DON-A-DREAA\S 
 
 HARVEY J. 
 O HIGGINS
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Mrs. Ben B. Lindsey
 
 V 
 
 *+o*^ 
 
 

 
 DON-A-DKEAMS
 
 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 A STORY OF 
 LOVE AND YOUTH 
 
 BY 
 
 HAEYEY J. O HIGGINS 
 
 AUTHOR OP "THE SMOKE-EATERS" 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE CENTURY CO. 
 
 1906
 
 Copyright 1906, by 
 THE CENTURY Co. 
 
 Published October, 1906 
 
 THE BE VINNE PRESS
 
 TO < 
 
 "MISTRESS ANNE" 
 
 TO REMIND HER OF THE DAYS WHEN SHE, TOO, 
 WAS GRAVE WITH YOUNG CARE AND WEIGHTED 
 DOWN WITH THE PROBLEMS OP A WHOLE UNI 
 VERSE J TO RECALL TO HER SOME OP THOSE 
 TEAR-BRIGHT DREAMS OP THE FUTURE WHOSE 
 REALIZATION IS ALREADY A POSSIBILITY ONLY 
 OP THE PAST ; TO BE TO HER A SOUVENIR AND 
 FOND REMEMBRANCER OP HER OWN YOUTH. 
 
 H. J. O H. 
 
 11O6209
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PART PAGE 
 
 i THE MAKE-BELIEVER . 3 
 
 ii THE DAY-DREAMER 61 
 
 in THE IDEALIST , 175 
 
 iv THE VISIONARY . . . 305
 
 PART I 
 THE MAKE-BELIEVER
 
 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 THE sun was an open hole in the heavens, like the 
 uncovered pot-hole of the kitchen stove. The 
 winds were made by the tossing branches of the gar 
 den maples fanning themselves in the heat. The rains 
 soaked through the ground to the ocean of an under 
 world, on which the crust of the earth was floating ; and 
 the street hydrants connected with those waters by a 
 length of pipe. He, himself, was as hollow as a rub 
 ber doll, and when he ate he filled himself with food. 
 Up on the tops of the clouds the angels sat in Heaven ; 
 and God was a stern father bearded like Jack s giant 
 who was engaged in large affairs all day but required 
 a strict account from little boys when He came home 
 from business of an evening and looked down awfully 
 through the roof on children at their prayers. 
 
 In short, it was a child s world that pathetically 
 wonderful world which is such a little round and level 
 of experience surrounded by imagination s so high and 
 misty hills. It was such a world as the old cartogra 
 phers used to map with all the poetry and fable of 
 the nursery located in a "Terra Incognita" just over 
 the horizon. For though the boy was six years old, he
 
 4 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 was the eldest of a brood of three, his mother had be 
 come an invalid, and he had been neglected in his most 
 inquisitive years for the sicklier infants who had suc 
 ceeded him. The little nursemaid, Nannie, had taught 
 him to read in an "indestructible" copy of "Jack, the 
 Giant-Killer ; and what he had not been able to learn 
 of the world from a volume of Grimm s Fairy Tales 
 he had worked out according to his fancy. 
 
 When Miss Morris, a visiting governess, succeeded 
 Nannie as his teacher, two small desks were set up 
 for him and Frankie in the playroom, and he began 
 eagerly to learn the game of figures which she called 
 "Arithmetic." But she objected to his methods when 
 she found that 1 was a tall, thin man, and 2 a little 
 old woman bent double, and 3 a fat cook with an 
 apron-string waist, and 4 a boy sitting. There fol 
 lowed explanations of things in general, and Miss 
 Morris spent a morning asking questions and laugh 
 ing at the answers she got. She set herself, with pa 
 tience, to correct his mistaken fancies; and he bore 
 it as a child must. But when she said that all fairy 
 tales were untruths and denied Jack and his Giant 
 any existence in reality, he began to doubt her; and 
 after she had gone, he turned to the book itself, and 
 found her word outweighed by the strong authority 
 of the print and the pictures. 
 
 He said nothing; he had, already, the habit of si 
 lence. But, thereafter, when she taught him that 
 "the world was round like an orange and flattened 
 at the poles," he looked out the playroom window 
 and saw a level earth that stretched away from the
 
 THE MAKE-BELIEVER 5 
 
 brick-and-stone realities of the street into the sunset 
 glow and horizon clouds of fairyland and " Terra In 
 cognita." When she heard him describe a void of 
 hunger by saying that his legs were empty, and ex 
 plained to him the tubular construction of his insides, 
 it did not prevent him from keeping his legs as 
 straight as possible under the dinner table so that his 
 food might have an easy passage down to his hollow 
 feet. And although she denied that the crust of the 
 earth floated on water, he watched with as much 
 anxiety as ever how the men dug in the street afraid 
 that the bottoms would fall out of the drain pits 
 which they were making, and drop them all into the 
 under ocean. 
 
 Then, one morning, when she was coming upstairs 
 to teach him, he heard her say to his mother: "He 
 has such babyish fancies about so many things." 
 
 His mother replied: "Babyish fancies?" in a tone 
 that resented the criticism of her boy as a reflection 
 on herself. 
 
 "Like Santa Glaus," Miss Morris added hastily. 
 "Only about other things." 
 
 "Well," his mother said, "I think I should leave 
 the child his Santa Glaus." 
 
 Miss Morris came up to the playroom in high color. 
 As soon as their books were opened, she said to Donald : 
 "I suppose you believe in Santa Glaus?" 
 
 She smiled as she said it; but he knew that smile. 
 
 "Isn t he?" he faltered. 
 
 "Is n t he what?" 
 
 "Is n t he really?"
 
 6 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 She did not answer. "We 11 begin," she said, 
 "with yesterday s lesson again. You 11 have to make 
 better progress Donald, or Frankie 11 catch up to 
 you." 
 
 He made no progress that morning; and when the 
 lessons were finished and Miss Morris had gone, he 
 found himself fallen on a withered day. All the 
 witchery and surprise of his Christmas were threat 
 ened; and his mother s "Leave the child his Santa 
 Glaus" was as humiliating as Miss Morris s cold 
 smile. 
 
 He spread the rug on the floor in the accepted 
 configuration of a battlefield, but he lost heart for 
 the game before he had his first fort built and his 
 soldiers drawn up in rank for Frankie s cannonade 
 of marbles. He took hold of the end of the rug, and 
 tossed the whole campaign into the air with a jerk 
 that threw his brother off his balance and bumped 
 the back of his head against the table leg. Frankie 
 went bawling down the stairs; and Don locked the 
 playroom door against the visit of any avenging 
 Nannie. 
 
 No one came. He was left to fret about the room 
 in aimless discontent. 
 
 Now before every Christmas in the past, he had 
 sent letters to Santa Glaus with Nannie s help let 
 ters that had been meaningless scrawls of lead pencil, 
 because he had not then learned to write. He had 
 "posted" them in a crack of the attic floor at the 
 foot of a large post that supported the beams of the 
 roof; and on every Christmas, the toys which he had
 
 THE MAKE-BELIEVER 7 
 
 written for, had been waiting for him in the nursery. 
 It occurred to him, now, that he could use that post 
 to put Santa Glaus to the proof. He tore a sheet 
 from his scribbling book, and after a half -hour s la 
 bor achieved a letter which was intended to read: 
 "Dear Santa Glaus Please write me a letter. Miss 
 Morris laughed because if I believed in Santa Glaus 
 and I want a letter because I never saw you. You 
 won t let us see you. I will write to-morrow or some 
 other day about what I want for Christmas. Please 
 excuse mistakes. I must now say good-bye. So good 
 bye." 
 
 The act relieved him like a prayer; for, of itself, 
 it gave Santa Glaus the reality of a being to whom 
 a petition could be sent. He dropped his letter into 
 the crack of the attic floor and felt himself confirmed 
 in his faith. 
 
 But Miss Morris, as an educator, held that children 
 should not be brought up on lies; and every day she 
 explored his mind for more of this "nursery non 
 sense"; and every day, she let the cold daylight 
 of common sense in on some cherished corner of his 
 twilight world. The snow that had begun to fall, 
 melting, on the warm earth, had not been shoveled 
 over the edges of the clouds by any celestial garden 
 ers cleaning the walks. Jack Frost was not a little 
 man with a blue nose who came at night to breathe 
 on the window panes. The dreams of a boy in a 
 warm cot were an affair of the stomach, and there 
 was no such place as Nannie s Slumberland. " Don 
 took refuge behind an obstinate silence from which
 
 8 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 no questions could draw him, but his education went 
 on none the less, and he could only oppose it with 
 the conscious effort of a make-believe. She laughed 
 at him one day when she found him engaged in a 
 mimic war with his blocks and marbles, and he locked 
 himself and Frankie in the playroom afterward. She 
 was superior Science smiling tolerantly at the simpli 
 city of Faith; he could only blush and flee from her. 
 
 However, she said no more to him about his Santa 
 Glaus, and Frankie and he, lying in bed in the morn 
 ingswith the light from the snow reflected on the 
 ceiling, and the sound of Canadian farm sleds creak 
 ing down the road with a jingle of bells "talked 
 Ch is mas" together, and were happy. Don explained 
 an idea he had of how Santa Glaus could transport 
 such millions of toys in one sleigh: he loaded the 
 clouds with them, from the top windows of his tower 
 ing ice palace, and sent them floating down the wind 
 to the cities; then, with his reindeer sleigh that flew 
 in the air, he delivered them from chimney to chim 
 ney; and when he had emptied his sacks of one cargo, 
 he drove back to the nearest cloud for another. 
 Frankie, blown about on high, with this description, 
 pressed his hands into the sinking sensation that took 
 him in the middle, and gloated, round-eyed; and Don 
 day-dreamed of Christmas in a heart-tickling content. 
 
 But, on the eve of the great mystery, his letter and 
 the suspicion that had inspired it recurred to him; 
 he caught the twinkle of a conspiracy in the smiles 
 of the household; his elders repeated too often a strict 
 injunction that when he went to bed he was to close 
 his eyes tightly and go to sleep at once. Why? "Be-
 
 THE MAKE-BELIEVER 9 
 
 cause, Donald," his mother answered him, kissing 
 him good-night, if Santa Glaus sees you looking at 
 him, he 11 fly away and not leave you anything." He 
 made no reply being confused with much thought. 
 
 Their bed room Frankie s and his had been 
 moved to the top of the house to protect the slumbers 
 of the new baby in the nursery. Their playroom had 
 been built for a billiard room, and it was divided from 
 the bedroom by a pair of large folding doors with 
 glasses newly frosted. Don had once licked at that 
 frosting in a mistaken idea that it was the same as 
 the icing of a cake. Finding it tasteless, he had 
 scratched at it with a penknife, and so had made a 
 peephole which he had since used when hiding from 
 Miss Morris. 
 
 Now, just as he was falling asleep (he had ex 
 plained that phrase "falling asleep" to himself by 
 imagining a physical sensation of falling through the 
 floor with his bed, and so induced sleep by confusing 
 his brain with the whirl and giddiness of his descent.) 
 Now, when the bed was well through the floor and 
 was beginning to rock gently down to " Slumberland, " 
 the thought of this peephole in the frosted door came 
 to him with a vividness of suggestion that might have 
 made it seem, to an older mind, a prompting of the 
 devil. It came with all the terrifying seductiveness, 
 the fear and fascination, of a tempting against con 
 science. Santa Glaus was to be in the playroom, on 
 the other side of the glass doors. Their stockings had 
 been hung there for him, and the peephole was on that 
 side of the room on which he would leave his gifts. 
 
 Don started up in his bed, and gazed at the squares
 
 10 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 of light that were framed in the doorcase. Frankie 
 had compelled the oblivion of young sleep by a stub 
 born silence, and now breathed a regular, small breath. 
 There was no sound of any movement in the playroom. 
 
 He debated the situation with himself. If Santa 
 Glaus should see him watching, he would not leave 
 any gifts; his mother herself had said so. Yes, but 
 behind the frosted glasses how could Santa Glaus see 
 him? And yet, why risk it, since an answer to the 
 letter would be enough. Well, if Santa Glaus would 
 not allow himself to be seen, would he allow himself 
 to write? And if he objected to being spied on, what 
 would he think of a boy who wrote to him to put him 
 to the proof? 
 
 He lay back on his pillows and blinked at the dim 
 ceiling. 
 
 He was startled into staring wakefulness it seemed 
 only an instant later by the sound of the glass doors 
 being shut with caution. Someone must have looked 
 into the room! It must have been Santa Glaus mak 
 ing certain that he was not being watched! 
 
 Don clutched the side of his cot, frightened at the 
 danger he had escaped and thankful that he had es 
 caped it; and under both feelings, he was glad beyond 
 words that Santa Glaus was "really." He listened, 
 holding his breath with awe. 
 
 A box fell in the playroom. The noise was followed 
 by a suppressed giggle. It was Nannie s giggle. And 
 Don had no sooner heard it than he was over the 
 side of his cot and tip-toeing across the room, with the 
 truth already heavy on his chest.
 
 THE MAKE-BELIEVER 11 
 
 He put his eye to the peephole. When he turned 
 away from the door, he stumbled blindly to his bed 
 and buried his face in the pillows and cried himself 
 to sleep. 
 
 YEARS afterward, when experience had discovered 
 to him his own personality, he saw in that small in 
 cident the little gist and prologue of his life. 
 
 II 
 
 IN the gray of the Christmas morning, he woke to 
 his disillusionment; but he woke also to the thought 
 that he must not tell Frankie; and he woke, in fact, 
 no longer an infant, but an elder brother, desperately 
 sophisticated and, beside Frankie s enthusiasm, even 
 blase. Thereafter, his make-believes were conscious 
 always; and he began to play with his imagination 
 for a game. 
 
 Being exiled from the nursery to escape the scarlet 
 fever, he was on a visit to an aunt who lived at the 
 other end of the town; and on an eventful morning, 
 he woke, alone in his cot, to hear his two cousins 
 whispering together within their high spindle pali 
 sade on the opposite side of the room. He opened 
 one sleepy eye to see that they were playing Mam 
 moth Cave," a game which he had taught them. (It 
 required that you cover yourself with the bed clothes, 
 turn flat on your face, and wriggle down through the
 
 12 DON-A-DEEAMS 
 
 suffocation of "between sheets" until your head came 
 out at the foot of the bed.) He did not rouse him 
 self; for the three children had formed an agreement 
 that no one of them should rise before the others, so 
 that if one wished to take an extra forty winks while 
 breakfast waited, they all lay in bed together and the 
 wrath of the powers of the household spent itself in 
 a general thunder that did not strike. 
 
 But their restlessness continued ; and when he heard 
 a sly chuckle, he asked thickly: What re you do 
 ing?" The over-prompt "Nothing!" of their an 
 swer wakened him. He rose on his elbow. Their 
 wriggling ceased, and their two stolid faces stared 
 blandly at him out of the bed clothes. 
 
 One of them said, with a. blink: "Who can make 
 the highest cant lever bridge?" (This was another 
 of his inventions. To do it you stretched yourself 
 out on your back, and then, with your elbows, raised 
 an arch of body supported on neck and heels.) But 
 while the elder cousin was getting himself up, he 
 lifted the corner of his coverlet accidentally, and 
 Don saw the black sleeve of his jacket. He cried 
 You re dressing ! 
 
 They were already dressed. The playing "canf- 
 lever bridge" had been a ruse by which they covered 
 an attempt to draw up their knickerbockers to their 
 waists. And all their other contortions had covered 
 similar treasons. 
 
 They ran away to breakfast, shouting; and Don 
 almost wept with chagrin and disappointment. It 
 was so low a betrayal of his confidence so treacher-
 
 THE MAKE-BELIEVER 13 
 
 OTIS a misuse of his beloved make-believes that he 
 felt he never would forgive them. He sulked through 
 a cold breakfast, and went out alone to the lawn, re 
 fusing to speak to either of them, though his aunt 
 attempted to placate him with a candy stick. 
 
 He took a picture book with him to console him 
 self in solitude; but he found the hired man cutting 
 the grass; and on his neighbor s veranda, a very 
 young lady with a doll was watching the work. Don 
 also watched. 
 
 "He he s cutting the grass," she explained. 
 "And when he has it all cut, he he puts water on 
 it to to make it grow again so so he can cut it 
 again." 
 
 He accepted the explanation in the spirit in which 
 it was offered; she introduced herself as "Miss 
 Margaret," a title which she had taken from the 
 family servants ; and in a few moments he was seated 
 on the front steps beside her, their heads together 
 over the picture book, and each sucking a share of 
 the candy stick. And Miss Margaret s share was the 
 larger. 
 
 Between bites, he explained the pictures. When 
 there was a castle in the background, he could tell 
 exactly in what room of it the princess was locked. 
 On demand, he described the ogre, who was her 
 jailer, to the very wart on the knob-end of his nose; 
 and he pictured every article of the gold and silver 
 furnishings of the palace with a realistic detail that 
 made Miss Margaret gasp. Before the b ook was fin 
 ished, they had become such friends that she let him
 
 14 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 wipe his sticky fingers on her handkerchief. "You 
 have n t remembered yours," she apologized for him. 
 
 "Oh," he said, "boys don t ever have them." 
 
 She thought the matter over. She said: "You can 
 always borrow mine." 
 
 It was so delicately put that with a masculine ob- 
 tuseness, he did not get her meaning. It was Miss 
 Margaret s surrender. 
 
 She was visiting the next door neighbors; and Don 
 and she, during the two weeks that followed their 
 meeting, were together constantly. He deserted his 
 cousins, and she left the youngsters with whom she 
 had been playing. She learned to storm block-forts 
 with battalions of colored marbles that were cavalry 
 at one moment and cannon balls at the next; to make 
 siege guns of cuts of elderberry bush bored of their 
 pith; and to lay out a national cemetery for lead 
 soldiers with dominoes for gravestones. When she 
 came to the game of imprisoned princess, she was 
 already more than a pupil, and she dictated the be 
 havior of the regal beauty in a way which Don could 
 not follow. She insisted that the prince should die 
 of his wounds after he had killed ten dragons and 
 the ogre and leave the princess to weep out the 
 eyes of her youth beside his tomb. Don could see no 
 right fun in that, and her contempt was galling. 
 They compromised by agreeing to give the game a 
 tragic ending every third time they played it; and 
 he consented to the substitution of a little china doll 
 for the "Noah s wife," shaped like a blue hourglass, 
 which he had always used as the imprisoned beauty.
 
 THE MAKE-BELIEVER 15 
 
 Their friendship thickened until he distinguished 
 himself by climbing up the pillar of a side veranda 
 to call "good morning" through the window to her 
 while she was still in bed; and she, at dinner, refused 
 to eat stewed corn, a dish of which she was ravenously 
 fond, because he had told her that it had once made 
 him ill. She was a most unusual young lady, especi 
 ally in affairs of the heart: she was impulsively posi 
 tive in her likes and her dislikes, and she expressed 
 either always unreservedly. She treated Don s el 
 der cousin, Conroy, with a coldness which the boy 
 demanded an explanation of: and she explained sim 
 ply "I don t like your face." She crossed the ve 
 randa to a visitor to whom she had not been intro 
 duced and sat herself on his knee, smiling the 
 frankest admiration; and when she was asked to ex 
 cuse her abruptness, she replied "He s nice." She 
 flattered Don with an adoration that went to his 
 head. 
 
 She had already given him a handkerchief worked 
 with her monogram in pale blue silk for his sticky 
 fingers, though she did not say so and she came one 
 afternoon to their playroom in the broken "summer 
 house" with a photograph of herself in her winter 
 furs. He was busy making preparations for the 
 burial of a lead hero who had been killed in the wars. 
 He accepted the picture with a brief condescension 
 and directed her to line up, in funeral procession, 
 the wooden animals from his Noah s ark. She obeyed 
 him silently, but not with her usual enthusiasm; and 
 when the last strain of martial music had died away,
 
 16 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 and Don had fired the last "Boom" of imaginary 
 cannon over the soldier s grave, she said abruptly: 
 "You ought to give me one." 
 
 "One what?" 
 
 "Picture. A picture of yourself." 
 
 He shook his head. "Haven t any." He was 
 erecting a tomb of building-blocks over the grave. She 
 watched him moodily. When he came to put on 
 the roof, he found himself in difficulties; he had no 
 blocks long enough to reach from wall to wall. He 
 looked around him for a substitute and saw her photo 
 graph. He tried it; it could be made to fit exactly 
 if the back wall were moved in an inch- 
 She snatched it from him. " No ! " 
 
 He caught at it. "Give me that." 
 
 She shook her head, her doll s eyes big with in 
 dignation. "No!" 
 
 "I want it," he said angrily. 
 
 "No." She backed away from him. "No. You 
 sha n t. JVo/" She stamped her foot to stop him as 
 he got up from his knees. When he clutched at her 
 arm, impatiently, she turned and ran, screaming "You 
 sha n t! You sha n t!" 
 
 Well, there were other building materials as good 
 as her old photograph. There was the cover of the 
 tin box in which he kept his marbles. He tried it, 
 and broke down a side of his mausoleum. He brushed 
 the ruins away and began a towering monument of 
 solid blocks. 
 
 But Miss Margaret did not come back, and he be 
 gan to miss her. He went nonchalantly around the
 
 THE MAKE-BELIEVER 1? 
 
 house to where the other children were playing "fire 
 engine"; but she was not there. He inquired next 
 door, from the maid-of-all-work ; and she told him 
 that Miss Margaret s mother had arrived and taken 
 her down town. 
 
 Even then he did not suspect what was in store 
 for him. He thought to make all right by finding 
 a picture of himself to give her; and the only picture 
 that he had was one of his Sunday school in which 
 he stood in the front row of a group of little girls. 
 He wrapped it up complacently in a newspaper and 
 left it with the servant for her. 
 
 He learned, next morning, that she had gone away 
 to her home. He learned also that she had not liked 
 the photograph; the servant returned it to him in 
 small pieces pieces which she had swept out from 
 behind a bureau when she was cleaning the guest 
 chamber. He gathered from his aunt that Miss Mar 
 garet had been jealous of the twenty-odd little girls 
 who were in the picture with him. She had left him 
 without even saying good-bye. 
 
 Ill 
 
 DON went back to his play somewhat lonely (for a 
 day or two) but with no sentimental regrets. With 
 the selfishness of his years, he forgot her in the ex 
 citement of returning to his home to find Frankie 
 shorn of his locks and promoted to knickerbockers.
 
 18 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 (Afterward, whenever he saw a boy in kilts, he 
 thought the youngster wore them because he had not 
 yet had the scarlet fever.) He did not recover Miss 
 Margaret again until the 24th of May. 
 
 These were the days when the 24th of May, "the 
 Queen s Birthday," was a festival for all loyal Cana 
 dians. And they were the days before the invention 
 of the giant cracker and the toy revolver. As yet 
 only the "cannon" that first improvement on the 
 Chinese cracker was in the toy-shop windows; and 
 although Don had bought five of them (believing in 
 weight of metal as against rapidity of fire) Frankie 
 had bought only crackers of smaller calibre. It re 
 mained to be seen whether his rattling volleys would 
 be a match for Don s great guns. 
 
 They had been forbidden to begin their celebration 
 until after breakfast, and they raced through the meal 
 neck and neck. They finished together and ran upstairs 
 together; but Don stumbled and fell on the landing, 
 and Frankie reached the toy closet first. There the 
 crackers, Roman candles, pin-wheels and what not, 
 were laid out on the floor in two long rows, in fond 
 imitation of ordnance in an arsenal; and Frankie 
 began to cram his purchases in his pockets as fast as 
 as he could pick them up. Don shoved in beside him, 
 panting, to see that his brother was taking two can 
 non crackers which he did not own; and Don, as the 
 rightful owner of them, snatched at them, to hold 
 them till he could get breath to protest. He caught 
 them by their long fuses; and Frankie, jerking back, 
 plucked the strings out by the roots.
 
