THE SEAS OF GOD
 
 "My poor little Lydia," he cried brokenly, holding her to 
 him, comprehending everything. "My poor little Lydia."
 
 THE SEAS 
 OF GOD 
 
 A Novel 
 
 FN*<? 
 
 '. . . .Are they not all the seas of God?" 
 
 Walt Whitman 
 
 NEW YORK 
 HEARST'S INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY Co.
 
 Copyright, 1915, by 
 HEARST'S INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY Co., INC. 
 
 All rights reserved, including tht translation into foreign 
 languages, including the Scandinavian.
 
 BOOK I 
 DREAMING YOUTH 
 
 2135144
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 LYDIA stood looking out toward the sunset. She 
 delighted in this hour of the winter afternoon 
 when glow was dying into gloom, in the bare trees 
 etched in all the delicate, lacelike intricacy of their 
 twigs and branches against the deepening orange of 
 the sky; and she was deriving now, from this sad but 
 splendid sunset hour, most exquisite sensations, tinged 
 pleasurably with melancholy. 
 
 A great evergreen tangle of honeysuckle clung to 
 one end of a narrow porch that ran part way across 
 the front of the cottage. Slats broken, or missing en- 
 tirely, left conspicuous gaps in all the blinds, and both 
 green and grey paint, blinds and walls, were dingy and 
 streaked from Kingsville's fierce summer suns, and the 
 frequent soot-showers of her winters. 
 
 The cottage had no distinction except one of site, 
 and in Kingsville, girt by its blue mountains, a beau- 
 site was so common as hardly to constitute of itself 
 any distinction at all. For Kingsville was built on 
 seven hills, an old brick-built Southern town, bristling
 
 with church spires. " Built like the Eternal City on 
 seven hills " Lydia, when a child, had heard some 
 one say. What a torch to her imagination had been 
 that comparison of Kingsville to far-off Rome ! 
 
 A time had come when she wondered why she did 
 not hate, instead of love, Kingsville. 
 
 She was wondering that this evening, for her glance 
 would travel to a neighbouring hill where the old build- 
 ings of Ransom College stood silhouetted against the 
 southern sky, the chapel with its little bell-tower crown- 
 ing the hill-top. At the foot of the hill, in the house 
 surrounded with great magnolia trees, whose chimneys 
 she could make out from the cottage window, she had 
 lived from her earliest memories until Ransom College 
 where her father had given his best years had 
 invited his resignation. 
 
 She caught sight of her father coming up the brick 
 walk. She had realised his health was declining, but 
 all at once she became conscious that never before had 
 he looked quite like this. 
 
 He came in from the porch, shivering, and, saying 
 something about the cold, went over to the open fire, 
 and held his long, thin hands before it to warm them. 
 
 Lydia busied herself about the table she had set for 
 supper. Since economy in coal had become a pressing 
 necessity, they used this sitting room for meals as well. 
 It was an irking way to Lydia her tastes were spa- 
 cious an irking, poor-folk's way of managing. But 
 she was not thinking just of that now. The fact was, 
 she could not trust her voice to answer his remark about 
 the weather because of a sudden oppressive sensation
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 3 
 
 in her throat. She fled to the kitchen to escape the too 
 close surveillance of his eyes. 
 
 Here, in an odd flash, she caught herself thinking 
 how remarkable it was that the rosy glow thrown forth 
 into the dusk of the room from the little openings in 
 the front of the cookstove, and the gentle singing of the 
 tea-kettle, should convey to her homely sight and 
 sound that they were an impression of something 
 definitely reassuring. ... It could not, could not, be 
 so alarming, really, she said to herself, that look of 
 her father, as for an instant she had allowed herself 
 to believe. 
 
 II 
 
 She set about slicing a piece of cold boiled beef with 
 feverish activity. To have something definite like this 
 to do, and to do at once, was to make yourself half 
 believe that nothing out of the ordinary had occurred 
 no terrifying impression just been received ! She 
 opened the oven and tested the potatoes to see if they 
 were done. Through a back window she saw her 
 father, who had gone out to the coal-shed in the rear 
 lot, set the loaded coal buckets down half way the short 
 distance from the shed to the steps of the cottage, and 
 place his hand on his back. 
 
 Before he could lift the buckets again, Lydia had 
 darted out of the door. 
 
 His face was ashy. 
 
 " Father, let me carry them ! " 
 
 ; ' I'm all right." He struggled to smile as he 
 brushed her aside.
 
 4 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 She followed him Into the kitchen. 
 
 " Oh, Father, I wish you'd change doctors! I don't 
 believe Dr. Williams is helping you at all 1 " she said 
 vehemently, and as she uttered the words a flame of 
 indignation rose in her young breast. Dr. Williams 
 was responsible that was it for all these distress- 
 ing feelings that had suddenly overtaken her. But in 
 her effort to calm her growing fears, she kept saying 
 over to herself emphatically, " Well, if Dr. Williams 
 can't help him, surely some doctor can ! " 
 
 ill 
 
 When they were seated at supper, her father drew 
 a letter from his pocket, unfolded a check from it, and 
 handed it to her. 
 
 " It's for you, Lydia. . . ." 
 
 "Forme?" 
 
 Her eyes widened with surprise. She noticed the 
 check was in payment for an article he had written on 
 the " Flora of the Kingsville Region," but she was 
 puzzled to know why he should hand it to her. 
 
 " Didn't I see you looking at a suit, yesterday? " 
 
 She turned crimson. Then he had seen her looking 
 in the windows at Maxfield's ! 
 
 ' You need a suit, Lydia." He motioned her to 
 keep the check. " And get a * toque,' or whatever they 
 call those little hats," he added awkwardly, evidently 
 conscious that he knew very little about the intricacies 
 of feminine dress. 
 
 As he lifted his cup of tea, she noticed the frayed
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 5 
 
 edge of his coat sleeve, and the lump in her throat 
 seemed on the point of choking her. 
 
 He looked up from his plate, directly at her, and a 
 slight, almost wistful smile passed over his large- 
 featured face, deepening its furrows. 
 
 " Lydia, what's the matter?" he asked. "You're 
 not?" 
 
 " No, I'm not! " she broke in with abrupt vivacity, 
 a smile glistening through her tears. 
 
 " It's just . . . I'm so pleased . . . about the suit. 
 . . . Oh, thank you, thank you ! " 
 
 She jumped up from the table, and as she flew by 
 him into her bedroom she bestowed with childish 
 gaucherie a swift, agitated kiss on the thin locks of 
 greyish hair that straggled over his forehead. 
 
 IV 
 
 An hour later, she persuaded him to put away his 
 writing for the evening those articles he wrote, alas ! 
 so few accepted and brought out the chessboard. 
 
 For Lydia, chess was an expiatory diversion. The 
 long waits for determining whether Pawn should be 
 sacrificed, Knight advanced, or what not, were all but 
 unendurable to her impatient habit of mind. She only 
 proposed the game at times like this when she was feel- 
 ing vaguely burdened with guilt. For view it as she 
 would, she felt it somehow culpable in herself that she 
 should be exhilarated, as without doubt she was, over 
 the prospect of the suit in Maxfield's windows at which 
 she had gazed longingly her own I
 
 6 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 It seemed to her this evening, as she bent over the 
 chessboard the light on the table making her bright 
 hair a nimbus about her head that the silences of the 
 game were longer and more appalling than ever before. 
 The only sound in the room was of the coal in the grate 
 crackling as little flames shot up through its fresh fis- 
 sures, and she felt, nervously, as though her father 
 could almost hear her thoughts clattering in her brain. 
 
 A sudden desire seized her to snatch his big, bony 
 hand hovering over the chess pieces and kiss it. She 
 wanted to express to him in some such savagely affec- 
 tionate, unmistakable way (before it was too late!) 
 her love for him, her respect, her admiration ! Bitter 
 injustice had been done him; he had been sacrificed to 
 satisfy the prejudices of absurd provincial bigotry, and 
 now perhaps he was dying, and those trustees of Ran- 
 som College not the seeds of the fatal disease that 
 were in him but those narrow trustees, and narrow 
 Kingsville opinion back of them, were killing him ! 
 They had forced his resignation from the college, four 
 years earlier, because of a series of lectures he had 
 delivered there on the Descent of Man. 
 
 Those Thursday Night Lectures, which he had 
 taken his turn in the faculty in delivering, were a win- 
 ter's course always offered by Ransom College to the 
 public, an " effort to relate the College to the Town," 
 the College expressed it; a relationship, when it came to 
 lectures, rather gingerly embraced, as a rule, by the 
 Town. 
 
 Her father's Thursday Nights had been well at- 
 tended because already suspicion had breathed over
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 7 
 
 Kingsville that he upheld those disquieting modern 
 theories so totally at variance with Kingsville's inher- 
 ited conviction that God, having finished heavens and 
 earth, had ended his work which he had made, and 
 rested ! 
 
 A God still working at his work of creation? Im- 
 possible ! Blasphemous ! 
 
 At least, in some such way, Lydia had scornfully in- 
 terpreted Kingsville's attitude, every drop of blood in 
 her young body fierce in justification of her father, 
 when the Kingsville clergy, hugging close the Book of 
 Genesis, had openly referred to his lectures, had ad- 
 monished their congregations of hearty-eating, soft- 
 sleeping Kingsvillians that God was still spelled with 
 a large G, nature with a small n they were not to 
 forget that had finally brought pressure to bear on 
 the trustees that had accomplished his severance from 
 the College. 
 
 The fire had burned down to a luminous bed of 
 ruby coals, over which little blue flames danced. 
 
 " Check ! " Professor Lambright's call broke the 
 long stillness. 
 
 Lydia's hand, moving to the rescue of her King, was 
 arrested by the sound of steps on the porch, and then 
 a knock. 
 
 ' The Pooles, probably," she whispered, and before 
 opening the door, she gave to her hair that instinctive 
 feminine touch of adjustment so inevitable at such a 
 juncture.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 It was not the Pooles. 
 
 " Why, Mr. Churchwell ! " she exclaimed. 
 
 " But you will let me in, won't you, Miss Lydia? " 
 the man in the doorway answered banteringly to her 
 surprise. 
 
 He held his soft hat in his hand, and his dark eyes, 
 which swam in a slight mist, looked down eloquently 
 into Lydia's. 
 
 An instant before the thought of a visit from the 
 comfortable Pooles had been a prop to her; it was as 
 if the presence of that good but prosaic couple might 
 banish the shadowy form she discerned dimly behind 
 her father; but now the unexpected advent of Ransom 
 Churchwell brought suddenly into the room a great 
 colourful warmth the lovely radiance of afternoon 
 sun sifting through jewelled windows! They were 
 not isolated now, she and her father ! They were re- 
 lated through him, through Churchwell, to all the 
 wealth and warmth of the outside world! The very 
 tones of Churchwell's appealing voice, the graceful 
 movements of his gallant figure, reassured her, while 
 he remained within her ken, of the friendliness of the 
 whole planetary system ! 
 
 " Interrupting one of your frivolous diversions, I 
 see " pointing to the chessboard " but I've brought 
 a book I thought you'd like to look over, Professor 
 Lambright." 
 
 He took a volume from the pocket of the ulster he 
 was removing and handed it to Lydia's father.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 9 
 
 " Oh! Yes, I've been wanting to see it, Ransom." 
 Lydia thrilled! She always thrilled to hear her 
 own father call this particular man by his first name, 
 familiarly, Ransom ! It seemed to bring Ransom 
 Churchwell mysteriously, entrancingly, nearer herself! 
 When her father had known him a lad, his pupil, of 
 course. But now, in majesty of manhood! Choicest 
 flower of the complacent aristocracy of Kingsville ! 
 
 Not that Lydia regarded her father unfit to treat 
 with the grandest, anywhere, on equal terms. Little 
 enough she knew, to be sure, of her father's forebears, 
 but they had been gentle she insisted that to herself, 
 always and her father a gentleman in something 
 more even than that sense of " high-erected thoughts " 
 and " heart of courtesy," of which surely indeed she 
 knew him possessed. The fact remained, however, 
 quite undeniably, that Ransom Churchwell was the 
 Lambrights' one point of contact with the picturesque 
 reigning class of Kingsville on which Lydia's child eyes, 
 and maiden eyes, had looked with so highly complex 
 a mixture of awe, contempt, hatred, envy ! 
 
 VI 
 
 Professor Lambright held the volume Churchwell 
 had brought him affectionately in his thin hands, turn- 
 ing the pages. Lydia had seated herself on a square 
 stool near the fire. 
 
 She had selected this spot, facing her father and 
 Churchwell, and placed her stool over it, because just 
 here the thin carpet had worn thinnest. Of course, 
 each time Churchwell came, things were, of necessity,
 
 io THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 a trifle more dilapidated than the time before; but as 
 her eyes made a swift, furtive inventory of the room 
 the side-table on which an old-fashioned silver tea- 
 set was gleaming in the light of the open fire, the book- 
 shelves with their bust of Goethe, the engraving, after 
 Raphael, which her father had brought years before 
 from Rome (St. Peter asleep between the watchmen, 
 and being awakened by the angel) she decided there 
 was still that air of refinement in their surroundings 
 so essential to the ease of her fastidious young soul. 
 Her stool well covering carpet-holes, she had no apolo- 
 gies to make not even to Mr. Churchwell, whose 
 eyes rested on her while he talked to her father. 
 
 " But, of course, Professor Lambright, we must let 
 Miss Aristotle read and digest this work first," he was 
 saying, his eyes gleaming mischievously, " so she can 
 determine whether it'll be profitable for you and me to 
 peruse! " 
 
 Lydia and her father both laughed. What cama- 
 raderie in the three-cornered friendship! How, at 
 once, they all understood each other! It was months 
 since Churchwell's last visit, and yet, now he was with 
 them again, it was as if only a day had passed since 
 then. 
 
 It was immeasurable comfort to Lydia that Church- 
 well sympathised with the views of her father which 
 had branded him dangerous in Kingsville, that he had 
 nothing but approval for those Thursday Night Lec- 
 tures on the Descent of Man which her father had 
 delivered at Ransom College, founded and endowed 
 by Ransom Churchwell's maternal grandfather.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD n 
 
 It was clearly apparent, on Churchwell's part, that 
 he loved to see the sparkling challenge of this girl's 
 eye rise to his, for he continued to rally her. 
 
 " Miss Lydia, I don't see how your father and I 
 are going to marry you to a Prince of the Blood Royal 
 of Kingsville, when you will persist in poring over the 
 ' First Principles of Synthetic Philosophy ' ! " 
 
 His quick eye had detected a battered copy on the 
 top of the shelves beside him, a small handkerchief 
 thrust between its pages to mark a place. 
 
 " Oh, I'm wedded already, to to Herbert 
 Spencer! " she laughed. 
 
 The deep, tender tones of Churchwell's voice were 
 still sounding through and through her. She was 
 wondering why his voice always made her feel so 
 queer, so sort of well, shaky, and perturbed, inside 
 withal rather a delicious tumult ! And she was 
 thinking, too, that it was tremendously clever in him, 
 actually very splendid and cosmopolitan, the easy, jest- 
 ing nonchalance with which he spoke of the Blood 
 Royal of Kingsville, as if he, himself, were not of the 
 strain. A rare Kingsvillian, truly, who could laugh 
 at Kingsville ! who could find amusing the airs 
 Kingsville's old families gave themselves, when Ran- 
 soms and Churchwells were of the oldest among them. 
 
 " Yes, you have the youths thoroughly terrified, 
 Miss Lydia! " insisted Churchwell, lifting one eyebrow 
 whimsically. " I heard young Bob Allen saying the 
 other day to my brother, ' There's that little Lydia 
 Lambright, prettier than any of them, but, confound 
 it, I'm afraid of her! She knows too much! ' "
 
 12 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 " Poor Bob 1 " laughed Lydia. But her pulses had 
 begun beating quickly. Spots, each feeling no larger 
 than a dollar, were burning hotly in her cheeks. She 
 was breathing in with excitement the perfume of Bob's 
 phrase, " Little Lydia Lambright, prettier than any of 
 them ! " but the thing that was really fluttering her 
 most was the way Mr. Churchwell had looked at her 
 when he had repeated it. 
 
 Her father, smiling absently at their chaff, had been 
 cutting pages in the " Riddle of the Universe," dip- 
 ping into it here and there. He rose now, to put more 
 coal on the fire. 
 
 " Ransom, you're just back from Washington? . . . 
 How's your case coming on? " he asked, as he turned 
 from the fire. 
 
 The men fell into men's talk; and Lydia's thoughts, 
 after a time, again to revolving in old grooves. . . . 
 It seemed ages ago to her, though it was only a matter 
 of five or six years, since she had read the fateful en- 
 graved words: 
 
 ". . . desire the honour of your presence 
 
 at the marriage of their daughter 
 
 Seraphina 
 
 to 
 Mr. Ransom Craighead Churchwell . . ." 
 
 Tear-drenched, secret hours had followed. Who 
 could have told her, better than she knew herself, how 
 futile ? How foolish I What right had she, child-to- 
 be-chucked-under-chin, nothing more, to him, to resent 
 this binding to Seraphina for better, for worse, till
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 13 
 
 death part, of her adored Mr. Churchwell? . . . Yet 
 she had resented it she was still vaguely resenting it. 
 
 Churchwell's voice startled her. 
 
 " Miss Lydia, may I speak to your father alone a 
 few moments? " 
 
 VII 
 
 " That's odd! " she thought, as she went out into her 
 bedroom. " What can he want to see him alone for? " 
 
 But instantly she defended Churchwell against a 
 phantom accuser. " It's something good, anyway." 
 
 She lit the glass bedroom lamp, and held it so she 
 could see herself in the mirror of the walnut bureau, 
 scrutinising carefully the reflection in its small swing- 
 ing glass. The voices of Churchwell and her father 
 reached her through the closed door, but more insistent 
 than their low tones were Bob Allen's words buzzing 
 gaily in her ears, " Little Lydia Lambright, prettier 
 than any of them ! " 
 
 Opening a scuffed leather trunk, she drew out the 
 waist of an old evening gown one of the few me- 
 mentoes she had of a mother so mysterious to her 
 when alive, and each year since her death grown more 
 baffling a memory. It released a faint, slightly musty 
 scent, and handling it she became indefinably agitated. 
 
 She had never seen her mother wear it; it belonged 
 to days before those she could recall; but once before, 
 playing " grown lady " in her childhood, she had 
 donned this pretty relic, and now she unfastened her 
 childishly-made serge dress, slipped from it, and into 
 the crushed evening bodice of pale green, cut into a
 
 i 4 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 low " V." She was shivering she could see her 
 breath form into vapour in the frigid air of the room 
 but she was burning too ! 
 
 She held up the lamp again and her heart jumped ! 
 It was that girl of Greuze in her father's copy ! gay, 
 dainty, elegant a cloud of fair hair waved back from 
 an oval face, high arch of crescent brows, a nose deli- 
 cately aquiline, soft pastel tints of downy skin height- 
 ened to rose in the cheeks ! She was bewitched by this 
 reflection of a Lydia transformed by a bit of old finery ! 
 It pleased her mightily, too, to fancy that in the fluid, 
 glancing, indescribable charm she found in the face in 
 the mirror, she could behold traces of that one of her 
 grandmothers of whom she had a faint but fascinating 
 knowledge. For, however strangely shrouded from 
 her the background of her parents' lives, they had told 
 her one thing, at least that her mother's mother had 
 been a Frenchwoman. 
 
 Peering with eager, parted lips into the swinging 
 glass, she thought she saw, far ahead, a destiny, for 
 this girl she gazed at, wondrous as dreams are won- 
 drous! There was a touch of initiation in the dark 
 eyes looking back at her that gave this promise, some 
 subtle, haunting quality of soul infused with the child 
 quality they had not entirely lost. 
 
 She threw up her head to let her eyes drift back 
 over the curve of white throat reflected, she turned 
 from side to side to catch every angle of enchantment. 
 With a little rapturous tremor she wound her arms em- 
 bracingly about her own shoulders, revealed to her frag- 
 ile but lovely as they rose above the pale-green bodice.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 15 
 
 All at once her father's voice reached her distinctly : 
 " Ransom, I can't accept " 
 
 Then the murmur of both voices again, rising, low- 
 ering, as if in contest. 
 
 A great wave of shame swept over Lydia. She 
 stripped off the evening bodice and threw it upon the 
 trunk, hurrying back into her dark serge dress. 
 
 " Oh, Father! " she cried, kneeling on the floor by 
 the bed, " how could I be admiring myself in the glass 
 when you're dying? " 
 
 VIII 
 
 " Lydia!" 
 
 She sprang up, and hurriedly dried her eyes. 
 
 Churchwell was leaving when she re-entered the sit- 
 ting room. Her father was standing opposite him on 
 the hearth-rug. A singular change had come over his 
 face an expression of hope. Sun rifted Lydia's 
 gloom, broke over her world again in myriad dancing 
 points of light! 
 
 Churchwell, drawing on his gloves, had some last 
 jesting talk with her. 
 
 ' You will come again soon won't you, Mr. 
 Churchwell? " escaped impulsively from her as he took 
 her hand. 
 
 "I will soon!" he promised. His eyes, so 
 searchingly sympathetic, so admiring ah, she could 
 not doubt it! beamed down assurance. 
 
 A moment more and he was gone, swallowed up in 
 the darkness outside, though for another moment Lydia 
 stood at the window, looking after him,
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 LYDIA opened sleepy eyes on the grey half-light 
 of a winter morning. She stretched drowsily, 
 dreading to step out of her warm bed into the cold 
 room. She would have loved another hour, but at 
 least she would give herself the guilty enjoyment of 
 just one more minute, two perhaps, or three, of warm 
 dreaminess before she made the plunge into the cold. 
 As her thoughts began to shape themselves more 
 clearly, she was filled with a sense of something agree- 
 able that had happened or was about to happen. 
 She wondered, more than she had the night before, 
 what Mr. Ransom Churchwell had talked to her father 
 about privately, and why her father had not told her 
 at once, after Mr. Churchwell left, what it was. 
 
 Her eyes wandered to a calendar which hung on the 
 wall beside her, and pushing a little farther away from 
 her the inevitable moment of getting up, she began to 
 read the dates on the calendar leaf. With a start, she 
 saw it was the twenty-seventh of January on which she 
 had just opened her eyes her father's birthday! 
 She had forgotten it ! And she was perplexed to know 
 where she could get enough money for a little feast, 
 something out of the ordinary, to surprise him. 
 
 A few moments later, she was so absorbed in secret
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 17 
 
 projects, that she hardly realised he had come into the 
 kitchen, until looking up from the coffee she had 
 ground and was pouring from the mill, she saw him 
 bent over the stove, his hands spread out above it. 
 
 " It gets warm here quicker than in the other room," 
 he explained. 
 
 It was borne in upon her that only lately had he been 
 so keenly sensitive to cold; their changed relation struck 
 her, too, as it had once or twice before the wonder- 
 ful sense of protection the mere presence of her father 
 once had given her, and now he seemed to have become 
 her charge. This compassion for him, that never left 
 her entirely any more, hurt like physical pain. . . . 
 There had been, certainly, that eager spark in his eye 
 the night before, and her glad hope that had swiftly 
 twinned his. But was it still there? Her glance re- 
 vealed him grey and pinched in the chill morning light. 
 
 At any rate, the last thing to do was to let him 
 suspect her fears. 
 
 " I do think ' Peter Ibbetson ' is perfectly charming, 
 Father," she remarked, as they sat down to breakfast. 
 " I believe it's the most charming book I ever read; 
 I couldn't help crying. And Peter, a little boy in 
 France, in that old garden, oh, I loved that! " 
 
 She chattered on, but constantly in the back of her 
 mind while she talked and while her father answered, 
 was the thought that it was his birthday, and she won- 
 dered if he remembered that it was.
 
 1 8 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 II 
 
 Breakfast over, she arranged the ironing-board, and 
 tested the irons, and as she did so, a memory flashed 
 through her of the sour, conscientious woman who had 
 exercised authority over her earlier years. Just as 
 Miss Barker had patted, pulled, pressed, she was pat- 
 ting, pulling, pressing, now. It seemed impossible for 
 her to get through the weekly ironing without these 
 vivid disagreeable representments of Miss Barker. 
 Her father had married in England, and had brought 
 her mother, English born, of French parents, home to 
 America, and after a time Lydia did not know how 
 long a time to Kingsville. A few years later, Miss 
 Barker, who had been housekeeper for his mother, had 
 come to take charge of his own household, demoralised 
 through the chronic illness of its mistress; she had been 
 willing to remain after his removal from the College, 
 when his salary stopped, and his inherited means ex- 
 hausted, sweeping retrenchment had become neces- 
 sary. 
 
 Lydia supposed long association had made Miss 
 Barker endurable to her father. ^Eons of association, 
 she thought, would not have reconciled her to Miss 
 Barker. Her own antagonism had grown out of some- 
 thing she had but little understood Miss Barker's 
 constant surveillance to prevent her being alone with 
 her mother. 
 
 But her thoughts kept returning to the birthday cele- 
 bration. Finally, she decided she might dispose of a 
 miscellaneous assortment of old text-books that had
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 19 
 
 survived her use of them in school. Her father's 
 Christmas present she had purchased with the proceeds 
 from a handful of old trinkets she had sold to a second- 
 hand dealer. 
 
 ill 
 
 Early in the afternoon, he announced his intention 
 of going out while the sun was still bright, and as soon 
 as he left, she put the books into her market-basket, 
 and started off. 
 
 She hurried along back streets, hoping that she 
 should meet no one who knew her, but wishing she had 
 courage enough not to try to cover up poverty, not to 
 try to disguise the fact that she was carrying a basket 
 of old books to sell to a second-hand book dealer. 
 
 She descended to the heart of the old town, and 
 wound swiftly in and out of narrow streets, dark and 
 malodorous, till she reached the second-hand book- 
 shop. 
 
 Art old man dragged himself forward and peered at 
 her cautiously as she took the paper off her basket and 
 piled up her books on a table already piled with nonde- 
 script battered volumes. 
 
 " What do you want for 'em? " 
 
 " Oh, what will you give? " 
 
 " They ain't worth anything. You know that, don't 
 you?" 
 
 ; ' Why, they use the same books in the schools 
 now. . . ." Lydia picked up an Elementary Algebra, 
 a Physiology and Hygiene, a General History, and 
 eagerly showed him,
 
 20 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 "Expect me to carry 'em till next September? 
 Bring 'em in then, if you want to sell 'em." 
 
 September! Lydia's heart sank. By September 
 there might be no more birthdays to celebrate ! 
 
 " You can give me something for them, can't you? 
 Anything . . . anything . . . you think they're 
 worth . . ." she added falteringly. 
 
 "Worth! They ain't worth anything, now." But 
 he made an abrupt concession " I'll give you a dollar 
 forty for the lot." 
 
 "Oh, more than that!" begged Lydia. "Look 
 how many! " 
 
 " If you don't want that, pack 'em up ! " 
 
 He turned his back on her, mumbling something as 
 he walked off; but she called him back and accepted his 
 offer. 
 
 He vanished then into a dim recess of the rear shop, 
 and was so unconscionably long in returning with the 
 money for her, that Lydia grew a trifle uneasy. She 
 began examining the lines of dusty books on the shelves 
 along the wall. Suddenly she took down a translation 
 of " Madame Bovary." She had taken hints from her 
 scattered reading that Flaubert's pages might reward 
 peeping into ! 
 
 "Want it?" 
 
 She started at the old man's voice behind her. A 
 quick, unpleasant wave of warmth passed over her, but 
 on second thought she realised that probably he knew 
 less than she the contents of " Madame Bovary." 
 
 " How much is it? " she asked, romancing with her- 
 self momentarily.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 21 
 
 " Let you have it a dollar ten. I ain't makin' those 
 prices every day . . ." His tones had grown bland. 
 
 " Oh, I won't take it to-day, thank you," she an- 
 swered hastily. 
 
 " A dollar . . . I'll give it to you for a dollar . . ." 
 
 " I'm in a hurry, please . . ." She held out her 
 hand. 
 
 His face clouded, but he put the money in her hand. 
 
 She drew a breath of relief when she got into the 
 street again, and started toward Maxfield's; but her 
 feet slackened as she reached the corner of Main 
 Street. Here was a shop window she had never been 
 able to resist ! 
 
 " Law, Lydia, you picking you out an engagement 
 ring?" came a drawling, jocular inquiry from behind 
 her. 
 
 Lydia turned around with vexation. 
 
 "Oh! Rosa! . . ." 
 
 But it was not as she would be seen even by Rosa 
 gaping in a jeweller's window! She liked to associate 
 herself, in thought at least, with the Grand Class, who 
 entered jewellers' doors, rather than stared hungrily 
 through their plate-glass. 
 
 "Where you keepin' yourself, Lydia? Why don't 
 you ever come over?" pursued Rosa familiarly. 
 " Can't you come on home with me now? " 
 
 " Oh, no, thank you. I have some errands . . ." 
 
 Lydia had tried to make this reply not too icy, yet 
 final. But Rosa Bagster was the kind you couldn't get 
 away from. 
 
 " I have to go on. Oh, that's kind of you, I'm sure.
 
 22 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 Thank you . . . thank you very much . . ." Dis- 
 guising, she hoped, with these civil words, her distaste 
 for Bagster invitations, Lydia released herself finally, 
 and hurried on down Main Street. Well, she was pay- 
 ing for that fatal mistake she had made in once accept- 
 ing an invitation to Rosa Bagster's. That party had 
 settled it for her. ... If she couldn't move, for one 
 reason and another, in the circle where she coveted to 
 move, she at least didn't need to mingle with Bagsters. 
 . . . They had looked up to her as if she were a queen, 
 timidly, or hysterically familiar, like Rosa herself, but 
 Bagster atmosphere was not at all one she would 
 breathe ! Better sit quietly at home, opposite her 
 father, reading. . . . And that she had done, since, 
 the evenings of several years past. 
 
 IV 
 
 She felt a sudden pang of dismay to find the suit she 
 had admired gone from the window when she reached 
 Maxfield's. Perhaps it had been sold ! 
 
 On the second floor millinery, corsets, ladies' suits 
 and coats she was referred to Mrs. Joy. Mrs. Joy 
 would show her the suits. 
 
 With a graceful gesture of apology, Mrs. Joy left 
 her other customers. "The brown suit . . .?" 
 Slowly "The brown suit . . . that was in the win- 
 dow . . .?" 
 
 Then with sudden inspiration " Oh ! I know 
 the very one you mean ! So sweet for you, too, with 
 those eyes ! " shaking a roguish finger at Lydia. 
 " Now just a moment, and I'm free ! On the settee,
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 23 
 
 my dear," propelling Lydia to a circular settee of plush 
 in the centre of the room. 
 
 Lydia watched her watched and listened, for not 
 to have heard the tones of Mrs. Joy's deep, fruity 
 voice was to have missed much of her quality. People 
 said Maxfield's was Mrs. Joy, and Mrs. Joy was Max- 
 field's. It seemed not improbable to Lydia as she ob- 
 served her. Such unctuous resource in the discharge 
 of those responsibilities, commercial, if you will, with 
 which Providence, or Maxfield, had entrusted her! 
 Kingsville, rolling the tid-bit gleefully under its old 
 tongue, declared Mrs. Joy the mistress of Maxfield. 
 Lydia had heard it: and, almost in equal parts, repelled 
 by the idea, and fascinated by it, by Mrs. Joy herself, 
 in the sumptuous flesh, she started thinking of that 
 awful institution a man's mistress ! . . . Kings had 
 mistresses. Successful merchants, like Maxfield, had 
 mistresses, it seemed. Men of the world had mis- 
 tresses. . . . She wondered if Mr. Ransom Church- 
 well had ever had a mistress! ... It was more 
 agitating than any thought she had ever known before 
 more torturing, for the moment, than even that feel- 
 ing she had had about the lawful Seraphina I 
 
 But Mrs. Joy was bidding farewell to her departing 
 customers. ..." So wise of you, Mrs. Copenhaver, 
 to take both evening wraps ! " Mrs. Joy looked quite 
 sapient herself as she said it, a wrap of black brocade 
 with lining of cerise depending from this plump arm, a 
 mantle of delicate fawn from that and between her 
 laden arms, her monumental bosom heaving under its 
 adorning passementerie.
 
 24 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 She turned to Lydia. " Now, my dear . . ." She 
 swept off. 
 
 Lydia was surprised to see her return carrying a 
 suit of green. 
 
 " Oh, it was a brown suit . . ." 
 
 " Yes, yes, my dear. . . . But you must put on this 
 first. . . . No ! no ! of course you don't want it ! But 
 just to please me! Now, won't you? I must get an 
 idea of your style, so I can give you just what's right 
 for you! " 
 
 She had Lydia's little thin coat stripped off; her little 
 hat with its quill, off; her wavy hair caressingly put 
 back just as it belonged; she had the skirt over 
 Lydia's head; the jacket on her; even the velvet Direc- 
 toire collar fastened around her throat, while Lydia 
 was still in a state of protest. 
 
 " Oh, what a picture ! " she cried rapturously. 
 " Made for her, isn't it? " she called to the other sales- 
 women. 
 
 She consulted the cryptic price-mark. " Forty-five ! 
 Oh! what value! " Her voice rose astonished, almost 
 pained. 
 
 " Let me look again 1 . . . What! Did I say forty- 
 five ? Thirty-five ! " she announced. 
 
 Lydia's heart quailed. She tried to muster courage 
 to explain that the figure so moderate, it appeared, to 
 Mrs. Joy, was far too high for her own consideration, 
 but the heady, exotic scent emanating from Mrs. Joy's 
 garments seemed to blunt her will. 
 
 " I don't like to give you so much trouble," she ven- 
 tured, starting to draw off the jacket.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 25 
 
 "Trouble?" Mrs. Joy rose gallantly to the 
 charge. "Trouble?" Her laughter came in rich 
 ripples, and she placed soft, arresting hands on Lydia. 
 " Why, dear child, I live to take trouble, to serve the 
 dear ladies of Kingsville ! I love you ! I love every 
 one of you! You know it! " she cried, with an arch 
 expression. " I go to New York for you, my dear ! 
 I will have my Kingsville ladies second to none " 
 Her voice dropped to a whisper. " And I'm going to 
 part with the profits on this little suit! It's too ador- 
 able on you I I'm going to let you have it for thirty ! " 
 
 Lydia braced herself. " But how much is the brown 
 suit?" she asked, a slightly belligerent ring in her 
 voice. 
 
 Mrs. Joy called out cheerily, " Miss Hooper, bring 
 me that little brown suit that was in the window, frogs 
 on the jacket ..." 
 
 Lydia's heart gave a leap of relief when its price, 
 fifteen dollars, fell on her ears. 
 
 " Nice, natty little suit," Mrs. Joy commended it, 
 as she shaped the jacket on her, " and really more be- 
 coming than the green! But a hard time you would 
 have, dear child, to find anything wwbecoming! " 
 
 She took the address. "Lambright?" She paused, 
 her pencil suspended. "Lambright . . .?" 
 
 " From the North, I suppose," she said, at last. 
 " So many Northern people in Kingsville now " 
 
 " I've lived in Kingsville always, almost," Lydia in- 
 terrupted, with some dignity. " My father's North- 
 ern," she added. Of course she would not deny it. 
 But it was irritating the way people in Kingsville al-
 
 26 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 ways, smiling it might be, but with lifted eyebrows, 
 pronounced this word Northern! It seemed to her 
 that you never could quite get away in Kingsville from 
 this blight of Northern extraction. ... If it hadn't 
 been too disloyal, she might have wished countless 
 times that her father, her grandfather, her great- 
 grandfather, had been of Kingsville origin. She felt 
 that then, perhaps, everything might have been so dif- 
 ferent for her. . . . 
 
 Mrs. Joy, the newly purchased suit dangling from 
 her arm, was visited with a sudden remembrance of 
 the name of Lambright. 
 
 " Oh! not Professor Lambright who was at the Col- 
 lege? " she asked. 
 
 Lydia said yes. 
 
 " Oh, my dear, excuse me I I didn't dream. . . . 
 But now, my dear, let me give you a bit of advice I 
 I'm old enough to advise you, am I not? " With her 
 flashing teeth, she invited Lydia to contradict .this 
 statement. " We all have our little troubles, dear ! 
 Don't brood on yours ! We don't choose our par- 
 ents " 
 
 The look in Lydia's face caused her to pause. 
 
 " Oh, my dear," she resumed, recovering herself, 
 "there's worse people in the world than atheists! 
 Kingsville's a bigoted old place! I've come pretty 
 near finding that out, myself! " The rippling laugh- 
 ter again, the knowing look, as if, out of the bounteous 
 nature of her, she would be willing to include, with the 
 supposed moral peccadilloes that had caused estrange-
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 27 
 
 ment of popular approval in her own case, whatever of 
 spiritual peccadilloes in the case of Lydia's father. 
 
 For some time after Lydia left Maxfield's, she was 
 still stinging with indignation. The presumption of 
 Mrs. Joy! as if she were competent to distinguish 
 atheist from theist! And how had the woman dared 
 class herself (in that profaning inuendo) with a man 
 like her father? 
 
 She almost wished she had not bought the suit. She 
 had been disappointed in its appearance once it was 
 on her; it had been anti-climax after the green suit. 
 However, by the time she reached the second-hand 
 bookshop, where she stopped to pick up her basket, 
 she had recalled her father so happy in giving her the 
 check, anticipating her joy in a new suit .... After 
 all, she would love it, she said to herself, with a little 
 catch in her breath. 
 
 The Market Square was full of loafers when she 
 came to it negroes and " poor whites." Miserable 
 looking white beggar-girls accosted her with their 
 whining " Miss, gimme a nickel." She made her 
 way hurryingly into the big Market House and made 
 purchases at various stalls. 
 
 As she emerged into the narrow, cluttered thorough- 
 fare that ran on four sides of the Market House, she 
 paused, and furtively opening her purse, glanced at the 
 remaining coins eighteen cents left, counting three 
 pennies ... it would be enough for a flower or two.
 
 28 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 Inattentively picking her way among the hucksters' 
 wagons, one of them almost backed into her and as she 
 sprang ahead to safety, she found herself full against 
 the Churchwell carriage ! So near that she could put 
 out her hand and touch Mrs. Ransom Churchwell, 
 whose opulent curves were outlined against the plum- 
 coloured cushions of the victoria. But a sort of haze 
 formed instantaneously over Lydia's eyes; near as she 
 was, she received only a dim, fleeting impression of 
 Mrs. Churchwell's plumes tossing her an aloof recog- 
 nition. 
 
 Her face was aflame, her cheeks still burning when 
 a few minutes later she entered a little florist's shop and 
 inquired the price of roses. 
 
 ''These?" The young woman in attendance 
 touched a jar of American Beauty roses. " Five dol- 
 lars." 
 
 " Oh, not a-dozen; a-piece . . ." 
 
 " Fifty cents, I suppose. These are cheaper," list- 
 lessly indicating some others. " Thirty-five . . . 
 twenty-five . . ." 
 
 " I was just pricing them," Lydia murmured, turn- 
 ing to go, when the young woman drew out a jar of 
 small rose-buds. " Fifteen cents a-piece for these," 
 she said, and Lydia selected one and paying for it laid 
 it tenderly on top of her marketing. 
 
 It was nearly four by the florist's clock, she had 
 noticed, and when she left the Square she flew. 
 
 She saw no smoke from the chimney as she ap- 
 proached the cottage. Evidently her father had al-
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 29 
 
 lowed the fire to go down. Well, when she went in, 
 she would scold him ! 
 
 But the key was still behind the blind where she had 
 left it. Oh, after all, it wasn't very late. Perhaps he 
 had gone for a walk in the country. 
 
 VI 
 
 And yet she felt a little uneasy. As she shook her 
 saucepan and clouds of fragrant steam began to rise 
 in the kitchen, she asked herself more and more anx- 
 iously why he did not come. 
 
 She looked out. The sky was deepening. She 
 coaxed a cheerful blaze in the sitting room grate to 
 welcome him. She had thought an hour earlier 
 how gaily she would set forth the little feast in all the 
 best bits of china and silver; but now, as she put the 
 rose in a delicate holder, arranged the candles, and the 
 grapes in their pretty basket, she could not force her 
 mood to any gaiety at all. . . . 
 
 It was growing very dark at last, and unable to sit 
 still, she went out on the porch and then on down to 
 the gate. With straining eyes she peered in every di- 
 rection through the deep, luminous blue of early even- 
 ing. There were the town lights, outlining, with their 
 silver stars against the blue, old Kingsville's hills and 
 valleys. But nowhere her father. For a moment she 
 thought she would run to the Pooles and ask their ad- 
 vice, but then she realised that such a course would be 
 an admission that she believed something had happened 
 to him. She would not, absolutely would not, yet,
 
 30 
 
 make that admission, and with pounding heart she went 
 back into the cottage. 
 
 The minutes lagged agonisingly; but it was always 
 so, she told herself, when you waited for any one, your 
 eyes riveted to the clock. 
 
 At last there was a sound on the walk outside, faint, 
 and then distinct, unmistakable. Her heart gave a 
 bound of joy! all her foolish fears, and here he 
 was. 
 
 She ran to the kitchen. Everything must be on the 
 table. In all its splendour the birthday supper should 
 meet his eyes ! In a twinkling she had the candles lit, 
 and then, the little festal table full in view, she flung 
 the outside door wide open. 
 
 VII 
 
 Her father staggered through the doorway. 
 
 " Don't be frightened . . ." he managed to articu- 
 late, trying to smile and fell to the floor. 
 
 " Father, what is it? " she cried. " Oh, Father! " 
 
 He did not answer. She tried to lift him, but he 
 pushed her away. 
 
 She ran from the cottage and past the few inter- 
 vening houses to summon the Pooles. She had for- 
 gotten the table, forgotten the feast, forgotten 
 everything except the one overwhelming fact that on 
 the floor of the cottage behind her lay her father. 
 But when, a moment later, she opened the door for 
 the Pooles, the picture that presented itself struck her 
 with shocking force the two lighted candles twin- 
 kling merrily on the supper table, the pink rose up-
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 31 
 
 holding its head bravely between them, the garnished 
 dishes 1 
 
 " How silly that table looks to the Pooles! " flashed 
 through her, as she knelt with them beside her father, 
 in an agony of tenderness. 
 
 VIII 
 
 . The doctor and Mr. Poole were with her father. 
 Lydia sat looking off into space, listening for the doc- 
 tor's return from the bedroom, scarcely hearing the 
 soft, sympathetic things Mrs. Poole said from time to 
 time. Something, perhaps a little stiffening in Mrs. 
 Poole's usually tranquil tones, made her look up. 
 
 " I would put away that bottle, dear." Mrs. 
 Poole's eyes, fixed upon the supper table, expressed 
 astonishment, plainly tinged with disapproval, at the 
 pomp, the brilliant circumstance, with which Lydia and 
 her father were apparently in the habit of supping. 
 " I would certainly put it away. There may be others 
 in, and people look at those things so differently, you 
 know." 
 
 Lydia rose slowly from her chair, went to the table, 
 and blew out the candles. Then she resumed her seat. 
 " I won't tell her a thing about the birthday," she 
 thought, with intolerance of Mrs. Poole's intolerance. 
 This cheap little bottle of claret had been the gala 
 touch to her feast. 
 
 Mrs. Poole rose very gently, and removing the bottle 
 herself, carried it to the kitchen. Lydia could hear 
 the pantry door open, then close. 
 
 When the doctor had left, she crept alone into her
 
 32 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 father's room. His eyes were closed. She knelt by 
 the bed, leaning her head against his arm. 
 
 "Oh, Father, it's your birthday! " she sobbed out, 
 at last. 
 
 One of his big, thin hands moved feebly to her hair, 
 and rested there.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE Pooles remained all night, sitting up, and this 
 ominous arrangement, which they had evidently 
 made with the doctor, left no room for doubt in Lydia's 
 mind that her father's condition was regarded critical. 
 
 Toward midnight, Mr. Poole, who had been con- 
 stantly darting to and from the sickroom, came tip- 
 toeing into the sitting room where Lydia and Mrs. 
 Poole had been for a long time sitting silently faced 
 to each other. 
 
 " Lydia," he said, already employing that hushed 
 voice .which bespeaks the house of death, " I'm going 
 to make a fire in your father's room. It will be better 
 to have one there now." 
 
 " Yes, it will be better," she answered in a dazed 
 tone, and started out in the direction of the kitchen. 
 
 " Oh, let me get the coal, Lydia." 
 
 She turned on him almost savagely. " I'll get the 
 coal," she said, passing on out. 
 
 She lit a lantern, and carried it out with her to the 
 little coal-house in the rear of the cottage lot and placed 
 it in the door, while with the big coal-shovel she filled 
 her bucket, scraping up coal-dust as well as coal-lumps 
 from the floor of the shed. 
 
 33
 
 34 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 Her eyes travelled in the uncertain lantern light over 
 the smutty shed. How many buckets full were left? 
 Very few; but as she made her laden way back to 
 the cottage, her lantern throwing a narrow gleam 
 ahead of her in the midnight blackness, she said to 
 herself that neither the Pooles, nor any one else, should 
 see how nearly exhausted the coal was. 
 
 The Pooles were the best people in the world, of 
 course ; but her place, now, was to keep guard ! She 
 would stay awake all night. Strangers, no, nor Pooles, 
 should look into all the pitiful makeshifts to which she 
 and her father had been driven. No one should know 
 that there was scarcely a decent change of linen for 
 her father's bed, with all her darning and patching. 
 She would manage some way take the sheets secretly 
 from her own bed in the morning, and wash them. 
 
 Through the still hours of the long night she sat 
 in an armchair by the fire, Mrs. Poole drowsing oppo- 
 site her. 
 
 But a time came when she felt her head nodding. 
 It would drop down upon her chest, and with a stu- 
 pendous effort she would prop it up again and shake 
 herself. At length she realised, with bewildered anx- 
 iety, that she was falling asleep. 
 
 She could not tell how long she had been asleep, 
 when she became aware of the sound of muffled voices 
 that at first she took to be a long distance off, and 
 gradually recognised as quite near. 
 
 " And, Edwin, wine and flowers on the table, and 
 not fifty cents' worth of staple groceries in this house ! "
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 35 
 
 Mrs. Poole's whisper cut distinctly across the field 
 of Lydia's slowly awakening consciousness. She op- 
 ened her eyes and closed them quickly again. The 
 Pooles had not seen her, but she had seen them in that 
 weird mingled light when dawn creeps in at the window 
 upon the lamp still lit. They were hovering over the 
 fire together, in eager consultation. 
 
 " I'll get some towels when I go home to breakfast 
 and bring them back with me. Would you believe it, 
 Edwin, I can't find a whole towel in this house ? Such 
 rags! It's pitiful! Sheets and pillow-cases the same. 
 I've looked everywhere; 'twas the only kind I could 
 find and mighty few of those." 
 
 Lydia winced. She wanted to sit up and say aloud, 
 with her eyes flashed wide open on Mrs. Poole : " I 
 suppose, then, you've been snooping in the coal-house, 
 too ! as you've been everywhere else." But she 
 only lay back perfectly still in her chair, with closed 
 eyes, not stirring a muscle, afraid even lest they should 
 catch the tense intake of air in her breathing. 
 
 "Oh, they're so unpractical!" began Mrs. Poole 
 again. " I don't know whatever will become of 
 Lydia!" 
 
 "So that's what they're speculating on already!" 
 And the shock of the thought coming all at once, and 
 for the first time fully, to her, Lydia wondered, her- 
 self, what would become of her if if ! 
 
 " Edwin, do you suppose there's any hope at all? " 
 Mrs. Poole resumed. 
 
 " Well, he might last a week or so. It's my opin-
 
 3 6 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 ion, though," he concluded in a hoarse whisper, at once 
 moved and sententious, " that the end'll come any time 
 now." 
 
 The end! Dumb sobs that had been struggling in 
 Lydia broke with terrific suddenness on the hush of 
 the room. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Poole sprang toward her. 
 
 " Oh, I just woke up I " something prompted her to 
 cry out brokenly between her sobs. 
 
 II 
 
 In the early afternoon of the dragging day which 
 followed a knock on the kitchen door aroused her. 
 
 The driver of a coal-wagon stood at the door. 
 
 " Wrong house! " she said hastily. 
 
 " No, it ain't the wrong house, miss," he persisted, 
 holding out a slip for her to sign. " Lambright " 
 he read, emphatically, " Hill Avenue One thousand 
 pounds Paid! " 
 
 " I won't sign it," announced Lydia, and closed the 
 door without further argument. 
 
 " All right," the man shouted back cheerfully 
 through the closed door. " I'll put it in the coal-house 
 anyway. Them's my orders ! " 
 
 Lydia sank into a chair, and bowed her head on the 
 table. The Pooles had looked into the coal-house, 
 then, while she slept ! 
 
 She heard the harsh rattle of the coal on the shed 
 floor as the driver threw it in shovelful by shovelful 
 from his wagon. She stopped her ears. The first
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 37 
 
 chanty! Oh, why did it hurt so bitterly? Why, why, 
 was she not grateful? 
 
 All at once, something struck her with grim humour ! 
 " One thousand pounds," the man had read from the 
 slip. Mr. Poole had realised that her father might 
 not live till a whole ton of coal should be exhausted! 
 How canny ! a half-ton ! How tempered with dis- 
 cretion Mr. Poole's charities were 1 
 
 But suddenly she marvelled at the wickedness of her 
 own heart that she could analyse even to her most 
 secret self the quality of Mr. Poole's kindness. How 
 good Mr. Poole had always been to her! Why, 
 she had eaten raspberries out of his hand, when she 
 had stood beside him, no higher than his knee, by the 
 bushes in his garden ! Who but Mr. Poole had raked 
 and heaped great beds of leaves for her to tumble in, 
 in autumn days long gone by? 
 
 Her eyes that had been dry and burning all day long 
 gathered a slight moisture. . . . Mr. Poole was a 
 truly generous man; not rich; half a ton from him was 
 more than twenty tons from say, Mr. Churchwell. 
 
 Churchwell ! She wondered if he would hear about 
 her father and come to inquire. " Yes," she thought, 
 "he'll come!" Something warm and soft seemed 
 suddenly, as she imaged his coming, to flood her whole 
 being. She fancied his coming right into the little 
 kitchen where she was sitting at the table now with 
 bowed head, lifting her up, so gently, gathering her 
 to his broad, protecting breast, his eyes with their mes- 
 meric gaze looking down into hers, his deep voice 
 whispering to her as he held her in his arms, " My
 
 3 8 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 poor, poof little Lydia ! " She trembled with excite- 
 ment, feeling in a wild transport of joy that his lips 
 were actually seeking hers ! Never before had her 
 fancies of him dared so far to such thrilling inti- 
 macy and it was strange, indeed, even to herself 
 luxuriating in these newborn emotions, that such fan- 
 cies should have sprung out of this deepest, most hope- 
 less misery she had ever known. 
 
 Ill 
 
 She was tapped lightly on the shoulder. She did not 
 look up at once. She had heard some one come into 
 the kitchen, and had felt a slight restiffening of her 
 spirit when she recognised the step as Mrs. Poole's. 
 
 " A package, Lydia." 
 
 Lydia took the package and carried it to her bed- 
 room, but before she had time to fasten the door she 
 felt Mrs. Poole pushing softly behind her into the 
 room. 
 
 ; ' What is it? " queried Mrs. Poole, eagerly. 
 
 Lydia without a word began untying the cord around 
 the box she had put on her bed. She lifted the cover, 
 threw back the tissue paper wrappings, and revealed 
 the suit she had purchased the day before. 
 
 "Oh! " exclaimed Mrs. Poole, leaning her plump, 
 elderly person against the foot of the bed. Framed 
 with its grey curls, her pretty face, in which softness 
 and sharpness were most extraordinarily blended, be- 
 trayed unusual surprise. " Oh, oh ! " she said, quite 
 playfully, while Lydia remained silent. 
 
 " New? " she asked, scanning the suit, and feeling it.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 39 
 
 " I bought it yesterday," Lydia replied briefly. She 
 took the suit from its box, and as she walked toward 
 the closet to hang it up, she felt a second inquiry strike, 
 as it were, against the back of her head : " How much 
 did you give for it, Lydia if I may ask? " 
 
 Lydia hesitated; then she answered, her back still 
 turned to Mrs. Poole, " Thirty dollars." 
 
 "Thirty!" 
 
 " I don't lie, usually," she said to herself, as Mrs. 
 Poole's gently reproachful, " Oh! Very pretty, very," 
 fell on her ears, " but when people ask the cost of 
 things oh, I hate curiosity ! "
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE next day trays borne by respectful servants 
 began to arrive at the Lambright cottage; they 
 came not only from the neighbourhood but from dis- 
 tant quarters of the town. 
 
 Lydia did not exactly know whether these broiled 
 birds and moulds of jelly and airy tea-rolls were for 
 herself or for her father, but she knew quite well that 
 she, no more than he, could have swallowed a morsel 
 of any of these dishes, proffered, many of them, by rich 
 and important families of Kingsville who had mani- 
 fested no previous interest in her father except in active 
 opposition to him in the movement of opinion that had 
 effected his removal from the College. 
 
 She handled the exquisite napery and china with an 
 odd mingling of defiance and satisfaction, and pon- 
 dered half-ironically, as she did so, the ways of Kings- 
 ville, which she and her father had sometimes analysed 
 laughingly together and which now, no laughter in her, 
 were brought home to her with such poignancy. . . . 
 Illness, fatal illness, death, burial they were to 
 Kingsville, in ascending scale of interest, what the play, 
 the ball-park, the race-track, the bull-fight, offer to other 
 communities, and the house of illness, the house of 
 death, were always crowded with the old town's help- 
 
 40
 
 41 
 
 ful or curious, friendly or managerial spirits. How 
 eager the discussions by the Kingsville fireside of the 
 mortal malady, the appearance of the " remains " ; and 
 how willingly, almost blithely, as conferring some in- 
 teresting importance upon himself, the Kingsvillian 
 moved to the office of pall-bearer. With what anima- 
 tion Kingsville street-corners speculated on the amount 
 the dead man had " left," and with what zeal was his 
 relict, whether by next marriage or otherwise, disposed 
 of in the carriages that wound home from a Kingsville 
 burying-ground. . . . 
 
 Lydia knew that now for their brief day she and her 
 father would furnish wagging for Kingsville tongues. 
 
 II 
 
 All day long, in unbroken stream, people called, 
 among them faces she could not remember ever to have 
 seen before, and while many only inquired with polite 
 solicitude at the door, others, who had never before 
 been inside the cottage, now pushed their way in and 
 offered their sympathy and assistance with eyes whose 
 roving Lydia was keenly alive to and resented angrily. 
 
 As the afternoon sun began pouring into the win- 
 dows of the sitting room, she saw with uneasiness that 
 the worn spots of the carpet and furniture would be 
 more and more uncompromisingly disclosed, and she 
 pulled the window shades down to the sills of the win- 
 dows. 
 
 " Lydia, I would have the shades up If I were you! 
 The room would be more cheerful." Mrs. Poole took 
 hold of one of the lowered shades to raise it.
 
 42 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 " I don't want the room cheerful ! I don't want it 
 cheerful, Mrs. Poole ! " she cried. " Leave the shades 
 down!" 
 
 Ill 
 
 As it drew near to sunset, Dr. Dunbar came. He 
 was a clergyman, a very tall, thin, frail-looking old 
 man. Her father held him in high regard, she knew, 
 and she had always looked up to him with affectionate 
 veneration; but she was on the alert now, wary of 
 every one. 
 
 He rose and took her hand as she came into the 
 room, looking down on her with an expression of ten- 
 der sympathy. 
 
 " Lydia, would you like me to see your father? " 
 
 " No, no ! " She answered vehemently, drawing 
 away her hand. 
 
 For an instant he looked at her blankly, then he 
 asked with gentle emphasis, " Lydia, do you think your 
 father would like to see me? " 
 
 Swift as thought she placed her back against the 
 door that led into the sickroom. 
 
 " My father doesn't need instruction in the art of 
 dying, Dr. Dunbar! He has lived nobly! He will 
 die nobly!" 
 
 The frail old clergyman, who in his long life had 
 witnessed many kinds of suffering, took no affront to 
 his personal or to his ecclesiastical importance. 
 
 " Daughter, you are right," he said slowly, looking 
 down at her with lenient eyes; "your father needs no 
 instruction in dying. He has lived well. He will die
 
 43 
 
 well. It is not as a clergyman, but as his friend, I 
 had thought " 
 
 Lydia suddenly seized his hand in both hers, raised 
 it to her eyes, and hid her burning face on it. 
 
 " Oh, Dr. Dunbar, forgive me, please forgive me," 
 she said low and piteously. " Everything is so ter- 
 rible!" 
 
 She felt him patting her head with his free hand, 
 and she felt a moment's healing in the gentle, generous 
 touch of the soft withered old hand, but with the first 
 creak of the sickroom door opening behind her, she 
 straightened up, instantly mistrustful again, and her 
 eyes, wild and over-wrought, strained at him through 
 her tears. 
 
 " But you won't go in, you won't go in, Dr. Dun- 
 bar? "... They should not say, those people who 
 talked so much, " Professor Lambright gave up those 
 ' monkey ' views of his, when he came to die; wanted a 
 preacher with him." No, not if she had to murder 
 some one to prevent, they shouldn't say it I 
 
 The old clergyman quieted her. " No, Lydia, I 
 won't go in; but if you want me, or I can help you, at 
 any time, let me know. I'll come." 
 
 IV 
 
 Dr. Dunbar had gone, and she sat with her elbow 
 on the pine work-table in the kitchen, her head drooped 
 against her hand. 
 
 " Lydia, I want to speak to you. . . ." 
 Mrs. Poole entered and shut the door behind her, 
 circumspectly providing for privacy.
 
 44 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 " I hope you won't take anything I say amiss, Lydia. 
 I'm sure no person has your welfare at heart more than 
 Mr. Poole and me." 
 
 She seated herself on one of the splint-bottomed 
 chairs. Her smooth face on which during sixty 
 years only a few, and those the minor, frets of life 
 had done a little light sketching here and there 
 wore an expression of unusual concern. 
 
 " You're doing yourself an injustice, Lydia, you cer- 
 tainly are, to behave to a minister like you did to Dr. 
 Dunbar!" 
 
 " I don't respect ministers as much as I do other 
 people . . ." answered Lydia, sullenly, evading the 
 eyes of her accuser. 
 
 "Oh, Lydia, how can you say such things? How 
 can you?" Mrs. Poole leaned across the table, her 
 eyes full of tears. " I've always been so fond of your 
 father, Mr. Poole and I, both, and we've always hoped 
 that some time the truth would come to him " 
 
 " The truth?" Lydia repeated indignantly. 
 
 '' We've known him seventeen years, and he was a 
 good man, but Mr. Poole and I think he ought to have 
 a minister with him now. A minister who was his 
 friend, like Dr. Dunbar, he couldn't object to to 
 pray with him now . . ." 
 
 " Pray with him ! Why should any one pray with 
 my father? No better man ever lived than my 
 father!" 
 
 " Yes, but an infidel, Lydia ! " 
 
 " Infidel! " Lydia brought her hand down on the
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 45 
 
 table with angry force. " Yes, in Kingsville, that's 
 what you call every one who has enlightened views, 
 views you don't understand! " 
 
 Mrs. Poole's mouth tightened, there was a twitch- 
 ing in the region of her lapped chins, a great deal of 
 blood had rushed to her face, and the admirable con- 
 formation of her nose sharpened to a slight point not 
 ordinarily observable. 
 
 " Lydia, you ought to be careful what you say, and 
 how you act! It was not only your father but your 
 mother it's my duty to tell you, so you may be cau- 
 tious there was talk " 
 
 Lydia, in a distant and stupefied voice, interrupted 
 her. 
 
 " My mother . . ." 
 
 Then she shook Mrs. Poole's hand from her shoul- 
 der, and her eyes slowly gathered a fiercer and fiercer 
 light. "Don't you dare speak of my mother 
 that way Mrs. Poole!" . . . Between great sobs, 
 her words broke spasmodically: "You don't know 
 . . . anything . . . about my mother. . . . She was a 
 foreigner . . . and so you didn't understand her . . . 
 any of you. ... It was just like my father's lectures 
 . . . people didn't understand her . . . any more 
 than they did ... his lectures . . . and what they 
 don't understand . . . they condemn . . . and they 
 made up mean things about her ... I suppose . . . 
 from what you say. . . . Oh, Mrs. Poole, how could 
 you be so cruel as to insinuate anything about my 
 mother, now ! "
 
 4 6 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 " Hush, hush, Lydia ! Hush, dear ! " 
 
 But Lydia sobbed on even after Mrs. Poole had left 
 her. 
 
 All the disquieting suspicions of past years had 
 sprung into life again. Her thoughts were running 
 back feverishly to a day of her childhood, when the 
 word of a malicious little playmate had set her think- 
 ing. And just now, on the threshold of revelation, she 
 had pushed away with frantic dread the hand that 
 would have opened to her the gate of mystery. Wil- 
 fully she had remained in darkness she would never 
 know, now, what it was they had said about her mother. 
 
