LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY & 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 SANTA CRUZ 
 
"PS 
 
 1903 
 
THE GREATER INCLINATION 
 
THE 
 GREATER INCLINATION 
 
 BY 
 EDITH WHARTON 
 
 NEW YORK 
 CHARLES SCRIBNEITS SONS 
 
 MDCCCCIX 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER^S SONS 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 I 
 
 TJie H fuse's Tragedy 
 
 II 
 
 A Journey 
 
 III 
 
 The Pelican 4 9 
 
 IV 
 
 Souls Belated 8S 
 
 V 
 
 A Coward 1S1 
 
 VI 
 
 The Twilight of the God 159 
 
 VII 
 
 A Cup of Cold Water 18S 
 
 VIII 
 
 The Portrait 
 
THE MUSE'S TRAGEDY 
 
THE MUSE'S TRAGEDY 
 
 DANYERS afterwards liked to fancy that he 
 had recognized Mrs. Anerton at once; but 
 that, of course, was absurd, since he had 
 seen no portrait of her she affected a strict anonymity, 
 refusing even her photograph to the most privileged 
 and from Mrs. Memorall, whom he revered and cul- 
 tivated as her friend, he had extracted but the one im- 
 pressionist phrase: "Oh, well, she's like one of those 
 old prints where the lines have the value of color." 
 
 He was almost certain, at all events, that he had been 
 thinking of Mrs. Anerton as he sat over his breakfast 
 in the empty hotel restaurant, and that, looking up on 
 the approach of the lady who seated herself at the table 
 near the window, he had said to himself, "That might be 
 she." 
 
 Ever since his Harvard days he was still young 
 enough to think of them as immensely remote Dan- 
 yers had dreamed of Mrs. Anerton, the Silvia of Vin- 
 cent Rendle's immortal sonnet-cycle, the Mrs. A. of the 
 Life and Letters. Her name was enshrined in some of 
 the noblest English verse of the nineteenth century 
 and of all past or future centuries, as Danyers, from the 
 stand-point of a maturer judgment, still believed. The 
 first reading of certain poems of the Antinous, the 
 
THE MUSE'S TRAGEDY 
 
 Pia Tolomei, the Sonnets to Silvia, had been epochs in 
 Danyers's growth, and the verse seemed to gain in mel- 
 lowness, in amplitude, in meaning as one brought to its 
 interpretation more experience of life, a finer emotional 
 sense. Where, in his boyhood, he had felt only the per- 
 fect, the almost austere beauty of form, the subtle in- 
 terplay of vowel-sounds, the rush and fulness of lyric 
 emotion, he now thrilled to the close-packed signifi- 
 cance of each line, the allusiveness of each word his 
 imagination lured hither and thither on fresh trails of 
 thought, and perpetually spurred by the sense that, be- 
 yond what he had already discovered, more marvellous 
 regions lay waiting to be explored. Danyers had writ- 
 ten, at college, the prize essay on Rendle's poetry 
 (it chanced to be the moment of the great man's 
 death); he had fashioned the fugitive verse of his own 
 storm-and-stress period on the forms which Rendle had 
 first given to English metre; and when two years later 
 the Life and Letters appeared, and the Silvia of the 
 sonnets took substance as Mrs. A., he had included in 
 his worship of Rendle the woman who had inspired not 
 only such divine verse but such playful, tender, incom- 
 parable prose. 
 
 Danyers never forgot the day when Mrs. Memorall 
 happened to mention that she knew Mrs. Anerton. He 
 had known Mrs. Memorall for a year or more, and had 
 somewhat contemptuously classified her as the kind of 
 
THE MUSE'S TRAGEDY 
 
 woman who runs cheap excursions to celebrities; when 
 one afternoon she remarked, as she put a second lump 
 of sugar in his tea: 
 
 "Is it right this time? You're almost as particular 
 as Mary Anerton." 
 
 "Mary Anerton?" 
 
 "Yes, I never can remember how she likes her tea. 
 Either it's lemon with sugar, or lemon without sugar, 
 or cream without either, and whichever it is must be 
 put into the cup before the tea is poured in; and if 
 one hasn't remembered, one must begin all over 
 again. I suppose it was Vincent Rendle's way of tak- 
 ing his tea and has become a sacred rite." 
 
 "Do you know Mrs. Anerton?" cried Danyers, dis- 
 turbed by this careless familiarity with the habits of 
 his divinity. 
 
 "'And did I once see Shelley plain?' Mercy, yes! 
 She and I were at school together she's an Ameri- 
 can, you know. We were at a pension near Tours for 
 nearly a year; then she went back to New York, 
 and I didn't see her again till after her marriage. 
 She and Anerton spent a winter in Rome while my 
 husband was attached to our Legation there, and 
 she used to be with us a great deal." Mrs. Memorall 
 smiled reminiscently. "It was the winter." 
 
 "The winter they first met?" 
 
 "Precisely but unluckily I left Rome just before 
 [3] 
 
THE MUSE'S TRAGEDY 
 
 the meeting took place. Wasn't it too bad ? I might 
 have been in the Life and Letters. You know he 
 mentions that stupid Madame Vodki, at whose house 
 he first saw her." 
 
 "And did you see much of her after that?" 
 
 "Not during Rendle's life. You know she has lived 
 in Europe almost entirely, and though I used to see 
 her off and on when I went abroad, she was always 
 so engrossed, so preoccupied, that one felt one wasn't 
 wanted. The fact is, she cared only about his friends 
 . she separated herself gradually from all her own 
 people. Now, of course, it's different; she's desper- 
 ately lonely; she's taken to writing to me now and 
 then; and last year, when she heard I was going 
 abroad, she asked me to meet her in Venice, and I 
 spent a week with her there." 
 
 "And Rendle?" 
 
 Mrs. Memorall smiled and shook her head. "Oh, I 
 never was allowed a peep at him; none of her old 
 friends met him, except by accident. Ill-natured peo- 
 ple say that was the reason she kept him so long. If 
 one happened in while he was there, he was hustled 
 into Anerton's study, and the husband mounted 
 guard till the inopportune visitor had departed. An- 
 erton, you know, was really much more ridiculous 
 about it than his wife. Mary was too clever to lose 
 her head, or at least to show shVd lost it but 
 [4] 
 
THE MUSE'S TRAGEDY 
 
 Anerton couldn't conceal his pride in the conquest. 
 I've seen Mary shiver when he spoke of Rendle as 
 our poet. Rendle always had to have a certain seat at 
 the dinner-table, away from the draught and not too 
 near the fire, and a box of cigars that no one else 
 was allowed to touch, and a writing-table of his own 
 in Mary's sitting-room and Anerton was always tell- 
 ing one of the great man's idiosyncrasies: how he 
 never would cut the ends of his cigars, though An- 
 erton himself had given him a gold cutter set with 
 a star-sapphire, and how untidy his writing-table was, 
 and how the house-maid had orders always to bring 
 the waste-paper basket to her mistress before empty- 
 ing it, lest some immortal verse should be thrown 
 into the dust-bin." 
 
 "The Anertons never separated, did they?" 
 
 "Separated? Bless you, no. He never would have 
 left Rendle! And besides, he was very fond of his 
 wife." 
 
 "And she?" 
 
 "Oh, she saw he was the kind of man who was 
 fated to make himself ridiculous, and she never in- 
 terfered with his natural tendencies." 
 
 From Mrs. Memorall, Danyers further learned that 
 
 Mrs. Anerton, whose husband had died some years 
 
 before her poet, now divided her life between Rome, 
 
 where she had a small apartment, and England, where 
 
 [5] 
 
THE MUSE'S TRAGEDY 
 
 she occasionally went to stay with those of her friends 
 who had been Rendle's. She had been engaged, for 
 some time after his death, in editing some juvenilia 
 which he had bequeathed to her care; but that task 
 being accomplished, she had been left without defi- 
 nite occupation, and Mrs. Memorall, on the occasion 
 of their last meeting, had found her listless and out 
 of spirits. 
 
 "She misses him too much her life is too empty. 
 I told her so I told her she ought to marry." 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 "Why not, pray? She's a young woman still what 
 many people would call young," Mrs. Memorall inter- 
 jected, with a parenthetic glance at the mirror. "Why 
 not accept the inevitable and begin over again? All 
 the King's horses and all the King's men won't bring 
 Rendle to life and besides, she didn't marry him 
 when she had the chance." 
 
 Danyers winced slightly at this rude fingering of 
 his idol. Was it possible that Mrs. Memorall did not 
 see what an anti-climax such a marriage would have 
 been? Fancy Rendle "making an honest woman" of 
 Silvia; for so society would have viewed it! How such 
 a reparation would have vulgarized their past it 
 would have been like "restoring" a masterpiece; and 
 how exquisite must have been the perceptions of the 
 woman who, in defiance of appearances, and perhaps of 
 [6] 
 
THE MUSE'S TRAGEDY 
 
 her own secret inclination, chose to go down to pos- 
 terity as Silvia rather than as Mrs. Vincent Rendle! 
 
 Mrs. Memorall, from this day forth, acquired an 
 interest in Danyers's eyes. She was like a volume of 
 unindexed and discursive memoirs, through which he 
 patiently plodded in the hope of finding embedded 
 amid layers of dusty twaddle some precious allusion 
 to the subject of his thought. When, some months 
 later, he brought out his first slim volume, in which 
 the remodelled college essay on Rendle figured 
 among a dozen somewhat overstudied "apprecia- 
 tions," he offered a copy to Mrs. Memorall; who 
 surprised him, the next time they met, with the an- 
 nouncement that she had sent the book to Mrs. An- 
 erton. 
 
 Mrs. Anerton in due time wrote to thank her 
 friend. Danyers was privileged to read the few lines 
 in which, in terms that suggested the habit of "ac- 
 knowledging" similar tributes, she spoke of the au- 
 thor's " feeling and insight," and was "so glad of the 
 opportunity," etc. He went away disappointed, with- 
 out clearly knowing what else he had expected. 
 
 The following spring, when he went abroad, Mrs. 
 Memorall offered him letters to everybody, from the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury to Louise Michel. She did 
 not include Mrs. Anerton, however, and Danyers 
 knew, from a previous conversation, that Silvia ob- 
 
 m 
 
THE MUSE'S TRAGEDY 
 
 jected to people who "brought letters." He knew 
 also that she travelled during the summer, and was 
 unlikely to return to Rome before the term of his 
 holiday should be reached, and the hope of meeting 
 her was not included among his anticipations. 
 
 The lady whose entrance broke upon his solitary 
 repast in the restaurant of the Hotel Villa d'Este 
 had seated herself in such a way that her profile 
 was detached against the window; and thus viewed, 
 her domed forehead, small arched nose, and fastidi- 
 ous lip suggested a silhouette of Marie Antoinette. 
 In the lady's dress and movements in the very 
 turn of her wrist as she poured out her coffee 
 Danyers thought he detected the same fastidious- 
 ness, the same air of tacitly excluding the obvious 
 and unexceptional. Here was a woman who had been 
 much bored and keenly interested. The waiter brought 
 her a Secolo, and as she bent above it Danyers noticed 
 that the hair rolled back from her forehead was turn- 
 ing gray; but her figure was straight and slender, and 
 she had the invaluable gift of a girlish back. 
 
 The rush of Anglo-Saxon travel had not set to- 
 ward the lakes, and with the exception of an Italian 
 family or two, and a hump-backed youth with an 
 abbe, Danyers and the lady had the marble halls of 
 the Villa d'Este to themselves. 
 
 When he returned from his morning ramble among 
 
 [8], 
 
THE MUSE'S TRAGEDY 
 
 the hills he saw her sitting at one of the little tables 
 at the edge of the lake. She was writing, and a heap 
 of books and newspapers lay on the table at her side. 
 That evening they met again in the garden. He had 
 strolled out to smoke a last cigarette before dinner, 
 and under the black vaulting of ilexes, near the steps 
 leading down to the boat-landing, he found her lean- 
 ing on the parapet above the lake. At the sound of 
 his approach she turned and looked at him. She had 
 thrown a black lace scarf over her head, and in this 
 sombre setting her face seemed thin and unhappy. 
 He remembered afterwards that her eyes, as they 
 met his, expressed not so much sorrow as profound 
 discontent. 
 
 To his surprise she stepped toward him with a 
 detaining gesture. 
 
 "Mr. Lewis Danyers, I believe?" 
 
 He bowed. 
 
 "I am Mrs. Anerton. I saw your name on the vis- 
 itors' list and wished to thank you for an essay on 
 Mr. Rendle's poetry or rather to tell you how much 
 I appreciated it. The book was sent to me last winter 
 by Mrs. Memorall." 
 
 She spoke in even melancholy tones, as though 
 the habit of perfunctory utterance had robbed her 
 voice of more spontaneous accents; but her smile 
 was charming. 
 
 [9] 
 
THE MUSE'S TRAGEDY 
 
 They sat down on a stone bench under the ilexes, 
 and she told him how much pleasure his essay had 
 given her. She thought it the best in the book she 
 was sure he had put more of himself into it than 
 into any other; was she not right in conjecturing that 
 he had been very deeply influenced by Mr. Rendle's 
 poetry? Pour comprendre il faut aimer, and it seemed to 
 her that, in some ways, he had penetrated the poet's 
 inner meaning more completely than any other critic. 
 There were certain problems, of course, that he had 
 left untouched; certain aspects of that many-sided 
 mind that he had perhaps failed to seize 
 
 "But then you are young," she concluded gently, 
 "and one could not wish you, as yet, the experience 
 that a fuller understanding would imply." 
 
 II 
 
 SHE stayed a month at Villa d'Este, and Danyers 
 was with her daily. She showed an unaffected 
 pleasure in his society; a pleasure so obviously founded 
 on their common veneration of Rendle, that the young 
 man could enjoy it without fear of fatuity. At first he 
 was merely one more grain of frankincense on the altar 
 of her insatiable divinity; but gradually a more per- 
 sonal note crept into their intercourse. If she still liked 
 him only because he appreciated Rendle, she at least 
 [10] 
 
THE MUSE'S TRAGEDY 
 
 perceptibly distinguished him from the herd of Rendle's 
 appreciators. 
 
 Her attitude toward the great man's memory struck 
 Danyers as perfect. She neither proclaimed nor dis- 
 avowed her identity. She was frankly Silvia to those 
 who knew and cared; but there was no trace of the 
 Egeria in her pose. She spoke often of Rendle's books, 
 but seldom of himself; there was no posthumous conju- 
 gality, no use of the possessive tense, in her abounding 
 reminiscences. Of the master's intellectual life, of his 
 habits of thought and work, she never wearied of talk- 
 ing. She knew the history of each poem ; by what scene 
 or episode each image had been evoked; how many 
 times the words in a certain line had been transposed; 
 how long a certain adjective had been sought, and what 
 had at last suggested it; she could even explain that 
 one impenetrable line, the torment of critics, the joy 
 of detractors, the last line of The Old Odysseus. 
 
 * J 
 
 Danyers felt that in talking of these things she was 
 no mere echo of Rendle's thought. If her identity had 
 appeared to be merged in his it was because they 
 thought alike, not because he had thought for her. Pos- 
 terity is apt to regard the women whom poets have 
 sung as chance pegs on which they hung their gar- 
 lands; but Mrs. Anerton's mind was like some fertile 
 garden wherein, inevitably, Rendle's imagination had 
 rooted itself and flowered. Danyers began to see how 
 
THE MUSE'S TRAGEDY 
 
 many threads of his complex mental tissue the poet 
 had owed to the blending of her temperament with 
 his; in a certain sense Silvia had herself created the 
 Sonnets to Silvia. 
 
 To be the custodian of Rendle's inner self, the door, 
 as it were, to the sanctuary, had at first seemed to 
 Danyers so comprehensive a privilege that he had the 
 sense, as his friendship with Mrs. Anerton advanced, 
 of forcing his way into a life already crowded. What 
 room was there, among such towering memories, for 
 so small an actuality as his ? Quite suddenly, after this, 
 he discovered that Mrs. Memorall knew better: his 
 fortunate friend was bored as well as lonely. 
 
 "You have had more than any other woman!" he 
 had exclaimed to her one day ; and her smile flashed a 
 derisive light on his blunder. Fool that he was, not to 
 have seen that she had not had enough! That she 
 was young still do years count? tender, human, a 
 woman; that the living have need of the living. 
 
 After that, when they climbed the alleys of the 
 hanging park, resting in one of the little ruined tem- 
 ples, or watching, through a ripple of foliage, the re- 
 mote blue flash of the lake, they did not always talk 
 of Rendle or of literature. She encouraged Danyers to 
 speak of himself; to confide his ambitions to her; she 
 asked him the questions which are the wise woman's 
 substitute for advice. 
 
THE MUSE'S TRAGEDY 
 
 "You must write," she said, administering the most 
 exquisite flattery that human lips could give. 
 
 Of course he meant to write why not to do some- 
 thing great in his turn? His best, at least; with the 
 resolve, at the outset, that his best should be the best. 
 Nothing less seemed possible with that mandate in 
 his ears. How she had divined him; lifted and disen- 
 tangled his groping ambitions; laid the awakening 
 touch on his spirit with her creative Let there be light! 
 
 It was his last day with her, and he was feeling very 
 hopeless and happy. 
 
 "You ought to write a book about him" she went 
 on gently. 
 
 Danyers started; he was beginning to dislike Ren- 
 die's way of walking in unannounced. 
 
 "You ought to do it," she insisted. "A complete in- 
 terpretation a summing-up of his style, his purpose, 
 his theory of life and art. No one else could do it as 
 well." 
 
 He sat looking at her perplexedly. Suddenly dared 
 he guess? 
 
 "I couldn't do it without you," he faltered. 
 
 "I could help you I would help you, of course." 
 
 They sat silent, both looking at the lake. 
 
 It was agreed, when they parted, that he should 
 rejoin her six weeks later in Venice. There they were 
 to talk about the book. 
 
 [13] 
 
THE MUSE'S TRAGEDY 
 
 III 
 
 Lago d'Iseo, August 14th. 
 
 WHEN I said good-by to you yesterday I prom- 
 ised to come back to Venice in a week : I was 
 to give you your answer then. I was not honest in 
 saying that; I didn't mean to go back to Venice or to 
 see you again. I was running away from you and 
 I mean to keep on running ! If you won't, / must. 
 Somebody must save you from marrying a disappointed 
 woman of well, you say years don't count, and why 
 should they, after all, since you are not to marry me ? 
 
 That is what I dare not go back to say. You are 
 not to marry me. We have had our month together in 
 Venice (such a good month, was it not?) and now 
 you are to go home and write a book any book 
 but the one we didn't talk of! and I am to stay 
 here, attitudinizing among my memories like a sort 
 of female Tithonus. The dreariness of this enforced 
 immortality ! 
 
 But you shall know the truth. I care for you, or 
 at least for your love, enough to owe you that. 
 
 You thought it was because Vincent Rendle had 
 loved me that there was so little hope for you. I 
 had had what I wanted to the full; wasn't that 
 what you said? It is just when a man begins to 
 think he understands a woman that he may be sure 
 [14] 
 
THE MUSE'S TRAGEDY 
 
 he doesn't! It is because Vincent Rendle didn't love me 
 that there is no hope for you. I never had what I 
 wanted, and never, never, never will I stoop to want- 
 ing anything else. 
 
 Do you begin to understand ? It was all a sham then, 
 you say ? No, it was all real as far as it went. You are 
 young you haven't learned, as you will later, the 
 thousand imperceptible signs by which one gropes 
 one's way through the labyrinth of human nature ; but 
 didn't it strike you, sometimes, that I never told you 
 any foolish little anecdotes about him ? His trick, for 
 instance, of twirling a paper-knife round and round 
 between his thumb and forefinger while he talked ; his 
 mania for saving the backs of notes; his greediness 
 for wild strawberries, the little pungent Alpine ones ; 
 his childish delight in acrobats and jugglers; his way 
 of always calling me you dear you, every letter be- 
 gan I never told you a word of all that, did I ? Do 
 you suppose I could have helped telling you, if he had 
 loved me ? These little things would have been mine, 
 then, a part of my life of our life they would have 
 slipped out in spite of me (it's only your unhappy 
 woman who is always reticent and dignified). But there 
 never was any "our life ;" it was always "our lives" to 
 the end. . . . 
 
 If you knew what a relief it is to tell some one at 
 last, you would bear with me, you would let me hurt 
 [15] 
 
THE MUSE'S TRAGEDY 
 
 you ! I shall never be quite so lonely again, now that 
 some one know"s. 
 
 Let me begin at the beginning. When I first met 
 Vincent Rendle I was not twenty-five. That was twenty 
 years ago. From that time until his death, five years 
 ago, we were fast friends. He gave me fifteen years, 
 perhaps the best fifteen years, of his life. The world, 
 as you know, thinks that his greatest poems were writ- 
 ten during those years ; I am supposed to have " in- 
 spired" them, and in a sense I did. From the first, the 
 intellectual sympathy between us was almost complete ; 
 my mind must, have been to him (I fancy) like some 
 perfectly tuned instrument on which he was never 
 tired of playing. Some one told me of his once saying 
 of me that I "always understood ;" it is the only praise 
 I ever heard of his giving me. I don't even know if he 
 thought me pretty, though I hardly think my appear- 
 ance could have been disagreeable to him, for he hated 
 to be with ugly people. At all events he fell into the 
 way of spending more and more of his time with me. 
 He liked our house; our ways suited him. He was 
 nervous, irritable ; people bored him and yet he dis- 
 liked solitude. He took sanctuary with us. When we 
 travelled he went with us ; in the winter he took rooms 
 near us in Rome. In England or on the continent he 
 was always with us for a good part of the year. In small 
 ways I was able to help him in his work ; he grew de- 
 [16] 
 
THE MUSE'S TRAGEDY 
 
 pendent on me. When we were apart he wrote to me 
 continually he liked to have me share in all he was 
 doing or thinking ; he was impatient for my criticism of 
 every new book that interested him ; I was a part of 
 his intellectual life. The pity of it was that I wanted 
 to be something more. I was a young woman and I 
 was in love with him not because he was Vincent 
 Rendle, but just because he was himself! 
 
 People began to talk, of course I was Vincent Ren- 
 die's Mrs. Anerton; when the Sonnets to Silvia appeared, 
 it was whispered that I was Silvia. Wherever he went, 
 I was invited; people made up to me in the hope of 
 getting to know him; when I was in London my door- 
 bell never stopped ringing. Elderly peeresses, aspiring 
 hostesses, love-sick girls and struggling authors over- 
 whelmed me with their assiduities. I hugged my suc- 
 cess, for I knew what it meant they thought that 
 Rendle was in love with me ! Do you know, at times, 
 they almost made me think so too ? Oh, there was no 
 phase of folly I didn't go through. You can't imagine 
 the excuses a woman will invent for a man's not telling 
 her that he loves her pitiable arguments that she 
 would see through at a glance if any other woman used 
 them! But all the while, deep down, I knew he had 
 never cared. I should have known it if he had made 
 love to me every day of his life. I could never guess 
 whether he knew what people said about us he 
 [17] 
 
THE MUSE'S TRAGEDY 
 
 listened so little to what people said ; and cared still 
 less, when he heard. He was always quite honest and 
 straightforward with me; he treated me as one man 
 treats another; and yet at times I felt he must see 
 that with me it was different. If he did see, he made 
 no sign. Perhaps he never noticed I am sure he never 
 meant to be cruel. He had never made love to me ; it 
 was no fault of his if I wanted more than he could give 
 me. The Sonnets to Silvia, you say ? But what are they ? 
 A cosmic philosophy, not a love-poem; addressed to 
 Woman, not to a woman ! 
 
 But then, the letters? Ah, the letters! Well, I'll 
 make a clean breast of it. You have noticed the breaks 
 in the letters here and there, just as they seem to be on 
 the point of growing a little warmer? The critics, you 
 may remember, praised the editor for his commendable 
 delicacy and good taste (so rare in these days !) in omit- 
 ting from the correspondence all personal allusions, all 
 those details intimes which should be kept sacred from 
 the public gaze. They referred, of course, to the as- 
 terisks in the letters to Mrs. A. Those letters I myself 
 prepared for publication; that is to say, I copied them 
 out for the editor, and every now and then I put in a 
 line of asterisks to make it appear that something had 
 been left out. You understand? The asterisks were a 
 sham there was nothing to leave out. 
 
 No one but a woman could understand what I went 
 [18] 
 
THE MUSE'S TRAGEDY 
 
 through during those years the moments of revolt, 
 when I felt I must break away from it all, fling the 
 truth in his face and never see him again; the in- 
 evitable reaction, when not to see him seemed the one 
 unendurable thing, and I trembled lest a look or word 
 of mine should disturb the poise of our friendship; the 
 silly days when I hugged the delusion that he must 
 love me, since everybody thought he did; the long pe- 
 riods of numbness, when I didn't seem to care whether 
 he loved me or not. Between these wretched days 
 came others when our intellectual accord was so per- 
 fect that I forgot everything else in the joy of feeling 
 myself lifted up on the wings of his thought. Some- 
 times, then, the heavens seemed to be opened. . . . 
 
 All this time he was so dear a friend! He had the 
 genius of friendship, and he spent it all on me. Yes, 
 you were right when you said that I have had more 
 than any other woman. // faut de Cadresse pour aimer , 
 Pascal says; and I was so quiet, so cheerful, so frankly 
 affectionate with him, that in all those years I am al- 
 most sure I never bored him. Could I have hoped as 
 much if he had loved me ? 
 
 You mustn't think of him, though, as having been 
 
 tied to my skirts. He came and went as he pleased, 
 
 and so did his fancies. There was a girl once (I am 
 
 telling you everything), a lovely being who called his 
 
 [19] 
 
THE MUSE'S TRAGEDY 
 
 poetry "deep" and gave him Lucile on his birthday. 
 He followed her to Switzerland one summer, and all 
 the time that he was dangling after her (a little too 
 conspicuously, I always thought, for a Great Man), he 
 was writing to me about his theory of vowel-combina- 
 tions or was it his experiments in English hexameter? 
 The letters were dated from the very places where I 
 knew they went and sat by waterfalls together and he 
 thought out adjectives for her hair. He talked to me 
 about it quite frankly afterwards. She was perfectly 
 beautiful and it had been a pure delight to watch her; 
 but she would talk, and her mind, he said, was "all 
 elbows." And yet, the next year, when her marriage 
 was announced, he went away alone, quite suddenly 
 . . . and it was just afterwards that he published 
 Love's Viaticum. Men are queer! 
 
 After my husband died I am putting things 
 crudely, you see Ihad a return of hope. It was be- 
 cause he loved me, I argued, that he had never spoken ; 
 because he had always hoped some day to make me his 
 wife; because he wanted to spare me the "reproach." 
 Rubbish ! I knew well enough, in my heart of hearts, 
 that my one chance lay in the force of habit. He had 
 grown used to me ; he was no longer young ; he dreaded 
 new people and new ways ; il avail pris son pli. Would 
 it not be easier to marry me ? 
 
 I don't believe he ever thought of it. He wrote me 
 [20] 
 
THE MUSE'S TRAGEDY 
 
 what people call "a beautiful letter;" he was kind, 
 considerate, decently commiserating; then, after a few 
 weeks, he slipped into his old way of coming in every 
 afternoon, and our interminable talks began again just 
 where they had left off. I heard later that people thought 
 I had shown "such good taste" in not marrying him. 
 
 So we jogged on for five years longer. Perhaps they 
 were the best years, for I had given up hoping. Then 
 he died. 
 
 After his death this is curious there came to me 
 a kind of mirage of love. All the books and articles 
 written about him, all the reviews of the "Life," were 
 full of discreet allusions to Silvia. I became again the 
 Mrs. Anerton of the glorious days. Sentimental girls 
 and dear lads like you turned pink when somebody 
 whispered, "that was Silvia you were talking to." Idiots 
 begged for my autograph publishers urged me to 
 write my reminiscences of him critics consulted me 
 about the reading of doubtful lines. And I knew that, 
 to all these people, I was the woman Vincent Rendle 
 had loved. 
 
 After a while that fire went out too and I was left 
 alone with my past. Alone quite alone; for he had 
 never really been with me. The intellectual union 
 counted for nothing now. It had been soul to soul, 
 but never hand in hand, and there were no little 
 things to remember him by. 
 [21] 
 
THE MUSE'S TRAGEDY 
 
 Then there set in a kind of Arctic winter. I 
 crawled into myself as into a snow-hut. I hated my 
 solitude and yet dreaded any one who disturbed it. 
 That phase, of course, passed like the others. I took 
 up life again, and began to read the papers and con- 
 sider the cut of my gowns. But there was one ques- 
 tion that I could not be rid of, that haunted me 
 night and day. Why had he never loved me ? Why 
 had I been so much to him, and no more? Was I so 
 ugly, so essentially unlovable, that though a man 
 might cherish me as his mind's comrade, he could 
 not care for me as a woman ? I can't tell you how 
 that question tortured me. It became an obsession. 
 
 My poor friend, do you begin to see? I had to 
 find out what some other man thought of me. Don't 
 be too hard on me ! Listen first consider. When I 
 first met Vincent Rendle I was a young woman, who 
 had married early and led the quietest kind of life; I 
 had had no "experiences." From the hour of our first 
 meeting to the day of his death I never looked at any 
 other man, and never noticed whether any other man 
 looked at me. When he died, five years ago, I knew the 
 extent of my powers no more than a baby. Was it too 
 late to find out ? Should I never know why ? 
 
 Forgive me forgive me. You are so young; it will 
 be an episode, a mere "document," to you so soon! 
 And, besides, it wasn't as deliberate, as cold-blooded 
 [22] 
 
THE MUSE'S TRAGEDY 
 
 as these disjointed lines have made it appear. I didn't 
 plan it, like a woman in a book. Life is so much more 
 complex than any rendering of it can be. I liked you 
 from the first I was drawn to you (you must have 
 seen that) I wanted you to like me; it was not a 
 mere psychological experiment. And yet in a sense it 
 was that, too I must be honest. I had to have an 
 answer to that question; it was a ghost that had to be 
 laid. 
 
 At first I was afraid oh, so much afraid that you 
 cared for me only because I was Silvia, that you loved 
 me because you thought Rendle had loved me. I be- 
 gan to think there was no escaping my destiny. 
 
 How happy I was when I discovered that you were 
 growing jealous of my past ; that you actually hated 
 Rendle ! My heart beat like a girl's when you told me 
 you meant to follow me to Venice. 
 
 After our parting at Villa d'Este my old doubts re- 
 asserted themselves. What did I know of your feeling 
 for me, after all? Were you capable of analyzing it 
 yourself? Was it not likely to be two-thirds vanity and 
 curiosity, and one-third literary sentimentality? You 
 might easily fancy that you cared for Mary Anerton 
 when you were really in love with Silvia the heart 
 is such a hypocrite ! Or you might be more calculating 
 than I had supposed. Perhaps it was you who had been 
 flattering my vanity in the hope (the pardonable hope !) 
 [23] 
 
THE MUSE'S TRAGEDY 
 
 of turning me, after a decent interval, into a pretty 
 little essay with a margin. 
 
 When you arrived in Venice and we met again do 
 you remember the music on the lagoon, that evening, 
 from my balcony? I was so afraid you would begin 
 to talk about the book the book, you remember, was 
 your ostensible reason for coming. You never spoke 
 of it, and I soon saw your one fear was / might do 
 so might remind you of your object in being with 
 me. Then I knew you cared for me ! yes, at that mo- 
 ment really cared ! We never mentioned the book once, 
 did we, during that month in Venice ? 
 
 I have read my letter over ; and now I wish that I 
 had said this to you instead of writing it. I could have 
 felt my way then, watching your face and seeing if you 
 understood. But, no, I could not go back to Venice ; 
 and I could not tell you (though I tried) while we 
 were there together. I couldn't spoil that month my 
 one month. It was so good, for once in my life, to get 
 away from literature .... 
 
 You will be angry with me at first but, alas! not 
 for long. What I have done would have been cruel if I 
 had been a younger woman ; as it is, the experiment 
 will hurt no one but myself. And it will hurt me hor- 
 ribly (as much as, in your first anger, you may perhaps 
 wish), because it has shown me, for the first time, all 
 that I have missed .... 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 A she lay in her berth, staring at the shadows 
 overhead, the rush of the wheels was in her 
 brain, driving her deeper and deeper into cir- 
 cles of wakeful lucidity. The sleeping-car had sunk into 
 its night-silence. Through the wet window-pane she 
 watched the sudden lights, the long stretches of 
 hurrying blackness. Now and then she turned her 
 head and looked through the opening in the hang- 
 ings at her husband's curtains across the aisle . . . 
 
 She wondered restlessly if he wanted anything and 
 if she could hear him if he called. His voice had 
 grown very weak within the last months and it irri- 
 tated him when she did not hear. This irritability, 
 this increasing childish petulance seemed to give ex- 
 pression to their imperceptible estrangement. Like 
 two faces looking at one another through a sheet of 
 glass they were close together, almost touching, but 
 they could not hear or feel each other: the conduc- 
 tivity between them was broken. She, at least, had 
 this sense of separation, and she fancied sometimes 
 that she saw it reflected in the look with which he 
 supplemented his failing words. Doubtless the fault 
 was hers. She was too impenetrably healthy to be 
 touched by the irrelevancies of disease. Her self-re- 
 [27] 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 proachful tenderness was tinged with the sense of his 
 irrationality: she had a vague feeling that there was a 
 purpose in his helpless tyrannies. The suddenness of 
 the change had found her so unprepared. A year ago 
 their pulses had beat to one robust measure; both had 
 the same prodigal confidence in an exhaustless future. 
 Now their energies no longer kept step: hers still 
 bounded ahead of life, preempting unclaimed regions 
 of hope and activity, while his lagged behind, vainly 
 struggling to overtake her. 
 
 When they married, she had such arrears of living 
 to make up: her days had been as bare as the white- 
 washed school-room where she forced innutritious facts 
 upon reluctant children. His coming had broken in on 
 the slumber of circumstance, widening the present till 
 it became the encloser of remotest chances. But im- 
 perceptibly the horizon narrowed. Life had a grudge 
 against her: she was never to be allowed to spread her 
 wings. 
 
 At first the doctors had said that six weeks of mild 
 air would set him right; but when he came back this 
 assurance was explained as having of course included 
 a winter in a dry climate. They gave up their pretty 
 house, storing the wedding presents and new furniture, 
 and went to Colorado. She had hated it there from the 
 first. Nobody knew her or cared about her; there was 
 no one to wonder at the good match she had made, 
 [28] 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 or to envy her the new dresses and the visiting-cards 
 which were still a surprise to her. And he kept grow- 
 ing worse. She felt herself beset with difficulties too 
 evasive to be fought by so direct a temperament. She 
 still loved him,, of course; but he was gradually, unde- 
 finably ceasing to be himself. The man she had married 
 had been strong, active, gently masterful : the male 
 whose pleasure it is to clear a way through the mate- 
 rial obstructions of life ; but now it was she who was 
 the protector, he who must be shielded from importu- 
 nities and given his drops or his beef-juice though the 
 skies were falling. The routine of the sick-room be- 
 wildered her; this punctual administering of medicine 
 seemed as idle as some uncomprehended religious 
 mummery. 
 
 There were moments, indeed, when warm gushes of 
 pity swept away her instinctive resentment of his con- 
 dition, when she still found his old self in his eyes as 
 they groped for each other through the dense medium 
 of his weakness. But these moments had grown rare. 
 Sometimes he frightened her: his sunken expressionless 
 face seemed that of a stranger ; his voice was weak and 
 hoarse ; his thin-lipped smile a mere muscular contrac- 
 tion. Her hand avoided his damp soft skin, which had 
 lost the familiar roughness of health: she caught her- 
 self furtively watching him as she might have watched 
 a strange animal. It frightened her to feel that this 
 
 [29] 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 was the man she loved; there were hours when to tell 
 him what she suffered seemed the one escape from her 
 fears. But in general she judged herself more leniently, 
 reflecting that she had perhaps been too long alone 
 with him, and that she would feel differently when 
 they were at home again, surrounded by her robust 
 and buoyant family. How she had rejoiced when the 
 doctors at last gave their consent to his going home! 
 She knew, of course, what the decision meant; they 
 both knew. It meant that he was to die ; but they 
 dressed the truth in hopeful euphuisms, and at times, 
 in the joy of preparation, she really forgot the purpose 
 of their journey, and slipped into an eager allusion to 
 next year's plans. 
 
 At last the day of leaving came. She had a dreadful 
 fear that they would never get away ; that somehow at 
 the last moment he would fail her; that the doctors 
 held one of their accustomed treacheries in reserve ; 
 but nothing happened. They drove to the station, he 
 was installed in a seat with a rug over his knees and a 
 cushion at his back, and she hung out of the window 
 waving unregretful farewells to the acquaintances she 
 had really never liked till then. 
 
 The first twenty-four hours had passed off well. He 
 
 revived a little and it amused him to look out of the 
 
 window and to observe the humours of the car. The 
 
 second day he began to grow weary and to chafe under 
 
 [30] 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 the dispassionate stare of the freckled child with the 
 lump of chewing-gum. She had to explain to the child's 
 mother that her husband was too ill to be disturbed : a 
 statement received by that lady with a resentment visi- 
 bly supported by the maternal sentiment of the whole 
 car .... 
 