 THE MAKE-BELIEVER 19 
 
 Now Frankie was a sturdy little fellow round- 
 headed and bent-browed and he had learned that he 
 could domineer over his milder brother by flying into 
 a childish passion whenever he was crossed. He 
 struck at Don, at once; but Don, enraged by the loss 
 of his two best crackers, closed with him; and in a 
 wild interchange of buffets, Frankie took a blow on 
 the face that sent him to the floor howling with a 
 bleeding nose. 
 
 Don, stiff and white with fright, was still standing 
 in the door of the closet, looking as guilty as Cain, 
 with Frankie yelling on the carpet at his feet, when 
 their father home for the holiday flung angrily 
 into the room. He took in the situation with one 
 furious glance; and then, without waiting for any 
 explanation, seized Don by the collar and began cuff 
 ing him with a brutally hard hand. 
 
 No doubt he did not know how heavily he struck 
 the boy, for he had never beaten any of his children 
 before being able to awe them with the mere threat 
 of his voice and Don was too stunned to cry out. 
 As soon as he was released, he staggered back against 
 the wall, his head ringing, the breath all out of his 
 body, blinded with tears. His father, taking Frankie 
 up, carried him, still bawling, out of the room. 
 
 It was Don s first experience of these passionate 
 griefs of childhood griefs that rend the body with 
 terrible convulsions, griefs that seem to rend the very 
 soul of the child with the pain of an injustice from 
 which there is no appeal. It was his first experience 
 of them, and he threw himself on the floor of the
 
 20 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 toy closet like a child in a fit. He flung the fire 
 crackers away from him; he beat the floor with his 
 little fists; he ran to the door of the playroom, locked 
 it, and dropped on the rug there choked with the 
 sobs that burst from him, in writhing and weeping, 
 till he was too weak to do more than moan. 
 
 Nannie came, and tapped secretly on the door, and 
 cried "Donnie? Bonnie?" under her breath. But 
 he knew from her tone that he was in disgrace with 
 the household, and he would not open to her. 
 
 They re goin on the picnic," she whispered 
 hoarsely. 
 
 He knew they were; and he knew that his father 
 would punish him by leaving him at home. He did 
 not intend to go downstairs and take his sentence. 
 He held quiet until Nannie had gone away, and then 
 he crawled, numb and exhausted, into the bedroom 
 and threw himself on his cot. 
 
 He heard knocking on his door faintly, in a weak 
 doze, but he did not get up. He heard his mother 
 calling him, up the stairs which she was unable to 
 climb; but he did not reply. Only when he heard 
 voices on the lawn, he peeped out behind the cur 
 tain and saw her in her invalid chair, his father 
 wheeling her with the baby on his arm and 
 Frankie walking proudly at her side. They turned 
 at the gate to call a last good-bye to Nannie; and 
 his mother looked up at the nursery windows with 
 a face that often came with tears, to Donald, after 
 ward, in dreams. 
 
 He jumped back and dropped the curtain. When
 
 THE MAKE-BELIEVER 21 
 
 he heard Nannie close the front door, he looked out 
 again. They were gone. 
 
 There were no more tears in him. He went back 
 to the playroom, dumbly, and sat down among his 
 toys. The sight of the fire-crackers gave him a sick 
 ening feeling. He began to set up his soldiery as 
 mechanically as an older person would turn from 
 grief to an accustomed task. 
 
 But weeping had made him hungry, and he de 
 serted his wars to look out a side window at the 
 neighboring fire-hall clock. Then, from the window, 
 he went to a wall of colored pictures which Frankie 
 and he had cut from the "Christmas Graphic" and 
 pinned up on the plaster; and, at last, he began to 
 wander from picture to picture, "playing showman" 
 as Frankie and he had done. 
 
 He was before a picture of Nelson at Trafalgar, 
 glowing with an imagined eloquence which did not 
 shape itself in words at all, and swaying a huge pub 
 lic with emotion (let his father beat him then) 
 when suddenly he saw Miss Margaret sitting in the 
 front row of his audience. 
 
 The audience vanished. Don had found for him 
 self that strange companion of so many solitary 
 children, an imaginary playmate. 
 
 H.e made a round of the pictures with her, played 
 Imprisoned Princess and the Game of War, and took 
 her on a tour of the empty house. He showed her 
 the post in the attic where he mailed his letters to 
 Santa Glaus, and he assured her that Santa Glaus 
 never failed to answer them. He took her to his
 
 22 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 mother s room and let her tumble in the prohibited 
 feather bed. He explored behind the big green sofa 
 in the sitting-room, and took down all the forbidden 
 books in his father s library to show them to her. 
 
 Nannie found him there, and summoned him to 
 luncheon; and Miss Margaret ate beside him in an 
 imaginary chair from a wonderful blue bowl, long 
 since broken, which he had once had for bread and 
 milk. He sat in such a thoughtful silence and was 
 so unresponsive to all Nannie s kind attempts to con 
 sole him, that she lost patience and accused him of 
 sulking. He ignored her temper, so that Miss Mar 
 garet might not be disturbed by it. When they had 
 finished their meal, he started the musical box for 
 her, and teased the parrot in the sun of the window 
 till "Polly" squawked and screeched and bit at the 
 bars of the cage; and Nannie scolded them out of 
 the room, and they raced upstairs together. 
 
 They came down with all the fire-crackers and with 
 a lead soldier in a match box, whom they buried deep 
 in the garden, croqning "Nearer My God To Thee" 
 with no sense of frreverence. They split all Don s 
 elderberry guns firing funeral salvos of crackers 
 from them; and they blew up a fort with a "cannon" 
 cracker and annihilated a whole regiment of men. 
 No one came to disturb them until they began to set 
 off pin wheels and Roman candles in mid-afternoon; 
 then Nannie interfered, and they ran into the house 
 laughing rebelliously, and shut themselves in the 
 playroom again. 
 
 "Well," Nannie complained to the cook, "his 
 lickin ain t done him any good."
 
 THE MAKE-BELIEVEE 23 
 
 When the family returned, he was cutting out fig 
 ures from the "Graphic" supplements and acting 
 new and wonderful games. He did not go down 
 stairs; Frankie came up full of the news of the 
 picnic and the steamboat trip down the river and 
 the glories of the merry-go-roundprepared, perhaps, 
 to gloat over the fallen estate of his brother. Don 
 did not even notice him. Frankie insisted on being 
 heard. Don gathered up his pictures and barricaded 
 himself in the bedroom. 
 
 He remained there until he was called to supper. 
 
 "You have been a bad boy, Don," his mother said 
 to him that night. "Your father s angry with you." 
 
 He would not look at her. His face was still swol 
 len from his morning s tears, and streaked with dirt, 
 and smudged with powder. His fingers were 
 scorched. There was a hole burned in the sleeve of 
 his jacket. 
 
 "What have you been doing?" 
 
 "Playing." 
 
 "Are n t you sorry?" 
 
 He did not answer. 
 
 "Say that you re sorry, or I shall not kiss you 
 good-night. 
 
 He did not feel that he was sorry, and he did not 
 speak. She smoothed his hair with her thin hand, 
 kissed him and sent him away. 
 
 "I don t seem to understand him any more," she 
 confessed to his father with a sigh. 
 
 His father replied: "He s growing too big to be 
 running around here, wild. He should be at school." 
 
 And that was the decree of judgment which was
 
 24 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 to end Don s childhood. He was left to his imaginary 
 Miss Margaret and his other make-believes through 
 all that long, radiant summer; but in the fall, Miss 
 Morris opened a "private and select" academy for 
 boys and girls, and Don was enrolled as her second 
 pupil. 
 
 Her first had been little Mary Morris, her small 
 sister. 
 
 IV 
 
 BETWEEN the ages of eight years and of eighteen, 
 there seems to be a period in which the individuality 
 of the schoolboy does not develop. The originality 
 of the child has been overgrown; the eccentricities of 
 the young man have not yet sprouted. Don, seated 
 at a. desk that was exactly like a score of other desks 
 in Miss Morris s schoolroom, studied the common les 
 sons from the prescribed books; and what he learned, 
 he learned like a parrot. Seated at home, beside the 
 "study" table in the playroom, he worked out his ex 
 ercises mechanically with Frankie, or idly scorched 
 the wood of his lead pencils over the flame of the 
 lamp. He learned to play the games which his 
 schoolmates played, to fight as they fought, to believe 
 what they believed, to act as they acted. His mind 
 no longer grew of its own strength, in its own incli 
 nation; it was forced in a hothouse bed, and trained 
 to a set figure.
 
 THE MAKE-BELIEVER 25 
 
 He was perhaps a trifle more timorous and retir 
 ing than most of his classmates, slower to fight, 
 slower to learn, and more given to what Miss Morris 
 called "dazing" over his books; but in all the broad 
 characteristics of his age, he was commonplace and 
 typical. Even in the playground he did nothing to 
 mark himself out among his fellows except to the 
 eyes of little Mary Morris, whose admiration was so 
 silent that he remained unaware of it. Once he at 
 tempted to take an impossibly high jump, went at it 
 in a smiling assurance, and fell over it with amaze 
 ment. (He explained, then, bruised and tearful, that 
 he had dreamed, the previous night, of jumping the 
 six-foot fence at the back of the yard, and had leaped 
 over it with ease and grace.) Ordinarily, he lacked the 
 desire to shine. He lacked it notably in comparison 
 with Frankie; but then Frankie was growing to be 
 the sort of boy who will not let you pass him on the 
 street even though he has to run to keep ahead of 
 you and who sleeps always on his side, with a leg 
 drawn up, in an attitude of climbing caught from 
 the schoolbook illustration of Longfellow s "Ex 
 celsior. 
 
 At the age of nine, Don was a weedy boy, slope- 
 shouldered, loose-wristed, pale and very shy. He was 
 not strong enough in the arm to enjoy baseball ; and 
 he was too weak in the calves to relish "Pump, pump, 
 pull away" or "Hounds and Deer"; and for that 
 reason, he did not join in half the games of the yard 
 and the pavement. He spent his idle hours reading 
 stories of Indians, English boarding-school boys and 

 
 26 D.ON-A-DREAMS 
 
 midshipmen; and on Sundays he gave himself with a 
 precocious devoutness to church and Sabbath school. 
 He had been impressed with the teaching that the 
 Deity is omnipresent; and in his solitary moments he 
 was almost physically conscious of the awful presence 
 of the Spirit. It was a feeling which he kept as secret 
 as a sin ; but it came to possess him with a. sense of 
 companionship. He even played with it imagina 
 tively, half expecting visions and praying in a childish 
 ecstasy; and in the public park near his home, there 
 was a thick clump of bushes in which he used to 
 build little fires of chips and leaves to burn wooden 
 animals from his ark as Hebraic offerings. 
 
 AMONG the pupils of Miss Morris s school was 
 Don s elder cousin Conroy the boy whose face Miss 
 Margaret had not liked; and between Don and him 
 there had always been a boyish ill-will that grew into 
 a noticeable enmity as Don became more of a long- 
 legged weakling and Conroy more of a pug-nosed and 
 sturdy bully. The tie of their relationship, added to 
 Don s plain inferiority in physical strength, kept 
 them from any set fights, but Conroy played rough 
 tricks on his cousin, tripped him slyly in the class 
 room, shouldered him from the sidewalk into the gut 
 ter, filled his cap with snow and laughingly pelted 
 and persecuted him in the playground and on the 
 street. At the same time, he would not let anyone 
 else take the same liberties; and he fought more than 
 one of the boys who in the expressive idiom of the 
 schoolyard " picked on" Don. Conroy plodded 
 through his studies as slowly as Don sauntered; and
 
 THE MAKE-BELIEVEE 27 
 
 they moved along together at the foot of their classes 
 in an enforced companionship that was contemp 
 tuously kindly on Conroy s side and at once grateful 
 and resentful on Don s. 
 
 Then one day the cousin came to school with the 
 whole story of Don s flirtation with Miss Margaret 
 a story he had learned from the dinner-table talk of 
 his elders on the previous evening. It was now three 
 years since she had passed out of their lives, but 
 Conroy still remembered her aversion to his "face" 
 and her whole-hearted admiration of Don; and to the 
 older point of view which he had newly caught,- Don s 
 whole affair had been a ridiculous childishness that 
 had ended in the still more ridiculous fiasco of the 
 torn photograph and Miss Margaret s indifferent de 
 parture. 
 
 It was shameful to Don when it was brought up 
 to him again, and he blushed and suffered bashfully 
 under his cousin s public teasing. "Did she use to 
 kiss you in the summerhouse ? " the others twitted 
 him. "Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie," they called 
 him. Go and play with the girls and give them your 
 photograph. 
 
 He silenced some of the younger ones by boxing 
 their ears; he was even irritated into fighting a boy 
 of his own height, and was only saved from a beating 
 by Conroy s interference. But the cousin kept up 
 his own teasing, day after day; and when Saturday 
 came, Don went out alone to his haunts in the Park, 
 almost a persecuted refugee from the small society 
 of the neighborhood. 
 
 It was a clear June morning, with a breeze that 
 
 CD
 
 28 DON-A-DKEAMS 
 
 rustled in the driveway maples and a sunlight that 
 lay dazzingly white on the gravel walks; and Don 
 looked about him with an easing sense of freedom, 
 drawing a refreshingly deep breath. He had not yet 
 learned to be sentimental about nature; he had 
 merely an animal pleasure in the escape to the open 
 where his eyes could stretch their book-cramped 
 muscles in long sight, and he could walk free from 
 the critical observation of his elders and talk shame 
 lessly to himself. 
 
 He was heading for the wilder upper portion of 
 the Park where there were no flower beds, and the 
 ground had not been levelled, and the grass was un 
 cutwhen he saw the distant figure of a boy coming 
 after him across the lower law r ns; and he immediately 
 dodged behind a bed of lilac bushes bordered with 
 geraniums and striped ribbon grass. It was a large 
 bed, in the shape of a great crescent; and Don skirted 
 it, under cover crouching in the accepted manner of 
 an Indian scout and peeped around the far tip of 
 the crescent to see his cousin Conroy coming up on 
 his trail. He knew it was against the law to enter 
 one of these hoed beds of bushes ; but, seeing no other 
 escape, he ran back and leaped over the geraniums 
 and crawled in among the lilacs on his hands and 
 knees. 
 
 He lay down in a little open patch of ground in 
 the center of the bed and listened breathlessly for the 
 footsteps of his pursuer. After a long time, he heard 
 Conroy calling him at a distance up the Park. He 
 rose cautiously to his knees, took off his little Scotch
 
 THE MAKE-BELIEVER 29 
 
 cap, and began to repeat his usual prayers in peace. 
 And then, to make his devotions more real, he gathered 
 some broken branches and small twigs, drove the 
 straighter ones into the soft earth and put the others 
 across them in a crude representation of an altar. 
 
 The story of that make-believe cannot be followed 
 farther without an appearance of sacrilege; but Don s 
 memory was full of Old Testament stories of Jehovah s 
 interference in aid of his prophets ; he had not yet 
 learned that the age of miracles had ceased ; and when 
 he came out of the bushes again, he walked like a 
 young David to battle, his eyes big with a religious 
 exaltation. 
 
 Conroy had been seeking him up and down the 
 Park, hiding and watching, without ever suspecting 
 that his timid cousin had dared to enter f>ne of the 
 forbidden clumps of bushes; and as soon as he saw 
 Don in the open, he raised a view-haloo and bore down 
 on him. Don doubled up his fists and waited. Con 
 roy came shouting gleefully. He did not intend to 
 tease again; he had seen Don going off alone into the 
 Park, and he had been taken with remorse for his per 
 secution. In the bottom of his boy s heart, he ad 
 mired his quiet relative, though by a common boyish 
 perversion of affection he could never keep his rough 
 hands off Don, trying to plague him out of a superior 
 indifference that was the more irritating because it 
 was so unconscious. 
 
 As he came nearer, he saw Don s attitude and 
 stopped. "What s the matter?" 
 
 "Keep away from me."
 
 30 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 The boy stared. "What s the matter?" 
 
 Don backed up against the geraniums. "Keep 
 away from me." 
 
 Conroy raised a derisive shout. "Do you want to 
 fight T 
 
 The young David swallowed slowly and shut his 
 teeth on the pale-lipped mutter of a prayer. His 
 cousin crept in on him, grinning, and crouched in 
 tending to wrestle him and roll him on the grass play 
 fully. Don caught him in the mouth with a blow 
 that knocked him off his balance. He jumped to his 
 feet, white; and Don was waiting for him. 
 
 They fought in a boyish fury, wrestling, kicking 
 and scratching; Don even bit his cousin s hand. He 
 was whimpering hysterically; half his blows were go 
 ing wide; and Conroy struck at his head and face 
 and kicked into his legs. He went down on the 
 grass, but before Conroy could more than pant out 
 "Had enough?" he was up again, fighting like mad; 
 and the more Conroy punished him, the harder he 
 fought, whining like an animal, his face covered with 
 blood. He did not feel the blows that blinded him; 
 and his endurance was so unexpected, and his des 
 pairing stubbornness so wild, that it frightened Con 
 roy, and he, too, began to cry. 
 
 He tried to dodge Don s onslaughts, but the boy 
 flung himself in, clutching and falling, and tearing 
 as he fell; and Conroy had to defend himself with 
 the most frantically brutal blows. Even then, sob 
 bing horribly and so weak he could scarcely stand, Don 
 staggered in again and again after every rebuff; and
 
 THE MAKE-BELIEVER 31 
 
 when he fell at last, he still struggled, fighting des 
 pairingly, with the grass. 
 
 Conroy, trembling in the knees, sat down at a little 
 distance, wiped his blubbered face and picked at his 
 torn stockings where the kick of Don s heavy shoes had 
 cut them and drawn blood. He looked at Don with 
 scared eyes. God ! God ! Don screamed suddenly, 
 and rising to his hands and knees, he began to crawl 
 toward Conroy, in a frenzy. Conroy jumped to his 
 feet and ran ; and as he looked back over his shoulder, 
 he saw Donald, in trying to follow him, topple and 
 fall on his face. 
 
 He did not stop running till he came to the Park 
 fountain. There, having washed his face and hands, 
 he sat down shivering with guilty horror, as bewildered 
 as a murderer, unable to make up his mind what to 
 do. He was afraid to go home and leave Don there. 
 He was afraid to go back and face the prospect of 
 more fighting. He had had enough. 
 
 It was fifteen minutes before he got himself around 
 the bed of lilac bushes and saw Don lying motion 
 less where he had fallen. 
 
 1 Don!" he called fearfully. "Don! What s the 
 matter ? . . . I did n t mean to. I did n t want to 
 fight . . . Don?" He came closer. "I m not going 
 to touch you. I you hurt me as much as I did 
 you. . . . Don? Get up." 
 
 Don began to moan. Conroy drew nearer. "You 
 were n t licked," he consoled, in a shameful whisper. 
 "You were n t licked. . . I ran away." 
 
 Don sobbed: "It it is n t that. It is n t that."
 
 32 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 Conroy knelt beside him and began to wipe his 
 cousin s torn fingers in his wet handkerchief. "I 11 
 never h hit you" He choked. 
 
 Don, face down, rolled his head from side to side. 
 It was n t that. He could n t tell what it was. 
 
 It was that his God had suddenly withdrawn into 
 the high heavens and left him; that He had shown 
 Himself not a God of personal mercy and protection, 
 but of distant justice and no partiality of love. 
 
 "Come on back, Don," Conroy whispered. "I 
 won t tease you any more. And I won t ever let any 
 one else." 
 
 IT was the end of Don s young religiosity, and it 
 was the beginning of a mutual respect and friendship 
 between Conroy and him. Don was incurably soli 
 tary in his inclinations, but it became a solitude of 
 two; for Conroy developed a sort of protective devo 
 tion that was as dumb as it was dogged. If Don did 
 not come out to join in the games of the other boys, 
 Conroy hunted him down among his books and sat 
 with him over them. If Don stole away into the Park, 
 Conroy followed him up like a young "Man Friday." 
 They played Robinson Crusoe together, and fought 
 Indians in the Park woods, and went on wonderful 
 exploring expeditions in those narrow wilds. Don 
 had a very robust and buoyant spirit that charmed 
 his cousin; and if he had any tendency to morbidness 
 or melancholy, the companionship kept it down. 
 
 They worked together at their lessons whenever they 
 could. If there were any fights to be fought, they
 
 THE MAKE-BELIEVER 33 
 
 took them together; and for that reason there were 
 few. They left Miss Morris s academy at the same 
 time, and entered an upper class of the Public School 
 where they sat side by side until their teachers sepa 
 rated them for reasons of discipline. And though 
 there was no girlish sentimentality in their friend 
 ship, they were David and Jonathan for years. 
 
 Their gradual separation began in the High School 
 "forms," because Don s father being a lawyer- 
 wished him to study classics in preparation for the 
 University and the profession of law, and Conroy s 
 father, a wealthy wholesaler, made him take the com 
 mercial course" in preparation for a business career. 
 They were then fifteen years of age and sixteen, Con- 
 roy being the older; and as yet in the great drama of 
 life that was being played around them, they had 
 taken no part. Don s mother was an invalid, and her 
 little daughter Mary had first claim on her affection; 
 his father was a busy man; and Frankie had com 
 panions of his own age. When Don was not with 
 Conroy, he was alone with his dog. 
 
 But Conroy had a family of brothers and sisters, 
 and a mother and a father who liked to keep their 
 children together in the house. Don was shy with 
 them, and he had an awkwardness of temperament 
 that prevented him from joining heartily in the little 
 parties of young folk that were so common in his 
 uncle s home. His solitary walks with "Dexter" be 
 came more frequent when the pressure of Frankie s 
 rivalry in his studies did not keep him home; for 
 Frankie had left Miss Morris s Select Academy with
 
 34 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 a five-pointed gold medal inscribed "Awarded to 
 Francis Grayson Gregg for Good Conduct, Punctu 
 ality and Progress"; he had entered the High School 
 at the head of his year; and he had closed up on 
 Don so nearly that if the elder brother ever tripped 
 on an examination, now, the younger would surely 
 draw up even with him. 
 
 "You re wasting too much time reading trash," 
 their father said to Don, one night when he found 
 the boy on a chair before his mother s bookshelves. 
 
 "I ve finished my lessons, sir," Don pleaded. 
 
 "What s that you re taking?" 
 
 It was a copy of Eeade s Put Yourself in His 
 Place." Mr. Gregg drew down his shaggy eyebrows 
 at it. "Put it back," he ordered. "That s no book 
 for a boy. It s no book for anyone. Silly trash! 
 Why don t you read something to improve your 
 mind?" It irritated him to find in Don the same 
 sentimental appetite for novels which his unpractical 
 wife had always had. Frankie had none of it. He 
 had inherited his father s brains. 
 
 Don put up the book reluctantly and turned to the 
 door. "And you might as well understand now," 
 his father said, "that I can t send you both to the 
 University. And if Frankie proves himself . . .better 
 fitted to profit by it, there 11 be no favoritism shown 
 ... in the matter . . . Do you hear?" 
 
 "Yes, sir," Don said, backing out. 
 
 His father opened his newspaper with the satis 
 faction of having performed his parental duties with 
 a stern impartiality; and Don went back rebelliously
 
 THE MAKE-BELIEVER 35 
 
 to a copy of Spenser s "Faerie Queene" which he had 
 begun to read because he had thought it might be a 
 fairy tale. He had never lost his love of fairy tales. 
 
 THE "Pass Matriculation and Third Certificate 
 Class," of which Don was a member, had now entered 
 on the Spring term that was to end in the dreaded 
 government examination for admission to the Pro 
 vincial University; and Don was working like a slave. 
 Even his Saturdays he gave up to study, and took 
 his walks with a text-book in his pocket, and drew 
 the figures of his geometrical "deductions" with a 
 twig in the earth. He went much further afield than 
 he had in the days when Conroy and he had hunted 
 man-eating tigers in the Park. He had found a 
 ravine, to the north of the town, lying wooded be 
 tween two bald-top hills that had been sheared for 
 farm land; the sides of the ravine had been left un 
 cut; and in the bottom of it, under the shelter of firs 
 and spruces, a little cool stream ran between its 
 shores of brown pine needles and dead leaves. Here, 
 he read and dreamed and studied, in a happy soli 
 tude with his dog, under innumerable green pine 
 branches, among the corded roots of clinging firs, be 
 side the crisp tinkle of little bubbled waterfalls. 
 
