MARY HAST INGS BRADLEY
 
 fe
 
 "'You must let me keep this,' he insisted." 
 
 [PAGE 14.]
 
 The 
 Splendid Chance 
 
 By MARY HASTINGS BRADLEY 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 'The Palace of Darkened Windows" 
 
 With Frontispiece 
 By EDMUND FREDERICK 
 
 A. L. BURT COMPANY 
 
 Publishers New York 
 
 Published by Arrangements with D. APPLETON & COMPANY 
 
 . 0? CALIF. LIBRARY, LOS ANGELF
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 Printed in the United States of America
 
 TO 
 
 L. S. C. 
 
 2125757
 
 THE 
 SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 SHE knew, as he very high-handedly carried her 
 away from the others who had come to the steamer 
 to see her off, that it was going to be a wretched 
 ten minutes ! They had gone over that ground so often 
 of late ! She was aware to her unhappiness of every 
 plea that he could make, of every stubborn, wounding 
 word that she must give in reply. It did no good to talk 
 about it any more, but since it was the last hour before 
 her sailing she could not grudge him those few instants 
 out of the lifetime that she was so persistently with- 
 holding. 
 
 To her unhappiness for him there was added a subtle 
 sense of shame, because she had seen this coming and 
 had been irresolute, uncertain, so genuinely liking him 
 that she had been dreadfully tempted. . . . 
 
 Even now it was hard to be sure that she would never 
 be sorry for this. There were so many ways of look- 
 ing at life! 
 
 "I'll wait," he kept telling her with maddeningly 
 
 1
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 dogged insistence. "You don't know yourself, yet. 
 You're crazy now over this painting thing but what 
 is there in that for you? You'll find out! And I'll 
 wait " 
 
 Across the gray-blue of her eyes there scudded a lit- 
 tle zigzag of panic fear. Across the young eagerness 
 of her face there darkened a shadow of age-old hesita- 
 tion. It was so perilously easy to have him wait 
 with no ostensible responsibility upon her part! Sup- 
 pose he were right? Suppose she failed? Suppose she 
 never loved? Suppose she never met anyone else so 
 likable so distractingly eligible? Oh, she knew what 
 lunacy her refusal of him would be thought ! And she 
 knew, too, for all her youth and buoyancy, that the 
 game of life goes often hardest with the most scrupulous 
 player. From the deeps a hundred whispers of caution 
 rose, a prompting echo from long lines of sensible, home- 
 loving women. 
 
 Then she shook her head at him angrily, her straight 
 brows knit. "No ! Don't wait, Dick. It's useless." 
 
 "But you like me?" 
 
 "Too well. That's the trouble. I can almost per- 
 suade myself that such liking is enough but it's not. 
 There's more I ought to feel, more I could feel, if 
 if " 
 
 "If you met the right one?" 
 
 The discord in his voice smote her quivering senses 
 hard. She was a girl with a fatal capacity for feeling 
 others' pain sometimes too late ; a fatal weakness for 
 giving pleasure sometimes too long. Tears leaped 
 to her eyes. 
 
 2
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "Oh, Dick, I wish I could give you what you want! 
 I wish I could !" 
 
 Quickly he told her, "Your liking is enough, Kath- 
 erine. I wouldn't ask for more." 
 
 She knew better. There was an irony of wisdom in 
 her shadowy smile. It was not enough, she told him. 
 Neither for him nor for her. She was so brimming 
 with life, so conscious of vitality that would be waste 
 with him, that her words came edged with unconscious 
 revelation. 
 
 "I want to know all of it all of life that there is to 
 feel. There must be something more ! And till it comes 
 I want to be free, free free for my work, free for my 
 own life." Already, beneath her transient distress, her 
 youth had taken on its look of eagerness. 
 
 He said bitterly, "You'd have married me if you 
 hadn't won that prize." 
 
 They were stopping at the rail, on the upper deck, 
 hidden by one of the lifeboats. For a moment more his 
 gaze, belligerent yet entreating, rested on her flushed 
 and spirited face as if for the first time he was reading 
 the true meaning of it for him, then his eyes turned 
 away from her in a blind stare across the harbor teem- 
 ing with its plying craft. The March wind, vagrant and 
 capricious, buffeted his set young face where desire and 
 stiffening pride struggled behind locked lips. He 
 opened them on a painful acknowledgment of defeat. 
 
 "Well, if I can't make you love me, Katherine, I 
 can't, that's all." 
 
 She put an impulsive hand on his arm. "And some 
 day you'll be glad! Some day when you meet the girl 
 
 3
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 with no paint stains on her fingers and with naturally 
 curly hair! And you'll tell her that she is the only one 
 you ever loved and that I was just a jolly old thing you 
 grew up with!" 
 
 The cheer of this prophecy fell flat. The goaded 
 young man grunted. 
 
 "A fat lot you know about it !" 
 
 Irrepressible humor bubbled into the compassion of 
 the girl's eyes. She looked at his averted face with a 
 half-rallying, half-roguish air of coaxing him to see 
 how ill tragedy became him. He was a stalwart figure 
 of young manhood, not tall, but very strongly built, 
 with an impressive air of discriminating prosperity 
 from the cut of his spring overcoat to the glint of the 
 black opal in his exclusive scarf. Achievement had cer- 
 tainly been in his forefathers. His own face had been 
 molded in lines of an acquiescent satisfaction with 
 which the present denial was at war. 
 
 Hesitantly, the girl reminded him of the time. The 
 others were waiting to see her. They would think it 
 strange. . . . He turned and looked at her, seeing 
 a vision that he was to carry as a memory for many a 
 day, a vision of a girl, gray-eyed, fresh-cheeked, with 
 yellow hair blowing in the wind. 
 
 He put a gripping hand upon her arm and drew her 
 further back in the shelter of the lifeboat. "It's the 
 last time we may ever see each other like this," he said 
 huskily. "You say it's good-by for always. Let me 
 kiss you good-by, Katherine." 
 
 In touched affection the girl inclined her cheek, cool 
 and rosy with the wind. 
 
 4
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 And then, whether he was making one last essay, in- 
 tending a conquering assault upon her senses, or whether 
 he was carried away by impulse, his arms closed tightly 
 round her and his lips insistently sought hers. A pang 
 went through her of confused incredibility, of distaste, 
 of unhappiness for him. . . . And as she pressed him 
 back she turned her flushing face away and encountered 
 the brightly fascinated gaze of a young man just 
 rounding the corner of their shelter. 
 
 She had a sudden, violent impression of the laughter 
 in that young man's eyes. There was wicked mirth in 
 the very set of his shoulders as he swung about and 
 beat a forced retreat. 
 
 It was humiliating ! The shame of intimacy intruded 
 upon is never with the intruder but with the unlucky 
 intruded-upon ones. A small boy beneath the balcony 
 would have turned Romeo and Juliet to derision. A! 
 hotter color stung Katherine's cheek than Dick Con- 
 rad's unwelcome kiss had brought. If she had loved 
 him but not loving him her concern was for the silly 
 figure that she was cutting in the unknown's eyes. Her 
 anger flared not against poor Dick for she had given 
 her cheek at least but against this intrusive young 
 stranger who came popping about unlikely corners in 
 such unforeseen fashion. Had he no one to whom he 
 should be saying good-by? Did he think he would 
 find his friends behind lifeboats? Or perhaps hate- 
 ful thought! he was not there just to say good-by to 
 someone. Perhaps he was a fellow-passenger! 
 
 He was indeed. He leaned near her at the rail some 
 little time later, when she and the Whartons, her travel- 
 
 5
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 ing companions, fluttered their farewells at the figures 
 upon shore that grew smaller and smaller till the faces 
 mingled in a dwindling blur. She had a swift impres- 
 sion of the young man as very tall and thin, with a long 
 ulster and a cap pulled far down over deep-set eyes, 
 and then she saw him take a quick, whimsical look at 
 herself, and as if delicately surmising that she might not 
 care for the proximity of one who had surprised the 
 tender intimacy of her adieu he moved considerately 
 away. He seemed to be alone. . . . 
 
 She was glad when that young man moved away. 
 She did not want to be made to remember those last 
 moments with Dick Conrad she was distressfully eager 
 to be free of Dick Conrad and all his ways. It was 
 dreadful to have hurt someone. In vain for her sense of 
 character older than her experience to tell her that 
 Dick Conrad was hardly the soil for deep-rooted 
 tragedy. She remembered that queer, impotent look in 
 his eyes. . . . 
 
 Was life to be forever like that? Could one never 
 be oneself, free to grow and develop as one wished, with- 
 out crushing out what someone else was wishing? 
 
 She wondered if she would be sorry, selfishly sorry for 
 this, in the years to come? She was not so made but 
 that the thought gave her a qualm ! But she could not 
 help her decision ; she seemed forever secretly different 
 from other people, set on some quest of her own. . . . 
 
 And then a reanimating gladness was lighted like a 
 lamp in her young relief that this worrying thing was 
 over and done with, the decision made and the future 
 was untrammeled and free. To her, the sailing of this 
 
 6
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 ship was adventure. It was adventure, romance the 
 eternal quest of youth. It was the first step to the un- 
 known the land of promise. Anything and everything 
 might happen. The stirring of far-away things was in. 
 the air. Hazard was invoked; chance tempted. . . ., 
 Her pulses quickened with the quickening stir of excite- 
 ment, and her face, young, eager, joyous, had the touch- 
 ingly confident look of one who listens to the Winged 
 Victories.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 BUT it was not so easy to be done with thoughts 
 of Dick Conrad. There were his roses on the 
 table in the dining salon. There was his fruit 
 basket in the stateroom. There was his steamer letter. 
 There were the Wharton sisters, old family friends, re- 
 curring to him with gentle insistence. Their fancy had 
 been captured by the young man's hasty trip to New 
 York to see her off, and his father's position shed unde- 
 niable glitter upon the romance. 
 
 In their separate ways both sisters made manifest to 
 her their solicitude lest her youthful desire for a career 
 should lead her to abandon the sphere of truest happi- 
 ness. It came rather touchingly from them, Katherine 
 thought. Ellen Wharton was one whom tragedy had 
 scarred. On the eve of the wedding her lover had been 
 killed. She was a very beautiful woman, with a clear- 
 cut, black and white distinction, but she had never, Kath- 
 erine had heard, "looked" at another man. Her statu- 
 esque whiteness gave her the suggestion, to the girl's 
 fancy, of one from whom her heart's blood had literally 
 been drained. 
 
 Anne Wharton, the younger, was not so distinctive 
 
 8
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 nor was her life so dignified by sorrow. She had known 
 neither love nor loss. She was one of those charming 
 women that the world wonders to find unmarried for- 
 getting what men are most prone to marry. Her exclu- 
 sions, her fastidiousness, the shyness behind her social 
 poise, and her fatal facility for generalizing a situation 
 she would have conventionalized an earthquake had 
 all been conspirators against her. From her, even more 
 than from Miss Ellen, Katherine thought, it was elo- 
 quent to hear the gently spoken reminder that, after all, 
 it was in her home that a woman found her most lasting 
 happiness. 
 
 "But with the right one," said Katherine defiantly. 
 
 Anne Wharton hesitated. "Yes-s," she murmured 
 into the depths of the steamer trunk which she was un- 
 packing. Then she cast a faintly quizzical glance upon 
 the gii'l. Her unspoken thought seemed to be pointing 
 out that it was a trifle absurd for Katherine daughter 
 of a none-too-affluent professor not to find the right 
 one in Dick Conrad. "He seems to care so genu- 
 inely " 
 
 "I know," said the girl hastily. "And his father's in 
 Steel. And if I don't live to regret him I'll regret the 
 Steel !" And to Miss Anne's air of deprecation of that 
 shameless point of view she gave a droll little grin that 
 had something indescribably boyish and gamin-like 
 about it. 
 
 "Never mind, dear Miss Anne, it's the way I'm made. 
 I expect it's the painting," she went on whimsically. "It 
 means more to me than anything else in the world !" 
 
 "Yes, dear, now but later?" 
 
 9
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 Always the cold hand of caution, the pointing finger 
 
 of feminine foresight, Katherine thought rebelliously. 
 
 Suppose life was a chance? It was a splendid chance! 
 
 Better never to have lived at all than to live 
 
 coldly, safely, snugly, like herded sheep! . . . 
 
 "Later? Who knows? That's the charm of it. And 
 I can't believe that I can ever be anything but happy !" 
 The girl stood for a moment with bright cheeks and 
 dreaming eyes, then whirled about on her companion 
 with one of the sudden turns that revealed her swift, 
 slim grace. "Don't let us bother over things in here any 
 longer ! Come out on deck again. The sea is glorious. 
 It's just as I knew it would be!" 
 
 Anne Wharton felt a throb of half-wistful, half-pity- 
 ing futility. The girl was so very young ! 
 
 But there were other reminders of Dick Conrad not 
 so easily diverted. The recollection of that unfortunate 
 farewell was flashed at Katherine half a dozen times a 
 day from the eyes of the young man who had surprised 
 it. 
 
 Not that this young man the second day out placed 
 him as an Englishman, a Captain Edgerton was so 
 base as to let his recollection dance openly upon the sur- 
 face, but the very pointedness of the repression, the 
 guarded negation of all laughter when his gaze encoun- 
 tered hers, was evidence enough. She knew perfectly 
 well that he remembered, that he was smiling at her in his 
 thoughts, recalling the ardor of the scene, her crimson 
 face . . . 
 
 And when he met her walking the deck with one or 
 the other of the young; men who sat at her table, or danc- 
 
 10
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 ing in the salon or chatting at late supper, she knew 
 from the ironic flicker of the Englishman's glance and 
 the twist of his lips that he was saying humorously, 
 "Ah, well, you're certainly not pining whatever you 
 write him! You are a cool hand!" 
 
 She had just enough conversation with this Cap- 
 tain Edgerton, the second day out, to know how he 
 would phrase it. He had been talking with some people 
 in a group of which Katherine formed a part, a group 
 that had gathered at the rail to watch the black fin of 
 a following shark. When the group thinned the Eng- 
 lishman had sauntered over to where Katherine still 
 stood, and, extending his field-glasses, made some casual 
 remarks. His bright glance, clear and a little cool, had 
 an air of deliberately not remembering that he had seen 
 her before under any circumstances whatever. 
 
 Katherine had replied with a hauteur which had be- 
 come ludicrous to remember. It had seemed to her to 
 whose social experience "introductions" were the breath 
 of life, and who had been cautioned by an anxious 
 mother concerning shipboard manners it had seemed 
 to her that this stranger was treating her with casual 
 freedom. The memories that he evoked of Dick Conrad 
 constrained her. She was absurdly anxious to make an 
 impression of dignity. 
 
 He had not waited for the impression to expand. 
 After a pair of monosyllables from her he had sauntered 
 away, and thereafter, to her later chagrin, be it admit- 
 ted, he had made no effort to develop the unpromising 
 acquaintance, contenting himself with an occasional bow 
 when unavoidable, and that carefully guarded glance 
 2 11
 
 which bespoke his mirthful recollection of something 
 droll to guard. 
 
 Increasingly Katherine had felt an utterly needless 
 desire to put herself right in his eyes, to prove to him 
 that she was not a young person of eternal stiffness and 
 to paint out the memory of the sentimental creature he 
 must be seeing in her. But one cannot walk up to an 
 all-but-total stranger and say, "Let me tell you, I am 
 not engaged to that young man ! You beheld no Romeo- 
 and-Juliet parting, but an act of charity, abused. Now, 
 for goodness* sake, don't let me catch you twinkling at 
 me any more !" 
 
 Yet aside from this faintly ruffling resentment of the 
 Englishman's memories, the days were all gladness to 
 her. They slipped past far too rapidly, like bright 
 beads raining from a string. They were unforgettable 
 days of wide seas and skies, days of spring sunshine and 
 March winds, of keen, salt freshness, of tumultuous 
 cloud and scudding shadows. All that loved beauty in 
 her responded to the beauty about her. It seemed 
 enough, then, just to be young and alive, with a heart 
 for loveliness and laughter. Why could not life be like 
 this always, bright and free and plastic, deeply con- 
 scious of its inexhaustible vitality?
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 IT had rained at noon but later the sun came out, 
 fugitive, faint-hearted, at first, then suddenly con- 
 fident and conquering. The sea that had been 
 foam-flecked and fretful became all bloom and glitter. 
 The clouds looked luminous and joyful, sailing very high 
 on their mysterious ways. 
 
 The exhilaration of the day was dancing in Kather- 
 ine's blood. A smile of prankish daring edged her lips. 
 Very stealthily she tore out a page of her sketchbook, 
 hidden within a larger book as she sat, rug-wrapped, in 
 the chair next Miss Anne's. Very stealthily she opened 
 the fingers that lifted the loose sheet just as a tall figure, 
 hands deep in the ulster pockets, peaked cap low over 
 the eyes, came tramping by on the tenth or twentieth 
 oblivious round. 
 
 The wind seized on the paper, fluttered it conspicu- 
 ously, and obligingly flung it across the path of that 
 tall, oncoming figure. And then, like all meddlesome as- 
 sistants, it overdid matters. With an unnecessary puff 
 it sent the paper twirling over the rail. 
 
 But the tall young man's hands came out of those 
 deep pockets with amazing quickness. He made a swift 
 
 IS
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 dash to the rail and reached high for that fluttering 
 paper. In triumph his fingers closed on it. 
 
 Katherine sat up very straight in her chair, her eyes 
 alight with mischief. 
 
 The young man turned to restore his capture and as 
 he did so very naturally his fingers busied themselves ab- 
 sently smoothing out the creases he had inflicted, and 
 very naturally his eyes rested upon the damage that his 
 grip had wrought. And then he became aware of bold, 
 black pencil strokes, of a long-legged, hurrying figure 
 in a monumental ulster overhung with a bulldog pipe, 
 an aquiline nose, and a peaked cap. The thing was capi- 
 tally done. The young Englishman began to laugh, 
 and a warm color, like a girl's, rose in his very clear- 
 skinned face. 
 
 "I say you must let me look at this," he declared to 
 Katherine. 
 
 "It's too late isn't it? to say no," she gave back, 
 in a soft note of laughter. 
 
 "You are clever that is, if you are the artist?" he 
 thought to question, and at her admissive nod, "Then 
 you must let me keep this," he insisted, still smiling boy- 
 ishly down at the crumpled sketch. 
 
 In the next chair Miss Anne bestirred her- 
 self. 
 
 "Why, Katherine, what is it?" And as the English- 
 man held up his trophy the lady's face was touched with 
 her sympathetic sense of what poor Katherine must be 
 feeling at this incident. "Ah, you mustn't mind that 
 pencil of hers, Captain Edgerton !" she said pacifically. 
 "She caricatures us all wickedly but she isn't always 
 
 14
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 so terribly found out !" And Katherine had the grace to 
 blush. 
 
 "But this is very jolly," the Captain maintained. 
 "It's clever, you know." He looked at Katherine as 
 though she might need reassurance upon that 
 point. 
 
 "At least you recognize it," she returned gaily. 
 "That is more than some portrait painters can claim, 
 isn't it?" 
 
 "Recognize it? Rather! . . . Do sign it for me. 
 I'd like to keep it, please." 
 
 Obligingly she printed a neat "Katherine King" in a 
 corner of the sketch, and then, after a little three- 
 cornered chat, when Miss Anne began to find it too cold 
 for comfort in her rug and decided to go within, Cap- 
 tain Edgerton turned to the girl with a boyish air of 
 yielding to impulse. 
 
 "Won't you take a turn with me, Miss King? It's 
 not cold when you're stirring." 
 
 She felt a little shy when she started off beside him. 
 And the eternal reminder of Dick Conrad was at hand 
 to embarrass her. Very quickly she began to talk. 
 
 "I should think more people would be out on deck. 
 It's such a wonderful afternoon." 
 
 "But there's auction," he reminded her humorously, 
 his hands deep in his ulster pockets again, his head bent 
 before the wind that assailed them as they rounded the 
 bow. "You forget that auction doesn't attend to 
 changes in the weather." 
 
 "You don't play?" 
 
 "Not on shipboard. ... If one confesses to it 
 
 15
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 once, one is lost. There is always a fourth to be found 
 for some dull table." 
 
 Katherine laughed. "You are far-sighted! I rather 
 wish I had been." 
 
 "I've observed you being occasionally victimized." 
 
 "But not often. And I should be adamant to any ap- 
 peal on such a day !" 
 
 "Ah, it's your first trip, isn't it?" He looked round 
 at her with a friendly smile. 
 
 She nodded. "It is. But I think I shall feel the same 
 on my tenth. . . . You've crossed often?" 
 
 "Not the Atlantic. This is only the second trip on 
 that." 
 
 "Your first trip then to America," she said. "Were 
 you there long?" 
 
 "A week." 
 
 "A week!" She laughed. "What was the matter? 
 Didn't you like us?" 
 
 "Immensely," he assured her. "But I didn't want 
 to forfeit my leave. I was just over for my chum's 
 wedding." 
 
 "To an American?" 
 
 "Yes, a New York girl. He met her last winter, on 
 the Mediterranean. One of those shipboard affairs." 
 
 "Oh!" said Katherine a little blankly. He spoke as 
 if "shipboard affairs" were negligible and fantastic 
 trifles barbed by chance and propinquity. She thought, 
 a bit resentfully, that he was young for such a tone. 
 
 "But what did you see of America in a week?" she 
 questioned. "Were you in New York?" 
 
 "Only overnight coming and going. The girl's peo- 
 
 16
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 pie had a place up the Hudson a very jolly place. 
 There were hills that looked splendid. I wish I'd had 
 more of a chance at them." 
 
 "You should have stayed. And then you laugh at 
 us for 'doing' Europe in so little time." 
 
 "Ah, but I don't claim to have 'done' America, you 
 know!" He looked down on her smilingly. "I sup- 
 pose you are going to see all the sights? Castles, cap- 
 itals, cathedrals?" 
 
 "I'm going to Paris to study." 
 
 "To study what?" 
 
 "Painting," she said a little self-consciously her 
 aim was so great and she always felt somehow so 
 femininely inadequate to it in people's eyes. 
 
 "Painting! . . . Ah, the sketchbook explained! 
 You're the real thing, then," he said lightly, but there 
 was frank astonishment in his eyes. She looked ab- 
 surdly young in the straight, loose coat she wore. Her 
 cheeks were poppy pink in the salt wind ; her eyes were 
 shining with their innocent air of happiness. Below 
 her traveling cap a wave of honey-colored hair was visi- 
 ble. ... It seemed to the young man that the study 
 of painting was a totally inadequate occupation for 
 such a feminine young person. 
 
 It seemed to the girl that he was feeling that she 
 was a totally inadequate-looking person for the study 
 of painting, and her answer was a meek murmur. "I 
 do hope I am." 
 
 "But that's a large order," he said, quite seriously. 
 "That is, if you're really going in for it." 
 
 "I am. I mean to find out if it's actually in me or 
 
 17
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 just a flash in the pan. You've no idea how furiously I 
 shall work ! And I've a year to do it in." 
 
 "A year!" A sudden flicker of mischief twinkled in 
 his eyes. He gave her a droll, boyish look. 
 
 "I say, that's a long time for him, isn't it?" 
 
 "For ?" 
 
 No use to evade the audacity of those eyes! "We 
 can't pretend, can we," their teasing look seemed to be 
 saying, "that I didn't see you and that you didn't see 
 that I saw ?" 
 
 She said lightly, trying for coolness, "That's a very 
 wrong assumption of yours." 
 
 "Oh, come now, Miss King, don't be a humbug! 
 Don't tell me that it was your brother !" 
 
 She laughed at that, her cheeks flushing in the quick- 
 ness of her young blood, her eyes for just one instant 
 meeting the chaffing boyishness of his. "No brother, but 
 I was only being a sister to him." 
 
 "Ah, now now ?" 
 
 "It was good-by to what never was," she heard 
 herself most strangely insisting. 
 
 The astonishing young Captain replaced his incredul- 
 ity with large surprise. "Letting the chap down 
 what? Not taking him on? Is that the way," he in- 
 quired with an air of solicitude, "that you usually er 
 let them down? Because if it is " 
 
 She refused to meet his merriment. 
 
 "I say, there's three more days before we land. If I 
 could work up a little sympathy for myself " 
 
 "You're too absurd!" Her laughter bubbled. Her 
 eyes were full of sudden lights. The audacity of hers 
 
 18
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 danced in tune in his. Poor Dick Conrad's passionate 
 farewell was serving in unremembered irony to bridge 
 these two to sudden intimacy. 
 
 "You're not a bit what I expected," she ran on mer- 
 rily. "I thought Englishmen were more polite and 
 not at all humorous." 
 
 "Ha, the funny paper chap ! Lord Dundreary who 
 daren't go to the music halls Saturday night for fear 
 he'll laugh in church on Sunday! . . . But you don't 
 mean that I'm the first Englishman you ever met?" 
 
 He revealed, in all unconsciousness, his sense of the 
 immense lack of such an existence. 
 
 Her smile was teasing. "The first ordinary one." 
 
 "I like that! As if I weren't a most extraordi- 
 
 nary 
 
 "But the others were lions writing lions and paint- 
 ing lions, caged and exhibited at receptions. And they 
 were solemn." 
 
 "I should hope so ! Fancy being exhibited at a pink 
 tea !" The young Captain grimaced. "And I suppose 
 you made heartless fun of their captivity?" 
 
 "No, I usually poked cakes and ices at them through 
 the bars of the cage. You see father is a professor in 
 a small college and so the social duties fall heavily upon 
 all the family." 
 
 "I begin to grieve that I am not a lion. Then I 
 might have been handed on to your college and you 
 would have exhibited me and fed me ices. And done my 
 portrait a very respectful portrait !" the young man 
 emphasized, and again their eyes met and their youth 
 
 19
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 laughed in that sudden, light-hearted sense of inti- 
 macy. 
 
 "Do you mind if I smoke?" he inquired, and at her 
 quick, "Not a bit," he stopped to fill and light his pipe 
 in the shelter of a companionway. It took several min- 
 utes for the wind was high, but the young man was not 
 impatient. He had an air of attending thoroughly to 
 whatever might be the business of the moment, and Kath- 
 erine, taking fresh note of his lean, clear-cut face and 
 tall, rather spare figure, found herself intensely liking 
 his look of high-bred race and nervous energy. He had 
 laughing eyes and a fighting chin. The eyes were 
 brightly blue, deep-set under arched brows ; the nose 
 was purely aquiline ; the chin would have been too domi- 
 nant but for the boyish sweetness of his mouth when he 
 smiled. . . . And he smiled when he looked up from 
 his pipe and surprised the serious fixity of her gray 
 eyes on him. 
 
 Without speaking they turned away from the com- 
 panionway and fell into step together, then paused in- 
 voluntarily at the stern of the boat to look down into 
 the churning froth of waters and out across the blue and 
 gold sparkle of the waves. It seemed to Katherine that 
 there had never been so gay a day. She felt a sense of 
 holiday in her heart, a feeling of gladness and content, 
 that yet held its undercurrents of vague agitation. 
 
 Captain Edgerton broke the lengthening silence. His 
 tone was quite serious now ; so were the blue eyes that 
 were looking steadily down at her. 
 
 "Tell me about the painting, please," he asked. "I 
 am interested." 
 
 20
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 The last crimson glow of the sunset which had blazed 
 like a burning Rome had faded from the west and only 
 light strands of purest, palest colors were fluttering 
 there like far banners on some height when Katherine, 
 wind-blown and breathless, came flying into the state- 
 room to dress for dinner. 
 
 She found Miss Ellen, freshly gowned, sitting on the 
 couch, a spread towel on her silken knees, doing a few 
 last things to her polished nails, while Miss Anne was 
 hooking in place the girdle of her sedate dinner dress. 
 
 "I am late we didn't realize " she murmured, 
 hastily flinging off her coat and hat, and attacking 
 blouse buttons with cold and rather fumbly fingers. 
 
 "Who is 'we' ?" inquired Miss Ellen, and at the girl's, 
 "Oh Captain Edgerton and I," Miss Anne looked up 
 quickly. 
 
 "Not all this time with Captain Edgerton?" she ex- 
 claimed, and then, curbing a natural astonishment to a 
 milder pace, "Why, what did you two find to talk about 
 so long?" 
 
 "Oh everything." The girl's eyes had little danc- 
 ing points of light in them, belying her vagueness. 
 "Paris London Oxford the barracks painting," 
 she recited. The mirror gave her a sudden shock. "So 
 I look like that?" she exclaimed tragically. "All red 
 and blowsy." 
 
 "How did you think you looked in this wind?" mur- 
 mured Miss Anne. 
 
 "I was feeling beautiful," said Katherine whimsically, 
 lowering the wash-stand. "His name is Jeffrey St. 
 Preux Edgerton," she informed them, while busily wash- 
 
 21
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 ing. "His grandmother was French. Her husband was 
 an ambassador. And all his other grandfathers were 
 soldiers. His father was killed in the Boer War, and 
 his mother lives in the country at Edgerton Hall. 
 Doesn't that sound English and romantic? There are 
 just the two sons the Captain and a little brother now 
 at Eton. He's going to the navy when he's big enough, 
 he says, but the Captain wants him in the army." 
 
 "What an autobiographical young man," was Miss 
 Ellen's comment. 
 
 Katherine stared above the folds of her active towel. 
 "Oh, no," she smiled back. "He didn't recite it like 
 that. It just came out when we were talking. You 
 see I'd been telling him about my home, and my brothers, 
 and and painting and so it all came out." 
 
 "You must have missed your tea," said Miss Anne 
 after a moment, during which Katherine attacked her 
 flying hair with a vigorous brush. "I went on deck to 
 look for you but I didn't see you and I thought you 
 were inside somewhere writing letters." 
 
 "We must have been on the upper deck, then," Kath- 
 erine reflected. She wavered, her hands full of her light, 
 shining hair, between a part and a low knot or a pompa- 
 dour and a high one, deciding hastily in favor of the 
 pompadour. "But we didn't miss our tea. Captain 
 Edgerton went down and brought some, and we had 
 it up there in the sunshine. Weren't the ginger cookies 
 good to-day, though?" 
 
 No one made any answer to that, and she completed 
 her hairdressing in absorbed silence, then drew out the 
 steamer trunk and began diving into it for a dress which 
 
 22
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 she had not yet worn. Behind her back the sisters' eyes 
 met. 
 
 "He's a very attractive young man, that Captain 
 Edgerton," said Miss Ellen evenly, after an instant. 
 "He comes from a very fine old family, I believe some 
 of the passengers were telling me about him only this 
 morning. It is very interesting to meet a young man 
 like that, so typical of a class foreign to us, full of 
 caste prejudices, of course, and immense exclusions, but 
 all the more interesting, on that account, to such casual 
 acquaintances as we travelers are." 
 
 Not a word of this did Katherine comprehend. Her 
 silence was not preoccupation with this "No Trespass- 
 ing" sign which Miss Ellen's caution was so swiftly 
 hanging out for her impulsive youth. She was wonder- 
 ing, sitting back on her heels before the open trunk, 
 whether, after all, the corn color would not look a 
 teenty bit too sudden . . . 
 
 And that night, meeting Captain Edgerton's eyes 
 after dinner, she was not in the least reminded of Dick 
 Conrad.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 SHE was not an early riser but the next morning 
 she suddenly found herself intensely awake in 
 her upper berth, her eyes fixed on the circle of 
 blue, bright sky the port-hole framed. And presently 
 the call of it became imperative, so that she slipped 
 softly down and dressed in stealthy haste. But the 
 terrible intimacy of the stateroom defied precaution, 
 and the two sleepers roused to a sense of something 
 extraordinary going on that the bald simplicity of her 
 explanation did not allay. 
 
 When the girl had gone, whisking lightly out the 
 stateroom with an air of elate escape, the sisters stared 
 solemnly at one another from lower berth to couch. 
 
 "Do you think ?" said Miss Ellen. 
 
 Remembering the yesterday afternoon, remembering 
 the corn-colored dinner dress, remembering the chat 
 over the coffee in the salon and the later walk on deck, 
 they appeared amply justified in thinking. And when, 
 a long hour and a half later, Kathcrine entered the 
 salon for breakfast with the young Englishman in her 
 wake, there was not the slightest doubt of disingenuous 
 collusion. But there the good ladies were wrong. 
 
 24
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 For Katherine had not the least reason to expect that 
 Jeffrey Edgerton would be striding briskly along the 
 sunshiny deck that morning. She had no notion at all 
 of his inveterately early habits. Simply the day was 
 calling to her and something in her was answering. 
 She strolled about, her hands boyishly deep in her 
 pockets, her uncovered hair blowing back from her face, 
 offering a spectacle of delightful girlhood to the few 
 spectators yet abroad mainly engaged in swabbing the 
 decks she so lightly trod and rubbing endlessly the shin- 
 ing brasses. 
 
 When a tall and curiously familiar figure came quickly 
 around the bow toward her, her heart gave a queer 
 little jump and then went on a little faster than ordi- 
 nary. She was conscious of no surprise but of a fresh- 
 ened sense of pleasure, only a little troubled and shy 
 for fear he should think she had been expecting him. 
 But his own gladness in the encounter was too frank 
 and simple for such undercurrents. 
 
 Together they elected to make their way out to the 
 bow, forbidden to cabin passengers in general, and there 
 huddling down against the coils of rope, the ship at 
 their backs, the sea in their faces, with white foam fly- 
 ing past, they knew that wonderful sensation of joyous, 
 lonely flight across the waters that no safe deck can 
 give. They could feel themselves out before the mast 
 of some flying galleon, plunging across an uncharted 
 sea. . . . 
 
 And to her, after that, those shipboard hours which 
 had seemed so amply sufficing in their changing loveli- 
 ness, became nothing but the background for the sud- 
 
 25
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 den play of this young attraction. She did not in the 
 least reason about it, she did not plan nor hesitate. 
 She gave herself, as simply as a child, to the pleasure 
 of being with him, of having him in their group, of 
 seeing him near them, knowing that he wanted to be 
 with her. It was very stirring, very exciting, and left 
 her sometimes a little breathless with a curiously hur- 
 rying heart. 
 
 To the one remonstrance which Miss Ellen thought 
 it worth while quietly to give she had replied, her gray 
 eyes childlike, her lips candidly smiling, "But Miss 
 Ellen, dear, I like Captain Edgerton," and appeared 
 to think that settled it. 
 
 So might Dido have declared that she liked ^Eneas 
 upon that warrior's arrival, and Helen may undoubtedly 
 have remarked to Menelaus in outward simplicity that 
 she liked Paris! Miss Ellen's dry "Evidently," was 
 significant of hidden depths. 
 
 But there were no conscious reserves behind Kath- 
 erine's simplicity. For the first time in her life she had 
 been overtaken by a feeling which stirred her into a 
 self she did not know, and beyond whose daily revela- 
 tions she did not attempt to analyze. Perhaps it was 
 all part of the spring wonder of the trip. . . . Perhaps 
 it was just a mood of spring, sparkling, evanescent. 
 . . . Perhaps like the spring it was a beautiful be- 
 ginning. 
 
 But from that veil her fancy drew back shyly, even 
 with sharp distaste. The present was enough. Real 
 work was waiting in Paris. 
 
 26
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 There were three days of it, three days of flashing, 
 quicksilver hours, and then through fog-drenched air, 
 heavy and blankly veiling as gauze curtains, Katherine 
 saw the shores of France take on a nearer and surer 
 outline. She saw the city of Boulogne looming shadowy 
 ahead, with its roofs and chimneys gaining in individual 
 distinctness against the dun sky, and before it in the 
 vague harbor waters separate ships detached themselves 
 with detail of spars and sail and misty cordage. Soon 
 she saw the little fleet of fishing-vessels stranded by low 
 tide upon the shores, and the puffing tender making 
 ready to come out. 
 
 Her first view of France and there was no uplift, 
 nor stirring rush of expectation as she stared at the 
 country her heart had so long strained to reach! Her 
 mood was as flat and uninspired as the view. What was 
 to be for her there was hidden behind that wan curtain 
 and she was conscious now only of indefinable heaviness 
 that was not far from depression. 
 
 It was absurd, but perhaps one always felt so at 
 the journey's end. 
 
 They would land now in an hour. Jeffrey Edgerton 
 was to go on with the boat to Southampton. 
 
 All day the rain shut them in to publicity. The sa- 
 lons seemed crowded ; the lower decks, canvas-curtained 
 for protection, held an incessant throng. Everywhere 
 the acquaintances to whom she had been so pleasant 
 had surrounded her; everywhere addresses and friendly 
 wishes and farewells were thrust upon her. Everywhere 
 but from Jeffrey Edgerton. Not a parting word had 
 lie said. Only his eyes, extraordinarily serious, had fol- 
 
 3 27 4
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 lowed her in an oddly puzzled way, as if he, too, were 
 wondering. . . . 
 
 And now that the rain had stopped and let them 
 come to the upper deck alone they were standing at 
 the rail, still wet with drops which the heavy air refused 
 to take back, standing in utter silence, staring solemnly 
 at the slowly nearing land. And suddenly it came over 
 her as an instance of the ironic coincidence, the start- 
 ling unexpectedness of life, that here where she had 
 begun the trip with a farewell to one young man she 
 was ending it with a farewell to another and one who 
 four days before had been an utter stranger. . . . But 
 what a difference in her mood. . . . And she thought 
 of that final parting with Dick Conrad, that utter put- 
 ting behind her of the temptation to dally, to be safe, 
 to invest the future, with a sense of almost frightened 
 thanksgiving. Suppose, now, that she were fettered 
 by some obligation ! Suppose these last few days had 
 never been ! 
 
 Captain Edgerton had drawn a square of folded pa- 
 per from his pocket. With a solemnity that gave him 
 an endearing likeness to a small boy resolutely ignoring 
 his self-consciousness at what he felt was a momentous 
 thing, he told her that it was his address and asked 
 for her own. 
 
 Hers, she said, was the American Express Company. 
 They were not sure yet at what hotel they would stop. 
 
 "But later, when you leave the Whartons and take 
 your studio, you'll send me that address ?" 
 
 "Why, yes, if you wish." 
 
 "I do wish very much.'* He gazed down at her a 
 28
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 little wistfully and worriedly. "I don't like to think of 
 you alone in Paris," he brought out surprisingly. 
 "Alone in a studio -with no one to look after you. It's 
 absurd." 
 
 "But why?" A very feminine smile quivered about 
 her lips. "There are hundreds of American girls do- 
 ing that very thing." 
 
 "But they're not you" Remorselessly his tone dis- 
 posed of these unknown hundreds, lumping them in a 
 safe and untroubling aggregation. He continued to 
 stare anxiously down at her through the soft dusk. 
 "Suppose you were ill?" 
 
 In sheer light-heartedness she felt a sudden inclina- 
 tion to laugh. Her depression, her dullness, had van- 
 ished magically like mist before some sudden warmth. 
 
 "But I shan't be ! I never am ! And anyway there 
 are certain to be people in Paris that I know at the 
 studios or at the hotels. Be sure," she declared, "that 
 I went over that with mother!" 
 
 Still his earnest look dwelt on her and she felt that 
 there was something more that he intended saying, some- 
 thing he did not quite know how to say. She found 
 herself waiting for it with a queer expectation and half 
 dread. 
 
 And then he asked if he might come and see her. 
 
 The secret tension was lightened. She felt a sense 
 of relief and gladness. "Why, yes, of course if you're 
 in Paris." 
 
 "But that's just it. I shan't be in Paris not as a. 
 casual thing, you know." He spoke half humorously,, 
 but with an implication of frank avowal. "I want most 
 
 29
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 awfully to see you again. I can't bear to think of my 
 not doing so. ... I can't get away till my leave in 
 August and that's too far away except for a possible 
 week-end or two. . . . And if I come for a week-end I 
 want to know if you will really let me see you give 
 me all the time you can, you know?" 
 
 With an ungloved finger she drew a long line through 
 the drops on the rail. "What a forehanded person !" she 
 murmured possibly to the rail for she did not look 
 up. "Does he leave nothing to chance?" 
 
 "He's going to leave a good deal to it!" the young 
 man laughed. "But he wants to know if you would be 
 glad to see him again?" 
 
 Carefully she demolished five bright drops. "It would 
 be sad," she confided then, "to express my anticipatory 
 delight and have you forget to come. Paris is some 
 way from London and our friendship is but four days' 
 old." 
 
 "But I've seen more of you in these four days than; 
 ever I have of any almost any other girl I ever knew," 
 he answered quickly, and Katherine's mind dwelt with 
 useless curiosity upon that "almost." 
 
 "Don't you believe," he earnestly demanded, "that in 
 four days I can come to feel that I really know; 
 you " 
 
 "Oh, yes indeed," she assured him. "I've been un- 
 usually lovely these four days it would be a stout 
 heart that could resist me! But I wonder if I could 
 liave stood the test of five?" 
 
 He chuckled and then returned with humorous vio- 
 lence, "How I hate myself for that time I lost at the be- 
 
 30
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 ginning ! I've court-martialed myself for gross in- 
 competence and neglect of opportunity. I 
 wanted to know you all the time. But, you see, I 
 thought " 
 
 She knew quite well what he had thought! Here, 
 upon this very deck, with wicked laughter in his eyes, 
 he had surprised her in Dick Conrad's arms ! The dark- 
 ness hid her heightening color. 
 
 Not wholly naively, "But did that matter?" she mur- 
 mured, her finger again intent upon its traceries. 
 "Couldn't you be friends with me even if you did 
 think " 
 
 "Humbug!" said Captain Edgerton rudely. "Now 
 if you had seen me kissing some delightful girl good- 
 by " 
 
 A distant shock went through her. That "almost" 
 recurred startlingly, and she began to wonder, rapidly 
 and helplessly, about the delightful girls in his unknown 
 life. And there must have been bridesmaids, yards of 
 visiony bridesmaids at the Hudson estate wedding. . . . 
 A small scare began to spread like a chilly cloud upon 
 her spirit. 
 
 "Did you?" she murmured pensively. 
 
 "Humbug again," said the Captain. "You know I 
 wouldn't be here if I had." 
 
 "There is nothing," she delicately pointed out, the 
 corners of her mouth tilting in a shadowy smile, "so 
 fatally compromising about being here !" 
 
 It struck her that there was a peculiar, almost an 
 ominous quality in that silence. Glancing hastily up 
 over her shoulder she found the young man looking 
 down. He had not stirred but through the dusk his eyes 
 
 SI
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 met hers with a little flash of dancing lights. . . . 
 
 In the pause a distinct, tingling, electrical disturb- 
 ance made itself felt. 
 
 "Not yet but if you continue to look like that!" He 
 laughed, but his voice had a sudden treacherous drop 
 in it. Then very quickly he reverted to the serious. 
 Night was closing in upon them and last minutes were 
 pressing hard. 
 
 "You haven't answered me yet," he said. "Tell me 
 truly will you really be glad to see me in Paris? Do 
 you vrant me to come?" 
 
 It was youth, with the insistent honesty of its desires. 
 It was life, on the eternal quest. Do you want me? Do 
 I want you? 
 
 She looked away from him across the darkening har- 
 bor, her eyes seeking dim distances. . . . Strange, 
 that on this very boat, in the act of what she had 
 thought an escape from the perplexing tangle of cross 
 purposes she had plunged even deeper than ever into 
 fresh stirrings and uncertainties. She was accustomed 
 to beginnings all her youth, as yet, was but tentative 
 and promise and undertaking, but the suddenness of 
 this beginning, its utter disconnection with the rest of 
 her life, gave it a sensation of almost ephemeral un- 
 reality. 
 
 She was silent so long, her eyes remote, that it 
 seemed to him that his answer had been given, and he 
 straightened under it in compliance with a nature which 
 met rebuff bravely. 
 
 "Of course, if you would rather I didn't come," he 
 said quietly, "if there is someone else so much a better 
 
 friend than I can ever be " 
 
 32
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "Oh, no! There isn't!" The words came springing 
 without her volition. She turned to him, her face lifted, 
 her gray eyes luminous under the shadowing lashes. 
 
 "I'd like you to come," she uttered with a frankness 
 that was a little breathless in its belated haste. "Only 
 only I was just wondering, Captain Edgerton, if you 
 were real! You've been so sudden you may be just a 
 a mirage." 
 
 He laughed happily, in the relief of her words. "A 
 jolly substantial one," he declared. "But I know what 
 you mean. I feel," he avowed, "a little bit that way 
 about you. . . . Four days ago there was a distant 
 young lady with yellow hair . . . talking with the other 
 chaps. And now there's you. And everything's quite 
 different. Isn't it?" 
 
 Her eyes acknowledged it, half laughing, half shy. 
 
 "And I'll come as soon as I can pull it off," he went 
 on. "It may be a bit hard to get away for a time but 
 it will come right, you'll see. We'll manage it some- 
 how." 
 
 It was the most unconscious thing in the world that 
 plural. It came slipping out of his exhilaration, his 
 young faith in her sincerity. ... It sent a sudden, 
 sweet, stinging confusion through her, a glad, disturb- 
 ing warmth. 
 
 And as they stood there, one lingering moment more, 
 the damp salt air in their faces, the low clouds overhead, 
 she realized, with a queer little flutter of her adventur- 
 ous heart, that a scrap of paper, tossed lightly across 
 the path of chance, may lead to solemn consequences.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 A LITTLE after noon the doors of the Academic 
 Moderne closed behind her and she came out into 
 the sunshine of the Rue de Notre Dame des 
 Champs. It was April, sweet, warm and bright, with 
 not a cloud from the morning's rain to dim the blueness 
 of the sky. The tender breath of spring came stealing 
 to her in the fragrance of violets from a curb vender's 
 cart, and she stopped impulsively for a damp cluster of 
 the purple flowers. 
 
 "Always the flowers," jeered Olga Goulebeff beside 
 her. She was a short, plump girl, orphan daughter of 
 a Russian father and a French mother, whose easel was 
 next to Katherine King's in the morning classes. She 
 had merry eyes, an impudent nose, a small, droll mouth 
 and black, curly hair that grew low over her forehead 
 and ears. At first glance she seemed a pleasant, rather 
 childlike creature; it was not till you looked close that 
 you glimpsed something fixed, secretive, inscrutable 
 about these small features. 
 
 Katherine smiled vaguely in response. Her eyes were 
 absently following the purple and gold masses of the 
 flower cart as it bumped its way through the crowded 
 
 34
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 street ; in her ears Olga's voice and the competitive cries 
 of the venders were caught up and blent in the chimes 
 that near them rang the quarter hour. She loved all 
 the tones in that unquiet voice of Paris, all the colors in 
 the bright and shifting spectacle. Everywhere she saw 
 pictures. . . . 
 
 Following a little group of students the two girls 
 turned into a small restaurant farther down the street 
 and took their places at the end of one of the red-clothed 
 tables. Already the scene had grown familiar to 
 Katherine and she nodded to acquaintances here and 
 there at the tables. There were a few girls and more 
 older women present, but the majority were men> 
 earnest-faced, bearded students, at present intent on the 
 business of consuming an excellent luncheon for an in- 
 significant price. Most of them were untidy in their 
 clothes, many of them were shabby, in a picturesque, 
 comfortable way, but the velveteen coat and the flamboy- 
 ant tie and hair of the artist tradition of the quarter 
 were nowhere represented except by two old derelicts of 
 painters sipping their vin ordinaire. 
 
 At her own table a stream of rapid nonsense and 
 parody was coming from a young man at the opposite 
 end, Etienne de Trezac. De Trezac was the spoiled 
 darling of the Academic. The students acclaimed him a 
 genius. Guerin, the master, believed ardently in his 
 power, and thundered, "Dilettante," bitterly at his in- 
 dolence. "Mediocrity is always industrious," the young 
 man would retort, with his mocking smile. 
 
 Between him and the other young Frenchmen at the 
 school, good, earnest, provincial young fellows for the 
 
 35
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 most part, there lay a subtle difference invoked by every 
 aspect of De Trezac's finished young person and grace 
 of manner. He was not, like these others, bending his 
 neck to the eternal yoke of Art; he was but lending 
 some years of his youth until certain expectations of 
 inheritance drew him back into that Faubourg where 
 the obligations of Family reigned supreme. He was 
 not rich; the small allowance on which he subsisted in 
 alternate recklessness and saving care was an unwilling 
 one from a family which felt that to produce instead of 
 to patronize art was unworthy of the blood. 
 
 The impressionability of Katherine's youth had found 
 romantic glamour in this story which De Trezac's 
 charm enhanced. She was trying now to follow his 
 rapid flow of French with its baffling elisions and its 
 studio slang, but she gave it up and turned to Olga in 
 rueful admiration. 
 
 "If I could only understand half that you do!" 
 
 Olga shrugged. "But why should I not? My mother 
 was French. It is as native to me as Russian." 
 
 "Yes, but the English as well and the German. 
 And I heard you getting on famously with that Italian, 
 the other afternoon." 
 
 "Our gift for languages is a national necessity. No 
 one can speak our own tongue and since we are a 
 people who must talk we must learn the tongues of 
 others," the girl laughed, finishing the last vegetable in 
 the soup. "Woof I was famished. That woman this 
 morning did you ever see such a pose? I worked like 
 ten demons and then there was nothing right." 
 
 "Are you going back this afternoon?" 
 
 36
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "I don't know. No." She drew a long breath of 
 Katherine's violets, her little nose wrinkling in luxurious 
 delight. "It is too warm. It is enervating. I should 
 like to go to the country, I think. And you? You 
 work, I suppose?" 
 
 Katherine shook her head. "No, I've some friends 
 coming in to say good-by." 
 
 "And the croquis?" 
 
 "I shan't get back for that, either." 
 
 Olga glanced down the table, caught Etienne de Tre- 
 zac's eye an instant, hesitated, then turned to Katherine 
 with an air of spontaneous inspiration. 
 
 "But later? Shall we dine together? Let us go to 
 the Lilas and look on. All the quarter will take the air 
 to-night." 
 
 "I'd love to," Katherine easily agreed. She found 
 Olga a bright and amusing companion whose three 
 years at the art schools had given a patter of informa- 
 tion and gossip to her tongue's end. 
 
 She went on with her lunch and did not see the little 
 Russian's steady nod to Etienne, nor his quiet signal of 
 intelligence. If she had noticed she would have thought 
 it all a drolly foreign precaution for an apparently 
 casual meeting. To her American mind such subtleties 
 were absurd between frank and friendly companions in 
 art. 
 
 Leaving Olga at the restaurant she started for the 
 studio which had become home to her now, passing down 
 the Rue de Varin for that detour through the Luxem- 
 bourg Gardens which was a constant joy to her beauty- 
 loving spirit. Here April was at her fairest and sweet- 
 
 S7
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 est ; the trees and shrubs were in delicate leaf ; the grass 
 held that first tender green of spring ; the borders shone 
 with golden-hearted daffodils. From the green shrub- 
 beries white statues gleamed and in the sunshine the 
 drops of the fountain sparkled in rainbow hues. 
 
 Everywhere against the bloom and color of the park 
 were bonnes and babies and a troop of little children ; 
 huge, bright hoops went flying down the paths with 
 active little bare legs racing after; balloons were bob- 
 bing and floating at mimic heights like a sudden high 
 growth of giant flowers and here and there delicious 
 little girls in miniature skirts and droll little boys in 
 very tight and short trousers above their thin legs were 
 tossing balls or playing at diabolo. 
 
 The girl's lips curved in unconscious smiles at the 
 youngsters, and she shared her violets with one toddler 
 that swayed perilously about her skirts, then, remember- 
 ing the flying minutes, she hurried on out of the park 
 and through the crooked streets to that gray-stoned old 
 corner where she lived. 
 
 She entered a worn doorway over which a battered 
 coat of arms still bore its lilies, passed the door of the 
 corner studio which was beneath her own and turned to 
 the stairs. On the lowest step she found a small child 
 sitting, who shrank patiently into the corner to let her 
 pass. A round shade hat and a mop of untidy black 
 curls half hid the little face, but from the shadows a 
 pair of big, black eyes met Katherine's interrogative 
 smile without a flicker of answering brightness. 
 
 "Do you want to see anyone?" said Katherine in 
 French, for Madame Bonnet, the concierge, was not at 
 
 38
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 present in her cage, and the mite looked forlorn there 
 on her shadowy step. 
 
 The child continued to stare darkly at Katherine be- 
 fore replying. "I am waiting for someone," she an- 
 swered briefly in French, with a small air of dignified- 
 reserve. 
 
 "Oh! I see," Katherine murmured, and being taken 
 by those solemn eyes she lingered, extending another 
 cluster of violets from that depleted bunch. "But it is 
 too fine a day to be waiting, isn't it? You ought to be 
 out picking these." 
 
 Rather slowly the little thing's fingers closed about 
 the flowers. "I thank you," she said primly, accepting 
 the necessity for so doing, apparently, as part of her 
 lot. 
 
 A stolidly reserved mite, Katherine reflected humor- 
 ously, abandoning her attempts at friendliness and 
 starting on, when a sudden joyous shout made her look 
 back. "Robert!" cried the little girl with a vigorous 
 American sounding of the "t," and running from her 
 lower step she cast herself jubilantly upon a young man 
 just entering the door. 
 
 Katherine stared involuntarily; the young man, a 
 stalwart, black-browed fellow, was just fitting his key 
 into the door of the first-floor studio. Katherine re- 
 membered that black-browed young man. She had 
 caught a glimpse of him once or twice in passing in or 
 out; she had heard that he was Robert MacNare, a 
 sculptor, an "arrived" sculptor, as Madame Bonnet had 
 stated succinctly, but the impression which pervaded all 
 others came from the day of her arrival, when, trailing 
 
 39
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 up the stairs in the wake of Madame Bonnet's creaking 
 stoutness, she had been startled by a stocky, blue- 
 bloused figure darting out to the bottom of the stairs 
 and shaking an admonitory fist after madame. 
 
 "Pas de chanteuses !" he had barked ferociously, add- 
 ing, "No singers, mind!" in unmistakable American for 
 Katherine's benefit, and madame had turned smilingly 
 and waved a pacific reassurance, "Oh, la, la, jamais, au 
 grand jamais! Pas de chanteuses, monsieur, pas de 
 chanteuses !" 
 
 The memory of that moment made Kathcrine's lips 
 twitch in irrepressible humor, and finding herself thus 
 caught in staring back and smiling she spoke out 
 frankly to the young man whose neighbor she was. "I 
 have been trying to make friends with the little girl 
 but she was rather shy of me." 
 
 The young man gave her a just perceptible glance 
 and turned the key in his door. "She has the bad taste 
 to be unsocial, mademoiselle," he rejoined curtly, step- 
 ping briskly into his studio, the mite of a child at his 
 side. 
 
 His manner more than implied that he also was 
 speaking for himself. 
 
 Katherine found herself alone and very warm- 
 cheeked. "Surly!" she thought furiously, and then, 
 "Why did I stop and speak to him anyway? It was a 
 silly thing to do ! But he might have been human. . . . 
 I suppose that little thing is his sister. She's American, 
 then, for all her French air. ... I wonder if she lives 
 there with him?" 
 
 Continuing to wonder at the relation between the odd 
 40
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 pair she reached her own studio, directly above that of 
 the black-browed young man, and her vexation went 
 streaming from her at the sunny pleasantness of the 
 room. 
 
 It was a bright airy place, with windows to the west 
 and north, and it offered the instant impression of hav- 
 ing been taken by storm after years of primitive occupa- 
 tion and vanquished by feminine civilization. To be 
 sure, the large easel by the north light and the litter of 
 paints and sketch-boxes on the window seat appeared 
 very much as it might always have done, but by the 
 western window a couch was gaily cushioned in yellows 
 and grays and a low table by it held books and photo- 
 graphs, a basket of sewing and a bowl of jonquils, while 
 another table, bearing a fat lamp and more books and 
 writing things, stood between wicker chairs before a 
 cavernous fireplace. 
 
 In the center of the room hung an electric light, 
 proud triumph of progress to madame's heart, and be- 
 yond a narrow door was a small retreat where the 
 miracle of running water might be spasmodically ob- 
 served. 
 