 That night he slept badly and the next morning his 
 temperature frightened her: she was sure he was grow- 
 ing worse. The day passed slowly, punctuated by the 
 small irritations of travel. Watching his tired face, she 
 traced in its contractions every rattle and jolt of the 
 train, till her own body vibrated with sympathetic 
 fatigue. She felt the others observing him too, and 
 hovered restlessly between him and the line of inter- 
 rogative eyes. The freckled child hung about him like 
 a fly; offers of candy and picture-books failed to dis- 
 lodge her: she twisted one leg around the other and 
 watched him imperturbably. The porter, as he passed, 
 lingered with vague proffers of help, probably inspired 
 by philanthropic passengers swelling with the sense 
 that "something ought to be done ;" and one nervous 
 man in a skull-cap was audibly concerned as to the 
 possible effect on his wife's health. 
 
 The hours dragged on in a dreary inoccupation. 
 Towards dusk she sat down beside him and he laid 
 his hand on hers. The touch startled her. He seemed 
 to be calling her from far off. She looked at him 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 helplessly and his smile went through her like a phy- 
 sical pang. 
 
 "Are you very tired?" she asked. 
 
 "No, not very." 
 
 "We'll be there soon now." 
 
 "Yes, very soon." 
 
 "This time to-morrow " 
 
 He nodded and they sat silent. When she had put 
 him to bed and crawled into her own berth she tried to 
 cheer herself with the thought that in less than twenty- 
 four hours they would be in New York. Her people 
 would all be at the station to meet her she pictured 
 their round unanxious faces pressing through the crowd. 
 She only hoped they would not tell him too loudly 
 that he was looking splendidly and would be all right 
 in no time: the subtler sympathies developed by long 
 contact with suffering were making her aware of a cer- 
 tain coarseness of texture in the family sensibilities. 
 
 Suddenly she thought she heard him call. She parted 
 the curtains and listened. No, it was only a man snor- 
 ing at the other end of the car. His snores had a greasy 
 sound, as though they passed through tallow. She lay 
 down and tried to sleep . . . Had she not heard him 
 move ? She started up trembling . . . The silence 
 frightened her more than any sound. He might not 
 be able to make her hear he might be calling her 
 now . . . What made her think of such things? It 
 [32], 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 was merely the familiar tendency of an over-tired 
 mind to fasten itself on the most intolerable chance 
 within the range of its forebodings . . . Putting her 
 head out, she listened ; but she could not distinguish 
 his breathing from that of the other pairs of lungs 
 about her. She longed to get up and look at him, but 
 she knew the impulse was a mere vent for her rest- 
 lessness, and the fear of disturbing him restrained her. 
 . . . The regular movement of his curtain reassured 
 her, she knew not why ; she remembered that he had 
 wished her a cheerful good-night ; and the sheer inabil- 
 ity to endure her fears a moment longer made her 
 put them from her with an effort of her whole sound 
 tired body. She turned on her side and slept. 
 
 She sat up stiffly, staring out at the dawn. The train 
 was rushing through a region of bare hillocks huddled 
 against a lifeless sky. It looked like the first day of 
 creation. The air of the car was close, and she pushed 
 up her window to let in the keen wind. Then she 
 looked at her watch : it was seven o'clock, and soon the 
 people about her would be stirring. She slipped into 
 her clothes, smoothed her dishevelled hair and crept to 
 the dressing-room. When she had washed her face and 
 adjusted her dress she felt more hopeful. It was always 
 a struggle for her not to be cheerful in the morning. 
 Her cheeks burned deliciously under the coarse towel 
 and the wet hair about her temples broke into strong 
 [33] 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 upward tendrils. Every inch of her was full of life and 
 elasticity. And in ten hours they would be at home ! 
 
 She stepped to her husband's berth : it was time for 
 him to take his early glass of milk. The window-shade 
 was down, and in the dusk of the curtained enclosure 
 she could just see that he lay sideways, with his face 
 away from her. She leaned over him and drew up the 
 shade. As she did so she touched one of his hands. It 
 felt cold . . . 
 
 She bent closer, laying her hand on his arm and 
 calling him by name. He did not move. She spoke 
 again more loudly; she grasped his shoulder and gently 
 shook it. He lay motionless. She caught hold of his 
 hand again: it slipped from her limply, like a dead 
 thing. A dead thing? . . . Her breath caught. She 
 must see his face. She leaned forward, and hurriedly, 
 shrinkingly, with a sickening reluctance of the flesh, 
 laid her hands on his shoulders and turned him over. 
 His head fell back ; his face looked small and smooth ; 
 he gazed at her with steady eyes. 
 
 She remained motionless for a long time, holding 
 him thus ; and they looked at each other. Suddenly she 
 shrank back : the longing to scream, to call out, to fly 
 from him, had almost overpowered her. But a strong 
 hand arrested her. Good God ! If it were known that 
 he was dead they would be put off the train at the next 
 station 
 
 [34] 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 In a terrifying flash of remembrance there arose be- 
 fore her a scene she had once witnessed in travelling, 
 when a husband and wife, whose child had died in the 
 train, had been thrust out at some chance station. She 
 saw them standing on the platform with the child's 
 body between them ; she had never forgotten the 
 dazed look with which they followed the receding 
 train. And this was what would happen to her. Within 
 the next hour she might find herself on the platform 
 of some strange station, alone with her husband's body. 
 . . . Anything but that! It was too horrible She 
 quivered like a creature at bay. 
 
 As she cowered there, she felt the train moving more 
 slowly. It was coming then they were approaching a 
 station ! She saw again the husband and wife standing 
 on the lonely platform ; and with a violent gesture she 
 drew down the shade to hide her husband's face. 
 
 Feeling dizzy, she sank down on the edge of the 
 berth, keeping away from his outstretched body, and 
 pulling the curtains close, so that he and she were shut 
 into a kind of sepulchral twilight. She tried to think. 
 At all costs she must conceal the fact that he was dead. 
 But how ? Her mind refused to act : she could not plan, 
 combine. She could think of no way but to sit there, 
 clutching the curtains, all day long . . . 
 
 She heard the porter making up her bed ; people 
 were beginning to move about the car; the dressing- 
 [35] 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 room door was being opened and shut. She tried to 
 rouse herself. At length with a supreme effort she 
 rose to her feet, stepping into the aisle of the car 
 and drawing the curtains tight behind her. She no- 
 ticed that they still parted slightly with the motion 
 of the car, and finding a pin in her dress she fast- 
 ened them together. Now she was safe. She looked 
 round and saw the porter. She fancied he was watch- 
 ing her. 
 
 "Ain't he awake yet?" he enquired. 
 
 "No," she faltered. 
 
 " I got his milk all ready when he wants it. You 
 know you told me to have it for him by seven." 
 
 She nodded silently and crept into her seat. 
 
 At half-past eight the train reached Buffalo. By 
 this time the other passengers were dressed and the 
 berths had been folded back for the day. The por- 
 ter, moving to and fro under his burden of sheets 
 and pillows, glanced at her as he passed. At length 
 he said: "Ain't he going to get up? You know 
 we're ordered to make up the berths as early as 
 we can." 
 
 She turned cold with fear. They were just enter- 
 ing the station. 
 
 "Oh, not yet," she stammered. "Not till he's had 
 his milk. Won't you get it, please ? " 
 
 "All right. Soon as we start again." 
 [36] 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 When the train moved on he reappeared with the 
 milk. She took it from him and sat vaguely looking 
 at it : her brain moved slowly from one idea to an- 
 other, as though they were stepping-stones set far 
 apart across a whirling flood. At length she became 
 aware that the porter still hovered expectantly. 
 " Will I give it to him ? " he suggested. 
 "Oh, no," she cried, rising. "He he's asleep yet, 
 [ think" 
 
 She waited till the porter had passed on; then 
 she unpinned the curtains and slipped behind them. 
 In the semi-obscurity her husband's face stared up 
 at her like a marble mask with agate eyes. The eyes 
 were dreadful. She put out her hand and drew down 
 the lids. Then she remembered the glass of milk in 
 her other hand : what was she to do with it ? She 
 thought of raising the window and throwing it out; 
 but to do so she would have to lean across his body 
 and bring her face close to his. She decided to drink 
 the milk. 
 
 She returned to her seat with the empty glass 
 and after a while the porter came back to get it. 
 "When '11 I fold up his bed?" he asked. 
 " Oh, not now not yet ; he 's ill he 's very ill. 
 Can't you let him stay as he is? The doctor wants 
 him to lie down as much as possible." 
 
 He scratched his head. "Well, if he's really sick " 
 
 [37] 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 He took the empty glass and walked away, ex- 
 plaining to the passengers that the party behind 
 the curtains was too sick to get up just yet. 
 
 She found herself the centre of sympathetic eyes. 
 A motherly woman with an intimate smile sat down 
 beside her. 
 
 "I'm real sorry to hear your husband's sick. I've 
 had a remarkable amount of sickness in my family 
 and maybe I could assist you. Can I take a look at 
 him?" 
 
 "Oh, no no, please! He mustn't be disturbed." 
 
 The lady accepted the rebuff indulgently. 
 
 "Well, it's just as you say, of course, but you don't 
 look to me as if you 'd had much experience in sick- 
 ness and I 'd have been glad to assist you. What do you 
 generally do when your husband's taken this way?" 
 
 "I I let him sleep." 
 
 " Too much sleep ain't any too healthful either. 
 
 Don't you give him any medicine ? " 
 
 Y yes." 
 
 " Don't you wake him to take it ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " When does he take the next dose ? " 
 
 "Not for two hours 
 
 The lady looked disappointed. "Well, if I was you 
 I'd try giving it oftener. That's what I do with my 
 folks. 
 
 [38] 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 After that many faces seemed to press upon her. 
 The passengers were on their way to the dining-car, 
 and she was conscious that as they passed down the 
 aisle they glanced curiously at the closed curtains. 
 One lantern-jawed man with prominent eyes stood 
 still and tried to shoot his projecting glance through 
 the division between the folds. The freckled child, 
 returning from breakfast, waylaid the passers with a 
 buttery clutch, saying in a loud whisper, " He 's 
 sick ; " and once the conductor came by, asking for 
 tickets. She shrank into her corner and looked out 
 of the window at the flying trees and houses, mean- 
 ingless hieroglyphs of an endlessly unrolled papyrus. 
 
 Now and then the train stopped, and the new- 
 comers on entering the car stared in turn at the 
 closed curtains. More and more people seemed to pass 
 their faces began to blend fantastically with the im- 
 ages surging in her brain . . . 
 
 Later in the day a fat man detached himself from 
 the mist of faces. He had a creased stomach and soft 
 pale lips. As he pressed himself into the seat facing 
 her she noticed that he was dressed in black broad- 
 cloth, with a soiled white tie. 
 
 "Husband's pretty bad this morning, is he?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Dear, dear ! Now that 's terribly distressing, ain 't 
 it ? " An apostolic smile revealed his gold-filled teeth. 
 [39] 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 " Of course you know there 's no sech thing as sick- 
 ness. Ain't that a lovely thought ? Death itself is but a 
 deloosion of our grosser senses. On'y lay yourself open 
 to the influx of the sperrit, submit yourself passively to 
 the action of the divine force, and disease and dissolu- 
 tion will cease to exist for you. If you could indooce 
 your husband to read this little pamphlet " 
 
 The faces about her again grew indistinct. She had 
 a vague recollection of hearing the motherly lady and 
 the parent of the freckled child ardently disputing the 
 relative advantages of trying several medicines at once, 
 or of taking each in turn ; the motherly lady maintain- 
 ing that the competitive system saved time ; the other 
 objecting that you could n't tell which remedy had ef- 
 fected the cure ; their voices went on and on, like bell- 
 buoys droning through a fog . . . The porter came 
 up now and then with questions that she did not un- 
 derstand, but that somehow she must have answered 
 since he went away again without repeating them ; 
 every two hours the motherly lady reminded her that 
 her husband ought to have his drops ; people left the 
 car and others replaced them . . . 
 
 Her head was spinning and she tried to steady her- 
 self by clutching at her thoughts as they swept by, but 
 they slipped away from her like bushes on the side 
 of a sheer precipice down which she seemed to be 
 falling. Suddenly her mind grew clear again and she 
 [40] 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 found herself vividly picturing what would happen 
 when the train reached New York. She shuddered as 
 it occurred to her that he would be quite cold and 
 that some one might perceive he had been dead since 
 morning. 
 
 She thought hurriedly : "If they see I am not sur- 
 prised they will suspect something. They will ask ques- 
 tions, and if I tell them the truth they won't believe 
 me no one would believe me! It will be terrible "- 
 and she kept repeating to herself: "I must pretend I 
 don't know. I must pretend I don't know. When they 
 open the curtains I must go up to him quite naturally 
 and then I must scream." . . . She had an idea that 
 the scream would be very hard to do. 
 
 Gradually new thoughts crowded upon her, vivid and 
 urgent : she tried to separate and restrain them, but 
 they beset her clamorously, like her school-children at 
 the end of a hot day, when she was too tired to silence 
 them. Her head grew confused, and she felt a sick fear 
 of forgetting her part, of betraying herself by some un- 
 guarded word or look. 
 
 "I must pretend I don't know," she went on mur- 
 muring. The words had lost their significance, but she 
 repeated them mechanically, as though they had been 
 a magic formula, until suddenly she heard herself say- 
 ing: "I can't remember, I can't remember!" 
 
 Her voice sounded very loud, and she looked about 
 [41] 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 her in terror; but no one seemed to notice that she 
 had spoken. 
 
 As she glanced down the car her eye caught the 
 curtains of her husband's berth, and she began to ex- 
 amine the monotonous arabesques woven through their 
 heavy folds. The pattern was intricate and difficult to 
 trace ; she gazed fixedly at the curtains and as she did 
 so the thick stuff grew transparent and through it she 
 saw her husband's face his dead face. She struggled 
 to avert her look, but her eyes refused to move and her 
 head seemed to be held in a vice. At last, with an effort 
 that left her weak and shaking, she turned away; but 
 it was of no use ; close in front of her, small and smooth, 
 was her husband's face. It seemed to be suspended in 
 the air between her and the false braids of the woman 
 who sat in front of her. With an uncontrollable gesture 
 she stretched out her hand to push the face away, and 
 suddenly she felt the touch of his smooth skin. She 
 repressed a cry and half started from her seat. The 
 woman with the false braids looked around, and feeling 
 that she must justify her movement in some way she 
 rose and lifted her travelling-bag from the opposite 
 seat. She unlocked the bag and looked into it; but the 
 first object her hand met was a small flask of her hus- 
 band's, thrust there at the last moment, in the haste of 
 departure. She locked the bag and closed her eyes . . . 
 his face was there again, hanging between her eye-balls 
 [42] 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 nnd lids like a waxen mask against a red curtain . . . 
 
 She roused herself with a shiver. Had she fainted or 
 slept ? Hours seemed to have elapsed ; but it was still 
 broad day, and the people about her were sitting in 
 the same attitudes as before. 
 
 A sudden sense of hunger made her aware that she 
 had eaten nothing since morning. The thought of food 
 filled her with disgust, but she dreaded a return of 
 faintness, and remembering that she had some biscuits 
 in her bag she took one out and ate it. The dry crumbs 
 choked her, and she hastily swallowed a little brandy 
 from her husband's flask. The burning sensation in her 
 throat acted as a counter-irritant, momentarily reliev- 
 ing the dull ache of her nerves. Then she felt a gently- 
 stealing warmth, as though a soft air fanned her, and 
 the swarming fears relaxed their clutch, receding 
 through the stillness that enclosed her, a stillness 
 soothing as the spacious quietude of a summer day. 
 She slept. 
 
 Through her sleep she felt the impetuous rush of the 
 train. It seemed to be life itself that was sweeping her 
 on with headlong inexorable force sweeping her into 
 darkness and terror, and the awe of unknown days. 
 Now all at once everything was still not a sound, not 
 a pulsation . . . She was dead in her turn, and lay 
 beside him with smooth upstaring face. How quiet it 
 was! and yet she heard feet coming, the feet of the 
 [43] 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 men who were to carry them away . . . She could 
 feel too she felt a sudden prolonged vibration, a 
 series of hard shocks, and then another plunge into 
 darkness : the darkness of death this time a black 
 whirlwind on which they were both spinning like 
 leaves, in wild uncoiling spirals, with millions and 
 millions of the dead . . . 
 
 She sprang up in terror. Her sleep must have lasted 
 a long time, for the winter day had paled and the lights 
 had been lit. The car was in confusion, and as she re- 
 gained her self-possession she saw that the passengers 
 were gathering up their wraps and bags. The woman 
 with the false braids had brought from the dressing- 
 room a sickly ivy-plant in a bottle, and the Christian 
 Scientist was reversing his cuffs. The porter passed 
 down the aisle with his impartial brush. An impersonal 
 figure with a gold-banded cap asked for her husband's 
 ticket. A voice shouted "Baig-gage express!" and she 
 heard the clicking of metal as the passengers handed 
 over their checks. 
 
 Presently her window was blocked by an expanse of 
 sooty wall, and the train passed into the Harlem tunnel. 
 The journey was over ; in a few minutes she would see 
 her family pushing their joyous way through the throng 
 at the station. Her heart dilated. The worst terror was 
 past . . . 
 
 [44] 
 
A JOURNEY 
 
 "We'd better get him up now, hadn't we?" asked 
 the porter, touching her arm. 
 
 He had her husband's hat in his hand and was medi- 
 tatively revolving it under his brush. 
 
 She looked at the hat and tried to speak ; but sud- 
 denly the car grew dark. She flung up her arms, strug- 
 gling to catch at something, and fell face downward, 
 striking her head against the dead man's berth. 
 
 [45] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 SHE was very pretty when I first knew her, 
 with the sweet straight nose and short upper 
 lip of the cameo-brooch divinity, humanized 
 by a dimple that flowered in her cheek whenever 
 anything was said possessing the outward attributes 
 of humor without its intrinsic quality. For the dear 
 lady was providentially deficient in humor: the least 
 hint of the real thing clouded her lovely eye like the 
 hovering shadow of an algebraic problem. 
 
 I don't think nature had meant her to be "intel- 
 lectual ; " but what can a poor thing do, whose hus- 
 band has died of drink when her baby is hardly six 
 months old, and who finds her coral necklace and 
 her grandfather's edition of the British Dramatists 
 inadequate to the demands of the creditors? 
 
 Her mother, the celebrated Irene Astarte Pratt, had 
 written a poem in blank verse on " The Fall of Man ; " 
 one of her aunts was dean of a girls' college ; another 
 had translated Euripides with such a family, the poor 
 child's fate was sealed in advance. The only way of pay- 
 ing her husband's debts and keeping the baby clothed 
 was to be intellectual ; and, after some hesitation as to 
 the form her mental activity was to take, it was unani- 
 mously decided that she was to give lectures. 
 [49] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 They began by being drawing-room lectures. The 
 first time I saw her she was standing by the piano, 
 against a flippant background of Dresden china and 
 photographs, telling a roomful of women preoccu- 
 pied with their spring bonnets all she thought she 
 knew about Greek art. The ladies assembled to hear 
 her had given me to understand that she was "do- 
 ing it for the baby," and this fact, together with 
 the shortness of her upper lip and the bewildering 
 co-operation of her dimple, disposed me to listen 
 leniently to her dissertation. Happily, at that time 
 Greek art was still, if I may use the phrase, easily 
 handled: it was as simple as walking down a mu- 
 seum-gallery lined with pleasant familiar Venuses and 
 Apollos. All the later complications the archaic and 
 archaistic conundrums : the influences of Assyria and 
 Asia Minor; the conflicting attributions and the 
 wrangles of the erudite still slumbered in the 
 bosom of the future "scientific critic." Greek art in 
 those days began with Phidias and ended with the 
 Apollo Belvedere; and a child could travel from one 
 to the other without danger of losing his way. 
 
 Mrs. Amyot had two fatal gifts: a capacious but 
 inaccurate memory, and an extraordinary fluency of 
 speech. There was nothing she did not remember 
 wrongly ; but her halting facts were swathed in so 
 many layers of rhetoric that their infirmities were 
 [50] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 imperceptible to her friendly critics. Besides, she 
 had been taught Greek by the aunt who had trans- 
 lated Euripides ; and the mere sound of the alt and 
 ofc that she now and then not unskilfully let slip 
 (correcting herself, of course, with a start, and indul- 
 gently mistranslating the phrase), struck awe to the 
 hearts of ladies whose only "accomplishment" was 
 French if you didn't speak too quickly. 
 
 I had then but a momentary glimpse of Mrs. 
 Amyot, but a few months later I came upon her 
 again in the New England university town where 
 the celebrated Irene Astarte Pratt lived on the sum- 
 mit of a local Parnassus, with lesser muses and col- 
 lege professors respectfully grouped on the lower 
 ledges of the sacred declivity. Mrs. Amyot, who, 
 after her husband's death, had returned to the ma- 
 ternal roof (even during her father's lifetime the 
 roof had been distinctively maternal), Mrs. Amyot, 
 thanks to her upper lip, her dimple and her Greek, 
 Was already esconced in a snug hollow of the Par- 
 nassian slope. 
 
 After the lecture was over it happened that I 
 walked home with Mrs. Amyot. From the incensed 
 glances of two or three learned gentlemen who were 
 hovering on the door-step when we emerged, I inferred 
 that Mrs. Amyot, at that period, did not often walk 
 home alone ; but I doubt whether any of my discom- 
 [51 ] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 fited rivals, whatever his claims to favor, was ever 
 treated to so ravishing a mixture of shyness and self- 
 abandonment, of sham erudition and real teeth and 
 hair, as it was my privilege to enjoy. Even at the open- 
 ing of her public career Mrs. Amyot had a tender eye 
 for strangers, as possible links with successive centres 
 of culture to which in due course the torch of Greek 
 art might be handed on. 
 
 She began by telling me that she had never been so 
 frightened in her life. She knew, of course, how dread- 
 fully learned I was, and when, just as she was going to 
 begin, her hostess had whispered to her that I was in 
 the room, she had felt ready to sink through the floor. 
 Then (with a flying dimple) she had remembered Em- 
 erson's line wasn't it Emerson's? that beauty is its 
 own excuse for seeing, and that had made her feel a 
 little more confident, since she was sure that no one 
 saw beauty more vividly than she as a child she used 
 to sit for hours gazing at an Etruscan vase on the book- 
 case in the library, while her sisters played with their 
 dolls and if seeing beauty was the only excuse one 
 needed for talking about it, why, she was sure I would 
 make allowances and not be too critical and sarcastic, 
 especially if, as she thought probable, I had heard of 
 her having lost her poor husband, and how she had to 
 do it for the baby. 
 
 Being abundantly assured of my svmpathy on these 
 [52] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 points, she went on to say that she had always wanted 
 so much to consult me about her lectures. Of course, 
 one subject wasn't enough (this view of the limitations 
 of Greek art as a "subject" gave me a startling idea of 
 the rate at which a successful lecturer might exhaust 
 the universe); she must find others; she had not ven- 
 tured on any as yet, but she had thought of Tennyson 
 didn't I love Tennyson ? She worshipped him so that 
 she was sure she could help others to understand him ; 
 or what did I think of a "course" on Raphael or Mi- 
 chelangelo or on the heroines of Shakespeare ? There 
 were some fine steel-engravings of Raphael's Madonnas 
 and of the Sistine ceiling in her mother's library, and 
 she had seen Miss Cushman in several Shakespearian 
 roles, so that on these subjects also she felt qualified to 
 speak with authority. 
 
 When we reached her mother's door she begged me 
 to come in and talk the matter over ; she wanted me to 
 see the baby she felt as though I should understand 
 her better if I saw the baby and the dimple flashed 
 through a tear. 
 
 The fear of encountering the author of "The Fall of 
 Man," combined with the opportune recollection of a 
 dinner engagement, made me evade this appeal with 
 the promise of returning on the morrow. On the mor- 
 row, I left too early to redeem my promise ; and for 
 several years afterwards I saw no more of Mrs. Amyot. 
 [53] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 My calling at that time took me at irregular intervals 
 from one to another of our larger cities, and as Mrs. 
 Amyot was also peripatetic it was inevitable that sooner 
 or later we should cross each other's path. It was there- 
 fore without surprise that, one snowy afternoon in Bos- 
 ton, I learned from the lady with whom I chanced to 
 be lunching that, as soon as the meal was over, I was 
 to be taken to hear Mrs. Amyot lecture. 
 
 "On Greek art ?" I suggested. 
 
 "Oh, you 've heard her then ? No, this is one of the 
 series called ' Homes and Haunts of the Poets.' Last 
 week we had Wordsworth and the Lake Poets, to-day 
 we are to have Goethe and Weimar. She is a wonderful 
 creature all the women of her family are geniuses. 
 You know, of course, that her mother was Irene Astarte 
 Pratt, who wrote a poem on 'The Fall of Man'; N. P. 
 Willis called her the female Milton of America. One of 
 Mrs. Amy of s aunts has translated Eurip " 
 
 "And is she as pretty as ever?" I irrelevantly inter- 
 posed. 
 
 My hostess looked shocked. "She is excessively mod- 
 est and retiring. She says it is actual suffering for her 
 to speak in public. You know she only does it for the 
 baby." 
 
 Punctually at the hour appointed, we took our seats 
 in a lecture-hall full of strenuous females in ulsters. 
 Mrs. Amyot was evidently a favorite with these aus- 
 [54] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 tere sisters, for every corner was crowded, and as we 
 entered a pale usher with an educated mispronuncia- 
 tion was setting forth to several dejected applicants 
 the impossibility of supplying them with seats. 
 
 Our own were happily so near the front that when 
 the curtains at the back of the platform parted, and 
 Mrs. Amyot appeared, I was at once able to establish a 
 comparison between the lady placidly dimpling to the 
 applause of her public and the shrinking drawing-room 
 orator of my earlier recollections. 
 
 Mrs. Amyot was as pretty as ever, and there was the 
 same curious discrepancy between the freshness of her 
 aspect and the staleness of her theme, but something 
 was gone of the blushing unsteadiness with which she 
 had fired her first random shots at Greek art. It was 
 not that the shots were less uncertain, but that she 
 now had an air of assuming that, for her purpose, the 
 bull's-eye was everywhere, so that there was no need 
 to be flustered in taking aim. This assurance had so 
 facilitated the flow of her eloquence that she seemed to 
 be performing a trick analogous to that of the conjuror 
 who pulls hundreds of yards of white paper out of his 
 mouth. From a large assortment of stock adjectives she 
 chose, with unerring deftness and rapidity, the one that 
 taste and discrimination would most surely have re- 
 jected, fitting out her subject with a whole wardrobe 
 of slop-shop epithets irrelevant in cut and size. To the 
 [55] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 invaluable knack of not disturbing the association of 
 ideas in her audience, she added the gift of what may 
 be called a confidential manner so that her fluent 
 generalizations about Goethe and his place in literature 
 (the lecture was, of course, manufactured out of Lewes's 
 book) had the flavor of personal experience, of views 
 sympathetically exchanged with her audience on the 
 best way of knitting children's socks, or of putting up 
 preserves for the winter. It was, I am sure, to this per- 
 sonal accent the moral equivalent of her dimple 
 that Mrs. Amyot owed her prodigious, her irrational 
 success. It was her art of transposing second-hand ideas 
 into first-hand emotions that so endeared her to her 
 feminine listeners. 
 
 To any one not in search of "documents" Mrs. Am- 
 yot's success was hardly of a kind to make her more 
 interesting, and my curiosity flagged with the growing 
 conviction that the "suffering" entailed on her by pub- 
 lic speaking was at most a retrospective pang. I was 
 sure that she had reached the point of measuring and 
 enjoying her effects, of deliberately manipulating her 
 public ; and there must indeed have been a certain 
 exhilaration in attaining results so considerable by 
 means involving so little conscious effort. Mrs. Amyot's 
 art was simply an extension of coquetry : she flirted 
 with her audience. 
 
 In this mood of enlightened skepticism I responded 
 [56] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 but languidly to my hostess's suggestion that I should 
 go with her that evening to see Mrs. Amyot. The aunt 
 who had translated Euripides was at home on Saturday 
 evenings, and one met "thoughtful" people there, my 
 hostess explained : it was one of the intellectual centres 
 of Boston. My mood remained distinctly resentful of 
 any connection between Mrs. Amyot and intellectu- 
 ality, and I declined to go ; but the next day I met 
 Mrs. Amyot in the street. 
 
 She stopped me reproachfully. She had heard I was 
 in Boston ; why had I not come last night ? She had 
 been told that I was at her lecture, and it had fright- 
 ened her yes, really, almost as much as years ago in 
 Hillbridge. She never could get over that stupid shy- 
 ness, and the whole business was as distasteful to her 
 as ever ; but what could she do ? There was the baby 
 he was a big boy now, and boys were so expensive ! 
 But did I really think she had improved the least 
 little bit? And why wouldn't I come home with her 
 now, and see the boy, and tell her frankly what I had 
 thought of the lecture ? She had plenty of flattery 
 people were so kind, and every one knew that she did 
 it for the baby but what she felt the need of was 
 criticism, severe, discriminating criticism like mine 
 oh, she knew that I was dreadfully discriminating ! 
 
 I went home with her and saw the boy. In the early 
 heat of her Tennyson-worship Mrs. Amyot had christ- 
 [57] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 ened him Lancelot, and he looked it. Perhaps, how- 
 ever, it was his black velvet dress and the exasperating 
 length of his yellow curls, together with the fact of his 
 having been taught to recite Browning to visitors, that 
 raised to fever-heat the itching of my palms in his 
 Infant-Samuel-like presence. I have since had reason 
 to think that he would have preferred to be called 
 Billy, and to hunt cats with the other boys in the 
 block : his curls and his poetry were simply another 
 outlet for Mrs. Amyot's irrepressible coquetry. 
 
 But if Lancelot was not genuine, his mother's 
 love for him was. It justified everything the lec- 
 tures were for the baby, after all. I had not been 
 ten minutes in the room before I was pledged to 
 help Mrs. Amyot carry out her triumphant fraud. If 
 she wanted to lecture on Plato she should Plato 
 must take his chance like the rest of us ! There was 
 no use, of course, in being " discriminating." I pre- 
 served sufficient reason to avoid that pitfall, but I 
 suggested "subjects" and made lists of books for 
 her with a fatuity that became more obvious as 
 time attenuated the remembrance of her smile ; I 
 even remember thinking that some men might have 
 cut the knot by marrying her, but I handed over 
 Plato as a hostage and escaped by the afternoon 
 train. 
 
 The next time I saw her was in New York, when 
 [58] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 she had become so fashionable that it was a part of 
 the whole duty of woman to be seen at her lec- 
 tures. The lady who suggested that of course I 
 ought to go and hear Mrs. Amyot, was not very 
 clear about anything except that she was perfectly 
 lovely, and had had a horrid husband, and was doing 
 it to support her boy. The subject of the discourse 
 (I think it was on Ruskin) was clearly of minor im- 
 portance, not only to my friend, but to the throng of 
 well-dressed and absent-minded ladies who rustled 
 in late, dropped their muffs and pocket-books, and 
 undisguisedly lost themselves in the study of each 
 other's apparel. They received Mrs. Amyot with 
 warmth, but she evidently represented a social obli- 
 gation like going to church, rather than any more 
 personal interest ; in fact, I suspect that every one 
 of the ladies would have remained away, had they 
 been sure that none of the others were coming. 
 
 Whether Mrs. Amyot was disheartened by the lack 
 of sympathy between herself and her hearers, or 
 whether the sport of arousing it had become a task, 
 she certainly imparted her platitudes with less con- 
 vincing warmth than of old. Her voice had the same 
 confidential inflections, but it was like a voice repro- 
 duced by a gramophone: the real woman seemed far 
 away. She had grown stouter without losing her 
 dewy freshness, and her smart gown might have 
 [59] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 been taken to show either the potentialities of a 
 settled income, or a politic concession to the taste 
 of her hearers. As I listened I reproached myself for 
 ever having suspected her of self-deception in saying 
 that she took no pleasure in her work. I was sure 
 now that she did it only for Lancelot, and judging 
 from the size of her audience and the price of the 
 tickets I concluded that Lancelot must be receiving 
 a liberal education. 
 
 I was living in New York that winter, and in the 
 rotation of dinners I found myself one evening at 
 Mrs. Amyot's side. The dimple came out at my 
 greeting as punctually as a cuckoo in a Swiss clock, 
 and I detected the same automatic quality in the 
 tone in which she made her usual pretty demand 
 for advice. She was like a musical-box charged with 
 popular airs. They succeeded one another with 
 breathless rapidity, but there was a moment after 
 each when the cylinders scraped and whizzed. 
 
 Mrs. Amyot, as I found when I called on her, was 
 living in a sunny flat, with a sitting-room full of flow- 
 ers and a tea-table that had the air of expecting 
 visitors. She owned that she had been ridiculously 
 successful. It was delightful, of course, on Lancelot's 
 account. Lancelot had been sent to the best school 
 in the country, and if things went well and people 
 didn't tire of his silly mother he was to go to Har- 
 [60] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 vard afterwards. During the next two or three years 
 Mrs. Amyot kept her flat in New York, and radiated 
 art and literature upon the suburbs. I saw her now 
 and then, always stouter, better dressed, more suc- 
 cessful and more automatic : she had become a lec- 
 turing-machine. 
 
 I went abroad for a year or two and when I came 
 back she had disappeared. I asked several people 
 about her, but life had closed over her. She had 
 been last heard of as lecturing still lecturing but 
 no one seemed to know when or where. 
 
 It was in Boston that I found her at last, forlornly 
 swaying to the oscillations of an overhead strap in a 
 crowded trolley-car. Her face had so changed that I 
 lost myself in a startled reckoning of the time that 
 had elapsed since our parting. She spoke to me shyly, 
 as though aware of my hurried calculation, and con- 
 scious that in five years she ought not to have altered 
 so much as to upset my notion of time. Then she 
 seemed to set it down to her dress, for she nervously 
 gathered her cloak over a gown that asked only to 
 be concealed, and shrank into a seat behind the line 
 of prehensile bipeds blocking the aisle of the car. 
 
 It was perhaps because she so obviously avoided me 
 that I felt for the first time that I might be of use to 
 her; and when she left the car I made no excuse for 
 following her. 
 
 [61] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 She said nothing of needing advice and did not ask 
 me to walk home with her, concealing, as we talked, 
 her transparent preoccupations under the guise of a 
 sudden interest in all I had been doing since she had 
 last seen me. Of what concerned her, I learned only 
 that Lancelot was well and that for the present she 
 was not lecturing she was tired and her doctor had 
 ordered her to rest. On the doorstep of a shabby house 
 she paused and held out her hand. She had been so 
 glad to see me and perhaps if I were in Boston again 
 the tired dimple, as it were, bowed me out and closed 
 the door on the conclusion of the phrase. 
 
 Two or three weeks later, at my club in New York, 
 I found a letter from her. In it she owned that she was 
 troubled, that of late she had been unsuccessful, and 
 that, if I chanced to be coming back to Boston, and 
 could spare her a little of that invaluable advice which 
 . A few days later the advice was at her disposal. 
 She told me frankly what had happened. Her public 
 had grown tired of her. She had seen it coming on for 
 some time, and was shrewd enough in detecting the 
 causes. She had more rivals than formerly younger 
 women, she admitted, with a smile that could still 
 afford to be generous and then her audiences had 
 grown more critical and consequently more exacting. 
 Lecturing as she understood it used to be simple 
 enough. You chose your topic Raphael, Shakespeare, 
 [62] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 Gothic Architecture, or some such big familiar "sub- 
 ject" and read up about it for a week or so at the 
 Athenaeum or the Astor Library, and then told your 
 audience what you had read. Now, it appeared, that 
 simple process was no longer adequate. People had 
 tired of familiar "subjects"; it was the fashion to be 
 interested in things that one hadn't always known 
 about natural selection, animal magnetism, sociology 
 and comparative folk-lore ; while, in literature, the 
 demand had become equally difficult to meet, since 
 Matthew Arnold had introduced the habit of study- 
 ing the " influence " of one author on another. She 
 had tried lecturing on influences, and had done very 
 well as long as the public was satisfied with the tra- 
 cing of such obvious influences as that of Turner on 
 Ruskin, of Schiller on Goethe, of Shakespeare on 
 English literature ; but such investigations had soon 
 lost all charm for her too-sophisticated audiences, who 
 now demanded either that the influence or the influ- 
 enced should be quite unknown, or that there should 
 be no perceptible connection between the two. The 
 zest of the performance lay in the measure of inge- 
 nuity with which the lecturer established a relation 
 between two people who had probably never heard 
 of each other, much less read each other's works. A 
 pretty Miss Williams with red hair had, for instance, 
 been lecturing with great success on the influence of 
 [63] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 the Rosicrucians upon the poetry of Keats, while some- 
 body else had given a "course" on the influence of 
 St. Thomas Aquinas upon Professor Huxley. 
 
 Mrs. Amyot, warmed by my participation in, her 
 distress, went on to say that the growing demand for 
 evolution was what most troubled her. Her grandfather 
 had been a pillar of the Presbyterian ministry, and the 
 idea of her lecturing on Darwin or Herbert Spencer 
 was deeply shocking to her mother and aunts. In one 
 sense the family had staked its literary as well as its 
 spiritual hopes on the literal inspiration of Genesis : 
 what became of "The Fall of Man" in the light of 
 modern exegesis? 
 
 The upshot of it was that she had ceased to lecture 
 because she could no longer sell tickets enough to pay 
 for the hire of a lecture-hall ; and as for the managers, 
 they wouldn't look at her. She had tried her luck all 
 through the Eastern States and as far south as Wash- 
 ington ; but it was of no use, and unless she could get 
 hold of some new subjects or, better still, of some 
 new audiences she must simply go out of the busi- 
 ness. That would mean the failure of all she had 
 worked for, since Lancelot would have to leave Har- 
 vard. She paused, and wept some of the unbecoming 
 tears that spring from real grief. Lancelot, it appeared, 
 was to be a genius. He had passed his opening exami- 
 nations brilliantly; he had " literary gifts" ; he had writ- 
 [64] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 ten beautiful poetry, much of which his mother had 
 copied out, in reverentially slanting characters, in a vel- 
 vet-bound volume which she drew from a locked drawer. 
 