 Conroy knew the place, but he did not often come 
 with Don except on a Sunday afternoon when there
 
 36 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 were no football games to play and his home was 
 depressingly Sabbatical. And this was a Saturday, 
 and Don did not expect to be disturbed. He had 
 made himself comfortable on a little knoll of grass, 
 with the stream at his feet and the slim white stem 
 of a silver birch at his back; Dexter had curled him 
 self in a patch of sunlight near by, his nose between 
 his paws, blinking sleepily; some wood sparrows 
 twittered and quarreled among the evergreens. 
 
 Don, with a book of the Odyssey on his knees and 
 a "crib" in his hand, fitted the translation to the 
 text and marked with a lead pencil the words he did 
 not know. He was so busy that he did not notice 
 Dexter when the dog pricked up its ears. He was 
 murmuring: "Then answering him then answering 
 him the wily Odysseus the wily Odysseus said 
 King Alcinous The dog sat up, its nostrils 
 twitching, and watched the trail of brown path down 
 which they had come. " Truly it is a beautiful 
 thing Quiet, sir." The dog had growled. "What s 
 the matter with you?" He looked up from his study. 
 There was a girl approaching through the trees. 
 
 He put his cap on quickly, and fixed his attention 
 on his book in a pretence of absorption which he in 
 tended to maintain until she had passed. But, in a 
 moment, out of the corner of his eye, he saw her 
 stop ; and Dexter, having sniffed at the hem of her 
 skirt which came almost to her shoe-tops barked and 
 ran away up the path. She came closer, and stood 
 there. He raised his eyes from her ankles which 
 were neatly turned to her belt, in which she carried 
 a bunch of violets and then to a face that was dimly
 
 THE MAKE-BELIEVER 37 
 
 familiar, brown-eyed, flushed, and greeting him with 
 a friendly smile that waited to be remembered. She 
 stood in the sunlight, her hands clasped behind her, 
 her eyes dark in the shadow of the brim of her hat, 
 her teeth white in the light; and the adorable dimple 
 in either cheek deepened when she saw that he did 
 not recognize her. 
 
 She laughed. A blind memory groped and moved 
 in his brain, and a rush of blood flamed over his face. 
 The dog was barking among the trees. She turned 
 and called in that direction: "He does n t remember 
 me!" 
 
 He knew then. It was "Miss Margaret!" 
 
 He started to get up, catching at his books as they 
 slipped from his knees, and fumbling for his pocket 
 as he tried to put away his lead-pencil. Remember 
 her? The realization that this smiling young woman 
 was his "Miss Margaret" had come on him with such 
 a shock that he did not know what he was about. 
 In a sort of bewildered double-consciousness, he 
 watched his hands trying to pick up the scattered 
 volumes. Miss Margaret ! And then he came sud 
 denly into clear possession of his senses, and stood 
 up with a tremulous smile, a book in one hand and 
 his pencil in the other. "Yes, I do," he said huskily. 
 "You re Miss Margaret," 
 
 "How did you know?" she cried, beaming on 
 him. "By the photograph? Have I changed?" 
 
 The excitement in her eyes was catching. He stam 
 mered, with a broken laugh: "N no. You took it 
 away the photograph. I have n t any." 
 
 "Oh yes!" she recollected. "I thought. . . But
 
 38 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 why did I?" she accused him. "You tried to" 
 
 "Well," he dared. "What did you do to mine? 
 You tore it up and threw it away." 
 
 "I did n t! Oh!" She was scarlet. "How did 
 you find out?" The dog came barking and jumping 
 about her, with Conroy stumbling over him. "He 
 did n t remember!" she cried. "How did you 
 know? . . . He has n t changed a bit. .. Is n t it 
 funny; he called me Miss Margaret !" 
 
 They all talked together, raising their voices to 
 drown Dexter s yelping. "It was my plan. I wanted 
 to surprise you." "I told her we d find you here." 
 "I almost called for Con on my way out, too." "Is n t 
 it fun!" "Quiet, sir!" "Just look at him!" 
 "Down, sir!" 
 
 Conroy caught the dog and muzzled it with a 
 hand; they heard the shrill treble of their voices, un 
 supported by its barking; and they stopped, self- 
 conscious. The excitement ceased as suddenly as it 
 had begun. 
 
 Don looked from Conroy to her with a quick change 
 to bashfulness that took him in the middle of a smile 
 and froze it. She was "Miss Margaret" and she was 
 not. "I did n t know any other name," he apologized. 
 
 < <T 
 
 "Didn t you? Didn t I ever teU you?" 
 
 "No. You-" 
 
 Richardson. 
 
 Miss Richardson. It made her a stranger to him. 
 He felt almost as if they needed an introduction. 
 "You knew mine?"
 
 THE MAKE-BELIEVER 39 
 
 "Your cousin told me." They both looked at Con- 
 roy, and were unable to get their eyes back to each 
 other again. Conroy saw the situation and busied 
 himself with the dog, snapping his fingers at it, and 
 catching at its ears. They struggled with an abashed 
 silence until Conroy thinking loyally that they 
 would get along better without him said: "Well, 
 I promised to be back home right away. . . I guess 
 I better be going." And in spite of their confused 
 efforts to keep him, he did succeed, with the aid of 
 Dexter, in getting himself off the scene. 
 
 She looked around her. What a beautiful place ! 
 
 He replied, lamely: "Yes, is n t it." 
 
 She saw his books. "Were you studying?" 
 
 He tried to think of something more to say than 
 the bald affirmative, and ended by faltering "N no." 
 
 She stooped down to the Odyssey. "Is n t it 
 funny? What is it?" 
 
 "Greek." 
 
 "Really?" She sat down on the grass. "Is it is 
 it as interesting as the book you 
 
 He caught the picture that was in her mind the 
 picture of the two of them with their heads together 
 over the fairy tales, on his aunt s porch steps and 
 he laughed. "No not quite I" 
 
 "What is it like? What is it all about?" 
 
 He came down slowly, on one knee beside her. 
 "It s I can t read it without a trans but it s a good 
 deal of a fairy tale too." 
 
 "And there are n t any pictures." She turned 
 over the pages, careful not to look at him for fear
 
 40 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 she should make him shy again. "It s like the first 
 time I saw music printed music. I wondered how 
 anyone could make . . . music out of it. I suppose 
 it s easy enough when you know how too Greek." 
 
 Don laughed apologetically as he sat down. "I 
 don t know. I don t know how." 
 
 "We don t study it at Horton. German is bad 
 enough. 
 
 "Are you studying German?" 
 
 Oh, she was not studying much of anything except 
 music and singing. And she had worked so hard at 
 those that her health had broken down and her mother 
 had taken her away from the school. They were in 
 town for a month, on their way to the Muskoka 
 lakes where they were to spend the summer. 
 
 She chattered nervously about herself, turning the 
 pages backward and forward. Don watched her 
 fingers. He glanced shyly at the soft profile of her 
 cheek and chin, with the dark eyelash and the dimple 
 that came and went with her smile. He breathed a 
 faint, warm odor of violets that overbore the scent of 
 the wood balsam, every now and then, with a sweet 
 suggestion of feminine daintiness and charm. And 
 that perfume stealing in on him, and her white hands 
 touching his old book, and her voice voluble in friend 
 ship, and her smile they dazzled, fascinated him, 
 intoxicated him, so that his eyes burned on her, and 
 he leaned forward beside her, clasping his knees, to 
 see her better under the brim of her hat; and she 
 looked up, half -startled, and caught the boyish gen 
 tleness and reverence that shone even through his ar 
 dor; and she was not afraid. .
 
 THE MAKE-BELIEVER 41 
 
 She told him of her studies in the boarding-school 
 for girls, in which she was a day scholar; and he 
 described his own class-room life. They talked as 
 eagerly, and listened as hungrily, as if the trivial ex 
 periences of their small days were great and moving 
 events. "I often wondered what you were doing," 
 she confessed. "There was a boy at home reminded 
 me of you a little." 
 
 Don was afraid to acknowledge that he had made 
 an imaginary playmate of her ; indeed, he remembered 
 it only dimly. "I did n t think I d ever see you 
 again," he said. "I did n t know where you d gone." 
 The miracle of her return came strong on him. 
 
 "You didn t forget me, though," she said. 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Your cousin told me how they teased you 
 about the photograph." 
 
 He laughed with a return of the shame which that 
 teasing had taught him to feel in remembering the 
 incident. "We had an awful fight," he recollected. 
 
 "You are good friends, now." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "He hurried me right out here, as soon as he knew 
 who I was." She smiled at the thought of Conroy s 
 delighted eagerness to have her meet Don again. 
 Then she leaned back against the birch, and gazed 
 happily at the tangle of sunlit green branches and 
 the bare, brown shadows underneath. It was just 
 such a place as she would have expected to find the 
 little boy whom she remembered. And he was the 
 same boy, though evidently his books had taken the 
 place of his make-believes, and he was more reserved.
 
 42 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 She liked him, and she knew it. On her way out 
 with Conroy, she had been wondering whether she 
 would like him. She was glad that she did. 
 
 As for Don, he had no feminine introspection, and 
 his happiness held him in a dazed silence. He was 
 conscious only that a young divinity for she was 
 already more than a girl to him had come glowing 
 and beautiful out of dreamland, and sat beside him 
 in an odor of violets, and talked to him with a musical, 
 soft voice. 
 
 "The water sounds so pretty," she said. 
 
 He replied, musingly: "I d change it for you, if 
 it didn t." 
 
 "Why! How?" 
 
 "It s the stream running over some big stones. 
 You can change the sound by changing the stones." 
 
 "Really?" 
 
 "Would you like to?" 
 
 "Why, of course I" 
 
 The tiny waterfall was just below their knoll, at 
 the end of a bright shallow where three boulders held 
 back the bed of the stream and dropped the current 
 brawling over their shoulders into a dark pool. Don 
 helped her down the steep bank to the water s edge ; 
 and with much excitement and more laughter, with 
 little cries of delight from her and a furious barking 
 from Dexter, they loosened stones from the bank and 
 put them where the plangent water would strike and 
 curl about them; and with every stone, sure enough, 
 they got a new note. 
 
 Then they followed down the changes of the stream
 
 THE MAKE-BELIEVER 43 
 
 to a green slope where, Don knew, the first violets 
 always budded; and when he found only leaves and 
 no blossoms yet for, of course, it was too early in 
 the year she took some of the hot-house flowers from 
 her belt, made holes in the ground with the pin of 
 her brooch, and stuck the stems in, playfully. 
 "There!" she said. "Now, you pick them." 
 
 He took them out again, one by one, careful not 
 to break the delicate stalks, and held them out to her, 
 laughing. 
 
 "Oh, thank you." She accepted them with a 
 sparkling gravity. "Are n t they sweet! May I have 
 them all? Would n t you like to keep some?" 
 
 Don stammered: "Ye e es." 
 
 "Have you a pin? No, I 11 put them in your 
 buttonhole. 
 
 He could not look at her face; he kept his eyes on 
 her frail wrists as she reached to the lapel of his 
 coat and put the violets in the buttonhole and patted 
 them into place. When she stood back, a little flushed 
 at her own daring, he raised his eyes to hers; and the 
 look that passed between them was as innocent as 
 affection and as tender as a caress. 
 
 Hours later, they came loitering down the avenue 
 towards home; and they came so slowly that Dexter 
 running ahead of them impatiently, waiting, and then 
 running back covered every foot of the way again 
 and again. They were still talking, but with an easy 
 friendliness now, and with a confident meeting of their 
 glances. The sun, low in the west behind them, slanted 
 its long rays on them in a glory as they came. The
 
 44 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 early April breeze, soft with its first evening mist, 
 stirred the budding chestnut branches over their heads, 
 with the breath of a sigh. A robin, as fat as a pullet, 
 called to them from a green lawn, as they passed, a 
 throaty promise of Spring. 
 
 VI 
 
 DON had scarcely more than outgrown knickerbockers ; 
 his habit of solitude had kept him as clean-minded 
 as the girl herself; and if it was love that had taken 
 him, it was a love that desired only to look at her 
 and listen to her when she was with him, and to 
 dream of her and wish for her when she was away. 
 It was a boy s love that had no burning, a present 
 happiness that had no doubt of the future and no 
 guilt of the past. But it filled his thoughts with 
 pictures of her that came between him and the pages 
 of his books; and he ran from school hours to her 
 like a child to play. 
 
 He came to the house for her quite openly, until 
 she noticed some of his school-fellows grinning at him 
 across the street as he walked with her, and she under 
 stood that they would tease him, as they had about 
 the photograph. After that, she agreed to meet him 
 at the top of the Park, on the road to their ravine. 
 She did not let him come out to her of an evening, 
 because she had heard his aunt say that he must not 
 neglect his studies; and she made him bring his books
 
 THE MAKE-BELIEVER 45 
 
 with him when they went on their walks. She even 
 encouraged him to work, by making him read his 
 translation aloud to her and by pretending to be in 
 terested with him in the solution of his "deductions." 
 And as long as he was with her, he could work. It 
 was when he was at his desk in school, or shut up 
 in his room at home, that she kept him idle, his eyes 
 set on the memory of her, and his book forgotten in 
 his hand. 
 
 Conroy accompanied them sometimes, but not often. 
 He could be with her of an evening, when Don could 
 not; and though there was no rivalry between them, 
 he knew that Don would not wish to share her, and 
 boyishly he held aloof. They went alone to their 
 green alcoves and grassed recesses, like a pair of lovers 
 in a poem, but with a childish spirit. There were 
 blue-birds to wonder at, the first hepaticas to find, a 
 water-rat for Dexter to go mad about, and the lurk 
 ing violets, at last, in a sudden, shy profusion. Don 
 broke off the odorous branches of firs and hemlocks 
 to make a dry seat for her, one day after it had 
 rained; and then he backed the seat with a screen of 
 foliage and made her a rough bower. As the weather 
 grew warmer, she felt less like romping along the 
 stream, and they sat oftener in this arbor; and while 
 she listened dreamily, with her head against his arm, 
 he read aloud from his Spenser s "Faerie Queene." 
 Many of the lines were printed in asterisks, because 
 Don explained the manuscript had been old and torn, 
 he supposed. But there was much there of knights 
 "yclad in mighty arms" who rode through the woods
 
 46 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 of Faery to slay monsters and rescue maids; and if 
 she sometimes objected that this was not study, Don 
 was able to assure her that Spenser was on his "Eng 
 lish course"; and if, while he read, he was the Red- 
 cross Knight and she Una "on her palfrey slow," he 
 did not tell her, and she did not guess. 
 
 It was all very innocent and friendly though Don 
 had some bewildering moments when his heart seemed 
 to swell with a choked longing in his chest. Then, 
 two days of wind and rain kept her in the house, where 
 he could only speak with her under conditions of 
 strained formality for he was at the age when the 
 usages of indoors are an oppression on the spirits 
 and their return to their haunts gave him the feeling 
 for her which a bright-colored toy had used to raise 
 in him, a desire to fondle it and rub it against his 
 cheek. When they sat to rest on a great pine one 
 that had been brought down by the wind in its 
 branches and the rain in its roots he put his arm 
 around her to support her; she was tired. He spread 
 her hand on his knee and compared his own brown 
 and ink-stained fingers with hers that were dimpled 
 at the knuckles and pink in the nails; and some older 
 instinct woke in him, and he lifted her hand and 
 kissed it. She answered the caress with a little pres 
 sure, and smiled absent-mindedly, a far-away look in 
 her eyes. 
 
 "What 11 you do when I go away?" she asked. 
 
 His heart was stifling him. "I don t know. Are 
 you going away?" 
 
 "Mother says I must. She says I don t look well."
 
 THE MAKE-BELIEVER 47 
 
 He drew her closer, and when she turned, their 
 eyes melted together in a look. His face drooped 
 to hers. "No," she whispered. "Don t . . . please, 
 Don. I promised mother. She said it was n t right." 
 
 He released her, his lips trembling, and turned 
 away. In a moment, she put a hand out and touched 
 his arm. "Read me something, Don," she said. 
 
 And neither of them understood what had happened. 
 
 THEY did not understand even when they came to 
 say their last good-byes, on the night before her depar 
 ture. It was a Sunday; she was to go in the early 
 morning; and all her friends and her mother s had 
 called to spend the evening. Don sat in an awkward 
 silence, without being able to find a word to say; 
 she followed him to the porch when he went out. 
 They shook hands, like their elders. "Well, good 
 bye," he said. 
 
 "Good-bye." 
 
 He waited. "You 11 be back?" 
 
 "Yes," she promised. "I 11 be back." 
 
 "I 11 wait for you." He put on his cap, and hesi 
 tated. "Will you write to me?" 
 
 "Oh yes! I 11 write often. " 
 
 He went down a step. "All right," he said bravely. 
 When he reached the path, he added "Good-bye." 
 
 She watched him out to the gate. He turned there; 
 and she, standing in the light of the door, waved 
 her hand and called "Good-bye." 
 
 They parted, as young people do, hopefully. The 
 future, they thought, was all theirs to meet again in.
 
 48 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 HE woke, next morning, with a start, and lay blink 
 ing at the warm May morning that shone in his 
 window. What what was it that had happened? 
 Miss Margaret! She had He groped under his pil 
 low for his watch ; it was eight o clock. She had gone. 
 Miss Margaret had gone. 
 
 The light suddenly looked hard and cold, framed 
 in the sash, like a prison window. His face went 
 blank. The day held no promise. He lay back on his 
 pillow and stared at the ceiling. 
 
 It is not in action but in the intervals of thought 
 that character grows; and for the next few days, Don 
 went about in a quiet muse that aged him more than 
 he knew. He shunned the ravine ; he worked with 
 a sort of stupid diligence; and not until Saturday 
 did he even so much as read anything but a school- 
 book. But on Saturday morning, he took up his 
 "Faerie Queene" again, and with the first words of 
 the poem a terrible longing gripped him at the heart. 
 He thrust the book in his pocket and hurried out of 
 doors, his cap over his eyes, half -running. 
 
 He came breathless to the top of the Park, to the 
 tree under -which she used to meet him; and there 
 he stopped, and smiled, and drew a long breath. 
 When he went on again, it was very slowly, his head 
 a little bowed; and when he came to the narrow path 
 that led down into the gully, he stepped back to let 
 her go ahead of him, and nodded and laughed. 
 
 At midday, he came out into the road again, with 
 the same slow air. There was no pathetic wistful- 
 ness in his face. There was something set and blind 
 in his gaze, but there was also a dreamy smile. And
 
 THE MAKE-BELIEVER 49 
 
 in the buttonhole of his lapel, he had a little bunch 
 of violets. 
 
 A girlish letter from her awaited him on his return 
 to the house; but it was as formal as a schoolroom 
 composition, in spite of its "Dear Don" and its 
 "Your loving friend, Margaret Richardson." It was 
 perfumed faintly, and that made him gulp ; but when 
 he had once put it in the little box in which he kept 
 a dried starfish and a bit of broken agate and some 
 other boyish treasures, he did not return to it. His 
 cousin whistled from the lawn while he was at dinner ; 
 he pleaded that he had to prepare his Monday s les 
 sons; and as soon as Conroy had gone, he hurried 
 away to his tryst, with his Odyssey in his pocket 
 and also a penknife with which he was to cut new 
 branches for her seat under the firs. 
 
 He came like a sleep-walker to the fallen pine on 
 which they had sat together, and he stopped, smil 
 ing, as if it were a barrier in his way. Dexter leaped 
 over it and went on. He looked after the dog, sway 
 ing irresolutely. Suddenly, he sat down. 
 
 His face had turned pale. A look of pain slowly 
 wrinkled around his eyes. Without moving his head, 
 he lifted his hand to his knee, and his fingers trembled 
 and twitched in a sort of empty groping. He turned 
 and the blood rushed to his face, and his eyes shut, 
 and his mouth gasped open and he slipped to his 
 knees on the grass and sank down in it with a sob. 
 
 And if he did not understand then, it was because 
 thp heart-hunger, the ache of longing, the fever of 
 loneliness that seized and shook and burned in him, 
 was like the blow of a grief that stuns.
 
 50 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 VII 
 
 THE months that followed are no more to be de 
 scribed than the love-fancies of a girl. The boy 
 worked over his books with a mind that was in a mist, 
 and as soon as he was free of school he went to his 
 make-believe meetings like an opium-eater to his 
 dreams. Of what he did there, of what he thought 
 there, he wrote her not a word. He filled his letters 
 with news of the acquaintances whom she had left 
 in Coulton particularly of Conroy, for whom she 
 inquired. Her own letters were made up of apologies 
 for not being able to write more frequently and of 
 accounts of her boating and bathing and picnicking 
 about the lake. It was a boy and girl correspondence, 
 more idle than chatter. He told her that Dexter was 
 "not very well"; that the stream in the ravine had 
 almost dried out to a trickle because a farmer had 
 dammed it up to make a pool for his cows; that the 
 church had been struck by lightning; that he was 
 writing on his "exams." She sent him blue-print 
 pictures of herself in a group of cottagers on the 
 beach. He pasted them in an old "Composition 
 Book" with her letters. 
 
 When his examinations were finished and his 
 school closed, he began to make plans. He would 
 go up to the University for four years. Then he 
 would take his course in the law school and accept
 
 THE MAKE-BELIEVEE 51 
 
 a call to the bar. As soon as he had set up his office, 
 they would be married. He would work till four 
 o clock every day at his cases just as he did now at 
 school but at four o clock sharp, he would hurry 
 home to her, and they would go for a little walk 
 before supper, and after supper he would read to her 
 until it was time for her to go to bed. It was to be 
 a feather bed, like his mother s. He would kiss her 
 good-night, there, before he went upstairs to his attic. 
 
 He could no more have told her of all this than 
 he could have told Conroy. But Dexter a illness 
 ended suddenly he was found dead on the lawn one 
 August morning and Don turned to her for conso 
 lation. His grief was not as bitter as it would have 
 been six months earlier, but it left him with a feeling 
 that he had only her now. She wrote back, in girlish 
 sympathy, that she wished she were with him in 
 Coulton, or he at the lake with her; that none of the 
 boys were as nice as he. And Don, on the impulse 
 of loneliness, shut himself up in his room and wrote 
 his first love letter. 
 
 He told her that he was to spend four years at 
 college, three years at the law school, and then per 
 haps a year in which to get up a practice. (He had 
 heard his father say it took a long time to work up 
 a practice.) He did not wish to bind her or any 
 thing like that but if she would just write to him, 
 and let him see her sometimes, and remember that he 
 was waiting for her, he would not care how long he 
 waited or how hard he worked. He would work so 
 hard that they would be rich, and be able to travel,
 
 52 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 and have a cottage at the lake to spend their sum 
 mers in. He would not care if he were never famous 
 unless, of course, she wished him to be. All he 
 wanted was to make her happy. He felt he could 
 do that because he (He hesitated a long time over the 
 word; he had never known anyone to use it, outside 
 of a book. But there was no other word for it; he 
 understood that women expected a man to say it; 
 and with a tremulous pen he wrote it:) because he 
 loved her. 
 
 He signed it, blushing like a girl, and then he 
 turned his back on the window, put his head down, 
 and shamefacedly kissed the paper. He ran out to 
 post it, so as to have it away from his eyes as soon 
 as possible ; and he sat down to wait for the reply. 
 
 He was still waiting when his father, coming home 
 from his office early, sent the maid upstairs to tell 
 Don that he was wanted in the library. He went 
 downstairs frightened. His father was sitting by his 
 smoking-table with a newspaper in his hand. "Well," 
 he said, "you ve failed in your examinations." 
 
 Don s first thought was that it would postpone his 
 marriage. 
 
 "Mr. McCutcheon tells me that your work during 
 the Spring term was uniformly bad." 
 
 Postpone his marriage! What would she say to 
 that? 
 
 "I think I warned you that what would happen 
 if you continued to waste your time. Your brother 
 has passed his examinations at the head of his class." 
 