 When it was night, she took down an old cape that 
 hung on a nail above her, wrapped herself in it, and 
 went outside, sitting down on the kitchen doorstep with 
 her back to the house. 
 
 Mrs. Poole urged her tenderly to come in out of the 
 cold and dark; Mr. Poole added his entreaties; even 
 the doctor laboured gravely with her. But Lydia re- 
 mained obdurate to all appeals. If she could have 
 been alone by her father's side, nothing could have 
 separated her from that sacred place, but she had been 
 helpless to prevent his delivery into other hands. 
 
 She got up from the step where her limbs were 
 growing numb, and shivering in the night air which 
 wrapped like a sheet, icy-wet, about her, she made her 
 way around the little house to the front yard, walked 
 slowly down to the wall that separated it from the 
 street, and stood above it, peering off into the darkness,
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 47 
 
 which here and there under a street-lamp was splotched 
 with half-bright spots, where fairylike the tree- 
 branches threw their tossing shadows. The night was 
 beautiful to her, steeped in delights, exquisite witch- 
 eries; even now in her misery, beautiful to her, and 
 moving! 
 
 She heard the chatter of approaching voices. 
 Around the corner and along the street came three 
 youthful couples, a gay troop. The girls swished- 
 swished softly, holding up carelessly under their long 
 wraps chiffon and silk dancing-skirts. The young men, 
 gallantly slouching, wore their overcoats loose from 
 the shoulders, exposing white expanses of evening linen. 
 
 An agitating blend of perfume waking her blood 
 to what momentary mad ardours, perilous wanderlust! 
 rose to Lydia with this passing of the party-clad 
 violet, super-distilled, wafted up to her from a web of 
 lace handkerchief, cigarette fume, scent of jasmine 
 from one of these little dancing-bodices. . . . 
 
 The third couple noticed her standing bare-headed, 
 her cape clutched about her, only a little above 
 them. 
 
 "Oh, is that you, Lydia? How's your father?" 
 And hardly had her low answer been given " About 
 the same " till on they swept, their laughter drifting 
 back to her. Were they laughing at her? Surely not, 
 yet the sound of their laughter, following so close their 
 greeting and inquiry, made her feel that they were. 
 How alone she felt! As they passed under a neigh- 
 bouring street-light, she could detect the bags that 
 dangled from the girls' arms, replete, she knew, with
 
 48 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 all the little vanities high-heels, powder-rags be- 
 loved of her girlish soul, too 1 
 
 VI 
 
 She saw a man's form moving toward her down the 
 walk from the house; nearer she discerned it the se- 
 date, long-coated, rather pompous figure of Dr. Wil- 
 liams; and when this time he said to her simply, 
 " Lydia, you had better come in," all the impulses that 
 had hitherto kept her from her father's room, suddenly 
 gave way to an overpowering eagerness to reach it. 
 
 She had never before looked on death, and was to 
 see it now seldom so terrible in its approach. All 
 night, and to 'almost the last flutter of her father's 
 breath, she watched this agonised battling of his flesh 
 to hold, still, the spirit it encased of the spirit to 
 struggle free its prison. And she tried, as never be- 
 fore in her life she had tried, to be brave; it was the 
 last thing she could do for her father help him to 
 die. . . . But when he began at last to beg to be de- 
 livered from his torment, she lifted herself from her 
 aching knees, and caught hold of the doctor with sud- 
 den desperate strength. 
 
 " Oh, doctor, give him something! Give him some- 
 thing! " she implored. 
 
 " Anything to alleviate, now, Lydia, would precipi- 
 tate" 
 
 She broke in on the doctor's measured words fren- 
 ziedly: 
 
 " Oh, bring the end, bring it! " 
 
 She was silenced by the sound of her father's voice.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 49 
 
 In all these hours of vigil years it seemed to her 
 it was the first time he had spoken her name, or had 
 seemed to know that she was in the room. 
 
 Her gaze fixed with awe on the big wasted figure 
 propped up with pillows in the bed. His eyes were 
 wide open, blue as she had never before seen them, 
 or known eyes could be, but she saw that they were 
 sightless, for as he said in a low, removed voice, 
 " Lydia, is that you? " the blue eyes staring from his 
 haggard, unshaven face were focused on vacant space. 
 
 " I'll go with the dawn," he whispered, after a little 
 pause. 
 
 " Turn me ... so I can face . . . the coming 
 day. . . ." 
 
 They turned him so that his face might be toward 
 the light of morning when it came. 
 
 Suddenly on the hush of the room the crowing of a 
 cock broke; then a cock's faint, far off answer; then 
 a chorus of cocks, far and near, that sounded strangely 
 ominous, and unearthly, in Lydia's ears. 
 
 Her father was speaking again. 
 
 " Lydia, I didn't expect to die, yet." 
 
 She saw the others fall a little away from the bed, 
 but she had ceased to care what privacies should be 
 overheard. What, at last, were privacies? What 
 was anything to her? What mattered, except that she 
 should save him whatever of anguish she could. 
 
 " It's all right, Father. It's all right. Don't worry. 
 I'll get along. 
 
 " Father, you know how I love you ! " she whispered 
 to him,
 
 50 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 He knew. Nevertheless, some impulse, more pow- 
 erful than she could resist, made her seek to reach him 
 with this last yearning assurance. 
 
 " Lydia . . . don't get anything . . . fine . . . 
 for me. Promise. You need all ... the little in- 
 surance. . . . Promise . . . just a plain coffin." 
 
 Her cry died on her lips. A singular and indescrib- 
 able radiance was suffusing her father's plain face. 
 Ravaged and emaciate, it was touched now to sublime 
 resignation, to the eternal peace; transfigured before 
 her eyes to a beauty more strange and touching and 
 noble than aught she had ever seen or dreamed ! 
 
 Suddenly she was conscious of a quick movement 
 among the other watchers by the bed. Her father's 
 chin had dropped to his breast and she saw, amazed, 
 that it was as he had said it would be the sky 
 streaked with light ! It had come the Dawn !
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 LYDIA accepted with silent docility the small cup 
 of hot broth which Mrs. Poole brought her. It 
 was noon: and she had been lying on the bed in her 
 own room, all through the hours since her father's death 
 at break of day, stunned and lifeless; but as she finished 
 sipping the broth, she asked for Mr. Poole. 
 
 ; ' What is it, Lydia, you want to see him about? 
 Can't I see to it for you? " 
 
 " No, I want to see Mr. Poole." 
 
 Mr. Poole sat down facing Lydia's bed, placing his 
 neat, spare figure quite forward in his chair, almost 
 on the edge of it, indeed. 
 
 " Mr. Poole, have you seen about the coffin yet? " 
 
 He jumped with the startling directness of Lydia's 
 question, her dark eyes, so big in her white face, 
 straight on him. 
 
 " Oh, Lydia, leave all that to me, leave all that to 
 me . . ." 
 
 He passed his hand nervously over his head. A 
 lonely January fly, sturdy survivor of a Kingsville 
 winter of unprecedented rigour, persisted, to his evi- 
 dent annoyance, in walking and rewalking the thin 
 strands of hair decorously trained across the bald crown 
 of his head. Lydia wondered, with a vague feeling of 
 
 51
 
 52 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 'disgust for herself, how at such a moment she could 
 notice anything so absurdly and horridly irrelevant; 
 but with the queer and sometimes quite undignified be- 
 haviour of the human mind, she did pertinaciously re- 
 gard the fly, even the while she put to Mr. Poole her 
 second calm and awful inquiry. 
 
 " What kind of a coffin did you get? " 
 
 " Oh, a very nice casket, a very nice one." 
 
 " Expensive? " 
 
 Mr. Poole fidgeted on his chair. "Expensive?" 
 He cleared his throat. " Why, you wouldn't want 
 anything ornate, Lydia ! Your father wouldn't want 
 anything of that kind." 
 
 " / would." 
 
 Her eyes, never wavering, bored into Mr. Poole's; 
 they were trying to bore into his skull, into the inner- 
 most recesses of his practical and cautious brain; she 
 did not propose to be circumvented by any covert, 
 cheese-paring ideas of his at such a time. 
 
 Mr. Poole kept clearing his throat, and again and 
 again uneasily settled his waist-coat. 
 
 ' Why, Lydia, let me see to these things for you. 
 . . . Let me see to them for youl " 
 
 She lifted herself from the pillow. She was so 
 violently agitated that her whole body shook. Her 
 dry lips clung together. 
 
 " Mr. Poole, I want the handsomest casket in Kings- 
 ville for my father, the handsomest one." 
 
 Mr. Poole stared at her. 
 
 " Lydia, my dear girl! " he found voice at last to 
 exclaim protestingly.
 
 53 
 
 " The handsomest one I " she repeated. " Do you 
 understand? " 
 
 "I wouldn't be foolish, Lydia ! Your father 
 wouldn't want you to be. ... Just something neat, 
 and suitable " 
 
 " Suitable! nothing is too precious to suit my fa- 
 ther." 
 
 "Oh, no, no, of course not, Lydia, of course not! 
 I didn't mean that." His hands as well as Lydia's 
 were shaking. 
 
 " Mr. Poole, if you won't promise to get the hand- 
 somest one in Kingsville for me I'll go down and 
 get it myself, from the the undertaker!" 
 
 But as she finished speaking, and made an effort to 
 rise from the bed, the frightened look on Mr. Poole's 
 face showed her she need no longer fear his resist- 
 ance. 
 
 " Lydia, are there any kin of your father that should 
 be notified? " he asked in a shy, faltering voice, wiping 
 beads of perspiration from his forehead. 
 
 It was Lydia's turn to start! She had not antici- 
 pated this question, and a wave of painful warmth 
 passed over her cold body. 
 
 " I think . . . there is no one ... at all .. ." 
 she said hesitatingly. " My father has no near rela- 
 tives . . . living." 
 
 As Lydia heard herself speaking these words, she 
 wondered if they were indeed true ! 
 
 Her moment of abstraction was broken into by a 
 loud, dreary, sing-song voice calling something from 
 the street outside.
 
 54 
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 " O-h, o-h, I hab, I hab, I hab three kinds." 
 It was the old black fishman going by, calling out 
 his fish: his cry varied with the luck of his fishing 
 " Two kinds," " One kind," " Three kinds." 
 
 i 
 
 O h, O h, I hab, I hab, I hab three kinds, I hab three kinds. 
 
 They were the first words lisped by a Kingsville 
 baby: " I hab, I hab, I hab three kinds," mocking the 
 old fishman. 
 
 Could it be possible, thought Lydia, as the old 
 darky's long-drawn-out, melancholy strain floated in 
 to her, that things were going on as usual in Kings- 
 ville? It struck her as heartless, that people should 
 be buying fish, eating fish, as if nothing had happened! 
 
 " O-h, o-h, I hab, I hab, I hab three kinds, I hab 
 three kinds." 
 
 How often she had heard the call, and had run down 
 to the gate. "Fresh, Uncle?" she would ask, and 
 with his old woolly head ceremoniously uncovered to 
 her, regularly would come his answer: " Yas 'um, 
 f raish ! I cotched 'em dis mornin' ! " 
 
 The old darky's mournful cry came back to the 
 bedroom faintly now, from a distance. " O-h, o-h, I 
 hab . . ." 
 
 It was all she could make out distinctly. A queer, 
 and almost exciting, idea flashed through her; she asked 
 herself whether ever again she would run out and buy 
 from him his " fraish-cotched " river fish.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD -55 
 
 No, Lydia, never, never, again! When years have 
 passed, when his old black body is mouldering in the 
 blacks' burying-ground of Kingsville, far off in a for- 
 eign land you will wake in the deep of night from your 
 troubled sleep, and you will think you have heard the 
 old black fishman of Kingsville calling, " I hab, I 
 hab . . ." But it will be only in your dream, Lydia, 
 that he was calling. 
 
 II 
 
 " About the music, Lydia . . ." 
 
 Mr. Poole had risen. 
 
 " About the music, Lydia. Would there be any 
 particular hymns you'd prefer at the funeral?" he 
 asked. 
 
 Lydia looked at him wonderingly for the fraction of 
 a minute. 
 
 " Hymns? " she repeated after him a little absently. 
 
 " I don't want any hymns," she said, rather 
 brusquely, sinking back on her pillow, as if the matter 
 were settled without further ado. 
 
 Mr. Poole approached the bedside. 
 
 ' There must be two hymns at the house, Lydia, 
 and one at the grave," he said, in a firm, dry manner 
 she had occasionally seen before when he was putting 
 through some measure that had met with neighbour- 
 hood, or with slight domestic interference. It had 
 formerly made her a little afraid. Nothing dismayed 
 her now. 
 
 " / won't have one hymn! " she answered him. " I 
 hate hymns! " she exclaimed defiantly.
 
 5 6 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 A little vibrating silence fell between them ; and then 
 he began explaining to her the necessary procedures of 
 Christian burial. 
 
 " Surely grand old hymns, Lydia, like " 
 
 " No, no! " she broke in on him vehemently. " I 
 don't want ' Lead, Kindly Light,' ' Nearer, My God, 
 to Thee,' ' Abide with Me,' not any of them ! I think 
 they're all dreadful! Oh, I hate them all! " 
 
 "Lydia! Lydia!" 
 
 " Mr. Poole, I tell you I won't have them, not one ! " 
 
 in 
 
 For a long time after Mr. Poole, unalterably 
 shocked, but vanquished, had made his prim exit from 
 the room, Lydia's thoughts ran chaotically; then she 
 sank into a sort of torpor, only conscious of a dull 
 misery, without hope, almost without form, except now 
 and then when she was made sickeningly aware, by 
 some sound that reached her through the walls, of the 
 soft-stepped preparations going busily forward all 
 around her in the cottage. 
 
 In the four winters they had lived in the cottage 
 rarely had a fire been lighted in her own or in her 
 father's bedroom; all winter long the two bedrooms 
 had been clammy as caves, but now flames had been 
 set licking up these damp, unused flues, and occasion- 
 ally when she opened her eyes she wondered vaguely 
 why her bedroom looked unfamiliar to her. 
 
 It was a fair-sized room, not very light or cheery at 
 any season of year or time of day. Its paper, a frigid
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 57 
 
 blue, had begun to peel and drop off the wall in many 
 places. But she had made her girlish attempts to 
 mitigate the room's air of general dreariness. She 
 had hung white muslin draperies at the window and 
 placed them on the dresser, very adroitly arranged them 
 to hide their holes and darns, though their pristine 
 freshness could never be long maintained in the soot 
 laden atmosphere of Kingsville. She had pinned on 
 the wall a little group of black and white magazine cuts, 
 an Annunciation, Botticelli's, Rossetti's Astarte Syriaca 
 such things, that had taken her fancy. And she had 
 achieved what she regarded a real touch of distinction 
 in her bureautop a brush, once her mother's, re- 
 deeming with its gleam of gold her own scanty array 
 of cheap little toilet implements. What worlds of ro- 
 mance she had woven from nothing more than the im- 
 ages evoked by her mother's name on the back of this 
 beautiful brush Aimee, in half-effaced script. 
 
 But now as the day wore on, and from time to time 
 she opened her eyes briefly from a sort of sleepless sleep, 
 and saw all these little treasures that had previously 
 had for her individual and interesting existence, they 
 ceased to have for her that kind of existence. She de- 
 rived no solace even from the soft pinkish glow from 
 the open fire that was bathing them now; there was 
 only a sort of blankness enveloping things, and now 
 and again a fearful shudder running through her as it 
 came back upon her with overpowering force, the re- 
 alisation of what had happened. Never to feel her 
 father's big hand clasping hers again, never to catch
 
 5 8 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 again that humorous twinkle in his grave eyes ! Could 
 she stand it? Could she live without him? . . . 
 
 She heard the door open a little, then further, though 
 still very gently, and in the next instant was aware of 
 Mrs. Poole approaching the bed, two great paste-board 
 boxes in her arms. 
 
 IV 
 
 Mrs. Poole moved with the resiliency common to 
 big, plump women, but with a step even more buoyant 
 than usual she came over to the bedside, and with a 
 little air of triumph discharged her arms of a load that 
 had evidently been pleasant for them to carry. 
 
 " Lydia, people are so kind in time of trouble, aren't 
 they?" she said, placing the boxes beside Lydia on 
 the bed, and lifting their covers. 
 
 " Mrs. Wyndham Wood sent them, dear, every- 
 thing you'll need. Wasn't it thoughtful of her? " 
 
 She lifted out a black dress of some fine woolen 
 material, trimmed with narrow crape bands. 
 
 " I don't know Mrs. Wood," remarked Lydia, 
 briefly. She had raised her head to look at the dress, 
 but she let it sink back upon her pillow again, as if 
 she was no longer interested. 
 
 " You know of her, Lydia," observed Mrs. Poole 
 unflinchingly. " One of the best women in this 
 town . . ." She continued to unload the boxes. 
 
 Lydia regarded with suspicious and disdainful eyes 
 each article displayed to her: the black petticoat, the 
 handkerchief with its deep black border, the dull black
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 59 
 
 gloves, dull black purse, even a dull black fan. 
 
 " I'm not going to wear any of those things, Mrs. 
 Poole." 
 
 " Oh, Lydia ! " Mrs. Poole gasped. " You wouldn't 
 hurt Mrs. Wood's feelings, surely 1" 
 
 " I'm not going to wear them. My father hated 
 mourning." 
 
 Mrs. Poole looked at her silently. A few tears had 
 gathered in her eyes. 
 
 " You must decide for yourself, Lydia, of course, 
 whether you'll wear mourning or not," she said, at 
 length, rather quietly. " I've always felt, myself, that 
 there was so little we could do for the dead, I was glad 
 to do that for them." She raised her eye-brows 
 slightly. 
 
 " I'm not going to wear them, Mrs. Poole." 
 
 All at once Lydia saw that the mysterious point she 
 had noticed before was forming now at the end of Mrs. 
 Poole's handsome nose. 
 
 " What will you wear . . . to-morrow ... to the 
 cemetery? " 
 
 " My new brown suit . . . he gave me . . ." 
 
 For a moment Mrs. Poole seemed unable to find her 
 voice; then she burst out: " I never heard of such a 
 thing, Lydia ! And no music ! . . . I should think it'd 
 be the last time in the world you'd want to do anything 
 to be talked about, Lydia . . . Well, surely, you'll 
 wear a veil over your face, and hat . . ." 
 
 " No, I'm not going to wear any veil." 
 
 Mrs. Poole stood erect by the bedside, looking down
 
 6o 
 
 almost threateningly at the white face, tearless and im- 
 movable, on the pillow below her. 
 
 " I shouldn't wonder, Lydia," she said slowly, letting 
 Lydia see that her store of patience had approached 
 perilously near an end, " I shouldn't wonder, my dear, 
 if you keep on like this, if you'd be your own worst 
 enemy! "
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 LYDIA had asked at last to see Dr. Dunbar, and 
 to see him alone. The fire in the grate had died 
 down and the bedroom was grey and shadowy as he 
 entered it, and groped his way to the bedside. He 
 bent over, to see her more distinctly. 
 
 She had consented to put on a wrapper of Mrs. 
 Poole, and her slim figure was almost buried in its 
 voluminous folds. Grief had wrought appalling 
 changes in her face; its pallor was almost the pallor 
 of death; the bones stood out with startling prominence 
 above the hollows that had come in her cheeks; and 
 her sunken eyes gave to her childish face, in its frame 
 of bright, disordered hair, a look singularly aged. 
 
 " Lydia, did you want to see me?" asked the old 
 clergyman softly. 
 
 She opened her eyes heavily, and looked up at him 
 with a faint, wistful smile. Yes, there was something 
 she wanted to say to him, but whenever she tried to 
 speak, the tightness and excruciating pain in her throat 
 seemed to prevent her doing so. 
 
 He sat down close to the bed, and waited. 
 
 " Dr. Dunbar, to-morrow, at the funeral," she began 
 at last, slowly, " will you please . . . not to apologise 
 in your sermon . . . for my father's not being ... a 
 Christian?" 
 
 ft
 
 62 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 " Daughter, can't you trust me? " 
 
 " I can't trust any one." 
 
 There was no hostility in her tone. If there was 
 any one in the world she felt tenderness for, now that 
 her father was gone, it was for this frail old minister; 
 he was better, and broader of mind, than the other 
 ministers of Kingsville she thought that ; still, he was 
 a minister, and she must make him understand! 
 
 " I've only been to two funerals," she resumed 
 huskily, after a little silence, " and at one of them, the 
 minister apologised, said the man . . . was a good 
 man . . . but wasn't a Christian . . ." 
 
 Her breath came with difficulty. 
 
 " My father was a Christian, Dr. Dunbar. I know 
 what Christ taught my father lived what he taught ! 
 I never saw him do an ignoble thing, or heard him say 
 an ignoble word. . . . Charity, and humility that 
 was what Christ taught, wasn't it, Dr. Dunbar? . . . 
 Well, my father was a Christian, then! And those 
 ministers that said he wasn't they're not worthy to 
 have tied the shoe of a man like my father! Oh, I 
 tell you, Dr. Dunbar, they lack the first requisite of 
 Christianity, themselves, charity! " 
 
 " Daughter, will you listen to me? I want to tell 
 you some things I've heard of your father, to-day." 
 
 Very quietly he repeated to her the expressions that 
 had come to him from various quarters, he told her 
 several little stories of things he knew himself, of 
 how, so long as he had had means, her father's hand 
 had gone down joyfully into his pocket for all who had 
 asked, how more than once he had gone to men in
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 63 
 
 trouble, and in disgrace, and had helped and cheered 
 them. 
 
 Lydia's eyes never for an instant had left his face. 
 It was what she had hungered for to hear from 
 others this unqualified praise of her father. And sud- 
 denly she was shaking convulsively not a sound, but 
 her whole body shuddering with sobs that struggled for 
 outlet. 
 
 For a long time he sat by her bedside, neither of 
 them speaking. Her breathing grew deep and regu- 
 lar; but she was not asleep . . . She became conscious 
 that he was softly leaving the room. 
 
 She called him, and his hand on the door-knob, he 
 turned back to her. 
 
 " I thought you had fallen asleep, Lydia. I hoped 
 so. You need sleep." 
 
 She put out her hand to him. 
 
 " Dr. Dunbar, I want to thank you for not saying 
 to me that I ought to be glad glad because my fa- 
 ther is 'better off' now!" 
 
 There was a faint suggestion of irony in her voice. 
 " That's what the Pooles said to me, and the doctor, 
 and the others, but you didn't say it! " 
 
 " No, daughter." 
 
 Evidently Dr. Dunbar rated the power of words to 
 convey comfort, at such a time, and to such a young per- 
 son, not over-high. " No, daughter." He said noth- 
 ing else. 
 
 " I don't know whether he's better off, or not, Dr. 
 Dunbar!" she said, almost in a whisper. "Nobody 
 does ! It's unknown ! And it's unknowable ! "
 
 64 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 Dr. Dunbar mutely stroked her hand. 
 
 She lifted herself so that she could see him better; 
 she wanted the companionship of his face ; but she could 
 scarcely distinguish the dim old eyes that her own wist- 
 fully glowing eyes looked up to. 
 
 " There are some words from a poem that 
 keep going over and over in my head! I can't get 
 away from them ! They they're terrible to me 
 now!" 
 
 " What are the words, daughter? f ' 
 
 She hesitated. She knew that he had opposed the 
 catholic range of reading her father had allowed 
 her. . . . And these words were from one of the books 
 he had thought she should not read. 
 
 " Tell me what troubles you, daughter what the 
 words are, you spoke of." 
 
 " ' No map there, nor guide,' " she repeated. 
 
 " ' Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand, 
 Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, 
 Are in that land.' " 
 
 She gripped the old hand that held hers. It flashed 
 through her that her reason was leaving her! Her 
 voice sounded out in terror in the twilight room. 
 
 " Oh, Dr. Dunbar, my poor father! " 
 
 All philosophy, all rational theories of death what- 
 soever, had deserted her. In a crushing agony of 
 doubt and fear, her thoughts reached out and tried to 
 follow her father into that awful region where his soul 
 was voyaging now, into that unknown and unknowable 
 region !
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 65 
 
 ii 
 
 " There are other words, Lydia, in that book." 
 There was a frosty touch in Dr. Dunbar's voice. 
 " I'm going to repeat to you the words that follow 
 those you've repeated, and I want you to dwell on 
 them, and to put the others out of your mind." He re- 
 peated slowly and impressively: 
 
 11 * My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain, 
 The Lord will be there and wait till I come on 
 
 perfect terms. 
 The great Camerado, the lover true for whom I 
 
 pine, will 
 Be there ' " 
 
 All at once, a feeling altogether different from any 
 she had ever known before came over her. Dr. Dun- 
 bar, nearing that " rendezvous " what faith he had ! 
 What trust in his old voice ! 
 
 Something in her heart seemed to melt, gently; and 
 a light, wan, like moonlight but better than the black- 
 ness that had been penetrated the mists in which 
 her restive and tormented soul was groping. 
 
 She dropped her face on the old minister's hand; 
 no sobs came to rend her; but she began to cry softly. 
 
 Ill 
 
 After a time she fell asleep, dreamily conscious of 
 Dr. Dunbar still sitting by her side. She could not 
 remember, afterwards, when he had left the room, but
 
 66 
 
 she woke some time in the night, and found that a 
 blanket had been placed over her. The fire was out, 
 the room perfectly black. She felt Mrs. Poole in bed 
 beside her. 
 
 It had been her first deep sleep for several days, and 
 she woke bewildered. For a moment she was so 
 dazed she could hardly realise all that had been hap- 
 pening; then, sharply, everything came back to her, 
 and her heart began pounding against her side. 
 
 The house was so still, Mrs. Poole asleep, and her 
 father's dead body so near her! A strange terror 
 came over her ! She had never before been near death. 
 
 It was about midnight she supposed. The repulsive 
 word that vulgar and ignorant people use came into 
 her mind corpse! And an awful fear of the dead 
 body in the next room crept over her ! 
 
 She felt paralysed ! It was like a nightmare she 
 tried to move, and could not! A huge hand seemed 
 bearing down on her lungs, forbidding her to breathe ! 
 That stiffened body, out of which the life had gone, so 
 near to her! And she was alone with it ! Mrs. Poole 
 was asleep! She thought she must wake her! She 
 hoped there were others in the house she must 
 rouse them too! She could not be alone, with that 
 dead body so near her! 
 
 IV 
 
 All at once, in the midst of her fear, a little picture 
 took form in her mind coming to her from, oh, so 
 far back In the dim shadow-land of her memory that 
 she wondered, afterwards, how it ever could have
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 67 
 
 found its way back to her that night: a small figure, 
 herself, she saw, a big figure, her father, in a woods 
 together, leaves falling it must have been autumn. 
 They were by a little stream, and her father had 
 stooped down by the water's edge, hollowed his hand, 
 and filled it with water, and she drank from his hand, 
 with delight at that wondrous drinking-cup which he 
 had made for her, her wonderful father! Back it 
 came to her, through the mist of years, even the pale 
 sunlight sifting through the branches of the trees upon 
 the big figure kneeling there, and the little figure drink- 
 ing from his hand! 
 
 She sprang from bed, and ran through the sitting 
 room into her father's room where his body lay on its 
 improvised bier. There was no light in the room, ex- 
 cept such as came from the sitting room through the 
 open door. 
 
 A singular and unforgettable odour permeated the 
 room. She knew nothing of such things, and did not 
 recognise it as the odour of a fluid that had been used 
 about the body; she was horrified, but she approached 
 the bier swiftly and without hesitation. She drew off 
 the sheet that had been drawn over the body, stooped 
 and touched her lips to her father's icy forehead. She 
 placed her hands on his folded hands. Then she knelt 
 on the floor, and stroked the sleeve of his coat. She 
 began talking to him in low tones, tears streaming from 
 her eyes. 
 
 " Oh, Father, how could I have been afraid of you?
 
 68 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 You would never have been afraid of my body! For- 
 give me! Oh, I'm not afraid of you now! " 
 
 VI 
 
 She heard steps behind her, and turned toward their 
 sound. Two men were coming into the room. They 
 were neighbours, she saw; she knew them only slightly; 
 one was a man who lived next door; his boots creaked. 
 
 The men had both been eating. Even in the dim 
 light she could see that one of them was wiping crumbs 
 from his lips; the other, the man who lived next door, 
 was making a little revolting clicking sound with his 
 tongue and teeth. She remembered vaguely that 
 there was some custom of providing food for those 
 who " sat up " with the dead. But she felt offended. 
 She thought it gross, and disrespectful to her father, 
 that men filling the office these men were filling should 
 desire to eat. 
 
 " Honey, you don't want to be here, do you? " one 
 of them said, stooping over her. 
 
 "Let me stay! " 
 
 " Oh, Miss Lydia, I wouldn't stay here ! " 
 
 The man seemed at loss to know what further he 
 should say to her. He retreated a little, but came 
 back after a moment. 
 
 " I reckon Mistress Poole's awake," he said hesi- 
 tatingly. " I'd better get her to come in here with 
 you, if you feel like you want to stay here, Miss Lydia." 
 
 " Oh, no, don't call her . . . and let me stay! It's 
 the last time I can ever be with him ! " she said in a 
 quivering voice. " Oh, I'm not a bit afraid ! "
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 69 
 
 One of the men, and then the other, blew his nose 
 vigorously. 
 
 They brought an armchair from the sitting room, 
 placed it close to the spot where she was kneeling, and 
 in the dim room she kept her vigil till daylight.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 IT had not occurred to Lydia to inquire where her 
 father was to be buried. Looking dully out of 
 the carriage window, she saw that the funeral pro- 
 cession was winding its way through a street skirting 
 the unhallowed but picturesque negro quarter of the 
 town, and proceeding toward the country in the direc- 
 tion of the New Cemetery. 
 
 For generations, representative families of Kings- 
 ville had buried their dead in the Old Cemetery. Eng- 
 lish ivy clambered over the trunks of its ancient trees, 
 there was a great central fountain, and clumps of holly 
 stood stiffly guard by its old brick burial-vaults. The 
 Dead must linger long in one spot, as must the Living, 
 to weave the veil of enchantment over their abode, and 
 the New Cemetery had to show as yet only a sparse 
 scattering of shafts on a treeless hillside beyond the 
 town's limits. 
 
 She had been in a sort of trance from the moment 
 Mr. Poole had helped her into the carriage; but now 
 she was stung into painful half-life by the realisation 
 that her father was being taken for burial to this bare 
 and hideous New Cemetery. Burial space in the Old 
 Cemetery had been too expensive for her to buy or 
 so Mr. Poole had decided ! . . . She kept her eyes on 
 
 70
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 71 
 
 her lap. She was utterly helpless in the matter, and 
 she knew it, but she wondered, with her heart full of 
 bitter tears, why she might not have had a few feet of 
 the beautiful Old Cemetery in which to lay her father's 
 body. 
 
 II 
 
 She seemed still to get the odour of the flowers 
 the deathly sweet of heliotrope and of tuberose. 
 
 " I'm sure it'll be a comfort to you, Lydia, to see 
 how many have sent flowers! " Mrs. Poole had whis- 
 pered, as she led her into the sitting room where the 
 casket had been placed. 
 
 She remembered now, in what seemed to her this 
 endless journey to the Cemetery, and she remem- 
 bered it dreamily, as something of years before that 
 there had been a wreath of white rose-buds, twined with 
 smilax, on the glass lid of the casket, and that on the 
 card tied to the wreath had been scrawled, With Sym- 
 pathy, above an engraved name, Mrs. Ransom Craig- 
 head Churchwell. She remembered Mrs. Poole's mur- 
 muring something about the wreath having been the 
 prettiest piece, she had thought, and so she had put it 
 there.; and she recalled her own removal of the wreath, 
 and her placing it on the seat of one of the camp-chairs 
 she had seen stationed in dreadful preparedness about 
 the room. 
 
 It had made her think of Mr. Churchwell, this 
 wreath sent by his wife, and a vagrant thought of him 
 ran through her mind again in this silent drive to the 
 Cemetery. She had been puzzled, at first, and inevit-
 
 72 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 ably hurt, when he had not called, but his wife's send- 
 ing the wreath confirmed an explanation she had al- 
 ready made to herself that he was absent from 
 town, and did not yet know of her father's death. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Mrs. Poole had said, as they stood together look- 
 ing down at the face under the glass lid, " How nice 
 he looks, doesn't he?" 
 
 She, herself, had noticed how plain and irregular 
 her father's face was, not comely even with the dig- 
 nity conferred on it by death. Oddly enough, she had 
 particularly noticed something about this waxy yellow- 
 ish cast of his face in death, she had hardly remarked 
 of it in life that his nose was slightly crooked, quite 
 perceptibly twisted to one side, and with this observa- 
 tion, his face had become to her by very virtue of its 
 new-found defect more infinitely precious than ever 
 before. 
 
 Mrs. Poole had cried all of the time they had stood 
 there together; had kept dabbing her eyes and nose, 
 sniffling and sobbing audibly. And Lydia had been 
 without sound or tear. But as she had looked down 
 for the last time on her father's face, something had 
 seemed to close vise-like about her heart. 
 
 The gripping pain was still at her heart, as they 
 drove through the gate of the New Cemetery. She 
 could not imagine that a time would ever come when 
 it would cease. 
 
 Mr. Poole helped her from the carriage, and she
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 73 
 
 alighted trance-like, as she had entered it trance-like 
 from the gate of the cottage. 
 
 It was one of those still, sad-coloured days of winter, 
 in which there is no sun, no wind only a great joy- 
 less wash of grey air. Lydia savoured its qualities to 
 the utmost. It seemed to her sinisterly appropriate 
 as a day of burial the whole world hushed, listen- 
 ing, as if prescient with awful fears! 
 
 " Out of one of these still, terrible days, the End of 
 the World will come smashing ! " she had said to her 
 father once, half in fun, half in fright, and she remem- 
 bered it now, as she stood by his fresh-dug grave. 
 
 She stood up very straight between Mr. and Mrs. 
 Poole. Her slight figure, clad in the new brown suit, 
 did not sway once. She did not lean on Mrs. Poole, 
 or allow Mr. Poole to support her. Her eyes, staring 
 from her unveiled, ghostly white face, had a look of 
 strange preoccupation, as if looking, she saw nothing; 
 but in reality she saw much. She saw the red clay 
 mounds of other new-made graves here and there on 
 the hillside, heard the cawing of distant crows, noticed 
 how erect, despite his years, old Dr. Dunbar still stood 
 like the old soldier he was. . . . 
 
 She heard him saying something about soldiers, and 
 about battles he had been through in the War, and 
 she heard him say, in a moved voice " Here, too, 
 was a soldier. He fought battles battles for what 
 he esteemed the truth . . . and I dare affirm he took 
 his wounds, and bore them, valiantly more and 
 greater wounds, perhaps, than some of us knew 1 "
 
 74 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 For an instant, after she heard these words, things 
 went swimming before her eyes, and she feared she 
 might not be able to stand longer, but then she steadied 
 herself, and looked again unflinchingly into the faces 
 of those who stood on the other side of the waiting 
 hole in the red earth. 
 
 IV 
 
 The first small clods dropped on her father's lowered 
 coffin the immemorial dust to dust. As the sound, 
 not loud, but distinct, reached her ears, there unfolded 
 before her a sudden gloomy and distorted vision of 
 her future existence, stretching ahead of her, long, 
 listless, purely mechanical, deprived of all vital urge. 
 Even sorrow, she believed, after this, could touch her 
 no further. Myopic with present grief, she could not 
 see where joys were waiting for her those minute, 
 ceaseless joys that reconcile the heart to its certain 
 miseries. 
 
 She wondered, vaguely, why it was given to her to 
 know, so young, so much of life. She did not dream 
 how pitifully little of life she knew, as yet! With all 
 her arrogant young belief in her own powers of judg- 
 ment and foreknowledge, she did not recognise this a 
 moment of destiny these harsh clay clods rattling 
 down upon her father's coffin ! She thought it prac- 
 tically the end of things for her did not fathom it 
 at all merely the beginning of events that would reach 
 to her grandchildren, and yet to theirs, and so on in 
 endless chain of consequence with such immeasur-
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 75 
 
 able complexity are woven the threads of human exist- 
 ence. For her ardent, fledgling spirit was but entering 
 on the earthly adventures her father's spirit had fin- 
 ished.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 A MONTH had passed. Already the early South- 
 ern spring was beginning to show itself blue 
 crocuses twinkled in the grass, jonquils were budded, 
 and birds were busy. 
 
 The little cottage had been dismantled; the furni- 
 ture sold; and the books, with a few other things, 
 packed in boxes and stored in the Pooles' attic. 
 
 Lydia, with a sewing-basket in her lap, and Mrs. 
 Poole with a " fancy-work " bag in hers, sat in the 
 Pooles' sitting room. The afternoon was waning, and 
 Mrs. Poole had the place by the west window, to catch 
 the last light for her work of embroidering red cher- 
 ries on a "centrepiece " of white linen. 
 
 Lydia was threading ribbon through the embroidery 
 of a nightgown she had recently made with Mrs. 
 Poole's assistance. She was feeling quite happy, at 
 this moment, with her very feminine occupation. She 
 had, in truth, been dimly conscious of a feeling of gen- 
 eral security and well-being ever since she had entered 
 the Pooles' home. 
 
 Occasionally Mr. Poole would dart into the room, 
 to disappear as quickly, in pursuit of one of the busy- 
 idle, finicking activities with which he filled his hours 
 
 76
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 77 
 
 since he had sold his store on the Market Square, and 
 retired from the most dependable grocery business ever 
 conducted in the town. 
 
 From time to time Lydia would exchange a remark 
 with Mrs. Poole, or look up from her ribbon thread- 
 ing and let her eyes wander contentedly about the fa- 
 miliar room. It was not a luxurious room; it was 
 certainly not artistic, with its profusion of meaning- 
 less ornament, and its stiff Nottingham curtains hang- 
 ing at every window, in their own and their owners' 
 blissful ignorance of the existence and gospel of an 
 Englishman named William Morris. But it was a 
 very comfortable room for all that, a room that car- 
 ried Lydia back to the happiest memories of her child- 
 hood all those treasures on the walnut what-not, the 
 stereoscope with its basket of views, the shells which 
 had brought the mysterious roar of the sea to her en- 
 chanted ears, the starfish, the kaleidoscope, which shift 
 by shift had wrought for her eyes such wonders with 
 its little glittering particles of coloured glass. 
 
 II 
 
 The permanent disposition of her future was a sub- 
 ject that had not been openly broached by the Pooles, 
 but their hints which at first had hurt her had 
 shown that it was a subject occupying their thoughts 
 hardly less than her own. 
 
 Unknown to them, she had already taken steps that 
 committed her to a future course a career, she hoped ; 
 and it was her knowledge that the day was drawing 
 near when she must disclose her plans, and that the
 
 78 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 Pooles would be justly reproachful that she had not 
 taken them into her confidence from the beginning, and 
 moreover that the carrying out of these plans would 
 take her a long way from Kingsville, and perhaps for 
 a long time, which made her very gentle to them now, 
 very tractable, and very sweet. 
 
 " Lydia, push your hair back from your forehead ! 
 Fasten it up ! " 
 
 Lydia smiled indulgently. She was resolved not to 
 allow herself to be irritated by any of Mrs. Poole's 
 little ways. A dozen times a day Mrs. Poole would 
 say, " Take your hair out of your eyes, Lydia ! " 
 when she herself had not been conscious of its being 
 in her eyes. She said to herself now, " Well, I'll soon 
 be gone ! " and tucked up the offending locks and 
 fastened them with a hairpin. 
 
 "There, that's better! " 
 
 Mrs. Poole looked out of the window for a moment 
 with a preoccupied air. Then she gathered up her 
 work in the diminutive apron she wore, and crossed 
 the room to consult the clock. 
 
 " Later than I thought ! " she said a little absently. 
 
 She was carefully extracting a thread from a small 
 skein of embroidery-floss when the doorbell jangled. 
 She started slightly at the sound, and drew a deep 
 audible breath of mingled anxiety and relief. 
 
 It was Dr. Dunbar. 
 
 in 
 
 " So it's true Miss Tillie Tallman's going to marry, 
 is it, Dr. Dunbar?" she inquired.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 79 
 
 " Yes, the twentieth of June is set." The old 
 clergyman rested his hands forward on the head of his 
 cane. " The schools will lose a good teacher." 
 
 " That'll make a vacancy in the schools," remarked 
 Mr. Poole. 
 
 " Now isn't it silly of them," said Lydia to herself, 
 " to go about it in this roundabout way! Why don't 
 they just come out and say that they think I ought to 
 try to get a position to teach? " 
 
 Mr. Poole glanced at her with a sly smile. 
 
 " Might be a chance for you there, Lydia ! " he 
 suggested. 
 
 Mrs. Poole looked properly surprised, but on the 
 whole pleased, with her husband's suggestion. Lydia, 
 who sat in a big plush chair playing with the fringe on 
 its cushioned arm, smiled. 
 
 There was a short silence in the room. It was 
 rather a tense silence. 
 
 " Had you thought of a position in the schools, 
 Lydia? " Dr. Dunbar asked gently. 
 
 " Not much," she replied evasively. 
 
 Mr. Poole lightly cleared his throat. 
 
 " Oh, I think no kind of position could be nicer for 
 you, Lydia," he began, enthusiastically. 
 
 His wife interrupted him. 
 
 " It's not that we're in a hurry for you to get a po- 
 sition, you know that, Lydia . . ." 
 
 Lydia was not so sure of that, after all! There 
 had been times in this month she had spent at the 
 Pooles' when she had inferred quite the contrary ! But 
 there was no room in her present mind for resentment.
 
 8o 
 
 It was filled with interesting, even romantic, pictures 
 of a future she was about to enter. And she was ex- 
 cited, and a little frightened, with the thought that in 
 a moment more she would spring her surprise. Her 
 cheeks were delicately flushed, her eyes were shining. 
 
 Confidence was expressed in her ability to pass the 
 examinations required for a teacher's certificate. 
 
 Dr. Dunbar would see two members of the board 
 of education for her, Mr. Poole, a third. 
 
 Lydia was relishing the moment, but not without 
 qualms. Every other instant she said to herself, " I'll 
 tell them now ! " But just as she had, at last, gathered 
 courage sufficient to make her announcement, Dr. Dun- 
 bar broke in on her resolution with words addressed 
 pointedly to her. 
 
 " There's one thing, Lydia, that might work against 
 you with the board." 
 
 " You mean my not belonging to any church? " she 
 asked quickly. 
 
 " Yes, I mean that," he answered, rather dryly. 
 
 She glanced at Mr. Poole where he sat with his chair 
 tipped toward the centre table. He was artfully, and 
 with the minute particularity of attention one might 
 give to a new possession, examining a paper-knife, 
 though she could not remember a time when this iden- 
 tical celluloid paper-knife had not been on the Pooles' 
 centre table. How unconcerned he looked and 
 Mrs. Poole, shading a cherry! 
 
 " If you join the Church, Lydia, it'll be the means, 
 I don't doubt, of getting you this nice, lady-like posi-
 
 8i 
 
 tion we'd all be so proud to see you in," Mrs. Poole 
 purred. 
 
 u I wouldn't like to see you neglect what's so plainly 
 to your interest, Lydia," added Mr. Poole, but Lydia 
 remained with her eyes downcast. " This good open- 
 ing for you now in the schools." 
 
 " Opening! Opening to what? " thought Lydia. 
 
 Visions shot through her of the dowdy, underpaid, 
 tired-faced school-mistresses of Kingsville ! 
 
 IV 
 
 ' There's nothing in the world I'd hate so much as 
 teaching school! " She bit out the words audaciously, 
 with wicked joy. 
 
 She felt the room suddenly electrified: 
 
 Mr. Poole recovered himself first. 
 
 " I don't think, Lydia, a person can let their likes 
 and dislikes govern them when it comes to the matter 
 of earning a living! " 
 
 She met his eyes unflinchingly. 
 
 " Well, teaching's one thing I won't consider, Mr. 
 Poole." 
 
 ''What do you expect to do, Lydia?" he inquired 
 in a challenging tone, after a short and terrible pause. 
 
 " I'm going to be a general agent for a publishing 
 company, and travel." Her voice trembled a little. 
 
 " Travel! " Mrs Poole bounced, the " fancy-work- 
 bag " slipping from her lap. She turned upon Lydia, 
 her face suddenly almost purple. 
 
 " You've said nothing nothing to us, about this,
 
 82 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 Lydia," objected Mr. Poole. "What is this thing 
 agent you're speaking of?" 
 
 " The man was here last week," Lydia explained, 
 " representing the company. I saw the advertisement 
 in the paper, and went to see him, and signed a con- 
 tract. I'm to travel, and appoint agents to sell their 
 works. ..." 
 
 " Is it a book-agent you're thinking of being, 
 Lydia?" asked Mrs. Poole abruptly, and with undis- 
 guised scorn. 
 
 Lydia answered quickly that it was not. 
 
 How insupportable for Mrs. Poole to have asked 
 the one question she had dreaded might be asked! 
 " Now," she thought, " it'll very likely get around 
 Kingsville that I'm going to be an ordinary book- 
 agent I " She set about trying to illuminate for the 
 Pooles the character of a general agency. 
 
 " All I'll have to do is to go to different towns and 
 find people who want to become agents, and employ 
 them. I don't sell any books myself. Each person 
 I employ pays me five dollars, for the privilege of be- 
 coming an agent and that's my commission. You 
 see how much I'll make if I get several agents, a day." 
 
 " Well, I don't suppose there's any use in trying to 
 get you to give up this thing, Lydia, now you've made 
 up your mind. . . ." Mr. Poole shook his head du- 
 biously. 
 
 Dr. Dunbar spoke at last, anxiously, and almost to 
 himself: "The travelling . . . the travelling . . . 
 I feel you're too young, for such a position." 
 
 The travelling I Why, the travelling, that was what
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 83 
 
 she wanted! What but the travelling had made her 
 consider the general agency? 
 
 And what, otherwise, the despised teaching elimi- 
 nated could she have done? 
 
 Man regarded, she knew, as the one desirable 
 economic solution for woman she previsioned with 
 certainty as yet a vague, but wholly glorious figure 
 in her own future. But till he arrived? 
 
 Clerk? Measure off two yards of ribbon for Mrs. 
 Ransom Churchwell, and say " Thank you " for the 
 coins Mrs. Churchwell's gloved hand dropped into 
 hers? Not she! 
 
 She was suddenly conscious that Mrs. Poole, her 
 work laid aside, was weeping. 
 
 Mr. Poole glanced solicitously at his wife, then at 
 Lydia, as much as to say, " There, now you see what 
 you've done, young lady! '' 
 
 Outright, he said, in a sorely aggrieved tone, " I 
 hardly thought, Lydia, I hardly thought you'd go ahead 
 and make all these plans and say nothing to us, when 
 we're so interested in everything that concerns you ! " 
 
 Lydia sprang from her chair and placed her hand 
 impulsively on his shoulder. 
 
 " Mr. Poole, I never, never, can thank you and Mrs. 
 Poole enough for all you've done for me, but I just 
 couldn't do the things here in Kingsville I knew you'd 
 want me to do. . . ." She stopped, her words chok- 
 ing her. 
 
 " Well, when when'll you have to start, Lydia? " 
 asked Mrs. Poole, with tears in her voice, but resign- 
 edly.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 IT was the day before Lydia was to leave. Mrs. 
 Poole, who had just returned from market, had 
 called her down to the kitchen, a dark room with 
 grease-spattered walls, over which roaches scampered 
 by day as well as by night not a room to put heart 
 in a squeamish stomach, but one out of which came 
 much and excellent cookery notwithstanding. 
 
 " Some little things for your lunch, to-morrow," 
 she said, separating some packages from her other 
 marketing, and handing them to an old shuffling black 
 woman. " But here I knew you'd want to go to 
 the cemetery, Lydia being your last day." She 
 lifted out of her market basket a bunch of purple and 
 white immortelles, and two wreaths of evergreen, aro- 
 matic leaves, known in Kingsville as " heart-leaves." 
 
 " Mrs. Poole, I wish you hadn't got them," began 
 Lydia, gently. " It was nice of you . . . but I don't 
 want to go." 
 
 Mrs. Poole darted a glance at her. " You haven't 
 been once ! " 
 
 " But I'd rather not go." She stopped, noticing 
 that the alarming phenomenon of Mrs. Poole's nose 
 was recurring. 
 
 ' You've a mighty queer way, Lydia, I must say, of 
 showing you mourn your father ! " 
 
 84
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 85 
 
 " But I don't think of him out in the cemetery, Mrs. 
 Poole. And I don't want to." 
 
 To her amazement, Mrs. Poole turned, and left her 
 staring rather dazed at all the marketing set out on 
 the table beside her the wreaths and the dry, stiff 
 immortelles among the eggs and butter and dressed 
 chickens and spare-ribs and bunches of vegetables. 
 
 She turned and walked slowly out of the kitchen, 
 returning to the bedroom, where she had been packing 
 her trunk. Mrs. Poole was very angry! It was too 
 bad this little clash had had to come on the last day! 
 
 II 
 
 But it was true she no longer thought of her father 
 as in the cemetery. 
 
 In the first week after his death, when it had stormed 
 at night, it had seemed to her she could not bear it 
 his poor body, alone, in the darkness and rain! She 
 could .see him in his coffin, and she thought that image 
 would never leave her. But she was young and 
 healthy, and soon it ceased to haunt her. 
 
 Already he was coming back to her strong and com- 
 panionable, the father of her earlier memories. 
 
 She had come, too, to feel that, wherever he was, all 
 was well with him. 
 
 And wherever he was, he was not accusing her of any 
 unfaithfulness to his memory. He understood! 
 
 He understood everything. . . . He would even 
 understand, if he knew of it, why, four or five hours 
 after that painful moment with Mrs. Poole in the 
 kitchen, she should be standing in front of a mirror in
 
 86 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 the Pooles' " spareroom," viewing herself in a new 
 hat one she had selected somewhat against Mrs. 
 Poole's judgment in the matter of a hat suitable for a 
 general agent. 
 
 Ill 
 
 She fastened her gloves, looked a last time in the 
 mirror, and then slipped stealthily down the stairs and 
 out of the house. A delightful bubbling was going on 
 in her heart ! The only thing that troubled her to any 
 appreciable degree was the fact that she had told an 
 untruth to Mrs. Poole. She had told her she was 
 going out to do some errands. 
 
 But every step she took, now, farther away from 
 the Pooles, she felt another shred of guilt drop from 
 her, and her heart grew lighter and more gay. 
 
 Japonica bushes she passed were scarlet with fiery 
 blossoms. A day more, and bloom would burst every- 
 where ! 
 
 Her plan was to walk several miles out the River 
 Road, and rest a while, and then on her way back she 
 would meet Mr. Churchwell returning home. He 
 could not suspect anything, because she and her father 
 had been accustomed to taking these long walks, and 
 often, as they returned, had met him. She knew that 
 in fine weather he never allowed his carriage to be sent 
 for him, but walked home from his office in town. 
 
 She did not know definitely what she was expecting. 
 But it would be immensely gratifying to have him see 
 her in these new and becoming clothes. 
 
 She was not sure she would tell him about the agency.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 87 
 
 She would let him know she was going away, but not 
 explain too circumstantially. 
 
 He had been called to Washington the very day of 
 her father's collapse, and he had written her, when he 
 learned of his death. No one else had said things to 
 her the way he had said them in that letter. 
 
 He had told her something that had been a great 
 surprise to her, that explained the conversation he had 
 had with her father alone that last night. It seemed 
 he had urged on her father the advisability of a sur- 
 gical operation. He did not say he had proposed to 
 arrange for the expense, but Lydia deduced as much. 
 
 She had written many letters in answer to his, and 
 had destroyed them all. 
 
 But now that he had returned to Kingsville (as she 
 had read in the Kingsville Courier), she had schemed 
 to see him in the only way she could think of that 
 would allow her to see him alone. She wanted to 
 thank him. And then she wanted his eyes looking 
 down into hers, his strong hand holding hers an instant ! 
 
 IV 
 
 She reached the River Road. It began really 
 within the town, which lay along its broad dividing 
 river on the picturesque seven hills, but did not assume 
 its name till it passed the town's limits, and began to 
 show the first of those dignified antebellum mansions 
 that marked it at intervals for eight or more miles into 
 the country. 
 
 A half mile beyond the town was the Churchwell 
 mansion, built in the forties. It stood on a knoll, its
 
 88 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 grounds rolling away from it with charming irregulari- 
 ties. Its slave quarters, still preserved, were visible 
 from the road. 
 
 Lydia had never been inside the house or even in 
 the grounds. As she came to them now, she saw an 
 old black mammy in a Turkey-red gown and white 
 kerchief coming down the winding drive, a toddling 
 child by the hand, another trailing behind. 
 
 After she passed the Churchwell place, she walked 
 on for miles. 
 
 Whenever she met a carriage, she felt a little un- 
 comfortable. Some of these people might fathom the 
 reason of her walk. 
 
 She came to an old place, with an avenue of box, 
 leading from the gate to the house. She caught the 
 acrid odour of the box in her nostrils. Previously 
 she had not liked it, but now it seemed delicious to her. 
 The air was full of scents. She sniffed with delight 
 the new-turned earth. 
 
 She paused at a lane bordered with cedar trees 
 the straight cedars like a double row of marching gren- 
 adiers, an escort for the narrow lane between them. 
 Here she and her father had always rested, and then 
 turned home. She looked up the lane as they had 
 often stood and looked up it together. 
 
 A little beyond, she found a dry place on the bank 
 'by the side of the road, and sat down. She was sur- 
 prised to find how tired she felt. She sat for a long 
 time on the bank, dreamily happy. She could fancy 
 strong arms cradling her weariness here in the spring 
 sunshine.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 89 
 
 There were no houses near in any direction. It was 
 wonderfully still, but she imagined that inside this 
 sunlit silence were millions of little chirping, singing, 
 joyful noises. 
 
 After a while, she crossed the road, and leaned on 
 the fence of a field which separated her from the river. 
 She laid her jacket across the fence, took off her gloves, 
 and picked patches of grey lichens idly off the top rail. 
 
 The island-dotted river wound below her in slow, 
 willow-fringed curves. She was too far from Kings- 
 ville now to see even its smoke. 
 
 On the other side of the river, red fields stretched 
 new-ploughed fields and sentinel cedars marked 
 to her eye the distant fence rows. 
 
 There was no haze in the air. On the nearest 
 mountains was a bloom of wonderful blue, as of blue 
 flowers. And beyond the blue mountains, other ranges 
 faded to paler and paler grey in the distance, vague 
 outlines, at last, merging into the pearly clouds that 
 wreathed their summits. All at once the beauty and 
 wonder of the world burst upon her with an astounding 
 and rapturous shock. She was suddenly inebriate with 
 the joy just of living, breathing. And on the morrow 
 she would step into a world of adventure that was 
 awaiting her that was calling her. Strange tremors 
 ran through her body, nameless longings born of 
 spring, of youth. 
 
 Ah, life! life!
 
 90 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 She did not know the passage of time, for she read 
 the hours only very vaguely from the afternoon shad- 
 ows. But she had not gone far on her homeward way 
 till she realised from the light that she had not started 
 back soon enough. Where there was no one to see, 
 she began to run. As it grew dusk, she became almost 
 frantic in her anxiety to reach the part of the road 
 where she had counted on meeting Churchwell. Fa- 
 miliar landmarks were so much farther apart than she 
 had thought. When she came at length to the top of 
 a hill from which she could see Kingsville, its street 
 lights were coming out, and they were still a long 
 way off. 
 
 She ran on again, her heart pounding. The fresh 
 evening breeze blew in her face. It seemed to her 
 now as if the only thing she wanted in the world was 
 not to miss this meeting. It had grown quite dark 
 by the time she reached the gates of his home. Lamp- 
 light glowed from its windows. In the sky a silver- 
 sickle moon was riding, and Lydia could see the street 
 lights of Kingsville plainly now. 
 
 She walked slowly after she passed the Churchwell 
 house. She was tired and breathless. If she should 
 meet him, it would be soon. She hoped it would be 
 on the bridge, a high bridge over a ravine, where sev- 
 eral times she and her father had met him. 
 
 When she started across the bridge, she saw some 
 one coming toward her from the other end. She could
 
 tTHE SEAS OF GOD 91 
 
 make out only the bare outlines of a man's form. She 
 grew suddenly faint. 
 
 But when she got near to the man, he peered at her 
 hard, and she saw it was some one she did not know. 
 
 VI 
 
 She dragged on wearily. She began to think of the 
 Pooles of how alarmed they would be, and the ex- 
 planation she should have to make them. 
 
 The streets were almost deserted. People were at 
 supper, or it was too soon after supper for them to be 
 starting out again. 
 
 She turned off at a side street when she reached 
 Ransom College, and came to the house where she had 
 lived as a child. She crept along by the fence, holding 
 to the pickets, and looked through the broad-spreading 
 branches of the magnolia trees toward the French win- 
 dows on the lower floor. 
 
 She kept listening that no one should come upon 
 her. ' She did not know the people that lived in the 
 house now, but she could see a man reading a news- 
 paper by a gas drop-light on a centre table. A woman, 
 his wife, probably, was laughing and making gestures 
 to a boy and girl who were having fun about some- 
 thing. How secure they looked! 
 
 Suddenly Lydia felt a dread of leaving Kingsville 
 on the morrow. She saw nothing ahead of her, now, 
 that she longed for, or even wanted. 
 
 She was startled by a faint, rustling sound, close to 
 her a cat stealing over some leaves that the wind
 
 92 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 had swept into a little hollow along the fence. She 
 could smell the leaves, damp and sooty. 
 
 She looked up to the window of the little room that 
 had been hers. There was. no light in it. She remem- 
 bered how she had gone back and kissed its walls, when 
 all the furniture had been moved out of the house, the 
 rooms bare and swept, and she and her father were 
 leaving it forever. 
 
 A passion of tenderness flooded her as she looked 
 up at the dimly lighted windows that once had been 
 her mother's. She could see her lying on a couch, see 
 the rose-coloured wrapper she wore, the lace falling 
 away from her wrists. She could hear that strange 
 pretty way her mother would call out to her when she 
 opened the door Barker's vigilance for a moment 
 asleep "Ah, my adored!" She could feel herself 
 gathered to that soft silken breast! 
 
 What was it about her mother? 
 
 What was it? What was it that little playmate had 
 hinted to her? And then Mrs. Poole? 
 
 Why had her father gone down to his grave with 
 sealed lips ? Why did she know nothing of his family 
 not even whether any of them were living? There 
 were so many things she did not understand. And 
 then there was a suffering she could not name, a new 
 suffering connected more or less consciously with 
 Churchwell. 
 
 She dropped her hands from her wet face. " Oh, 
 Father, I wish I could see you again ! " she sobbed, 
 and hurried on. 
 
 She looked back once.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 93 
 
 At the top of the hill she turned toward the Pooles'. 
 The little cottage where she and her father had lived 
 was dark. There was a prejudice in Kingsville against 
 going into a house where some one had recently died.
 
 MRS. POOLE had not accompanied Lydia into 
 the car. She was so afraid the train would 
 start before she could get off. 
 
 Mr. Poole had braved the perils of a snorting, 
 quivering, bellringing train, entered it, and deposited 
 the box of lunch beside her. 
 
 " All aboard ! " rang sonorously through the car 
 windows. 
 
 Mr. Poole gripped her hand. 
 
 " Remember, we're home to you Pooles' is home 
 to you, Lydia ! " he said hurriedly, his old voice shak- 
 ing. 
 
 Lydia put her head out of the window and waved. 
 Her depression of the night before had left her. Her 
 dread of what was ahead had vanished, and she was 
 filled with happy excitement. 
 
 The crown of Mr. Poole's head, satin-smooth, ex- 
 cept for the few hairs trained across it, shone in the 
 bright morning sun as he waved his hat to her. 
 
 She saw Mrs. Poole tell him to put his hat back on 
 his head. She could not hear her, but she knew that 
 Mrs. Poole was saying: " Edwin, Edwin, be careful, 
 you'll catch cold ! " 
 
 Mrs. Poole's eyes and nose were both red. She had 
 
 94
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 95 
 
 been crying softly ever since they left the house for the 
 station. 
 
 They were waving, waving. Lydia swallowed hard 
 as she closed the window. She caught a last glimpse 
 of Mrs. Poole's little jet bonnet with its purple pan- 
 sies, and then the Pooles vanished from her eyes, for- 
 ever. 
 
 II 
 
 The train was running faster. She looked out on 
 the old red-brick warehouses she was passing. She 
 caught a glimpse of church spires glistening in the 
 morning sun. Her eyes were riveted to the window. 
 She looked back Kingsville on her seven hills ! 
 Look well, Lydia ! You will never, never, see it again ! 
 