 Lancelot's verse struck me as nothing more alarming 
 than growing-pains ; but it was not to learn this that 
 she had summoned me. What she wanted was to be as- 
 sured that he was worth working for, an assurance 
 which I managed to convey by the simple stratagem 
 of remarking that the poems reminded me of Swin- 
 burne and so they did, as well as of Browning, 
 Tennyson, Rossetti, and all the other poets who sup- 
 ply young authors with original inspirations. 
 
 This point being established, it remained to be de- 
 cided by what means his mother was, in the French 
 phrase, to pay herself the luxury of a poet. It was clear 
 that this indulgence could be bought only with coun- 
 terfeit coin, and that the one way of helping Mrs. 
 Amyot was to become a party to the circulation of 
 such currency. My fetish of intellectual integrity went 
 down like a ninepin before the appeal of a woman no 
 longer young and distinctly foolish, but full of those 
 dear contradictions and irrelevancies that will always 
 make flesh and blood prevail against a syllogism. When 
 I took leave of Mrs. Amyot I had promised her a dozen 
 letters to Western universities and had half pledged 
 myself to sketch out a lecture on the reconciliation of 
 science and religion. 
 
 [65] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 In the West she achieved a success which for a year 
 or more embittered my perusal of the morning papers. 
 The fascination that lures the murderer back to the 
 scene of his crime drew my eye to every paragraph cel- 
 ebrating Mrs. Amyot' s last brilliant lecture on the 
 influence of something upon somebody ; and her own 
 letters she overwhelmed me with them spared me 
 no detail of the entertainment given in her honor by 
 the Palimpsest Club of Omaha or of her reception at 
 the University of Leadville. The college professors 
 were especially kind: she assured me that she had 
 never before met with such discriminating sympathy. 
 I winced at the adjective, which cast a sudden light 
 on the vast machinery of fraud that I had set in mo- 
 tion. All over my native land, men of hitherto unblem- 
 ished integrity were conniving with me in urging their 
 friends to go and hear Mrs. Amyot lecture on the re- 
 conciliation of science and religion ! My only hope was 
 that, somewhere among the number of my accomplices, 
 Mrs. Amyot might find one who would marry her in 
 the defense of his convictions. 
 
 None, apparently, resorted to such heroic measures ; 
 for about two years later I was startled by the an- 
 nouncement that Mrs. Amyot was lecturing in Tren- 
 ton, New Jersey, on modern theosophy in the light of 
 the Vedas. The following week she was at Newark, 
 discussing Schopenhauer in the light of recent psychol- 
 [66] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 ogy. The week after that I was on the deck of an 
 ocean steamer, reconsidering my share in Mrs. Amyot's 
 triumphs with the impartiality with which one views 
 an episode that is being left behind at the rate of 
 twenty knots an hour. After all, I had been helping a 
 mother to educate her son. 
 
 The next ten years of my life were spent in Europe, 
 and when I came home the recollection of Mrs. Amyot 
 had become as inoffensive as one of those pathetic 
 ghosts who are said t strive in vain to make them- 
 selves visible to the living. I did not even notice the 
 fact that I no longer heard her spoken of; she had 
 dropped like a dead leaf from the bough of memory. 
 
 A year or two after my return I was condemned to 
 one of the worst punishments a worker can undergo 
 an enforced holiday. The doctors who pronounced the 
 inhuman sentence decreed that it should be worked 
 out in the South, and for a whole winter I carried my 
 cough, my thermometer and my idleness from one 
 fashionable orange-grove to another. In the vast and 
 melancholy sea of my disoccupation I clutched like a 
 drowning man at any human driftwood within reach. I 
 took a critical and depreciatory interest in the coughs, 
 the thermometers and the idleness of my fellow-suf- 
 ferers ; but to the healthy, the occupied, the transient 
 I clung with undiscriminating enthusiasm. 
 
 In no other way can I explain, as I look back on it, 
 [67] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 the importance I attached to the leisurely confidences 
 of a new arrival with a brown beard who, tilted back 
 at my side on a hotel veranda hung with roses, im- 
 parted to me one afternoon the simple annals of his 
 past. There was nothing in the tale to kindle the most 
 inflammable imagination, and though the man had a 
 pleasant frank face and a voice differing agreeably 
 from the shrill inflections of our fellow-lodgers, it is 
 probable that under different conditions his discursive 
 history of successful business ventures in a Western 
 city would have affected me somewhat in the manner 
 of a lullaby. 
 
 Even at the time I was not sure I liked his agree- 
 able voice : it had a self-importance out of keeping 
 with the humdrum nature of his story, as though a 
 breeze engaged in shaking out a table-cloth should 
 hare fancied itself inflating a banner. But this criticism 
 may have been a mere mark of my own fastidiousness, 
 for the man seemed a simple fellow, satisfied with his 
 middling fortunes, and already (he was not much past 
 thirty) deep-sunk in conjugal content. 
 
 He had just started on an anecdote connected with 
 the cutting of his eldest boy's teeth, when a lady I 
 knew, returning from her late drive, paused before us 
 for a moment in the twilight, with the smile which is 
 the feminine equivalent of beads to savages. 
 
 "Won't you take a ticket?" she said sweetly. 
 [68J 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 Of course I would take a ticket but for what? I 
 ventured to inquire. 
 
 "Oh, that's so good of you for the lecture this 
 evening. You needn't go, you know; we're none of us 
 going; most of us have been through it already at 
 Aiken and at Saint Augustine and at Palm Beach. I've 
 given away my tickets to some new people who've just 
 come from the North, and some of us are going to send 
 our maids, just to fill up the room." 
 
 " And may I ask to whom you are going to pay this 
 delicate attention?" 
 
 "Oh, I thought you knew to poor Mrs. Amyot. 
 She's been lecturing all over the South this winter; 
 she's simply haunted me ever since I left New York 
 and we had six weeks of her at Bar Harbor last sum- 
 mer ! One has to take tickets, you know, because she 's 
 a widow and does it for her son to pay for his educa- 
 tion. She's so plucky and nice about it, and talks about 
 him in such a touching unaffected way, that everybody 
 is sorry for her, and we all simply ruin ourselves in 
 tickets. I do hope that boy's nearly educated!" 
 
 " Mrs. Amyot ? Mrs. Amyot ? " I repeated. " Is she 
 still educating her son ? " 
 
 " Oh, do you know about her ? Has she been at it 
 long? There's some comfort in that, for I suppose 
 when the boy's provided for the poor thing will be 
 able to take a rest and give us one!" 
 [69] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 She laughed and held out her hand. 
 
 " Here's ycur ticket. Did you say tickets two? Oh, 
 thanks. Of course you needn't go." 
 
 "But I mean to go. Mrs. Amyot is an old friend of 
 mine." 
 
 " Do you really ? That 's awfully good of you. Per- 
 haps I '11 go too if I can persuade Charlie and the 
 others to come. And I wonder" in a well-directed 
 aside " if your friend ? " 
 
 I telegraphed her under cover of the dusk that my 
 friend was of too recent standing to be drawn into her 
 charitable toils, and she masked her mistake under a 
 rattle of friendly adjurations not to be late, and to 
 be sure to keep a seat for her, as she had quite made 
 up her mind to go even if Charlie and the others 
 would n't. 
 
 The flutter of her skirts subsided in the distance, 
 and my neighbor, who had half turned away to light 
 a cigar, made no effort to reopen the conversation. At 
 length, fearing he might have overheard the allusion 
 to himself, I ventured to ask if he were going to the 
 lecture that evening. 
 
 "Much obliged I have a ticket," he said abruptly. 
 
 This struck me as in such bad taste that I made no 
 answer; and it was he who spoke next. 
 
 "Did I understand you to say that you were an 
 old friend of Mrs. Amyot's?" 
 [70] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 "I think I may claim to be, if it is the same Mrs. 
 Amyot I had the pleasure of knowing many years ago. 
 My Mrs. Amyot used to lecture too " 
 
 " To pay for her son's education ? " 
 
 " I believe so." 
 
 "Well see you later." 
 
 He got up and walked into the house. 
 
 In the hotel drawing-room that evening there was 
 but a meagre sprinkling of guests, among whom I saw 
 my brown-bearded friend sitting alone on a sofa, with 
 his head against the wall. It could not have been curi- 
 osity to see Mrs. Amyot that had impelled him to 
 attend the performance, for it would have been im- 
 possible for him, without changing his place, to com- 
 mand the improvised platform at the end of the room. 
 When I looked at him he seemed lost in contemplation 
 of the chandelier. 
 
 The lady from whom I had bought my tickets flut- 
 tered in late, unattended by Charlie and the others, 
 and assuring me that she would scream if we had the 
 lecture on Ibsen she had heard it three times al- 
 ready that winter. A glance at the programme reas- 
 sured her: it informed us (in the lecturer's own slanting 
 hand) that Mrs. Amyot was to lecture on the Cosmog- 
 ony. 
 
 After a long pause, during which the small audience 
 coughed and moved its chairs and showed signs of re- 
 [ 71J 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 gretting that it had come, the door opened, and Mrs. 
 Amyot stepped upon the platform. Ah, poor lady! 
 
 Some one said " Hush ! ", the coughing and chair- 
 shifting subsided, and she began. 
 
 It was like looking at one's self early in the morning 
 in a cracked mirror. I had no idea I had grown so old. 
 As for Lancelot, he must have a beard. A beard ? The 
 word struck me, and without knowing why I glanced 
 across the room at my bearded friend on the sofa. 
 Oddly enough he was looking at me, with a half-de- 
 fiant, half-sullen expression ; and as our glances crossed, 
 and his fell, the conviction came to me that he was 
 Lancelot. 
 
 I don't remember a word of the lecture ; and yet 
 there were enough of them to have filled a good-sized 
 dictionary. The stream of Mrs. Amyot's eloquence had 
 become a flood : one had the despairing sense that she 
 had sprung a leak, and that until the plumber came 
 there was nothing to be done about it. 
 
 The plumber came at length, in the shape of a clock 
 striking ten ; my companion, with a sigh of relief, 
 drifted away in search of Charlie and the others ; 
 the audience scattered with the precipitation of peo- 
 ple who had discharged a duty ; and, without surprise, 
 I found the brown-bearded stranger at my elbow. 
 
 We stood alone in the bare-floored room, under the 
 flaring chandelier. 
 
 [72] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 "I think you told me this afternoon that you were 
 an old friend of Mrs. Amyot's ? " he began awkwardly. 
 
 I assented. 
 
 " Will you come in and see her ? " 
 
 "Now? I shall be very glad to, if ' 
 
 " She 's ready ; she 's expecting you/' he interposed. 
 
 He offered no further explanation, and I followed 
 him in silence. He led me down the long corridor, and 
 pushed open the door of a sitting-room. 
 
 " Mother," he said, closing the door after we had 
 entered, "here's the gentleman who says he used to 
 know you." 
 
 Mrs. Amyot, who sat in an easy-chair stirring a cup 
 of bouillon, looked up with a start. She had evidently 
 not seen me in the audience, and her son's description 
 had failed to convey my identity. I saw a frightened 
 look in her eyes ; then, like a frost flower on a window- 
 pane, the dimple expanded on her wrinkled cheek, and 
 she held out her hand. 
 
 " I 'm so glad," she said, " so glad ! " 
 
 She turned to her son, who stood watching us. " You 
 must have told Lancelot all about me you 've known 
 me so long ! " 
 
 "I haven't had time to talk to your son since I 
 knew he was your son," I explained. 
 
 Her brow cleared. "Then you haven't had time to 
 say anything very dreadful ? " she said with a laugh. 
 [73] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 "It is he who has been saying dreadful things," I 
 returned, trying to fall in with her tone. 
 
 I saw my mistake. " What things ? " she faltered. 
 
 " Making me feel how old I am by telling me about 
 his children." 
 
 " My grandchildren ! " she exclaimed with a blush. 
 
 " Well, if you choose to put it so." 
 
 She laughed again, vaguely, and was silent. I hesi- 
 tated a moment and then put out my hand. 
 
 "I see you are tired. I shouldn't have ventured to 
 come in at this hour if your son " 
 
 The son stepped between us. "Yes, I asked him to 
 come," he said to his mother, in his clear self-asser- 
 tive voice. "I haven't told him anything yet; but 
 you've got to now. That's what I brought him 
 for." 
 
 His mother straightened herself, but I saw her eye 
 waver. 
 
 "Lancelot " she began. 
 
 " Mr. Amyot," I said, turning to the young man, " if 
 your mother will let me come back to-morrow, I shall 
 be very glad 
 
 He struck his hand hard against the table on which 
 he was leaning. 
 
 " No, sir ! It won't take long, but it 's got to be said 
 now." 
 
 He moved nearer to his mother, and I saw his lip 
 [74] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 twitch under his beard. After all, he was younger and 
 less sure of himself than I had fancied. 
 
 " See here, mother," he went on, ft there 's some- 
 thing here that's got to be cleared up, and as you 
 say this gentleman is an old friend of yours it had 
 better be cleared up in his presence. Maybe he can 
 help explain it and if he can't, it's got to be ex- 
 plained to him" 
 
 Mrs. Amyot's lips moved, but she made no sound. 
 She glanced at me helplessly and sat down. My early 
 inclination to thrash Lancelot was beginning to reassert 
 itself. I took up my hat and moved toward the door. 
 
 " Mrs. Amyot is under no obligation to explain any- 
 thing whatever to me," I said curtly. 
 
 "Well! She's under an obligation to me, then 
 to explain something, in your presence." He turned 
 to her again. "Do you know what the people in this 
 hotel are saying? Do you know what he thinks what 
 they all think ? That you 're doing this lecturing to 
 support me to pay for my education! They say you 
 go round telling them so. That's what they buy the 
 tickets for they do it out of charity. Ask him if it 
 isn't what they say ask him if they weren't joking 
 about it on the piazza before dinner. The others think 
 I 'm a little boy, but he 's known you for years, and 
 he must have known how old I was. He must have 
 known it was n't to pay for my education ! " 
 [75] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 He stood before her with his hands clenched, the 
 veins beating in his temples. She had grown very 
 pale, and her cheeks looked hollow. When she spoke 
 her voice had an odd click in it. 
 
 " If if these ladies and gentlemen have been com- 
 ing to my lectures out of charity, I see nothing to be 
 ashamed of in that " she faltered. 
 
 "If they've been coming out of charity to me" he 
 retorted, "don't you see you've been making me a 
 party to a fraud? Isn't there any shame in that?" 
 His forehead reddened. " Mother ! Can't you see the 
 shame of letting people think I was ad beat, who 
 sponged on you for my keep ? Let alone making us 
 both the laughing-stock of every place you go to ! " 
 
 " I never did that, Lancelot ! " 
 
 "Did what?" 
 
 "Made you a laughing-stock " 
 
 He stepped close to her and caught her wrist. 
 
 " Will you look me in the face and swear you never 
 told people you were doing this lecturing business to 
 support me ? " 
 
 There was a long silence. He dropped her wrist 
 and she lifted a limp handkerchief to her frightened 
 eyes. "I did do it to support you to educate you" 
 she sobbed. 
 
 " We 're not talking about what you did when I 
 was a boy. Everybody who knows me knows I've 
 [76] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 been a grateful son. Have I ever taken a penny 
 from you since I left college ten years ago?" 
 
 " I never said you had ! How can you accuse your 
 mother of such wickedness, Lancelot ? " 
 
 "Have you never told anybody in this hotel or 
 anywhere else in the last ten years that you were 
 lecturing to support me ? Answer me that ! " 
 
 "How can you," she wept, "before a stranger?" 
 
 " Have n't you said such things about me to stran- 
 gers ? " he retorted. 
 
 " Lancelot ! " 
 
 "Well answer me, then. Say you haven't, mo- 
 ther!" His voice broke unexpectedly and he took 
 her hand with a gentler touch. " I '11 believe any- 
 thing you tell me," he said almost humbly. 
 
 She mistook his tone and raised her head with a 
 rash clutch at dignity. 
 
 " I think you 'd better ask this gentleman to ex- 
 cuse you first." 
 
 "No, by God, I won't!" he cried. "This gentle- 
 man says he knows all about you and I mean him to 
 know all about me too. I don't mean that he or any- 
 body else under this roof shall go on thinking for 
 another twenty-four hours that a cent of their money 
 has ever gone into my pockets since I was old enough 
 to shift for myself. And he sha'n't leave this room 
 till you've made that clear to him." 
 [77] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 He stepped back as he spoke and put his shoul- 
 ders against the door. 
 
 "My dear young gentleman/' I said politely, "I 
 shall leave this room exactly when I see fit to do so 
 and that is now. I have already told you that Mrs. 
 Amyot owes me no explanation of her conduct." 
 
 "But I owe you an explanation of mine you and 
 every one who has bought a single one of her lec- 
 ture tickets. Do you suppose a man who's been 
 through what I went through while that woman was 
 talking to you in the porch before dinner is going 
 to hold his tongue, and not attempt to justify him- 
 self? No decent man is going to sit down under that 
 sort of thing. It's enough to ruin his character. If 
 you 're my mother's friend, you owe it to me to hear 
 what I 've got to say." 
 
 He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his 
 forehead. 
 
 " Good God, mother ! " he burst out suddenly, 
 "what did you do it for? Haven't you had every- 
 thing you wanted ever since I was able to pay for 
 it? Haven't I paid you back every cent you spent 
 on me when I was in college? Have I ever gone 
 back on you since I was big enough to work ? " He 
 turned to me with a laugh. " I thought she did it to 
 amuse herself and because there was such a de- 
 mand for her lectures. Such a demand ! That's what 
 [78] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 she always told me. When we asked her to come 
 out and spend this winter with us in Minneapolis, 
 she wrote back that she could n't because she had 
 engagements all through the south, and her man- 
 ager wouldn't let her off. That's the reason why I 
 came all the way on here to see her. We thought 
 she was the most popular lecturer in the United 
 States, my wife and I did ! We were awfully proud 
 of it too, I can tell you." He dropped into a chair, 
 still laughing. 
 
 " How can you, Lancelot, how can you ! " His 
 mother, forgetful of my presence, was clinging to 
 him with tentative caresses. "When you didn't need 
 the money any longer I spent it all on the children 
 you know I did." 
 
 " Yes, on lace christening dresses and life-size rock- 
 ing-horses with real manes ! The kind of thing chil- 
 dren can't do without." 
 
 "Oh, Lancelot, Lancelot I loved them so! How 
 can you believe such falsehoods about me ? " 
 
 " What falsehoods about you ? " 
 
 "That I ever told anybody such dreadful things?" 
 
 He put her back gently, keeping his eyes on hers. 
 "Did you never tell anybody in this house that you 
 were lecturing to support your son?" 
 
 Her hands dropped from his shoulders and she 
 flashed round on me in sudden anger. 
 [79] 
 
THE PELICAN 
 
 "I know what I think of people who call them- 
 selves friends and who come between a mother and 
 her son ! " 
 
 " Oh, mother, mother ! " he groaned. 
 
 I went up to him and laid my hand on his shoulder. 
 
 "My dear man," I said, "don't you see the use- 
 lessness of prolonging this ? " 
 
 " Yes, I do," he answered abruptly ; and before I 
 could forestall his movement he rose and walked 
 out of the room. 
 
 There was a long silence, measured by the lessen- 
 ing reverberations of his footsteps down the wooden 
 floor of the corridor. 
 
 When they ceased I approached Mrs. Amyot, who 
 had sunk into her chair. I held out my hand and she 
 took it without a trace of resentment on her ravaged 
 face. 
 
 " I sent his wife a seal-skin jacket at Christmas ! " 
 she said, with the tears running down her cheeks. 
 
 [80] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 THEIR railway-carriage had been full when 
 the train left Bologna ; but at the first sta- 
 tion beyond Milan their only remaining com- 
 panion a courtly person who ate garlic out of a car- 
 pet-bag had left his crumb-strewn seat with a bow. 
 
 Lydia's eye regretfully followed the shiny broad- 
 cloth of his retreating back till it lost itself in the 
 cloud of touts and cab-drivers hanging about the sta- 
 tion ; then she glanced across at Gannett and caught 
 the same regret in his look. They were both sorry to 
 be alone. 
 
 " Par-ten-za !" shouted the guard. The train vibrated 
 to a sudden slamming of doors ; a waiter ran along the 
 platform with a tray of fossilized sandwiches ; a be- 
 lated porter flung a bundle of shawls and band-boxes 
 into a third-class carriage ; the guard snapped out a 
 brief Partenza ! which indicated the purely ornamental 
 nature of his first shout ; and the train swung out of 
 the station. 
 
 The direction of the road had changed, and a shaft 
 of sunlight struck across the dusty red velvet seats 
 into Lydia's corner. Gannett did not notice it. He had 
 returned to his Revue de Paris, and she had to rise 
 and lower the shade of the farther window. Against 
 [83] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 the vast horizon of their leisure such incidents stood 
 out sharply. 
 
 Having lowered the shade, Lydia sat down, leaving 
 the length of the carriage between herself and Gan- 
 nett. At length he missed her and looked up. 
 
 "I moved out of the sun," she hastily explained. 
 
 He looked at her curiously : the sun was beating on 
 her through the shade. 
 
 "Very well," he said pleasantly ; adding, "You don't 
 mind?" as he drew a cigarette-case from his pocket. 
 
 It was a refreshing touch, relieving the tension of 
 her spirit with the suggestion that, after all, if he 
 could smoke ! The relief was only momentary. Her 
 experience of smokers was limited (her husband had 
 disapproved of the use of tobacco) but she knew from 
 hearsay that men sometimes smoked to get away from 
 things ; that a cigar might be the masculine equiva- 
 lent of darkened windows and a headache. Gannett, 
 after a puff or two, returned to his review. 
 
 It was just as she had foreseen ; he feared to speak 
 as much as she did. It was one of the misfortunes of 
 their situation that they were never busy enough to 
 necessitate, or even to justify, the postponement of 
 unpleasant discussions. If they avoided a question it 
 was obviously, unconcealably because the question was 
 disagreeable. They had unlimited leisure and an ac- 
 cumulation of mental energy to devote to any subject 
 [84] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 that presented itself; new topics were in fact at a 
 premium. Lydia sometimes had premonitions of a fam- 
 ine-stricken period when there would ba nothing left 
 to talk about, and she had already caugnt herself dol- 
 ing out piecemeal what, in the first prodigality of their 
 confidences, she would have flung to him in a breath. 
 Their silence therefore might simply mean that they 
 had nothing to say ; but it was another disadvantage of 
 their position that it allowed infinite opportunity for the 
 classification of minute differences. Lydia had learned 
 to distinguish between real and factitious silences ; and 
 under Gannett' s she now detected a hum of speech 
 to which her own thoughts made breathless answer. 
 
 How could it be otherwise, with that thing between 
 them? She glanced up at the rack overhead. The 
 thing was there, in her dressing-bag, symbolically sus- 
 pended over her head and his. He was thinking of it 
 now, just as she was ; they had been thinking of it in 
 unison ever since they had entered the train. While 
 the carriage had held other travellers they had 
 screened her from his thoughts ; but now that he 
 and she were alone she knew exactly what was pass- 
 ing through his mind; she could almost hear him 
 asking himself what he should say to her. . . . 
 
 The thing had come that morning, brought up to her 
 in an innocent-looking envelope with the rest of then* 
 [85] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 letters, as they were leaving the hotel at Bologna. As 
 she tore it open, she and Gannett were laughing over 
 some ineptitude of the local guide-book they had 
 been driven, of late, to make the most of such inci- 
 dental humors of travel. Even when she had unfolded 
 the document she took it for some unimportant busi- 
 ness paper sent abroad for her signature, and her eye 
 travelled inattentively over the curly Whereases of the 
 preamble until a word arrested her: Divorce. There 
 it stood, an impassable barrier, between her husband'? 
 name and hers. 
 
 She had been prepared for it, of course, as healthy 
 people are said to be prepared for death, in the sense 
 of knowing it must come without in the least expect- 
 ing that it will. She had known from the first that 
 Tillotson meant to divorce her but what did it mat- 
 ter ? Nothing mattered, in those first days of supreme 
 deliverance, but the fact that she was free ; and not 
 so much (she had begun to be aware) that freedom 
 had released her from Tillotson as that it had given 
 her to Gannett. This discovery had not been agree- 
 able to her self-esteem. She had preferred to think 
 that Tillotson had himself embodied all her reasons 
 for leaving him ; and those he represented had seemed 
 cogent enough to stand in no need of reinforcement. 
 Yet she had not left him till she met Gannett. It was 
 her love for Gannett that had made life with Tillotson 
 [86] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 so poor and incomplete a business. If she had never, 
 from the first, regarded her marriage as a full cancel- 
 ling of her claims upon life, she had at least, for a 
 number of years, accepted it as a provisional compen- 
 sation, she had made it "do." Existence in the com- 
 modious Tillotson mansion in Fifth Avenue with Mrs. 
 Tillotson senior commanding the approaches from the 
 second-story front windows had been reduced to a 
 series of purely automatic acts. The moral atmosphere 
 of the Tillotson interior was as carefully screened and 
 curtained as the house itself: Mrs. Tillotson senior 
 dreaded ideas as much as a draught in her back. 
 Prudent people liked an even temperature ; and to 
 do anything unexpected was as foolish as going out 
 in the rain. One of the chief advantages of being rich 
 was that one need not be exposed to unforeseen con- 
 tingencies : by the use of ordinary firmness and com- 
 mon sense one could make sure of doing exactly the 
 same thing every day at the same hour. These doc- 
 trines, reverentially imbibed with his mother's milk, 
 Tillotson (a model son who had never given his par- 
 ents an hour's anxiety) complacently expounded to 
 his wife, testifying to his sense of their importance 
 by the regularity with which he wore goloshes on 
 damp days, his punctuality at meals, and his elaborate 
 precautions against burglars and contagious diseases. 
 Lydia, coming from a smaller town, and entering New 
 [87] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 York life through the portals of the Tillotson mansion, 
 had mechanically accepted this point of view as in- 
 separable from having a front pew in church and a 
 parterre box at the opera. All the people who came 
 to the house revolved in the same small circle of 
 prejudices. It was the kind of society in which, after 
 dinner, the ladies compared the exorbitant charges of 
 their children's teachers, and agreed that, even with 
 the new duties on French clothes, it was cheaper in 
 the end to get everything from Worth ; while the 
 husbands, over their cigars, lamented municipal cor- 
 ruption, and decided that the men to start a reform 
 were those who had no private interests at stake. 
 
 To Lydia this view of life had become a matter of 
 course, just as lumbering about in her mother-in-law's 
 landau had come to seem the only possible means of 
 locomotion, and listening every Sunday to a fashion- 
 able Presbyterian divine the inevitable atonement for 
 having thought oneself bored on the other six days 
 of the week. Before she met Gannett her life had 
 seemed merely dull : his coming made it appear like 
 one of those dismal Cruikshank prints in which the 
 people are all ugly and all engaged in occupations 
 that are either vulgar or stupid. 
 
 It was natural that Tillotson should be the chief 
 sufferer from this readjustment of focus. Gamiett's 
 nearness had made her husband ridiculous, and a 
 [88] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 part of the ridicule had been reflected on herself. 
 Her tolerance laid her open to a suspicion of obtuse- 
 ness from which she must, at all costs, clear herself 
 in Gannett's eyes. 
 
 She did not understand this until afterwards. At 
 the time she fancied that she had merely reached 
 the limits of endurance. In so large a charter of lib- 
 erties as the mere act of leaving Tillotson seemed 
 to confer, the small question of divorce or no divorce 
 did not count. It was when she saw that she had 
 left her husband only to be with Gannett that she 
 perceived the significance of anything affecting their 
 relations. Her husband, in casting her off, had vir- 
 tually flung her at Gannett : it was thus that the 
 world viewed it. The measure of alacrity with which 
 Gannett would receive her would be the subject of 
 curious speculation over afternoon-tea tables and in 
 club corners. She knew what would be said she had 
 heard it so often of others! The recollection bathed 
 her in misery. The men would probably back Gannett 
 to "do the decent thing"; but the ladies' eye-brows 
 would emphasize the worthlessness of such enforced 
 fidelity ; and after all, they would be right. She had 
 put herself in a position where Gannett " owed " her 
 something; where, as a gentleman, he was bound to 
 " stand the damage." The idea of accepting such com- 
 pensation had never crossed her mind ; the so-called 
 
 [89] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 rehabilitation of such a marriage had always seemed 
 to her the only real disgrace. What she dreaded was 
 the necessity of having to explain herself; of having 
 to combat his arguments ; of calculating, in spite of 
 herself, the exact measure of insistence with which 
 he pressed them. She knew not whether she most 
 shrank from his insisting too much or too little. In 
 such a case the nicest sense of proportion might be 
 at fault ; and how easy to fall into the error of taking 
 her resistance for a test of his sincerity ! Whichever 
 way she turned, an ironical implication confronted her : 
 she had the exasperated sense of having walked into 
 the trap of some stupid practical joke. 
 
 Beneath all these preoccupations lurked the dread 
 of what he was thinking. Sooner or later, of course, 
 he would have to speak; but that, in the meantime, 
 he should think, even for a moment, that there was 
 any use in speaking, seemed to her simply unendura- 
 ble. Her sensitiveness on this point was aggravated 
 by another fear, as yet barely on the level of con- 
 sciousness ; the fear of unwillingly involving Gannett 
 in the trammels of her dependence. To look upon him 
 as the instrument of her liberation ; to resist in herself 
 the least tendency to a wifely taking possession of his 
 future ; had seemed to Lydia the one way of maintain- 
 ing the dignity of their relation. Her view had not 
 changed, but she was aware of a growing inability to 
 
 [90] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 keep her thoughts fixed on the essential point the 
 point of parting with Gannett. It was easy to face as 
 long as she kept it sufficiently far off: but what was 
 this act of mental postponement but a gradual en- 
 croachment on his future ? What was needful was 
 the courage to recognize the moment when, by some 
 word or look, their voluntary fellowship should be 
 transformed into a bondage the more wearing that it 
 was based on none of those common obligations which 
 make the most imperfect marriage in some sort a 
 centre of gravity. 
 
 When the porter, at the next station, threw the 
 door open, Lydia drew back, making way for the 
 hoped-for intruder; but none came, and the train 
 took up its leisurely progress through the spring 
 wheat-fields and budding copses. She now began to 
 hope that Gannett would speak before the next 
 station. She watched him furtively, half-disposed to 
 return to the seat opposite his, but there was an 
 artificiality about his absorption that restrained her. 
 She had never before seen him read with so con- 
 spicuous an air of warding off interruption. W r hat 
 could he be thinking of? Why should he be afraid 
 to speak ? Or was it her answer that he dreaded ? 
 
 The train paused for the passing of an express, and 
 he put down his book and leaned out of the window. 
 Presently he turned to her with a smile. 
 
 [91] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 "There's a jolly old villa out here," he said. 
 
 His easy tone relieved her, and she smiled back at 
 him as she crossed over to his corner. 
 
 Beyond the embankment, through the opening in 
 a mossy wall, she caught sight of the villa, with its 
 broken balustrades, its stagnant fountains, and the stone 
 satyr closing the perspective of a dusky grass-walk. 
 
 (t How should you like to live there ? " he asked 
 as the train moved on. 
 
 "There?" 
 
 " In some such place, I mean. One might do worse, 
 don't you think so? There must be at least two cen- 
 turies of solitude under those yew-trees. Shouldn't 
 you like it?" 
 
 "I I don't know," she faltered. She knew now 
 that he meant to speak. 
 
 He lit another cigarette. "We shall have to live 
 somewhere, you know," he said as he bent above the 
 match. 
 
 Lydia tried to speak carelessly. " Je rien vois pas la 
 necessite ! Why not live everywhere, as we have been 
 doing ? " 
 
 " But we can't travel forever, can we ? " 
 
 "Oh, forever's a long word," she objected, picking 
 up the review he had thrown aside. 
 
 "For the rest of our lives then," he said, moving 
 nearer. 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 She made a slight gesture which caused his hand 
 to slip from hers. 
 
 " Why should we make plans ? I thought you agreed 
 with me that it's pleasanter to drift." 
 
 He looked at her hesitatingly. " It 's been pleasant, 
 certainly ; but I suppose I shall have to get at my work 
 again some day. You know I haven't written a line 
 since all this time," he hastily emended. 
 
 She flamed with sympathy and self-reproach. "Oh, 
 if you mean that if you want to write of course 
 we must settle down. How stupid of me not to have 
 thought of it sooner! Where shall we go? Where do 
 you think you could work best ? We ought n't to lose 
 any more time." 
 
 He hesitated again. "I had thought of a villa in 
 these parts. It's quiet; we shouldn't be bothered. 
 Should you like it ? " 
 
 " Of course I should like it." She paused and looked 
 away. "But I thought I remember your telling me 
 once that your best work had been done in a crowd 
 in big cities. Why should you shut yourself up in a 
 desert ? " 
 
 Gannett, for a moment, made no reply. At length 
 he said, avoiding her eye as carefully as she avoided 
 his : " It might be different now ; I can't tell, of course, 
 till I try. A writer ought not to be dependent on his 
 milieu ; it 's a mistake to humor oneself in that way ; 
 [93] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 and I thought that just at first you might prefer to 
 be" 
 
 She faced him. "To be what?" 
 
 "Well quiet. I mean " 
 
 (f What do you mean by 'at first ' ? " she interrupted. 
 
 He paused again. " I mean after we are married. " 
 
 She thrust up her chin and turned toward the win- 
 dow. " Thank you ! " she tossed back at him. 
 
 " Lydia ! " he exclaimed blankly ; and she felt in 
 every fibre of her averted person that he had made 
 the inconceivable, the unpardonable mistake of antici- 
 pating her acquiescence. 
 
 The train rattled on and he groped for a third 
 cigarette. Lydia remained silent. 
 
 "I haven't offended you?" he ventured at length, 
 in the tone of a man who feels his way. 
 
 She shook her head with a sigh. " I thought you 
 understood," she moaned. Their eyes met and she 
 moved back to his side. 
 
 "Do you want to know how not to offend me? By 
 taking it for granted, once for all, that you 've said 
 your say on this odious question and that I 've said 
 mine, and that we stand just where we did this morn- 
 ing before that that hateful paper came to spoil 
 everything between us ! " 
 
 "To spoil everything between us? What on earth 
 do you mean? Aren't you glad to be free?" 
 
 [*] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 " I was free before." 
 
 " Not to marry me," he suggested. 
 
 " But I don't want to marry you ! " she cried. 
 
 She saw that he turned pale. " I 'm obtuse, I sup- 
 pose," he said slowly. " I confess I don't see what 
 you 're driving at. Are you tired of the whole busi- 
 ness ? Or was I simply a an excuse for getting away ? 
 Perhaps you didn't care to travel alone? Was that 
 it? And now you want to chuck me?" His voice had 
 grown harsh. "You owe me a straight answer, you 
 know ; don't be tender-hearted ! " 
 
 Her eyes swam as she leaned to him. " Don't you 
 see it's because I care because I care so much? Oh, 
 Ralph ! Can't you see how it would humiliate me ? 
 Try to feel it as a woman would! Don't you see the 
 misery of being made your wife in this way? If I'd 
 known you as a girl that would have been a real 
 marriage ! But now this vulgar fraud upon society 
 and upon a society we despised and laughed at this 
 sneaking back into a position that we Ve voluntarily 
 forfeited : don't you see what a cheap compromise it 
 is? We neither of us believe in the abstract 'sacred- 
 ness ' of marriage ; we both know that no ceremony 
 is needed to consecrate our love for each other ; what 
 object can we have in marrying, except the secret fear 
 of each that the other may escape, or the secret long- 
 ing to work our way back gradually oh, very gradu- 
 [95] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 ally into the esteem of the people whose conven- 
 tional morality we have always ridiculed and hated? 
 And the very fact that, after a decent interval, these 
 same people would come and dine with us the wo- 
 men who talk about the indissolubility of marriage, 
 and who would let me die in a gutter to-day because 
 I am 'leading a life of sin' doesn't that disgust you 
 more than their turning their backs on us now ? I can 
 stand being cut by them, but I couldn't stand their 
 coming to call and asking what I meant to do about 
 visiting that unfortunate Mrs. So-and-so ! " 
 
 She paused, and Gannett maintained a perplexed 
 silence. 
 
 "You judge things too theoretically," he said at 
 length, slowly. " Life is made up of compromises." 
 
 "The life we ran away from yes! If we had been 
 willing to accept them" she flushed "we might have 
 gone on meeting each other at Mrs. Tillotson's dinners." 
 
 He smiled slightly. " I did n't know that we ran 
 away to found a new system of ethics. I supposed it 
 was because we loved each other." 
 
 " Life is complex, of course ; is n't it the very recog- 
 nition of that fact that separates us from the people 
 who see it tout d'une piece ? If they are right if mar- 
 riage is sacred in itself and the individual must always 
 be sacrificed to the family then there can be no real 
 marriage between us, since our our being together is 
 
 [96] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 a protest against the sacrifice of the individual to the 
 family." She interrupted herself with a laugh. " You '11 
 say now that I 'm giving you a lecture on sociology ! 
 Of course one acts as one can as one must, perhaps 
 pulled by all sorts of invisible threads ; but at least 
 one need n't pretend, for social advantages, to sub- 
 scribe to a creed that ignores the complexity of human 
 motives that classifies people by arbitrary signs, and 
 puts it in everybody's reach to be on Mrs. Tillotson's 
 visiting-list. It may be necessary that the world should 
 be ruled by conventions but if we believed in them, 
 why did we break through them ? And if we don't be- 
 lieve in them, is it honest to take advantage of the 
 protection they afford ? " 
 
 Gannett hesitated. "One may believe in them or 
 not; but as long as they do rule the world it is only 
 by taking advantage of their protection that one can 
 find a modus vivendi." 
 