 To work hard ! To get rich ! He had failed at the 
 very beginning!
 
 THE MAKE-BELIEVER 53 
 
 "I don t intend to sacrifice his future to yours. I 
 told you I could not send you both to college." He 
 threw down the paper decisively. "I will get you 
 a position down town in a bank, if I can." 
 
 "But but," Don stammered. 
 
 His father turned away. He was used to court 
 room scenes. He was sorry; but he knew that his 
 decision was wise. 
 
 Don stood, stupefied with the horror of the disaster. 
 Then he ran for his room, stumbling up the stairs, 
 holding his breath, in a desperate attempt to get out 
 of sight before he lost control of himself. 
 
 The little room that had hidden so many of his 
 boyish griefs sheltered "this one too ; but it was to be 
 the last. For though he cried like a child for five 
 despairing minutes, he jumped up, then, and shook 
 his fists at the door, and sobbed: "No! No, you 
 won t! . . . No, you won t! No, you won t!" He 
 was engaged to be married; his first duty was to his 
 wife. He had promised her that he would go to col 
 lege and be a lawyer. His father stop him? 
 
 He laced up his shoes, washed his face frantically, 
 and hurried out. He bought a newspaper and found 
 that he had been "starred" in mathematics. He 
 could write it off in the Supplemental Examination. 
 His father stop him? 
 
 He came into his aunt s sitting-room at the other 
 side of the town with his cap set awry on his head, 
 pale, and with a face that startled her. "Why, Don!" 
 she said. 
 
 He took the newspaper from his pocket. "I ve 
 failed in my examination in mathematics." His
 
 54 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 voice shook, but not with tears. "Father says I can t 
 go to college. If I promise to pay you back, will 
 you lend me the money?" 
 
 "Don!" She started toward him. 
 
 He backed away; it was no time for caresses. "I 
 can write off the mathematics at the Supplementals. 
 I know I can. I must I must go." His voice failed 
 him. 
 
 "What a shame!" she cried. "Oh! To do such a 
 thing!" 
 
 "He says he can t send us both that Frankie"- 
 
 "John!" she called to her husband. "John!" 
 He was already at the door. "What do you think? 
 Roger he has refused to let Don go to college now. 
 He says Frankie" 
 
 "He says he can t send us both. He says 
 Frankie 
 
 Mr. McLean came slowly into the room. "Well," 
 he said, "is n t that like him?" He did not love 
 the lawyer. 
 
 "I failed in mathematics. I could write it off in 
 September if he d let me. He he says he 11 get 
 me a place in a bank." 
 
 His uncle snorted contemptuously. "In a bank. 
 Is n t that like him?" 
 
 "He sha n t do it!" she cried. "What a shame! 
 He s always been like this about Don. And 
 Frankie" 
 
 "If I could borrow the money," Don pleaded, his 
 under-lip beginning to tremble. "I I could pay it 
 back."
 
 THE MAKE-BELIEVER 55 
 
 His uncle looked at him keenly; he swallowed and 
 stood up to it. "How much?" 
 
 He shook his head; he could not trust his voice. 
 
 His uncle flicked an imaginary speck of dust off 
 his coat front. "Hmmm. Go ahead with your ex 
 aminations." He took off Don s cap for him, and 
 patted him on the shoulder. "Go ahead and do your 
 work." And when Don had stammered through his 
 thanks and got himself out of the room again, his 
 uncle said: "That that brother of yours! What s 
 the matter with him anyway? Educate a boy that 
 way and then put him in a bank! What use would 
 anything he knows be in a bank?" He added, after 
 a moment s thought: "I 11 send Conroy with him, 
 too. He can take some special course. He ought to 
 be allowed to see for himself about how much good 
 this college business *s." 
 
 They had noticed a change in the timid Don; and 
 his father also noticed it at the evening meal: for 
 though Don did not speak, neither did he sulk ; he was 
 thoughtful, without being depressed; and he left the 
 table before his father in violation of the parental 
 rule. He said nothing of the scene with his aunt 
 except to his mother. Her, he told, dry-eyed and res 
 olute, and she listened with an invalid s helplessness, 
 and wept over him. "Your father means it for the 
 best, Don, she pleaded. I know he does. He thinks 
 you would be better at work." 
 
 "I have to go to college," Don said; and that was 
 all he would say. 
 
 He went to his room, and remained there, waiting.
 
 56 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 He was working at his mathematics when his father 
 came in. "So ... you have gone to your uncle for 
 money. 
 
 Don answered, with his heart in his mouth: "I 
 have to go to college. I don t care how I get there." 
 He did not look up. He drew a shaking line under 
 the problem he had finished, and turned the page to 
 the next. 
 
 His father took one quick stride into the room 
 and stopped. He had never struck Don since that 
 24th of May. He tried to be strictly just with his 
 boys, and he expected to be strictly obeyed. He saw 
 the defiance in his son s face. "Very good," he said. 
 And without another word, he went out. 
 
 Don worked until midnight. Then he took her note 
 from his breast pocket, and knelt down to his prayers 
 with it clasped in his hands. When he went to bed, 
 it was under his pillow. 
 
 Two evenings later he received a reply to his love 
 letter. It was from Mrs. Richardson. "My dear 
 Donald," it read. "Margaret, of course, has shown 
 me your letter. You are both too young to think of 
 such things for years yet. Certainly Margaret is, and 
 I do not wish her to think of them until she has 
 finished her schooling, at least, and is old enough to 
 know her own mind. You have your studies to at 
 tend to, and I do not think that either of you should 
 waste your time in sentimental correspondence. 
 When you have taken your degree however, it is 
 better not to think of it. You are both much too 
 young. I was sorry to hear that your pretty dog
 
 THE MAKE-BELIEVER 57 
 
 had died. Remember me to your aunt. I have asked 
 Margaret not to write. I know you will be a sensible 
 boy and understand." 
 
 He read it a second time, with the face of a bank 
 rupt. Then he put it away quietly, and returned to 
 his mathematics. At ten o clock, he took it out again, 
 and slowly tore it to pieces, his lips shut thin and 
 tight. 
 
 And Donald was no longer a boy. 
 
 HE was no longer a boy; and for the time he was 
 no longer a lover. It was as if, having eaten a sickly- 
 sweet Eastern poison, he ftad come out of dreams and 
 delirium weak and shaken; and the mere thought of 
 the girl gave him an almost physical sensation of 
 empty nausea that sent him, hungrily, to his work. 
 He avoided the books, the walks and the associations 
 that might remind him of her. He grappled with 
 his mathematics in a renewal of mind that rejoiced 
 in its own keenness. He avoided even solitude ex 
 cept the busy solitude of his studies and returned 
 to the wholesome companionship of his cousin with 
 out any reference to what had separated them. His 
 father, secretly proud of the unexpected determina 
 tion and independence which his son had shown, 
 watched him in a silence that gave consent to the boy s 
 ambition, but held aloof in a desire to confirm this 
 new strength of spirit by doing nothing to prop it. 
 It was his mother who gave him word that he 
 would be allowed to go to college and be maintained 
 there as long as he passed the examinations in his
 
 58 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 course. It was she who packed his trunk sitting in 
 her chair and wrapping all his things, needlessly, in 
 tissue paper as white as her own hands with the 
 eyes of a mother who is sending her boy into those 
 spiritual wars of the world which have made her 
 husband a stranger to her. And it was she, unseen, 
 who still waved good-bye to him from the window 
 when he turned, with Conroy, at the street corner, 
 and saw only the old house standing there, strangely 
 dead and mute, a thing of the past already, all the 
 glow of young expectation gone from it into the un 
 known scenes to which he was hastening.
 
 PAET II 
 THE DAY-DREAMER
 
 THEY arrived at the college gates on a late Sep 
 tember afternoon, and stood to look across the 
 green at the "Norman pile" which was " Varsity." 
 Its walls, romantically ivied, rested, as if without found 
 ations, on the perfect level of the lawn ; it was flanked, 
 on either wing, by large and solemn oaks; its towers 
 rode in an autumn sunlight that mellowed them with 
 a warm tone like an old landscape painter s trans 
 parent "glaze" as if rich with culture and ripe with 
 ease; and against the background of the raw civiliza 
 tion around it, that artful imitation of an English 
 university had the effect on Don of the first sight of 
 Rome on a pilgrim. Surprised, in a sort of eager 
 reverence, his lips parted, flushed under the eyes, he 
 looked at it as if he were a young novice come to 
 the studious quiet of a cloister. There was suddenly 
 something beautiful in his face, for although his 
 cheekbones were high and his lips thin, he had that 
 transparent paleness as clear as fine porcelain 
 which seems to light up from within at the first glow 
 of enthusiasm; and his eyes, under a boyish wide 
 forehead, were the speaking eyes of a poet. 
 
 His cousin browner, sturdier, his feet firmer on 
 the ground looked the buildings over with a shadow 
 of distaste. For him, there was something alien and 
 
 61
 
 62 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 "imported" in the conventional lawns, the perfect 
 oaks, the carved and battlemerited grey walls; and he 
 had the same vague feeling of dissatisfaction that was 
 to irritate him again when he heard the careful 
 "English accent" of some of his teachers. But while 
 he was still looking, a "practice team" of young 
 athletes in the dirt-brown costumes of the football 
 field came running out on the campus, "passing" the 
 ball and dodging with it; and Conroy pricked up his 
 interest with a quick change of expression. "Say, 
 Don," he said, "I 11 bet that s the Varsity team. 
 They ve been training all summer." 
 
 Don nodded, abstractedly. 
 
 "Come on," Conroy laughed. "Let s get into 
 this game. 
 
 They were entered by the Registrar on the rolls 
 of the University as "Donald Bailey Gregg, aged 18, 
 Anglican," taking the course in Political Science as 
 a preparation for the study of the law, and "Conroy 
 Gregg McLean, aged 19, Presbyterian," a special 
 student in Modern Languages. In respectful silence, 
 they enrolled with the spectacled professors whose 
 lectures they were to attend. They wandered through 
 the panelled corridors of the college buildings, walk 
 ing almost on tip-toe in their efforts to prevent their 
 heels from clattering on the hardwood floors. They 
 found themselves a boarding-house, and unpacked 
 their books. And Donald did all these things almost 
 without emotion, in a sort of thoughtful dulness, in 
 curious, and perversely sad. 
 
 When his cousin went out, after supper, to see the
 
 THE DAY-DEEAMEE 63 
 
 town, he remained in his room, like one of those im 
 migrants who come into the port of their hopes in 
 high spirits, and, having looked over the rail at the 
 strangeness of the land, retire below decks and sit 
 on their trunks, reluctant to go ashore. All the past, 
 which he had put behind him irrevocably, came to 
 him, now, in a more vivid presence than the present 
 itself. The strange room in which he sat dazing" 
 over his book as Miss Morris would have said was 
 lost in the shadows that hung around his lamp ; and 
 he was sitting in the room in which he had used to 
 lock himself from Miss Morris s persecutions, the 
 room which he had shared with his imaginary play 
 mate, the room in which he had read his "Faerie 
 Queene, " in which he had written his first love letter, 
 in which he had defied his father, in which he had 
 planned his future and thought to leave his past. 
 Celt that he was, he sat there turning over his recol 
 lections like the pages of an old book, s.lowly ideal 
 izing even his most unhappy experiences and seeing 
 all beautiful through the mists of regretful memory. 
 And that mood was to be the dominant one of his 
 first weeks at college. Conroy was separated from 
 him by the divergence of their studies, and Donald 
 avoided his new classmates as shyly as he had his 
 old. They the prize students of small towns, the 
 ambitious sons of poor farmers had come, by the 
 hundreds, to study for the "professions" at the ex 
 pense of the government, with no pocket money be 
 yond what paid their board, working for "free 
 scholarships" with the same untiring labor that had
 
 64 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 made clearings in the wilderness and forced crops 
 from the very stones. Shiny at the elbows, clumsy 
 in the feet, they had as little wish to cultivate the 
 social graces as he had himself; and, like him, they 
 came from their boarding-house garrets to their 
 morning lectures, and went from the class rooms to 
 the library and from the library back to the class 
 rooms diligently all day, and returned at last, blink 
 ing through the twilight and loaded down with books, 
 to swallow a hasty supper and begin a long evening s 
 work bent double over the discarded "parlor" tables 
 that stood beside their boarding-house beds. 
 
 Conroy, of course, joined the ranks of the more 
 leisured students who had time for athletics, college 
 clubs and fraternal societies. He became what was 
 called, in the student slang, "a, sport"; whereas Don 
 was already marked as one of the "plugs." The 
 sports had a sharp contempt for these latter round- 
 shouldered and bilious word-grubbers who worked 
 like convicts and gave the university the atmosphere 
 of a penal institution and Conroy began to be 
 ashamed of his cousin when they met on the lawns. 
 "You re getting to be an awful fish," he remon 
 strated, one night in their room. "A man doesn t 
 come to college just for the books. You ought to do 
 something to keep up the the college spirit." 
 
 He, himself, had learned to smoke a "bulldog" 
 briar; he wore a class pin conspicuously on the lapel 
 of his coat; he had an inch of college ribbon sewed 
 in the band of his hat; he had caught the tone of 
 almost brutal frankness which his new companions
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 65 
 
 used in their social relations with one another. And 
 Don, looking up from his work, saw anew the dis 
 tance that had widened between them, and could not 
 speak across it. 
 
 "I m not plugging," he tried to defend himself. 
 "I m reading outside of my course." 
 
 "Rats!" Conroy retorted. "That s what they al 
 ways say." 
 
 Don rearranged his books impatiently. "That 
 cant about the college spirit is a trifle stale itself." 
 
 "Oh, s it? ... You have a cheek to accuse me of 
 canting. 
 
 "You shouldn t accuse me of being a plug." 
 
 "I didn t." 
 
 Don s hand trembled as he turned up his lamp. 
 He was not timid in a quarrel, but he was afraid of 
 making a violent end of this friendship that was al 
 ready too weak to bear the slightest rupture. He did 
 not speak. 
 
 Conroy turned his back on the table and stood 
 frowning disgustedly at the shabby discomfort of the 
 room. "We should have gone into Residence," he 
 said, "instead of coming to this hole. ... If I can 
 get a room there, will you come?" 
 
 "I can t afford it. Can t you get one of the other 
 boys to take a room with you?" 
 
 "I don t know," Conroy answered. "I might." 
 
 He had, in fact, already talked the matter over 
 with a sophomore who had advised him to join "the 
 Residence gang" if he wished a place on the football 
 team; and Don guessed as much from the tone in
 
 66 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 which Conroy had said "I might." When his cousin 
 went out rather guiltily, he turned, almost with 
 relief, to the page of his book. 
 
 He had come to college with a conception of the 
 universe which he had formed, as a boy, in the Sab 
 bath school, accepting as literally true all the symbols 
 of his religion. And the first lectures in biology and 
 geology had come on him like Miss Morris s first 
 criticisms of his childish fancies. But now, instead 
 of an infantile resentment of change, he had a young 
 man s eagerness for knowledge; he did not pause to 
 examine what he was learning; he hurried along, 
 blindly, with a pathetic trust in the guidance of his 
 teachers, assured that he was rising above his boyish 
 ignorance of Science to the serene heights of wisdom 
 and broad views of life. 
 
 In the absorption of such a progress, all his cousin s 
 noisy claims on his time were a trivial interruption. 
 He received calmly the news that Conroy had found 
 a room-mate in the university Residence. And he 
 sat down alone to his studies, on the night after Con 
 roy s removal, like a philosophic anchorite to his 
 meditations. 
 
 He had had two startling shocks within the week: 
 one in a biological lecture that had ended a long 
 series of proofs of the kinship of man with the ani 
 mals by discussing the intimate physiological relation 
 between man and the anthropoid apes; and the other 
 in a geological lecture in which the professor, having 
 put down the tooth of a mammoth and dusted the 
 black-board chalk from his hands, had announced,
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 67 
 
 smiling: "We come, now, to the first appearance, so 
 far as we know, of an animal that by reason of a 
 superior development of its brain, was destined to 
 subjugate all the other members of the animal king 
 domthe animal which we know as Man." And 
 Donald had been facing the picture of his own infinite 
 littleness in the mighty scheme of a universe which 
 had existed so many ages before the first appearance 
 of that prehistoric animal, the first Man, and which 
 would exist when all the inhabitants of the modern 
 world were fossil remains to an endless future of 
 geologists. 
 
 In his later years he was to consider that this same 
 brave Science had once taught confidently that the 
 stars were set in crystal spheres revolving tunefully 
 about the earth, that it had prescribed dissolved 
 pearls as a medicine, and believed the liver to be the 
 seat of love. But now he saw only that his teachers 
 had led him to confront a terrible query a query 
 which for days he had been afraid to face. If it were 
 true that Man was only an animal of a superior 
 development of br-ain, and if all animals died the 
 everlasting death? 
 
 In the hope of finding an answer to that query, 
 he had been reading hungrily and in the large. Now 
 he was gulping the conclusions of a materialist who 
 had just said the last word on Science and Immor 
 tality ; and the book had led him to the plain edge 
 of the depths for which he had hoped it would find 
 him a bridge and had left him standing there. 
 
 When he looked up from the final page of the vol-
 
 68 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 ume, he felt lonely. He missed his cousin from the 
 room. 
 
 He rose from his chair and began to pace up and 
 down with a frightened restlessness. He halted, 
 staring at the cheerful glow of his "student" lamp, 
 and finding it, in some strange way, a tragically small 
 light in the vast darkness of the night. He turned 
 with a quiver, struck cold again by the thought that 
 was crouching, like a terror, in his brain. If it were 
 true that death? 
 
 Suddenly, he smiled the ghastly smile of a man 
 trying to deride his fear. It was impossible that all 
 this immense activity of civilization all this labor 
 and art and learning, all this doing and suffering, all 
 this loving and nobility, praying and aspiring of man 
 was the chattering business of a world of untailed 
 apes. God would not 
 
 His smile set on his mouth in a fixed grimace in 
 which there was no mirth. His eyes slowly narrowed 
 and shut as if he had been stricken with a pain in 
 the temples. He jerked back his head, and threw his 
 hands up to his face. 
 
 When the stroke had passed, he was on his knees 
 beside his bed, praying praying with the fervor of 
 a condemned man who has suddenly realized the 
 whole meaning of the sentence of death, praying with 
 the increasing feverishness of doubt, praying against 
 the thought that his prayers were addressed to the 
 deaf heaven of Science that is hung with barren stars 
 and the cold night of endless emptiness. He stopped 
 and looked up, his jaw fallen, as if listening to the
 
 THE DAY-DEEAMER 69 
 
 echo of his own whisper on the dead silences, his eyes 
 fixed in a frightened despair for it seemed to him, 
 now, in his newly critical view of his faith, that he 
 had been believing in another Santa Glaus. 
 
 II 
 
 THESE are the commonplaces of young experience, the 
 growing pains of any spiritual development; but 
 they came on Don with a sudden violence that gave 
 them a staggering weight. He was away from home: 
 that is to say, he was away from the comfortable out 
 look on life which a man gets from the very per 
 manence of familiar surroundings; he was facing the 
 powers of life and death, alone and in the open; he 
 was the more conscious of his own weakness, more 
 exposed to the assault of doubt, and perhaps 
 more inclined to be contemptuous of the fireside 
 religions. He had been raised in those sheltered be 
 liefs which are, in a way, feminine and sentimental; 
 he had been, for the past few months, thrown upon 
 his own unmothered masculinity in a world that de 
 spised the gentle moralities which it preached on one 
 day in seven; and his mind had changed more than 
 he had been aware. 
 
 When he woke next morning, it was to a dull ac 
 ceptance of that loss which had come upon him, the 
 previous night, in such a frantic revolt against 
 bereavement. He looked out his window on the first
 
 70 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 soft fall of snow, and remembered that it was Satur 
 day. His studies lay around him, dead of interest, 
 like the ruins of an avocation. He went downstairs, 
 listlessly, his hands in his pockets, and ate his break 
 fast with the mechanical appetite which follows a 
 stress of emotion. And then he muffled himself up 
 in his overcoat and winter gloves, and with his head 
 bent against a mild wind he began to walk. 
 
 He had intended to walk in a comfortable daze, 
 quite thoughtless, with the snow-flakes clogging his 
 eyelashes and the wind crooning in his ears. But his 
 mind was unusually alert, his observation greedy of 
 every sight he passed; and when he came to the main 
 business street of the town turning northward in an 
 unconscious habit of direction he saw the life around 
 him with an involuntary wonderment, as if it were 
 suddenly new to him; and he watched the actions of 
 the men and women on the sidewalks and in the shops 
 as if they had been a race of animals whose cheerful 
 acceptance of a brief and tragic lot was an inexplic 
 able mystery to him. He saw them even with pity as 
 they smiled and nodded and chattered to one another 
 with the pity which one would feel for the play 
 fulness of a butcher s animals; and he did not at all 
 confound himself in their fate, but walked among 
 them as unconsciously self-superior as a philosopher 
 who has just proved the nothingness of all things, and 
 who feels the personal importance of his triumphant 
 intellectuality and the great distinction of his act. 
 
 The feeling raised him to a lonely isolation, and as 
 he neared the quieter suburbs he was reminded of
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 71 
 
 the streets of Coulton and of the companion who had 
 used to join him at the top of the Park. Nor was 
 it so much of a reminding for, of course, she had 
 been dwelling in the painful background of his mind 
 at all times. It was a sudden leaping of her image 
 into the vacant interest which his studies had been 
 occupying, a weaker yielding to the thoughts which 
 he had kept resolutely out of his busy days. And 
 he did not think of her with pity, as he did of these 
 others. The mood is likely to be over-expressed in any 
 words: but she took her place beside his own concep 
 tion of himself and companioned him among these sha 
 dows of men and women like an immortal walking 
 with him in a futile and passing world. 
 
 He began to chat with her, in an imaginary con 
 versation, at first rather sadly, but without any refer 
 ence to the cause of his tragic manner, for he had 
 the same instinct to shield her from his doubts as he 
 had had to protect Frankie from the discovery that 
 Santa Glaus was a myth. She asked him about his 
 studies, about Conroy, about the life at college; and 
 her questions were as unexpected as the conversation 
 which one carries on in dreams. He saw her down 
 ward smile, the eyelash on her cheek, the quick side 
 glance which she raised to him, rather shyly because 
 of their long separation; and he looked down to see 
 whether she wore her rubbers in the snow, and, while 
 he replied to her, he watched her little feet appearing 
 and disappearing below the hem of her skirt. The 
 pleasure which he took out of it all was a thing not 
 to be described. On top of his lonely misery, it was
 
 72 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 more real than any real joy could possibly have been, 
 since it was outside of all halting actuality, purely 
 ideal. , 
 
 He turned with her into an open road that led up 
 the side of a hill; and they stopped at the top of it 
 to look back at the town, where it lay in the cup of a 
 valley, facing the lake. He explained to her that, 
 according to the geologists, this range of hills had 
 been the shore-line in the "glacial period"; she 
 wished that she had studied geology; he shook his 
 head sadly. In order the better to see, they climbed 
 the bank that edged the road, and stood together un 
 der a huge bare elm that raised above them its inter- 
 weaved branches, fantastically touched with snow. 
 He brushed off a great root that writhed up from 
 the frozen ground; and they sat down on it to look 
 over the city. 
 
 He was still sitting there when the sun came out, 
 and he was smiling, with a rapt expression, at the 
 horizon. She had her hands in a fur muff on her 
 knees, and her cheeks were rosy with the wind. With 
 out turning, he saw her so; and he listened to her 
 with the face of a lover. Below him were all the 
 houses of the town, and they had suddenly become the 
 nests which love had built for its shelter. All the 
 business of those streets which had an hour before 
 seemed so inexplicable to him was now the joyful 
 activity of men who were working to bring home the 
 daily bread to their mates. All the misery and the 
 sin of that city were the absence, the debasing, the 
 denial of love. Geology, history all the parched and
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 73 
 
 sterile sciences of the lecture room were a study of 
 the dry bones and fossils of a life from which love 
 had departed. Beauty was the face of Love; Truth 
 was the voice of Love. God Himself and it came 
 to him as a hope which he seized upon as a discovery 
 was the divine principle of Love which gave a 
 meaning to the universe. 
 