 You were an alien there, really, Lydia, when you 
 called it home. How could it have been otherwise 
 with that fierce nativism that permeated Kingsville? 
 But in years to come you will look back and it will 
 seem to you that Kingsville had been home. Through 
 long years your heart will sicken with yearning for a 
 sight of the spires of Kingsville. In memory you will 
 adore every brick of its old uneven pavements. But 
 your eyes will not look on its spires again, Lydia, nor 
 your feet tread the bricks of its old pavements! 
 
 Only in dreams will you flit through its market 
 house, your little basket on your arm ! Only in dreams, 
 Lydia, will you peep over its crumbling stone walls at 
 the roses that are blooming in Kingsville's gardens !
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 AFTER an hour, the train stopped at Pleasant- 
 water. All the way from Kingsville Lydia had 
 been conjuring up agreeable pictures of a pretty creek 
 or river, but when she stepped off the train, she looked 
 around her, and could not discover the imagined 
 stream. 
 
 " This way, miss, to the Cumberland Hotel ! " 
 " This way to the Mansion House ! " the negro porters 
 importuned her. 
 
 She gave her little bag to one of them, and followed 
 him to the Mansion House. The lobby, with a row 
 of armchairs turned to the wall, was solitary except for 
 a clerk behind the desk, a young man in a brown 
 checked suit and red tie, who looked hard at her as the 
 porter threw open the front door. 
 
 The clerk pushed out a big open book to her. The 
 only travelling she had done had been a few brief trips 
 with her father, but she knew the procedure of regis- 
 tering. 
 
 She was annoyed to find her hand trembling as she 
 wrote, Lydia Lambright, Kingsville, below the dashing 
 signature of Max Loivenstein, Baltimore. 
 
 " Be here some time? " inquired the clerk, eying her 
 gaily. 
 
 96
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 97 
 
 " I don't know." She detested his looks. His 
 erupted face was almost as red as his satin tie, and his 
 hair was ostentatiously " roached " as Mrs. Poole 
 would have styled the arrangement. 
 
 Carrying her bag, he led Lydia through an uncar- 
 peted hall, saturated with the smell of stale grease, 
 and up a narrow flight of stairs, to her room. He en- 
 tered ahead of her, pulled up the cracked window- 
 shade, and after walking over to the washstand and 
 looking into the pitcher, he helped the porter in with 
 her trunk, and unstrapped it himself. Then to her 
 utter amazement, he closed the door after the porter, 
 sat down coolly on her trunk and began nonchalantly 
 swinging his feet. 
 
 " Ever been in Pleasantwater before? " 
 
 " No." Lydia smiled faintly. She wished she 
 knew how to get rid of him. 
 
 44 Think you'll like it?" 
 
 "I, hope so." 
 
 "Say, look here! What you here for, anyhow?" 
 
 " I'm an agent." 
 
 "Sure enough? What for?" 
 
 " I'm a general agent," answered Lydia evasively. 
 " I appoint other agents." 
 
 She was growing uneasy. When was he going to 
 leave? 
 
 "Been at it long?" 
 
 She hesitated an instant. " Some time. Do you 
 know any one here that's ever been a book agent?" 
 she asked. " I'm looking for people who want to sell 
 things."
 
 98 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 His jaws, active with chewing gum, relaxed momen- 
 tarily. 
 
 " Old Mclntosh up at the Junction," he replied, 
 after a brief reflection. 
 
 "How do I get to the Junction?" she inquired 
 eagerly. 
 
 "Walk the ties. I'll show you if you're right 
 sure you want to go ! " He stopped swinging his feet, 
 and winked at her. 
 
 " Oh," thought Lydia, " you young fool ! I'll sup- 
 press you! " 
 
 " I'll have to ask you to leave. I want to get some 
 things out of my trunk," she said, with tart dignity. 
 
 He removed himself in a leisurely manner from the 
 high trunk, walked over to where she was standing, 
 folded his arms and looked down at her, narrowing 
 his eyes, and scanning her face and the lines of her 
 slim figure, intimately. 
 
 She must not let him see she was Brightened, but it 
 seemed to her they must be alone in the hotel, every- 
 thing was so quiet. She could not hear a sound. 
 
 " If there's anything you want, call on me! " he said 
 slowly. 
 
 " Oh, thank you ! " replied Lydia.. Her heart was 
 missing beats. 
 
 ' Thank you," she said again, in a frightened voice, 
 opening the door. 
 
 He approached the door, then wheeling abruptly, he 
 threw his arm around her, and fastened his lips on hers. 
 
 She tore herself away. Her hat had loosened, 
 waves of hair were tumbling about her face.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 99 
 
 " I thought a business woman would be respected 
 anywhere ! " burst from her, her eyes blazing with in- 
 dignation. 
 
 " You're a picture of a business woman, you are ! " 
 he called back to her scornfully, from the hallway. 
 
 II 
 
 She turned the key in the door. Her hands were 
 like ice. She had but one thought to get through 
 with Pleasantwater, and away from it, as soon as pos- 
 sible. Nothing in the world could induce her to stay 
 all night at the Mansion House ! 
 
 She hastily took out of her trunk specimens of the 
 books she was to furnish agents to sell, and started out. 
 As she passed through the lobby, to her relief, the 
 clerk did not look up. 
 
 An old brick building, that appeared to be a court- 
 house, was in the square beyond the Mansion House, a 
 row of horses tied to the hitching-posts in front of it. 
 
 A countrified-looking man was untying his horse at 
 one of the posts, and Lydia inquired of him the direc- 
 tion of the Junction. 
 
 " Which? " he replied interrogatively, staring at her 
 with a dazed air. 
 
 " I want to go to Mr. Mclntosh's at the Junction. 
 Which way is it? " 
 
 He pointed a long finger. " Thar, jest keep straight 
 on up yon way." 
 
 " Will I have any trouble finding Mr. Mclntosh's 
 house when I get there? " 
 
 The man was adjusting the saddle-bags on his horse.
 
 ioo THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 He turned to her, his eyes faintly illumined with inter- 
 est. " Grandpap Mclntosh? " 
 
 " I " she hesitated " I think so." 
 
 " He lives in a yaller house." 
 
 " Old man's bed-ridden, same as bed-ridden," he 
 called after her. 
 
 Bed-ridden! She stopped a minute, puzzled to 
 know what to do. Bed-ridden Grandpap Mclntosh 
 could hardly make much of a success selling either the 
 " History of Famous Women " or the " Imperial 
 Galaxy of Poetry and Art " ! 
 
 But she decided to go on. Perhaps he could tell her 
 people in Pleasantwater she could get for agents, and 
 where to find them. 
 
 in 
 
 She had no difficulty in finding the house. There 
 was only one " yaller " house in Pleasantwater Junc- 
 tion. 
 
 She scrambled up a clay bank, and had unfastened 
 the gate when a goat came running toward her from 
 the rear of the house, his horns advanced defiantly. 
 For one brief moment she wished she had elected to 
 remain in Kingsville and teach school. 
 
 The door of the house opened and a mild voice called 
 out, " Don't be frightened, honey. He's jest a-tryin' 
 to play with you." 
 
 Lydia smiled feebly. 
 
 The voice called reassuringly "Come along, 
 honey. He ain't a-goin' to tech you." 
 
 Lydia walked up to the door.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 101 
 
 " Yes, he's here," the woman who had called out to 
 her answered to her inquiry. " Pore man, he's bound 
 to be here. He cain't git away." She had a pale, 
 serene face, and, except for a slight stain of snuff 
 around one corner of her mouth, looked clean. 
 
 " Pap," she roused a gnarled old figure in a chair 
 by the window, " here's a lady to see you." 
 
 Lydia sat down in a rocker. The room was scantily 
 furnished with cheap furniture, it had a peculiar and 
 depressing odour, but it was orderly. 
 
 The old man turned his face toward her. " You're 
 a book agent, are you? " 
 
 " A general agent," corrected Lydia. 
 
 " They ain't no difference. I've been both. If 
 there's any advantage with one or tother, it's with 
 the regular agent. It's harder to get people to sell 
 your books for you, than it is to sell 'em yourself." 
 
 " Now, Pap, don't you discourage the young lady," 
 the woman remonstrated with him. 
 
 But Mr. Mclntosh evidently considered he was en- 
 titled to diversion when it came his way. " Been at it 
 long appointin' agents?" he questioned slily. 
 
 " Some time." 
 
 "Where you been a-workin' at it?" 
 
 " Little places up above Kingsville," she answered, 
 falteringly. 
 
 " Greensburg worked it?" 
 
 11 Yes." 
 
 " Well, you got Jake Ross, then, I reckon, to go out 
 for you," he observed, a malicious gleam in his rheumy 
 eyes.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 Lydia smiled. 
 
 "Didn't you?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " You didn't! That's quair ! Never heard of a 
 general agent going to Greensburg before and not get- 
 tin' Jake Ross!" 
 
 Lydia's face had flushed. Why should this old man 
 be catechising her? She tried to ask him some of the 
 questions she had come to ask, but she was on the verge 
 of tears, and afraid to speak, lest she should break 
 down. 
 
 " Honey," remarked the woman pleasantly, " you 
 look like the book business had treated you well ! " 
 Her gentle eyes were appraising Lydia's clothes. 
 " How's the most of 'em wearin' the sleeves now in 
 Kingsville? Gittin' any bigger? " 
 
 Could it be possible that this flat-chested woman of 
 Pleasantwater Junction, a collection of six houses on a 
 clay bank, was interested in the fashions? 
 
 Lydia was momentarily diverted from her misery. 
 Smiling a little, she gave her in detail the latest modes 
 in sleeves. 
 
 IV 
 
 Then she got back to the business she had come on. 
 
 " Oh, give her some names, Pap," the woman urged; 
 " some one she might git to sell her books fer her." 
 
 ' You know Pleasantwater's got no persons wants 
 to go out as agents, Becky!" he replied snappishly. 
 " I've canvassed this here town for agents time and 
 again."
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 103 
 
 " Now, Pap, there's Pink Deaderick. She's been 
 a-looking fer something to do." 
 
 Lydia wrote down the name of Pink Deaderick. 
 The woman suggested other persons. And although 
 Mr. Mclntosh expressed his doubts enthusiastically 
 about each of them, Lydia finally had a list of names 
 written in her notebook. 
 
 The woman accompanied her to the gate when she 
 left. When they were outside, she interpreted the 
 ways of the old man her father-in-law apologet- 
 ically. " He has a right smart o' book-larnin', Pap 
 has, but, pore thing, he jest suffers all the time now! 
 You needn't to mind how he goes on. I hope you'll 
 git Pink," she called after her, as Lydia started down 
 the bank toward the railroad tracks. 
 
 The soft veil of early evening had settled over Pleas- 
 antwater's ugly face when she started back to the 
 Mansion House from her last call on a prospective 
 agent. In the quiet streets robins were chirping their 
 close-of-day notes. There were few feet of Pleas- 
 antwater that Lydia had not traversed in the course of 
 her day. She was faint, as well as very tired, for in 
 order to avoid a fresh sight of the hotel clerk, she had 
 gone without a noon meal. Though she said to herself 
 that she must not be, nevertheless she was terribly dis- 
 couraged. 
 
 Pink Deaderick had seemed, at one time, on the 
 point of yielding to the attractive arguments in favour 
 of book-selling which she had presented to her. Per-
 
 16 4 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 haps she had been too ardent with her. At any rate, 
 the overtures to Pink had come to nothing. And the 
 others, mostly girls, but some of them men, had listened 
 to her stolidly unmoved, their eyes full of suspicion. 
 
 The smell of fried ham, and of other undistinguish- 
 able fried things, met her when she entered the Man- 
 sion House, and as she passed through the lobby, she 
 saw the clerk sitting at his supper in the cavernous 
 waste of the dining room. He looked up as she passed. 
 Their eyes met, and dropped. 
 
 When she got inside her room, she sank into a 
 chair, her books sliding to the floor. 
 
 She was roused by a knock. The porter who had 
 brought her from the station was at the door. 
 
 " Bell's done rang! " he announced respectfully. 
 
 " I don't want any supper, thank you." 
 
 " Dey's a mighty good supper," he stammered so- 
 licitously. " Batter-cakes . . ." 
 
 " I'm not hungry, thank you." Lydia smiled weakly 
 at him. 
 
 The black man's friendly interest had warmed her 
 heart a little. She went over to the bureau where she 
 had placed Mrs. Poole's lunch and sat down to eat 
 her supper. 
 
 Already the Pooles seemed a long way from her. 
 She could hardly make herself believe that it was only 
 in the morning they had waved good-bye to her from 
 the station platform at Kingsville. And it seemed 
 weeks to her, since she had come in from her walk on 
 the River Road, the evening before, and the Pooles 
 had been so alarmed because she had been so late, all
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 105 
 
 their vexation melted away in their anxious hours of 
 waiting. 
 
 Her heart was very tender toward them. She could 
 remember so many little kind things they had done for 
 her, and she could scarcely recall at all things they had 
 done or said to provoke her. She did not see, now, 
 indeed, how she could ever have been provoked with 
 them. 
 
 Their life had been very tiresome and commonplace 
 to her, so different from all she craved might be put 
 into her own existence, but now, at the end of her first 
 day's journey into the world, what a snug happy har- 
 bour the Pooles' home seemed as she looked back on it I
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE train was hours late arriving at Pleasant- 
 water, and was further delayed by its ailing 
 engine. 
 
 At the raw, black, unpropitious hour of three in the 
 morning, Lydia arrived at Sparta, and a sleepy darky 
 led her by the light of his lantern to the Bella House, 
 nearly a mile from the railroad station. 
 
 She slept soundly for several hours after going to 
 bed, and was awakened by a catbird singing a rich, 
 voluble song outside her window. Sunshine streamed 
 across the floor. 
 
 She was surprisingly rested from her fatigue of the 
 day before, and started out buoyantly, with a long list 
 of names furnished her by the clerk, whose sad eyes 
 had at once quieted whatever fears she had brought 
 with her from the Mansion House at Pleasantwater, 
 and had satisfactorily contradicted to her the cavalier 
 ferocity of his huge flowing moustache. 
 
 It was an exhilarating day. Light clouds drifted in 
 the sky. Her heart was gladdened by the sight of 
 daffodils in bloom long, golden, nodding lines of 
 them arow in old gardens she passed. She stepped 
 briskly along through streets that seemed to lead di- 
 rectly into blue mountains at the end of them. 
 
 At a little after four in the afternoon, she had 
 
 106
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 107 
 
 visited every person whose name the clerk at the Bella 
 House had given her. Some had seemed mildly inter- 
 ested, but, warned by her experience with Pink Deader- 
 ick at Pleasantwater, she had refrained from over- 
 urging them. 
 
 At a few minutes after four, standing on a hilltop 
 overlooking all of Sparta, she consulted her list. Two 
 days, and she had not yet employed an agent. In a 
 flash of alarm, she saw her slender roll of bills eaten 
 up by travelling expenses, and no bills earned to replace 
 them. 
 
 She decided to go back to the Gobbles. Mrs. Gob- 
 ble and Dawn had been more friendly to her proposi- 
 tion than any of the others to whom she had presented 
 it. Both mother and daughter had unmistakably co- 
 quetted with the idea. 
 
 II 
 
 The Gobbles exhibited no surprise when they found 
 her at 1 their door again. 
 
 " Yes, Dawn likes the idy," Mrs. Gobbles admitted. 
 
 There was the same mysterious reservation that 
 Lydia had observed before. 
 
 Dawn had been playing the organ when Lydia re- 
 appeared, but the three sat rocking together now. 
 
 ;< Well, Mrs. Gobble, if she likes the idea, will you 
 tell me frankly, then, why your daughter can't take the 
 agency? I know she'll do well with it . . ." 
 
 Lydia paused, her cheeks rosy, her eyes shining with 
 expectation, for Mrs. Gobble, though still not commit- 
 ting herself, looked distinctly malleable.
 
 io8 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 "I don't think it's no disgrace, Miss Lambright 
 if that's what you said your name was " Mrs. Gob- 
 ble began with rather a challenging air " I don't 
 think it's no disgrace, to own to not havin' much " 
 
 "Of course it isn't!" Lydia interrupted encourag- 
 ingly. 
 
 " Well, we jest ain't got the five dollars to pay out 
 for Dawn takin' the agency," Mrs. Gobble warmed 
 to a confidential tone "though I'd like the best in 
 the world to have her, and Dawn's mighty nigh sick 
 to do it!" 
 
 Lydia cast through her mind, rapidly. She was dis- 
 tinctly nearer to appointing an agent than she had been 
 before. This girl, poor Dawn, a mouth-breather, 
 wanted to be an agent! 
 
 " I'll tell you what I'll do, Mrs. Gobble," she said, 
 " I'll just credit Miss Dawn with paying me the five 
 dollars. I'll give her the outfit, the books she's to 
 show, and her instructions, and order-blanks, and every- 
 thing, and then when she's taken a few orders, she can 
 send me five out of what she makes. I think that'll 
 be all right. She can send it to me, care of the house. 
 She'll have the address . . ." 
 
 " Well, I don't know, I don't know." Mrs. Gobble 
 was still a little reluctant, though palpably pleased. 
 " I don't guess Mr. Gobble can object, though . . ." 
 
 The transaction was closed without much further 
 difficulty, and Dawn, a faint tinge of colour struggling 
 to show itself in her pasty cheeks, was duly constituted 
 an agent to sell the " History of Famous Women " and
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 109 
 
 the " Imperial Galaxy of Poetry and Art," all the 
 papers made out appertaining thereto. With timid 
 gratitude, she accompanied Lydia to the gate, and a 
 little way down the street, where they parted cordially. 
 
 Ill 
 
 By the time the distance between Lydia returning 
 to the hotel, and Dawn returning to the home of her 
 parents, had lengthened to two hundred feet, Lydia's 
 elation at having appointed an agent was expiring. 
 She was not certain whether it was the rather touching 
 figure of Dawn that had affected her judgment, or 
 whether it had come about entirely through her eager- 
 ness to appoint an agent some way or other. The 
 only thing she was perfectly certain of was that she 
 had done an idiotic thing. How was she to get any 
 money herself, if she credited agents, when her only 
 compensation was to be what the agents paid her? It 
 was not that Dawn would not pay her back, if she 
 earned money selling the works, but Dawn Gobble 
 would never in the world be able to sell a copy of either 
 the " History of Famous Women " or the " Imperial 
 Galaxy." It wasn't in Dawn Gobble to persuade any 
 one in the world to take anything in the world! She 
 saw that plainly enough now. 
 
 She was heartily glad she had not confessed to Mr. 
 Poole that she herself had paid twenty-five dollars for 
 the outfits she was to furnish agents to sell. Mr. 
 Poole would certainly not have approved, for though 
 she had thought it was quite a little sum she had left
 
 no THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 after paying her father's funeral expenses, he had inti- 
 mated he thought it was exceedingly small, and had 
 warned her to be very careful. 
 
 As she approached the Bella House she counted to 
 herself the number of days her money would probably 
 last, with the necessary daily expenses of railroad fare 
 and hotels.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 SOME days she was less downcast than others; but 
 taking it all in all, by the time Lydia had travelled 
 ten days, not an illusion regarding general agencies re- 
 mained in her mind. 
 
 With the exception of Dawn Gobble at Sparta, which 
 she never recalled without chagrin, she had not ap- 
 pointed an agent. 
 
 She had talked, and talked, and talked, said every- 
 thing she could possibly think of to say, and in every 
 manner she could possibly conceive of saying such 
 things. Those who had never been book agents, looked 
 on the occupation, and on the arguments she offered 
 for its success, with suspicion, and those who had been 
 book agents, looked on the occupation and the argu- 
 ments with even greater suspicion. She wondered how 
 any one had ever induced any one else to become a 
 book agent, for she knew there were countless book 
 agents in the world. 
 
 Of the adventures she had confidently looked for- 
 ward to when she had contemplated the general agency 
 from Kingsville she had had not one ! Her experi- 
 ences had been entirely with the poor, not with the 
 abject, suffering poor, but still with the poor the 
 ignorant, the highly-prejudiced, the hopelessly-common-
 
 ii2 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 place poor. Oh, the rooms she had shown her cheap, 
 showy books in, and smiled and chattered in, and tried 
 to woo, and all but wept in! Would she ever forget 
 the look of them, the shoddy, pitiful look? Would 
 she ever forget those depressing odours of pov- 
 erty? 
 
 Whole days through the spring sunshine she had 
 walked the streets of little towns she had never seen 
 before, going from one such home to another, her cer- 
 tainty growing and growing of how different it all was 
 from what she had expected! 
 
 II 
 
 But on the evening of the tenth day, as she lifted her 
 head from the wiry plush upholstery of the car seat 
 against which she had been trying to rest, and looked 
 out of the car window and saw everything so lovely in 
 the fading daylight the delicate pink-and-white drift 
 of blossoming fruit trees, and fields with little new- 
 born calves clinging timidly to the sides of their calm 
 mothers, and little colts practising on their awkward 
 new legs, and little pigs scampering foolishly as their 
 startled snouts sniffed the passing train as she saw 
 little lambs running after the old ewes, and a pair of 
 " mourning " doves wing-by-wing on a fence rail as 
 she saw and felt it all, suddenly all the wonder and 
 beauty and interest of the world, and the realisation 
 that it was for her, too, burst upon her as it had that 
 afternoon on the River Road. 
 
 Her young heart filled with thirst for life. She 
 longed to see the world, something more than just this
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 113 
 
 region about Kingsville. She longed to taste experi- 
 ences far different from those she had tasted. 
 
 She counted over every penny in her purse. There 
 was enough to buy a ticket to New York; and Walden, 
 her next stop, was a railroad junction where she could 
 catch a through train. 
 
 If she did not buy this ticket to New York, then 
 what? Why, then she would go trailing on, day after 
 day, to one little miserable place after another, and 
 pretty soon all her money would be gone, and she 
 would be stranded at a place something like Pleasant- 
 water, and have to write to the Pooles for money with 
 which to return to Kingsville. That she would never 
 do. Never ! 
 
 She did not know exactly what she should find to do 
 when she reached New York, but a city offered bound- 
 less opportunities; and, in any event, whatever she 
 found it would be more to her taste, not harder, or 
 more barren of. results, than the general agency. 
 
 Except for the thought that she would have to write 
 the Pooles and acquaint them with her change of plans 
 she pictured their dismay! this moment was the 
 happiest she had known since she left Kingsville. 
 
 New York! One of the great cities of the world! 
 
 What millions of young men and women before her, 
 in all countries and ages, had turned their eager shin- 
 ing faces, their glowing hearts, to a great city, just 
 as she was turning her shining face, her glowing heart, 
 to a great city, believing that there, surely there, must 
 be found life! 
 
 Shining faces ! Glowing young hearts I
 
 CHAPTER XIV, 
 
 LYDIA paused on the curb, and with her little trav- 
 elling bag on the pavement beside her, drew a 
 newspaper clipping from her purse and held it close 
 to her eyes. This was the right number, 148. " Re- 
 fined Christian home with bountiful table." Ordi- 
 narily she would have been amused by this combination 
 of advantages which the advertisement offered. But 
 as she had drawn near the city, she had found herself 
 distinctly more terrified than merry, and had selected 
 this advertisement from a long list precisely because of 
 its word Christian. The word seemed to throw a 
 cloak of protection around her. 
 
 As she mounted the steps, she was much impressed 
 by the appearance of the house. She feared it would 
 be higher priced than she could afford. But the cab 
 had whipped off up the street. No doubt she could 
 stop a day or two, till she found something cheaper. 
 
 Her breath came in odd, quick jerks as she stood in 
 the tiled vestibule waiting an answer to her ring. 
 
 Through the frosted panes in the upper part of the 
 double doors she could see some one approaching. A 
 coloured maid opened the door. 
 
 "Is Miss Tompkins in?" Lydia's voice trembled 
 slightly. 
 
 JI4
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 115 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I'd like to see her, please." 
 
 The maid ushered her through a dangling pair of 
 rope portieres into the front parlour. 
 
 " What name? " she demanded with sullen impolite- 
 ness. 
 
 " Lambright I'm from the South Kings- 
 ville. . . ." 
 
 II 
 
 Lydia looked around her. There were oil paintings 
 on the walls, and a Venetian scene in water-colours. 
 A high pitcher of metal that appeared bronze stood 
 on a shelf at the base of a long mirror between the 
 front windows. On the rack of an upright piano, a 
 hymn book was open. She stole softly to the piano. 
 The hymn book was open to " Bringing in the Sheaves." 
 She had often heard its vigorous refrain pouring out 
 of Sunday-school windows in Kingsville. " Bringing 
 in the Sheaves ! Bringing in the Sheaves ! " 
 
 She waited nervously. The lights were turned 
 rather low, and the house seemed uncomfortably quiet. 
 A delicate tip 1 toe ! fall of a mouse's toe not lighter 
 Miss Tompkins was approaching through the back- 
 parlour, a woman of medium height, plump, her eyes 
 prominent and protruding, and her grey hair arranged 
 about her face in an orderly succession of premedi- 
 tated curls, not cork-screws, but their lineal descend- 
 ants. 
 
 " Miss Lambright?" she pronounced, with a mark- 
 edly rising inflection.
 
 n6 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 Lydia rose, and as Miss Tompkins did not sit down, 
 remained standing. 
 
 " I saw your advertisement, Miss Tompkins." 
 
 "O h?" Miss Tompkins put an extraordinary 
 amount of cool surprise into her exclamation. " Sit 
 down, will you? From the South, I believe?" 
 
 " Yes, from Kingsville." 
 
 "Kingsville? Kingsville?" Miss Tompkins said 
 it over several times. She admitted she had never" 
 heard of the place. 
 
 "You have references?" she asked, smilingly. 
 
 " I just came. . . . I've never been here before." 
 
 "O h? " Miss Tompkins moistened her lips. 
 " I never take any one without references," she said, 
 in a bland but resolute voice. 
 
 The colour spread in a hot sheet over Lydia's face. 
 
 " Would you be prepared to pay the first week or so 
 in advance, Miss Lambright?" 
 
 "What are your prices?" asked Lydia, apprehen- 
 sively. Under the influence of Miss Tompkins' imper- 
 sonal smile, it seemed a rather indelicate question. " I 
 just want a small room." 
 
 Without answering her inquiry definitely, Miss 
 Tompkins led her up flight after flight of stairs, each 
 floor lighted more dimly than the one below. 
 
 On the top floor, she passed to the front, entered a 
 tiny room, and lit the gas. She was out of breath with 
 her climb, but she explained the operation of the gas- 
 heater and of the folding-bed, and stated the price 
 nine dollars a week. 
 
 Lydia counted out the money and paid a week's
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 117 
 
 board in advance. She could stay two weeks, then, if 
 that was the rate. And by that time, of course she 
 would have a position. 
 
 ill 
 
 It was some time before she was able to sleep after 
 she went to bed the rumble of the elevated on one 
 side, the clang of the surface cars on the other, and all 
 through the night the muffled roar of the great city 
 she was actually in New York! 
 
 When at length she fell asleep, she dreamed she was 
 in Kingsville. Nothing looked as it had actually 
 looked, but she could see her father's body on its bier. 
 She seemed to be searching everywhere for his clothes, 
 and as she found them they looked perfectly natural, 
 his old pair of shoes, his worn slippers, and his shiny 
 coat with the spots on the front. She could see patches 
 and darns on his undergarments exactly where she had 
 put them. Some one seemed to be dogging her steps. 
 She stuffed the clothes in a grate with frantic haste, 
 poured oil over them, and set a match to them so 
 that Mrs. Poole should not find them and see how 
 pitiful and shabby they were. The bundle blazed, the 
 fire roared and leaped higher and higher, catching her 
 by the arm ! The flames were burning her whole body ! 
 She tried to cry out, to make sjome one hear. 
 
 When she woke, she found she had been lying on 
 her arm; it was aching. Perhaps she had cried aloud, 
 before she woke she was not sure. The tears 
 rolled down her face while she lay in the darkness, 
 longing for morning to come.
 
 n8 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 When she fell asleep again, she was visited with 
 another, very different dream. She thought she was 
 driving down Fifth Avenue that apogee of the na- 
 tional elegance which she had heard and read of. She 
 was in an open carriage, a victoria, like Mrs. Ransom 
 Churchwell's, leaning back against the cushions. 
 Throngs of people along the sidewalk were looking 
 at her. Then a " poor-white " girl, such as hung about 
 the Market House in Kingsville, came running after her 
 carriage, calling, "Miss, gimme a nickel!" and an- 
 other little barefoot " poor-white," with a bundle of 
 rich pine in her arms, came running alongside the car- 
 riage, asking her to buy, just as the little pine-sellers 
 ran after people on the streets of Kingsville begging 
 them to buy their bundles of sappy pine, for kindling- 
 wood. She stopped the carriage and took both the 
 beggar girl and the pine-seller up on the seat beside 
 her. Then she woke. It was broad light, and break- 
 fast smells were coming through the transom. 
 
 IV 
 
 She spent a day full of happy excitement. Intoxi- 
 cated with the city sights and sounds, with the gorgeous 
 displays in the shop windows, and with the tonic, ex- 
 hilarating air, she was soon dodging under a horse's 
 nose, grazing a wheel, nimbly and gaily averting death 
 with each street crossed. 
 
 At first, after stepping out into this glittering city 
 sunshine, she was uneasy lest the vulgar mark of those 
 days she had toiled as agent was stamped somewhere 
 on her. But as the hours advanced, she felt more and
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 119 
 
 more purged of the stains of Sparta and Pleasantwater. 
 She caught more than one glimpse of herself in 
 mirrors of the shop windows, and Bob Allen's words 
 recurred to her with a fresh, agitating, delicious shock 
 " Little Lydia Lambright, prettier than any of 
 them!" 
 
 At half-past six Miss Tompkins' dinner-gong 
 sounded. When Lydia reached the foot of the base- 
 ment stairs, she could see into the dining room. The 
 other boarders were already there ; the room was full ; 
 and she did not know where to sit, as Miss Tompkins 
 had told her at breakfast that the seat she had then 
 would not be her regular seat. A spectacled woman 
 looked out at her frigidly. Other women who could 
 see the hall door were scrutinising her curiously. The 
 maid who had opened the door to her the night before 
 and another coloured maid were moving loftily among 
 the tables, offering dishes to the boarders. 
 
 Miss Tompkins suddenly fluttered out to her, a nap- 
 kin tucked in her bosom. 
 
 " I hope you haven't been waiting long! " she whis- 
 pered. " I'll put you at the table with Mrs. Kearney, 
 a widow, a delightful lady I can't think of her broth- 
 er's name ! But no matter, he only comes in to din- 
 ner." 
 
 She led Lydia mincingly to a corner table, and intro- 
 duced her, Mrs. Kearney assisting with the name of 
 her brother, McCarthy. He was middle-aged, and a 
 bachelor as he soon made known to Lydia a
 
 120 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 heavily-built man with a ruddy, large-featured face. 
 When he smiled he disclosed somewhat discoloured 
 teeth. His clothes were good, but he looked un-at- 
 home in them, like a small boy forcibly dressed in his 
 Sunday suit. He had been brought up on a farm, he 
 said; yet he was full of city slang, and intensely inter- 
 ested in the business and pleasures of the city. 
 
 "Old Ladies' Home!" he whispered, his eyes 
 twinkling, when he caught Lydia stealing glances at the 
 other tables in the room. 
 
 There were only three men present, including Mc- 
 Carthy. One, a pale, youngish man with a pointed 
 beard, wore a high-cut clerical vest. He sat at a good- 
 sized table in the centre of the room, women flanking 
 and opposite him all widows or spinsters, McCarthy 
 whispered to Lydia some withered, some still vigor- 
 ous. They were talking to each other, and to the pale 
 man, always very deferentially to him, of church mat- 
 ters. Occasionally one of them won from him a dry- 
 as-dust smile. 
 
 The talk was all very subdued in tone. Even Mrs. 
 Kearney and her brother, who seemed the only live, 
 and perhaps worldly persons in the room, contented 
 themselves with undertones. But they kept up a brisk 
 conversation with Lydia. Like Miss Tompkins, they 
 admitted they never before had heard of Kingsville. 
 
 " I guess you won't be leaving Miss Tompkins' for 
 your dinners, after all, will you, Steve? " his sister said, 
 smilingly, glancing at Lydia, as the three of them rose 
 from the table together.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 LATE one gusty afternoon, Lydia, who had been a 
 little more than two weeks in New York, dragged 
 herself up the steps of Miss Tompkins' and let herself 
 into the house with her latch-key. She had been out 
 all day in pursuit of what now appeared phantom po- 
 sitions. 
 
 As the front door clicked, Miss Tompkins pushed 
 aside the portiere that hung at a door in the back hall. 
 
 " Oh, that you, Miss Lambright? Will you step 
 here a moment, if you don't mind? " 
 
 " You understood, did you not, Miss Lambright,." 
 she said, when they were seated in the bedchamber, 
 " that board was to be paid in advance? " 
 
 Motes of light danced in the darkness that gathered 
 before Lydia's eyes. She had the sensation of water 
 filling her ears, muffling Miss Tompkins' voice to her, 
 and her own voice seemed to come to her from a great 
 distance as she answered simply, " Yes, Miss Tomp- 
 kins." 
 
 ' You overlooked the fact that your third week was 
 due Tuesday? " 
 
 " I'll have to ask you to wait till the end of the week, 
 this time, please, Miss Tompkins." As she spoke, 
 waves of heat and of cold broke alternately over her. 
 
 121
 
 122 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 She did not know why she had said the end of the 
 week. But she had to say something. 
 
 " May I ask, Miss Lambright, why you are in New 
 York? Have you a position in view? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Of what character, if I may ask? " 
 
 " I'm considering two or three different positions." 
 
 An uncomfortable silence ensued. Lydia's eyes, 
 wandering uneasily, took in the ordered frippery of the 
 crowded bedchamber. A vision of the long, tedious, 
 spinster years that had gone to the accumulating of 
 all this litter rose depressingly to her mind. But not 
 with compassion for Miss Tompkins. She hardly 
 accounted Miss Tompkins a human being, like herself, 
 compounded of hopes and fears. Miss Tompkins was 
 a boarding-house keeper, demanding board-money, and 
 she had none to give her. 
 
 She started to quit the room. 
 
 Miss Tompkins adroitly intercepted her. 
 
 " Would it be convenient to pay me part, of your 
 week's board, Miss Lambright? I have my insurance 
 to meet this week." 
 
 With a quick movement, Lydia opened her purse, 
 and handed her a two-dollar bill. " I can pay that 
 much on it." 
 
 "Oh! Thank you. Shall I give you a receipt?" 
 
 Fingering the bill, Miss Tompkins made a tentative 
 move in the direction of her walnut secretary. 
 
 " Oh, no, I don't care for a receipt." Lydia's hand 
 was on the portiere, raising it, so that she could with- 
 draw from the room.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 123 
 
 " I'm afraid you're getting yourself too tired, my 
 dear." 
 
 Lydia smiled faintly. " I have a headache. That's 
 all." 
 
 II 
 
 As she went through the hall, and up the stairs, she 
 wondered feverishly what she should do now. On 
 the third floor, she found the maid who had let her in 
 the evening she came bent over a book, under one of 
 the gas jets that were always lit in the dusky hallways. 
 A broom leaned against the wall at her side, and the 
 dusting-cloths had slid to her feet. Evidently she had 
 started to do some cleaning, but had stopped to con 
 a lesson. Viola attended school, giving her services 
 to Miss Tompkins out of school hours. 
 
 Lydia glanced at the outlines of her woolly head 
 against the light paper of the wall behind her, at her 
 sprawling feet, her sour withdrawal into the Latin 
 text-book on her knees. The picture at once amused 
 and irritated her. 
 
 The black girl was reading over her lesson aloud, 
 with parturient throes pronouncing the fiery invective 
 against Catiline, "O temporal O mores!" 
 
 Lydia had read the immortal orations under her 
 father's direction. Something irresistibly impelled her 
 to follow up the halting syllables in a light, mocking 
 tone. 
 
 " Senatus haec intelligit! consul videtf hie tamen 
 vivitf " she repeated. " Can I be of any help, Viola ? " 
 
 " You needs help yo'self," mumbled the girl, stick-
 
 I2 4 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 ing out her lips. She had dropped back into the vernac- 
 ular of a Southern childhood. 
 
 "Oh!" exclaimed Lydia sharply. 
 
 She knew Viola was impudent; it was her own fault 
 that she had been insulted 1 
 
 But she wished she could take charge of Miss Tomp- 
 kins' menage for just one day! She would like to 
 prove to Miss Tompkins that blacks, like children, 
 were polite when they were made to be polite, and that 
 their happiness followed in the wake of their enforced 
 politeness. She would like to demonstrate to her the 
 profound simplicities of the black character! 
 
 She flung herself on the folding-bed, burying her 
 face in the cool pillow. These black minds were very 
 penetrating, very cute, for all their simplicity. Viola 
 had guessed she was out of money and her board due! 
 
 Ill 
 
 She wished she could go to sleep and forget every- 
 thing. Things were going round and round in her 
 brain. She had answered every advertisement she 
 could find. In some places where she had applied for 
 work she had met courtesy; in others, what she con- 
 sidered brutal rudeness; but courteous or rude, none 
 of the employers wanted her. " References " were de- 
 manded, just as Miss Tompkins had demanded " refer- 
 ences," and she had no references. She had no special 
 training for anything. The only positions offered her, 
 were to sell things. She could be agent for anything 
 from hose supporters and face creams to encyclopaedias.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 125 
 
 But she had no money to start with, even if she had 
 wanted to start out again as agent; and her experience 
 with the " History of Famous Women " and the " Im- 
 perial Galaxy of Poetry and Art " had given her a dis- 
 trust of all agencies. 
 
 She could get a situation as domestic servant. But 
 death would be preferable to that. 
 
 She had been thinking of death, as a solution, for 
 several days. 
 
 She pictured herself turning on the gas, and Miss 
 Tompkins finding her body stretched out stiffly on the 
 folding bed. But except for the image of Miss Tomp- 
 kins' consternation, she derived little satisfaction from 
 the picture. 
 
 When she thought of dying, of putting an end to 
 herself, Kingsville came back to her poignantly. 
 These spring nights were sweet there now with honey- 
 suckle ! 
 
 She did not want to die ! She wanted to live ! 
 
 IV 
 
 But how was she going to live ? That was the ques- 
 tion torturing her. 
 
 All at once, an idea struck her. McCarthy! iWhy 
 wasn't McCarthy a solution? 
 
 Every evening she had been with him, usually in his 
 sister's room, talking or playing cards. His sister's 
 room, the best at Miss Tompkins', always had fresh 
 flowers in it, and fruit, and candy, and magazines. 
 And they both seemed to go wherever they pleased,
 
 126 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 and to have whatever they wanted. He had taken her, 
 with his sister, to the theatre, and one Sunday she had 
 walked alone with him in the Park. She had not en- 
 couraged the extremely personal things he had tried to 
 say to her whenever they were alone together; she 
 liked him, and liked to be with him; but she felt a 
 slight sense of recoil from the robust physical presence 
 of the man. Now, however, she began to think of him 
 in a different way, and a sense of relief crept over her. 
 
 When the gong sounded for dinner, she examined 
 herself a last time in the looking-glass. She was ex- 
 ceedingly pleased with the reflection. But she dreaded 
 presenting herself in the dining room. She felt as if 
 the cold eyes of the widows and spinsters would see 
 right through her, and know perfectly why she had 
 dressed her hair in this unaccustomed and rather saucy 
 style, and why she had put on her best dress made 
 by a seamstress in Kingsville the week before she left 
 there a delicate grey crepe, to which she had added 
 a knot of scarlet velvet ribbon she had bought out of a 
 shop window on her first entrancing day in the city. 
 
 She felt the boarders stir as she entered the dining 
 room. They were all looking at her. She tried to 
 appear indifferent, as she made her way across the 
 room. 
 
 McCarthy rose quickly. 
 
 " By George ! Some one's a beauty ! " he exclaimed 
 half under his breath. 
 
 Lydia smiled sparklingly on him. She had recov- 
 ered her equanimity.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 127 
 
 " Where's Mrs. Kearney? " she asked. 
 
 He explained that his sister had been suddenly called 
 out of the city. 
 
 "Want to go to a good show this evening?" he 
 asked, with marked reluctance turning his eyes to the 
 dish Viola was impatiently offering him.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THREE hours afterwards, Lydia was at the 
 theatre. A lean, clownish man came out and 
 sang, "Oh, Mr. Dooley! Oh, Mr. Dooley!" The 
 song was new, and the audience kept him to the point 
 of exhaustion repeating with twists and winks, " Oh, 
 Mr. Dooley, Oh, Mr. Dooley! " 
 
 The curtain finally descended, and lights blazed on. 
 The orchestra took up the strain now, " Oh, Mr. 
 Dooley! Oh, Mr. Dooley! " 
 
 Lydia had laughed herself to tears. McCarthy 
 stooped to pick up her programme which had fallen to 
 the floor, and as he straightened himself, his shoulder 
 brushed hers. A slight shiver ran through her. 
 Neverthless, under the stimulus of the music and her 
 surroundings she was becoming every instant more 
 reconciled to the idea of McCarthy as a solution. He 
 was not romantic; he was the farthest remove in the 
 world, indeed, from all her fancy had ever pictured 
 of a lover or a husband; but in the straits to which she 
 was reduced, the very solidity of his look, the common- 
 ness of his grain, seemed a guarantee of her future 
 security. 
 
 He regaled her between the acts with stories of other 
 shows, as he called them. She had never before heard 
 
 128
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 129 
 
 even the names of these actors and singers he men- 
 tioned. 
 
 The orchestra's sprightly strain of " Mr. Dooley " 
 changed to a soft, tender melody, and, changing again, 
 merged into a warm, sensuous flood of music that 
 seemed to filter through every fibre of her being. Mc- 
 Carthy was looking down devouringly into her face. 
 
 She allowed his eyes to hold hers an instant, and 
 then dropped them, feeling the colour hot in her cheeks. 
 Her eyes had said plainly " I'm yours, if you'll have 
 me ! " . . . She said to herself it was an equitable 
 proposition she was offering him. She would give him 
 youth and refinement, and he would save her from 
 destitution. 
 
 " I wish I could be here always. I love New York," 
 she said, abruptly, ostensibly studying her programme. 
 
 He looked at her quizzically. " Well, can't you? " 
 
 " I don't know . . ." 
 
 " Sweetheart back in Kingsville? " 
 
 " I don't care for any one in Kingsville," she an- 
 swered pointedly. She raised her eyes deliberately 
 to his. But her heart was less bold than her eyes. 
 She felt it pounding. If not McCarthy, then 
 what? 
 
 He leaned close to her. 
 
 The house had grown dark. The stage was bathed 
 in rosy light. Bespangled chorus-girls were fluttering 
 about in an enchanted world. A swift impression 
 passed through Lydia's mind that something more un- 
 real was happening to her than was happening on the 
 stage. She heard McCarthy saying to her in a low
 
 130 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 voice: "Did you mean that, little girl?" and she 
 felt his hand, under cover of the dusk of the house, 
 giving her own a fervent pressure. 
 
 II 
 
 The great green curtain dropped; the orchestra took 
 up again the strains of " Oh, Mr. Dooley! Oh, Mr. 
 Dooley ! " Lydia shrank a little away from McCarthy 
 as he assisted her solicitously with her wrap. He looked 
 so rotund, so almost ridiculous, in his short spring over- 
 coat. Suddenly, as she stood pinning on her hat, she 
 was aware of a young woman, at a little distance across 
 the house, trying to attract his attention. 
 
 " That young lady's trying to speak to you, I think." 
 She indicated to him the direction of a pink evening 
 wrap. 
 
 He bowed and smiled across the emptying seats, 
 waving his gloves, and the young woman, who wore 
 her black hair in a huge " pompadour," waved her pro- 
 gramme. 
 
 " Say, isn't she stunning? " he asked, his eyes fol- 
 lowing the pink wrap as it disappeared up the centre 
 aisle. 
 
 "Was that her mother with her?" asked Lydia, 
 with an assumption of unconcern. 
 
 "Search me!" 
 
 Then he didn't know the young woman so well after 
 all. She breathed more easily. 
 
 " She's handsome. Is she married? " 
 
 " Married? " McCarthy laughed. He was mak-
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 131 
 
 ing their way aggressively through the pavement 
 throngs. " No not now." 
 
 When they had gone less than a block, he stopped 
 in front of a building from whose windows lights 
 streamed out across the pavement. Couples who had 
 come from theatre were going up the steps. 
 
 "What do you say? Let's go in and have some- 
 thing." 
 
 "Oh, no, not to-night! " 
 
 "No?" McCarthy looked surprised. "You're a 
 funny girl! " he said. 
 
 And the moment they had passed on, Lydia won- 
 dered why she had refused his proposal. She was 
 convinced she had made a mistake. She wished she 
 dare say, " Let's go back." 
 
 Ill 
 
 Suddenly she began to talk with feverish gaiety, 
 about the opera, about anything, clinging a little closer 
 to his arm. 
 
 " Oh, I wish it could go on forever and forever and 
 forever! " she exclaimed. " Nothing else, nothing to 
 worry about, just 'Oh, Mr. Dooley, Oh, Mr. Doo- 
 ley! ' She hummed the song. 
 
 They had started down the hill toward Miss Tomp- 
 kins'. 
 
 McCarthy paused under a street lamp, and looked 
 at her. 
 
 " Don't you wish it could go on forever? " she chal- 
 lenged him, her eyes glistening.
 
 1 32 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 " I wish some things could! " 
 
 " Everything to the brave ! " she laughed, as they 
 ascended the long flight of steps at Miss Tompkins'. 
 
 Suddenly he linked his arm in hers, and bent over 
 her, trying to look into her face. 
 
 They stopped in the tiled vestibule. A dim light 
 'shone through the frosted panes in the doors. Lydia 
 was trembling violently. 
 
 " Will you give me to-morrow evening go with 
 me to dinner to-morrow evening? " he asked in a low 
 tone. Before she realised what was happening, he had 
 drawn her to him. " You're my girl! " he said husk- 
 ily. 
 
 " Forever and forever and forever! " she whispered, 
 repeating her wild words of a moment before. 
 
 She was saved! She had no horror of him now. 
 But her thoughts were whirling dizzily. The tension 
 of many hours of over-wrought nerves was breaking 
 in her. She felt weak, robbed of volition. With the 
 misty unreality of a dream, she was conscious that he 
 was kissing her. 
 
 " I didn't dream, that first night I came, I'd ever be 
 engaged to you ! " she whispered, pushing him a little 
 away, so that she could speak. 
 
 She felt herself abruptly released. What had hap- 
 pened? Was some one coming up the steps behind 
 them? She looked. But there was no one there. 
 
 " Engagement ! What idea have you got in your 
 head, little girl? " McCarthy spoke crisply, but his 
 voice was anxious. " I'm no marrying, man ! You're 
 in the wrong pew ! "
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 133 
 
 Lydia staggered, reaching the doors for support. 
 
 " I thought I thought oh, I don't know what I 
 thought!" she faltered. "I didn't know men, hon- 
 ourable men, kissed girls and made love to them," 
 her quivering words were almost lost in sobs 
 " unless they wanted to marry them! " 
 
 " Oh, look here ! " He tried to soothe her, but she 
 drew away from him, searching the door uncertainly for 
 the keyhole. Her body felt like ice, yet her cheeks 
 burned with unbearable fire. 
 
 " Look here, little girl, don't take it that way, for 
 God's sake ! " he begged. 
 
 But she pushed the door open, closed it quickly 
 behind her, and groped her way up the stairs, clinging 
 to the banister.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 LYDIA, pale and wild-eyed, lay staring straight 
 ahead of her at the faded wall-paper. Her un- 
 dergarments were strewn about anywhere, and on the 
 floor in a dejected heap lay the grey crepe dress she 
 had donned with such proud assurance the evening 
 before. She caught a glimpse of a scarlet rosette 
 peeping out from its folds, and the sight sickened her. 
 
 "Oh, Mr. Dooley! Oh, Mr. Dooley!" came 
 through the window, in a high pert treble. She stopped 
 her ears. She wished she might never again to the last 
 day of her life hear the hateful sound of that song! 
 She had fallen asleep toward morning, and now this 
 butcher's boy had wakened her from oblivion, and 
 recalled everything to her with fresh horror; She 
 hated herself. How could she ever have courage to 
 look McCarthy in the face again? 
 
 But what had he meant when he said to her in his 
 hoarse whisper "You're my girl?" What had he 
 meant by that? If he didn't want to marry her, what 
 did he want her for? Just some one to take out with 
 him in the evenings? to kiss and hold in his arms? 
 
 Another idea flashed through her an idea impos- 
 sible of belief in the broad morning light that flooded 
 the little hall bedroom.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 135 
 
 ii 
 
 The odour of chops and of weak coffee came through 
 the transom. Another day had to be lived. What 
 should she do? What was left to her to do? 
 
 She brushed her hair out of her eyes, rose, and 
 wearily picked up her stockings from the floor. She 
 did not hurry. What if she did miss her break- 
 fast? 
 
 She brushed her hair languidly, regardless of the 
 gold flecks playing in its soft lengths. The sunshine, 
 by its contrast, only emphasised her misery. She put 
 on her blouse, and pulled the skirt of her suit over her 
 head and adjusted it. How long ago it seemed since 
 that day she had bought this brown suit from the ebul- 
 lient Mrs. Joy at Maxfield's in Kingsville ! The image 
 of herself in the glass blurred. 
 
 She lifted the grey crepe dress, hung it carelessly 
 on a hook, and left the room. After breakfast, there 
 would be one more place to try for, a secretaryship she 
 had seen advertised, and had not applied for because 
 she had known so well what they would want that 
 the secretary should know shorthand and typewriting. 
 There wasn't a chance in a million she could get it. 
 But she would try. And if she didn't get it 
 
 ill 
 
 A light, fresh breeze was blowing as she stepped out 
 of Miss Tompkins'. White clouds were billowing in 
 the sky's clear blue. It was impossible not to be 
 slightly buoyed up with hope as she felt herself car-
 
 136 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 ried along on the shining stream of the spring morn- 
 ing. 
 
 But noon found her on lower Broadway, her hope 
 again dashed. The secretaryship had been filled; 
 when she entered the office, a young woman, the new 
 secretary, was taking down dictation in shorthand from 
 the. man who had advertised for a secretary; so there 
 had been, evidently enough, no chance at all for her. 
 
 She stood hesitating on the curb for a while after 
 she came out of the office building. At last, she started 
 walking up Broadway, hoping that as she walked along 
 some idea of what to do would suggest itself. But with 
 the hurrying midday crowds jostling her, she found it 
 difficult to think with any clearness. As she came in 
 sight of Grace Church, its delicate grey spire, glittering 
 in the noon sunshine, gave her a moment of keen pleas- 
 ure, and lifted the apathy that wrapped her. 
 
 When she reached Union Square, she thought for an 
 instant of going and sitting down on one of its benches, 
 to see if she could not think out there some plan of 
 future action. But none of the benches were entirely 
 vacant, and the men on them looked seedy and dejected, 
 and she did not want to be near them. 
 
 Occasionally she stopped and looked into a shop win- 
 dow, gazing at the articles displayed, but hardly seeing 
 them. She could think of only two possibilities now: 
 to write the Pooles for money, and ignominiously re- 
 turn to Kingsville; or turn on the gas at Miss Tomp- 
 kins'. Only a miracle, now, could save har from 
 one of these alternatives, and it seemed to her that, of 
 the two, she would rather end herself with gas. Mist
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 137 
 
 gathered before her eyes, and she had the feeling of 
 being in a trance, as she kept walking along beside 
 others on the sidewalk who were going in the same di- 
 rection. 
 
 As she found herself safely delivered on the pave- 
 ment, from the vortex of the three streets that meet 
 below the Fifth Avenue Hotel, she looked up at the 
 light fagade of the hotel flashing in the noon sun, and 
 something stirred faintly in her. She felt a singular 
 vague sense of protection in its nearness. Kingsville 
 people were in the habit of stopping here when they 
 were in New York. The ghost of something dear and 
 familiar seemed hovering near her. 
 
 She paused in front of the ladies' entrance. Why 
 not go up and sit down quietly in the parlour, and try 
 to think out there what she should do? Anything 
 would be better than going back to Miss Tompkins'. 
 
 She stood irresolutely under the portico of the ladies' 
 entrance. The porter looked out on her through the 
 glass doors, respectfully waiting for her decision. 
 
 She heard something! Was she dreaming? Or 
 had she lost her mind ? Her heart almost stopped beat- 
 ing. She heard some one calling her name. She looked 
 around. It was Ransom Churchwell, approaching her 
 swiftly from the main entrance of the hotel. 
 
 IV 
 
 He caught her hands in both his. 
 " Lydia, in God's name, what are you doing here? " 
 " Oh, Mr. Churchwell ! " She clung to his hands. 
 He was so tall, so well built, so graceful, so well dressed.
 
 138 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 She saw everything about him. Every least thing in 
 his appearance stamped itself on her mind with joy at 
 once exquisite and painful. 
 
 " I'm so glad ... to see you . . . Mr. Church- 
 well ... it seems as if ... I should die! " 
 
 " Lydia, what's the matter? What are you doing 
 here in New York? I thought you were travelling, for 
 a book concern, around in the State, near Kingsville. 
 Mr. Poole told me you were." 
 
 " Oh, I have so much to tell you, Mr. Churchwell," 
 she said breathlessly. " I can't tell you here " 
 
 " No, no, not here, of course not. We'll go inside. 
 But wait a minute." He took out his watch. " I have 
 an appointment, very soon." 
 
 She wanted to say, " Oh, don't leave me ! " She 
 could hardly keep from saying it. 
 
 Churchwell smiled reassuringly. "You poor child! 
 You're in trouble ! But don't worry another minute 
 I'll look after you, Lydia! I'll come for you, and 
 we'll go to dinner somewhere this evening, and then 
 you can tell me everything and whatever it is, I'll 
 fix it up for you! Don't worry any more. Where 
 are you staying? 
 
 " I think something told me you were here, Lydia, 
 and needed me ! " he said, writing down the address 
 she gave him. " I was talking to a man there, just 
 inside the door, when I realised it was you that had 
 passed. I was surprised, and yet somehow I wasn't 
 surprised." 
 
 He looked at her in the old sympathetic way, but, at 
 the same time, in a new, and strangely intimate way.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 139 
 
 " You needed me," he said softly, " and I came ! " 
 She was conscious that the old red-faced porter in- 
 side the door was watching them. But she did not care. 
 She did not care for, or know, anything, except Church- 
 well. He was her whole world, and he was standing 
 close beside her under the portico of the ladies' en- 
 trance to the hotel. 
 
 " It was a miracle I was there, and saw you, Lydia, 
 just as you were passing! " 
 
 " A miracle! a miracle! " she said, her eyes shining 
 into his. She was vibrating with the sweetest, most 
 wonderful joy she had ever known.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 LYDIA had dressed and was listening for every 
 sound. She walked to the window, her limbs 
 weak, and looked down into the street, where the lights 
 were lit now. 
 
 Some one rapped. When she opened the door, it 
 was Viola holding out to her a long paste-board box. 
 
 "Has has any one called for me?" she in- 
 quired, taking in the box. 
 
 " No'um." 
 
 She lingered, and Lydia saw that the girl was curi- 
 ous about the box she had brought up, but she closed 
 the door and untied the cord with trembling fingers. It 
 was the first time in her life she had received a florist's 
 box, and she was delighted, but not greatly surprised. 
 Anything might happen now ! 
 
 She buried her face in the roses, revelling in their 
 warm, moist, hothouse perfume. 
 
 A card caught her eye, and she drew it out from the 
 stems. Stephen T. McCarthy. 
 
 " So he sent them ! " 
 
 She lifted them nonchalantly from the box, and ar- 
 ranged them in her only available receptacle, the water- 
 pitcher on her washstand. Why was he sending her 
 roses? She felt a sense of shame; it was almost as 
 if he were offering her payment for her kisses or for 
 
 140
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 141 
 
 her frank designs on him that she had let him see! 
 However, as she thought now of the happenings of 
 the evening before, they no longer affected her with 
 quite the same sense of humiliation they had a few 
 hours earlier. 
 
 II 
 
 It was nearly an hour after Miss Tompkins' dinner- 
 gong sounded when Churchwell came for her. As she 
 hastened down the last flight of stairs, she encountered 
 the prim-visaged lady boarders ascending from dinner, 
 singly and in pairs. They looked beyond her, or aside. 
 
 But Miss Tompkins stood at the foot of the stairs, 
 near the doorway leading into the front parlour, ap- 
 parently waiting for her. Though her face wore its 
 habitual smile, her eyebrows were elevated. " Why, 
 going out again?" 
 
 " Yes," Lydia smiled. Through the rope portieres 
 she could see Churchwell seated in the parlour waiting 
 for her. 
 
 At the moment, McCarthy, who had come up from 
 the basement, had turned and was coming toward her. 
 She pretended not to see him. But as she turned from 
 Miss Tompkins into the parlour, she knew that he was 
 advancing toward the hatrack in the front hall, and 
 while she stood talking with Churchwell in the parlour, 
 fastening her gloves, she was conscious that McCarthy 
 was lingering by the hatrack, drawing on his own gloves, 
 and that he was probably listening to what she and 
 Churchwell were saying. She glanced out at his broad 
 back, wishing he would leave.
 
 1 42 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 She heard the front door close behind him, and the 
 next moment she left the house with Churchwell and 
 entered a carriage that was waiting. 
 
 It was too wonderful to be true that she should be 
 beside Churchwell in this closed carriage ! She was on 
 the brink of she knew not what, and with the closing 
 of the carriage door, little waves of exquisite fear be- 
 gan surging through her blood. 
 
 Churchwell turned so he could look more directly 
 into her face. 
 
 " Lydia, how beautiful you are ! " he exclaimed. 
 "What have you been doing to yourself? You've 
 changed since I last saw you I " 
 
 She was wearing the grey crepe dress, and the scarlet 
 knot of ribbon. 
 
 " Oh, you don't know what I've been through, Mr. 
 Churchwell ! " she said quickly. 
 
 " Tell me, you poor little girl ! " He took her 
 hand, and her fingers thrilled through the gloved clasp. 
 " Tell me everything." 
 
 " Oh, I've tried so many things, and can't find any- 
 thing to do, and my board's due, and I'm out of 
 money . . ." 
 
 "Out of money?" 
 
 " I just have a few cents. . ." 
 
 " Oh, my God, Lydia, alone here in the city, without 
 money! " 
 
 He released her hand, and drew some bills, a num- 
 ber together, quickly out of his billbook, and pressed 
 them into her hand. 
 
 " Oh, no," she protested faintly.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 143 
 
 She was conscious of curiously mingled sensations 
 as she felt the bills in her fingers. 
 
 " You'll hurt me, Lydia, if you don't take this," he 
 said, and she could sec his eyes were blurred with tears. 
 She could hardly remember ever before to have seen 
 tears in a man's eyes. She placed the money in her 
 purse, showing him, her own eyes tear dimmed, how 
 few coins she had left. 
 
 " It's horrible to think what you've been through! " 
 he murmured. 
 
 Then they were silent. She trembled to feel his 
 arm lightly against hers. 
 
 The carriage stopped, and the driver got off the box, 
 and held open the door. Lydia looked up and down 
 the quiet street while Churchwell gave the driver some 
 low directions which she did not try to hear. 
 
 Ill 
 
 They entered glass doors, and mounted a broad flight 
 of stairs. In the subdued light of the landing at the 
 top of the stairs a waiter with expansive shirt front 
 stood waiting to receive them, and a boy in red uniform 
 took their wraps. The waiter ushered them into a 
 room glowing under crimson-shaded lights. It was 
 the most beautiful room Lydia had ever seen. The 
 ceiling, which was not very high, was supported by 
 marble columns, and the walls, on delicate bluish-green 
 tiles, pictured cupids and goats disporting themselves 
 in a vineyard. Everywhere the vine of the grape was 
 intertwined. The goats had rose-garlands about their 
 necks and drew little wagons after them that were
 
 i 4 4 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 heaped with grapes, and the cupids bore great loads of 
 grapes in their chubby naked arms. 
 
 Around the room were small alcoves, half open to 
 view, yet with their hangings of crimson silk, having an 
 air of seclusion. A waiter conducted Lydia and Church- 
 well to one of these alcoves. Its little table was set 
 with two places. Between the places was an arrange- 
 ment of lilies-of-the-valley mingled with red roses. 
 
 " I'm so glad he gave us the table with the flowers! " 
 Lydia said, in a low voice. 
 
 Churchwell smiled. " This is our table, reserved 
 for us," he answered quietly. " Are the flowers the 
 kind you like ? " 
 
 She flushed. The realisation that he had ordered 
 the flowers as well as the table filled her with a sort 
 of terrified delight. But she was conscious of having 
 appeared perhaps a little countrified. It vexed her. 
 She did not wish to be thought so foolishly unso- 
 phisticated. She wanted more than anything else to 
 appear attractive in his eyes. 
 