 As Katherine entered the studio Madame Bonnet 
 creakingly descended the stairs from a trip to the 
 lodgers overhead, two American ladies of middle age, 
 and paused upon the threshold, having a few words to 
 speak, it appeared, upon the subject of a blanchisseuse. 
 Katherine's choice met with darkly hinted disapproval. 
 Madame had her favorites and played them vigorously. 
 She was a stout, substantial old lady, girdled with a 
 medieval jingle of keys. Her wrinkled face was a map 
 
 41
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 of shrewd experience, and if the small, bright eyes be- 
 neath the beetling brows proclaimed a trifle derisively 
 that their owner was no man's fool, they also added that 
 there were honest folk in the world and she knew when 
 she was treating with them. 
 
 Now, as they rested upon Katherine, those eyes were 
 of a philosophic toleration. That a girl, so young and 
 pretty, with such yellow hair and childlike eyes, should 
 come so far from her home to sit in an atelier and copy 
 naked people, that she should make here a mock home of 
 screens and couches it was all part and parcel of the 
 American madness. So lunatic and so young! 
 Madame Bonnet had seen many women come to Paris 
 for some art's sake; she had seen many hopes withered 
 and many hearts drained, but she had never seen one 
 quite so young nor so exceedingly cheerful. She was 
 always smiling, this mademoiselle and in the name of 
 Heaven, why? . . . She should be safe at home, where 
 the good God would send her a fitting husband, and not 
 be here squandering her dowry in senseless paint and 
 couch-covers. 
 
 Such were Madame Bonnet's inmost thoughts as she 
 stood on her lodger's threshold, discoursing leisurely 
 upon the blanchisseuses, and watched Katherine, kneel- 
 ing triumphantly over a prostrate screen cover, nailing 
 the last edge of gray burlap in snug place. 
 
 Katherine liked Madame Bonnet and liked to listen to 
 her expressive French. Moreover she was not yet in- 
 nured to the solitude of her much-loved studio, and was 
 not always proof against the insidious waves of loneli- 
 ness and homesickness to which she never referred in her 
 
 42
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 bright letters home. When she was at work in the 
 Academic she forgot everything, but in the outside 
 hours there were many little chinks not yet filled, and 
 the newness and foreignness of her life, so delightful in 
 general, held occasional little aches of remoteness and 
 disconnection. 
 
 She wished that her mother and father could see her 
 studio. She transferred it minutely to them in her 
 voluminous letters, with descriptions of the Academie, 
 of Guerin, the master, of Etienne, the genius, and Olga, 
 her informant. Her letters reflected her serenity, her 
 happy assurance, her sense of the miracle of life. On 
 one thing alone were they silent. 
 
 Suddenly madame broke off. She listened, her head 
 a-cock, and Katherine waited, her hammer in her hand. 
 She hoped the Whartons would not arrive until her 
 screen was finished and in place. 
 
 "Ah, the voice of the monsieur below !" said madame 
 with impressiveness and creaked hurriedly from the 
 room, to lean over the rail. In the silence the voice of 
 the monsieur from below was distinctly audible. 
 
 She turned to Katherine. 
 
 "He desires to know if mademoiselle is to continue 
 for eternity?" she reported simply. "He is annoyed." 
 
 "Crack!" went Katherine's hammer upon the next 
 nail-head. 
 
 "There is but a little more to do," she responded 
 coldly. "However that little is necessary." 
 
 Madame did not return to the hall with the com- 
 munication. She appeared aware that the gentleman 
 below had relieved himself with a question purely 
 4 43
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 rhetorical. She merely shut the door behind her as if 
 that diminished the sounds falling upon the floor. 
 
 "I have a right to make a screen," said the girl 
 spunkily. "Or doesn't he let you rent rooms to people 
 who make screens?" 
 
 "Of that he had said nothing," replied madame with 
 fine simplicity. "To singers no nor young ladies 
 who practice the piano. He is of a particularness, that 
 man ! But then, it is not necessary to take such lodgers. 
 Here there are always artists, or ladies who study at -the 
 Sorbonne, like the Americans above, or young gentle- 
 men at the Ecole des Mines, or 
 
 Afterwards Katherine was a trifle ashamed of the 
 vigor of the blows that sent those last nails home. Un- 
 doubtedly she made the poor man's ceiling quake ! And 
 since he was a sculptor probably he was sensitive to vi- 
 brations. 
 
 But her remorse did not have time to mount. The 
 screen was no sooner triumphantly in place than the 
 Whartons appeared upon the threshold in Madame 
 Bonnet's stead, their arms filled with generous last things 
 for Katherine and her studio. 
 
 As they sat about the low tea-table in the western 
 sunshine, the steam rising from the tiny kettle and the 
 air fragrant with crisp cakes hot from the pastry cook's, 
 Katherine felt a keen sense of loss in their departure the 
 next day. She would miss them. They were home 
 friends, those two dear Americans ; with them she had 
 begun this miracle of a foreign year and their going 
 would cut a stanch tie. 
 
 Their interest in her work was genuine and a little 
 44
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 anxious, and she found herself enthusiastically reassur- 
 ing them that she had found the right place and the 
 right master. 
 
 "It's the only place where they really teach you to 
 paint !" she declared with the fervor of the disciple. "I'm 
 seeing things I never saw before and I'm doing things- 
 better already." 
 
 "But that, other Academie was very much praised,'* 
 Miss Ellen demurred. "And Monsieur Simon is such a 
 delightful gentleman " 
 
 "Monsieur Simon is a delightful gentleman and Mon- 
 sieur Maynard is a delightful gallery god, and they are 
 both delightful painters !" exclaimed Katherine. "And 
 they come in turn each week and never remember you 
 unless you have been there three years so Olga says. 
 Now here Monsieur Guerin knows you. And he knows 
 your work. Why, he asked me this morning," she pro- 
 ceeded triumphantly, "why I made the same mistake in 
 a neck that I made in a pose three weeks ago !" 
 
 "Why did you?" said Miss Anne worriedly. 
 
 Katherine's lips twitched. "Because necks are the 
 very Old Harry," she murmured pensively. "Now if it 
 were only legs I could do a centipede with assur- 
 ance !" 
 
 Something in the two pained faces before her caused 
 her to hurry violently from that topic. She suspected 
 that they would ask her presently if the legs had stock- 
 ings. . . . And yet, she reflected, as she rambled on 
 about her classes, they reveled in the Old Masters. . . . 
 The distaste was for masterpieces in the making. . . . 
 
 She was telling now of the croquis, the sketch classes; 
 45
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 at four in the afternoon to which everyone came, 
 masters, pupils, arrived artists. 
 
 "You stay when you like and pay fifty centimes when 
 you leave," she explained. "And such models ! The 
 beauties who don't come to the schools, who only pose at 
 the artists' private studios, come to the croquis after 
 hours to make a little extra money. There was a girl 
 yesterday a young Valkyrie ! There was Norse blood 
 in her I know. Tall and strong and deep bosomed 
 with an arm that could throw a spear and a pillar of a 
 neck that could bear a helmeted head proudly ! And 
 her skin was like silk with muscles that rippled when 
 she moved. They say Roulier is doing her as an Ama- 
 zon. I wonder what the Amazons' sons were like and 
 whether they stayed on at home." 
 
 "I hope the things one hears about them are not so," 
 Miss Ellen observed, sipping her tea. 
 
 Katherine stared. "The Amazons?" 
 
 "The models." 
 
 "Oh! Poor things I'm afraid that they are." 
 Katherine looked momentarily depressed. "However," 
 and she brightened, "they aren't half as bad as the 
 things one hears about the Americans here !" 
 
 "Not the representative Americans." Miss Ellen's 
 distinction was rather fine. To her the exuberant 
 millionaires of recently naturalized forebears were no 
 more Americans than the incoming Slovak woman with 
 her shawled head full of superstitions. To be an Amer- 
 ican one must inherit spiritual responsibilities or in- 
 vest heavily in them for oneself. 
 
 She refused severely to accept as American that rich 
 46
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 and rapid clique of Paris spenders whose gay doings 
 were just then filling the Parisian journals. "That 
 woman's father, my dear, was an illiterate trainman. 
 He came to our country simply to make money 
 the money which she is spending now abroad. 
 He may have had a vote but I trust you do not 
 call him an American?" was her disposal of the 
 matter. 
 
 It was a fine and solitary discrimination. 
 
 It was Miss Anne who on her way from Katherine's 
 easel paused at the writing-table and discovered a 
 framed picture there. 
 
 "Why, Katherine, this looks like " The discovery 
 leaped from her lips with involuntary surprise. Then 
 determinedly she went on with it, feeling a certain re- 
 sponsibility. 
 
 "Is it Captain Edgerton?" 
 
 "Yes. He has just had that taken," Katherine re- 
 sponded with a brightness almost too casual. "He sent 
 it over this week." 
 
 A queer little silence fell. 
 
 Miss Anne stood looking down at the picture. She 
 noticed that Katherine had it in a silver frame. And she 
 thought, worriedly, that he was a very fine-looking 
 young man, indeed. 
 
 "You are writing, then?" Miss Ellen's tones held a 
 cool implication of wonder. 
 
 "Why, yes and when I sent him some of the snaps 
 that we had taken on shipboard he reciprocated with this 
 photograph." Then Katherine hated herself for the 
 
 47
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 weakness of the explanation. She took the picture from 
 Miss Anne and extended it to Miss Ellen. 
 
 "He's rather conquering looking, isn't he?" 
 
 "He is a very soldierly young man." Miss Ellen held 
 the picture a moment and then set it upon the tea-table, 
 where its straight, lifelike glance looked out directly 
 upon the little group. 
 
 Katherine felt again that odd, subtle, hampering sense 
 of their disapproval creeping over her. And why? 
 Was it simply the precipitation of the friendship which 
 made it distasteful to their notions of dignified pro- 
 gress? Did they think her too impulsive? Too im- 
 pressionable? 
 
 She smiled a little wistfully over the picture's head at 
 the elder woman. 
 
 "Dear Miss Ellen," she said, "life can't always be a 
 minuet. Sometimes it must waltz. Sometimes the tempo 
 is accelerando." 
 
 Faintly Miss Ellen's fine lips smiled. "So it would 
 seem, my dear. But I doubt the wisdom of so much 
 haste." 
 
 "Are the only right impulses then the laggard 
 ones?" said the girl, resenting. "Is truth never in first 
 feelings?" 
 
 Miss Ellen merely smiled again with that arching of 
 her brows which was like a shrug, and Katherine was 
 left with a sense of baffled defeat. . . . She did not 
 know that Miss Ellen was remembering a day of thirty 
 years ago when a young man had brought her his pho- 
 tograph in the West Point uniform. They had not been 
 lovers then, not avowed lovers. . . . She remembered his 
 
 43
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 little formal speech of presentation. . . . And for 
 twenty-nine years he had been lying in the church- 
 yard. . . . 
 
 The memory did not give her any sense of sympathetic 
 kinship with this other girl and this other photograph. 
 It brought her only the loneliness of detachment, the 
 sense of remoteness to this heedless onrush of the 
 present. She did not think of Katherine's feelings as 
 being in the least like her feelings of thirty years 
 ago. 
 
 It was Miss Anne who made answer to Katherine's 
 impatient question. "First feelings may be quite true 
 to the moment," she said mildly, "but they are not al- 
 ways true to second feelings are they? ... I am only 
 afraid that you are apt to be a little impulsive at times, 
 Katherine and then have to undo it later." 
 
 Katherine, drawing fresh water for their second cups, 
 was saved an immediate reply. She thought, as she 
 relighted the alcohol lamp, which was subject to 
 draughts, that if they had read in a book about her 
 friendship with Jeffrey Edgerton Miss Anne, especial- 
 ly, was addicted to mild romance that they would have 
 deemed it a beautiful and youthful expression of 
 sincerity. But because it happened under their very 
 noses, she put it to herself somewhat heatedly, because 
 she was just an everyday girl instead of a book heroine, 
 why they thought her a forward little minx to write a 
 young man like that and let him send her photographs ! 
 There was something vaguely cheapening to them in 
 the greedy haste of youth. . . . Her vanity was sensi- 
 tive to this thought of her. 
 
 4-9
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 And then she caught at Miss Anne's last phrase. 
 "Undo it? What do you mean, Miss Anne?" 
 
 "Well you didn't quite know your own mind about 
 Richard Conrad did you?" 
 
 "He didn't always know his about me. He found out 
 first, that was all. . . . But but this is quite different, 
 please !" The self-conscious color was deepening in her 
 cheeks, but she spoke with an assumption of airy ease. 
 "Because he sends me a picture, Captain Edgerton isn't 
 in the least a devoted suitor." 
 
 "Englishmen take these things more seriously than 
 our men, my dear. For him to write you and to send 
 you his photograph argues that he is taking a real 
 interest " 
 
 "And to accept the picture is leading him on?" Kath- 
 erine laughed with increasing constraint. 
 
 "Either that or you are permitting him a flirta- 
 tion," Miss Ellen answered unexpectedly as Miss Anne 
 hesitated. "His inclination may be going a little faster 
 than his head will follow." 
 
 It was a startling and an unpalatable thought. Kath- 
 erine betrayed her nai've astonishment in a soft stare, 
 and then she threw out a little ripple of derision. 
 
 "Am I so very ineligible, dear Miss Ellen? Don't 
 Englishmen like young ladies who paint canvases?" 
 
 "An Englishman of position thinks of more than his 
 inclination," pronounced Miss Ellen. "I think that 
 water has boiled enough, Katherine." 
 
 "I beg your pardon. . . . Well I promise not to 
 break my heart over him, then. Nor to let him break 
 his over me. I guarantee it a thoroughly cooperative 
 
 50
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 friendship of great mutual uplift and enlightenment," 
 Katherine ran on at random, hurrying to pour out the 
 tea. "But now do tell me about Versailles. I was so 
 sorry I couldn't have had that experience with you." 
 
 And she thought, as she listened to their accounts of 
 the previous day's trip, that it was a fortunate thing 
 that they were not clairvoyant to the letter lying in the 
 portfolio upon her table. For Jeffrey Edgerton was 
 coming to see her a week from that Saturday, "God and 
 the Colonel agreeable," he had cheerily written. 
 
 Even to read his brief words brought her a vivid sense 
 of him, tall and straight and merry, a vivid feeling of 
 his personality. That feeling had been very strong 
 those first days in Paris. . . . The journey from 
 Boulogne had been an outer blank, beneath which she 
 had given herself over to dreams and revery. And at 
 first even Paris, party-colored, kaleidoscopic Paris, had 
 beat upon the surface of her senses in vain. She had 
 lent it no more than a veiling attention. 
 
 Yet swiftly that dreaminess had worn away. The 
 continued impact of the novel sights, and the quick 
 plunge into the work for which she had come, had set 
 up their reactions. Edgerton seemed something remote 
 and apart from her present life, and though his letters, 
 arriving regularly each week, revivified the keen sense 
 of his personality, they did not bring him into relation 
 with her everyday existence. 
 
 She was perfectly content with this. Life was going 
 on splendidly. It was enough to have his friendship for 
 her speaking in the interchange of letters without its 
 reappearance in her daily actual experience. From that 
 
 51
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 reappearance she secretly shrank, partly from an un- 
 acknowledged feeling that it was putting life to the 
 question too soon, and the announcement of his in- 
 tention to come was causing her many a flutter. 
 
 There would be something significant in that meeting 
 or something flatly disenchanting. 
 
 "You won't like me a bit when you see me again," she 
 had written him promptly. "My fingers are always 
 painty and I'm so fearfully impressed by your taking 
 time to come that I shall be dumb with awe." 
 
 "I'll risk it," he had scrawled back, and underscored, 
 "Especially the dumbness!" 
 
 The consciousness of this intimate exchange kept 
 Katherine a little flushed and defensive during the re- 
 mainder of the visit. She had meant to refer, frankly 
 in appearance but with misleading casualness, to the 
 prospects of Captain Edgerton's being in Paris, but 
 now she closed her lips upon it. 
 
 And she wondered, with a sudden gleam of abnormal 
 insight, if Ellen Wharton's fidelity to the memory of 
 that dead lover was utterly due to a broken heart, or to 
 some secret disinclination to the full-bloodedness of sex, 
 from which she was willing to stand forever apart in the 
 sanctifying purity of her grief. It was a mere flash of 
 transient thought, not wholly just to the woman before 
 her, but it held its element of truth. . . . 
 
 Katherine felt suddenly tenderer toward Miss Anne. 
 And she wished that she would meet some thoroughly 
 nice man, fall tumultuously in love with him and marry 
 him at the consul's in post haste. 
 
 52
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 It was a pity these revelations didn't occur. 
 
 But the matrimonial times had been out of joint for 
 gentle, careful Miss Anne. 
 
 How pale life would be if it were done with splendid 
 hope ! Pity the heart that never risked its argosies of 
 adventure. 
 
 In showing out her guests downstairs and lingering 
 over their last farewells she blocked the way of the man 
 who came plunging out his first-floor door. She stood 
 aside to let him pass and he made a reluctant motion 
 toward the slouch hat tugged down over his black- 
 browed eyes, but he did not send a glance in her direc- 
 tion. 
 
 And Katherine, able wholly to laugh now over the 
 encounter of the afternoon, pointed them gayly to his 
 big, retreating back. 
 
 "He bites," she said mysteriously, and she christened 
 him to herself for all time. "My neighbor the Surly 
 Man !"
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE little dinner at the Lilas proved merry. The 
 warm April evening had precipitated an on- 
 slaught of marble-topped tables upon the side- 
 walk where the Boulevard Montparnasse crosses the 
 Avenue de 1'Observatoire and as the two girls sat at one, 
 awaiting their order, what more natural than for 
 Etienne de Trezac to saunter past with a friend, and 
 what more agreeable as it happened than for him to 
 ask permission for them to dine together? 
 
 De Trezac's friend, a medical student, was also, it 
 appeared, a friend of Olga's, and though a discriminat- 
 ing spectator might have observed, at the first, a slight 
 estrangement between them, a stiffness upon his part, 
 and a defensive antagonism upon hers, Katherine was 
 far too occupied with the novelty of De Trezac's ac- 
 quaintance to perceive those fine shades of the past 
 which indeed swiftly melted into a more congenial 
 though intermittently ruffled present. 
 
 Katherine found De Trezac charming. He seemed 
 to her a most engaging boy, rarely gifted, and all 
 the more interesting for his French differences, and she 
 accepted companionship with him, ready friendship, 
 
 54
 
 even, with that thoughtless confidence which makes the 
 American girl so bewildering to the foreign observers. 
 
 The talk was rather three-handed, with Katherine put- 
 ting in only an occasional interested word or question. 
 In the beginning it dwelt mildly upon the schools, the 
 exhibitions and studios, but presently it ranged with 
 freedom and liveliness ; during the chicken it concen- 
 trated in a debate between Etienne and Louis Arnaud 
 concerning the veracity of some experiments that a 
 noted chemist was conducting, and by the salad it had 
 veered, unexpectedly, to systems of philosophy with in- 
 timate and personal applications. 
 
 "But you you find in pleasure the end of life," 
 Louis asserted gesticulating, one confesses, with a fork. 
 "That is the fine substance of your philosophy !" 
 
 "Naturally. It is the philosophy of all the world," 
 said Etienne calmly, "though one may mask it with 
 names. . . . What else is glory, fame, high office, dis- 
 covery, but the particular kind of thing that delights 
 one? Pleasure that is the sap of gratification which 
 each flings, in one form or another, to this monster of 
 an ego within." Smilingly he tapped on his slender 
 chest. "What name do you give your philosophy, my 
 friend?" 
 
 "Achievement," said Arnaud with a snap of his jaw. 
 
 "Achievement ? . . . But that is to say that your am- 
 bition is the hunger of your ego for the pleasure of dis- 
 tinguishing itself from other egos, of receiving acclaim, 
 recognition. . . . Gratified pride is not that your 
 pleasure ?" 
 
 "But the pleasure of achievement is different from 
 
 55
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 pleasure in useless gratifications and distractions." 
 
 "Not at all," said Etienne calmly. "It may be the 
 only one to which your harp of one string vibrates, that 
 is all. What you call distractions may be the reactions 
 of a more plentifully endowed nature." 
 
 His laughing eyes turned to Katherine and found her 
 smiling at his mockery. 
 
 "There are higher pleasures/' Louis began doggedly. 
 
 "Oh, as to that granted! There is the pleasure of 
 painting a Venus and the pleasure of eating an ome- 
 let!" 
 
 "And the pleasure of making love to a pretty girl," 
 Olga thrust in, her chin in her hands. "Do not forget 
 that, either of you !" 
 
 They both laughed on different notes. 
 
 "Where would you put that in?" 
 
 "Oh, above the omelet, mademoiselle, assuredly !" 
 
 "Then you would rather paint a woman than kiss 
 one?" pursued Olga, with that impudent tilt of her little 
 nose and mouth, that baffling inscrutability of her eyes. 
 
 "If we are speaking of generalities yes," the painter 
 blandly parried. 
 
 "And he he would rather dissect a Venus than em- 
 brace her," Olga commented, with a mocking nod at 
 Arnaud. 
 
 "One is a step up the way of truth and one a 
 descent into delusion," the young physician observed, 
 not without his own sparkle of malice. He added, 
 emptying the oil cruet upon his last lettuce leaf, "And 
 an embrace leads to bonnets." 
 
 It was evident to Katherine that Etienne shared her 
 
 56
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 perception that the chatter was a trifle unabridged. He 
 brought the conversation back with a quick thrust at 
 Louis. 
 
 "You perceive, then, that in your philosophy of life 
 which you call achievement, you are choosing only the 
 gratification of the pleasure which appeals the most 
 strongly to you?" 
 
 "At least I have chosen. And what I say is, that if 
 you do not choose, if you spin about with all the vibra- 
 tions which you term the reactions of your plentifully 
 endowed nature you will land nowhere and the end of 
 your life will be regret." 
 
 "Show me the life without regrets," said Olga sud- 
 denly. 
 
 "True but do not, at least, arrange to regret the 
 most worthy of your possibilities." 
 
 Having consumed the last vestige of lettuce, Arnaud 
 wiped up the plate with a piece of bread and then pushed 
 it away from him, thrust his hands into his pockets, 
 tilted back his chair and cocked his narrow, cynical 
 head a trifle derisively at Olga. 
 
 The girl suddenly laughed. "Your choice then is not 
 hamperingly large," she gibed, "that choice of your 
 'worthy possibilities' !" 
 
 Etienne turned to Katherine with a humorous mien. 
 "And what is your philosophy, Mademoiselle King?" he 
 inquired. "What do you seek in life?" 
 
 "Happiness !" she gave back on a note of laughter, 
 but with an involuntary earnestness of avowal. Her 
 clear, gray eyes, meeting his dark ones so frankly, re- 
 vealed a trustful confidence in her bright quest. 
 
 57
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 And then, choosing her words more slowly, her faintly 
 smiling lips seeming to deprecate her unnecessary seri- 
 ousness, she added, "The happiness, I mean, of the 
 realization of self of the very most that is in one." 
 
 Quizzically he drew his brows together. "But accord- 
 ing to our inexorable friend here, one must choose. . . . 
 What kind of happiness? The realization of yourself 
 as a painter? Or as a beautiful woman?" 
 
 The medical student glanced at her with sudden in- 
 terest. He was attracted by her air of radiant health 
 and vitality, by the freshness of her color and the slen- 
 der firmness of her white throat that the open collar 
 revealed. 
 
 "A beautiful woman, of course," he interpolated, but 
 not without his air of underlying irony. "The epileptic 
 can paint." 
 
 The girl glanced from one to the other, her candid 
 eyes subtly appealing against their mockery. It was a 
 discussion which she had often carried on secretly with 
 life. 
 
 "Perhaps you think I desire to eat my cake and have 
 it, too," she smiled. "But why must a woman renounce 
 herself to be a painter? A man does not." 
 
 "But he places one thing above the other," Etienne 
 said quickly. "He starves his wife for art or he be- 
 trays his art and becomes what is it that you say in 
 America a good provider? Yes?" 
 
 "Not always. Some wives understand and share the 
 adventure with them. . . . And for a woman it ought 
 to be easier in a financial way because she is not the 
 provider. . . . And why is she not a more successful 
 
 58
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 painter for being a woman who lives life not evades 
 it? . . . Every experience enriches . . . reveals " 
 
 She paused, a little diffident of the deepening waters. 
 Then, smiling, "Isn't every young singer who essays the 
 great roles told to go and have her heart broken?" 
 
 "But observe, mademoiselle, she is told to have her 
 heart broken not to realize its hopes," Arnaud pointed 
 out, while Etienne watched Katherine's kindled face 
 where her youth was dancing like a blown flame. "There 
 is a difference." 
 
 "Indeed a difference, the chance of life," murmured 
 Olga unexpectedly pensive. 
 
 "But the difference is in favor of happiness," Kath- 
 erine replied to Arnaud. "Cannot one do better work 
 with a happy heart, with a full inspiration of life, a 
 stimulating gladness " 
 
 He interrupted. "A happy heart is a time-consum- 
 ing affair. ... It involves the menage a deadening 
 domesticity. One does not paint immortal works while 
 one " he appeared to interrupt himself, then resumed, 
 "one prepares the meals, mademoiselle or, if the 
 menage is rich, one plays the chatelaine. A pair has a 
 place in society and behold another Moloch for time. 
 . . . But a broken heart is another thing. The affair 
 is over and done with. The broken heart yields its 
 essence of despair. . . . The painter lives in his work, 
 feeds it with that despair, with that energy which love 
 did not consume. . . . Behold the truth !" 
 
 But she would not yield. 
 
 "Does a broken heart stay broken?" she laughed. 
 "The heart of Romeo, you remember, was broken for 
 5 59
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 Rosaline and then he saw Juliet! You cannot stifle 
 life of its meanings, its hopes. . . . And is it not better, 
 from your cynical point of view, even, to have a happy 
 love affair and once and for all safely occupy the 
 heart " 
 
 "Mademoiselle is an economist, then," murmured Ar- 
 naud. 
 
 "An idealist !" declared Etienne. "She pays the heart 
 the tribute of assuming its constancy, when once its 
 affairs have reached a happy conclusion. . . . But is 
 it not your opinion, Monsieur Philosopher," he inquired 
 of Arnaud with pronounced gravity, "that success in a 
 love affair may prove less engrossing than a fail- 
 ure " 
 
 "Take care," said Olga, in a low, hostile voice. 
 
 "I am but a speculator in the realms of fancy," said 
 Louis quickly, with a gay air. "Who knows but what 
 Mademoiselle King is right, and a heart relieved by suc- 
 cess and so freed from the strain of courtship may not 
 turn to its work and spend itself there?" 
 
 "You are a beast," said Olga across the table to 
 Etienne, who laughed, and raising her demi-tasse she 
 saluted him with her impudent little smile but with cold 
 eyes, "To your perdition !" 
 
 Katherine reflected that Jeffrey St. Preux Edgerton 
 would judge the conversation extraordinary. 
 
 She thought it a little extraordinary, herself, but 
 these were student days and to her comrades she gave 
 the students' liberty. 
 
 She had found the little dinner a quatre so pleasant 
 that she was frankly pleased to have it followed by 
 
 60
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 other dinners now openly by appointment and those 
 led in the quickly ripening intimacy of student associa- 
 tion to rambling and light-hearted expeditions about 
 Paris in search of interest and diversion. 
 
 More and more she liked De Trezac. For all the tre- 
 mendous differences of their environment and their per- 
 spective, differences but half understood by her, as yet, 
 she was serenely sure that she and "Etienne," as it easily 
 became after a fortnight of their comradeship, under- 
 stood each other implicitly. And he was very good for 
 her French, she wrote her mother cheerily, for he could 
 not or would not talk English, and her French was 
 becoming so rapid now that it fairly ran away with her I 
 
 Her Paris days were settling into more and more 
 sharply defined ways. At the College Club she had met 
 several pleasant American girls, but as most of them 
 happened to be studying music the difference in interest 
 drew them steadily apart. There was an English girl 
 she liked, studying art at Julien's, and she saw some- 
 thing of her but not much for most of her time was 
 given to her own Academie and the friends that she made 
 there. 
 
 Two middle-aged American ladies she liked immense- 
 ly; good, energetic souls, who after an arid youth of 
 teaching drawing were at last realizing something of 
 their long-deferred ambitions. Fortunately they had 
 not yet realized how fatally deferred those poor ambi- 
 tions had been. With them Katherine often went to 
 Henriette's, that little restaurant about which cluster so 
 many traditions of frolicsome student life, and with 
 
 61
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 them she shared the sly amusement provoked by intrud- 
 ing American tourists, lured by these old tales of high 
 jinks, and woefully taken aback upon beholding many 
 groups of compatriots, mild, feminine, sedate, with their 
 sprinkling of gray hairs. 
 
 There were other nights, however, when Henriette's 
 was not so decorous. Then it was the Americans, the 
 younger Americans, more than the French students, 
 who upheld the riotous tradition, but the most sympa- 
 thetic eye could not find in the babel of laughter and 
 corks the romantic gayety of the Mimis and the Ru- 
 dolphs of the past. 
 
 These were the days when Katherine's work absorbed 
 her, when she lived from day to day in an enthusiasm 
 and ennobling delight that was like a spiritual flame in 
 her. Her passionate preoccupation would have worn 
 down a youth less buoyant and healthily gifted. She 
 painted at the Academic every morning and often after- 
 noons ; but her habit was to work in her own studio in 
 the afternoons, at experiments of her own devising, re- 
 turning to the Academic for the croquis at four. 
 
 At first she had been shy of herself and distrustful 
 of her ability among these strangers, but her gift was 
 genuine and asserted its power. And she had been 
 splendidly trained with nothing to unlearn. She 
 painted, Guerin finally told her, like a man. Her effect 
 was simple and bold and strong. 
 
 "It is a pity you are not a man," Guerin observed, 
 studying one of her half-finished canvases. 
 
 Her eyes steadily, a little too defiantly, interrogated 
 liim. 
 
 62
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "Oh, yes, you understand," he answered, dryly. "You 
 see now how you work you know that you are painting 
 against time." 
 
 That held its barb of truth for her. She realized 
 indeed that if ever her work was to justify itself, was 
 to be of paramount concern in the ordering of her life, 
 it must take its place of honor as soon as possible. 
 Etienne, her fellow-student, had scant sympathy with 
 work when it conflicted with his suggestions for an 
 outing, and the way of the world outside that studio 
 was to take it as the pleasant time-serving of talent, and 
 to assume that what life had only to deal with was a 
 gray-eyed girl with a fresh and wholesome color, and a 
 healthy appetite for experience ! 
 
 She knew, for instance, that Jeffrey Edgerton no 
 more thought of her painting as a thing to be seriously 
 reckoned with in his attraction for her than he thought 
 of her embroidery. Probably he had not even attempted 
 to analyze his impression upon the subject, but if he 
 had it would have been undoubtedly that she sketched 
 very cleverly and would make some pretty things to 
 hang on the walls. As for serious work probably he 
 thought that there she painted badly, very badly in- 
 deed, but Katherine felt intuitively that his loyalty 
 would always stanchly insist that the things were "very 
 jolly." 
 
 He had not made that trip to Paris upon the expected 
 Saturday. Neither God nor the Colonel had been favor- 
 ably enough inclined, it appeared by the disposition of 
 events, for an absurd epidemic of measles had broken 
 out in his quarters and he was quarantined. 
 
 63
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 It was the telegram apprising her of this that brought 
 the first sign of humanity from the Surly Man. 
 
 In the two weeks that had intervened since her ill- 
 advised utterance of neighborliness she had seemed to 
 run -upon that man on almost every occasion and with- 
 out the least softening of their edged aloofness to each 
 other. In general they appeared not to see each other. 
 When this desirable abstraction could not be main- 
 tained for instance when dashing violently against 
 each other in a bundle-laden rush out a delicatessen door 
 his awareness of her personality and reception of 
 her apologies, for she had been the principal dasher, with 
 some fatal damage to an eggy bundle of his, she surmised 
 had been accomplished with a maximum of ill grace. 
 
 But when the telegram came, when Madame Bonnet 
 handed it interestedly out to her from the little cage as 
 she sped into the hall on her return from the Academie 
 that Friday afternoon, and she stood rather dumbly 
 there, reading it over the second time, a voice came out 
 of the shadows by madame's recess that was so mild 
 that it was not for a minute recognizable as the voice 
 of her neighbor. 
 
 "No bad news, I hope?" he offered, coming forward 
 awkwardly. 
 
 "Oh, yes," said Katherine dully, and then, "Why no 
 no. It doesn't matter," and she fled up the stairs in 
 a frame of mind as distracted as her stupid speech. 
 In sharp reaction from that first blank disappointment 
 came cowardly relief. The awkwardness of meeting was 
 postponed for a time. She wouldn't have to lie awake 
 to-night, planning what they would do, and what she 
 
 64
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 would say feeling foolishly expectant in the thought 
 of that momentous visit . . . feeling chagrined if it 
 fell flat and uninspired. . . . 
 
 It was better to have his letters going on as usual. 
 
 And yet, after all, that was a very blank Saturday. 
 iOn the whole, so her mood veered, she wished he had 
 come and had it over with.' 
 
 The first visit appeared rather humorously in the 
 aspect of a dose of medicine on whose success the rest 
 of their friendship depended. Decidedly she was a 
 young lady of too much humor for her own tranquillity. 
 
 Sunday, also, opened very emptily. In expectation 
 of Edgerton's arrival, she had declined a trip to the 
 Bois with Etienne and Louis and Olga, and now the 
 perfect loveliness of the day, the relaxing warmth that 
 lured and beckoned, waked restlessness and discontent 
 as she sat over her coffee and rolls in a neighboring 
 cremerie. 
 
 Then she became aware that the Surly Man and his 
 small charge were at the next table, also at breakfast. 
 He had his back to her, his big shoulders hunched over 
 his paper, a coffee cup in his hand. The child faced 
 her, gravely staring above the rim of her mug. 
 
 Presently when the Surly Man wandered off about the 
 shop, collecting favorite rolls, the little thing slipped 
 deliberately down from her chair and came slowly to 
 Katherine's table, standing looking at her with that 
 dark, unwavering gaze. 
 
 "She's not unsocial," thought Katherine, with a little 
 flash of indignation. "She's only shy !" 
 
 65
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 She smiled, a little shyly herself at her visitor, half 
 fearful of frightening her away. 
 
 "And what is your name?" she said in English. 
 
 "Peggy," said the child clearly. ''Peggy in English. 
 . . In French I am Marguerite." 
 
 "They are both very pretty. . . . But which do you 
 like the best?" 
 
 A grave consideration of this dwelt in the little 
 girl's face. Then she turned, cast a sudden glance 
 across the room at the Surly Man returning to the 
 table with a heaped plate, and then gave Katherine a 
 look, fleeting, mysterious, embarrassed. 
 
 "Peggy," she said with a little gasp, as if her reasons 
 for it made it a confession, and turned and precipitated 
 against the Robert that she adored. 
 
 Fe\7 young men care for the impetuous affection of 
 a public attack that grips them dangerously about the 
 knees, but the Surly Man, though Katherine saw the 
 color mount in his face, offered no suggestion of rebuke. 
 Having clasped a steadying hand an instant over the 
 rocking rolls he put that hand down upon the little girl's 
 head with a gesture of affection that was curiously 
 touching, and when he had lifted her back upon her 
 chair, and buttered a fresh roll for her and refilled her 
 mug, Katherine registered a sudden, enlightening dis- 
 covery about him, also. 
 
 "Perhaps he's just shy, too !" she thought. 
 
 But that was not wholly the case. 
 
 It became the case for her thoughts, however, and she 
 saw the young man's gruffness through eyes of sym- 
 pathy. He was so oddly alone, with that little sister 
 
 66
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 and how the child adored him ! The English Peggy had 
 been dear to her because it was the name of her brother 
 for her Katherine had divined that in a flash. What 
 old little things they were, these mites, and what quaint 
 things went on in back of their heads ! 
 
 And as she watched the two of them for the young 
 man's back was to her and his paper again engrossed 
 him she saw that the child had a droll way of drinking 
 only when he did. Several times the little Peggy 
 gripped her mug firmly, in hopeful expectancy, but if 
 the 3 r oung man put down his coffee cup or his glass of 
 water untasted the child put down her mug. When he 
 drank she drank, methodically, watchfully. ... It was, 
 one of those queer secrets of childhood. " 
 
 She wondered if the man knew, or if this hidden play- 
 went on unseen through all their meals. 
 
 At the end she saw that he knew. For he told the 
 child to finish her milk, and as she hesitated he raised 
 his own glass with an air of beautiful casualness and 
 kept it at his lips until her milk was drained. And 
 Katherine's sympathy went out to him in a queerly pity- 
 ing way, although he appeared such a very self-sufficient 
 young man, stoutly able to repel all manifestations of 
 interest. 
 
 Perhaps it was his very air of assurance that made 
 him all the more pitiable. The red wreath on the child's 
 hat with that amazingly blue sash ! 
 
 She wished, with a woman's intrusive and amiable 
 recklessness, that there was something that she could do 
 for them.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE chance came with unexpected suddenness. On 
 that very Sunday a lonely, drifting one for 
 herself, given over to letters and reveries and a 
 brief walk upon the boulevards that disgusted her with 
 all strolling Frenchmen forever, she told herself, the 
 little Peggy was taken down with cold and fever. Upon 
 Madame Bonnet's mentioning, some three days later, 
 that "la petite, la-bas," was ill, Katherine discovered 
 that the good madame was aiding in the nursing, al- 
 though monsieur was devoted as a mother, madame de- 
 clared, nodding emphatically. 
 
 Katherine put no questions, refraining from appear- 
 ing to interrogate madame upon the subject of a young 
 gentleman and an arrived sculptor, but she did make 
 bold, with what she assured herself was unmixed kind- 
 ness of motive, untouched by feminine curiosity, to tap 
 at Robert MacNare's door and ask if there was any- 
 thing she could do for the child. She had had quite a 
 little experience with her small brothers, but she did not 
 get as far as that in her little speech to MacNare. 
 
 She met with a scarcely opened door and a curt re- 
 fusal. Thank you, but no help was needed. 
 
 68
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 On her way upstairs she thought of several things 
 that she would like to happen. Particularly she hoped 
 that Peggy would have fits harmless fits, of course 
 in the night and he would come flying to her, craving 
 her skill. . . . 
 
 It is not often that life falls into the whim of our sug- 
 gestions. But two nights later, events unfolded with the 
 thorough retribution of the third act of a tragedy. 
 
 At eleven o'clock the Surly Man came knocking at her 
 door, a very distraught and hastily attired Surly Man, 
 demanding, not beseeching, her presence on the floor be- 
 low while he went for a doctor. He had wakened to find 
 Peggy in a choking paroxysm. There was no telephone 
 in the building and Madame Bonnet was spending the 
 night with a neighbor. 
 
 Katherine was a little scared by this prompt response 
 of fate, and when she hurried down with him, in informal 
 dressing-gown and slippers, the child's condition shocked 
 her beyond all thoughts but those of fear. 
 
 Peggy was sitting up in bed, gasping in a horrible, 
 strangled way. Her tortured little face was darkening 
 with blood. 
 
 "What is it ? She never had this " The young man 
 hung over her in an agony of helplessness, one arm 
 about the shaking little figure. Over his shoulder he 
 flung a look that was a command at Katherine. 
 
 "You run like the devil for the nearest doctor! I 
 daren't leave her. Try the one at the corner. Quick !" 
 
 But Katherine had seen croup before, though never 
 such an extremity as this. She flew to the table where 
 there were medicines and an alcohol heater and a moment 
 
 69
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 later she was holding a spoonful of white vaseline in the 
 blaze, unmindful of her blistering fingers. Pouring the 
 warm stuff into another spoon she gave it to the stran- 
 gling child. 
 
 "She must cough it up," she said desperately. "She 
 must !" And cough it up poor little Peggy did, with the 
 last remnant of her gasping little strength. 
 
 And when her head drooped back against the young 
 man's arms with a spent sigh, the dark color fading 
 splotchily from her face, Katherine took her from him 
 and sent him for the doctor. 
 
 MacNare returned with a slender, bearded man, whose 
 keen brown eyes behind thickly convexed lenses stared 
 rather hard to find the child, made sweet and fresh in 
 her reordered bed drawn out in the middle of the studio, 
 clinging to the hand of a very young girl in a blue 
 dressing-gown with two ropes of light hair down 
 her back like Marguerite's. Katherine had been 
 too busy with Peggy to remember her own appear- 
 ance. 
 
 Nor was the doctor's astonishment lessened by Mac- 
 Nare. 
 
 "Dr. Thibault, this is er ' frowningly the Surly 
 Man confronted his guest. "I don't believe I ever knew 
 your name," he blurted. 
 
 Katherine turned to the doctor. "I am Miss King. 
 I am on the floor above and came down when the child 
 was choking." 
 
 For just one minute the Frenchman's face permitted 
 the revelation of his thoughts. To have a girl with such 
 hair on the floor above and not to know her name ! It 
 
 70
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 was incredible! Then he devoted himself to the small 
 invalid, and when he had taken stock of affairs he 
 turned toward Katherine again with an air of admira- 
 tion that had nothing at all to do with her braids, and 
 paid her the compliment that comes only sincerely to a 
 physician's lips. 
 
 "You would have made a good nurse, Mademoiselle 
 King. You have had experience?" 
 
 "With my brothers. Now if there is nothing more 
 that I can do ?" 
 
 "You have done everything." He made her a grave 
 bow. 
 
 "Then I'll say good-night." 
 
 At the door the Surly Man shot forward and gripped 
 her hand. 
 
 "I'm glad you knew what to do," he said with a deep 
 breath. "And I I want " Emotion too strong 
 for speech was struggling inarticulately within him. 
 He did not lift his eyes to her face. Some perception 
 of the past blackness of his conduct was further com- 
 plicating his expression. 
 
 "I'm so glad that I could help," said Katherine 
 quickly. And then, emerging from her deep relief and 
 gratefulness into a very human triumph, she spread her 
 graciousness a trifle expansively. "And if you need me 
 again to-night or if there is anything that I can do 
 to-morrow for your little sister " 
 
 Abruptly his hand withdrew from hers. 
 
 "She is my daughter," he said hurriedly. 
 
 Then why on earth did she call him Robert? That 
 
 71
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 was what Katherine wanted to know, staring solemnly 
 wide-eyed in the dark. 
 
 His daughter! How amazing! 
 
 It seemed a disconcerting fact, but presently her vig- 
 orous imagination, only momentarily stunned, laid hold 
 of the circumstances and constructed an entire story. 
 And its pathos reinvested the Surly Man with that drap- 
 ing glamour of romance from which the first shocked 
 discovery of his wedded past had contrived, curiously 
 enough, to divest him. 
 
 His young wife had been beautiful and adored. Her 
 death had broken his heart and he hated all women be- 
 cause they were living while she was gone. ... So he 
 lived alone with his little child and his artist's dreams. 
 
 It was very tragic. And Katherine, having com- 
 pleted the creation, indulged a woman's passion for 
 sequels. She reflected, as she yielded to her neglected 
 sleep, that it was a pity that he was not ten years older. 
 . . . Miss Anne was so sympathetic when one knew 
 her. 
 
 But the sculptor, unfortunately, was not much more 
 than thirty. 
 
 However, since he had done with youthful romance, 
 perhaps. . . . 
 
 Sleep, impatiently, snuffed out the rest.
 
 L 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 IVE, live, live! The sun and stars shall light 
 
 you!" 
 
 Forgetful of the ban upon songstresses, Katherine 
 was caroling at her easel shortly after her return from 
 the Academie the next afternoon. 
 
 " ' Live, live, live ! Some spot of earth invite 
 
 you 
 Live, live, live ! Some face and heart delight 
 
 you.' . . . 
 
 "Come in," she broke off her song to call, looking over 
 her blue-aproned shoulder at the door, expectant of the 
 American ladies from overhead who were to report about 
 some tickets for a play. 
 
 At sight of the Surly Man, standing rather hesitantly 
 in the doorway, she freed her thumb quickly from the 
 palette and came forward in welcome. 
 
 "Do come in. How is little Peggy to-day? I inquired 
 of Madame Bonnet at noon and she said that she was 
 better." 
 
 "She is. Much," MacNare sententiously vouchsafed. 
 He was in his sculptor's blouse, and his hands, though 
 fresh-washed, bore unmistakable traces of clay about the 
 
 73
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 close-cut nails. It was evident that he had run up from 
 his work on the spur of resolution. 
 
 ''But you are busy," he objected, with a look at her 
 easel. 
 
 "Only puttering. And I'd do better to let it alone 
 a bit. . . . Will you take this chair? It's really man- 
 size and comfy." 
 
 She spoke rapidly, intent upon pleasant hospitality. 
 There was something about this gruff young man, with 
 all his surliness, that stirred both feminine curiosity and 
 a motherly impulse to soften his aloofness. 
 
 "No, no I only came for a minute." 
 
 Katherine perched on the wide wicker arm of a chair 
 facing him. She made no motion to take off her very 
 painty apron, fearing that might suggest a criticism 
 of his workaday blouse, and above its long blue folds 
 her fresh-tinted face looked curiously small and young. 
 
 "And is the croup all gone?" she asked as he stood 
 silent. 
 
 "Oh yes. Thibault says that came from too heavy a 
 meal last night. . . . She was so much better from her 
 cold then that I didn't know more than to indulge her." 
 
 "I expect you have your hands full," she ventured 
 sympathetically. 
 
 He did not immediately reply and she saw, to her sur- 
 prise, that a tide of dark color was rising in his rather 
 white face. 
 
 "I don't know how to thank you," he said abruptly. 
 "But perhaps you are really a person who doesn't care 
 to be thanked I've read that there are such persons !" 
 
 Katherine laughed. "Oh no! I like to be thanked 
 
 74
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 very much," she said mischievously. "Please go 
 ahead." 
 
 Very blankly he eyed her. Then meeting her smiling 
 eyes he smiled, too, a little stiffly as one unaccustomed 
 to this relaxing intimacy. 
 
 "I wish I knew how," he said. "Your promptness 
 saved her." 
 
 "Oh, you could have brought a doctor in time. But 
 I was too frightened to wait. Croup's a horrible thing. 
 You're very fortunate that she never had it before. My 
 brother Donald had more than one siege, poor lad." 
 
 Again he was silent, still struggling, it appeared with 
 the sense of his deep obligation. "I wish that there was 
 something that I could do to repay you," he ploughed 
 on at last, uncomfortably intent, and she broke out in 
 sensitive opposition, "But I'm not a doctor so you can't 
 send a check! And is a little neighborly kindness so 
 burdensome to you?" 
 
 Her eyes met his with a sudden little flash. This time 
 it was he who smiled the first, a slow and reluctant smile, 
 admissive of that quality with which she reproached him. 
 
 It was the first time that Katherine had really looked 
 at the Surly Man; he had been a vaguely featured, 
 black-browed person draped with the fog of both re- 
 sentments and sympathies, but now her quick glance 
 absorbed a host of impressions. He was very black- 
 browed, indeed, and black-eyed, with heavy black hair 
 growing low on a wide white forehead. His nose was 
 straight and finely cut ; his cheek-bones were rather 
 heavy; his mouth had a grim, locked look, and his 
 square- jawed chin was blunt. 
 6 75
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 He looked like a person who made up his mind about 
 things as a bulldog holds to a bone. But there came to 
 her the softening memory, not alone of his helpless 
 agony last night, but of the gentle way he had put his 
 hand on Peggy's head that Sunday morning as she had 
 gripped his knees in her impulsive onslaught. 
 
 Very decisively Katherine whisked the question of 
 gratitude to the winds. "Will you feel better if I 
 promise to have a spasm some night and call upon you? 
 Then we'll be even." 
 
 Her flippancy elicited no lightness of response. He told 
 her rather dryly, "Yes, I'd feel better if you would." 
 
 "How you hate to be grateful! . . . But you 
 needn't be really. It didn't make a particle of differ- 
 ence between us. You mustn't bother to speak to me any 
 more than before, and when I make screens and things 
 you can come and roar just as loudly in the halls !" She 
 looked at him with a little-girl sauciness, swinging a 
 restive foot. "The status quo," she added, her face 
 tilted, its fugitive foreshortened lines touched with a 
 gamin-like malice, "is undisturbed." 
 
 He shot her a suddenly aroused look under his dark 
 brows. 
 
 "So you do bear grudges, after all!" he commented, 
 with unexpected amusement. 
 
 "Not grudges recollections." 
 
 "The bear that walks like a man?" 
 
 "Still you were very human once," in justice she re- 
 called. "Last week when I had a telegram and you 
 asked if it were bad news." 
 
 "You didn't seem to know." 
 
 76
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "Your sympathy upset me." 
 
 She had stirred him, at any rate out of the slough of 
 his inarticulate gratitude. He seemed to be enjoying 
 the saucy clash. 
 
 She went on quickly, "But I shall insist, however, 
 upon being friends with Peggy. And now do tell me 
 about her. Does she go to a school here? Or is she too 
 young?" 
 
 And about Peggy, it seemed, once the stream of his 
 speech were thawed, he was pathetically eager to talk. 
 For the child was a problem. In the mornings she went 
 to a little 'kindergarten kept by French ladies for sim- 
 ilarly detached French and American children, and she 
 had her luncheons there before the bus returned her, 
 but the afternoons were difficult now that she was old 
 enough to resent excursions with a bonne. She had few 
 playmates and she was too young for more school. 
 
 "She ought to be out of doors," Katherine declared. 
 
 He nodded. "I know," he said rather humbly. "And 
 I do knock off every day or so and take her out, but 
 when I'm working you know how that is?" His appeal 
 recognized her as a fellow-worker and she felt gravely 
 flattered. 
 
 "Usually she amuses herself in the studio when I'm 
 busy. She's got her paints and her paper dolls she's 
 a self-sufficient child. . . . And of course, we have 
 each other. . . . But lately I've realized she ought to 
 have more of a young life of her own " 
 
 He was walking up and down the studio, now, his 
 hands under his baggy blouse, deep in his trousers* 
 pockets. 
 
 77
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 Katherine mused a moment. "I suppose there aren't 
 any relatives you could bring over ?" she threw out. 
 
 "Oh, God, no ! Relatives !" He gave a stare of hor- 
 ror. "Fancy having relatives around some woman." 
 He jerked a hand free and ran his fingers through his 
 thick hair. 
 
 "Never mind, you needn't have one," said Katherine 
 hastily. "Why not just get some nice girl to take her 
 out afternoons say four a week to play in the gar- 
 dens?" 
 
 "I've tried. But it's not so easy to find the right ones. 
 Peg's hated most of them and when she hasn't / have." 
 He stopped for a moment's silent recollection of certain 
 obstructive memories. "Do you know of anybody?" he 
 demanded. "I'd rather have an American than a 
 Frenchwoman, because of the language. Peg knows 
 more French than English now." 
 
 "I might hear of somebody at the Club," Katherine 
 reflected. "There are lots of nice students who are glad 
 to earn a little extra money and in such a pleasant way. 
 I'll find out." 
 
 "That would be good of you," he said simply. He 
 seemed to have a fundamental masculine helplessness to- 
 ward some of the practicalities of life, and she sus- 
 pected that the skillful ways she had witnessed in his 
 caring for the child had come rather hard to his slow 
 unhandiness. Mentally she took him and his baby under 
 her untried wing. 
 
 "I'll find you a splendid somebody," she promised 
 with an infectious smile. "And sometimes, perhaps, 
 you'll let me borrow her for some out-of-door hours? 
 
 78
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 You see, I haven't forgotten how I used to look after 
 my small brothers. And it will keep me from getting 
 too homesick." 
 
 "Homesick?" he said with a sudden frowning scru- 
 tiny of her bright face. A little quizzical gleam came 
 into his dark eyes and he was about to speak when a 
 knock sounded and he turned toward the door as Kath- 
 erine moved to open it. 
 
 Again it was not the ladies from upstairs. Etienne 
 de Trezac, a debonair and frock-coated Etienne with 
 miraculously creased trousers and a waxen boutonniere 
 in his lapel, with a cane and a high hat and lemon-colored 
 gloves now held carelessly in his hands, revealed himself 
 in conscious splendor. 
 
 "Oh good-by," said the Surly Man abruptly. "I 
 hope I haven't kept you," he muttered, plunging toward 
 the door and ignoring the polite salute of the young man 
 who stood aside to let him pass. 
 
 As the door closed De Trezac turned to Katherine 
 with raised brows. 
 
 "So you know Robert MacNare ?" 
 
 "Why, he lives below me. But how did you know who 
 he was ?" 
 
 "How did I know?" Ironically he laughed. "True, 
 you did not present me but do you think he is under 
 a bushel ? He is somebody that one ! There is no one 
 to whom Paris looks with more expectation. Did you 
 read what Rodin wrote of him? No?" 
 
 She shook her head, feeling an odd surprise. Madame 
 Bonnet had insisted impressively that MacNare was an 
 arrived sculptor, but she had never spoken of him to peo- 
 
 79
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 pie in the studios and she was not prepared for Etienne's 
 complete respect. Generally he had a gibe for the most 
 successful of artists. 
 
 His gibe now was for other things. "So he lives be- 
 low? Well that is convenient! He consults you, I 
 suppose, about his great fountain?" 
 
 "His fountain?" 
 
 "Did you not know of that? Why to him was given 
 the prize, the commission but that is evidently not 
 what he comes to talk to you about? No?" Under 
 his laughter there was a stirring of something she 
 faintly resented. 
 
 "He came to talk to me about his little daughter. 
 She needs a companion for afternoons " 
 
 "His daughter !" De Trezac's face registered a droll 
 surprise. "So he has a daughter?" 
 
 "A tiny little girl. She lives with him. And of 
 course he's rather helpless about her." 
 
 The young Frenchman nodded. "Well, well I did 
 not know that there was a petticoat in his life! But 
 that is what is back of these hermits cherchez la 
 femme!" Then he added with a flourish of his lemon- 
 colored gloves, "And so he comes to consult you about 
 this daughter ?" 
 
 "Of course he does. We're both Americans. Don't 
 be absurd, Etienne." The girl spoke sharply, annoyed 
 by something lurking in his mockery which she but 
 scantly understood. 
 
 "I grieve to have driven him away. . . . But then, 
 he has so many opportunities." There was something 
 besides mockery in De Trezac's manner. That quick, 
 
 80
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "We're both Americans," of hers, had pricked the male 
 instinct of domination. . . . He resented it, subtly. 
 And, being Gallic, he mocked. 
 
 "Will you sit down? Or is this splendor for the 
 Faubourg?" Katherine was aware of his formal de- 
 scents upon his sacred at-homes of his relations. 
 
 "You have said. My grand-aunt's day." Etienne 
 sighed dolorously. Then with retaliative malice, "And 
 a jeune fille, I understand, fresh from the provinces, and 
 lovely as the dawn. A veritable treasure. Ah, those 
 jeune filtes of my family's designs !" Then he permitted 
 himself to smile, "However, this one there is always 
 expectation." 
 
 "How you will dazzle her !" Katherine mocked in her 
 turn. 
 
 "Without saying," the young man responded equably, 
 strolling to the little French mirror with its encircling 
 Cupids which Katherine had rescued from a second-hand 
 shop, and settling his tie with elaborate care. 
 
 "Well, I must be off, Katherine. I but came to " 
 
 "To dazzle me?" she laughed going back to her 
 neglected easel and looking at him over her shoulder. 
 
 "To give pleasure to your eyes," he agreed gayly. 
 "A fine livery for a free man, nest-ce pas?" He made 
 a movement of derision toward his holiday attire. 
 
 "You know you really dote upon it and your Fau- 
 bourg," she murmured, picking up her brushes with 
 fingers still sore from last night's burns. 
 
 He turned back at the door. "How busy you are. 
 Am I to descend noisily so that Monsieur MacNare 
 will be aware of my departure ?" 
 
 81
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "You forget that I can pound on the floor," she gave 
 back laughing. 
 
 To her astonishment, for she suspected nothing more 
 in him than mischief, he colored. 
 
 "Truly. . . . Adieu," he said abruptly, and was 
 gone. 
 
 She only laughed to herself as she added a reckless 
 blue to the sky in the canvas. "What a boy he is," was 
 her uncomprehending thought and it struck her as drolly 
 irrational for one to think of Robert MacNare as 
 accessible to feminine interest. . . . To her he was a 
 man apart. She thought of his past and his grief as 
 something impenetrable, impassable . . . permanent. 
 . . . But Etienne, she reflected, was incorrigibly 
 French. 
 