 "Aren t your hands cold?" she asked. 
 
 "Not very." 
 
 "Put one in here," she said, and moved her muff 
 across her knees to him. 
 
 He touched her gloved fingers in that warm nest 
 of fur. She smiled. The sunlight swam with a sud 
 den glory of light in the moist happiness that clouded 
 his eyes. And Don-a-Dreams had found himself 
 again in the love dream of youth and the poets. 
 
 SHE had come like the imaginary playmate who 
 had consoled him for the loss of his picnic on the 
 24th of May to companion him in a world that had 
 grown to be a place of doubt and terror to him; and 
 she kept him from the thought of a darkness which 
 he dared not think of. But he did not allow her to 
 make any change in the outward manner of his days. 
 As if he had been a criminal or a conspirator with 
 some secret double life to conceal, he even frequented 
 more than usual any crowded assemblies of the stu 
 dents, and watchfully applauded at the meetings of 
 the debating society, and cheered the assaults at arms 
 in the gymnasium, and listened with a diligent pre 
 tence of absorption in the lecture rooms. Not that
 
 74 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 he did any of these things consciously, or by plan; 
 it was instinctive with him to conceal the thought of 
 this presence that hung around him like a ghost; and 
 the instinct made him show an open interest in life 
 and his acquaintances, at the same time that it made 
 it impossible for him to come to terms of intimacy 
 with any friends. He spent an occasional evening 
 with Conroy in his room at Residence, and he 
 listened silently, but with a smile, to the conversation 
 of Conroy s new friends; and he was as nearly as 
 possible unnoticed by them there. He particularly 
 absented himself from the college "socials" in which 
 young women participated; he studied less in the 
 library, and took fewer books to his room at night. 
 For the rest, he usually walked out for an hour before 
 going to bed; and he invariably spent his Saturdays 
 and his Sundays on the country roads or in that net 
 work of ravines and river bottoms which holds back 
 the northeastern suburbs of the city. 
 
 It was on one of these night walks a frozen Decem 
 ber night that Conroy, on his way home from the 
 theater, saw Don ahead of him sauntering up the line 
 of dark shop-windows towards his boarding-house 
 and stopped him with an over-eager hail of greeting. 
 Since their separation, Conroy had had a guilty feel 
 ing that he had deserted an old friend treasonably; 
 he had explained the incident, in a letter to his mother, 
 as due to Don s inability to pay for anything better 
 than a "beastly uncomfortable" boarding-house room 
 in which it was unhealthful to live; and his mother 
 had tactfully persuaded Don to accept an extra al-
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 75 
 
 lowance from her on the easy condition that he should 
 pay it back when he was able. Conroy was curious 
 to know what his cousin was doing with his money 
 for he was obviously not spending it. 
 
 Don had started at his cousin s cheery shout, and 
 jerked his hand out of the bosom of his coat, and let 
 his arm that had been crooked swing ostentatiously 
 at his side. He met Conroy with a curious expression 
 which puzzled the boy. "What re you doing down 
 here, anyway, Don?" he asked. 
 
 "Taking a walk. What re you?" 
 
 Conroy replied that he had been at the theater, but 
 he ended the explanation with a return to his curi 
 osity regarding Don. "Working pretty hard?" 
 
 "Oh yes," Don laughed. "Plugging as hard as 
 ever. 
 
 That reference to the unmentioned cause of their 
 separation silenced Conroy. They walked along with 
 out a word, crunching the snow under their heels. 
 Suddenly Conroy asked : Do you ever hear from her, 
 now?" 
 
 Don turned, with a startled "Who?" 
 
 "Margaret Miss Richardson." 
 
 "What made you ask that?" 
 
 There was again, in his face, that faint suggestion 
 of guilty confusion which Conroy had noticed when 
 they met. "I don t know," the cousin answered, 
 embarrassed. "I d seen so little of you lately. I 
 thought that, perhaps Jessie wrote me the other day 
 that she d heard she was coming here, after Christ 
 mas, to study music at the Conservatory."
 
 76 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 "Miss Richardson." 
 
 "Coming here?" 
 
 "Yes. To the Conservatory." 
 
 After an interval of thought, Don said: "Oh! I 
 hadn t heard." 
 
 When they separated at a street corner, Don thrust 
 both hands deep in his overcoat pockets and paced 
 along alone in a slow absorption of thought; and 
 when he came to the door of the boarding-house, he 
 let himself in without any smiling pause for parting 
 on the threshold. 
 
 She was coming back. His "imaginary playmate" 
 was "coming true" again. The news had brought 
 him down to real life with the bewildering shock of 
 a sudden awakening. 
 
 Ill 
 
 THERE intervened his Christmas holiday at home a 
 momentous holiday; for after the first rush of greet 
 ings, he found himself standing before Frankie and 
 his sister and even his mother herself, a stranger in 
 a life from which he had grown away ; and the inevit 
 able readjustment began at once almost with pain. 
 Of them all, his mother had clung most closely to his 
 thoughts, from the day he had opened his trunk and 
 found his handkerchiefs so fondly packed in tissue 
 papers tied with ribbons to the day he had received
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 77 
 
 her little hoard of Christmas savings with a request 
 that he buy this for Frank and that for Mary and 
 a dozen other gifts and remembrances for his cousins 
 and his aunt. Her letters to him had been full of 
 news and comment the letters of a woman who 
 looked on life from the windows of her sick room 
 with a spectator s interest and sympathy. He had 
 felt her watching him in all his absence. He had seen 
 her sitting over her needlework, thinking of him. 
 And he had come to her, now, with a heart full of 
 affection. 
 
 But when he sat down opposite her chair, still smil 
 ing and blushing awkwardly from the caress of wel 
 come, he found himself facing the loving scrutiny 
 of her gaze; and he looked away quickly, conscious 
 of the change in himself, his beliefs, his outlook on 
 life, his hidden thoughts and the growth of experi 
 ences in which she had had no part. It seemed, to 
 him that she would penetrate the secret behind his 
 eyes if she saw into them clearly. And this very 
 attempt of concealment betrayed him to her. With 
 a mother s quick suspicion, she began to seek him out, 
 with those apparently trivial questions which are like 
 the tappings of a tiny hammer on the suspected pan 
 els of a wainscoating. 
 
 They found him by the silences with which he tried 
 to cover his boy s secrets. It took her days to do it; 
 but in the long talks which they had together in her 
 room sitting with the winter sunlight on the lace 
 curtains and her needle busy in the embroidery with 
 which she occupied her wasted hands she probed
 
 78 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 him unerringly because of the very acuteness of her 
 sympathy and the anxiety of her love. Concerning 
 the girl whoever it might be she had no fear. 
 She trusted the innocence of his youth. But it was 
 this very innocence that she feared in the matter of 
 his religion; and when to a pointed question of his 
 belief, he replied desperately: "I d I d rather not 
 discuss it, the thought of her boy tempted and miser 
 able kept her awake all night. 
 
 She felt that he needed a father s guidance. He 
 was almost a man, now, and it must be that a man 
 would understand him. When he stood before her, 
 tall and quiet as if thoughtful with his experience 
 of that outer world from which he came into her four- 
 walled prison of sickness she was so conscious of his 
 new manliness that she looked up to him almost as 
 she looked up to her husband. They were of the same 
 world and the same sex. Perhaps the father could 
 help the son. 
 
 That she could have thought of such a plan showed 
 how little she understood the silent lawyer. But she 
 knew that he was constant in his attendance at church, 
 that he took up the collection at the morning service, 
 that he had been employed in legal matters by the 
 bishop, that he was a trustee of the new hospital 
 which had just been built by the Anglicans of the 
 town. He never spoke of religion to her, but he never 
 spoke of politics either, or indeed of any of the inter 
 ests that kept him busy all day. 
 
 She put the case to him in timid hints and queries: 
 Had Don acted strangely in church? Had he spoken
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 79 
 
 of his beliefs at all? She had heard that the uni 
 versity education had a tendency to make boys irre 
 ligious. Oh, Don had not said anything, but she was 
 afraid that there was something wrong. She had not 
 felt able would he speak to Don? 
 
 He would. And he did. 
 
 He did it with the cleverness of a mind skilled in be 
 traying witnesses into admissions which they did not 
 wish to make betraying them not by brow-beating 
 and bewildering them with questions, but by an in 
 sinuating friendliness and a flattering attention to 
 their involved replies. He began by congratulating 
 Don on his attendance at church (whither the boy 
 had gone because he knew that to remain away would 
 be to give his mother pain.) So many Universitiy 
 men, Mr. Gregg had noticed, made a license of their 
 college liberty in order to escape their church duties. 
 It was a great mistake a mistake which they always 
 regretted later in life. A man depended on his fel 
 low-men for a living in the organized union which we 
 call society ; and the church was an organization within 
 the larger body, an organization primarily for worship 
 on the lines of a common belief 
 
 "But," Don interrupted, feeling the intolerable 
 hypocrisy of his silence, "there are things one can t 
 believe in." 
 
 "Certainly," his father assented, with no change 
 of voice. "There are government policies that I do 
 not believe in, but I do not therefore revolt against 
 the will of the majority. A man may not believe in 
 capital punishment, but he need not break open the
 
 80 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 jails to release murderers. Church membership, for 
 a lawyer particularly " 
 
 He stopped to raise his hat to a fellow church-mem 
 ber and his wife; and Don, looking down at the pow 
 dered snow which he threw up with an impatient 
 shuffle of the foot, put in quickly: "I don t think 
 I m law doesn t appeal to me." 
 
 His father asked mildly: "What do you intend to 
 do?" 
 
 I don t know. I thought 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 "I thought that the university education alone " 
 
 "Along what lines?" 
 
 "I I hadn t decided." 
 
 They were at their gate. Mr. Gregg paused with 
 his hand on it and gave Don a stern face and a sudden 
 change of tone. "If you are not going to study law, 
 you must decide what you are going to study. We 
 will talk this over to-night." * 
 
 Don followed him up the path like a boy led to 
 chastisement. And as long as his father was visibly 
 before him tall and grave and authoritative the 
 son s young habit of respect and obedience kept his 
 thought cowed. But as soon as the mid-day dinner 
 had ended and Don had shut himself in his room, 
 shame and resentment rose in him in a dangerous 
 revolt. He had been tricked ; that sudden change from 
 suavity to sternness had been the springing of the 
 trap; the man had played on him with hypocrisy. 
 And for the instant Don despised him. 
 
 More than that: in his absence at college, Don had
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 81 
 
 come to see his father as he saw other men, not as 
 a superior creature to be looked up to with awe, but 
 as a human animal like himself grown old and hard 
 and mechanical though he had once been young and 
 had known the enthusiasm of love and marriage 
 cleverly using his brain to support his wife and fam 
 ily, and pathetically nearing the obscurity of his 
 grave. He saw him, if not with strong affection, at 
 least with pity and respect, as a man who had made 
 the best of an undistinguished success in law and who 
 lived without vices. And if he saw no more in him 
 than this, it was because the father living up to that 
 stern ideal of British parents which the race has 
 brought to Canada had never tried to make himself 
 beloved by his sons but only respected and obeyed. 
 It is doubtful whether Don, as he went downstairs 
 to that night s interview, went with any respect for 
 the man he was to face. Certainly, he did not intend 
 to obey him. Their short colloquy on the way home 
 from church had been to the boy a brief and mislead 
 ing glimpse into his father s mind; and he had con 
 structed a whole life of politic hypocrisy from the 
 lawyer s confession of faith in the worldly advantages 
 of church membership. He did not suspect that his 
 father had been through a struggle with these same 
 doubts which now assailed himself; that he had ar 
 rived at a working compromise with them and made 
 a peace; that he had preserved the integrity of his 
 own mind without resisting the police of organized 
 religion. Still less did Don suspect that the older 
 man, remembering his own youth, felt a reluctant
 
 82 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 sympathy for this beginner in life with all the prob 
 lems of his world thick about him. Don saw his 
 father, merely, as a lawyer whose practice in the 
 courts had dulled his sense of truth and justice and 
 the ideals behind the statutes and had left him only 
 the lesson of conformity which is so often the essence 
 of the law to the priest and the practitioner. 
 
 It gave the boy new cause to hate the profession. 
 His mind, at college, had turned from the thought 
 of it with distaste, and rose against it now that it 
 was to be forced on him with an almost desperate 
 repulsion. His aunt s allowance, added to the money 
 which he had saved from his small expenses, at college, 
 would put him through whatever "course" he 
 chose to take. He would not quarrel with his father, 
 but he would not submit to him. 
 
 He entered the "study" with a volume which he 
 pretended he had come to return to its shelf. He 
 found his father walking up and down the room, smok 
 ing a curved pipe. A gas lamp, with a frosted shade, 
 lit a precise arrangement of books and papers on the 
 table. Don walked past them almost defiantly, and 
 turned his back from the bookcase. 
 
 Mr. Gregg said abruptly: "I judge from your col 
 lege Calender that your Political Science course 
 does not really begin until your second year. Is that 
 correct ? 
 
 Don answered, without turning: "Yes, sir." 
 
 Mr. Gregg cleared his throat. "You have until 
 then to make up your mind what you are going to do. 
 
 Don waited, shutting the glass doors of the book-
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 83 
 
 case slowly. When he turned around, his father had 
 sat down in his easy chair and taken up his book. 
 Don understood that judgment had been rendered, 
 and started awkwardly toward the door. It seemed 
 a great distance across the room. He had his hand 
 on the door-knob when his father added: "Meanwhile, 
 for your mother s sake if not for your own, you will 
 go to church and try to behave yourself." 
 
 Don got himself out, in silence, with his ears burn 
 ing. As he closed the door behind him, he heard his 
 father strike a match. 
 
 Crestfallen, dismissed with all his heroic insubor 
 dination unnoticed, he went upstairs ashamed of him 
 self, and in spite of himself admiring the strength 
 that had taken him up, considered him briefly, given 
 him a curt decision, and then turned to other mat 
 ters with the calm re-lighting of a pipe. For a moment, 
 he doubted whether this old brain might not know 
 what was best for him to do; whether he would not 
 be wise to study law and be at peace with his father. 
 But it was only for a moment. Law was to him a 
 dead and dried collection of classified statutes, printed 
 in old books, in a formal jargon as repellent as the 
 scientific names on a museum of beetles. Life as a 
 lawyer would be life in a musty library with a con 
 tinual droning of court arguments coming to him 
 through green baize doors, and all the sunlight and 
 freedom of love and happiness beating on the closed 
 windows that shut him in. He shook his head, draw 
 ing a long breath of relief. He was free. He had 
 five months in which to choose a career. All the
 
 84 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 world was before him, like a garden full of inviting 
 paths; and somewhere in the center of it, in a secret 
 green recess, she sat waiting, with a bunch of violets 
 gathered for him in her hand, and a girlish smile of 
 welcome trembling in a sort of timorous expectation 
 on her lips. 
 
 THAT thought filled his last week at home with a 
 restless impatience. It was as if he were about to 
 start on a tour of the world, and had a week to wait 
 for his date of sailing. He chafed under the enforced 
 inaction of the long sittings with his mother, looking 
 wistfully out of the window, until she silently re 
 proved herself for keeping him too much indoors and 
 unselfishly let him go. (He had said nothing of his 
 interview with his father, but she did not resent his 
 reticence. Her husband had accustomed her to silence, 
 and, like the deaf, she read faces, without words.) 
 She let him go, and he tramped the streets of Coulton 
 in the footprints of his past, marvelling to see how 
 the life of the little town stood rooted, like a village 
 seen from the window of a railroad car as the years 
 whirled him along. The Park was incredibly small 
 the park in which he and Conroy had roamed as if 
 it had been a prairie. His ravine, leafless and frozen, 
 was bare and mean, with a little gurgle of water un 
 der thin ice. His aunt bored him. His cousins sat 
 and looked at him, unable to reach his interest, or 
 teased and fought around him as if he were not in 
 the room. He came back to his home like a reluctant 
 visitor, feeling the presence of the taciturn head of 
 the house as soon as he saw the maples that stood
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 85 
 
 along the fence, and entering the front door with 
 the silent droop in spirit of a dog suddenly brought 
 to heel. 
 
 His whole life was opening before him, inviting 
 him like an adventurous and breezy road; and in 
 those days of waiting, he resolved that wherever that 
 road might lead him, it should bring him back to 
 Coulton except as a hasty visitor never again. 
 
 IV 
 
 HE woke to his expected liberty, on the following 
 Sunday morning, in his boarding-house room a 
 room as small as ,a squirrel-cage, with its slanting 
 roof and its dormer window the sash of which, hung 
 loosely on hinges, allowed a powdered snow to sift 
 in on the sill. The railroad journey of the previous 
 night had been an impatient flight to this haven of 
 lonely freedom; and he had fallen asleep, too tired 
 to think, with a happy assurance that the next day 
 would rise on his new life. 
 
 It had risen. The sun was bright on window-panes 
 that were white with a hoar frost as thick as a lichen. 
 His trunk, still unstrapped, stood in a corner. His 
 lamp was on his table, his books on the shelves of the 
 "what-not" which served him as a bookcase. It was 
 as if he were in a cabin on board ship, a night s sail 
 from land; and he was eager to be out on deck to see 
 the new horizon. 
 
 He jumped from his bed, and the cold closed on
 
 86 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 him as invigorating as an icy bath. It was nine 
 o clock by his watch. He scrambled into his clothes, 
 his teeth chattering laughably. The water from his 
 cracked basin stung on his hands and face. He 
 smiled at the ghostly reflection of himself in the mir 
 ror that was as dull as a sheet of tin ; and he laughed 
 when he found that his watch, lying on the marble 
 top of his washstand, had been stopped over night by 
 the penetrating cold of the stone. He went down 
 stairs on tip-toe, in the silence of a house asleep, put 
 on his overcoat and fur cap like a thief, and opened 
 the front door on a sparkling level of new-fallen snow 
 that lay, untracked an unbroken wonder, a white 
 spell of silence over the empty street. He stood a 
 moment, on the edge of it, almost reluctant to break 
 the charm. Then he drew his cap down to his ears, 
 and with an unvoiced shout of high spirits he ran 
 down the porch steps and waded in. 
 
 The sunshine blinded him, breaking into prismatic 
 colors on the lashes of his half-closed eyes. The snow 
 silenced his footsteps. There was not even a stir of 
 wind to make life around him. He walked in an 
 enchanted world, through the stillness of a Sunday 
 morning, his thought singing ecstatically, in a croon 
 of pleasure, like a child at play. 
 
 He went without design, without direction. But 
 unconsciously he turned into the way that led to col 
 lege, and he strode along, swinging his arms, his head 
 down against the sun, glancing at the houses which 
 he passed, and smiling with all the contempt of his 
 frost-bitten and tingling alertness at thought of the
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 87 
 
 warm sloth of the sleepers indoors. He caught a 
 glimpse of a face at a lower window, but the frozen 
 brilliance of a lawn gleamed between him and it, and 
 he could not see it clearly. He slowed his pace at the 
 next street corner, and hesitated there until he re 
 membered that the Conservatory of Music stood in 
 the middle of the block below: then he turned in that 
 direction, with the scarcely conscious intention of 
 looking at the door through which she was to enter 
 to her studies and the windows from which she was 
 to look out. 
 
 He was thinking of her blissfully, deep in his 
 dreams, when he heard a muffled sound of hurried 
 footsteps behind him. He was in front of the Con 
 servatory, now, and he walked very slowly, to let the 
 passerby go before him, so that he might stand and 
 gaze if he pleased. He heard a quick breath at his 
 elbow. He pretended to be curiously interested in 
 the red stone building, bald and formal, among its 
 stripped trees. A low voice her voice choked with 
 mischief, asked: "Well? How do you like it?" 
 
 She was gasping between laughter and the attempt 
 to catch her breath, flushed with the exertion of over 
 taking him and enjoying almost hysterically the awk 
 wardness of his surprise. He stammered: "Why 
 how " He was not conscious of taking the hand 
 which she held out to him. He stared at her in a 
 dumb amazement that was ludicrous. "How did 
 you 
 
 "I saw you pass the house. Didn t you see me? 
 at the window?"
 
 88 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 He shook his head blankly. "No. Was it you 
 following me?" 
 
 She nodded^ breathless. 
 
 "Why didn t you call out?" 
 
 "I I couldn t." She freed her hand from him 
 and pressed it against her side, panting. "I was 
 walking so fast, I could n t. Why did you stop ? 
 
 He did not take his fascinated gaze from her to 
 indicate the building; he jerked his head back at it, 
 beginning to smile as a slow blush of pleasure burned 
 up into his face. "Conroy told me" 
 
 "That I was coming?" 
 
 "Yes to study music." His smile was for him 
 self now as he saw the situation. "I came to see 
 whether you were here yet." 
 
 "Really?" He had not changed, she thought; his 
 face was a little older, a little thinner; but his smile 
 was the same unguarded, boyish grin. She laughed 
 in a sudden release of her pent-up excitement, her 
 amused scrutiny deepening to a frank regard of sym 
 pathy, as warm as a clasp of hands. 
 
 It brought his own ardor into his face, glowing 
 and tender. "Yes," he said. "Really." And his 
 voice shook on the word with a husky tremble. 
 
 She looked away from him in quick embarrassment, 
 glancing around her at the frozen silence that held 
 them in the heart of an immense calm. "Is n t 
 is n t it funny? Why is it so quiet?" 
 
 She wore a little sealskin cap set jauntily on the 
 dark brown luster of her hair, and under a wave of 
 that as she turned he saw the rosy-tender dainti-
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 89 
 
 ness of her ear, a little curled shell of an ear that 
 appealed to everything masculine in him as the sight 
 of an infant s wrinkled fingers will appeal to all the 
 maternal in a woman. He heard himself reply: 
 "Well, it s Sunday. And it can t be more than eight 
 o clock yet." 
 
 She felt his look on her, and could not turn to 
 meet it. "Would n t she scold if she knew mother 
 She had a cough. I left her in bed." 
 
 He blinked the existence of her mother of every 
 one but the two of them alone and together. "Have 
 you had your breakfast?" 
 
 "No. . . . Have you?" 
 
 "No." He added daringly, in a voice that belied 
 the attempted bravado of his smile: "I could n t wait. 
 I wanted to see you." 
 
 She tried to laugh at him again. "You funny 
 boy!" 
 
 "I knew I d meet you." 
 
 "How?" 
 
 "I don t know. Are you going to church?" 
 
 The hungry directness of the appeal confused her. 
 "I suppose so. Yes. After breakfast." 
 
 "Where? What one?" 
 
 "Whichever s the nearest." 
 
 "St. Stephen s?" 
 
 She tried to fence with him, to get time to think. 
 "Is that the nearest?" 
 
 "Yes." He waited. 
 
 She looked around her vaguely. "Where is it?" 
 
 "I 11 show you. After breakfast. . . . May I?"
 
 90 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 She had never before seen that expression in a face, 
 or heard that tone in a voice; and they frightened 
 her at the same time that they thrilled and flattered 
 her. "Oh, goodness!" she faltered. "I must hurry 
 back before they come down and miss me." She 
 started, with a quick step, toward the house; and 
 he stumbled in the snow as he turned with her, look 
 ing at her instead of watching the path he was walk 
 ing and gone suddenly dumb. "I hope they don t 
 see me," she said. "You mustn t come to the door." 
 She stopped abruptly. "How ever shall I tell 
 mother ! 
 
 He asked, startled: "Tell her what?" 
 
 "Why, that I I ran after you?" 
 
 Don t tell her. Tell her you met me at church. 
 I 11 meet you there." 
 
 She hinted guiltily: "I promised her I would n t 
 write. 
 
 "Well, you did n t, did you?" 
 
 "No, I only wrote Jessie. But if I make an ap 
 pointment to meet you, is n t that" 
 
 "Don t make it. I 11 meet you." 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 "You re not to know. What time will you be 
 going to church?" 
 