 When the waiter, a serious German, whose presence 
 intimidated her, withdrew with the order, she called 
 Churchwell's attention to a small embossed hoof at the 
 top of the menu Mephisto's printed above the hoof. 
 
 " Look, it's a cloven hoof ! Is Mephisto's the name 
 of this place?" 
 
 " Yes, Mephisto's." Churchwell picked up the menu 
 card, running over it for something he had omitted 
 from his order. 
 
 Lydia studied his face his characteristic Church- 
 well nose, conspicuous but handsome, his Churchwell
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 145 
 
 chin with its just perceptible cleft, his dark eyes and 
 hair, brown without cast of black, and his beard show- 
 ing faintly under the close-shaven skin. . . . And she 
 was here with him, alone, in this enchanted place ! She 
 could not understand why, when she was so happy, she 
 should be also frightened frightened whether at him, 
 herself, the place, she hardly knew! 
 
 Churchwell constantly urged her to eat, helping her 
 to delicate portions of the different dishes he had or- 
 dered, but she only nibbled her roll, sipped her wine, 
 and played a little with her fork. She wondered how 
 she could be telling him all these things that had been 
 shut up in her for so long. When she told him of the 
 little subterfuges to hide poverty that she had been 
 driven to in the days before and after her father's 
 death, she saw his eyes cloud with tears, as they had 
 in the carriage; and when she related to him her ex- 
 periences as general agent, he burst out laughing, 
 though in the next breath he exclaimed anxiously, " Oh, 
 you romantic little Lydia, you were never intended to 
 cope with this big world! " 
 
 ' This morning, when I stood there, where you 
 called me," she continued, " I was thinking of ending 
 it, to-night, by turning on the gas ! " 
 
 "For God's sake, child!" He laid his hand im- 
 pulsively on hers. " Lydia, promise me you'll never 
 think of such a thing again." 
 
 "Oh, you haven't been through it!" she answered 
 impetuously. " You don't know what it is to be alone 
 in the world, to have nothing, and not to know what to 
 do!"
 
 146 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 " You never shall again, Lydia," he said slowly, with- 
 out smiling. 
 
 IV 
 
 The waiter refilled their glasses. Lydia was fas- 
 cinated watching the bubbles in the stem of her glass. 
 Every drop of the seething ruby wine was magically 
 alive. 
 
 At the window near them the curtains were blown 
 gently into the room by the soft breeze of the spring 
 evening. An orchestra in a balcony was playing a pop- 
 ular air, and some one at one of the tables was hum- 
 ming the air after the orchestra, " The Good Old 
 Summer Time, the Good Old Summer Time." 
 
 Whichever way she turned she saw lights dancing 
 up and down before her eyes. Suddenly, she leaned 
 across the narrow table till her flushed face almost 
 touched Churchwell's. She saw his eyes, but she saw 
 these same points of light that were dancing all over 
 the room dancing between her eyes and his. 
 
 " Is it the wine? " she asked, smiling, but bewildered. 
 " It's something running clear down to my finger tips ! " 
 
 "Why did you leave Kingsville, Lydia?" he asked 
 a moment later. 
 
 "Oh, Mr. Churchwell, how can you ask me that? 
 Why should I stay in Kingsville? What could I do 
 there? Your Kingsville and my Kingsville are two 
 very different places, you know, Mr. Churchwell! 
 Everything beautiful and desirable there is yours. But
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 147 
 
 what was there for me if I stayed in Kingsville?" 
 She spoke with agitation, and a trifle scornfully. In 
 the midst of her complex, confused emotions, she felt a 
 touch of the old bitterness at the thought of all she had 
 envied and been shut out from in Kingsville. " A 
 school-room " 
 
 " Heaven forbid, Lydia, that your loveliness should 
 have been buried in a Kingsville school-room! 
 
 "Why didn't you answer my letter?" he inquired. 
 "Didn't you get it?" 
 
 " Yes ... I got it." 
 
 " Why didn't you answer it? " 
 
 " I . . ." she hesitated. " I . . ." She brushed 
 back her hair from her face. " I don't know." 
 
 " You do know! " He held her eyes steadily with 
 his. 
 
 " I did write ... I tore them up . . ." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " I was afraid . . ." 
 
 "Afraid of what?" 
 
 "Afraid . . . afraid . . . that I would say Oh, 
 don't make me- tell you ! " 
 
 " If you hadn't been afraid, Lydia, you would have 
 said ? " he persisted, in a low, deliberate voice. 
 " What would you have said, Lydia? " 
 
 " Don't ask me ! " 
 
 She looked up at him with the wistful appeal of a 
 child. She felt something in her breaking, and she was 
 trying to keep it from breaking. But she felt power- 
 less, gradually giving way to something stronger than 
 herself. Delicious warmth was in her veins, and some-
 
 148 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 thing in her was throbbing madly, at once battling 
 against this man, yearning to yield to him. " Don't 
 ask me." 
 
 "Yes" 
 
 " Oh, you know." 
 
 "Tell me, Lydia!" 
 
 " I love you! " With a little gasp she turned her 
 quivering face away from his view. 
 
 " Lydia, look at me ! " 
 
 She heard his low voice, and felt the pressure of his 
 hand on her own, agonisingly sweet. 
 
 " I love you with my whole being, child ! I've al- 
 ways loved you." 
 
 " Oh, but you think of me only as a child! " she in- 
 terrupted him passionately. 
 
 " No," he answered slowly, " not that way. As a 
 man loves a woman! " 
 
 " Tell me," she whispered, " it isn't wrong for me 
 to love you? " 
 
 " Wrong? It's the most right thing in the universe, 
 Lydia! We're each other's. Nothing could keep us 
 apart! Think of the miracle of our meeting this 
 morning! " 
 
 She was comforted. She heard him murmuring low, 
 worshipful words to her. " I've always thought of 
 you, Lydia, like these lilies so slim, and delicate, 
 and pure and then fire glowing in you, too, like these 
 roses ! You're just like flame sheathed in pearl,' that's 
 what you're like, my darling! You're all that a man 
 can long for in woman, Lydia ! "
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 149 
 
 VI 
 
 She saw the little naked cupids on the blue-green 
 walls, and the goats with their garlands of roses, wav- 
 ering, shifting, merging into each other, all jumbled 
 together as she looked at them. She realised that she 
 was walking between the tables in the main room 
 toward the door by which she and Churchwell had en- 
 tered and that people at the tables were watching her. 
 She hoped they did not notice that her steps were 
 unsteady, but she did not greatly trouble herself about 
 the matter. It was all right. No matter what they 
 thought. She knew Churchwell was close beside her. 
 
 In the vestibule at the foot of the stairs, he held her 
 to him. There was only the dark, quiet street outside, 
 and a waiting carriage, and behind them the blurred 
 strains of the orchestra drifting down from the glow- 
 ing room above that they had just left. 
 
 " Will you trust me, Lydia? " 
 
 She heard his voice in her ears. 
 
 " I trust you," she whispered, " absolutely! "
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE fading afternoon light entered softly through 
 Mephisto's lace-shrouded windows. A few wait- 
 ers stood about in the hushed room, watchful and silent. 
 Here and there at a table a man and woman were 
 talking together in low tones, absorbed in each other. 
 Lydia and Churchwell were seated in an alcove, the 
 same they had occupied the first time he brought her 
 to the place, two weeks earlier. They had been talk- 
 ing about his leaving for Kingsville. Lydia was ab- 
 sently twirling the slender stem of the glass the waiter 
 had set before her. Her eyes had clouded. 
 
 " There's something troubles me," she said, " some- 
 thing that's so hard to tell you." 
 
 A terrible idea had kept recurring to her whenever 
 she was alone in the last day or two an idea that 
 there was something in common now between her and 
 those strange, loathsome creatures whose painted faces 
 she had seen hurriedly drawing back from the windows 
 at Ann Rogers' a Kingsville institution (as stable 
 as the Court House) which she had passed countless 
 times going to and from Market. 
 
 " Come, tell me what it is, troubling you, Miss Aris- 
 totle! " 
 
 "Miss Aristotle!" A tear coursed slowly down 
 
 150
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 151 
 
 Lydia's cheek. " That's what you used to call me in 
 Kingsville . . . when father . . . when we were all 
 there together 1 " 
 
 Her voice dropped, and she looked at Churchwell 
 intently. " Do you respect me as you did then ? " 
 she asked falteringly. 
 
 " Why, my little girl ! " He folded her hand in 
 his. 
 
 " Because . . . because I always imagined that men 
 didn't think quite the same of women . . . after " 
 
 " Lydia ! " 
 
 " You know I'm not the same, now, as in Kings- 
 ville ! " she went on resolutely. 
 
 Her eyes had grown big in* her flushed, anxious face. 
 
 "Lydia, my darling!" he tried to stop her from 
 saying more. 
 
 " I'd rather die than think you loved me less than 
 before!" 
 
 ''Less? Lydia, there is no other woman in the 
 world, not one, I honour as I do you! If you de- 
 scended to the gutter, you'd still be little Lydia to me, 
 more pure and lovely, in my eyes, than any other woman 
 in the world! " 
 
 Lydia sighed. She was not quite at peace yet, but 
 she wanted to enjoy this last hour, she wanted to forget 
 that she had associated herself even in imagination 
 with those painted, squabbling, terrible women at Ann 
 Rogers'.
 
 152 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 ii 
 
 Churchwell looked at his watch for the second time. 
 " I wish we could have dinner together this evening, too, 
 Lydia. But duties, you know." 
 
 "Duties?" she repeated wonderingly. 
 
 Her heart was beginning to sink, at the thought that 
 he would soon be on his way to Kingsville. She wished 
 she were going back herself. She was homesick for 
 Kingsville. 
 
 " I've been with you almost every evening, Lydia. 
 I must dine with the family, this evening! " His eyes 
 twinkled a little. 
 
 "Family? What do you mean? " 
 
 His face sobered. " My wife, of course." 
 
 "Your wife!" 
 
 She pushed her glass away, and sank against the back 
 of her chair. 
 
 " She isn't here, in the city, with you? " she inquired 
 breathlessly. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Has she been here all the time? That night, 
 you brought me here first? " 
 
 " Oh, she was here, I see," she said, when he did not 
 answer her. 
 
 " Had you been here, at Mephisto's, yourself, be- 
 fore that night? " in the same breathless aloof voice. 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 "With her?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 "Oh, with other women!"
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 153 
 
 " Perhaps," he admitted, impatiently. " A man's 
 life, and a young girl's, Lydia, are very different 
 things." 
 
 " So it seems," she replied slowly. " So I've heard." 
 
 An ironic smile crept over her blanched face. 
 
 " But, you know, some way I thought " breathing 
 heavily between her words, " I thought what you told 
 me . . . was true that you had been waiting for me 
 always, that I was the love of your life, not just one 
 of many! " 
 
 " Oh, Lydia, you are the love of my life ! " he in- 
 sisted quickly, with tender solicitude. " There have 
 been women in my life, dear, of course. How did I 
 know you were waiting in the world for me? Most 
 men go through their whole lives dreaming of the in- 
 comparable one, and she never comes ! How did I 
 know, blessed heart, that your little feet were travelling 
 to meet me? Had I known, there would have been 
 no others ! " 
 
 Lydia's mouth trembled. 
 
 u Lydia, you must understand ! I've passed the time, 
 yes I've been a lover of women, in a sense, as all 
 the Churchwell men before me have been. But I know, 
 now, that till you came to me I had never really known 
 what love was! Don't be sad, little Lydia," he en- 
 treated. " I want so much to make you happy! " 
 
 " But your wife," she repeated. " It's so horrible 
 to me, to think she's been here all the time ! You 
 loved me, and then " 
 
 She covered her face. The beauty and sacredness 
 of their love was irreparably tarnished!
 
 154 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 The waiter approached cautiously, but Churchwell 
 waved him away. 
 
 " Lydia, you must see things differently," he pleaded 
 with her. " No one is sharing the feeling I have for 
 you. You have all my love ! Countless things influ- 
 ence a man to marry propinquity, or a pretty figure 
 ravishes his imagination, or something of the sort. A 
 man thinks, perhaps, it's love, and then, later, he learns 
 what love really is! I have respect and affection for 
 my wife. She's devoid of imagination, but she's a 
 good woman." 
 
 " No, she isn't! She isn't a good woman at all! " 
 Lydia interrupted hotly. 
 
 He looked at her all at once with amusement. 
 
 " Lydia, if you didn't look so adorable, with those 
 flames in your eyes, I'd scold you for saying that! " 
 
 That he could banter at such a moment ! " Don't 
 defend her! She isn't good at all! She's had every- 
 thing all her life, wealth, and position, and a beautiful 
 home and everything! She's always been pro- 
 tected, and spoiled! Oh, I know her, I know what 
 she's like! And I hate her!" 
 
 Churchwell smiled. 
 
 " Hot heart, we won't discuss her, please," he said, 
 in a controlled, indulgent voice. " She's the mother 
 of my children! " 
 
 " Yes, we will discuss her! " Lydia retorted stormily. 
 
 But suddenly, dwelling on what he had just said, 
 her face changed, a warm glow overspread it. She 
 leaned across the table. " Oh, it wasn't a virtue in
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 155 
 
 her it was her good fortune," she whispered, " to 
 have been the mother of your children ! " 
 
 "Lydial " He laid his hand over hers, and they 
 sat silent and reconciled, only their eyes speaking.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 IT was some weeks before Churchwell returned to 
 the city. Lydia lived on his letters and on the 
 treasure of her secret memories. But there were hours 
 when she was feverish with unrest, and she was often 
 very lonely, though she still spent many of her evenings 
 with Mrs. Kearney, and with McCarthy, with whom 
 she was again on friendly, but now cautious terms. 
 
 One afternoon when she came in from shopping, she 
 stopped at Miss Tompkins' door. She wore a new 
 spring gown of brown silk and a fashionably tailored 
 jacket of light cloth. The long brown plume on her 
 hat drooped gracefully against her light hair. Time 
 was on her hands, and now that she was able to pay 
 her board promptly, she felt less fear of Miss Tomp- 
 kins, and less active disrelish for her. When she oc- 
 casionally contemplated what seemed to her the arid 
 waste of Miss Tompkins' life, she even pitied her. 
 
 She heard her tipping around in her room, and she 
 knocked lightly. " May I come in? " 
 
 Miss Tompkins' permission rang out cheerfully. 
 
 " I thought I'd just pay you to-day, Miss Tompkins, 
 as my board's due to-morrow, and I thought of it." 
 She opened her purse and handed Miss Tompkins the 
 amount of her weekly board. 
 
 156
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 157 
 
 "Won't you sit down?" 
 
 " Oh, a minute." She seated herself, and they chat- 
 ted about the fine May weather, and on kindred im- 
 personal topics. 
 
 " It must take wonderful management, Miss Tomp- 
 kins, to keep a house always running as smoothly as 
 yours does," said Lydia, on a sudden impulse, and with 
 flattering, almost obsequious warmth. " I've had a 
 little experience in housekeeping myself. I kept house 
 for my father." 
 
 " Indeed? " exclaimed Miss Tompkins, with the in- 
 evitable rising inflection that as inevitably dashed 
 Lydia's spirits. " Your father is dead, I think you 
 said, Miss Lambright? " a little absently, after a brief 
 but rather awkward silence. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "And your mother? " 
 
 " My mother's dead, too." 
 
 There was something very disquieting in the intent- 
 ness of Miss Tompkins' eyes. Lydia wished she had 
 not stopped in her room. She got up from her chair, 
 and walked over to a painting of calla lilies, on a black 
 ground, that hung on one side of the walnut secretary. 
 The painting was execrably executed, but in an effort 
 to disarm Miss Tompkins, she affected to admire 
 it. 
 
 " It was your cousin, I believe, Mrs. Kearney 
 said, who was here, Miss Lambright? " 
 
 " Yes, my cousin." 
 
 " Oh." 
 
 Lydia turned to go. " I have a letter to write be-
 
 158 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 fore dinner," she remarked, feeling suddenly limp, but 
 with an attempt at ease. 
 
 Miss Tompkins cleared her throat in the peculiarly 
 delicate but significant manner she had of clearing it. 
 
 " By the way, now you're here, there's a little matter 
 I'd like to speak of, Miss Lambright." 
 
 Lydia tried to meet her eyes without flinching. 
 
 " In the future, if your cousin's in the city, I would 
 rather, when you went out with him, you didn't come 
 in so late at night. It creates comment in the house." 
 
 " I didn't know people in the house were discussing 
 me! " rejoined Lydia, with a show of spirit. 
 
 " Avoid the appearance of evil, my dear, avoid the 
 appearance ! " Miss Tompkins smiled chillingly. 
 
 All at once, Lydia perceived that Miss Tompkins 
 was scrutinising the clothes she wore. 
 
 After her first momentary reluctance that night in 
 the carriage, she had taken money from Churchwell 
 without hesitation. He was rich. And they loved each 
 other. His thought of her wants and pleasures, and 
 her acceptance of his right to provide for them, seemed 
 to bind them closer. Moreover, all her life she had 
 craved beautiful things, and though occasionally she 
 felt a qualm in spending the large sums he gave her, 
 not because he had given them to her, but because she 
 was unaccustomed to spending such large sums, yet, on 
 the whole, she had revelled in her purchases. With 
 a painful shock, all the delight she had had in her new 
 finery vanished. She felt a little ashamed of it. 
 
 She wondered whether Mrs. Kearney, who had 
 teased her about the attentions of her " cousin " a
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 159 
 
 fiction Churchwell had invented for her suspected 
 anything, whether McCarthy did. Had Mrs. Kearney 
 been a trifle less cordial lately? 
 
 She moved through the dim halls and looked at the 
 closed doors which shut in Miss Tompkins' other 
 boarders, and a fierce antagonism rose in her against 
 them all. 
 
 " What do I care what they say? " she said to her- 
 self, shrugging her shoulders. 
 
 But she did care tremendously. 
 
 II 
 
 Viola, carrying towels to the rooms, stopped her. 
 " Your washwoman's waitin' for you." 
 
 A small, pleasant-faced woman was standing outside 
 her door. She might have been old and looked young, 
 or young and looked old. She wore a black jacket, 
 buttoned so tight it had the effect of cramping her nar- 
 row chest. A black sailor hat of antiquated shape 
 sat on her wavy brown hair, which was parted over 
 her forehead and twisted into a small tight knot at the 
 back of her head. 
 
 " I'm sorry you had to wait for me," said Lydia, 
 throwing the door of her room open. " I've forgotten 
 your name again." 
 
 " Stark, Emma Stark. I've had everything to do 
 myself, or I would have been here on the regular day. 
 My Old that's my old cousin I live with is sick." 
 She laid out Lydia's undergarments and blouses, beau- 
 tifully laundried. 
 
 " You look tired," said Lydia sympathetically.
 
 160 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 The little woman smiled. " Oh, I'm not so tired! " 
 
 " Are you German? " 
 
 " Yes. My Old brought me over when I was a 
 baby. She wants to go back sometimes. She's wor- 
 ried in her head, since she's sick. She thinks too much 
 about the Old Country! It wouldn't be what she 
 thinks, any more, if she went back. They're dead, the 
 ones she knew." 
 
 Lydia's heart went out to her with secret warmth. 
 She did not know why it was that these new fears that 
 had taken possession of her were easier to endure in 
 the presence of this little German washerwoman with 
 her patient eyes and gentle voice.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 IT was late afternoon. Lydia drew a chair to the 
 window, and picked up a book, a new novel she 
 had bought in the morning. Churchwell was coming 
 only one more day now I Between her eyes and the 
 pages of the novel, burning images interposed them- 
 selves. 
 
 When she could not read, she tried to write a letter 
 to the Pooles. She had only written them one brief 
 note since her arrival in the city weeks before; and she 
 had not given them her address. She found, however, 
 she had nothing to say to them now nothing she felt 
 free to say. 
 
 Through the open window she looked down aim- 
 lessly into the street. Some one passed carrying an 
 armful of lilacs. The sight brought to her mind the 
 cousin of her little washerwoman, the old woman who 
 was sick, and homesick for the Old Country, and sug- 
 gested to her the idea of carrying her some flowers. 
 
 She went out and bought at a street corner a big 
 bunch of lilacs and some roses, and started with them 
 to the address the washerwoman had given her. 
 
 Everywhere was the feel and sight and smell of 
 spring, the air divinely soft and warm. Even up 
 through the hard, dry city streets, and the myriad 
 throbs of the city life, the colossal throb of spring could 
 foe felt. The lilacs and roses in her arm smelled to 
 
 161
 
 162 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 Lydia of Kingsville. In a few hours more Church- 
 well's arms would be about her ! She felt them I She 
 was rapturously happy! Churchwell was coming! 
 
 The hurdy-gurdies were grinding out, " Oh, Bill 
 Bailey, Won't You Please Come Home! " The town 
 was whistling, u Oh, Mr. Dooley, Oh, Mr. Dooley! " 
 and humming, " The Good Old Summer Time, the 
 Good Old Summer Time ! " But everywhere it was 
 bawling, " Oh, Bill Bailey, Won't You Please Come 
 Home ! " 
 
 Her senses quiveringly alive, it seemed to Lydia the 
 very globe she trod was spinning through joyous space 
 to the splendid rollicking irresponsibility of " Oh, Bill 
 Bailey, Won't You Please Come Home ! "
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 A BIG, friendly woman answered Lydia's ring and 
 directed her to Emma Stark's flat. A scrubbed, 
 scoured, soapy smell pervaded the whole house. As 
 Lydia came to the top of the last flight of stairs, she 
 looked through an open door, and saw in the fading 
 sunlight Emma seated at supper, at a clean, bare table, 
 opposite an old woman. Some blue and white cook- 
 ing utensils were arranged on a prim shelf edged with 
 scalloped paper. Metal pots hung in a row under- 
 neath. A clothes-horse was laden with freshly ironed 
 clothes. On the wall, beside a flaming print of the 
 Sacred Heart was one of the Virgin Mary, her dolor- 
 ous face swathed in blue. 
 
 Emma rose, a shade of embarrassment in her eyes, 
 greeted Lydia, and placed a chair for her. 
 
 A stew of meat and potatoes, half eaten, was on the 
 table, and the remains of a pitcher of beer, but the 
 women would not resume their meal, insisting they had 
 finished. 
 
 The old woman looked at the flowers Lydia had 
 brought her with an expression of grim satisfaction in 
 her cavernous eyes. She spoke with a strong German 
 accent, and had little to say. 
 
 Lydia chatted gaily. She liked to look into Emma 
 Stark's trustful brown eyes. She could scarcely keep 
 
 163
 
 1 64 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 from singing Churchwell's name aloud to these washer- 
 women, it was singing with such joyous insistence in 
 her heart. She wanted to share her rich, pulsing joy! 
 She wanted to bestow on these poor washerwomen 
 some of her own largess. In a flash, she saw the 
 whole map of their lives the washtub, the ironing 
 board, the evening pitcher of beer, Mass. 
 
 But as she talked with them longer she saw that 
 they lacked nothing they desired. They had lived 
 seventeen years, they told her, in these same two rear 
 rooms. The house was the most respectable and or- 
 derly in the neighbourhood. They had saved money, 
 owned a building in Hoboken. Lydia rejoiced in their 
 content. She wanted every one else in the world to be 
 as happy as she was herself ! 
 
 An insurance collector interrupted their talk. 
 Emma, excusing herself, took him into the adjacent 
 room to transact her business with him. Alone with 
 her, something about the old woman made Lydia un- 
 easy. She wished Emma would return. She was 
 ready to leave. 
 
 " I'm glad you're getting well," she said, at last, to 
 break the silence. " Your cousin was so anxious about 
 you." 
 
 Glancing cautiously at the door Emma had gone out 
 of, the old woman whispered in a sly guttural, " Ach, 
 she is no cousin ! She was my love-child! " 
 
 Lydia stared. She was shocked shocked that the 
 old woman had told her such a thing. And the vul- 
 garity of the word, love-child she saw nothing of its 
 innate beauty.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 165 
 
 A sensation bordering on terror crept over her. 
 Former vague alarms shaped themselves definitely in 
 her mind. What if it were true ? a love-child be- 
 neath her own beating heart ! 
 
 II 
 
 She was on her way back to Miss Tompkins' when 
 she met McCarthy coming from dinner. She was not 
 hungry, she insisted, and much preferred this fine even- 
 ing outside to dinner in Miss Tompkins' basement or 
 anywhere else. She agreed eagerly to his suggestion 
 that they take a walk. The truth was she did not 
 wish to spend the evening alone with her thoughts. 
 
 In the yellow twilight, they walked along Riverside 
 Drive, and sat down on a bench near the great tomb. 
 McCarthy was slightly abashed by her rapidly chang- 
 ing moods, alternately gay, responsive, absent, and 
 even a little contemptuous and caustic. But while she 
 puzzled and teased and played with him, every now 
 and then the word " love-child " leaped into her con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 " Fine, isn't it? " he exclaimed, pointing to the river 
 widening out to the Palisades. 
 
 " It doesn't appeal to me," she answered perversely, 
 shaking her head. 
 
 "What that view? Why, it's famous!" 
 
 " I reckon so! " she replied, with the Kingsville in- 
 flection, laughing a little. She was not interested in 
 the view, or in McCarthy. 
 
 " So you say that isn't beautiful? " he motioned with
 
 1 66 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 his derby, his forehead red and ridged, dewed with 
 perspiration. 
 
 " Oh, I don't say it isn't beautiful," she answered 
 indifferently. " But it's not a view that moves me." 
 She was thinking of the broad, winding, island-dotted 
 river she loved. She saw the red fields and the rail 
 fences and the blue wood-smoke rising from the darky 
 cabins, and the stately mansions along the River Road. 
 She was tired of shops and shop windows. She hated 
 the city parks. She did not like this Drive. Oh, if 
 she could wake in the morning and look out of her 
 window and see those blue mountains she loved, with 
 the faint Smokies beyond them! Her own prodigal, 
 unkept, picturesque country! 
 
 " This isn't the beauty that moves me," she repeated 
 absently, her eyes mechanically following the river 
 craft. 
 
 He edged closer, looking at her with an ardour that 
 annoyed and oppressed her. 
 
 " I know the beauty that moves me! " he said, low- 
 ering his voice, and gazing caressingly at her delicately 
 tinted face. 
 
 in 
 
 She got up from the bench. " Let's stroll on," she 
 said. 
 
 The dusk was deepening and lights were coming out 
 on the river boats. 
 
 They stopped at a little enclosure on the edge of the 
 bluff, leaned on the iron railing, and in the uncertain 
 light barely made out the quaint, time-blurred inscrip-
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 167 
 
 tion on the monument erected to the memory of " an 
 amiable child " 
 
 ". . . Died 15 July, 1797, in the 5 year of his 
 age " 
 
 "Think of it! " exclaimed Lydia, " he's been here 
 all alone for more than a hundred years! " She 
 glanced over to the great tomb, on the other side of 
 the Drive, covering the heroic ashes that had lately 
 been brought to it. " Well, the amiable child will 
 have company now," she said tenderly. 
 
 " Say, Miss Lambright," McCarthy broke in, " I 
 want to explain something to you. You know that 
 night " 
 
 " Oh, that's all right. Let's go on." 
 
 " No, wait a minute ! " He caught her arm just 
 firmly enough to make her pause. " I want you to 
 hear what I've got to say ! " 
 
 " Oh, don't recall that night! " Lydia looked away 
 from him toward the river rolling silently below, veiled 
 in gathering darkness. 
 
 But he persisted. " I'm not such a brute, little girl, 
 as you think I am! I didn't exactly understand what 
 you meant, at first what you wanted." 
 
 Lydia winced. 
 
 " I'm going to tell you the unvarnished truth. 
 There's a woman who's threatened to cut up, if I mar- 
 ried. And I let her bluff me. But, by George, I've 
 come to my senses! " He wiped his forehead. " I'll 
 be plain with you you puzzled me. I thought you 
 were straight, all right, till that night, and then I got a 
 different idea, from/ the way you acted, and talked, and
 
 1 68 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 I'll confess I was surprised, then, when I found you 
 thought I meant marriage. I'd been taken with you 
 all the time, but I thought marrying wasn't in my line. 
 
 " But, look here," he went on eagerly. " I'm in 
 love with you, little girl, and no mistake, and I want 
 you to marry me." 
 
 " Oh, Mr. McCarthy, let's just be good friends," 
 she answered. It was the only thing that came to her 
 to say. She let him hold her hand, which he did with- 
 out presumptuous pressure. 
 
 " Won't you consider it? " he asked. 
 
 "No, I can't! No, no, I can't." 
 
 " Look here, I don't want you to get mad at me," 
 he said, after a silence, " but you're too nice a little 
 girl to be to be starting on the road you've started 
 on!" 
 
 "What road?" She drew away her hand. 
 
 " You know what I mean ! I think a lot of you, 
 little girl, and it wouldn't make any difference to me. 
 I think you're all right, a damned sight better, and 
 sweeter, and purer, than some of the other sort, and a 
 man can trust a woman like that, when he marries her, 
 quicker than he can the other sort." 
 
 " What are you implying? " she interrupted him 
 angrily. 
 
 " Oh, come, I wasn't born yesterday! I've seen a 
 few things and know a few things. And Mrs. Atkin- 
 son saw you coming in that night " 
 
 She stopped him. " Mrs. Atkinson you listen to 
 old woman's talk, do you?" contemptuously, walking 
 away from the little grave and forcing him to follow
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 169 
 
 her. She refused to say anything else, or to listen to 
 him. She boiled with hatred of every one at Miss 
 Tompkins', of Mrs. Atkinson, Mrs. Kearney, Mc- 
 Carthy. 
 
 IV 
 
 Under an arc light, he saw that her face was ghostly 
 white. 
 
 " I want to tell you something, little girl," he said, 
 when they passed again into shadow, his voice serious 
 and sympathetic, a slight hint of bitterness in it. " I 
 want you to know I'm your friend. Don't despise my 
 friendship too much! You may want to remember, 
 some day, that I'm your friend. Maybe I can be of 
 use to you some day." 
 
 Lydia's only answer was a toss of her head. At the 
 foot of Miss Tompkins' steps, she dismissed him. 
 
 She heard "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Al- 
 mighty! " issuing in robust staccato from the parlour 
 Miss Tompkins at the piano, three or four straight- 
 backed spinsters grouped around, lifting their voices, 
 and Mrs. Atkinson and the other clergyman's widow, 
 their hands folded on black-henrietta laps, listening de- 
 voutly. The same women who congregated in the 
 parlour for a little while every evening. 
 
 Lydia was guiltily conscious that they were watching 
 her as she stopped and looked at the mail on the hat- 
 rack and took out her own letter. When she reached 
 her room, she sat down and pressed the letter to her 
 cheek, holding it comfortingly there, for a long time, 
 before she opened it. All night long, as she tossed
 
 170 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 on her bed, half sleeping and half awake, the fervid 
 love-words in the letter sounded and resounded in her 
 ears, like the treble of a celestial symphony. But al- 
 ways below, now blending with the love-words, now 
 sinisterly distinct, a bass rumbled the gossip that 
 was going on about her in the boarding house.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 IT was a week since Churchwell's arrival, and he had 
 given his days to business and his evenings to 
 Lydia, but this day was to be hers. They were trav- 
 elling along the north shore of Long Island. 
 
 From the conversations around them they gathered 
 that they had happened on a free excursion, arranged 
 by a real estate company to give prospective purchasers 
 an opportunity to look at their suburban lots. 
 
 Churchwell had risen, shortly after their start, and 
 presented his seat to a woman. He was again seated 
 by Lydia, but she had detected shadows of annoyance 
 drifting across his face, not at the sacrifice of his seat, 
 which he had bestowed with unmistakable graciousness, 
 but at the jostlings of under-mannered persons who con- 
 stantly moved, unnecessarily, he appeared to think, up 
 and down the aisle where he was standing. 
 
 " I'm sorry we chose this train," said Lydia. She 
 wanted him to say that nothing mattered, if only they 
 were together. 
 
 " It's all right, my dear. This is your day," he 
 smiled generously. 
 
 "How dainty you are!" He looked approvingly 
 over her linen costume, finished simply at the neck and 
 wrists with bands of lace, and a loose cravat-like black 
 
 171
 
 172 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 bow at the throat; he told her she was a delectable 
 contrast to this earful of bouncing women bound on 
 their real estate adventure; and he assured her that 
 her hat, with its wreath of daisies, was wickedly be- 
 coming. 
 
 She had been just the slightest bit disappointed that 
 he had not commented earlier on her appearance. And 
 she was afraid she herself had been a little tinged in 
 his eyes by the commonness of the excursionists because 
 she had not found them so annoying as he had. She 
 felt a sense of relief when they reached their destina- 
 tion and escaped the envelopment of the excursionists. 
 
 II 
 
 They left the train, and had the road to themselves 
 that led from the station. At a turn, a long, one-street 
 village came into view, winding down before them, its 
 quaint old houses half smothered in shrubs and vines. 
 
 Lydia drew a quick breath. " Oh how did you 
 know of this little place? " 
 
 " I thought you'd like it! " 
 
 " I'm so happy," she sighed, " so happy I could 
 die ! " They stood in the shade of a great tree whose 
 branches overhung their path, and she looked up at 
 him, her eyes brimming with rapture. It mattered so 
 little now, what the boarders at Miss Tompkins' might 
 be saying! 
 
 He seized her hands, and held them an instant 
 against his breast, his eyes avid of her beauty, fresh 
 as the morning light that bathed it. 
 
 " If this were the last day of my life," she
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 173 
 
 murmured, " I should know I had lived, anyway ! " 
 
 It seemed hardly possible to her that life would 
 allow any one such joy long, the June morning alone 
 with one's lover, in this spot charming as the pictured 
 page out of a story-book. 
 
 "Smell them!" she cried, when an old-fashioned 
 rose bush held out to them across a stone wall its 
 gnarled, close-wadded blossoms, the dew not yet gone 
 from them. 
 
 They wandered on and on, peeping over gates, and 
 through branches of screening bushes. 
 
 Once, seeing no eyes on them, the houses were 
 wide-separated by their gardens they joined hands 
 and swung along the village street like a pair of school 
 children. No caper could be too young, too foolish ! 
 'You're not sorry I asked you to bring me, now, 
 are you? " she asked. 
 
 " I do wish there wasn't any one else in the world 
 but just you and me," she said, after a while, a thin 
 shade passing over her mood, a trifling sense of inse- 
 curity. 
 
 " So do I." 
 
 He stopped, a sudden gleam in his eyes, and put his 
 hand on her arm. 
 
 " I have half a notion . . ." he said, and paused, 
 " half a notion to pick you up in my arms and run off 
 with you, Lydia, to the ends of the earth! " 
 
 The image of being captured, crushed hotly, carried 
 fleet-footed away, primitive woman by her primitive 
 man, sent tremors of delicious excitement through her 
 body.
 
 174 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 And the perception that he might really be consider- 
 ing leaving everything, for her, woke in her a hope of 
 terrifying joy. 
 
 They walked slowly, and came to a tiny white house, 
 with green shutters, hanging on the flank of a hill that 
 rose behind it. In the grass, and along the paths, peri- 
 winkles trailed, their glossy vines starred with blue 
 flowerets. 
 
 " Oh, how I should love to live in this place ! " 
 Lydia rested a moment on the gate. 
 
 A woman in a sunbonnet was down on her knees, 
 working among the flowers. 
 
 " We were just stopping to admire," Churchwell ex- 
 plained. 
 
 "Is this place for sale?" Lydia inquired. 
 
 The woman stood up, and came nearer them, a gar- 
 den trowel in her hand. 
 
 "Why, no, I guess not," she replied, looking sur- 
 prised. " We've rented it from Mr. Green forty-one 
 years last month." 
 
 Lydia was aware of a blanched, vacant face at one 
 of the sagging windows. 
 
 She smiled, and moved on. 
 
 Churchwell had strolled ahead. " Well, did you 
 buy it? " he laughed, as she overtook him. 
 
 "Don't tease me! I've built a romance! What 
 if it were ours ? " She laid her hand on his arm lightly, 
 but with an air of ownership. " ' Periwinkle Cottage,' 
 we'd call it, and I would work in the garden all day, 
 thinking about you, and then every night you'd come 
 home to me ! "
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 175 
 
 He pressed the hand on his arm. 
 
 " Suppose I took you in the house . . . when you 
 came home . . . and made you walk very softly . . ." 
 she felt her face colouring " because something 
 ours . . . was asleep in a cradle ! " 
 
 " You little romancer! " he laughed. 
 
 An expression was filtering through his eyes that she 
 could not fathom. The only thing she understood 
 clearly was that he had not responded to her thrilling 
 hint as she had expected. 
 
 " It's almost noon," he remarked, leisurely regard- 
 ing the face of his watch. " We'd better get some- 
 thing to eat," he added, carelessly, " though the worst 
 of these picturesque little places is, that they never give 
 you a decent meal ! " 
 
 III 
 
 They walked back in the direction they had come 
 from. 
 
 How mysteriously he had receded from her! She 
 glanced covertly at him. How had this gulf suddenly 
 opened between them, united as they were by the radi- 
 ant ties of their secret relation? How could they have 
 become, all at once, so separated, so casual? 
 
 And yet, what had he said, what had he done? He 
 was looking at her as usual. 
 
 It was what he had not looked, what he had not 
 spoken ! 
 
 They repassed " Periwinkle Cottage." But a chill 
 had crept into the noon sunshine. These quiet old 
 houses looked lonely now. The whole village im-
 
 1 76 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 pressed her now as forsaken, brooding, too still. 
 
 All the while, she was praying praying coweringly 
 that he had not understood her hint! 
 
 " Hungry? " he asked, as they approached the vil- 
 lage hotel. 
 
 " Not very." The brief words ached in her throat 
 as she spoke them, but she smiled brightly. He should 
 not see the least quiver ! She had not been more reso- 
 lutely proud hiding poverty in the Kingsville cottage 
 from prying eyes, than covering her wound now from 
 this Kingsvillian ! 
 
 " I'm starving! " he laughed, " and with prospects 
 not the fairest! 
 
 " I suppose you think I ought not to want any dinner 
 at all!" he said, mischievously pinching her arm as 
 they mounted the hotel steps. 
 
 "I didn't!" she answered, warming a little under 
 his teasing tenderness. 
 
 " Poor little Bleeding Heart, you'll have so many 
 disappointments in men! They're such miserable 
 brutes at best ! " 
 
 They followed a sad-miened waiter to the dining 
 room. Lydia thought of the Mansion House at Pleas- 
 antwater. 
 
 The wretched dinner set before them and the stupid 
 service excited active irritation in Churchwell. Lydia 
 tried to placate him; the quality of one meal did not 
 seem a very vital matter to her; but she felt responsi- 
 ble for the unsatisfactoriness of the dinner, as she had 
 for the vulgarity of the excursionists on the train.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 177 
 
 He continued to order the waiter peremptorily about, 
 and finally exploded with disgust at the flies swarming 
 over the table. 
 
 " Oh, be a philosopher ! " Lydia rallied him, but she 
 laughed nervously. 
 
 " Not on an empty stomach ! I missed breakfast 
 catching our train." 
 
 She pushed her plate away. " I'm sorry, absolutely 
 sorry, we ever came at all," she said slowly. " I 
 thought it would mean so much to have a day in the 
 country together . . . I've longed for it for weeks. 
 I didn't know how every paltry discomfort " she 
 hesitated for words to express her scorn, " would upset 
 you!" 
 
 There was an instant's silence while they regarded 
 one another hostilely. Then he burst into a laugh. 
 
 " Oh, my Hot, Hot Heart, how I do love you! " 
 he exclaimed, his eyes twinkling. " Why, Lydia, 
 you're delicious! So paltry discomforts upset me, do 
 they?" 
 
 She had brought him back to good-humour again 
 happiness mounted once more through all the channels 
 of her own being. 
 
 IV 
 
 The hours of afternoon found them strolling along 
 the Road of Enchantment, as they named it, a secluded 
 stretch of road they came upon after they left the vil- 
 lage, and turned finally with their faces toward the 
 Sound. Once they met some children trooping home
 
 i 7 8 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 from school. They caught sight of a little schoolhouse 
 across the fields. The children stared, the bolder ones 
 making faces at them. 
 
 Myriad butterflies led them along their way, the 
 gauzy yellow wings always ahead of them, hovering 
 tremulously over the dust of the road. 
 
 Lydia sniffed the fields delightedly; she pulled 
 grasses, and nibbled their tender ends; she sucked 
 honey from the tiny drinking-cups in the clover blos- 
 soms. 
 
 " What a child you are 1 " Churchwell caught her 
 in his arms, and showered kisses on her, only the sun 
 for witness. 
 
 Banks of dark cloud began to gather; stretches of 
 the road lay in shadow. 
 
 Lydia saw vague, smouldering trouble in Church- 
 well's eyes, but she refused to heed it. 
 
 Sometimes she seized his face in her hands, and 
 gazed on it with adoration. His flaws, revealed by 
 the morning, only served to enhance his masculine 
 charm. She glanced sideways at him, while they rested 
 by the roadside. It seemed miraculous to her that 
 they should be together, here, on this Road of En- 
 chantment. 
 
 The wind began to blow more chill, and gusts brought 
 scurrying raindrops into their faces. The odour of 
 fresh-moistened earth rose. They hurried along 
 toward a shelter in the distance. 
 
 When they came to it, they saw it was a dilapidated 
 roadhouse, with an air of depravity about it, like an 
 aged, abandoned harlot. Rotted boards led from it
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 179 
 
 across a reedy waste to some half-sunken boats, and 
 tattered window-shades swished in and out of the lower 
 windows. 
 
 " Fe, fi, fo, fum, I smell the blood of pirates ! " 
 whispered Lydia, as a rush of wind and rain drove 
 them on the porch. 
 
 A woman made them grudgingly free of the house, 
 and they went inside and sat down at a smeary table. 
 On Churchwell's order, a heavy-footed man brought 
 them beer. 
 
 Lydia glanced uneasily at the couple mumbling in 
 the rear of the room. But through her fear, she felt a 
 vague pleasurable sense of excitement at the prospect 
 of peril with Churchwell's protecting arm so near. 
 
 Having done their duty of patronage, they escaped 
 from the sour, squalid room, found a bench on the 
 porch in a protected spot, and seated themselves to 
 await the end of the storm. 
 
 The rattling and banging of loose boards put them 
 out of earshot of the couple inside, and Lydia savoured 
 their isolation cosily, as she crept close to Churchwell, 
 and looked back with him to the Road of Enchantment 
 down which they had come. 
 
 The wind finally slackened, but not the rain, and in 
 their long wait, they fell to talking of many things. 
 
 " You should have seen Mr. and Mrs. Poole's faces 
 when I announced to them I should hate teaching 
 school! They couldn't imagine any one not wanting 
 to teach ! * Such a nice, lady-like position for you, 
 Lydia,' Mrs. Poole said! " Lydia laughed lightly in 
 recollection.
 
 i8o THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 Churchwell flicked the ash from his cigar, which he 
 had been smoking rapidly. 
 
 "What are you going to do, Lydia?" he asked, 
 looking ahead of him, at the fields mistily obscured by 
 the rain. 
 
 She started. What did he ask her that for? He! 
 
 " Why, I don't know. I hadn't thought much about 
 it, lately write, I guess. I'm going to try again to 
 get a position with a newspaper." 
 
 "You know you've got to appear to be doing 
 something, Lydia ! " He laughed constrainedly. 
 
 " Yes," she answered, quietly. But her brain was 
 seething. Again, she said to herself she must make 
 clear to him, without further delay, the suspicion she 
 had, which she had only hinted to him before. But 
 just as when they had lingered along the Road of En- 
 chantment, she had been unwilling to jar the magic 
 from the hour, so now this moment seemed inoppor- 
 tune to her this moment when she was struggling 
 to understand him. 
 
 She took off her hat, and pushed back the moist 
 ringlets from her forehead. 
 
 Churchwell flung his cigar into the drenched weeds 
 
 at the edge of the porch. " Queer," he said, " I never 
 
 noticed before how much you look like your mother! " 
 
 ' Tell me about my mother," she said, in a wistful 
 
 voice. 
 
 " She was a beautiful woman " 
 
 " I don't mean that," she interrupted him, a little
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 181 
 
 impatiently. " I remember how she looked. I mean, 
 how did she impress you? Wasn't there something 
 different about her? How do you account for 
 
 it?" 
 
 She asked the questions deliberately, but back of their 
 deliberateness there was something hurrying and eager, 
 and she felt herself trembling. 
 
 " I used to think, Lydia, that she must be the most 
 attractive and unusual person in the whole world, when 
 I stopped by her couch to speak to her, that year, you 
 remember, your father tutored me." 
 
 In a rush of memory, Lydia saw herself a little girl, 
 peeping through a crack in the door at the handsome 
 young man her father was tutoring, then Miss Barker 
 dragging her away. 
 
 ' Yes, I remember, but what I want to know is 
 what was the mystery about my father and mother? " 
 She s.aw Churchwell's eyes were trying to escape hers, 
 but she kept on, " I know she took some drug, mor- 
 phine, or something, those last years. I suppose every- 
 body knew that, though," she added, a little bitterly. 
 
 " I wouldn't talk about it, Lydia. It only makes 
 you unhappy." 
 
 " Yes, I want to talk about it! Everything's such a 
 mystery to me ! But I'm sure it was my father's 
 marriage that estranged him from his family don't 
 you think so? " 
 
 She held him to an answer. 
 
 " I think perhaps it was." 
 
 "But why? Why? What did people say ?" She 
 leaned toward him supplicatingly. " Tell me this
 
 1 82 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 'do you think my mother had been an adventuress, or 
 something like that? " 
 
 " That was the gossip, Lydia." 
 
 They were silent. Only the beat of the rain. 
 
 She wanted to know more. But her courage failed 
 her. 
 
 " A man like my father, who loved books and na- 
 ture," she brought herself to say "it seems it 
 seems somehow an odd marriage for him." 
 
 " Your father had a romantic strain in him, Lydia, 
 an adventurous strain. He hadn't always been so 
 placid, I dare say, as those years in Kingsville. I can 
 easily see how he might have thrown up everything for 
 a woman, a woman like your mother, and, dear, I'm 
 sure of one thing " he threw his arm around her 
 shoulders to draw her nearer him " I'm sure, even if 
 your mother had a past, as they call it, still she was a 
 woman of rare and beautiful nature." 
 
 " Oh, I'm so glad you thought that about her! " she 
 broke in on him, her voice glowing with gratitude. " I 
 think that about her, too ! And do you know if I 
 didn't love you for any other reason, I'd love you be- 
 cause you loved my father! I can never forget that of 
 every one in Kingsville you alone noticed that he was 
 dying, and cared, and took some interest, and tried to 
 save him by planning about the operation for him ! " 
 
 He had averted his eyes. 
 
 " Oh, I can never forget what you wanted to do for 
 him ! " 
 
 He turned his face completely away from her, rest- 
 ing it on his clenched hand.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 183 
 
 " Oh, my God, what would your father think of what 
 I've done for him now? You were the apple of his 
 eye ! I swear by his sacred memory, Lydia, that I 
 didn't mean to ... to take advantage of you, that 
 night I took you to Mephisto's. . . . You were so 
 sweet, and so inexperienced . . . you had always in- 
 terested me so much . . . and I was so happy to help 
 you out of trouble " his broken words were half 
 whispered " but I suppose I thought most of the de- 
 lightful sensations I would enjoy myself, taking an 
 innocent girl like you, in the seclusion of a carriage, to 
 a place like Mephisto's, seeing the effect produced on 
 you by the place, and the wine, and the attentions. . . . 
 And when you let me know you loved me, as you did, 
 that wine was too heady for me. 
 
 " Damned hound that I am," he ground through his 
 teeth, " I thought I must have you ! Now, what would 
 your father say? How would he thank me? " 
 
 She laid her hand on his shoulder. 
 
 " I don't want you to say you took advantage of 
 me!" she said, proudly. "You didn't! I gave my- 
 self as freely to you, as you gave yourself to me. And 
 if my father knew everything, he wouldn't blame 
 you, or me! "
 
 CHAPTER XXIV, 
 
 ALL the way home, in the black drive from the 
 roadhouse to the station, sandwiched in on the 
 seat between Churchwell and the driver, and after- 
 wards on the train, Lydia in her thoughts kept repelling 
 Churchwell's suggestion that he had taken advantage 
 of her that night she had gone with him first to Me- 
 phisto's. She could not endure the idea that he re- 
 garded her his victim. To think of herself that way, 
 as one despoiled, was to rob their love of its dignity 
 and glory. But she was too weary to talk to him 
 about it. 
 
 She slept all night, and till late the next morning, 
 dreamily conscious of sometimes moaning in her sleep. 
 A knock on the door roused her, and she stretched her 
 tired limbs, not quite sure the knock had been on her 
 own door. Viola entered and held out a letter, and a 
 messenger's book for her to sign. She saw at a glance 
 it was Churchwell's writing on the envelope. Strange 
 he should be sending her a letter, a thick letter, at this 
 hour! 
 
 She tore open the envelope. To the inside sheet of 
 the letter were pinned five one-hundred dollar bills. 
 
 II 
 
 " My little Lydia " she read " I am sitting 
 down at dawn to write you. I have walked the streets 
 
 184
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 185 
 
 all night, thinking what was best to do. God spare 
 any other man from having to write words as hard to 
 write, as these I must say to you." 
 
 She wrapped a petticoat around her shoulders, over 
 her nightdress. The little room was flooded with sun- 
 shine, but she shook with cold. 
 
 She read on. " It is not possible for me to undo the 
 wrong I have done you, but no matter how painful to 
 both of us, I feel our relation must end. We cannot, 
 dearest one, be to each other what we wish to be. 
 No matter what insane dreams have from time to 
 time beset me, I know that I cannot ignore respon- 
 sibilities that circumstances had already imposed 
 on me before you and I realised our love for each 
 other. 
 
 " And I see plainly, now, that so long as our present 
 relation continues, no other possibility of life is open 
 to you. 
 
 " I want to eliminate myself, in order that you may 
 find a happier, safer life than you can find while I stand 
 in the way. Dear fierce little heart, you will think, 
 perhaps, that with the closing of our chapter there is 
 no further happiness for you, but so much is open to 
 you, Lydia. You will be asked in marriage, and I 
 want to live to see you surrounded by the respect and 
 admiration you can surely command. Sweet as our 
 secret hours have been, I cannot permit you to remain 
 in a relationship which would demand more and more 
 degraded subterfuges as time went on. It would mean 
 that you would deteriorate, inevitably the most hor- 
 rible of all thoughts to me. I know the world better
 
 1 86 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 than you know it, Lydia, and I know how swiftly and 
 surely such deterioration comes. 
 
 " Be brave, dear. Don't look back too much. 
 Look to the future. Write. I believe you can do so 
 successfully; you have ability, and you will find content- 
 ment for the present in the serious attempt to use it. 
 
 " By the time this letter reaches you, I shall be on 
 my way back to Kingsville, but I am enclosing an 
 amount sufficient, I think, to take care of you till you 
 have established yourself in some way, but, if not, com- 
 municate with me at my office address in Kingsville, 
 marking your letter ' Personal.' I feel I can trust you, 
 absolutely, Lydia, not to try to reopen communication 
 with me, except in case of necessity, and that you will do 
 nothing that could possibly reach the ears of an inno- 
 cent woman, and bring suffering upon her. 
 
 " And now, Lydia, do not think that you suffer alone. 
 I am being punished for all the wrong I have ever done 
 in my life, in the torture of these hours, in giving you 
 up, my own sweet. I have never loved any other, nor 
 shall I, as I do you. Believe that, Lydia. 
 
 " And there may be some other life, some other 
 world, beyond this one, where I may call my child 
 mine, and I may be hers. 
 
 " RANSOM." 
 
 in 
 
 She finished reading the last page and mechanically 
 placed it under the others. ..." My little Lydia, I 
 am sitting down at dawn . . ." 
 
 She saw the engraved heading, Fifth Avenue Hotel.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 187 
 
 She saw other black marks on white paper. She kept 
 reading over and over, " My little Lydia, I am sitting 
 down at dawn ..." 
 
 No phrase, no particular part of the body of the let- 
 ter she had just read, struck her. She felt neither 
 agony nor resentment. No tears came to her eyes. 
 Her hands that held the letter no longer shook as when 
 she had at first handled its pages. If she was conscious 
 of anything at all, it was of numbness gradually steal- 
 ing over her. There was something dull grey, it 
 might be gaseous, it might be liquid, in which she was 
 beginning to whirl with deadened senses. Suddenly 
 through this medium she saw coming directly toward 
 her the staring eyes of a dead fish. She wanted to 
 scream, but she did not scream. She realised, after the 
 first dazed impression, that they were the protuberant 
 eyes of Miss Tompkins, that Miss Tompkins had en- 
 tered the room, and closed the door cautiously behind 
 her. 
 
 " iWhy, why, I'm afraid you've missed your break- 
 fast this morning, Miss Lambright!" she said play- 
 fully. 
 
 Lydia dropped the petticoat from her shoulders, 
 reached for a silk wrapper and slipped her arms into it. 
 She summoned all the forces of her being, but abor- 
 tively, in an effort to answer Miss Tompkins' simple 
 pleasantry. 
 
 " I'll sit down an instant, Miss Lambright." 
 
 With a vague sense of shame, Lydia saw Miss 
 Tompkins lift her corset and undergarments and place 
 them on the bed.
 
 i88 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 " I have an applicant for this room, Miss Lambright 
 who'll be permanent. You know you've never as- 
 sured me positively you would be." She smiled, feel- 
 ing her way along carefully. 
 
 Lydia's lips tried to move. 
 
 " If you wouldn't mind my telling you, my dear, for 
 your own good, there have been so many unpleasant 
 things reported to me, that I think I shall have to ask 
 you to find another boarding place." Her head was 
 shaking like palsy. " I have to consider the feelings 
 of people in my house who have made their home with 
 me for years." 
 
 " I'll find another place to-day, Miss Tompkins." 
 
 " Oh, your week's not up till Tuesday. I don't want 
 to hurry you ! " 
 
 " I want to hurry, though," replied Lydia, dully. 
 
 "You're not sick, are you, Miss Lambright?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 As Miss Tompkins, flushing and confused, backed 
 out of the room, Lydia was sensible of a sort of grati- 
 tude to her. Miss Tompkins had supplied the thing 
 to stir her out of this strange stupor. 
 
 " Well, I've lived, anyway! " she said to herself in 
 a ghostly whisper, staring down at the yellow bills, 
 which had fallen to the floor.
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 LYDIA began dressing; she got into her clothes 
 rapidly. A tottering energy had taken possession 
 of her. She left the house, bought a morning paper 
 at a news-stand and walked on with it to a basement 
 tearoom, where she ordered coffee and rolls, and pro- 
 ceeded to look over advertisements of furnished rooms 
 to let. By noon, she had rented a room, and paid for 
 it a week in advance. No references were asked. Be- 
 fore evening her trunk had gone to her new room. 
 
 The gong was sounding for dinner, as she came 
 down the last flight of stairs, to leave the house her- 
 self. . 
 
 Miss Tompkins, who had evidently been listening 
 for her, hastened into the hall. " Oh, Miss Lam- 
 bright, you aren't going to go without saying good- 
 bye? " she called. 
 
 Lydia turned partly around. Her little travelling- 
 bag in her hand, she was opening the front door. She 
 was dressed exactly as she had been the day before, but 
 she no longer looked as when she had followed the but- 
 terflies down the Road of Enchantment. Her clothes 
 were slightly awry and untidy. She was wilted. 
 
 " I hope you'll take care of yourself, Miss Lam- 
 bright. You're not looking well I" Miss Tompkins 
 looked solicitously into her pale, strained face. 
 
 189
 
 i 9 o THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 Lydia's ears caught the genteel rustling of the 
 boarders beginning to descend to dinner from the upper 
 floors, and at the sound a more definite emotion shaped 
 in her than any she had known during the day. She 
 wanted to get out of the house quickly, before any of 
 the boarders could reach the parlour floor. 
 
 Miss Tompkins had put out her hand. " I'm sure I 
 wish the best in the world for you, my dear." 
 
 " I don't want to shake hands with you, Miss Tomp- 
 kins. There isn't any feeling of friendliness between 
 us. I don't feel any, I'm sure, and I don't see any 
 need of demonstration." Lydia's voice quivered. 
 " There's my latch-key." She pointed to the hatrack, 
 opened the door and went out. 
 
 When she reached the street she gave a quick back- 
 ward glance at the house. Two black faces at the 
 windows of the basement dining room were gaping at 
 her. Even Viola and Jenny knew I " Turned out, 
 that's what I am, of course ! " 
 
 Before she reached the corner, she turned back once 
 again for a last look at the house that had cast her off 
 in disgrace. A faint feeling of regret stirred in her, 
 not at leaving Miss Tompkins, or the boarders, but at 
 breaking away from the house itself. " I'll never be 
 in that house again ! " she thought. " In that vestibule 
 I stood, so frightened, that night I got here ! That's 
 where I kissed Ransom Churchwell good-night! On 
 the hatrack in that hall is where I found his letters 1 " 
 
 At the corner she stopped to wait for a street car. 
 There was a blockade, and the cars were long in com- 
 ing. As she stood waiting, she kept her eyes in the
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 191 
 
 direction from which McCarthy usually approached 
 when he came to dinner. She had no idea what she 
 would say to him; but the forlorn hope persisted that 
 he would come in sight before her car came. She 
 craved the very real and fortifying sound of his cheery 
 greeting. She allowed several cars to slip by, but, at 
 last, too tired to stand longer, she lifted her cheap little 
 bag, the same she had started with proudly from Kings- 
 ville, as general agent, and boarded a car, changing, 
 when she had gone some distance, to another car that 
 took her cross-town to her new room. 
 
 II 
 
 On the street floor was the grocery shop of Augustus 
 Rathemacher. The floors above were all rented by 
 Rathemacher, who sublet the rooms furnished, except 
 those he and his wife occupied. Lydia had rented a 
 small front room on the second floor, the same floor on 
 which were the rooms occupied by the Rathemachers 
 themselves. 
 
 In this room she lived for many weeks following, 
 generally going for her dinner to the table d'hote of 
 the cheap Italian hotel which Rathemacher's adjoined, 
 sometimes to one of the cheap restaurants nearby. 
 She depended on the delicatessen shops with which the 
 neighbourhood abounded for her other meals, eating 
 them with languid interest in the solitude of her room. 
 
 She discovered a branch of the Public Library within 
 walking distance, and with the assistance of Rathe- 
 macher's signature, secured a card from it, which en- 
 abled her to draw books. She tried poetry first, bring-
 
 i 9 2 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 ing back to her room volumes of the poets she had 
 known and loved best. But she found that the poems 
 which had given her such joy, lulled her, or thrilled her, 
 in by-gone hours, were now, in this hour she needed 
 them most, only words on paper to her. She tried 
 fiction. But after getting through a few pages of a 
 novel, she would close the book, never to look in it 
 again. 
 
 Through long summer days, and intolerably long 
 hours of the close summer evenings, she would sit, with 
 a sort of abject resignation, looking out of her window. 
 Opposite was a clock repair shop, a dusty, disorderly 
 place, with unwashed windows. Above it were 
 lodgers, as in her own building, only less respectable 
 than Rathemacher's lodgers; below it, was an antique 
 shop, whose bell jingled every time its door was 
 opened; and easily within range of her eye were 
 bakers', grocers', barbers' shops; in the little holes 
 under them, tailors, toiling early and late, Italian cob- 
 blers, and the dispirited entrance to " St. Andrew's 
 Penny Meals for Poor Men " into which she never 
 saw any poor or other man whatever enter for his penny 
 meal. 
 
 But as she had looked at the books, scarcely seeing 
 them, so, though her eyes followed the busy movements 
 in the shops opposite, and in the narrow street below, 
 she saw little except that dim, troubled region she knew 
 she was soon to enter.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 193 
 
 in 
 
 She had never read Churchwell's letter after the first 
 time. She had tied it in a package with his other let- 
 ters. But as the days went on, gradually its phrases 
 came back to her, syllable by syllable, marshalling them- 
 selves in her mind precisely as they stood in the letter. 
 
 Why had he broken the tie? Why had he? He 
 had not lost his love for her she could not believe 
 that. Nor could she believe how she wished that 
 she could! that he had broken it for the reasons he 
 had given her solely out of consideration for her 
 welfare. 
 
 Had money been the reason? Had he felt, after 
 his first squandering, that she was costing too much? 
 She remembered one day he had remarked, handing 
 her money as he did so, " You're a royal little spend- 
 thrift, Lydia!" She remembered her slight uneasi- 
 ness, her attempt to give back part of the money, his 
 insistence he was only jesting insistence she should 
 keep it all, and yet and yet there was that little 
 anxiety she remembered, her fear that he had felt she 
 was becoming too quickly habituated to spending. 
 Perhaps he had not, himself, so much to spend as peo- 
 ple in Kingsville had always thought; he had dropped 
 a hint of business worries. 
 