 Nothing that he had said made her in the least self- 
 conscious in her eager young desire to be "nice" to the 
 Surly Man and help him with his problems and his 
 Peggy. Life seemed to have hurt him so badly that 
 she gave free rein to her generous sympathies, and that 
 fatal instinct of hers for giving pleasure. 
 
 Besides, she was so happy herself that it was a neces- 
 sity to make others happy. Jeffrey Edgerton had writ- 
 ten ; another date was set, the first Saturday after his 
 release from the quarantine, and her spirit was on tip- 
 toe with expectation. 
 
 The other disappointment had been so keen that she 
 had lost in it her dread of the awkwardness of the visit. 
 She only knew that she wanted him to come.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 IN the shadow-spangled restaurant of the Bois, where 
 violins wailed, and the velvet-shod waiters came 
 and went like genii, the light of the pink-shaded 
 candles lay like a blush, of pleasure on the little table. 
 Between the pink candle-shades the girl's face shone to 
 Jeffrey Edgerton like a rose tipped with sunshine. 
 Happiness was dancing on her eyes and lips. 
 
 In her youthful white frock, with its mild display of 
 her slender throat she seemed enchanting to him. His 
 memories of the boat had always been of the out-of- 
 doors, of blowing hair and wind-flushed cheeks and 
 jaunty, boyish coats. Now in the sophistication of this 
 Paris restaurant she had taken on new grace and dignity 
 and her charm was more feminine and more alluring. 
 The intimacy of the little meal a deux had woven its 
 spell. Being fanciful, he thought it was like having a 
 nymph of spring opposite one, and being in love, he 
 thought, "How jolly to have her always like that at 
 table !" 
 
 Unconsciously he was grateful to her for being all that 
 he had dreamed. It had not been a simple thing to do 
 this dashing off for such a pursuing sort of visit. He 
 
 83
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 was tremendously aware, even in the winged rush of his 
 attraction, of all the implications and the weight of 
 things involved. He knew that he was taking what he 
 very seriously called a "decisive step." . . . And he 
 might be taking it toward a possible misadventure, an 
 awkwardness, a disappointment. Suppose she were not 
 all that his fancy had pictured her ! He had faced that 
 contingency very clear-eyedly in crossing, but he had 
 forgotten it utterly at the first sound of her light, ap- 
 proaching feet. And now they had had Saturday din- 
 ner together and Sunday luncheon and Sunday tea, and 
 this was Sunday dinner and in a few brief hours it would 
 all be over and he would be taking his way back to Eng- 
 land and his post. 
 
 But he was too happy now to feel the wrench of that. 
 He was so proud of her, so openly glad at being with 
 her, that this seemed the only reality in the world. 
 
 He wondered about her. Was it possible that this 
 visit could mean as much to her as to him ? . . . But was 
 it possible that he could misread the bright candor of 
 those eyes? It seemed to him that she was surely com- 
 ing with him down the same spring-enchanted way ' 
 otherwise why, otherwise, life would be too cruel, too 
 bitter. And Jeffrey Edgerton had youth's glad confi- 
 dence in its own conquering destiny. 
 
 Almost, being impetuous and a lover, he was tempted 
 to put some decisive speech to her now, but the leash of 
 common-sense still held. He knew that it was too soon. 
 Dimly, without in the least analyzing it, certain reti- 
 cences of hers, certain fleet intangible withdrawals be- 
 fore too pressing a moment, had made him aware that 
 
 84
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 precipitation would commit himself to her uncertainties. 
 
 Even in love he kept his head. A committed lover is 
 less interesting. . . . Besides, a restaurant was not the 
 place. 
 
 A little silence had fallen upon them. In the hours 
 that had just been passed together there had not been 
 many silences ; with the eager freshness of children they 
 had been busied remaking each other's acquaintance. 
 
 They had laughed away the first, fleet constraint of 
 meeting. And her secret anxieties as to what to do with 
 him those many hours, her guileless plans and decisions, 
 had been wasted for Jeffrey knew his Paris and had his 
 own plans of pleasant authority. There had been a late 
 dinner Saturday, and a rambling stroll through favorite 
 streets where the lamps winked up at them from the 
 smooth Seine : there had been that day a motor to Ver- 
 sailles and a glimmering noon of April brightness, of 
 playing fountains and holiday crowds ; there had been 
 a fleet dash back to town, and then tea in her studio as 
 she had planned, and then after an interval for rest 
 and dress this last dinner. 
 
 And in all that time, in all that strenuous youthful 
 dose of each other's society, not one moment but of deep- 
 ening pleasure. That was the young miracle of it. 
 Their talk had ranged with the freedom and easy inter- 
 est of youth; she had given him gay accounts of the 
 Academic, of her acquaintances there, of Olga, of De 
 Tre/ac, of the Club with the pleasant girls, of her studio 
 and her encounters with the Surly Man. She narrated 
 with becoming lightness the adventure of the croup and 
 was not ill-disposed to the admiration which it evoked 
 
 85
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 in her devoted listener. That the notion which Edgerton 
 received from her droll sketch of her neighbor was that 
 of a crabbed and slightly elderly man, was not, of 
 course, to be attributed to her intention. She did not 
 really think of him as young. . . . 
 
 And Edgerton, in his turn, had his narrations. He 
 had brought one or two snapshots to supplement them 
 of his quarters, his fellow-officers and of his country 
 home. The pictures gave only glimpses of Edgerton 
 Hall, drolly foreshortened, but they were glimpses of 
 a lovely house front, overhung with ivy, of an old tower, 
 casement-windowed, and of gardens sloping to a river, 
 their walks flanked by old-fashioned flowers. 
 
 "It's not much of a place," had said Jeffrey modestly, 
 "but it's very jolly. And the gardens are great. To 
 me they're the sweetest spot in England." 
 
 "They look lovely," Katherine had given back, rather 
 shyly. 
 
 "I thought I had a good one of the rose garden, but 
 Fred, the scamp, had secretly taken his pony on that 
 film and forgotten to wind it. ... You'd like the rose 
 garden. It has a wall about it and a gate and a jolly 
 old sun-dial in the center. . . . Mother loves it. She's 
 famous for her roses." 
 
 "So is my mother," Katherine had answered with a 
 sudden laugh of whimsical amusement. "But she hasn't 
 any rose garden and wall and sun-dial just a little 
 side yard and an arbor but she has the most wonder- 
 ful crimson rambler over it in town ! And there's a Dor- 
 othy Perkins on the porch that has figured in many a 
 number of seed catalogs !" 
 
 86
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "I know it's charming," Edgerton had instantly 
 agreed. 
 
 She had shaken her head at him drolly, "Oh, no you 
 wouldn't think it, really! For we haven't any park 
 about us, and any sheep in the meadows and deer in 
 the woods ! And our neighbors on one side are so near 
 that we look in each other's dining-room windows and 
 in summer we can hear everything and he isn't a pro- 
 fessor that father likes ! It's too bad that all you know 
 of America is an estate on the Hudson. You can't pic- 
 ture the rest of us at all." 
 
 He had smiled at her in silence, not trusting speech. 
 For how could he tell her, without seeming a clumsy 
 flatterer, that that unknown environment must be the 
 rarest in the world since it had produced such a miracle 
 of a girl, innocent, intelligent, self-reliant, brimming 
 with young laughter and simple friendliness? 
 
 But his eyes had not been dumb and that moment at 
 Versailles was among the most golden of her memories. 
 
 Now, in the little quiet that had fallen on them at the 
 close of dinner they drained their tiny coffee cups and 
 Edgerton drew out a slim cigar from a dark enameled 
 case and asked for her permission. 
 
 As she assented, as the attendant waiter leaped from 
 the outer gloom to the ritual of the lighting, she found 
 herself thinking how natural it seemed to have him there 
 with her just as it used to seem natural to round the 
 corner of the deck and find him tramping toward her, 
 his head bent, his cap pulled low, his pipe in his mouth. 
 
 At that memory she laughed softly. "It should be 
 your pipe," she murmured nodding at the cigar. 
 
 87
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "You remember the pipe?" 
 
 With a ludicrous little moue, "It made a very strong 
 impression upon me." 
 
 He feigned alarm. "Oh come, you haven't it in for 
 my pipe! What? I always use very good 'baccy." 
 And he added, his blue eyes teasing, "You know I should 
 hate to give up my pipe!" 
 
 "You wouldn't !" she retorted. " 'A woman is only a 
 woman ' ' 
 
 He saw the sensitive color rise in her cheeks as she 
 broke off. After all why not in a restaurant? 
 
 "Remember that sketch of the pipe and me that 
 you made?" he suddenly demanded. Perhaps he felt 
 speech was safest. 
 
 She nodded, a mischievous sparkle in her face. 
 
 "I've it framed. On my desk. It it always makes 
 me think of the way you looked when you saw me look- 
 ing at it !" 
 
 "I ought to have looked," murmured the girl ob- 
 scurely. 
 
 "That's my mascot," said the Captain fondly. "If 
 it hadn't been for that bit of paper flying out across 
 my path " 
 
 Katherine suddenly giggled. There was something 
 little-girlish and guilty in that giggle which brought 
 the young man's eyes to her. 
 
 "Can't you guess why it flew across your path?" she 
 suddenly demanded, her eyes alight with mischief. 
 
 "Eh? What?" 
 
 "I threw it." 
 
 "You threw it?" 
 
 88
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "I did." She was softly laughing at his mystification. 
 "I'd just finished it. And you came tramping by again, 
 so lordly and aloof, that a horrid impulse seized me. I 
 wanted you to see yourself as others saw you. I thought 
 you'd be furious. It wasn't flattering, you know. . . . 
 And so I let it go on the wings of chance. The wind 
 did the rest." 
 
 She laughed again, that little prankish ripple of a 
 laugh that enchanted him. 
 
 He affected sternness. "You minx !" he brought out. 
 "I thought you looked like a kitten in the cream and 
 I thought it was for discovery of your wicked pencil 
 and I was sorry for you. Sorry ! Ha !" 
 
 "That was when I began to like you," she amiably 
 confessed. 
 
 "You began to like me !" 
 
 "It had to have some beginning on something ! You 
 didn't suppose, did you, that I I evolved this violent 
 friendship on first sight?" 
 
 But that was an unfortunate speech. It brought 
 back the memory of that actual first sight, and a wave 
 of hasty color surged into her cheeks and into his. Once 
 they had treated that encounter laughingly but now that 
 note was too forced. He felt shot with pain that an- 
 other man's arms had been around her, another man's 
 lips had gathered her sweetness to himself, even in the 
 renunciation of farewell. . . . He lowered his eyes from 
 that flushing face, that sensitively trembling mouth. . . . 
 
 Her own eyes were on her plate. She felt hot shame 
 at the simple friendliness which had yielded her cheek 
 to Dick Conrad. In deepening self-consciousness she 
 
 89
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 felt as if she had ignorantly squandered a secret treas- 
 ure. . . . And to have been overseen, misinterpreted 
 by him. . . . Yet after all, she had been no more than 
 a friend to Dick. No more. 
 
 Jeffrey leaned across the table, his lowered voice a lit- 
 tle strained. "May I ask you I know I've not the 
 least right but is that other man quite gone from your 
 life, your thoughts? Is it a clear field?" 
 
 She raised her lids till her eyes were looking into his. 
 They were dark as pools of shadowed water beneath the 
 heavy lashes. 
 
 "Don't you understand," she said quietly, "that it 
 could never have been I could never have let him kiss 
 me good-by if he had been anything to me? He was 
 just a dear friend." Her voice trembled slightly. "He 
 is a dear friend now but a very droll one. For he has 
 quite accepted the fact that I'll never be more to him and 
 to prove his own friendship and to save his pride per- 
 haps, he writes me the oddest of jocular letters. . . . 
 Some day he'll announce in them the discovery of the 
 one and only girl. Then he'll forget that he ever 
 thought of me but as a friend." 
 
 "That wouldn't be possible," said Jeffrey with a 
 clipped little smile. "Was he forgive me, but I would 
 like to know was he someone that your parents would 
 have cared for you to marry ?" 
 
 Katherine's eyes grew vague. "Dick is a dear boy 
 and his father is a millionaire " she felt a queer little 
 pride in bringing that home to Edgerton "and my 
 people would have been quite glad if I had loved him, 
 but but they never said one word to advise it. And 
 
 90
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 if I loved the town doctor's son, who is also a dear and 
 very good to his mother, they would have been just as 
 pleased, if you can believe it. They're tremendously 
 unworldly souls. . . . But I I did think about it," she 
 confessed. "I liked Dick and I wanted to be able to do 
 things for people, and have things yes, and I wasn't 
 sure that I'd ever care for anybody else, in a a differ- 
 ent way. And all the books are full of regretted might- 
 have-beens." 
 
 She laughed uncertainly. "And so I did think about 
 it. But I didn't want to. And my painting saved me. 
 It took me away and kept me free for the chance of life 
 the splendid chance " 
 
 She brought it out radiantly with shining eyes. Her 
 face was like a suddenly glowing mirror that gave to 
 him the stirred depths of her feeling. ... It was a magic 
 phrase to her. It voiced that deep craving in her soul 
 for high adventure in living, for glorious excitement, 
 for fine passionate experience that would be the climax 
 of all living. . . . Watching her, the young man felt 
 both the glow of answering youthful enthusiasm and a 
 leap of anxious pity for so sentient a creature, knowing 
 so little, expectant of so much, exposed so confidently to 
 all the world might do. . . . All the masculine impulse 
 of protectiveness rose in him. . . . He felt a sudden de- 
 sire to clasp that slim hand lying on the table. . . . He 
 wanted to be alone with her, to speak his ardor, his de- 
 votion. 
 
 The waiter brought the bill. His train was inex- 
 orable. 
 
 The ride back under an April sky sown with stars 
 7 91
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 was a silent one. He was solicitous for her comfort but 
 his hand did not outstay its privilege of drawing the 
 wraps about her. In him, more than in her, was the con- 
 sciousness of the exceptional conditions of their com- 
 panionship, of her trustful, chaperonless estate. Every- 
 thing that was chivalrous in him restrained him, but his 
 look, at parting at the door of her building, was charged 
 with a sudden flash of revealing attraction that sent her 
 from him on the winged feet of dreams.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THAT visit added a conscious excitement to her 
 life, a quickening sense of something stirring 
 about to happen. . . . 
 
 It was no longer possible to think of her friendship 
 with Jeffrey Edgerton as a thing apart from her every- 
 day world for he had crossed the threshold of her Paris 
 days, and though his visit remained something un- 
 merged, separate, distinct, her sensitive memory was 
 constantly flashing forth pictures of his presence. 
 
 Those few hours seemed to have peopled her Paris 
 with recollections. There were the magic streets she 
 had walked with him, the cabs she had taken, the meals 
 she had shared. There was the tea in her studio. And 
 she would look up sometimes from a letter she was writ- 
 ing and see him there, young and soldierly erect, in her 
 big wicker chair. 
 
 And she remembered, with a queer little smile hover- 
 ing about her lips, that he had totally forgotten to ask 
 to see her work, had never once looked at the easel at 
 the study of a head which she had carefully arranged 
 there. . . . Yet her smile was not the smile of a dis- 
 pleased artist, but a woman's smile. . . . 
 
 93
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 However she did not neglect her work in those days. 
 She worked hard. It was not entirely that she was 
 painting against time, as Guerin had accused, though 
 something of that feeling unconsciously goaded her, but 
 the creative spirit in her was deepening and taking on 
 new strength and impetus. She had that sense of alive- 
 ness which comes to the creative artist in the freshness 
 of his mood, that feeling of power surging and tingling 
 to the finger-tips. 
 
 The world appeared wonderful. She felt herself in a 
 blessed place in it, with heart-happiness and work-happi- 
 ness like Aurora's steeds at her chariot. 
 
 There was a feeling of impending gladness in the air. 
 Her gayety, her exuberance dived and circled like 
 swallows through all her moods. Everyone was twice 
 as delightful as before Etienne was charming, Olga 
 was droll, the Surly Man was touching in his new-found 
 efforts at amiability. With so much inner happiness it 
 was impossible not to pour it out upon every circum- 
 stance of her life. 
 
 Not a thought of folly crossed her careless mind. 
 Etienne de Trezac's finished compliment of manner to 
 her she discounted as part of his foreignness, and the 
 gay pretense of devotion which he more and more as- 
 sumed upon their expeditions was all part of the charm- 
 ing nonsense of their relation. Etienne was French ; he 
 belonged in a romantically exclusive Faubourg; he 
 would some day have a title and income and marry a 
 jeune fille. . . . These were student days. . . . 
 
 She was perplexed, to be sure, by certain freedoms 
 between Olga and Louis Arnaud. They made less and 
 
 94
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 less pretense of concealing various intimacies of affec- 
 tion his arm about her in a cab, in the Bois, or at 
 some of the promiscuous bals which their curiosity led 
 them to penetrate. But it was not these casual freedoms 
 which provoked Katherine's speculation as much as cer- 
 tain intangible elements in their manner to each other. 
 They quarreled furiously at times. Katherine often 
 heard Olga's low angry voice some distance behind them 
 on their walks, yet these storms never lasted long. And 
 Olga never explained them. 
 
 "Louis is a bete!" she would exclaim disdainfully. 
 She always spoke of him in terms of airy superiority and 
 her manner to him often was of insufferable imperti- 
 nence, yet it was generally she whose angers veered first 
 into contrition. 
 
 Neither of them restricted themselves to the society 
 of the other and Katherine gathered that these ex- 
 cursions into fancy's fields were the cause of some of 
 the acrimonious disputes. 
 
 Her notion was that some sort of sweethearts' under- 
 standing existed between them, opposed by difficulties of 
 time and means, and perhaps position, for Arnaud's 
 family might be above the orphan daughter of a wild 
 Russian boyar and a lower caste Frenchwoman, living in 
 such un-French independence on the little income the 
 Russian father had left. 
 
 April had flowered into May and May had blossomed 
 into June. The misty laciness of the trees was lost in 
 luxuriance ; the sky was like broad, bright washes of 
 water-color. Every silvery stone of the gray old build- 
 ings ; every arch of the bridges and gleam of the 
 
 95
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 river was translated into stronger and brighter effect. 
 
 The Americans were in possession of Paris. The big 
 hotels were crowded; the streets flashed with motors 
 bearing beautifully gowned women on their rounds ; the 
 windows glittered with jewels and glowed with chiffons. 
 Laurent's and Paillard's were crowded luncheon centers ; 
 there were gay throngs at tea on the terraces above the 
 Seine; the songs of violins harmonized the discordant 
 shrillness of human chatter at the restaurants at the 
 Bois or at the Cafe de Paris ; the theaters were visions of 
 costumes. 
 
 Katherine felt a touch of the invasion in the increas- 
 ing prices in the big shops. Other Americans were there, 
 too ; her own kind as she called them happy, eager- 
 looking people, with Baedeckers and little books under 
 their arms, looking up galleries and tariffs, pilgrimag- 
 ing to the Louvre, to Versailles, to Les Invalides, climb- 
 ing Notre Dame. . . . Some penetrated even to the 
 threshold of her school and her restaurants. 
 
 More and more of these came as June went by and the 
 vacation terms released the teachers and often she en- 
 countered acquaintances, or acquaintances of acquaint- 
 ances, and the little tea-kettle on her table boiled at 
 several hospitable parties. 
 
 It was on one of these that the Surly Man unexpect- 
 edly opened the door, and then turned as if he would 
 bolt, but Katherine's quick call stayed him. 
 
 "Do come in," she invited. "We've been talking 1 
 about you for we've just been at the Salon and seen 
 your Prophet." 
 
 96
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 A perceptible thrill ran through her guests, two 
 teachers and a young niece of theirs. 
 
 "Have you a a piece of art gum?" said MacNare 
 abruptly, demanding the first thing his eyes fell on. 
 "I'm in a hurry for a bit " 
 
 With a strong suggestion of intercepting him, Kath- 
 erine flew to the cube of it that he was eying. Not for 
 him so simple an escape ! There was mischief in her 
 eyes. 
 
 "But you must meet my guests," she declared and 
 rushed the introductions as if fearing a bolt in the 
 middle of them. "Won't you take some tea with us?'* 
 she added wickedly. 
 
 "Never drink it," he uttered hurriedly, but by now 
 the ladies had found their tongues, and were trying to 
 tell him how much, how very much, his work had meant 
 to them, and especially his wonderful Prophet. And 
 was it any particular prophet or just a symbol? 
 
 They hastened to say all the kind and flatteringly- 
 meant things which much impressed and none-too-re- 
 sourceful ladies can find to say to the greatness of the 
 moment, and MacNare glowered unresponsively upon 
 them and edged to the door. 
 
 "But we mustn't drive you away we were just 
 going," one of the ladies protested and the rest rose 
 obediently, gathering their wraps. 
 
 "But I'm going. I must get back to my work," said 
 MacNare, and the eldest lady in ill-omened inspiration, 
 turned to him with deprecating but insinuating sweet- 
 ness. 
 
 "And your studio is just under this, isn't it? Dear 
 97
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 Miss King has been telling us a little about it. ... I 
 know it's a great favor to ask, Mr. MacNare, and from 
 such strangers, too, but perhaps as dear Miss King's 
 friends and fellow-Americans and such admirers you 
 would let us just peep in the door and see some of those 
 beautiful things in the making ?" 
 
 MacNare's dark glance flitted past the three sup- 
 pliants and laid the burden of its wrath upon Katherine 
 who twinkled back impish delight. 
 
 "There's nothing to be seen," he said crisply. "Noth- 
 ing I want anyone to see." 
 
 "Oh but surely we understand if you'd just make 
 us an exception?" the lady breathed, flustered but not 
 knowing how gracefully to retreat from her impor- 
 tunities. 
 
 "It's a workshop not a shop window," he said with 
 his dry smile. 
 
 The smile misled them to further attempt. This time 
 it was the niece who had pretty eyes. She raised them 
 beseechingly. 
 
 "But that is just what makes it so interesting 
 
 "To ladies' curiosity?" he said ironically. "Good 
 afternoon." 
 
 "He is a character, dear Miss King," breathed the 
 eldest lady, with a politely dissembling air of enjoy- 
 ment. 
 
 Katherine went down the stairs with them. When 
 they had gone she rapped viciously upon the door of 
 the first-floor studio. 
 
 MacNare opened it a less than customary crack, then 
 seeing her alone, he flung it wide. 
 
 98
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 She marched to a table littered with tools and clay 
 and thumped do\vn a cube of art gum. 
 
 "You forgot to take this away." 
 
 She was smiling but her tone held a peculiar dryness. 
 He looked at her silently under his dark brows. 
 
 "You are a Surly Man !" she exploded, facing him in 
 intense exasperation. 
 
 "Oh! . . . Because I didn't let in that rabble ?" 
 
 "Rabble! . . . Oh, it wouldn't have hurt you," she 
 cried, "to have let those poor things had their 'peep' for 
 half a minute." 
 
 "They'd never have gone." 
 
 "I'd have seen to that if you'd been so decent as to 
 let them in." 
 
 "Decent !" he echoed irritably. "What earthly good 
 would it have done?" 
 
 "Everything to them. It would have given them the 
 feeling that they were really seeing Paris and famous 
 folk and that poor lady would have carried back won- 
 derful impressions to the little school she came from." 
 
 "Impressions !" he snorted. "The woman was a fool, 
 an ignoramus " 
 
 "Your tongue does lose itself in compliment." 
 
 "Why does she pretend to interests " 
 
 "Dear man, they're all she has ! She doesn't know 
 that she doesn't know and it's too late to unlearn her. 
 So you might as well be kind for she's such a tre- 
 mendously good soul, with all sorts of heroisms and sac- 
 rifices in her narrow, deprived life that she never thinks 
 of as heroisms at all just duty to sick sisters and 
 grumpy father." 
 
 99
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "Is it your idea that I am to soften the mishaps of 
 life to deprived ladies who don't know art from artificial 
 by letting them make free with my studio ?" 
 
 She shook her yellow head at him in a kind of despair. 
 "It's only that it would have been so kind of you. . . . 
 And even if you didn't you might have been politer to 
 them softened it made excuses." 
 
 "I don't soften things and I don't make excuses," he 
 returned indignantly. "That's not in my character. 
 And if I didn't hold my studio and my time sacred there 
 would come nothing from them worth the intrusive cu- 
 riosity of lady teachers or anyone else." 
 
 "I know but these were my friends," she murmured 
 with a shamelessly feminine change of front. "And if I 
 hadn't thought them deserving of your forbearance I 
 wouldn't have " 
 
 "Oh, Lord Harry!" He ran his fingers through his 
 hair with a gesture of fierce exasperation. "Well, see 
 here here's the key of this place. I'm goijng out. You 
 can bring them here at your freedom and let them 
 revel in impressions " He flung his arms toward an 
 attending circle of unfinished models. "Only they can't 
 peep at that," he prohibited, indicating the model for 
 his fountain under a shrouding cloth. 
 
 "But it was you that was the magnet ' 
 
 "The magnet damn ! I beg your pardon no, I 
 don't either. You deserved worse than that. . . . But 
 if you've really set your heart on pouring that crew in 
 here, on me, why why" again that distraught ges- 
 ture through his rumpled hair "why you get them 
 back here again and I'll let them in. ... Only don't 
 
 100
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 ask me to explain my 'revelation of a Prophet,' " he 
 snorted. 
 
 She met his look with a face all gleams of laughing 
 triumph. "Now you are nice! . . . But it's too late 
 for you to suffer for it, for they are off to an unknown 
 restaurant, and they are leaving in a rush to-mor- 
 row. . . . Besides, I explained you." 
 
 "Explained me?" 
 
 She nodded, a teasing little smile about her lips. "I 
 hinted mystery beneath the words of truth. I said 
 that you were working and and undoubtedly there 
 was nothing here that you wanted anyone to see. . . . 
 Your own words, you see. And the dears guessed a 
 model!" 
 
 "A model?" He looked but faintly enlightened. 
 Then a wry grin flickered across his face. 
 
 "You should have seen their slant looks at the door as 
 they passed. . . . And they told me they quite under- 
 stood!" 
 
 "And felt they were treading near to bacchanalian 
 secrets ?" He chuckled suddenly and Katherine wondered 
 what made her so surprised and then recalled that it was 
 the first recognizable sound of mirth she had heard from 
 him in all these weeks of their increasing friendship. He 
 was not a gloomy man, though taciturn to strangers, 
 dry and unsocial, but never, even with little Peggy, had 
 she heard him laugh. 
 
 She was still thinking about that and fitting it into 
 her scheme of his tragedy when he startled her by march- 
 ing up to her, his hands deep in his pockets, his dark 
 head thrust forward with an air of active belligerency. 
 
 101
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "It's all very well for you to preach to me you have 
 a sweet missionary spirit as no one knows better than my 
 Surly Self," he said dryly, "but I have a few words of 
 warning to say to you. . . . It's all very 'nice' to be 
 agreeable to worthy travelers and deprived ladies but 
 there are plenty of other people's time for them to 
 waste. ... If you are ever going to do anything in the 
 world and bring a harvest out of the seed that's in you, 
 there's just one way do it." 
 
 He drew a hand out of his pocket and shook it at 
 her impressively. "Give yourself to it, body and soul. 
 Keep the distractions down to the thinnest margin of 
 recreation. . . . Save your strength and your time for 
 your work. . . . That's the one condition of doing your 
 best and making your best better." 
 
 "And you think I fritter?" She meant a touch of 
 amusement, but she was too impressed by his force. 
 
 "Not much yet," he acknowledged grimty. "It's 
 natural that makes it almost inevitable. . . . The un- 
 natural and amazing thing would be to have a girl of 
 your age and your" he hesitated then shading his 
 words with irony "your degree of pulchritude conse- 
 crate herself to serious and creditable achievement. . . . 
 You started in well at first. Now you're letting things 
 get hold of you." 
 
 "Such as ?" There was trepidation behind the 
 defiant innocence of her smile. But he surprised her. 
 
 "Such as that French popinjay that chap that came 
 in on you one afternoon, do you remember?" 
 
 She did and was amazed that he did. 
 
 "And I've seen you about with him constantly. . . . 
 102
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 That's all very well for some people but it's a blind alley 
 and leads nowhere. . . . Don't waste your time on him. 
 You didn't come over here to flirt with adolescent 
 Frenchmen." 
 
 Her chin went up with a swift gesture of anger. Her 
 eyes were gray as agates with all the soft and cloudy 
 blue withdrawn. 
 
 "As I happen not to be flirting " 
 
 "Then he is," he said bluntly. "Don't tell me. I 
 know them. . . . They're daft about la femme. . . . 
 You don't suppose he'd waste time on you if you weren't 
 young and pretty, do you?" 
 
 His manner quite removed any trace of compliment. 
 Her lips quivered with wrath. 
 
 "I think it's you who are daft about la femme to take 
 that view of things ! Can't you understand friendship, 
 companionship " 
 
 "/ can but he can't. Not so much of it. ... And 
 you'll be letting yourself in for a lot of time-consuming 
 explanations some of these days if you don't let a little 
 less companionship go a longer way." 
 
 "I suppose you think I ought not to go anywhere," 
 she said in a childishly furious voice, "except to the 
 Louvre with the two ladies from the Sorbonne." 
 
 "Oh no I'll throw in a few outings with Peggy and 
 me," he said coolly. "We don't count. . . . But that 
 young Frenchman thinks he does or I'm mistaken." 
 
 "That you're mistaken is the kindest thing I can think 
 about you," she retorted and felt that she carried the 
 honors of war from the room. 
 
 One hour afterward she came downstairs again. It 
 103
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 was little Peggy who answered her knock. Robert was 
 out buying strawberries the child explained; they were 
 to dine in the studio and Peggy was to make chocolate. 
 
 Then, slipping into French with her best manners, the 
 child asked if Mademoiselle King would care to join 
 them it would be a pleasure. She was a drolly re- 
 pressed little thing in the French formality of her school- 
 mistress's phrases. Her emotions and her childish in- 
 coherencies were for her English. 
 
 Katherine declined with responding courtesy, then 
 stood irresolute a moment, looking about the room, a 
 larger one than hers, for here a partition has been re- 
 moved, making one room of two. MacNare also rented 
 the sleeping-room beyond, but Katherine remembered 
 that Peggy's bed had been drawn out here the first time 
 she had entered the place that night of the croup. 
 
 Now, but for the little table the child was setting with 
 slow care by one of the windows, there were scant signs 
 of domestic possession. The big room was barren of 
 artistic litter; it had a clean and wind-swept look. It 
 was like the owner's life with the superfluous gone, leav- 
 ing it stripped and barren of incumbrance, like a boxer 
 entering a ring. 
 
 By one of the windows the model of his fountain stood 
 beneath the shrouding cloth and one or two other cloths 
 covered certain unfinished studies, while all about the 
 room, ghastly white in the deepening shadows, were the 
 pale creatures of the sculptor's hand. They were old 
 acquaintances now to Katherine, but she seemed to feel 
 them now as for the first time the great torso study, 
 straining in a Sisyphus endeavor, a fragment of an un- 
 
 104
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 finished Victory, a charming head of Peggy, a Greek 
 runner, a Prometheus, a horseshoer, and a dozen other 
 studies of man and beast. 
 
 The girl's eyes went from one to the other, then 
 lingered upon the study for the Prophet. The im- 
 pressiveness of the great marble at the Salon was not in 
 the model, but there was power and passion even in the 
 smaller clay of the gaunt and fiery Prophet, appeal- 
 ing with outflung hands and vision-touched lips to the 
 multitude who turned from him in cynical incredulity, in 
 ribald mockery, in dull oblivion and gay pursuits. . . . 
 
 As she gazed a great humility of spirit came upon 
 her. She found a pencil and paper and wrote upon the 
 edge of a clay, moist table. 
 
 DEAR SURLY MAN : 
 
 I am one of the multitude who did not heed the 
 Prophet and I am very much ashamed. . . . 
 You are a Great Man who is patient with all my 
 foolery and foolishness and very good to take an 
 interest in my poor work. I am going to work 
 very hard indeed, and when I am no longer young 
 and pulchritudinous and tempted I may be on the 
 line ! 
 
 You see I am joking again but that is only 
 bravado. I am really very sad over my bad 
 temper. K. K. 
 
 She left the little note on his plate and fled. 
 
 And Peggy, devotedly eyeing her Robert father over 
 the strawberries wondered why he pocketed that note so 
 carefully and then took it out and tore it into a hundred 
 pieces.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 TO the good resolutions of that note Katherine 
 adhered steadily in the days that followed and 
 she was the less tempted to Avander from the 
 Surly Man's counsels of perfection because Etienne de 
 Trezac was out of the city at a family gathering at 
 some country chateau. 
 
 The Academic was officially closed for the summer 
 vacation but a substitute held morning classes for those 
 who lingered, and there were sketching classes made up 
 for afternoons in the Bois and about Paris. Sometimes 
 Katherine worked with these ; sometimes she went by 
 herself. 
 
 Even in these few months of Paris study her advance 
 was perceptible. Olga Goulebeff commented upon it 
 with a jeer of irony. 
 
 "Ah, you will rival Etienne, our genius ! Do you 
 think you will be the dearer to him for that?" 
 
 Olga's nerves were often on edge. Louis Arnaud had 
 left for the summer vacation. At first Katherine in- 
 quired after him with friendly interest, but to one in- 
 quiry if he had written lately, Olga had responded with 
 a fury of derision. 
 
 106
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 'Tou jours, . . . et tou jours avec tendresse, je vous 
 
 assure I 
 
 I" 
 
 Katherine's own spirits were subject to unwonted 
 moods those warm June days. There were times when 
 discouragement assailed her; when she distrusted her 
 work, her power, her future. It seemed to her at those 
 rather depressed hours that she was standing outside 
 of life, futilely painting its reflections, while others 
 worked in its real stuff. 
 
 It was the hard application of the day that brought 
 these reactions of lassitude, but Dick Conrad's accounts 
 of house-parties and motoring had something to do with 
 them. . . . She was quite human enough to want to 
 eat her cake and have it, too. . . . And the gray and 
 yellow studio room seemed very far away on long, 
 lonely evenings, from the dear associations of her 
 home. 
 
 Jeffrey Edgerton appeared a person of many engage- 
 ments and occupations. He wrote of a cousin's wed- 
 ding, of the London season, of numerous acquaintances, 
 of visiting officers. His life was very far away, too, 
 from the old American interests. The England in which 
 he lived and moved and had his soldierly being was re- 
 mote. She told herself that she was glad he did not 
 come again. 
 
 Sometimes when she was very, very tired, and the 
 colors were dull instead of clear and her lines were 
 mediocre and unrevealing, she wondered if her splendid 
 dreams would bring her only to the life of a maiden 
 art teacher. They must have had their dreams, once 
 their human dreams, their hopes of glory. . . . She 
 8 107
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 ! 
 
 cried dolefully into her pillow one night at the pitiful 
 
 prospect. . . . And even if she succeeded, if she became 
 a "somebody" why, what would that really bring her? 
 . . . The Surly Man was a somebody, a very distin- 
 guished somebody and some day he would be famous 
 but she thought him the most lonely creature that she 
 had ever known. 
 
 She did not in the least want to be lonely and pitied 
 or sensible and matter-of-fact. She wanted, with every 
 fiber of her healthy, egoistic youth, to be splendidly and 
 actively and happily occupied. 
 
 In these unwonted low spirits she came to rely more 
 and more upon the companionship of Robert MacNare. 
 Not that she said a word to him of her occasionally 
 painful forebodings, but it was a comfort for her to be 
 with someone as blunt and frank and uncompromising 
 in his relation to the facts of life. She felt that she 
 would learn truth from him if ever she asked it. She had 
 odd fluctuations in her attitude to him. Sometimes, 
 especially in the presence of his work, she felt queerly 
 young and untried and aspiring in comparison with 
 the greatness of his genius, and her manner was hedged 
 with a fleet, shy diffidence of her discipleship, but gen- 
 erally she was too merry of speech and too saucy for 
 reverence, and too responsive to the pity that he invol- 
 untarily waked in her to remember that he was a great 
 man. 
 
 Their intercourse was peculiarly in the present tense. 
 Katherine, to be sure, often spoke of her home, her 
 mother and father and brothers, but MacNare's utter 
 silence upon his own past environment made her sensi- 
 
 108
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 live to constraint. His past was never touched upon 
 between them until one night that she never forgot. 
 
 They had been speaking of Peggy. He had come up, 
 one evening, to carry her away from one of her frequent 
 visits to Katherine, and little Peg had refused to go 
 until she had finished putting all the paper dolls to bed 
 between the pages of the book they lived in a lengthy 
 and monotonous rite. Curled up on Katherine's couch 
 she was sleepily murmuring, "Now I wash 'is one's face 
 and now I wash 'at one's face and now I comb 'is one's 
 hair and now I comb " ad infmitum after the manner 
 of the repetitious Scribes and Pharisees. 
 
 In moments of intense happiness she spoke an odd 
 baby jargon of her own; in dull, everyday affairs she 
 was a stolid and reserved little soul. 
 
 MacNare, at Katherine's request, had drawn out his 
 pipe, and was smoking while he waited, and Katherine 
 finished a letter to her mother, thinking with a wave of 
 homesickness how many miles it must travel before it 
 would be brought up the steps of that old white porch 
 into the eager hands awaiting it, and how, when her 
 father came home from classes her mother would greet 
 him with, "I've heard from Katherine to-day," and little 
 Don would call out impatiently, "When's she coming 
 home? When's she coming home?" 
 
 From such faraway thoughts as these she roused her- 
 self to try and banish the odd, worried frown that was 
 knitting MacNare's black brows together. Peggy was 
 the best topic she knew to bait his speech, but her low- 
 toned mention of the child served to deepen the frown. 
 
 Yes, Miss Lowe, the new American governess of 
 109
 
 Katherine's discovery, was all right, MacNare admitted 
 briefly. Peg liked her; the child was certainly better 
 for the greater outdoor freedom. 
 
 "And happier, too," suggested Katherine. 
 
 MacNare cast a glance at his little daughter whose 
 oblivious head was sinking sleepily lower and lower. 
 Her tousled black curls half hid her face, but one round 
 dimpled arm was outflung over her dolls, and two fat 
 knees and plump little legs were displayed between the 
 short socks and her rumpled white frock. The picture 
 was winning enough to lighten any parent's look of 
 care, but the man's dark gaze did not brighten. 
 
 "I can do for her now all right," he muttered, as if 
 to himself, "but by and by . . ." 
 
 By and by little Peggy with her great eyes and curls 
 would be a handful for any man, most of all for a 
 grimly unsocial artist who had cut the ordinary ties of 
 human associations. 
 
 Katherine's glance had lingered on his set face, a veil 
 of quick, human sympathy softening the bright direct- 
 ness of her eyes. 
 
 "It's hard," she said in a low voice. 
 
 After a moment MacNare turned his head deliberately 
 and looked at her. "What's hard?" he said in a chal- 
 lenging way. "For her? For me?" 
 
 "For you both to be so alone," slipped confusedly 
 from her. 
 
 He drew a long breath upon his pipe and sent a 
 cloud of blue smoke into the air. "It would be a great 
 deal harder if we weren't alone," he said with a grim 
 emphasis of satisfaction. 
 
 110
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 A sharp wonder struck her. 
 
 In the pause Peggy's faint croon came across the 
 room to them. "Now I put 'is one here now I put 'at 
 one here " 
 
 MacNare lowered his voice when he spoke again. It 
 was held taut as a whipcord against all trace of feeling 
 and the words came like a crack. 
 
 "Peggy's mother is not dead." 
 
 He looked straight at Katherine and she could feel 
 the visible rush of her confusion to her unguarded face. 
 She could not meet his eyes ; there seemed something 
 sardonic and defiant in their depths, and she turned her 
 head away, a wave of bright color in her cheeks. 
 
 "Oh !" was all that she could find to offer. Limply 
 she added, trying to sound matter-of-fact, "I always 
 supposed " 
 
 "I generally let people suppose." His tone was 
 grating. He went on, not looking at her now, "I prefer 
 to be frank with you. . . . We parted five years ago." 
 
 Katherine's eyes turned unconsciously to the child. 
 Peggy's head had sunk to the outflung arm and from 
 her parted lips came the deep, even breathing of sleep. 
 That pause grew heavy. It seemed necessary to Kath- 
 erine to say something, but everything that occurred 
 to her she rejected as a stock formula of inadequacy. 
 
 Hesitantly at last she murmured, "Of course when 
 people aren't happy it's better to separate " 
 
 "I'm divorced," said MacNare abruptly. 
 
 She said nothing. 
 
 He added, "I don't want any false pretenses. Truth 
 isn't always simple but here it is. ... I made a thor- 
 
 111
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 ough young fool of myself. I married at twenty-three. 
 That's a century ago I'm thirty-two now. . . . We 
 lived together three years. Then Peg was born. Be- 
 fore she was a year old I got my divorce. I took her to 
 New York then came here. We've been here nearly 
 four years." 
 
 There seemed nothing in the world to say to that 
 bald narrative. Phrases of it went snapping through 
 the girl's head A thorough young fool / got my 
 divorce. . . . Her sentimental notions of the man's 
 tragedy went crashing. . . . From the chaos loomed 
 dimmer and grimmer specters, dark outlines she could 
 not apprehend. . . . 
 
 She thought, confusedly, that the Surly Man would 
 probably be hard on a woman especially a woman who 
 had wronged him. . . . She looked at the child over 
 whose unconscious head the story had been told and 
 felt a pang of pity for the mother who had lost her. 
 
 From that pity sprang the unconsidered question, 
 "Does her mother never see her?" 
 
 "Never." 
 
 He went on, biting off his words, "The one desire of 
 my life is that her mother will never see her and that 
 Peggy will never see her mother. And if I live it's 
 safe enough to prophesy. . . . She," there was an odd, 
 indescribably shading of the word, "she has married 
 again." 
 
 "I'm glad," said Katherine, from a confusion of feel- 
 ing. 
 
 A wry, mirthless grin flickered over a corner of that 
 young-old mouth. 
 
 112
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "So am I." 
 
 Determinedly he reapplied himself to his pipe. He 
 had said all that he meant to say. Katherine could but 
 faintly guess what it had cost him, yet now that it was 
 done he felt a distinct relief. 
 
 As he sat there in the gathering dusk, silently smok- 
 ing, he seemed to Katherine's pitying fancy to be some 
 grim and forceful projection from the dark background 
 that his words had painted for her. She thought she un- 
 derstood how dark it had been. . . . She thought it the 
 old three-cornered tragedy, and wondered concerning 
 that unknown woman over whom he had been such a 
 "thorough young fool," that woman who had taken his 
 youth and then flung it away. . . . She wondered in- 
 curable sentimentalist! if he still "loved" her. She 
 thought it quite in keeping with his character that he 
 should love and not forgive. . . . Then a consuming 
 pity for him rose in her, a helpless sorrow for the bru- 
 talities of life. 
 
 And suddenly she felt herself a child, ignorant of 
 passion, untried and unstirred by the deep terrible cur- 
 rents that sweep men and women to their fates. 
 
 Yet when he rose to go, without a further word, lift- 
 ing Peggy gently and easily in his strong arms, she felt 
 herself at the same time a very mother to him, longing 
 to sooth, to assuage. . . . But to heal that, she knew, 
 was beyond such simple gifts as her friendship could 
 bring to him. 
 
 "Good night," was all the word she had for him but 
 her eyes spoke for her.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 IT was some two weeks later upon a Saturday 
 morning that Madame Bonnet unburdened herself 
 of a few observations. She had eyes in her head, 
 that shrewd madame, for other things than the studio 
 which she was officiously setting to rights beneath Mac- 
 Nare's protesting nose. He always remained on guard 
 to defend his possessions from this invasion of feminine 
 cleanliness. 
 
 It was late June and warm and the north windows 
 were wide to lure a most capricious breeze. The broad 
 doors upon the side street had been opened, too, to ad- 
 mit the great block of marble for MacNare's fountain, 
 which was now in the middle of the studio, mantled in 
 heavy white cloths. MacNare was still struggling with 
 the bolts and bars of the cumbersome doors, used only 
 for his statues, and madame glanced once or twice ten- 
 tatively at his back before she commenced her conver- 
 sation. 
 
 "A wonderful day," she observed, her damp cloth 
 vigorous upon a mantle top. "Not a day in which to 
 be in Paris." 
 
 "I thought you were a good Parisian." MacNare 
 114
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 drove the last bolt home and grunted with satisfaction. 
 Then he turned to eye her onslaught upon his mantle 
 with disapprobation. 
 
 "And so I am a good Parisian. . . . But I was also 
 a good country girl before I married Bonnet God rest 
 his soul ! and I have not forgotten how soft the air 
 is at Les Buissons nor how the little stream runs through 
 the meadow with the ducks floating on it. ... My 
 son's Marie has hatched out some fine duck's eggs," 
 madame continued with a broad disregard of distinc- 
 tions. "Now there are fat little ducklings ready for 
 the oven. Monsieur must go down and taste them." 
 
 "Without a doubt," MacNare assented vaguely, be- 
 ginning to sort his motley pipes upon a table next in 
 
 the line of attack. 
 t 
 
 "And never will there be a better time than now!" 
 madame enthusiastically proclaimed. "Why not this 
 very day, monsieur? Marie does not need warning. 
 Or monsieur can sleep at the inn and come to Marie's 
 for dinner " 
 
 "I thought that Marie " 
 
 "That is not for three months. My son did not marry 
 a weakling," said madame scornfully. "Marie would 
 be glad of a lodger. And the country air would benefit 
 monsieur. He has not the look of one who has the 
 good appetite." 
 
 "Oh, tut-tut-tut! What should I do down in the 
 country?" returned the sculptor irritably. "Madame 
 understands that I do not paint pictures of fields in 
 bloom nor make models of domestic hens." 
 
 "Monsieur could take a walk with mademoiselle." 
 115
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "Eh?" MacNare stared sharply at the bland coun- 
 tenance of his landlady. "What mademoiselle?" 
 
 "The mademoiselle la-dessus." Madame rolled her 
 eyes to the ceiling, her hands being occupied with the 
 table top. "She went this morning. She had spoken 
 of going before, and yesterday, seeing what weather it 
 is, she came to me and asked me to telegraph Marie. 
 She is to make pictures there for a week." 
 
 "And you propose that I should go this afternoon !" 
 MacNare gave a hoot of a laugh. "Fie, madame, at 
 your age !" 
 
 But he did not meet the look in her eyes. He began 
 to fill the pipe nearest his hand, jamming the tobacco 
 down hurriedly with those strong, blunt, marvelously 
 sensitive fingers of his. 
 
 Madame shrugged and sent her cloth vigorously 
 across the table, surveying its blackened folds with 
 proper expressiveness. 
 
 "As to my age, it is one of good sense which monsieur 
 apparently has not yet reached," she rejoined smartly, 
 in the habitual frankness of years of association. "For 
 monsieur to turn his back upon a mademoiselle with 
 cheeks like apples and a heart of gold !" 
 
 "I turn my back !" said the young man gruffly. 
 
 "Yes, yes, I have seen ! For a time after the little 
 one's illness affairs were pleasant. Then it was, 'Ma- 
 demoiselle, come to the Bois this Sunday with us,' and 
 'Mademoiselle, take a walk' . . . but of late it is as if 
 mademoiselle were Cain. When monsieur hears her com- 
 ing he turns back into his room. If mademoiselle knocks 
 when the little one is not here he does not answer Oh, 
 
 116
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 I have heard ! Ungrateful ! Stupid !" madame hurled, 
 her face pink with indignation. "It is not as if mon- 
 sieur were a graybeard with a wooden leg that he could 
 not lift his eyes to a young girl who knows no better 
 than to think the good God sent her into the world to 
 paint worthless women !" 
 
 MacNare had turned his back squarely upon madame. 
 A dull, dark red was mounting higher and higher in 
 his face, crimsoning the roots of his hair. It was not 
 pleasant to a man of his temperament to find the feeling 
 which he had refused to admit to the light of his own 
 recognition being wantonly twirled, like an impaled but- 
 terfly, upon madame's observation. 
 
 And yet her last words struck a queer, forbidden 
 pleasure into him which he denied. 
 
 He took his big chair and planted himself in it, 
 eyeing her determinedly with an air of outfacing the 
 enemy, and remarked in a rallying tone, "Do I look to 
 you> then, a lover?" 
 
 She gave him the fleetest of glances, but so pointed 
 with a shrewd feminine penetration that he felt his 
 bravado disposed of on the instant. But he did not 
 abandon his note of jocular scorn. 
 
 "And this advice from you, you who know so much 
 of me ! Why, I thought that you were a good Catholic 
 and believed that once married, always married to the 
 death !" 
 
 "Monsieur is not a Catholic." 
 
 "Do you then wish me in deadly sin?" 
 
 Madame came a little closer, her face a study. "Oh, 
 as to being a good Catholic," she observed, with frank- 
 
 117
 
 T-HE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 ness, yet also with embarrassment, "why so I hope I 
 am. I hold with religion. It is necessary for the 
 people. How else should one be baptized and married 
 and laid in the ground? And the Church has its own 
 rules the Church is very wise. . . . Divorce is not 
 seemly. It is hard enough, God knows, to get one good 
 husband for a girl nowadays there are not many 
 young men like my Jean ! without having to get her 
 a second. And if the first swallowed all the dowry 
 what would there be for the second? And if a man 
 could rid himself of a wife every time that the wind 
 turned north no, no, no !" 
 
 She shook her head vigorously. "But as for sucking 
 in all that a priest says like mother's milk why, I will 
 tell monsieur. . . . When I was quite a girl, my father 
 God rest his soul!" piously madame crossed herself 
 "my father took me to walk in the churchyard where 
 we had laid a bead wreath upon the grave of a relation. 
 'Look you, Clotilde,' he said to me in confidence, 'you 
 are my child; you are not an ordinary fool of a girl. 
 As to mass and confession and the rest, it is the re- 
 spectable thing, and will keep you a good girl, and there 
 is nothing else for the people. But do not be deceived. 
 Do not pay the priest instead of the doctor, nor waste 
 yourself in candles for purgatory. When you are dead 
 you go back into the earth, and it is the fresh seeds 
 that rise from the earth in the spring, and not the fallen 
 petals. If you would live again you live in the memory 
 of just deeds and loving kindnesses!' ' 
 
 She sighed deeply. "He was a shrewd man, my 
 father, and the priest had great respect for him. 
 
 118
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 'When you are once dead,' he said that day, and never 
 again did he open his mouth to me about it, 'you are 
 dead a long time, and it is well to have lived while you 
 live.' And so I say to you, monsieur, that when once 
 you are dead you are dead, and it is well to live while 
 you are young and not to sit in a room with a block 
 of marble as if you were carving your own monument. 
 ... It was not worth the time of the good God to 
 have blown the breath of life into your bones if you 
 make no more use of it than this !" 
 
 Madame ceased to talk and applied herself to another 
 side of the room. 
 
 MacNare's pipe had gone out. A little spark from 
 its bowl was charring an undiscovered spot upon his cuff . 
 From the open window the sounds of the summer streets 
 filled the room but did not penetrate his mood. 
 
 He had thought himself done with women forever. 
 Certainly one of them had shown him everything that 
 was weakest and basest in the feminine heart. It was 
 not that she had loved another. He was a man who 
 could have risen above his own hurt and loss to under- 
 standing and compassion for another's tragedy and 
 pain, but the iron that had entered his soul had been 
 poisoned with a far more venomous barb. 
 
 The woman that he had married, in the first flush 
 of a boy's infatuation for a beautiful face, had been a 
 trifler as light as air, ignorant of worth or honor or 
 truth, greedy for every cheap excitement, every easy 
 praise or moment's passion that her beauty snared. 
 She had been wild before she came to MacNare's little 
 city, and met him, and she did not stay long in the 
 
 119
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 confines of that position and society which pleased her 
 like a toy in the first months of their marriage. She 
 was the talk of the little town, the occasion for many 
 knowing winks and nods among the traveling men, be- 
 fore MacNare had his first hint of the truth, before he 
 knew what her mysterious visits to "friends in the city" 
 meant. 
 
 That was when Peggy was coming. But the child 
 was his own. The very angle of her stubborn tiny baby 
 jaw told him that. And the mother promised what 
 facile tears she wept, what hysterics, what appeals ! 
 And then there was another traveling man, and Mac- 
 Nare took his baby and got a divorce. 
 
 It was the cheapness of it that was salt in his wounds, 
 the galling, futile, sordid cheapness. To have given his 
 heart to such slack and tawdry hands ! . . . Well, she 
 was married, to the last traveling man, and being of 
 her fiber, it might be that he could hold her as he wished. 
 For himself the marriage meant relief and security. 
 He thought of her marriage with detachment, but the 
 image of her brought always that sick nausea of mem- 
 ory. That once he had kissed her ropes of gold-brown 
 hair, her rose-pink lips ! A fool's passion ! How he 
 had grown to loathe her big eyes, with their trick of 
 watching him out of their corners, her moist, red, al- 
 ways love-seeking lips. 
 
 Well, it had been a dose of the sex to last him a life- 
 time. But he had ignored his own youth. He had 
 ignored the tremendous springs of life. . . . And then, 
 when he had found himself turning to that girl from 
 the States, with her clear true eyes, her innocent friend- 
 
 120
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 ship, her merry youth, how he had snatched himself 
 back as if from the brink of the most disastrous folly! 
 
 His recoil was instinctive; it was the burnt flesh's 
 memory of the fire. He had no desire to suffer again, 
 no intention of playing the fool to a commendable, but 
 hopeless passion. He shrank from even the sound of 
 Katherine's light feet on the stairs. Sometimes he left 
 his studio rather than listen to her quick footsteps over- 
 head, or the soft soprano of her singing. He could 
 see her too clearly there, the light on her yellow head, 
 her gray eyes clear and shining, her lips just touched 
 with that teasing little smile. . . . 
 
 That night he had told her of his marriage he had 
 not owned to himself what motives prompted him to 
 open the past to her. . . . But the hours that followed 
 had been merciless in their revelations. And he had 
 avoided her with almost resentful anger because she 
 had the power to make him feel. . . . 
 
 And as he sat there drawing at his lifeless pipe, the 
 deadening years slipped suddenly from him. He ceased 
 to feel a hundred and thirty-two. . . . He thought of 
 Les Buissons and the yellow of the grain in the fields 
 that was like the yellow of Katherine's hair, and the 
 blue of the little stream with the ducklings floating on 
 its placid surface. He thought of the straight, white 
 road that led to it, with the straight, green trees on each 
 side, and he remembered a little hill, just beyond the 
 farm . . . and the way that the country faded at twi- 
 light in the silver distance. 
 
 He rose to his feet, stretching his strong arms, and 
 feeling the sense of power and vigor in his muscles. 
 
 121
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "If I should go for the Sabbath," he remarked, en- 
 deavoring to infuse an air of gruffness into his voice, 
 *'it would be to escape thy foolish tongue. Can you 
 have the little one ready by the morning train?" 
 
 He would have liked to go that evening but he con- 
 sidered the delay a last screen to his pride. 
 
 "For the morning train," assented madame. Being 
 a wise woman she gave no sign of undue triumph. 
 "Marie's little Jeanne will be glad to see her. They 
 will have a fine time together in the fields. And she 
 will find the little Thomas walking." 
 
 MacNare grunted, and became suddenly aware that 
 the pipe in his mouth was cold. 
 
 "And for monsieur," continued madame evenly, with a 
 scarcely perceptible glance in his direction, "something 
 in the nature of a more suitable costume for the coun- 
 try yes? Lighter for comfort and convenience. And 
 if I should venture another suggestion it is that mon- 
 sieur's cravats may well go now to tie his parcels and 
 a new one, of perhaps, a blue, not a black, would be an 
 acceptable reinforcement of his modishness !" 
 
 "Imbecile!" said MacNare with a scornful laugh. 
 And he aired a new black cravat with the gray suit 
 which he self-consciously wore home that afternoon. 
 But there was a blue cravat in his pocket.
 
 CHAPTER XHI 
 
 ALONG, straight white road led to Les Buissons, 
 shaded with tall trees, between whose sturdy 
 trunks were glimpses of rich rolling fields and 
 lovely woods. It was a pretentious road, but Les Buis- 
 sons was not pretentious ; it was an old gray-stoned 
 place that seemed to have grown very cozily and com- 
 pactly upon the bosom of the luxuriant countryside. 
 Even the spires of the weathered church did not rise 
 very high in their modest aspirations, but they were 
 pleasant spires and not above a sense of companionable- 
 ness. 
 