 She started forward rapidly again, without answer 
 ing, but he kept pace with her. "To St. Stephen s?" 
 he pressed her. "It s right ahead of us about four 
 blocks up the street." When she did not reply, he 
 suggested, with an appealing timidity: "At ten 
 o clock?"
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 91 
 
 At last, she said, almost in a whisper, her face 
 shamefully suffused: "Yes, . . . but you must n t come 
 any further now. There s the house where you see 
 those little trees along the boulevard ." She put out 
 her hand. "Good-bye." 
 
 He held it a moment. "Good-bye." 
 
 When she glanced back from the gate, he was stand 
 ing where she had left him, his hand half raised from 
 releasing hers, gazing after her. 
 
 She disappeared ; and he looked about him, blink 
 ing, like a man who has seen a vision and does not 
 recognize the familiar and unchanged world in which 
 it has left him. 
 
 HE turned dazedly down the street. Beautiful! 
 How beautiful she was! That was his first thought. 
 And it was not a thought so much as a mental picture 
 of her which he could gloat over now, in silence, 
 without the distraction of speech. He framed her 
 face in the hollow of his hands and held it before 
 him the dear girl s face, laughing up at him from 
 its dimples, with a tenderer gleam in the mischievous 
 eyes ! Beautiful ! Beau He came down with a 
 startling jolt from the sidewalk into the drifted gut 
 ter. He pulled himself together with a half laugh, 
 and hurried away down the avenue like one possessed. 
 And he was possessed. His eyes were possessed by 
 her smile, his ears by the note of her voice, his brain 
 by the trivial words she had spoken, his nerves by 
 the thrill that had set him shaking when he had tried 
 to say good-bye to her. She had taken him, body and
 
 92 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 mind; and his blood was in a fever, and his thoughts 
 were deliriously confused. But even so, there was 
 something spiritual in his frenzy. He thought of her 
 as the boy of the classic fable must have thought of 
 his goddess when she descended to him Diana ! 
 from her moon. After the first hungry obsession 
 that had made him take her face in his hands, he stood 
 back from her as from something holy. She was what 
 the poets had made woman to him. She was some 
 thing so nearly divine that she was to be almost wor 
 shipped with that passionate reverence which the 
 poets make of love. All his religious emotions, 
 turned back from their proper outlet by the scepticisms 
 of Science, flowed out to her in the tide of desire. 
 His make-believes, his day-dreams of her, had sur 
 rounded her with a sort of glory that was part of the 
 bewitchment of her beauty. He did not even dare, 
 in his thought, to kiss her hand. 
 
 And yet, that was not all. The process of his mind 
 was not so high fantastical alone. With the com 
 plexity of a brain that was trained to cheat itself 
 with its own make-believes but still was never ignorant 
 that it was being cheated, Don was aware that his 
 relations with her were not to be simply those of 
 blind worship and accepted love. Her frightened 
 confusion, when his voice had betrayed him, warned 
 him, now, that mere ecstasy and ardor would only 
 drive her from him; that he must be politic; that she 
 was a human being judging him in accordance with 
 the conventions of human society, and not as clair 
 voyant as a goddess or as untrammeled as an ideal.
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 93 
 
 He understood that he was in a game against her, a 
 game of courtship with his happiness at stake; and 
 with all the madness of a lover, he developed some 
 of the instinctive craftiness as well. 
 
 He began to plan, walking more deliberately and 
 frowning in his effort to think. He recognized that 
 her mother, of course, would be the great opponent 
 of any free intercourse with her; and though he 
 might perhaps call on her, in the restricted circle of 
 parental surveillance, that would be to bring the lady 
 of his dreams down to the commonplaces of everyday 
 life, and he rejected the thought. What he wanted 
 was her alone, away from everybody else in the world, 
 as he had had her in the innocent beginnings of their 
 companionship at Coulton, as he had always had her 
 in imagination, since. 
 
 He finished his walk at the bowed pace of troubled 
 meditation. 
 
 THE mistress of the house in which he boarded had 
 a motherly regard for her studious guest, and served 
 him without intruding any remarks upon him when 
 ever she saw him preoccupied with thought. Her 
 daughter, long since discouraged in the first atten 
 tions of a somewhat stale coquetry, had fallen back 
 on a disdainful silence in her unavoidable meetings 
 with him, and spoke of him with the contempt of a 
 critic whose appreciations had been despised. The 
 nine-year old son who completed the family was al 
 ways silently engaged at breakfast in an attempt to 
 avoid eating porridge which he hated unhealthily
 
 94 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 and his mother made him eat by smuggling as much 
 of it as possible into his coffee cup, drinking off the 
 overflow of coffee and emptying the guilty mug, later, 
 in the kitchen. Mother, daughter and son left Don 
 to his plans. 
 
 Nevertheless, when he went out to waylay Margaret 
 on her road to church, he had formed no design for 
 circumventing the difficulties in his path. He saw 
 no further than the fact that he was to meet her 
 again. It was, perhaps, for the last time, alone; but, 
 at least, it was this once; and he took what joy he 
 could from that concession of circumstance. 
 
 HE had been pacing up and down in the cold, for 
 fifteen minutes, kicking his toes into his heels to 
 keep his feet warm, idling at corners and turning 
 a dozen times in a block to see whether she was com 
 ing behind him trembling with hope at one thought, 
 shivering with cold and the prospect of disappoint 
 ment at the next when he saw her between the ave 
 nue trees, walking toward him slowly, graceful 
 against the shining background of the snow, her head 
 down with the appearance of knowing that she was 
 doing wrong. And the flush of pleasure with which 
 he had sighted her, faded out in uneasiness as her 
 manner became more reluctant and unjoyful with her 
 approach.
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 95 
 
 "I m not going to church," she announced hur 
 riedly. "I can t stay away from mother so long. 
 She is we re afraid she may be catching pneu 
 monia. 
 
 He dropped his hand from his cap. His disappoint 
 ment was so complete that it left him blank; he had 
 nothing to say. 
 
 She turned over the snow with her foot, and patted 
 it down nervously. "I m sorry," she said, "but 
 I-" 
 
 "Oh, it s all right," he put in bravely. "Only 
 I 11 not have a chance to I hope it is n t serious?" 
 
 "We don t know yet." 
 
 "What does the doctor say?" 
 
 She shook her head. "We have n t sent for him. 
 We re waiting to see." 
 
 "Oh." He watched her working at the snow. 
 
 After an awkward silence, she said: "I must hurry 
 right back." And there was a half-heartedness in 
 the way she said it, as if she were assuring herself 
 that she meant to do it, very soon. 
 
 He caught the note. "Won t you walk to the cor 
 ner and back ? It s better . . . waiting . . . out here. 
 
 A "cutter" passed them with a rousing jingle of 
 bells. The sunlight was etching the shadow of bare 
 branches on the snow. He saw in her face that she 
 felt the contrast between the crisp brilliancy of the 
 morning and the heavy atmosphere of indoors. 
 
 "Well," she agreed, as if conditionally. 
 
 When they had gone a few steps, he asked: "Have 
 you ever seen the college?"
 
 96 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 No Is it far?" 
 
 "Just two streets over to the grounds." 
 
 "Well." 
 
 She stepped out more briskly, having made a truce 
 with her conscience, apparently; and when he asked 
 "Have you left Horton?" she answered "Oh, yes. 
 I didn t go back this year at all. We didn t know 
 quite what we were going to do." 
 
 "About what?" 
 
 "About everything! Mother has been having dif 
 ficulty with lawyers, you know about property I 
 mean titles in father s will, and now she has won 
 the cases and sold everything and invested the money, 
 and she wants to travel to Germany or some place 
 where I can study music or New York." 
 
 "Are n t you going to be at the Conservatory?" 
 
 She hastened to reassure his dismay. "Yes, yes. 
 For this term. Of course ! . . . Mother may leave me 
 here, with Mrs. Kimball, and go down south for the 
 winter. She has been talking of it since September 
 and this cold may drive her away." 
 
 "Oh?" The aching apprehension which her greet 
 ing had started in him, had been slowly easing. Now 
 there began to work in its place a bubbling sense of 
 happiness that was as unreasonable as an intoxication. 
 He struggled to repress his smiles. He looked down 
 at the snow on the sidewalk and up at the snow in 
 the crotches of the trees. He fastened the button of 
 his heavy glove, inspecting it narrowly, with the man 
 ner of a girl who is in danger of giggling in church. 
 "I hope it won t be as bad as that," he said in a false 
 voice.
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 97 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "Her cold." 
 
 "No. ... I hope not." She glanced around at him, 
 but he pretended to be examining the front of a house 
 across the road. She put up her hand to pat and 
 finger the coil of hair at the back of her head; and 
 when he looked at her again, noticing her silence, he 
 saw that her arm was shaking. 
 
 Wh what s the matter ? 
 
 The irrepressible quiver of laughter in his voice 
 set her off; and with her first convulsive choke, he 
 snickered. They began to laugh in a sort of sup 
 pressed hysteria, blundering along through the snow 
 together, unable to look at each other and breaking 
 out into fresh spasms of giggles infectiously like a 
 pair of children. 
 
 "I did n t say anything," he protested. 
 
 You re so funny ! she cried. And that started 
 them afresh. 
 
 They had gone a block before they recovered con 
 trol of themselves; and even then their conversation 
 was interspersed with unreasoning smiles and amused 
 silences. But that laughter had broken down the 
 restraint that separated them; it had joined them in 
 an unconscious conspiracy against her mother; and 
 it had brought them nearer to the camaraderie of 
 their Coulton days. No matter what commonplaces 
 they spoke now, there was a sparkling undercurrent, 
 unexpressed and really inexpressible, flowing beneath 
 their words, almost in a secret understanding, like 
 the furtive twinkles of two actors who had been jok 
 ing together in the wings before they came out on
 
 98 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 the stage to speak their lines. With Don, the acting 
 was not unconscious; he was well aware that he was 
 not voicing the tumult of his heart. But with her, 
 the inner working of her thought was in the more 
 complicated spirit of a mild flirtation. She knew 
 that she was playing with fire, for the first flame in 
 Don s eyes, that morning, had frightened her; but 
 he had hidden it now, though she knew it was still 
 there; and while, in her words, she refused to recog 
 nize it, she fed it with glances, with smiles, with little 
 dimpling blushes, warmed and excited by it, girlishly. 
 
 She asked him what he had been doing at college; 
 and he told her what lectures he had been taking 
 and what subjects he preferred. She asked him how 
 he had spent his Christmas; and he replied with re 
 port of the friends whom she had left in Coulton 
 and of the small events of the town. They made no 
 reference to that past which included his love letter 
 and its result. He said nothing of his constant 
 thought of her, nothing of his revolt against the dic 
 tation of his father, nothing of his inner life at all. 
 He kept their conversation on the easy plane of 
 friendly chatter; and when she brushed against his 
 shoulder, in a narrowing of the path, he did not speak 
 until the choke of emotion had died down again in his 
 throat. 
 
 She liked skating better than toboganning; he had 
 done very little of either. She recalled with enthu 
 siasm a "bobbing" party which the girls had had. at 
 Horton, last winter, on a moonlit night; and he 
 laughed at her description of how she had blown a
 
 THE DAY-DEEAMER 99 
 
 tin horn in the ear of a teacher whom she disliked. 
 He learned that she was contemptuous of boys 
 who wore spring skates, you know," instead of the 
 hockey skates which screwed to the sole of the shoe; 
 and he marked the distinction in his memory as if 
 it were a point of correct dress to be observed. And 
 he was so unaffectedly interested in everything she 
 said in such sympathetic accord with all her likes 
 and dislikes, and so eager to hear every scrap of in 
 formation that would help him to imagine her in the 
 life which she had led in their separation that she 
 enjoyed her walk like a princess among courtiers and 
 rewarded him, regally, with her smile. 
 
 When they saw the towers of "Varsity" showing in 
 dark grey above the snow-powdered tops of the pines 
 which screened the building from this approach, he 
 was reminded of his cousin, and asked quickly: 
 "Have you seen him Conroy yet?" 
 
 "Not yet." 
 
 "He will be calling to see you as soon as he hears." 
 
 "I suppose so. Yes." 
 
 "If your mother s not too ill." 
 
 "But," she laughed, "I did n t say she was so ill. 
 It was Mrs. Kimball who was afraid she might be 
 getting pneumonia. I just I did n t like to say I 
 was going to church without her, so I said I was 
 going. . . to take a little walk. . . while the sun was 
 out." 
 
 "Oh." When he had readjusted his thoughts to 
 that change in the situation, he went on boldly: "I 
 might call with him, then?"
 
 100 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 "I m sure Yes, of course. Why not?" 
 
 lie suggested, in as matter-of-fact a tone as pos 
 sible: "If you wrote to him, telling him where you 
 are, he 11 ask me to go with him ... I think." 
 
 The quick glance she gave . him, archly, accepted 
 the small deception which the plan implied. "Well," 
 she agreed. 
 
 They walked in a guiltily-smiling silence until they 
 came to the side gate of the college grounds. Their 
 agreement required that Conroy should not see them 
 together. Don said: "He s in Residence, you know," 
 and nodded toward the building. 
 
 She turned quickly. "I must n t go any further. 
 I ve been away so long already." 
 
 "That s so," he said. "Let s go back by the 
 avenue. 
 
 It was the longest way round. 
 
 As soon as the college was out of sight in the trees, 
 the hush of their small conspiracy lifted again, and 
 they went along with heir chatter, stepping out 
 against a wind that was sifting the snow down on 
 them from the branches overhead. He asked her 
 whether she was cold because the question gave him 
 an excuse for looking at her with a lingering appre 
 hension. She replied that she was not, but tried to 
 turn up her collar to show him a woman s apprecia 
 tion of his thought of her comfort. And when the 
 collar came up awkwardly, she let him help her with 
 it, and pretended not to notice the reverent timidity 
 with which he did it. 
 
 "Are n t you too?" she asked. "Turn yours up,"
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 101 
 
 repaying him with innocent full eyes that enjoyed 
 the confusion they created. 
 
 "Oh, I m I m all right," he stammered, but 
 raised the collar obediently with an expression of 
 face at once so pleased and so blushingly grateful 
 that it appealed to her affection like the clumsy de 
 votion of the awkward age. 
 
 She continued their conversation in a more serious 
 tone for the remainder of the way, drawing from 
 him the confession that he did not intend to study 
 law but did not know what he did intend to study; 
 and when they stopped at the street corner below her 
 house again, she gave him her hand with demure 
 good wishes for his success in whatever "course" he 
 decided to follow; and he carried away with him a 
 memory of her gentle confidence that was at once a 
 benediction and a surety for hope. 
 
 He took a long walk, that afternoon, to the elm 
 where he had fancied her sitting with him looking 
 down on the town; and he stood there in the snow, 
 leaning against the tree, his eyes fixed on the dis 
 tant spire of St. Stephen s that marked the quarter 
 in which she lived. After supper, he locked him 
 self in his room, and having lit his lamp and opened 
 his books, he spent the evening in idleness, trying to 
 draw a picture of her in lead pencil on a page of his 
 note book, tantalized by the visual memory of her 
 which he could not reproduce or abandoning him 
 self to it, with closed eyes, resting his head and arms 
 on the table, smiling blindly until the cold drove 
 him to bed. There, he lay on his back, his hands
 
 102 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 clasped over his head, staring at the blackness in 
 which he saw sudden retinal images of her that 
 flashed and vanished. And he tried to make his bed 
 rock down through the floor to "Slumberland" in 
 a return to his childish fancies holding to the mem 
 ory of her in the hope that he might compel her to 
 come into his dreams; and he woke, with a 
 start, his arms numb, his shoulders aching, and 
 found the thought of her again, and cuddled down 
 with it under the bedclothes like a child who wakes 
 frightened, and finds its mother s hand there in the 
 dark. 
 
 VI 
 
 IT was next day that Conroy met him in the col 
 lege corridor, and took him aside, to the deep em 
 brasure of a window, with a manner at once confused 
 and mysterious. "Read this," he said, and drew 
 from his pocket the small envelop of a note from her. 
 It announced that she and her mother were staying 
 with the Kimballs, invited him to call, and concluded 
 "If there are any other of our Coulton friends in 
 town, will you please let them know?" 
 
 Don read it, refolded it, returned it to its envelop, 
 and gave it back without a word. 
 
 Conroy asked timidly: "Did n t she write to you?" 
 
 He shook his head. "No." 
 
 "Perhaps she did n t know you were here." 
 
 "Yes. I think she knew."
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 103 
 
 His cousin turned the note over, without putting 
 it back in his pocket, in a manner of disowning it, 
 apologetically. "That s queer." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "I don t know. I thought Are n t you going to 
 see her?" 
 
 "I think so. Yes." 
 
 "Are you! When?" 
 
 "Whenever you like." 
 
 Conroy was obviously relieved. "I 11 call for you 
 on my way over to-night, shall I ? " 
 
 "Yes ... if you re going to-night." 
 
 "About half-past eight?" 
 
 "That 11 do. Yes." 
 
 "You 11 be ready?" 
 
 "I 11 try to." 
 
 "All right. Half -past eight, sharp." 
 
 Don escaped, ashamed of his deception; and Con 
 roy, before he tucked away the letter in his pocket, 
 fingered it a moment, smiling like a nattered young 
 Lothario. 
 
 HE arrived at Don s boarding-house at eight 
 o clock, in high spirits, and assumed the leadership 
 of the expedition at once, laughing and talking and 
 straightening his necktie before the mirror and cock 
 ing his head on one side to see the "set" of his 
 trouser legs, while he waited for Don to polish a pair 
 of cracked shoes. He was too boyish to have any 
 self-conscious vanity, but he glanced at his watch, 
 patted it back into his pocket, and smoothed his
 
 104 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 waistcoat with a pleased and excited air that would 
 have been in an older man the anticipation of a "lady- 
 killer." He was not handsome; his features were too 
 flat. But he was well-dressed and well-built, and he 
 had the assurance of an easy manner. He accented, 
 by contrast, Don s paleness, his angularity, and his 
 student shabbiness; and by an exuberance of spirits 
 he had the effect of increasing, perversely, Don s 
 reserve. 
 
 They came, together, to the door of the old, "semi 
 detached," white-brick house, in which the Kimballs 
 lived. Don let him ring, standing back himself on 
 the edge of the porch to look at the lighted curtains 
 of the window at which she had stood to see him pass 
 on Sunday morning. And when a maid opened the 
 door, Don followed in, under the crimson gas-globe 
 of the hall, as reverently as if he had been entering 
 a church. 
 
 Lights and laughter and the music of a piano 
 invaded him with bewilderment almost at once. She 
 parted the hangings of a doorway at his elbow, and 
 greeted Conroy and him with a dazzlingly flushed 
 smile, dressed as he had never seen her before, in a 
 young girl s evening gown with elbow sleeves. She 
 ushered them into a blazing room of gaslights and 
 strange faces, and introduced them to a multitudinous 
 company of seven persons. Her mother, a small and 
 pretty woman with young eyes, met them in spite 
 of a hoarse cold with the bright friendliness that 
 was habitual with her. Mrs. Kimball, without rising, 
 lifted the drooped and puffy eyelids of a strong face,
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 105 
 
 and acknowledged their bows with the slightest incli 
 nation of her head, grey-haired and fine-looking. 
 Three young ladies who were to Don three different 
 arrangements of feminine eyes, nose and mouths, 
 smiled politely and forgot him. A young man with 
 a pince-nez whom he recognized as an upper stu 
 dent of the university shook his hand with a manner 
 of condescending, for the moment only, to meet a 
 Freshman as a social equal. Another man, prema 
 turely bald, said deeply "Glad to know you," and then 
 startled him with a limp touch of indifferent fingers 
 which he dropped like a wet fish. He recovered from 
 his embarrassment to find himself sitting beside a girl 
 whom he subsequently discovered to be the younger 
 of Mrs. Kimball s two daughters. 
 
 She opened conversation with him, patronizingly, 
 by asking him whether he was a college student, what 
 "year" he was in, and what "course" he was taking; 
 and leaning back in her chair with an unnecessary 
 haughtiness that brought out a striking pose of her 
 neck and head, she regarded him with a cool curiosity 
 in which there was something inimical. . He did not 
 understand that she rather shone in her young circle 
 as a girl who questioned the intellectual superiority 
 of men as evidenced in college students and who 
 prided herself on discouraging with sarcasms the 
 masculine adoration which her beauty brought her. 
 He replied to her with a divided attention, aware that 
 Conroy and Margaret for the "Richardson" was 
 still a strange formality to his thought had gone to 
 the piano together, and that Conroy was preparing
 
 106 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 to turn the pages of her music while she played. 
 She was poised on the duet-bench with a slender grace 
 of figure that was heart-shaking. In a strange duality 
 of consciousness, Don bent above her, with Conroy, 
 devotedly, at the same time that he heard Miss Kim- 
 ball and replied to her. 
 
 "I beg your pardon?" 
 
 Miss Kimball, after a calculated pause, repeated: 
 "How do you like Professor Cotton?" 
 
 But the first notes of the piano, running in a quick 
 melody tenderly, caught and tangled his attention; 
 and after stammering distractedly "I I don t " 
 he relapsed into the silence which had fallen on the 
 room; and gazing at the carpet between his feet, he 
 listened to the music, smiling, as if it had been a 
 voice. 
 
 He did not know what the composition was, or 
 who had written it; and he was not curious to know. 
 It was magically hers; and it spoke to him of her in 
 the rise and fall of a melody that hung and trembled 
 and rose plaintively above the rocking chords of a 
 flowing bass. It was to him a divine yearning, an 
 almost tearful aspiration; and it raised in him con 
 fused thoughts of darkness and love, of mystery and 
 sadness and the unappeasable cry of affection- 
 thoughts that were less thoughts than pensive emo 
 tions, vibratory moods that stirred in response to the 
 singing of the instrument and trembled in him till 
 it seemed to him that his very soul thrilled and was 
 shaken. 
 
 It faded away in a fluttering and soft appeal of
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 107 
 
 single notes, and was lost in a polite applause that 
 thanked her with admiring comment. "How well 
 she plays!" "She has such excellent technique, don t 
 you think so ? " My favorite nocturne. 
 
 Miss Kimball had been watching the changes of 
 his face. She asked "Do you like Chopin?" 
 
 He looked up at the piano, transparently pale, his 
 eyes burning; and he replied without altogether 
 understanding what she had asked "I don t . . . 
 know him." 
 
 THE whole evening was a repetition in variations 
 of that situation. Although he did not watch Conroy 
 and Margaret, his mind was secretly with them. He lis 
 tened to Miss Kimball and replied to her without be 
 traying more than a heavy simplicity; and he re 
 mained impenetrable to her curiosity in a way that 
 first piqued and then bored her. When she rose and 
 left him, Mrs. Richardson took the chair beside him, 
 and inquired for his aunt and his mother, and tried 
 to rally him with smiles. She had been noticing the 
 way in which Margaret devoted herself to his cousin; 
 she had been feeling some remorse for her summary 
 interdiction of Don s correspondence; and she began 
 to look at him, now, with the sympathy of a mother 
 who sees her daughter playing the coquette. But she 
 was surprised to find him stolidly unruffled; when she 
 caught him with his eyes on Margaret, she could find 
 no trace of jealousy in his look; and she was puzzled, 
 as much as Miss Kimball had been, to see him, more 
 than once, gaze around the room with a sort of won-
 
 108 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 dering interest as if he were suddenly curious to hear 
 what they were saying, to watch their expressions and 
 to study their gestures and their clothes. She decided 
 that he had outgrown his boyish love affair, and she 
 was at once relieved and disappointed. She found him 
 rather a stupid youth. 
 
 He was, in fact, alternating between the exalted 
 moods to which the music lifted him, and a puzzled 
 return to the consciousness of his surroundings. At 
 one moment, he was alone with Margaret in the grop- 
 ings and longings of his doubts of life. At another, 
 he was sitting among these curious fellow-humans 
 who seemed to move in a small circle of light sur 
 rounded by the mysterious darknesses of their origin 
 and their destiny, talking of nothing, smiling at noth 
 ing, and apparently unconscious of anything but what 
 was before their eyes. 
 