 Well, if it had been money, she forgave him. 
 
 Relentlessly, she went over and over the hours she 
 had known with him, torturing herself with every sweet 
 memory of the past, every bitter realisation of the 
 present.
 
 i 9 4 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 IV 
 
 Various moods bore down on her sometimes one 
 of mingled scorn and despair when she said to herself, 
 " And he held out the hope that there was another 
 world as if I believed such things ! " She would 
 feed no hopes on such sop she was born of too late 
 a generation. Though often, in the twilight, when she 
 sat with her white face in her hands, looking down 
 from her window into the street below, a close-welded, 
 whispering pair of lovers sauntering by, or a father 
 with his little girl holding tight to his hand, brought 
 to her such a crushing sense of her own loneliness, that 
 there would come creeping over her a yearning to be- 
 lieve, as the ignorant believed, in a definite u life to 
 come," where in a real heaven she might relive heav- 
 enly hours she had known on earth, where again she 
 might hold to the big, steadfast hand of her father, her 
 own so cold with fear now. 
 
 Sometimes sick in body, and always in mind, there 
 were hours when she writhed under the memory of the 
 warning Churchwell had given her not to bring suffer- 
 ing to an " innocent " woman. She felt he had con- 
 trasted them his wife and herself ! She pictured the 
 " innocent " woman in her beautiful surrounding in 
 Kingsville . . . he guarding her, with all his soft de- 
 votion, and it seemed to her her heart would burst. 
 
 She would wring her hands, and whisper to herself 
 with trembling, contemptuous lips " I'll not harm
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 195 
 
 her! I'll not embarrass him! He needn't have 
 warned me! Oh, I won't lift a finger to harm his 
 lamb!" 
 
 For while that June morning when he had spoken of 
 running off with her to the ends of the earth, she had 
 accepted the idea with mad joy; yet now, some vague 
 but still untarnished ideal of conduct prevented her 
 wishing to unsettle the peace of that other woman. 
 Despite her anger, her questionings, her piercing jeal- 
 ousy, she accepted her portion.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 LYDIA welcomed the arrival of autumn. The 
 cool days permitted her to wear heavier clothes 
 that better disguised her figure. She had put away 
 the handsome gowns and hats bought with Church- 
 well's money in the delirious spring days when she was 
 decking herself for his eyes, and in order to attract as 
 little attention as possible wore again the hat she had 
 worn in Kingsville and the simple brown suit she had 
 bought at Maxfield's very fine it had seemed to her 
 then, and very plain it looked to her now. Unfortu- 
 nately, the charm of her face, at once delicate and 
 vivid, had become more and more of the kind to pluck 
 by the sleeve the passer-by. 
 
 She was returning to her room one afternoon carry- 
 ing a package she had refused to have sent home for 
 her; the car was crowded, and she stood in the aisle, 
 holding to a strap for support. She might have taken 
 a kind of pitiful comfort from the package under her 
 arm, except that she felt that every one knew her secret, 
 that every sprawling woman, every squirming child, 
 every staring man in the whole long, crowded Sixth 
 Avenue car could look right through the brown paper 
 wrapping and see the little slips and socks and shirts. 
 
 " I can never be considered respectable again as long 
 
 196
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 197 
 
 as I live," she thought, and with a poignancy amount- 
 ing to physical pain she felt that every one else in the 
 car was thinking that, too. 
 
 She was so conscious of many eyes, that she did not 
 notice one particular pair of eyes that were busy about 
 her, till a faint pressure of other knees against her own 
 made her look down. A young Jew was gazing up at 
 her. She recoiled from his bold and sensual eyes, but 
 not before she had seen them, with unmistakable sig- 
 nificance, run from her face to her waist and back again. 
 With an instinctive movement of concealment, she let 
 go the strap, and pulled down her jacket. Swiftly as 
 she had done it, she realised she had hopelessly con- 
 victed herself, and the flush on her face deepened to 
 scarlet. 
 
 The young man rose, and fearing she would attract 
 more attention in refusing than in accepting it, she 
 dropped into the seat he offered her. She tried to look 
 unconscious, but she felt his eyes still roving over her, 
 wherever she turned she felt other eyes watching her, 
 and, finally, unable to endure it longer, she left the car. 
 
 It was a perfect autumn afternoon, following a crisp, 
 frosty morning, and as she walked along, her fate 
 seemed to her infinitely more cruel than it had ever 
 seemed before. She did not greatly rebel against the 
 statutes of society, or very specifically consider herself 
 a martyr to them, or believe really that things would 
 ever be very different woman, alone, would always 
 bear the brand for sins against those statutes. It was 
 only that she saw a beautiful world, brimming with all 
 those possibilities of joy in life she had so hungered
 
 i 9 8 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 and thirsted for, had just tasted, and now again must 
 evermore hunger and thirst for. 
 
 The gracious, tempered October sunshine threw a 
 faint glamour even over this prosaic thoroughfare of 
 deafening elevated and clanging surface car, and made 
 her heartsick for her country, steeped now, as she knew 
 so well, in the languorous, hazy, peaceful loveliness of 
 a Southern autumn. 
 
 When she opened the street door, a strong and agree- 
 able odour met her, of vinegar and spices heating to- 
 gether, and at the head of the stairs she saw that the 
 door of Rathemacher's little kitchen was wide open, 
 and Mrs. Rathemacher in a light percale wrapper was 
 bending over a kettle on her gas range. For some 
 time past, Lydia had tried to avoid her. She had 
 begun to suspect that Mrs. Rathemacher was making 
 occasions to talk to her and to ask her questions. 
 
 Mrs. Rathemacher turned her warm face from the 
 range, and came to the door, holding a plump hand 
 under the bowl of the big wooden spoon with which 
 she had been stirring. " Making tomato catsup," she 
 explained. " Gus had that many tomatoes on hand, 
 they was spoiling faster than he could sell 'em. A 
 body has to do all kinds of ways, to make the grocery 
 business pay." 
 
 " It smells good," Lydia smiled. 
 Mrs. Rathemacher bent over her kettle again. 
 " Miss Lambright, I got a couple wants your room 
 permanent." 
 
 ' You can have it to-morrow. I'm going to Cali- 
 fornia."
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 199 
 
 " California? I got a cousin there." 
 
 Lydia made no answer. She wondered why she had 
 said California. She saw Mrs. Rathemacher was 
 through with her, and she went to her room, and locked 
 herself in. 
 
 She put her package in a drawer, and tilting the 
 mirror in the bureau as far back as she could, stood in 
 front of it and turned anxiously from side to side. 
 
 For a brief moment, she considered going back to 
 the kitchen and throwing herself on Mrs. Rathe- 
 macher's mercy, begging to be allowed to remain. In 
 this smell of boiling vinegar and spices, there was a 
 suggestion of something permanent and homelike, 
 which she would be severing herself from forever when 
 she left Rathemacher's. A darting vision showed her 
 herself agonised and alone in the hour of childbirth. 
 
 II 
 
 It would have been better if she had represented her- 
 self from the start as a married woman. She could 
 have said she had been deserted by her husband 
 hereafter she must call herself Mrs. Lambright. She 
 sat down, without taking off her hat or jacket or even 
 her gloves, and began planning how to explain herself 
 in seeking another room. She sat for a long time, 
 thinking, thinking, thinking. 
 
 An hour passed, another hour. . . . She unlocked 
 her trunk and delving into a small compartment drew 
 from it a little chamois-skin bag tied with a faded rib- 
 bon, emptied out the trinkets it contained, and picked 
 out from them her mother's wedding-ring. Pulling
 
 200 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 off her glove, she worked the ring on her own wed- 
 ding-finger. It was too worn and old-fashioned; she 
 must have a newer looking ring. She carried it to the 
 window, and held it so she could read the half-effaced 
 word engraved inside that had always puzzled her 
 Fulfilment. 
 
 Fulfilment! What had been fulfilled? Ah, they 
 too, her father and mother, had known life ! And she 
 felt as if something were beating all about her in the 
 air of the room a peculiar, misty, almost terrifying 
 sense of their near, impalpable presences. 
 
 She threw herself on her knees, neither weeping nor 
 trembling, but holding awed communion. 
 
 " Don't leave me ! " she called aloud, wistfully. 
 
 ill 
 
 After a time, she left the room, locking the door 
 behind her, and slipped through the hall and down the 
 stairs quietly. She remembered a little shop on Third 
 Avenue, below Miss Tompkins', where cheap jewelry 
 was sold, and she decided to buy a ring there rather 
 than at the shop in her present neighbourhood, where 
 perhaps the clerks had begun to notice her. 
 
 It was not necessary to pass Miss Tompkins'; but 
 something impelled her to do so. She had not been 
 in the locality for months, and it was like entering a 
 strange city now. When she came to the house, she 
 glanced up at it furtively. Suddenly, there was a 
 slight twitching movement of the lace curtains at one 
 of the parlour windows. As she hurried on down the 
 hill, she remembered McCarthy's calling Miss Tomp-
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 201 
 
 kins' solemn parlour the " mortuary chapel." If she 
 had only married McCarthy as he had asked her to 
 that evening on the Drive. It would have been Para- 
 dise compared to the present ! And then came rushing 
 over her consciousness the realisation that even to save 
 herself from what lay before her, she could not have 
 been so base. 
 
 She was icy cold and shaking when she stepped into 
 the shop and asked to look at rings. The clerk was a 
 dull-looking young man, for which she was thankful. 
 Most of the rings in the tray he set out on the counter 
 had small, cheap sets in them. Some were chased. 
 None of them were the kind she wanted. He pulled 
 out one after another, pricing them to her from their 
 tags. 
 
 " I want to see wedding-rings, please," she said, in 
 a low voice. 
 
 His finger, running over the rings, halted, but he 
 did not look up. 
 
 " It's for a friend," she murmured, and then, realis- 
 ing she had said a silly thing, that it was silly to have 
 said anything, she straightened herself, and threw back 
 her head with an assumption of hauteur. 
 
 The clerk set another tray on the counter without 
 saying anything, and she singled out one of the rings, 
 without examining any of them, and quickly opened her 
 purse to pay for it. 
 
 " Hadn't you better try it on? They're all sizes," 
 he ventured. 
 
 She stripped the glove from her left hand. 
 
 All at once, she was aware that an old man, with a
 
 202 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 magnifying glass screwed in his eye, had turned from 
 the watch he had been examining and was looking at 
 her, and when the ring would not pass beyond the sec- 
 ond joint of her puffed finger, a wave of heat passed 
 over her face. 
 
 A ring was found that would fit, and she left the 
 shop precipitately. Outside, she slipped it on, throw- 
 ing away the little box that had held it. A sob caught 
 her, as she felt the ring on her finger. This was her 
 wedding-march no swelling music, clouds of white, 
 no trumpery dearly-sweet to woman-hearts, no bride- 
 groom whispering in her ear a little figure, losing 
 only too plainly its virgin lines, slinking along disgraced 
 and alone in the autumn twilight. 
 
 IV 
 
 She kept thinking of the Pooles. They were al- 
 ways in her mind, and had been for a long time. She 
 did not want them to find out what had become of her. 
 She thought she would write them that she was mar- 
 ried, and was going to California to live. She would 
 tell them that whether in the years to come they heard 
 from her or not, she would always love them. All the 
 fussy things about them that had irritated her, when 
 she was with them, had faded away; only their kind- 
 nesses remained in her memory. How ungrateful they 
 would always think her! They would never under- 
 stand, because they would never know! And if they 
 knew, they could never understand, because they were 
 the Pooles. 
 
 When she got back to her room, she sat down in the
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 203 
 
 mellow twilight. She had eaten no dinner and she did 
 not want any. She wanted to think about her country. 
 This wedding-ring she had bought and put on her finger 
 made her think of it in a way she had not before. She 
 was exiled from it now forever, but she could still 
 dream of it. She was a little girl again, trudging 
 along a road in the mountain country near Kingsville. 
 It was a dull autumn morning, and she and her father 
 were watching the slow, pearly mists rise from the val- 
 leys. From the wet woods came the mournful tinkle 
 of cow-bells, and a lean " poor-white " boy, tattered 
 and melancholy, was driving cows up the red moun- 
 tain road ahead of them. Wild morning-glories over- 
 ran the rail fences and the neglected, rain-drenched 
 gardens. Then the sun, flashing out, touching it all 
 with splendour! . . . Her country! Her face went 
 down on her hands, her whole body heaved. ... If 
 she could only be there again ... if she could only 
 feel her father's hand once more on her hair. 
 
 Kingsville, steeped in its warm, pensive October 
 haze, rose softly before her; the little dry click of in- 
 sects everywhere filling the air; the snail's slimy iri- 
 descent trail along the bricks of the old walks; honey- 
 suckle clambering over the walls, and roses still 
 blooming in all the gardens. 
 
 " And I can never, never, go back now ! I can never 
 see Kingsville again! " Yearning, hopeless sobs shook 
 her. 
 
 She groped her blinded way to the bureau, drew out 
 the package she had placed in it a few hours before, 
 and spread the little slips and socks and shirts on the
 
 204 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 bed. She knelt down, feeling along the hems and the 
 tiny sleeves, the tears streaming down her cheeks till 
 she tasted them salt on her lips. 
 
 She did not want to die. Love of life burned in 
 her with a hard, inextinguishable flame, and she could 
 catch a feeble gleam, far, far off, ahead, that would, 
 that must, one day lead her up from these depths. She 
 buried her tear-swollen face in the little garments she 
 had bought for her love-child. Already they seemed 
 to exhale the tender, delicious fragrance of baby flesh, 
 and something in her thrilled faintly to that fragrance.
 
 BOOK II 
 EXILE
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 IN a car of the Ninth Avenue Elevated, a young 
 woman, whom some might have styled a young 
 girl, had they not looked too close at her eyes, hung 
 to one of the straps, swaying a little with the movement 
 of the car, and steadying herself as the car jerked in 
 and out of station after station on its down-town pas- 
 sage, but in the main manifesting the poise and security 
 of the habituated strap-hanger. It was a little before 
 eight in the evening, and the seats in the car were full. 
 One woman had a pale blue scarf over her head, and 
 carried what appeared to be opera-glasses in a small 
 plush bag; the woman with her wore a spangled scarf 
 over her head. A youngish man in evening dress, with 
 a white muffler inside his overcoat collar, was reading 
 an evening paper. He glanced up, though not imperti- 
 nently, at the young woman who was holding to the 
 strap over his head. After he had glanced at her sev- 
 eral times, he rose, and with quiet insistence gave her 
 his seat. 
 
 The young woman was tired, and she was therefore 
 grateful for the seat. Moreover, she was gratified at 
 attention from a man of this man's appearance and 
 manners. She wondered if anything about her own ap- 
 pearance indicated that she was a servant, and she 
 
 207
 
 208 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 hoped exceedingly that nothing did. She wore a black 
 cheviot skirt, a black shirtwaist, and a white linen col- 
 lar with a small black bow at the front of the collar; 
 she wore this uniform because Mrs. Van Antwerp, her 
 employer, required it. She was glad it was completely 
 covered at present by a long ulster of brown woollen 
 material, a garment not totally devoid of style, though 
 three years old. It had taken her a whole winter to 
 pay for it, in instalments, but it was a good garment, 
 and she thought she had done well to buy it She had 
 a small tippet of brown fur around her neck, and her 
 light waving hair escaped rather alluringly from under 
 the edge of a small fur turban. It was a cheap dyed 
 fur, but she wore both tippet and turban with some- 
 thing of an air. Her gloves were good heavy walk- 
 ing-gloves, a Christmas present from Mrs. Van Ant- 
 werp's sister. Her shoes were not new, nor had they 
 been pretty when new, and she hid her feet as well as 
 she could with her skirt. For a number of years she 
 had dressed with a whole-hearted desire to avoid obser- 
 vation. But in the last year or two, she had been grad- 
 ually giving more and more attention to her appear- 
 ance. In the last month or two, she had found herself 
 depressed if no one looked at her with obvious admira- 
 tion as she rode on the elevated to and from her work. 
 It was almost seven years since Lydia had left Kings- 
 ville to seek her fortune. It seemed a lifetime to her 
 since then, and Kingsville almost a dream. In dreams, 
 many, many dreams, in these seven years, she had been 
 back in Kingsville, searching, searching, through the
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 209 
 
 old streets, up and down the hills, but never finding the 
 houses where she had lived, or the places she was seek- 
 ing. 
 
 To a casual observer, she was not greatly different 
 from the Lydia whom the clerk at the Mansion House 
 in Pleasantwater had forcibly kissed. But there were 
 differences. She had grown in these seven years, was 
 taller by actual measurement. Her hands and feet, 
 though not conspicuously large, were larger than the 
 hands and feet of Lydia, the general agent. Her hair 
 had less gold in it, and it tumbled about her face a little 
 less indecorously than once. Her face had not wholly 
 lost the child look, but it was less vivid than the face of 
 seven years earlier; its tints were not faded, but they 
 were all delicately lowered. When she smiled now, 
 faint depressions appeared in her cheeks. She carried 
 her slim body straight, and well, and she carried her 
 head high, and with a spirited air which indicated that 
 the fires in her, though slumbering, had not yet gone 
 out. 
 
 At present her cheeks were brilliant. She had 
 walked rapidly to the elevated station in the sharp win- 
 ter air. And the little courtesy paid her by the refined 
 looking man who had given her his seat had kept the 
 colour still in her cheeks, as well as added lustre to her 
 eyes. 
 
 At Fifty-ninth Street the man left the car. His eyes 
 met hers briefly, but with interest, as he buttoned him- 
 self securely into his overcoat and adjusted his muffler 
 for the plunge from the hot car into the freezing air
 
 210 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 outside. The women with the light scarfs over their 
 heads also left the car at this station. A good many 
 stations farther down Lydia left the car. 
 
 II 
 
 She ran down the long steps from the station to the 
 street, straining her eyes eagerly. There he was ! 
 a little boy, at the bottom of the steps, a few feet back 
 from the landing Lydia's love-child ! A red knitted 
 <:ap, with a long peak hanging down behind, was pulled 
 over his head and down over his ears, and some one 
 had stuffed him into a little outgrown reefer overcoat. 
 
 He was worth every bit of pain, suffering, sorrow, 
 bitterness, hard work, she had been through in these 
 seven years that was what Lydia said to herself 
 every day in the year, and every hour in the day, and 
 what she woke up and said to herself in the dead of 
 night. 
 
 " Gee, Mother, you're late ! I've been waiting hours 
 and hours! " 
 
 He was shivering a little. She bent down and kissed 
 him, his arms around her neck; and then with a covert 
 glance, to be sure none of the " kids " were near, he 
 gave her another hug. 
 
 " Let's look at the clock." They glanced in the 
 window of a grocery shop. " Oh, I am twenty min- 
 utes later than last night! Well, they had company 
 to dinner. Where are your mittens, Blessed? What 
 are you doing with your hands bare this cold night? 
 They're frozen! " She held tight to one of his bare 
 hands as they hurried along.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 211 
 
 " I couldn't find my mittens, Mother. I found one, 
 and then I couldn't find it! " 
 
 They rounded a corner briskly, and started down a 
 street parallel to the one where their room was ; it was 
 three squares and a half out of their way, but unless 
 an absolute blizzard was raging, it was understood this 
 was their path home from the elevated station, where 
 he met her every evening when she came from her 
 work. They got a great deal of joy and excitement out 
 of looking into shop windows together, especially out 
 of the window they were headed for. The shop was 
 closed, of course, at this time in the evening, but Peter 
 would choose what he would rather have out of the 
 whole window, and then Lydia would choose what she 
 would rather have. 
 
 Sometimes, on Saturday evenings, they would walk 
 over to Sixth Avenue, down it for blocks and blocks, 
 and even up and back the block of Twenty-third Street 
 between Sixth Avenue and Fifth Avenue, looking in 
 the windows there. These Saturday evenings were as 
 much Lydia's occasions as Peter's, or more hers than 
 his, because, taking them all in all, there was more of 
 women's apparel displayed in the windows they passed 
 than of toys. Peter was always sorely tried when he 
 had to look, for long at a stretch, at women's dresses 
 and hats. But sometimes he behaved with exemplary 
 patience and indulgence, and entered into his mother's 
 game at the dress-and-hat windows as gaily and 
 sympathetically as she entered into his at the train of 
 cars, sail boat, and fire engine windows. " Which 
 dress, of every one, would you d'ruther have, Mother? "
 
 212 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 he would ask, on one of these evenings when he was 
 humouring her and making concessions to her feminine 
 weaknesses. " I think you'd look the prettiest in the 
 pink one I " 
 
 He always began tugging at her hand when they got 
 to the first corner after their meeting at the elevated 
 station. It was at this corner the decision was made 
 about passing the shop they were on their way to now. 
 He would pilot her in the direction of the toy window, 
 and she would laugh, as if she had been trapped, when 
 she found herself heading toward it, and he would 
 laugh gleefully, as if he had trapped her. They were 
 great chums. 
 
 To-night an icy wind was blowing, and she was ex- 
 ceptionally tired, but though Peter had pulled her with 
 less resolution than usual in the direction of the toy 
 window, she had made no resistance whatever. She 
 had a vague, indefinable feeling that recently she had 
 been in some way disloyal to the little fellow, in her 
 thoughts at least, and she wanted to make up to him 
 for this fleeting disloyalty. 
 
 To-night there were some new sets of lead soldiers 
 in the window. There had been infantry before, but 
 now there were cavalry, cavalry gallantly mounted on 
 lead steeds, and artillery as well. 
 
 Peter wavered between the artillery and the cavalry. 
 He could hardly tell which he wanted more, but it was 
 against the rules of the game to choose more than one 
 thing out of the window on any one evening. 
 
 The game was not played this evening with quite the 
 usual verve. Lydia was slightly abstracted, and what
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 213 
 
 was more-unusual, Peter was slightly abstracted. There 
 were all the hand-tuggings, the grippings, the standings- 
 on-tip-toe to get a better look, the laughter, and the 
 excited, " Mother, you will get me one of those, some 
 day, won't you?" but the key was noticeably low- 
 ered. Lydia wondered what was on the child's mind. 
 She wished, almost wished, these lead soldiers would 
 be taken out of the window. The truth was, what with 
 the new winter underclothing she had to buy him, and 
 the dentist's bill for herself, and the doctor's bill of the 
 year before, for him, still only half paid, and her own 
 car-fare ten cents a day every day in the month, and 
 the room rent, and his food, and what she paid to have 
 him looked after in her absence well, it took brave 
 managing. No- margin for lead soldiers. 
 
 ill 
 
 They left the toy window, and, hand clasping hand, 
 almost ran, the wind from the river in their faces, along 
 the street westward, then around a corner, a block 
 north, and finally doubling east, a half block to their 
 own number. It was the house where the little German 
 washerwoman, Emma Stark, and her old cousin lived, 
 and had been Lydia's home from the day she had left 
 her room at Rathemacher's more than six years before. 
 She had a decided attachment to the house. It was 
 always clean and orderly, and, with few exceptions, the 
 people since she had lived in it, had been hard working, 
 decently behaving people. Her life having turned out 
 as it had, she thought it fortunate that she had been 
 spared lodging among brawling, squalid families.
 
 2i 4 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 There were moments when her heart was full of 
 thanksgiving. She had been by no means continuously 
 miserable all these seven years. She had known serene 
 hours, light-hearted hours, even downright merry hours, 
 and in her motherhood she had experienced deep, ar- 
 dent, abiding joy. 
 
 "Have you been a good boy to-day?" she asked, 
 as they neared the top of the last flight of stairs. 
 
 " Pretty good." 
 
 Peter dropped his head rather shame-facedly. 
 
 " Well, we'll ask Emma and My Old," said Lydia, 
 stopping at their door, which was slightly ajar, giving 
 a light tap, and entering a little way into the room, 
 while Peter hung back, not eager to be present at the 
 inquiry. 
 
 The old woman was ironing. Emma, in her hat and 
 jacket, a wool scarf around her neck, was just starting 
 out with a wicker suitcase to deliver some clothes. 
 
 " What kind of a boy has Peter been to-day? " asked 
 Lydia. 
 
 Emma peeked at him, shaking her finger smilingly. 
 She seldom reported adversely on the young rascal. 
 " He's all right. Come in here, Peter, and get your 
 hands warm. We couldn't any of us find his mittens." 
 
 The old woman looked more serious. " Ach, Peter, 
 I told you I'd tell your mother! He run off again! 
 He's been out with them bad boys ! " 
 
 IV 
 
 Lydia did not know what was to be done with him. 
 Peter would not stay penned up in the room all day
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 215 
 
 with the old woman and Emma. Once, he had been 
 satisfied with the trips with Emma to carry or collect 
 the laundry and with the little walk in the morning to 
 put his mother on the elevated, and in the evening 
 to meet her. But since he had made the acquaintance 
 of the " kids " two older boys in the same house, 
 and the indeterminate neighbourhood gang to which 
 they belonged he ran off to them every time the old 
 woman's or Emma's eyes were not on him. Punished 
 for it, he went again, and yet again. He was pos- 
 sessed to be with them. He had brought in from them 
 several mouth-filling oaths, with the drastic result that 
 his mouth was washed out with My Old's coarse yellow 
 soap. The problem was growing serious. Peter must 
 have more outdoors, and he needed child companions. 
 
 " Well, My Old, we will see about this," Lydia said 
 gravely, and went on with Peter to a little room at the 
 front. 
 
 There was barely space in the little room for two 
 single iron beds, each white, one smaller than the 
 other, one along each side wall. On the wall at the 
 side of Lydia's bed were pinned three pictures she had 
 cut from a magazine, reproductions of paintings of 
 Arnold Bocklin, that had thrilled her with strange 
 thrills and in some indefinable way had opened up to 
 her new and hitherto unsuspected worlds. On the wall 
 by Peter's bed were pinned both magazine and news- 
 paper cuts of cowboys, and bucking ponies, of ships, 
 and all manner of sea-craft, and of Indians, Indians 
 in war bonnets, on the trail, old-fashioned, real In- 
 dians, all the Indians Lydia had been able to find.
 
 216 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 There was a loose strip of rag carpet on the floor, 
 which Lydia had painted herself, and there was a small 
 rocking chair she had painted white, as she had also 
 the frame of the looking-glass that hung above the 
 wash stand. Inside the box of which the wash stand 
 was made, and screened from sight by a cotton valance 
 in a gay pattern of scarlet poppies, were stored all 
 manner of small articles, a fascinating, forbidden place 
 for Peter to rummage in Lydia's absence. 
 
 Lydia hung up her ulster and stripped off the tight 
 reefer that Peter was vainly trying to wriggle out of 
 by himself. Then she seated herself in the narrow 
 space between the two beds, and made Peter sit down 
 facing her, in a low child's chair. His face, usually 
 mischievous, was perfectly sober. 
 
 " Well, Peter, you've disobeyed My Old again, and 
 disobeyed me, too. What am I going to do about it? " 
 
 Peter put one of his hands into his trousers pocket, 
 and drew out a tangle of string, a piece of chewing-gum 
 that had been chewed, two rusty nails, a tin tobacco-tag, 
 and a tiny round looking-glass in the heart of them 
 all, an unwrapped chocolate caramel, which he extri- 
 cated and handed to his mother. 
 
 "What am I going to do about it?" she had just 
 asked, and he had handed her this disarming caramel. 
 
 " My friend give me three of 'em, and I saved this 
 one for you." 
 
 His " friend " was the young Russian Jew who kept 
 the news-stand near the elevated station. 
 
 " My friend's a very good man," added Peter, anx-
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 217 
 
 ious to lead the conversation into a safe channel. 
 " He's going to save his funny page for me every Sun- 
 day. . . . Eat it, Mother. I saved it for you, 'cause 
 I knew you loved 'em. . . . It's clean I wiped it 
 on my knickers." 
 
 " I'm sorry, but I'll have to punish you, Peter." 
 Lydia looked steadily at him. " You understood you 
 were not to go down " 
 
 " All right, you can punish me if you want to ! " he 
 interrupted, his lip trembling. " But I didn't have no 
 fun. The kids said " 
 
 Suddenly he rose from the little chair, crept up 
 against her, and put his arms around her neck. 
 
 " Oh, Mother, I did have a regalar father, just like 
 the other boys, onct, didn't I ? " 
 
 Lydia was silent. For years she had dreaded this 
 moment, and lo, it had come! Her little boy's sobs 
 stabbed her. 
 
 " Yes, of course, you had a father I " she said, at last, 
 gathering him on her lap. " Tell me what the * kids ' 
 said, Peter." 
 
 '' They was talking about their fathers, and I told 
 'em about my father fightin' Indians, and they said it 
 wasn't so. They said you wasn't married, Mother, 
 and that I didn't have no regalar father, never. Fritz 
 said I was a " He whispered a word in Lydia's ear. 
 " Oh, Mother, what's that? " 
 
 " Just a bad word Fritz made up I don't know 
 what it means." She hugged him tight to her, tears 
 rolling down her cheeks on his shock of fair hair.
 
 218 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 " You mustn't pay any attention to what those boys say, 
 they're trying to tease you, they're just jealous because 
 their fathers weren't Indian fighters! " 
 
 She began telling him stories, his favourite Indian 
 stones. 
 
 " You remember one time, Peter, the Indians thought 
 the Great Spirit was going to give them back all their 
 happy hunting-grounds? Well, they all got together 
 to have a big dance, and they put up a pole in the centre 
 of the camp, and the young Indians that wanted to 
 make themselves brave warriors cut slits in the muscles 
 in their chests here," she illustrated on Peter's 
 plump anatomy " and pulled buckskin thongs through 
 the slits, and tied the thongs to a rope which was tied 
 to a pole, and then pulled and pulled and pulled, till 
 they pulled the flesh loose " 
 
 " It did hurt 'em, though, didn't it, Mother? " 
 
 "Hurt them? Certainly! But Indians don't cry." 
 
 " Tell me about the squaws bringing 'em things to 
 eat," suggested Peter, looking a trifle sheepish, and 
 wiping his last tears on his mother's shoulder. 
 
 " Well, the old squaws brought them dried deer- 
 meat, and dried buffalo-meat that's what they loved, 
 you know and tried to tempt them to eat because 
 they were hungry, and tried to tempt them to drink 
 they were terribly thirsty but if one of them ate a 
 bite, or drank a drop, or stopped dancing and pulling 
 on the rope for a minute, then the old Indians caught 
 him and " 
 
 " Put a dress on him ! " completed Peter, very fa- 
 miliar with the story, " and called him a woman, and he
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 219 
 
 was ashamed of hisself. Gee, Mother, they was brave, 
 wasn't they, when they pulled a hole in they-selves I I 
 wish't I'd been there ! 
 
 " Tell me about my father busting up the dance," 
 he suggested, in a lower voice, and a little timidly. 
 
 " Well, your father had heard the Indians were 
 getting ready to make trouble for the white people, 
 and he took Swift Bird and Fights the Enemy with 
 him, and Iron Horse and Crazy Heart they were 
 the Indian police, you know, that made the other In- 
 dians behave " 
 
 " I know they was " impatiently. 
 
 " They got on their little Indian ponies, and rode, 
 fast as the wind, over the prairies. They could see 
 the camp fires way off across the plains, flaming up in 
 the dark night, and when they got near the camp, they 
 could hear the tom-toms, going like this " she made 
 a sound that delighted Peter " in the medicine-man's 
 tepee " 
 
 " That was Spotted Eagle, the medicine-man. 
 Mother, was I borned then? " 
 
 " No, oh, no." 
 
 She went on hurriedly with a tale of Spotted Eagle. 
 She said no more of punishment. Peter had been pun- 
 ished enough, this day, with the " kids' " taunts. . . . 
 She could scarcely recall how she had first thought of 
 making his father, of whom he had questioned her, 
 the chief hero of these bedtime stories, but she had 
 invented this father for him and dwelt on his exploits 
 as an Indian fighter till he had become almost as real 
 a figure to her as to Peter himself.
 
 The tale of Fears Nothing she saved to rob Peter's 
 nightly bath of some of its terrors. The ordeal he 
 particularly and regularly protested against was the 
 ordeal of purification. She brought a kettle of hot 
 water from the Starks' room, and in spite of his twist- 
 ing and struggling, she was succeeding fairly well in 
 keeping him under her hands, when suddenly, in the 
 midst of her story of Fears Nothing roping a wild 
 colt, he asked, " Mother, have you got a picture of 
 him?" 
 
 "Of v/hom?" she inquired, startled. 
 
 "Of my father!" 
 
 Lydia went on drying his hands with the towel she 
 held in hers. 
 
 " Mother, didn't you hear me? " 
 
 " Yes, I have one, I think," she replied, slowly. 
 " Let me look." 
 
 She hunted through her trunk for a photograph of 
 Mr. Poole which he had given her on her last Christ- 
 mas in Kingsville. Perhaps a bona-fide photograph, 
 any photograph, would be proof to Peter of the exist- 
 ence, once, of a " regalar " father. 
 
 She drew the faded picture, a cabinet photograph, 
 out into the light, and looked at it herself. A queer, 
 mistrustful feeling seized her. She had thought it was 
 really a little more dashing than this ! But it was too 
 late to put it away now. Peter was on tiptoe, eager to 
 see it. 
 
 " Phew! " he exclaimed, with a kind of whistling 
 sound, at his first look. 
 
 He stood with his back against his little iron bed.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 221 
 
 He had on pajamas Lydia had made for him and of 
 which he was exceedingly proud. His face was very 
 sweet and clean and rosy and shining, after its enforced 
 scrubbing. His bare chubby feet were crossed, and he 
 held the photograph with both hands, studying it. 
 
 Finally he looked up, and handed the photograph 
 back to her. 
 
 " You can have it, Mother," he said, soberly. " I 
 was goin' to show it to the kids, but I ain't goin' to, 
 now. He don't look esactly like a Indian 
 fighter." 
 
 Then something he saw in his mother's face moved 
 his sympathy. He reached up and wound his arms 
 around her neck. 
 
 " He don't look esactly like I thought he did, Mother, 
 but he looks all right! " he said to her, brightly and 
 consolingly. 
 
 "I wish't he'd had on his buckskin suit, though, when 
 he had it tooken," he added, reflectively. 
 
 He was a long time going to sleep after he was in 
 bed. Lydia arranged a shade on one side of the gas- 
 burner, so that his bed should be in shadow, and seated 
 herself with her work. She was darning the mon- 
 strously big holes in a pair of his stockings. Peter 
 kept asking abrupt questions, more or less revelant to 
 their recent conversations. At last, sounds ceased to 
 come from his direction. She glanced at him he was 
 fast asleep, looking very blameless and cherubic, his 
 red lips a trifle parted.
 
 222 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 So after all these years of dignified, and even prim 
 behaviour, the people in the house did know that she 
 wasn't married ! 
 
 " What's ahead of us, anyway? " she thought to her- 
 self. " Just this grind, and loneliness, and poverty, 
 forever. Never any one congenial . . . nothing in 
 the world that I crave for myself or for him! What 
 have we got to look forward to? " 
 
 She dropped the stocking into her lap. At the end 
 of almost seven years of patient endurance of her 
 obscure lot, fires of rebellion had started in her. 
 
 A long fluttering sigh from Peter's lips broke in 
 on her thoughts, the little ghost of a sob. " Poor lit- 
 tle chap, he's worrying even in his dreams over whether 
 he ever had a ' regalar ' father! " 
 
 She laid aside her work, and bent over his bed, 
 pushing the moist hair back from his forehead. His 
 hands were outside the cover. They were still dimpled 
 baby hands, but they were rough and red. She stooped 
 and kissed them. 
 
 " Poor little boy, poor little boy ! " she whispered 
 to him. " I wish I could take it all myself all the 
 punishment, if it is punishment ... all the suffering! 
 That's the worst, darling, you have to suffer, too ! "
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 IN the first hour of the New Year, six years earlier, 
 Peter had entered the world. Lydia's final cries 
 of anguish had mingled with the blowing of whistles, 
 the booming, the terrific din, with which the great city 
 regularly greets the coming of the New Year; and 
 athwart the horns and boisterous, drunken merry-mak- 
 ing of revellers in the street below, Peter's first cry 
 broke on her ears. 
 
 He had been born in this same little room where he 
 lay asleep now in his shadowed bed. 
 
 In those hours when Peter and the New Year were 
 being born together, Lydia had cried aloud, wildly and 
 wrathfully, " Don't show me the child when it's born ! 
 I never want to look at it! How can mothers love 
 their children, when they've gone through this? " But 
 with his first cry no feeble wail, Peter had vigorously 
 saluted the world he was entering a wave of celestial 
 happiness passed over her soul. " Oh, it's a real 
 baby ! " she cried, incredulously. 
 
 Then she had fainted. And when she opened her 
 eyes again, she looked into the nice eyes of a grey- 
 haired doctor, who sat beside her bed, his fingers on 
 her pulse. At the foot of the bed Emma and the old 
 woman were standing, and another woman, with a 
 
 223
 
 224 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 bundle in her arms. The streets below were quieter. 
 
 " I suppose you don't want to see your son, little 
 mother? " the doctor asked. 
 
 " Son ! " Lydia laughed, almost gaily. Her thoughts 
 went back to a book she had loved u Peter Ibbet- 
 son." ... " His name's Peter, Doctor," she said, a 
 strange, wistful light coming into her eyes, hollow with 
 suffering. " Give him to me 1 " 
 
 And the little bundle was laid against her heart. 
 
 II 
 
 Emma Stark's gentle eyes were the magnet that had 
 drawn her on that day when she had been forced to 
 leave Rathemacher's. She had implored the little 
 washerwoman to find a room for her, telling her a story 
 of having been married, and deserted by her husband. 
 And Emma had arranged everything; she had secured 
 this little room for her, had gone for a nurse and 
 doctor the night of Peter's birth. 
 
 Whether it was true, that Emma was the child of 
 this old woman she called her cousin, as the old woman, 
 for some unfathomable reason, had whispered to her 
 on the occasion of her first call, and whether, if true, 
 Emma knew of the fact herself, Lydia had never dis- 
 covered. She had certainly never asked them ques- 
 tions. 
 
 And neither had they questioned her, though at first 
 she had feared the old woman might. 
 
 Through Emma, who had been told it at Miss Tomp- 
 kins', she learned that McCarthy had gone to a west- 
 ern city to live. It was with an odd sinking of heart
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 225 
 
 she heard that bit of news one of her few, intangible 
 hopes had vanished. Until she knew he had gone, she 
 had always hoped that some day she might run across 
 him on the street. But from the day she left Miss 
 Tompkins', she had never seen his friendly face. Sev- 
 eral years had elapsed now, since she had learned of his 
 leaving the city, and he had ceased to come into her 
 mind, except as a rare, passing thought. 
 
 Save at long intervals, she did not, any more-, dwell 
 intensely on the thought of Churchwell. And when 
 she did, it was almost entirely in connection with her 
 child. Her mind was singularly free from blame of 
 him for his part in her own fate. But at times, when 
 she had no money to buy for Peter things he needed, 
 or longed for, a very fury of resentment flamed up in 
 her against Churchwell. 
 
 One winter, the hardest she struggled through, when 
 Peter had had one child-illness after another, and was 
 inadequately clad, as she herself was, she had written 
 a long letter to Churchwell, saying to herself, angrily 
 and vindictively, that she did not care if it did fall 
 into the hands of his wife ! It had been a bitter, pas- 
 sionate letter, pleading for what Peter needed and what 
 Peter wanted. She had poured out on him, with no 
 sparing pen, all she and Peter were going through. 
 When the letter was finished, she had read it over, 
 tears streaming down her face upon its pages . . . and 
 then she had torn it into bits. 
 
 In all these years, she had heard nothing whatever 
 of him, nothing of Kingsville. At first, she had been 
 always straining her eyes in every direction, dreading
 
 226 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 yet hoping, always watching when she was on the 
 street, always expecting to meet him. There had been 
 but one vivid reminder of Kingsville. On a Novem- 
 ber afternoon, towards dusk, she was hurrying along 
 with a bundle of clothes she had washed and ironed 
 and was carrying home to a boarding house in one of 
 the West Forties. Peter was not quite two years old 
 then, and she was washing and ironing for their living, 
 under the direction of Emma and the old woman. She 
 was earning very little, and she had not yet learned to 
 manage her slender earnings as well as she learned to 
 manage them later. And she was very shabby, shab- 
 bier than any year before or after that; she had sold 
 her best clothes, after Peter's birth, and the jewelry 
 Churchwell had given her, because she had been in 
 pressing need of money; and she had not been able to 
 buy others ; she was wearing old things she had brought 
 from Kingsville. 
 
 It was a wonderful afternoon for November, and 
 she was breathing it in with delight, after bending over 
 the ironing-board since early morning. She had al- 
 most forgotten, for the moment, her miserable condi- 
 tion, when suddenly, nearing the boarding house of her 
 destination, she saw coming toward her a man and 
 woman whom she recognised. They were from Kings- 
 ville, a banker and his wife. She had had only a 
 bowing acquaintance with them there; but it flashed 
 across her that she had seen this man standing with 
 bared head on the edge of her father's grave. The 
 thought that they might recognise her almost suffocated 
 her. She wheeled abruptly, when she was almost in
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 227 
 
 their faces, speeding ahead of them till she reached 
 the corner, where she turned and fled. . . . For days 
 afterwards, she had been filled with excitement, sleep- 
 ing little at night and thinking all day of Kingsville. 
 
 in 
 
 But, for the most part, these had been years of such 
 intense activity since Peter's birth, she had been so 
 completely immersed in the problem of earning a living, 
 the present moment had been so insistent, that she had 
 had small opportunity for indulging in wretched reflec- 
 tions on the past, or in adventurous dreams of the 
 future. 
 
 For the first two years, she had tried washing and 
 ironing, under the direction of Emma and the old 
 woman, in order that she might be at home with her 
 baby. But while these German washerwomen, inured 
 to the heaviest labour from their childhood, could work 
 early, late, and ceaselessly, support themselves and save 
 money, Lydia had soon found it would be impossible 
 to support herself and Peter in this manner. She was 
 seldom actually ill, but she had not the strength requi- 
 site to turn off a profitable amount of this kind of work, 
 and the monotony of it had been almost insupportable 
 to her. 
 
 As soon as she had been able to make up her mind 
 to leave Peter for the whole day, she had secured a 
 position as housemaid. From then on, she had paid 
 the Starks for looking after him during the day, and 
 had given them money to buy milk and other simple 
 food for him. She continued to have great difficulty
 
 228 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 in making both ends meet, but she was gradually get- 
 ting along better, and, taking it all in all, was consider- 
 ably better off than when she had tried to wash and 
 iron for a living. 
 
 In the three years from the time she had left off 
 washing and ironing until she had secured her present 
 " place " with the Van Antwerps, which she had held 
 now a year, she had had four " places "; and she had 
 encountered many difficulties, many discouragements, 
 and countless heart-breaking mortifications to her pride 
 in adjusting herself to the status of servant. 
 
 But she had constantly gained in experience and skill. 
 She had learned from other servants, by observation, 
 and from mistresses, through instruction. The work 
 itself she had seldom found obnoxious, and often inter- 
 esting. She pored over cookbooks; and in her room 
 at night, Peter asleep in his little bed, she studied 
 books from a public library, on dietetics, on marketing, 
 on every imaginable subject relating to household econ- 
 omy. She had profited from all these efforts to im- 
 prove herself, till now at the Van Antwerps', she re- 
 ceived better wages than she had ever received before. 
 
 And although she did not admire either Mrs. Van 
 Antwerp, or Mrs. Van Antwerp's sister, Mrs. Schem- 
 merhorn, she could not deny that they were just and 
 generous to her. 
 
 The duties of both cook and maid devolved upon 
 her; but she did not object to this, as she felt her posi- 
 tion much less keenly than where other servants were 
 employed; and the Van Antwerp apartment had every 
 appliance for the speedy and satisfactory despatch of
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 229 
 
 her work. The laundry work was sent out; a bellboy 
 washed the windows ; and a strong Finnish woman came 
 once a week, and laboured the whole day under her 
 direction, shaking and sweeping rugs, polishing silver 
 and brass, waxing and polishing floors. 
 
 There were seldom guests, never more than two or 
 three at a time; while no visitor ever spent the night. 
 The Van Antwerp routine, in a word, was never dis- 
 turbed. Indeed, if the soul of Mrs. Van Antwerp had 
 a passion, Lydia perceived it a passion for that un- 
 broken, comfortable calm which results from routine. 
 
 Thursday afternoons she had for her own, the Van 
 Antwerps dining out at some hotel on that evening, ac- 
 cording to their custom of years' standing. On Sun- 
 days, dinner was at one, so that she had almost the 
 whole of the afternoon for herself and Peter. 
 
 Mr. Van Antwerp attended church with his wife and 
 sister-in-law on Sunday mornings, and dined at home 
 on that day. On other days he rarely dined at home, 
 but dined at his club, or elsewhere. 
 
 His business had something to do with stocks, securi- 
 ties, investments obscure symbols to Lydia, familiar 
 only with the tangible business activities of Kingsville, 
 such things as coal, marble, and dry-goods. Whatever 
 it was Mr. Van Antwerp made his money from, he was 
 always flying off at a moment's notice to London or 
 Paris, California or New Mexico, with no more con- 
 cern to himself or to any other member of his house- 
 hold than if he had been merely running over to Brook- 
 lyn or Jersey City. 
 
 The arrangements and evident understandings of
 
 230 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 this small, stiff, calm household where she was em- 
 ployed, were very remarkable to Lydia very baffling. 
 Mrs. Van Antwerp and her sister were originally 
 from the South, they had told her. Mr. Van Ant- 
 werp's origin, his reasons for marrying the lady who 
 was now Mrs. Van Antwerp obviously many years 
 older than he every aspect of this man, everything 
 pertaining to him, remained to her, after a year's obser- 
 vation, almost a complete, and sometimes rather a 
 stimulating mystery.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 IT was still perfectly dark, and it seemed to Lydia 
 she had been asleep only a few moments, but here 
 was Emma knocking at the door. 
 
 " Oh, Emma, it's not time to get up ! " she called 
 drowsily. 
 
 " Yes, yes, quarter to six, Lydia," came the soft, re- 
 gretful answer. 
 
 She sprang out of bed and lit the gas. Peter's eyes 
 suddenly opened, and he looked up, smiling thor- 
 oughly alive all in an instant. He was always awake, 
 squirming about, wanting to talk to her, exasperatingly 
 crickety, while she was still heavy with sleep. 
 
 "Can I get up?" 
 
 " No, not yet. Turn your eyes to the wall." 
 
 " Jake found a dog, Mother, and he's goin' to keep 
 it. It's a pup, it's awful thin it's got two sores on 
 it. Wish't I'd found it 'stead of Jake." 
 
 A short silence, broken by the faint rustle of Lydia's 
 dressing. She buttoned her coarse muslin corset-cover, 
 and pulled her black cotton petticoat over her head. 
 
 " Mother can I have a dog? " 
 
 " Yes, some day." Whatever Peter asked for, she 
 promised. They lived in an indeterminate, halcyon 
 future where dogs, and all things, would be possible. 
 
 231
 
 232 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 At least Peter's faith was constant and enormous in 
 this indeterminate but halcyon future. A time had 
 arrived when Lydia's faith in it had begun to waver. 
 
 "What kind of a dog?" 
 
 " Jake thinks it's a bloodhound, that it's goin' to be. 
 Oh, you mean the kind I want? I b'lieve I'd ruther 
 have a bloodhound, too, or a water spaniel." 
 
 They were still talking of dogs a half-hour later 
 when they made their way together down the three 
 flights of dark stairs inside the house, and down the 
 shorter flight from the front door to the street, and 
 along the street itself, which was almost completely 
 dark, except for the light of the street-lamps still burn- 
 ing. 
 
 Snow had fallen in the night; the street and side- 
 walks were white. They could feel ice under the snow, 
 and a fine cutting snow, like powdered glass, blew sting- 
 ingly into their faces. " Perhaps you'd better go back, 
 Peter." 
 
 " Oh, Mother! Please! " beseechingly. 
 
 " Well, come on, then." 
 
 This frigid, dark-grey, early-morning hour, when 
 she was hurrying along to her work, with all these 
 other working people hurrying to theirs, had never 
 ceased to be a depressing hour to Lydia. But to Peter, 
 his hand tightly, hotly, clasped in hers, running along 
 by her side, the hour was full of magic. 
 
 When they reached their parting place, at the foot 
 of the long flight of steps to the elevated station, Peter 
 hugged her, and clung to her for an instant. Hardly 
 any one was about yet, and so he was not afraid of
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 233 
 
 being discovered in these unmanly demonstrations. As 
 Lydia kissed him good-bye, he caught her face between 
 his hands. 
 
 " Mother, do you think it'll be long till we can have 
 the dog? " he asked, his eyes shining eagerly into hers. 
 
 To herself, Lydia said, "A dog! Why, you poor 
 little beggar, I can't even get you a lead soldier! " 
 
 But to Peter she answered, " Not very long, I hope ! 
 A collie, then, we decided ! Well, good-bye, good-bye ! 
 Mind Emma and My Old! Remember what you 
 promised me ! Don't forget, Peter ! Because I'll be 
 trusting you all day! Good-bye! " 
 
 And she ran up the steps, getting her ticket out of 
 her purse, to have it ready for the turn-stile. She 
 looked back. She could still see Peter, standing at the 
 bottom of the stairs, looking up after her, his rosy face 
 smiling after her, bravely, but a little wistfully, tufts 
 of his fair hair pushing out all around his forehead, 
 from' under his red knitted cap. He waved his hand 
 to her. She saw him turn, caught a glimpse of the 
 long red peak of his cap bobbing up and down his 
 back as he started off. Then a swirl of fine snow and 
 the dark street swallowed him up. Something closed 
 tight around her heart, and hurt her sharply. She 
 seemed still to see the long red peak of Peter's little 
 cap bobbing up and down his back, even after she had 
 seated herself, and was travelling along toward her 
 work in the fiercely bright car, with the dense darkness 
 outside. Peter's brave, eager, trusting eyes seemed 
 still to be looking into hers.
 
 234 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 ii 
 
 Breakfast at the Van Antwerps' was understood to 
 be ready promptly at eight. Immediately at eight, 
 Mrs. Van Antwerp, shortly followed by Mrs. Schem- 
 merhorn, would make her appearance in the dining 
 room. As a rule, Mr. Van Antwerp made his appear- 
 ance not more than a few moments later; but occa- 
 sionally the ladies had already left the table. It did 
 not seem to make the slightest difference to him whether 
 the ladies of his household breakfasted with, or before, 
 him; neither did it seem to make the slightest difference 
 to the ladies themselves. Not that it was an impolite 
 household. On the contrary. 
 
 The clock on the dining room mantel stood at a 
 minute to eight. 
 
 Lydia switched on the lights, and a primrose glow 
 overspread the breakfast service. 
 
 In her little white cap a severe and never ceasing 
 humiliation to her unquenchably proud spirit her 
 only ornament the plain Third Avenue wedding-ring, 
 she gave a last scrutiny to the table. It was almost 
 identical with thousands of other breakfast tables, in 
 thousands of other almost identical, tropically-heated 
 dining rooms all over the city, all over the country from 
 ocean to ocean. 
 
 She laid the morning paper beside the ash-tray at 
 Mr. Van Antwerp's place. 
 
 To her astonishment, he came in first. She could 
 not remember that it had ever happened before. 
 
 She had thought of a Roman Senator, the first time
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 235 
 
 she saw Mr. Van Antwerp. With his soft, measured 
 gait, his immobile, chilling, epicurean countenance, she 
 had fancied him with some amusement to herself 
 wrapped in the folds of a toga. 
 
 She had been exceedingly grateful to him, when he 
 had taken no notice of her. For some weeks, when he 
 had had occasion to address her he had called her 
 " Clara," apparently confusing her with the preceding 
 maid, whose name had been Clara. 
 
 Her experience in her last " place " before the Van 
 Antwerps' had been distinctly different. The man of 
 the house had waylaid her at every opportunity, had 
 pressed her hand dusting his study, and had tried to 
 kiss her. 
 
 It had been almost delightful when Mr. Van Ant- 
 werp had thought it was still " Clara " who was hand- 
 ing him a fresh box of matches. 
 
 However, through a succession of emotional nuances, 
 she had grown to regard with some irritation his com- 
 plete oblivion of her existence as a human being, as a 
 young human being, as a young woman and person- 
 able 1 It unmistakably piqued her, at last, to be looked 
 on by him as nothing more than one of the pieces of his 
 domiciliary machinery, as merely Clara's successor 
 the emptier of his ash-tray! 
 
 He nodded, almost imperceptibly, and took his seat 
 at the table. As he unfolded his paper, he glanced 
 sideways at her. 
 
 Mrs. Van Antwerp* came into the room. " Good 
 morning, William." Her voice was heavy, but not 
 devoid of breeding.
 
 236 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 " Good morning." Mr. Van Antwerp looked up 
 from his paper very briefly. 
 
 With the entrance of Mrs. Schemmerhorn, there was 
 another exchange of good mornings, civil, but not effu- 
 sive. 
 
 Mrs. Van Antwerp was rather comely; her voice 
 seemed not to belong to her own face. Mrs. Schem- 
 merhorn was a tall, angular woman, with conspicuous 
 teeth; an undue proportion of bone material appeared 
 to have gone to her making-up. However, there was 
 a look about her, even more markedly than about her 
 comelier sister, of a forerunning of gentle ancestry; 
 you could no more doubt her quality than the quality 
 of a Heppelwhite chair. Lydia could not conceive a 
 drop of wife-blood or mother-blood ever to have 
 coursed through the veins of these punctilious sisters; 
 could not conceive them ever to have undergone those 
 mysterious, excruciating, exquisite, thrilling adventures 
 leading to and culminating in motherhood. Yet the 
 historical facts were Mrs. Schemmerhorn mourned 
 a husband, once flesh, and two children who had died 
 in infancy; Mrs. Van Antwerp, twice wed, and during 
 her first marriage twice a mother. 
 
 " Did you have a good night, Julia? " inquired Mrs. 
 Van Antwerp. There was always a thorough exchange 
 of experience between them in regard to the night's 
 hours. 
 
 " I slept very well the early part of the night. But 
 I heard the clock strike three, four, and five ! " 
 
 " Well, well ! The wind blowing always keeps 
 me awake, too."
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 237 
 
 " Your lame shoulder, Carrie," asked Mrs. Schem- 
 merhorn, helping herself to a hot muffin, " how is it 
 this morning? " 
 
 Thereupon ensued the sisters' regular breakfast dis- 
 cussion of their ailments, mentioned with eminent re- 
 finement but minutely. They gave no little thought to 
 the condition of their aging though still admirably pre- 
 served persons. 
 
 As usual, Mr. Van Antwerp took no part in their 
 breakfast conversation. He talked less, and ate less, 
 than any other man Lydia had ever known or had op- 
 portunity to observe. His breakfast consisted princi- 
 pally this morning, as always, of the morning paper, 
 black coffee, and cigarettes. 
 
 Lydia had frequently speculated on his age. He 
 was not young, yet she hesitated to call him old. In 
 a different way, he seemed as stiff and formal as his 
 wife and sister-in-law. But Lydia could imagine his 
 unbending. This morning as she stood by the break- 
 fast table, black-uniformed, white-capped, alert and re- 
 spondent, the idea of Mr. Van Antwerp's unbending 
 recurred to her. It had been an unmistakable personal 
 glance he had given her, at the moment of his seating 
 himself at the table and unfolding his paper, and she 
 felt a faint fluttering of excitement. 
 
 in 
 
 The sisters rose from the table together. Mrs. Van 
 Antwerp said, most courteously, " You will excuse us, 
 please, William." 
 
 Mr. Van Antwerp looked up from his paper, and as
 
 2 3 8 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 his wife's straight, broad, black-garbed back, following 
 the straight, narrow, black-garbed back of Mrs. Schem- 
 merhorn, was vanishing through the door into the hall, 
 called out to her, " Carrie, please have a steamer trunk 
 brought up from the locker to-day." 
 
 "Eh, William? Sailing Saturday? Well, you'll 
 have a rough passage, I'm afraid." She painted to the 
 snowstorm racing past the windows. 
 
 Lydia withdrew to the butler's pantry. As she 
 pushed through the swinging door, she heard " Lon- 
 don, Rotterdam," in Mr. Van Antwerp's odd, rapid, 
 muffled utterance. 
 
 Her hands began to shake slightly. She sorted out 
 some silver from the plates she had removed, and 
 placed it in a pan of hot suds. 
 
 She could hear the indistinct sounds of Mr. and 
 Mrs. Van Antwerp's voices. They were talking busi- 
 ness, one subject in which they seemed to have mutual 
 interest. There was something in the sound of their 
 voices, low and confidentially toned, that she resented 
 vaguely, that was even a little revolting, inexplicably 
 revolting, to her, and she left the silver soaking in the 
 hot suds, and went from the pantry into the kitchen. 
 
 She set her breakfast on the kitchen table. Three 
 times a day she ate her meal here, alone, in the kitchen ; 
 never without a feeling of protest. But as she sat 
 down to it now, an overwhelming sense of humiliation 
 at her position swept over her. 
 
 She pushed her plate away from her, and was look- 
 ing at it, at the slice of bacon and the muffin, her 
 mind sunk in sudden miserable, mutinous reflections,
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 239 
 
 when Mrs. Van Antwerp entered. "The list, Lydia." 
 
 Lydia handed her a slip of paper on which she had 
 written a marketing list. 
 
 She heard the outer door of the apartment click shut. 
 Mrs. Van Antwerp had started; no weather interfered 
 with her marketing; she never ordered over the tele- 
 phone. Mr. Van Antwerp must be still over his news- 
 paper. 
 
 She entered the dining room softly, a tray in her 
 hand. She had countless times entered the dining room 
 under conditions precisely like the present conditions, 
 when Mrs. Van Antwerp had started on her market- 
 ing, when Mrs. Schemmerhorn was securely isolated 
 in her bedroom at the opposite end of the apartment, 
 and when Mr. Van Antwerp, as now, was absorbed in 
 his morning paper. For the first of these countless 
 times, she experienced a sensation, distinctly but terri- 
 fyingly delicious, of being alone with him. The softly 
 swinging pantry door had shut them in, secretly and 
 provocatively. She started to remove the water- 
 glasses, careful not to disturb Mr. Van Antwerp, but 
 tinglingly conscious that she wished him aware of her 
 presence. 
 
 She was lifting the marmalade jar in its silver holder 
 when he dropped his paper, and took the cigarette from 
 his lips. " Is there anything I can do for you ? " he 
 asked, in a voice even lower than his customary voice. 
 " I may be gone some time." 
 
 Lydia returned his gaze unswervingly. She did not 
 know exactly what he meant, and was afraid to venture 
 on an answer.
 
 2 4 o THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 " I don't think you were born to this." He indi- 
 cated with his eyes the tray her hand was resting on. 
 
 " Unhappily not! " she answered, smiling, but a trifle 
 scornfully. 
 
 " You have a history," he said, slowly knocking the 
 ash from his cigarette. "I thought so!" 
 
 ' You thought so ? When you confused me with 
 your former slave? All those weeks you honoured me 
 with her name ' Clara ' ? " 
 
 An amused smile met hers frankly. It completely 
 transformed the man's face. 
 
 " That was rather astute, on my part I thought," 
 he said, still smiling, and raising his eyebrows signifi- 
 cantly. " You didn't perceive that it was a piece of 
 play-acting? Ah, I credited you with more penetra- 
 tion!" 
 
 " Perhaps you don't rate your histrionic powers as 
 high as they deserve ! " she retorted, with a low laugh. 
 " You were very convincing! " It seemed to her as if 
 some fountain of her being had been unsealed, and was 
 bubbling, bubbling! She would have loved to laugh 
 out gaily, ringingly, had she dared. 
 
 " I wish you might see Clara ! Only a blind man, 
 or an imbecile, could be guilty of the confusion you 
 accuse me of! " 
 
 He relit his cigarette and looked at Lydia deliber- 
 ately, with candid admiration. 
 
 " A man must feign blindness, my girl, to retain his 
 peace of home, when you are in it! And he must be 
 actually blind, to retain his peace of mind! You are a
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 241 
 
 disturber," he added, slowly, with unmistakable but 
 controlled intensity. 
 
 They looked into each other's eyes. Lydia felt her 
 pulses beating fiercely. 
 
 In the tense silence, a discreet rustling was heard, 
 and she hurriedly made a pretence of rearranging her 
 tray as Mrs. Schemmerhorn entered. 
 
 " My handkerchief did I drop it at my place, 
 Lydia ? " she asked. 
 
 When the handkerchief was not found, she seated 
 herself, with a slightly tentative air, in the chair next 
 to Mr. Van Antwerp. 
 
 " Well, William, isn't the weather er just now 
 almost unsafe for you to think of crossing?" she 
 asked with polite solicitude. 
 