 " Do outlaws need a modus vivendi ? " 
 
 He looked at her hopelessly. Nothing is more per- 
 plexing to man than the mental process of a woman 
 who reasons her emotions. 
 
 She thought she had scored a point and followed it 
 up passionately. " You do understand, don't you ? You 
 see how the very thought of the thing humiliates me ! 
 We are together to-day because we choose to be 
 don't let us look any farther than that ! " She caught 
 [97] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 his hands. "Promise me you '11 never speak of it again ; 
 promise me you '11 never think of it even/' she implored, 
 with a tearful prodigality of italics. 
 
 Through what followed his protests, his arguments, 
 his final unconvinced submission to her wishes she 
 had a sense of his but half-discerning all that, for 
 her, had made the moment so tumultuous. They had 
 reached that memorable point in every heart-history 
 when, for the first time, the man seems obtuse and 
 the woman irrational. It was the abundance of his 
 intentions that consoled her, on reflection, for what 
 they lacked in quality. After all, it would have been 
 worse, incalculably worse, to have detected any over- 
 readiness to understand her. 
 
 II 
 
 WHEN the train at night-fall brought them to 
 their journey's end at the edge of one of the 
 lakes, Lydia was glad that they were not, as usual, to 
 pass from one solitude to another. Their wanderings 
 during the year had indeed been like the flight of 
 outlaws : through Sicily, Dalmatia, Transylvania and 
 Southern Italy they had persisted in their tacit avoid- 
 ance of their kind. Isolation, at first, had deepened 
 the flavor of their happiness, as night intensifies the 
 scent of certain flowers ; but in the new phase on which 
 [98] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 they were entering, Lydia's chief wish was that they 
 should be less abnormally exposed to the action of 
 each other's thoughts. 
 
 She shrank, nevertheless, as the brightly-looming 
 bulk of the fashionable Anglo-American hotel on the 
 water's brjnk began to radiate toward their advancing 
 boat its vivid suggestion of social order, visitors' lists, 
 Church services, and the bland inquisition of the table- 
 d'hote. The mere fact that in a moment or two she must 
 take her place on the hotel register as Mrs. Gannett 
 seemed to weaken the springs of her resistance. 
 
 They had meant to stay for a night only, on their 
 way to a lofty village among the glaciers of Monte 
 Rosa ; but after the first plunge into publicity, when 
 they entered the dining-room, Lydia felt the relief of 
 being lost in a crowd, of ceasing for a moment to be 
 the centre of Gannett's scrutiny ; and in his face she 
 caught the reflection of her feeling. After dinner, 
 when she went upstairs, he strolled into the smoking- 
 room, and an hour or two later, sitting in the darkness 
 of her window, she heard his voice below and saw him 
 walking up and down the terrace with a companion 
 cigar at his side. When he came up he told her he 
 had been talking to the hotel chaplain a very good 
 sort of fellow. 
 
 "Queer little microcosms, these hotels! Most of 
 these people live here all summer and then migrate 
 [99] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 to Italy or the Riviera. The English are the only 
 people who can lead that kind of life with dignity 
 those soft-voiced old ladies in Shetland shawls some- 
 how carry the British Empire under their caps. Civis 
 Romanus sum. It's a curious study there might be 
 some good things to work up here." 
 
 He stood before her with the vivid preoccupied 
 stare of the novelist on the trail of a "subject." With 
 a relief that was half painful she noticed that, for the 
 first time since they had been together, he was hardly 
 aware of her presence. 
 
 " Do you think you could write here ? " 
 
 "Here? I don't know." His stare dropped. "After 
 being out of things so long one's first impressions are 
 bound to be tremendously vivid, you know. I see a 
 dozen threads already that one might follow " 
 
 He broke off with a touch of embarrassment. 
 
 " Then follow them. We '11 stay," she said with sud- 
 den decision. 
 
 " Stay here ? " He glanced at her in surprise, and 
 then, walking to the window, looked out upon the 
 dusky slumber of the garden. 
 
 "Why not?" she said at length, in a tone of veiled 
 irritation. 
 
 "The place is full of old cats in caps who gossip 
 with the chaplain. Shall you like I mean, it would 
 be different if" 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 She flamed up. 
 
 "Do you suppose I care? It's none of their busi- 
 ness." 
 
 "Of course not; but you won't get them to think 
 so." 
 
 "They may think what they please." 
 
 He looked at her doubtfully. 
 
 "It's for you to decide." 
 
 "We'll stay/' she repeated. 
 
 Gannett, before they met, had made himself known 
 its a successful writer of short stories and of a novel 
 which had achieved the distinction of being widely 
 discussed. The reviewers called him "promising," and 
 Lydia now accused herself of having too long inter- 
 fered with the fulfilment of his promise. There was 
 a special irony in the fact, since his passionate assur- 
 ances that only the stimulus of her companionship 
 could bring out his latent faculty had almost given 
 the dignity of a " vocation " to her course : there had 
 been moments when she had felt unable to assume, 
 before posterity, the responsibility of thwarting his 
 career. And, after all, he had not written a line since 
 they had been together: his first desire to write had 
 come from renewed contact with the world! Was it 
 all a mistake then? Must the most intelligent choice 
 work more disastrously than the blundering combina- 
 tions of chance ? Or was there a still more humiliating 
 [101] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 answer to her perplexities? His sudden impulse of 
 activity so exactly coincided with her own wish to 
 withdraw, for a time, from the range of his observa- 
 tion, that she wondered if he too were not seeking 
 sanctuary from intolerable problems. 
 
 " You must begin to-morrow ! " she cried, hiding a 
 tremor under the laugh with which she added, " I 
 wonder if there's any ink in the inkstand ? " 
 
 Whatever else they had at the Hotel Bellosguardo, 
 they had, as Miss Pinsent said, " a certain tone." It 
 was to Lady Susan Condit that they owed this ines- 
 timable benefit ; an advantage ranking in Miss Pin- 
 sent' s opinion above even the lawn tennis courts and 
 the resident chaplain. It was the fact of Lady Susan's 
 annual visit that made the hotel what it was. Miss 
 Pinsent was certainly the last to underrate such a 
 privilege: "It's so important, my dear, forming as 
 we do a little family, that there should be some one 
 to give the tone; and no one could do it better than 
 Lady Susan an earl's daughter and a person of such 
 determination. Dear Mrs. Ainger now who really 
 ought, you know, when Lady Susan's away abso- 
 lutely refuses to assert herself." Miss Pinsent sniffed 
 derisively. "A bishop's niece! my dear, I saw her 
 once actually give in to some South Americans and 
 before us all. She gave up her seat at table to oblige 
 
 [ 102] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 them such a lack of dignity! Lady Susan spoke to 
 her very plainly about it afterwards." 
 
 Miss Pinsent glanced across the lake and adjusted 
 her auburn front. 
 
 "But of course I don't deny that the stand Lady 
 Susan takes is not always easy to live up to for 
 the rest of us, I mean. Monsieur Grossart, our good 
 proprietor, finds it trying at times, I know he has 
 said as much, privately, to Mrs. Ainger and me. After 
 all, the poor man is not to blame for wanting to fill 
 his hotel, is he ? And Lady Susan is so difficult so 
 very difficult about new people. One might almost 
 say that she disapproves of them beforehand, on prin- 
 ciple. And yet she's had warnings she very nearly 
 made a dreadful mistake once with the Duchess of 
 Levens, who dyed her hair and well, swore and 
 smoked. One would have thought that might have 
 been a lesson to Lady Susan." Miss Pinsent resumed 
 her knitting with a sigh. "There are exceptions, of 
 course. She took at once to you and Mr. Gannett it 
 was quite remarkable, really. Oh, I don't mean that 
 either of course not ! It was perfectly natural we 
 all thought you so charming and interesting from the 
 first day we knew at once that Mr. Gannett was in- 
 tellectual, by the magazines you took in ; but you 
 know what I mean. Lady Susan is so very well, I 
 won't say prejudiced, as Mrs. Ainger does but so 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 prepared not to like new people, that her taking to 
 you in that way was a surprise to us all, I confess." 
 
 Miss Pinsent sent a significant glance down the long 
 laurustinus alley from the other end of which two 
 people a lady and gentleman were strolling to- 
 ward them through the smiling neglect of the garden. 
 
 "In this case, of course, it's very different; that 
 I 'm willing to admit. Their looks are against them ; 
 but, as Mrs. Ainger says, one can't exactly tell them 
 so." 
 
 "She's very handsome," Lydia ventured, with her 
 eyes on the lady, who showed, under the dome of a 
 vivid sunshade, the hour-glass figure and superlative 
 coloring of a Christmas chromo. 
 
 "That's the worst of it. She's too handsome." 
 
 "Well, after all, she can't help that." 
 
 " Other people manage to," said Miss Pinsent skep- 
 tically. 
 
 "But isn't it rather unfair of Lady Susan con- 
 sidering that nothing is known about them?" 
 
 " But, my dear, that 's the very thing that 's against 
 them. It's infinitely worse than any actual knowledge." 
 
 Lydia mentally agreed that, in the case of Mrs. 
 Linton, it possibly might be. 
 
 "I wonder why they came here?" she mused. 
 
 "That's against them too. It's always a bad sign 
 when loud people come to a quiet place. And they 've 
 [104] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 brought van-loads of boxes her maid told Mrs. 
 Ainger's that they meant to stop indefinitely." 
 
 "And Lady Susan actually turned her back on her 
 in the salon ? " 
 
 " My dear, she said it was for our sakes : that makes 
 it so unanswerable ! But poor Grossart is in a way ! 
 The Lintons have taken his most expensive suite, 
 you know the yellow damask drawing-room above 
 the portico and they have champagne with every 
 meal ! " 
 
 They were silent as Mr. and Mrs. Linton sauntered 
 by ; the lady with tempestuous brows and challenging 
 chin ; the gentleman, a blond stripling, trailing after 
 her, head downward, like a reluctant child dragged 
 by his nurse. 
 
 "What does your husband think of them, my dear?" 
 Miss Pinsent whispered as they passed out of earshot. 
 Lydia stooped to pick a violet in the border. 
 "He hasn't told me." 
 
 "Of your speaking to them, I mean. Would he 
 approve of that? I know how very particular nice 
 Americans are. I think your action might make a 
 difference ; it would certainly carry weight with Lady 
 Susan." 
 
 "Dear Miss Pinsent, you flatter me!" 
 Lydia rose and gathered up her book and sun- 
 shade. 
 
 [ 105 ] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 "Well, if you're asked for an opinion if Lady 
 Susan asks you for one I think you ought to be pre- 
 pared," Miss Pinsent admonished her as she moved 
 away. 
 
 Ill 
 
 EiDY SUSAN held her own. She ignored the Lin- 
 tons, and her little family, as Miss Pinsent phrased 
 it, followed suit. Even Mrs. Ainger agreed that it was 
 obligatory. If Lady Susan owed it to the others not 
 to speak to the Lintons, the others clearly owed it to 
 Lady Susan to back her up. It was generally found 
 expedient, at the Hotel Bellosguardo, to adopt this 
 form of reasoning. 
 
 Whatever effect this combined action may have 
 had upon the Lintons, it did not at least have that of 
 driving them away. Monsieur Grossart, after a few 
 days of suspense, had the satisfaction of seeing them 
 settle down in his yellow damask premier with what 
 looked like a permanent installation of palm-trees 
 and silk sofa-cushions, and a gratifying continuance 
 in the consumption of champagne. Mrs. Linton trailed 
 her Doucet draperies up and down the garden with 
 the same challenging air, while her husband, smoking 
 innumerable cigarettes, dragged himself dejectedly in 
 her wake ; but neither of them, after the first encoun- 
 ter with Lady Susan, made any attempt to extend 
 
 [ 106 ] " 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 their acquaintance. They simply ignored their ignorers. 
 As Miss Pinsent resentfully observed, they behaved 
 exactly as though the hotel were empty. 
 
 It was therefore a matter of surprise, as well as of 
 displeasure, to Lydia, to find, on glancing up one day 
 from her seat in the garden, that the shadow which 
 had fallen across her book was that of the enigmatic 
 Mrs. Linton. 
 
 " I want to speak to you," that lady said, in a rich 
 hard voice that seemed the audible expression of her 
 gown and her complexion. 
 
 Lydia started. She certainly did not want to speak 
 to Mrs. Linton. 
 
 " Shall I sit down here ? " the latter continued, fixing 
 her intensely-shaded eyes on Lydia' s face, " or are you 
 afraid of being seen with me?" 
 
 "Afraid?" Lydia colored. "Sit down, please. What 
 is it that you wish to say ?" 
 
 Mrs. Linton, with a smile, drew up a garden-chair 
 and crossed one open-work ankle above the other. 
 
 "I want you to tell me what my husband said to 
 your husband last night." 
 
 Lydia turned pale. 
 
 "My husband to yours?" she faltered, staring at 
 the other. 
 
 "Didn't you know they were closeted together for 
 hours in the smoking-room after you went upstairs? 
 [ 107 ] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 My man didn't get to bed until nearly two o'clock 
 and when he did I couldn't get a word out of him. 
 When he wants to be aggravating I '11 back him 
 against anybody living ! " Her teeth and eyes flashed 
 persuasively upon Lydia. "But you'll tell me what 
 they were talking about, won't you ? I know I can 
 trust you you look so awfully kind. And it's for his 
 own good. He 's such a precious donkey and I 'm so 
 afraid he 's got into some beastly scrape or other. If 
 he 'd only trust his own old woman ! But they 're al- 
 ways writing to him and setting him against me. And 
 I 've got nobody to turn to." She laid her hand on 
 Lydia's with a rattle of bracelets. "You'll help me, 
 won't you?" 
 
 Lydia drew back from the smiling fierceness of her 
 brows. 
 
 " I 'm sorry but I don't think I understand. My 
 husband has said nothing to me of of yours." 
 
 The great black crescents above Mrs. Linton's eye? 
 met angrily. 
 
 "I say is that true?" she demanded. 
 
 Lydia rose from her seat. 
 
 " Oh, look here, I did n't mean that, you know 
 you must n't take one up so ! Can't you see how rat- 
 tled I am?" 
 
 Lydia saw that, in fact, her beautiful mouth was 
 quivering beneath softened eyes. 
 
 [ '08] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 "I'm beside myself!" the splendid creature wailed, 
 dropping into her seat. 
 
 "I'm so sorry," Lydia repeated, forcing herself to 
 speak kindly; "but how can I help you?" 
 
 Mrs. Linton raised her head sharply. 
 
 "By finding out there's a darling!" 
 
 "Finding what out?" 
 
 "What Trevenna told him." 
 
 "Trevenna ?" Lydia echoed in bewilderment. 
 
 Mrs. Linton clapped her hand to her mouth. 
 
 "Oh, Lord there, it's out! What a fool I am! 
 But I supposed of course you knew ; I supposed every- 
 body knew." She dried her eyes and bridled. " Did n't 
 you know that he 's Lord Trevenna ? I 'm Mrs. Cope." 
 
 Lydia recognized the names. They had figured in 
 a flamboyant elopement which had thrilled fashionable 
 London some six months earlier. 
 
 "Now you see how it is you understand, don't 
 you ? " Mrs. Cope continued on a note of appeal. " I 
 knew you would that's the reason I came to you. 
 I suppose he felt the same thing about your husband ; 
 he's not spoken to another soul in the place." Her 
 face grew anxious again. " He 's awfully sensitive, gen- 
 erally he feels our position, he says as if it wasn't 
 my place to feel that ! But when he does get talking 
 there 's no knowing what he '11 say. I know he 's been 
 brooding over something lately, and I must find out 
 [ 109] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 what it is it's to his interest that I should. I always 
 tell him that I think only of his interest ; if he 'd only 
 trust me! But he's been so odd lately I can't think 
 what he's plotting. You will help me, dear?" 
 
 Lydia, who had remained standing, looked away 
 uncomfortably. 
 
 "If you mean by finding out what Lord Trevenna 
 has told my husband, I 'm afraid it 's impossible." 
 
 "Why impossible?" 
 
 "Because I infer that it was told in confidence." 
 
 Mrs. Cope stared incredulously. 
 
 "Well, what of that? Your husband looks such a 
 dear any one can see he 's awfully gone on you. 
 What 's to prevent your getting it out of him ? " 
 
 Lydia flushed. 
 
 " I 'm not a spy ! " she exclaimed. 
 
 " A spy a spy ? How dare you ? " Mrs. Cope flamed 
 out. "Oh, I don't mean that either! Don't be angry 
 with me I'm so miserable." She essayed a softer 
 note. "Do you call that spying for one woman to 
 help out another ? I do need help so dreadfully ! I 'm 
 at my wits' end with Trevenna, I am indeed. He 's 
 such a boy a mere baby, you know ; he 's only two- 
 and-twenty." She dropped her orbed lids. " He 's 
 younger than me only fancy ! a few months younger. 
 I tell him he ought to listen to me as if I was his 
 mother; oughtn't he now? But he won't, he won't! 
 
 [ no] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 All his people are at him, you see oh, I know their 
 little game ! Trying to get him away from me before 
 I can get my divorce that's what they're up to. 
 At first he would n't listen to them ; he used to toss 
 their letters over to me to read ; but now he reads 
 them himself, and answers 'em too, I fancy ; he 's al- 
 ways shut up in his room, writing. If I only knew what 
 his plan is I could stop him fast enough he's such 
 a simpleton. But he 's dreadfully deep too at times 
 I can't make him out. But I know he's told your 
 husband everything I knew that last night the 
 minute I laid eyes on him. And I must find out you 
 must help me I've got no one else to turn to!" 
 
 She caught Lydia's fingers in a stormy pressure. 
 
 "Say you'll help me you and your husband." 
 
 Lydia tried to free herself. 
 
 " What you ask is impossible ; you must see that it 
 is. No one could interfere in in the way you ask." 
 
 Mrs. Cope's clutch tightened. 
 
 "You won't, then? You won't?" 
 
 "Certainly not. Let me go, please." 
 
 Mrs. Cope released her with a laugh. 
 
 "Oh, go by all means pray don't let me detain 
 you! Shall you go and tell Lady Susan Condit that 
 there 's a pair of us or shall I save you the trouble 
 of enlightening her ? " 
 
 Lydia stood still in the middle of the path, seeing 
 
 [in] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 her antagonist through a mist of terror. Mrs. Cope was 
 still laughing. 
 
 "Oh, I'm not spiteful by nature, my dear; but 
 you 're a little more than flesh and blood can stand ! 
 It 's impossible, is it ? Let you go, indeed ! You 're too 
 good to be mixed up in my affairs, are you ? Why, you 
 little fool, the first day I laid eyes on you I saw that 
 you and I were both in the same box that's the 
 reason I spoke to you." 
 
 She stepped nearer, her smile dilating on Lydia like 
 a lamp through a fog. 
 
 " You can take your choice, you know ; I always 
 play fair. If you '11 tell I '11 promise not to. Now then, 
 which is it to be?" 
 
 Lydia, involuntarily, had begun to move away from 
 the pelting storm of words ; but at this she turned and 
 sat down again. 
 
 " You may go," she said simply. " I shall stay 
 here." 
 
 IV 
 
 SHE stayed there for a long time, in the hypnotized 
 contemplation, not of Mrs. Cope's present, but of 
 her own past. Gannett, early that morning, had gone 
 off on a long walk he had fallen into the habit of 
 taking these mountain-tramps with various fellow- 
 lodgers ; but even had he been within reach she 
 [ "2] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 could not have gone to him just then. She had to 
 deal with herself first. She was surprised to find 
 how, in the last months, she had lost the habit of 
 introspection. Since their coming to the Hotel Bel- 
 losguardo she and Gannett had tacitly avoided them- 
 selves and each other. 
 
 She was aroused by the whistle of the three o'clock 
 steamboat as it neared the landing just beyond the 
 hotel gates. Three o'clock ! Then Gannett would soon 
 be back he had told her to expect him before four. 
 She rose hurriedly, her face averted from the inquisi- 
 torial fa9ade of the hotel. She could not see him just 
 yet ; she could not go indoors. She slipped through one 
 of the overgrown garden-alleys and climbed a steep 
 path to the hills. 
 
 It was dark when she opened their sitting-room 
 door. Gannett was sitting on the window-ledge smok- 
 ing a cigarette. Cigarettes were now his chief resource : 
 he had not written a line during the two months they 
 had spent at the Hotel Bellosguardo. In that respect, 
 it had turned out not to be the right milieu after all. 
 
 He started up at Lydia's entrance. 
 
 "Where have you been? I was getting anxious." 
 
 She sat down in a chair near the door. 
 
 "Up the mountain," she said wearily. 
 
 "Alone?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 [113] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 Gannett threw away his cigarette : the sound of her 
 voice made him want to see her face. 
 
 " Shall we have a little light ? " he suggested. 
 
 She made no answer and he lifted the globe from 
 the lamp and put a match to the wick. Then he looked 
 at her. 
 
 "Anything wrong? You look done up." 
 
 She sat glancing vaguely about the little sitting- 
 room, dimly lit by the pallid-globed lamp, which left 
 in twilight the outlines of the furniture, of his writing- 
 table heaped with books and papers, of the tea-roses 
 and jasmine drooping on the mantel-piece. How like 
 home it had all grown how like home ! 
 
 " Lydia, what is wrong ? " he repeated. 
 
 She moved away from him, feeling for her hat- 
 pins and turning to lay her hat and sunshade on the 
 table. 
 
 Suddenly she said: "That woman has been talking 
 to me." 
 
 Gannett stared. 
 
 "That woman? What woman?" 
 
 "Mrs. Linton Mrs. Cope." 
 
 He gave a start of annoyance, still, as she perceived, 
 not grasping the full import of her words. 
 
 "The deuce! She told you?" 
 
 "She told me everything." 
 
 Gannett looked at her anxiously. 
 [114] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 "What impudence! I'm so sorry that you should 
 have been exposed to this, dear." 
 
 " Exposed ! " Lydia laughed. 
 
 Gannett' s brow clouded and they looked away from 
 each other. 
 
 " Do you know why she told me ? She had the best 
 of reasons. The first time she laid eyes on me she saw 
 that we were both in the same box." 
 
 "Lydia!" 
 
 " So it was natural, of course, that she should turn 
 to me in a difficulty." 
 
 "What difficulty?" 
 
 "It seems she has reason to think that Lord Tre- 
 venna's people are trying to get him away from her 
 before she gets her divorce " 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " And she fancied he had been consulting with you 
 last night as to as to the best way of escaping from 
 her." 
 
 Gannett stood up with an angry forehead. 
 
 "Well what concern of yours was all this dirty 
 business? Why should she go to you?" 
 
 "Don't you see? It's so simple. I was to wheedle 
 his secret out of you." 
 
 "To oblige that woman?" 
 
 " Yes ; or, if I was unwilling to oblige her, then to 
 protect myself." 
 
 [115] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 "To protect yourself? Against whom?" 
 
 " Against her telling every one in the hotel that she 
 and I are in the same box." 
 
 "She threatened that?" 
 
 "She left me the choice of telling it myself or of 
 doing it for me." 
 
 "The beast!" 
 
 There was a long silence. Lydia had seated herself 
 on the sofa, beyond the radius of the lamp, and he 
 leaned against the window. His next question sur- 
 prised her. 
 
 "When did this happen? At what time, I mean?" 
 
 She looked at him vaguely. 
 
 "I don't know after luncheon, I think. Yes, I 
 remember ; it must have been at about three o'clock." 
 
 He stepped into the middle of the room and as 
 he approached the light she saw that his brow had 
 cleared. 
 
 "Why do you ask?" she said. 
 
 " Because when I came in, at about half-past three, 
 the mail was just being distributed, and Mrs. Cope 
 was waiting as usual to pounce on her letters ; you 
 know she was always watching for the postman. She 
 was standing so close to me that I could n't help see- 
 ing a big official-looking envelope that was handed 
 to her. She tore it open, gave one look at the inside, 
 and rushed off upstairs like a whirlwind, with the di- 
 [116] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 rector shouting after her that she had left all her other 
 letters behind. I don't believe she ever thought of you 
 again after that paper was put into her hand." 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Because she was too busy. I was sitting in the 
 window, watching for you, when the five o'clock boat 
 left, and who should go on board, bag and baggage, 
 valet and maid, dressing-bags and poodle, but Mrs. 
 Cope and Trevenna. Just an hour and a half to pack 
 up in ! And you should have seen her when they 
 started. She was radiant shaking hands with every- 
 body waving her handkerchief from the deck dis- 
 tributing bows and smiles like an empress. If ever a 
 woman got what she wanted just in the nick of time 
 that woman did. She'll be Lady Trevenna within a 
 week, I '11 wager." 
 
 "You think she has her divorce?" 
 
 " I 'm sure of it. And she must have got it just after 
 her talk with you." 
 
 Lydia was silent. 
 
 At length she said, with a kind of reluctance, " She 
 was horribly angry when she left me. It would n't have 
 taken long to tell Lady Susan Condit." 
 
 "Lady Susan Condit has not been told." 
 
 "How do you know?" 
 
 " Because when I went downstairs half an hour ago 
 I met Lady Susan on the way " 
 [117] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 He stopped, half smiling. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "And she stopped to ask if I thought you would 
 act as patroness to a charity concert she is getting up." 
 
 In spite of themselves they both broke into a laugh. 
 Lydia's ended in sobs and she sank down with her 
 face hidden. Gannett bent over her, seeking her 
 hands. 
 
 "That vile woman I ought to have warned you 
 to keep away from her ; I can't forgive myself! But he 
 spoke to me in confidence ; and I never dreamed 
 well, it 's all over now." 
 
 Lydia lifted her head. 
 
 "Not for me. It's only just beginning." 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 She put him gently aside and moved in her turn to 
 the window. Then she went on, with her face turned 
 toward the shimmering blackness of the lake, " You see 
 of course that it might happen again at any moment." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "This this risk of being found out. And we could 
 hardly count again on such a lucky combination of 
 chances, could we?" 
 
 He sat down with a groan. 
 
 Still keeping her face toward the darkness, she 
 said, "I want you to go and tell Lady Susan and 
 the others." 
 
 [118] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 Gannett, who had moved towards her, paused a few 
 feet off. 
 
 " Why do you wish me to do this ? " he said at 
 length, with less surprise in his voice than she had 
 been prepared for. 
 
 "Because I've behaved basely, abominably, since 
 we came here: letting these people believe we were 
 married lying with every breath I drew " 
 
 "Yes, I've felt that too," Gannett exclaimed with 
 sudden energy. 
 
 The words shook her like a tempest : all her thoughts 
 seemed to fall about her in ruins. 
 
 " You you 've felt so ? " 
 
 "Of course I have." He spoke with low-voiced 
 vehemence. " Do you suppose I like playing the sneak 
 any better than you do? It's damnable." 
 
 He had dropped on the arm of a chair, and they 
 stared at each other like blind people who suddenly 
 see. 
 
 " But you have liked it here," she faltered. 
 
 "Oh, I've liked it I've liked it." He moved im- 
 patiently. "Haven't you?" 
 
 "Yes," she burst out; "that's the worst of it 
 that's what I can't bear. I fancied it was for your 
 sake that I insisted on staying because you thought 
 you could write here ; and perhaps just at first that 
 really was the reason. But afterwards I wanted to 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 stay myself I loved it." She broke into a laugh. 
 "Oh, do you see the full derision of it? These peo- 
 ple the very prototypes of the bores you took me 
 away from, with the same fenced-in view of life, the 
 same keep-off-the-grass morality, the same little cau- 
 tious virtues and the same little frightened vices 
 well, I 've clung to them, I 've delighted in them, 
 I 've done my best to please them. I 've toadied Lady 
 Susan, I 've gossipped with Miss Pinsent, I 've pre- 
 tended to be shocked with Mrs. Ainger. Respecta- 
 bility ! It was the one thing in life that I was sure I 
 didn't care about, and it's grown so precious to me 
 that I 've stolen it because I could n't get it in any 
 other way." 
 
 She moved across the room and returned to his side 
 with another laugh. 
 
 " I who used to fancy myself unconventional ! I must 
 have been born with a card-case in my hand. You 
 should have seen me with that poor woman in the 
 garden. She came to me for help, poor creature, be- 
 cause she fancied that, having 'sinned,' as they call 
 it, I might feel some pity for others who had been 
 tempted in the same way. Not I ! She did n't know 
 me. Lady Susan would have been kinder, because 
 Lady Susan wouldn't have been afraid. I hated the 
 woman my one thought was not to be seen with 
 her I could have killed her for guessing my secret. 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 The one thing that mattered to me at that moment 
 was my standing with Lady Susan ! " 
 
 Gannett did not speak. 
 
 "And you you've felt it too!" she broke out 
 accusingly. "You've enjoyed being with these peo- 
 ple as much as I have ; you 've let the chaplain talk 
 to you by the hour about f The Reign of Law' and 
 Professor Drummond. When they asked you to hand 
 the plate in church I was watching you you wanted 
 to accept" 
 
 She stepped close, laying her hand on his arm. 
 
 " Do you know, I begin to see what marriage is 
 for. It's to keep people away from each other. Some- 
 times I think that two people who love each other 
 can be saved from madness only by the things that 
 come between them children, duties, visits, bores, re- 
 lations the things that protect married people from 
 each other. We 've been too close together that has 
 been our sin. We've seen the nakedness of each 
 other's souls." 
 
 She sank again on the sofa, hiding her face in her 
 hands. 
 
 Gannett stood above her perplexedly : he felt as 
 though she were being swept away by some implaca- 
 ble current while he stood helpless on its bank. 
 
 At length he said, "Lydia, don't think me a brute 
 but don't you see yourself that it won't do ? " 
 [121] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 "Yes, I see it won't do," she said without raising 
 her head. 
 
 His face cleared. 
 
 " Then we '11 go to-morrow." 
 
 Go where?" 
 
 "To Paris ; to be married." 
 
 For a long time she made no answer; then she 
 asked slowly, "Would they have us here if we were 
 married ? " 
 
 "Have us here?" 
 
 "I mean Lady Susan and the others." 
 
 " Have us here ? Of course they would." 
 
 "Not if they knew at least, not unless they could 
 pretend not to know." 
 
 He made an impatient gesture. 
 
 " We should n't come back here, of course ; and 
 other people needn't know no one need know." 
 
 She sighed. "Then it's only another form of de- 
 ception and a meaner one. Don't you see that ? " 
 
 "I see that we're not accountable to any Lady 
 Susans on earth ! " 
 
 " Then why are you ashamed of what we are doing 
 here?" 
 
 "Because I'm sick of pretending that you're my 
 wife when you're not when you won't be." 
 
 She looked at him sadly. 
 
 " If I were your wife you 'd have to go on pretend- 
 [ 122 ] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 ing. You 'd have to pretend that I 'd never been 
 anything else. And our friends would have to pretend 
 that they believed what you pretended." 
 
 Gannett pulled off the sofa-tassel and flung it away. 
 
 " You 're impossible/' he groaned. 
 
 " It 's not I it 's our being together that 's impossi- 
 ble. I only want you to see that marriage won't help it." 
 
 " What will help it then ? " 
 
 She raised her head. 
 
 " My leaving you." 
 
 "Your leaving me?" He sat motionless, staring at 
 the tassel which lay at the other end of the room. At 
 length some impulse of retaliation for the pain she was 
 inflicting made him say deliberately : 
 
 " And where would you go if you left me ? " 
 
 " Oh ! " she cried. 
 
 He was at her side in an instant. 
 
 "Lydia Lydia you know I didn't mean it; I 
 couldn't mean it! But you've driven me out of my 
 senses; I don't know what I'm saying. Can't you get out 
 of this labyrinth of self-torture? It 's destroying us both." 
 
 "That's why I must leave you." 
 
 " How easily you say it ! " He drew her hands down 
 and made her face him. " You 're very scrupulous about 
 yourself- and others. But have you thought of me ? 
 You have no right to leave me unless you've ceased 
 to care " 
 
 [123] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 "It's because I care " 
 
 " Then I have a right to be heard. If you love me 
 you can't leave me." 
 
 Her eyes defied him. 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 He dropped her hands and rose from her side. 
 
 "Can you?" he said sadly. 
 
 The hour was late and the lamp flickered and sank. 
 She stood up with a shiver and turned toward the 
 door of her room. 
 
 AT daylight a sound in Lydia's room woke Gannett 
 from a troubled sleep. He sat up and listened. 
 She was moving about softly, as though fearful of 
 disturbing him. He heard her push back one of the 
 creaking shutters ; then there was a moment's silence, 
 which seemed to indicate that she was waiting to see 
 if the noise had roused him. 
 
 Presently she began to move again. She had spent 
 a sleepless night, probably, and was dressing to go 
 down to the garden for a breath of air. Gannett rose 
 also ; but some undefinable instinct made his move- 
 ments as cautious as hers. He stole to his window and 
 looked out through the slats of the shutter. 
 
 It had rained in the night and the dawn was gray 
 and lifeless. The cloud-muffled hills across the lake 
 [12*] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 / 
 
 were reflected in its surface as in a tarnished mirror. 
 In the garden, the birds were beginning to shake the 
 drops from the motionless laurustinus-boughs. 
 
 An immense pity for Lydia filled Gannett's soul. 
 Her seeming intellectual independence had blinded 
 him for a time to the feminine cast of her mind. He 
 had never thought of her as a woman who wept and 
 clung: there was a lucidity in her intuitions that 
 made them appear to be the result of reasoning. Now 
 he saw the cruelty he had committed in detaching 
 her from the normal conditions of life; he felt, too, 
 the insight with which she had hit upon the real 
 cause of their suffering. Their life was "impossible," 
 as she had said and its worst penalty was that it 
 had made any other life impossible for them. Even 
 had his love lessened, he was bound to her now by a 
 hundred ties of pity and self-reproach ; and she, poor 
 child ! must turn back to him as Latude returned to 
 his cell . . . 
 
 A new sound startled him : it was the stealthy clos- 
 ing of Lydia' s door. He crept to his own and heard 
 her footsteps passing down the corridor. Then he went 
 back to the window and looked out. 
 
 A minute or two later he saw her go down the steps 
 
 of the porch and enter the garden. From his post of 
 
 observation her face was invisible, but something 
 
 about her appearance struck him. She wore a long 
 
 [125] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 travelling cloak and under its folds he detected the 
 outline of a bag or bundle. He drew a deep breath and 
 stood watching her. 
 
 She walked quickly down the laurustinus alley to- 
 ward the gate ; there she paused a moment, glancing 
 about the little shady square. The stone benches under 
 the trees were empty, and she seemed to gather reso- 
 lution from the solitude about her, for she crossed 
 the square to the steam-boat landing, and he saw her 
 pause before the ticket-office at the head of the wharf. 
 Now she was buying her ticket. Gannett turned his 
 head a moment to look at the clock: the boat was 
 due in five minutes. He had time to jump into his 
 clothes and overtake her 
 
 He made no attempt to move ; an obscure reluc- 
 tance restrained him. If any thought emerged from 
 the tumult of his sensations, it was that he must let 
 her go if she wished it. He had spoken last night of 
 his rights : what were they ? At the last issue, he and 
 she were two separate beings, not made one by the 
 miracle of common forbearances, duties, abnegations, 
 but bound together in a noyade of passion that left 
 them resisting yet clinging as they went down. 
 
 After buying her ticket, Lydia had stood for a mo- 
 ment looking out across the lake ; then he saw her 
 seat herself on one of the benches near the landing. 
 He and she, at that moment, were both listening for 
 [126] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 the same sound : the whistle of the boat as it rounded 
 the nearest promontory. Gannett turned again to 
 glance at the clock : the boat was due now. 
 
 Where would she go ? What would her life be when 
 she had left him ? She had no near relations and few 
 friends. There was money enough . . . but she asked 
 so much of life, in ways so complex and immaterial. 
 He thought of her as walking bare-footed through a 
 stony waste. No one would understand her no one 
 would pity her and he, who did both, was powerless 
 to come to her aid . . . 
 
 He saw that she had risen from the bench and 
 walked toward the edge of the lake. She stood look- 
 ing in the direction from which the steamboat was 
 to come ; then she turned to the ticket-office, doubt- 
 less to ask the cause of the delay. After that she went 
 back to the bench and sat down with bent head. 
 What was she thinking of? 
 
 The whistle sounded; she started up, and Gannett 
 involuntarily made a movement toward the door. But 
 he turned back and continued to watch her. She stood 
 motionless, her eyes on the trail of smoke that pre- 
 ceded the appearance of the boat. Then the little 
 craft rounded the point, a dead-white object on the 
 leaden water : a minute later it was puffing and 
 backing at the wharf. 
 
 The few passengers who were waiting two or 
 [ 127] 
 
SOULS BELATED 
 
 three peasants and a snuffy priest were clustered 
 near the ticket-office. Lydia stood apart under the 
 trees. 
 
 The boat lay alongside now; the gang-plank was 
 run out and the peasants went on board with their 
 baskets of vegetables, followed by the priest. Still 
 Lydia did not move. A bell began to ring querulously ; 
 there was a shriek of steam, and some one must have 
 called to her that she would be late, for she started 
 forward, as though in answer to a summons. She moved 
 waveringly, and at the edge of the wharf she paused. 
 Gannett saw a sailor beckon to her; the bell rang 
 again and she stepped upon the gang-plank. 
 