 When he rose with them to say good-night, they 
 seemed to close in on him and separate him from her; 
 and it was as if across their interference that he 
 reached her hand for a moment and held it while he 
 caught the meaning of her smile. A slight pressure 
 of friendliness seemed to reward him for the evening 
 apart. Then Conroy came between them with a laugh 
 ing , You 11 not forget ? and he backed away. 
 Miss Kimball dismissed him with a contemptuous 
 smile that stung him into a startled examination of 
 his conduct toward her; Mrs. Richardson did not say 
 good-night to him at all; and while he was waiting 
 for Conroy on the porch, the two men came out, laugh 
 ing and talking, and passed him over with a glance.
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 109 
 
 He woke to the fact that he had been conspicuously 
 dull all the evening; that they looked on him as a 
 silent boor whose acquaintance was not worth acknowl 
 edging; that even she must be ashamed of him when 
 she compared his conduct with Conroy s. What a 
 clumsy dolt he must have seemed! What an ass he 
 was to behave so! 
 
 He hurried down the path to get away from the 
 scene of his disgrace as soon as possible, but Conroy 
 caught up to him at the gate and accompanied him 
 to the street-corner with a reminiscent chuckling of 
 self-satisfaction that was a salt in Don s wounds. 
 When he was alone again, he wandered dispiritedly 
 around the streets, chafing with discomfiture and 
 still so hungry with the unappeased desire to see her 
 and hear her that he could not face the emptiness of 
 his room. He came back to look at the Kimball house, 
 hiding from a street-lamp, behind a tree-trunk, across 
 the road; and he watched the lighted windows darken 
 one by one, newly aware of how she was shut in from 
 him by the conventions of the world, and feeling him 
 self walled out with his dreams, longing and lonely, 
 under the inscrutable cold glitter of the stars. 
 
 VII 
 
 HE was too shy to face the Kimballs again, and she 
 did not invite him to do so ; for Miss Kimball had made 
 a household joke of his reply that he did not know
 
 110 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 "Mr. Chopin," and the girl was afraid that they 
 might tease her, and make sport of him, if he called 
 to see her. She contrived to meet him, as if accident 
 ally, next morning, in the stream of college students 
 that drew in from all the neighboring streets, at nine 
 o clock, to the beginning of the day s lectures ; and he 
 learned from her that he might find her coming from 
 her music lessons at eleven o clock on certain morn 
 ings and at five o clock on other afternoons. 
 
 For the moment, it was all he wished the oppor 
 tunity of having her, if but for ten minutes, alone 
 and out of doors, away from the formality of parlor 
 conversation and the curious eyes of household gos 
 sips. With a young lover s instinct, he wished to 
 preserve their intercourse from the touch and soiling 
 of everyday life. And he parted from her on a street 
 corner, without taking her to the gate, glad to see 
 from her manner that she did not wish their meetings 
 to be known. 
 
 It was the fresh beginning of one of those strange 
 courtships of young people which appear to the on 
 looker so amusingly tame. He had suddenly grown 
 humble with her. Compared with his own social 
 awkwardness, she seemed to him discouragingly 
 bright and talented. Sitting in his room of an even 
 ing, he pictured her, in the midst of light and com 
 pany, charming everybody with her piano-playing 
 and accepting their congratulations with an unem 
 barrassed smile. Working at his studies in the col 
 lege library, worried by the uncertain prospect of 
 his future, she seemed one of those happy aristocrats
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 111 
 
 of art and leisure whose duty it is to adorn life, to 
 give pleasure, and to be happy that they may make 
 others so. Sullied with his own disbeliefs, he thought 
 of her innocent faith as something sweet and pure. 
 He made her the symbol of all that is in man the 
 substance of hope and the object of aspiration, almost 
 consciously uplifting her so that he might gratify his 
 instinct to look up. 
 
 And yet, when he walked with her, he said nothing 
 of such thoughts. He was content, for the present, 
 that she should take an interest in his progress at 
 college, and accept his devoted attentions as a pleasant 
 matter-of-course. He had his future to plan anew, 
 and he did not seem to be able to think at once of 
 any mode of life that would be sufficiently ideal for 
 her to share it. He examined his classmates, walking 
 home with one or another of them at luncheon hour; 
 and he found that a few were, like Conroy, looking 
 forward to succeeding their fathers in some business; 
 that many were to be lawyers, more teachers, and some 
 ministers; but that the majority did not know what 
 they were to be. They were to decide after they had 
 taken their degrees. 
 
 Law and the church were equally out of the ques 
 tion for him; and the schoolhouse was even less invit 
 ing. He knew nothing of business; and though he 
 consulted the "want columns" of the newspapers, 
 they offered no suggestions. He felt that he might 
 have studied medicine perhaps, or science, if he had 
 begun in time; but it was too late now; he could not 
 turn back a year and start afresh. What he wished
 
 112 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 was some way of earning an easy living without mak 
 ing himself the bound slave of business or a profes 
 sion; for he felt a high contempt for all the money- 
 grubbers and day laborers whom he saw crowding 
 through the streets of the city, as blind as driven 
 animals, in the pursuit of trade or patronage. He 
 resolved that he would find a way to live as free as 
 a boy and as independent as a man, avoiding all 
 ambitious cares or worries, content to enjoy a modest 
 comfort without great luxury, love her, and be happy. 
 Pending his discovery of the necessary means to that 
 end, he perfected his conception of the end itself in 
 his imagination, and spent hours picturing her as she 
 would look when she stood to meet him in the door 
 of their little home at sunset or when she sat at the 
 piano playing to him of an evening with the lamp 
 light shining on her hair or when she poured the 
 breakfast coffee with a dainty turn of wrist and 
 passed the cup to him, smiling beautifully across the 
 roses that were always fresh in a vase on the table, 
 as they were always fresh in her cheeks. 
 
 Meanwhile, their walks together were the most ad 
 venturous and romantic meetings. One day it was 
 snowing so heavily that she had brought an umbrella, 
 and he held it over her, keeping so close to her that 
 they were almost arm in arm, shut in with her under 
 that small cover by the storm, and smiling at nothing 
 blissfully. Then there was the day when the laces 
 of one of her heavy winter shoes became untied, and 
 he knelt down beside a doorstep to refasten them for 
 her, and she in order to steady herself while she 
 stood on one foot put her hand on his shoulder and
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 113 
 
 bent over him, laughing at his clumsiness because his 
 fingers were cold. And above all, there was the after 
 noon when she made the excuse, to her mother, that 
 she had to do some shopping down town; and they 
 made their way to the business district along the 
 squalid "back" streets of "The Ward," where the 
 sidewalks were so slippery that on their return, in 
 the gathering darkness, she had to take his arm, 
 twittering gaily, and swinging a long stride to keep 
 step with him, unconscious of the fact that the touch 
 of her hand was burning him through his sleeve. 
 
 She no longer had any coquettish timidity in her 
 manner towards him, and he was careful to say noth 
 ing that might frighten her into thinking seriously of 
 their relations. The issue of his only declaration of 
 love was still a warning in his mind. He did not 
 speak of the future in which he had included her. 
 When she asked him whether he had decided what study 
 he was going to pursue, in the place of law, he replied 
 easily: "Oh yes. I m taking a general course a 
 pass course, they call it. I can get my degree in 
 that, you know." 
 
 "And then what will you do?" 
 
 "What Emerson says," he laughed. 
 
 "What is that?" 
 
 " Make yourself necessary to the world and the 
 world will give you bread. 
 
 She looked at him thoughtfully, struck by the hope 
 ful impracticality of his trust in the advice of books. 
 
 "You should read Emerson," he said. "He s 
 great. 
 
 The unworldly philosophy of the mild New Eng-
 
 114 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 lander had come to him, only a few days before, like 
 the gospel to a new convert. He had read with glad 
 eyes "You will hear every day the maxims of a low 
 prudence. You will hear that the first duty is to get 
 land and money, place and name. But why should 
 you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts 
 of truth for the premature comforts of an acre, house 
 and barn? Make yourself necessary to the world and 
 mankind will give you bread, and if not store of it, 
 yet such as shall not take away your property in all 
 men s possessions, in all men s affections, in art, in 
 nature and in hope." He had felt that he should 
 take as the motto of his life: "Whoso would be a man 
 must be a nonconformist. Nothing is at last sacred 
 but the integrity of your mind." He had submitted, 
 in his relations with her, to the command: "Give 
 all to love; obey thy heart. It is a god, knows its 
 own path and the outlets of the sky." In reply to 
 the despondencies of his religious disbeliefs, he had 
 accepted as an inspiration, the high advice: "Seek 
 not the Spirit, if it hide inexorable to thy zeal. Say 
 Here am I; here will I abide, forever to myself 
 soothfast; go thou, sweet Heaven, or at thy pleasure 
 stay! Already Heaven with thee its lot has cast, 
 for only it can absolutely deal." And all this poet 
 ical transcendentalism had gone to his head, like a 
 white wine, and he had begun to live on it, intoxicated 
 with enthusiasm, and exalted above the "low pru 
 dence" and the small facts of life. 
 
 When he learned from her that Conroy was calling 
 to see her frequently in the evenings, he had no
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 115 
 
 jealousy of his cousin none even when he heard that 
 she and Miss Kimball had gone to the theater with 
 Conroy, or when he found that Conroy had given her 
 the rose which she wore one morning in her coat. 
 
 He s a funny boy, is n t he ? " she said. 
 
 He nodded, admiring her silently. 
 
 "He seems to be having a gay time at college," 
 she went on. 
 
 "Yes. That is what he came for." 
 
 A moment later, she added: "Mother says so many 
 boys at college learn to to drink" She blushed 
 "and gamble." 
 
 He looked up quickly. "But he s not that sort, 
 is he?" 
 
 That s what I told mother ! She seemed to think 
 but you 11 look after him, won t you?" 
 
 "What has happened?" 
 
 Why, nothing ! Really nothing, she cried. It 
 was just that mother spoke of boys doing those things 
 at college. And I knew that you wouldn t let him 
 do them, if you knew. And that s why I mentioned 
 it really." 
 
 "What made your mother speak of it at all?" he 
 asked suspiciously. 
 
 "She she had a brother once, who went to college 
 and" 
 
 "Oh." He thought it over. "No. Con s all right. 
 He 11 take care of himself." He was flattered by 
 her trust in him. "I see him in the halls almost 
 every day." 
 
 He did not say that he had been avoiding Conroy,
 
 116 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 having refused a half-hearted invitation to go call 
 ing with him again. And he was not shrewd enough 
 to see that Conroy had been avoiding him. He only 
 envied his cousin s opportunities of hearing her 
 music; and when she told him that her mother, at 
 last, had gone to a southern winter resort for the 
 next two months, he said : " I wish they d all go away. 
 I want to hear you play again, and I can t hear you 
 when they re all talking. " 
 
 "I wish they would, too," she replied. "They 
 treat me as if they thought I was a baby that 
 should n t be left alone with anyone for five minutes ! 
 They re speaking, now, of going to the Conversat 
 without ever asking me whether I should like to go. 
 I suppose mother has been telling them I m too 
 young to be going out." 
 
 "I suppose." 
 
 "Are you going?" 
 
 He shook his head. "No." 
 
 As he was parting from her, she said: "If they all 
 go to the Conversat without me, I 11 just play to you, 
 that night, as much as you like." 
 
 HE passed the next few days in a prayerful ex 
 pectation that they would go to the affair without 
 her. They did so ; and they were not more than well 
 out of the house, before he rang the bell and heard 
 her open the inside door and call back to the maid: 
 "I 11 go, Maggie." 
 
 She received him under the red gas-globe of the 
 outer hall with a mischievous affectation of surprise.
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 117 
 
 "Why, how do you do? Aren t you going to the 
 Conversat ? And he entered as if he had been Romeo 
 just arrived by way of his rope ladder. 
 
 She had been sitting for her photograph on the 
 previous day, and she had put on again the pretty 
 dress which she had worn for the picture. It was cut 
 low and square in the neck, to show a throat that was 
 as round as a bird s, girlishly white and soft, and to 
 him so tenderly beautiful that it took him with a 
 blushing catch of the breath which she saw and smiled 
 at as she had smiled at her reflection in the mirror. 
 She patted the butterfly bow which she had arranged 
 as if it had lighted artlessly on top of her young 
 coiffure, thanking him for his admiration with tri 
 umphant eyes. This is so unexpected!" she 
 said. 
 
 "Won t she tell?" he whispered. 
 
 She understood that he referred to the maid. She 
 set the bow dancing with a spirited shake of her head. 
 "I 11 tell on her if she does. When they had passed 
 out of the hall, through the curtains, she explained 
 in a choked undertone: "There s someone in the 
 kitchen with her. She s awfully funny. They won t 
 let her have callers. She says they re a lot of old 
 maids !" 
 
 He wiped the melted snow from his eyelashes and 
 his eyebrows, laughing in his handkerchief. 
 
 "I did n t dare light all the lights," she went on, 
 under her voice, "for fear the neighbors would see 
 it and say something. Isn t it a joke!" And then 
 with the same gaiety but loudly, fluttering across the
 
 118 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 room with a suddenness that bewildered him, she 
 cried: How do you like my photographs? See! 
 They re just the proofs I m to choose from." 
 
 The single jet of gas above him did not give light 
 enough for him to make them out, and she led him 
 over to the piano-lamp that was glowing secretly un 
 der its rose-leaf shade in a far corner. He was smil 
 ing when he looked at the first picture; she enjoyed 
 the change of his expression. "Do you like that 
 one?" she asked. 
 
 Did he like it! He gazed at it as he would have 
 gazed at her if he could have had her unconscious 
 of his scrutiny and undefended by the distracting 
 challenge of her eyes. She was posed glancing aside, 
 in the shy demureness he most loved in her, her neck 
 turned prettily, her ear showing in its nest of brown 
 hair as round and white and fragile as a little field- 
 bird s egg. After waiting a moment for his answer, 
 she gave him the next picture, almost embarrassed by 
 his devouring silence; and he blinked at the roguish 
 eyes which met his full under level eyebrows with a 
 twinkling gravity as if trying to deny the smile that 
 curled the corners of her mouth. "That s the one 
 I like," she said, standing beside him to look at it over 
 his arm. "That and this." 
 
 The last was a more formal portrait, a three- 
 quarters view, with the chin up saucily and the ex 
 pression one of young alertness and sly penetration. 
 "I ve decided on those two the last two." 
 
 He turned back to the first. "May I . . have this, 
 then?"
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 119 
 
 "But it will fade out, in the light. It s just a 
 proof." 
 
 "I 11 keep it where it won t." 
 
 His tone sent her to the piano, nervously, and she 
 sat down at the keyboard, turning her back. "Well," 
 she said, running up the scale. 
 
 He drew a long breath of gratification, and passing 
 his hand over the picture to brush a speck of dust 
 from it, caressingly, he laid it between two letters 
 taken from his inside pocket, and put it away with 
 the warm flush of a girl hiding a love letter in the 
 bosom of her bodice. She had begun to play a light 
 air. He sat down to put his elbows on his knees and 
 his chin in his hands; and he remained so, as if the 
 music were a bright stream flowing past him and he 
 were staring at it, full of his thoughts. 
 
 It brought him back, at last, to something of her 
 own sparkling mood; and when she had finished it, 
 he said : " I wish I could play like that. 
 
 "Come on and try," she laughed, moving aside on 
 the bench. 
 
 He hesitated. "Is there room?" 
 
 "There should be. It s for the Misses Kimball s 
 duets." 
 
 "Oh." He came awkwardly. She invited him 
 again by gathering in her skirts beside her. He sat 
 down. 
 
 "Now. Put your hands so. I may have to earn 
 my living this way some day. My first pupil!" And 
 with a severe "One two! One two! One two!" 
 she began the exercises for the first two fingers.
 
 120 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 "Knuckles down, sir." She gave them a tap. 
 Wrists up. Forearms on a level with the keys. 
 Again! One two! One two! One " 
 
 "I liked the other things you played, better," he 
 joked. 
 
 "There you are!" she said. "They always want 
 pieces right away. One two! One two! You 
 must perfect your technique first." 
 
 And with a stern pretence of seriousness, that 
 trembled always on the verge of laughter, she put 
 his clumsy fingers through their drill, in a teasing 
 vein of coquetry that made him long to catch her 
 hands and crush them, as one longs to catch up a 
 frisking kitten and cuddle it fiercely. 
 
 "Now," she said, "I 11 give you your first piece 
 The Blue Alsatian Mountains ." 
 
 It was at last too tantalizing to be endured, and he 
 held her hands and said shakily "No. Please play. 
 Play that nocturne was it? the one you played 
 first that night." 
 
 "This one?" She freed her fingers and began it. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 He did not leave his seat Reside her, and she wove 
 the magic of that melody under his eyes, casting the 
 spell of it on him as softly as a breath perfumed 
 with the fragrance of her garments and warm with 
 the vitality of her abundant young life. He was in 
 the clutch of instincts which he could not understand 
 and which he was afraid to yield to, drawn toward 
 her by a terrible longing but not daring to let him 
 self go because he feared to put all his hopes to a
 
 THE DAY-DREAMEE 121 
 
 disastrous test again, prematurely; and above all, he 
 was fighting for his transcendentalism and willfully 
 in awe of his ideal. 
 
 He rose from the music bench and began to walk 
 about the room, trying to overcome his agitation. He 
 did not know himself, and he was bewildered by the 
 loss of his self-control. His under-jaw was trembling 
 in his cheek; his throat ached. When she looked at 
 him over her shoulder, with her hands lingering on 
 the last notes, he was so pale and distressed that she 
 cried: "What s the matter? Are you ill?" 
 
 "No, no," he stammered. "I m " 
 
 "What is it?" She came over to him. He was 
 standing beside a chair, wiping the moist palm of 
 his hand on his coat sleeve in a fumbling nervousness 
 that alarmed her. She took him by the wrist, to 
 stop him. "What is it?" He put his other arm 
 about her shoulders and drew her to him, his face 
 twitching; and he frightened her so that she stepped 
 back at once, confused, and blushing, and concerned 
 for him. 
 
 After a helpless silence, he said "I m all right. 
 ... I was dizzy." He looked at the chair beside him. 
 "I guess I 11 sit down." 
 
 She returned to the piano and began to play again 
 to cover her bewilderment. They passed the rest of 
 the evening with the width of the room between them. 
 And he replied to her with a labored deliberation, 
 pausing in the middle of his sentences to take breath, 
 in a way that reminded her of an amateur singer s 
 faulty "phrasing."
 
 322 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 After he had gone, she remained seated there, her 
 hands clasped between her knees, in a girlish attitude 
 of puzzled meditation. When she smiled doubtfully, 
 it was because she recalled his thin fingers on the 
 piano keys and his bony wrists exposed below his coat 
 sleeves by the outstretching of his arms. When she 
 frowned, it was at the recurring thought of his 
 strangeness, his moodiness, his failure to rise to her 
 innocent coquetry and good spirits. When she 
 blushed, blinking uncertainly, it was at the memory 
 of that sudden fluttering of his eyelids and the ap 
 proach of a caress which she had suspected but which 
 she could not be sure, now, that he had attempted. 
 At last, rising quickly, she took up her photographs, 
 as if to put away from her the thought of this even 
 ing that had been such a perplexing failure; and she 
 stood smiling down, with a pleased appreciation, on 
 the camera s reflection of her pretty face. 
 
 VIII 
 
 THAT began the struggle between his romantic 
 ideals and his natural instincts; and it began a 
 week of constraint and strangeness in his manner 
 toward her; and it ended by making her fear that 
 he was bored by her, that he was no longer interested 
 in her small talk, walking with her through the melt 
 ing snows or freezing rains of March in a depressing 
 silence that was either absent-minded or worse. She
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 123 
 
 contrasted the stupidity of these meetings with the 
 gallantry of his cousin s evenings, and she knew that 
 the difference was not in her. And Don, unable to 
 respond to her little coquetries, because he was cling 
 ing to the high solemnity of adoration which he 
 brought to her from his solitary thoughts, felt the 
 estrangement between them and worried over it in a 
 silence that increased her discouragement. 
 
 When, at the end of the week, she found herself 
 with a cold which kept her from her lesson, she made 
 no effort to let him know that he would not find her 
 coming home at the usual hour. She told herself 
 that if he wished to break with her, it would serve 
 as an excuse; and if he did not, it would bring him 
 to his senses. With a young girl s cruelty, she was 
 willing to punish affection in order to prove it; and 
 she remained in the house, reading her books and 
 practising her music, and noting with a somewhat 
 guilty satisfaction that it was storming on him out 
 of doors. 
 
 Don passed and repassed the gate of the Conserva 
 tory a dozen times in the half hour that he waited 
 for her, wet to the knees with the cold slant of rain 
 that blew under his umbrella, chilled with loitering 
 and downcast with disappointment. He returned to 
 his room, as miserable as if he had missed his dinner, 
 and sat down in his wet clothes, wondering what had 
 happened to her, and unable to get his mind away 
 from the gap which her absence had left in his day. 
 It was not until he had had his supper and shut him 
 self in with his books, that he regained his usual
 
 124 DON-A-DEEAMS 
 
 cheerfulness in the expectation of seeing her on the 
 morrow; and he went to bed early to escape the 
 shivering dampness of his room and to hasten the 
 arrival of their next meeting by sleeping through as 
 much as possible of the interval. 
 
 Although he suffered, next day, with a heavy ach 
 ing in his back and his legs, he went to intercept her 
 earlier than usual, in the fear that he might have 
 been late on the previous afternoon ; and in a piercing 
 wind that pricked him as if with tiny needles of ice 
 through his clothes, he watched for her for an hour, 
 until the horrible certainty that she must be ill and 
 unable to send him word hurried him home in a panic 
 of anxiety, resolved to call and inquire for her that 
 night. By this time his head was aching with the 
 fever of influenza and he was half choked with a sore 
 throat. He gulped his supper, unable to taste it, 
 and hurried out to get Conroy to accompany him to 
 the Kimball house. 
 
 It was a dripping black night, foggy and cold, 
 with hidden pools in the crossings and feeble street 
 lamps to see them by. He splashed through them 
 in anxious haste, holding with a bare hand his 
 overcoat closed on the aperture of a missing button 
 at the neck. He made a short cut across the college 
 campus through the sodden grass, and came to the 
 Residence wing like the midnight caller for a 
 country doctor in a matter of life and death. He 
 saw a light in Conroy s window as he swung under 
 the arch that opened on the "quadrangle." He 
 heard a shout of songs as he sprang up the stairs
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 125 
 
 of the "house" in which Conroy lived; and when he 
 came to his cousin s door, he knocked before he un 
 derstood that the singing was in Conroy s room. 
 
 There was a sudden silence, inside. It was followed 
 by a hasty shuffle. In a moment, someone shouted: 
 "Come in!" 
 
 He opened the door on a group of students seated 
 at a table, with pipes and cigarettes, in the circle 
 of a lamp-light that was so strong in their eyes they 
 could not see him in the shadow. He stood on the 
 threshold. "Who is it?" Conroy asked, peering 
 against the light. 
 
 "It s I want to speak to you a minute, Con." 
 
 Oh, it s you ! Come in here, you monk, you old 
 hermit! All right, boys." He put back on the table 
 an ale bottle which he had hidden under his chair, 
 and the others brought out their glasses from between 
 their knees and their playing cards from their pockets. 
 "Come in here and shut the door. Get us another 
 glass, Pittsey. Come in here and shut the door. Come 
 on. Come in here." 
 
 Don obeyed from mere irresolution, and his cousin 
 welcomed him with a flushed hilarity which Don, for 
 the moment, attributed to nervousness. "Dry your 
 self at the fire. Bring another bottle of pop, Pitt 
 sey. Whose ante is it?" 
 
 Someone replied, contemptuously: "Give me three 
 cards. We re all in a week ago." 
 
 "All right," Conroy went on, unabashed. "Here 
 goes. They re off in a bunch. Hang your coat on 
 the floor, Don."
 