 Lydia had a fleeting, tail-of-eye vision, as she de- 
 parted with her tray, of Mr. Van Antwerp coolly, re- 
 luctantly, with approximative if not actual rudeness, 
 transferring his attention from his paper to Mrs. 
 Schemmerhorn. She saw his eyes had narrowed 
 slightly, and she fancied a sort of frigid, black-flame 
 rage in them. She was enraged, too, enraged from the 
 same cause, and terrified from others. 
 
 IV 
 
 An hour and a half later, in the course of her morn- 
 ing routine, she entered Mr. Van Antwerp's bathroom. 
 The sight of the flesh-brushes, sponges, toilet-waters, 
 unguents, had always affected her in a peculiar and not 
 agreeable way. Something in her recoiled from the
 
 242 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 idea of a man .submitting himself to the elaborate and 
 calculated toilet this bathroom implied. 
 
 She was not free this morning from the usual recoil, 
 the usual slight distrust, as she put his Sybaritic bath- 
 room to rights. But she was in the grip of intricate 
 emotions. She hardly knew if she were wretched or 
 happy, disgusted and depressed, or wildly jubilant. It 
 seemed to her that she was all of these things at once. 
 She kept saying to herself, " I'm glad he's going, day 
 after to-morrow! I'm glad he's going to be gone a 
 long time ! I'm glad there probably won't be a chance 
 for another word alone between us! " And all the 
 time, she knew she was not glad he was going, not glad 
 he was going to be away a long time, not glad there 
 would be no further chance for secret words or glances. 
 
 She said to herself that it was coarse and low, this 
 significant conversation with Mrs. Van Antwerp's hus- 
 band in Mrs. Van Antwerp's home. She had felt self- 
 conscious and ashamed when she confronted her on her 
 return from market; and she was uneasy at the very 
 thought of Mrs. Schemmerhorn. But all the time, 
 despite her self-reproaches, her apprehensions, she was 
 faint and dizzy, with the sound of Mr. Van Antwerp's 
 low-spoken words still in her ears, with the memory 
 of that singular gaze, at once so frigid, so burning! 
 
 She touched a button, flooding the oval face of the 
 bathroom mirror with dazzling light, and studied her 
 face in the mirror before which Mr. Van Antwerp per- 
 formed the rites of his morning toilet. A resolute 
 scrutiny revealed tiny lines in her cheeks, like almost 
 imperceptible leaf-veinings ; faint lines encircled her
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 243 
 
 throat, and horizontally across her forehead were 
 other faint lines. Radiating from the tails of her eyes 
 were lines still exceedingly delicate . . . but a few 
 more years, other lines would join these . . . crow's- 
 feet ! And what chance, then, for another fling at life, 
 with all its sweet perils ! 
 
 Finishing her work in the bathroom, she returned to 
 the bedroom, and dusted the white woodwork of the 
 window-sill which each morning had accumulated a pow- 
 dering of coal dust from the outside air. Great clouds 
 of snow were still flying past the window. She was 
 safe and warm here, inside the apartment. But what 
 about Peter? Was he safe and warm, too? Of 
 course ! Peter was all right ! Why did she keep wor- 
 rying about Peter? 
 
 She looked down through three stories of space into 
 the street. Only a few people were in sight. A de- 
 livery wagon was passing, the great patient horses lift- 
 ing their feet cautiously from the icy street. . . . 
 Peter's face came back to her as she had seen it when 
 he held her face in his hands and asked, " Mother, do 
 you think it'll be long till we can have the dog?" 
 She saw the long peak of his red cap bobbing up and 
 down his back, as he started off in the swirling snow. 
 She tried to shut out the sight. But she could not shut 
 it out. It was such a simple sight, yet something about 
 it hurt her almost unbearably. 
 
 Down in front of the apartment house was a little 
 parked space in which two historical gentlemen in 
 bronze were supporting each other. In the summer, 
 when the shrubbery was in leaf, the two historical gen-
 
 244 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 tlemen were almost obscured by foliage. The snow 
 had drifted on their feet now. But Lydia was not 
 thinking of them. She was thinking of Peter. Peter's 
 clear eyes were looking directly and compellingly into 
 hers. She had said to him, " I'll be trusting you all 
 day, Peter!" And all day, Peter would be trusting 
 her, too ! Could she betray him that brave, wistful 
 little chap ? She had placed on him the eternally inef- 
 faceable stain of bastardy had she not wronged him 
 enough ? her love-child ! 
 
 Then, the next moment, a white, chiselled face, look- 
 ing strange, potent things, pierced its way between her 
 face and Peter's face shut Peter's face away from 
 her. . . . 
 
 Then Peter's eyes again, and Peter's rosy face, 
 Peter's little roughened hands, and Peter's big head 
 with its shock of fair tousled hair! . . . And again 
 Lydia said to herself, with renewed resolution, and al- 
 most ferociously, "We can't have dogs, Peter! So 
 many, many things we want, boy, we can't have ! But 
 we've got each other ! And I'll work for you, just as 
 I've worked for you all these years, Peter. I'll be 
 straight and honourable, and I'll make up to you, 
 darling, just as far as I can, in every straight and hon- 
 ourable way I know, for bringing you into the world ! 
 I'll do it! We'll live for each other, Peter, and we'll 
 live and work straight ! "
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 MR. VAN ANTWERP came home from Europe 
 in the first week of March, but hardly had he 
 landed when he sailed for England again. In his two 
 or three days at home, he had been completely absorbed 
 in business, and had spent even fewer hours in the 
 apartment than he usually spent there. Lydia had just 
 caught his eyes on hers during the first breakfast 
 for one fleeting instant, when Mrs. Schemmerhorn, 
 looking up from her olate, had immeshed both pairs of 
 eyes in her own. 
 
 He was in Europe now. Mrs. Van Antwerp and 
 Mrs. Schemmerhorn had gone to Atlantic City for their 
 yearly sojourn there of one week in the month of 
 April; they had both expressed to Lydia the hope 
 that she would take a good rest in their absence, which 
 she had interpreted as a suggestion that she should 
 enter on her duties in the apartment with renewed 
 vigour on their return. Well, as a matter of fact, 
 she had been going through her work for some time, 
 not really negligently, but certainly listlessly. Doubt- 
 less they had noticed it. 
 
 The week of her vacation was half over, and she was 
 seated in her bedroom, sewing a lace collar on a dress 
 she had bought a few days before. She had paid five 
 
 245
 
 246 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 dollars and eighty-nine cents for the dress and in the 
 shop it had looked pretty, but now it frankly looked its 
 price. 
 
 She had borrowed the money from Emma to buy 
 it, and little by little, as she could spare, she would pay 
 it back. But as she sat sewing on the dress now, she 
 was conscious of a dull resentment in connection with 
 the loan. The slight reservation in Emma's manner, 
 when she handed the money to her, was as if she had 
 said, " We wear our clothes till they are worn out 
 before we buy new ones." Not, to be sure, that she 
 had said anything at all. 
 
 Lydia darted her eyes off her sewing. Emma had 
 knocked, and entered, without waiting for her to an- 
 swer. Oh, dear, what had Peter done now? She was 
 certain it was something in connection with Peter. 
 
 Emma's cheeks were pink, and her brown eyes were 
 faintly troubled. She nervously patted an iron-holder 
 she held in her hands. 
 
 " I'm sorry to bother you, Lydia, but did Peter 
 bring our stove-blacking over here? " 
 
 "Stove-blacking! What would Peter want with 
 your stove-blacking?" Lydia asked impatiently, as if 
 stove-blacking were the last thing in the world Peter 
 would touch, when she knew, perfectly well, that no 
 human mind was ingenious enough to fathom where 
 Peter's budding desires and Peter's magnificent over- 
 plus of energy might lead him. But then Emma, even 
 Emma, whom she sincerely loved, and knew she loved, 
 had irritated her more than a little in these last few 
 weeks. Who had not irritated her, lately, when it
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 247 
 
 came to that? Her mind was like a raw wound the 
 least touch galled it. 
 
 " Peter's out with the boys," she said, sulkily, as if 
 trying to prove an alibi for him. She knew that 
 neither Emma nor the old woman approved of Peter's 
 ever being downstairs with the boys, and at this mo- 
 ment it gave her a slight, malicious satisfaction to make 
 Emma understand she was managing Peter herself. 
 
 " Yes, but he was up again, after he went down," re- 
 plied Emma in her quietly sweet, long-suffering voice. 
 " He was around the shelf where we keep the stove- 
 blacking, and now it's not there. I thought he might 
 a-brought it in here. It's a new box. I'd just put it 
 on the shelf before Peter came in," continued Emma, 
 not often so persistent. 
 
 The old woman came shuffling through the door, 
 and stood beside Emma, glaring at Lydia. Apparently 
 Peter had, at last, put too strong a strain upon her re- 
 gard for him. " Ach, he took it, for sure ! He takes 
 everything, that boy! " 
 
 ' Takes everything ! " Lydia was aflame in an in- 
 stant. "What do you mean?" 
 
 " He lost the hammer and them good shears we 
 had!" 
 
 Lydia was furious with Peter, but more furious with 
 his accusers. " I'll replace whatever Peter's lost," she 
 said haughtily. " I'll see that he doesn't bother you 
 much longer! " she added, with only a vague idea what 
 she intended by this threat. 
 
 The old woman lubbered back across the hall. 
 Emma withdrew murmuring soothingly.
 
 2 4 B THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 " All this fuss about a box of stove-polish! " Lydia 
 said to herself. Reason would have told her that to 
 these German washerwomen, passionately neat, pas- 
 sionately frugal, a box of stove-polish was as important 
 as any of the importunate issues of her own life to 
 her. But she was not listening to the voice of rea- 
 son. 
 
 She heard Peter stamping noisily up the stairs. He 
 was whistling, his smiling face, his mop of flaxen hair, 
 his hands and clothes, all bearing damnatory evidence 
 to the recent accusations against him from head to 
 toe he was smeared with blacking. 
 
 Lydia seized him angrily. " What did you mean 
 to dare take their stove-polish? " 
 
 Peter's jaunty air vanished. 
 
 "What did you mean? What did you mean?" 
 shaking him roughly. 
 
 " I needed it," Peter gasped. 
 
 "Needed it!" She was almost in tears, and the 
 immediate occasion, as she dimly realised, was by no 
 means the real occasion the storm had been gather- 
 ing in her for months. " Oh, you " She paused 
 for a word. 
 
 Peter supplied it. 
 
 " Brat ! " he finished, with satanic divination, look- 
 ing her saucily in the eye. 
 
 Lydia stared at him, stupefied this sinner of her 
 own blood, not yet separated from his baby-teeth, 
 wholly unterrified, even humorously relishing the situa- 
 tion. 
 
 She burst into tears.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 249 
 
 Peter subsided into a scared quiet. " I had a acci- 
 dent," he said. 
 
 " Accident! What kind of an accident? " 
 
 " I couldn't help it, Mother." His lips began to 
 tremble. " They was a nail sticking up it teared a 
 hole in my stocking." 
 
 ' Your new stockings ! " Lydia exclaimed almost 
 despairingly. 
 
 Peter courageously turned the rear of his leg for her 
 inspection. A great gap appeared, and the plump calf, 
 laid bare in the opening, was heavily smeared with 
 black. A casual glance could scarcely have detected 
 where black stocking stopped, blackened leg com- 
 menced. 
 
 "What on earth!" 
 
 " I wetted the box and blacked my leg with it so the 
 hole wouldn't show," explained Peter quickly. 
 
 " So that's what you were doing with the stove-pol- 
 ish!" 
 
 Suddenly Lydia sniffed. " Peter!" She sniffed 
 again, dismayed now. " Peter, what's that in your 
 pocket? " 
 
 Peter drew something from the pocket of his knicker- 
 bockers and held it out tenderly in his grimy little 
 hands. " I found it under the electric light! " It was 
 a dead English sparrow. 
 
 "Peter, how horrible!" Lydia snatched the bird 
 from his hands. 
 
 "Mother, Mother!" 
 
 She threw the window open and hurled the dead 
 sparrow down through space.
 
 250 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 Peter threw himself on the floor, sobbing passion- 
 ately. 
 
 " Get up, Peter! Stop your crying! " 
 
 He lifted himself heavily from the floor. Tears had 
 washed rivulets down his smeared cheeks, still infan- 
 tile, exquisite, of rose-petal texture. " It's . . . it's 
 . . . the only pet ... I ever had ... in my life ! " 
 he brought out brokenly between his sobs. 
 
 " Pet ! Why, you couldn't have that bird for a pet, 
 Peter ! It was dead and and coming to pieces ! " 
 Her voice softened. 
 
 " I was goin' to stuff it. Jake knows how, he's got 
 a stuffed robin-bird. And now you throwed it away! 
 Mother, I hate you! " 
 
 " Oh, Peter ! " She tried to draw him to her. 
 
 " I hate you ! " he reiterated, fighting away from her. 
 
 He threw himself on his little bed, and Lydia picked 
 up her sewing. 
 
 II 
 
 Peter was not part and parcel of herself; he was 
 something quite distinct from her, thinking hostile 
 thoughts of her, looking hatred at her! A long dis- 
 tance separated them now. 
 
 Now and then a dying sob smote her ears. He was 
 eating his stormy little heart out over the loss of the 
 dead English sparrow. His cheap, shabby clothes, his 
 scuffed, stubby little shoes wrung her heart. She de- 
 tested herself for having bought this new dress, she 
 detested herself for her impatience, her violence, with 
 him. Who was she, to have guardianship over a child?
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 251 
 
 Why, she was the veriest child herself in her dealings 
 with Peter. Other women were they children, too ? 
 Or was she, alone, among women, a shameless child? 
 Oh, everything was wrong! If only she and Peter 
 could lie down to-night in this little room, and never 
 wake! 
 
 Some time during the night, she was wakened by a 
 small arm stealing about her neck, by a choking, penitent 
 voice. " Mother, Mother, I love you ! I told you I 
 hated you, Mother, but I love you better than any- 
 thing else in the world. I don't hate you, Mother ! I 
 said I did, but I don't ! " 
 
 There in the dark, that April night, life was re- 
 created good to Lydia. Since Peter's first cry, ending 
 her travail, that mad New Year's morn, nothing had 
 sounded in her ears so ineffably sweet as this little 
 reassuring voice. 
 
 Peter's love, that precious love of her love-child, 
 the feel of this little soft arm around her neck ah, 
 what more did she need?
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 IT was Sunday morning. Lydia was dusting the 
 books in the library of the Van Antwerp apart- 
 ment. She loved to handle them; they were not new, 
 and every book had William Van Antwerp written on 
 its fly-leaf, histories, classic essayists and poets, a sprin- 
 kling of classic fiction and many French and German 
 works. They were merely an item of furniture now; 
 no one except herself seemed ever to look at them. 
 
 The room with its unused books, its formal, unused 
 air, had always faintly depressed her, but this morning, 
 she felt a great charm in it. It was shimmering with 
 the morning sunshine of May, and the fragrance of 
 lilacs arranged in vases and jars brought back Kings- 
 ville to her with painful delight brought back 
 Churchwell and her love for him. Seven years since 
 that one brief rapturous love-passage in her life, with 
 its disastrous ending. She wondered how starved 
 as she was for love, life burning with a thousand 
 intricate desires she had ever been able to endure 
 the long, dull, weary, humiliating, menial years that 
 stretched behind her. " I'm going to live again 
 before it's too late 1 " she said to herself dizzily. 
 " I'm going to live ! I'm going to live I " 
 
 The day before Mr. Van Antwerp had come home 
 
 252
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 253 
 
 from Europe, and this morning he had departed start- 
 lingly from Van Antwerp custom; he had not accom- 
 panied his wife and sister-in-law to church. At break- 
 fast, he had announced his intention of going to his 
 office, instead, to look over some correspondence. 
 
 Lydia had a vague, perturbed notion that this an- 
 nouncement concerned herself. 
 
 The ladies were at church now. 
 
 She listened tremulously for sounds. 
 
 The outer door of the apartment opened and her 
 hand, running over the mantel with her dust-cloth, came 
 to a standstill. A warm exquisite faintness swept 
 her. She heard some one moving softly along the 
 narrow hall of the apartment, and then through a magic 
 haze she saw Mr. Van Antwerp standing in the door- 
 way. He wore a frock coat, and removing his silk 
 hat, held it in his gloved hand. His ceremonial attire 
 awed and charmed her. She knew that tinging her 
 cheeks and flaming in her eyes were youth and ardour 
 and allure. 
 
 In the doorway, only a few feet from where she 
 stood in this silent, sunlit room, perfumed with May, 
 was a man whose white, carven face fascinated her 
 beyond all reason or resistance! He fascinated her 
 because she had known few men, and this man was 
 different from such men as she had known. He fasci- 
 nated her because she felt that he knew intimately all 
 those vast, secret, labyrinthine phases of life whose 
 existence she knew so little about, and was intensely 
 curious about. Above all, he fascinated her because 
 overwhelmingly powerful forces in her own nature,
 
 254 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 which had lain dormant for years, were reawakening 
 wildly, clamouringly. And at this moment of their 
 reawakening, nature offered her Mr. Van Antwerp, 
 mature, highly sophisticated, dissipated, baffling. 
 
 She was delirious with the thought of the fires that 
 frigid exterior might cover. She was intoxicated with 
 a sense, long denied her, of personal power. She, her- 
 self, was to release the fires under that sheath of ice! 
 
 Mr. Van Antwerp walked across the room to where 
 she stood, still with her hand on the mantelshelf, and 
 drew off his gloves. 
 
 "You understood I would come back?" he asked, 
 almost in a whisper, with his slight but transforming 
 smile. 
 
 II 
 
 And then, a brief awkward silence obtained. Lydia 
 felt at sudden and singular disadvantage. He had 
 come back to see her alone, and momentous things were 
 trembling in the golden air of the room. Yet her cap 
 and apron marked off an impassable gulf between her- 
 self and this man in his irreproachable Sunday morning 
 elegance. She felt a servant before him. 
 
 " I've always been opposed, on principle, to intrigues 
 of this sort " He made a gesture indicating he 
 meant within the walls of his home. u But what 
 would you? when Lydia enters! " 
 
 He had never before called her by her name, and it 
 gave her an odd start, keenly pleasurable. 
 
 He regarded her quizzically, and after a few jesting 
 commonplaces, began questioning her, not rudely, but
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 255 
 
 with unconcealed curiosity. She told him that she en- 
 joyed dusting his books. 
 
 "You're a reader, then? Novels, I suppose," he 
 suggested. 
 
 " Not always." 
 
 " What else, for instance? " 
 
 " Oh, many things Pater, Matthew Arnold, 
 Schopenhauer." 
 
 "By Gad!" He drew a cigarette from his case, 
 and lighted it. " By Gad ! Pater Schopenhauer 
 and this!" He motioned with his cigarette to her 
 dust-cloth. 
 
 " You think Pater and Schopenhauer would prevent 
 my dusting your apartment properly? " she asked, smil- 
 ing a little. 
 
 " No, probably not. I should say not." He blew 
 a long column of smoke from his lips. 
 
 Suddenly his face sobered. " My girl, it's astound- 
 ing to me that you're doing the sort of thing you are ! " 
 
 " It used to astound me, too ! It's still like a dream 
 to me that I am. But I wasn't trained to do any- 
 thing. I had to do what I could. There was this, 
 or clerking in a shop." 
 
 He threw his cigarette into a cloisonne jar. 
 " Never in Christ's world were you intended for 
 this!" he said, and drew her slim fingers away from 
 the dust-cloth they were still clinging to. He held 
 them delicately in his. 
 
 " Not pot-wrestler's hands, Lydia, oh, no ! " he ex- 
 claimed. ' They attracted me even before your face 
 did!"
 
 256 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 He lifted them to his lips and kissed them lightly. 
 " You will never lack a lover while these hands re- 
 main to you ! " 
 
 He drew her gently to him. " I'm saturated with 
 you, my girl ! " he said, in a barely audible voice. 
 " You haven't been out of my mind a moment since 
 that morning last winter . . ." 
 
 With a sudden movement, she released herself and 
 drew a little away from him, placing her hands against 
 the lapels of his coat. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Van Antwerp, I've been like a nun, for 
 years ! I don't know why I can't resist you ! But 
 don't think I give up like this ... to any one . . . 
 just at a word! I swear! I swear I haven't been 
 like that! I'm not like that! " 
 
 " No, no, no . . ." he soothed her, drawing her to 
 him again. "No, no I don't think that!" He 
 smiled reassuringly into her troubled eyes. " Do you 
 suppose, for one moment, my dear, that you would 
 interest me as you do, if I thought you were any ordi- 
 nary little drab ? " 
 
 She felt against her burning cheek the cool contact 
 of his. " Let me look after you, dear, and make life 
 a little more worth while to you! " he said, caressingly. 
 " Let me look after you, now, my girl, my lass! " he 
 whispered.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 AT first, it had been very wonderful to Lydia like 
 one of the transformations of fairyland, to have 
 money again, to keep Peter at boarding-school and be 
 able to pay his school bills promptly, to send him to a 
 " boys' camp " in vacation-time, to dress him well, to 
 dress herself richly and fashionably, and to have a 
 luxurious little apartment she could call her own. 
 
 More than two years had passed now since that Sun- 
 day morning in the month of May that had so com- 
 pletely altered the complexion of her life. 
 
 And sometimes, yet, it seemed a miracle to her that 
 it was her own hand, this delicate hand, lying idle in her 
 silken lap. In her rare moments of reflection, she 
 knew herself a changed creature inwardly, even more 
 momentously than these jewelled fingers outwardly be- 
 tokened. If she had not lost in the course of these 
 two years whatever delicate reserves of character she 
 had once possessed, if she had not lost all her early 
 ideals, she had at least banished most of the ideals, 
 and hidden the delicate reserves securely in some inner 
 chamber, and refused to remember that they were 
 there. Looking back, as once in a long while she did, 
 on her relation to Ransom Churchwell, she felt that 
 she had been a very pure and innocent young pet-sorv ^ 
 the time in her life when he was her lover, 
 
 257
 
 258 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 Life was a far different thing to her now, and men 
 far different beings, from what she had once thought. 
 Through the bitter, poverty-stricken years in Kings- 
 ville, after her father had been forced to resign from 
 Ransom College, and all through those obscure years 
 when she had worked for herself and Peter, first as a 
 washerwoman, then as a house-servant, she had kept 
 her belief, despite her own cruelly-disappointing lot, in 
 the essential sweetness and goodness of life, and in the 
 essential goodness and cleanness of the human heart. 
 But after two years and a half of Mr. Van Antwerp's 
 tutoring, and the tutoring of men she knew through him 
 or, in the last year, men she knew through other 
 avenues, she no longer believed in the essential clean- 
 ness and uprightness of the human heart. And she 
 laughed at the idea of a purpose that made for good 
 running through the universe ! 
 
 Everywhere under the fair, glittering surface of 
 things, she saw the world saturated with vice the very 
 existence of which had been unguessed by her through 
 twenty-seven years of her life. Back of their distin- 
 guished manners, their correct morning clothes, their 
 frock coats, their immaculate evening attire, men ap- 
 peared to her, alike, incorrigible beasts. Society pre- 
 tended not to know this. Wives of the bosom were 
 perhaps genuinely ignorant of it. Women, such as 
 she had become, knew it for a desolating certainty. 
 
 At times, she was inclined to think that Life was the 
 diabolic perpetration of an Arch Joker. She did not 
 know where she was drifting to, or what end this Arch 
 Joker had in store for her. . . .
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 259 
 
 She loved the perfumed luxury that surrounded her, 
 she loved the beautiful soft gowns and the jewels she 
 wore, she loved to see plays and operas and pictures, 
 loved to buy things for Peter which " the other boys 
 had." But her life, if she stopped to think of it she 
 tried frantically not to stop and think of it she 
 loathed. She loathed it, but she had made it for her- 
 self, with conscious efforts, and with success, and she did 
 not see how to escape from it now. Except in moments 
 of desperation lulls that inevitably occurred now and 
 then in the course of her feverish hours she did not 
 genuinely desire to escape from it. She could hardly 
 conceive herself going back to that dull, laborious life 
 she had known before. Occasionally, she dwelt briefly 
 on the idea that another miracle might some day in- 
 tervene in her behalf. Another shift, and perhaps she 
 would be lifted out of this life into another life where 
 she would be as comfortable materially as in her pres- 
 ent life, but where she might enjoy respectability. She 
 jeered at respectability; but in her secret heart she 
 ceaselessly and passionately craved it. Perhaps some 
 day, before she had lost her youthful charm and her 
 power, she would meet a man who knowing all there 
 was to know about her would wish to marry her. Such 
 luck actually did come, sometimes, to women like her- 
 self . . . 
 
 II 
 
 One November evening, after dinner, she dismissed 
 her maid, and at a little after seven o'clock was en- 
 tirely alone in her apartment.
 
 2 6o THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 She moved about restlessly from room to room, alter- 
 ing the position of a chair or cushion here, with the 
 toe of her slippered foot sliding a rug a few inches 
 to right or left there, adjusting a fold of drapery, 
 straightening a picture, turning on or off lights, every- 
 where studying the effects of her new furnishings in 
 her new rooms. She had been in the apartment barely 
 threie weeks, and she was still extracting from its novel 
 vistas something of the excitement a child extracts from 
 a new toy. 
 
 The early autumn she had spent in Europe with Mr. 
 Van Antwerp, who was still abroad, endeavouring to 
 dispose of American property to foreign capitalists; 
 and the three weeks since her own return, she had 
 spent in a veritable debauch of reckless buying. 
 
 At the door of the long and narrow hall, the en- 
 trance to two rooms which opened into each other 
 through a wide arched doorway, she paused. 
 
 "Charming, charming! " she exclaimed aloud. 
 
 "Enchanting!" 
 
 But she stamped her foot, in its prodigiously high- 
 heeled slipper, with impatience. Charming as it was, 
 she was dissatisfied, oppressed by a vague discontent 
 that was constantly with her. More than this, at 
 present, there was a definite, pressing anxiety in regard 
 to money. Those dining room chairs with their high 
 carved backs and their cane seats and cane panels, those 
 chaste pieces of Colonial silver faintly illumining the 
 dark buffet, these rugs, soft with the bloom of time, 
 which her dainty slippered toe pushed around on the 
 waxed floor, that spreading dome of topaz glass over-
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 261 
 
 hanging the dining table, and these Tiffany lamps shed- 
 ding their lovely glow of daffodil over the little salon 
 all this had cost a great deal of money! 
 
 Spending, acquiring beautiful things, was, of course, 
 one of the principal diversions and one of the principal 
 rewards of her existence. And it was extraordinary 
 how rapidly the amount of money she required had 
 increased. What she had spent a year ago, six months 
 ago, seemed absurdly inadequate for her present needs. 
 And here, in the last mail, in the heart of a whole 
 sheaf of bills, had come a letter from Mr. Van Ant- 
 werp, telling her that it looked as if his " deal " was 
 not " going through," and warning her about her ex- 
 penditures warning her now, just when her expenses 
 had all increased and these unpaid bills ! After all, 
 what right had a man to expect loyalty from a woman 
 in her position? Mr. Van Antwerp had spent a lot 
 of money on her, all told, but what sacrifices would he 
 make for her? Bah, none! And why should she 
 make any for him? 
 
 The telephone-bell rang. " Yes, this is Mrs. Lam- 
 bright. . . . Yes, yes, this is she! Who? Miss 
 Stark? Oh, well, have her brought up," she answered, 
 impatiently. 
 
 She had never been back to the house in the West 
 Thirties since the day she left it and put Peter in a 
 boarding-school in the suburbs, and she had not laid 
 eyes on the queer old woman, mother or " cousin " of 
 Emma Stark, since that tragic day of leave-taking. 
 But occasionally Emma came to see her, and she looked 
 forward to seeing her at the present moment with sen-
 
 262 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 sations of curiously mixed pleasure and vexation. 
 
 Emma had come dressed in her Sunday garments. 
 She always came so. Once it had made Lydia ashamed, 
 but now Emma in her Sunday clothes had no particular 
 effect on her; though it did flash through her that 
 the tight-fitting black jacket Emma wore was exceed- 
 ingly like the jacket she had worn the first time she 
 had ever seen her, at Miss Tompkins', almost ten 
 years before; and that the small black velvet hat, 
 trimmed with a cheap, bedraggled feather, was perched 
 grotesquely high on Emma's head, as if it had acci- 
 dentally alighted there, exactly as the little black sailor 
 hat had been perched on her head then. 
 
 With her arm around her, Lydia led her through 
 the hall into the softly glowing salon and seated her in 
 a luxurious chair upholstered in old-gold moire. 
 
 She bolstered herself with cushions on the divan. 
 Her filmy, clinging black gown revealed almost identi- 
 cally the silhouette of her girlhood, slender but nowhere 
 angular. Diamonds sparkled on her breast and on 
 her restless glancing hands. Her lips were vivid with 
 blood alone, but her cheeks, with their faint depressions, 
 showed that rouge had gone to assist their own too- 
 great pallor. 
 
 " I'm afraid you were going out somewhere, Lydia." 
 
 "Oh, no!" ' 
 
 " Or expecting company," faltered Emma. " Per- 
 haps I'd better go, and come back another evening." 
 She made a movement to rise, but Lydia with smiling 
 force held her in her chair. 
 
 " Sit still, Emma ! I've been hoping you'd come
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 263 
 
 ever since I got back, and I'm awfully glad of an op- 
 portunity to sit still myself. I'm dreadfully tired! 
 I've been rushing around every minute since I landed, 
 getting things settled. Well, what do you think of my 
 new apartment? " 
 
 Emma, sitting uncomfortably in her fine chair, was 
 taking in the unreal splendour of her surroundings with 
 dazed eyes. " Oh, Lydia, I never s*een such a pretty 
 place ! " she replied, at last. But fear, and even pity, 
 a sort of divinely patient pity, tinge.d her eyes. 
 
 Lydia read the expression with a feeling of irrita- 
 tion. But she chattered gaily about places she had 
 recently visited, about little things that had happened 
 on her voyage, going and coming, and about trifling 
 experiences, amusing or annoying, she had had in set- 
 tling her new apartment. She showed her some Eu- 
 ropean postcards, in which Emma took a mild but 
 polite interest. 
 
 Ill 
 
 "How's Peter?" Emma asked shyly, when the 
 postcards had been exhausted. There was a certain 
 timid deference never absent from her manner to Lydia. 
 
 " Peter? He's flourishing." 
 
 " Has he been in to see you, since you came back? " 
 
 " No, not yet. He's coming Saturday, to spend the 
 day with me." She hoped Emma would not ask her 
 if she had been out to see him since her return. She 
 had not been, because he was more contented when she 
 did not visit him or let him visit her too frequently, and 
 perhaps she, too, was more contented the less she saw 
 of him.
 
 264 THE SEA8 OF GOD 
 
 " Are you still pleased with the school, Lydia? " 
 
 "Oh, yes, it's all right. Peter's well that's the 
 main thing. And I guess he's learning a little the 
 names of the Saints, anyway! " She laughed a trifle 
 uneasily. " But come, I'll show you something! " 
 
 She rose from the divan and led the way into the 
 hall. 
 
 " Oh, wait a minute, let me get the key." 
 
 She returned with a key, unlocked a door next the 
 door that led into the salon, and turned on the lights. 
 The room was full of games and toys. 
 
 Emma stared in astonishment. 
 
 " You see I haven't forgotten Peter! Won't he go 
 wild when he sees it? " 
 
 "Is he going to stay with you here?" gasped 
 Emma. 
 
 Lydia shot a swift, resentful glance at her. Some- 
 times Emma infuriated her. " He's not to spend the 
 night," she rejoined sharply. " It's just a room for 
 him to have for his, when he comes in to see me." 
 
 On the floor was a gay Navajo blanket, and on the 
 blanket in a big coil were yards of miniature railroad 
 track, and a miniature engine. " It runs by electricity. 
 Isn't it clever?" Already her tone was kind again; 
 she was sorry that she had spoken angrily to Emma the 
 moment before. " When Peter comes, he can roll up 
 the rug and lay the track out on the bare floor. I knew 
 he'd want to do that himself." 
 
 " Does Peter know about it? " asked Emma, her face 
 painfully flushed. 
 
 " No. It will all be a surprise to him when he comes
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 265 
 
 Saturday! Look!" Lydia pointed to the broad 
 frieze of the wall-paper. Indians in war-paint, 
 mounted on lean, fiery ponies, were tearing around the 
 four walls of the room. 
 
 " You can almost hear their war-whoops, can't you? 
 Peter will go mad for joy when he sees them! " She 
 said it almost wistfully. 
 
 Emma walked from one thing to another in the room, 
 looking at them with a sort of stupefaction. She tried 
 to smile, but she said nothing except that now and then 
 she uttered a faint, involuntary exclamation of sur- 
 prise. 
 
 On a table in front of the double windows was a 
 large rectangular aquarium. Gold and silver fishes 
 were swimming about in it, and in and out of the win- 
 dows of the toy castle on its pebbly bottom. 
 
 " See the two little turtles, Emma? And the polly- 
 wogs and the snails? Oh, I had them put in just 
 everything. Peter won't have to go down to the Bat- 
 tery Aquarium now, will he? He'll have an aquarium 
 of his own! " 
 
 They turned away to another larger table, on which 
 was an array of lead soldiers. They were waiting for 
 Peter's hand to lead them into action. " He won't see 
 another thing in the room," said Lydia, " when he 
 catches sight of these! " 
 
 ' That's right, for sure ! Peter always loved sol- 
 diers the best of anything!" Emma answered softly. 
 It was the longest speech she had made since Lydia ush- 
 ered her into the room. 
 
 Lydia avoided moments of reflection as she would
 
 266 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 have avoided a plague, but, unbidden and overpower- 
 ingly strong, came to her now the memory of Peter in 
 the old days gazing yearningly into the shop windows 
 at little lead soldiers and tiny lead cannon like these. 
 A vision, both sweet and cruel, rose before her of that 
 little Peter in his shabby, outgrown reefer, hotly grasp- 
 ing her hand as they looked together into the shop 
 windows, those clear eyes of Peter upturned to hers, 
 and his trustful, " You'll get them for me some day, 
 won't you, Mother? " And she had got them for him 
 at last! But, oh, God, how had she got them? 
 
 She linked her arm in Emma's it was good to feel 
 Emma's arm in hers. Emma could make her angry, 
 but she was the one person in the world she trusted 
 entirely. 
 
 All at once, Lydia felt something give way within 
 her. Her eyes were brilliant and dry and tearless, but 
 she felt that in another moment her heart's anguish 
 must break forth. She dared not remain an instant 
 longer in Peter's room. The ghastliness of having such 
 a room here in this apartment ! 
 
 She hurried Emma out of the room, locked the door, 
 and dropped the key into a small drawer in the dress- 
 ing-table in her bedroom. She did not want to sit 
 down and talk to her, but Emma took the chair she 
 offered her, and she felt compelled to sit down, too. 
 After a moment's forced talk, she rose, walked over 
 to the chiffonier and took out some packages. 
 
 " I thought My Old might like this," she said, un- 
 folding a silk shawl with deep fringe, and holding it up. 
 " You take it to her with my love, Emma."
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 267 
 
 " Oh, Lydia, it's too handsome ! " 
 
 " No, no, it isn't ! She can put it away in her drawer 
 and look at it, if she doesn't want to wear it. This is 
 for you," opening a case and handing Emma a brooch 
 in the design of a butterfly. " I got it in Paris . . . 
 and these souvenir spoons, one for each of you, are 
 from the Fatherland. Oh, don't thank me Here's 
 the mail! " 
 
 She glanced carelessly at the envelopes a bell-boy 
 brought in, except one, which she tore open. 
 
 " It's from Peter. He writes such funny letters! " 
 
 She spread out the pages of Peter's scrawled, ink- 
 splotched epistle, and read aloud: 
 
 " Dear Mother: 
 
 " I was terbil homesick for you yestarday and last 
 night. I have got an awful toothache. I got 5$ you 
 sent. I want to see you so bad. Let me come Sat- 
 erday sure. There is a store here now. they sell 
 candy cake pie and a number of little refreshments. 
 I will write you a short letter every day and put them 
 together it will make a great big letter. I want you 
 to do the same. You havent done as you promised 
 me you don't write me hardly ever. Only if you only 
 say hellow I will be glad to get it. I wish I could 
 see your face just in one look for one minute, it seems 
 as if you didn't care much about me. you dont let me 
 be with you even in vacashun times you dont seem ever 
 to want me. I am very tired every night and have to 
 'be woke up with two shakes in the morning to get my 
 eyes open. It dont seem true I am going to see you
 
 268 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 Saterday. I am afraid mebbe I dreamed it but 
 Brother said you wrote I could come to you Saterday. 
 1 can find your new house. Don't worry I can find 
 any place you are. I wish you would have a picture 
 taken and put it in a locket. I would always have it 
 next my heart. I mean it to. its seirous. 
 
 " PETER LAMBRIGHT, 
 " your loveing son. 
 
 " P.S. How I wish I could be with you tonight. 
 
 " P.S. Good luck to you." 
 
 Before Lydia had finished reading the letter, it did 
 not seem funny to her. She had hardened herself to 
 countless things, but lines like these from one of Peter's 
 untidy letters were stabs in her heart. She had become 
 very pale except for the rouged spots on her cheeks, and 
 the hands that held Peter's letter were trembling vis- 
 ibly. She had often had letters from Peter like this 
 . . . what was the matter with her? . . . 
 
 Emma sprang from her chair. 
 
 " Lydia, are you sick? " tears streaming down her 
 cheeks. "Lay down on the bed! " She stroked Ly* 
 dia's half-bare arm with her big, rough hand. 
 
 " I'm all right. . . . It's over now. I'm always let- 
 ting myself get too tired." Lydia smiled. " Don't 
 let Peter's letter worry you, Emma. All children at 
 boarding-school are like that, homesick more or less." 
 It consoled her slightly to speak consolingly to Emma. 
 
 " Of course I can't have him with me." 
 
 Emma nodded. " Of course not."
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 269 
 
 They had never before spoken to each other can- 
 didly with regard to Lydia's situation. 
 
 " The little fellow's better off with the Brothers," 
 said Emma, looking at Lydia with an odd, steadfast 
 look. 
 
 Lydia turned her eyes away uneasily, and glanced 
 openly at the little boudoir clock among the fittings of 
 her dressing table.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 AS she let Emma out of the door, Lydia admitted a 
 youngish man in evening dress. He raised her 
 fingers to his lips in the foreign manner and kissed them 
 fervidly. His red lips were in striking, almost dis- 
 quieting contrast to his milky skin and blond beard. 
 
 He removed his overcoat and put it on a chair with 
 his hat and gloves, and then turned and placed his hands 
 lightly on her flimsily clad arms. 
 
 " I thought you had forgotten my existence ! " she 
 said. "Where have you been, if I may inquire? " 
 
 " The same place you've been Paris ! " There 
 was a slight defect in his speech, akin to a lisp. " I 
 caught a glimpse of you one afternoon, about a month 
 ago, in the Rue de Rivoli going into Rumpel- 
 mayer's." 
 
 " Really? But you're ambiguous, my dear man 
 you or I going into Rumpelmayer's? " 
 
 " You." 
 
 " So near me, and didn't reveal yourself! " 
 
 " You were well cavaliered," he replied, a little off- 
 ishly, dropping his hands from her. 
 
 She made a slight grimace, and shrugged her shoul- 
 ders. She had played fast and loose with this man, 
 blown hot and cold on him, and he still endured it, 
 
 270
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 271 
 
 though always with the manner of a grudge against her. 
 She did not know how much longer he would endure it, 
 and did not care greatly, except that he was a man of 
 fortune, without ties, frankly infatuated with her 
 and she was in desperate need of money! Consider- 
 ing everything, she had best be very charming this 
 evening, not allow herself any caprices with him, any 
 captiousness. 
 
 " I have only a moment," he remarked, running his 
 fingers caressingly through his long hair. " I am on 
 my way to the Opera. 
 
 "Ah!" he exclaimed, following her into the little 
 salon. "Lovely! You've really shown taste!" 
 
 "It surprises you that I should show taste!" 
 She laughed, but her eyes were keen, almost hostile. 
 
 He folded his arms, assumed an attitude, and looked 
 around him critically all his mannerisms were absurd 
 and disagreeable to her. 
 
 " You've attained splendour, in a small way, without 
 tawdriness," he pronounced gravely. 
 
 "Tawdriness! Tawdriness!" she repeated, mock- 
 ingly. 
 
 She lit a cigarette and threw herself upon the divan. 
 Her hair, catching a light from above, was like a net of 
 gold. She swung her elevated foot in its black satin 
 slipper with the extravagantly high heel, a brilliant scar- 
 let heel, back and forth impatiently. 
 
 "Tawdriness! You expected tawdriness? " 
 
 " I didn't say that." He scowled at her slightly, 
 and continued to examine the furnishings of the rooms 
 that were open to his view.
 
 272 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 " Tawdriness ! " she said, going back to the word, 
 and pronouncing it slowly. ' Your sense of the fitness 
 of things suggests, I suppose, Mr. Beauvais, that a 
 cage, a cage like mine a gilded cage, in the popular 
 phrase ought to be tawdry ! Refined taste seems 
 hardly compatible eh?" With the cigarette be- 
 tween her fingers, she let the smoke issue toward him 
 impudently through her closed teeth. Her vivid lips 
 were apart and smiling, but there was a cynical gleam 
 in her eyes. 
 
 He looked puzzled, and a little disgusted. 
 
 " 4 Why do you want to be so unnecessarily 
 nasty?' why don't you ask me that? I can see 
 you're thinking it! I've shocked your delicate sensi- 
 bilities, haven't I, dear?" 
 
 "Are you trying to insult me?" he asked slowly, 
 his lisp distinctly noticeable. " I didn't stop here this 
 evening to be insulted." 
 
 She rose abruptly from the divan and approached 
 him with a little fluttering, undulating movement. 
 
 "Oh, it was just foolery! I'm going to be good, 
 now, very, very good ! I don't know what made me so 
 horrid! " She touched her fingers to his cheek. " I 
 must be a nice, gracious hostess, mustn't I ? my 
 house-warming, too! Now, you're aesthetic, Louis," 
 she went on; " studied at the Beaux Arts and all that 
 sort of thing what about my rugs? I crave your 
 opinion of them ! No reds or blues, you see ! " 
 
 Flicking an ash from her cigarette, she pointed out 
 with the toe of her slipper the orange, the pale yellows, 
 faded greens, and patches of black in the velvety sur-
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 273 
 
 faces of the three rugs that lay rather far apart on the 
 polished floor. "What do you think of them?" 
 
 He continued to look wounded, but gave her his 
 opinion of the rugs launched into a dissertation on 
 Oriental rugs. 
 
 She knew he was happy now soberly riding a 
 hobby. 
 
 " They're rather exceptionally good in colouring. 
 You must have spent some time finding them " 
 
 " More than time! In fact " She held the gilt 
 tip of her half-smoked cigarette rakishly between her 
 lips. " In fact, I'm thinking of going into the hands 
 of a receiver! Are you qualified for receivership, 
 Louis?" She was very close to him, she knew the 
 perfume of her was in his susceptible nostrils, and she 
 pressed her advantage. She looked at him tantalis- 
 ingly. 
 
 ".Lydia . . ." He held out his arms. 
 
 She felt as if she could not endure the panting ardour 
 of his face, at once so anasmic, so sensual. But she did 
 not move. 
 
 " Debts, too, Louis? " she asked, with an arch, daz- 
 zling smile. 
 
 "You know the conditions! " he answered whisper- 
 ingly. "I won't share you!" The veins stood out 
 blue and prominent on his white forehead. 
 
 She looked at him without flinching, her bare white 
 breast rising and falling rapidly. 
 
 All at once, her hate of the man rose in her over- 
 poweringly, hatred of his soft, womanish flesh, of his 
 small feet of which, oh, disgust of disgusts ! he
 
 274 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 was proud hatred of his blond beard, of his silky, 
 self-adored locks, hatred, unbounded contempt, for 
 something in the man's character ! Swift as thought 
 her mood changed. 
 
 " Come let me show you something! " 
 
 He followed her. 
 
 " Look ! " She pointed to a big carved chest of dark 
 wood that stood one side of the chimney in the dining 
 room. 
 
 " You see," she said, lifting the heavy lid, " it's 
 big enough for a sarcophagus ! " 
 
 She closed the chest, and seated herself on it. 
 
 The man stood in front of her, his arms folded, wait- 
 ing to see her whim revealed, an expression in his eyes 
 of mingled desire and resentment. 
 
 " Do you remember a story about a bride long ago 
 in Italy Chiding in a chest like this, during her wed- 
 ding revelry, when they were playing hide-and-seek? 
 And the chest locking on her? And years afterwards, 
 her skeleton, wrapped in bridal finery, discovered in 
 the chest? Do you remember that story? . . . Well, 
 some day I'm going to crawl into this chest, and let the 
 lid drop ! " She was slipping her rings up and down on 
 her trembling fingers. 
 
 " Are you losing your mind? " 
 
 " I hope so! " She shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 But as he made a movement of annoyance, a move- 
 ment to leave, she put out her hand. " Listen ! 
 listen! You must hear me !" Her cheeks were flam- 
 ing with more than rouge now. " My maid will come
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 275 
 
 some morning, and there'll be no trace of where I've 
 gone . . ." 
 
 " Haven't you derived enough entertainment, now, 
 from this fantastic talk you're indulging in? " he asked, 
 freezingly. " I didn't stop here this evening to be 
 treated to this " 
 
 " No, I suppose not ! " she interrupted him, with 
 a slight sneer. " But now you're here, let me show you 
 it's true that it's large enough to hold me ! " She 
 got up from the chest, and put her hands on the lid 
 to lift it again, but he restrained her, turning her around 
 to face him. 
 
 "What sort of silliness is this? Are you mad?" 
 
 "Yes, a little mad!" She laughed scornfully in 
 his face, and shook off his hands. " But what I want 
 to ask you is does it occur to you how uncomfortable 
 you'll be, when you read the news of my disappearance, 
 knowing that I'm shut up here, dead, in this?" 
 
 He looked at her with positive stupefaction. 
 
 " Will you come back to this little appartement de 
 jole, point out this chest, and say ' Here she is, in 
 this chest, poor little thing 1 / knew her ! ' Will you 
 come back and say it? No! Oh, I know you 
 you're all alike ! Your dear, pure, innocent, protected 
 aunts and cousins and sisters and mothers and wives 
 might hear of it! " 
 
 All her smouldering bitterness at her position had 
 burst into blaze, her bitterness toward the class of 
 women from which she felt herself forever ostracised. 
 
 She laughed hysterically. " Amusing, isn't it? "
 
 276 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 His look of stupefaction had grown to one of alarm. 
 
 " Yes, yes, you ask me to give you everything, every- 
 thing I have to give ! " Her voice for the first time 
 threatened to break. " You ask me to give you every- 
 thing, and the one thing I want in the world, you 
 wouldn't give me the chance to be some one again ! 
 I know ! I know ! You want me to give you all of me, 
 all I have to give my soul's lost but my body 
 ... all for you . . . for you alone . . . and then 
 you Oh, why do I talk? " She covered her burning 
 face. 
 
 "You're not yourself you're dissipating too 
 much." 
 
 She dropped her hands from her face. 
 
 " I was never more myself," she answered calmly. 
 
 " You're drinking too much," he said sternly. 
 
 " I haven't been drinking. It isn't drink." She 
 sighed deeply. The fire and contempt had gone com- 
 pletely out of her eyes. She felt extraordinary ex- 
 haustion. 
 
 He eyed her curiously. u How many persons are 
 you, Lydia ? " 
 
 " Several," she answered nonchalantly. 
 
 II 
 
 They returned to the salon, and he seated himself 
 beside her on the divan, protesting he must be gone, 
 but lingering. 
 
 Suddenly and irrelevantly, she remarked; "I 
 haven't any books, you see, not a book ! " 
 
 She waved her hand through the rooms.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 277 
 
 "Not a book! To some people, a book is like a 
 pipe of opium they read to forget! But I can't 
 read that way! I must be at peace, before I can read! 
 When I sit down now with a book, instead of forget- 
 ting, I begin to remember ! So I don't read now I 
 just live, live ! 
 
 " I don't read books any longer," she went on wildly, 
 " but I'm going to write a book ' My Apologia ' 1 
 It will be a thick volume, perfectly candid . . . furnish 
 data . . ." 
 
 " What nonsense are you talking now? " he asked, 
 his brows knit, his nostrils distended. 
 
 "Nonsense?" 
 
 He rose, and moved hurriedly toward the hall, mum- 
 bling " I've had enough of this! " 
 
 She leaned forward on the divan, bathed in the mel- 
 low light of the lamps, the slim grace of her black 
 figur^ sharply defined against the soft golden back- 
 ground of the cushions behind her. There were bril- 
 liant spots of colour in the picture she made her lips, 
 her cheeks, her high scarlet heels. 
 
 The man was departing from her in wrath; she ab- 
 solutely detested him but perhaps she had gone too 
 far! Not yet was she ready to burn her bridges be- 
 hind her. Not yet could she dispense with him! 
 
 "Louis!" she called after him, softly, but imper- 
 iously. 
 
 He did not answer. 
 
 She rose and passed swiftly into the hall, where he 
 was lifting his overcoat from the chair. . . . She knew 
 the witchery she could summon at will . . . she knew
 
 278 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 his vanity and the magic words with which to woo him 
 back . . . she knew her beauty . . . knew the terri- 
 ble, remorseless power she could exert . . . knew the 
 male the eternal masculine . . . 
 
 ill 
 
 " Where does this door lead to? " he asked, pausing 
 at a closed door in the hall, as she accompanied him to 
 the outer door of her apartment, when he was leaving. 
 
 " To a closet," she replied quickly. 
 
 "A closet?" He measured with his eye the wall 
 space that extended beyond the door. " I don't see 
 how it can be merely a closet." He turned the door 
 knob. " Why do you keep it locked? " 
 
 "Would you like to look in? I advise you not to 
 insist! You remember Bluebeard's secret chamber! 
 Well, there might be a row of men, hung up in here 
 by their beards ! " 
 
 With laughter and jest she drew him on, past the 
 locked door. 
 
 But when the last clasp of his moist, nerveless hand 
 had been endured, when the door had clicked behind 
 him, and she had heard the elevator door open and 
 slam shut, and knew that he was descending, gone . . . 
 she leaned wearily against the wall, filled with loathing 
 of him, profound loathing of her life . . . deathly dis- 
 gust with existence. 
 
 She almost reeled along the dim hall till she reached 
 the locked door of Peter's room. There, with her 
 hand on the doorknob, a crushing wave of homesick- 
 ness for Peter swept over her. In all the big, dark,
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 279 
 
 hideous universe there was but one spot of clean, shin- 
 ing light Peter, looking up at her with trusting, ador- 
 ing eyes. 
 
 She could see a big dormitory, a dim night-light burn- 
 ing in it, a brother in black womanish garments gliding 
 along stealthily between the rows of narrow white beds, 
 Peter's big shock head on one of the pillows, and the 
 pillow wet with tears Peter's homesick tears ! Her 
 very heart was being torn out of her body. 
 
 Those scrawled post-scripts in Peter's dirty, blotted 
 little letter stood out to her " Good luck to you! " 
 " How I wish I could be with you to-night ! "
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 IN the mood of despair that had followed that mood 
 of remorse, that longing to be delivered from her 
 life a man's voice over the telephone had asked her 
 to meet him, and she had seized the suggestion eagerly. 
 She could not remain in her apartment, alone with her 
 frenzied thoughts. 
 
 They were in a small private room of a restaurant, 
 and she was talking gaily. Her companion was a 
 hunchback. He was dressed conspicuously, as though 
 out of sheer bravado to court attention to his deform- 
 ity; a diamond flashed from his shirt front, and a dia- 
 mond and ruby ring blazed on one of his large, finely- 
 formed, hairy hands. Across the room, he produced 
 a curious effect of being a young man, almost a boy, 
 but near, he was seen to be almost an old man. The 
 unmistakable and touching mark of the hunchback was 
 upon his face. 
 
 Lydia knew very little about him, except that his 
 name was Faidley, that his home was in the West, that 
 he was rich, that he drank heavily and spent money 
 recklessly. She knew him through Mr. Van Antwerp, 
 who had brought him to see her with the idea that 
 Faidley's frank, erratic talk would amuse her.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 281 
 
 At present, Faidley was far advanced in intoxication, 
 though at intervals talking lucidly, even luminously. 
 
 He had ordered a number of expensive dishes, which 
 Lydia had barely touched, and he had not touched at 
 all. 
 
 The door into the hall opened now and again, to 
 admit a waiter, or the obsequious manager. Faidley 
 was giving them enormous tips for the most trifling 
 services flourishing his great roll of bills. 
 
 "Witch!" he exclaimed, when the manager and 
 waiter had both withdrawn, " witch, so old Van let you 
 come home from Europe ahead of him, did he? 
 Damned if I'd let you out of my sight, witch, if you 
 were mine ! " 
 
 He cocked his grey, curly head on one side, a sly, 
 humorous expression in his blurred eyes. " Too 
 damned pretty, you are, little one." He- chuckled and 
 nodded his head at her in an admiring but thoroughly 
 maudlin fashion. " Too damned pretty 1 " 
 
 Lydia leaned back against the glistening lining of 
 her velvet cloak, hung over her chair, and laughed 
 across the table at him. She wore a wide hat of dark 
 velvet, with a snowy plume. 
 
 " Where'd old Van find you, kitten ? He won't tell ! 
 Heh? You won't tell, either? " 
 
 He began talking half to himself, looking down into 
 the glass he had drained and was handling shakily. 
 "You're a rare one, kitten you're the blue flower 
 in the garden of sports. You're from good people, 
 too, good people . . . good people. . . ." He kept 
 repeating it, smiling knowingly.
 
 282 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 " How do you know? " 
 
 " How do I know? Hands and ears, that's how I 
 know I They tell blood every time ! " 
 
 He fell into a revery. 
 
 " Old Van trots us all out to see you," he resumed. 
 Suddenly he looked up. " You know that girl shot 
 herself?" 
 
 Lydia started. 
 
 " Hah, what's the matter with me? I mustn't make 
 injudicious injudicious" he had difficulty in pro- 
 nouncing the word to his satisfaction " injudicious 
 that's it! disclosures! . . . But don't you ever 
 shoot yourself on Van's account, kitten hear me? 
 He ain't worth it; we ain't any of us worth it, comes 
 to that! But I see one of the dears shooting herself 
 for me! " He laughed ironically, broke off laughing, 
 and seemed to meditate an instant. Then, " Drink, 
 drink your wine, Lydia ! " he said peevishly. " Brace 
 up, brace up ! " 
 
 Exhorting her to " brace up," he settled into a more 
 hopeless heap himself. 
 
 II 
 
 Lydia had seen men intoxicated, but never before 
 been alone with a man so abjectly drunk as Faidley 
 now. In a thick, barely -intelligible utterance, he was 
 flattering her in one breath, half-humorously berat- 
 ing her and trying to quarrel with her in the next. It 
 was a question only of moments now before he would 
 be on the floor. She was by no means certain of her 
 own movements the walls of the room were swim-
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 283 
 
 ming round her but she summoned her scattering 
 wits, and touched a button. 
 
 " Bring a pot of coffee, very strong, the strongest 
 you can get! " she ordered the waiter, indicating with 
 her eyes the figure of Faidley, who was resting his 
 head on the table, his grotesquely long arms sprawled 
 across it in an attitude that hinted at collapse. 
 
 The hunchback paid no attention to the waiter's 
 presence, or to Lydia's order to him. But a few mo- 
 ments later, when the manager came into the room, 
 with the waiter and coffee, and held a whispered con- 
 ference with her, he lifted his head, and poured forth 
 a torrent of profane abuse. 
 
 " Think I'm drunk, do you?" 
 
 Lydia laid her hands on his and talked to him 
 coaxingly. " Have your coffee, now please ! Oh, 
 please with me ! I don't want to drink mine alone. 
 Let me pour you a cup." 
 
 Kte smiled at her, a foolish, befogged smile. Then 
 an idea struck him, and abruptly pulling himself to- 
 gether, he sat up, and began articulating indistinctly 
 but with vehemence " Give me that give me that 
 damned pot of coffee I " 
 
 Lydia made a sign to the waiter, and he hurriedly 
 rearranged things, setting the metal pot and the small, 
 heavy cups in front of the hunchback. 
 
 To her consternation, Faidley lifted the pot as high 
 as his long arm would extend, and poured the coffee 
 in a wavering, splashing stream down into the cup. 
 She sprang back, as the scalding liquid glanced on her 
 bodice and dropped on her hands. It was useless to
 
 284 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 interfere; Faidley had the coffee pot in his possession; 
 it was his whim to handle it; and although deformed, 
 he had the broad shoulders and strong arms of a big, 
 normally-built man; he was enormously strong; and 
 with the temporary revival of his physical and mental 
 faculties, he was eager for trouble. He poured a sec- 
 ond cup, laughing with demoniac glee. Lydia also 
 laughed. It was a ridiculous if disgusting sight. 
 
 Suddenly he was seized with violent hiccoughs. 
 "Pretty sight, eh? ain't it? . . . pretty sight a 
 hunchback in his cups," laughing bitterly between his 
 hiccoughs. 
 
 He turned to the manager, who was asking instruc- 
 tions of Lydia with his eyes. 
 
 " Get out of here ! " he bellowed. And he flew into 
 a rage again, quarrelling and cursing. But before the 
 manager and waiter had left the room, he pulled out 
 his big roll of money, and, with contemptuous good- 
 humour, tossed a bill at each of them. 
 
 " Here, give me your money ! I'll keep it for you ! " 
 Lydia said softly, when they were gone. " You're 
 throwing it away! I'll keep it for you I " 
 
 " You keep it for me . . . you keep it for me . . ." 
 he muttered thickly. He handed the roll of bills to 
 her without protest. And she thrust it down into the 
 open bosom of her bodice. She felt it there, against 
 her fevered, naked flesh a hard, unyielding, tanta- 
 lising mass. 
 
 She was anxious now to sober him sufficiently to get 
 him away and back to the old-fashioned hotel where he 
 always stopped and where she knew he would be well
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 285 
 
 taken care of till he was himself again. She made him 
 drink cup after cup of black coffee, calling several times 
 for a fresh pot. 
 
 " How much more ... of this stuff . . . are you 
 going to make me take ? " he asked, at length. His 
 blood-streaked eyes were shot with amusement. " I'm 
 floating now. Why, good God A'mighty, I'm floating 
 
 in a sea of coffee ! " 
 
 For a little while, he had better command of himself. 
 He expressed himself more coherently, cursing his de- 
 formity, and blaming on it his beastly lapses. 
 
 ' What difference does it make, anyway? Who re- 
 spects Alex Faidley more than they would a cursed 
 little Jack-in-the-box ? See here ain't that so ? 
 And I'm a man man's desires and powers and sensi- 
 bilities . . . but, by God, no woman's ever looked on 
 me except with horror ! Think I don't know it? " 
 
 " Oh, no, no, Mr. Faidley, they don't think of you 
 that way, they don't ! / don't I'm sure ! " As a 
 matter of fact, he was repugnant to her because of his 
 deformity, but she had suffered much, and her soul 
 knitted swiftly to another soul that had suffered. 
 " They admire your your originality just as I do 
 
 and personality and everything like that ! They 
 don't think about you the way you say ! I swear 
 they don't!" 
 
 ; ' What a damned little liar you are!" he replied 
 hoarsely, raising her slim fingers, sparkling with jewels, 
 to his lips. " Your pity's sweet, little one, but bit- 
 ter-sweet bitter-sweet ! " 
 
 He slowly lifted his head, his tears dropping upon
 
 286 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 her hands. " You're a good little girl," he said, " a 
 good little girl." 
 
 A bewildered, slightly troubled look invested his 
 features, and now that the twinkle was absent from his 
 eyes, Lydia noticed how lined with suffering his jester's 
 face was. 
 
 " I'd be content to sit on your doorstep all the days 
 of my life, little queen, if you'd let me just to let 
 your dress brush me as you passed in and out." 
 
 He began genuinely weeping, and presently grew 
 utterly incoherent again, his head and shoulders wag- 
 ging with limp uncertainty from side to side. His in- 
 termittent talk became more and more indistinct, and 
 he settled heavily against the table, dead, apparently, 
 to everything about him. But when Lydia rose, 
 " Where are you going? " he asked crossly. 
 
 " I'll be right back." She tapped him reassuringly 
 on the head, and left the room. 
 