 Half-way down the short incline to the deck she 
 stopped again ; then she turned and ran back to the 
 land. The gang-plank was drawn in, the bell ceased 
 to ring, and the boat backed out into the lake. Lydia, 
 with slow steps, was walking toward the garden . . . 
 
 As she approached the hotel she looked up furtively 
 and Gannett drew back into the room. He sat down 
 beside a table ; a Bradshaw lay at his elbow, and me- 
 chanically, without knowing what he did, he began 
 looking out the trains to Paris . . . 
 
 [ 128J 
 
A COWARD 
 
A COWARD 
 
 ft -m JT Y daughter Irene/' said Mrs, Carstyle (she 
 1^/1 made it rhyme with tureen), "has had no 
 
 -^. v .A social advantages ; but if Mr. Carstyle had 
 chosen " she paused significantly and looked at the 
 shabby sofa on the opposite side of the fire-place as 
 though it had been Mr. Carstyle. Vibart was glad that 
 it was not. 
 
 Mrs. Carstyle was one of the women who make re- 
 finement vulgar. She invariably spoke of her husband 
 as Mr. Carstyle and, though she had but one daughter, 
 was always careful to designate the young lady by 
 name. At luncheon she had talked a great deal of 
 elevating influences and ideals, and had fluctuated be- 
 tween apologies for the overdone mutton and affected 
 surprise that the bewildered maid-servant should have 
 forgotten to serve the coffee and liqueurs as usual. 
 
 Vibart was almost sorry that he had come. Miss Car- 
 style was still beautiful almost as beautiful as when, 
 two days earlier, against the leafy background of a 
 June garden-party, he had seen her for the first time 
 but her mother's expositions and elucidations cheap- 
 ened her beauty as sign-posts vulgarize a woodland 
 solitude. Mrs. Carstyle's eye was perpetually plying 
 between her daughter and Vibart, like an empty cab 
 [131] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 in quest of a fare. Miss Carstyle, the young man de- 
 cided, was the kind of girl whose surroundings rub off 
 on her; or was it rather that Mrs. Carstyle's idiosyn- 
 crasies were of a nature to color every one within 
 reach ? Vibart, looking across the table as this consola- 
 tory alternative occurred to him, was sure that they 
 had not colored Mr. Carstyle ; but that, perhaps, was 
 only because they had bleached him instead. Mr. Car- 
 style was quite colorless ; it would have been impossi- 
 ble to guess his native tint. His wife's qualities, if they 
 had affected him at all, had acted negatively. He did 
 not apologize for the mutton, and he wandered off 
 after luncheon without pretending to wait for the 
 diurnal coffee and liqueurs ; while the few remarks 
 that he had contributed to the conversation during 
 the meal had not been in the direction of abstract 
 conceptions of life. As he strayed away, with his vague 
 oblique step, and the stoop that suggested the habit 
 of dodging missiles, Vibart, who was still in the age 
 of formulas, found himself wondering what life could 
 be worth to a man who had evidently resigned himself 
 to travelling with his back to the wind ; so that Mrs. 
 Carstyle's allusion to her daughter's lack of advan- 
 tages (imparted while Irene searched the house for 
 an undiscoverable cigarette) had an appositeness un- 
 intended by the speaker. 
 
 " If Mr. Carstyle had chosen," that lady repeated, 
 [ 132 1 
 
A COWARD 
 
 " we might have had our city home " (she never used 
 so small a word as town) " and Ireen could have mixed 
 in the society to which I myself was accustomed at 
 her age." Her sigh pointed unmistakably to a past 
 when young men had come to luncheon to see her. 
 
 The sigh led Vibart to look at her, and the look led 
 him to the unwelcome conclusion that Irene "took 
 after " her mother. It was certainly not from the sap- 
 less paternal stock that the girl had drawn her warm 
 bloom : Mrs. Carstyle had contributed the high lights 
 to the picture. 
 
 Mrs. Carstyle caught his look and appropriated it 
 with the complacency of a vicarious beauty. She was 
 quite aware of the value of her appearance as guaran- 
 teeing Irene's development into a fine woman. 
 
 " But perhaps/' she continued, taking up the thread 
 of her explanation, "you have heard of Mr. Carstyle's 
 extraordinary hallucination. Mr. Carstyle knows that I 
 call it so as I tell him, it is the most charitable view 
 to take." 
 
 She looked coldly at the threadbare sofa and indul- 
 gently at the young man who filled a corner of it. 
 
 " You may think it odd, Mr. Vibart, that I should 
 take you into my confidence in this way after so short 
 an acquaintance, but somehow I can't help regarding 
 you as a friend already. I believe in those intuitive 
 sympathies, don't you? They have never misled me " 
 
 [ I**] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 her lids drooped retrospectively "and besides, I al- 
 ways tell Mr. Carstyle that on this point I will have 
 no false pretences. Where truth is concerned I am in- 
 exorable,, and I consider it my duty to let our friends 
 know that our restricted way of living is due entirely 
 to choice to Mr. Carstyle's choice. When I married 
 Mr. Carstyle it was with the expectation of living in 
 New York and of keeping my carriage ; and there is 
 no reason for our not doing so there is no reason, 
 Mr. Vibart, why my daughter Ireen should have been 
 denied the intellectual advantages of foreign travel. I 
 wish that to be understood. It is owing to her father's 
 deliberate choice that Ireen and I have been impris- 
 oned in the narrow limits of Millbrook society. For 
 myself I do not complain. If Mr. Carstyle chooses to 
 place others before his wife it is not for his wife to 
 repine. His course may be noble Quixotic; I do not 
 allow myself to pronounce judgment on it, though oth- 
 ers have thought that in sacrificing his own family to 
 strangers he was violating the most sacred obligations 
 of domestic life. This is the opinion of my pastor and 
 of other valued friends ; but, as I have always told 
 them, for myself I make no claims. Where my daugh- 
 ter Ireen is concerned it is different 
 
 It was a relief to Vibart when, at this point, Mrs. 
 Carstyle's discharge of her duty was cut short by her 
 daughter's reappearance. Irene had been unable to 
 [134] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 find a cigarette for Mr. Vibart, and her mother, with 
 beaming irrelevance, suggested that in that case she 
 had better show him the garden. 
 
 The Carstyle house stood but a few yards back from 
 the brick-paved Millbrook street, and the garden 
 was a very small place, unless measured, as Mrs. Car- 
 style probably intended that it should be, by the extent 
 of her daughter's charms. These were so considerable 
 that Vibart walked back and forward half a dozen 
 times between the porch and the gate, before he 
 discovered the limitations of the Carstyle domain. It 
 was not till Irene had accused him of being sarcastic 
 and had confided in him that "the girls" were furious 
 with her for letting him talk to her so long at his 
 aunt's garden-party, that he awoke to the exiguity 
 of his surroundings ; and then it was with a touch of 
 irritation that he noticed Mr. Carstyle' s inconspicuous 
 profile bent above a newspaper in one of the lower 
 windows. Vibart had an idea that Mr. Carstyle, while 
 ostensibly reading the paper, had kept count of the 
 number of times that his daughter had led her com- 
 panion up and down between the syringa-bushes ; and 
 for some undefinable reason he resented Mr. Carstyle's 
 unperturbed observation more than his wife's zealous 
 self-effacement. To a man who is trying to please a 
 pretty girl there are moments when the proximity of 
 an impartial spectator is more disconcerting than the 
 [ 135] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 most obvious connivance ; and something about Mr. 
 Carstyle's expression conveyed his good-humored in- 
 difference to Irene's processes. 
 
 When the garden-gate closed behind Vibart he 
 had become aware that his preoccupation with the 
 Carstyles had shifted its centre from the daughter to 
 the father; but he was accustomed to such emotional 
 surprises, and skilled in seizing any compensations 
 they might offer. 
 
 II 
 
 THE Carstyles belonged to the all-the-year-round 
 Millbrook of paper-mills, cable-cars, brick pave- 
 ments and church sociables, while Mrs. Vance, the 
 aunt with whom Vibart lived, was an ornament of the 
 summer colony whose big country-houses dotted the 
 surrounding hills. Mrs. Vance had, however, no diffi- 
 culty in appeasing the curiosity which Mrs. Carstyle's 
 enigmatic utterances had aroused in the young man. 
 Mrs. Carstyle's relentless veracity vented itself mainly 
 on the " summer people," as they were called : she 
 did not propose that any one within ten miles of Mill- 
 brook should keep a carriage without knowing that 
 she was entitled to keep one too. Mrs. Vance remarked 
 with a sigh that Mrs. Carstyle's annual demand to 
 have her position understood came in as punctually as 
 the taxes and the water-rates. 
 [ 136] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 " My dear, it 's simply this : when Andrew Carstyle 
 married her years ago Heaven knows why he did; 
 he 's one of the Albany Carstyles, you know, and she 
 was a daughter of old Deacon Ash of South Millbrook 
 well, when he married her he had a tidy little in- 
 come, and I suppose the bride expected to set up 
 an establishment in New York and be hand-in-glove 
 with the whole Carstyle clan. But whether he was 
 ashamed of her from the first, or for some other un- 
 explained reason, he bought a country-place and set- 
 tled down here for life. For a few years they lived 
 comfortably enough, and she had plenty of smart 
 clothes, and drove about in a victoria calling on the 
 summer people. Then, when the beautiful Irene was 
 about ten years old, Mr. Carstyle' s only brother died, 
 and it turned out that he had made away with a lot 
 of trust-property. It was a horrid business : over three 
 hundred thousand dollars were gone, and of course 
 most of it had belonged to widows and orphans. As 
 soon as the facts were made known, Andrew Carstyle 
 announced that he would pay back what his brother 
 had stolen. He sold his country-place and his wife's 
 carriage, and they moved to the little house they live 
 in now. Mr. Carstyle's income is probably not as large 
 as his wife would like to have it thought, and though 
 I 'm told he puts aside a good part of it every year to 
 pay off his brother's obligations, I fancy the debt won't 
 [ 137 ] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 be discharged for some time to come. To help things 
 along he opened a law office he had studied law in 
 his youth but though he is said to be clever I hear 
 that he has very little to do. People are afraid of him : 
 he 's too dry and quiet. Nobody believes in a man who 
 doesn't believe in himself, and Mr. Carstyle always 
 seems to be winking at you through a slit in his 
 professional manner. People don't like it his wife 
 doesn't like it. I believe she would have accepted the 
 sacrifice of the country-place and the carriage if he 
 had struck an attitude and talked about doing his 
 duty. It was his regarding the whole thing as a matter 
 of course that exasperated her. What is the use of 
 doing something difficult in a way that makes it look 
 perfectly easy? I feel sorry for Mrs. Carstyle. She's 
 lost her house and her carriage, and she hasn't been 
 allowed to be heroic." 
 
 Vibart had listened attentively. 
 
 " I wonderwhat Miss Carstyle thinks of it ?" he mused. 
 
 Mrs. Vance looked at him with a tentative smile. " I 
 wonder what you think of Miss Carstyle ? " she returned. 
 
 His answer reassured her. 
 
 " I think she takes after her mother," he said. 
 
 "Ah," cried his aunt cheerfully, "then I needn't 
 write to your mother, and I can have Irene at all my 
 parties!" 
 
 Miss Carstyle was an important factor in the re- 
 
 [ I**] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 stricted social combinations of a Millbrook hostess. A 
 local beauty is always a useful addition to a Saturday- 
 to-Monday house-party, and the beautiful Irene was 
 served up as a perennial novelty to the jaded guests 
 of the summer colony. As Vibart's aunt remarked, she 
 was perfect till she became playful, and she never 
 became playful till the third day. 
 
 Under these conditions, it was natural that Vibart 
 should see a good deal of the young lady, and before 
 he was aware of it he had drifted into the anomalous 
 position of paying court to the daughter in order to 
 ingratiate himself with the father. Miss Carstyle was 
 beautiful, Vibart was young, and the days were long 
 in his aunt's spacious and distinguished house ; but it 
 was really the desire to know something more of Mr. 
 Carstyle that led the young man to partake so often 
 of that gentleman's overdone mutton. Vibart's imagi- 
 nation had been touched by the discovery that this 
 little huddled-up man, instead of travelling with the 
 wind, was persistently facing a domestic gale of con- 
 siderable velocity. That he should have paid off his 
 brother's debt at one stroke was to the young man a 
 conceivable feat; but that he should go pn methodi- 
 cally and uninterruptedly accumulating the needed 
 amount, under the perpetual accusation of Irene's in- 
 adequate frocks and Mrs. Carstyle's apologies for the 
 mutton, seemed to Vibart proof of unexampled heroism. 
 
A COWARD 
 
 Mr. Carstyle was as inaccessible as the average 
 American parent, and led a life so detached from the 
 preoccupations of his womankind that Vibart had some 
 difficulty in fixing his attention. To Mr. Carstyle, Vibart 
 was simply the inevitable young man who had been 
 hanging about the house ever since Irene had left 
 school ; and Vibart' s efforts to differentiate himself 
 from this enamored abstraction were hampered by Mrs. 
 Carstyle's cheerful assumption that he was the young 
 man, and by Irene's frank appropriation of his visits. 
 
 In this extremity he suddenly observed a slight but 
 significant change in the manner of the two ladies. 
 Irene, instead of charging him with being sarcastic 
 and horrid, and declaring herself unable to believe a 
 word he said, began to receive his remarks with the 
 impersonal smile which he had seen her accord to the 
 married men of his aunt's house-parties; while Mrs. 
 Carstyle, talking over his head to an invisible but evi- 
 dently sympathetic and intelligent listener, debated 
 the propriety of Irene's accepting an invitation to 
 spend the month of August at Narragansett. When 
 Vibart, rashly trespassing on the rights of this un- 
 seen oracle, remarked that a few weeks at the sea- 
 shore would make a delightful change for Miss Car- 
 style, the ladies looked at him and then laughed. 
 
 It was at this point that Vibart, for the first time, 
 found himself observed by Mr. Carstyle. They were 
 
A COWARD 
 
 grouped about the debris of a luncheon which had 
 ended precipitously with veal stew (Mrs. Carstyle ex- 
 plaining that poor cooks always failed with their sweet 
 dish when there was company) and Mr. Carstyle, his 
 hands thrust in his pockets, his lean baggy-coated 
 shoulders pressed against his chair-back, sat contem- 
 plating his guest with a smile of unmistakable ap- 
 proval. When Vibart caught his eye the smile van- 
 ished, and Mr. Carstyle, dropping his glasses from the 
 bridge of his thin nose, looked out of the window with 
 the expression of a man determined to prove an alibi. 
 But Vibart was sure of the smile : it had established, 
 between his host and himself, a complicity which Mr. 
 Carstyle's attempted evasion served only to confirm. 
 
 On the strength of this incident Vibart, a few days 
 later, called at Mr. Carstyle's office. Ostensibly, the 
 young man had come to ask, on his aunt's behalf, 
 some question on a point at issue between herself 
 and the Millbrook telephone company; but his pur- 
 pose in offering to perform the errand had been the 
 hope of taking up his intercourse with Mr. Carstyle 
 where that gentleman's smile had left it. Vibart was 
 not disappointed. In a dingy office, with a single win- 
 dow looking out on a blank wall, he found Mr. Car- 
 style, in an alpaca coat, reading Montaigne. 
 
 It evidently did not occur to him that Vibart had 
 come on business, and the warmth of his welcome gave 
 [141] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 the young man a sense of furnishing the last word in 
 a conjugal argument in which, for once, Mr. Carstyle 
 had come off triumphant. 
 
 The legal question disposed of, Vibart reverted to 
 Montaigne : had Mr. Carstyle seen young So-and-so's 
 volume of essays? There was one on Montaigne that 
 had a decided flavor : the point of view was curious. 
 Vibart was surprised to find that Mr. Carstyle had 
 heard of young So-and-so. Clever young men are 
 given to thinking that their elders have never got 
 beyond Macaulay ; but Mr. Carstyle seemed suffi- 
 ciently familiar with recent literature not to take it 
 too seriously. He accepted Vibart's offer of young So- 
 and-so's volume, admitting that his own library was 
 not exactly up-to-date. 
 
 Vibart went away musing. The next day he came 
 back with the volume of essays. It seemed to be tacitly 
 understood that he was to call at the office when he 
 wished to see Mr. Carstyle, whose legal engagements 
 did not seriously interfere with the pursuit of literature. 
 
 For a week or ten days Mrs. Carstyle, in Vibart's 
 presence, continued to take counsel with her unseen 
 adviser on the subject of her daughter's visit to Nar- 
 ragansett. Once or twice Irene dropped her imper- 
 sonal smile to tax Vibart with not caring whether she 
 went or not ; and Mrs. Carstyle seized a moment of 
 tete-a-tete to confide in him that the dear child hated 
 [142] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 the idea of leaving, and was going only because her 
 friend Mrs. Higby would not let her off. Of course, if 
 it had not been for Mr. Carstyle's peculiarities they 
 would have had their own seaside home at Newport, 
 probably : Mrs. Carstyle preferred the tone of Newport 
 and Irene would not have been dependent on the 
 chanty of her friends ; but as it was, they must be 
 thankful for small mercies, and Mrs. Higby was cer- 
 tainly very kind in her way, and had a charming social 
 position for Narragansett. 
 
 These confidences, however, were soon superseded 
 by an exchange, between mother and daughter, of 
 increasingly frequent allusions to the delights of Nar- 
 ragansett, the popularity of Mrs. Higby, and the jolli- 
 ness of her house ; with an occasional reference on 
 Mrs. Carstyle's part to the probability of Hewlett 
 Bain's being there as usual hadn't Irene heard from 
 Mrs. Higby that he was to be there ? Upon this note 
 Miss Carstyle at length departed, leaving Vibart to 
 the undisputed enjoyment of her father's company. 
 
 Vibart had at no time a keen taste for the summer 
 joys of Millbrook, and the family obligation which, 
 for several months of the year, kept him at his aunt's 
 side (Mrs. Vance was a childless widow and he 
 filled the onerous post of favorite nephew) gave a 
 sense of compulsion to the light occupations that 
 chequered his leisure. Mrs. Vance, who fancied herself 
 [143] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 lonely when he was away, was too much engaged with 
 notes, telegrams and arriving and departing guests, 
 to do more than breathlessly smile upon his presence, 
 or implore him to take the dullest girl of the party 
 for a drive (and would he go by way of Millbrook, 
 like a dear, and stop at the market to ask why the 
 lobsters had n't come ?) ; and the house itself, and the 
 guests who came and went in it like people rushing 
 through a railway-station, offered no points of repose 
 to his thoughts. Some houses are companions in them- 
 selves : the walls, the book-shelves, the very chairs 
 and tables, have the qualities of a sympathetic mind ; 
 but Mrs. Vance's interior was as impersonal as the 
 setting of a classic drama. 
 
 These conditions made Vibart cultivate an assiduous 
 exchange of books between himself and Mr. Carstyle. 
 The young man went down almost daily to the little 
 house in the town, where Mrs. Carstyle, who had now 
 an air of receiving him in curl-papers, and of not al- 
 ways immediately distinguishing him from the piano- 
 tuner, made no effort to detain him on his way to her 
 husband's study. 
 
 Ill 
 
 NOW and then, at the close of one of Vibart's 
 visits, Mr. Carstyle put on a mildewed Panama 
 hat and accompanied the young man for a mile or two 
 [144] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 on his way home. The road to Mrs. Vance's lay through 
 one of the most amiable suburbs of Millbrook, and 
 Mr. Carstyle, walking with his slow uneager step, his 
 hat pushed back, and his stick dragging behind him, 
 seemed to take a philosophic pleasure in the aspect 
 of the trim lawns and opulent gardens. 
 
 Vibart could never induce his companion to prolong 
 his walk as far as Mrs. Vance's drawing-room ; but one 
 afternoon, when the distant hills lay blue beyond the 
 twilight of overarching elms, the two men strolled 
 on into the country past that lady's hospitable gate- 
 posts. 
 
 It was a still day, the road was deserted, and every 
 sound came sharply through the air. Mr. Carstyle 
 was in the midst of a disquisition on Diderot, when 
 he raised his head and stood still. 
 s "What's that?" he said. "Listen!" 
 
 Vibart listened and heard a distant storm of hoof- 
 beats. A moment later, a buggy drawn by a pair of 
 trotters swung round the turn of the road. It was 
 about thirty yards off, coming toward them at full 
 speed. The man who drove was leaning forward with 
 outstretched arms; beside him sat a girl. 
 
 Suddenly Vibart saw Mr. Carstyle jump into the 
 
 middle of the road, in front of the buggy. He stood 
 
 there immovable, his arms extended, his legs apart, in 
 
 an attitude of indomitable resistance. Almost at the 
 
 [145] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 same moment Vibart realized that the man in the 
 buggy had his horses in hand. 
 
 "They're not running!" Vibart shouted, springing 
 into the road and catching Mr. Carstyle's alpaca sleeve. 
 The older man looked around vaguely : he seemed 
 dazed. 
 
 " Come away, sir, come away ! " cried Vibart, grip- 
 ping his arm. The buggy swept past them, and Mr. 
 Carstyle stood in the dust gazing after it. 
 
 At length he drew out his handkerchief and wiped 
 his forehead. He was very pale and Vibart noticed 
 that his hand shook. 
 
 "That was a close call, sir, wasn't it? I suppose 
 you thought they were running." 
 
 " Yes," said Mr. Carstyle slowly, " I thought they 
 were running." 
 
 " It certainly looked like it for a minute. Let 's sit 
 down, shall we ? I feel rather breathless myself." 
 
 Vibart saw that his friend could hardly stand. They 
 seated themselves on a tree-trunk by the roadside, 
 and Mr. Carstyle continued to wipe his forehead in 
 silence. 
 
 At length he turned to Vibart and said abruptly : 
 
 " I made straight for the middle of the road, did n't 
 I ? If there had been a runaway I should have stopped 
 it?" 
 
 Vibart looked at him in surprise. 
 [146] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 " You would have tried to, undoubtedly, unices I 'd 
 had time to drag you away." 
 
 Mr. Carstyle straightened his narrow shoulders. 
 
 "There was no hesitation, at all events? I I 
 showed no signs of avoiding it ? " 
 
 " I should say not, sir ; it was I who funked it for 
 you." 
 
 Mr. Carstyle was silent : his head had dropped for- 
 ward and he looked like an old man. 
 
 "It was just my cursed luck again!" he exclaimed 
 suddenly in a loud voice. 
 
 For a moment Vibart thought that he was wander- 
 ing ; but he raised his head and went on speaking in 
 more natural tones. 
 
 " I daresay I appeared ridiculous enough to you 
 just now, eh? Perhaps you saw all along that the 
 horses weren't running? Your eyes are younger than 
 mine ; and then you 're not always looking out for 
 runaways, as I am. Do you know that in thirty years 
 I've never seen a runaway?" 
 
 " You 're fortunate," said Vibart, still bewildered. 
 
 u Fortunate ? Good God, man, I 've prayed to see 
 one : not a runaway especially, but any bad accident ; 
 anything that endangered people's lives. There are 
 accidents happening all the time all over the world ; 
 why should n't I ever come across one ? It 's not for 
 want of trying! At one time I used to haunt the 
 [147] 
 
< 
 
 A COWARD 
 
 theatres in the hope of a fire : fires in theatres art so 
 apt to be fatal. Well, will you believe it ? I was in *Jie 
 Brooklyn theatre the night before it burned down ; 
 I left the old Madison Square Garden half an hour 
 before the walls fell in. And it's the same way with 
 street accidents I always miss them; I'm always just 
 too late. Last year there was a boy knocked down by 
 a cable-car at our corner ; I got to my gate just as they 
 were carrying him off on a stretcher. And so it goes. If 
 anybody else had been walking along this road, those 
 horses would have been running away. And there was 
 a girl in the buggy, too a mere child ! " 
 
 Mr. Carstyle's head sank again. 
 
 ff You 're wondering what this means," he began 
 after another pause. "1 was a little confused for a 
 moment I must have seemed incoherent." His voice 
 cleared and he made an effort to straighten himself. 
 "Well, I was a damned coward once and I've been 
 trying to live it down ever since." 
 
 Vibart looked at him incredulously and Mr. Carstyle 
 caught the look with a smile. 
 
 " Why not ? Do I look like a Hercules ? " He held 
 up his loose-skinned hand and shrunken wrist. "Not 
 built for the part, certainly; but that doesn't count, 
 of course. Man's unconquerable soul, and all the rest 
 of it ... well, I was a coward every inch of me, 
 body and soul." 
 
 [148] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 He paused and glanced up and down the road. 
 There was no one in sight. 
 
 "It happened when I was a young chap just out 
 of college. I was travelling round the world with an- 
 other youngster of my own age and an older man 
 Charles Meriton who has since made a name for him- 
 self. You may have heard of him." 
 
 <e Meriton, the archaeologist? The man who discov- 
 ered those ruined African cities the other day ? " 
 
 " That 's the man. He was a college tutor then, and 
 my father, who had known him since he was a boy, and 
 who had a very high opinion of him, had asked him to 
 make the tour with us. We both my friend Collis and 
 I had an immense admiration for Meriton. He was 
 just the fellow to excite a boy's enthusiasm : cool, 
 quick, imperturbable the kind of man whose hand 
 is always on the hilt of action. His explorations had 
 led him into all sorts of tight places, and he 'd shown 
 an extraordinary combination of calculating patience 
 and reckless courage. He never talked about his do- 
 ings; we picked them up from various people on our 
 journey. He'd been everywhere, he knew everybody, 
 and everybody had something stirring to tell about 
 him. I daresay this account of the man sounds exag- 
 gerated ; perhaps it is ; I 've never seen him since ; but 
 at that time he seemed to me a tremendous fellow 
 a kind of scientific Ajax. He was a capital travelling- 
 [ 149] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 companion, at .any rate : good-tempered, cheerful, easily 
 amused, with none of the been-there-before superiority 
 so irritating to youngsters. He made us feel as though 
 it were all as new to him as to us: he never chilled 
 our enthusiasms or took the bloom off our surprises. 
 There was nobody else whose good opinion I cared as 
 much about: he was the biggest thing in sight. 
 
 "On the way home Collis broke down with diph- 
 theria. We were in the Mediterranean, cruising about 
 the Sporades in a felucca. He was taken ill at Chios. 
 The attack came on suddenly and we were afraid to 
 run the risk of taking him back to Athens in the 
 felucca. We established ourselves in the inn at Chios 
 and there the poor fellow lay for weeks. Luckily there 
 was a fairly good doctor on the island and we sent 
 to Athens for a sister to help with the nursing. Poor 
 Collis was desperately bad : the diphtheria was fol- 
 lowed by partial paralysis. The doctor assured us that 
 the danger was past ; he would gradually regain the 
 use of his limbs ; but his recovery would be slow. The 
 sister encouraged us too she had seen such cases be- 
 fore ; and he certainly did improve a shade each day. 
 Meriton and I had taken turns with the sister in nurs- 
 ing him, but after the paralysis had set in there was n't 
 much to do, and there was nothing to prevent Meri- 
 ton's leaving us for a day or two. He had received 
 word from some place on the coast of Asia Minor that 
 [ 150] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 a remarkable tomb had been discovered somewhere in 
 the interior ; he had not been willing to take us there, 
 as the journey was not a particularly safe one ; but now 
 that we were tied up at Chios there seemed no reason 
 why he should n't go and take a look at the place. The 
 expedition would not take more than three days ; Col- 
 lis was convalescent ; the doctor and nurse assured us 
 that there was no cause for uneasiness ; and so Meriton 
 started off one evening at sunset. I walked down to the 
 quay with him and saw him rowed off to the felucca. 
 I would have given a good deal to be going with him ; 
 the prospect of danger allured me. 
 
 " ' You '11 see that Collis is never left alone, won't 
 you?' he shouted back to me as the boat pulled out 
 into the harbor; I remembered I rather resented the 
 suggestion. 
 
 " I walked back to the inn and went to bed : the 
 nurse sat up with Collis at night. The next morning 
 I relieved her at the usual hour. It was a sultry day 
 with a queer coppery-looking sky ; the air was stifling. 
 In the middle of the day the nurse came to take my 
 place while I dined ; when I went back to Collis's 
 room she said she would go out for a breath of air. 
 
 " I sat down by Collis's bed and began to fan him 
 
 with the fan the sister had been using. The heat made 
 
 him uneasy and I turned him over in bed, for he was 
 
 still helpless : the whole of his right side was numb. 
 
 [151] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 Presently he fell asleep and I went to the window 
 and sat looking down on the hot deserted square, 
 with a bunch of donkeys and their drivers asleep in 
 the shade of the convent-wall across the way. I re- 
 member noticing the blue beads about the donkeys' 
 necks . . . Were you ever in an earthquake? No? 
 I'd never been in one either. It's an indescribable 
 sensation . . . there 's a Day of Judgment feeling in 
 the air. It began with the donkeys waking up and 
 trembling; I noticed that and thought it queer. Then 
 the drivers jumped up I saw the terror in their faces. 
 Then a roar ... I remember noticing a big black crack 
 in the convent-wall opposite a zig-zag crack, like 
 a flash of lightning in a wood-cut ... I thought of 
 that, too, at the time ; then all the bells in the place 
 began to ring it made a fearful discord ... I saw 
 people rushing across the square . . . the air was full 
 of crashing noises. The floor went down under me in 
 a sickening way and then jumped back and pitched 
 me to the ceiling . . . but where was the ceiling? 
 And the door? I said to myself: We're two stones up 
 the stairs are just wide enough for one ... I gave 
 one glance at Collis : he was lying in bed, wide awake, 
 looking straight at me. I ran. Something struck me 
 on the head as I bolted downstairs I kept on 
 running. I suppose the knock I got dazed me, for I 
 don't remember much of anything till I found myself 
 
A COWARD 
 
 In a vineyard a mile from the town. I was roused 
 by the warm blood running down my nose and heard 
 myself explaining to Meriton exactly how it had hap- 
 pened . . . 
 
 "When I crawled back to the town they told me 
 that all the houses near the inn were in ruins and that 
 a dozen people had been killed. Collis was among 
 them, of course. The ceiling had come down on him." 
 
 Mr. Carstyle wiped his forehead. Vibart sat looking 
 away from him. 
 
 " Two days later Meriton came back. I began to tell 
 him the story, but he interrupted me. 
 
 t<( There was no one with him at the time, then? 
 You 'd left him alone ? ' 
 
 "'No, he wasn't alone/ 
 
 " ' Who was with him ? You said the sister was out.' 
 
 "'I was with him.' 
 
 " ' You were with him ? ' 
 
 " I shall never forget Meriton's look. I believe I had 
 meant to explain, to accuse myself, to shout out my 
 agony of soul ; but I saw the uselessness of it. A door 
 had been shut between us. Neither of us spoke an- 
 other word. He was very kind to me on the way 
 home ; he looked after me in a motherly way that 
 was a good deal harder to stand than his open con- 
 tempt. I saw the man was honestly trying to pity 
 me; but it was no good he simply couldn't." 
 [ 153 ] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 Mr. Carstyle rose slowly, with a certain stiffness. 
 
 " Shall we turn toward home ? Perhaps I 'm keep- 
 ing you." 
 
 They walked on a few steps in silence; then he 
 spoke again. 
 
 "That business altered my whole life. Of course I 
 oughtn't to have allowed it to that was another 
 form of cowardice. But I saw myself only with Meri- 
 ton's eyes it is one of the worst miseries of youth 
 that one is always trying to be somebody else. I had 
 meant to be a Meriton I saw I'd better go home 
 and study law . . . 
 
 "It's a childish fancy, a survival of the primitive 
 savage, if you like ; but from that hour to this I' ve 
 hankered day and night for a chance to retrieve my- 
 self, to set myself right with the man I meant to be. 
 I want to prove to that man that it was all an acci- 
 dent an unaccountable deviation from my normal in- 
 stincts ; that having once been a coward does n't mean 
 that a man 's cowardly . . . and I can't, I can't ! " 
 
 Mr. Carstyle's tone had passed insensibly from agita- 
 tion to irony. He had got back to his usual objective 
 stand-point. 
 
 " Why, I 'm a perfect olive-branch/' he concluded, 
 
 with his dry indulgent laugh ; " the very babies stop 
 
 crying at my approach I carry a sort of millennium 
 
 about with me I'd make my fortune as an agent of 
 
 [154] 
 
A COWARD 
 
 the Peace Society. I shall go to the grave leaving that 
 other man unconvinced!" 
 
 Vibart walked back with him to Millbrook. On her 
 doorstep they met Mrs. Carstyle, flushed and feath- 
 ered, with a card-case and dusty boots. 
 
 " I don't ask you in," she said plaintively, to Vibart, 
 " because I can't answer for the food this evening. My 
 maid-of-all-work tells me that she's going to a ball 
 which is more than I 've done in years ! And besides, 
 it would be cruel to ask you to spend such a hot 
 evening in our stuffy little house the air is so much 
 cooler at Mrs. Vance's. Remember me to Mrs. Vance, 
 please, and tell her how sorry I am that I can no 
 longer include her in my round of visits. When I had 
 my carriage I saw the people I liked, but now that 
 I have to walk, my social opportunities are more 
 limited. I was not obliged to do my visiting on foot 
 when I was younger, and my doctor tells me that to 
 persons accustomed to a carnage no exercise is more 
 injurious than walking." 
 
 She glanced at her husband with a smile of unfor- 
 giving sweetness. 
 
 " Fortunately," she concluded, " it agrees with Mr. 
 Carstyle." 
 
 [ 155 ] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 I 
 
 A Newport drawing-room. Tapestries, flowers, bric-a-brac. 
 Through the windows, a geranium-edged lawn, the cliffs 
 and the sea. Isabel Warland sits reading. Lucius War- 
 land enters in flannels and a yachting-cap. 
 
 ISABEL. Back already? 
 Warland. The wind dropped it turned into a 
 drifting race. Langham took me off the yacht on 
 his launch. What time is it ? Two o'clock ? Where 's 
 Mrs. Raynor? 
 
 Isabel. On her way to New York. 
 Warland. To New York? 
 
 Isabel. Precisely. The boat must be just leaving; 
 she started an hour ago and took Laura with her. 
 In fact I'm alone in the house that is, until this 
 evening. Some people are coming then. 
 Warland. But what in the world 
 Isabel. Her aunt, Mrs. Griscom, has had a fit. 
 She has them constantly. They're not serious at 
 least they wouldn't be, if Mrs. Griscom were not 
 so rich and childless. Naturally, under the circum- 
 stances, Marian feels a peculiar sympathy for her; 
 her position is such a sad one ; there 's positively no 
 [159] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 one to care whether she lives or dies except her 
 heirs. Of course they all rush to Newburgh whenever 
 she has a fit. It's hard on Marian, for she lives the 
 farthest away ; but she has come to an understanding 
 with the housekeeper, who always telegraphs her first, 
 so that she gets a start of several hours. She will be at 
 Newburgh to-night at ten, and she has calculated that 
 the others can't possibly arrive before midnight. 
 
 Warland. You have a delightful way of putting 
 things. I suppose you 'd talk of me like that. 
 
 Isabel. Oh, no. It's too humiliating to doubt one's 
 husband's disinterestedness. 
 
 Warland. I wish I had a rich aunt who had fits. 
 
 Isabel. If I were wishing I should choose heart- 
 disease. 
 
 Warland. There's no doing anything without money 
 or influence. 
 
 Isabel (picking up her book). Have you heard from 
 Washington ? 
 
 Warland. Yes. That's what I was going to speak 
 of when I asked for Mrs. Raynor. I wanted to bid 
 her good-bye. 
 
 Isabel. You're going? 
 
 Warland. By the five train. Fagott has just wired 
 me that the Ambassador will be in Washington on 
 Monday. He hasn't named his secretaries yet, but 
 there isn't much hope for me. He has a nephew 
 [160] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 Isabel. They always have. Like the Popes. 
 
 Warland. Well, I 'm going all the same. You '11 
 explain to Mrs. Raynor if she gets back before I 
 do? Are there to be people at dinner? I don't sup- 
 pose it matters. You can always pick up an extra 
 man on a Saturday. 
 
 Isabel. By the way, that reminds me that Marian 
 left me a list of the people who are arriving this 
 afternoon. My novel is so absorbing that I forgot to 
 look at it. Where can it be? Ah, here -Let me see: 
 the Jack Merringtons, Adelaide Clinton, Ned Lender 
 all from New York, by seven p. M. train. Lewis 
 Darley to-night, by Fall River boat. John Oberville, 
 from Boston at five P.M. Why, I didn't know 
 
 Warland (excitedly). John Oberville? John Ober- 
 ville? Here? To-day at five o'clock? Let me see 
 let me look at the list. Are you sure you're not 
 mistaken ? Why, she never said a word ! Why the 
 deuce did n't you tell me ? 
 
 Isabel. I did n't know. 
 
 Warland. Oberville Oberville ! 
 
 Isabel. Why, what difference does it make ? 
 
 Warland. What difference? What difference? Don't 
 look at me as if you didn't understand English! 
 Why, if Oberville's coming (a pause) Look here, 
 Isabel, didn't you know him very well at one time? 
 
 Isabel. Very well yes. 
 
 [161] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 Warland. I thought so of course I remember 
 now ; I heard all about it before I met you. Let me 
 see didn't you and your mother spend a winter in 
 Washington when he was Under-secretary of State ? 
 
 Isabel. That was before the deluge. 
 
 Warland. I remember it all comes back to me. I 
 used to hear it said that he admired you tremend- 
 ously; there was a report that you were engaged. 
 Don't you remember ? Why, it was in all the papers. 
 By Jove, Isabel, what a match that would have been ! 
 
 Isabel. You are disinterested ! 
 
 Warland. Well, I can't help thinking 
 
 Isabel. That I paid you a handsome compliment ? 
 