 The church was at one side of the square into which 
 the single street of the village led from the white high- 
 way, where one descended from the train of infinite ac- 
 commodation, and on the other sides were a town hall 
 and a row of substantial little shops and an old inn and 
 a new inn where "Garage" and "Petrol" displayed on 
 commanding signs told of the inspiring frequence of 
 motorists. 
 
 But it was not the shops and the inns that made Les 
 Buissons ; it was the little farms, those small, independ- 
 ent holdings that are the pride and glory of the French 
 123
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 tiller of the soil, and the backbone of thrifty France. 
 Their red roofs were dotted all about the countryside, 
 and the carefully tilled fields were squared off like check- 
 erboards in the varying greens and golds. A little 
 stream wandered fitfully about the edges of the village ; 
 at one place there was a mill, at another the flat stones 
 where the women washed their clothes ; and some distance 
 away was the pool where the sheep were washed before 
 the shearing. 
 
 The farm of Jean Bonnet it was madame's farm, too, 
 but having become addicted to the city in her husband's 
 lifetime she still clung to Paris through her working 
 days was some distance beyond the village on the 
 banks of this little stream, and not far from the straight 
 highway. It was so trim and fresh-looking a little farm, 
 so bright of color with its red tiles and its white-washed 
 buildings, so clean with its scrubbed door stones and 
 bright window-panes that its age was not even sug- 
 gested until you passed the sunken door stones, under 
 the worn lintel, into the wide, oak-paneled room. 
 
 Here the years had turned the oak to blackness save 
 for the curious squares upon the wall opposite the case- 
 ment window where the sunlight had bleached the wood 
 to ivory pallor and one end of the long room had re- 
 ceived additional darkening from the smoke of the great 
 oven. Shining brasses and coppers gleamed about the 
 oven, and old pottery ware added its charm of color to 
 the shelves. It was ware of whose worth Marie Bonnet 
 was proudly acquainted and to the occasional tourists, 
 offering a franc or so for an odd piece which they 
 averred had "happened to catch their fancy" she would 
 
 124
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 composedly remark, "But that is the pottery of the 
 Vosges. See, madame, this is the mark of authenticity. 
 It is not for two francs that one disposes of such." 
 
 Many of these pieces dated from the old times when 
 there had been a grand seigneur in the chateau beyond 
 the woods, not two tenant Americans, and the farm had 
 been one of his possessions. It had been given to one of 
 Madame Bonnet's ancestors for signal service in the 
 chase, and had remained in her family through all the 
 years. Little by little, self-denial had added to its tiny 
 fields until it was indeed a farm of which to be proud. 
 
 Marie Bonnet met MacNare and Peggy at the door. 
 He and his little girl had lodged with her several times, 
 and she welcomed them now with a flow of hospitable re- 
 gret that he had chosen to stop at the inn. It was true 
 that the mademoiselle had the best room, overhead, but 
 it was not as if there were not other places where he 
 could be made comfortable. Did monsieur remember the 
 time, in hot midsummer, when he had elected to sleep out 
 on the hay, at the Inn of the Silver Moon? 
 
 And the little one ! How glad she was that she had 
 come ! The child would be the better for country milk. 
 The cow was giving splendidly now there was a new 
 calf, yes, and new pigs. Little Marguerite should be- 
 hold them. 
 
 Quickly the woman busied herself in filling a blue bowl 
 with yellow cream, and breaking off an end of a long 
 loaf for the little girl who stood clinging to her young 
 father's hands, staring about at the half-remembered 
 room with dark, eager eyes. 
 
 MacNare was fidgeting like a boy in school. He had 
 125
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 been on a holiday ever since he and Peggy had taken the 
 train early that Sunday morning, a holiday from his 
 wonted self. He had yielded to the lure that was draw- 
 ing him, and he felt young again, elated with the old 
 sense of being ready for life, and equal to it. ... 
 
 He drew a deep breath of the good country air and 
 the faint flush of the sun was already coloring his pale 
 skin. Marie, good woman, her mind running ahead to 
 this addition to the midday meal and selecting the extra 
 duckling to be dispatched, was not too occupied to note 
 sympathetically that the monsieur was like a boy, and 
 that a blue cravat became him. 
 
 She moved to call her husband and the two children 
 but MacNare was already out the door again. With 
 betraying eagerness under his assumption of ease he 
 asked Marie where the mademoiselle was now. Out 
 painting? 
 
 "Down the long road to the lull beyond," Marie 
 answered gesturing. "There is a view " 
 
 "Let the little one stay here," said MacNare brusque- 
 ly, and vanished. 
 
 The straight white road was hot and dusty, but on 
 the edge of it, beneath the shade of the trees, there was 
 a narrow path worn by generations of feet, bare or 
 saboted, little active feet bringing home the geese or 
 cows. Here MacNare tramped along, not in undue 
 haste, savoring the day and his own mood. 
 
 The sky was very blue and filled with soft little clouds, 
 floating slowly. Their shadows fell lightly as a bird's 
 wing on the fields that the Sabbath had emptied of the 
 busy workers. The rich smell of the fertile land came to 
 
 126
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 him and the fresh scent of growing things. It was still 
 June but there was the breath of July's luxuriance in 
 the air, the warm forerunner of harvest. The broad 
 earth was sunning herself in happy anticipation. . . . 
 Something of that same warmth was coursing through 
 the man's veins. The happiness of the fertile earth com- 
 municated itself to him. 
 
 He had been a fool, he thought, to let one weak woman 
 darken the face of this earth for him, and sour the taste 
 of life to his tongue. . . . She had distorted love to 
 him, like a bleared looking-glass, tainting and falsifying. 
 Now he could think of her, with hard justice, but not 
 with bitterness. He did not even regret that it had been, 
 for it had given him Peggy, the child of his lonely 
 heart and it had given him, too a measure of deeper 
 understanding for this other woman, this girl who had 
 come so swiftly into his life. 
 
 If he had never known un faith and tinsel lures and 
 shameful calculation how could he have known the beauty 
 of such simply sincerity as Katherine's, such innocent 
 gayetyand brave friendliness? He thought ofKatherine 
 with rare tenderness as he went on, not thinking of what 
 he should say to her, not sure that he should say any- 
 thing at all as yet, but only dwelling upon her image and 
 glad to be going to her conscious with all his faculties 
 that he was going to her. She had surprised his nature 
 and filled it with her own sunny youth. . . . He thought 
 of her young friendliness to him, her ready trust, her 
 saucy humor. He thought of the bright hair like daffo- 
 dil-gold, and the fine sweep of it over her close-set ears ; 
 he thought of the lovely carriage of her head, its light 
 
 127
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 poise upon her slender neck, and the slim, strong lines 
 of her young and buoyant body. She was the embodi- 
 ment of springtime to him, of youth, clean, strong, light- 
 hearted youth, innocent, tender, audacious. 
 
 With a deepening of his reverence he felt that it was 
 perhaps well that he had suffered for now he would be 
 wise arid strong enough to guard her, if ever in the 
 future she should grant that to him, so that the ugliness 
 of life should never hurt her if he could help it. Not 
 even the winds of heaven should visit her face too 
 roughly, he thought, the phrase singing itself over and 
 over in his mind. 
 
 The sun was high over his head, marking the noon, 
 but in the shade of the path he took off his hat, letting 
 the light wind ruffle his thick hair. The dust of the walk 
 and of the journey was on his new gray clothes and he 
 was glad; he felt drolly self-conscious to be coming to 
 her in such fine array after all her daily knowledge of 
 his rumpled garments and working blouses, and yet he 
 was boyishly pleased. She would not think him a 
 sloven. 
 
 He turned aside from the road to mount the hill, and 
 as he did so Katherine's figure appeared at the top, 
 silhouetted against the blue. She was not alone. Beside 
 her, very close, was a tall young man, and her arm was 
 slipped through his, and his other hand was laid upon 
 hers in a gesture of intimacy. Her face was upturned 
 to his, and her lips were moving in soft, laughing speech. 
 He was smiling down upon her. And upon both their 
 faces was the look that life wears only once in all its 
 time. 
 
 128
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 MacNare stopped short. He did not stir and was 
 standing as rigidly by the path as one of his own statues 
 when Katherine caught sight of him and the color came 
 rushing rosily to her pretty face. It was a day when 
 her young blood was swift to stir. 
 
 With an accent of frank pleasure she called his name, 
 and as he advanced and met them she presented him to 
 the tall soldier at her side, who greeted him with the 
 cordiality of an absent-minded god. It did not take 
 more than one glance to see that this Captain Edgerton, 
 from whose arm her hand had fallen, was a man in the 
 very top-heaven of happiness. 
 
 His young face was shining as if a lamp were lighted 
 back of his eyes. To MacNare, suddenly conscious of 
 defeated years, the boy seemed victorious youth, hand- 
 some, happy-hearted, created for passion and vigor and 
 triumphant love. 
 
 Bitterness surged sickeningly over him ; it filled his 
 mouth, his throat, his nostrils like a palpable taste. . : . 
 The sudden eclipse of all tender expectation dashed a 
 sense of suffocating despair into his very soul. He met 
 his own pain with iron contempt for its deluded 
 folly. He knew, now, that he was done with folly for- 
 ever. 
 
 Meanwhile he was walking with them, and talking. 
 At least he was answering Katherine's half-absent ques- 
 tions. It did not seem strange to her that MacNare had 
 come, for Madame Bonnet had told her that often he 
 went to the farm, and she chatted of him and his child 
 to Edgerton with the kindness of an overflowing heart. 
 Perhaps Edgerton, suddenly perceiving the vigorous 
 
 129
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 youth of this father of Peggy of whom she had written 
 as of a graybeard, had his own thoughts, but he was 
 too scrupulous to admit them. He could afford to feel 
 a pang of pity for the dark-browed fellow who had 
 stared so blankly at them. 
 
 They reached Marie's where the scent of the duck- 
 lings filled the air, and where Jean Bonnet and his two 
 children in their Sunday best were waiting to greet him, 
 but it appeared that MacNare could not remain for 
 dinner. Peggy must get her hat and say farewell. 
 
 Marie was voluble in regret. Moving on to Armande ? 
 What, in the name of heaven, was there to interest a 
 gentleman at Armande ? Pigs and a bad smell pervaded 
 that place it was no village for a gentleman and at 
 dinner hour, also, with ducklings ready to pop into one's 
 mouth ! 
 
 Armande was but the first of a journey, he assured 
 her. He and Peggy were upon a pilgrimage. It was 
 for their health. . . . 
 
 And so he was gone, the child clinging tightly to his 
 hand, desolated at being torn from the small Thomas 
 and the black pigs, but shutting her lips, so like his own, 
 over her griefs. For no more than an hour had he been 
 at Les Buissons and for no more than an hour was he 
 remembered by the girl he had gone to meet. 
 
 "I'm always so sorry for him!" she sighed to her 
 lover. 
 
 He gazed into her radiant eyes. "I'm sorry for 
 everybody else in the whole wide world, sweetheart." 
 
 She had come there to avoid Edgerton. She had con- 
 130
 
 fessed that to him that morning when he had met her 
 in the road, setting forth upon her trip to the hill. 
 
 When his letter had reached her, announcing that at 
 last he was free to come to Paris for another week- 
 end and asking her to wire if not convenient, she had 
 hesitated and dallied until the last moment. And then 
 sudden panic had sent winging the late reply that she 
 was to be out of the city, for a week in the country, 
 painting. Hurriedly that Saturday she had packed her 
 things and fled to the daughter-in-law of whom madame 
 had so often told her. It was sheer fright, scurrying for 
 cover. She was afraid of him, of that steady intentness, 
 that simple concentration of his. She told herself that 
 she didn't know him, that he didn't know her, that it was 
 too soon, that they were too young, that it was absurd 
 to think that he meant anything and that she must be 
 awaiting him as if she meant anything, and that she was 
 too unsettled to decide anything at all. . . . And so she 
 fled . . . like any mid-Victorian maiden, instead of a 
 modern girl confronting her future with fearless eyes. 
 
 For just one second Edgerton had been balked by that 
 telegram. But he was a young man who hated disap- 
 pointments. Metaphorically he sprang into the saddle 
 and made for the border. What he really did was to 
 come straight to Paris, and finding that the studio build- 
 ing had no telephone he took a cab to it and inquired 
 for Miss King of Madame Bonnet. Madame, believing 
 him no more than a caller, replied that mademoiselle was 
 out of town and gave her address. This happened Sat- 
 urday evening, while MacNare was packing his bags. 
 
 Edgerton left on the evening train for Les Buissons. 
 131
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 He had no notion what manner of place it might be but 
 if Katherine were there he was confident that he could 
 find her. American girls with gray eyes and yellow hair 
 were not so frequent as to be unnoticed in rural France. 
 
 His inquiries informed him of her presence at Jean 
 Bonnet's, but it was late, for the train had not hurried 
 in its extremely local character, so he had gone to the 
 inn and slept the sleep of young and eager lovers that 
 is to say he had been awake half the night, not unhap- 
 pily. And then he had slept so heavily and long, that 
 though he had dashed through his petit dejeuner Kath- 
 erine was just coming down the path into the road, her 
 sketchbook under her arm when he met her. 
 
 Whatever misgivings the young man had had as to 
 her reception of his audacity had vanished at that mo- 
 ment. Her starry-eyed surprise, the sweet color stealing 
 into her cheeks, the hint of confusion these unconscious 
 signs banished every doubt that had battled with the 
 happiness of his coming. His own face, though he did 
 not know it, was shining. 
 
 They touched hands, then he took her sketching 
 things from her, and together they turned into the road 
 and walked side by side under the trees, and then climbed 
 the hill where she set out her things and made a pretense 
 of painting. But soon she gave up, with a confessing 
 laugh, and they seated themselves in the long grass in 
 the shade of the wide-branched trees, looking off into the 
 sunny distances. 
 
 The air was sweet with the slow ringing of bells. On 
 the road below them the country folk were coming in to 
 church but from their point they could not see the road, 
 
 132
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 only the field and wood beyond, with the blue gleams of 
 a winding river against the green-gray of more distant 
 woods. 
 
 It was a day of tender warmth, of high heartbeats, of 
 dreams that seemed to hover with gossamer wings like 
 the bright butterflies circling about them. Small need 
 for words on such a day. It was enough to be together. 
 They shared a sense of something blessed and uplifting ; 
 of happiness in which the whole world seemed to take 
 part. Whatever Power had made them had given them 
 this. 
 
 He was looking at her with all his heart in his eyes, 
 honest, unashamed, unbelievably tender. His hand in 
 the grass was pressing close to hers. Suddenly he said 
 huskily, "Ever since I've known you," and bent and 
 pressed the back of her hand to his lips. 
 
 Then he lifted his head and looked down on her, and 
 she saw the brightness of his eyes darken and grow grave 
 with the question asked. 
 
 She sat very still, her hand lying in his, her eyes up- 
 turned, held by his. She was pale and her heart was 
 beating unsteadily, shaken by a terrifyingly sweet sur- 
 prise that was not at any suddenness in his touch or 
 words, for these were the simple crystallization of the 
 vague happiness in which she seemed to have been float- 
 ing, but a surprise that it should all seem to her so 
 simple, so natural, so inevitable. 
 
 The moment had brought its revelation and de- 
 molished at a touch her vagueness and her wistful hesi- 
 tancies. The eyes that were lifted to him grew starry 
 bright through their soft wonder. . . . 
 
 133
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 With a gesture infinitely tender he gathered her into 
 his arms and held her close, his cheek pressed against 
 hers one throbbing moment before his kiss touched her 
 cheek and then her quivering lips. It was a shy, sweet 
 passage of love that held their first kiss, so much of the 
 reverent boy in him, so much of the unawakened girl in 
 her. 
 
 And like two happy children in some enchanted wood, 
 they lingered through unperceived hours, while the sun 
 grew higher and higher overhead, and dancing gleams 
 of sunshine dappled the fawn-colored shade. 
 
 Their talk, fitful and infrequent, ran at first upon 
 their past, that short little past which had accomplished 
 such tremendous miracles of things for them. He told 
 her that he had fallen in love with her on the boat, but 
 that he couldn't quite believe it, for he hadn't fancied 
 himself the sort to fall in love with anyone. 
 
 "As if a chap knew himself in these things !" he said 
 with a laughing contempt from his height of experience 
 for that callow ignorance of yesterday. "But my chums 
 have always chaffed me for being such an awfully thick- 
 skinned sort that I'd come to believe them fancied that 
 when I married it would be some nice neighborly jog- 
 trot affair, arranged by the Mammas. ... I never 
 dreamed of this." 
 
 His arm tightened about her as he spoke. Katherine 
 leaned back against it and looked up at him with eyes 
 that were brushed with laughing surprise. 
 
 "I'm afraid that there was some nice, neighborly girl 
 in the background that you did dream of !" 
 
 The fresh color rose high under his bronzed skin. 
 134
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "But I didn't dream." He hesitated, uncomfortably. 
 "You see, dearest, it's not very easy to talk about. It 
 sounds as if I were fearfully conceited. But I've always 
 fancied you know how Maters look out for one?" 
 
 Katherine, remembering her unworldly and improvi- 
 dent mother, tempered her assent with reservation. 
 
 "Well, there is a very sweet little girl next place to 
 ours we were rather fond of each other as kids. And 
 later I imagined, Oh, from nothing on the girl's part, 
 you know " 
 
 "That wasn't true," thought Katherine with inner 
 conviction. 
 
 "It was Mater rather put the idea in my head, just 
 because she wished it, I fancy, and so, as there was noth- 
 ing at all in it, I kept out of the way. I've only been 
 down to the Hall once this spring when I took those 
 snaps I brought you. Remember? Now next week I 
 have to go down it's Mater's birthday and that was 
 one of the reasons I couldn't let your telegram put me 
 off. It had been impossible to get away to you before, 
 and I had to see you before I went down and have some- 
 thing definite to go on." 
 
 He added, his voice a happy boy's, "And for my 
 long leave, the end of next month, you'll come to the 
 Hall, won't you darling? Mater will write you, of 
 course." 
 
 "But but you're not going to tell her at once ?" 
 
 Katherine sat up very straight, a yellow elf-lock 
 tumbling over a flushed cheek, her gray eyes round with 
 ingenuous wonder. 
 
 "Of course." 
 
 135
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "But it's so fearfully sudden! I can't imagine 
 what my own mother will say !" 
 
 "When she sees me?" The Captain chuckled. 
 
 "Oh, I'm not worrying about that," she conceded with 
 fond pride. "It's what she'll say before she sees you 
 when you're just a vague, unknown English officer." 
 
 "I know." He looked concerned. "It is pretty 
 abrupt for her. I've thought about it. But your 
 friends these Whartons? those very charming souls 
 on the boat, they know your mother don't they? And 
 they will write and reassure her that I'm not a fearful 
 cut-throat, and you can have your friends investigate 
 me, you know. And I assure you, darling," he declared, 
 "that I can stand any amount of investigation !" 
 
 Katherine smiled vaguely, tucking up her blowing 
 hair, confused with sudden thoughts of her mother, and 
 of the Whartons' surprise, after their warnings of the 
 Captain's "caste." 
 
 "It all sounds very far away," she murmured. 
 
 "Far away! Dear girl, aren't you to marry me in 
 six months ?" 
 
 "Six m ?" 
 
 She let her hair alone and stared at him, her lips 
 parted. 
 
 "I know chat dates are the bride's prerogatives," he 
 smiled, "but you aren't averse to suggestions, dear? 
 Of course, if you can be ready in three 
 
 "Why, I can't be married for years and years !" 
 Katherine gasped. 
 
 He put a strong arm about her and drew her back to 
 his shoulder again. 
 
 136
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 Presently she admitted, "Well next summer, then. 
 Next summer.*' 
 
 "I'll come for you at any time. But it seems to me 
 tliat spring " 
 
 She murmured, "My poor mother." 
 
 "She won't like your living in England?" 
 
 "Of course not." And she added, her lips curving, 
 "And I won't, either. 
 
 Said the Captain confidently, "Wait till you've seen 
 it." 
 
 "It doesn't matter. If it were as horrid as India " 
 
 "Would you, my darling?" 
 
 With such interruptions the conversation did not pro- 
 ceed rapidly. But by and by an ordered plan came out 
 of the incoherence. Instead of his announcing it at once, 
 as it was his frank young intention to do, and having 
 her invited to the Hall during his leave the last of July 
 and the first of August, they would wait until his leave, 
 and then she would come to London with the Whartons, 
 who, she remembered, were providentially scheduled to 
 appear among the English cathedrals at that time. 
 Then he could come and see her, and she would meet 
 his mother in a less trying way than plunging down to 
 the Hall for a visit, and then everything could be an- 
 nounced, both to his side and to hers. 
 
 The Whartons were to sail for America the last of 
 August, and their personal word would allay her 
 parents' anxieties. "Though, of course," she worriedly 
 mentioned, "even their glowing account of you isn't 
 going to make England any nearer to mother." 
 
 "But you can go often to her, dear, and with your 
 137
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 father's long vacations he's a professor, isn't he? he 
 and your mother can come often to you." 
 
 "You don't know a professor's salary," said the girl 
 with a whimsical smile for the intrusion of rueful prac- 
 ticalities into the idealism of the hour, "nor the cost of 
 living in the great American Republic and supporting 
 our millionaires and trusts ! However we'll manage." 
 
 As for the immediate future and the young man 
 kept a very commanding eye upon that it was finally 
 agreed that she would return to Paris for a time 
 "Where I can get over to see you," he declared, with a 
 shameless disregard for the claims of art and then, 
 abridging that year of work, she would return just be- 
 fore Christmas to America, so as to have at least six 
 months at home before he came for her in June. 
 
 It seemed very unreal and dreamlike, as they planned 
 it there on the hilltop, and yet he had such a way of 
 making dreams come true ! How dream-like he had 
 seemed to her memory, those first days in Paris, and yet 
 how real and how vivid he was now more near and 
 dear than anything in the world. Her eyes kept turning 
 to him with that touching look of soft and happy 
 wonder. She hardly knew what had been happening to 
 her. 
 
 But what had happened was so clearly written in her 
 face that MacNare had not needed to look twice.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 IT was a day of enchantment. 
 At the farm Katherine presented the Englishman 
 to Marie Bonnet's astonishment Marie was al- 
 ready in a sentimental excitement over the appearance 
 of MacNare and his strange haste to find the mademoi- 
 selle and Jeffrey Edgerton, believing it more seemly to 
 establish his status, had made the first announcement of 
 his betrothal in that ancient farmhouse to these un- 
 known French folk. 
 
 There was something idyllic in the rustic quality of 
 the scene that touched the fancies of the young lovers. 
 The long, dark, low-ceiled room, the sunshine sparkling 
 through the tiny casements upon the table spread with 
 Marie's whitest linen and the brightest of the old pot- 
 tery, the open door through which inquiring hens wan- 
 dered, the shining, rosy faces of the little children, 
 were all delighting to the girl's pictorial sensitiveness. 
 
 They dined upon the ducklings that were fit to pop 
 into the mouth of an archangel as the merry Jean 
 declared, and afterwards Jean, his French blood 
 stirred by the romance of these newcomers to his hos- 
 pitable roof, descended to his tiny cellar and returned 
 10 139
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 with a cobwebby bottle of the vintage of the last 
 seigneur wherein to drink the health of mademoiselle 
 and le capitaine, if they would graciously permit. 
 
 And Katherine, touching glasses half shyly, felt the 
 first stir of womanly possessive pride as she saw how 
 Jeffrey's unconscious charm, his boyishness over his di- 
 rect, manly authority, had captivated already those 
 simple but shrewd folk. 
 
 Afterward the young people had another walk and 
 talk, in the heart of the dreamy afternoon, and later 
 they climbed their hill again, while the long twilight died 
 into the first faint starlight, and the magic of evening 
 turned the world to fairyland. 
 
 Life, in that hour, seemed to hold its cup brimming at 
 her lips. Older than the seigneur's vintage, she tasted 
 of the very wine of miracle. 
 
 Silvery and remote the fields lay at their feet, with 
 the soft white gauze mists stealing over them. The 
 woods looked far and shadowy ; the distant river revealed 
 itself in pale and fugitive gleams. . . . How high above 
 the world she seemed, with Jeffrey at her side. . . . And 
 his eyes upon her, those dear, blue eyes with their look 
 of love and power, their strong, "Trust me," to her 
 every sense. She knew that she would answer that look 
 as long as her heart had strength to beat. 
 
 And that night, as she lay in Marie Bonnet's rose- 
 mary-scented linen sheets, with the starlight stealing in 
 the casement, and the scent of the hay mingling with 
 the breath of the night, she lived that hour again, and 
 her heart was very humble in its joy. . . . Through all 
 
 140
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 the chances of the world love had come to her, a splen- 
 did love, a love to which one could give one's life in 
 honoring. And she was grateful that she had been true 
 to herself, to those deep instinctive cravings that had 
 spoken of high and stirring things so that she had kept 
 her heart free and her life unfettered to answer the clear 
 call when it came. 
 
 Also it seemed very wonderful to her that Jeffrey 
 Edgerton should love her as he did. She was not too 
 young to feel the rarity of that pure, romantic impulse 
 in him that had brought him to her, undelayed by con- 
 siderations of a more worldly choice, but it was not 
 that he had yielded to his love as that she should have 
 awakened it that made her heart beat fast and her cheeks 
 flush in the darkness of that happy night. Her feel- 
 ings were beyond anything that she had known, any- 
 thing that she had divined that she could know. All 
 things that were in her, heart and soul and mind and 
 body, were united like a single flame in that altar fire of" 
 her devotion.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 KATHERINE returned from Les Bulssons upon 
 Wednesday, not waiting to stay her week, feel- 
 ing each day of importance now in those classes 
 where her time was to be so abridged. And knowing that 
 Marie would inevitably write to her mother-in-law of the 
 English officer who had appeared upon that Sabbath, 
 making his revelations, she showed Madame Bonnet his 
 picture, one day in her room, with a brief statement. 
 
 "Ma foi!" said madame amazedly, and then promptly 
 expressed many graceful wishes for the mademoiselle's 
 happiness. "Eh, Mary, Mother of God, what have I 
 done!" ran her inner ejaculations. And, a suitable 
 time having been devoted to the mademoiselle's happy 
 prospects, she recurred casually to the ones at Les 
 Buissons, and inquired if Monsieur MacNare had ap- 
 peared at the farm. She had urged him to take the lit- 
 tle one there for her health. 
 
 And Katherine answered simply that he had come but 
 did not stay ; she thought he was making some sort of a 
 tour. 
 
 "A tour of Purgatory," said madame's inner self 
 with conviction. And she wondered, with a flame of re- 
 
 142
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 sentment against self-absorbed youth, wrapped in the 
 chrysalis of its own affairs, what Heaven had given the 
 girl such large clear gray eyes for, if it was not to see 
 through a grindstone. . . . And why had the girl, her 
 heart gone to an absent Englishman, been so lavish of 
 herself with the American? Did she think he was of 
 marble like his own statues ? Did she think that lonely 
 men were made to contemplate pink cheeks and bright 
 eyes and hear merry laughter every day of the calendar 
 and not reach a hand for them? 
 
 Apparently that was Katherine's frame of mind. She 
 did have an uncomfortable qualm or so about Mac- 
 Nare's abrupt withdrawal from the farm, believing that 
 if he had found her unoccupied and ready to share her 
 time with him, he would have stayed companionably on. 
 But she did not dream that he would have wanted of her 
 more than friendliness. She merely thought that the 
 contrast between her evident happiness and his own 
 marred life was painful for him. 
 
 For two weeks MacNare and Peggy were away. And 
 then one night they were back, Peggy browner and 
 healthier than of yore, with dusty clothes and shabby 
 boots and an epic of narrative, concerned with intimate 
 detail of four-legged beasties for she had a farmer's 
 heart, and MacNare leaner, grimmer, more taciturn than 
 ever. Between madame and himself not one word was 
 ever exchanged concerning that ill-omened expedition 
 of his. 
 
 But Katherine, believing that madame would communi- 
 cate the fact of her engagement, and aware, too, that he 
 could not have been unperceptive of her evident relation 
 
 143
 
 to Edgerton, though their enlightening remarks to the 
 Bonnets had been made after his departure, felt that she 
 really ought to make some reference to it so he would 
 not feel that her friendship was not being frank with 
 him. Indeed, so overflowing was her heart with it, that 
 it was hard not to tell all her world desperately hard 
 not to write it in those letters of hers home. 
 
 But there she knew it would cause pain and appre- 
 hension. "John," her mother would say tragically, 
 "we've let that goose of a girl go off painting and 
 she's engaged herself to an unknown Englishman. 
 What shall we do?" 
 
 And she could hear her father's unrevealing reply, 
 "Do? She seems to have done enough herself. Just 
 what does she say?" 
 
 And then they would go over and over it, worrying, 
 unsettled, confronting the grief of losing her, and the 
 anxieties of her choice. 
 
 No need of perturbing them now. In a month, when 
 they would soon see the Whartons when she had grown 
 more used to this new state of things. It was one thing 
 to reveal the happiness of her engagement and another 
 to go into all the plans that must ensue. 
 
 Nor could she tell her mother very well until Jeffrey 
 had told his, and that announcement she had absolutely 
 prohibited until they should meet in London. 
 
 The opportunity of speaking of it to the Surly Man 
 did not occur immediately. He was working like a 
 demon upon that fountain of his, and when they met 
 the conversation did not flow into channels of intimate 
 revelation. The most of his remarks were ireful com- 
 
 144
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 ments upon models. Katherine reminded herself that 
 her small concerns were a very negligible factor in his 
 interests, and that however she might have occasionally 
 served to fill some of the gaps in his solitary life for 
 him, he probably did not remember her existence when 
 the flame of his genius was kindled in him. 
 
 In which she was utterly deceived. For into the 
 woman of his Fountain of Life MacNare was pour- 
 ing the buoyancy and the young gladness of the girl he 
 secretly loved and his passion touched the face in marble 
 with the light which was denied to shine upon him. And 
 many a night, his head bent in his hands, he sat 
 motionless by the open window, while from above floated 
 down the soft strains of the Croatian song that Kath- 
 erine loved so much. 
 
 " 'Live live live, the sun and stars shall light- 
 you ' " 
 
 But it was the second verse that she sang oftenest 
 now. 
 
 ' 'Love, love, love, some magic glance befall you, 
 Love, love, love, some magic whisper call you, 
 Love, love ,love, some magic touch enthrall you.' " 
 
 And then in a little shower of happy notes the gay 
 little love song from "Carmen" would come down to him, 
 or the plaintiveness of old ballads. But it was always 
 of love that she sang. 
 
 And he who had called, "Pas de chanteuses" after his 
 145
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 first glimpse of her back, sat and listened, his windows 
 wide to catch every faint and delicate note. 
 
 She was not working much those days. Her dream 
 possessed her. And as her dream concerned first of all 
 that visit to London, happily arranged with the Whar- 
 tons, and that visit meant luncheons and teas and din- 
 ners and drives and pretty frocks, her errant feet led 
 her past windows of alluring hats and witching gowns, 
 and her wistful eyes were full of chiffons and modes and 
 linens and practical calculations. 
 
 Since she was not to stay the year out she could 
 draw more deeply upon the sum put aside for that year, 
 a sum derived from part of a small legacy and from a 
 prize competition for a magazine cover the prize 
 against which Dick Conrad's resentment had burned bit- 
 terly. And since when one is young and in love and 
 Paris frocks are a Voccasion it would be a sin not to 
 be beautiful for one's beloved, the girl's thoughts and 
 fingers were more often occupied with ninon and lace 
 than with her paints and brushes. But she did adhere 
 determinedly to the morning classes, which met now in 
 a garden of the substitute teacher's home. 
 
 The sunshiny gladness of her mood fell brightly upon 
 Etienne de Trezac. Even in those short months her 
 French had grown supple and quick, and was pliant 
 enough now for her jesting humor to meet his own 
 turns of raillery. This developed a habit of chaffing 
 intimacy which she greatly enjoyed, for one cannot live 
 entirely upon dreams and the society of the two stren- 
 uous and elderly American art teachers, who like her- 
 self were staying on in Paris during the vacation time. 
 
 146
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 One night she and Etienne dined, "Dutch treat" as 
 she always insisted, except upon some special occasion, 
 at one of the little restaurants upon the left bank, and 
 then were tempted into a rambling walk by the loveli- 
 ness of the summer night, which seemed to hang upon 
 them like a sweet-breathing, impalpable presence. 
 
 They were both silent, Katherine's thought so given 
 to Jeffrey that it almost seemed as if he were walking at 
 her side. The beauty of the night without him made 
 her heart ache, but when she thought that in a little 
 time now, the very end of this same month, he would 
 be with her again, why then her pulses seemed to sing 
 in their light beating. 
 
 At the door of the studio building Etienne, his man- 
 ner oddly irresolute, asked if he might come up. 
 
 "For the space of one last cigarette," he said lightly. 
 "I have the blue-moon hunger to-night you would not 
 cast me off to it?" 
 
 "For just a little then," said Katherine uncertainly. 
 It was not really too late for a call, but she wanted to 
 be alone and write to Jeffrey while the words that the 
 night had brought her were still brimming in her heart. 
 But her good-humor was. too pliant. 
 
 In the studio she smilingly offered Etienne the matches 
 for that cigarette and then took off her white hat, lift- 
 ing the flattened hair with ruffling fingers, while the 
 young man stood watching her, his dark eyes intent, 
 then she drifted aimlessly to her table and sat down to 
 sorting its decidedly overtaxed capacities. A basket, 
 brimming with a tangle of lace, brought a faint smile 
 to her lips as she tidied it. 
 
 147
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "How you are beautiful to-night !" said De Trezac 
 suddenly, with honest sincerity. "You are always 
 pretty but this summer you have bloomed like a 
 flower. Perhaps it is the Paris air," he added, recap- 
 turing his old note of raillery. 
 
 "Then it is a pity that I am to leave,'* she smiled, 
 and wondered what Jeffrey thought about this matter. 
 Never, she recalled, had he paid her one of those com- 
 pliments supposed to issue from a lover's lips. Even 
 the Surly Man had once dryly granted her "a degree 
 of pulchritude." Well perhaps Jeffrey didn't like her 
 looks. Perhaps he preferred brunettes. Perhaps it 
 was her soul he loved, or her intellectual sobriety. She 
 felt in her heart the soft laughter of a secure and happy 
 love. 
 
 "To leave Paris ?" De Trezac said, with sharpness. 
 
 "Not forever ! But I think I shall take a vacation 
 and see London." 
 
 "A vacation in England an anomaly! There one 
 does not relax. Oh, you should not do that," he said 
 quickly. 
 
 He added, rising suddenly and moving restlessly 
 around the room, "But you are right here it is too 
 hot. Impossible to work! The city air the pave- 
 ments the dust. ... I will tell you. . . . You have 
 never been to Normandy?" 
 
 "I have never been anywhere in Europe but here." 
 
 "You should see Normandy. And what better time? 
 ... I will tell you. ... I know a place no crowds, no 
 tourists, but the sea and the great rocks Ah, yes you 
 should go there for your vacation, yes ?" 
 
 148
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 She said absently, faintly surprised by his odd en- 
 thusiasm but too preoccupied with her own thoughts 
 for attention, "Oh, I know Normandy is lovely, 
 but " 
 
 "Lovely? It is a heaven upon earth when one 
 brings the essence of heaven with one ! . . . Ah, you 
 will come with me? Yes? I will manage. I will take 
 every care " 
 
 She whirled about in her chair, just as he stooped to 
 bend over her. His face, close to her own, was alight 
 with his strange excitement ; his dark eyes were glowing. 
 
 She thought amazedly, "Why why, he is perfectly 
 mad! . . . He's insulting me !" 
 
 It seemed to be absolutely preposterous. She could 
 have smiled at such a word in connection with herself. 
 
 Aloud her voice was saying coldly, "What in the 
 world are you talking about?" 
 
 Her cool crispness was arresting, even to an ardor 
 abandoning its leash. An instant wariness leaped in his 
 eager eyes ; he looked at her with uncertain calculation 
 beneath his smile. 
 
 "You do not understand? . . . But it is very simple." 
 
 Then a surge of feeling drove him toward her again. 
 "Ah, you make me quite mad for you ! Be a little kind, 
 Katherine, and do not play any longer with me. . . . 
 Just a little holiday ... in Normandy " 
 
 His hurried words stopped. She had drawn frigidly 
 back from his eager approach and taken a few steps 
 from him into the room, where she paused and looked at 
 him with calm-eyed assurance. She was feeling a cold 
 disgust, a bitter impatience at his stupidity. 
 
 149
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "I wonder if you have any idea how absurd you are, 
 Etienne?" she said very clearly. 
 
 "Absurd? But why?" His expression concentrated 
 on her own. 
 
 "To say such things to me." She was still very quiet 
 and clear-voiced. Intuitively, with the rush of enlight- 
 enment, she understood that he would laugh at heroics 
 of moral indignation. Her scornful amusement was her 
 only weapon. "It is as droll as if a tourist to whom 
 one had been pleasant urged your sister to fly for a 
 vacation with him! I had not thought you so dull. 
 Must you see the background of society, the chap- 
 eronage of mother and father, to appreciate one's qual- 
 ity and one's position in the world?" 
 
 An ironic smile edged his handsome lips. "That is a 
 little too strong," he returned, endeavoring to reflect 
 her calm, but with the betraying color burning hotly 
 in his cheeks. "What 'position in the world' am I 
 to assume for one who makes Olga Goulebeff her 
 intimate?" 
 
 "Olga! What is wrong with Olga? She is a com- 
 rade, a fellow-student 
 
 "And the very good friend of Louis Arnaud ! When 
 she told you of her vacation in the Alps, the winter 
 sports, the games, did you not know who took her there, 
 who ?" He laughed disagreeably at the blank stare 
 she gave him. 
 
 "I don't believe it," she flung back. "I don't be- 
 lieve " 
 
 "As you will." He shrugged airily, finding himself 
 growing master of the situation. "But as for me, I 
 
 150
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 know. Louis is not alone in his conquest J To every- 
 one the right of solace in neglect !" 
 
 She thought his laugh was the most hateful thing 
 that she had heard in her life. 
 
 "And you can boast that is your code!" she said 
 furiously, feeling herself in defensive league with her 
 sex against his dominant one. "Ah, poor Olga!" 
 
 "Poor Olga! And you never knew you never sus- 
 pected?" He stared hard at the unbelievable innocence 
 of her gray eyes. Then softly he whistled and snapped 
 his fingers. 
 
 "Tiens! . . . What was I to think? . . . You and 
 Olga, together. . . . And you played with me " He 
 whirled about on her suddenly, and his eyes grew hot and 
 angry again. "Can you pretend that you have not 
 seen not permitted one to believe? What was it that 
 you were thinking, in the name of Heaven? Oh, you 
 knew, you were content to have me follow you, to smile 
 at me, to accept, to kindle and you thought to hold me 
 at a distance forever ! That is the American way, then ? 
 You would practice on me, amuse yourself, be cool while 
 I I Name of a Name, but you Americans are 
 either the greatest fools on earth or the greatest cheats ! 
 . . . You would play the game but you do not risk the 
 counters." 
 
 "You were I thought you were my friend !" She 
 gave back, and flinched at his laugh. 
 
 "And did you think that that was all I would desire 
 to be I whom you permitted to see you alone, to dine 
 with you, to smile into your eyes ... to talk to you of 
 myself, of my most sacred dreams but you under- 
 
 151
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 stood what was growing within me. It is impossible to 
 be so blind. My words, my actions 
 
 "I thought you were gallant that your real liking 
 made a pretense, perhaps, and play of compliments you 
 did not feel " 
 
 She faltered, and he made a sound of mingled disgust 
 and unbelief. 
 
 "Pretense ! . . . Compliment ! For a pretense do I 
 waste my time, do I put myself at the service of a girl 
 who " 
 
 Very suddenly the color came back into her pale 
 cheeks, and very suddenly and sharply she flung back 
 her head, with that oddly boyish gesture of defiance in- 
 stinctive to her moments of emotion. 
 
 "I have been used to American men," she uttered. 
 
 "Are they blocks of wood?" he interposed, with im- 
 pertinence. 
 
 "They are men of honor, and their friendship for a 
 girl is very real. And if they grow to be more than 
 friends, they do not talk nonsense about vacations, like 
 the villains in the theater. They are honorable 
 men," she insisted broadly, like Anthony of his 
 Romans. 
 
 "In their own class of life," said Etienne de Trezac, 
 very amiably. "But did you imagine that I was seek- 
 ing my future countess ?" 
 
 In a society where chivalric custom had sheered man- 
 kind of its pointed clarity of speech to the other sex, 
 however unchivalricly its masculine behaviors may veer 
 beneath the veil, Katherine had not known such taunts 
 could be endured. And the bland presentation of his 
 
 152
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 assurance of her social inequality was gall and worm- 
 wood to her proudly democratic soul. 
 
 She was silent, and her silence was not unreceptive 
 of new impressions and adjustments. . . . Even in her 
 stinging mortification she was not unconscious of various 
 truths in his position. 
 
 She uttered chokingly, "It is impossible for us to dis- 
 cuss " and then her pride came stoutly to her aid. 
 In a voice that sounded creditably like her own, "For we 
 could never understand each other," she continued. 
 "However impossible I might be to your society as a 
 future countess, you would be just as impossible to 
 mine, and I should be making myself absurd, and cheap, 
 if I were to consider marrying a foreign count . . . 
 you do not know how the Americans laugh at the mil- 
 lionaires' daughters who bought your titles ! But that 
 is the very reason," she went on quickly, "just because 
 our lives were so different, that I thought it was inter- 
 esting to be friends, and thought that our friendship 
 Was perfectly safe, because we could neither of us be 
 more to each other than friends." 
 
 Her French began to stumble and hesitate. She was 
 conscious of a reaction of horrible weariness that threat- 
 ened to leave her weakly stranded, without having made 
 a harbor. Determinedly she rallied her forces and her 
 language. 
 
 "It did not occur to me that you could think any- 
 thing else." 
 
 He looked at her out of the corners of his eyes, then 
 gazed down into the cigarette case which he had drawn 
 out, and made a careful selection. 
 
 153
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "The misunderstanding seems to have been unani- 
 mous," he remarked softly. 
 
 Applying a match he added, "Observe, mademoiselle, 
 the villain in the theater always smokes a cigarette." 
 
 "And makes a low bow at the door," she supplemented 
 with a wan smile. . . . Most unaccountably and uncon- 
 trollably her knees were trembling under her and she 
 felt a supreme desire to sink down into the nearest chair. 
 And then she saw that the hand which was resting upon 
 the back of the chair by her was distinctly quivering 
 and she tried desperately to control it, proudly afraid 
 he would read her excitement for weakness. 
 
 "I accept the suggestion," murmured De Trezac, and 
 moved to the door with his lightest grace of carriage. 
 It occurred to her that the honors were even. If he had 
 discredited himself in her eyes, he had certainly retali- 
 ated with a few home truths implanted unforgettably in 
 her pride. 
 
 "Adieu to our understanding," he smiled, made his 
 low bow with a flourish and was gone. 
 
 It was when she stood before Jeffrey Edgerton's 
 photograph that the full tide of shame rose over her. 
 That such a thing could happen to his betrothed ! . . . 
 She felt dishonored, cheapened. . . . She could feel in 
 the leap of his anger against De Trezac an edge of 
 wounded amazement for herself. . . . Never would he 
 fully understand. . . . Never would he need to under- 
 stand. 
 
 She knew that the episode was buried in her conscious- 
 ness with such a millstone of shame tied to it that no 
 tidal storm could bring it to the surface. 
 
 154-
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 ONE factor of the situation remained for her to 
 deal with Olga. To be sure she had not seen 
 much of Olga lately, but their manner to each 
 other had long been of a casual intimacy. And now . . . 
 
 Olga was not at classes the next two days but upon 
 Sunday morning she came early to Katherine's studio, 
 with rolls and butter and strawberries under her arm, 
 to breakfast in the room. 
 
 "But I am to have breakfast in the cremerie with 
 Robert MacNare and his little girl," said Katherine. 
 It was an engagement made that instant, but she was 
 familiar with Surly Man's hours and habits. 
 
 "Then I will eat while you dress, lazy one," said 
 Olga, and began to brew her own coffee. 
 
 As she dressed Katherine stole a troubled glance or 
 two at the other girl. It was a problem beyond her 
 powers. She was conscious of a sudden repugnance 
 for the sight of Olga's little laughing mouth, and her 
 secretive eyes, yet the repugnance was touched by a 
 queer pity. 
 
 Olga turned briskly and found Katherine's eyes upon 
 her. 
 
 11 155
 
 "How you stare! Is it my earrings? Do you not 
 like them?" 
 
 Her attention drawn to them Katherine found her- 
 self far from liking them. The huge pearls that for- 
 merly would have easily seemed to her a part of Olga's 
 foreignness became significant of falsity, commonplace 
 and cheap. She shook her head shortly. 
 
 "You are too young for them." 
 
 A moment later she added, "Have you heard from 
 Louis Arnaud?" 
 
 Olga continued to eye the boiling coffee, then she 
 looked up with deliberate fixity of expression. "Now 
 why do you ask?" 
 
 "Olga, why weren't you frank with me?" blurted 
 Katherine. The other girl's face did not change. It 
 seemed to solidify its expression of blank interrogation, 
 to grow rigid and fixed like a mask. Her little eyes 
 were very still. 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 "About Louisi. About what you were to each other. 
 If if that is true. . . ." 
 
 Something flickered behind those set eyes and then 
 was gone. 
 
 "So someone has been talking of me," said Olga, in 
 intense disdain. "You listen to scandal yes?" 
 
 Katherine felt wretchedly that she had made a mis- 
 erable botch of things in the beginning. Indeed she 
 did not know what she had expected to accomplish. But 
 the old relation had become impossible for her, and 
 she had made a blind rush toward the truth. 
 
 "Who was it?" said Olga fiercely. 
 156
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 Katherine was silent. 
 
 "And you believe what is said by someone you dare 
 not name?" 
 
 "I don't know what I believe." 
 
 "Was itEtienne?" 
 
 "Does it matter who said it? If only it isn't 
 true " 
 
 "Etienne I suppose that it would be he !" Katherine 
 saw Olga's breast heave stormily, yet her features were 
 unchanged in their stony wariness. 
 
 "Yes, it was he," said Katherine with desperation. 
 "And if it isn't true, Olga, outface him and deny it!" 
 
 Olga sat watching her a moment, then she gave a bit- 
 ter laugh. 
 
 "And if I do would you believe me?" 
 
 "Yes," said Katherine heavily, and disbelieved herself. 
 
 "And if it were true you desire to see no more of 
 me ?" 
 
 "If if I can help you, Olga, you know I will. 
 I " 
 
 "Help !" Olga's sneer was something that Katherine 
 remembered for many a day with a sense of her own 
 inadequacy. "What do you call help?" 
 
 "If you need money," Katherine faltered, "you could 
 come here to me for a time " 
 
 "Shelter for the Magdalene." Decidedly there was a 
 terrible spirit loose in Olga Goulebeff that morning. 
 In another mood she might have met Katherine with 
 denial, with mockery, with reassurance. Now she was 
 possessed by a fury of insolent and indifferent contempt. 
 
 "Grand merely but I need neither a bed nor a sermon ! 
 157
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 And I have no explanation to make to you! Whatever 
 you think of me and Louis . . . it is not my concern. I 
 will make no answer to such impertinence. Tell Etienne 
 de Trezac that from me. And as for yourself and Eti- 
 enne " 
 
 "I have been very foolish to go about so much with 
 him," said Katherine swiftly. "And perhaps you have 
 been only foolish, Olga. . . . Do stop then, and turn 
 your back on them. You have talent. You can make a 
 name for yourself. And some day you will meet a man 
 worth while " 
 
 "My talent !" The little Russian snapped her fingers. 
 "You have seen for yourself what that is ! A straw ! 
 I might make a drawing mistress in a provincial school 
 if I had the references. And my life what is it? My 
 father's people cast me off. He was above my mother. 
 And my mother's people country dullards from whom 
 she ran away to come to Paris ! . . . What friends 
 have I? ... But I am a fool to talk. . . . Do not 
 think I admit anything. ... I despise your lies. But 
 you can clear your own skirts." 
 
 She pushed the food before her sharply away and 
 turned from the table. 
 
 Katherine, buttoning her blue linen frock with shak- 
 ing fingers, felt a terrible pity. 
 
 "Do not go just because I must hurry away," she 
 stammered. "Sit down and eat your breakfast." 
 
 Olga stared at her a moment. "Eh, very well," she 
 said at last coolly, and sat down again at the table. But 
 her eyes returned stealthily to Katherine. 
 
 At the door Katherine paused. She wanted to add 
 158
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 something definite to the futile inadequacy of the inter- 
 view, to say something friendly and kind and bracing. 
 Her feeling of indignation against the girl was gone, 
 lost in a new comprehension and sorrow. She was too 
 innocent of realities to feel the full sordidness of the 
 revelation. But she could think of nothing to say. 
 Olga's manner made her feel herself an intrusive 
 fool. 
 
 "Good-by," she said at last, in a strained voice, 
 with lowered eyes, as if hers were the disgrace, and 
 "Good-by," returned Olga with hard brilliance, reap- 
 plying herself to the rolls. 
 
 But when the door had closed Olga leaned back from 
 her pretense of eating, and sat very still, one hand on 
 her throbbing throat. 
 
 In the cremerie, at the table where Katherine joined 
 MacNare and Peggy, the girl's anxieties could not be 
 repressed. 
 
 It seemed to her notions of American responsibility 
 that she ought to "do" something, something helpful 
 and decisive, but she felt utterly at sea. 
 
 "How can one help?" she begged of MacNare, with 
 incoherent suddenness breaking one of their companion- 
 able silences. "There's a girl, a girl at the school a 
 friend of mine, too. And I find she's been she isn't I 
 mean she's rather gay very gay and rash and wild and 
 and wicked. And yet I think she was in love with 
 him and hoped. . . . Anyway she's all alone, and I'm 
 afraid that she's going on drifting and drifting. She 
 hasn't enough ambition for anchor, and there isn't one 
 to whom she matters. And I I've said all the wrong 
 
 a 59
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 things to her, and and I don't know what the right 
 things are. If I could only do something " 
 
 "Does she want you to help ?" said MacNare briskly, 
 buttering his roll. 
 
 "No no. It isn't that. But what is going to be- 
 come of her?" 
 
 "Several things," said the young man coolly, handing 
 Peggy the roll and taking another for himself. Some- 
 thing in his tone made Katherine remember with a start 
 that another such girl had found being his wife one of 
 the things that she could compass. "And all of them 
 beyond your power of interference," he went on. 
 
 "But I seem like like a wretch to cast her off " 
 
 MacNare looked shrewdly at the girl's flushed cheeks 
 and troubled eyes, as she sat staring into the ugliness 
 of this tragedy. 
 
 "Does she want to cling to you to draw herself out 
 of the mud," he asked, "or to lend herself countenance in 
 her indulgence? That's one question. And another 
 can you undertake the duties of permanent prop? . . . 
 Nonsense. Everyone has to stand on his own feet. It's 
 grim gospel, but it's the only one that will save the 
 world. The only pilgrim worth salvage is the kind that 
 climbs his hill himself not gets lugged there on some 
 poor John Christian's back. That isn't saying that we 
 shouldn't make every allowance in our judgments," he 
 added with unexpected gentleness. 
 
 "But but can't we help?" 
 
 "Help? Sometimes. Sometimes not. 'Character is 
 destiny,' you know, and you can't create character. 
 You can't even legislate it," he added, sardonically, 
 
 160
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "though the American legislatures seem trying to do 
 that for the other fellow." 
 
 Conscious of Peggy's eyes fixed anxiously upon him, 
 he raised his coffee to his lips, and the child, with a 
 relieved sigh, promptly applied her thirsty little lips to 
 her milk. 
 
 Katherine sat silent. 
 
 "Help? How do you think you can help?" he shot 
 at her with sudden irritability. 
 
 But that was just what nonplussed her. "Perhaps 
 if she had plenty of good companionship " 
 
 "Meaning yours?" 
 
 With a ghost of a smile she nodded. 
 
 "Hasn't she had it all summer? And can you hon- 
 estly share your life with her now, your friends? And 
 don't flatter yourself that anything less than sharing 
 counts. Condescension isn't help. It's salt on the raw. 
 . . . Nonsense. Your business isn't to go about frat- 
 ernizing with wavering virtue. Your business is to 
 live your own life beautifully, which will be helpfully, 
 and to paint strong, true, beautiful pictures that will 
 take the seal from people's eyes and hearts " 
 
 He stopped, balking at the first hint of eloquence. 
 He added very slowly and gruffly, his eyes turning to 
 that signet ring on her finger which Jeffrey had placed 
 there until the London visit, "Besides there's more to 
 consider. . . . Hasn't that English captain friend of 
 yours something to say about this?" 
 
 It was the first mention of Edgerton between them 
 since the encounter at Les Buissons. Katherine felt 
 the self-conscious color rise in her face. She had 
 
 161
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 wanted this opportunity, but now she met it constrain- 
 edly. "Yes, I suppose he has." 
 
 "Well, he'd tell you to wait a few years for your 
 missionarying. . . . You'll find plenty of chance to be 
 quite broadminded enough to suit him in years to come.'* 
 
 "He's not narrow-minded," flashed Katherine. 
 
 "But he's not fool enough, either, I hope, to want you 
 to make yourself a public target for the sake of a sense- 
 less girl." The Surly Man bit quite savagely into the 
 crust of his roll. "Remember that in Paris you will 
 find a practically unlimited field for such talents !" 
 
 "You make me feel a great goose," said Katherine, 
 with a rueful laugh. 
 
 "That's good. A woman who feels herself a fool 
 isn't so likely to be making one of herself that moment. 
 . . . Don't marmalade your napkin, Peg, it isn't be- 
 coming. . . . How soon does your Academic reopen?" 
 
 "Not till September." 
 
 "And you've given yourself one year for your study 
 here?" 
 
 "I I don't think I shall stay that year out." Some- 
 how it took courage to say that. And she did not meet 
 his eyes. Perhaps her subconscious self knew a little 
 more than that surface girl admitted. "I think I'll go 
 home for Christmas." 
 
 "Homesick?" 
 
 "N-not exactly." 
 
 "Funds out?" 
 
 "No. They're all right But but if I'm to leave 
 
 my mother rather soon for good 
 
 Still she did not look up. And the pause between 
 162
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 them seemed freighted with some heavy significance. 
 She could not have told why she felt so reluctant about 
 this telling him, now that it came to the point. 
 
 He made a gruff sound of comprehension. Pres- 
 ently he said, "Before Christmas?" 
 
 Peggy raised her head quickly. "/ had a Christ- 
 mas," she said eagerly. "I did an' I had a doll and; 
 another doll, and a bed for a " 
 
 "And what becomes of the career?" 
 
 "Oh that? That goes on, forever and ever as long 
 as I do," said Katherine with sudden relieved gayety. 
 "There will be lots of chance to study afterwards " 
 
 Under his dark brow his gaze rested on her a long 
 moment in silence, then he said sharply, "See that there 
 is ! For if it is the real thing you can never bury it 
 alive it will be like a living child struggling for birth. 
 Mind you, I don't say that you are a genius but you 
 have a spark. . . . And what does he say to it, your 
 Englishman?" 
 
 "He never said anything to it for he hadn't looked 
 at it, not till last week," returned Katherine merrily. 
 "And then I sent him a sketch I made after he left Les 
 Buissons, and he thinks it's very, very wonderful and 
 I must exhibit it in the Academy when I come to Lon- 
 don." 
 
 "Ha!" MacNare gave his bark of a laugh. "Paint 
 a pair of Airdales or a little boy in a lace collar and 
 send it in." Then the sardonic hardness of his eyes 
 softened as they rested on the girl's look of touching 
 happiness. 
 
 "Never mind just so you do your dogs well," he 
 163
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 conceded, "with not too noble eyes. . . . And I'm very 
 glad you are so happy. It's probably the best thing in 
 the world for you. He he looked a very fine sort." 
 