 The floor rose in billows to meet her feet. She 
 passed closed doors, from whence came boisterous 
 sounds, and descended a short flight of stairs at the 
 rear of the hall, to a small dressing room, entered it, 
 and bolted the door. The room was dimly lighted 
 with one small gas-flame, and was pervaded with the 
 scent of sachet-powder, Jickey, and other stale, name- 
 less odours. There was a small looking-glass hanging 
 above a stationary wash-stand. She looked into the 
 glass but could not get a distinct image of herself. She 
 felt a little sick, and everything was hazy and more or 
 less unreal to her. On the edge of the dirty marble 
 basin was an open powder-box half filled with pink
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 287 
 
 face-powder, and several discarded scraps of soiled 
 chamois-skin were scattered about. She opened the 
 gold-mesh purse that hung from her wrist, drew out 
 of it a minute powder-box and tiny puff and dusted 
 powder over her face. She did it mechanically. It 
 was not precisely what she had come for here to 
 this room. . . . An idea had struck her a few moments 
 before, at first dimly, then more vividly, and she was 
 more or less resolutely in pursuit of it now. . . . She 
 was not sure she had the strength the " nerve " 
 to carry it out! She was dizzy . . . her heart was 
 beating too fast . . . she had an unpleasant, actually 
 painful, sensation of suffocation. She reached down 
 inside her bodice and, drawing out the hunchback's big 
 roll of bills, counted them hurriedly, with shaking, icy 
 fingers. Bills of small denomination were on the out- 
 side of the roll, inside fifties and hundreds as 
 nearly as she could tell in her agitated state eleven 
 hundred or twelve hundred dollars in all. . . . She 
 needed money at once. 
 
 She counted out about six hundred dollars from the 
 inside bills, rolled them in a separate roll, and, wrap- 
 ping her little lace handkerchief about them, thrust 
 them far down inside her bodice, placing the remaining 
 bills just inside her bosom and easily accessible. 
 
 She had never before in her life appropriated even 
 the most minute object that belonged to another. . . . 
 She reasoned with herself now that if she did not take 
 this money, it would be all thrown away on waiters and 
 servants and profligate women in the next few hours, 
 or some one else would filch it, the whole roll, perhaps.
 
 288 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 She reasoned that Faidley had plenty of money, cared 
 little how it went . . . would give her as much as this 
 if she asked him for it. 
 
 Yet she was at pains to reassure herself that Faidley 
 would never know she had taken this six hundred dol- 
 lars 1 He would think, when he was sober enough to 
 think anything about it at all, that he had squandered 
 it in some crazy way himself . . . she was at pains so 
 to reassure herself, but her heart continued to beat 
 with strange, almost frightening rapidity, her breast 
 fluttered with strange, novel trepidations as she made 
 her way back to the room where she had left him, 
 opened the door, and saw him sunk in helpless drunk- 
 enness, his curly head dropped on the table, his hide- 
 ous, pitiable back toward her as she entered. 
 
 ill 
 
 He raised his head. " Come here . . . sit 
 down. . . ." He spoke with the maximum of effort, 
 rolling his head around in the most unseemly fashion, 
 and his clouded eyes were dreadful to look upon. 
 " Sit down ... I want to give you a little advice . . . 
 want to give you a little advice. . . ." 
 
 Lydia dropped into a chair, leaning toward him. 
 
 " You see . . . you see what a beast I am, confound 
 it ... you see what drink makes of me, little one ! 
 You leave it alone . . . take my advice. You're 
 drinking too much yourself . . . you've got to quit 
 . . . it'll ruin you. . . . You think you've got to drink 
 eh, don't you ? But you don't ! You cut it out, 
 you pretty little ! "
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 289 
 
 He had called her by the unspeakable name, the 
 name loaded with the infamy and iniquitous associa- 
 tions of ages. A terrible shudder ran through Lydia's 
 whole body. A dazzling, hellish light flooded her. 
 She saw herself the most unholy of living creatures. 
 Within her a voice cried brokenly "Why was I 
 born? Why was I ever born? " 
 
 IV 
 
 W T hat happened next she could not afterwards re- 
 call with much clearness. She had only a clouded 
 remembrance of bursting into violent sobs, of the 
 hunchback's trying to console her, wiping her eyes and 
 face with his handkerchief, clumsily but tenderly . . . 
 a dim remembrance of Faidley and herself in some way 
 getting away from the place ... of her paying the 
 bill out of his money ... of the waiter and the man- 
 ager helping him between them to a taxi-cab ... a 
 dim, disgusting, unforgettable memory of the hunch- 
 back inside the taxi-cab with her, crazed and whimper- 
 ing, as they sped through the dark, deserted streets 
 . . . and then a memory of leaving him at his hotel 
 . . . handing to the night-clerk Faidley's money 
 that part of it she had left him. 
 
 She could recall, misty as a dream, the taxi-cab leav- 
 ing her at the apartment house where she lived, and 
 how she had made her way through the familiar en- 
 trance hall, past its walls with the bright green panels 
 of brocaded satin, past its white marbles and big mir- 
 rors . . . she could recall tripping, some one picking 
 her up ... a bell-boy bringing her up in the elevator,
 
 290 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 unlocking her door for her and leading her into the 
 hall, turning on lights. Oh, depths to which she had 
 fallen!
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 IT seemed to her as if she were just tossing in a sort 
 of burning half-sleep the night through, but when, 
 at length, she became conscious that the faint morning 
 light was coming in through the window, she knew she 
 had been asleep, for she had dreamed a dream still 
 unfaded, tangible. 
 
 She saw she had only half undressed herself; she 
 had not taken her hair down, and the hairpins were 
 hurting her head; her throat was parched, and an evil 
 taste was in her mouth, but she was too inert even to 
 ring for a glass of water. . . . And she was miserable 
 ... in her dream, her father had appeared to 
 her. . . . 
 
 She could hear the maid moving around softly in the 
 apartment, though the door that led from her bedroom 
 into the hall had been closed. 
 
 Her eyes roamed over the room. It was a white 
 room, almost as white as a hospital room. It had 
 been her fancy to have it so no roses, no pink trap- 
 pings trappings of Aphrodite. There were no pic- 
 tures in the room, no mere ornaments, no frippery. 
 The bed-draperies were entirely white and simple, as 
 were the fine, transparent draperies at the window. 
 But it was an expensive whiteness, an expensive sim- 
 
 391
 
 292 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 plicity. The multitude of toilet accessories on the 
 dressing-table were of ivory embellished with gold. 
 Through an open door gleamed a white bathroom 
 tile, enamel, glass the acme of luxury. 
 
 Over this elegant whiteness of chamber and bath 
 were scattered in dissolute confusion feminine gar- 
 ments, outer garments and intimate inner garments. 
 A sense of utter degradation assailed Lydia. ... In 
 that dream, still so vivid in her mind, she and the 
 hunchback were issuing together into the dark street 
 from the door of the resort where they had been to- 
 gether; they were both staggering, when suddenly her 
 father stood on the pavement in front of them, looking 
 only at her at her long velvet cloak, her beautiful, 
 costly furs, the sweeping plume of her hat, her jewels, 
 the rouged spots on her cheeks. A light from some- 
 where illumined his face, that kind, homely face so 
 infinitely sad, so troubled, amazed " Why, Lydia, 
 
 are you a ? " calling her by the name Faidley had 
 
 called her by, the name that had branded her in her 
 own thoughts forever ! 
 
 II 
 
 Her thoughts went back to her father's death-bed. 
 She saw again that wondrous and beautiful transfigur- 
 ing of his plain, spent face . . . the unearthly sound 
 of cocks crowing was breaking across the dreadful hush 
 of the room, Mr. and Mrs. Poole and other neighbours 
 were standing about. . . . She heard again those 
 words wrung from her father's heart, the last words
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 293 
 
 his lips had uttered " Lydia, don't get anything fine 
 for me. Just a plain coffin. . . ." 
 
 How she had loved him, how she had respected and 
 admired him ! . . . 
 
 There was a step in the hall. The maid tapped at 
 the door. She feigned sleep. Sick and wretched as 
 she was, she wanted to be alone. For a long time she 
 had directed passionate efforts towards escaping her 
 thoughts. Now she was facing them with desperate 
 courage, no longer hiding from herself how debased 
 she had become. 
 
 Her dream was it a dream? She had little faith 
 in so-called psychic experiences, but she had not thought 
 of her father as alive, close to her, for a long, long 
 time, and now this dream ! 
 
 The old craving for his sane, strong, dear presence 
 stirred in her ! How vivid he was to her all at once ! 
 What happy hours they had known. But how long 
 ago it seemed that life they had led together. How 
 far in the past, how dim, shrouded, seemed Kingsville. 
 So much 'had happened since in her outward life, 
 and even more truly in her inner life. It was but a 
 child she had read about in a book, a girl in a dream, 
 that Lydia of fast-blurring outlines, the Lydia who had 
 lived in Kingsville. 
 
 And yet at the thought of Kingsville, she was all 
 faintly a-thrill. It was always so; her memory of 
 Kingsville had the troubling fragrance of a May night. 
 Always, always, she would pine for the old, proud, self- 
 satisfied, picturesque Southern town throned on its
 
 294 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 seven hills. No other spot on earth could ever be so 
 sweet to her, so glorified by her imagination. She 
 would yearn always, till the hour her eyes gathered 
 over them the film of death, for the sight, the smell, 
 the feel, of Kingsville. But it could never be for her 
 again. Not even her dust, the dust of her flesh she 
 had so polluted, could lie there and mingle with the 
 dear red dust of the hills of Kingsville. 
 
 HI 
 
 But Saturday would bring Peter ! This was Thurs- 
 day. How could she wait the dragging moments till 
 that blessed medicine Peter arrived! Peter's 
 coming made it possible for her to live, to face the 
 truth, to plan. 
 
 She tried to formulate definite plans for getting 
 away from her present life. It took possession of her, 
 as her supreme longing, to have Peter with her again. 
 
 How should she proceed? . . . how start again? 
 
 Of course she could go back to the sort of work she 
 had supported herself and Peter with before. She 
 could go back to a little mean hall bedroom, in a cheap 
 lodging-house, up flights and flights of stairs, have 
 washer-women and drivers of delivery wagons for her 
 neighbours ... all that old nightmare once more, 
 Peter in the streets again, with gutter chums oh, no ! 
 
 When she came to consider, it was the same diffi- 
 culty facing her that had faced her ever since the day 
 her father's death left her a young girl, alone, in 
 Kingsville, without resources. She was not trained to
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 295 
 
 earn a living in any way compatible with her tastes and 
 temperament, and in the days since she had begun her 
 own struggle, all lines of endeavour had become highly 
 specialised, were becoming more and more specialised 
 all the time, so that the problem was far more difficult 
 now than in those days when she had started out as 
 general agent. 
 
 The more she thought about things, the more im- 
 potent she felt. Everything seemed impossible to her 
 except to drift along, sometimes in the depths of mis- 
 ery, as at present, again, reasonably satisfied with her 
 existence, and its rewards, such as they were. 
 
 But then, the dream, her father's face, Peter! No, 
 no, she could not remain in this life ! She must stiffen 
 herself, make a supreme effort, break from it, and 
 establish herself decently again. 
 
 Whom could she consult? Which of the men she 
 knew could she go to with such a problem? They 
 would laugh at her. Mr. Van Antwerp certainly 
 would. They would think she was not in earnest, or 
 betray a lack of interest boredom, possibly. They 
 would think her silly, to consult them on such a bit of 
 business, and she would feel silly herself. 
 
 Of all the men she knew, Faidley, alone, occurred to 
 her as a man whom she might consult without fear of 
 misunderstanding. Drunk or sober, and for all his 
 foul, bitter tongue, he was a big-hearted man. Yet 
 at the thought of him she quailed. The money ! 
 Suppose he should accuse her I . . . With a tremen- 
 dous effort, she dismissed the thought of him.
 
 296 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 Perhaps she might consult some minister of the 
 Church, some pure, broad-spirited clergyman like old 
 Dr. Dunbar in Kingsville. 
 
 But almost immediately she wondered at herself 
 that she could have entertained the notion for even an 
 instant. Clergymen were far from sacrosanct to her, 
 as a class, and how would she know where among them 
 to seek a Dr. Dunbar? 
 
 Another idea came to her. Why not go down to 
 old Trinity Church, and there, removed from all the 
 suggestions and pressures of life in her apartment, 
 think things over. Perhaps in that dim, silent interior 
 some plan would suggest itself to her. 
 
 But scarcely had she formed this intention, than the 
 established habits of her life asserted their familiar, 
 insistent sway over her. The masseuse arrived. Un- 
 der her skilful fingers, Lydia fell into a light sleep and 
 woke from it a few moments later with a vague, com- 
 forting sense of recovered well-being. . . . Those 
 perplexing, insistent problems that had harassed her 
 appeared now less perplexing, less insistent. 
 
 While her nails were manicured and her hair sham- 
 pooed, she gave the maid directions, paid bills, looked 
 over newly-purchased lingerie, answered calls at the 
 telephone, in a word, transacted innumerable small 
 businesses of the kind with which the hours of every 
 (morning were filled. 
 
 The full tide of her day had caught her, and the 
 only things that seemed very real to her and not to be 
 put aside were these small, importunate matters of 
 every day. The ideas she had entertained a short
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 297 
 
 while before of going to a minister, of going down to 
 Trinity Church to meditate, now seemed rather theat- 
 rical, a little absurd, and altogether impossible. 
 
 Her maid brought in a florist's box, opened it, and 
 handed her Louis Beauvais' card. 
 
 "Paper flowers 1" she exclaimed disdainfully, 
 merely glancing at the showy, long-stemmed chrysan- 
 themums. " I detest them! " 
 
 The little manicurist looked up with shy wonder 
 from Lydia's finger-nail she was filing. " Oh, I think 
 they're swell! " she said, her eyes following covetously 
 the expensive flowers the maid was carrying from the 
 room. 
 
 " Why, you can have them ! " Lydia exclaimed im- 
 pulsively. " Leave them in the box, I'll give them to 
 Theresa ! " she called after her maid. 
 
 Bonnie wheeled resentfully in the doorway. Her 
 rights to participation in all the fat spoils of an irregu- 
 lar household were threatened. 
 
 " Oh! " said Lydia, good-naturedly, " so you're not 
 going to let Theresa have all of them! Well, leave 
 half in the box for her, the other half you can have." 
 
 The little manicurist beamed adoring gratitude. 
 Lydia loved to make such girls happy. A great lack 
 in her life was the companionship of women, and in a 
 small degree she supplied it by friendliness and gen- 
 erosity to the working women she came in contact with, 
 by winning regard and admiration from saleswomen 
 in shops, from her corsetiere, her dressmaker, the mil- 
 liners who caressingly tried their creations on her chic, 
 satisfactory head.
 
 298 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 She chatted gaily with Theresa. Every moment as 
 the morning advanced she felt a little better, a little 
 more sure of herself, of her powers, of the attractions 
 of mere living. 
 
 And Theresa flattered her. Her nails were " per- 
 fect," her hair was the " loveliest " Theresa had ever 
 " worked with." 
 
 So the glib masseuse had fed her with compliments 
 earlier in the morning.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 SHE had bought a ticket earlier in the week for 
 Ellen Terry's lecture on " The Children in Shake- 
 speare's Plays." She could not imagine a very engag- 
 ing discourse on the children in Shakespeare; she could 
 barely recall that there were children in Shakespeare's 
 plays. Moreover, a man who often discoursed inter- 
 estingly to her on bygone as well as present-day ac- 
 tresses, had warned her. " Don't, don't see her now ! 
 Ah, you should have seen her years ago what a 
 delight she was then ! " 
 
 But she must have entertainment of some sort this 
 Thursday afternoon; and she confessed to curiosity 
 about an actress whose name had been one to conjure 
 with for generations. She confessed to more than a 
 little curiosity about a woman, the passing of whose 
 youth old men could speak of now in tones of sad, al- 
 most resentful regret, as if, with the passing of Ellen 
 Terry's youth, had " passed a glory from the earth." 
 
 The stage of the Broadway Theatre was arranged 
 with a simple reading-desk against a dark velvet cur- 
 tain. Ellen Terry came out, paused in front of the 
 velvet curtain a tall, fair-haired, big woman in grey- 
 green satin, a rather singular, floating garment. She 
 wore one ring, the Henry Irving ring. Her eyes held 
 
 299
 
 300 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 Lydia's chief attention. They were not large or dark 
 or especially clear or luminous, they were not at all 
 the sort of eyes to which power is commonly attributed, 
 yet Lydia quickly perceived that it was in her eyes had 
 lain, lay still, part of the spell Ellen Terry exer- 
 cised over countless men and women. Oddly enough, 
 the character of these eyes seemed to lie in some inex- 
 plicable way in their very characterlessness. Lydia 
 could not define the impression they made on her, but 
 it was an extraordinarily strong, extraordinarily pleas- 
 ant impression. 
 
 After the lecture was over, she could not repeat a 
 single thing Ellen Terry had said about the children 
 of Shakespeare's plays. 
 
 But she had speedily discovered that the matter of 
 Ellen Terry's discourse was of no importance what- 
 ever. The importance was in Ellen Terry. 
 
 She found herself drawing her handkerchief from 
 her muff, and at first furtively, and then more openly, 
 mopping her eyes. She found her breath catching 
 in little sobs. What was she crying about? Ellen 
 Terry was reading, or talking, in those friendly little 
 interspersions she made in her reading, of nothing par- 
 ticularly sad, of nothing particularly intended to be 
 touching. 
 
 " Why is my face wet with tears? " Lydia asked her- 
 self. 
 
 She could not tell exactly why, not for a moment or 
 two, but then she knew that they were tears of sheer 
 gladness. It was so good that the world had in it 
 Ellen Terry ! That great lady would never know her.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 301 
 
 But the desolating loneliness from which she had suf- 
 fered so long even from her solitary childhood in 
 Kingsville seemed suddenly dispelled. Ellen Terry 
 was in the world! In the same world with her! She 
 could never be so lonely again. 
 
 And they called her old! this big, roguish woman 
 moving back and forth in front of the velvety curtain 
 in her big, free, impulsive way. Why, how could they 
 call her old? Could you call sunshine old? Could 
 you call the tumbling music of a little fall of water you 
 came upon in the woods old? Could you call that 
 fresh, liquid, jubilant note of the wood-thrush in spring 
 could you call it old? No more could you call 
 Ellen Terry old! She was the morning sunshine that 
 glinted through a chink in your blinds and played in 
 those dazzling globules of delight on your chamber 
 wall ! She was the mysterious, delicious rustling of 
 tree-tops ! She was like a force of nature, she was a 
 force of nature eternally fresh, beautiful, spontane- 
 ous, regenerative ! Given to the borne-down hearts of 
 men to gladden them, uplift them, revivify them ! 
 
 II 
 
 It was over. Ellen Terry had finished the last page 
 of her discourse, she had smiled her final frank, boyish 
 smile at her smiling but tear-misted audience. Because 
 some nice little boy in the audience had asked her to 
 she had recited " The quality of mercy is not strained," 
 and so forth, as only Ellen Terry could, and only Ellen 
 Terry ever would be able to recite it. 
 
 Lydia was out in the street again, walking rapidly
 
 302 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 and lightly along Broadway, with a great throng of 
 other people who had come pouring out of the theatres. 
 The air was crisp and exhilarating. The street lights 
 and the lights in the shops glittered through the waning 
 daylight. 
 
 More than the invigorating November air exhila- 
 rated her. She had never before respected herself 
 merely for being a human creature, for she had never 
 fully understood what a human creature might be of 
 joy and light to others, until this bright radiance of 
 Ellen Terry had fallen on her.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 AS she walked over to Fifth Avenue and entering 
 a fashionable hotel made her way to its brilliant 
 tearoom, the brave radiance of that other human crea- 
 ture was still upon her. Alone at her table, and silent, 
 except for a few words interchanged with the waiter, 
 she had a sense nevertheless of participation in the vi- 
 vacious scene around her. She had been in this tea- 
 room on certain afternoons before when her own 
 separation, her isolation, from her kind, from the kind 
 certainly that attracted her, womenkind particularly, 
 had borne down heavily upon her. But, this after- 
 noon she was neither depressed nor lonely. As she 
 sipped her tea and leisurely ate the cakes she had se- 
 lected from a tray of pretty cakes offered for her 
 choice, and as she met glances from neighbouring ta- 
 bles, it was almost impossible for her not to nod and 
 smile at these fellow mortals. She felt a strange new 
 sense, very delightful, of human fellowship. After all, 
 we mortals, all so weak, and all so strong, too, were 
 not so far separated from one another. . . . The room 
 seemed full of friends to her such a nice, new, rather 
 funny sensation it was ! Her mind was teeming with 
 fresh perceptions. There were all sorts of noble, 
 sunny possibilities, vague, to be sure, to which she as 3 
 human creature might still attain. 
 
 303
 
 304 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 She finished her tea, paid the waiter, tipped him lib- 
 erally, and walked through the crowded rotunda to the 
 main entrance of the hotel, where she lingered a mo- 
 ment, buttoning the last button of her gloves, adjusting 
 her long stole of fur a little closer before she emerged 
 into the nippy air. A swift procession of people 
 brushed by her in and out of the hotel. The eyes of 
 men met hers with frank admiration and with lingering 
 inquiry. But the furtive seeking of her own eyes was 
 more a matter of habit than of actual intent. She was 
 not bent at the moment on adventure. She was merely 
 relishing, half-unconsciously, the admiration she ex- 
 cited, as, in the absence of wholesome food in her life, 
 she fed on the fulsome flattery of the masseuse and of 
 the little manicurist. With a slight return of bitter- 
 ness to her ever-fluctuating heart, she wondered 
 whether all these people who stared at her knew what 
 she was . . . and, in a more practical vein, she was 
 debating with herself whether she had better take the 
 Fifth Avenue 'bus, or walk. She wanted the nearness 
 of the great human stream in the street, and in the 'bus, 
 of all places she knew, she felt least sense of human 
 kinship. She was still wavering, when she became con- 
 scious that a couple approaching the hotel from the 
 street were staring at her. The woman's big, black 
 eyes, bold but effulgent, had fixed on her a look of half- 
 recognition, and her companion, who seemed hardly 
 more than an appendage to her own stylish toilette 
 a small, prosperous, though insignificant-looking man 
 was peering at Lydia through the thick lenses of his 
 spectacles in an apparently puzzled effort to place her.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 305 
 
 She was aware that the big, bold-looking woman had 
 called the little man's attention to her. 
 
 In a flash, she realised that it was Mrs. Joy the 
 Mrs. Joy who controlled and pervaded Maxfield's in 
 Kingsville the invincible Mrs. Joy, who would have 
 patronised royalty. She recognised the little man with 
 her as Maxfield himself. 
 
 Mrs. Joy pushed through the heavy revolving doors, 
 and seized her hand. " My dear, I know you per- 
 fectly perfectly! Yet I can't call your name! " 
 
 " I don't think you can remember me, Mrs. Joy 
 I lived in Kingsville years ago," replied Lydia, out- 
 wardly composed, smiling a little. 
 
 " So stupid of me not to recall your name but no 
 one would ever forget your face, my dear ! I said to 
 Mr. Maxfield ' There's some one I know, that beau- 
 tiful woman there in the door! ' 
 
 " My name was Lambright." 
 
 Mrs. Joy seemed at a loss. "Lambright? Lam- 
 bright?" She turned to Maxfield, who with smiling 
 patience was awaiting the disclosure of Lydia's iden- 
 tity. " You remember that name? " 
 
 He looked questioningly first at Mrs. Joy then at 
 Lydia. "Lambright? I think I recall the name." 
 But he offered no further elucidation. 
 
 " Lambright ! " Mrs. Joy exclaimed triumphantly, 
 seizing Lydia's hand afresh. " Of course, of course! 
 Professor Lambright who was at the College, 
 who " She checked herself, but with the next 
 breath, " You were the little Lambright girl, of course! 
 Didn't I sell you a pretty little suit, my dear " - her
 
 306 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 voice dropped sympathetically " just a day or so be- 
 fore your father died? " 
 
 Lydia admitted that she had. 
 
 " You've married, of course ! " Mrs. Joy envel- 
 oped her in her luxuriant, plausible smile. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Your name now, dear?" with a lift of her black 
 eyebrows. 
 
 "Still Lambright! " laughed Lydia, entirely self- 
 possessed. She understood nowadays how to meet 
 these moments. " I took my own name back." 
 
 " So sensible, too, my dear! Of course you had no 
 attachment to the other name ! " Mrs. Joy's voice 
 had all the rich cadences Lydia remembered in it of 
 yore. " You're living here in New York? " 
 
 " Yes. Won't you come with me, both of you, to 
 my apartment, and have dinner with me ? " Her heart 
 beat tempestuously. " I want to hear about Kings- 
 ville." 
 
 "Oh, my dear, how we would love to do that! 
 How sweet of you to ask us I How perfectly sweet of 
 you ! But you see we only came up on business, a fly- 
 ing trip, to look at a bankrupt stock, and we're going 
 back this evening the nine o'clock train, and we have 
 an appointment, a business appointment, for six-thirty 
 sharp ! But my dear, why can't you go right up now 
 with us, to my sitting room, and have a little visit there. 
 Oh, yes, yes, there's quite time enough." 
 
 The sitting room proved a spacious, gorgeously fur- 
 nished apartment. On the mahogany table was an 
 enormous cluster of American Beauty roses in an o-
 
 THE SEAS Of GOD 307 
 
 tentatious cut-glass vase. The merchant an elderly 
 man with rodent features and a small self-depreciatory 
 moustache seated himself beside Mrs. Joy on the 
 couch. Lydia said to herself with some amusement 
 that Mrs. Joy had lasted rather well ! She looked 
 hardly a day older than when she last saw her. 
 
 At first Lydia's inquiries were of a cautious and gen- 
 eral character Had Kingsville grown? Had it 
 changed much? But finally she asked of the Pooles 
 Did Mrs. Joy know anything about them? How 
 they were? Mr. and Mrs. Poole who lived on Hill 
 Avenue. 
 
 " Oh, my dear, my dear, they've been dead years, 
 years! " 
 
 " Not not both of them? " Lydia asked, shocked, 
 incredulous. 
 
 ' Yes, yes, indeed ! Died very near together. I 
 remember so well because I attended to her widow's 
 mourning for her such a pretty old dear, wasn't 
 she ? and he hardly cold in his grave, yes, actually, 
 hardly cold in his grave, before the old lady followed 
 him heart, or something of the kind, I think they 
 said. You knew them, did you? " 
 
 Lydia smiled pluckily, but there was an ache in her 
 heart. Why had it never occurred to her that the 
 Pooles might be dead? She was wrung with remorse. 
 It seemed to her that nothing else in her life was so 
 unforgivable as her ingratitude to the Pooles. She 
 was afraid, now, to ask of old Dr. Dunbar. He, too, 
 was dead, of course.
 
 308 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 ii 
 
 But there was one curiosity clamouring for satisfac- 
 tion one question she wished to ask above every 
 other. " Mr. Ransom Churchwell," her pulses were 
 throbbing, " he is well? And handsome as ever? " 
 
 " Oh, my dear, handsomer, handsomer than ever ! 
 His hair snow-white, you know! By the way, I have 
 two gowns and an evening wrap very smart ! 
 right there in my trunk now that I'm taking back to 
 Mrs. Churchwell! She wanted something unusual, 
 don't you know, and she always counts on me for that 
 sort of thing! She's really quite the smartest dresser 
 in Kingsville now! " 
 
 It was not of Ransom Churchwell's wife that Lydia 
 wanted to hear. " The Churchwells are happy, I sup- 
 pose? " she ventured to throw out, at last, as a feeler. 
 
 Mrs. Joy's lips closed over her glistening teeth in 
 an indulgent grimace. " Oh, well, you know how 
 those things are in this day and time, my dear ! It's a 
 day of liberty, don't you think so ? I don't think Mrs. 
 Churchwell bothers herself much about his little de- 
 flections, so to speak! The Churchwell blood, you 
 know! She had to expect that sort of thing." She 
 shook her big head mischievously. " Oh, yes, he's 
 quite a ladies' man still." 
 
 The little merchant broke in with a loud guffaw 
 of laughter. " Decidedly yes ! " he agreed, the first 
 words he had offered. " I should say so a ladies' 
 man!"
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 309 
 
 After all these years, resentment . . . jealousy, a 
 devouring flame, leaped within Lydia. 
 
 Before she left the hotel she had telegraphed Ran- 
 som Churchwell " Can you come to me at once? "
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 SWIFT as wires could bring it, she had had his an- 
 swer; he would leave Kingsville on the first train. 
 
 In the hours since, the hours of the intervening day 
 and of the two intervening nights and now of this day 
 Saturday had come it seemed to her that she had 
 lived through every emotion of which the heart is 
 capable. 
 
 She had sent a long telegram to the head brother at 
 Peter's school; Peter was not to come to her on Satur- 
 day; she would wire not later than Sunday morning 
 when he might come; he was to be assured it would be 
 very soon, very likely she would come out to the school 
 for him herself Sunday or Monday. She did not dare 
 dwell on Peter's inconsolable childish grief when he 
 knew the Saturday visit he had been counting on was to 
 be postponed. 
 
 But it was out of the question that Peter should be 
 present during the first moments of her meeting with 
 his father. 
 
 Ransom Churchwell, Peter's father! With every 
 moment that brought Churchwell nearer, it was harder 
 to believe. 
 
 She was waiting for him now in almost delirious ex- 
 citement. She saw the objects about her through a 
 
 310
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 311 
 
 haze like the quivering haze of intense summer heat. 
 She was so weak she could scarcely walk across the 
 room, and water stood out in little beads on her hands 
 and forehead. She had dressed herself with great 
 care; she was afraid that she might look old to him 
 and not as he remembered her. 
 
 She had put on a gown of some crepy white fabric, 
 girlishly fashioned, and she had tried to do without 
 cosmetics, but without them her face looked featureless 
 and unattractive to her and she had at last to resort 
 to the accustomed aids. 
 
 She had left off diamonds and her more glaringly 
 expensive ornaments, but she had not denied herself 
 certain effective adjuncts to her appearance shoes of 
 emerald green leather; an antique jewel at her throat 
 on a narrow black ribbon, a curious jewel of green 
 enamel and brilliants; and an antique ring, companion 
 to the jewel at her throat. 
 
 II 
 
 It was four o'clock. She had counted that he might 
 possibly arrive at four. Perhaps the train was late 
 in that blessed way she remembered Southern things 
 had of always being late 1 She felt as if she could not 
 endure the suspense much longer. Her mind flew back 
 to the brief lines of his telegram " I am coming, 
 Lydia, first train. Arrive New York Saturday three- 
 thirty. Ransom." 
 
 Ah, he was the same Ransom Churchwell that 
 warm, spontaneous, appealing-to-be-forgiven touch 
 " I am coming, Lydia ! " Who but Ransom Church-
 
 3 i2 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 well would have put it that way ? Wild longing took 
 possession of her; followed swiftly by dread, gnawing 
 fears. 
 
 And when at length she knew that it was he whom 
 she heard the elevator stopping at her floor to let off, 
 he, ringing the bell of her apartment, Ransom Church- 
 well, the god of her childhood, the worshipped love of 
 her maidenhood the father of Peter, her poor little 
 beloved Peter, something hard and icy touched her 
 heart. A wave more of hate than of love swept 
 through her as she heard him ask for her at the door 
 in his deep, unchanged voice, that magic voice and in- 
 tonation of the South ! 
 
 She reached for a cigarette, lit it hurriedly, and blew 
 a thin column of smoke from her lips. He did not 
 jmove from the door where the maid had left him, he 
 did not speak her name, nor she his. In all the pas- 
 sionately turbulent years of her life nothing had been 
 like this moment this interminable moment. He 
 stood looking at her, and she, half-reclining against the 
 cushions of the divan, at him, the soft light of late 
 afternoon shining over the roofs and chimneys of the 
 great city and softly through the windows back of her. 
 
 in 
 
 " He does not look as I thought he did ! . . . He 
 looks old!" A slight pang of pity for him shot 
 through her heart. Yet she realised and with another, 
 very different pang, that he looked thoroughly well- 
 conditioned, not like a man who had known suffering 
 or deprivation of any kind. And of all the percep-
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 313 
 
 tions and emotions crowding on her, something queerly 
 like pride was in her observation that in his clothes and 
 bearing he was wholly like the city men her eyes were 
 accustomed to now. 
 
 The most curious thing to her was, that it did not 
 seem to her that this was really Ransom Churchwell 
 this tall, graceful man. 
 
 And she was vaguely conscious that similar unreal- 
 ities were oppressing him as he stood silent, his head 
 a little bowed. 
 
 " Lydia, I came as you asked me to didn't 
 you? " he said finally, and the tones of his voice, deep 
 and tender, with the indefinable charm of the Southern 
 cadence, made him again seem real to her, as when she 
 had caught the first sound of his voice at the outer 
 door. 
 
 u Won't you have a chair? " she said, smiling coolly, 
 and with the hand on which shone the antique ring, a 
 big ,blur of green and brilliants, she motioned to the 
 chair nearest the divan. 
 
 He took the chair she indicated, answering her with 
 a smile as slight and casual as her own. Their hands 
 did not extend to one another in greeting, and their 
 eyes met with something akin to hostility. Indeed, it 
 seemed to her, that here, where she had but to put out 
 her fingers and touch him, he was worlds and worlds 
 separated from her, farther from her than he had ever 
 been even in Kingsville when she had looked off 
 from afar at him across the impassable gulf which had 
 separated them then. 
 
 This unexpected sense of his distance and separation
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 from her was agony. The old savage desire for ex- 
 clusive possession seized her. She felt she would 
 rather die than have to continue to live with the knowl- 
 edge that he was no longer hers! 
 
 "Won't you smoke?" She held out to him her 
 gold cigarette case. 
 
 He shook his head. " No, not now, thank you," 
 his eyes puzzled, and displeased or sad, she could not 
 tell which. 
 
 She rose quickly from the divan, forcing a little laugh. 
 " Ah, perhaps you don't fancy my Russian tobacco, my 
 cigarettes are too mild for you ! " She offered him his 
 choice of Egyptian and Turkish cigarettes and of sev- 
 eral English and American brands. But he answered 
 her lightly that if she really wished him to smoke, and 
 would pardon his incivility, he preferred his own manu- 
 facture to any other, and taking a pouch of tobacco and 
 a book of papers from his pocket, he filled and rolled 
 a cigarette with the familiar movements she recalled as 
 characteristic of him. Curiously enough, with this 
 perfectly trivial performance, he became all at once 
 thoroughly himself to her. 
 
 But before she bared her own heart, he must bare 
 his. " Is Kingsville the same old Kmgsville? " she 
 asked, with a laugh, but her heart beating convul- 
 sively. 
 
 "It hasn't changed beyond recognition!" His 
 smile was a trifle ironic. 
 
 " I always think of it," she said, with deliberate 
 malice, puffing slowly at her cigarette, " I always think 
 of it as the quintessence of the provincial as the
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 315 
 
 most deliciously narrow-minded, self-satisfied town the 
 sun ever shone on ! " 
 
 A gleam of amusement came into his eyes. " Yes, 
 very provincial," he assented indulgently. " Very old- 
 fashioned and provincial. The only place on earth, I 
 suppose," slowly, " where there are still any of the 
 virtues left! " 
 
 "I'm sure you refer to feminine virtues those 
 that are left! " she retorted. " Kingsville men were 
 never distinguished for their virtues, were they? " 
 
 A look of understanding passed between them. 
 Through the tense stillness she heard the muffled roar 
 of the street traffic outside and she could hear with 
 extraordinary, almost irritating distinctness the sharp 
 ticking of a clock in the room. 
 
 He broke the stillness. " Lydia, I have some natu- 
 ral curiosity. Why did you send for me? Can I be 
 of use to you ? I judge you've left your husband, from 
 the fact you've taken back your name." 
 
 She looked at him. astounded. " My husband ! " 
 she breathed. And then she saw him start. 
 
 " Good God, you're married, aren't you? " 
 
 A ghost of a smile flitted across her face. " Mar- 
 ried? Not exactly. . . ." 
 
 ' You don't mean to say you were never mar- 
 ried? Why, you wrote the Pooles " 
 
 ' Yes, I wrote the Pooles " she interrupted him, 
 her voice ominously calm. 
 
 ; ' Why, what does it mean, then? You've evidently 
 been very successful in some line ! " His eyes ran 
 swift and puzzled over the luxurious rooms.
 
 316 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 "Yes, very successful!" she answered slowly, in a 
 barely audible voice. 
 
 Everything inside her seemed somehow breaking up, 
 leaving her naked and defenceless before him. Her 
 lower lip was quivering quivering exactly as long 
 years ago it had quivered when Miss Barker scolded 
 her for a torn or soiled dress. 
 
 "Very successful in an old, old line!" she said. 
 Her eyes were riveted on his with strange wistfulness. 
 . . . And then he sprang from his chair and had her 
 in his arms. And to her the whole roof of the uni- 
 verse was riven, and heaven descended! 
 
 " My poor little Lydia ! " he cried brokenly, hold- 
 ing her to him, comprehending everything. " My 
 poor little Lydia ! "
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 , you poor little fierce heart, what you've 
 passed through ! And your beauty and charm 
 not damaged, dear, no, not a bit! " He held her face 
 in his hands and gazed at it. 
 
 They had been talking now a long time. It seemed, 
 they both said, as if, if they talked together the rest 
 of their lives, they would never finish all that they had 
 to say to each other. 
 
 She had disclosed to him her life, almost without 
 reservation, and he had understood her, and all the 
 motives that had actuated her, even better than she had 
 ever understood herself. She had told him things she 
 had not dreamed would ever pass her lips. And in the 
 telling, there was a feeling of victory, not shame, vic- 
 tory over herself. From this confessional, she was to 
 arise cleansed, with power to begin life anew, aright. 
 
 But there was one burden on her soul that she did 
 not cast off the theft of Faidley's money. Ransom 
 Churchwell could forgive her all the infamous things 
 she had revealed to him she could still be his love, 
 his " little Lydia," after it all. But she would never 
 be the same to him again if he knew her a thief! 
 He would always think of her, always see her, a thief. 
 No, she could never tell him. That knowledge she 
 must bear alone. 
 
 317
 
 3 i8 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 ii 
 
 For the second time he said: " The miracle to me, 
 Lydia, is how you have ever lived through it all! " 
 
 She had told him of her struggles through the first 
 years after Peter was born; had told him a little, not 
 much some reticence here she barely comprehended 
 held her back of those stupefied, trancelike days, 
 in the little room over Rathemacher's grocery-shop, 
 before Peter's birth; told him of buying the wedding- 
 ring and putting it on her finger and wearing it for 
 years, and with that he had broken down and sobbed. 
 She had told him how in the evenings after her day's 
 work, she and Peter would play their exciting happy- 
 sad game of choosing out of the shop-windows what 
 they would have for theirs, if they could. " My poor 
 little babes ! " he had cried, in an agony of re- 
 morse. . . . 
 
 They talked, now, both of them, as if all the trou- 
 bles were over, as if, now they were together again, 
 all of evil and sorrow that had been in the past was 
 over forever, as if there were no more problems of 
 existence to be faced. To Lydia, for all the sadness 
 of it, the hour was so rich, so happy, it seemed to pay 
 for all the suffering she had ever known. 
 
 ill 
 
 ' You don't see how I endured it, you don't see how 
 I've ever lived at all, with the disgrace and ignominy, 
 and those years of humiliation when I was a servant 
 . . . and everything since. Why, Ransom, life's so
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 319 
 
 queer I've found out that! I've had moments, I 
 have them every day, I don't know whether I can ex- 
 plain to you exactly, but the street lights reflected in 
 long, shining paths across the pavements on a wet 
 night, or a scent you catch that brings back something 
 in the past to you, or just the dry crackle of leaves 
 under your feet in the fall, or the outlines of trees, 
 like those tall, graceful, delicate trees you see in 
 France, with their little trembling tuft of leaves at the 
 top why, little things like that move me I 
 can't tell you how to such unbounded delight ! And 
 they're always occurring, every day, so that you can 
 live along . . . and endure things . . . the other 
 things ! And then, of course, I've had Peter ! 
 He's bad sometimes, very often in fact, he's a real boy, 
 but . . . well, he's just Peter; I can't describe him! 
 Really, you can't imagine how adorable Peter is! " 
 
 " Oh, yes, I can, too ! He's the son of an adorable 
 mother! " 
 
 He held her close, in an impassioned embrace, till 
 she was almost impatient of his ardour she wanted 
 to tell him all about Peter. It flashed through her 
 that his two children, his legitimate children, the two 
 born before she left Kingsville she did not know 
 what children there might have been since would be 
 big lads now. Violent jealousy for Peter's rights 
 gripped her Peter who had known nothing of all the 
 benefits of Ransom Churchwell for a father that those 
 other boys had known. Every atom of the universe 
 was glorified since Ransom Churchwell had come back 
 into her life; but down in the deeps of her heart was
 
 320 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 a love for Peter, Peter whom she had worked for, 
 whom she had suffered with more tender, more 
 utterly inalienable, greater than any other love she 
 could ever know. It welled up very strong in her now. 
 
 "He will be so disappointed poor little chap 
 that he couldn't come to-day. It's been months since 
 we've seen each other, such a long time for both of 
 us!" 
 
 And then, for the first time, she broke down com- 
 pletely herself, and cried softly and a long time, her 
 head on Churchwell's shoulder his stroking hands, 
 his lips on her wet cheek, striving to console her. 
 
 " But you see Peter I know how he is," she 
 answered chokingly to Churchwell's sympathetic words, 
 " I know just how he is he's had so many disap- 
 pointments, and he's so stormy and intense ... his 
 heart will be broken! He won't believe in me any 
 longer! He'll be so desolate, and feel so deserted 
 he'll want to die! Oh, I know, I've been through it 
 all . . . what he's going through " 
 
 " Hush, hush, dear, I know ! I know ! YouVe 
 been through so much, and now the flood-gates are un- 
 loosed at last! I know! But Peter's only a child 
 you can make it up to him, you can make him forget 
 it in a minute you can see him to-morrow! It's all 
 right, it's all right, little Lydia, don't cry any more! 
 We'll make it up to Peter to-morrow! " 
 
 He even teased her a little, and told her he was 
 jealous of Peter, and that if she didn't stop crying, he 
 should have to go, and Peter would have to come and 
 take his place, as he could not make her happy.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 321 
 
 After a while, she smiled once more, and they talked 
 together again of things in the past, and in the present 
 not yet of things in the future. 
 
 The room was dark now. Lydia rose, turned on 
 the lights in one of the softly-shaded lamps, and left 
 the room. She did not want him to see her face 
 stained with tears. 
 
 IV 
 
 There was one point in their talk that did not satisfy 
 her. An old suspicion that had haunted her cease- 
 lessly during those numb, lonely days when she was 
 waiting for Peter's birth came back now to torment her 
 with fresh force, no matter what they spoke of, no 
 matter how resolutely she tried to put it away from her. 
 
 " Ransom, I want you to tell me one thing " she 
 said, fixing her eyes on him solemnly. He was sitting 
 by her, her hands fast in his, telling her with every 
 breath all she was to him, all he had suffered in losing 
 her from his life . . . how poorly existence had com- 
 pensated him for giving her up. " Ransom, tell me 
 one thing. You must not shrink from telling me, for 
 I'm sure I could forgive you anything. Why, look 
 what you've forgiven me! But I must know you 
 can't believe how it's tormented me all these years! 
 . . . Ransom, did you suspect my condition when you 
 sent me that last letter when you left me ... here 
 . . . alone?" 
 
 His hands tightened on hers convulsively. " Lydia, 
 for God's sake, how can you ask me that? I've been
 
 322 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 reprobate enough, God knows, but I'm not entirely 
 devoid of decency ! " 
 
 She wanted to believe him. Oh, never had she 
 wanted anything more in her life ! " You swear 
 you swear it Ransom? That you didn't suspect 
 anything? " 
 
 "I swear it! I swear it! I swear by everything 
 holy that I did not dream " 
 
 " No, no, don't swear by everything holy, Ransom," 
 she broke in on him, in a low voice. " An oath by the 
 old God that no one believes in any longer, that you 
 don't believe in yourself, only you're afraid to say so, 
 because . . . because you're a Kingsvillian an oath 
 of that kind, the old kind, doesn't satisfy me ! I must 
 know, oh, Ransom, I must know the truth! I must 
 know the truth ! There's only one name I know you 
 wouldn't swear falsely by, it's not God's, it's not 
 God's! It's my father's!" she cried. "It's my 
 father's name ! " She felt Churchwell's hands loosen 
 their hold on hers and her heart died within her. 
 " Swear by the name of my father, Ransom ! " 
 
 His lips worked, but they uttered no sound. He 
 moved away from her, freeing himself from her touch, 
 even from the contact of her garments. 
 
 " You have my answer," he said, at last, in a toneless 
 voice. 
 
 She hid her face. She could not look on his shame. 
 
 After a long while, he said, speaking as if he were 
 lifting some great load on his breast with every word 
 he uttered " I couldn't swear falsely ... by the 
 name ... of my friend . . . your father. . . ."
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 323 
 
 Terrible, endless moments passed. Then he spoke 
 again, " You know me a coward. There is nothing 
 lower for a man to confess to, than what I've confessed 
 to what you made me confess to ! I wasn't man 
 enough to confess it otherwise. A coward there, too, 
 you see ! " he added, with bitterness, almost with re- 
 sentment. 
 
 Looking up, she saw that he had bent over, dropping 
 his head into his hands. 
 
 " Ransom," she said falteringly. She did not know 
 just why she spoke his name. She was flooded with 
 such strangely mingled, contradictory emotions. 
 " Ransom ! " But she could not say more. Every- 
 thing in the world had become suddenly utterly hope- 
 less. 
 
 " I don't know, Lydia I don't know but it's more 
 contemptible to try to explain than to keep silent. But 
 I want to say, anyhow, that though I did suspect some- 
 thing from what you threw out . . . that day we 
 were in the country I had an idea you'd be able to 
 take care of things all right, yourself if I left you 
 money to see things through with. All men, I sup- 
 pose, dread such complications. . . . No, no, I'll take 
 that back! I won't implicate other men! I won't 
 undertake to say how they feel or how they would act 
 under similar circumstances! I won't implicate other 
 men in my guilt! Perhaps I'm the lowest of my sex. 
 ... I don't know . . . but anyhow, I didn't dream 
 things would go on ... and there would be a child. 
 ... I suppose I didn't properly estimate your inno- 
 cence . . . and I thought that if I provided you with
 
 3 2 4 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 money, you'd get along all right. . . . Of course, I 
 can't remember exactly the line of reasoning I followed 
 at the time . . . it's a long time ago. . . . But I 
 knew through it all, I loved you, as I'd never loved 
 any one else . . . and as I never shall love any one 
 else. . . ." 
 
 With this expressionless, passionless statement of his 
 love for her, something more completely reassuring 
 swept over her than had in moments of his most burn- 
 ing declarations. . . . Afterwards, many times, she 
 was to bring back to her mind the way, precisely the 
 way, he was speaking to her now of his love for her, 
 bring it back to cherish it the most radiant jewel in 
 her memory of him. 
 
 " I knew how I loved you," he went on. " I knew 
 it was getting dangerous, for both of us, the way 
 the attachment was growing . . . and of course there 
 were many things to be taken into consideration . . . 
 with both of us ... and so it seemed the only thing 
 was ... to break off. . . . And soon afterwards I 
 heard from Mr. Poole you were married you'd 
 written them. I didn't doubt it you believe that, 
 don't you? and I was greatly relieved that it was 
 so!" 
 
 Several times, in his slow, painful, toneless talk, 
 Churchwell had dropped into the Kingsville vernacu- 
 lar. How odd the once familiar expressions sounded 
 in Lydia's ears ! " I don't reckon," he said, rather 
 helplessly, " I don't reckon there's anything lower for
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 325 
 
 a man to admit than cowardice, but such as I am, 
 Lydia, I offer myself to you, for your use, as you will 
 with me. I'll try to atone the best I can for all the 
 suffering I've brought on you for what I've caused 
 you to become I'll try to atone for my cowardice ! 
 I'll give my life, the rest of it, to making everything 
 as good, for you, as I can, for you and the boy ! " 
 
 "Oh, Ransom, Ransom!" she cried, "oh, don't 
 look the way you do, don't look the way you do ! 
 That's all I ask ! Oh, my dearest, my beloved, my one 
 love, why, don't you know I forgive you ? Oh, I for- 
 give you everything! Suppose you were cowardly, 
 you didn't know what it would all lead to and . . . 
 and, Ransom, never mind, never mind, forget every- 
 thing except our love ! Except that! " 
 
 She drew him to her arms and rained kisses upon his 
 drawn face. She lavished endearments on him in a 
 frenzy of love and pity. She could not bear to see him 
 so abased before her. " Oh, Ransom, my darling, my 
 lover! We're not gods and goddesses! We're just 
 men and women . . . and we're capable of so much 
 that's bad, but then we're capable of so much that's 
 good, too! And you're so big and generous and 
 splendid in a thousand ways ! Oh, my own love, how 
 could I live at all in your sight think of that " 
 she whispered " with the wickedness you know of 
 me if I hadn't found this one blot on your escutch- 
 eon! " She wrapped him in her love, comforted him, 
 brought him back after a while to a better esteem of 
 himself, into close sympathy with her. ... At last, 
 they could smile together again, talk and plan.
 
 326 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 VI 
 
 He spoke of nothing else so earnestly now as of 
 atonement. At first, she had hardly understood him, 
 hardly dared understand what he meant. He had 
 given, he said, the best of his life to others who had 
 claims upon him, now her claims should be considered. 
 He could provide for his wife and children well 
 they would have the home, and he would arrange that 
 they should have by far the greater part of all he pos- 
 sessed. For his little new family at this they both 
 laughed, though a little shyly he would retain only 
 a little, enough to start with, but he would give himself, 
 and all his energies, to them all the years to come 
 to them! 
 
 They talked of things practically, and joyously, and 
 finally almost with exaltation. It was as if they had 
 been snatched from barely-averted death back into the 
 full warm tide of life; they could not be thankful 
 enough for their escape, happy enough. He was to 
 go back to Kingsville the next evening, where 
 secretly as possible, there was no need to raise a hue 
 and cry till he was actually gone he would make ar- 
 rangements. It was quite useless, he said, to consider 
 divorce, because there were no legal grounds on which 
 he could secure a divorce from his wife, and she was 
 so constituted that she would never procure one from 
 him, particularly if she thought he desired it. He did 
 not speak of his children except in a general term as 
 his " children," and a certain timidity restrained Lydia 
 from questioning him.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 327 
 
 At a rose-decked, exquisitely appointed table, their 
 dinner was served them, a dinner brimming full, over- 
 flowing with happy excitement. Of the two of them, 
 Lydia felt he was the more intoxicated with all these 
 anticipations. Neither of them ate or drank much, 
 and she assured him laughingly that she had not sup- 
 posed anything in the world could diminish a man's 
 zest for his dinner! He praised her taste in the meal 
 that was served, and she received his praise with a 
 queerly mingled shame and pride. They talked of old 
 days together . . . spoke of Mephisto's, in hushed 
 voices, remembering the torrential passion of their first, 
 fresh love. Mephisto's was gone out of existence now, 
 she told him, closed forever. But their love, they 
 whispered to each other, that had survived Mephisto's ! 
 
 And then after the coffee and liqueurs and cigarettes 
 they planned again. She got out her Baedeker's and 
 they studied maps. For now they were considering in 
 what, country they would begin their life together. 
 He thought it had better be an English-speaking 
 country; except a fool college French, and precious 
 little even of that, he was able to speak only his own 
 language; and they would have to depend to a great 
 extent on his future activities, because the property 
 that he felt justified in converting into cash would only 
 support them for a short time. He wished to provide 
 too well, rather than not well enough, for those left 
 behind, and she agreed with him heartily. They, he 
 and she, must make the material sacrifices, because they 
 would have always the great compensation their 
 love ! . . . Would she be afraid to face poverty with
 
 328 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 him? Oh, no, no, no! After what she had known, 
 how sweet poverty would be with him, her lover, Ran- 
 som Churchwell, hers now forever! 
 
 They talked of Bermuda and of the Bahamas, of 
 Jamaica and Canada, and even of Alaska. They 
 spoke of England, but England, they realised almost 
 at once, was not for them! England was too staid, 
 too law-abiding to the marrow of her, for such as 
 they, more or less vagabonds henceforth. No, not 
 England. 
 
 Australia they dwelt on longer and with more hope, 
 looking over together routes and steam-ship sailings. 
 . . . But all that could be settled in the days immedi- 
 ately to come. " While I'm gone, you, Miss Aris- 
 totle," he said, with something of the old mischievous 
 look in his eyes, " you, with your ubiquitous knowledge, 
 can be weighing the relative advantages for us of these 
 different countries ! " 
 
 " The only thing I fear, Ransom, is that some day, 
 when you can never go back any more, you'll feel this 
 terrible homesickness for Kingsville that I feel, and " 
 
 " For Kingsville the ' quintessence of the provin- 
 cial ' wasn't that what you called it? " he interrupted 
 her, pinching her cheek. " So you think that my pro- 
 vincial soul will never be content away from the con- 
 genial provincialism of its native place! " 
 
 " Seriously, Ransom, nothing, nothing, has been 
 harder for me to bear than the thought that I can never 
 go back to Kingsville again ! You see you don't know 
 yet what that feeling is exile! I could never de- 
 scribe to you what it feels like, but it's an awful rest-
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 329 
 
 lessness that never leaves you, a burning envy of every 
 one who can stay there, who can live in Kingsville 
 when you can't, and it's a dull pain in you somewhere 
 that never ceases, never, day or night! Why, Ran- 
 som, there have been times when I've felt I'd rather 
 I'd rather " her voice shook with stifled sobs " be 
 back in Kingsville and be one of those miserable little 
 waif dogs that used to pick up scraps around the 
 Market House than to be the grandest person in the 
 world anywhere else ! " 
 
 " Lydia, poor little child! You'll have a part of 
 Kingsville with you all the time, after this. A poor 
 part, but a part. Perhaps this poor part can make up 
 to you ... a little. . . ." 
 
 ' You'll think it's ridiculous," she began again, when 
 she could command her voice once more, " you'll think 
 it's ridiculous, but it's true what do you suppose I 
 loved the best in London the pictures in the Na- 
 tional Gallery? No the smell ! " 
 
 He laughed. 
 
 ' Yes, actually, the smell, that smell that every one 
 else hates ! And because the smell of London is just 
 like the smell of Kingsville ! It's the soft-coal smoke 
 and something soft and damp in the air. Why, the 
 first time I went to London, I was simply mad with joy 
 . . . and sadness, too, because it smelled like 
 home!" 
 
 Her voice caught again, with her last word. 
 
 " You're thinking about Kingsville, now ! " he said. 
 "Your eyes are a thousand miles away!" He bent 
 over her and kissed her absent eyes.
 
 330 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 She smiled happily, though a little wistfully. 
 
 " Why, here ! " he teased her, " I see I'm going to 
 be even more jealous of Kingsville than of Peter! " 
 
 She laughed and snuggled closer to him. There was 
 something so comforting in his breast for her head, 
 weary with trying to worry out life alone, in the feel 
 of his strong arms about her. 
 
 " I'll tell you the truth, now, child of my dreams," 
 he admitted, bending over her again, " I don't feel 
 any such passion for Kingsville as you confess to ! " 
 
 " But you don't know " 
 
 " Oh, I don't think I ever should, under any circum- 
 stances. You've idealised Kingsville, Lydia ! " 
 
 " Oh, no," she objected, " it was just that way years 
 ago, when I lived there, even when I was a little child 
 I hated the place, but all the time I absolutely 
 adored it just as you adore people and hate them 
 at the same time ! . . . Of course, I was only an alien 
 there, really, and there's no place else in the world, I 
 suppose, where an alien is more truly an alien than in 
 Kingsville!" 
 
 " I have an idea, Lydia, that perhaps it is just be- 
 cause you were an alien that you've accumulated all 
 this sentiment about Kingsville. Why, the place is full 
 of my aunts and cousins the whole population is 
 my " 
 
 " * Kin ' I " she supplied, her eyes smiling up at 
 him. She knew the word he would have used. 
 
 " Yes, ' kin ' ! The town was founded by my ances- 
 tors and all that, and yet, frankly, it won't give me 
 much of a wrench to leave Kingsville itself." his
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 331 
 
 voice faltered a little, but almost immediately he went 
 on in an ordinary tone "I know Kingsville better 
 than you do, Lydia; I have no illusions about Kings- 
 ville I Oh, I can live away from Kingsville, I promise 
 you ! " 
 
 " I always thought it must be the height of happiness 
 to live where your ancestors have lived, and your aunts 
 and cousins, all your kindred, around you. . . . I've 
 always been so solitary myself. . . ." Her eyes 
 looked off into space again. 
 
 " It's far nearer the height of happiness to dwell 
 where your love dwells wherever that is I " he whis- 
 pered. " And never mind, treasure, Peter and I'll be 
 aunts and cousins to you I You shall never be solitary 
 any more 1 " 
 
 VII 
 
 The hour of leave-taking came; and now he spoke 
 to her openly of his wife. " I'm not afraid it'll hurt 
 her, except her pride," he said. " I've treated her 
 with consideration, I think, during our married life, 
 the sort of consideration she wanted, and I believe she 
 has affection for me we've never bickered, she's not 
 the fury you are, child of my heart, so there have never 
 been any scenes. But I believe once the blow to her 
 pride is healed and it will be she'll get a great 
 deal of sympathy, the whole town will give it to her 
 she'll be all right. She's a woman to whom her 
 own physical comfort is the supreme consideration in 
 life. Fortunately I won't have to interfere with that. 
 I can leave her enough to assure that permanently, and
 
 332 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 so I don't think I shall be doing her an irreparable 
 wrong in removing myself ! You think, Lydia, because 
 I've never known poverty or any special deprivation 
 in a material way, that I haven't tasted any of the bit- 
 ter of life, but I have ! Why, dear, one moment, such 
 as I've known with you, has had more joy in it for me 
 than the whole sixteen years with her put together! " 
 They were standing in the long, dimly-lighted hall, and 
 he held her slim, white-clad figure to him. " Your 
 little finger, the very tip of your little finger, child," 
 he told her, huskily, " is more precious to me than all 
 of her ever was ! " 
 
 In the midst of the wonder of it that it was all 
 just as it had been before, all those years ago the 
 torturing delight, the same exquisite, wild ecstasy 
 Maxfield's coarse guffaw smote on her ears again, " A 
 ladies' man I should say so! " She savoured with 
 whirlwind fury other women clasped in his arms as 
 she now ! " Oh, Ransom, I can't endure, I can't en- 
 dure it, the thought of the women in these years 
 we've been separated! Tell me, tell me, you didn't 
 love them, any of them, those women, since . . . since 
 . . . you left me. . . ." 
 
 He crushed her to his heart. " When will you ever 
 understand? Oh, my sweetheart, my sweetheart, in 
 my heart has been but one image yours ! Many, 
 many times, in these years we've been separated, I've 
 waked in the dead of night with your name on my lips ! 
 Oh, you must understand, child, that you, you alone, 
 have fulfilled the dreams of my youth and my man- 
 hood!"
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 333 
 
 Their lips met. " Till to-morrow! " he whispered. 
 And then she was alone, staggered with happiness, 
 though a feeling of the unreality of all that had hap- 
 pened stole over her as soon as he had vanished, as 
 soon as flesh and blood he was removed from the touch 
 of her fingers.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 IN the morning, they were to take the train out to 
 Peter's school. How overjoyed Peter would be to 
 see them ! Lydia was quite sure Churchwell would 
 win Peter; but she was not to reveal at once his iden- 
 tity; Peter must be gradually prepared for the an- 
 nouncement that the Indian fighter, his father, had not 
 after all been killed, but was here, alive and well, to 
 live with them forevermore. She and Churchwell 
 would have to do some rehearsing together on the de- 
 tails of those Indian fights in which she had made him 
 so gallant a figure. 
 
 They could invent between them some explanation 
 to account for the years of his absence and silence. 
 Peter would not, she thought, interrogate them em- 
 barrassingly. He would sense at once, in the uncanny 
 way he had of sensing such things, that there was some 
 mystery here he was not intended to solve, and he would 
 not attempt to solve it, at least not through them. She 
 realised with a shock that he would always be mystified 
 about his parents and their past lives, just as she had 
 always been about hers. But, at any rate, he was 
 going to have a great deal of recompense now in a 
 happy future in a " regalar " father such as he had 
 envied the " other boys," in a real home, at last, some- 
 where. 
 
 334
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 335 
 
 II 
 
 In the morning, she heard Churchwell's voice at the 
 door much earlier than she had expected. Why had 
 he come so early? A feeling of foreboding came over 
 her. She was not ready to join him, but without 
 changing her delicate neglige garment, her hair tucked 
 up carelessly, she ran with a faint outcry to the door 
 of the little salon. 
 
 " Ransom! " The name froze on her lips; she put 
 out her hand to the door-frame for support. All she 
 was to learn, she learned then, the instant her eyes be- 
 held him. He was rising from a chair, weakly and 
 uncertainly; his face was ashy and haggard; he looked 
 like an old man. There was a defenceless look in his 
 imploring eyes. 
 