 Warland (preoccupied). Eh ? Ah, yes exactly. 
 What was I saying? Oh about the report of your 
 engagement. (Playfully.) He was awfully gone on 
 you, was n't he ? 
 
 Isabel. It's not for me to diminish your triumph. 
 
 Warland. By Jove, I can't think why Mrs. Raynor 
 didn't tell me he was coming. A man like that 
 one doesn't take him for granted, like the piano- 
 tuner! I wonder I didn't see it in the papers. 
 
 Isabel. Is he grown such a great man? 
 
 Warland. Oberville? Great? John Oberville? I'll 
 
 tell you what he is the power behind the throne, 
 
 the black Pope, the King-maker and all the rest of 
 
 it. Don't you read the papers ? Of course I '11 never 
 
 [ 162] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 get on if you won't interest yourself in politics. And 
 to think you might have married that man ! 
 
 Isabel. And got you your secretaryship ! 
 
 Warland. Oberville has them all in the hollow of 
 his hand. 
 
 Isabel. Well, you '11 see him at five o'clock. 
 
 Warland. I don 't suppose he 's ever heard of me, 
 worse luck ! ( A silence.) Isabel,, look here. I never ask 
 questions, do I? But it was so long ago and Ober- 
 ville almost belongs to history he will one of these 
 days at any rate. Just tell me did he want to marry 
 you? 
 
 Isabel. Since you answer for his immortality (after 
 a pause) I was very much in love with him. 
 
 Warland. Then of course he did. (Another pause.) But 
 what in the world 
 
 Isabel (musing). As you say, it was so long ago ; I 
 don't see why I shouldn't tell you. There was a mar- 
 ried woman who had what is the correct expression? 
 made sacrifices for him. There was only one sacrifice 
 she objected to making and he did n't consider him- 
 self free. It sounds rather rococo, doesn't it? It was 
 odd that she died the year after we were married. 
 
 Warland. Whew! 
 
 Isabel (following her own thoughts). I 've never seen 
 him since ; it must be ten years ago. I 'm certainly 
 thirty-two, and I was just twenty-two then. It 's curi- 
 [163] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 ous to talk of it. I had put it away so carefully. How 
 it smells of camphor! And what an old-fashioned cut 
 it has ! (Rising.) Where 's the list, Lucius ? You wanted 
 to know if there were to be people at dinner to- 
 night 
 
 Warland. Here it is but never mind. Isabel 
 (silence) Isabel 
 
 Isabel. Well? 
 
 Warland. It's odd he never married. 
 
 Isabel. The comparison is to my disadvantage. But 
 then I met you. 
 
 Warland. Don't be so confoundedly sarcastic. I won- 
 der how he '11 feel about seeing you. Oh, I don't mean 
 any sentimental rot, of course . . . but you 're an 
 uncommonly agreeable woman. I daresay he'll be 
 pleased to see you again ; you 're fifty times more 
 attractive than when I married you. 
 
 Isabel. I wish your other investments had appre- 
 ciated at the same rate. Unfortunately my charms 
 won't pay the butcher. 
 
 Warland. Damn the butcher! 
 
 Isabel. I happened to mention him because he's 
 just written again ; but I might as well have said the 
 baker or the candlestick-maker. The candlestick-maker 
 I wonder what he is, by the way? He must have 
 more faith in human nature than the others, for I 
 haven't heard from him yet. I wonder if there is a 
 [ 164] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 Creditor's Polite Letter-writer which they all consult ; 
 their style is so exactly alike. I advise you to pass 
 through New York incognito on your way to Washing- 
 ton ; their attentions might be oppressive. 
 
 Warland. Confoundedly oppressive. What a dog's life 
 it is ! My poor Isabel 
 
 Isabel. Don't pity me. I did n't marry you for a home. 
 
 Warland (after a pause). What did you marry me 
 for, if you cared for Oberville ? (Another pause.} Eh ? 
 
 Isabel. Don't make me regret my confidence. 
 
 Warland. I beg your pardon. 
 
 Isabel. Oh, it was only a subterfuge to conceal the 
 fact that I have no distinct recollection of my rea- 
 sons. The fact is, a girl's motives in marrying are 
 like a passport apt to get mislaid. One is so sel- 
 dom asked for either. But mine certainly couldn't 
 have been mercenary : I never heard a mother praise 
 you to her daughters. 
 
 Warland. No, I never was much of a match. 
 
 Isabel. You impugn my judgment. 
 
 Warland. If I only had a head for business, now, I 
 might have done something by this time. But I 'd 
 sooner break stones in the road. 
 
 Isabel. It must be very hard to get an opening in 
 that profession. So many of my friends have aspired to 
 it, and yet I never knew any one who actually did it. 
 
 Warland. If I could only get the secretaryship. 
 [165] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 How that kind of life would suit you ! It 's as much 
 for you that I want it 
 
 Isabel. And almost as much for the butcher. Don't 
 belittle the circle of your benevolence. (She walks 
 across the room.) Three o'clock already and Marian 
 asked me to give orders about the carriages. Let me 
 see Mr. Oberville is the first arrival; if you'll ring 
 I will send word to the stable. I suppose you '11 stay 
 now? 
 
 Warland. Stay? 
 
 Isabel. Not go to Washington. I thought you spoke 
 as if he could help you. 
 
 Warland. He could settle the whole thing in five 
 minutes. The President can't refuse him anything. But 
 he does n't know me ; he may have a candidate of his 
 own. It's a pity you haven't seen him for so long 
 and yet I don't know ; perhaps it 's just as well. The 
 others don't arrive till seven? It seems as if How 
 long is he going to be here? Till to-morrow night, I 
 suppose ? I wonder what he 's come for. The Merring- 
 tons will bore him to death, and Adelaide, of course, 
 will be philandering with Lender. I wonder (a pause) 
 if Darley likes boating. (Rings the bell.) 
 
 Isabel. Boating? 
 
 Warland. Oh, I was only thinking Where are the 
 matches? One may smoke here, I suppose? (He looks 
 at his wife.) If I were you I 'd put on that black gown 
 [166] 
 
THE TWIL'IGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 of yours to-night the one with the spangles. It's 
 only that Fred Langham asked me to go over to Nar- 
 ragansett in his launch to-morrow morning, and I was 
 thinking that I might take Darley ; I always liked 
 Darley. 
 
 Isabel (to the footman who enters}. Mrs. Raynor wishes 
 the dog-cart sent to the station at five o'clock to meet 
 Mr. Oberville. 
 
 Footman. Very good, m'm. Shall I serve tea at the 
 usual time, m'm ? 
 
 Isabel. Yes. That is, when Mr. Oberville arrives. 
 
 Footman (going out). Very good, m'm. 
 
 Warland (to Isabel, who is moving toward the door). 
 Where are you going? 
 
 Isabel. To my room now for a walk later. 
 
 Warland. Later? It's past three already. 
 
 Isabel. I 've no engagement this afternoon. 
 
 Warland. Oh, I didn't know. (As she reaches the 
 door.) You '11 be back, I suppose ? 
 
 Isabel. I have no intention of eloping. 
 
 Warland. For tea, I mean? 
 
 Isabel. I never take tea. (Warland shrugs his shoul- 
 ders.) 
 
 [167] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 II 
 
 The same drawing-room. Isabel enters from the lawn 
 in hat and gloves. The tea-table is set out, and the footman 
 just lighting the lamp under the kettle. 
 
 ISABEL. You may take the tea-things away. I 
 never take tea. 
 
 Footman. Very good, m'm. (He hesitates.) I under- 
 stood, m'm, that Mr. Oberville was to have tea? 
 
 Isabel. Mr. Oberville ? But he was to arrive long 
 ago ! What time is it ? 
 
 Footman. Only a quarter past five, m'm. 
 
 Isabel. A quarter past five ? ( She goes up to the clock.) 
 Surely you 're mistaken ? I thought it was long after 
 six. (To herself.) I walked and walked I must have 
 walked too fast . . . (To the Footman.) I 'm going out 
 again. When Mr. Oberville arrives please give him his 
 tea without waiting for me. I shall not be back till 
 dinner-time. 
 
 Footman. Very good, m'm. Here are some letters, 
 m'm. 
 
 Isabel (glancing at them with a movement of disgust). 
 You may send them up to my room. 
 
 Footman. I beg pardon, m'm, but one is a note from 
 Mme Fanfreluche, and the man who brought it is 
 waiting for an answer. 
 
 [168] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 Isabel Didn't you tell him I was out? 
 
 Footman. Yes, m'm. But he said he had orders to 
 wait till you came in. 
 
 Isabel. Ah let me see. (She opens the note.) Ah, yes. 
 (A pause.) Please say that I am on my way now to 
 Mme Fanfreluche's to give her the answer in person. 
 You may tell the man that I have already started. Do 
 you understand? Already started. 
 
 Footman. Yes, m'm. 
 
 Isabel. And wait. (With an effort.) You may tell 
 me when the man has started. I shall wait here till 
 then. Be sure you let me know. 
 
 Footman. Yes, m'm. (He goes out.) 
 
 Isabel (sinking into a chair and hiding her face). Ah ! 
 (After a moment she rises, taking up her gloves and sun- 
 shade, and walks toward the window which opens on the 
 lawn.) I 'm so tired. (She hesitates and turns back into 
 the room.) Where can I go to ? ( She sits down again by 
 the tea-table, and bends over the kettle. The clock strikes 
 half-past Jive.) 
 
 Isabel (picking up her sunshade, walks back to the win- 
 dow). If I must meet one of them . . . 
 
 Oberville (speaking in the hall). Thanks. I '11 take tea 
 first. (He enters the room, and pauses doubtfully on seeing 
 Isabel.) 
 
 Isabel (stepping towards him with a smile). It's not 
 that I 've changed, of course, but only that I happened 
 [169] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 to have my back to the light. Isn't that what you 
 are going to say? 
 
 Oberville. Mrs. Warland! 
 
 Isabel. So you really have become a great man ! They 
 always remember people's names. 
 
 Oberville. Were you afraid I was going to call you Isabel ? 
 
 Isabel. Bravo ! Crescendo ! 
 
 Oberville. But you have changed, all the same. 
 
 Isabel. You must indeed have reached a dizzy emi- 
 nence, since you can indulge yourself by speaking the 
 truth ! 
 
 Oberville. It 's your voice. I knew it at once, and yet 
 it's different. 
 
 Isabel. I hope it can still convey the pleasure I feel 
 in seeing an old friend. (She holds out her hand. He takes 
 it.) You know, I suppose, that Mrs. Raynor is not here 
 to receive you ? She was called away this morning very 
 suddenly by her aunt's illness. 
 
 Oberville. Yes. She left a note for me. (Absently.) 
 I 'm sorry to hear of Mrs. Griscom's illness. 
 
 Isabel. Oh, Mrs. Griscom's illnesses are less alarming 
 than her recoveries. But I am forgetting to offer you 
 any tea. ( She hands him a cup.) I remember you liked it 
 very strong. 
 
 Oberville. What else do you remember? 
 
 Isabel. A number of equally useless things. My mind 
 is a store-room of obsolete information. 
 [170] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 Oberville. Why obsolete, since I am providing you 
 Mdth a use for it? 
 
 Isabel At any rate, it 's open to question whether 
 it was worth storing for that length of time. Especially 
 as there must have been others more fitted by op- 
 portunity to undertake the duty. 
 
 Oberville. The duty? 
 
 Isabel. Of remembering how you like your tea. 
 
 Oberville (with a change of tone}. Since you call it a 
 duty I may remind you that it's one I have never 
 asked any one else to perform. 
 
 Isabel. As a duty ! But as a pleasure ? 
 
 Oberville. Do you really want to know? 
 
 Isabel. Oh, I don't require and charge you. 
 
 Oberville. You dislike as much as ever having the z's 
 dotted ? 
 
 Isabel. With a handwriting I know as well as yours ! 
 
 Oberville (recovering his lightness of manner). Accom- 
 plished woman ! (He examines her approvingly.) I 'd no 
 idea that you were here. I never was more surprised. 
 
 Isabel. I hope you like being surprised. To my mind 
 it's an overrated pleasure. 
 
 Oberville. Is it ? I 'm sorry to hear that. 
 
 Isabel. Why? Have you a surprise to dispose of? 
 
 Oberville. I 'm not sure that I have n't. 
 
 Isabel. Don't part with it too hastily. It may improve 
 by being kept. 
 
 [171] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 Oberville (tentatively}. Does that mean that you don't 
 want it? 
 
 Isabel. Heaven forbid ! I want everything I can get. 
 
 Oberville. And you get everything you want. At 
 least you used to. 
 
 Isabel. Let us talk of your surprise. 
 
 Oberville. It 's to be yours, you know. ( A pause. He 
 speaks gravely.) I find that I 've never got over having 
 lost you. 
 
 Isabel (also gravely). And is that a surprise to you 
 too? 
 
 Oberville. Honestly yes. I thought I 'd crammed 
 my life full. I didn't know there was a cranny left 
 anywhere. At first, you know, I stuffed in everything 
 I could lay my hands on there was such a big void 
 to fill. And after all I have n't filled it. I felt that the 
 moment I saw you. ( A pause.) I 'm talking stupidly. 
 
 Isabel. It would be odious if you were eloquent. 
 
 Oberville. What do you mean? 
 
 Isabel. That 's a question you never used to ask me. 
 
 Oberville. Be merciful. Remember how little practise 
 I 've had lately. 
 
 Isabel. In what? 
 
 Oberville. Never mind ! (He rises and walks away ; 
 then comes back and stands in front of her.) What a fool 
 I was to give you up ! 
 
 Isabel. Oh, don't say that ! I 've lived on it ! 
 [172] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 Oberville. On my letting you go ? 
 
 Isabel. On your letting everything go but the 
 right. 
 
 Oberville. Oh, hang the right! What is truth? We 
 had the right to be happy! 
 
 Isabel (with rising emotion). I used to think so some- 
 times. 
 
 Oberville. Did you? Triple fool that I was! 
 
 Isabel. But you showed me 
 
 Oberville. Why, good God, we belonged to each 
 other and I let you go ! It 's fabulous. I 've fought for 
 things since that were n't worth a crooked sixpence ; 
 fought as well as other men. And you you I lost 
 you because I could n't face a scene ! Hang it, suppose 
 there 'd been a dozen scenes I might have survived 
 them. Men have been known to. They're not neces- 
 sarily fatal. 
 
 Isabel. A scene? 
 
 Oberville. It 's a form of fear that women don't un- 
 derstand. How you must have despised me ! 
 
 Isabel. You were afraid of a scene? 
 
 Oberville. I was a damned coward, Isabel. That's 
 about the size of it. 
 
 Isabel. Ah I had thought it so much larger! 
 
 Oberville. What did you say? 
 
 Isabel. I said that you have forgotten to drink your 
 tea. It must be quite cold. 
 
 [ 173] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 Oberville. Ah 
 
 Isabel. Let me give you another cup. 
 
 Oberville (collecting himself). No no. This is perfect. 
 
 Isabel. You haven't tasted it. 
 
 Oberville (falling into her mood). You always made 
 it to perfection. Only you never gave me enough sugar. 
 
 Isabel. I know better now. ( She puts another lump in 
 his cup.) 
 
 Oberville (drinks his tea., and then says, with an air of 
 reproach). Is n't all this chaff rather a waste of time 
 between two old friends who have n't met for so many 
 years ? 
 
 Isabel (lightly). Oh, it's only a hors d'ceuvre the 
 tuning of the instruments. I 'm out of practise too. 
 
 Oberville. Let us come to the grand air, then. (Sits 
 down near her.} Tell me about yourself. What are you 
 doing ? 
 
 Isabel. At this moment? You'll never guess. I'm 
 trying to remember you. 
 
 Oberville. To remember me? 
 
 Isabel. Until you came into the room just now my 
 recollection of you was so vivid ; you were a living 
 whole in my thoughts. Now I am engaged in gather- 
 ing up the fragments in laboriously reconstructing 
 you .... 
 
 Oberville. I have changed so much, then? 
 
 Isabel. No, I don't believe that you 've changed. It 's 
 [ 174] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 only that I see you differently. Don't you know how 
 hard it is to convince elderly people that the type of 
 the evening paper is no smaller than when they were 
 young ? 
 
 Oberville. I've shrunk then? 
 
 Isabel. You could n't have grown bigger. Oh, I 'm 
 serious now ; you need n't prepare a smile. For years 
 you were the tallest object on my horizon. I used to 
 climb to the thought of you, as people who live in a 
 flat country mount the church steeple for a view. It's 
 wonderful how much I used to see from there! And 
 the air was so strong and pure! 
 
 Oberville. And now? 
 
 Isabel. Now I can fancy how delightful it must be 
 to sit next to you at dinner. 
 
 Oberville. You're unmerciful. Have I said anything 
 to offend you ? 
 
 Isabel. Of course not. How absurd ! 
 
 Oberville. I lost my head a little I forgot how long 
 it is since we have met. When I saw you I forgot 
 everything except what you had once been to me. 
 (She is silent.} I thought you too generous to resent 
 that. Perhaps I have overtaxed your generosity. (A 
 pause.) Shall I confess it? When I first saw you I 
 thought for a moment that you had remembered as 
 I had. You see I can only excuse myself by saying 
 something inexcusable. 
 
 [175] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 Isabel (deliberately}. Not inexcusable. 
 
 Oberville, Not? 
 
 Isabel. I had remembered. 
 
 Oberville. Isabel! 
 
 Isabel. But now 
 
 Oberville. Ah, give me a moment before you unsay 
 it! 
 
 Isabel. I don't mean to unsay it. There's no use in 
 repealing an obsolete law. That's the pity of it! You 
 say you lost me ten years ago. ( A pause.) I never lost 
 you till now. 
 
 Oberville. Now? 
 
 Isabel. Only this morning you were my supreme 
 court of justice ; there was no appeal from your ver- 
 dict. Not an hour ago you decided a case for me 
 against myself! And now . And the worst of it is 
 that it 's not because you' ve changed. How do I 
 know if you 've changed ? You have n't said a hun- 
 dred words to me. You haven't been an hour in the 
 room. And the years must have enriched you I 
 daresay you 've doubled your capital. You 've been 
 in the thick of life, and the metal you 're made 
 of brightens with use. Success on some men looks 
 like a borrowed coat ; it sits on you as though it 
 had been made to order. I see all this ; I know it ; 
 but I don't feel it. I don't feel anything . . . any- 
 where ... I'm numb. (A pause.} Don't laugh, but 
 [176] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 I really don't think I should know now if you came 
 into the room unless I actually saw you. (They are 
 both silent.) 
 
 Oberville (at length}. Then, to put the most merci- 
 ful interpretation upon your epigrams, your feeling for 
 me was made out of poorer stuff than mine for you. 
 
 Isabel. Perhaps it has had harder wear. 
 
 Oberville. Or been less cared for? 
 
 Isabel. If one has only one cloak one must wear it 
 in all weathers. 
 
 Oberville. Unless it is so beautiful and precious that 
 one prefers to go cold and keep it under lock and key. 
 
 Isabel. In the cedar-chest of indifference the key 
 of which is usually lost. 
 
 Oberville. Ah, Isabel, you're too pat! How much I 
 preferred your hesitations. 
 
 Isabel. My hesitations ? That reminds me how much 
 your coming has simplified things. I feel as if I 'd had 
 an auction sale of fallacies. 
 
 Oberville. You speak in enigmas, and I have a notion 
 that your riddles are the reverse of the sphinx's more 
 dangerous to guess than to give up. And yet I used 
 to find your thoughts such good reading. 
 
 Isabel. One cares so little for the style in which 
 one's praises are written. 
 
 Oberville. You 've been praising me for the last ten 
 minutes and I find your style detestable. I would 
 t 177] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 rather have you find fault with me like a friend than 
 approve me like a dilettante. 
 
 Isabel. A dilettante ! The very word I wanted ! 
 
 Oberville. I am proud to have enriched so full a 
 vocabulary. But I am still waiting for the word / 
 want. (He grows serious.) Isabel, look in your heart 
 give me the first word you find there. You've no 
 idea how much a beggar can buy with a penny! 
 
 Isabel. It's empty, my poor friend, it's empty. 
 
 Oberville. Beggars never say that to each other. 
 
 Isabel. No ; never, unless it 's true. 
 
 Oberville (after another silence). Why do you look 
 at me so curiously? 
 
 Isabel. I'm what was it you said? Approving you 
 as a dilettante. Don't be alarmed ; you can bear ex- 
 amination ; I don't see a crack anywhere. After all, 
 it's a satisfaction to find that one's idol makes a 
 handsome bibelot. 
 
 Oberville (with an attempt at lightness). I was right 
 then you're a collector? 
 
 Isabel (modestly). One must make a beginning. I 
 think I shall begin with you. (She smiles at him.) Posi- 
 tively, I must have you on my mantel-shelf! (She rises 
 and looks at the clock.) But it 's time to dress for dinner. 
 (She holds out her hand to him and he kisses it. They look 
 at each other, and it is clear that he does not quite under- 
 stand, but is watching eagerly for his cue.) 
 [178] 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD 
 
 War land (coming in}. Hullo, Isabel you're here 
 after all? 
 
 Isabel. And so is Mr. Oberville. (She looks straight at 
 Warland.) I stayed in on purpose to meet him. My 
 husband (The two men bow.) 
 
 Warland (effusively). So glad to meet you. My wife 
 talks of you so often. She 's been looking forward tre- 
 mendously to your visit. 
 
 Oberville. It 's a long time since I 've had the pleas- 
 ure of seeing Mrs. Warland. 
 
 Isabel. But now we are going to make up for lost 
 time. (As he goes to the door.) I claim you to-morrow 
 for the whole day. 
 
 Oberville bows and goes out. 
 
 Isabel. Lucius ... I think you 'd better go to Wash- 
 ington, after all. (Musing.) Narragansett might do for 
 the others, though. . . . Could n't you get Fred Lang- 
 ham to ask all the rest of the party to go over there 
 with him to-morrow morning ? I shall have a headache 
 and stay at home. (He looks at her doubtfully.) Mr. Ober- 
 ville is a bad sailor. 
 
 Warland advances demonstratively. 
 
 Isabel (drawing back). It 's time to go and dress. I 
 think you said the black gown with spangles? 
 
 [ 179] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 IT was three o'clock in the morning, and the cotil- 
 lion was at its height, when Woburn left the 
 over-heated splendor of the Gildermere ball- 
 room, and after a delay caused by the determination 
 of the drowsy footman to give him a ready-made 
 overcoat with an imitation astrachan collar in place 
 of his own unimpeachable Poole garment, found him- 
 self breasting the icy solitude of the Fifth Avenue. 
 He was still smiling, as he emerged from the awn- 
 ing, at his insistence in claiming his own overcoat : 
 it illustrated, humorously enough, the invincible force 
 of habit. As he faced the wind, however, he discerned 
 a providence in his persistency, for his coat was fur- 
 lined, and he had a cold voyage before him on the 
 morrow. 
 
 It had rained hard during the earlier part of the 
 night, and the carriages waiting in triple line before 
 the Gildermeres* door were still domed by shining 
 umbrellas, while the electric lamps extending down 
 the avenue blinked Narcissus-like at their watery im- 
 ages in the hollows of the sidewalk. A dry blast had 
 come out of the north, with pledge of frost before 
 daylight, and to Woburn's shivering fancy the pools 
 in the pavement seemed already stiffening into ice. He 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 turned up his coat-collar and stepped out rapidly, his 
 hands deep in his coat-pockets. 
 
 As he walked he glanced curiously up at the ladder- 
 like door-steps which may well suggest to the future 
 archaeologist that all the streets of New York were 
 once canals ; at the spectral tracery of the trees about 
 St. Luke's, the fretted mass of the Cathedral, and the 
 mean vista of the long side-streets. The knowledge 
 that he was perhaps looking at it all for the last time 
 caused every detail to start out like a challenge to 
 memory, and lit the brown-stone house-fronts with the 
 glamor of sword-barred Edens. 
 
 It was an odd impulse that had led him that night to 
 the Gildermere ball ; but the same change in his condi- 
 tion which made him stare wonderingly at the houses in 
 the Fifth Avenue gave the thrill of an exploit to the 
 tame business of ball-going. Who would have imagined, 
 Woburn mused, that such a situation as his would pos- 
 sess the priceless quality of sharpening the blunt edge 
 of habit ? 
 
 It was certainly curious to reflect, as he leaned 
 against the doorway of Mrs. Gildermere's ball-room, 
 enveloped in the warm atmosphere of the accustomed, 
 that twenty-four hours later the people brushing by 
 him with looks of friendly recognition would start at 
 the thought of having seen him and slur over the 
 recollection of having taken his hand ! 
 [184] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 And the girl he had gone there to see : what would 
 she think of him? He knew well enough that her 
 trenchant classifications of life admitted no overlapping 
 of good and evil, made no allowance for that incalcul- 
 able interplay of motives that justifies the subtlest 
 casuistry of compassion. Miss Talcott was too young 
 to distinguish the intermediate tints of the moral 
 spectrum ; and her judgments were further simplified 
 by a peculiar concreteness of mind. Her bringing-up 
 had fostered this tendency and she was surrounded 
 by people who focussed life in the same way. To 
 the girls in Miss Talcott' s set, the attentions of a 
 clever man who had to work for his living had the 
 zest of a forbidden pleasure ; but to marry such a 
 man would be as unpardonable as to have one's car- 
 riage seen at the door of a cheap dress-maker. Poverty 
 might make a man fascinating; but a 'settled income 
 was the best evidence of stability of character. If there 
 were anything in heredity, how could a nice girl trust 
 a man whose parents had been careless enough to 
 leave him unprovided for? 
 
 Neither Miss Talcott nor any of her friends could be 
 charged with formulating these views ; but they were 
 implicit in the slope of every white shoulder and in the 
 ripple of every yard of imported tulle dappling the 
 foreground of Mrs. Gildermere's ball-room. The ad- 
 vantages of line and colour in veiling the crudities of 
 
 [ 185 ] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 a creed are obvious to emotional minds ; and besides, 
 Woburn was conscious that it was to the cheerful 
 materialism of their parents that the young girls he 
 admired owed that fine distinction of outline in which 
 their skilfully-rippled hair and skilfully-hung draperies 
 cooperated with the slimness and erectness that came 
 of participating in the most expensive sports, eating 
 the most expensive food and breathing the most ex- 
 pensive air. Since the process which had produced 
 them was so costly, how could they help being costly 
 themselves ? Woburn was too logical to expect to give 
 no more for a piece of old Sevres than for a bit of 
 kitchen crockery; he had no faith in wonderful bar- 
 gains, and believed that one got in life just what one 
 was willing to pay for. He had no mind to dispute 
 the taste of those who preferred the rustic simplicity 
 of the earthen crock ; but his own fancy inclined to 
 the piece of pate tendre which must be kept in a 
 glass case and handled as delicately as a flower. 
 
 It was not merely by the external grace of these 
 drawing-room ornaments that Woburn' s sensibilities 
 were charmed. His imagination was touched by the 
 curious exoticism of view resulting from such condi- 
 tions. He had always enjoyed listening to Miss Talcott 
 even more than looking at her. Her ideas had the 
 brilliant bloom and audacious irrelevance of those trop- 
 ical orchids which strike root in air. Miss Talcott's 
 [186] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 opinions had no connection with the actual ; her very 
 materialism had the grace of artificiality. Woburn had 
 been enchanted once by seeing her helpless before a 
 smoking lamp : she had been obliged to ring for a ser- 
 vant because she did not know how to put it out. 
 
 Her supreme charm was the simplicity that comes 
 of taking it for granted that people are born with car- 
 riages and country-places : it never occurred to her 
 that such congenital attributes could be matter for self- 
 consciousness, and she had none of the nouveau riche 
 prudery which classes poverty with the nude in art 
 and is not sure how to behave in the presence of 
 either. 
 
 The conditions of Woburn's own life had made him 
 peculiarly susceptible to those forms of elegance which 
 are the flower of ease. His father had lost a comfortable 
 property through sheer inability to go over his agent's 
 accounts; and this disaster, coming at the outset of 
 Woburn's school-days, had given a new bent to the 
 family temperament. The father characteristically died 
 when the effort of living might have made it possible 
 to retrieve his fortunes ; and Woburn's mother and 
 sister, embittered by this final evasion, settled down 
 to a vindictive war with circumstances. They were the 
 kind of women who think that it lightens the burden 
 of life to throw over the amenities, as a reduced house- 
 keeper puts away her knick-knacks to make the dust- 
 [ 187] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 ing easier. They fought mean conditions meanly ; but 
 Woburn, in his resentment of their attitude, did not 
 allow for the suffering which had brought it about : 
 his own tendency was to overcome difficulties by 
 conciliation rather than by conflict. Such surround- 
 ings threw into vivid relief the charming figure of 
 Miss Talcott. Woburn instinctively associated poverty 
 with bad food, ugly furniture, complaints and recrimi- 
 nations : it was natural that he should be drawn to- 
 ward the luminous atmosphere where life was a series 
 of peaceful and good-humored acts, unimpeded by 
 petty obstacles. To spend one's time in such society 
 gave one the illusion of unlimited credit ; and also, 
 unhappily, created the need for it. 
 
 It was here in fact that Woburn's difficulties began. 
 To marry Miss Talcott it was necessary to be a rich 
 man : even to dine out in her set involved certain 
 minor extravagances. Woburn had determined to marry 
 her sooner or later ; and in the meanwhile to be with 
 her as much as possible. 
 
 As he stood leaning in the doorway of the Gilder- 
 mere ball-room, watching her pass him in the waltz, 
 he tried to remember how it had begun. First there 
 had been the tailor's bill ; the fur-lined overcoat with 
 cuffs and collar of Alaska sable had alone cost more 
 than he had spent on his clothes for two or three years 
 previously. Then there were theatre-tickets ; cab-fares ; 
 [188] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 florist's bills ; tips to servants at the country-houses 
 where he went because he knew that she was invited ; 
 the Omar Khayyam bound by Sullivan that he sent 
 her at Christmas ; the contributions to her pet chari- 
 ties ; the reckless purchases at fairs where she had a 
 stall. His whole way of life had imperceptibly changed 
 and his year's salary was gone before the second quar- 
 ter was due. 
 
 He had invested the few thousand dollars which had 
 been his portion of his father's shrunken estate : w r hen 
 his debts began to pile up, he took a flyer in stocks 
 and after a few months of varying luck his little patri- 
 mony disappeared. Meanwhile his courtship was pro- 
 ceeding at an inverse ratio to his financial ventures. 
 Miss Talcott was growing tender and he began to feel 
 that the game was in his hands. The nearness of the 
 goal exasperated him. She was not the girl to wait 
 and he knew that it must be now or never. A friend 
 lent him five thousand dollars on his personal note 
 and he bought railway stocks on margin. They went 
 up and he held them for a higher rise : they fluctu- 
 ated, dragged, dropped below the level at which he 
 had bought, and slowly continued their uninterrupted 
 descent. His broker called for more margin ; he could 
 not respond and was sold out. 
 
 What followed came about quite naturally. For 
 several years he had been cashier in a well-known 
 [ 189] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 banking-house. When the note he had given his 
 friend became due it was obviously necessary to pay 
 it and he used the firm's money for the purpose. To 
 repay the money thus taken, he increased his debt to 
 his employers and bought more stocks ; and on these 
 operations he made a profit of ten thousand dollars. 
 Miss Talcott rode in the Park, and he bought a 
 smart hack for seven hundred, paid off his trades- 
 men, and went on speculating with the remainder of 
 his profits. He made a little more, but failed to take 
 advantage of the market and lost all that he had 
 staked, including the amount taken from the firm. 
 He increased his over-draft by another ten thousand 
 and lost that ; he over-drew a farther sum and lost 
 again. Suddenly he woke to the fact that he owed 
 his employers fifty thousand dollars and that the 
 partners were to make their semi-annual inspection 
 in two days. He realized then that within forty-eight 
 hours what he had called borrowing would become 
 theft. 
 
 There was no time to be lost : he must clear out and 
 start life over again somewhere else. The day that he 
 reached this decision he was to have met Miss Talcott 
 at dinner. He went to the dinner, but she did not ap- 
 pear : she had a headache, his hostess explained. Well, 
 he was not to have a last look at her, after all ; better 
 so, perhaps. He took leave early and on his way home 
 [ 190] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 stopped at a florist's and sent her a bunch of violets. 
 The next morning he got a little note from her : the 
 violets had done her head so much good she would 
 tell him all about it that evening at the Gildermere 
 ball. Woburn laughed and tossed the note into the fire. 
 That evening he would be on board ship : the exami- 
 nation of the books was to take place the following 
 morning at ten. 
 
 Woburn went down to the bank as usual ; he did 
 not want to do anything that might excite suspicion 
 as to his plans, and from one or two questions which 
 one of the partners had lately put to him he divined 
 that he was being observed. At the bank the day 
 passed uneventfully. He discharged his business with 
 his accustomed care and went uptown at the usual hour. 
 
 In the first flush of his successful speculations he 
 had set up bachelor lodgings, moved by the tempta- 
 tion to get away from the dismal atmosphere of home, 
 from his mother's struggles with the cook and his sis- 
 ter's curiosity about his letters. He had been influenced 
 also by the wish for surroundings more adapted to his 
 tastes. He wanted to be able to give little teas, to 
 which Miss Talcott might come with a married friend. 
 She came once or twice and pronounced it all delight- 
 ful : she thought it so nice to have only a few Whistler 
 etchings on the walls and the simplest crushed levant 
 for all one's books. 
 
 [191] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 To these rooms Woburn returned on leaving the 
 bank. His plans had taken definite shape. He had en- 
 gaged passage on a steamer sailing for Halifax early 
 the next morning ; and there was nothing for him to 
 'do before going on board but to pack his clothes and 
 tear up a few letters. He threw his clothes into a 
 couple of portmanteaux, and when these had been 
 called for by an expressman he emptied his pockets 
 and counted up his ready money. He found that he 
 possessed just fifty dollars and seventy-five cents ; but 
 his passage to Halifax was paid, and once there he 
 could pawn his watch and rings. This calculation com- 
 pleted, he unlocked his writing-table drawer and took 
 out a handful of letters. They were notes from Miss 
 Talcott. He read them over and threw them into the 
 fire. On his table stood her photograph. He slipped it 
 out of its frame and tossed it on top of the blazing 
 letters. Having performed this rite, he got into his 
 dress-clothes and went to a small French restaurant 
 to dine. 
 
 He had meant to go on board the steamer immedi- 
 ately after dinner ; but a sudden vision of introspective 
 hours in a silent cabin made him call for the evening 
 paper and run his eye over the list of theatres. It 
 would be as easy to go on board at midnight as now. 
 
 He selected a new vaudeville and listened to it with 
 surprising freshness of interest ; but toward eleven 
 [ 192] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 o'clock he again began to dread the approaching ne- 
 cessity of going down to the steamer. There was some- 
 thing peculiarly unnerving in the idea of spending 
 the rest of the night in a stifling cabin jammed against 
 the side of a wharf. 
 
 He left the theatre and strolled across to the Fifth 
 Avenue. It was now nearly midnight and a stream of 
 carriages poured up town from the opera and the 
 theatres. As he stood on the corner watching the fa- 
 miliar spectacle it occurred to him that many of the 
 people driving by him in smart broughams and 
 C-spring landaus were on their way to the Gildermere 
 ball. He remembered Miss Talcott's note of the morn- 
 ing and wondered if she were in one of the passing 
 carriages; she had spoken so confidently of meeting 
 him at the ball. What if he should go and take a last 
 look at her? There was really nothing to prevent it. 
 He was not likely to run across any member of the 
 firm : in Miss Talcott's set his social standing was good 
 for another ten hours at least. He smiled in anticipa- 
 tion of her surprise at seeing him, and then reflected 
 with a start that she would not be surprised at all. 
 
 His meditations were cut short by a fall of sleety 
 rain, and hailing a hansom he gave the driver Mrs. 
 Gildermere's address. 
 
 As he drove up the avenue he looked about him like 
 a traveller in a strange city. The buildings which had 
 [ 193] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 been so unobtrusively familiar stood out with sudden 
 distinctness : he noticed a hundred details which had 
 escaped his observation. The people on the sidewalks 
 looked like strangers : he wondered where they were 
 going and tried to picture the lives they led ; but his 
 own relation to life had been so suddenly reversed that 
 he found it impossible to recover his mental perspec- 
 tive. 
 
 At one corner he saw a shabby man lurking in the 
 shadow of the side street; as the hansom passed, a 
 policeman ordered him to move on. Farther on, Wo- 
 burn noticed a woman crouching on the door-step of a 
 handsome house. She had drawn a shawl over her head 
 and was sunk in the apathy of despair or drink. A well- 
 dressed couple paused to look at her. The electric 
 globe at the corner lit up their faces, and Woburn saw 
 the lady, who was young and pretty, turn away with 
 a little grimace, drawing her companion after her. 
 
 The desire to see Miss Talcott had driven Woburn 
 to the Gildermeres' ; but once in the ball-room he 
 made no effort to find her. The people about him 
 seemed more like strangers than those he had passed 
 in the street. He stood in the doorway, studying the 
 petty manoeuvres of the women and the resigned amen- 
 ities of their partners. Was it possible that these were 
 his friends ? These mincing women, all paint and dye 
 and whalebone, these apathetic men who looked as 
 [ 194] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 much alike as the figures that children cut out of a 
 folded sheet of paper ? Was it to live among such pup- 
 pets that he had sold his soul ? What had any of these 
 people done that was noble, exceptional, distinguished ? 
 Who knew them by name even, except their trades- 
 men and the society reporters? Who were they, that 
 they should sit in judgment on him? 
 