 "Oh, he is a fine sort," she instantly agreed, with the 
 radiance on her eyes and lips. "The very finest sort !" 
 
 MacNare, looking at her with that dark-browed gaze, 
 so unrevealing of the stark, human hunger behind it, felt 
 again that sore, beaten feeling which had crushed him as 
 he stood at the foot of the hill and saw her turn her face 
 to that other man. He wondered dumbly what he had 
 done that he should be so outcast from the happiness 
 that fell to other men as their daily lot. 
 
 Then swiftly the hard lines of his face relaxed. He 
 gave the girl one of his rare smiles. 
 
 "And may you always continue to think so," he said 
 in a voice so charged with friendly warmth that Kath- 
 erine wondered, as she left the cremerie with him, fol- 
 lowed by the totally misapprehending eyes of the bride- 
 of-a-year who kept the desk, why she should ever have 
 thought him indifferent or oblivious. 
 
 Certainly, after that, he found time even in the fervor 
 of his work, for some companionable hours, for he told 
 himself, with grim bitterness, that at least he could in- 
 dulge himself to that extent. There was no need to hide 
 and bury his head like an ostrich. Nature, the arch 
 enemy, had already found him out. It was late in the 
 day for him to be saving himself pain. 
 
 By Christmas she would be gone. He would never 
 see her again. The future was utterly a blank. Mean- 
 while, there was at least for him the sound of her voice, 
 and the light of her unsuspecting eyes. 
 
 164
 
 BOOK II 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 SUNSHINE again after the weeks of rain, and with 
 the sun there came a brightening of spirits and 
 a laughing away of the fears which had been 
 gathering in those gray, wet days of flying rumor and 
 threatening headlines. 
 
 At the Club where Katherine King had lunched with 
 some American acquaintances the reaction of relief was 
 especially vivid. Someone in a pension had been told 
 by someone in another pension who had been told by 
 a sub-editor of a paper all this in privacy and confi- 
 dence, to be sure that an absolute arrangement had 
 been made by the conferring Powers, and there was 
 to be no war at all except, of course, in the un- 
 happy Balkans where war appeared the status quo 
 and that everybody could go on with their trips 
 and get their checks cashed and their itineraries 
 arranged. 
 
 For this small tableful the cloud was quite dispelled. 
 And now they were sure that it had never been a real 
 cloud, just a pother of dust thrown up by the scare- 
 heads and the jingoists and the war party. War an 
 Eastern-European war was too absurd to be contem- 
 
 165
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 plated ; it was an anachronism, an obsolete bogy. That 
 sort of thing had been settled by the Peace Conferences. 
 Moreover the deadliness of modern inventions had made 
 warfare too destructive to be possible. 
 
 Of all the luncheon party Katherine's relief was 
 probably the keenest, for while she had never believed 
 in this French war at all, still the red tape surrounding 
 it had interfered prodigiously with her plans. For 
 Jeffrey Edgerton's leave had been postponed till the 
 middle of August and as that postponement didn't 
 agree with the plans she had made with the Whartons 
 she had been obliged to write them that she was delayed 
 and beg them to wait for her. And then there had 
 been the possibility of another postponement in the 
 background. It seemed very long since the enchanted 
 day at Les Buissons and even the dear daily letters did 
 not stop the little ache of her hope deferred. But now 
 everything was settled, just as she had known it would 
 be, and they could plan again. 
 
 The sunshine was too glorious to waste, after those 
 dull, dark days, so when she left her friends she started 
 on one of those rambling strolls through the older 
 streets which never failed to delight her even after these 
 five months of Paris, a stroll having for objective a 
 tiny lace shop in one of the old quarters. 
 
 It was Saturday, the first of August. She looked 
 back on that date afterwards as separated, as by the 
 sudden cleavage of a sword, from everything which had 
 gone before in her life. 
 
 She walked slowly, lingering in the Jardins where 
 the children were again at play, and it was after four 
 
 166
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 when she came to her tiny shop and it was dark in the 
 narrow place. 
 
 But even in the dimness it was impossible not to see 
 that the young woman who came slowly forward to wait 
 upon her had been crying. Her face was swollen and 
 her breath came brokenly as she went about the measur- 
 ing of the lace and the tying of the little parcel. Only 
 the necessary words were uttered. Katherine would 
 have liked to find the right expression of interest for 
 the poor thing's evident trouble but the shyness of 
 sympathy and the fear of intrusion took her quickly 
 away. 
 
 And then out on the sidewalk again, in the glow of 
 the August sun, she came upon a couple clasped in 
 each other's arms, the woman wildly sobbing. "Oh, 
 non non non !" the poor thing was gasping, her thin 
 hands clutching the man's shoulders, and the man, a 
 young ouvrier, in his blue cotton blouse and greasy 
 trousers, was patting her heaving shoulders with dumb 
 devotion. 
 
 Katherine slipped past them with bent head, wonder- 
 ing vaguely if some tragedy of the quarter had befallen, 
 and then in the restaurant just ahead, where she had 
 contemplated a cup of tea on one of the little tables 
 shining in the sun, she saw the wife of the proprietor 
 with her head on arms outcast across one of the table 
 tops, and an unnoticed baby pulling at her skirts. 
 
 Just beyond, a knot of people were standing, talking 
 excitedly, hands gesticulating, eyes gleaming, the words 
 crackling like whips. Beside an old, one-armed man 
 Katherine stopped. 
 
 167
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "What is it, please? What is it?" 
 
 "C'est arrivee . . . c'est arrivee," said the old 
 man. 
 
 "What has come?" 
 
 "C'est arrivee. . . . C'est la guerre." 
 
 La guerre the word beat meaninglessly in her ears as 
 she hurried away, turning instinctively toward the Ave- 
 nue de 1'Opera. War France was in war, then? The 
 trouble which had seemed to be brewing in such far-off 
 cauldrons, that cry of Slavic peril what had that to 
 do with France? 
 
 Those rumors, then, those flying undertones of anx- 
 iety, the whisperings of the men about the cafes, the 
 gatherings of the women in the streets, these had nob 
 been meaningless ebullitions of anxiety, of far-fetched 
 apprehension born of the terrible memories of 1870. 
 These people had known 
 
 Her thoughts flew to Jeffrey. Could this actually 
 involve England? But it could delay his leave and play 
 havoc with their cherished plans. She told herself that 
 was all, but the queer breathless excitement in her was 
 tightening its tension. She raced along the streets 
 faster and faster. 
 
 Now a throng blocked the way, a jostling crowd of 
 men of all sorts and conditions, silk-hatted men, with 
 side whiskers suggesting the aisle managers in the shops, 
 men with tall coachmen's whips, blue-bloused, grimy 
 men, a chauffeur in khaki, and a footman in a gleaming 
 livery of silver and blue and buff, a wonderful creature 
 that one supposed had no reality except a waxen pose 
 upon the boxes of carriages with coroneted doors. Yet 
 
 168
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 here he was in the rear of that crowd, pushing, talking, 
 shoving, his sphinx-like gaze alive and vibrant. 
 
 Ivatherine plucked at the sleeve of the nearest man; 
 when he remained oblivious she shook it vehemently. 
 
 "What is it? What is it?" 
 
 He looked down on her with glassy eyes. It was the 
 mobilization order, she was told, and pressing closer 
 into the throng, she caught the glaring print of the 
 huge posters. 
 
 ARMEE de TERRE et ARMEE de MER 
 
 ORDRE 
 DE MOBILIZATION GENERALE 
 
 Very quietly and very soberly she made her way out 
 of that crowd through the streets. Over and over again 
 she tried to tell herself just what it was that was hap- 
 pening but her mind refused to accept the monstrous 
 thing. A million men in arms. A million men uprooted. 
 And many times a million hearts wrung with parting 
 and suspense. . . . 
 
 The streets were scene after scene of parting. Paris 
 was oblivious of everything but the beating of her own 
 heart. Everywhere the girl saw the sudden, unforget- 
 table glimpses of agony, an old mother clinging to her 
 sons, a man taking the ribbon from the neck of his little 
 child to stuff within his shirt, a husband comforting a 
 wife, a girl stifling her sobs as her sweetheart left her. 
 ... A million men going. . . . Everyone between the 
 ages of twenty-one and forty-eight. . . . 
 
 169
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 At the American Express Office and at Cook's the 
 Americans were gathering excitably, but to Katherine's 
 heart, weighted with sympathy for the great griefs of 
 France, the anxieties of her compatriots as to boats and 
 trains and money was not of great moment. What did 
 it matter if they were delayed, or lost a passage or had 
 no money for a time? They would somehow be fed and 
 cared for; their hearts were not wrung with parting 
 from sons and husbands ordered to meet the cannon of 
 the enemy. 
 
 Her American acquaintances of that day's luncheon 
 party were in the throng, their buoyant assurance of 
 noontime gone, their ire the keener against the reassur- 
 ances of the sub-editor which had percolated so cheer- 
 ingly from pension to pension. There, also, were the 
 two American art teachers studying at the Academic, 
 resolved on getting out of this dangerous place at the 
 earliest opportunity. 
 
 Through the various notes of the throng, some quer- 
 ulous, some anxious, most of them patiently good- 
 natured, she heard one boy's jubilant accents, "Why I 
 wouldn't have missed this for anything ! This is an 
 experience!" 
 
 An experience ! Yes, it was that, even for him. But 
 for the French? 
 
 Outside Robert MacNare's door she found him talk- 
 ing with a group of Frenchmen, artists she recognized 
 as his occasional companions at a cafe, two already in 
 uniform. In the dim hall, in her cage, Madame Bonnet 
 sat unstirringly, her head sunk forward on her shoul- 
 ders. 
 
 170
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 Katherine felt a fresh pang, remembering the younger 
 son Henri was still doing his military service. "This 
 will mean Henri?" she said, with diffident sympathy. 
 
 Madame Bonnet raised her head slowly, staring 
 straight at nothing. 
 
 "Les deux," she said expressionlessly. 
 
 Of course it would mean them both ! How sluggishly 
 her mind was working. Jean was not thirty. He would 
 be going to-day, leaving Marie alone upon the farm 
 with her little ones. 
 
 It is only by individual instances that the mind com- 
 prehends a general disaster. The greatness of it is too 
 great. But when one knows that it is Henri and Jean 
 and Marie who is left when it means the husband in 
 the cremerie across the way whose little wife of a year 
 is expecting her baby, when it means the only son of 
 the old woman boarding overhead with them, and the 
 tailor down the street whose five children are mother- 
 less, why then, pang by pang, the meaning of pain 
 comes home. 
 
 A million men. . . . 
 
 That evening Katherine strolled with MacNare up 
 and down the Boul' Miche', an altered, sober BouP 
 Miche', where the students, with linked arms sang "The 
 Marseillaise," with young voices that shook in the be- 
 ginning of their passionate realization of love of coun- 
 try. And everywhere were the scenes of parting, and 
 everywhere through the streets the incessant rolling of 
 taxi-cabs and carts and automobiles and carriages and 
 fiacres, laden with men and women and luggage of every 
 12 171
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 description, hurrying to and from every station in the 
 city, men arriving, provincials leaving, foreigners flee- 
 ing, a turmoil of transit. 
 
 Sometimes there were cheers and gay greetings for 
 some crowd of dusty reservists marching by with haver- 
 sacks over their shoulders and a long loaf of bread 
 sticking from some jacket pocket; sometimes the irre- 
 pressible humor of the people would be tickled to smile 
 at some self-conscious boy parading with a pretty girl 
 in his fresh regimentals, red-trousered, blue-coated, his 
 knapsack and rifle and tin pans clattering as he walked, 
 but the tears were too near the surface for laughter, 
 and the uniform was too dear to their hearts for 
 youth's naive airs to alter the symbol. And the boy's 
 young pride in his glory was touchingly in contrast 
 with the future for which he was destined. Old men 
 and women cried blessings on him as he passed 
 and little girls ran after to slip a small flag in his 
 hands. 
 
 Among the students many that Katherine knew were 
 going, for only those of under twenty-one remained. 
 "You will be shouting for us soon," one band of these 
 youngsters called merrily to a group of older friends 
 who were already in the colors. 
 
 Among these later Katherine saw Etienne de Tresac, 
 wearing his uniform with easy distinction, his handsome 
 face alight with enthusiasm as he passed with one arm 
 flung about a comrade's shoulders. 
 
 He waved his hand gayly to her and she waved back, 
 calling, "Good luck!" They were her first words to 
 him since that wretched parting in the studio; indeed 
 
 172
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 she had scarcely seen him since for he had ceased his 
 desultory attendance upon the summer classes. 
 
 And there was Olga, strolling with girls she did not 
 know, talking eagerly and searching the faces she 
 passed as if she were seeking someone. Katherine called 
 to her but Olga returned only that same indifference 
 and aloofness which had marked her manner since that 
 Sunday morning. Katherine wondered if the girl were 
 looking for Louis Arnaud, hoping that he would pass 
 through Paris and the quarter on the way to whatever 
 barracks claimed him, and she, too, half unconsciously, 
 began to look for him but he was not to be seen. 
 
 MacNare was very silent. To one question of hers 
 he replied, rather contemptuously that he was not going 
 to run away. He did not think that the Germans would 
 reach Paris, although they must be magnificently ready 
 or they would never have incurred the war. 
 
 "But do you think that the Germans have always; 
 intended ?" she began diffidently, feeling her deep ig- 
 norance of the real Europe. 
 
 He looked down on her somberly. "For years the 
 guns have been invented, the powder made, the boy 
 babies encouraged into the word ere this day should 
 come ! Now that men and machines are at a maximum 
 strength they judge the time has come to toss a match 
 into the powder. Any match will do. In 1913 it might 
 have been one thing; in 1914 the Archduke's murder 
 will do as well as another. Raise the cry of Slavic peril 
 and march on to France. Straight to the heart of 
 her, get Paris by the throat, make her buy her breath 
 with a strip of sea coast opposite England. . . . Then, 
 
 173
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 peace, perhaps, for more machines and more men and 
 more powder but not forty years of it, for eyes will 
 be opened and then England. . . . And then 
 
 Katherine could only stammer, "But but I thought 
 the Germans were different were " 
 
 "The Germans? When have the Germans ruled Ger- 
 many? When have the Schuberts and the Schumanns 
 and the Goethes and the Schillers and the Wagners and 
 the Heines been a political influence? . . . The Germans, 
 individually, are delightful collectively their very pe- 
 culiar virtues make them the finest instrument in the 
 world for Prussian militarism to wield docile, fervent, 
 sentimental, brave. . . . Pour them out in masses, in- 
 flame them with a prepared brand of patriotism, instill a 
 calculated hatred, fling them at the enemy there you 
 have your ideal fighting machine. . . . God help those 
 boys," he added under his breath, his black-browed gaze 
 on the marching ranks. 
 
 "Then then what in the world is to happen ?" 
 
 He said very slowly, "A struggle to the death." 
 
 Her eyes clung to him in sudden appeal. "Will Eng- 
 land be in it?" 
 
 "Who knows?" Then as if he knew that she found 
 his answer evasive he said grimly, "I hope so." 
 
 "You are cruel," she said chokingly. 
 
 "I am not thinking of individuals. The hour has 
 struck for nations." 
 
 The grhn foreboding of his words settled like a weight 
 on her heart. 
 
 With the crowd they followed to the Gare de 1'Est 
 174
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 to see the men depart. Here the men were to take 
 trains for Toul, Verdun, or for whatever barracks 
 where they were to report the next day. And their 
 destination after that? Who knew? 
 
 A high iron fence stretched in front of the station, 
 with three gates three gates guarded by soldiers. 
 Three scenes of last farewell . . . and scenes more ter- 
 rible in their poignancy, their ultimate realization, than 
 those the day had held. 
 
 Outside the fence was crushed a crowd of people, 
 men, women, children, a crowd that from the hundreds 
 leaped to thousands as more and more arrived. And 
 every instant the streams of reservists came through 
 them, some arriving in taxis, some in carts, some on foot, 
 most of them singing, many cheering, but some deadly 
 quiet, stoic, their arms about some woman. 
 
 It made Katherine think of the guillotine. For just 
 one last minute those women had their men, their sons, 
 their sweethearts, their husbands, clutched in their arms, 
 warm and safe against their breasts, and then through 
 the iron gate into the black oblivion of the future. . . . 
 And so many ... so many. . . . 
 
 What would happen ? What would happen ? 
 
 She heard the sounds of the women's sobs under all 
 the strains of "The Marseillaise"; she could feel the 
 breaking of their hearts under all the fervor of sacrifice 
 that had leaped to meet the spiritual demand of their 
 defense. 
 
 "C'est pour la France," "C'est pour la patrie" these 
 were the words she heard oftenest on the lips of boys 
 to their mothers, of husbands to their wives, and the 
 
 175
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 women, too, touched with this sacrificial flame, echoed 
 it with lips that paled with their deeper understanding 
 of what lay back of those words. Some of those women 
 remembered 1870. Some had worn black since that 
 year. . . . 
 
 "C'est pour la France," Katherine heard one acqui- 
 esce in a dry whisper. She had parted with her husband 
 and three sons in that moment. Alone she turned and 
 made her way out of the throng. And as she went she 
 kept tapping upon her breast and speaking in that 
 husky voice which was like the last dry whisper of a 
 consumptive, "C'est fini c'est tout fini." 
 
 The individual was finished. ... It was only nations 
 now that counted.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 BY Sunday noon two facts had made their connec- 
 tion for Katherine. 
 
 There were no potatoes at her little res- 
 taurant. People were provisioning for a siege. 
 
 She had not thought till then very particularly of 
 herself, not sharing the traveler's contagion for flight. 
 Indeed she had declared herself a resident of Paris, so 
 that, having secured her papers of identification, she 
 would not have to continue to report each morning at 
 nine as transients were to be required to do. She still 
 intended to leave for London upon the tenth, if she 
 did not hear to the contrary from Jeffrey Edgerton, 
 and it seemed best to her now to wait where she 
 could get word from him, and then accept his decision. 
 Now the excitement of the times was gaining upon 
 her. 
 
 By Monday the auto busses were gone from the 
 streets. People were swarming about the provision 
 dealers, carrying or wheeling away sacks of flour and 
 rice and macaroni, and Katherine went out and pain- 
 fully lugged home a heavy supply to the Surly Man's 
 amusement. 
 
 177
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "Are you going to bake for the army ?" he demanded, 
 wresting the load from her arms. 
 
 Change was scarce. The shops were iron-barred and 
 shuttered ; the streets were empty of men and quiet of all 
 traffic. In the gloom of a chill rain Paris looked grim 
 and forbidding. 
 
 Into the quiet streets the newsboys had rushed with 
 their damp sheets, "Speciale de la Guerre !" now an- 
 nouncing Germany's ultimatum to Belgium. Indigna- 
 tion ran high. The excitement was tense but not 
 hysterical. Later, another edition told of the bombard- 
 ment of Luneville. 
 
 In the larger department stores while some girls were 
 busy putting away stock the others were making Red 
 Cross supplies. The sight of these bandages, deftly 
 rolled by those busy fingers, was the first glimpse to 
 Katherine of what thing it was that Paris was prepar- 
 ing for. Having sent her youth and strength to meet 
 the enemy she sat waiting to receive the shattered re- 
 turns. 
 
 The next morning she found the door of MacNare's 
 studio wide open and narrow cots being carried in. She 
 saw that the great room was stripped and cleared, with 
 the statues and marble crowded into one corner, and cot 
 after cot was standing in a white, orderly row. Peggy 
 was scurrying up and down the stairs with bundles in 
 her arms. 
 
 "A sick man's a-coming," she whispered excitedly to 
 Katherine, her eyes big with the fascination of novelty. 
 
 "We shall sleep on the top floor I've given this for a 
 little nursing depot," said MacNare, and it was not 
 
 178
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 from him, but from the nursing sister, a quiet, gray- 
 haired woman of Le Croix Rouge, that Katherine learned 
 that his private income was being given for its service. 
 
 She felt her heart contract with the painful expect- 
 ancy of those white beds. 
 
 No letter had come from Jeffrey, and she doubted if 
 her telegrams to him had reached him. She felt isolated 
 and alone, and a feeling of fear was creeping higher and 
 higher in her, like a stealthily rising tide. Everywhere 
 the talk was of England. What would she do? Day 
 had dawned with the Germans still in Belgium, having 
 made no reply to Great Britain's midnight warning, de- 
 manding respect for Belgium's neutrality, and all day 
 there was that horrible sense of waiting, waiting. . . . 
 Did the Germans mean to go on, to strike an innocent 
 country, to flout their sacred pledges, the rights of na- 
 tions? Was that way to France so clear to them that 
 they judged they could hew through it and seize Paris 
 before Great Britain's arm could reach them? Did they 
 feel themselves strong enough to overwhelm at once 
 those nations that withstood them? And if they did 
 
 She read Sir Edward Grey's speech before the Eng- 
 lish Parliament and she thrilled but her thrill died in a 
 shudder. There was a horrible, muffled pounding in her 
 heart as if it were blindly fleeing from some unnam- 
 able apprehension. . . . 
 
 She tried to tell herself that it was a hundred years 
 since England had sent men to a European soil, and that 
 only the gravest urgency would bring them now but 
 still the Germans were in Belgium. 
 
 Late in the afternoon a letter from Jeffrey, much de- 
 179
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 layed, reached her already opened, thus giving mute 
 evidence of the activities of the censor. It was very 
 brief and grave ; he promised to let her know as soon as 
 anything was certain for him. 
 
 That night she went to the Boul' Miche' with Mac- 
 Nare and Peggy, and strolled up and down among the 
 little groups that were casting occasional glances up at 
 the sky for stealthily gliding Taubes. Once a guarding 
 aeroplane winged its way overhead, the hum of its 
 engines sounding faintly, like a swarm of far-away 
 bees. 
 
 From out a brown study she said aloud, "If I left at 
 once " 
 
 MacNare was painfully clairvoyant to the girl's 
 thoughts. His voice was full of rugged understanding. 
 *'I don't believe you could see him," he said. "He is 
 with his regiment and any moment " 
 
 She echoed, "Any moment!" 
 
 As he looked at her, her slender figure drooping 
 slightly as she walked beside him, her youthful color pal- 
 ing under premonitions of anxiety, he felt a resurgence 
 of old anger against the idiocy of this scheme of things. 
 What infinite waste! With no great confidence in the 
 good intentions of life toward himself, he had uncon- 
 sciously conceived of no destiny as capable of treachery 
 to this girl's bright trust. And now, to see the begin- 
 ning of fear in her eyes 
 
 "But she is too young to know what it means," he 
 told himself. "And she will have his heroism to 
 adore. . . . He is one of life's lucky ones." 
 
 He stopped and bought her one of the little English 
 180
 
 flags offered for sale with those of France and Russia 
 and Belgium and Servia. 
 
 Everywhere upon the streets was the talk of Eng- 
 land's sending troops to Belgium. Some rumors de- 
 clared that they were already on the way. There were 
 stories now of fighting near Liege, and the women and 
 old men and boys told each other, with kindling faces 
 and shining eyes, of Belgium's heroic reply to Germany. 
 
 Four mornings later Madame Bonnet was at her door 
 with a blue envelope, and ripping it open, Katherine 
 stared blankly at the French words, 
 
 Ayez de courage. Avec tout mon cceur, 
 
 JEFFREY. 
 
 All telegrams must now be sent in French, but the un- 
 wonted phrases seemed utterly unrelated to her lover. 
 It took a moment for her mind to realize the truth. 
 "Have courage," she repeated under her breath, and 
 then, "With all my heart." 
 
 "From the Captain?" madame was eagerly demand- 
 ing. "The English, mademoiselle, they are in France?" 
 
 Katherine turned a soft, unseeing look to her. She 
 spoke without emotion. "Yes, they are in France. The 
 message came from Havre." 
 
 Jeffrey was there with his men, moving somewhere to- 
 ward the fighting. . . . 
 
 It was incredible to her. If she could have seen him 
 again, could have talked with him, have held him in her 
 arms as those women had held their men, if they could 
 have met and parted, the parting would have been believ- 
 
 181
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 able, but this blank this silence this slip of blue paper 
 with strange, hurried words 
 
 She could have held it a dream but for that grinding 
 pain in her side, that sick, drunken lurching of her 
 heart. 
 
 "God be thanked !" said madame. "The English 
 they keep their word. Oh, God be thanked they are 
 come." 
 
 The sight of the girl's blanched face recalled her. 
 
 "C'est la guerre," she repeated to her, laying a hand 
 upon her shoulder in a comrade's gesture. "You are 
 one with us, mademoiselle." And as she turned away> 
 her flare of enthusiasm sunken to the stolidity of every- 
 day, "This is war." 
 
 Unthinkable now to leave Paris, to leave the city for 
 whose safety her lover was fighting. She was nearer to 
 him here than anywhere ; here he would know where to 
 address her. 
 
 So she wrote long, cheerful letters home, saying she 
 was safe and well and better off than in a friendless Eng- 
 land, scrambling for steerage in an overloaded ship. 
 They were not to worry. And she wrote the Whartons, 
 fearing their unselfish sense of responsibility might de- 
 lay them for her, that they were not to wait, that she 
 had friends who would care for her. 
 
 No one knew when mail would be delivered, but hav- 
 ing seen her letters into a box she felt she had done her 
 utmost and gave herself to the present.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 IN those tense days of waiting, when the red rush of 
 the invader rolled nearer and nearer to the gates of 
 Paris, Katherine King knew that incredible, stifling 
 sensation of one struggling to break the gripping bonds 
 of nightmare. So utterly had war been a thing apart 
 from the happy security of her American environment 
 that it was fantastic and unreal to be here in this city 
 that was girding itself for mortal combat, with the 
 rage and ruin of war blazing closer and closer, and 
 somewhere on that red line of defense the man whose 
 life was dearer to her than her own. 
 
 "Can this be I?" the girl thought dumbly, as she 
 walked those silent streets, where the children ceased to 
 play, and waited with those patient, tragic crowds of 
 women and old men for the official communiques. 
 
 Ah, those communiques ! How infrequent they were 
 and how laconic ! And always the same. Always the 
 Germans were nearer, nearer, a great, oncoming, ma- 
 chine-mass, endless, irresistible. The front ranks that 
 went down were like the vanishing foam on an incoming 
 tide. The tide surged in, mighty, unstopping. She 
 knew the paralyzing fear of helplessness. She saw it re- 
 
 183
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 fleeted in the faces of the men and women about her, 
 deepened with their knowledge of what helplessness had 
 meant in a bitter past. 
 
 "It is the guns," said the little bride-of-a-year, in the 
 cremerie, clinging pitifully to her hands. "They have 
 the guns, mademoiselle, the monsters that deal destruc- 
 tion. For this they have been making ready. . . . And 
 our men are there. . . ." 
 
 "You must not cry so, you must not," Katherine 
 whispered, her own throat choked, her heart aching. 
 
 The little woman flung back her head, with an effort 
 of defiance. "I will not," she answered. "I will live for 
 the child. And if it is a son a son whose father does 
 not return then when he is a man I will put a gun in his 
 hands to slay the murderers of his father !" 
 
 So the war seed was sown, thought Katherine ; so the 
 heritage of hate and enmity brought its festering fulfill- 
 ment. 
 
 "You will not talk so when you have sons to lose," 
 said the old woman who boarded with her. "My mother 
 saw five go in 1870 and I was all that was left to her. 
 And then my man he was my bridegroom it was there 
 he got the wound that took him off in the end. But for 
 that he would be here now. . . . You will not talk so 
 when you have lived a little more." 
 
 She turned feebly to Katherine. "Is there news, 
 mademoiselle ? I am not strong to go out in the streets 
 to-day " 
 
 And Katherine went for them and searched the scanty 
 lists for those names that meant everything to those 
 women. There were very few lists and those brief and 
 
 184
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 incomplete, but by now the wounded were being brought 
 into the city, and hurried from the hospital trains to 
 those waiting beds, and little bands of women went from 
 ward to ward, waiting patiently to speak to the nurse, 
 to ask if such an one were here, or if any of his regiment, 
 or if there was news of that regiment. 
 
 All day now Katherine made Red Cross supplies, or 
 aided where she could in the nursing going on in Mac- 
 Nare's small asylum. Only the lightest cases were 
 brought there, but as she went from bed to bed, looking 
 down on those rows of wan, drawn faces, Katherine's 
 heart contracted with the terror of deepened under- 
 standing. And the meaning of war, the murderous on- 
 slaught of man against man, raised its bloody face upon 
 her from the draping veils of glory and of custom. 
 
 The story of Belgium, brought by flying rumor, 
 gasped from the lips of the first poor refugees, had 
 reached the city and set the anxious hearts there afire 
 with a passion of agonized sympathy. Eyes were raised 
 to the mute skies ; locked hands were lifted in despairing 
 grayer. Women fled to the churches to plead at the 
 Madonna's feet for pity upon those helpless ones and 
 safety for their own. 
 
 It seemed to Katherine that the sun could never shine 
 for her again. That in this day of vaunted Christian- 
 ity invaders who took Christ's name in prayer could 
 pour upon a peaceful countryside, burning, shooting, 
 stabbing, terrorizing, meeting the defense of innocent 
 burghers with the brutalities of Huns, with wanton re- 
 prisals, with wholesale slaughter; that men who called 
 themselves Christians could fling themselves methodical- 
 
 185
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 ly upon a country of unoffending neutrals and rend it 
 limb from limb in the name of "political necessity" ; that 
 barbaric slogan of "Might is Right," filled her with 
 shocked and fiery horror. 
 
 All the idealisms, the sugary coating of civilization's 
 assurances, went down like a pack of cards. . . . While 
 the Kaiser had been signing his "scraps of paper" at 
 the Hague, the engines for this destruction were being 
 forged, the plans made for Germany's march through 
 the neutrality she was swearing to protect ! . . . Prus- 
 sia's place in the sun! . . . Big Business, bludgeon- 
 weaponed, empire-crowned, tramping human rights and 
 lives underfoot in the name of a Fatherland ! . . . . That 
 was conquest. 
 
 Often the Surly Man, wrung by the girl's white 
 cheeks and questioning eyes, made her come for long 
 walks with him through the strange and silent streets, 
 emptied of sound and stir, motorless, trafficless, where 
 old men and youths drilled in little squads and herds of 
 sheep and cattle grazed in the Bois and Champs Elysees. 
 Out from the city had streamed long miles of refugees, 
 women and children, most of them, mothers bearing their 
 babies to safety, little lads hurried by frightened grand- 
 mothers, rich or poor, all unprepared and needy, they 
 had poured out the gates and down the dusty roads be- 
 yond the sound of guns. 
 
 Hushed and tensely waiting, her heart with her youth 
 upon her battle-line, Paris was beautiful in those August 
 days as never before. The uncut grass grew long in her 
 gardens ; the red geraniums and white roses rioted 
 gorgeously in the borders. And at night the moonlight 
 
 186
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 bathed the lampless streets in spectral brilliancy, 
 glistening white upon the dome of Les Invalides, upon 
 the Arc de Triomphe, upon the blunt towers of Notre 
 Dame and delicate traceries of fretted column and 
 Gothic arch. ... If Paris was to die it would be in the 
 full panoply of her beauty, in the splendor of her ancient 
 and irrecoverable loveliness. 
 
 Nearer and nearer the battle-line. On it came, closer, 
 closer, with dull and sullen thunder stealing from the 
 horizon, an arrow-pointed battering ram hammering 
 and hammering, a sweeping tide, surging and submerg- 
 ing, and then in a sugar-beet field near Claye, ten miles 
 from the outer fortifications of Paris, the furthest reach- 
 ing fringe of that tide was met and turned. Slowly it 
 receded, borne back by desperate force. . . . 
 
 The communiques were first cautious, then explicit. 
 They told of places retaken, of advances made. Now 
 twenty, now thirty, now forty miles, that line of battle 
 was pushed back. And in Paris, the clutch upon the 
 heart relaxed. Free breath was drawn again. Grate- 
 ful eyes shone in white faces. 
 
 That Sunday of September was France's day of 
 thanksgiving. 
 
 But all this time no word of Jeffrey. No scrap of 
 writing came back from that unknown place in the front 
 of battle. 
 
 She heard the stories of the poor, wounded boys in 
 the hospitals and she thought of him there in the days 
 and nights, harried and desperate, fighting those over- 
 13 187
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 whelming odds, pushed back, still stubbornly defending, 
 outnumbered but bitterly resisting, each instant a chance 
 in the hell of battle, and her heart would stop its beat- 
 ing before those fears to which she dared not give a 
 name. 
 
 Yet because she was young and the eclipse of personal 
 disaster was unthinkable she could draw deeply upon 
 hope. But the blackness of that waiting ! . . . The 
 bitterness of knowing nothing ... of fearing every- 
 thing. . . . She lived years in those weeks, and in her 
 eyes darkened that look of dumb questioning which she 
 pitied in the women's eyes about her. 
 
 Sometimes she wrote her heart out to her mother, only 
 to tear the letter into a hundred pieces. Why sadden 
 those dear ones at homes with her own agony of sus- 
 pense? . . . It would shock and wound them. . . . And 
 any day now might bring news. . . . Any moment she 
 might hear. . . . 
 
 And no news was not the worst. . . . 
 
 So she went about her work, rolling bandages with a 
 little group of French workers, taking lessons in nurs- 
 ing from one : f many classes held, spending her money 
 in comforts fo,r the poor boys in the hospitals and the 
 wretched refugees that brought the misery of Belgium 
 home again and again to tender hearts, writing brave 
 letters to America, begging more money for help for 
 the homeless ones and then one day the miracle hap- 
 pened, and there was a new heaven and a new earth 
 about her. 
 
 Its precursor was a tremor of alarm, for Madame 
 Sonnet came into her room, bringing Jeanne and little 
 
 188
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 Thomas with her, and the sight of the children brought 
 a fear of disaster, so many terrible stories had come of 
 slaughter and fire, and bloody reprisals. 
 
 Quickly Madame Bonnet explained. "No, no, the 
 Germans have not been there. They were all about, but, 
 God be thanked, the village was saved. A wood just 
 beyond they could not get through that, where our 
 soldiers had their guns. . . . But Marie has sent them. 
 The train came in this morning. She feels it safer in. 
 case anything should happen to her she is not well, you 
 understand, and her time is come. . . . See, the little 
 innocents- they are big-eyed with the war. The 
 soldiers took the pigs, yes, our soldiers they have 
 stomachs, the poor lads. Does Marie think they win 
 battles upon emptiness?" 
 
 "And news have you news of your boys ?" Katherine 
 asked quickly. 
 
 "Of Jean, yes. He is one of those stationed in the 
 wood beyond the village. One arm was out, nothing to 
 make a fuss about you understand. A scratch, when the 
 Boches tried to come through the wood at night." 
 Madame was excited; her old liveliness reanimated her 
 face, which had been settling into lines of mask-like 
 rigidity. "But it is not of my boys that mademoiselle 
 is thinking no?" 
 
 A look of sly pleasure came in the old woman's eyes 
 and she pushed little Jeanne toward the girl. "Show the 
 mademoiselle what is about thy neck." 
 
 Obediently the child began to tug at a discolored rib- 
 bon ; presently a little leather case came outside her 
 collar band. 
 
 189
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "Voila, mademoiselle," she said shyly, putting it in 
 Katherine's hand. 
 
 But Madame Bonnet could contain herself no longer. 
 
 "From Monsieur le Capitaine !" she exploded. "From 
 the Captain of mademoiselle ! In truth ! In truth ! He 
 came riding through the wood he came to the farm, 
 and learning that the children were about to start he 
 declared that Jeanne was safer than the post !" 
 
 Madame chuckled delightedly, her keys jingling with 
 their old fervor. "Read, mademoiselle," she exhorted, 
 as if Katherine were not already lost in those few hur- 
 ried lines. "Read, and tell me what he says ! . . . All 
 is well, yes?" 
 
 Thumb-grimed and creased, the little square of pa- 
 per lay in Katherine's hand. 
 
 MY DEAREST KATHERINE: 
 
 Fancy writing you at the old f arm in such times ! 
 We have had the devil's own scratch of it, but now 
 we're getting a bit of our own back. It's nasty 
 business to see your comrades going but it's for 
 the right, and we're in it to the finish. You mustn't 
 worry about me, darling, even if you don't hear. 
 With your love all mine there isn't a bullet that 
 can stop me. Write me here; we'll stick a bit till 
 we get forward. 
 
 Your 
 
 JEFFREY. 
 
 As an afterthought he scribbled that he was perfect- 
 ly well though starving, and Marie had produced a fine 
 hen for him. 
 
 190
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 Little Jeanne supplied a thousand eager details, when 
 once her shyness was overcome. The Captain had taken 
 her up on his big horse ; he had laughed and kissed her 
 and told her, Oh, yes, she was not to forget, that this 
 kiss was for Mademoiselle Katherine. And the child 
 reached forward and clasped her arms about Katherine's 
 neck. 
 
 "He held me like this, like this," she explained. 
 
 Madame clapped her hands eagerly. She forgot that 
 she had cherished a grievance against this Captain who 
 had so utterly overthrown those unselfish hopes for Mac- 
 Nare and little Peggy ; she forgot that she had scarcely 
 glimpsed his features that night when he had come in- 
 quiring for Katherine, and she broke into fervent 
 praises of his handsome appearance and his valor. She 
 beamed upon that picture of his on the girl's table. "A 
 man in a thousand a man of courage and of 
 heart ! . . . But mademoiselle," she added naively, "is 
 there any word of Henri? Has the Captain heard?" 
 
 And at Katherine's gesture of pitying negation, "Of 
 course he would not hear, among so many," she returned 
 with a semblance of briskness. "But I think of my 
 chickens, of course ! ... It is so long . . . but silence 
 is better than the word of death. That poor old mother 
 over the cremerie ! She heard last night. ... It was at 
 Mons, during that long retreat. . . . They sent her a 
 silver ring of his. She says nothing. . . . But the wife 
 there told me that she had laid upon her bed some little 
 things she had saved, a baby shoe of his, you under- 
 stand, and a little dress and a card of his first letters 
 and sits there looking at them." 
 
 191
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 Madame Bonnet wiped her eyes. "It is for France, of 
 course, but it is very hard. . . . Why should such 
 things be, mademoiselle?" 
 
 She added, restlessly, "It is hard on a mother not to 
 smooth her son's brow in his last moments, not to look 
 into his face. . . . But there is no help for it. . . ." 
 
 The children, growing more familiar in the room, re- 
 called her. 
 
 "Jeanne ! That is the mademoiselle's cushion do not 
 let thy little brother sprawl upon it like that ! Thank 
 the mademoiselle for the chocolate. . . . That is bet- 
 ter. ... I must take these little ones to a neighbor," 
 she added, "for I have much to do if I am to leave to- 
 night. Would mademoiselle prefer to confide a letter 
 to me sooner than to the army post? If the Captain 
 Edgerton is stationed there I shall get it to him with 
 certainty." 
 
 "But where are you going?" Katherine demanded 
 quickly. 
 
 "To Les Buissons, of course. My daughter needs 
 me. . . . Besides, it is my home and my heart has been 
 heavy with fears for it. I shall go to-night." She nod- 
 ded her head slowly, with the air of a Sibyl confirming a 
 decision. 
 
 "But the permits the passes ?" 
 
 "There is a train to-night," said madame, and Kath- 
 erine saw that she was formulating a plan already ma- 
 tured. "I shall obtain a permit if I must have one in 
 truth I am but returning to my home. . . . And if 
 mademoiselle will make ready her letter " 
 
 "My letter?" Impetuously Katherine turned upon 
 192
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 her, her face shining, a great hope dancing in her eyes 
 like a blown flame. "Myself!" 
 
 And as the Frenchwoman opened her lips, "Surely if 
 I go at once I must find him! He said to write him 
 there. Anyway I would be near if he should be 
 hurt. . . . Oh, I could make my way to him. Dear 
 Madame Bonnet, you get me a permit, if I must have it, 
 or let me just slip along with you. Help me. ... I 
 must go. ... I know I shall find him." 
 
 And then, trying to speak more calmly and reason- 
 ably, "Since they are running trains for the refugees 
 to return to their homes, surely it is not so difficult to 
 let me go on one of them?" 
 
 "It is not so easy." Madame eyed her doubtfully. 
 
 No, Katherine knew that it was not so easy. She 
 knew that newspaper correspondents were mewed up in 
 Paris, cooling their heels in much-to-be-regretted but 
 unavoidable delays ; she knew that when their military 
 passes were at last made out many started for the front 
 in their expensively acquired motors only to meet with 
 strange difficulties over papers, with polite deten- 
 tions. . . . No, it was not so easy. France was not 
 baring her defenses and her stories for every writer 
 to rush to print. The censorship was unimaginably 
 strict. 
 
 And in a country constantly betrayed by spies, with 
 treachery slipping through every avenue of life, the 
 mere presence of a foreigner in an unwonted place was 
 suspicious in itself. Many of the Americans who still 
 remained in Paris, and even English visitors, were sub- 
 jected to constant surveillance, and she herself had often 
 
 193
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 been made aware that her simple days were not un- 
 noticed. 
 
 Once madame humorously reported to her a contro- 
 versy between herself and a questioning agent. 
 
 "I told him," madame had reported, "that you were 
 betrothed to an English captain at the front, and the 
 wretch replied that any German would betroth herself to 
 any number of captains to obtain a shred of informa- 
 tion. . . . But I took him down your letter from home, 
 telling of the money coming for the refugees," madame 
 concluded triumphantly, "and that settled his imagina- 
 tion. . . . The good God knows they must have a little 
 reason in their suspicions." 
 
 Reflecting upon this vanished letter from her desk, 
 Katherine perceived that life in France now must be an 
 open book. But in no way had she been annoyed. Per- 
 haps Madame Bonnet's allegiance, perhaps the friend- 
 ship of Robert MacNare had removed her from suspi- 
 cion. 
 
 Now she gave no thought to the difficulties, the pos- 
 sible dangers. She was on fire with the knowledge that 
 the fortunes of war had brought Edgerton to Les Buis- 
 sons, of all dear places, and that he was actually within 
 reach. If it were humanly possible she was going to 
 him. 
 
 And so she stormed Madame Bonnet's sympathies and 
 affections, and that good woman surrendered, not at 
 discretion, but with an enthusiasm that entered whole- 
 heartedly into the plan. 
 
 "But you may have to be my cousin," she declared, 
 eyeing Katherine with an air of humorous misgiving. 
 
 194
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "My cousin, whose grandfather went to America. . . . 
 I had such cousins or my mother did. We have lost 
 track of them. . . . But if you are to come with me put 
 on your hat no, not that one, you are too chic, child, 
 and come and say nothing. We shall see what we shall 
 see."
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 IT was not humanly possible that everyone in that 
 station had passes ! Katherine eyed the throng 
 with hopeful reassurance, as she edged her way 
 through it after Madame Bonnet's bulky person. Her 
 American passport, and papers of identification were 
 tucked safely away within her blouse, in case of some 
 serious difficulty arising, but for the present she trusted 
 wholly to madame's protection. 
 
 And it had proved as simple as addition. It had been 
 merely a matter of getting to the station, of finding 
 when a train left for Les Buissons, of buying the tickets 
 and waiting until the train actually left. 
 
 The pair of them were an unnoticed part of that 
 jostling crowd of refugees, returning to the homes 
 which they had left through the fear or the fact of Ger- 
 man occupation, vigorous women clutching babies and 
 bundles and birdcages, middle-aged men in peasant 
 smocks, some of them, some of them in their Sunday 
 best, by way of carrying it, and girls and boys with 
 arms piled with indiscriminate household goods, most 
 of their faces wreathed in smiles at this return to their 
 acres. 
 
 196
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 But there were some who were going back to villages 
 through which the Germans had actually passed, once 
 in the rush of their advance and once in the bitterness 
 of their retreat, and these were troubled, and apprehen- 
 sive of what might lie before them. Here the women 
 talked of their homes and household supplies and the 
 men and boys of the crops and the hayricks. 
 
 Into a train already crammed beyond all hope of com- 
 fort, Katherine followed Madame Bonnet, and found) 
 wedged places among thirteen others in a compartment 
 intended for eight. Nor was their number limited to the 
 two-legged. One little youngster, in an incredibly dirty 
 dress, sat at her grandmother's feet, repeatedly envelop- 
 ing a restless kid in a stout shawl which was also 
 wrapped about her own head, so that the child's head 
 kept bobbing like a mandarin's with the little kid's 
 restless efforts to escape. 
 
 An infirmiere major and her five nurses, one of the 
 many flying corps sent out by the Union des Femmes 
 de France, were in the compartment, and Katherine 
 watched the clear-eyed women in their neat uniforms 
 and official cloaks with eyes of devoted respect. She 
 wished that she could go as they were going to bring 
 healing to those wounded men. Often she had thought 
 of volunteering, trusting to her quickness in the courses 
 of instruction, already undertaken, added to the expe- 
 rience she was gaining in assisting the nurses in Mac- 
 Nare's tiny hospital, but the fear of being under orders 
 and away from communication and the chance of word 
 from Jeffrey had held her back. And there had been 
 plenty for her to do in unofficial ways. Now she thought 
 
 197
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 that if the war lasted, and Jeffrey wished her to, she 
 would try to get taken on by the Red Cross if only 
 to scrub floors and wash clothes until she could take 
 responsibility. And washing and making clean were no 
 small part of nursing anyway ! 
 
 She would have liked to talk with the nurses, in es- 
 pecial with one slender woman whose eyes had met hers 
 in a friendly way, but she shrank from drawing official 
 attention to herself and devoted herself to occupying as 
 little space as possible in order to give them more for 
 their rest. Most of the time she stood out in the 
 crowded corridor, leaning against the barred glass win- 
 dow, looking into the darkening night. As long as it 
 was light she could see bands of refugees returning to 
 the places from which the threat of invasion seemed 
 averted, many more by far than those who had come to 
 Paris by train, a broken procession of people driving 
 goats and sheep and cows and carrying hens and geese 
 and household pets among their other bundles. Some- 
 times a cart would be so loaded that a man would be 
 glimpsed tugging away with the ox or decrepit horse. 
 These people seemed going north, to the villages be- 
 yond Les Buissons, where the Germans had actually 
 penetrated. They were marching now with hope and 
 courage, vastly different from the despair which sent 
 them streaming. 
 
 It grew dusk and the October haze veiled the land- 
 scape ; then night came on rapidly. Now the train was 
 rumbling through a darkness punctuated by occasional 
 brief flares of bonfires against which men's figures were 
 silhouetted. 
 
 198
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 <J The soldiers are roasting thy cow," one boy said 
 roguishly to a neighbor as they passed such a fire just 
 before the village which was their destination. 
 
 The train was stopping frequently, with racking 
 jerks, and a guard would often put his head in the 
 door, eyeing the occupants, but a glimpse of the nurses 
 seemed to allay all suspicion. And when at last, after 
 delays interminable to Katherine's eager impatience, 
 they came to Les Buissons, now the end of the railroad, 
 for on the German's advance the tracks beyond had 
 been torn up, and the nurses gathered their satchels, 
 Katherine knew a mingled motive in the quickness with 
 which she volunteered to carry the bag of the little 
 slender lady who had so roused her interest. 
 
 But she did not need to attach herself to the gray- 
 cloaked group to avoid suspicion, for the very respon- 
 sible young soldier who was peering determinedly at 
 each arrival with the manner of one upon whose thor- 
 oughness empires rested and thrones balanced proved 
 well known to Madame Bonnet and she literally fell 
 upon him with a storm of questions. A few moments 
 later, leaving the platform, she was venting her disgust 
 to Katherine. 
 
 "As if his red breeches must make him uncivil! . . . 
 I, that shook the breath of life into his lungs when he 
 was coughing his way out of this world ere he had been 
 a minute in it! ... I, that nursed his mother! . . . 
 Not to be able to answer my questions ! He might have 
 told me about Marie." 
 
 Still grumbling at the village boy's importance she 
 hurried forward into the town square where the embers 
 
 199
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 of a fire were glowing on the cobblestones, surrounded 
 by half a hundred dark, sprawling figures. 
 
 "They will get a bomb dropped on them for their 
 comfort," grumbled madame, still- ruffled. "But I sup- 
 pose they would rather ruin the town than endure chil- 
 blains." 
 
 A few lights flickered in the windows of the inn and 
 in the small shops where soldiers were quartered, and 
 from some open windows a sound of voices and young 
 laughter drifted down. Horses were stabled all about, 
 and the reek of sweaty skins and leather, the unwashed 
 odors of battling men, poured to them across the little 
 square, but faintly purified by the acrid smell of the 
 burnt wood and autumn leaves. 
 
 Dull and muffled, like thunder on the horizon, there 
 was sounding the rumble of far-away guns in some 
 rhythmic artillery duel of the night. 
 
 From one of the soldiers in the square, a young 
 man of the neighborhood, the two women found that 
 the firing line was far beyond the town, and that these 
 soldiers had been sent back for a snatch at rest after 
 their long hardships.. They would be sent forward 
 again at any moment if the enemy attacked, but there 
 was hope of reinforcements from the south. Yes, the 
 English were there somewhere out beyond the town, 
 but where the young fellow could not say. They had 
 better see the officers and the mayor. Certainly they 
 would not be allowed to move near the actual line of 
 battle without permits and papers. 
 
 "We will go to my home," said madame, a little 
 indignant at this red tape on her native heath. 
 
 200
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 But the soldier was not sure whether she would get 
 there. There would be sentries. He had an idea that 
 the second line of trenches, for a possible retreat, ran 
 somewhere near the Bonnet place, and his advice to 
 these two women who had the bad sense to leave Paris 
 in such times was to find the mayor or the proper offi- 
 cials. 
 
 He was asleep and snoring before madame could 
 make up her mind as to whether it would be best to 
 take the advice or not. 
 
 However the mayor was not inaccessible. He was a 
 second cousin of madame's upon her mother's side, and 
 a big, brawny, white-haired giant of a man. They 
 found him at the new inn, arranging for the temporary 
 accommodation of the corps of nurses and upon ma- 
 dame's appearance he welcomed her delightedly, and re- 
 assured her as to Jean's safety and Marie's. And upon 
 being informed of Katherine's desire to discover the lo- 
 cation of the th Guards, he led them promptly, pro- 
 testing that it was no difficulty, that his night was not 
 for sleep but for his village, to a room where the 
 French officers could direct them. 
 
 And Katherine found herself in a tiny room thick 
 with tobacco loke, confronting four unknown young 
 Frenchmen who had risen from a table of cards, while 
 Madame Bonnet poured out not only an appeal for in- 
 formation but an explicit statement of the young Eng- 
 lish captain's engagement and the venerable mayor ut- 
 tered continuous assurances as to madame's utter loy- 
 alty and reliability. They were amused but sympa- 
 thetic, those four young men, and eyeing the American 
 
 201
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 girl's embarrassed color and eager eyes they proceeded 
 to felicitate the unknown Captain. The English had 
 been in the town, they told her, but now they occupied 
 the edge of woods just beyond it, and the th Guards, 
 for whom she was inquiring, were stationed in the old 
 chateau to the north. 
 
 "Then if I sent a messenger ?" Katherine began, 
 feeling her own affairs very small indeed in the midst of 
 this war's concerns, but resolved just as stubbornly 
 upon a glimpse of Jeffrey. 
 
 One of the unshaven young men made her a merry 
 bow and tapped himself upon the chest. 
 
 "I, myself, will use the legs of wire for you," he de- 
 clared. "Mademoiselle must not forget the invention of 
 the telephone although now it is denied to all but the 
 military." Taking her name and her address at the 
 farm and the Captain's name and company he bade her 
 rest assured that the Englishman would receive a mes- 
 sage and would come to her if the confounded Boches 
 did not attack again. 
 
 "They give us no rest, those fellows !" he declared 
 cheerily. 
 
 "Monsieur '1'Officier should take it when he can," 
 madame observed maternally. 
 
 The young fellow smiled at her with that touch of 
 charming democracy which makes the French the most 
 fraternal of aristocrats. 
 
 "When life k so short !" he said gayly. "One 
 must laugh when one can." Then as if that called too 
 much attention to the real aspect of affairs he observed 
 that doubtless a divine destiny had intended him to 
 
 202
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 await their arrival and he gave them the password, 
 without which they could not have passed the sentry on 
 the way to the farm, and waved away their volume of 
 united thanks. 
 
 So, taking leave of the friendly officers and the kindly 
 mayor, the two women set out, trudging through the 
 darkness along the old highway to the farm, where an 
 amazed Marie, with a neighbor woman for company 
 and possible aid, welcomed them with surprised and 
 touching joy, overlaid with anxiety. 
 
 "Thou shouldst not have come not when the Ger- 
 mans are so near. Thou dost not know what happened 
 at Armande where they stayed for two days. And " 
 
 "It was my home before it was thine," returned ma- 
 dame tranquilly, "and these many days I have wished 
 myself within it. ... If the Germans come an old 
 woman is better for safety than a young one, but they 
 are not coming this way again. We shall see no more 
 of their faces. . . . Moreover Jean is my son as well 
 as thy husband and it is in my heart to behold him again 
 while he is near. . . . Also I love thee and thou needest 
 me. . . . Did they eat all the pigs? And what of the 
 cows ?" 
 
 That night Katherine lay again in the little upstairs 
 room which brought back to her so vividly the hours of 
 her betrothal night. It seemed to her to be years ago, 
 and she remembered the beauty of that June night and 
 the radiant happiness of her heart as touching frag- 
 ments of some old dream. . . . And then again it was 
 the dream which was real and this harassed life with 
 14 203
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 its knife-edge of uncertainty seemed the unreal dream. 
 And most unreal of all to be in this soldier-invested 
 countryside, listening to the steady roar of distant 
 guns and straining her ears for the sound of hoofs upon 
 the road. 
 
 She told herself that it was impossible that he could 
 come so soon. He was distant at the chateau; he had 
 orders to fulfill, undoubtedly, or he was taking a much- 
 needed sleep. He might not be able to see her all the 
 next day. . . . She resolved to set out upon that 
 chateau road as soon as it was light, risking the sen- 
 tries and detention. . . . She must get to him ; he could 
 not come to her. Yet, though common-sense reasoned 
 thus and she acceded she did not sleep and she did not 
 wholly undress, but lay there upon the bed, her case- 
 ment windows wide to the cool air, her senses quickened 
 to all the noises of the night. 
 
 When after midnight she heard the clatter of hoofs 
 drawing nearer and nearer just as some deep unrea- 
 soning presentiment in her had told her that she would 
 she would not admit to herself that it was Jeffrey, 
 withholding her heart from the joy of a hope whose re- 
 versal would betray it too utterly. . . . Not even when 
 the hoofs turned into the farm road, when they slack- 
 ened at the gate, would she say more than, "He has sent 
 a letter a messenger." 
 
 But kneeling at her window, searching the shadowy 
 gloom for the horseman, she called, "Jeffrey?" 
 
 And the call came back, clear and near, ringing with 
 gladness, "Katherine !" 
 
 But it was not real, no, not even when she was down 
 204-
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 the stairs and out the door and gripped in his eager 
 arms. It was a dream, a wonderful dream, from which 
 she would surely waken. . . . But, Oh, the strength of 
 those arms about her again after the weeks of fear, the 
 delight of his kisses and his dear cheek again on hers ! 
 
 Then she held him off to look at him through the 
 faint starlight. . . . He was thinner and older and 
 grimmer and his skin was a red-brown except where the 
 freshly shaven cheeks told of a once-protecting beard. 
 There was a flesh-wound healing across his left cheek- 
 bone which her fingers touched with light, exploring 
 pity. 
 
 "Sound as a nut," he declared to her quick rush of 
 anxious question, "and tough as as a bullet, darling! 
 . . . But, sweetheart, is it really you?" 
 
 He held her close as if he would never let her go, and 
 her arms reached and clung about his neck. In that 
 long kiss of young love their spirits seemed to breathe 
 and mingle. . . . She knew a speechless happiness that 
 was beyond all remembrance of the past, beyond all 
 dread of the future. 
 
 But through his eager gladness his anxiety cut 
 quickly. 
 
 "How did you come? They should not have let you. 
 The Germans are so near. . . . They have been holding 
 their own too well and stiffening the line we're afraid 
 of another attack. You must get away at once, dear, at 
 once !" 
 