 But it was not pity for him that convulsed her body ! 
 Later, not then. 
 
 A -kind of unholy lightness seized on her, an ecstasy 
 of fear, hate, despair! 
 
 " Why didn't you send me a note again with 
 some bills in it? It would have been easier for you 
 wouldn't it? " she asked. 
 
 "Lydia!" 
 
 " Oh, you don't need to tell me anything! I know 
 everything you have to say ! I'll spare you saying it ! 
 But don't wait for the night train! Don't linger to 
 make any explanations to me ! Fly to safety to the 
 arms of your wife whom you must save from all incon- 
 venience, now you've had the night to think it over! 
 I can stand these blows ! I'm used to them ! I'm ac-
 
 336 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 quainted with the whole gamut of perdition ! But not 
 your wife, your spotless Seraphina " 
 
 " You don't understand, Lydia. There are oth- 
 ers" 
 
 " Yes, others! Your children, your Kingsville chil- 
 dren those with Seraphina's pure blood in their 
 veins! Not Peter, it's not Peter you're thinking of! " 
 she cried. 
 
 He came closer to her, until they were only an arm's 
 length apart. " One of my children, Lydia, is afflicted ! 
 I can't" 
 
 " Don't tell me anything of your children those 
 children! I'm not interested in them nor their af- 
 flictions," pitilessly. " There's only one of your chil- 
 dren that interests me and he's afflicted, too, past 
 cure, afflicted with every drop of blood in his poor little 
 body ' Churchwell blood ' ! The famous ' Church- 
 well blood ' ! " she taunted him, almost in a whisper, 
 through her colourless lips. 
 
 " I forgot everything last night, Lydia," he managed 
 to say, managed to make her hear. " I forgot reason 
 and honour and everything. . . ." 
 
 " Honour! " she repeated jeeringly. 
 
 " Yes, honour," he said steadily. " You must sit 
 down and let me talk to you sanely." 
 
 " No, I won't let you talk to me sanely ! What do 
 I want of sanity? " She stamped weakly on the floor. 
 " I don't want to hear anything you have to say, not 
 anything! " The silken folds of her neglige had fallen 
 apart, disclosing her bare throat and breast and the 
 lace of her night-dress, " I don't want to hear any-
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 337 
 
 thing! '' she reiterated passionately. " You came back 
 into my life, into this gilded hell where I live yes, 
 oh, yes, I'm talking coarsely, my life's not been as 
 guarded as Seraphina's, I've words in my vocabulary 
 doubtless she doesn't need in hers. You came back 
 into my life and raised my hopes oh, Ransom, Ran- 
 som," she buried her face in her hands, " you raised my 
 hopes to heaven! " 
 
 He tried to put his arms around her, but she thrust 
 him away from her. 
 
 " And now . . . now . . . you've come to tell me 
 that, after all, it's better just to let me stay in hell 
 where you found me, than to disturb Seraphina's 
 peace ! I have the means to kill you," she said, lower- 
 ing her voice to a whisper; " I have the means near 
 at hand! A woman in my position wouldn't live, you 
 know, without the means to put some one else or her- 
 self out of existence quickly! " 
 
 ' Take your pleasure with me, Lydia," he answered, 
 not without dignity. " Death is not terrible to me, 
 now. It is only life that is terrible. I would have 
 finished .myself last night, after I left you, when I real- 
 ised everything the ruin I should work whichever 
 way I acted! If I were seeking merely the easy thing 
 to do, I would have put an end to myself " 
 
 "Oh, I'm not so sure of that! Not so sure of 
 that ! " she laughed derisively in his face. " These 
 ' Southern gentlemen ' their * chivalry ' their brav- 
 ery it's a myth, largely ! I doubt very much if you 
 have the courage to put an end to yourself! " 
 
 Suddenly she stopped herself.
 
 338 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 Through the closed windows came faintly the sound 
 of church-bells. 
 
 " Church-bells I " she exclaimed. "Do you hear 
 them? They're calling you back to pass the plate at 
 St. Mark's next Sunday morning as usual I " 
 
 He tried to break in on her, tried to explain why he 
 could not desert his responsibilities in Kingsville, why 
 that brief, ecstatic dream of theirs the night before, of 
 some secret corner of the world where they could be 
 each other's forever, was impossible. When he in- 
 sisted on providing in future for her and Peter's main- 
 tenance, she repulsed his offer with fury. He tried to 
 make her understand that his love for her had never 
 been greater or more pitiful than at this moment, but 
 she would not let him put the weight of his finger on 
 her. She would hear nothing. She commanded him 
 to leave her. " This is my dwelling-place you dic- 
 tate who shall come into your house I dictate in 
 mine ! " She would not see his outstretched arms, or 
 heed his entreaties, or listen to her name whispered 
 over and over. 
 
 in 
 
 The outer door closed behind him. He had taken 
 her at her word. Her eyes looked blankly in the di- 
 rection he had gone. He must come back, if only for 
 a moment! She must touch him! She must feel his 
 lips, his arms ! She must hear him call her " Lydia " 
 just once, again! 
 
 " Ransom, come back ! I can't live without you, 
 Ransom! Come back! "
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 339 
 
 She listened. Were those his returning footsteps 
 she heard in the hall outside her apartment? They 
 died away. . . . She could hear the elevator ascend- 
 ing and descending, ascending and descending. Men 
 in silk hats and women in handsome clothes were start- 
 ing out to church, and little proper children in nice 
 Sabbath garments. She heard the church-bells clang- 
 ing again. The room was full of sunshine, Sabbath 
 sunshine, subtly different from week-day sunshine. . . . 
 Church-bells and Sabbath sunshine. . . . But for her 
 the sun was blotted out forever. Ransom Churchwell 
 was gone, irrevocably this time, out of her life.
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 MASSES of ice floated by in the turbid Arno on 
 which the windows of the Pension Paggi 
 looked down. For Italy, it was a winter of extreme 
 severity, and the confort moderne, which the Pension 
 Paggi advertised, being of course a quite relative ex- 
 pression, was not interpreted by beautiful Signora 
 Paggi, nor furnished her patrons, in terms of heat. 
 There were the same inadequate provisions for heat- 
 ing this otherwise delightful and its delights were 
 many Pension Paggi, that Lydia had known so well 
 in her childhood and girlhood in Kingsville. After 
 all, there must be much that is alike in all Southern 
 climes. She found a sort of tantalising pleasure, here 
 as elsewhere, in fancying even the least resemblance to 
 that old Southern town in her own country which she 
 would never see again. 
 
 Indeed, days with fiercely hot sun that kept breaking 
 in on the snow and storms of this Florentine winter 
 were very like those springlike, sweet-promising, fickle 
 days she remembered of a Kingsville winter. 
 
 She had dreamed all her life as who that dreams 
 at all has not dreamed? of Italy. And now she was 
 in Italy. There had been the first few, almost inevita- 
 ble, shocks. She could not reconcile herself at once 
 
 343
 
 344 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 to the Southern churches, to their motley outer garb, 
 their convict's stripes of black and white; to an inner 
 aspect of them she found bare and forbidding, or on 
 the other hand, and more often, too frivolously gor- 
 geous. She felt she must always love better the great 
 grey churches her eyes had beheld first, the great 
 churches of England and of France, athwart whose 
 mysterious inner gloom she remembered rich dark rays 
 piercing slantingly through jewelled windows. She 
 felt she must always care more for Northern churches 
 and like better Northern galleries she was fatigued 
 with Holy Families and Saint Sebastians. She derived 
 small joy from Botticelli's delicate minor tones, and no 
 particular pleasure from his sad, visionary faces. She 
 marvelled that people so much loved the Delia Robbias 
 with their vivid, uncompromising yellows and blues and 
 greens their sweet naivete had not yet touched her. 
 
 Nevertheless, when she rose these winter mornings, 
 her bed chamber flooded with sun, and looked out to 
 the hills across the Arno, those velvet Tuscan hills, 
 silvery with their ancient olive orchards, when she 
 looked up at the tall, solemn cypresses that in gloomy 
 grandeur pointed the sky from the hill of San Miniato, 
 she said to herself, catching her breath, " There is no 
 place else in the world so beautiful as this! " 
 
 And as a turn of a dark, narrow street in her morn- 
 ing wanderings brought her an unexpected and enchant- 
 ing vista of Brunelleschi's great dome or of Arnolfo's 
 slender, flower-like tower, as she came upon a peeling 
 way-side fresco of the Virgin, the blink of a little light 
 before some dark street-corner shrine, or looked up to
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 345 
 
 a sky never so blue before as she heard in her 
 ears day-long that soft, incomparable melody of Italian 
 voices such life, laughter, sobs, colour such very 
 tissue of drama everywhere she would say to her- 
 self, again breathlessly, " No, no other land like this! " 
 
 So she said, too, when alone, or with Mr. Van Ant- 
 werp, she looked down from windings of the Viale de' 
 Colli to Florence shimmering below in the afternoon 
 sunshine, or from the heights of Fiesole, where on a 
 lofty terrace they often had their tea Florence far 
 below, all her towers and domes bathed in the rosy 
 light of the setting sun, the Arno winding through like 
 a silver ribbon. 
 
 But for the healing of this Italy in whose beauty 
 she had been so soon thereafter immersed she did 
 not know how she could have lived through the weeks 
 three months past now since Churchwell's second 
 coming back into her life had left the world empty. 
 She believed she could hardly have continued to live 
 but for Italy and Peter. 
 
 One evening towards the end of February she stood 
 at her chamber window watching the lights on the hill 
 of San Miniato opposite as one by one they pierced with 
 silver the purple dusk. She wore a strand of small 
 pearls and a narrow black fillet bound her hair, and 
 over the delicate violet of her thin gown she had 
 thrown a white evening cloak edged with fur, for she 
 was perpetually chilly, and in the evenings and morn- 
 ings sometimes suffered acutely from cold. She had 
 left off wearing her more conspicuous ornaments, and 
 though she thought she looked more attractive with
 
 346 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 cosmetics, she had for the time given up using them. 
 She wished above all things to be considered a lady by 
 the people at the Pension Paggi. 
 
 The door that led into an adjoining chamber was 
 slightly ajar, and she could hear Mr. Van Antwerp, 
 who had just come in, moving around soft-footedly in 
 his room, dressing for dinner, she presumed she had 
 not seen him since morning. 
 
 In the afternoon mail she had had a letter from 
 Peter, forwarded from a Paris address. She smiled 
 to herself. The letter was unusually brief for Peter 
 but how like Peter 1 
 
 " Dear Mother, 
 
 " You said they wasnt theives in this school but they 
 is. I found my skates. I found them on a boy and 
 he has now got 2 black eyes and a bloody nose. 
 
 ' Your loveing son 
 
 " PETER LAMBRIGHT 
 
 " P.S. I knew they was mine I had a mark on them. 
 Peter." 
 
 Poor, impetuous Peter how many battles were 
 ahead of him. Well, he forgave as quickly that 
 was to be remembered. 
 
 Between Lydia and the silver lights up on San 
 Miniato, between her and dark-flowing Arno below, 
 Peter's face thrust itself, his face as it had impressed 
 itself upon her in the days they had spent together in 
 her apartment after Churchwell left her. For she had 
 clung to Peter then. In his little-boy innocence, and 
 in his boundless happiness at being with her again, his
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 347 
 
 delight with the treasures she had prepared for him, 
 he had been her stay during those terrible days. She 
 had thrown herself with a desperate assumption of 
 gaiety into Peter's pleasures. But when she had sent 
 him back to school again, she could not endure the 
 desolation of the apartment without him ; she could not 
 endure the never-abating restlessness, the incessant, 
 feverish thoughts, day and night, of Churchwell. 
 Finally, in a moment of desperation, when she felt that 
 unless she had an immediate change of scene and 
 thoughts, she must make an end of her own life, she 
 had taken passage to Europe, surprised Mr. Van 
 Antwerp in Paris, and persuaded him to bring her to 
 Italy. 
 
 II 
 
 This evening as she stood waiting till dinner should 
 be announced, yielding herself to the sad loveliness of 
 the Florentine winter dusk, she had more than the 
 thought of Florence, of Peter, or of Churchwell 
 who clung ever a ghost to her side to occupy her 
 mind. About a week earlier an American couple had 
 arrived at the Pension Paggi; previously, Lydia and 
 Mr. Van Antwerp, under the name of Lambert, had 
 been the only Americans in the house. Except to note 
 with a slight uneasiness the fact that the new arrivals 
 were Americans, Lydia had paid no attention to them 
 until she heard some one refer to them as Mr. and 
 Mrs. Lambright, and learned, through inquiries she 
 made of Signora Paggi, that they were from the 
 American town that had been her father's early home.
 
 348 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 How extraordinary that here at Pension Paggi in Flor- 
 ence she should have come upon, and for the first time 
 in her life, a kinsman of her father I 
 
 For she was convinced that he was a kinsman. 
 There was an unmistakable resemblance in the walk, 
 the hands, in the somewhat gaunt outlines of face and 
 figure, and notably in a slight crookedness, a slight 
 twisting to one side, of the bridge of the nose, which, 
 curiously, she had marked first in her father's beloved 
 face when she had looked down on it through the glass 
 lid of his coffin. 
 
 A prey to all sorts of irrational notions and fears, 
 she was afraid at first the man might discover her own 
 identity, and reveal to the Pension Paggi, where she 
 and Mr. Van Antwerp had been treated with consid- 
 eration and cordiality, that they were not man and 
 wife. Soon, however, she realised that it was quite 
 unlikely that this Mr. and Mrs. Lambright should 
 know anything whatever about her, or be able to dis- 
 cover, far less disclose, anything she wished hidden. 
 
 Now, she suddenly decided to seek from them some 
 knowledge of her father's early life and of his aliena- 
 tion from his family. 
 
 The door into Mr. Van Antwerp's chamber opened 
 wider, and, turning, she saw his white shirt-front, 
 defined by the black of his dinner-coat, gleaming faintly 
 in the dusk of the room. He came over to the win- 
 dow, remarked that she was looking unusually pretty, 
 that he liked her face without rouge, and kissed her 
 briefly and undemonstratively. 
 
 After dinner she went with him to the fumoir where
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 349 
 
 coffee was served to them, to a young officer of the 
 Italian cavalry, and to a very old Russian gentleman 
 who had joined them. The shabby fumoir whose 
 four long windows looked out from the rear of the 
 house on the Via Corso de' Tintori with its big 
 lounge, its commodious chairs, its writing tables, litter 
 of newspapers and periodicals, and its ugly stove, was 
 the warmest and except to noses squeasy to tobacco- 
 smoke the most genuinely comfortable room in the 
 house. 
 
 Lydia sipped her coffee leisurely, listening to the talk 
 of the three men, although, as they were conversing 
 mostly in French, she did not understand much that was 
 said. It felt good to her to lean back against the 
 cushions of the lounge. She was not ill, but recently 
 she had been subject to attacks of sudden exhaustion. 
 She went about every morning sight-seeing a little, 
 usually alone, for Mr. Van Antwerp was not disposed 
 to sight-see, nor was Florence new to him; in the after- 
 noons she drove, and often then he accompanied her; 
 but she rarely came in from walk or drive that she did 
 not choose the ascenseur rather than the one easy flight 
 of stairs to her room. Very often after the most 
 trifling exertions she would be dewed with perspiration, 
 and when a sharp sound struck on her ears she would 
 feel a tingling of pain sweep the whole surface of her 
 body. 
 
 The old Russian gentleman inquired, in his halting 
 but chivalrous English, if she were perhaps a little ill 
 this evening. She shook her head, smiling brightly on 
 him. She thought him the most charming old man she
 
 350 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 had ever met. He was so old, and his bleached old 
 countenance so purged of earthiness, that his constant 
 interest in her, his charming old gallantries to her, she 
 found altogether delightful. She could be perfectly 
 natural with him, responsive, vivacious, fanciful, as her 
 mood was. With the younger men about her, who 
 what once would have been a source of gratification to 
 her gave indisputable evidence of her attraction for 
 them, she held herself more in reserve. 
 
 When she rose after the coffee service was removed, 
 the old Russian rose too and insisted on accompanying 
 her to the drawing room. Mr. Van Antwerp re- 
 mained in the fumolr with the young cavalry officer; 
 he seldom appeared in the drawing room; he was a 
 man who enjoyed men, or women never men and 
 women. Sometimes Lydia wondered, from a way she 
 caught the young officer now and again looking at her, 
 if Mr. Van Antwerp, in fumoir confidences, had ever 
 betrayed to him that she was not his wife. She con- 
 sidered it by no means impossible. 
 
 Once Mr. Van Antwerp had been high-priest to in- 
 itiate her into the mysteries of an unknown world. 
 But mysteries had vanished, and with their vanishing, 
 a large measure of whatever fascination he had had 
 for her. His character, a singular compound, had 
 once been itself a fascinating mystery; there was some- 
 thing in him that always suggested to her a monk who 
 had forsaken the cloister, turned worldling; he pre- 
 sented curious survivals of a scholarly-trending, even 
 perhaps ascetic youth, but sport had overtaken and 
 supplanted scholar in him. She was never quite able
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 351 
 
 to make him out. However, she was no longer inter- 
 ested in even trying to understand him. 
 
 Since she had been again with Churchwell, en- 
 wrapped for all the tragic ending of them in 
 those unforgettable hours of rapturous love and under- 
 standing, she had found something vitally, and almost 
 unendurably, disparate between herself and Mr. Van 
 Antwerp. He was always, she knew now, in a state 
 of greater or less intoxication, and though she had 
 never seen him even verge upon hilarity, never seen 
 his white, carven face lose for a moment its whiteness, 
 its icy immobility, yet now she recognised readily his 
 states of greater intoxication, and there had not lacked 
 in these weeks together in Italy certain moments' of 
 horrid disenchantment. Moreover, a day had arrived 
 when she did not hide from herself that he bored her. 
 His sly stories, she had once thought so daringly clever, 
 thrice-heard had palled on her. 
 
 ill 
 
 There was a little stir of pleasant excitement as she 
 and the old Russian entered the drawing room. With 
 her arm clinging in his they formed a charming picture. 
 The Russian, although somewhat stooped with his 
 great age, had not lost the distinction of his bearing. 
 Lydia was as straight as a wand and carried her head 
 with the slightly haughty, slightly challenging air which 
 was characteristic, but there was something soft and 
 faintly troubled in her glance, something blended with 
 her quick smiles that was instantly and indescribably 
 appealing. From her pallor and the hollows in her
 
 352 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 cheeks, 'her tenure of life appeared hardly more certain 
 than the old Russian's. 
 
 Every one in the room seemed anxious to pay some 
 little attention to one or the other of them. How 
 pleasant it was, Lydia thought to herself. Yet how 
 secretly ill-at-ease their kind treatment made her feel ! 
 How different it would all be, if they knew knew 
 who she was and the facts about her! She was never 
 free, indeed, from a shamed sense of imposing on 
 these kind and delightful people, and the assumed 
 name she and Mr. Van Antwerp were under was of all 
 possible dissemblings the most hateful to her. 
 
 She was always in demand for the card-table, but 
 this evening she said she was too tired to play. As a 
 matter of fact, she was scarcely more tired than on 
 other evenings, but she had a definite and agitating 
 plan in mind and she must be free to carry it out. 
 
 A game was made up without her the old Italian 
 colonel, who invariably played, whoever did not 
 hardly less belligerent in aspect at the card-table, one 
 could believe, than in the old days under Garibaldi; 
 the spirited but amiable young man from Vienna; the 
 Russian princess, unpretentious and agreeable; the 
 pretty, white-haired lady from Dublin, whose bright 
 eyes gave false, bright promises of her intelligence. 
 
 Lydia picked up a battered copy of a Tauchnitz 
 novel from one of the tables and sat down near the 
 fire, a few smouldering knots of wood in the big fire- 
 place. The old Russian, after chatting with her a few 
 minutes, betook himself to a stale copy of a Parisian 
 journal he had found somewhere in the room, and pres-
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 353 
 
 ently fell into a doze over it. A British matron, of the 
 type sans peur, sans reproche, was knitting rigorously 
 at an interminable strip of white lace. A Scottish 
 spinster was entertaining callers. The pretty daugh- 
 ter of the pretty lady from Dublin was strumming on 
 the piano. A German couple had a map of Italy 
 spread on a table before them and were mastering it 
 with Teutonic thoroughness. A gentle Dane, profes- 
 sor in the University of Copenhagen, was looking over 
 some Uffizi photographs. 
 
 With all its occupants, the room was not noisy; its 
 hush was broken only by the soft strumming on the 
 piano, the low murmur of conversation from a distant 
 corner of the room, or by an involuntary cry of joy 
 from the young Viennese when a good hand was dealt 
 him, or an exclamation of fiery impatience from the 
 veteran of Garibaldi when his partner, the Irish lady, 
 led from the wrong suit, which was not infrequently. 
 Lydia looked up at a framed legend that hung on the 
 wall 'near her which recorded, 
 
 Pension Paggi Honoree Dans L? An 18 De La 
 Presence Des Souverains D'ltalie. 
 
 Ah, Pension Paggi ! There had never been any- 
 thing else in her life of its kind so pleasurable as her 
 weeks at the Pension Paggi. . . . But now it must 
 soon be over, Pension Paggi and Italy ! And her 
 life, her future life, what of that? . . . Her prob- 
 lems grew not easier but more difficult as time pro- 
 gressed. 
 
 Across the room, on a sofa and quite alone, also
 
 354 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 pretending to read, sat Mrs. Lambright. Lydia sent 
 furtive, perturbed glances in her direction, trying to 
 summon courage to walk across the room and introduce 
 herself. The lady was unmistakably a trifle piqued. 
 The old guests at Pension Paggi had not opened arms 
 to her quickly enough, quite warmly enough, perhaps! 
 How fortunate Lydia had been unworthy she I 
 she blushed at the thought to have been so swiftly 
 gathered into Pension Paggi's fold. She got up, hold- 
 ing her white cloak around her, smiled on the card- 
 table, which gave back smiles in return, glanced around 
 at the different hands, and, a vivid spot of colour in 
 each cheek, made her way to the sofa where Mrs. Lam- 
 bright sat. 
 
 " Our names I am Mrs. Lambert are so simi- 
 lar ... and compatriots ... we should know each 
 other, should we not?" she said, smilingly extending 
 her hand. 
 
 Mrs. Lambright, a voluminous blonde, responded 
 cordially. Her husband, she explained, was writing 
 letters. He wasn't well, and Florence they found too 
 cold. It had been much milder, a former winter they 
 had spent here. They were considering leaving for 
 Egypt, but then you froze to death in Cairo, too, of 
 course, when it was cold there . . . and so on. 
 
 Lydia listened perfunctorily, while she gave herself 
 another moment to gather her scattered forces. Her 
 cheeks were burning. " There used to be Lam- 
 brights in the town where I lived Kingsville," she 
 remarked carelessly when there was a moment's pause.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 355 
 
 The woman beside her gave a slight start. " Kings- 
 ville! Are you from Kings ville?" 
 
 " Yes, that is I lived in Kingsville when I was a child. 
 . . . There was a Professor Lambright there at 
 Ransom College." 
 
 Mrs. Lambright raised her eyebrows and laughed 
 lightly and with a little embarrassment. " Oh, yes 
 my husband's brother, Girard Lambright! " 
 
 Something closed tight around Lydia's heart. Her 
 father's brother, here, only a few yards from her! 
 She had not dreamed it could be nearer than cousin ! 
 
 " Did you know him ? " Mrs. Lambright asked. 
 " Or his wife? " she added with a significant smile. 
 
 " I knew them a little ... or at least their little 
 girl." 
 
 "Oh!" She looked at Lydia with increasing in- 
 terest. " The child, yes! Was she pretty? " 
 
 Lydia smiled faintly. " Not very. . . ." 
 
 " The mother was a beauty! " 
 
 " Yes, I remember her. . . ." 
 
 " You say you don't live in Kingsville now? " 
 
 " No, I left there years ago." 
 
 " He's dead Girard Lambright. Did you know 
 it?" 
 
 " Yes, I'd heard it." 
 
 ' You knew about his wife, of course? He ruined 
 his life for that woman! " 
 
 " I remember there were rumours . . . but I don't 
 think I knew anything definite. ... I was only a 
 child. . . , She killed herself, at last, I think I heard."
 
 356 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 " Pity she didn't do it earlier, before she murdered 
 Mrs. Lambright! " 
 
 "What!" 
 
 " Oh, it amounted to that! She absolutely died of 
 a broken heart Mrs. Lambright, I mean, Girard's 
 and my husband's mother all the disgrace of the 
 thing! You didn't know the facts, then? Why, we 
 heard it all came out in Kingsville and that the woman 
 was completely ostracised there ! " 
 
 u She was an invalid," Lydia interposed feebly. 
 "What was her history? I don't know, except the 
 vague rumours." 
 
 " Oh, she was simply notorious ! English, you 
 know, or English and French. Her mother was a 
 French dancer, and notorious before her, thoroughly 
 depraved. After she lost her youth and beauty, she 
 turned virtuous, nominally virtuous at least, the mother 
 I mean, married an Englishman, went to England to 
 live, and then this daughter, Aimee, who married 
 Girard, and who was kept in a convent in France dur- 
 ing her childhood, outdid her mother in notoriety. 
 When she became perfectly abandoned, Girard had the 
 misfortune to meet her, and became infatuated with 
 her!" 
 
 Lydia was listening with terrified attention. Her 
 aunt oh, how queer, her aunt ! had paused for 
 breath. 
 
 " He was a perfectly impractical man, governed by 
 the most quixotic impulses, just the man for that sort 
 of woman to get hold of. Of course she worked on 
 his feelings, and he thought it was the noble thing to
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 357 
 
 marry her and try to rehabilitate her absurd, you 
 know; you can't rehabilitate a woman of that sort! 
 But she was clever! They said to meet her you 
 wouldn't know she'd ever had a vicious thought. The 
 bomb burst when Belle Lambright came home a few 
 weeks after Girard and his wife. She had been abroad 
 with her husband for several years the same time 
 Girard was abroad and they'd learned everything 
 about the woman. Oh, I shall never forget all the 
 excitement! I wasn't married then, but Judge Lam- 
 bright's grounds and my father's adjoined. It nearly 
 killed the Lambrights ! There the woman was 
 right in the house one of them, so to speak and 
 going to have a child ! Heaven knows whose child ! " 
 
 Lydia's lips blanched. " Whose child? It was his, 
 wasn't it? her husband's?" she faltered, striving to 
 force a smile. 
 
 "Whose?" An expression of amusement crossed 
 Mrs. Lambright's broad, pink face. " Well, I guess 
 Girard Lambright would have been delighted if he 
 could have been sure he was the father! " 
 
 The room grew black before Lydia's eyes. The 
 voices from the card-table, bidding in more or less 
 broken English, " one heart " " two diamonds " 
 " no-trumps " came to her from across some vast 
 abyss. Her father, her dear father whom she had 
 walked with on the River Road, whose poor wasted 
 hand she had held in hers that winter dusk when he 
 had looked out to see the dawn of Kingsville come for 
 the last time was not her father! The last props 
 of her existence had fallen from under her.
 
 358 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 And it was her mother who had doomed her father 
 to suffer what he must have suffered, her mother who 
 had doomed her to suffer what she was suffering now ! 
 
 IV 
 
 " Judge Lambright ordered them out of the house ! " 
 the woman beside her was saying. " Belle and the 
 other sisters were in perfect accord with their father 
 very spirited girls like the Judge. My husband 
 was several years younger than Girard. He was at 
 college, and so of course wasn't forced to take a stand 
 one way or the other, at the time." 
 
 "You spoke of the mother that it killed her," 
 Lydia ventured in a voice that to her own ears sounded 
 hollow and far away. 
 
 " Yes, she took it harder than any of them, though 
 in a different way. She was one of those mild women 
 who never would believe evil of any one and she was 
 wrapped up in Girard actually wouldn't believe the 
 things they told her of the woman he married and 
 wanted the Judge and the girls to do nothing. She 
 used to write to Girard as long as she lived, and when 
 she died she left him his share of her property. But 
 to the day he died Judge Lambright never allowed 
 Girard's name to be mentioned to him." 
 
 " There was a Miss Barker, I remember, who used 
 to live with the Lambrights in Kingsville," Lydia said 
 slowly, with a great effort. 
 
 "Oh, yes, Barker! Sour woman, but extremely 
 loyal to Girard. After she came back from Kingsville, 
 no one could ever get a word out of her about Girard's
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 359 
 
 wife. She wouldn't discuss her at all, or the life they 
 led. You see old Mrs. Lambright brought Barker up, 
 made a little more than a servant of her, and when she 
 was dying, she asked her to go to Kingsville and look 
 after Girard's house. Of course, I always felt some 
 sympathy for poor Girard he was the victim of a de- 
 signing, depraved woman but one thing I never 
 could condone in him " 
 
 " What was that? " asked Lydia, quivering with fear 
 yet eager to hear. 
 
 "His naming that child for his mother 
 Lydia!" 
 
 ' Yes," Lydia agreed, a wraithlike smile illuming 
 her pale face and quickly dying out again. She had 
 never before known she was named for any one in 
 particular. It came to her in a rush of feeling that 
 hereafter there would be a little tender association to 
 her of her own name with the name of that good and 
 forgiving woman, her father's mother. . . . Was he 
 her 'father? 
 
 " Pardon me for suggesting it, but, if you don't mind, 
 don't mention Kingsville or knowing the Lambrights to 
 my husband when you meet him ! He's in a very nerv- 
 ous state at present. He didn't know of Girard's 
 death till several years after it occurred I'm sorry 
 he ever heard of it at all and he's been more or less 
 possessed of an idea ever since that he, or some of 
 them, ought to have looked him up and effected a recon- 
 ciliation purely morbid idea, of course, as I tell him 
 constantly, but you know how people are when they get 
 in a low state of health and possessed of an idea of that
 
 360 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 kind you can't reason with them ! By the way, 
 what became of the child? We never heard." 
 
 " I don't know. . . . She left Kingsville . . . dis- 
 appeared." 
 
 " Went the way of the mother, doubtless ! " 
 " Doubtless ! " Lydia repeated in a low voice, and 
 then . . . her body floated off into space. . . . What 
 was happening to her? Every one was talking at once, 
 at first loud, and then low. . . . Peter was so far 
 away in America thousands of miles away! 
 What would become of Peter? . . . She was lying 
 against some one's soft breast, and she saw indistinctly 
 the scared face of the young Viennese somewhere near 
 her . . . and then her own bed chamber in Pension 
 Paggi . . . and her narrow bed . . . Caterina, the 
 maid, chafing her feet . . . tears, she could not help, 
 coursing down her cheeks . . . and beautiful Signora 
 Paggi bending over her, with her face of an angel, mur- 
 muring to her with all the rich tenderness of her noble 
 heart " Oh, I am so sorry, I am so sorry! "
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 LYDIA did not know whether she had fainted or 
 not, but she knew she had suffered some sort of 
 collapse, and when she recalled her talk with Mrs. 
 Lambright, and realised what had happened to her she 
 felt that she could never again see any of the people 
 at the Pension. She allowed no one to enter her room 
 except Caterina, Signora Paggi, and Mr. Van Antwerp, 
 and her concern with Mr. Van Antwerp was merely to 
 induce him to make arrangements for their immediate 
 departure. 
 
 A few mornings later, they were seated in an omni- 
 bus on their way to take the early morning train to 
 Rome. She had a last glimpse of the soft, dark beauty 
 of Signora Paggi, could still feel the warm, last pres- 
 sure of her tender hands ... a glimpse of Caterina, 
 weeping and waving. . . . Now Pension Paggi became 
 a blur to her as she looked back through the windows 
 of the omnibus . . . she could barely distinguish the 
 servants still clustered before the door . . . then a 
 corner turned and Pension Paggi . . . Lungarno 
 vanished. 
 
 Her eyes caught sight in another moment of Perseus 
 holding aloft the Medusa head, and then the lovely 
 Loggia vanished . . . Piazza Vittoria Emanuele cut 
 
 361
 
 362 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 across . . . Via Strozzi traversed . . . Santa Maria 
 Novella's marbles glistening in the morning sun . . . 
 then all that had meant Florence to her vanished. 
 A thought flitted through her mind of the morning she 
 had left Kingsville and looked back, her eyes lingering 
 on its spires that were glistening in the morning sun- 
 shine. How little she had dreamed, then, that she 
 would never again look on those church-spires. How 
 full of hope she had been ! How steeped in beautiful 
 girlish dreams ! How simple life had looked to her, 
 and how easy and certain of conquest the big, unknown 
 world as she waved good-bye to Mr. and Mrs. Poole. 
 . . . And now, rattling over the stones of Florence this 
 winter morning, sunlit too, how intricate and baffling 
 life was, whichever way she turned how impossible of 
 happy solution. 
 
 Her eyes followed absently all day long what passed 
 outside the car window. Already Florence had be- 
 come almost a dream, and it was almost like a dream 
 that she was approaching Rome. It came back to her 
 with faint amusement how in their provincial pride 
 Kingsvillians had been wont to compare Kingsville on 
 her seven hills to great Rome on its famed seven hills. 
 How that comparison had fired her childish imagina- 
 tion. Rome ! The Eternal City ! 
 
 But now that she was actually approaching Rome, 
 her mind was passionately preoccupied. She could 
 think of nothing but what she had heard of her mother 
 of her grandmother ! She was descended from a 
 line of courtesans. It made her own life loathsome to 
 her in a way she could not before even have imagined.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 363 
 
 What if Peter, half unconsciously suspecting but still, 
 with the generosity of childhood, adoring her, should 
 grow up, and learn about her what she had learned 
 about her mother at the Pension Paggi ! If his adora- 
 tion should turn to the feeling she harboured now 
 against her mother. . . . He had written her in one 
 of those exuberant childish outbursts of homesickness 
 that often occurred in his letters " I wish you would 
 have a picture taken and put it in a locket. I would 
 always have it next my heart." How could she bear 
 it, if the image of her beloved face should some day 
 become a shame and a horror to him I 
 
 II 
 
 Mr. Van Antwerp touched her lightly on the arm. 
 
 " Perugia ! " He leaned slightly over her and 
 pointed out the window to a city on a high hill. 
 
 Perugia ! 
 
 She smiled absently, and following his pointing fin- 
 ger saw a city seated on a hill, like a pictured city, a 
 city in an old engraving. Perugia. She hardly took 
 it in. 
 
 Occasionally Mr. Van Antwerp looked up from the 
 newspaper he was reading, and bestowed a light caress 
 on her, teased her a little, called her " Our Lady of 
 Sighs," then he went back again to his newspapers. 
 
 As they approached Rome, a first sight of a Roman 
 pine, lifting on high its great emerald head, shocked 
 her with its beauty into a momentary joy. 
 
 Monte Rotondo . . . and then, soon after, the first 
 glimpse of St. Peter's dome. ... In the lives of most
 
 364 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 men and women that first glimpse of St. Peter's 
 Rome I was a moment to remember for years after- 
 wards. But now to her all precious realisations of the 
 present were denied. 
 
 in 
 
 In the days that followed, Mr. Van Antwerp never 
 questioned her, never seemed curious, and was never 
 outwardly perturbed at a change in her she knew he 
 could not have failed to notice. However, he sug- 
 gested now, as indeed he had suggested in Florence, 
 though he had never insisted on it, that she should see 
 a physician. He even professed a willingness to ac- 
 company her to see the sights of Rome, but she refused 
 this as decisively as she had refused his suggestion of a 
 physician. She knew that he detested sight-seeing, and 
 that he would speedily find ways other than sights 
 to occupy himself here, as he found ways to occupy him- 
 self in other foreign cities, whether or not he had busi- 
 ness interests in them. Moreover, his presence gave 
 no especial comfort to her; on the whole she preferred 
 to be alone, with her own thoughts, miserable as they 
 were. 
 
 Sometimes she sat almost a whole day at the window 
 in her room in the little hotel in the Via Nazionale, 
 thinking and thinking of her present situation and of 
 her past, watching with tepid interest the busy street 
 outside nursemaids, long, gorgeously-coloured rib- 
 bons streaming from their caps, the Bersaglieri, topped 
 with their queer, ridiculous cock's-plumage. Small, ill- 
 conditioned horses all day long and more than half the
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 365 
 
 night toiled up the steep hill of the Quirinal on the 
 slope of which the little hotel was situated, often slip- 
 ping on the wet paving-stones, volleys of abuse pouring 
 out on them as they struggled up to their wretched 
 bleeding shins. This was Rome. She scarcely real- 
 ised it more than this. ... If she leaned out of her 
 window she could see a little way down the street, at 
 the foot of the hill, the tall shaft of an ancient column 
 rising from Trajan's Forum. Quirinal! Trajan's 
 Forum ! What words of magic they had once been to 
 her. 
 
 Try as she would, she could not revitalise Rome. 
 It had been more alive to her when a child she climbed 
 the hills of Kingsville with Rome in her mind than now 
 when she climbed its own hills, wandered about its vast 
 Forum Romanum, gazed at its broken columns, knew 
 that her steps were following the Via Sacra, knew that 
 she stood on the threshold of what once had been great 
 Caesar's house, or Nero's golden house; now that she 
 passed under triumphal arches, heard murmurs all 
 about her of Peter and of Paul. Yes, down that hill 
 came Cicero, there walked and jested Horace, along 
 this Appian Way moved a sumptuous Roman triumph, 
 yonder flitted Vestal virgins, on this spot, where she 
 stood in the great arena of the crumbling Coliseum, 
 quivering Christian martyrs crouched, hearkening to the 
 shouts of " The Christians to the lions ! " But never 
 once in these soft, misting spring days was she shaken 
 out of herself. Her unhappiness overshadowed to her 
 even Rome.
 
 3 66 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 IV 
 
 The old Russian at the Pension Paggi had urged her 
 to visit the garden of the Villa d'Este at Tivoli, and 
 several times since their arrival in Rome, she had pro- 
 posed to Mr. Van Antwerp that they should go there 
 together. She had not asked or wished him to go with 
 her elsewhere, but she felt a little timid at the idea of 
 making this excursion outside Rome alone. He had 
 smiled, teased her a little, and put her off. He had 
 discovered acquaintances in Rome, and was spending 
 hours with them, hours of every day and every night, 
 just how and just where she did not know, or inquire, 
 any more than he inquired of her how she spent her 
 own hours. 
 
 It was still early when she left the Porta San Lo- 
 renza one morning for a solitary journey to Tivoli. All 
 the way from Rome she had the tram almost to herself. 
 The day was slightly overcast, but as she looked out of 
 the tram window, out over the Campagna through 
 which her way lay, miles and miles of waste, desolation, 
 only a Roman pine here and there, or an arch of the 
 ancient aqueduct, gradually she felt something of the 
 pathetic grace of the lonely Campagna stealing softly 
 into her heart. She felt herself in some obscure way 
 in sympathy with, even comforted by, these pensive 
 wastes, this great wash of grass and dull sky that closed 
 her in on all sides, like a sea. 
 
 The sun struggled through the clouds as the tram 
 approached Tivoli. The tramway mounted higher and 
 higher, through olive groves whose gnarled trees with
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 367 
 
 their grey-green leaves, silver now in the sun, moved 
 her to the delight that the silvery olive groves on the 
 hills about Florence had moved her to, the delight that 
 trees above everything else in nature had always moved 
 her to. 
 
 When she stepped out of the car at the gate of 
 Tivoli, she was sensible for the first time in many weeks 
 of a good feeling of hunger. Her watch showed her 
 it was almost eleven o'clock, and she asked a facchmo, 
 one of the importunate hangers-about at the Porta 
 Santa Croce, the way to a place where she could get 
 lunch. 
 
 The sunshine grew brighter and as she climbed a 
 steep hill, stopping now and again to rest, and wound 
 her way through narrow ancient streets, she breathed 
 more easily, the choking in her throat and the oppres- 
 sion on her lungs were a little lightened. An old 
 gaiety, long a stranger there, stirred in her heart. 
 
 It was a rather dirty place she had been directed to 
 for her lunch, in the central Piazza of the town. Hens 
 ran about on the tiled floor, scurrying in and out of the 
 door, sometimes almost under her skirts. But nothing 
 annoyed her. The lunch seemed to her appetising and 
 excellent. And it seemed friendly and good to have 
 the hens cackling about as she ate her omelette, her 
 macaroni ai pomi d'oro her beefsteak, and 
 drank her glass of pale amber Lacrima ChristL She 
 did not feel in the least lonely here in this homely little 
 ristorante she had never seen or heard of till a few 
 moments before. She did not know exactly why she 
 should feel less miserable than she had been feeling for
 
 368 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 many days, but for some reason she did feel a trifle 
 better and more natural the blessed sensation of the 
 beginning of recovery after a long, perilous illness. 
 
 Her father would have liked a queer little place like 
 this friendly ristorante. And as the memory of him 
 came to her in this natural and pleasant way, it flashed 
 through her that, after all, she had not lost her father. 
 Even if he were not her father, still he was something 
 that had been very near and dear in her life and he 
 would always be. Just as she would always long to 
 feel that he really was her father, so doubtless for years 
 he had longed to feel that she really was his daughter. 
 That upon both their hearts had been laid the same 
 burden of doubt and longing brought him closer to her 
 and united him to her more tenderly and strongly than 
 he had ever been before. All at once some of the hor- 
 ror she had carried around with her for days and days 
 lifted from her. 
 
 She paid her bill, slipped a lira into the hand of the 
 smiling waiter, and with his musical, ardent " Ah 
 grazie, grazie, grazie, Signora!" still sounding in her 
 ears, she stepped out again into the noon sunshine of 
 the Piazza del Plebiscite, and made her way to the 
 entrance of the Villa d'Este. 
 
 She descended from terrace to terrace; peeped at 
 little half-hidden lakes, at stone balustrades and broken 
 images of stone reflected in their lovely waters; 
 glimpsed mossy statues in cool, dripping grottoes;
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 369 
 
 through a chink in a wall of trees beheld St. Peter's 
 dome, shining in the noon sun, far away across the 
 Roman plain that stretched below her; she gazed en- 
 chanted at a hundred fountains whose white jets rose 
 sparkling in the green gloom that enshrined them; and 
 at last she stood at the foot of the garden of Villa 
 d'Este and looked back, up terrace after terrace, up the 
 long flights of stone steps she had descended, looked 
 up through high, narrow walls of green, past the grey 
 of stone, green of trees, jets of sparkling water, to the 
 white villa crowning it all, shining above, looking down 
 on its tier on tier of matchless garden. . . . 
 
 No one had told her it was like this ! 
 
 She slipped some money into the willing fingers of 
 the custodian, asked him to leave her, and taking off 
 her travelling-coat she threw it across a stone bench, 
 embroidered with lichens and with little delicate grasses 
 and flowers, and sat down on it. 
 
 She was alone in the garden a garden that had 
 been quick with almost four hundred springs, that had 
 been mellowed and blended by the suns and dews of 
 almost four hundred summers, by the rains and frosts 
 of almost four hundred winters, a garden built by the 
 great builders of gardens in the age of the Renais- 
 sance. . . . Patches of sunshine fell about her. A 
 slender jet of water sprinkled her with its diamond 
 drops of spray where she sat. Tall cypresses lifted 
 themselves in their gloomy grandeur above her to the 
 sky. The flashing white of the villa looked down from 
 above ah, she had never seen or imagined a place
 
 370 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 like this ! It burst upon her that nothing, no, not even 
 her sins, could alienate from her the great heritage of 
 the world's beauty. 
 
 How rich she was! She had been banished from 
 Kingsville by her own acts had banished herself 
 forever. Even so, how rich she was! Sky, earth, 
 trees, fountains, all this glory hers, too ! 
 
 Some words she had read in " Leaves of Grass," 
 long since, brief lines " To a Common Prostitute," in 
 this moment of heightened consciousness, winged their 
 way back to her Not till the sun excludes you do I 
 exclude you. Not till the waters refuse to glisten for 
 you and the leaves to rustle for you . . . and other 
 words from somewhere in the same book Whoever 
 you are, you are he or she for whom sun and moon 
 hang in the sky! 
 
 She had mutilated her life; her mother, her mother's 
 mother, they too, had mutilated their lives. In a sense, 
 she was an outcast, and would be forever, from what 
 had been so dear to her. Even so, for her sun and 
 moon hung in the sky! 
 
 The birds were silent. Only the dark cypresses of 
 Villa d'Este whispered softly above her in the noon 
 stillness. Lydia's eyes rested on the ancient tessellated 
 path under her feet. Her sins passed in review be- 
 fore her. They assumed to her present mind almost 
 equal magnitude; her sins of the flesh, her ingrati- 
 tude of long ago to the Pooles, her impatience with 
 Peter and her separation from him, and her theft from 
 Faidley. She could not analyse or separate them now. 
 She did not seek to palliate them to herself, She had!
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 371 
 
 sinned, sinned grievously, put her mind and body to 
 degraded uses . . . been disloyal, unclean, selfish 
 
 But as she dwelt on her sins, still other words came 
 to her from that book of Walt Whitman the book 
 that in Kingsville no one had dared speak of aloud. 
 The words had meant little to her when she read them. 
 But now they came freighted to her The earth re- 
 mains jagged and broken only to him or her who re- 
 mains jagged and broken. . . . 
 
 If she could cling to that, courage would not fail 
 her ! She wanted to stand up and shout for gladness. 
 She had been liberated from a long and terrible dark- 
 ness. The future opened up before her, all at once, 
 broad, almost limitless in possibilities, even for herself. 
 To various souls various visions. If she could cling to 
 this vision that had been flashed on her here in the noon 
 stillness and solitude of beautiful Villa d'Este, no 
 longer need the earth remain jagged and broken to her, 
 because no longer would she remain jagged and broken !
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 LYDIA suddenly lifted her head from the pillow. 
 It was night, or early morning. What was it 
 she'd heard? the old fish-man of Kingsville calling 
 out his fish in that droll, familiar, long-drawn-out 
 strain " O h, o h, I hab, I hab, I hab three 
 kinds!" 
 
 Unconsciously, she must have uttered some exclama- 
 tion, for Mr. Van Antwerp, who had apparently just 
 come in, entered from his adjoining bedroom. She 
 was aware of his rather slight figure in evening dress 
 approaching her bed along the path of pale light that 
 streamed across the darkness of her room from his own 
 lighted chamber. He seated himself on the bed and 
 took her hand in his. She was bewildered, and hardly 
 knew where she was. 
 
 "What is it? "he asked. 
 
 " Oh, I heard the old fish-man calling, the old fish- 
 man in Kingsville ! " she exclaimed, breathlessly. " I 
 heard him plainly! " 
 
 "What, my girl? What are you saying? Where 
 do you think you are? You're dreaming! " 
 
 " No, I wasn't dreaming! I heard him! " 
 
 Then she woke more fully, and realised she must 
 have been asleep and dreaming. But her heart was 
 
 372
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 373 
 
 still fluttering. She could still hear the old darky's 
 cry, as it had sounded in her ears only a moment be- 
 fore " O h, o h, I hab, I hab three kinds ! " 
 
 Outside her window all that darkness outside 
 was Rome. She could hear a poor horse slipping 
 on the paving-stones, struggling up the hill. Of course, 
 the Quirinal Hill . . . Rome . . . Mr. Van Antwerp 
 sitting on the bed at her side the other had been 
 only a dream! But how queer, it had been so vivid! 
 She felt as if she had actually been there, just a moment 
 since back in Kingsville ! 
 
 Mr. Van Antwerp drew her, warm with sleep, her 
 hair tumbling about her shoulders, into his arms. She 
 felt his cool, smooth cheek against hers, and then sud- 
 denly she was entirely herself, and fully conscious of 
 her surroundings and of the significance of the present 
 moment. She repulsed him gently. 
 
 " Don't, don't! " she said. " I have something to 
 tell you right away right now ! I tried to stay 
 awake till you came in, but I must have fallen asleep. 
 I was so tired, packing " 
 
 " Packing! " he repeated in surprise. 
 
 " Yes, I had the maid help me, and I'm all through. 
 I want to leave to-morrow morning . . . well, per- 
 haps it's morning now this morning, then, for Na- 
 ples. I'm going home. There's a steamer to- 
 morrow. I want to take it ! " 
 
 H 
 
 " What is this whim, my girl? I have arranged 
 for our passage on the boat two weeks from to-morrow.
 
 374 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 And I've made other arrangements it isn't 
 convenient for me " 
 
 " I don't want you to go now ! " she broke in. " I 
 want to go home alone ! It's what I wanted to tell 
 you I'm going ... to leave you, for all the 
 time" 
 
 " What do you mean? " he asked, in his rapid, muf- 
 fled utterance. She felt that his hands holding hers 
 were not quite steady, and in the half light she could 
 discern his white face, only a few inches removed from 
 her own, working slightly. 
 
 " Why, I'm breaking off the past! I wish every- 
 thing good and happy for you that can possibly come 
 to you, but as soon as it's morning I'm going to leave 
 you, forever " 
 
 " In what have I been remiss, Lydia? " he asked, his 
 hands tightening. But before she could answer, he had 
 answered himself, self-reproachfully. " In much, I 
 know!" 
 
 " Oh, it isn't that, it isn't that! It's just I can't 
 live this way any longer ! " 
 
 " I've never spied on you, Lydia. I've trusted you 
 completely. . . ." 
 
 She winced. 
 
 " But I've felt, ever since you came to me in Paris, 
 the change in you. I've recognised that you were 
 very unhappy . . . preoccupied. Be honest with 
 me, Lydia, have I failed to hold your interest? Are 
 you in love with some one? Is it that? " 
 
 " Oh, no, it isn't that ... it isn't that making 
 me leave you ! "
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 375 
 
 They were silent an instant. 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 "Oh, I can't live any longer in this degrada- 
 tion" 
 
 " You're too intelligent, too enlightened, Lydia," 
 he interrupted, " not to know that there's quite as much 
 degradation, if you call it that, in wedlock! " 
 
 " Yes, I know, I know. We've talked of all that. 
 I know that many married women are only ' legalised 
 prostitutes,' as you call them, but it's all the other 
 things that grow out of this sort of life / lead ! I don't 
 know, I don't suppose I'll ever understand clearly just 
 how far people have a right to give up to the desires 
 of the flesh that drive them but it's the other things, 
 the things that grow out of such a life as mine the 
 deception, the lying, and . . . and everything ... all 
 the other degradations that follow inevitably! The 
 married woman, even though she may be a ' legalised 
 prostitute,' doesn't have to resort to all the subterfuges 
 that a woman like I am, does . . . she doesn't 
 have to become so corrupt in all the rest of her nature ! " 
 
 " I don't think you're very corrupt, dear! " he said 
 to her, smiling faintly. " You're very sweet to me, 
 my girl! " He raised her hands to his lips and kissed 
 them, one and then the other. " You're the loveliest 
 bit of womanhood that I've ever been privileged to 
 know!" 
 
 "Oh, I'm . . . I'm a lot worse even than you 
 know ! " 
 
 " No, no, no, no ! " he hushed her, kissing her on 
 the lips.
 
 376 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 As he kissed her she felt the first small dent in that 
 brave new armour she had buckled on only a few hours 
 earlier in the garden of Villa d'Este. 
 
 " I've neglected you, my girl . . . I'm far from im- 
 peccable ... I formed habits, selfish ones in my 
 years of bachelorship, and in my years of married life 
 that have been virtually bachelorship . . . I'm an un- 
 worthy man basely unworthy of the worthy father 
 who begat me . . . but " He broke off, leaned 
 over and gathered her close to him. " I can't give you 
 up, my girl, you're in my blood, my brain ! I can't give 
 you up, my lass ! " he added, in a barely audible whis- 
 per. 
 
 Ill 
 
 "You mustn't try to dissuade me! " she protested, 
 struggling to resist him, and to resist herself. " Oh, 
 I don't pretend that I see the truth even now in a great 
 white blaze, or anything like that I suppose only 
 great minds see the truth that way. I only see a little 
 glimmer of truth what seems to me truth but 
 you must let me follow that that glimmer 1 " she 
 faltered. " It's taken me such a long time to realise 
 that we have to renounce what's dear to us in order to 
 gain what's dearer dearest of all self-respect, and 
 the respect of others! I've heard it, and read it, all 
 my life . . . and yes, I've known it all my life . . . 
 but it's never had any force with me before I There's 
 a Russian proverb, * As the character is, so is the 
 fate ! ' I've felt sometimes fate was unjust to me, 
 but at last I've realised what that proverb means
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 377 
 
 I've made my own fate! My character has been my 
 fate ! And I seem to see, now, what I never did see 
 plainly before why the world clings to its Christs 
 as it does to the men who come to declare to us we 
 must lose our life to save it! Perhaps the doctrine 
 wasn't new to the world even when Jesus Christ came 
 to teach it; men have to be told it over and over. He 
 only re-enunciated it for them, but he gave up his life 
 to emphasise it! " 
 
 She was almost sobbing. 
 
 " Oh, I know how it seems to you my setting my- 
 self up as a spiritual director how ridiculous and 
 profane ! " She was holding him away from her, at 
 the same time holding to his shaking hands supplicat- 
 ingly. " But I've got to tell you how things seem to 
 me now . . . why I'm leaving you I ... I love 
 luxury ... no one ever loved it better, and I love to 
 see the beautiful places in the world, and to have an 
 existence full of colour and romance and excitement 
 ... I was born craving and adoring such things . . . 
 but I've got to give them all up now ... all those de- 
 sires and leanings . . . I've got to earn a living again, 
 any way I can, honestly, for my little boy and my- 
 self. . . ." 
 
 ' You're not strong enough now, my girl! " 
 
 " Oh, yes, I am! My body's not ill, except as my 
 mind has made it so ! It's the ' maladies of the soul ' 
 that have been killing me ! I'm stronger already 
 now that I've made my decision. I'll soon be well ! " 
 
 Except this one argument regarding her physical 
 strength, he offered no arguments against the decision
 
 378 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 she had announced; no reproaches, no criticism or even 
 comments on all she had said to him. He only pleaded 
 with her, with low-voiced, persistent, passionate inten- 
 sity, pleaded with her to remain in the relation she bore 
 him. When grey morning twilight succeeded the dark- 
 ness of night in the room, the struggle between them 
 had not ended. Sounds from outside, the exclamations 
 that punctuate every hour of Italian life, and the soft 
 cadences of Italian street-chatter, began to rise from 
 below through the open windows. There was some- 
 thing weird and even almost terrifying to her in the 
 sight of Mr. Van Antwerp revealed in this chill light 
 of dawn, still in his evening attire, his face so strangely 
 moved out of its habitual calm. Dissipated and inor- 
 dinately selfish undoubtedly he was, in many ways the 
 puzzle to her he had always been, but she saw him go- 
 ing through an anguish such as she had endured in the 
 hour when she had realised that Churchwell, the one 
 person to whom her heart had ever freely communi- 
 cated, was lost to her forever. And something of the 
 early power he had asserted over her, he reasserted 
 now. And then he could insure her the material com- 
 forts of existence. She was very much alone in the 
 world; if she left him, she must go forth again to un- 
 known but certain difficulties. 
 
 But she fought her fight the battle with him, and 
 the harder battle with herself. Sunlight of the spring 
 morning was breaking over Rome, when she stood up 
 before him shaken with pity, with something akin to 
 love for him, with perilous drawings of her flesh to- 
 ward him, but invincible to all his pleadings and appeal.
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 379 
 
 Steadfastly she prepared to follow into a new life the 
 little flickering glimmer of truth she believed she had 
 discerned " The earth remains }agged and broken 
 only to him or her who remains jagged and broken! "
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 A FEW weeks later, Lydia was seated in a train mov- 
 ing toward the great Southwest. Peter was at 
 her side, watching with intent interest all that flew by 
 the car window. Occasionally when something espe- 
 cially attracted him, he would turn to her with an ex- 
 cited, "Look, Mother!" 
 
 She was thinking as he sat here at her side that, no 
 -matter how long she might live, she would never for- 
 get the day of her arrival from Italy the moment 
 when in the big bare reception room of the Brothers' 
 school, under the escort of one of the black-skirted 
 Brothers, Peter appeared at the door his face 
 rimmed with dirt, and between his smiling red lips the 
 gap created by a missing front tooth evidently re- 
 cently shed his blouse soiled and torn, his knicker- 
 bockers in sore need of mending but what a light of 
 joy in his clear, shining, surprised eyes as he spied her, 
 under a ghastly pictured crucifixion, waiting for him! 
 Nothing would ever be more beautiful to her than Peter 
 at that instant I 
 
 She had sold all her possessions from which she 
 could realise anything, and she had also a little money 
 she had accepted, reluctantly but what seemed to her 
 
 380
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 381 
 
 of necessity, from Mr. Van Antwerp. She and Peter 
 were on their way to a growing health resort in the 
 Southwest, where she had learned of an opening, a 
 house to take charge of, rooms and meals a board- 
 ing house not to put too fine a point upon her en- 
 terprise. 
 
 She thought of her early dreams of life how en- 
 tirely they had excluded such an inglorious role for her- 
 self as the one she was now preparing to assume. 
 Well, she had been worse things, far worse ! She 
 tried never to lose sight of that, to rejoice in the pres- 
 ent opportunity, and to look forward hopefully. 
 She had had some experience in the practical prob- 
 lems of housekeeping and marketing. She trusted 
 she would prove equal to the undertaking ahead of 
 her. 
 
 The train was passing through what seemed to her 
 a very ugly state, dotted with hideous new buildings, 
 frame buildings or buildings constructed of cement 
 blocks, a flat, treeless country, under a cloudless sky, 
 and a ceaseless wind blowing over it. She hoped that 
 the point of their destination it was more than a 
 day's journey yet before they reached it would be 
 more attractive than the country they were journeying 
 through to it. She wondered if Peter found this 
 new country disappointing. Probably not. He was 
 seeing so much he had never seen before, even 
 Indians tame Indians, in white men's garments, 
 but Indians! 
 
 Peter had never once questioned her about his 
 father, or asked her to tell him any of the old Indian
 
 382 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 tales, since that evening, while they were still living 
 among the washerwomen in the West Thirties, when 
 he had confided to her the taunts of the " kids." She 
 was afraid the " kids " had implanted in his mind 
 doubts that would never be uprooted. 
 
 Ah, no knowing what thoughts were hidden back 
 of those eyes looking out of the car window, those 
 pathetically trustful young eyes, so eager for the ad- 
 venture of life, so unafraid of it as yet ! No knowing 
 what dreams in that big tousled head of his dreams 
 of the life he was going to carve out for himself ! 
 
 II 
 
 Well, she was taking him with her now to a part 
 of the world where barriers of social distinction were 
 not yet so impassable as in older communities of the 
 world. Perhaps she and Peter might still have a 
 chance of friends, the kind of friends it would be 
 pleasant to know and be associated with. Of course, 
 they would not enjoy a very exalted position even in 
 this new place to which they were going, and she would 
 be more or less haunted always with the fear that some 
 one who knew things about her which she wished hid- 
 den would appear and reveal them. Then, too, she 
 had not attained a very great age even yet; she was 
 by no means drained of all her hasty blood . . . she 
 was not sure exactly how much strength she could mus- 
 ter to a supreme testing of herself. And, above all, 
 the problems of existence still offered much to perplex 
 her; she did not see a clean-cleft path which willy-nilly
 
 THE SEAS OF GOD 383 
 
 she should follow. She saw what seemed the truth, 
 as she had told Mr. Van Antwerp she saw it, merely 
 as a glimmer, fluctuating, dying down now to the 
 smallest, feeblest-glowing ember, now leaping briefly 
 into clear flame. 
 
 But, at any rate, she felt, somehow, stronger to 
 fight the fight of life than she had ever felt before. 
 She hoped devoutly that she would not succumb again, 
 weakly and shamefully succumb, as it had occurred to 
 her might happen, at some unexpected point of 
 attack. 
 
 Her lips touched lightly Peter's shock of fair fine 
 hair, a touch so light that the little boy was not con- 
 scious of it. His eyes were following with unabated 
 interest what passed outside the car window, and 
 Lydia's eyes, above his head, were following what his 
 followed, looking out on the wide windy prairies 
 through which they were passing. Life would never 
 be entirely easy evidently life was not intended to be 
 that. But she was going to work hard, going to make 
 herself respected in this new place that was to be their 
 home. 
 
 Her eyes were dim with tears, but there was far 
 more of happiness and hope in her heart than of fear 
 and sorrow. She wanted, more than anything else in 
 the world now, to save Peter, if she could, some of the 
 humiliations and the sorrow she had known in her 
 own life, and she hoped that she would have strength 
 to live henceforth so that in years to come, if Peter 
 should ever learn things of her past such as she had 
 learned for a certainty about her mother that evening
 
 384 THE SEAS OF GOD 
 
 at the Pension Paggi in Florence, he would have gained 
 such respect for her, that he could still love her, and 
 would be able to forgive her. 
 
 THE END 
 
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