 The bald man with the globular stomach, who 
 stood at Mrs. Gildermere's elbow surveying the dan- 
 cers, was old Boylston, who had made his pile in 
 wrecking railroads ; the smooth chap with glazed eyes, 
 at whom a pretty girl smiled up so confidingly, was 
 Collerton, the political lawyer, who had been mixed 
 up to his own advantage in an ugly lobbying trans- 
 action ; near him stood Brice Lyndham, whose recent 
 failure had ruined his friends and associates, but had 
 not visibly affected the welfare of his large and ex- 
 pensive family. The slim fellow dancing with Miss 
 Gildermere was Alec Vance, who lived on a salary of 
 five thousand a year, but whose wife was such a good 
 manager that they kept a brougham and victoria and 
 always put in their season at Newport and their spring 
 trip to Europe. The little ferret-faced youth in the 
 corner was Regie Colby, who wrote the Entre-Nous 
 paragraphs in the Social Searchlight : the women were 
 charming to him and he got all the financial tips he 
 wanted from their husbands and fathers, 
 [195] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 And the women? Well, the women knew all about 
 the men, and flattered them and married them and 
 tried to catch them for their daughters. It was a 
 domino-party at which the guests were forbidden to 
 unmask, though they all saw through each other's 
 disguises. 
 
 And these were the people who, within twenty-four 
 hours, would be agreeing that they had always felt 
 there was something wrong about Woburn ! They 
 would be extremely sorry for him, of course, poor 
 devil; but there are certain standards, after all 
 what would society be without standards? His new 
 friends, his future associates, were the suspicious-look- 
 ing man whom the policeman had ordered to move 
 on, and the drunken woman asleep on the door-step. 
 To these he was linked by the freemasonry of failure. 
 
 Miss Talcott passed him on Collerton's arm : she was 
 giving him one of the smiles of which Woburn had 
 fancied himself sole owner. Collerton was a sharp fel- 
 low ; he must have made a lot in that last deal ; prob- 
 ably she would marry him. How much did she know 
 about the transaction? She was a shrewd girl and 
 her father was in Wall Street. If Woburn's luck had 
 turned the other way she might have married him 
 instead ; and if he had confessed his sin to her one 
 evening, as they drove home from the opera in their 
 new brougham, she would have said that really it was 
 [ 196] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 of no use to tell her, for she never could understand 
 about business, but that she did entreat him in fu- 
 ture to be nicer to Regie Colby. Even now, if he 
 made a big strike somewhere, and came back in ten 
 years with a beard and a steam yacht, they would all 
 deny that anything had been proved against him, and 
 Mrs. Collerton might blush and remind him of their 
 friendship. Well why not? Was not all morality 
 based on a convention ? What was the stanchest code 
 of ethics but a trunk with a series of false bottoms? 
 Now and then one had the illusion of getting down 
 to absolute right or wrong, but it was only a false 
 bottom a removable hypothesis with another false 
 bottom underneath. There was no getting beyond the 
 relative. 
 
 The cotillion had begun. Miss Talcott sat nearly 
 opposite him : she was dancing with young Boylston 
 and giving him a Woburn-Collerton smile. So young 
 Boylston was in the syndicate too! 
 
 Presently Woburn was aware that she had forgotten 
 young Boylston and was glancing absently about the 
 room. She was looking for some one, and meant the 
 some one to know it : he knew that Lost-Chord look 
 in her eyes. 
 
 A new figure was being formed. The partners circled 
 about the room and Miss Talcott's flying tulle drifted 
 close to him as she passed. Then the favors were dis- 
 [ 197 ] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 tributed ; white skirts wavered across the floor like 
 thistle-down on summer air ; men rose from their seats 
 and fresh couples filled the shining parquet. 
 
 Miss Talcott, after taking from the basket a Legion 
 of Honor in red enamel, surveyed the room for a mo- 
 ment; then she made her way through the dancers 
 and held out the favor to Woburn. He fastened it in 
 his coat, and emerging from the crowd of men about 
 the doorway, slipped his arm about her. Their eyes 
 met ; hers were serious and a little sad. How fine and 
 slender she was ! He noticed the little tendrils of hair 
 about the pink convolution of her ear. Her waist was 
 firm and yet elastic; she breathed calmly and regu- 
 larly, as though dancing were her natural motion. She 
 did not look at him again and neither of them spoke. 
 
 When the music ceased they paused near her chair. 
 Her partner was waiting for her and Woburn left her 
 with a bow. 
 
 He made his way down-stairs and out of the house. 
 He was glad that he had not spoken to Miss Talcott. 
 There had been a healing power in their silence. All 
 bitterness had gone from him and he thought of her 
 now quite simply, as the girl he loved. 
 
 At Thirty-fifth Street he reflected that he had 
 better jump into a car and go down to his steamer. 
 Again there rose before him the repulsive vision of the 
 dark cabin, with creaking noises overhead, and the cold 
 
 [ 198] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 wash of water against the pier: he thought he would 
 stop in a cafe and take a drink. He turned into Broad- 
 way and entered a brightly-lit cafe ; but when he had 
 taken his whisky and soda there seemed no reason for 
 lingering. He had never been the kind of man who 
 could escape difficulties in that way. Yet he was con- 
 scious that his will was weakening; that he did not 
 mean to go down to the steamer just yet. What did 
 he mean to do ? He began to feel horribly tired and 
 it occurred to him that a few hours' sleep in a decent 
 bed would make a new man of him. Why not go on 
 board the next morning at daylight? 
 
 He could not go back to his rooms, for on leaving 
 the house he had taken the precaution of dropping his 
 latch-key into his letter-box ; but he was in a neigh- 
 borhood of discreet hotels and he wandered on till he 
 came to one which was known to offer a dispassionate 
 hospitality to luggageless travellers in dress-clothes. 
 
 II 
 
 HE pushed open the swinging door and found 
 himself in a long corridor with a tessellated 
 floor, at the end of which, in a brightly-lit enclosure 
 of plate-glass and mahogany, the night-clerk dozed 
 over a copy of the Police Gazette. The air in the corri- 
 dor was rich in reminiscences of yesterday's dinners, 
 [ 199 ] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 and a bronzed radiator poured a wave of dry heat into 
 Woburn's face. 
 
 The night-clerk, roused by the swinging of the door, 
 sat watching Woburn's approach with the unexpectant 
 eye of one who has full confidence in his capacity for 
 digesting surprises. Not that there was anything sur- 
 prising in Woburn's appearance ; but the night-clerk's 
 callers were given to such imaginative flights in ex- 
 plaining their luggageless arrival in the small hours of 
 the morning, that he fared habitually on fictions which 
 would have staggered a less experienced stomach. The 
 night-clerk, whose unwrinkled bloom showed that he 
 throve on this high-seasoned diet, had a fancy for clas- 
 sifying his applicants before they could frame their 
 explanations. 
 
 " This one 's been locked out," he said to himself as 
 he mustered Woburn. 
 
 Having exercised his powers of divination with his 
 accustomed accuracy he listened without stirring an 
 eye-lid to Woburn's statement ; merely replying, when 
 the latter asked the price of a room, "Two-fifty." 
 
 " Very well," said Woburn, pushing the money un- 
 der the brass lattice, " I '11 go up at once ; and I want 
 to be called at seven." 
 
 To this the night-clerk proffered no reply, but 
 stretching out his hand to press an electric button, re- 
 turned apathetically to the perusal of the Police Gazette. 
 [ 200 ] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 His summons was answered by the appearance of a man 
 in shirt-sleeves, whose rumpled head indicated that he 
 had recently risen from some kind of makeshift repose ; 
 to him the night-clerk tossed a key, with the brief 
 comment, " Ninety-seven ; " and the man, after a sleepy 
 glance at Woburn, turned on his heel and lounged 
 toward the staircase at the back of the corridor. 
 
 Woburn followed and they climbed three flights in 
 silence. At each landing Woburn glanced down the 
 long passage-way lit by a lowered gas-jet, with a double 
 line of boots before the doors, waiting, like yesterday's 
 deeds, to carry their owners so many miles farther on 
 the morrow's destined road. On the third landing the 
 man paused, and after examining the number on the 
 key, turned to the left, and slouching past three or 
 four doors, finally unlocked one and preceded Woburn 
 into a room lit only by the upward gleam of the elec- 
 tric globes in the street below. 
 
 The man felt in his pockets ; then he turned to 
 Woburn. "Got a match?" he asked. 
 
 Woburn politely offered him one, and he applied it 
 to the gas-fixture which extended its jointed arm above 
 an ash dressing-table with a blurred mirror fixed be- 
 tween two standards. Having performed this office with 
 an air of detachment designed to make Woburn recog- 
 nize it as an act of supererogation, he turned without 
 a word and vanished down the passage-way. 
 F 201 1 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 Woburn, after an indifferent glance about the room, 
 which seemed to afford the amount of luxury generally 
 obtainable for two dollars and a half in a fashionable 
 quarter of New York, locked the door and sat down at 
 the ink-stained writing-table in the window. Far below 
 him lay the pallidly-lit depths of the forsaken thor- 
 oughfare. Now and then he heard the jingle of a horse- 
 car and the ring of hoofs on the freezing pavement, or 
 saw the lonely figure of a policeman eclipsing the 
 illumination of the plate-glass windows on the opposite 
 side of the street. He sat thus for a long time, his el- 
 bows on the table, his chin between his hands, till 
 at length the contemplation of the abandoned side- 
 walks, above which the electric globes kept Stylites- 
 like vigil, became intolerable to him, and he drew 
 down the window-shade, and lit the gas-fixture beside 
 the dressing-table. Then he took a cigar from his case, 
 and held it to the flame. 
 
 The passage from the stinging freshness of the night 
 to the stale overheated atmosphere of the Haslemere 
 Hotel had checked the preternaturally rapid working 
 of his mind, and he was now scarcely conscious of 
 thinking at all. His head was heavy, and he would 
 have thrown himself on the bed had he not feared to 
 oversleep the hour fixed for his departure. He thought 
 it safest, instead, to seat himself once more by the 
 table, in the most uncomfortable chair that he could 
 [ 202 ] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 find, and smoke one cigar after another till the first 
 sign of dawn should give an excuse for action. 
 
 He had laid his watch on the table before him, and 
 was gazing at the hour-hand, and trying to convince 
 himself by so doing that he was still wide awake, when 
 a noise in the adjoining room suddenly straightened 
 him in his chair and banished all fear of sleep. 
 
 There was no mistaking the nature of the noise ; 
 it was that of a woman's sobs. The sobs were not loud, 
 but the sound reached him distinctly through the frail 
 door between the two rooms ; it expressed an utter 
 abandonment to grief; not the cloud-burst of some 
 passing emotion, but the slow down-pour of a whole 
 heaven of sorrow. 
 
 Woburn sat listening. There was nothing else to be 
 done ; and at least his listening was a mute tribute to 
 the trouble he was powerless to relieve. It roused, too., 
 the drugged pulses of his own grief: he was touched 
 by the chance propinquity of two alien sorrows in a 
 great city throbbing with multifarious passions. It 
 would have been more in keeping with the irony of 
 life had he found himself next to a mother singing 
 her child to sleep : there seemed a mute commiseration 
 in the hand that had led him to such neighborhood. 
 
 Gradually the sobs subsided, with pauses betokening 
 an effort at self-control. At last they died off softly, 
 like the intermittent drops that end a day of rain. 
 [ 203 ] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 " Poor soul/' Woburn mused, " she 's got the better 
 of it for the time. I wonder what it 's all about ? " 
 
 At the same moment he heard another sound that 
 made him jump to his feet. It was a very low sound, 
 but in that nocturnal silence which gives distinctness 
 to the faintest noises, Woburn knew at once that he 
 had heard the click of a pistol. 
 
 " What is she up to now ? " he asked himself, with 
 his eye on the door between the two rooms ; and the 
 brightly-lit keyhole seemed to reply with a glance of 
 intelligence. He turned out the gas and crept to the 
 door, pressing his eye to the illuminated circle. 
 
 After a moment or two of adjustment, during which 
 he seemed to himself to be breathing like a steam- 
 engine, he discerned a room like his own, with the 
 same dressing-table flanked by gas-fixtures, and the 
 same table in the window. This table was directly in 
 his line of vision ; and beside it stood a woman with a 
 small revolver in her hands. The lights being behind 
 her, Woburn could only infer her youth from her slen- 
 der silhouette and the nimbus of fair hair defining her 
 head. Her dress seemed dark and simple, and on a 
 chair under one of the gas-jets lay a jacket edged 
 with cheap fur and a small travelling-bag. He could 
 not see the other end of the room, but something in 
 her manner told him that she was alone. At length 
 she put the revolver down and took up a letter that 
 [ 204 ] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 lay on the table. She drew the letter from its envelope 
 and read it over two or three times ; then she put it 
 back, sealing the envelope, and placing it conspicu- 
 ously against the mirror of the dressing-table. 
 
 There was so grave a significance in this dumb-show 
 that Woburn felt sure that her next act would be to 
 return to the table and take up the revolver; but he 
 had not reckoned on the vanity of woman. After put- 
 ting the letter in place she still lingered at the mirror, 
 standing a little sideways, so that he could now see 
 her face, which was distinctly pretty, but of a small 
 and unelastic mould, inadequate to the expression of 
 the larger emotions. For some moments she continued 
 to study herself with the expression of a child looking 
 at a playmate who has been scolded ; then she turned 
 to the table and lifted the revolver to her forehead. 
 
 A sudden crash made her arm drop, and sent her 
 darting backward to the opposite side of the room. 
 Woburn had broken down the door, and stood torn 
 and breathless in the breach. 
 
 " Oh ! " she gasped, pressing closer to the wall. 
 
 "Don't be frightened," he said; "I saw what you 
 were going to do and I had to stop you." 
 
 She looked at him for a moment in silence, and he 
 saw the terrified flutter of her breast ; then she said, 
 " No one can stop me for long. And besides, what right 
 have you 
 
 [205] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 "Every one has the right to prevent a crime/' he 
 returned, the sound of the last word sending the blood 
 to his forehead. 
 
 " I deny it," she said passionately. " Every one who 
 has tried to live and failed has the right to die." 
 
 "Failed in what?" 
 
 " In everything ! " she replied. They stood looking 
 at each other in silence. 
 
 At length he advanced a few steps. 
 
 " You 've no right to say you Ve failed/' he said, 
 * while you have breath to try again." He drew the 
 revolver from her hand. 
 
 " Try again try again ? I tell you I 've tried seventy 
 times seven !" 
 
 "What have you tried?" 
 
 She looked at him with a certain dignity. 
 
 " I don't know," she said, " that you 've any right to 
 question me or to be in this room at all " and sud- 
 denly she burst into tears. 
 
 The discrepancy between her words and action 
 struck the chord which, in a man's heart, always 
 responds to the touch of feminine unreason. She 
 dropped into the nearest chair, hiding her face in 
 her hands, while Woburn watched the course of her 
 weeping. 
 
 At last she lifted her head, looking up between 
 drenched lashes. 
 
 [206] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 " Please go away/' she said in childish entreaty. 
 
 " How can I ? " he returned. " It 's impossible that 
 I should leave you in this state. Trust me let me 
 help you. Tell me what has gone wrong, and let's 
 see if there 's no other way out of it." 
 
 Woburn had a voice full of sensitive inflections, and 
 it was now trembling with profoundest pity. Its note 
 seemed to reassure the girl, for she said, with a begin- 
 ning of confidence in her own tones, " But I don't even 
 know who you are." 
 
 Woburn was silent : the words startled him. He 
 moved nearer to her and went on in the same quiet- 
 ing tone. 
 
 " I am a man who has suffered enough to want to 
 help others. I don't want to know any more about you 
 than will enable me to do what I can for you. I 've 
 probably seen more of life than you have, and if you 're 
 willing to tell me your troubles perhaps together we 
 may find a way out of them." 
 
 She dried her eyes and glanced at the revolver. 
 
 "That's the only way out," she said. 
 
 " How do you know ? Are you sure you Ve tried 
 every other ? " 
 
 " Perfectly sure. I 've written and written, and hum- 
 bled myself like a slave before him, and she won't 
 even let him answer my letters. Oh, but you don't un- 
 derstand" she broke off with a renewal of weeping. 
 [207] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 " I begin tp understand you 're sorry for something 
 you 've done ? " 
 
 "Oh, I've never denied that I 've never denied 
 that I was wicked." 
 
 "And you want the forgiveness of some one you 
 care about ? " 
 
 "My husband," she whispered. 
 
 " You Ve done something to displease your hus- 
 band?" 
 
 " To displease him ? I ran away with another man ! " 
 There was a dismal exultation in her tone, as though 
 she were paying Woburn off for having underrated 
 her offense. 
 
 She had certainly surprised him ; at worst he had 
 expected a quarrel over a rival, with a possible com- 
 plication of mother-in-law. He wondered how such 
 helpless little feet could have taken so bold a step ; 
 then he remembered that there is no audacity like 
 that of weakness. 
 
 He was wondering how to lead her to eompleter 
 avowal when she added forlornly, " You see there 's 
 nothing else to do." 
 
 Woburn took a turn in the room. It was certainly 
 a narrower strait than he had foreseen, and he hardly 
 knew how to answer; but the first flow of confession 
 had eased her, and she went on without farther per- 
 suasion. 
 
 [ 208 ] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 " I don't know how I could ever have done it ; I 
 must have been downright crazy. I did n't care much 
 for Joe when I married him he wasn't exactly hand- 
 some, and girls think such a lot of that. But he just 
 laid down and worshipped me, and I was getting fond 
 of him in a way ; only the life was so dull. I 'd been 
 used to a big city I come from Detroit and Hinks- 
 ville is such a poky little place ; that 's where we lived ; 
 Joe is telegraph-operator on the railroad there. He'd 
 have been in a much bigger place now, if he hadn't 
 well, after all, he behaved perfectly splendidly about 
 that. 
 
 " I really was getting fond of him, and I believe I 
 should have realized in time how good and noble and 
 unselfish he was, if his mother had n't been always sit- 
 ting there and everlastingly telling me so. We learned 
 in school about the Athenians hating some man who 
 was always called just, and that 's the way I felt about 
 Joe. Whenever I did anything that wasn't quite right 
 his mother would say how differently Joe would have 
 done it. And she was forever telling me that Joe did n't 
 approve of this and that and the other. When we were 
 alone he approved of everything, but when his mother 
 was round he'd sit quiet and let her say he didn't! 
 I knew he*d let me have my way afterwards, but 
 somehow that didn't prevent my getting mad at the 
 time. 
 
 [ 209 ] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 "And then the evenings were so long, with Joe 
 away, and Mrs. Glenn (that 's his mother) sitting there 
 like an image knitting socks for the heathen. The 
 only caller we ever had was the Baptist minister, and 
 he never took any more notice of me than if I 'd been 
 a piece of furniture. I believe he was afraid to before 
 Mrs. Glenn." 
 
 She paused breathlessly, and the tears in her eyes 
 were now of anger. 
 
 "Well?" said Woburn gently. 
 
 "Well then Arthur Hackett came along; he was 
 travelling for a big publishing firm in Philadelphia. He 
 was awfully handsome and as clever and sarcastic as 
 anything. He used to lend me lots of novels and maga- 
 zines, and tell me all about society life in New York. 
 All the girls were after him, and Alice Sprague, whose 
 father is the richest man in Hinksville, fell desperately 
 in love with him and carried on like a fool ; but he 
 would n't take any notice of her. He never looked at 
 anybody but me." Her face lit up with a reminiscent 
 smile, and then clouded again. " I hate him now," she 
 exclaimed, with a change of tone that startled Woburn. 
 "I'd like to kill him but he's killed me instead. 
 
 " Well, he bewitched me so I did n't know what I 
 
 was doing ; I was like somebody in a trance. When he 
 
 was n't there I did n't want to speak to anybody ; I 
 
 used to lie in bed half the day just to get away from 
 
 [210 ] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 folks ; I hated Joe and Hinksville and everything else. 
 When he came back the days went like a flash ; we 
 were together nearly all the time. I knew Joe's mother 
 was spying on us, but I didn't care. And at last it 
 seemed as if I could n't let him go away again without 
 me ; so one evening he stopped at the back gate in a 
 buggy, and we drove off together and caught the east- 
 ern express at River Bend. He promised to bring me to 
 New York." She paused, and then added scornfully, 
 "He didn't even do that!" 
 
 Woburn had returned to his seat and was watching 
 her attentively. It was curious to note how her passion 
 was spending itself in words ; he saw that she would 
 never kill herself while she had any one to talk to. 
 
 "That was five months ago," she continued, "and 
 we travelled all through the southern states, and 
 stayed a little while near Philadelphia, where his 
 business is. He did things real stylishly at first. Then 
 he was sent to Albany, and we stayed a week at the 
 Delavan House. One afternoon I went out to do some 
 shopping, and when I came back he was gone. He had 
 taken his trunk with him, and had n't left any address ; 
 but in my travelling-bag I found a fifty-dollar bill, 
 with a slip of paper on which he had written, 'No 
 use coming after me ; I 'm married.' We 'd been to- 
 gether less than four months, and I never saw him 
 again. 
 
 [211 ] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 " At first I -could n't believe it. I stayed on, thinking 
 it was a joke or that he 'd feel sorry for me and come 
 back. But he never came and never wrote me a line. 
 Then I began to hate him, and to see what a wicked 
 fool I'd been to leave Joe. I was so lonesome I 
 thought I 'd go crazy. And I kept thinking how good 
 and patient Joe had been, and how badly I 'd used 
 him, and how lovely it would be to be back in the 
 little parlor at Hinksville, even with Mrs. Glenn and 
 the minister talking about free-will and predestination. 
 So at last I wrote to Joe. I wrote him the humblest 
 letters you ever read, one after another ; but I never 
 got any answer. 
 
 " Finally I found I 'd spent all my money, so I sold 
 my watch and my rings Joe gave me a lovely tur- 
 quoise ring when we were married and came to New 
 York. I felt ashamed to stay alone any longer in Al- 
 bany ; I was afraid that some of Arthur's friends, who 
 had met me with him on the road, might come there 
 and recognize me. After I got here I wrote to Susy 
 Price, a great friend of mine who lives at Hinksville, 
 and she answered at once, and told me just what I had 
 expected that Joe was ready to forgive me and crazy 
 to have me back, but that his mother wouldn't let 
 him stir a step or write me a line, and that she and 
 the minister were at him all day long, telling him how 
 bad I was and what a sin it would be to forgive me. 
 [212 ] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 I got Susy's letter two or three days ago, and after 
 that I saw it was no use writing to Joe. He '11 never 
 dare go against his mother and she watches him like 
 a cat. I suppose I deserve it but he might have given 
 me another chance ! I know he would if he could only 
 see me." 
 
 Her voice had dropped from anger to lamentation, 
 and her tears again overflowed. 
 
 Woburn looked at her with the pity one feels for a 
 child who is suddenly confronted with the result of 
 some unpremeditated naughtiness. 
 
 " But why not go back to Hinksville," he suggested, 
 " if your husband is ready to forgive you ? You could 
 go to your friend's house, and once your husband knows 
 you are there you can easily persuade him to see you." 
 
 " Perhaps I could Susy thinks I could. But I can't 
 go back; I haven't got a cent left." 
 
 " But surely you can borrow money ? Can't you ask 
 your friend to forward you the amount of your fare ? " 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "Susy ain't well off; she couldn't raise five dollars, 
 and it costs twenty-five to get back to Hinksville. And 
 besides, what would become of me while I waited for 
 the money ? They '11 turn me out of here to-morrow ; 
 I haven't paid my last week's board, and I haven't 
 got anything to give them; my bag's empty; I've 
 pawned everything." 
 
 [213] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 " And don't you know any one here who would lend 
 you the money ? " 
 
 " No ; not a soul. At least I do know one gentleman ; 
 he 's a friend of Arthur's, a Mr. Devine ; he was stay- 
 ing at Rochester when we were there. I met him in 
 the street the other day, and I did n't mean to speak 
 to him, but he came up to me, and said he knew all 
 about Arthur and how meanly he had behaved, and 
 he wanted to know if he couldn't help me I suppose 
 he saw I was in trouble. He tried to persuade me to 
 go and stay with his aunt, who has a lovely house 
 right round here in Twenty-fourth Street ; he must 
 be very rich, for he offered to lend me as much 
 money as I wanted." 
 
 "You didn't take it?" 
 
 " No," she returned ; " 1 daresay he meant to be 
 kind, but I did n't care to be beholden to any friend 
 of Arthur's. He came here again yesterday, but I 
 wouldn't see him, so he left a note giving me his 
 aunt's address and saying she 'd have a room ready 
 for me at any time." 
 
 There was a long silence ; she had dried her tears 
 and sat looking at Woburn with eyes full of helpless 
 reliance. 
 
 "Well," he said at length, "you did right not to 
 take that man's money ; but this is n't the only alter- 
 native," he added, pointing to the revolver. 
 [214] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 " I don't know any other," she answered wearily. 
 " I 'm not smart enough to get employment ; I can't 
 make dresses or do type-writing, or any of the useful 
 things they teach girls now ; and besides, even if I 
 could get work I couldn't stand the loneliness. I can 
 never hold my head up again I can't bear the dis- 
 grace. If I can't go back to Joe I 'd rather be dead." 
 
 " And if you go back to Joe it will be all right ? " 
 Woburn suggested with a smile. 
 
 " Oh," she cried, her whole face alight, "if I could 
 only go back to Joe ! " 
 
 They were both silent again ; Woburn sat with his 
 hands in his pockets gazing at the floor. At length 
 his silence seemed to rouse her to the unwontedness 
 of the situation, and she rose from her seat, saying in 
 a more constrained tone, " I don't know why I 've told 
 you all this." 
 
 "Because you believed that I would help you," 
 Woburn answered, rising also ; " and you were right ; 
 I 'm going to send you home." 
 
 She colored vividly. 
 
 " You told me I was right not to take Mr. Devine's 
 money," she faltered. 
 
 "Yes," he answered, "but did Mr. Devine want to 
 send you home ? " 
 
 "He wanted me to wait at his aunt's a little while 
 first and then write to Joe again." 
 [215] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 "I don't I want you to start to-morrow morning; 
 this morning, I mean. I '11 take you to the station and 
 buy your ticket, and your husband can send me back 
 the money." 
 
 "Oh, I can't I can't you mustn't " she stam- 
 mered, reddening and paling. "Besides, they'll never 
 let me leave here without paying." 
 
 "How much do you owe?" 
 
 "Fourteen dollars." 
 
 " Very well ; I '11 pay that for you ; you can leave 
 me your revolver as a pledge. But you must start by 
 the first train ; have you any idea at what time it 
 leaves the Grand Central?" 
 
 "I think there's one at eight." 
 
 He glanced at his watch. 
 
 " In less than two hours, then ; it 's after six now." 
 
 She stood before him with fascinated eyes. 
 
 "You must have a very strong will," she said. 
 "When you talk like that you make me feel as if I 
 had to do everything you say." 
 
 "Well, you must," said Woburn lightly. "Man was 
 made to be obeyed." 
 
 " Oh, you 're not like other men," she returned ; " I 
 never heard a voice like yours ; it 's so strong and kind. 
 You must be a very good man ; you remind me of Joe ; 
 I 'm sure you 've got just such a nature ; and Joe is the 
 best man I 've ever seen." 
 
 [216] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 Woburn made no reply, and she rambled on, with 
 little pauses and fresh bursts of confidence. 
 
 " Joe 's a real hero, you know ; he did the most 
 splendid thing you ever heard of. I think I began to 
 tell you about it, but I did n't finish. I '11 tell you now. 
 It happened just after we were married ; I was mad 
 with him at the time, I 'm afraid, but now I see how 
 splendid he was. He'd been telegraph operator at 
 Hinksville for four years and was hoping that he 'd 
 get promoted to a bigger place ; but he was afraid to 
 ask for a raise. Well, I was very sick with a bad attack 
 of pneumonia and one night the doctor said he was n't 
 sure whether he could pull me through. When they 
 sent word to Joe at the telegraph office he could n't 
 stand being away from me another minute. There was 
 a poor consumptive boy always hanging round the 
 station ; Joe had taught him how to operate, just to 
 help him along ; so he left him in the office and tore 
 home for half an hour, knowing he could get back 
 before the eastern express came along. 
 
 " He had n' t been gone five minutes when a freight- 
 train ran off the rails about a mile up the track. It was 
 a very still night, and the boy heard the smash and 
 shouting, and knew something had happened. He 
 couldn't tell what it was, but the minute he heard 
 it he sent a message over the wires like a flash, and 
 caught the eastern express just as it was pulling out 
 [217] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 of the station above Hinksville. If he'd hesitated a 
 second,, or made any mistake, the express would have 
 come on, and the loss of life would have been fearful. 
 The next day the Hinksville papers were full of Op- 
 erator Glenn's presence of mind; they all said he'd 
 be promoted. That was early in November and Joe 
 didn't hear anything from the company till the first 
 of January. Meanwhile the boy had gone home to his 
 father's farm out in the country, and before Christmas 
 he was dead. Well, on New Year's day Joe got a notice 
 from the company saying that his pay was to be raised, 
 and that he was to be promoted to a big junction near 
 Detroit, in recognition of his presence of mind in stop- 
 ping the eastern express. It was just what we 'd both 
 been pining for and I was nearly wild with joy ; but I 
 noticed Joe didn't say much. He just telegraphed for 
 leave, and the next day he went right up to Detroit 
 and told the directors there what had really happened. 
 When he came back he told us they 'd suspended him ; 
 I cried every night for a week, and even his mother 
 said he was a fool. After that we just lived on at 
 Hinksville, and six months later the company took 
 him back ; but I don 't suppose they '11 ever promote 
 him now." 
 
 Her voice again trembled with facile emotion. 
 
 (t Was n't it beautiful of him ? Ain't he a real hero ? " 
 she said. " And I 'm sure you 'd behave just like him ; 
 [218] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 you 'd be just as gentle about little things, and you 'd 
 never move an inch about big ones. You 'd never do 
 a mean action, but you 'd be sorry for people who did ; 
 I can see it in your face ; that 's why I trusted you 
 right off." 
 
 Woburn's eyes were fixed on the window ; he hardly 
 seemed to hear her. At length he walked across the 
 room and pulled up the shade. The electric lights were 
 dissolving in the gray alembic of the dawn. A milk- 
 cart rattled down the street and, like a witch return- 
 ing late from the Sabbath, a stray cat whisked into an 
 area. So rose the appointed day. 
 
 Woburn turned back, drawing from his pocket the 
 roll of bills which he had thrust there with so different 
 a purpose. He counted them out, and handed her fif- 
 teen dollars. 
 
 " That will pay for your board, including your break- 
 fast this morning," he said. " We '11 breakfast together 
 presently if you like ; and meanwhile suppose we sit 
 down and watch the sunrise. I have n't seen it for years." 
 
 He pushed two chairs toward the window, and they 
 sat down side by side. The light came gradually, with 
 the icy reluctance of winter ; at last a red disk pushed 
 itself above the opposite house-tops and a long cold 
 gleam slanted across their window. They did not talk 
 much ; there was a silencing awe in the spectacle. 
 
 Presently Woburn rose and looked again at his watch. 
 [219 ] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 "I must go and cover up my dress-coat/' he said, 
 "and you had better put on your hat and jacket. We 
 shall have to be starting in half an hour." 
 
 As he turned away she laid her hand on his arm. 
 
 "You haven't even told me your name," she said. 
 
 ee No," he answered ; " but if you get safely back to 
 Joe you can call me Providence." 
 
 " But how am I to send you the money ? " 
 
 "Oh well, I'll write you a line in a day or two 
 and give you my address ; I don't know myself what 
 it will be ; I 'm a wanderer on the face of the earth." 
 
 " But you must have my name if you mean to write 
 to me." 
 
 "Well, what is your name?" 
 
 "Ruby Glenn. And I think I almost think you 
 might send the letter right to Joe's send it to the 
 Hinksville station." 
 
 "Very well." 
 
 "You promise?" 
 
 "Of course I promise." 
 
 He went back into his room, thinking how appropri- 
 ate it was that she should have an absurd name like 
 Ruby. As he re-entered the room, where the gas sick- 
 ened in the daylight, it seemed to him that he was 
 returning to some forgotten land ; he had passed, with 
 the last few hours, into a wholly new phase of con- 
 sciousness. He put on his fur coat, turning up the 
 [ 220 ] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 collar and crossing the lapels to hide his white tie. 
 Then he put his cigar-case in his pocket, turned out 
 the gas, and, picking up his hat and stick, walked 
 back through the open doorway. 
 
 Ruby Glenn had obediently prepared herself for 
 departure and was standing before the mirror, patting 
 her curls into place. Her eyes were still red, but she 
 had the happy look of a child that has outslept its 
 grief. On the floor he noticed the tattered fragments 
 of the letter which, a few hours earlier, he had seen 
 her place before the mirror. 
 
 "Shall we go down now?" he asked. 
 
 " Very well," she assented ; then, with a quick move- 
 ment, she stepped close to him, and putting her hands 
 on his shoulders lifted her face to his. 
 
 " I believe you 're the best man I ever knew," she 
 said, "the very best except Joe." 
 
 She drew back blushing deeply, and unlocked the door 
 which led into the passage-way. Woburn picked up her 
 bag, which she had forgotten, and followed her out of the 
 room. They passed a frowzy chambermaid, who stared 
 at them with a yawn. Before the doors the row of boots 
 still waited ; there was a faint new aroma of coffee 
 mingling with the smell of vanished dinners, and a fresh 
 blast of heat had begun to tingle through the radiators. 
 
 In the unventilated coffee-room they found a waiter 
 who had the melancholy air of being the last survivor 
 [221 ] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 of an exterminated race, and who reluctantly brought 
 them some tea made with water which had not boiled, 
 and a supply of stale rolls and staler butter. On this 
 meagre diet they fared in silence, Woburn occasionally 
 glancing at his watch ; at length he rose, telling his 
 companion to go and pay her bill while he called a 
 hansom. After all, there was no use in economizing his 
 remaining dollars. 
 
 In a few moments she joined him under the por- 
 tico of the hotel. The hansom stood waiting and he 
 sprang in after her, calling to the driver to take them 
 to the Forty-second Street station. 
 
 When they reached the station he found a seat for 
 her and went to buy her ticket. There were several 
 people ahead of him at the window, and when he had 
 bought the ticket he found that it was time to put her 
 in the train. She rose in answer to his glance, and to- 
 gether they walked down the long platform in the 
 murky chill of the roofed-in air. He followed her into 
 the railway carriage, making sure that she had her bag, 
 and that the ticket was safe inside it ; then he held out 
 his hand, in its pearl-coloured evening glove : he felt 
 that the people in the other seats were staring at them. 
 
 "Good-bye," he said. 
 
 " Good-bye," she answered, flushing gratefully. " I '11 
 never forget never. And you will write, won't you? 
 Promise ! " 
 
 [222] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 te Of course, of course," he said, hastening from the 
 carriage. 
 
 He retraced his way along the platform, passed 
 through the dismal waiting-room and stepped out 
 into the early sunshine. On the sidewalk outside the 
 station he hesitated awhile ; then he strolled slowly 
 down Forty-second Street and, skirting the melancholy 
 flank of the Reservoir, walked across Bryant Park. 
 Finally he sat down on one of the benches near the 
 Sixth Avenue and lit a cigar. 
 
 The signs of life were multiplying around him ; he 
 watched the cars roll by with their increasing freight 
 of dingy toilers, the shop-girls hurrying to their work, 
 the children trudging schoolward, their small vague 
 noses red with cold, their satchels clasped in woollen- 
 gloved hands. There is nothing very imposing in the 
 first stirring of a great city's activities ; it is a slow 
 reluctant process, like the waking of a heavy sleeper ; 
 but to Woburn's mood the sight of that obscure re- 
 newal of humble duties was more moving than the 
 spectacle of an army with banners. 
 
 He sat for a long time, smoking the last cigar in 
 his case, and murmuring to himself a line from Hamlet 
 the saddest, he thought, in the play 
 
 For every man hath business and desire. 
 
 Suddenly an unpremeditated movement made him 
 [ 223 ] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 feel the pressure of Ruby Glenn's revolver in his 
 pocket ; it was like a devil's touch on his arm, and he 
 sprang up hastily. In his other pocket there were just 
 four dollars and fifty cents; but that didn't matter 
 now. He had no thought of flight. 
 
 For a few minutes he loitered vaguely about the 
 park ; then the cold drove him on again, and with the 
 rapidity born of a sudden resolve he began to walk 
 down the Fifth Avenue towards his lodgings. He 
 brushed past a maid -servant who was washing the 
 vestibule and ran up stairs to his room. A fire was 
 burning in the grate and his books and photographs 
 greeted him cheerfully from the walls ; the tranquil 
 air of the whole room seemed to take it for granted 
 that he meant to have his bath and breakfast and 
 go down town as usual. 
 
 He threw off his coat and pulled the revolver out of 
 his pocket; for some moments he held it curiously in 
 his hand, bending over to examine it as Ruby Glenn had 
 done ; then he laid it in the top drawer of a small cabi- 
 net, and locking the drawer threw the key into the fire. 
 
 After that he went quietly about the usual business 
 of his toilet. In taking off his dress-coat he noticed 
 the Legion of Honor which Miss Talcott had given 
 him at the ball. He pulled it out of his buttonhole 
 and tossed it into the fire-place. When he had fin- 
 ished dressing he saw with surprise that it was nearly 
 [224] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 ten o'clock. Ruby Glenn was already two hours nearer 
 home. 
 