 "The nurses are in town I can stay and help them," 
 eho protested, "and to be near you 
 
 "Near me this moment only to-morrow I may be 
 205
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 twenty miles away. This is our first bit of rest and it 
 won't be long it's just drawing breath to get on with. 
 . . . You don't know what this is like. You must get 
 out of it. I couldn't bear to think of you as near." 
 
 Over his young face she saw fresh-graved lines that 
 aged his merry youth. "You don't know what we've 
 seen," he said fiercely, "up there in Belgium. . . . 
 The women the civilians Oh, there are no words for 
 that hell. . . . You go back. I won't have you any- 
 where near. For one decent man there are a hundred 
 savages. I've seen things that that 
 
 He broke off, breathing heavily. "But, by God, Bel- 
 gium won't be their slaughter-house forever ! We're in 
 this to the finish." 
 
 "Oh, Jeffrey, you'll be careful?" 
 
 The futility of that womanish plea was painfully clear 
 to her even as she cried it. 
 
 Wryly he smiled and answered lightly, "You must tell 
 that to the Boches, dear! Their 'Jack Johnsons' are 
 so deuced promiscuous !" 
 
 Then his voice grew earnest and reassuring. "You 
 mustn't worry, Katherine girl. With your love to guard 
 me there cannot anything happen ! Somehow I'm sure. 
 . . . You don't know how I've thought of you even 
 through the fight back there. And I thought of all 
 our plans for my leave " 
 
 "If I could only have had a line," she whispered. 
 "You don't know what it was that waiting." 
 
 "I did write didn't a thing reach you? I scrawled 
 twice one note I sent back after Mons by a stretcher- 
 bearer who was going to a base-hospital, I remember. 
 
 206
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 Poor chap must have lost it or been hit. But even if 
 you don't hear you're not to worry. These aren't good 
 postage days." 
 
 "Worry !" she said chokingly, her arms tightening. 
 
 "I'll get through, all right," he told her, looking 
 down into her upturned face and stroking back the 
 fluttering hair from her brow. "You'll see, darling! 
 And all our dreams will come true for us every one." 
 
 "You're all my life," she whispered. 
 
 "And you mine." 
 
 All too swiftly the minutes passed, sometimes in mur- 
 mured speech, oftener in silence. The pain of parting 
 pressed quickly upon the gladness of meeting, and at 
 last, like a knife in her heart, came his reluctant words. 
 It did not seem that he had been there any time, and yet 
 the sky was lightening to that pale gauzy gray in which 
 stars fitfully withdraw. 
 
 "I must go," he said at last, his arms holding her close 
 for one last clasp. 
 
 She raised a tear-wet face. She did not know that 
 she had been crying, so quietly those tears had over- 
 flowed. A moment more they had together while he 
 tugged at a saddle-strap and she stroked the muzzle 
 of his friendly horse, then a last kiss and he was in the 
 (saddle and off, and she was standing in the road for her 
 heart to catch and hold the last impression of the shad- 
 owy, galloping figure. 
 
 "My dear love," she was saying chokingly to herself. 
 "My dear, dear love." 
 
 How loud those guns were sounding ! Roaring, roar- 
 ing. . . . 
 
 207
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 SHE seemed scarcely to have fallen asleep before 
 she awoke to a world of noise. The air was racked 
 with dull, throbbing detonations that came at 
 rhythmic intervals, and shaken with sudden, irregular, 
 sharper shocks. 
 
 The guns were closer. She was not afraid for her- 
 self; she did not know enough to be afraid, but she 
 thought of Jeffrey and wondered fearfully if this meant 
 another battle that he must be in, and thought how 
 weary he had looked and how much sleep she had caused 
 him to lose. 
 
 The sky was light but day had not yet come and 
 everything stood defined in the clear, shadowless dis- 
 tinctness of before-dawn. She could see the dewdrops 
 brimming on the trees and the blades of grass. The 
 world before her window was empty of any sight more 
 hostile than a white rabbit taking an early nibble, with 
 a wary eye out for the family cat. 
 
 She dressed and hurried downstairs to find the Bon- 
 nets already about, with a breakfast prepared. The 
 neighbor woman had gone over the fields to her own 
 place, much nearer the town, but the Bonnets were not 
 
 208
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 prepared to move yet for the mere sound of guns. Yet 
 their nerves were beginning to jump at the constant 
 shocks and they ate hurriedly, going often to the door 
 to look out. 
 
 "They are closer closer," said madame anxiously. 
 
 As the three stood clustered in the low doorway there 
 came a crack and a whipping tongue of beautiful blue 
 smoke and a tree in the roadside lashed its branches 
 frantically in the hurricane breath. 
 
 "Oh, maman, it is here !" 
 
 "Be quiet, Marie. We will descend to the cellar, if 
 necessary. Eh, but our men are coming back look 
 what they are about." 
 
 Down the white road toward them a group of men 
 came galloping, bringing a small gun. Off the road they 
 turned, hurrying behind the masking row of trees, and 
 wheeled the gun into position. One gunner turned and 
 seeing the women shouted a hoarse warning, his teeth, 
 flashing white in his blackened face. 
 
 "Get back to town they are attacking!" Then he 
 whirled to his work. 
 
 Katherine watched them curiously. This man was 
 sighting his barrel, swinging it back and forth to make 
 sure of its smoothness, while another placed in readiness 
 the belts of cartridges on which the automatic fed. An- 
 other, his glasses raised, was watching some spot for a 
 signal. He raised his hand. 
 
 She watched for the smoke. None nothing but a, 
 little flicker of red like the dart of a garter snake's 
 tongue, and the thir-r-r, thir-r-r, of the rapid spinning 
 of the tape through the cylinder. . . . Somewhere, miles 
 
 209
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 away, over the hill on an unseen enemy those bullets 
 were raining. 
 
 The man with the glasses was looking again, then he 
 turned to the gunners with a rapid transmission of the 
 signals for correcting the range and the man adjusted 
 the elevation. Again the raised hand the rapid whirl- 
 ing of the cartridge belt. 
 
 It did not seem to her like a gun. It did not seem to 
 her like war this little group of men behind trees, 
 the distant directions, the unseen enemy. She wondered 
 where the rest of the French were. 
 
 One of the artillerymen came running up to fill their 
 canteens. His hands were black and greasy like pol- 
 ished ebony and Katherine stared as she hurried to wait 
 upon him. 
 
 "You must go," he repeated. "They are getting the 
 range your farm will go like that!" He snapped 
 the black fingers. 
 
 "It is my home," said madame, "and there is always 
 the cellar." 
 
 "A bomb may dig you a bigger one," he retorted. 
 "The way to the village will soon be unsafe. . . . Must 
 it take a bayonet to prod you?" 
 
 "No no let us stay," Marie was begging. "I can- 
 not leave I am not well enough for that walk." 
 
 "You will never be any better than now," returned 
 madame, but her expression was dubious. Neither 
 woman could bear to leave the home and its possessions. 
 
 Suddenly from the fields on their left came a crackle 
 of rifles like a rattle of drums. Katherine ran out the 
 door to look, and high overhead she caught a dark 
 
 210
 
 shadow against the cloudy sky. An aeroplane of the 
 enemy had drawn the fire of a masked battery. The 
 next minute, it seemed to her, something dropped into 
 those fields. She saw a flash of flame and a blur of dark 
 fragments rising in the air then another flame and 
 flash. The smoke was black, heavy. 
 
 The crackle of bullets was steady, now, slitting the 
 air, and suddenly the girl was conscious of a new sound, 
 a whiz and hum like a swarm of bees high in the air 
 a whistle a wish-sh 
 
 Bullets were coming now as well as going. The enemy 
 there to the left was not far away. She thought of 
 Jeffrey with his men at the chateau and wondered what 
 part they were taking in this. 
 
 An explosion that made her head jerk as if it would 
 snap off her neck and the wind in her face of a shrap- 
 nel shell that struck six hundred yards away. . . . And 
 beyond that the blue clouds of other shrapnel, leaping 
 out of nothing. . . . And she remembered that there 
 are two hundred and fifty bullets in a shrapnel case and 
 they carry forward and kill everything for twenty yards 
 ahead and ten yards at the side. 
 
 She had read this in a Paris paper some weeks before 
 and she now saw the paper distinctly before her vision, 
 the unwavering print with its careful numerals. 
 
 She tried to remember what she had read about bul- 
 lets. There was something about a short hum and a 
 long hum one meant that the bullet was far and the 
 other one near, but here the facts eluded her. She could 
 not bring the phrases to mind. It seemed to her terri- 
 bly important about those long and short sounds. 
 
 211
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "I should have remembered that," she said frowningly. 
 
 She had a tense, high-strung feeling of excitement. 
 "This is actually under fire," she thought, and recalled 
 the words of the youth at the Express Office that mobili- 
 zation day in Paris, "Why, I wouldn't have missed it 
 for anything. This is an experience!" 
 
 She was back in the shelter of the doorway now with 
 no memory at all of her flying trip to it, and down the 
 road a streak of artillerymen were galloping, bringing 
 more guns, and over to the right, across the fields, zig- 
 zagged a line of moving objects like ants, except that 
 they flashed red in the rising sun. 
 
 "Oh, those trousers !" she heard herself saying. 
 
 Within the house Madame Bonnet was moving briskly, 
 making hurried bundles. 
 
 "Too late is never too well," she uttered sententiously. 
 "Take this, Marie, that is enough for thee. Mademoi- 
 selle, will you put these in your case? And these? For 
 myself, you see " 
 
 For herself she had an enormous bundle of linens and 
 household goods swelling out a sheet which she cumber- 
 somely strapped to her shoulders as she marshaled 
 them to the door. 
 
 "The stable is on fire," she remarked calmly. "It 
 came when that monster noise broke the glass. Well 
 there are no beasts left to save. That man told the 
 truth. We must go before it is too dangerous. . . . 
 It is no time for tears, Marie. The farm may stand. 
 But we must make sure of what we can and of our- 
 selves." 
 
 She was a figure of dignity, even with that huge 
 212
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 bundle upon her shoulders, as she stood at the threshold 
 of her old home, taking what might be her last look upon 
 it. Her eyes were bright and tearless, and her deep- 
 lined features unrevealing. Only the breath tearing its 
 way painfully through her restricted throat betrayed 
 her. 
 
 "Maman, the cat!" cried Marie pitifully. 
 
 "I'll take him in a pillow case," Katherine volun- 
 teered. 
 
 Madame considered. "He would run from the village 
 back here. No, he will hide from the noise and hunt 
 mice till we come again. Adieu, poor beast. . . . On 
 our way." 
 
 The little group set out into a world on which a pale 
 dun sun was rising, a world shaken and racked with in- 
 human, ear-splitting noises. As they took the path 
 on one side of the road Katherine glanced back, beyond 
 the farm to the wooded slopes of a hill her hill and 
 Jeffrey's. That Sunday there had been the last of 
 June. . . . And now it was early October, and on the 
 hill the trees were shedding their dry and yellow leaves. 
 . . . But what changes in their lives ! Jeffrey in arms 
 facing the enemy and she, trudging along the path 
 with the French refugees . . . 
 
 For a minute the tenacity of the past order made the 
 present remote and unreal. Then a wave of fear 
 brought the reality home again to her with secret panic. 
 Thurish-h thurish-h thureesh a shell went scream- 
 ing overhead. She did not see where it struck ; she did 
 not see that it struck anything, but her nerves started 
 from the stunned acquiescence of the dav and began to 
 
 213
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 dance. The enemy were getting the range ; it was not 
 the masked infantry that drew this fire; it was these 
 hidden guns, this advancing column of men. . . . 
 
 Thurish-h thurish-h thureesh. Another and an- 
 other. 
 
 She gripped Marie's arm tightly, urging her to haste. 
 After them Madame Bonnet trudged in hard-breathing 
 silence. Katherine's throat was dry ; she felt weak and 
 shaky. She wanted to run. The whine of a spent bul- 
 let in her ear made her dodge in futile panic. She 
 thought, "Any moment any moment 
 
 For a time those seemed the only words of her con- 
 sciousness, then she began to wrangle angrily with her 
 fright. "What do the men do in the fields? They face 
 this they aren't all killed !" But a voice in her an- 
 swered that these men were sustained by the heat of bat- 
 tle and the intense demand upon their activities ; they 
 were not trudging along a muddy road with two foolish 
 women who had so weighted themselves with household 
 goods that they resembled a rummage sale ! She felt an 
 insane desire to laugh as she remembered that she had 
 offered to lug the cat. 
 
 In her inmost soul she would have been glad to take 
 her heels and race down that road, but shame restrained 
 her, and on she marched in a cold and horrid fright. 
 When she spoke, which she did encouragingly to Marie, 
 she was surprised at the strength and calm of her own 
 voice. It sounded as usual. She seemed to be acting as 
 usual. 
 
 She had no memory of that road. It stretched on and 
 on, forever and forever. Sometimes they abandoned it 
 
 214
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 to advancing troops, and took to the fields. Vaguely 
 she remembered a trench, hastily dug, veiled with 
 branches from the enemy's observations from above, be- 
 ing fortified with guns. She remembered smoke that 
 curled out of a distant row of trees and minute flashes 
 of red light. . . . Her head and neck were aching from 
 their spasmodic jerks and she had bitten her cheeks and 
 tongue in the sudden crashes of guns. She began to 
 chew on a piece of her handkerchief as she had seen men 
 chew on cigars. 
 
 And then they had crossed the little stream and gained 
 the village and a blessed sense of haven reached envel- 
 oped her. The gray walls looked safe and sheltering, 
 and no shells were dropping there as yet. 
 
 Madame Bonnet took refuge with some friends in 
 their little shop upon the main street. Here no one 
 knew any more than the Bonnets what was happening 
 for all that could be sure was that the Germans were 
 suddenly advancing and the French and English were 
 out there to hold them off. There was talk of rein- 
 forcements that were expected. 
 
 "It was like this before but they did not come," a 
 woman assured madame. 
 
 From the door Katherine could look out into the 
 square where she had seen those sleeping soldiers last 
 night about their fire. The cobblestones looked very 
 hard. They must have been tired to sleep ! From out 
 the church's wide doors the village priest came into the 
 square to help bring in the bedding for the hospital im- 
 provised there, and she saw the nurses appear at inter- 
 vals. Once she went forward and spoke to the slender 
 
 215
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 one whose satchel she had carried, offering to help, but 
 aid was not yet needed, the nurse told her and Katherine 
 returned to the villagers. 
 
 It was a day of interminable hours. At first the 
 women talked bravely and hopefully. Les Buissons had 
 been saved before when all the countryside had been 
 overrun ; and it would be saved again, for their men 
 would hold the woods and the protecting loop of river. 
 Nothing in it had yet been hurt, although the shells be- 
 gan to drop into the village. A small fire or two, or a 
 roof did not matter. The shells would stop. So they 
 encouraged one another. 
 
 Then subtly, stealthily, the secret reaction set in. It 
 was hard to tell just when it first betrayed itself, in the 
 louder assumptions of confidence and the repetitions of 
 good hope. Perhaps it came with the first sight of the 
 men returning from the front, limping, dragging them- 
 selves painfully, or carried in stretchers. The anxiety 
 was acute for the village men were in the defending com- 
 pany in the trenches, and the women ran out from door- 
 ways to greet the wounded and when the rattle of the 
 gray ambulance motor sounded they swarmed after it 
 to peer in the open back for a familiar form among those 
 stretched in the shelf-like bunks. 
 
 Sometimes the onlookers turned silently away; some- 
 times there would ring out a cry of "Jean !" or 
 "Jacques !" and the women would follow after the motor 
 to learn the danger of the wound. At times they did not 
 need to ask a leg gone or an arm wrenched off at the 
 socket enlightened at first glance. 
 
 With the wounded came the trickle of individual news. 
 216
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 The Boches were coming on incessantly ; they were 
 charging here ; their guns were hammering there. They 
 had crossed the distant river in the face of deadly fire, 
 and charged the trenches with a rain of hand grenades 
 and liquid fire so terrible that all men in one trench 
 were burned to death. A drop blinded. ... It did no 
 good to kill those Germans ; for every company that 
 went down there were two to follow. They thought noth- 
 ing of men. They had them to throw away like grains 
 of sand. 
 
 So the stories came, brought by those bloodied, dust- 
 caked lips. 
 
 The shells were falling now with thundering regu- 
 larity. One fell upon the roof of the new inn and there 
 was no more inn, only a crumble of debris under which 
 the bodies of the proprietor and his wife and children 
 were pinned. His old sisters began to dig frantically 
 among the bricks, crying aloud and listening for muffled 
 words. 
 
 People were staring at each other with frightened 
 eyes. Still they talked hopefully. Their men were out 
 there; they would soon stop this. But the shells fell 
 thicker and thicker and the buildings shook with the 
 deafening roar and the window glass shivered and 
 crashed and still the gray rumbling motors brought in 
 the wounded from the front. 
 
 Now the hospital was being moved. The shells 
 seemed to have concentrated upon the church for one- 
 half the roof was gone and many of the wounded killed. 
 Hastily the motors rushed their shattered freight far- 
 ther from the danger zone and carts and stretcher- 
 
 217 

 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 bearers followed, bringing what they could. One sur- 
 geon's motor made the trip again and again, till the 
 last man was out. 
 
 Later a cart came slowly down the road from the fir- 
 ing line, loaded with huddled men, with others clinging 
 to the sides and back painfully dragging themselves 
 along. In the village square the priest sorrowfully 
 pointed down the road in the direction the hospital had 
 taken and the cart creaked slowly on, its axles complain- 
 ing, but not a groan coming from its occupants, while 
 many of the hangers-on gave up and followed the priest 
 into the nearest house for what care they could get. 
 
 It had been raining for some hours and though the 
 heaviest downpour had ceased the air was a dreary driz- 
 zle of rain. 
 
 On and on went the terrible pounding of the guns, 
 but the shells did not seem to be directed against the 
 village but were bursting just ahead where the trenches 
 were and the guns. Katherine ceased to jump and 
 quiver at each shock and roar ; she felt a stunned and 
 heavy feeling of insensibility. There was no pretense 
 of encouraging talk among the people now ; they waited 
 in stolid silence, dumb with apprehension and forebod- 
 ing that grew keener from moment to moment. Their 
 men were losing. They felt it, they knew it, and they 
 waited, speechlessly, for the event. 
 
 The order to fall back had been given and back 
 through the streets came the men at a forced march, 
 dogged and silent. 
 
 The gazing women knew then and their hearts sank. 
 A few ran out into the road and followed the soldiers. 
 
 218
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 Katherine ran out, too, to bring food to the stragglers 
 and question them, but they knew nothing except of 
 their own pocket of the fight. They were ordered to 
 fall back that was all. The guns and the cavalry 
 would hold off the enemy as long as possible. But if 
 
 j only they had been allowed to go forward and 
 
 !/ charge ! 
 
 The rain was ceasing, but the sky was still heavily 
 clouded, dull and dark, and through the dusk that was 
 like the dusk of twilight the men marched, a long and 
 weary stream, wet and cold, disheartened by their orders, 
 sick at the outcome of events. Retreat, even a strategic 
 retreat, was bitterness. And there was too intense a 
 familiarity in this order to fall back. They had only 
 begun to advance. Now their progress appeared unre- 
 liable and transient. Retreat was the only substantial 
 and enduring thing in a world of disaster. 
 
 So they marched, hurrying, haphazard, lines and lines 
 of men, and out in front the guns spoke fiercely and the 
 distant racket of rifles rang. Then for a time the streets 
 were empty and the people huddled in the doorways, 
 munching bread and looking out and waiting, till a fresh 
 
 ' onslaught of shells drove them within again. Children 
 began to cry with nervousness at the incessant noise, 
 and anxious mothers, huddling in the basements, tried 
 to quiet them and told them frightening tales of how 
 still they must be if the Boches came, with never a 
 sound to betray their hiding-places ! 
 
 Katherine clung to the doorway, staring out, and 
 whatever spark of hope she still cherished went cold at 
 the sight of the retreating guns. They were brought 
 15 219
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 back at a gallop, the men lishing the horses through 
 the stony streets. Gun after gun rattled past and still 
 Katherine waited, her heart pounding with suspense 
 and fear. Surely Jeffrey's men must come this way! 
 Or were they circling about on distant roads, lined for 
 a desperate last stand ? 
 
 A sudden thought took her across the square to the 
 church. There was a stairway to the bells, and a tiny 
 place to look out. Strange she had not thought of it 
 before! She sped through the empty building where 
 abandoned bedding and the smell of ether told the story 
 of its recent occupancy, and hurried up the old stair, 
 straining her eyes down the wide roadway. 
 
 The shells had stopped. The world seemed suddenly 
 strangely quiet and still. 
 
 It was dark down there and the trees threw such 
 shadows. . . . But out there, no, those were not shadows 
 in the road, but moving men that road was all men. 
 . . . And there, beyond, across the fields those creep- 
 ing lines those were men, too. . . . Dim, green-gray, 
 indistinguishable from the dusk, except for their move- 
 ment, they were coming the Germans. 
 
 Her hands turned cold. Her heart beat as if it would 
 burst her side. She turned to warn the people below 
 but her eyes still clung to those dim, swarming fields. 
 
 And then, just outside the village, at the road's angle 
 with the little stream, she saw another line of moving 
 figures emerge from the shadows of the trees and sud- 
 denly sweep away toward the first detachment of the 
 oncoming swarm. An instant more, and a din of noise 
 was borne up to her through the air that had been so 
 
 220
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 still shouts and cries, yells and gunshots and the 
 screams of horses all mingled in a fearful babel. 
 
 She could not see ; she strained her eyes in vain. Only 
 dimness and indistinguishable confusion. What was 
 there? Was that the English cavalry, in a desperate 
 sally against the first of the enemy? Had they been in- 
 tercepted in a too-delayed retreat? ... A bugle was 
 sounding wildly. . . . And then came the clatter of 
 hoofs on cobblestones and she saw horseman after horse- 
 man dashing through the streets and many a riderless 
 horse with them. 
 
 She leaned over the rail of her balcony. There were 
 men in khaki, riding with reckless desperation. There 
 were not many of them. And then came a last group 
 that swung about in the square and swept back down 
 the street again, a reckless handful gaining a few min- 
 utes for their comrades at a terrible sacrifice. ... 
 Where was Jeffrey among them? Was he there at all? 
 She could have sworn that that figure she had glimpsed 
 on the big black was he but in the confusion her over- 
 anxious eyes might be mistaken. 
 
 Tense and rigid she waited, listening to the shock of 
 an encounter just beyond the corner, and then one horse- 
 man came tearing back through the square, and then 
 others, in twos and threes, riding for their lives, and 
 after them a molten mounted mass of men, helmets glit- 
 tering, lances striking, hoarse German cries sound- 
 ing as they bore down upon the last of the little band 
 of English who had so daringly waylaid and attacked 
 them. And behind them more Germans and more and 
 more. Like a whirlwind they swept through the square 
 
 21
 
 , THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 and on up the street, the racket of their hoofs dying 
 abruptly as the cobblestones ended. 
 
 Sick with fright she clung to the railing, then turned 
 and stumbled down the stairs and through the church 
 to the outer doors. A horror of foreboding was upon 
 her. 
 
 Even in those few minutes the scene had changed. 
 The square lay utterly silent, and motionless, deserted 
 of the wild life which had poured through it. For a 
 moment she thought it empty, except for that horse 
 writhing there horribly, and then as her eyes swept its 
 shadows she saw those dumpy figures, huddled, inert and 
 motionless where they had been flung, like sacks tossed 
 from some cart. . . . She stared at them in horror, 
 and then a limp outflung arm caught her eyes and all 
 the icy blood seemed driven back from her heart as she 
 saw that long, thin figure lying there unstirringly. 
 
 And in the very moment that she saw him, she saw 
 something else that burned the ice from her veins and 
 poured the fury of the tiger mate into her. From out 
 the shadows ahead a green-gray figure straightened 
 from one of the immovable forms. The gleam of the 
 bayonet in his hand lit up that scene for her in a flash 
 of lurid lighting. The man moved to the next figure. 
 Out the door she went on flying feet ; she caught up 
 something what she never knew, a brick, a rock, a bit 
 of gun and launched herself upon him as he stooped. 
 She seemed to crash through space, striking furiously at 
 something that went down before her. . . . She heard 
 a grunt. . . . And then she staggered up and then 
 the man rolled over and lay still. As she bent over him 
 
 222
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 his stertorous breathing was not more uneven than her 
 own. 
 
 Back to Jeff re} 7 Edgerton she flew; she flung herself 
 upon his body, not stopping to know if he were dead 
 or alive; she knelt and clutching his shoulders she 
 dragged him up on her strong young back and stag- 
 gered, reeling, to the nearest doorway. . . . 
 
 Back in the empty shop was a closed trapdoor. She 
 pounded on it and as it was not locked, she pried it up 
 and called gaspingly into the blackness, crying that 
 she had an English officer there that she must save. 
 
 "Quick, quick," she sobbed down into that darkness. 
 
 From the depths below a ladder reached out, and an 
 old man's head appeared. She flew back to Jeffrey and 
 together they bore him down into the safe gloom of 
 that cellar and closed the hatch again and hid the lad- 
 der. 
 
 Into the farthest recess of the place they dragged 
 him, where some women were huddled with their children. 
 He was breathing heavily ; now he began to moan. She 
 bathed his temples with the water the women gave, and 
 held some to his lips as his eyes opened. He drank 
 gaspingly, then his head fell back against her arm. 
 
 "It's I Katherine," she whispered. 
 
 Dazedly he accepted the miracle. For the moment it 
 seemed enough to him to comprehend that he was safe 
 with her, hidden and secret, and that for all the heavi- 
 ness and aching of his head, the fall had not cut it nor 
 broken any bones. He lay there quietly, like a child, his 
 head in her lap, his hand clasping hers in the darkness. 
 
 Beside them the old man and the women were working 
 223
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 through an aperture they had made in the wall where 
 they had dug out a little den where they might hide. 
 Now they were working the harder to make it large 
 enough for the English officer to rest in comfort and 
 the simple friendliness with which they shared their 
 hiding-place and their food and drink with two strangers 
 went to Katherine's heart. 
 
 For all the fear of those furtive moments she knew 
 a deep, fierce gladness. Jeffrey was safe and she had 
 saved him. The passion of the primitive mate beat 
 strong in her ; she crouched over his head with eyes that 
 searched the darkness for the first hint of danger. For 
 this, she felt, she had waited in Paris, she had come to 
 Les Buissons, had watched that village street. 
 
 Her man was safe and she had saved him.
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 THEY had moved into the den hollowed out be- 
 hind the wall, replacing enough bricks to leave 
 only a tiny aperture. And in this cave they 
 crouched, hour after unending hour, while over their 
 heads sounded the din and confusion of the victorious 
 army. There were shouts and lusty singing, endless 
 marching of endless feet, trampling of horses, clatter of 
 wheels, and rumble of guns. Straining their ears they 
 tried to distinguish the sounds that came down to them. 
 
 Once the trap was lifted. Through the chinks in 
 their loosely piled bricks they saw the pale light of a 
 lantern lowered into the cellar, while a voice called out 
 in German to know if there were anyone there. Behind 
 their flimsy barricade they sat motionless, the children 
 dumb, with their heads buried in their mothers' laps, 
 not a whimper betraying them. The lamp was with- 
 drawn. 
 
 "A rat in a trap," Jeffrey muttered restlessly. With 
 his returning strength came bitterness at the fate which 
 penned him here, a helpless fugitive from his enemies, 
 unable either to fight or fly. 
 
 His practical mind busied itself with the problem. 
 225
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 Give himself up never! Skulk here until starved out? 
 Make a dash for it under cover of dark and be shot? . . . 
 He put a hand to his bruised head, shaking it angrily, 
 deeply chagrined at his predicament. 
 
 For Katherine his anxiety was sharper than for him- 
 self. He begged her to hide herself, to trust no one. 
 Memories of Belgium tortured him. He could only hope 
 that the Allies would come again with those reinforce- 
 ments which had been delayed. 
 
 For long, long hours they huddled there, speaking in 
 whispers, their hands locked. . . . Everything that she 
 had ever felt for him seemed poor beside the flood-tide 
 of this feeling 
 
 At last he slept and gratefully she sat there, pillow- 
 ing his head, cramped and stiff, but flooded with the 
 ecstasy of his safety. Sometimes she, too, dozed, her 
 head drooping against the earth wall, her weariness un- 
 mindful of cramp or discomfort 
 
 From such a nap she roused with a start. The noises 
 overhead which had been quieter had broken out in 
 louder force. There was an uproar of sound, a crackle 
 of rifles, a crash of blows, of falling weights, a trampling 
 of feet. She heard human voices, shouting and yelling, 
 and the earth shook with the jarring crash as of two 
 armies coming together. 
 
 Jeffrey was alert, rigid with excitement. 
 
 "By God, they have come back it's a night attack !" 
 He scratched a match and peered at his watch. "Two 
 o'clock. . . . The boys are up there. They've taken 
 them by surprise. . . . Let me get out of this." 
 
 "Wait wait!" she implored, and in desperation she 
 226
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 urged the only plea that could stay him : "If you go up 
 and fight them now they'll think it is a civilian and if 
 they hold the village they'll burn it in revenge. Wait 
 till you are sure. You must !" 
 
 "I'll make sure but I must go, dear. . . . I'm my- 
 self, now. I must go." 
 
 The earth was shaken with the jar of feet. Up ifl 
 the darkness above them a wild fight was on. 
 
 Jeffrey was out in the cellar and searching for the 
 ladder; when he found it Katherine pressed on up after 
 him, hoping and fearing. The hatch had not been 
 replaced and they saw that the room above them was 
 dark. Cautiously they raised themselves into it, finding 
 abandoned blankets and other bedding in their way, and 
 stole to the open door. Out in the street through the 
 darkness a line of shadowy figures was racing, stopping 
 to turn and fire and then tear on again. Back of them 
 a bugle rang. 
 
 "Our call our call!" Jeffrey crouched forward, 
 his lean body strained and tense. "They're still com- 
 ing, girl, they're coming a night charge. . . . Do you 
 hear that yell? . . . The Guards are with them. . . . 
 Oh, if I had a horse, a saber ! . . . Do you hear them, 
 do you hear?" 
 
 Wild-tongued on the night, like a pack of hounds in 
 cry, came the swelling sound again, deep- throated, tri- 
 umphant, the human cry of man hunting man. Into the 
 square swept the ranks of mounted men, driving out the 
 last of those firing shadows, and as the square filled 
 there came a crackle of rifles and a rain of fire burst 
 down upon the invaders from the windows where a band 
 
 227
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 of Germans had waited in ambush. The screams of 
 horses answered, shrilling over the shouts of men, and 
 in plunging confusion the crowded ranks wheeled and 
 reared while the slaughter went on Men flung them- 
 selves from their horses and tore into the buildings while 
 fresh cavalry poured into the square and surged on 
 <after the flying Germans. 
 
 Jeffrey turned to Katherine. "Good-by, my girl, 
 good-by." 
 
 "Oh, Jeffrey, no, no, no !" It was a cry of sheerest 
 terror. Her arms clung tensely to him to hold him, 
 from that pandemonium of death. 
 
 Once more he kissed her. "Be brave, dear. I'll come 
 back to you again," and with a quick, tight clasp, a last 
 hurried kiss, he was out the door and catching at the 
 bridle of a riderless horse. . . . She heard his voice 
 ringing out in the shout for a sword and then he was 
 lost to her in the mob of men. 
 
 All that night the Allies came, pouring back through 
 the village, and by morning fresh troops were still com- 
 ing and spreading fan-like across the fields and hills, and 
 all morning the deep, shaking detonations told of the 
 greeting of the guns that awaited them out there. A 
 great battle was on. 
 
 Back to their homes crept the people, back to the 
 shell-ridden ruins that had been homes, and at dawn 
 Katherine was following them pitifully about, help- 
 ing where she could, carrying tired babies, soothing 
 little children. The sights she saw tore at her very 
 heart. 
 
 She had not seen Belgium and it seemed to her that she 
 228
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 was looking upon the deeps of desolation. The death that 
 she had seen before had been death in a casket with the 
 scent of flowers, the sound of music and all the soften- 
 ing tenderness with which love surrounds the last visible 
 moments of the body. But now she saw men dead in 
 the streets, stiff-legged, grotesque in their last agonies, 
 bloody and staring-eyed and she saw the scattered 
 remnants of what had been men the night before and 
 now were sickening horrors to be pitched into a wagon 
 and carried to a lime-filled trench. 
 
 At the end of one street the girl leaned against a 
 house, shaken with a paroxysm of nausea. 
 
 A woman passed her, searching the ruins. Suddenly 
 she ran into one debris pile and brought out some bits 
 of yellow crockery. She turned to Katherine. 
 
 "That was my jug." And then she stood silent, 
 staring. Presently she crept to the broken threshold 
 and sat down, leaning against the charred door-frame, 
 the broken pieces in her lap. 
 
 "If I could paint her so," thought Katherine, "if peo- 
 ple would only see this war !" 
 
 Later when she had seen the body of an old man, 
 strangled in his barn, his face a bloodied bruise, she 
 knew that no pictures could ever tell the story. But she 
 felt that whatever talent was hers was consecrated to the 
 one purpose of trying to tell it. 
 
 In one of the houses Marie lay very ill with her baby 
 girl. Madame Bonnet had not hidden ; she had met an 
 intruding German at the door with a statement of the 
 case and found the young man unexpectedly sympa- 
 thetic. He had driven out some roisterers below-stairs 
 
 229
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 and written a notice that here a new-born babe was not 
 to be disturbed. 
 
 "A very good young man," said Madame Bonnet. 
 "He had sense and consideration. . . . Why should 
 such people fight us, mademoiselle? Can they not be 
 busy and happy at home?" 
 
 "They have a government of Caesars," said Kath- 
 erine bitterly. 
 
 "What a thing it is to have education!" commented 
 madame. 
 
 For Katherine's narration of the events of her night 
 she had an equable acceptance. "That is what it is to 
 have presence of mind ! I hope you killed the assassin." 
 
 "He was breathing," said Katherine doubtfully. She 
 had thought that she would feel strange to know that 
 she had killed a man. To her amazement she was in- 
 different. He was a sickening vampire. She remem- 
 bered that Jeffrey had said, "I hope you didn't kill 
 him, dear," and she felt a flash of humor at the revela- 
 tion. Men were like that even in what they felt was 
 righteous carnage they wanted their women's hands 
 clean. . . . 
 
 In the church the Red Cross hospital had reestab- 
 lished itself, and men were out with stretchers and carts, 
 bringing in the wounded. Beneath a fallen stone wall 
 Katherine saw a mangled hand moving and she shouted 
 at a man she saw hurrying across the square. He came 
 quickly, a trim, spare little doctor, with thick-lensed 
 glasses, and meeting the brown eyes back of them Kath- 
 erine called him by name. 
 
 "Why, Dr. Thibault ! You took care of Robert Mac- 
 230
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 Nare's little daughter. Do you remember me the night 
 of the croup ?" 
 
 "Perfectly," he rejoined quickly, "but to find you 
 here " * 
 
 His eyes were very questioning. That haunting 
 thought of spies ! 
 
 She told him how she came, and how the night had 
 passed, while two men he called up were digging out 
 the poor buried fellow below, a German, it seemed, who 
 must have been caught by a toppling wall at the mo- 
 ment of retreat. 
 
 "Do let me help," Katherine besought, when the 
 crushed lad was taken to the hospital. "You know that 
 I can be of some help and I can follow directions. I 
 have been studying at those first-aid courses " 
 
 He remembered her steady presence of mind with the 
 child. "Come then. We are short-handed, and it may 
 be you will be of use." 
 
 She found the same nurses there that had been there 
 the day before. They had only retreated to the next 
 village, and leaving the wounded they had brought to 
 the care of other nurses there, these had come again, 
 at the first permission, to establish a field hospital as 
 near as possible to the firing line. The roof was being 
 roughly protected and clean beds had been made up 
 all over the church, and an operating-room arranged in 
 the baptistry, but as yet there was small need of that. It 
 had been a life or death struggle and there was more 
 call for men with spades and quicklime than for sur- 
 geons. 
 
 All that day Katherine saw those wagons wending 
 231
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 their slow way along the fields ; saw them halt and the 
 drivers hand down the shovels and then the stiff logs 
 of bodies; saw them begin to dig. . . . 
 
 And that was the end of them, of all that had 
 been men, the end of their eager lives, their hopes, 
 their ardors. . . . Butchered . . . hurled out of the 
 world. . . . 
 
 There was a lump in her throat that never left. But 
 she went very steadily about the work assigned to her, 
 grateful for the interest of that pleasant nurse with 
 the friendly eyes whose bag she had carried. Soon the 
 ambulance from the front began to bring its human 
 freight. 
 
 Nurses entering hospitals have a mercifully long time 
 to become inured to the horrors of sickrooms, and only 
 little by little are admitted to the full secrets of life and 
 death. But Katherine took a baptism of fire. ... In 
 Paris she had seen much of the hospitals, but there it was 
 illness in its bed, clean and decent, mercifully soothed 
 and tended, and she had thought it pitiful enough, but 
 now she saw the wounded coming in all the dirt and 
 filth of battle, broken, bloody, battered, legs horribly 
 dangling, wounds caked, eyes gouged. . . . To see it 
 was to see into the heart of the hell of war. 
 
 "You are going to faint," said Sister Agnes sud- 
 denly. The girl looked at her with a wavering smile. 
 "Why no !" And then the room turned very black, 
 pricked with dancing red lights ; she felt a hand on her 
 elbow guiding her to the door and she clung to the 
 doorway, fighting the suffocating darkness with all her 
 might. 
 
 232
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "If they can live it, can I not look on? I am all 
 right," she insisted fiercely. 
 
 "Perhaps you have a heart trouble," said Sister 
 Agnes. 
 
 Katherine shook her head. "It is just the sight " 
 
 "I know," said the older woman quietly and left her. 
 Presently she came back. "There is a boy here an 
 English boy. Both arms are gone. It is no use to 
 amputate. Will you take a letter to his people?" 
 
 So that day wore on. By afternoon there were fewer 
 and fewer men brought in. The battle had been pressed 
 over the hill, beyond the woods, and the Germans were 
 shelling the fields so fiercely that it was impossible to 
 venture yet after the wounded. The men that had 
 come knew nothing of any of the fight beside their in- 
 dividual confusion. They talked of charges met with 
 bayonets, of hand to hand grapples with cold steel. 
 "Not many coming from that field, nurse," one boy 
 said with a bitter grin. 
 
 That afternoon Dr. Thibault came out of the opera- 
 tion-room looking as if he had come from a shambles. 
 Behind him came Sister Agnes. The front of her uni- 
 form was sprayed with bright arterial blood. Her face 
 was 'drawn and gray-white. She put down a bowl of 
 bloody water with hands that sagged. 
 
 Katherine sprang for it. "Let me." Sister Agnes 
 turned her face slowly till it was toward the doctor. 
 She articulated "Digitalis," in a half-whisper, then 
 quietly slid down on her knees. 
 
 Katherine flew to raise her, but the doctor's sharp 
 prohibition checked her and sent her after the medicine. 
 
 233
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 He knelt quickly beside the woman, and she opened her 
 eyes and her lips moved. He bent to catch the flutter- 
 ing words. 
 
 "It was always bad but I thought that it would be 
 strong enough. I am sorry. . . ." 
 
 Sister Agnes was dead. The heart that would have 
 been strong enough for years of quiet had not been able 
 to meet the strain she had put upon it. ... It had 
 done all it could do for France. 
 
 "Folly," said the doctor very gently. 
 
 It was then that Katherine learned that Sister Agnes 
 was the Baroness de Saronne. Her husband was dead 
 and she had given herself to France. Somewhere at 
 the front was her only son. 
 
 "Take her place, mademoiselle," Thibault concluded 
 to Katherine. "You will find she has a clean uniform. 
 Later we can regularize this, perhaps. Now we need 
 you." 
 
 In the unaccustomed uniform of the dead woman, 
 the sacred cross about her arm, Sister Katherine came 
 into being. 
 
 The deafening roar of the guns had grown duller and 
 duller as the battle pressed victoriously farther and 
 farther on. Now, by late afternoon, the roar had be- 
 come a rumble, infrequent and rhythmic, telling the 
 listening ears at the village that the Allies were still 
 pushing their battle-line. Hurriedly Dr. Thibault or- 
 dered the field wagon and the orderlies and stretcher- 
 bearers, that had been so long in readiness, to proceed, 
 and since another surgeon had come to assist him, he 
 left the man in charge and went with the wagon. 
 
 234
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "He will go under fire," said the infirmiere major to 
 one of her nurses, "yet in others he is severest on a 
 folly. . . . Some day he will be brought back. . . ." 
 
 At the doorway he was surprised by a cloaked figure 
 that came flying out of the shadow to meet him. Kath- 
 erine had put on Sister Agnes' cloak and carried her 
 emergency satchel. Brusquely he broke into her first 
 words. 
 
 "We do not take nurses on the battlefields." 
 
 "I am not a regular nurse. I am not needed here 
 now and with you I can help. I can lift as well as 
 a man." 
 
 "It is no place for a girl. Go back." 
 
 She looked at him with burning eyes. "If he is there 
 I can find him. ... If I do not go with you, I go 
 alone." 
 
 "Are you serving France or your own affair?" he 
 demanded. 
 
 "They are the same ! I beg of you " 
 
 "Get in, get in," he commanded testily. "Are you 
 to keep us waiting till dark?" 
 
 Swiftly the wagon hurried on over the roads to the 
 distant sound of guns. She did not know when they 
 passed the Bonnet farm. There were no buildings 
 standing to mark it. But she recognized the hill her 
 hill and Jeffrey's, and here the wagon left the road 
 and pressed up over the edge where it could reach the 
 scene of early conflict. 
 
 16
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 FROM the plain below the tide of battle had swept 
 on and away, leaving, like the flotsam and jet- 
 sam of the tide, a stranded, crumpled wreckage 
 of lives. It was a field soaked in blood and sown with 
 human flesh, with limp bodies and arms and legs and 
 heads, and fragments of raw meat that bore no resem- 
 blance to any part of humanity. 
 
 Here carnage had taken every form ; huge pits of 
 earth told of great shells, burying a score of men or 
 blowing them to bits, and a spent rain of bullets told of 
 furious rifle fire, while blood-soaked bayonets, some still 
 clenched in the stiff hands, others upright in the flesh 
 they had turned to clay, were mute evidence of frenzied 
 hand-to-hand encounters, where men stabbed each other 
 to the death. 
 
 Numbed and steeled to horror as Katherine believed 
 herself to have become in those grim hours, this ghastly 
 plain with its harvest of human hate and madness, 
 seemed more than a heart of pity could endure. She was 
 cold and sick as she hurried down after the doctor and 
 the Red Cross men, but the thought of Jeffrey had 
 power to nerve her on. It was into this field that he 
 
 236
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 had swept with the troops after leaving her, in the 
 blackness of early morning; here he had battled and if 
 here he lay hers was the determination to find him and 
 bring him back to care and safety. 
 
 For many rods there were no wounded, only the dead, 
 but farther on the men paused at the wreck of a battery 
 where shrapnel had blown men and iron in a grisly mass 
 of wreckage, and beneath a pile of debris a man was 
 pinned, shrieking and giggling with the delirium of an- 
 guish. Another man was buried until only the head 
 showed and beyond him a grotesque pair of heels pro- 
 truded from the ground, where the explosion had buried 
 a man head downward. . . . They dug him up. His 
 face was hideous with strangulation. 
 
 As they went on into the plain its terrible secrets 
 showed more and more, and the helpers were so few, so 
 pitifully inadequate ! From group to group they hur- 
 ried, drawing the living from the dead, estimating the 
 chances of life, sending back the lightest wounded and 
 laying the others in rows to wait till help was practi- 
 cable, quieting the worst agonies with precious hypo- 
 dermics. 
 
 Katherine soon ceased to follow the doctor; she un- 
 dertook her own explorations and moved from man ta 
 man, feeling herself a woman in the grip of a nightmare 
 too terrible for reality. One part of her brain seemed 
 frozen and numb mercifully numb. She thought that 
 if her brain performed its work, if she understood one- 
 thousandth part of the horror and evil that she saw that 
 she would go mad of it and die. She seemed to be two 
 persons in one the nurse, moving along that field, and 
 
 237
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 the other something aloft in the air, looking down on it 
 all, suffering a heartache that was a devouring flame. 
 
 From one to another, she went, stooping to wipe the 
 filth from the lips of a boy who was dying, her sense 
 straining to catch the broken French words he gasped. 
 She wrote them down, with his number, then on to give 
 a hypodermic to a man who lay bleeding, his abdomen 
 torn out, his legs crushed. ... It was only a matter 
 of minutes now for him ; he had known agony for hours. 
 She brought water to the lips of a boy whose arms 
 were crushed, and water and a cigarette to one with 
 broken legs. There was so little that she could do. 
 The wounded were few in comparison to the dead, the 
 terrible dead, stiff and stark, with that grotesqueness 
 which freezes the blood in the veins, denuded of their 
 dignity, their sacredness, but all the more ghastly in 
 effect. 
 
 Sometimes she found men who had applied the first 
 dressing to their own wounds, and dragged themselves 
 to a place of refuge, only to have been riddled with bul- 
 lets by a counter-attack, or crushed in by the hoofs of 
 another cavalry charge. Wheels of guns went over 
 them; even their own troops had passed across their 
 quivering flesh. 
 
 Often she stopped and picking a rifle from the ground 
 put an end to the screaming agony of some horse. Once 
 she found a man sobbing about a dead white horse, and 
 he told her that he had raised her from a colt and that 
 she had carried him to safety before she dropped. He 
 added that he had a brother gone down a little farther 
 on and his neighbors were all gone too. His own hand 
 
 238
 
 was shot away and the stump tied with a dirty rag, but 
 he did not seem sensible of pain, and said indifferently 
 that he had tied the artery. He refused to go back in 
 the direction she told him or let her take him, shaking 
 his head wilfully at her and patting his dead beast. 
 . . . She had to leave him there. 
 
 The sun was going lower and lower, sinking into a 
 bank of cloud. It became necessary to go close to the 
 shadows, and peer into the thickets to be sure that no 
 form lay there. Looking back over her shoulder she 
 found she had outdistanced the others ; perhaps the doc- 
 tor had gone to operate, leaving the stretcher-bearers 
 to their carrying. Sometimes, when she wanted to 
 make sure of their attention to an unlikely spot, she 
 fixed a strip of white to some bayonet and let it flutter 
 for them. 
 
 From one heap of mangled dead she heard a smoth- 
 ered groan, and dragged at the grisly figures to find 
 who still lived there. From out the heap she saw a 
 boy's face looking at her, his eyes bright with fever. 
 
 "Right-O !" he said cheerily. "I can't get out. Both 
 arms are smashed I think." 
 
 Something caught at her heart ; it was a moment be- 
 fore her numbed brain understood. He had spoken in 
 English. She had come to the English companies. 
 
 As she tugged at the grim thing in a green-gray uni- 
 form that sprawled across him, she asked his regiment. 
 It was not Jeffrey's. Jeffrey's must be still beyond. 
 
 "The rest of 'em went on across the field," said the 
 boy. "They haven't been back. That was about sun- 
 rise." He had been lying there ever since. 
 
 239
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 Both his arms were helpless. She put her hand about 
 his shoulder. "Do you think you can walk back, now ?" 
 she asked, "or can you if I help?" 
 
 She raised him to a sitting position. He stared 
 frowningly at his own limbs. 
 
 "So that's it," he said slowly. She saw that one foot 
 was hideously mangled; the other was queerly twisted. 
 Silently she laid him back, and held a drink of water to 
 his lips, then pinned a white flag beside him. 
 
 "I say, nurse." He looked up at her from the blood- 
 soaked ground. His face was gray under the dried 
 blood. 
 
 "You know I'm no use after this," he said quickly. 
 "I'm done for arms gone legs. ... I can't hold a 
 gun or I wouldn't trouble you. But won't you please 
 put a gun to my head? . . . Just pull. . . . It's sim- 
 ple. . . . You'd do it for a horse. . . . Then I shan't 
 have to wait here and afterwards " 
 
 She shook her head helplessly, her eyes stung by the 
 salt of tears she thought she had forgotten how to shed. 
 
 "You'd do it for a horse, you know," he urged, his 
 eyes begging, like a pitiful dog's. "Come nurse Oh, 
 for God's sake ! Just one pull be a good fellow." 
 
 "You'll be glad I didn't," she tried to tell him, but 
 the lie stuck in her throat. 
 
 Another voice called, a voice of fearful agony and 
 delirium and she went to see what she could do there. 
 Her morphin was giving out and now she gave only 
 water from the canteens she found or a bit of food or a 
 cigarette from some dead fellow's pockets. One poor 
 boy, a German, tried to tell her something, but half his 
 
 240
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 jaw was shot away; she put a pencil into his hands and 
 tried to help him trace the words he wished, but he died 
 as he wrote, "Mein liebe " 
 
 She put away the paper and his metal check of identi- 
 fication and a picture that he carried there of a young 
 girl. Next to it was the framed map of Belgium that 
 every German soldier carried and as she saw it and 
 thought upon the thousand and thousand of such maps, 
 ready for this invasion when the time was ripe, the misty 
 sky seemed to turn red about her, and her blood burned. 
 . . . But for this boy her heart was heavy. He had not 
 craved a world empire, poor lad; his hopes had been, 
 of that girl whose picture he carried, and of a home and 
 love and children. . . . But he had been nothing in the 
 general scheme. 
 
 Through the waning light she flitted on and on, con- 
 scious of the two conflicting selves, the nurse that lin- 
 gered at each form, the woman whose heart was hur- 
 rying with a sense of straining impatience. Now the 
 men were all English and Germans khaki and gray 
 uniforms locked in desperate embraces. 
 
 "We gave 'em hell," one trooper gasped. "Are they 
 coming soon nurse ?" 
 
 Always she repeated that the stretchers would be there 
 shortly, but she knew that she was far ahead of the relief 
 work. She had wandered miles with no idea now of 
 where she was. A bend in the fields had long hidden the 
 first reaches of the plain from her, and now before her 
 was sloping ground rising unevenly to a distant wood, 
 crossed by a wandering stream marked by the ruins of a, 
 tiny hamlet and a broken mill. Not a creature stirred 
 
 241
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 in the desolation. Not a voice answered hers from those 
 dark clumps of figures. 
 
 Here in the beet fields and on the banks of the stream 
 the carnage had been terrible. And here she found the 
 uniform of Jeffrey's Guards, and her dread spurred her 
 on and on, up and down the rows of ploughed fields, 
 over and over the muddy earth, through each thicket, 
 each hedge, each shadowy tangle. She was not con- 
 scious of fatigue nor pain, although her feet were cut 
 and her hands bleeding and her muscles .wrenched from 
 their heavy struggles with the wreckage. 
 
 Up the slope toward the wood she worked, her breath 
 coming in heavy gasps as she hurried to outstrip the 
 coming night. The bodies were fewer now. Here the 
 Guards seemed to have triumphed and driven the enemy 
 before them. 
 
 She stepped around a dead horse. It was not Jef- 
 frey's and no premonition touched her. Then she saw a 
 soldier lying on his back, his face to the dark sky. 
 
 She knew then that this was what she had foreseen, 
 foreknown, and her heart seemed to stop in such an icy 
 clutch of dread that she thought she would sink and 
 die of her fear. But she found herself bending over 
 him, speaking his name. . . . His eyes were closed; but 
 his flesh was warm, even hot, though damp with the 
 rain and wet of the soaked ground. His breast was 
 soaked with blood. 
 
 She touched his head ; there was no wound ; the limbs 
 lay unmangled. But from that hole in his breast the 
 blood Was welling, welling. . . . 
 
 She tore at her satchel for the flask of brandy she had 
 242
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 so jealously guarded and slipping her arm under 
 his head she put it to his lips, letting a few drops run 
 into his mouth and down his throat. . . . After a mo- 
 ment he swallowed. . . . Slowly his lips moved ; his eye- 
 lids fluttered upward and he stared up at her with a 
 gaze glazed and vague with pain. . . . Then she saw 
 the flash of recognition, shot with incredulous joy and 
 gladness even in the agony. 
 
 "Jeffrey," she said with a sob that shook her, "Jef- 
 frey you know me?" 
 
 "Katherine," he whispered faintly and tried to smile. 
 
 "Jeffrey, I've found you again I'll take care of you 
 I'll save you," she promised, and her heart tightened 
 and swelled with a desperate might of resolution. 
 
 A fluttering motion of one hand stirred to his chest. 
 "They've got me here," he said in that faint, husky 
 voice, so weakly articulated that she strained her ears 
 to hear. "The end after all." 
 
 "No no no not that ! " Her voice rose on its 
 lonely defiance. Then she calmed herself; she must 
 not agitate him. 
 
 "Don't give up, darling, don't," she besought. "I'll 
 take care of you and help will come. I've found you 
 and I'll keep you, love " 
 
 She saw in his eyes an agony of pain and of pity for 
 her. 
 
 "The end not far off. I'm going fast, dear. . . . 
 So glad you came glad," he mumbled, feeling for her 
 hands. 
 
 She had laid him back, shaking her head sharply to 
 clear her eyes of the tears that were pouring. . . . She 
 
 243
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 was furious at them. What had she to do with tears? 
 . . . She tore away his shirt. . . . She looked into the 
 wound from which protruded the charred threads of 
 his dirty uniform. The flesh was black and swollen, 
 and from a low, three-cornered cut the drops of blood 
 were oozing. 
 
 "It's choking me." He made a shaking gesture to his 
 throat. "Can't breathe worse all the time. . . . Noth- 
 ing to do, dear, nothing to do." 
 
 The realization came to her that there was not. His 
 lungs were shattered, flooding with blood. She looked 
 at him one long minute, then rose to her feet and strained 
 her eyes down into the field. If there were men in 
 sight if only a surgeon would come for that shattered 
 breast. . . . Perhaps she ought to run and bring some- 
 one. . . . 
 
 But as she stared about that desolate country, re- 
 membering the lonely miles and miles that she had hur- 
 ried, she knew that search was vain. It was folly. No 
 surgeons would be there. He would not live to be 
 brought to them. He would be gone before she got to 
 them. . . . She need not leave him. There was no hope 
 to urge her to that. 
 
 She stood very still, with the dying man at her feet. 
 She did not want him to see her face, in that moment 
 when the certainty of his death invaded her. Her heart 
 ceased to resist its agony. . . . But all the time the 
 utter impossibility of this thing's happening was beating 
 wildly like a caged bird in her brain. Other men might 
 die had died like flies but not her own. Not Jeffrey. 
 All women thought like that until the end came for 
 
 244
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 them. Now hers had come. She had found him only to 
 lose him. The end of the world had come to them there 
 on that French field. 
 
 To her mind it was absolutely unreal. But her heart 
 knew. 
 
 There came a sudden calm of thankfulness that she 
 had found him in time. This moment at least was theirs. 
 
 From another's canteen she brought him water, and 
 gave him more of the precious brandy; then stanched 
 his wound as best she could, and bathed his face 
 and lifted his head into her lap as she sat down beside 
 him, holding him so that he could breathe easier. She 
 remembered that only last night she had held him, be- 
 lieving him safe then, snatched out of danger. 
 
 "Better," he said with his wan smile, and that look 
 in his eyes that was only for her. 
 
 She fought against the despair that outfaced her. 
 
 "Live, Jeffrey," she whispered. "Live for me. . . , 
 We'll pull through somehow." 
 
 Faintly came the answer, after a long wait. "I 
 haven't time to pretend, dear. . . . No use." And 
 she felt rebuked for the pitiful insistence of life before 
 the great realities of death. 
 
 "Oh, my love, my love," she breathed in a quivering 
 little voice that fluttered out between her lips from her 
 breaking heart. "My love, my love." 
 
 He smiled up at her, then closed his eyes with a great 
 weariness. 
 
 She was grateful that he did not seem to suffer. There 
 was fever and pain in his chest and his breathing was 
 heavy and slow, but his senses seemed mercifully dulled 
 
 245
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 by the shock. She shuddered to think what those hours 
 had been for him. . . . And over her, like rolling waves 
 submerging her agony and heartbreak, came the 
 gladness that she had found him, that he was not to 
 die alone upon the field of battle, but that her arms would 
 hold him and her heart go with him. 
 