 Woburn stood looking about the room of which he 
 had thought to take final leave the night before ; 
 among the ashes beneath the grate he caught sight 
 of a little white heap which symbolized to his fancy 
 the remains of his brief correspondence with Miss 
 Talcott. He roused himself from this unseasonable 
 musing and with a final glance at the familiar setting 
 of his past, turned to face the future which the last 
 hours had prepared for him. 
 
 He went down stairs and stepped out of doors, has- 
 tening down the street towards Broadway as though 
 he were late for an appointment. Every now and then 
 he encountered an acquaintance, whom he greeted 
 with a nod and smile ; he carried his head high, 
 and shunned no man's recognition. 
 
 At length he reached the doors of a tall granite 
 building honey-combed with windows. He mounted 
 the steps of the portico, and passing through the 
 double doors of plate-glass, crossed a vestibule floored 
 with mosaic to another glass door on which was em- 
 blazoned the name of the firm. 
 
 This door he also opened, entering a large room with 
 wainscotted subdivisions, behind which appeared the 
 stooping shoulders of a row of clerks. 
 
 As Woburn crossed the threshold a gray-haired man 
 [225] 
 
A CUP OF COLD WATER 
 
 emerged from an inner office at the opposite end of 
 the room. 
 
 At sight of Woburn he stopped short. 
 
 " Mr. Woburn ! " he exclaimed ; then he stepped 
 nearer and added in a low tone : " I was requested to 
 tell you when you came that the members of the firm 
 are waiting ; will you step into the private office ? " 
 
 [226] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 IT was at Mrs. Mellish's, one Sunday afternoon last 
 spring. We were talking over George Lillo's por- 
 traits a collection of them was being shown at 
 Durand-Ruel's and a pretty woman had emphatically 
 declared : 
 
 " Nothing on earth would induce me to sit to him ! " 
 
 There was a chorus of interrogations. 
 
 "Oh, because he makes people look so horrid; 
 the way one looks on board ship, or early in the 
 morning, or when one's hair is out of curl and one 
 knows it. I 'd so much rather be done by Mr. Cum- 
 berton ! " 
 
 Little Cumberton, the fashionable purveyor of rose- 
 water pastels, stroked his moustache to hide a con- 
 scious smile. 
 
 "Lillo is a genius that we must all admit," he said 
 indulgently, as though condoning a friend's weakness ; 
 "but he has an unfortunate temperament. He has 
 been denied the gift so precious to an artist of 
 perceiving the ideal. He sees only the defects of his 
 sitters ; one might almost fancy that he takes a morbid 
 pleasure in exaggerating their weak points, in painting 
 them on their worst days ; but I honestly believe he 
 can't help himself. His peculiar limitations prevent his 
 [ 229 ] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 seeing anything but the most prosaic side of human 
 
 nature 
 
 <e< A primrose by the river s brim 
 
 A yellow primrose is to him, 
 And it is nothing more. 1 " 
 
 Cumberton looked round to surprise an order in the 
 eye of the lady whose sentiments he had so deftly 
 interpreted, but poetry always made her uncomforta- 
 ble, and her nomadic attention had strayed to other 
 topics. His glance was tripped up by Mrs. Mellish. 
 
 "Limitations? But, my dear man, it's because he 
 hasn't any limitations, because he doesn't wear the 
 portrait-painter's conventional blinders, that we 're all 
 so afraid of being painted by him. It 's not because he 
 sees only one aspect of his sitters, it's because he 
 selects the real, the typical one, as instinctively as a 
 detective collars a pick-pocket in a crowd. If there 's 
 nothing to paint no real person he paints nothing; 
 look at the sumptuous emptiness of his portrait of 
 Mrs. Guy Awdrey " - (" Why," the pretty woman 
 perplexedly interjected, "that's the only nice picture 
 he ever did ! ") " If there 's one positive trait in a nega- 
 tive whole he brings it out in spite of himself; if it 
 is n't a nice trait, so much the worse for the sitter ; it 
 is n't Lillo's fault : he 's no more to blame than a mir- 
 ror. Your other painters do the surface he does the 
 depths ; they paint the ripples on the pond, he drags 
 [ 230 ] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 the bottom. He makes flesh seem as fortuitous as clothes. 
 When I look at his portraits of fine ladies in pearls and 
 velvet I seem to see a little naked cowering wisp of a 
 soul sitting beside the big splendid body, like a poor 
 relation in the darkest corner of an opera-box. But look 
 at his pictures of really great people how great they 
 are ! There 's plenty of ideal there. Take his Professor 
 Clyde ; how clearly the man's history is written in those 
 broad steady strokes of the brush : the hard work, the 
 endless patience, the fearless imagination of the great 
 savant ! Or the picture of Mr. Domfrey the man who 
 has felt beauty without having the power to create it. 
 The very brush-work expresses the difference between 
 the two ; the crowding of nervous tentative lines, the 
 subtler gradations of color, somehow convey a sugges- 
 tion of dilettantism. You feel what a delicate instru- 
 ment the man is, how every sense has been tuned to 
 the finest responsiveness." Mrs. Mellish paused, blush- 
 ing a little at the echo of her own eloquence. " My 
 advice is, don't let George Lillo paint you if you don't 
 want to be found out or to find yourself out. That's 
 why I Ve never let him do me ; I 'm waiting for the 
 day of judgment," she ended with a laugh. 
 
 Every one but the pretty woman, whose eyes be- 
 trayed a quivering impatience to discuss clothes, had 
 listened attentively to Mrs. Mellish. Lillo's presence 
 in New York he had come over from Paris for the 
 [231 ] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 first time in twelve years, to arrange the exhibition of 
 his pictures gave to the analysis of his methods as 
 personal a flavor as though one had been furtively dis- 
 secting his domestic relations. The analogy, indeed, is 
 not unapt ; for in Lillo's curiously detached existence 
 it is difficult to figure any closer tie than that which 
 unites him to his pictures. In this light, Mrs. Mellish's 
 flushed harangue seemed not unfitted to the triviali- 
 ties of the tea hour, and some one almost at once car- 
 ried on the argument by saying : " But according to 
 your theory that the significance of his work depends 
 on the significance of the sitter his portrait of Vard 
 ought to be a master-piece ; and it 's his biggest fail- 
 ure." 
 
 Alonzo Yard's suicide he killed himself, strangely 
 enough, the day that Lillo's pictures were first shown 
 had made his portrait the chief feature of the ex- 
 hibition. It had been painted ten or twelve years earl- 
 ier, when the terrible " Boss " was at the height of his 
 power ; and if ever man presented a type to stimulate 
 such insight as Lillo's, that man was Vard ; yet the 
 portrait was a failure. It was magnificently composed ; 
 the technique was dazzling ; but the face had been 
 well, expurgated. It was Vard as Cumberton might 
 have painted him a common man trying to look at 
 ease in a good coat. The picture had never before been 
 exhibited, and there was a general outcry of disappoint- 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 ment. It wasn't only the critics and the artists who 
 grumbled. Even the big public, which had gaped and 
 shuddered at Vard, revelling in his genial villany, and 
 enjoying in his death that succumbing to divine wrath 
 which, as a spectacle, is next best to its successful de- 
 fiance even the public felt itself defrauded. What had 
 the painter done with their hero ? Where was the big 
 sneering domineering face that figured so convin- 
 cingly in political cartoons and patent-medicine adver- 
 tisements, on cigar-boxes and electioneering posters? 
 They had admired the man for looking his part so 
 boldly; for showing the undisguised blackguard in 
 every line of his coarse body and cruel face ; the 
 pseudo-gentleman of Lillo's picture was a poor thing 
 compared to the real Vard. It had been vaguely ex- 
 pected that the great boss's portrait would have the 
 zest of an incriminating document, the scandalous at- 
 traction of secret memoirs ; and instead, it was as in- 
 sipid as an obituary. It was as though the artist had 
 been in league with his sitter, had pledged himself to 
 oppose to the lust for post-mortem "revelations" an 
 impassable blank wall of negation. The public was 
 resentful, the critics were aggrieved. Even Mrs. Mel- 
 lish had to lay down her arms. 
 
 " Yes, the portrait of Vard is a failure," she admitted, 
 " and I 've never known why. If he 'd been an obscure 
 elusive type of villain, one could understand Lillo's 
 [ 233 ] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 missing the mark for once ; but with that face from 
 the pit!" 
 
 She turned at the announcement of a name which 
 our discussion had drowned, and found herself shak- 
 ing hands with Lillo. 
 
 The pretty woman started and put her hands to her 
 curls ; Cumberton dropped a condescending eyelid (he 
 never classed himself by recognizing degrees in the 
 profession), and Mrs. Mellish, cheerfully aware that she 
 had been overheard, said, as she made room for Lillo 
 
 "I wish you'd explain it." 
 
 Lillo smoothed his beard and waited for a cup of 
 tea. Then, " Would there be any failures," he said, " if 
 one could explain them ? " 
 
 " Ah, in some cases I can imagine it's impossible to 
 seize the type or to say why one has missed it. Some 
 people are like daguerreotypes ; in certain lights one 
 can't see them at all. But surely Vard was obvious 
 enough. What I want to know is, what became of 
 him? What did you do with him? How did you man- 
 age to shuffle him out of sight ? " 
 
 " It was much easier than you think. I simply missed 
 an opportunity " 
 
 "That a sign-painter would have seen!" 
 
 "Very likely. In fighting shy of the obvious one 
 may miss the significant " 
 
 " And when I got back from Paris," the pretty 
 [234 J 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 woman was heard to wail, " I found all the women 
 here were wearing the very models I 'd brought home 
 with me ! " 
 
 Mrs. Mellish, as became a vigilant hostess, got up 
 and shuffled her guests ; and the question of Yard's 
 portrait was dropped. 
 
 I left the house with Lillo ; and on the way down 
 Fifth Avenue, after one of his long silences, he sud- 
 denly asked : 
 
 "Is that what is generally said of my picture of 
 Vard? I don't mean in the newspapers, but by the 
 fellows who know?" 
 
 I said it was. 
 
 He drew a deep breath. "Well," he said, "it's 
 good to know that when one tries to fail one can 
 make such a complete success of it." 
 
 "Tries to fail?" 
 
 " Well, no ; that 's not quite it, either ; I did n't 
 want to make a failure of Yard's picture, but I did so 
 deliberately, with my eyes open, all the same. It was 
 what one might call a lucid failure." 
 
 "But why?" 
 
 " The why of it is rather complicated. I '11 tell you 
 some time " He hesitated. "Come and dine with me 
 at the club by and by, and I '11 tell you afterwards. 
 It 's a nice morsel for a psychologist." 
 
 At dinner he said little ; but I did n't mind that, I 
 [235] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 had known him for years, and had always found some- 
 thing soothing and companionable in his long absten- 
 tions from speech. His silence was never unsocial ; it 
 was bland as a natural hush ; one felt one's self in- 
 cluded in it, not left out. He stroked his beard and 
 gazed absently at me ; and when we had finished our 
 coffee and liqueurs we strolled down to his studio. 
 
 At the studio which was less draped, less posed, 
 less consciously "artistic" than those of the smaller 
 men he handed me a cigar, and fell to smoking be- 
 fore the fire. When he began to talk it was of indif- 
 ferent matters, and I had dismissed the hope of 
 hearing more of Yard's portrait, when my eye lit on 
 a photograph of the picture. I walked across the 
 room to look at it, and Lillo presently followed with 
 a light. 
 
 "It certainly is a complete disguise," he muttered 
 over my shoulder; then he turned away and stooped 
 to a big portfolio propped against the wall. 
 
 " Did you ever know Miss Vard ? " he asked, with 
 his head in the portfolio ; and without waiting for my 
 answer he handed me a crayon sketch of a girl's profile. 
 
 I had never seen a crayon of Lillo' s, and I lost sight 
 of the sitter's personality in the interest aroused by 
 this new aspect of the master's complex genius. The 
 few lines faint, yet how decisive! flowered out of 
 the rough paper with the lightness of opening petals. 
 [236] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 It was a mere hint of a picture, but vivid as some word 
 that wakens long reverberations in the memory. 
 
 I felt Lillo at my shoulder again. 
 
 " You knew her, I suppose ? " 
 
 I had to stop and think. Why, of course I 'd known 
 her: a silent handsome girl, showy yet ineffective, 
 whom I had seen without seeing the winter that 
 society had capitulated to Vard. Still looking at the 
 crayon, I tried to trace some connection between the 
 Miss Vard I recalled and the grave young seraph of 
 Lillo's sketch. Had the Yards bewitched him? By 
 what masterstroke of suggestion had he been beguiled 
 into drawing the terrible father as a barber's block, the 
 commonplace daughter as this memorable creature? 
 
 "You don't remember much about her? No, I sup- 
 pose not. She was a quiet girl and nobody noticed her 
 much, even when " he paused with a smile "you 
 were all asking Vard to dine." 
 
 I winced. Yes, it was true we had all asked Vard 
 to dine. It was some comfort to think that fate had 
 made him expiate our weakness. 
 
 Lillo put the sketch on the mantel-shelf and drew 
 his arm-chair to the fire. 
 
 " It 's cold to-night. Take another cigar, old man ; 
 and some whiskey? There ought to be a bottle and 
 some glasses in that cupboard behind you . . . help 
 yourself ..." 
 
 [237 ] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 II 
 
 ABOUT Yard's portrait? (he began.) Well, I'll 
 -I~\. tell you. It's a queer story, and most people 
 would n't see anything in it. My enemies might say 
 it was a roundabout way of explaining a failure ; but 
 you know better than that. Mrs. Mellish was right. 
 Between me and Vard there could be no question of 
 failure. The man was made for me I felt that the 
 first time I clapped eyes on him. I could hardly keep 
 from asking him to sit to me on the spot ; but some- 
 how one couldn't ask favors of the fellow. I sat still 
 and prayed he 'd come to me, though ; for I was look- 
 ing for something big for the next Salon. It was twelve 
 years ago the last time I was out here and I was 
 ravenous for an opportunity. I had the feeling do you 
 writer-fellows have it too? that there was something 
 tremendous in me if it could only be got out ; and I 
 felt Vard was the Moses to strike the rock. There were 
 vulgar reasons, too, that made me hunger for a victim. 
 I 'd been grinding on obscurely for a good many years, 
 without gold or glory, and the first thing of mine that 
 had made a noise was my picture of Pepita, exhibited 
 the year before. There 'd been a lot of talk about that, 
 orders were beginning to come in, and I wanted to 
 follow it up with a rousing big thing at the next Salon. 
 Then the critics had been insinuating that I could do 
 [ 238 ] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 only Spanish things I suppose I had overdone the 
 castanet business ; it 's a nursery-disease we all go 
 through and I wanted to show that I had plenty 
 more shot in my locker. Don't you get up every morn- 
 ing meaning to prove you 're equal to Balzac or Thack- 
 eray ? That 's the way I felt then ; only give me a chance, 
 I wanted to shout out to them ; and I saw at once 
 that Vard was my chance. 
 
 I had come over from Paris in the autumn to paint 
 Mrs. Clingsborough, and I met Vard and his daughter 
 at one of the first dinners I went to. After that I could 
 think of nothing but that man's head. What a type ! I 
 raked up all the details of his scandalous history ; and 
 there were enough to fill an encyclopaedia. The papers 
 were full of him just then ; he was mud from head to 
 foot ; it was about the time of the big viaduct steal, and 
 irreproachable citizens were forming ineffectual leagues 
 to put him down. And all the time one kept meeting 
 him at dinners that was the beauty of it! Once I re- 
 member seeing him next to the Bishop's wife ; I 've got 
 a little sketch of that duet somewhere . . . Well, he 
 was simply magnificent, a born ruler; what a splendid 
 condottiere he would have made, in gold armor, with 
 a griffin grinning on his casque ! You remember those 
 drawings of Leonardo's, where the knight's face and 
 the outline of his helmet combine in one monstrous 
 saurian profile? He always reminded me of that . . . 
 [ 239 ] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 But how was I to get at him? One day it occurred 
 to me to try talking to Miss Vard. She was a monosyl- 
 labic person, who did n't seem to see an inch beyond 
 the last remark one had made ; but suddenly I found 
 myself blurting out, " I wonder if you know how ex- 
 traordinarily pain table your father is ? " and you should 
 have seen the change that came over her. Her eyes lit 
 up and she looked well, as I 've tried to make her 
 look there. (He glanced up at the sketch.) Yes, she 
 said, was rit her father splendid, and did n't I think him 
 one of the handsomest men I 'd ever seen ? 
 
 That rather staggered me, I confess; I couldn't 
 think her capable of joking on such a subject, yet it 
 seemed impossible that she should be speaking seri- 
 ously. But she was. I knew it by the way she looked 
 at Vard, who was sitting opposite, his wolfish profile 
 thrown back, the shaggy locks tossed off his narrow 
 high white forehead. The girl worshipped him. 
 
 She went on to say how glad she was that I saw him 
 as she did. So many artists admired only regular beauty, 
 the stupid Greek type that was made to be done in 
 marble ; but she 'd always fancied from what she 'd 
 seen of my work she knew everything I 'd done, it 
 appeared that I looked deeper, cared more for the 
 way in which faces are modelled by temperament and 
 circumstance; "and of course in that sense," she con- 
 cluded, "my father's face is beautiful." 
 [240] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 This was even more staggering ; but one could n't 
 question her divine sincerity. I 'm afraid my one 
 thought was to take advantage of it ; and I let her go 
 on, perceiving that if I wanted to paint Vard all I had 
 to do was to listen. 
 
 She poured out her heart. It was a glorious thing 
 for a girl, she said, wasn't it, to be associated with 
 such a life as that ? She felt it so strongly, sometimes, 
 that it oppressed her, made her shy and stupid. She 
 was so afraid people would expect her to live up to 
 him. But that was absurd, of course ; brilliant men so 
 seldom had clever children. Still did I know? she 
 would have been happier, much happier, if he had n't 
 been in public life ; if he and she could have hidden 
 themselves away somewhere, with their books and 
 music, and she could have had it all to herself: his 
 cleverness, his learning, his immense unbounded good- 
 ness. For no one knew how good he was ; no one but 
 herself. Everybody recognized his cleverness, his bril- 
 liant abilities ; even his enemies had to admit his ex- 
 traordinary intellectual gifts, and hated him the worse, 
 of course, for the admission ; but no one, no one could 
 guess what he was at home. She had heard of great men 
 who were always giving gala performances in public, 
 but whose wives and daughters saw only the empty 
 theatre, with the footlights out and the scenery 
 stacked in the wings ; but with him it was just the 
 [241 ] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 other way : wonderful as he was in public, in society, 
 she sometimes felt he wasn't doing himself justice 
 he was so much more wonderful at home. It was like 
 carrying a guilty secret about with her: his friends, 
 his admirers, would never forgive her if they found out 
 that he kept all his best things for her ! 
 
 I don't quite know what I felt in listening to her. 
 I was chiefly taken up with leading her on to the 
 point I had in view; but even through my personal 
 preoccupation I remember being struck by the fact 
 that, though she talked foolishly, she did n't talk like 
 a fool. She was not stupid ; she was not obtuse ; one 
 felt that her impassive surface was alive with delicate 
 points of perception ; and this fact, coupled with her 
 crystalline frankness, flung me back on a startled re- 
 vision of my impressions of her father. He came out of 
 the test more monstrous than ever, as an ugly image 
 reflected in clear water is made uglier by the purity 
 of the medium. Even then I felt a pang at the use to 
 which fate had put the mountain-pool of Miss Yard's 
 spirit, and an uneasy sense that my own reflection 
 there was not one to linger over. It was odd that I 
 should have scrupled to deceive, on one small point, 
 a girl already so hugely cheated ; perhaps it was the 
 completeness of her delusion that gave it the sanctity 
 of a religious belief. At any rate, a distinct sense of 
 discomfort tempered the satisfaction with which, a day 
 [242] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 or two later, I heard from her that her father had 
 consented to give me a few sittings. 
 
 I'm afraid my scruples vanished when I got him 
 before my easel. He was immense, and he was unex- 
 plored. From my point of view he 'd never been done 
 before I was his Cortez. As he talked the wonder 
 grew. His daughter came with him, and I began to 
 think she was right in saying that he kept his best for 
 her. It was n't that she drew him out, or guided the 
 conversation ; but one had a sense of delicate vigilance, 
 hardly more perceptible than one of those atmospheric 
 influences that give the pulses a happier turn. She was 
 a vivifying climate. I had meant to turn the talk to 
 public affairs, but it slipped toward books and art, and 
 I was faintly aware of its being kept there without 
 undue pressure. Before long I saw the value of the 
 diversion. It was easy enough to get at the political 
 Vard : the other aspect was rarer and more instructive. 
 His daughter had described him as a scholar. He 
 was n't that, of course, in any intrinsic sense : like 
 most men of his type he had gulped his knowledge 
 standing, as he had snatched his food from lunch- 
 counters ; the wonder of it lay in his extraordinary 
 power of assimilation. It was the strangest instance of 
 a mind to which erudition had given force and fluency 
 without culture ; his learning had not educated his 
 perceptions : it was an implement serving to slash 
 [243] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 others rather, than to polish himself. I have said that 
 at first sight he was immense ; but as I studied him he 
 began to lessen under my scrutiny. His depth was a 
 false perspective painted on a wall. 
 
 It was there that my difficulty lay : I had prepared 
 too big a canvas for him. Intellectually his scope was 
 considerable, but it was like the digital reach of a me- 
 diocre pianist it did n't make him a great musician. 
 And morally he wasn't bad enough; his corruption 
 was n't sufficiently imaginative to be interesting. It was 
 not so much a means to an end as a kind of virtuosity 
 practised for its own sake, like a highly-developed 
 skill in cannoning billiard balls. After all, the point of 
 view is what gives distinction to either vice or virtue : 
 a morality with ground-glass windows is no duller than 
 a narrow cynicism. 
 
 His daughter's presence she always came with 
 him gave unintentional emphasis to these conclu- 
 sions ; for where she was richest he was naked. She 
 had a deep-rooted delicacy that drew color and per- 
 fume from the very centre of her being: his senti- 
 ments, good or bad, were as detachable as his cuffs. 
 Thus her nearness, planned, as I guessed, with the 
 tender intention of displaying, elucidating him, of 
 making him accessible in detail to my dazzled per- 
 ceptions this pious design in fact defeated itself. She 
 made him appear at his best, but she cheapened that 
 [244] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 best by her proximity. For the man was vulgar to the 
 core ; vulgar in spite of his force and magnitude ; thin, 
 hollow, spectacular; a lath-and-plaster bogey 
 
 Did she suspect it? I think not then. He was 
 wrapped in her impervious faith . . . The papers? 
 Oh, their charges were set down to political rivalry ; 
 and the only people she saw were his hangers-on, or 
 the fashionable set who had taken him up for their 
 amusement. Besides, she would never have found out 
 in that way : at a direct accusation her resentment 
 would have flamed up and smothered her judgment. 
 If the truth came to her, it would come through 
 knowing intimately some one different; through 
 how shall I put it? an imperceptible shifting of 
 her centre of gravity. My besetting fear was that I 
 could n't count on her obtuseness. She was n't what 
 is called clever; she left that to him; but she was 
 exquisitely good ; and now and then she had intuitive 
 felicities that frightened me. Do I make you see her? 
 We fellows can explain better with the brush; I 
 don't know how to mix my words or lay them on. 
 She wasn't clever; but her heart thought that's 
 all I can say . . . 
 
 If she'd been stupid it would have been easy 
 enough : I could have painted him as he was. Could 
 have ? I did brushed the face in one day from mem- 
 ory ; it was the very man ! I painted it out before she 
 [245] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 came : I could n't bear to have her see it. I had the 
 feeling that I held her faith in him in my hands, carry- 
 ing it like a brittle object through a jostling mob ; a 
 hair's-breadth swerve and it was in splinters. 
 
 When she wasn't there I tried to reason myself 
 out of these subtleties. My business was to paint 
 Vard as he was if his daughter didn't mind his 
 looks, why should I ? The opportunity was magnificent 
 I knew that by the way his face had leapt out of 
 the canvas at my first touch. It would have been a 
 big thing. Before every sitting I swore to myself I 'd 
 do it ; then she came, and sat near him, and I did n't. 
 
 I knew that before long she 'd notice I was shirking 
 the face. Vard himself took little interest in the por- 
 trait, but she watched me closely, and one day when 
 the sitting was over she stayed behind and asked me 
 when I meant to begin what she called "the like- 
 ness." I guessed from her tone that the embarrass- 
 ment was all on my side, or that if she felt any it 
 was at having to touch a vulnerable point in my 
 pride. Thus far the only doubt that troubled her was 
 a distrust of my ability. Well, I put her off with any 
 rot you please : told her she must trust me, must let 
 me wait for the inspiration; that some day the face 
 would come ; I should see it suddenly feel it under 
 my brush . . . The poor child believed me : you can 
 make a woman believe almost anything she doesn't 
 [ 246 ] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 quite understand. She was abashed at her philistinism, 
 and begged me not to tell her father he would make 
 such fun of her! 
 
 After that well, the sittings went on. Not many, 
 of course ; Vard was too busy to give me much time. 
 Still, I could have done him ten times over. Never had 
 I found my formula with such ease, such assurance ; 
 there were no hesitations, no obstructions the face 
 was there, waiting for me ; at times it almost shaped 
 itself on the canvas. Unfortunately Miss Vard was 
 there too . . . 
 
 All this time the papers were busy with the viaduct 
 scandal. The outcry was getting louder. You remember 
 the circumstances? One of Yard's associates Bard- 
 well, wasn't it? threatened disclosures. The rival 
 machine got hold of him, the Independents took him 
 to their bosom, and the press shrieked for an investi- 
 gation. It was not the first storm Vard had weathered, 
 and his face wore just the right shade of cool vigil- 
 ance ; he wasn't the man to fall into the mistake of 
 appearing too easy. His demeanor would have been 
 superb if it had been inspired by a sense of his own 
 strength ; but it struck me rather as based on contempt 
 for his antagonists. Success is an inverted telescope 
 through which one's enemies are apt to look too small 
 and too remote. As for Miss Vard, her serenity was 
 undiminished ; but I half-detected a defiance in her 
 [247] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 unruffled sweetness, and during the last sittings I had 
 the factitious vivacity of a hostess who hears her best 
 china crashing. 
 
 One day it did crash : the head-lines of the morning 
 papers shouted the catastrophe at me: "The Mon- 
 ster forced to disgorge Warrant out against Vard 
 Bardwell the Boss's Boomerang" you know the kind 
 of thing. 
 
 When I had read the papers I threw them down and 
 went out. As it happened, Vard was to have given me 
 a sitting that morning; but there would have been 
 a certain irony in waiting for him. I wished I had 
 finished the picture I wished I'd never thought of 
 painting it. I wanted to shake off the whole business, 
 to put it out of my mind, if I could : I had the feeling 
 I don't know if I can describe it that there was a 
 kind of disloyalty to the poor girl in my even acknow- 
 ledging to myself that I knew what all the papers were 
 howling from the housetops . . . 
 
 I had walked for an hour when it suddenly occurred 
 to me that Miss Vard might, after all, come to the 
 studio at the appointed hour. Why should she ? I could 
 conceive of no reason ; but the mere thought of what, 
 if she did come, my absence would imply to her, sent 
 me bolting back to Twelfth Street. It was a presenti- 
 ment, if you like, for she was there. 
 
 As she rose to meet me a newspaper slipped from 
 [248] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 her hand : I 'd been fool enough, when I went out, to 
 leave the damned things lying all over the place. 
 
 I muttered some apology for being late, and she 
 said reassuringly : 
 
 te But my father 's not here yet." 
 
 "Your father ?" I could have kicked myself for 
 the way I bungled it ! 
 
 " He went out very early this morning, and left 
 word that he would meet me here at the usual 
 hour." 
 
 She faced me, with an eye full of bright courage, 
 across the newspaper lying between us. 
 
 "He ought to be herein a moment now he's 
 always so punctual. But my watch is a little fast, I 
 think." 
 
 She held it out to me almost gaily, and I was just 
 pretending to compare it with mine, when there was 
 a smart rap on the door and Vard stalked in. There 
 was always a civic majesty in his gait, an air of having 
 just stepped off his pedestal and of dissembling an ora- 
 tion in his umbrella ; and that day he surpassed him- 
 self. Miss Vard had turned pale at the knock ; but the 
 mere sight of him replenished her veins, and if she 
 now avoided my eye, it was in mere pity for my dis- 
 comfiture. 
 
 I was in fact the only one of the three who did n't 
 instantly " play up " ; but such virtuosity was inspiring, 
 [249] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 and by the time Vard had thrown off his coat and 
 dropped into a senatorial pose, I was ready to pitch 
 into my work. I swore I 'd do his face then and there ; 
 do it as she saw it ; she sat close to him, and I had 
 only to glance at her while I painted 
 
 Vard himself was masterly : his talk rattled through 
 my hesitations and embarrassments like a brisk north- 
 wester sweeping the dry leaves from its path. Even his 
 daughter showed the sudden brilliance of a lamp from 
 which the shade has been removed. We were all sur- 
 prisingly vivid it felt, somehow, as though we were 
 being photographed by flash-light . . . 
 
 It was the best sitting we 'd ever had but unfor- 
 tunately it did n't last more than ten minutes. 
 
 It was Yard's secretary who interrupted us a slink- 
 ing chap called Cornley, who burst in, as white as 
 sweetbread, with the face of a depositor who hears his 
 bank has stopped payment. Miss Vard started up as he 
 entered, but caught herself together and dropped back 
 into her chair. Vard, who had taken out a cigarette, 
 held the tip tranquilly to his fusee. 
 
 " You 're here, thank God ! " Cornley cried. " There 's 
 no time to be lost, Mr. Vard. I 've got a carriage wait- 
 ing round the corner in Thirteenth Street 
 
 Vard looked at the tip of his cigarette. 
 
 " A carriage in Thirteenth Street ? My good fellow, 
 my own brougham is at the door." 
 [250] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 "I know, I know but t/iey're there too, sir; or 
 they will be, inside of a minute. For God's sake, Mr. 
 Vard, don't trifle! There's a way out by Thirteenth 
 Street, I tell you" 
 
 " Bardwell's myrmidons, eh ? " said Vard. " Help me 
 on with my overcoat, Cornley, will you?" 
 
 Cornley's teeth chattered. 
 
 " Mr. Vard, your best friends . . . Miss Vard, won't 
 you speak to your father ? " He turned to me hag- 
 gardly ; "We can get out by the back way?" 
 
 I nodded. 
 
 Vard stood towering in some infernal way he 
 seemed literally to rise to the situation one hand 
 in the bosom of his coat, in the attitude of patriotism 
 in bronze. I glanced at his daughter: she hung on 
 him with a drowning look. Suddenly she straightened 
 herself; there was something of Vard in the way she 
 faced her fears a kind of primitive calm we drawing- 
 room folk don't have. She stepped to him and laid her 
 hand on his arm. The pause had n't lasted ten seconds. 
 
 " Father " she said. 
 
 Vard threw back his head and swept the studio with 
 a sovereign eye. 
 
 " The back way, Mr. Vard, the back way," Cornley 
 whimpered. " For God's sake, sir, don't lose a minute." 
 
 Vard transfixed his abject henchman. 
 
 " I have never yet taken the back way," he enun- 
 [251] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 elated ; and, with a gesture matching the words, he 
 turned to me and bowed. 
 
 "I regret the disturbance" and he walked to the 
 door. His daughter was at his side, alert, transfigured. 
 
 "Stay here, my dear." 
 
 " Never ! " 
 
 They measured each other an instant ; then he drew 
 her arm in his. She flung back one look at me a 
 paean of victory and they passed out with Cornley at 
 their heels. 
 
 I wish I 'd finished the face then ; I believe I could 
 have caught something of the look she had tried to 
 make me see in him. Unluckily I was too excited to 
 work that day or the next, and within the week the 
 whole business came out. If the indictment wasn't a 
 put-up job and on that I believe there were two 
 opinions all that followed was. You remember the 
 farcical trial, the packed jury, the compliant judge, the 
 triumphant acquittal ? . . . It 's a spectacle that always 
 carries conviction to the voter : Vard was never more 
 popular than after his "exoneration" . . . 
 
 I did n't see Miss Vard for weeks. It was she who 
 came to me at length ; came to the studio alone, one 
 afternoon at dusk. She had what shall I say? a 
 veiled manner; as though she had dropped a fine 
 gauze between us. I waited for her to speak. 
 
 She glanced about the room, admiring a hawthorn 
 [252 ] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 vase I had picked up at auction. Then, after a pause, 
 she said : 
 
 "You haven't finished the picture?" 
 
 " Not quite," I said. 
 
 She asked to see it, and I wheeled out the easel 
 and threw the drapery back. 
 
 "Oh," she murmured, "you haven't gone on with 
 the face?" 
 
 I shook my head. 
 
 She looked down on her clasped hands and up at 
 the picture ; not once at me. 
 
 "You you're going to finish it?" 
 
 "Of course," I cried, throwing the revived purpose 
 into my voice. By God, I would finish it! 
 
 The merest tinge of relief stole over her face, faint 
 as the first thin chirp before daylight. 
 
 " Is it so very difficult ? " she asked tentatively. 
 
 " Not insuperably, I hope." 
 
 She sat silent, her eyes on the picture. At length, 
 with an effort, she brought out : " Shall you want more 
 sittings ? " 
 
 For a second I blundered between two conflicting 
 conjectures ; then the truth came to me with a leap, 
 and I cried out, "No, no more sittings !" 
 
 She looked up at me then for the first time ; looked 
 too soon, poor child ; for in the spreading light of re- 
 assurance that made her eyes like a rainy dawn, I saw, 
 [253] 
 
THE PORTRAIT 
 
 with terrible distinctness, the rout of her disbanded 
 hopes. I knew that she knew . . . 
 
 I finished the picture and sent it home within a 
 week. I tried to make it what you see. Too late, 
 you say? Yes for her; but not for me or for the 
 public. If she could be made to feel, for a day longer, 
 for an hour even, that her miserable secret was a se- 
 cret why, she'd made it seem worth while to me to 
 chuck my own ambitions for that . . . 
 
 Lillo rose, and taking down the sketch stood looking 
 
 at it in silence. 
 
 After a while I ventured, "And Miss Vard ?" 
 He opened the portfolio and put the sketch back, 
 
 tying the strings with deliberation. Then, turning to 
 
 relight his cigar at the lamp, he said: "She died last 
 
 year, thank God." 
 
 [254] 
 
BOOKS BY EDITH WHARTON 
 
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 Madame de Treymes 
 
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 The Descent of Man 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 The Descent of Man The Dilettante 
 
 The Mission of Jane The Reckoning 
 
 The Other Two Expiation 
 
 The Quicksand The Lady's Maid's Bett 
 
 A Venetian Night's Entertainment 
 
 ' ' It is, of course, the extraordinary directness with which 
 Mrs. Wharton's probe goes to the spot under inspection, the 
 deftness with which she is able to bring to the light of day 
 what we had hidden even from ourselves, that account for 
 the admiration with which we regard her short stories. " 
 
 London Academy. 
 
BOOKS BY EDITH WHARTON 
 
 SIXTH EDITION 
 \12mo, $1.50] 
 
 The Greater Inclination 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 The Muse's Tragedy A Coward 
 
 A Journey The Twilight of the Gods 
 
 The Pelican A Cup of Cold Water 
 
 Souls Belated The Portrait 
 
 ' ' Between these stories and those of the ordinary entertain- 
 ing sort there is a great gulf fixed." The Dial. 
 
 \12mo, $1.50] 
 
 Crucial Instances 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 The Duchess at Prayer " Copy " : A Dialogue 
 
 The Angel at the Grave The Rembrandt 
 
 The Recovery The Moving Finger 
 
 The Confessional 
 
 "Tragedy and comedy, pathos and humor, are mingled in 
 these pages of brilliant writing and splendid imagination." 
 
 Philadelphia Press. 
 
 [12mo, $1.50} 
 
 The Valley of Decision 
 
 25TH THOUSAND 
 
 " Coming in the midst of an epoch overcrowded with works 
 of fiction, ' The Valley of Decision ' stands out giant-like 
 above its surroundings. It stands, indeed, almost without 
 a rival in the modern literary world, and there can be little 
 doubt that it places Mrs. Wharton at once side by side 
 with the greatest novelists of the day." 
 
 Boston Evening Transcript. 
 
BOOKS BY EDITH WHARTON 
 
 [8vo, $2.50 net. Postage 17 cents] 
 
 Italian Backgrounds 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY PEIXOTTO 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 An Alpine Posting Inn A Tuscan Shrine 
 
 A Midsummer Week's Dream Sub Umbra Liliorum 
 The Sanctuaries of the Pennine March in Italy 
 
 Alps Picturesque Milan 
 
 What the Hermits Sain Italian Backgrounds 
 
 ' ' Belongs in that small class of books of observation which 
 are also books of artistic and spiritual interpretation ; which 
 not only describe places and monuments, but convey an 
 impression of peoples, a sense of society, with the elusive 
 atmosphere in which everything of historical or artistic 
 value is seen by those who have the gift of sight." 
 
 The Outlook. 
 
 \12mo, $1.25 net] 
 
 The Joy of Living 
 
 (Es lebe das Leberi) 
 
 A play in five acts, by HERMANN SUDERMANN. Trans- 
 lated from the German by EDITH WHARTON. 
 
 [Large 8vo, $2.50 net] 
 
 The Decoration of Houses 
 
 With 56 full-page illustrations, by EDITH WHARTON and 
 OGDEN CODMAN, JR. 
 
THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA CRUZ 
 
 This book is due on the last DATE stamped below. 
 
 APR 16 '86 A 1 
 
 NOV 8 1985 REC'D 
 
 LOOm-8,'65(F6282s8)2373 
 
PS3545.H16G7 1909 
 
 3 2106 00215 4307