 It was very dark now. Into the fields below a white 
 mist had stolen like a vaporous sea. The distant guns 
 were quieter, and the rhythmic thunder had ceased to 
 roll, but often she heard, far ahead at her right, the 
 sudden scream of shrapnel and a faint popping of 
 rifles. 
 
 But in all that dark land there seemed none living but 
 herself and the man in her arms. ... It was stark, un- 
 real, ghastly a mad scene in a mad world. 
 
 She was very quiet, very calm. If she yielded one 
 breath to the emotion that beat in upon her she would 
 go mad, she told herself ; she must be quiet and live care- 
 fully these precious moments. 
 
 He was going fast. There was nothing to be done. 
 She held his head higher and higher, against her breast. 
 She bent her face close to his. She was afraid that he 
 would go from her as he slept. With a woman's futile 
 passion for farewells she roused him to garner every 
 moment left of consciousness. 
 
 "Dear, was there anything you want to send your 
 mother?" 
 
 His eyes opened into hers. "Oh, yes, mother." He 
 spoke with difficulty. "Go to her tell her everything. 
 Say good-by sorry. There's Fred left for her. . . . 
 Love to them. . . ." 
 
 246
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 He stopped, then his voice came more clearly. "It's 
 nearly on the clock for me, my girl. . . . Oh, Katherine, 
 Katherine !" His eyes, agonized, hopeless, looked up 
 into hers. "Is it possible?" he said wonderingly, and 
 then, "All that was to be !" 
 
 Her mouth was on his brow. It was cold and damp. 
 
 "A kiss," he whispered, "My lips " 
 
 Lightly, for fear of stopping his fluttering breath, 
 she touched her lips to his. They kissed, their eyes on 
 each other's, a passion of pain and heartbreak looking 
 from soul to soul. 
 
 Then he threw back his head with sudden wildness, 
 straightening convulsively in her arms. 
 
 "God I'm dying !" His voice was thick. "All over 
 all God ! . . . We must win. . . ." He choked. A 
 terrible rattle sounded in his throat. At his lips foamed 
 blood and froth. 
 
 And then his eyes flashed up at her in a look of such 
 agonized recognition that it seemed as if their spirits 
 touched. And through all the agony was the smile that 
 his eyes had ever kept for her. 
 
 "Dearest good-by." 
 
 The light, the recognition, was gone forever. The 
 flame was out. And over the boy's features Death 
 stamped his strange and inalterable seal, that gray im- 
 print of the other world which makes remote, strange 
 clay of the intimate flesh within our arms. 
 
 Fixed and sightless his glazed eyes stared into hers. 
 His cheek grew cold against her breast. His fingers 
 stiffened in her clasp. His own breast no longer panted 
 
 47
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 with its tortuous breath. The blood flowed no more but 
 congealed in a heavy mass. 
 
 Her senses broke themselves against the truth, dash- 
 ing her again and again upon the incredibility of her 
 own woe.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 STONILY she sat there like the last stricken figure 
 of life in a world already dead. 
 
 She had not stirred when the blackness of mid- 
 night closed in about her. Suddenly the blackness was 
 lightened by a faint glow reflected from far beyond the 
 wood, and on the wind came the fearful odor of acrid 
 flesh. An army was burning its dead. 
 
 She understood and her somber eyes could see those 
 dead. And now she thought that her anguish was but 
 the anguish of one woman and that this death in her 
 arms was but the death of one man, and she thought 
 of all the dead men in that pyre and all the dead men 
 out in the night and of all the women who loved them, 
 and her own grief seemed to grow and expand with the 
 feeling of their pain, till the burden of it was greater 
 than she could bear 
 
 Then an anger that was hot with all their angers, hot 
 as the licking flames of that devilish holocaust, burned 
 through her. She laid down her dead and rose to her 
 feet, flinging back her face to that fire-tinged sky, her 
 arms wide, her breast heaving. Hate was surging 
 through and through her, a passionate hate of war, of 
 
 249
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 the conquest-war that made murder in this world, that 
 spirit that grasped with mailed hands, that stabbed and 
 crushed, that trampled right and liberty in the mire, 
 that starved women and babies and befouled inno- 
 cence and outraged helplessness. Empires thrones 
 dominions what rivers of forgotten blood flow 
 underneath the rotting crust of their raped 
 soils ! 
 
 Her hate poured itself upon the war-spirit of greed 
 and cruelty that set nation against nation and man 
 against man, that made patriotism a lust for power and 
 flung armies to the murdering and thieving that were 
 dishonor to the single man . . . the cold war-spirit of 
 scheming that moved men hither and thither, like pawns 
 in a game, to change the color of the little maps of the 
 earth they lived in ... the spirit that sells its brains 
 for blood money that more guns may deal more death 
 . . . the spirit that has ridden down the world with 
 Xerxes and Alexander and Caesar, crucifying each 
 Christ of pity. . . . 
 
 And as she stood there it seemed to her as if all the 
 dead men of the night were standing, too, gathering 
 from the field, their stark faces touched with new un- 
 derstanding, and their eyes ablaze with stern anger at 
 the thing which had done them to death. 
 
 She could see them all about her, shadowy troopers, 
 gathering and gathering, with here and there a face that 
 she remembered that of the boy who had begged her to 
 kill him and the German with his jaw shot away and the 
 French lad who had gasped of his mother these, and all 
 that she had seen that day pressed about her, a darkling 
 
 250
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 throng, their gray faces lifted to the sky, their eyes on 
 fire. . . . 
 
 She thought how many had turned their faces to a 
 mute heaven for justice. What God did they seek there, 
 some kind God of their mother's prayers, or some de- 
 fender to whom they had chanted war-like hymns? . . . 
 What God could help them, except that God which was 
 in their own hearts, that seed of pity, that divinity of 
 love, which alone could comprehend and break the chain 
 of human wrong and fearful habit! . . . The God of 
 that love was in their churches and on their lips a 
 Krupp and Kaiser had prayed to him devoutly. Bet- 
 ter to hang between dishonor at Golgotha than from 
 an altar receive the homage of such prayers ! 
 
 There in the dim sky before her, where that fearful 
 glow had flickered and waned, high over that silent 
 ghostly throng, it seemed to her that the Christ was 
 hanging, gazing darkly down upon them, the pain of 
 all the world in His face, the pity of it in His eyes. . . . 
 And He was still upon His Cross, not risen in men's 
 hearts. . . . 
 
 And then He was gone, as He had gone from the earth 
 and the passion of men, and the wind swept suddenly 
 through the plain like the flight of the souls of the dead, 
 wailing aloud, bitterly wailing aloud. . . . 
 
 She was sitting again, with Jeffrey in her arms. There 
 were stars out now, friendly stars of healing and com- 
 passion. She had no fear of that cold flesh she held 
 only of the time when she could never hold it more. 
 17 251
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 Again and again her lips touched its marbling stillness. 
 
 Down in the distant fields she caught the flicker of 
 far-away lights, like ghoulish will-o'-the-wisps among 
 the slain. They were the flash-lamps of some Red 
 Cross aids, but she did not cry out. They would only 
 take her from her dead and leave him there. 
 
 The sky darkened and the stars fled. It rained in 
 slant and drenching torrents that soaked her to the 
 skin. Bending above the dead man she tried to protect 
 his poor flesh from the wet. It ceased and the air grew 
 colder. 
 
 Slowly a gray and grudging morning forced itself 
 upon the night. Slowly a wan light displaced the dark. 
 A listless vapor rolled back along the plain. Every- 
 thing stood distinct and gray, and then the color flick- 
 ered into the east, a delicate infusion of pale pinks and 
 blues and greens, mingling in a lovely gauzy dawn, and 
 then like a rotund pursuer of some fragile girl in chif- 
 fons a hot sun panted up over the horizon and the pale 
 colors fled. The clouds dissolved in pearly streamers, 
 leaving a sky of fairest blue. A golden though not 
 brilliant light bathed the whole plain, where rain and 
 dew drops sparkled and every aspect of the morning 
 exhaled innocent freshness and delight. In the woods 
 behind the girl some little birds were faintly chirrup- 
 ing ; suddenly they burst into brief riot of song. 
 
 Morning had come to the world with its resurgent 
 life. Only the dead lay there, untouched by any day, 
 incongruously terrible and unchanged. 
 
 Hours passed. The sun went under a cloud again; 
 sometimes it rained. Sometimes she lay on the ground 
 
 252
 
 T N^E SPLENDID C 77 // A T r E 
 
 beside the xjtead'maiij sometimes she-walked up and down 
 to fight the cramping stiffness. She drank water and 
 ate biscuit from the knapsack of cfcad soldvcrs-+-^but 
 the food of an invader she could not touch. She 
 watched for the ambulance corps -bat; no one came. 
 
 Cannons were thundering to left and right and ; thfc 
 faint screaming- of shrapnel told her that the tide- of 
 battle had' surged in again. Perhaps > she was cut off 
 from her lines. Once in the woods behind her the rat- 
 tle of riftes sounded like the tap-tap-tapping of drums. 
 She began to watch the wood bat no one came out of jt, 
 only once a horse, limping wearily, a great hole in 'his 
 side. ; She rose and shot him!' 'Then she resumed* her 
 Vigil with th dead. ''' .enob 8jn ' 
 
 Now the wind brought her 'tainted air. . . . She be- 
 gan- to think of what she Tnus4rfd<tta ,bnim -jyd rii vl^ni 
 
 Even if the 'help came they might not spare time for 
 this one poor corpse. Th^y- might burn the bodies or 
 bury them in a connfmon trendi.-"" f!iuov isri ' 
 
 She walked into the wood and looked about. It was 
 beautiful there, and peaceful. The fallen leaves lay in 
 little damp drifts beneath the trees. Only the hoof 
 marks in the ground told of a swift struggle and^A 
 flight and these the rains had half effaced. She found, 
 a soft place, beneath three trees, near a boulder of 
 rock. ,?.bni5(i 
 
 It was hard 'to stagger there with the dead man on. 
 her back but somehow she accomplished itj and witk 
 that desperation of strength given to supreme human 
 endeavor she dug a grave. For long hours she toiled, 
 with bayonets and helmets and her bare hands. . . . 
 
 253
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 Then she waited. She could not bear to lay away the 
 last sight of her love. 
 
 At last she laid him down in it. She spread a hand- 
 kerchief across the face; she laid a horse blanket for 
 cover over his uniform. She wished there was a flag 
 to wrap about him but no British colors were carried into 
 the fields. . . . From the hands she drew a ring and a 
 wrist watch as mementoes for his mother. For herself 
 there was the signet ring which she had worn since that 
 June day at Les Buissons. She put a ring of her own 
 upon the dead fingers, and left a last kiss upon the lips 
 and brow. 
 
 Handful by handful the earth was heaped. It was 
 dark when all was done. Beside the mound she lay and 
 looked at the trees and tried to fix the location unerr- 
 ingly in her mind, so that even if they were gone, some 
 clue would tell her of this place. . . . By and by she 
 rose and covered the grave with rocks and little stones. 
 
 And all her youth and joy were down there with him 
 under the earth and stones. Her Jeffrey dead. 
 
 They came in the dawn two Red Cross bearers, and 
 some power of astonishment was left in them for her 
 story. 
 
 "But that is pitiable, mademoiselle," said the oldest, 
 looking at her bleeding hands, her blackened, blood- 
 soaked uniform. "To have found your lover and 
 buried him !" 
 
 With them she struggled back to the hospital. They 
 were short-handed there. The Allies had been successful 
 in driving back the enemy, but the Germans' shells still 
 
 254
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 reached them. A nurse had been killed before the 
 church. 
 
 And suddenly it seemed to Katherine that she, too, 
 need not have to wait very long with so much death 
 about. It would only be hours, or days, . . . and then 
 she would be out of all this. Meanwhile there was work. 
 
 Dry-eyed and utterly contained Sister Katherine went 
 about her nursing.
 
 
 
 
 r oot . 
 
 
 
 lUOfl 3<? 
 
 . 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 ONE two, three, four she counted the steps 
 gaspingly. She could manage four and then 
 she must stop and wait. One, two, three, four 
 she began again. 
 
 A door opened below her and a step entered the hall, 
 then someone came up the stairs behind her and a hand 
 caught her elbow as she was clinging to the rail. 
 
 She found herself looking up through the dusk into 
 the face of Robert MacNare. 
 
 "It's just my knee " she said weakly and sat down 
 on the stairs. 
 
 He did not waste time in questions. "Let me 
 take " 
 
 "No," she cried irritably as he bent toward her. "I 
 can go on. I can." 
 
 He offered nothing more and when she was ready he 
 helped her in silence. At her locked door she looked 
 blankly up at him. "My keys I forgot." 
 
 He drew out a key ring from his pocket and fitted one 
 into her lock. "Madame Bonnet left hers. She is still 
 away." 
 
 He opened the door and followed her as she limped 
 256
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 into the room, striking matches arid lighting the lamp, 
 and flinging open a window for the cool wind toi come. 
 rushing into the airless place. 
 
 The girl on the edge of the couch shivered. "It's 
 cold." 
 
 He closed the window and went to the hearth. Then 
 he ran downstairs to reappear with the fuel for a fire 
 which he promptly kindled. "And now for your knee," 
 he said turning toward her again. 'to o!i: 
 
 She sat unstirringly, drawing her cloak closer. For 
 the first time he noticed what she wore and saw the Hed 
 Cross onier arm. 
 
 "It's bandaged it's all right," she told him in her 
 slow, tired voice. "But I walked home on it. And that 
 hurt. And once I fell." 
 
 "Why? Why walk?" he said savagely. 
 
 "It wasn't their fault. I insisted. I am well 
 enough. But I am tired now. And then the train. 
 That was too crowded. All wOundedl" -iq < 
 
 "So you've been nursing all this month?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 He made no comment. He had not seen nor heard 
 from her since that October morning when she had bade 
 him a hurried farewell as she ran eagerly after madame 
 on her way to the station. Now November was beginning. 
 
 "Dr. Thibault was there," she said suddenly. "He 
 had the hospital. Wasn't that strange?" 
 
 "Yes. But you're too tired to talk," he answered, as 
 she might have told one of her own patients. "Take off 
 your things and lie down and when I come back I'll 
 bring some more food and something to eat." 
 
 257
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "You needn't. I'm quite right now," she said dully, 
 but he made no response. And like an exhausted child 
 she dropped back against the dusty gray and yellow 
 cushions without stirring. For three weeks she had 
 worked like some silent, tireless automaton; suddenly 
 something had snapped. Her will flagged. The hurt 
 to her knee nothing serious, only a cut from a flying 
 bit of wood in depriving her of activity had deprived 
 her also of that strange momentum of activity. She 
 felt stopped. She felt as if she could never go on again. 
 
 Presently MacNare came back, and very quietly and 
 matter-of-factly as if she were little Peggy, he set 
 <'ibout making her comfortable, taking off her cloak and 
 dusty shoes, bringing her wet towels and dry ones, find- 
 ing a thick blanket to spread over her and building a 
 bright blaze upon the hearth. From out her thin face, 
 her big eyes followed him about with a dumb, sick wist- 
 fulness. There was comfort in the simple humanness 
 of his presence. When he brought her a tray from a 
 neighboring cafe she tried to eat and found herself 
 hungry. 
 
 But the inevitable associations of that room were 
 speaking to her. Through all her clogged and numbed 
 exhaustion the realization forced itself home. She had 
 not died out there; she had lived through days and 
 nights of nightmare, and now she was here, quite well, 
 but for that knee, quite young and facing the life that 
 was to be lived. 
 
 In her big, haggard eyes the weak tears suddenly 
 brimmed. She looked up at him, one thin hand reaching 
 pitiably to him from the blue blanket. 
 
 258
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "He's dead. . . . He's dead. . . . They've killed 
 him." 
 
 MacNare dropped into a chair beside her, taking that 
 poor, clinging hand in silence. After these past weeks 
 he had not thought that life could deal him further pain, 
 but now it seemed that there were still quivering sensi- 
 bilities for the ingenious devils to play on. . . . That 
 she should not be spared ! That she, of all brightness, 
 should be broken on the wheel. . . . 
 
 The old rage welled in him ; the muscles of his neck 
 knotted; the veins in his forehead swelled. He wished, 
 like Alceste> for the gods of this world to have one neck 
 that he might wring it. ^ 
 
 Then infinite weariness succeeded the futile rage. Tcr 
 what end what end? 
 
 He said dully, "It hardly seems worth while to have 
 made us for all this does it?" 
 
 She answered quiveringly, "But it could all be so 
 right!" 
 
 "A little too much cannibal in the blood," he mut- 
 tered. 
 
 She did not tell him any more then. She was too 
 tired for words and yet she could not sleep. She clung 
 tightly to his hand as he sat there beside her in the fire- 
 light, that died slowly down till shadows and darkness 
 possessed the room. 
 
 And then suddenly she began to talk, to tell him of 
 the fight, of her search, of the long hours with her dead. 
 Not one word of her own loss had crossed her lips since 
 the day she came again to the hospital, and never again 
 did she tell to anyone what she told this grim, silent man 
 
 259
 
 THE >S PL&NDTD C II A A T C E 
 
 beside her in the darkness, but in her weakness the'niisery 
 of her soul overflowed and poured out to him. Brokenly, 
 haltingly,' the grim story came. All the dumb/horrors 
 that had pressed upon her strove for utterance. 
 
 "Those dead those dead," she said over again, in 
 her hoarse, tired voice. "They burned them in the 
 nights they tied . them, together like cords and 
 stacked -them to be carried out. . -J j-Arid always 
 some woman. . . . Some Woman is waiting. . . ." 
 
 He had no words. His heart bled for her. 
 
 Once or twice he thought she slept* 'Biit when he 
 Stirred to throw a new log upon the fire she would be 
 instantly alert, her haggard eyes .searching 1 for him 
 through the dusk. 
 
 Sometimes she put a fitful question. Howi was the 
 hospital?; T.hatrwas moved, he told her. A new build- 
 ing near by had been given where there could be space 
 for operations. 
 
 "So you're downstairs again?" 
 
 "Yes." rii l-fidinnBo nSi/m oo.! !>liii : - 
 
 "All alone here?" 
 
 "All alone." - torn yjn& mid Ifai Jon bib od 
 
 "How is Peggy? Won't she be missing you- " 
 
 "She isn't here." 
 
 "You've sent her away?" 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 "Then you're quite alone," she muttered, and added, 
 "Were you afraid?" 
 
 "Yes." .wov/ -KV 
 
 She barely heard him. "They'll never get here now," 
 she whispered. "That living 1 sacrifice- has saved 
 
 260
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 France." And then she began to whisper again about 
 that sacrifice, telling him incessantly of those pitiful 
 things that seared her brain and heart. 
 
 It was a strange night. Alone in that empty house 
 those two sat clinging to each other like two ship- 
 wrecked souls upon some raft. At last he was sure that 
 she slept, and when an hour went by and she did not stir 
 nor wake he tiptoed quietly away and left her. 
 
 It was noon when she awaked, to the clear brightness 
 of her empty room. She stared about her, aware, with 
 returning consciousness, of some numb, pressing weight, 
 some deadly heaviness. ... It was a full minute before 
 memory came back, cutting like knives. She knew then 
 what that weight was. . . . 
 
 The merciful exhaustion of the night had passed. 
 Sleep in refreshing her body had given her back to 
 the torment of her mind. . . . She lay there and re- 
 membered how eight months before she had come to that 
 room, eager, ambitious, gay. . . . Since then she had 
 lived what had been her life. . . . 
 
 Soon after her first steps across the floor a knock 
 sounded and she found MacNare at her door with a 
 tray of breakfast. 
 
 "You are kind," she said gratefully, lifting those 
 great eyes of hers from which all the brightness had 
 been washed by those deep tears. His face shocked her. 
 It was not only that he was thin and white so white 
 that the black of his eyes and hair was startling in its 
 contrast, but some terrible change had passed over his 
 face leaving it old and drawn and gaunt. It was like the 
 
 261
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 skeleton faces of suffering that had looked up at her 
 from so many fever beds. 
 
 "You are ill," she said abruptly. 
 
 He shook his head and left her, telling her to rest. 
 
 All that day she stayed in her room. There were 
 letters from her family on the dusty floor where they 
 had been thrust under the door, but she did not read 
 them at once. From Les Buissons she had sent them 
 one or two brief notes saying that she was helping with 
 the nursing there and saying no more ; now she sat down 
 at her table and commenced to write, struggling for the 
 pitiful comfort of telling them. . . . Then she leaned 
 back, her face tense. . . . She opened their letters and 
 began to read. 
 
 It was too soon for them to answer her notes from Les 
 Buissons ; they were still concerned with her presence in 
 Paris and troubled for her safety. The papers were 
 full of an air raid. They wanted her to come home for 
 Thanksgiving, and discussed routes with anxiety, for 
 fear of mines. Italy, they thought, was safest. Every- 
 one was deeply stirred over the war. Everyone was 
 sick at heart for Belgium. 
 
 So the letters ran, in artless comments and honest in- 
 dignation and sympathies, with little details of the home, 
 the commencement of the professor's fall work, the ac- 
 counts of new students, a new cook, a new dress. And 
 the boys were growing so and missed her dreadfully. 
 If she was helping they would not take her away, but 
 she must not go into danger and she must come home 
 soon. 
 
 Katherine sat there a long time, her letters in her 
 262
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 hand. She could see her home, see her mother standing 
 waiting in the door for her as when, a careless, happy 
 girl, she used to come across the campus with flying 
 feet. Some maples would still be flaming. The leaves 
 would be all heaped and scuffly in the paths. . . . She 
 thought of the sodden leaves in that wood where she had 
 left Jeffrey. . . . And then she thought of the bright- 
 ness in those home faces. 
 
 The letter begun to them was torn into small bits. 
 No, she could not write them now, she could not fling 
 into their unsuspecting lives the bitterness of her grief. 
 When she was with them again, when they could help 
 her. . . . But now, to fret her mother, to worry her 
 father's serene and gentle heart no, she would not do 
 that. 
 
 The weakness of the night had passed. There had 
 grown in the girl a new strength, a very gallant cour- 
 age. She comprehended pain. She could not bear 
 to deal it. And since her family did not know of her 
 love for Jeffrey, since he was only a name to them, 
 someone she had met on the boat and seen later in Paris, 
 her letter would be a needless bolt out of the blue. 
 
 So she postponed that writing. Later when she had 
 seen Jeffrey's mother. 
 
 From Les Buissons she had sent a note to Mrs. Edger- 
 ton telling her of Jeffrey's death. Now she wrote again, 
 saying that she was coming to London and would meet 
 her to tell her all the story. She knew how that poor 
 mother must be yearning to hear. She thought of Jef- 
 frey's words, "Go to mother. Tell her everything," 
 with a deep longing for the fulfillment of that telling. 
 
 263
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 She would tell her everything. Their sorrow was one 
 sorrow. And they could talk together of Jeffrey she 
 could go with her to that home Jeffrey had pictured and 
 in the sheltering peace of those old gardens and quiet 
 walks she could live for a while in the scenes that he had 
 loved and in the memories of the happiness that he had 
 once given her. 
 
 She longed for the solace of his mother and his 
 mother's love as a spent runner longs for his goal. If 
 she could once be there, she thought, be with those who 
 knew and loved Jeffrey where she could hear of him and 
 dream of him then something of peace might come. 
 
 After posting the letter she crossed limping to the 
 cremerie, for her evening meal, and saw that the little 
 woman there wore black. She recalled the young hus- 
 band who was gone, a plump, obliging man with a quick 
 smile and a vast pride in his young bride and his clean 
 place, and his own special tarts a cerises. How strange 
 a mark for tragedy ! 
 
 She said something of gentle sympathy to the young 
 widow. The woman made a vaguely deprecating ges- 
 ture, apathetic almost in the inclusiveness. 
 
 "There are so many of us," she said. 
 
 She asked after Madame Bonnet, reporting that little 
 Jeanne and Thomas, left in a neighbor's care, were 
 well. 
 
 Katherine thought that Madame Bonnet would re- 
 turn shortly with Marie and her baby girl. 
 
 "It is well that they were not here," said the little 
 woman. "Otherwise they would have been up 
 
 there " 
 
 264,
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "Up where?" 
 
 The woman betrayed' a faint surprise at the blankness 
 of Katherine's look. "But in those upper rooms ! . . . 
 Is it possible you have not heard?" 
 
 "I but came last night. What is. the matter?" 
 
 "And you have not looked? . . . Nor seen the poor 
 monsieur?" 
 
 "Yes, I have seen him. But he has not said " 
 
 "Regard, if you please." 
 
 Katherine turned and followed the other's gesture. 
 And then she saw what she had not yet lifted her eyes 
 to observe, that the upper story of the studio building 
 had suffered some collapse, and was now patched with 
 new repairs and replacements. 
 
 "And mademoiselle has not heard!" the woman re- 
 peated with a ghost of her old vivacity. Then she 
 sighed. "The poor little one !" 
 
 A ghastly premonition began to stir. "Not not 
 Peggy Marguerite? What happened ? The " 
 
 "The Zeppelins? What else? They came at night 
 that night of the eleventh, and bomb after bomb it was 
 terrible ! And one of the first went through that roof. 
 The monsieur was upon one side of the room the child 
 in her cot on the other. . . . He was hurled against 
 the wall, that was all. . . . But she !" 
 
 The young woman shuddered. "They say that it was 
 beyond anything. The father had to look for her, 
 mademoiselle, to pick her up bit by bit. ... I must 
 not think of it. ... He buried her that Sunday. And 
 now he lives down there again for they moved the hos- 
 pital the next day into a more commodious place that 
 
 265
 
 was given and he lives like some wild animal in his 
 den, coming and going, getting his food, shutting him- 
 self up in the daytime and stirring out at night through 
 the dark streets. . . . My heart aches for him." 
 
 Katherine did not answer. She crossed that street 
 on flying feet ; with shaking hands she knocked upon the 
 door of the studio and when no answer came she knocked 
 again sharply, calling out. 
 
 She heard bars withdrawn and pushing open the door 
 she found herself face to face with Robert MacNare. 
 In that first look she saw that he knew that she had 
 heard, and then he half turned away as if dreading her 
 words. Her hands went out and clutched at his arm. 
 "Oh, you you too!" she faltered and then all words 
 failed. Her voice lodged in her throat. Dry, gasping 
 sobs shook her. She leaned her head against the hands 
 that were clutching his arm and clung there shaking 
 convulsively. 
 
 A shudder ran through the man ; he stiffened against 
 her, staring away. And then very tragically all the 
 stark fighting strength wilted from him; his big 
 shoulders sagged and he bowed above her, his breath 
 coming in great tearing gasps. 
 
 It frightened her from her own abandon. "Oh, what 
 a weak fool I am to come to you like this ! But Oh, my 
 dear, my dear " 
 
 Her hands relaxed and he turned from her shakingly 
 and stumbled into a chair where he sat huddled, fighting 
 for that grim control which the girl's passionate pity 
 had overthrown. His brain was foaming again with 
 blood and horror as on that night of death. But in a 
 
 266
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 moment, it seemed, he drew himself up and turned to 
 her the bleak, set face of a man who faces something 
 quite unalterable. 
 
 "You see, I go a little mad at times," he said huskily. 
 "But you you must not take it like that " 
 
 He came to her as if he would put his hand on her 
 shaking shoulder, then he turned aside and began hunt- 
 ing on a table for a pipe. "There is nothing to be 
 said." 
 
 "Have you had dinner?" she unexpectedly demanded. 
 
 He looked about vaguely. "I? . . . Have you?" 
 
 "No," she denied promptly. "Will you come with 
 me?" 
 
 "Can you go on that knee? I'll bring you some- 
 thing." 
 
 "No, we'll go. My knee is quite right. We'll go 
 somewhere where there is a little light and very few 
 people. Please, dear Surly Man." 
 
 As she waited till he found his hat and coat she no- 
 ticed a revolver lying casually among the pipes and 
 books upon his dusty table. She wondered, very piti- 
 fully, why he had happened not to blow out his brains. 
 She thought that his despair was the kind to cut its 
 way out ... in some black moment. . . . She did not 
 know that two things only had lowered that loaded gun 
 from the throbbing temple that so ached for surcease of 
 its memories. And one thing was that he was waiting 
 for news of her safety. And the other thing was that he 
 preferred for that revolver muzzle some other temple 
 some temple in a green-gray uniform. Now this second 
 thing was still deferred on her account. For MacNare 
 18 4 267
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 forgot himself in a compassion for her that was born 
 out of his old love for her and yet greater than it, for 
 now his sorry heart neither hoped nor despaired, asking 
 only to shelter her a little, to help her over this first 
 difficult place, to spend himself in what service and com- 
 fort he could give. . . . He had never loved her in the 
 blossoming of all her bright loveliness as he loved her 
 now, wan and weak and grieving, but his love was in- 
 finitely different, infinitely deeper. Her sorrow was a 
 bond to him in his sorrow. He would have given his 
 life, that poor, unhappy, tormenting life of his, given 
 it up in tortures, gladly, if he could have brought back 
 to her that brave young boy whom he remembered as a 
 triumphant god of youth. . . . And still he thought 
 of him as one of life's lucky ones. For into his soldier's 
 grave he had taken her love with him, ... he had 
 known it to the last. 
 
 That night she told him that she was going to Lon- 
 don, as soon as her knee was well, to Jeffrey's mother, 
 and he answered that they would go together as he had 
 business to arrange in London, too. 
 
 "Mrs. Grundy is too busy for gossip," he added, with 
 the ghost of his sardonic smile. "We can be cousins of 
 a sort ; you know you shouldn't travel alone now." 
 
 She accepted his escort with a gratefulness that yet 
 fell short of real appreciation. She was engrossed in 
 thoughts of Jeffrey's mother. If she could only reach 
 her, only open her heart to her, then perhaps she would 
 feel less miserably forlorn. . . . 
 
 It was a gray crossing and a dim landing. Neither; of 
 268
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 the two travelers had much to say to each other, yet she 
 felt his silent presence as a comfort. 
 
 In London he found her an old family hotel of the old 
 type, and for himself he took a quiet place around the 
 corner. She had telegraphed to Edgerton Hall, and 
 Mrs. Edgerton replied that she would reach town and 
 call upon her that next afternoon, and all that day she 
 waited with quickening expectancy.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 THE drawing-room was long and narrow with two 
 high windows at one end. As Katharine came 
 forward into the room, her heart hurrying with 
 an excitement she had not forgotten she could feel, 
 a tall, slender figure in deep mourning rose from 
 one of the chintz-covered chairs and held out a 
 quick hand. 
 
 "Miss King?" 
 
 There was a trace of Jeffrey in the swift motion and 
 the turn of the head, but only a trace. The mother's 
 features were softer and not so clear cut, and the blue 
 of her eyes was paler and blurred now as if by secret 
 tears. It was a delicate but not a weak face ; she was 
 stricken but there was something proud and fine in her 
 grief, shining out with that indomitable look of race 
 that Jeffrey had worn. 
 
 "You are the nurse who was with my son?" 
 
 Katherine knew then that Jeffrey had left his mother 
 uninform'ed, as she, herself, had bidden, and that, as yet, 
 she was but a stranger to her, a messenger from him. 
 At the instant she became aware of another figure which 
 had risen behind the mother, that of a young girl also 
 
 270
 
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 in deep black, a sweet-looking little creature with wist- 
 ful violet eyes and a weakly pretty mouth. 
 
 "I was acting as nurse then and afterwards. I am 
 not a real member of the corps," Katherine answered 
 slowly. She wished that the girl were not there ; she had 
 not thought of Mrs. Edgerton's bringing anyone with 
 her. Yet it was very natural. The girl smiled rather 
 shyly upon her and Mrs. Edgerton, as if remembering 
 her, murmured that she had brought Miss Harcombe, a 
 close friend, with her. 
 
 "Please tell us everything," she said as they sat 
 down. 
 
 She had the air of one who steels herself to endure 
 and to conceal a grief too sacred for the public eyes. 
 "How was he hurt?" she asked, as Katherine hesitated. 
 
 It had become hard for Katherine to speak. She was 
 conscious of that girl before her, leaning forward with 
 upraised eyes. 
 
 "I wrote you what day it was," she began. "I was at 
 the hospital at Les Buissons, where I had taken the place 
 of a nurse who died. . . . The day before the Germans 
 had captured the village, but the Allies made a night 
 attack and retook it, driving the Germans as far back 
 as they could. There was a terrible battle from mid- 
 night all through the next day. ... In the afternoon 
 we went out on the field to find the wounded." 
 
 "And he was there?" the mother prompted. 
 
 "Yes he was there." Katherine looked past her, 
 seeing again that desolate plain beneath the lowering 
 sky. . . . She saw Jeffrey lying there bleeding. . . . 
 "He was far away," she said in a very low voice, "and 
 
 271
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 I was all alone when I got to him, and it was dusk. And 
 for him it was too late to do anything. . . . He had 
 been stabbed in the chest." 
 
 Very slowly she went on, choosing her words with diffi- 
 culty, speaking of his wound, of his lack of suffering at 
 the last, of his high courage. . . . 
 
 A silence fell. The mother was breathing heavily, 
 with tight-shut lips, in her face that look of anguished 
 but exalted suffering that a martyr might wear. Her 
 eyes were remote. Perhaps she saw again the panorama 
 of her boy's life, his babyhood, his merry youth, his 
 pride in his first uniform. 
 
 Then her glance came back to the American girl with 
 startled remembrance. "It was very good of you, Miss 
 King, to have stayed with him. . . . Did he talk much? 
 What did he say? There must have been last mes- 
 sages." 
 
 "He was very weak," said Katherine. "He said 
 very little." 
 
 "But that little ?" The older woman spoke with un- 
 conscious authoritativeness as though this unknown girl 
 before her were holding back a priceless possession. 
 "There must have been messages to me and to Miss 
 Harcombe," she added, turning to the young creature 
 with her who was wiping away the flowing tears. "He 
 would speak of her as Violet. If my son had lived " 
 Her voice quivered and she exchanged with the weeping 
 girl a look of tender and sad understanding. 
 
 Katherine sat very still, her head bent, her tense 
 fingers clasped in the folds of her black gown. No use 
 to protest to herself that she did not know what she 
 
 272
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 could do she knew to dreariness ! She could have 
 laughed aloud for the ironic misery of it. ... 
 Her dreams of casting herself into this mother's 
 arms of taking a daughter's place in her life! 
 Her dreams of memories in the shelter of Jeffrey's 
 gardens ! 
 
 She could not tell her story. She could not strip from 
 that slight, weakly trusting little thing the pitiful 
 solace of her poor little romance-of-what-might-have- 
 been ; she could not rob her of the dignity of her real 
 sorrow. ... It did not matter that the girl had built 
 falsely. It did not matter. Perhaps she truly believed 
 had been led to believe 
 
 Something seemed to be happening to herself she 
 could not stop to discover what it was. They were ask- 
 ing her things and she had to be very, very careful or 
 she would hurt them. . . . What was that was asked? 
 Oh, yes, his last messages. 
 
 Slowly, trying to gain time, "He spoke of his wound, 
 saying that it was no use, that he knew he must go. He 
 said it was too late to pretend. He said, 'It's nearly on 
 the clock for me,' and and just after that he said, 'We 
 must win.' He told me to go to you to tell you every- 
 thing." Heavily the words fell from her lips. She did 
 not raise her eyes. "He sent you his love and good- 
 by." 
 
 "And and did he say " The girl was leaning 
 forward, her wistful eyes drowned in tears, her lips 
 quivering. 
 
 Katherine closed her eyes a moment. She was think- 
 ing of that kiss, that last kiss. The supreme agony of 
 
 273
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 those dying moments threatened to rise above her like a 
 sea. She longed to spring up and cry out to them, 
 "No, no he was mine, mine, mine ! Once I saved him, 
 and at the last I came to him. He died loving me and 
 I shall live in that love forever." 
 
 But she knew that she was strong enough to find, even 
 for this girl, the kind lie that would comfort. 
 
 "It might have been, 'Vi'," she half whispered, "and 
 then good-by !" 
 
 She felt shamed when she had said it, as if she had 
 stained the purity of the truth of that dying hour. She 
 was not repaid by the light that came into the girl's, 
 face. Her own light seemed extinguished forever. . . . 
 And down the way that she had come in those moments 
 there was no returning. 
 
 "And his last words ?" said the mother. 
 
 "He said good-by." 
 
 In the long silence they thought their different 
 thoughts of the dead. Then the mother spoke. It 
 seemed as if no voice could withstand the strain she put 
 upon it, but hers was unwavering, only a little hesitant. 
 "And the body? Is there any way that we could get 
 later perhaps ?" 
 
 "He is buried in a wood. Alone. ... If the trees 
 stand I could find the place again." 
 
 "Surely if he had been carried to camp I would 
 have paid anything 
 
 "They could not have carried him back to camp. 
 They were digging trenches and putting them all to- 
 gether pouring in quicklime." Katherine gave the 
 naked facts dully. Her auditors flinched. 
 
 274
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 Something else recurred to her. "I have some keep- 
 sakes for you. I will bring them." 
 
 She had left them in her room, having meant to bring 
 the mother to that seclusion before giving her the relics 
 of her boy, but now she rose and went for them, leaving 
 the slender, straight figure tensely upright in the in- 
 congruously gay chintz chair, with that other drooping 
 little figure beside it, crying softly. 
 
 In her room she unlocked her treasure box and took 
 out the ring and the wrist-watch and the pocketbook and 
 the writing things and carried them downstairs and put 
 them silently into the other woman's hands. She saw 
 the mother's chin quiver as she looked down on those 
 poor relics of her boy that was gone, and when Mrs. 
 Edgerton raised her eyes Katherine felt in their remote- 
 ness that utter withdrawal of the human spirit into its 
 incommunicable grief. 
 
 Miss Harcombe began to sob aloud. "Violet, dear, 
 you must not. Remember what we have to be proud of." 
 Mrs. Edgerton spoke with quiet, restraint, still looking 
 down upon her relics. "Some of these but later." 
 She put the things away carefully in a black bag she 
 carried and turned to Katherine. "His sword? Did 
 anyone think of that?" 
 
 "It was buried with him." 
 
 "They sent me his father's from South America." It 
 was not reproach but wistfulness that spoke. ... So 
 twice to this slender, delicate woman had come those 
 poor relics out of the silence once for her husband and 
 once for her son. 
 
 "Oh, I wish I had known had thought !" 
 275
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 The sad pity of the cry brought Mrs. Edgerton's 
 eyes to Katherine, and from out her remoteness her at- 
 tention concentrated a moment on this girl before her 
 who had been the comforter of her dying son. How 
 young she was and how pretty . . . but such pale, thin 
 cheeks, and such dark shadows, like bruises, about her 
 big, sorrowful eyes. . . . She must have been see- 
 ing terrible things . . . going about a battlefield 
 seeking the wounded. . . . Fleetingly she wondered 
 about her. 
 
 "You are an American?" she questioned. 
 
 "Yes." The girl's lips closed sharply over further 
 speech that might be too revealing. Perhaps Mrs. 
 Edgerton knew of Jeffrey's going to Paris to see some 
 American. . . . She was looking very attentively at her 
 now, as if remembering something. . . . But if the 
 mother's mind raised any questions she did not seek an 
 answer. And Katherine's silence seemed to exorcise 
 them. 
 
 "You have been more than kind," she said. "You 
 have taken a great deal of trouble for me. It was more 
 than I could expect and I am grateful. I would 
 like She hesitated. "Is there anything in the 
 world that I can do for you, my dear?" 
 
 Dumbly Katherine shook her head. There was a lump 
 in her throat that would not be swallowed. She knew 
 then that she could have loved this woman. . . . 
 
 "You must leave me your address. And later, after 
 it is over if you can remember the place ... I 
 would like to have him in the old church." 
 
 "Yes, I will send my address. And I will write you 
 276
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 everything I can remember of the place so that if any- 
 thing should happen to me you could find it." 
 
 "I should be grateful." 
 
 For a moment more Jeffrey's mother held her hand, 
 looking down upon her, saying something of her sad 
 gratitude, and then she was gone, her arm slipped 
 through that of the clinging girl. They were fond of 
 each other, Katherine could see. . . . She moved to the 
 window. A very old man was holding open the door of 
 a carriage. He closed it upon them and they drove 
 away. 
 
 Upstairs she locked the box that looked so empty 
 now. But still she had his letters. . . . And then she 
 remembered, and looking down upon her third finger she 
 saw that she had been wearing before them the old sig- 
 net which Jeffrey had placed there that Sunday at Les 
 Buissons. . . . Had the mother noticed? 
 
 She would never know now, she thought, what inter- 
 pretation perhaps to her discredit the mother would 
 place upon its presence there. It seemed to her the last 
 card in a pack of ironies.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 THAT night she had no more terms to make with 
 grief. It had its way with her. 
 
 In those first stunned days at the hospital she 
 had been drugged with work. And in Paris when she 
 had waked to the meaning of her loss she had fled from 
 it, like a child running in terror before some overwhelm- 
 ing thing, hurrying blindly to the refuge of Jeffrey's 
 mother and the comfort of her understanding and her 
 sympathy. 
 
 Now that refuge was gone. She had closed the door 
 upon it, or rather, it had never been open. Her com- 
 mon-sense now flashed the dry white light of ironic 
 understanding over that. . . . To Jeffrey's mother she 
 would have been a stranger, an outsider, someone who 
 had captured Jeffrey's heart from her. . . . Instinc- 
 tively she divined that the very mildness of his affection 
 for the little Violet was a recommendation for the girl 
 in the mother's eyes. She was no formidable rival, but 
 a dear protegee to be sheltered. 
 
 Now that was all over. . . . She was shut out from 
 everything of his old life. . . . She felt like Hagar 
 stumbling into the wilderness. . . . 
 
 78
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 And Jeffrey was gone . . . gone forever. . . . She 
 must think what life would be like now; she must look 
 at her life, face it clearly. . . . 
 
 Wave after wave of anguish went over her. She lay 
 on her bed, stiff and rigid, her hands tightly clenched, 
 as if she were enduring a physical spasm. If she kept 
 very quiet perhaps this agony would abate . . . like a 
 fever. . . . 
 
 But her mind would not be quiet. Like a storm at sea 
 it was casting up its wreckage memories, pictures, 
 images, old thoughts, old associations. . . . She kept 
 seeing Jeffrey's face, eager and splendid, with that shin- 
 ing look that his eyes held for her, even at the last. . . . 
 She kept hearing his voice in the old words and phrases, 
 but ending always in the pitiable ghost-like whisper, 
 "Is it possible? . . . All that was to be." 
 
 All that was to be! Those other women in black, 
 those wives, those mothers, they were not to be pitied 
 as was she ; they had lived their love, they had days and 
 nights of memories, of dear associations, of priceless 
 hours. She had so little ! Their love and life were all 
 before them. . . . And now it was all over. Never to 
 see him again, never to be his wife, never to hear his 
 dear home-coming step. . . . 
 
 She twisted over on the bed, hiding her face in her 
 arms, great sobs shaking her body. She felt she could 
 not bear it. ... But other people had borne it. They 
 had lived somehow. Ellen Wharton had lived, frozen 
 into a sad statue, going about the surface of life. . . . 
 Bravely or bitterly, somehow people lived. 
 
 And she must live. Her splendid chance ! The words 
 
 279
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 flung themselves at her ironically. Her splendid chance 
 of life and love and happiness all wrecked and broken 
 and trampled underfoot under a Kaiser's foot. 
 
 Never again. . . . Her heart took up the burden of 
 that nevermore and beat against the doors of mystery. 
 . . . Sorrow does away with all the little candles men 
 have lit to see by and demands the great white light of 
 truth. . . . She strained her untried eyes in vain to 
 search its farthest rays. 
 
 What was the meaning of life? A great, whirling, 
 nebulous mass, rotating, condensing, cooling . . . with 
 a flicker of animation creeping from plant to plant, 
 leaping the border into animal existence, mounting from 
 form to form, higher and higher, to blaze up into human 
 consciousness and then ? 
 
 The mystery of the human consciousness ! Science 
 could not answer her, any more than the kind God of 
 her mother's church, a church where hell was tacitly 
 ignored and heaven assumed, a church where every spar- 
 row's fall was still credited with prearrangement and 
 the answer to every perplexity was that of a "mysteri- 
 ous way His wonders to perform." 
 
 What answer was that to Belgium ? What answer to 
 the unending history of human injustice and brutality 
 and martyrdom? What heaven was that of shining 
 saints, faith-saved, their brothers damned? 
 
 It would take a greater God than the God of separate 
 churches to answer her and still He did not speak. 
 Unless this world was His mouthpiece? And if it 
 was 
 
 Her spirit was standing at the gates of death, shaking 
 280
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 the bars. What was beyond? The resurrection? The 
 transference of the spirit? . . . Either were a death to 
 the old and loved familiar flesh. ... A sleep? A sleep 
 unending, like the flowers whose seeds may spring to 
 fresh life but whose petals are gathered into the bosom 
 of the earth in undying but unidentical persistence? 
 Was this analogy for both the flesh and spirit? 
 
 So everyone who thinks and feels and loves questions 
 of life. And so Katherine, in the travail of her soul. 
 But no one who had gone through the anguish of that 
 battlefield and its scenes of suffering could find a simple 
 answer to that chaos of human fury and human exalta- 
 tion. 
 
 From its desperate questionings her heart dropped 
 back into its own grief of loss. What did it matter? 
 What did it all matter? Jeffrey was gone and she 
 must live without him. 
 
 "But I can't I can't," she moaned. 
 
 The next morning she telephoned MacNare and he 
 came to her hotel, prepared for the parting which had 
 been understood between them. 
 
 "But I'm not going," she said quickly, to his inquir- 
 ing look. "Not not to Edgerton Hall." 
 
 He was shocked by the alteration of the night. She 
 had a feverish color and her eyes were bright and defi- 
 antly hard as if she were warning off the world. 
 
 "I I didn't tell her," she went on rapidly, as he 
 waited for her speech. "She she had a girl with her 
 someone she was fond of and someone who was fond of 
 Jeffrey and who thought. . . . You see, I couldn't tell 
 
 281
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 them. It wouldn't have done me any good," she added, 
 trying for light indifference, "for they wouldn't have 
 loved me for it. ... This was a wild goose chase, you 
 see. . . . Except of course that that I would have 
 come anyway and told her everything I could of his 
 death. . . . And now it's all over " 
 
 "Yes? Now?" 
 
 Her eyes looked past him. Her locked fingers twisted 
 restlessly. 
 
 "You'll go home? To your mother?" 
 
 "My mother? And bring this to her?" She touched 
 her own breast. "How can I? I've never told her of 
 Jeffrey, you see. . . . And now No, I'm no use 
 there. I can be of use in Paris. So I'll go back. If 
 if you could tell me about trains 
 
 He thought that it was a hard fate which had sent 
 this girl to Europe on the same boat with Jeffrey Edger- 
 ton. Just another day before sailing 
 
 Aloud he said, "You need a rest, a change 
 
 "Don't you know that a rest is the last thing in the 
 world that I need?" she flashed petulantly at him. "I 
 want to get away, to get away from everybody, from 
 myself! I want to work, to forget " 
 
 "You won't do much work till you've had a rest," he 
 continued stolidly. "No doctor would put you on a case 
 now. He'd put you to bed. ... I want you to come 
 down to the Cotswolds with me." 
 
 "TheCotswolds?" 
 
 "I'm sufficiently a cousinly person for you to be 
 with, and I don't believe we'd find any society to 
 inquire." 
 
 282
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "It isn't that! But I don't want- 
 
 "I've business there and I I'd like you to go with 
 me. I want someone with me, you know." 
 
 "Business !" she mocked. He met her look with a 
 steadiness that melted her eyes to gentleness. Not that 
 she believed a word he said. He was trying to make out 
 a case for himself, in order to give her the change he 
 thought she needed. It was touchingly friendly. 
 
 "It's so quiet there," he told her, "and so open. 
 You'd like it for a few days." 
 
 And of course, whether he knew it or not, he really 
 did need someone with him. She had not forgotten his 
 grim isolation in his own terrible loss. But he seemed 
 so strong, so able now to endure, that she faintly won- 
 dered. What formula had he found for going on with 
 life? 
 
 She had no thought at all that the queer, black- 
 browed young man who sat so stolidly before her in that 
 chintz-hung drawing-room, knew now but one formula 
 as a spring for action. As long as she was near him, 
 as long as she needed him in her peculiar loneliness and 
 he could care for her and help her a little, why then he 
 had something to do from moment to moment. He had 
 a dumb, hungry longing to be with her. He accepted 
 the utter hopelessness and the limitations of this strange 
 association, and he asked nothing for himself but to help 
 her now a little and then stand aside. He told himself 
 that he would not suffer long. 
 
 With utter indifference she left the details to him. It 
 did not matter to her where she went or what she did. 
 19 283
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 She wanted to be left alone and allowed to eat her heart 
 out in bitter rebellion at the havoc of her life. 
 
 She was preoccupied with her own misery and did not 
 appreciate the patient kindliness of the taciturn man be- 
 side her, and his thoughtfulness for her in little things, 
 but she remembered his trouble and tried to rouse her- 
 self and make an effort for his sake. It was a strange 
 journey. She knew that he was taking it for her sake, 
 trying to be kind to her, and though her heart made 
 no response her courage tried to hide her wretchedness 
 and accept his friendliness as he meant it. 
 
 So when the train had climbed to the little hidden vil- 
 lage among the barren hills whither MacNare's recol- 
 lections pointed him, she feigned pleasure in the place, 
 the scenery, the quaint lodgings which he found for 
 her around the corner from his tiny inn, and all the ex- 
 cursions that he constantly devised, going docilely with 
 him for walks and drives or long rambles along the 
 scantily wooded streams in some wide valley, or breath- 
 less climbs up the hilly slopes that looked so slack and 
 proved so endless. 
 
 But for her it was just the country that she would 
 never see with Jeffrey, the England where she and Jef- 
 frey would never live. . . . 
 
 Every day her bitter heart said that it could not go 
 on. 
 
 It was the seventh week since Jeffrey had died. It 
 seemed to her that it was the seventh year. Already she 
 had grown accustomed to pain, to waking with a heart 
 of lead into a world in which she was alone. The first 
 wild resentment, the anguished incredulity with which 
 
 284
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 her heart had wakened to her loss and cried, "It cannot, 
 cannot be true! That voice cannot be stilled for- 
 ever, that warm ardent heart cannot be cold 
 these things are too awful to be!" and refused to 
 accept the present in the vision of the past, this defiance 
 had been beaten by every slow, succeeding day into 
 submission. 
 
 She accepted the fact of her loss and as the days went 
 by felt as if she had always known it. The young coun- 
 try couples, glad in each other's nearness, waked no 
 longer a rebellious cry against blind fate but only a 
 dumb wonder that asked heavily if her heart had ever 
 been as joyous, her laugh as ready. ... So quickly 
 does grief exhaust its wonder, and know itself for a 
 maimed thing. 
 
 She went through only the motions of living in those 
 empty days. There was a certain amount of pretense 
 about it, a certain semblance of interest to screen her 
 from the village eyes, but behind this screen of motion 
 the real woman sat idly, with folded hands. She felt 
 that her inner life was done. 
 
 She thought one night that she wished never to wake 
 again. And she waked early, in the chill of before- 
 dawn, with a glimpse of the reddening east in the 
 November sky. She dressed hurriedly and left the quiet 
 house, passing the inn where a solitary hostler, washing 
 down a horse in the court, touched h>s cap to her in 
 surprise. 
 
 Down the lane she went and into one of the winding 
 roads that curved among the hills, and presently she 
 
 285
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 turned off from the road and started up a grassy hill- 
 side. An intense need for out-of-doors, for breathing 
 space, drove her on. She wanted to exhaust herself in 
 physical energy. She climbed blindly at first with no 
 eyes for the country ; it seemed to her that beauty would 
 never mean anything to her again. 
 
 The air was mild though with the tang of crisper days 
 at hand, and there was still green in the stubbly grass 
 under her feet. She looked down at the gauzy, dew- 
 filled cobwebs stretching from blade to blade. Ahead 
 of her there were white rabbits scampering away. One 
 turned and looked back at her with soft, inquiring eyes. 
 It looked very innocent and friendly. And men shot 
 them for sport ! Everything in the world held its stab 
 of pain. 
 
 And everything held its associations. There had been 
 a little white rabbit breakfasting about the farm that 
 day of the first battle. 
 
 She went on and on, hurrying with a sense of urgency, 
 almost of expectation. There were no trees and the 
 sky stretched overhead in limitless space. Her back was 
 to the east but she saw ahead of her its faint reflections. 
 The blue of the sky was deepening above with the deep- 
 ening light. She passed a dew-pond, full, unstirred, a 
 circle of sky invaded by the rosy flush of east. . . . 
 Her heart beat suddenly with a fuller pulse. She 
 pressed on, tirelessly. 
 
 And then she reached the top, a great, bare headland 
 of jutting rock and close-cropped grass, and turned to 
 look down. It was not a high hill but it seemed high in 
 the morning light, and the soft vapors of the night still 
 
 286
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 veiled the valleys so that the world seemed to lie at her 
 feet. 
 
 In the east a flash of fire leaped from behind a craggy 
 hill head and ran along the rim of the dim world. Up 
 from the horizon into the reddened clouds there poured 
 a blaze of gold, like the flames of Wotan's forge or 
 Brtinhilde's dancing fire, and into the burning beauty 
 sprang out the red-gold sun. A shaft of purest light 
 seemed to flash along the hilltops ; she felt bathed in its 
 light and in a sense of fresh, new day. ... A wind 
 sprang up; it blew cool against her forehead, tossing 
 back her hair. Down in the valleys it was blowing back 
 the vapors, revealing gleaming little lakes. The dew- 
 pond's reflected gold was crisped with sudden, tiny 
 waves. The cobwebs glowed. 
 
 Again she felt the stir that all strong manifestations 
 of nature roused in her, the sense of being one with 
 them and sharing them. She felt caught up in that free 
 wind and carried out to high heaven and the fiery east ; 
 the light and the pure color dazzled her and her blood 
 flowed faster in her veins, her breath came and went 
 in sudden ecstasy. . . . God nature something inar- 
 ticulate out there was answered by the articulate spirit 
 within. . . . Splendor and beauty lived and called to 
 her. 
 
 Suddenly she felt herself strong and enduring, even 
 as the earth was enduring, and in the elemental clay 
 her spirit burned with a new fire. . . . She felt glad. 
 Life was not all horror while it held love and beauty, 
 and love was not gone while memory lived. The mys- 
 tery of it was still insoluble, but she was unafraid. 
 
 287
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 God was greater than any creed that men could bind 
 Him with. He was no demon omniscience, designing her 
 heart to its individual anguish. He was no gross mis- 
 manager of monarchies, accessible to prayer and incense 
 and the formal beseechments of crowned heads. . . . 
 He was that light that sprang at her from the dawn, 
 that ray that kindled in men's hearts. . . . 
 
 Strange how that flash of consciousness that had been 
 running through the world, from form to form, from life 
 to life, seemed still winging on its ways among men, 
 kindling, ennobling, enlightening! And however the 
 majority of men were dull to its spark, unaware of high 
 capacity, content to cower, to accept, to make terms, to 
 serve, there were always found the shining spirits, know- 
 ing a higher life, realizing a sujalimer self. These were 
 the Fire-bringers among men, that like Prometheus 
 would give their bodies to the torment rather than be- 
 tray the mission of their souls. Were these the last 
 answer of conscious life, the final sublimity of evolu- 
 tion? 
 
 For a moment her thoughts followed on this trail of 
 her old questionings, then they came back to confront 
 that world which stretched about her, into which she 
 must descend and live her days. . . . She thought of 
 the future now steadily. Her heart was not empty ! It 
 held priceless memories of love and courage. Bitter 
 that Jeffrey must be one of the martyrs in that struggle 
 of the everlasting verities of freedom and right against 
 undying stupidities and cruelties, but splendid for her 
 that he had lived, that she had known him, that they had 
 loved !
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 She looked out over the world, fresh and beautiful, 
 and though the irrecoverable beauty and freshness of 
 her own life were gone, her splendid chance for perfect 
 joy, she felt the indestructible forces of youth and life 
 within her. And she knew that she would go on, and go 
 on bravely and stanchly, not darkening a sad world with 
 her grief, but drawing strength from her memories, 
 from her own soul, and from the strength of this nature, 
 so impersonal, so enduring, so free of beauty. 
 
 She knew herself then as a woman stronger than the 
 grief-crushed girl, able to hide her wounds and to help, 
 perhaps, in healing others. That was all that really 
 mattered now to heal, to comfort, to help bandage 
 those many wounds. . . . She thought, as of a stranger, 
 of that other self who had set sail, those nine months 
 before, to find her fortune, that other, so avid of happi- 
 ness, so incredulous of disaster!
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 TO France!" she told MacNare, turning to him 
 with a sudden smile. 
 
 He had just asked her where they should 
 go that afternoon. 
 
 All morning they had driven on an old Roman road 
 by high and windy pastures where low-massed clouds 
 trailed their slow and purple shadows on the empty 
 fields, and all morning her thoughts had fed silently 
 on new purposes while her senses had quickened to the 
 beauty about her. 
 
 She added, "My 'rest' has lasted long enough." 
 
 MacNare saw that the girl Katherine was gone. It 
 was a woman, steady-eyed and quiet-lipped, that smiled 
 at him, and his heart ached for that gay lost creature 
 with her eyes of joy. ... If only he could see her face 
 light again in the old way, see her lips pucker in their 
 saucy young laughter ! . . . But the world was replete 
 with the destruction of precious things and this girl's 
 lightness of heart had gone with the rest. 
 
 It was one thing more out of his life, that was all 
 and the last. . . . The first flush of his youth had been 
 squandered on a waster. . . . Then he had shut him- 
 
 290
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 self away from love, and a child had taken the place in 
 his life of all that affection might mean to other men. 
 . . . But love was not a matter of decision. It had 
 taken him by surprise, invaded him like a rush of spring. 
 He had had his brief dream a dream of folly. His 
 heart still knew the pang of that moment when he had 
 glimpsed Katherine on the brow of the hill, her arm 
 in Jeffrey's. 
 
 So had gone love, with the dumb show of friendship 
 remaining. Then had gone the child, torn out of his 
 life in a bloody nightmare of horror. . . . Now the last 
 use of friendship was nearly over. 
 
 "And in France?" he heard himself asking. 
 
 "Work again. Nursing. Yes, and I want to paint 
 again, strong things, terrible things, even, that people 
 may see and know. . . . That may be my way of 
 helping." 
 
 After a silence she added, "And you ?" 
 
 "I have some work, too," he said slowly. "One last 
 thing to do also that people may see and understand. 
 . . . That will occupy me for some little time." 
 
 Madame Bonnet was back in the building with Marie 
 and her baby and the two children. Jean was a pris- 
 oner, and Marie was alternately depressed and thankful 
 that he was not in the trenches. Henri was yet safe. 
 That was the news. 
 
 Whatever astonishment the good madame experi- 
 enced at beholding her two lodgers return together she 
 did not express. MacNare she comprehended and re- 
 garded with dumb head-shakings and pitying eyes; 
 
 291
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 Katherine she studied wonderingly in the days which 
 followed. 
 
 "She is a brave girl," she ventured to observe to 
 MacNare, one morning, presenting herself upon some 
 excuse in the studio where he was now eternally 
 engrossed in a huge lump of clay. "Look, now, what 
 she is doing every other day to the hospitals to 
 relieve the regular nurses, cleaning, bathing, band- 
 aging such work as no young girl should have to 
 do! and between times at her easel, or trudging 
 from hospital to refugees to find the picture that she 
 must paint Oh, she is a brave, a noble girl, 
 monsieur !" 
 
 "She is helping herself in helping others," said Mac- 
 Nare shortly. 
 
 "It is not for that that she does it !" 
 
 "You mistake me. ... I comprehend her motives. 
 ... It is their very disinterestedness that is helping 
 her." 
 
 Madame was silent, dusting the ashes from a chair 
 as an excuse for lingering. She gave MacNare a 
 stealthily appraising look. 
 
 "It is to your grave that you are hurling yourself," 
 she thought with sorrowful indignation. In the crevices 
 of the chair she found a tiny, forgotten paper doll. 
 Hurriedly she tucked it away in her pocket. She had 
 found that he had shut out of sight every little frock 
 and toy of his dead child and she had been swift to aid 
 in removing the little reminders that were such stabs 
 of memory. 
 
 After a moment she murmured casually, straighten- 
 292
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 ing from the chair, "But she is blessedly young, mon- 
 sieur. . . . Youth is a willow wand." 
 
 "She is young," said MacNare steadily. "And some 
 day she will not forget, madame, but overlay the mem- 
 ory with other days and other experiences. ... So we 
 cannot lose hope for her." 
 
 Madame regarded his unstirred countenance with 
 mutinous indignation. Then heavily she sighed. Mac- 
 Nare had changed. Decidedly he was cherishing no 
 more personal hope. . . . He applied himself to his 
 clay as if, thought madame, nothing in the world could 
 be made but from mud. 
 
 And yet Katherine would nearly always stop at his 
 door on her way back from the hospitals, and often 
 they went out to dinner together. . . . 
 
 It was to Katherine that the good woman offered her 
 next remarks. Entering the kitchen in her own quar- 
 ters one noon some few days later she chanced to find 
 her young lodger there, talking with Marie and the 
 baby, and she promptly sent Marie on an errand and 
 addressed herself to some understanding of this strange 
 American. 
 
 "Marie needs the air," she remarked to her. "You 
 will not mind holding the baby, mademoiselle, while I 
 complete this soup? ... It is for the monsieur. If I 
 did not bring him a hot dish he would forget to eat, 
 that poor man." 
 
 Katherine was cuddling the tiny girl. There being 
 an American rocking-chair in the kitchen she rocked 
 blissfully, the little body warm against her, the fuzzy 
 head on her arm. It gave her a tender feeling to hold 
 
 293
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 the baby and yet it hurt cruelly. For there would 
 be no little children of her own to hold, no little sons 
 with Jeffrey's eyes, no little daughters. . . . She bowed 
 her head over the baby, swinging slowly to and fro. 
 
 "Mademoiselle, that man should not be so much 
 alone," said madame thoughtfully, nodding her head to 
 indicate the sculptor in the front of the house. "I do 
 what I can but it is not much. And you, of course, 
 are busy. ... I am troubled for him." 
 
 "I know," Katherine sighed. "But he is working 
 hard, and isn't that the best thing for him?" 
 
 "Do you imagine that he forgets? ... I do not 
 know what he is making in there but sometimes his face 
 is the face of ten devils. . . . Remember that she was 
 all he had and they blew her head off her body !" 
 
 Madame added, her voice breaking, "You do not 
 know how even I miss her! The little innocent. ... I 
 had her so much. ... It was I who bought her little 
 things. . . ." 
 
 They were silent, with thoughts of the child heavy 
 between them. Katherine found herself remembering 
 one night when Peggy had cuddled down upon her 
 couch putting her paper dolls to bed . . . such a big- 
 eyed, curly-haired little mite, all fat legs and dimples 
 . . . and MacNare had sat there smoking . . . and 
 had told her of the mother. 
 
 She had been sorry for him then, God knows. . . . 
 And she had been glad to think that the child would be 
 more and more a comfort to him. . . . 
 
 She strained the baby to her suddenly. . . . How 
 one's very life could twine about a child! 
 
 294
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "He must not be so alone," madame was repeating 
 insistently. 
 
 "I don't mean to leave him alone," Katherine re- 
 turned. "I want to do everything I can he was so 
 good to me in England, you don't know how good ! . . . 
 But I don't think he cares for much companionship 
 now. I felt I mustn't intrude upon him." 
 
 "For you that would be an impossibility." 
 
 Katherine looked doubtful. "I presume much now 
 upon our friendship " 
 
 "It is more than as a friend that he regards you, my 
 child." 
 
 Over the baby's head Katherine raised warning eyes 
 to her. "You must not say such things, dear madame." 
 
 "Not say them ? Is a true devotion then only ac- 
 cepted but never acknowledged?" 
 
 A faint color found its way into the girl's cheeks. 
 "You must not mistake the great kindness of Monsieur 
 MacNare." 
 
 "Kind he is, with a heart of gold but it is not I 
 who misunderstand," said madame calmly. "Monsieur 
 worships the very ground upon which you walk. . . . 
 You brought spring when you came to this house and 
 I saw that Monsieur MacNare remembered that he was 
 young and I was glad for him. For I thought that 
 when mademoiselle knew him and she was so friendly 
 with him that I dreamed. . . . And then, fool that I 
 was ! I sent him to Les Buissons." 
 
 "You sent him?" 
 
 "I told him that you were there, that you did not 
 regard him as a grandfather with a wooden leg! He 
 
 295
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 was young and a man of genius. He had means. Why 
 not? I did not know then that mademoiselle had met 
 her man. . . . And monsieur went off like a boy to 
 make a little holiday with you, perhaps to let you look 
 into his heart. . . ." 
 
 She paused, apparently concentrating upon the soup, 
 and Katherine's thoughts went back that long way to 
 the Sunday at Les Buissons, to MacNare, and his queer 
 look when she had come down the hill with Jeffrey, to 
 his abrupt departure. She could see him still, marching 
 down the farm path, little Peggy clinging to his hand. 
 ... A hundred half-forgotten, half-glimpsed impres- 
 sions rushed back to her. . . . But he had been so 
 stolidly reserved, so shy of speech in all his bluntness ! 
 
 Eyeing her changing face, "Saint Anne of Miracles, 
 but she did not know !" thought madame amazedly. 
 "He has never let her see not even in England. . . . 
 He is mad, that young man ! And she did not her 
 poor young Englishman God rest his soul! teach 
 her what stuff men's hearts are made of?" 
 
 "I am so sorry," said a sober little voice over the 
 baby's head. "I would not have hurt him for any- 
 thing." 
 
 "It was not you, mademoiselle, it was the destiny." 
 
 Katherine's perceptions, at last aroused, were running 
 on swiftly. If this were true why this, then, was the 
 secret of his gentleness to her, his patient tenderness in 
 her grief. . . . She remembered the night of her deso- 
 late return to the studio. . . . She remembered the gray 
 crossing to England. . . . She remembered the long 
 days at the Cotswolds. . . . 
 
 296
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "Mademoiselle must not regret that I have mentioned 
 this," said the older woman, a little anxiously. "I but 
 spoke of it to show that it would be impossible for you 
 to presume, as you said, upon his feeling for you. 
 There is nothing that you can do that would be dis- 
 pleasing to him. And now that he is alone and fairly 
 ill with grief you can do much for him." 
 
 "I will do everything I can," said the girl, with a 
 simple readiness that managed to depress poor madame's 
 Lopes. "If my companionship can help I am only too 
 glad to give it. He is my dear friend. . . . And what- 
 ever he thought in the beginning, madame, and that 
 Sunday at Les Buissons, that is now long past." 
 
 She looked up at the Frenchwoman with a faint, wist- 
 ful smile. "We are two different creatures, now, he 
 and I, and it is our sorrow that is a bond between us. 
 ... I think that no two people could be so empty of 
 desire." 
 
 That was the pity of it, thought madame, incurable 
 builder that she was. 
 
 There was nothing now to be said. Her two dear 
 mad Americans had their own arrangement of affairs. 
 
 But the conversation had touched Katherine's heart 
 to a deepened understanding of that strange friend of 
 hers. She thought it pitiful that after his first tragedy 
 and his odd, hermit years, he should have found fresh 
 hope again only to be disappointed. . . . But it was 
 all very far away now. And the Katherine that he had 
 desired was left back there in the woods at Les Buissons. 
 . . . For this sadder Katherine who had taken her 
 place he had infinite compassion and friendliness but, 
 
 297
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 of course, no desire. . . . And grief for a murdered 
 child does not leave a man's heart space for the love 
 of women. 
 
 So the girl thought, quite innocently pigeon-holing 
 MacNare's sorry romance among the things that were, 
 and permitting it only a tender memory in her thoughts. 
 But for compunction at her past blindness and the pain 
 that she had unconsciously caused him to suffer in the 
 days of her own happiness she redoubled the frank 
 friendliness of her ways to him, and in the long evening 
 hours that art could not fill for him, and the emptiness 
 of the dinner-time, she tried to make him forget that 
 little figure that had trotted so quietly about the studio, 
 the little face, with its great dark eyes that had watched 
 him across so many dinner-tables. 
 
 She felt that it was good that he was working hard 
 at that new model of his. She herself had begun to un- 
 derstand now something of the uses of her creative 
 power. She was filling canvas after canvas with those 
 wan faces at the hospitals, with the dazed horrors of 
 the Belgian refugees, the piteous faces of wives whose 
 husbands had been bayoneted before them, of mothers 
 whose daughters had been torn from them, whose sons 
 had been shot. ... If only her power of painting 1 
 could keep some sort of pace with her passionate sorrow 
 for these people if only she could do them the poor 
 service of winning one jot of the world's compassion! 
 
 Often she brought these canvases for MacNare to 
 see. He eyed them with a grim satisfaction. 
 
 "Good you paint like a man." 
 
 Guerin had told her that once before. 
 298
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 MacNare thought a minute. "You face facts not 
 tint them." 
 
 "You mean I'm literal?" 
 
 "You are fundamentally honest," he brought out 
 slowly, his frowning gaze still on her study. "And un- 
 afraid. . . . Women are born colorists. . . . But they 
 shrink from the bare bones of things." 
 
 "And you do not?" 
 
 She meant it generally. But he took it to himself 
 with a harsh laugh. 
 
 "I ? I live among the bare bones of things !" 
 
 20
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 IN one of the workshops that charity was maintaining 
 for needy women Katherine discovered Olga Goule- 
 beff. The little Russian was stitching busily, not 
 for charity, but for the franc and a half a day. The 
 allowance from Russia had ceased. 
 
 "Perhaps he is. dead, that uncle who saw to it," Olga 
 said. "Anyway it is not here and I regret for I could 
 do much with it. It would have bought many cigarettes 
 for those poor boys and many warm socks." 
 
 It was not of herself that Olga was thinking. The 
 girl's odd eyes were lighted with a pale intensity. "If 
 I were a man!" she said. 
 
 A little hesitantly Katherine asked for news of Louis 
 Arnaud. 
 
 "One letter has come." Olga's fingers flew on with 
 their rapid stitching as she spoke unemotionally. "It 
 is not to me that he writes often, you understand and 
 if he should die his people would not know of me to send 
 word nor send word if they knew." Her tone was not 
 bitter; she was stating the facts unresentfully. "I do 
 not even know where he is. I think at Ypres." 
 
 For a moment both girls were silent, their thoughts 
 300
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 with that long drawn battle-line, stretched like a taut 
 and quivering bowstring across France. That living 
 line! 
 
 "You still remain?" Olga spoke incuriously. 
 
 "Yes. I was nursing for some weeks in the country 
 now I am helping a little here. And painting." 
 
 "Always the painting ! You have not forgotten your 
 ambition, then? . . . But why should you," Olga added, 
 pointedly. "It is not your country's life that is at 
 stake." 
 
 Katherine was silent. Olga went on, "But that makes 
 it even kinder when the Americans come and help. . . . 
 And they are helping! . . . That woman's son," and she 
 nodded across the busy room to where a wounded youth, 
 sat chatting with a group of the women there were 
 wounded soldiers in many of the groups and little chil- 
 dren playing about some women's knees "he told me 
 of the American legion that enlisted. He was next them 
 on the field. And coming back he led one poor Amer- 
 ican, his eyes quite gone. . . . He was not twenty- 
 two. . . . Think of it ! And he gave them for 
 us ! ... And so you are nursing and painting. Still 
 learning !" 
 
 "Still learning," said Katherine with a shadowy smile. 
 "And so much to learn. . . . But I am working hard." 
 
 "Always you worked hard," Olga murmured. "But 
 you had reason." 
 
 "You must come and see me," Katherine said in part- 
 ing. "Come in and have dinner with me, whenever you 
 can, Olga." 
 
 The girl nodded without speaking. Then as Kath- 
 301
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 erine turned away she caught at her sleeve, plucking her 
 back. 
 
 "If you should hear anything at your hospitals 
 his was the th Regiment " 
 
 "I will let you know at once." 
 
 Olga's hand fell slowly. "It is not that I cherish any 
 dreams," she said with a touch of her old irony. "In 
 the beginning of course always I hoped. For that I 
 went to Les Avants with him, hoping to become dearer 
 and dearer. ... I am not the first to go that road. 
 Though some succeed. . . . But I was a fool. I was 
 jealous. And so I I thought to pay him back, to show 
 him that others valued valued," she echoed with in- 
 describable irony. "They valued me for a boast! . . . 
 And that finished me with him, you comprehend. ... I 
 became the affair of a day." 
 
 Picking up a spool, she briskly threaded her needle. 
 She did not raise her eyes to Katherine but went on 
 sewing, her tone unchanging in its quiet bitterness. 
 "I was a fool who cut my own throat. . . . There is 
 something lacking in me, of course, something too reck- 
 less, too uncontrolled, too ready. . . . You angered me 
 that day with your pity as if I were a sinner on her 
 knees. . . . But you were kind. You never spoke 
 never told. ... I would like to thank you for that 
 much. . . . After this, perhaps I shall go to New York. 
 I must earn my bread and there my talent can serve for 
 something if only to draw fashion plates! . . . But 
 now this war is everything. It is both my countries. 
 . . . And it may be that I shall see Louis again." 
 
 It was Olga's solitary revelation. Though Katherine 
 302
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 afterwards made a point of running in to her, to taking 
 her out to dinner and seeing that she had something sub- 
 stantial to eat, never again was there any talk between 
 them of the past. Always the crisis of the war engrossed 
 them, and Olga, living like a little anchorite upon her 
 franc and a half a day, still managed to wrest from 
 that pittance, so Katherine found, some two sous or 
 more each day, to drop in the box labeled, "Pour Nos 
 Soldats." 
 
 For our soldiers that was Olga's life. 
 
 After that in the hospitals Katherine sought for news 
 of Louis but found nothing. 
 
 One day as she passed down the white rows a sud- 
 den likeness arrested her. Then she saw that it was more 
 than a likeness ; it was Etienne de Trezac himself, the 
 ghost of the old handsome Etienne, lying with closed 
 eyes and drawn, white face. As she looked his dark 
 eyes opened upon her and lighted with recognition. 
 
 "Is it you?" 
 
 She came up to the side of the bed. "Really I, Eti- 
 enne Sister Katherine, now a substitute, you see. . . . 
 But I am glad to see you again even here," she added 
 gently, "for we shall soon have you well " 
 
 She looked down and saw the bandaged stump of an 
 arm. The right hand was gone. A rush of scalding 
 pity brought the words, "Oh, Etienne your painting 
 hand!" 
 
 Something flickered in the depths of his dark eyes 
 but they did not flinch and the gallant smile on his 
 pale lips did not falter. "For France I can learn to 
 paint with my left !" 
 
 303
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 The spirit of those days! The spirit of France! 
 She tried to meet his brave smile with one of her own 
 but her lips quivered. He went on, "That poor man at 
 my left here he has lost both eyes. And he has a wife 
 and four children and a sick mother dependent upon 
 him. . . . He used to repair watches." 
 
 His tone added, "Now that is a tragedy if you like! 
 I am nothing !" 
 
 On the next bed a bandaged face turned restively 
 toward them. Katherine bent lower. "Speak softly, 
 Etienne he hears you." 
 
 "He comprehends." Etienne spoke clearly. "And he 
 knows that I comprehend. We are brothers in arms. 
 . . . And I shall always look out for you and yours, 
 my brother." 
 
 From the next bed a thin arm was thrust uncertainly 
 forth and Etienne reached and clasped it with his left 
 hand, giving it a warm grip before the hands fell apart. 
 It was only one of the many simple pacts of aid those 
 days made between man and man to whom suffering 
 brought brotherhood. Immediately Etienne demanded 
 cheerfully of Katherine, "Have you a banana? I have 
 never seen a spot so bananaless as this hospital! Is it 
 that they cease to exist? Have the submarines sunk 
 every cargo of them?" 
 
 "I'll bring some," Katherine gladly promised, and she 
 came often to spend as much time as was possible with 
 him, reading or chatting cheerfully. In all that hospital 
 hers was the only voice she had heard raised in pity. 
 Every word was of courage or admiration. 
 
 Even from Etienne's relatives whom she came to meet 
 304
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 in their visits there, frail and aged gentlewomen of an 
 old regime, she did not hear any condolences to the 
 maimed boy. They were proud of him. He could be 
 proud of himself. He had done his duty. 
 
 To them she spoke of the Baroness de Saronne, who 
 had died at Les Buissons, and found they knew her 
 well. 
 
 All this news and more she brought back with her to 
 MacNare in his hermitage studio, giving him scene after 
 scene of her days. Some wounded German boys were 
 especially pathetic to her. One had been found fainting 
 across a dead Frenchman to whom he had brought water. 
 
 "His own knee was shattered and he is so pa- 
 tient! Not a complaint, ever. He said to the French 
 boy in the cot next him, 'We are not enemies in hos- 
 pital no?' And then he said very worriedly, 'And why 
 should we be enemies at all? . . . We want to live, not 
 kill each other. But it is for the Fatherland.' The 
 Fatherland! For Prussia!" 
 
 For the officers she felt not so much sympathy. The 
 arrogance of their caste was there. Once she beheld 
 one young German lieutenant spit promptly in the face 
 of a soldier from his own regiment who without being 
 addressed had spoken to him, offering to translate for 
 him. It might not be typical but it was illustrative of 
 a spirit that made her American blood boil. 
 
 And again she sat up all one night with a dying pris- 
 oner who had the sins of war on his young conscience. 
 He had gone mad with the others in sacking one Bel- 
 gian village and there had been a young girl who re- 
 sisted him and he had bayoneted her. He told Kath- 
 
 S05
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 erine over and over again how sick it had made him 
 when the steel went running through her soft body. 
 
 "She was like my sister at home but that is war, is 
 it not, nurse? And we had orders we could do as we 
 liked with the girls. That is war. . . . And someone 
 had fired it was for an example. She was like Frida. 
 . . . But in war a man is not himself she should not 
 have fought me. And that old man " 
 
 He babbled, staring-eyed, till dawn brought him 
 death. 
 
 There were other scenes more cheerful. One day she 
 came to an English private, an irate cockney, bitterly 
 berating the man who had carried him off a battlefield 
 under fire. "Used me like a sack on 'is back, the beg- 
 gar did a blooming shield between 'im and the bul- 
 lets. They plumped two more into me. . . . And they 
 speaks of Mm for a medal. Life-saving ! Garn ! 'Ose 
 life, I'd like to know?"
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 CHRISTMAS came with a sober pealing of bells, 
 with music and candles and high masses in the 
 cathedrals where the women prayed, with flowers 
 and fruit for the hospitals and many, many gifts for the 
 trenches, so many of them pathetically undelivered. 
 
 To Etienne de Trezac that day was given his first 
 sight of his fresh-healed stump. He was sitting in an 
 invalid chair, wrapped in a huge blanket, steadily re- 
 garding his arm, when Katherine came toward him and 
 for a moment the girl was tempted to turn and run. 
 
 Often it seemed to her tense nerves that the limit of 
 sensibility's endurance had been reached, but always she 
 forced herself on. 
 
 Now Etienne raised his head and greeted her com- 
 posedly. "Surveying the relic, you observe," he said, 
 holding it grimly out. "A stupid thing, is it not? 
 Some mechanical horror will doubtless be attached that 
 I may hook up a fallen handkerchief." 
 
 "Etienne, do not !" 
 
 "I do not mean to distress you. I am but hardening 
 myself to the spectacle. Does it affront you?" 
 
 "Never that never ! But it makes me too sorry." 
 307
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 He looked up at her with sudden brightness. He saw 
 her white face smiling down upon him, her soft gray- 
 blue eyes clouded with their deep compassion. Her lips 
 were very tender. 
 
 He smiled with a trace of his old insinuating daring, 
 looking boyish again. "You have an English proverb 
 something from your Shakespeare. How does it go in 
 English? That pity is akin to love!" 
 
 Her eyes turned from him to sweep the long narrow 
 room, animated to-day with many visitors. "I love 
 every one of you !" she declared. 
 
 "Will you regard me for a moment?" 
 
 His eyes were serious now, filled with a bright, warm 
 light. His thin white face was flushed. "Once I was 
 very stupid," he said abruptly. "I I did not suffi- 
 ciently respect the canons of your amazing country. 
 But that is forgiven, is it not?" 
 
 "Oh, long ago forgiven and forgotten." Sincerity 
 rang in her quick words. It was of no moment to her 
 now that he had ever misjudged or wounded her. It 
 seemed very trivial and far away. 
 
 She thought that she would tell him of Olga and her 
 life now, but he went on hurryingly, "But I have not 
 forgotten ! I was insolent ! . . . And all the time. . . . 
 It seems that I was indeed searching for my future 
 countess. . . . If if you would do me so much honor? 
 If this" he indicated that poor stump "if this does 
 not repel you ?" 
 
 "Oh, Etienne!" There was keen reproach for that 
 thought in her cry. Then she smiled and shook her 
 head at him in the teasing way of the bright Katherine 
 
 308
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 that he had known. "Now I know that you are con- 
 valescent. To propose to the nurse in America that 
 is a most favorable symptom ! I shall put it upon your 
 chart." 
 
 But he would be answered. "You evade me and I 
 am sincere. I love you. I did not mean to speak yet, 
 but my love it is not of a patience, love, you know." 
 He spoke lightly but his pathetic eyes were searching 
 her face. 
 
 What he saw there prepared him for her words. "It 
 can never, never be, my dear." 
 
 "Never that is a long time." 
 
 "And for me also." 
 
 She could not speak of Jeffrey ; she could not tear 
 away the protective silence from that bleeding wound 
 in her life, but the sudden inflection of her voice, the 
 dark dilation of her eyes, struck his sensitive perceptions 
 with meaning and hushed the eager words upon his lips. 
 
 He said no more. When she rose to go his left hand 
 caught at hers and carried it to his lips in a gesture 
 that seemed to breathe a sudden comprehension in its 
 farewell. 
 
 Nor was the time without other reminders of her 
 youth and its place in others' lives. Next day there 
 came a letter from Dick Conrad, grumbling at her lack 
 of communicativeness and at his weakness in writing her 
 again. 
 
 Somehow I can't picture you [he wrote] going 
 about in a uniform distributing beef tea and pale 
 pink pills. Do you wear a cap? Your mother 
 
 309
 
 says you are just substituting now. Does that 
 mean reading aloud to handsome convalescents ? 
 
 The jocoseness grated upon her sympathies, so fresh- 
 ly vibrating from the day's demands. ( Then she smiled. 
 Good old Dick! That was his way of putting things, 
 of hiding his feelings under a display of humor. She 
 read on. 
 
 We are all fed up on the war over here and the 
 governor is something fierce about it, let me tell 
 you ! No "ma patrie" and "dear old England" 
 here! The Conrads are strong for the Father- 
 land, believe me ! Funny, too, because he's nevei*" 
 seen it, and his dad cleared out early, I under- 
 stand, not caring to drill and preferring to make 
 steel in a community where the man of peace was 
 allowed upon the sidewalk, but I am not mention- 
 ing that aloud at all. No, sir, we are fighting 
 for the hearth and home and life and liberty, and 
 every nation on earth has been hating Germany 
 since the fall of Eden and trying to slip hemlock 
 in her beer. ... It always seemed to me that 
 Germany was getting along very fatly, with her 
 share of good things, and this "place in the sun" 
 looks like a mighty hot place in the future, but 
 these thoughts are not for home consumption, 
 little Dickie not caring for a decrease in the size 
 of his pay checks. Enough is pouring out of the 
 family vaults now for the dogs of war. Query: 
 can you call sausages in the trenches the dogs of 
 war? 
 
 However the country is doing something else 
 310
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 besides knit and read the headlines. There are 
 some quite entertaining new steps and you had 
 better come home and learn them. The de- 
 butantes have got us all trotting till dawn. 
 Never saw such a set of lively youngsters, always 
 up to the day-ahead-of-to-morrow stuff. If you 
 get this far you might sit down and write an old 
 friend a line, just to say that you haven't eloped 
 with any parlez-vous or vodka gentleman to date. 
 Is the painting all off? Or do you still thirst for 
 fame? 
 
 As ever, 
 
 DICK. 
 
 "And the moral of that," murmured Katherine as she 
 laid the letter down, "is that Absence makes the heart 
 grow fonder, and he hasn't quite decided on his debu- 
 tante yet, and will give his old love another chance." 
 
 It did not seem to her quite possible that once she had 
 seriously considered Dick Conrad. With all their back- 
 ground of environment they were as far apart as the 
 poles. What different roads they had traveled! She 
 wondered, letting the dusk gain upon her as she sat 
 there with her thoughts, if she could wish herself never 
 to have taken that steamer, never to have met Jeffrey, 
 never to have lived those awful days. 
 
 But she could not wish that time unlived. Her mem- 
 ories were priceless. 
 
 Her own grief, that had been so strange at first, had 
 grown an intimate. It seemed natural now for that se- 
 cret heaviness to lie upon her heart the wonder was she 
 had ever been different! Now she never looked or 
 
 311
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 planned one week or month ahead. Everything that 
 was dear was behind her; the present was a desperate 
 effort to lose herself in work. 
 
 And though in the busy days she seemed more and 
 more like her old self, though she was gallantly cheer- 
 ful, quick of smile and speech, she never closed her eyes 
 of nights without remembering those other eyes that 
 would never open again, the strange, cold waxen lids her 
 fingers had touched so unbelievingly. And those cold 
 lips. . . . That still heart that she had felt leap and 
 quiver against her own in their young hour of love. . . . 
 Those were the memories that kept her company in the 
 desolate wakeful hours and dogged even her sleep with 
 dreams. 
 
 But when Dick Conrad's letter slipped from her fingers 
 and she sat there musing, she began, for the first time, 
 to face something of the future. What was before her ? 
 She could not go on here forever; for one thing her 
 money would not much more than last her year out, and 
 for another there would not always be work for her to 
 do. Her family were anxious for her return. This life 
 must end sometime. And then? 
 
 She shivered as she looked at those years ahead. 
 
 Her painting, of course but that was only a small 
 part of life. Since the day of her betrothal she had 
 known how small a part. And some spring of incentive 
 was broken in her. . . . 
 
 Definitely she had decided not to tell her family. 
 Since Jeffrey's mother did not know her own mother 
 need not be saddened. Confidence would not help, for 
 
 312
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 they had not known Jeffrey, had not come with her all 
 this way. ... It would be easier to go on with life at 
 home if no one knew and no worried eyes were watching 
 her saying, "Now she must not brood," or, "Now she is 
 getting over it." No, she would never tell them. . . . 
 But what was she to do with her life ? 
 
 Very slowly she folded Dick Conrad's letter and put it 
 away. That way was not possible for her. . . . She 
 had put it behind her long ago when she took the 
 steamer for France. Then Jeffrey had first seen her in 
 Dick's arms. And now Dick was going on, dancing and 
 making love, and Jeffrey was under the trees at Les 
 Buissons. . . . 
 
 No, it was not possible for her. . . . Not all the 
 wealth of all those factories, pouring their black .smoke 
 into the sky, could alter it. ... Dick's jocularity 
 touched no response. He wanted her to be gay with, to 
 dance with, to make love to. He did not really need 
 her. . . . Her heart was tenderer to Etienne. 
 
 He had played his part in this great struggle which 
 had taken Jeffrey. He, too, had suffered, would suffer 
 as long as he lived. She knew what his work really 
 meant to his secret self ; she knew what high dreams he 
 had gloried in behind his mask of nonchalance. He 
 would rather have lost his tongue, his limbs, than that 
 hand. . . . 
 
 She would have liked to help him but the tenderness 
 of her heart was not the love he wanted, and to give 
 more was an impossibility, even in thought. 
 
 She could give only what she had, not what these 
 wanted of her. 
 
 313
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 So she thought forlornly, sitting there in the dusk, 
 and presently, forgetting that below-stairs a man was 
 waiting for her to come out to dinner with him, she put 
 out her light and crept into bed, reliving on her pillow 
 the days before the great guns spoke and German Kid- 
 tur had broken upon the world.
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 SINCE the marble had come she had scarcely seen 
 him. Sometimes he came out to eat, sometimes 
 he sat through a dinner with her, but he sat 
 silent and abstracted, his mind back in that studio, cut- 
 ting and chiseling. Even a glimpse of his model he had 
 refused her. She must wait for the finished thing, he 
 said, pale as that would be to the thought that was try- 
 ing to shape its likeness. 
 
 The glow of creation was upon him and he toiled like 
 a giant upon his rock, spending his strength furiously, 
 draining his already gaunt and haggard body. His 
 worn appearance was troubling Katherine, and when she 
 found that note under her door, asking to see her, her 
 first thought was that he was ill. She listened and could 
 hear no sound from below, where for so many, many 
 evenings had come the march of -his restless steps. 
 
 She was late that night, for she had stayed at the 
 hospital at the deathbed of a man who held her for his 
 wife and whispered his dying words into her ears ? and 
 she was sick and shaken, for the long months had worn 
 her resistance to the snapping point. December, Jan- 
 uary, February day by day each had passed. And so 
 21 315
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 slowly that battle-line was pressing the invader back 
 from France, so slowly, foot by foot and yard by yard 
 and so many new faces in those beds so many hob- 
 bling out, hurt and maimed ! 
 
 To-night she was in the grip of horror. And as she 
 ran down the stairs again, her hat and coat untouched, 
 she dreaded what she might find in that room below. 
 
 There was no answer to her first knocking and her 
 fear sprang into clearer form. She remembered that 
 casual revolver. . . . Suppose that he had waited only 
 to finish that work of his ? 
 
 Again she struck the door. Now there were sudden 
 steps and the noise of a chair pushed back. 
 
 The lock was turned, the door opened, and in the dim 
 hall light she saw him standing there in his sculptor's 
 blouse, his hair disheveled, his face flushed. 
 
 "I must have been asleep. ... I didn't hear you 
 come in, though I'd been listening." 
 
 He snapped on the electricity and she stumbled into 
 the room a little weak in the reaction of her tired nerves. 
 
 "You're ill," he said sharply, staring at her and 
 blinking his heavy eyes owlishly in the sudden light. 
 "You look like a ghost. Where have you been all this 
 time?" 
 
 "At the hospital. A man was dying he thought I 
 was his wife and he kept clinging to me. Oh, it was too 
 pitiful." Suddenly she put her hands up to her face 
 to hide its quivering, but the long strain had been too 
 much and the big tears welled between her screening 
 fingers. "I didn't mean to act like this," she stam- 
 mered, "but I can't stand any more I can't I can't !** 
 
 316
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 And then she flung back her head with a defiance 
 characteristic of her old challenging gesture. "D- 
 don't m-mind me, please. ... If they can d-die, I guess 
 that I c-can help. . . . I'll be all right." 
 
 He gave her a long look, then walked away with a 
 glance at his great covered marble, standing where last 
 summer the marble for his unfinished "Fountain of 
 Life" had stood, and began puttering with his tools. 
 
 "You said you wanted to see me," she reminded him. 
 
 "You're too tired. Another time." 
 
 "No. I couldn't sleep. . . . I'd rather hear what it 
 was." 
 
 A fire in the room had made it warm and she slipped 
 out of her jacket which weighed upon her, and lifted 
 the hat from her tired head, running her ruffling fingers 
 through the soft, light hair. 
 
 "I wish you wouldn't wear black," he told her sharply. 
 
 Over her shoulder she cast him a faint smile. "I 
 shan't any more But you didn't send for me to tell 
 me that? Are you ill?" 
 
 "111? Why, no. ... But I I wanted to show you 
 something. I wanted you to see the first. But you 
 are tired out now. It can wait." 
 
 "Oh, your work! I'm not too tired for that! It 
 would rest me, Rob." For months now she had accepted 
 his curt request to use his first name as he used hers, but 
 she had shortened it to Rob in ever sensitive fear of re- 
 minding him of Peggy's "Robert." 
 
 "I'm not sure about that," he said frowningly. "It's 
 not very restful." 
 
 But she saw that he was boyishly eager to show her, 
 
 317
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 and she was touched. He looked as if he had been work- 
 ing for days and nights, snatching sleep when his driv- 
 ing energy would let him; he was unshaven, untidy, 
 tousled. . . . She made up her mind to make him come 
 out for a walk with her next day. He was killing him- 
 self and she had neglected him. But she had thought 
 him happier at work. 
 
 "Come over here." He indicated the place. "There. 
 . . . Then shut your eyes. . . . Now." 
 
 Excitement stirred in his voice. She shut her eyes, 
 wishing she had more vitality that moment to meet the 
 demand of his impatience for her first impression, then 
 at his permission she opened her eyes again upon the 
 finished work. The thing was like a shock. She did not 
 need to summon strength to feign an interest; it took 
 hold upon her with rude force. 
 
 Out from the great block of marble rose the triumph- 
 ant war figure, conquering, imposing, a Mars of blood 
 with a rhythm of lances, a rank of soldierly forms, of 
 massy cannon in the rock behind him. . . . Under him 
 were the crushed creatures, the half-guessed, shattered 
 figures, the prostrate women, the dead men. He trod on 
 upturned, sightless faces. Beneath one foot, clearly in- 
 dicated from the rough mass of agony, lay the broken, 
 tender figure of a child. 
 
 Katherine looked and looked, and all that was artist 
 and all that was woman in her felt the power of that 
 conception the brute force of the oncoming aggres- 
 sion, the poignancy of that slaughtered child. ... A 
 lump came into her throat and her mouth worked. 
 
 "The Invader," said MacNare grimly behind her. 
 318
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 A rush of tears blinded her. They were tears for 
 the man himself, for the artist whose individual agony 
 had scourged his genius to this thing. . . . She could 
 not look at him just yet. She continued to face that 
 figure of callous conquest. 
 
 And then she turned on him a look shining through 
 her tears. "You've carved it there for the world to 
 see. Oh, if there are 'sermons in stones' " 
 
 "There are and in paint and ink, and the world sees 
 and reads and only the small, sentient fraction of it feels 
 and understands. ... As for the mass " He made a 
 gesture of despair. "Believe me, I have no illusions as 
 to what you or I can do with ourselves and yet it is 
 there for us to do. . . . And so we keep on. . . . And 
 the mass that cheer and cry for victories, that feel a 
 glory in seizing territory from weakness, in wider boun- 
 daries, and far possessions, that mass comes and shud- 
 ders and says, 'How terrible but that is war !' And ac- 
 quiesces as the East acquiesced in leprosy and the 
 Brahmin women in suttee and the Spaniard in the In- 
 quisition. . . . 'How terrible but how customary ! . . . 
 It will always be done !' ' 
 
 His bitterness broke off. "However one does what 
 one can. You you feel it?" He motioned toward the 
 great marble, and there was the eager flash of achieve- 
 ment in his face. 
 
 "Too much," said Katherine, her wide eyes on it 
 again, a surge of memories rising within her. "Too 
 much," she echoed under her breath. 
 
 Abruptly he snapped off the lights, leaving them in 
 darkness but for the waning firelight and the pale, wide 
 
 810
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 squares of windows, and began fumbling on a littered 
 table for candles and matches. "That's enough you 
 don't need any more horrors to-day. But I wanted you 
 to see." 
 
 Her eyes followed him wistfully. "You're a great 
 man, Mr. Surly Man. It must be a great feeling to 
 make such thoughts come alive." 
 
 He shook his tousled head at the looming white mass. 
 "That's not true to my thought. . . . But I've done 
 enough on it. I can't do more. . . . And now that's 
 done " 
 
 He sat down and picked up a pipe, and she sank into 
 a chair opposite him and surveyed him half whimsically, 
 half worriedly. 
 
 "Have you lived on anything but coffee and tobacco ?" 
 
 "Eh ? . . . I don't know I dare say not. . . . Good 
 old Bonnet is always slipping around with some mess 
 or other I find them at the door when I don't let her 
 in." He smiled faintly. 
 
 "She's a dear." 
 
 "Yes, yes a brave woman." 
 
 A pause followed, full of brooding for her. She could 
 not shake off the distress of the day and the culminating 
 shock that his marble had made upon her. She asked 
 "What are you going to do now with that?" 
 
 "Oh, that? Not much now. I'm leaving it with some 
 old artist friends and by and by I want it placed pub- 
 licly I'm making a gift of it to France." 
 
 "Leaving it but why ?" 
 
 He said brusquely, "I'm going away." 
 
 "Away? Where?" 
 
 320
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 Somehow she had thought of him as fixture in his 
 cave-like studio. Quick disquiet edged her gaze on 
 him. 
 
 "To the front? Where else?" 
 
 "Enlist?" 
 
 "Naturally." 
 
 "Why why " Her voice failed. She sat thinking 
 as swiftly as her tired brain would go. . . . Something 
 ia the fixity of the man's air brought the key to those 
 old days when she had wondered at his stoic courage. 
 ... So he had intended this always. . . . And he had 
 accepted every day because he meant this in the end. 
 . . . But his genius had intervened, had held him for 
 one last message to the world. 
 
 She said, her voice shaking unaccountably, "You 
 know that you aren't in condition you aren't half 
 strong enough. Those trenches ' 
 
 "It is not to be a contest of physique," he remarked 
 with his old crispness. Under his dark brows his burn- 
 ing eyes turned sharply on her. "Don't worry. I'm not 
 going to shake out with ague in a trench. I'll get to 
 them before that and when I do God help them !" 
 
 Sudden, savage exultation leaped in his grim face. 
 A shocked impression went through her; she shivered 
 and raised a hand in startled protest. "Don't ! It's " 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "It's too terrible," she finished weakly. His smile was 
 sardonic. She knew what he was remembering now. 
 That dead child in the room above. . . . And this was 
 what he meant to do about it what he had always 
 meant. . . . His clenched hand was tightening till the 
 
 321
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 knuckles whitened as if he had his strong fingers curl- 
 ing about some enemy's throat those subtle, sensitive 
 fingers of his which could make clay a living thing and 
 chisel beauty from the bare rock. 
 
 She flashed at him, "You mean not to come back !" 
 
 "Naturally," he said coolly, "but when I go I'll take 
 a few of them along with me remember that !" 
 
 "It's terrible !" she said again, with gathering spirit. 
 "For you deliberately to plan to die and die kill- 
 ing " 
 
 "That's soldier's business, isn't it?" 
 
 "But it's not your business you're not a soldier! 
 It's your revenge your private score. To go out 
 and sell your life and your life isn't yours to throw 
 away. You can do more that way," she pointed at the 
 marble, "a hundred times than by 
 
 "Shall I go out and exhibit that to the Germans?" 
 
 "To the rest of the world !" 
 
 "I have left it to speak for me." 
 
 "And you may never reach them. You may die in a 
 trench." 
 
 "Chances of war. . . . But I'll risk it." 
 
 "You're not fit. You're worn to a " 
 
 "I'll last my time." 
 
 She rose to her feet, shaken with gathering fear. Her 
 words came in a broken rush, "But it's death it's death ! 
 . . . And I couldn't bear I couldn't bear anything 
 more ! . . . You must live, I tell you !" 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 Fixed and brightly dark his haggard eyes held hers 
 in irony. 
 
 322
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 "For your future your works your friends. 
 What you are planning is suicide." 
 
 "Live? For my work? My friends?" He leaned 
 forward, his hands knotted, his face upturned to hers. 
 "Let me tell you. Have you any idea what my life 
 is that you are asking me to go on with? . . . Listen. 
 You remember that I spoke to you once of my marriage. 
 But you have no idea you have no idea what I went 
 through. I married a beauty. I worshiped beauty. 
 I knew nothing of women. I had been a sort of hermit 
 in my young enthusiasm for work, even here in my 
 student days in Paris. I was full of the most blinded 
 idealisms. In my infatuation with that woman I took 
 for granted that beauty of form meant beauty of feel- 
 ing I took every refinement, every sincerity, every deli- 
 cacy as innate. ... In six months I was sickened to the 
 core. And I did not know then I did not even com- 
 prehend that it was possible for her to betray me. That 
 came later." 
 
 He waited a moment, his eyes unwavering upon the 
 girl's shocked face. "You thought there was another 
 man, perhaps? . . . There were half a dozen. Now 
 perhaps you can imagine. . . . But Peg was mine, and 
 when I saw the child would not keep her clean I divorced 
 her. The last man married her. He knew of no for- 
 mer rivals perhaps he has kept himself from later 
 ones. They prosper, I believe. . . . You need not 
 flinch it means nothing to me, nothing, except bitter- 
 ness for my folly, for the utter waste." 
 
 His head dropped lower, his black brows drew to- 
 gether as if he were contemplating the ghost of those 
 
 323
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 old years. Katherine stood motionless, her hand upon 
 the back of her chair, her eyes on his dark head. 
 
 He resumed, "You can imagine that after that I did 
 not care for women ! No, nor for anyone much. . . . 
 There were some few men here, but I did not care to see 
 them often. . . . Peg and I got along very well. I 
 I adored the little thing. ... I used to take her into 
 my bed nights, to feel her little human warmth clinging 
 to me. ... I could do everything for her. . . . When 
 she grew older of course I had always that difficulty 
 ahead, but I would manage. . . . But a child cannot 
 be a man's life. Perhaps it can a woman's I do not 
 know." 
 
 He raised his head suddenly and flung her a question- 
 ing glance, then his head dropped. "I used to feel starved 
 and hungry hungry. I did not know for what. But 
 I went out of my way to avoid a pretty girl. And 
 then you came. . . . And from the first I dreaded you. 
 You were another to avoid. . . . But that night that 
 you saved Peg I had to go to you and afterwards 
 you were so gay and so friendly I could not keep away 
 and then " 
 
 He gave a queer little sound that was like a sick man's 
 groan. "What a blind fool I was ! You do not know 
 what I hoped ! After Les Buissons I stayed away till 
 I could face you like a man." 
 
 "Oh, I arn sorry 
 
 He brushed away her little whispering cry as if it 
 teased him. 
 
 "You need not be I am not not now. But I want 
 you to understand. I want you to know what my love 
 
 324
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 for you meant hopeless as it was. I gave you every- 
 thing, everything that I was or could be. I made myself 
 your friend. . . . You went to Les Buissons, and that 
 bomb fell. It destroyed the only thing in the world 
 that was my own. I went mad that night. I go mad 
 when I think of it now. . . . At the last I remember 
 standing with my gun at my forehead then I thought 
 of you. I wanted to wait to hear that you were safe. 
 After that I would not kill myself, but sell my life 
 sell it dearly. But it was long waiting. At last I heard 
 your poor limping steps on the stairs." 
 
 His tone involuntarily softened, and he paused, as if 
 thinking of that night. She was thinking of it too, of 
 his silent tenderness, of the kind hand to which she had 
 clung in her whispered outpourings. . . . 
 
 In a low voice he said, "I forgot myself in my pity 
 for you. You do not know how gladly I would have 
 died have died in torture to give you back your 
 heart's desire. . . . And yet I was almost happy that I 
 could take care of you. It was bitter to take you to 
 London, to his mother. I I knew that you would feed 
 all your youth to her, if you could, and I wanted you to 
 begin again to go on not back. . . . That was why 
 I was not sorry that you did not tell her and I took you 
 to the Cotswolds, away from the sights of war. ... It 
 is always good to feel the earth again underfoot 
 and the free heavens above. One gets to know one- 
 self." 
 
 "Oh, you were good, you were so good !" she cried in 
 a rush of memory. 
 
 "Good? My dear, I was adoring you. I was utterly 
 325
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 happy. . . . We seemed alone in the world. But I was 
 not a fool of hope. I had no dreams. I lived in the 
 present. . . . Then you found yourself, and found 
 yourself strong to go on. We came back, and I had 
 one thing more to do. . . . Now that is done. . . . And 
 in all my life there is not one thing to hold me. I have 
 finished. . . . And I tell you all this that you may 
 understand completely and spare yourself any pity of 
 compassion for the rest." 
 
 "Not one thing?" she said slowly. 
 
 He looked very steadily at her and in his eyes she 
 saw the man's long acquaintance with denial. She saw 
 there, too, the softening tenderness for her that was like 
 the look in those other eyes. . . . She flinched at the 
 stab of memory and cried a little wildly, "But you 
 mustn't go, you mustn't! Think how I should feel, 
 should wait for word of you ! Oh, it would be too cruel ! 
 And if anything happened as you mean it to hap- 
 pen " 
 
 "I tell you you are not to be sorry ! What should I 
 go on for?" His words were curt, his tone hard. "Do 
 not think," he added, quickly, "that I've told you this to 
 hurt you or to beg of you ! I am not such a fool ! . . . 
 I beg your pardon, my dear," he added, a little huskily, 
 "but you you mustn't expect me to go on forever. 
 I really think I can be spared better than anyone 
 else I know." 
 
 His head dropped forward on his hands; his big 
 shoulders, hunched and sagging, had the look in the 
 dusk of some crouched and wounded thing. 
 
 She took a quick step toward him, one trembling hand 
 826
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 outstretched as if she would touch him, her lips trying 
 to form some words of meaning. But she could not 
 speak, so much now hung upon each word. Pity was 
 hot in her, urging her to fling herself at his side, to 
 comfort, to murmur kind things. . . . But of what use 
 was such weak kindness? A sop to her feelings a drain 
 upon his ! . . . Always she had taken from him, taken, 
 taken, unwittingly hurting and tantalizing, blind utterly 
 to his deep and secret hungers. . . . 
 
 But what now could she give him? 
 
 Something cold seemed to pass through her very 
 heart. Her eyes, dark and dilated with dread, stared 
 over his bowed head, seeing their old vision of Jeffrey, 
 erect and soldierly, that smile in his blue eyes. . . . She 
 could feel his dead face against her breast. She was his. 
 How could she tear herself from those memories, even 
 in the urge of divinest pity for another? 
 
 In that moment of intense luminous perception the 
 possibilities of life flashed before her. . . . She had 
 begun to know herself ; in the very agony of her suffer- 
 ing had been revealed her own poignant capacities for 
 life. From this very passion for life, this longing for 
 the height and depth of human experience, had sprung 
 the bitterest of her pangs of denial. . . . The world 
 before her would be one war of cross-purposes. Would 
 she grow disheartened and tired of her lonely ways? 
 Would she yield to some lesser impulse 
 
 In all her life there did not seem to her anything so 
 worthy the doing as to help to heal. To this the war 
 had brought her. And there was no one so needing her 
 healing as this solitary man before her, whom life had 
 
 327
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 hurt so cruelly. But could she do it? Could she go to 
 him? 
 
 To-night, perhaps, it would not be hard, with this 
 surge of compassion strong in her, but to-morrow and 
 all the morrows? He knew her sorrow but where she 
 had drawn comfort from him before, now she must hide 
 the need of it. ... She must give much or her com- 
 passion would be useless. There must be silence and 
 courage. ... In all the world, perhaps, there was no 
 one to whom she could come so close to loving but it 
 was not a bridal gladness that filled her brooding eyes 
 and touched her tender heart. . . . 
 
 These thoughts streamed through her as one thought, 
 and she lived the years in the moments in which she 
 stood motionless, her arm half raised, her lips parted 
 over the words that did not come. 
 
 As if he had heard he raised his head suddenly and 
 saw her there, poised in the firelight, emotion brimming 
 her eyes, quivering her lips. ... A flicker of pain 
 twisted across his set face. He knew a sudden savage 
 impulse to jump up, and crush her to him, to feel her 
 soft weight in his arms, her face against his lips. It 
 seemed to him that every frustration that his life had 
 known was in the denial of that wild longing. 
 
 Unsteadily, he smiled and shook his head at her. "Not 
 your pity, my dear not your pity. It's no use. I want 
 so much more than you can ever give." 
 
 As if that refusal were the spring that could stir her 
 she flashed across the firelight to the shadows at his side 
 and knelt beside him, her hands clasping his. 
 
 "You don't know how much I want to give. How 
 328
 
 THE SPLENDID CHANCE 
 
 much there is to give," she whispered chokingly. "Of 
 all people in the world I I could begin again with you." 
 
 She felt a heavy hand, like a vise upon her shoulders. 
 She heard the sharply indrawn breath stir the heavy 
 chest. "Do you do you know what you are mean- 
 ing?" 
 
 "I do indeed I do ! I want to make up to you for 
 all that life has done. I want you to to make up to 
 me. ... I couldn't lose you now I couldn't let you go. 
 No more battles for us, no more blood ! We've borne 
 enough of hurts. There are other ways of helping 
 for us both. But don't go out to fight with that hate 
 in your heart ! Not not yet not till they need you ! 
 We'll help, we'll spend our lives in helping, . . . but 
 let it be now for the little children, the homeless ones 
 for Peggy's sake. . . . Oh, you'll stay? You'll stay 
 with me?" 
 
 The man's hand on her shoulder trembled. His heart 
 was beating as if it would break. Incredulous of hap- 
 piness, his dark eyes, so wistful, so hungry, searched her 
 upturned face. 
 
 "With you?" he said huskily, and then with a little 
 broken sound that was half a sob he bent and drew her 
 close to him, her face against his breast, his cheek on 
 her bright hair. 
 
 (4)
 
 Popular Copyright Novels 
 
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 Ask your dealer for a complete list of 
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 Abner Daniel Will N. Harben 
 
 Adventures of Gerard A. Conan Doyle 
 
 Adventures of a Modest Man R. W. Chambers 
 
 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes A. Conan Doyle 
 
 After House, The Mary Roberts Rinehart 
 
 Ailsa Paige Robert W. Chambers 
 
 Alternative, The George Barr McCutcheon 
 
 Alton of Somasco Harold Bindloss 
 
 Amateur Gentleman, The Jeffery Farnol 
 
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 Annals of Ann, The Kate T. Sharber 
 
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 Ariadne of Allan Water Sidney McCall 
 
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 Auction Block, The Rex Beach 
 
 Aunt Jane of Kentucky Eliza C. Hall 
 
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 Bambi Marjorie Benton Cooke 
 
 Bandbox, The Louis Joseph Vance 
 
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 Betrayal, The E. Phillips Oppenheim 
 
 Better Man, The Cyrus Townsend Brady 
 
 Beulah (111. Ed) Augusta L Evans 
 
 Black Is White George Barr McCutcheon 
 
 Blaze Derringer Eugene P. Lyle, Jr. 
 
 Bob Hampton of Placer Randall Parrish 
 
 Bob, Son of Battle Alfred Ollivant 
 
 Brass Bowl, The Louis Joseph Vance
 
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 Bronze Bell, The Louis Joseph Vance 
 
 Buck Peters, Ranchman Clarence E. Mulford 
 
 Business of Life, The Robert W. Chambers 
 
 Butterfly Man, The George Barr McCatcheon 
 
 By Right of Purchase Harold Bindloss 
 
 Cabbages and Kings 0. Henry 
 
 Cab No. 44 R. P. Foster 
 
 Calling of Dan Matthews, The Harold Belt Wright 
 
 Cape Cod Stories Joseph C Lincoln 
 
 Cap'n Eri Joseph C. Lincoln 
 
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 Carmen (Geraldine Farrar Edition) 
 
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 Claw, The Cynthia Stockley 
 
 C. O. D Natalie Sumner Lincoln 
 
 Colonial Free Lance, A Chauncey O. Hotchkiss 
 
 Coming of the Law, The Chas. A. Seltzer 
 
 Conquest of Canaan, The Booth Tarkington 
 
 Conspirators, The Robert W. Chambers 
 
 Counsel for the Defense Leroy Scott 
 
 Crime Doctor, The E. W. Hornung 
 
 Cry in the Wilderness, A Mary E. Waller 
 
 Cynthia of the Minute Louis Joseph Vance 
 
 Dark Hollow, The Anna Katharine Green 
 
 Dave's Daughter Patience Bevier Cole 
 
 Day of Days, The Louis Joseph Vance 
 
 Day of the Dog, The George Ban M'cCutcheon 
 
 Depot Master, The Joseph C. Lincoln 
 
 Desired Woman, The Will N. Harben 
 
 Destroying Angel, The Louis Joseph Vance 
 
 Diamond Master, The Jacques Futrelle 
 
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 El Dorado Baroness Orczy 
 
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