 126 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 But Don, standing before the blaze in the grate, 
 with his back to the table, was facing a smiling photo 
 graph of Margaret Richardson on the mantelpiece. 
 It was a picture finished and mounted, and not a 
 mere "proof"; he remembered that, on the afternoon 
 on which he had last seen her, she had said she expected 
 her photographs to come home on the following day; 
 and he understood that Conroy must have seen her 
 since that time. He took down the picture and turned it 
 over to find it dated in her handwriting "March 22." 
 Then she had not been ill. 
 
 "Look out there, McLean," one of the boys chaffed. 
 "Gregg s trying to get away with your girl." 
 
 The boy who was named Pittsey a youth of liter 
 ary pretensions, in a dressing gown called out: 
 Which one ? Not the prettiest girl he ever kissed ! 
 
 Conroy attempted to silence them with a frantic 
 expression of face. They shouted gleefully, scenting 
 game, and prepared to pursue it with all the bar 
 barism natural to the young collegian. 
 
 "Don t be shy now, McLean." 
 
 "A kiss and a cuddle, wasn t it?" 
 
 "It s the girl that plays the piano with one hand 
 while he holds the other. Give him another pint of 
 pop and he 11 tell us all about it again." 
 
 Don turned, horrified. Conroy was trying to carry 
 an expression of unconscious innocence, but it broke 
 in a befuddled and foolish smile. "Oh shut up, you 
 clams," he said. "That s not the girl." 
 
 They howled. See him blush ! " " Who s a liar ? 
 Did n t you tell us, when you brought in that 
 picture"
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 127 
 
 One of the boys rose oratorically. "Gentlemen, 
 this is a question of veracity which, I may say, affects 
 us all. Either the accused did or did not kiss the 
 lady. If he did not, then he is guilty of slander, 
 false witness, breach of truth and attempted oscular 
 embezzlement, and he owes us and the photograph an 
 apology." (In vain Conroy tried to stop him.) 
 "His present manner is the demeanor of guilt. I 
 move that if he did not kiss said maiden lady, he be 
 compelled to go down on his knees before the counter 
 feit presentment thereof and sing the Doxology. " 
 
 Conroy attempted to escape, but those nearest 
 caught him before he was free of his chair and forced 
 him down in it and held him there. "Oh, say, fel 
 lows," he pleaded, "don t be a lot of d " 
 
 The others closed in on him, laughing like a circle 
 of savages about a torture. It was evident from their 
 manner that while they accepted Conroy s hospitality, 
 they were accustomed to make him the butt of their 
 sport. "Guilty or not guilty?" 
 
 "None of your business," he gasped. 
 
 The orator raised his voice. "The prisoner refuses 
 to plead. This is a case for the thirty-third degree 
 as it is administered to Freshmen. Will someone 
 kindly bring a hair-brush. Remove the prisoner s" 
 
 Conroy screamed "Not guilty!" 
 
 Then to an accompaniment of uproarious laughter 
 and in a confusion of voices and above a continual 
 scuffling and crowding for place, the examination 
 continued : 
 
 "Did you, or did you not, kiss the same and afore 
 said maiden lady?"
 
 128 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 "Oh, go to grass." 
 
 "On the ear?" 
 
 Conroy did not answer. A dozen willing hands 
 attacked the buttons of his waistcoat. "No!" he 
 shouted. 
 
 "On the eye?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "On the mouth?" 
 
 There was no answer. Another attack on his but 
 tons brought out a frantic "Yes!" 
 
 The orator reached a "mortar-board" and put it 
 on as if it had been the "black cap" of a hanging 
 judge. "The prisoner is convicted. He has insolently 
 and without warrant impugned the veracity of this 
 august body. He is condemned to be taken from this 
 place to the mantelpiece and there compelled to go 
 down on his knees and imprint a chaste salute upon 
 the lips of the lady s photograph in our united 
 presence. Pittsey, you will hold the photograph." 
 
 But the photograph had disappeared, and Donald 
 had gone with it. 
 
 HE rang the Kimball bell and faced the arrival of 
 the maid in a tense tremble. "May I Is Miss 
 Richardson in? I have something a message I wish 
 to give her if she s not too ill." 
 
 The maid held the door open. "She s not so sick. 
 Won t you come in?"
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 129 
 
 He entered the vestibule. "No. I can t wait. I m 
 too wet, I 11 stay here. Tell her Gregg" 
 
 She caught the suppressed excitement of his manner, 
 and hurried away without closing the door, alarmed 
 by the prospect of some bad news for the girl, whom 
 she liked. 
 
 He remained staring at a tiny stream of water that 
 had trickled from some wet umbrellas in the rack and 
 shone on the linoleum in a pool as red as blood under 
 the light of the crimson gas-globe overhead. 
 
 Why ! Won t you come in ? " 
 
 He looked up at her slowly and shook his head. 
 "I ve been over with Conroy. They had this pic 
 ture." He held it out shakily. "They were making 
 fun of it " 
 ."I don t . . . understand." 
 
 His face was drawn in a white mask that showed 
 like a grotesque in the crimson light. His eyes were 
 glittering. He asked hoarsely: "Did he?" 
 
 "Did he what?" 
 
 "Did he ... kiss you?" 
 
 She turned over the photograph. Then she looked 
 up with a nervous smile that was a faint attempt to 
 return the whole matter to the frivolous light in which 
 she had seen it. "Well, he I couldn t help it. He 
 We were . . . cutting up." 
 
 He turned around without a word and started out 
 the open door. 
 
 "Wait!" she said sharply. "I don t understand- 
 Why do you come here with
 
 130 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 He answered, without lifting his head: "He was 
 boasting of it to a lot of boys. I didn t believe it. 
 I didn t believe you would do that sort of thing." 
 
 "Well!" she cried defiantly. "You tried to do it 
 too!" 
 
 "Yes," he said. "I tried to do it too. Good-bye." 
 
 She followed him out to the darkness of the porch 
 impetuously, and caught him by the sleeve. "Wait," 
 she said. "You can t I won t have you come here, 
 like this. What is it? How dare you . . . accuse me! 
 I" 
 
 He was so overwhelmed with the shame of that 
 scene in Conroy s room that he could not argue with 
 her, he could not look at her. He said, in a low, 
 stifled voice: "You shouldn t have done it. I didn t 
 think you They made fun of you. He was boasting 
 of it." He shuddered with cold and sickness and 
 misery. "I thought you were above that." 
 
 She flung his arm from her. "Go away!" she 
 choked. "Go away! I 11 never see you I 11 never 
 speak to you again." He went down the steps. She 
 slammed the door on him. He walked home, stiffly 
 erect, through a cold rain that pelted him with deri 
 sion and the downfall of his ideals. 
 
 It was to him as bitter a disenchantment as personal 
 grossness and infidelity and an open scandal would 
 have been to an older man. He returned to the dese 
 crated solitude of his room the room that had been 
 the sanctuary of his worship like a priest to a 
 wrecked and empty altar. Without lighting his 
 lamp, he threw himself on his bed in his clothes, shak-
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 131 
 
 ing with chills and fever, the pulse beating in his ears, 
 his brain swimming, his mind numb with exhaustion 
 and staggering in the whirl of delirium. 
 
 There was the small trickle of blood forming in a 
 pool on the linoleum of the vestibule floor, and he 
 stared at it dully, wondering what she would say 
 when he told her that he had killed his cousin. . . . 
 His father, on the bench, put on a black mortar 
 board" solemnly and having condemned him to 
 death, borrowed a match from the grinning jury and 
 struck a light for his pipe. . . From the barred win 
 dow of his prison, he saw his mother in her invalid 
 chair, with little Mary in her arms and Frankie at 
 her side, going to the execution, his father wheeling 
 her, a picnic basket at her feet; and she looked up 
 at him with a face of grief that set him screaming 
 and sobbing frantically and beating on the floor with 
 his fists. Someone knocked on the door of his cell, 
 and called "Donnie? Donnie?" in Nannie s voice. 
 There was a light in the doorway. He sat up in bed 
 and saw Mrs. Stewart, his boarding-house mistress, 
 with a lamp in her hand, all in white, a shawl over 
 her shoulders, standing at the foot of the bed. He 
 said weakly, "I m sick." 
 
 The rest was a hurry of women in the room some 
 one taking off his shoes, a steaming glass at his lips, 
 a mustard plaster on his chest and in the wan light 
 of the morning a man with a black beard saying: 
 "Nothing much yet. A touch of pneumonia perhaps. 
 Bring me a glass of water. . . One of these every 
 half hour for the next four hours. Two of the others
 
 132 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 every hour until further orders. . . La grippe prin 
 cipally. He 11 be all right." 
 
 IX 
 
 HE lay, for the next few days, dosed with quinine 
 and aconite, his ears ringing, his eyes two balls of 
 pain in his head, his body so sore that he turned 
 himself in bed as carefully as a man just released 
 from the rack. And every aching minute of thought 
 made the situation clearer to him. He had lost her, 
 and he had lost her to Conroy. She had never been 
 more than friendly; the last week had been marked 
 by a growing indifference; she had avoided him, 
 finally, when he went to meet her ; and she had received 
 Conroy, had given him her photograph, had allowed 
 him to kiss her, and had turned angrily on him when 
 he came to accuse her of it. How dare he accuse her ! 
 What right had he to accuse her! She would never 
 speak to him, she would never see him, again. 
 
 The pang of it was not the "pang of disprized 
 love " ; he had always known that she did not prize 
 his clumsy devotion. And it was not the sting of 
 wounded vanity which is so large a portion of a 
 rejected lover s smart for Don was neither an egotist 
 nor a sentimentalist. It was the pain of a boyish de 
 spair, of a lost ideal, of a wrecked hope, of a maimed 
 life. He saw himself living blank days, in aimlessness 
 and regret. He knew that he could never recover 
 from the loss of her; he would bear the scar of it
 
 THE DAY-DREAMEE 133 
 
 to his lonely grave. He was too old to take root in 
 a new affection. Yes, he was almost twenty, now. It 
 was too late. He was a failure and a castaway in life. 
 
 By the time he was convalescent, he was also re 
 signed, though he sat in his room like a life-prisoner 
 in his cell. The familiar walls, in their faded paper 
 streaked with the leak of rains, shut out the world 
 that had persecuted him. He would study here, happy 
 among his books; he would become a university pro 
 fessor, devote his life to learning, and be safe behind 
 grey-stone walls covered with ivy. One room would 
 suffice for him even a room like this, though it 
 should have a study chair and a desk like his father s 
 and a student s couch, instead of this old oval parlor 
 table, this dining-room chair upholstered in imitation 
 leather and sagging in the seat, and this yellow, 
 boarding-house bed, machine-carved, with a varnish 
 scalded to a milky white where the cleanly house 
 keeper had used boiling water on it. He would never 
 be happy again, but he would be quiet and contented. 
 
 It was in this mood that he received Conroy sitting 
 with a black bandage over his eyes, for the influenza 
 had weakened them and he was not allowed to use 
 them yet. And Conroy, guiltily silent about the scene 
 in the room at Residence, did not tell him that Mar 
 garet had refused to see him, too, as a result of that 
 incident; he contented himself with awkward inqui 
 ries about Don s departing pains, and left a bag of 
 oranges as a peace offering when he went. 
 
 Don ate them stolidly. He had seen enough in his 
 cousin s room to understand that Conroy was wasting 
 himself in dissipations, and doing it with that ridic-
 
 134 DON-A-D-REAMS 
 
 ulous bravado of college boys who take to cards and 
 beer bottles as a schoolboy takes to tobacco. But, after 
 all, that was a part of the life which Conroy had 
 chosen, and it was his own affair. He could fight his 
 own battles. He had her to help him now! 
 
 "Well, my young man," the doctor said, "I am 
 leaving you a tonic. Take more exercise with it 
 and less books. You re not within fifteen pounds of 
 your proper weight, and if I m called in here again, 
 I 11 send you home to your parents. The day after 
 to-morrow, if it s bright, you may go out of doors 
 and stay out." He tock Don by the shoulders and 
 shook him playfully. "The man who built this room 
 did n t suppose anyone would be fool enough to try 
 to live in it, do you understand ? 
 Don laughed. 
 
 "Well, if your eyes bother you, come and see me. 
 Good-bye." 
 
 He passed through the doorway and out of Don s 
 life, as doctors do. 
 
 She did not write. When he went out, he did not 
 try to meet her. He returned to his old round of 
 lectures, library studies, solitary walks and lonely 
 evenings. He underlined, in his volume of Emerson s 
 poems, the verse : 
 
 "Though thou loved her as thyself, 
 As a self of purer clay, 
 Though her parting dims the day, 
 Stealing grace from all alive, 
 Heartily know 
 When half -gods go, 
 The gods arrive."
 
 THE DAY-DREAMEE 135 
 
 WITH a robustness of spirit which had once charmed 
 his cousin in their younger days, he set his face to a 
 new future and a new ideal. She had been but a half - 
 god" after all. Perhaps some day, when he was rich 
 in academic honors and professorially wise, he would 
 meet such a woman as he had thought her to be a 
 woman tall and dark and pale whose smile would al 
 ways be somewhat melancholy and who would see life 
 as the mystery which it was to him. Meanwhile, the 
 year s examinations were approaching, and he knew 
 that he was not prepared to meet them. He drank his 
 bitter tonic and studied doggedly. 
 
 He met Conroy in the corridors as often as ever, and 
 saw that the young gentleman s eyes were frequently 
 bloodshot, his color, bad and his manner nervous. Com 
 ing out of the college grounds, one April morning, 
 he saw Margaret approaching him at a distance, slowly, 
 and he turned back, wincing, and crossed the campus 
 to another gate. He took a volume of Emerson on his 
 walks, and read under the pines, on the side of one 
 of those northeastern ravines which the heavy snows 
 had made impassable to him since the early winter. 
 And lying on his back under the branches, he shut 
 his eyes on the light and projected himself upward 
 past the sun and the stars and the entire universe as 
 he conceived it, till these were all flying far below 
 him, like a cloud of glittering insects, in an unceasing 
 and meaningless whirl; and then he turned himself 
 around suddenly on the void of space, and tried to 
 imagine where all these tiny creatures had flown from, 
 where they would alight, from what eggs they had
 
 136 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 
 
 been hatched, and in what nest ; and finding them afloat 
 without any origin which his imagination could pic 
 ture with nothing above them, nothing below them, 
 and on all sides nothing from which they had come 
 or to which they could return a fear seized him, an 
 almost physical fear of dropping, as if in the darkness 
 of a nightmare, into this unfathomable mystery in 
 the midst of which he lived; and he opened his eyes 
 on the sunlight with a start, his forehead wet with 
 perspiration, taking his breath in a tremor and feel 
 ing the round world swimming below him like a great 
 balloon which might, at any moment, burst and fall 
 into the shuddering depths that were below it. 
 
 ONE night, late in April, Conroy came into the room, 
 took off his brown derby and his spring overcoat, sat 
 down on the side of the bed and said: "Well, I ve 
 come to stay." 
 
 Don looked up at him and closed his text-book. 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 "I ve been put out of Residence. 
 
 Don raised the shade of his lamp to get the light 
 on his cousin s face, and then quickly dropped the 
 shadow down over him again. One glimpse of the 
 faltering challenge of that twisted smile was sufficient. 
 He reached his pen-knife and began snapping the 
 blade back and forth against the flat of his thumb. 
 
 "The Dean s been after me ever since I went in 
 and he caught me last night celebrating Pittsey s 
 birthday with some of the boys the sneak! And I 
 told him he was, too," he boasted, "and if he d said
 
 - THE DAY-DREAMER 137 
 
 much more I d ve run him out of the room. You d 
 think we were a lot of girls in a boarding-school. 
 What harm is there in a game of cards?" 
 
 "You re not supposed to bring . . . liquor into 
 Residence, are you?" 
 
 "And that s another thing! We re old enough 
 to take care of ourselves, and we ve as much right 
 to drink what we like as he has. A bottle of champagne 
 is n t going to kill us." 
 
 "Have n t you been doing too much of that sort 
 of thing?" 
 
 "What sort of thing?" 
 
 "Beer, champagne, pop generally." 
 
 Conroy stood up. "I did n t come here to be lec 
 tured by you, either. If you don t want me here, say 
 so. There are plenty of other rooms." 
 
 "Well." Don put down his knife. "You re old 
 enough to know what you re doing. I ve said all 
 I intend to say about it ... If you sleep with me 
 to-night, I suppose we can get the big front room 
 to-morrow. 
 
 Conroy seated himself again sulkily, holding an 
 ankle on his knee and frowning at the floor. 
 
 Don asked: "What will your father say?" 
 
 "He need n t know unless you tell him." 
 
 Don passed the insult unanswered; he was thinking 
 of Margaret. Conroy added unexpectedly: "You 
 were quick enough to tell her." 
 
 "Yes. . . You need n t be afraid. I 11 not tell 
 her." 
 
 "A lot I care whether you do or not."
 
 138 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 Don took the eyeshade which he had been wearing 
 at work since his illness, and put it on; it covered 
 his face like the peak of a cap drawn down over his 
 eyes. "I only told her because I did n t believe it. 
 If I had supposed it was true, I should n t have 
 troubled myself." 
 
 Conroy grunted. "You made a deuce of a lot 
 of trouble out of nothing." 
 
 "That s all the thanks I got for it. . . Where s 
 your stuff?" 
 
 "In my rooms." 
 
 Thereafter, they talked perfunctorily about moving 
 their trunks and making their arrangements with Mrs. 
 Stewart; but the tone in which Don had spoken about- 
 the "thanks" he had received for his interference in 
 the affair of the photograph, stuck in Conroy s 
 thought; and when they were undressing for bed to 
 gether, in a more friendly sympathy, he asked sud 
 denly: "When did you see her last?" 
 
 Don replied: "I have n t seen her at all." 
 
 "Since when?" 
 
 "Since that night with the photograph." 
 
 After a silence, Conroy said: "I met her on the 
 street while you were sick, and told her what was the 
 matter with you. I think she asked because she was 
 wondering why you had n t been around to call." 
 
 "Well, you were mistaken." 
 
 "She asked me again, a few weeks ago at a public 
 lecture. 
 
 Don said, to end the discussion: "She told me, that 
 night, that she d never speak to me again." 
 
 Conroy laughed. Oh, I know. She told me that. too.
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 139 
 
 She got over her mad three weeks ago. You ought 
 to go and look her up." 
 
 Don blew out the lamp, abruptly, without replying, 
 and came slowly to bed where he lay silent with his 
 thoughts. 
 
 But Conroy, moved to confidences in the dark, like 
 a schoolgirl in bed with her room-mate, began to con 
 fess himself to his cousin with a sort of tentative frank 
 ness that seemed always on the point of ending in 
 the silences which interrupted it, but which broke out 
 afresh after every pause. And behind the halting 
 sentences, Don could see how the son of the merchant, 
 come among these "sports" whom he admired and 
 tried to imitate, had never been accepted by them, 
 because of the home training which had left him 
 ignorant of wines and theatres and low talk of women ; 
 how he had toadied to them and spent his money on 
 them, and they had despised him for it ; how he had 
 brought liquor to his rooms for them, and helped to 
 drink it in a mean ambition to prove himself as much 
 a man of the world as any of them; how he had even 
 made his boast about the photograph with the same 
 aim, and how they had gleefully betrayed him to his 
 cousin as soon as they saw that the betrayal would 
 humiliate him. "They re a lot of cads, Don that 
 gang. You should hear them talk about the girls they 
 know. And they sponge on you for everything, and 
 try to get you drunk. And when you get into trouble 
 they won t stand by you. Pittsey was the best of the 
 whole crowd, and he had n t a good word to say for 
 any of them." 
 
 Don listened with a divided mind, trying to repress
 
 140 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 the stirring of a hope which would not be still. . . . She 
 had quarrelled with Conroy, too, about the photograph. 
 She had been asking Conroy 1 about him. She had been 
 thinking of him all these weeks, and expecting to see 
 him. Perhaps she had come to meet him that morn 
 ing when he had turned back from her at the college 
 gate. . . . He said to Conroy, smiling absent-mindedly 
 in the darkness: "You re well out of there anyway. 
 If the Dean does n t write home about it 
 
 "No, he 11 not do that. He said he would n t. He 
 said he thought I should leave Residence, but that no 
 one need know why. He talked a lot of punky cant- 
 about doing it for my own good. He s a snivelling 
 codfish anyway. All the boys loathe him." 
 
 "Well, we d better get a sleep now. Good-night." 
 
 "Good-night. . . I 11 get even with him some day." 
 
 He was breathing in a heavy stupor of sleep when 
 
 Don was still lying awake, smiling at the blackness, 
 
 open-eyed. 
 
 THE Spring had come early, in a sudden heat of 
 sunlight that steamed the snow off the hillsides and 
 warmed the moist air to the temperature of a hot-house. 
 The grass had greened as if it were in a forcing-bed; 
 the twigs of the trees had flushed and budded mirac 
 ulously; the birds had come out chirping and flutter 
 ing on the lawns, in busy possession of a world which 
 they had seized and settled overnight. And on a ra-
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 141 
 
 diant holiday afternoon, Don walked with her along 
 the road that dipped into his valley on the outskirts 
 of the town, as happy as if he were bringing her to 
 a new Eden. 
 
 They had escaped from the cramped seats of a 
 crowded trolley-car, and they came to freedom down 
 the middle of the water-rutted steep road between 
 guardian poplar trees, at a pace that set the loose 
 stones rolling under their feet. It brought back to 
 her cheeks a color that the winter had blanched from 
 them, and to her eyes a sparkle of mischief that had 
 been lacking to the more timid, grave regard with 
 which she had met him since their quarrel. She ran 
 to a boulder that had been bared by the rains, at the 
 road-side, and sprang up on it; and leaning against 
 the wind, she drank in the air and the distance with 
 deep breaths and a long gazing, j>oised on her little 
 feet with her arms as if floating out beside her, her 
 skirts blown, her ribbons fluttering in her hat; and 
 he watched her, holding his breath on a smile, as if 
 she were a bird which he was afraid was about to fly 
 away. "Is n t it lovely I" she thrilled. "The trees 
 so green! Look at the shadows of the clouds on 
 the hill there ! Oh ! " She clasped her hands. 
 "Where are we going?" 
 
 He laughed, guarding the small secret. "Down 
 there around the turn in the valley where we can 
 look over the river." 
 
 "Is it as pretty as this?" 
 
 "Prettier. It s never been farmed, the sides are 
 too steep."
 
 142 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 She stood gazing. "How do you find such places?" 
 
 "I look for them." 
 
 "Alone?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 She reached for his arm to help her down. "Why 
 are you always alone?" 
 
 When she was beside him in the grass, he replied: 
 "Because you re not always with me." 
 
 She gave him her full face with a hesitating smile. 
 "You would tire of me, if I were." And when he 
 shook his head, tight-lipped, she cried: "Oh, yes, you 
 would! I tire myself even. Some days I just hate 
 myself. Ask Helen Kimball if you would n t. You 
 should see the way she looks at me sometimes when 
 I m talking at the table." 
 
 "I met her," he said; and at the thought of Helen 
 Kimball the stiff, the critical, in her posed assump 
 tion of superiority he smiled tolerantly. "I met her 
 the night I called with Conroy." 
 
 "What did you think of her?" (She remembered 
 Miss KimbalPs "Mr. Chopin.") 
 
 "I did n t think of her at all." 
 
 She. understood, and she laughed. After a silence, 
 she said: "I d love to roll down this hill, would n t 
 you?" 
 
 "It is n t as smooth as it looks under the grass." 
 
 "Let s run." 
 
 She caught his sleeve gaily and started down the 
 slope, with a constantly increasing speed which he saw 
 at once she would be unable to check. "Don t!" 
 he cried. "Not so fast!" and tried to hold her back. 
 She tripped and almost fell over a rock. He caught
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 143 
 
 at a bush, and jerked her to her feet, and swinging 
 her at arm s length he brought her around toward 
 him as they slipped, held her until the bush broke, 
 caught another, and stopped her breathless and fright 
 ened on the edge of a sudden steepness, with his arm 
 about her. She clung to him, gasping and choking 
 with excitement. 
 
 "You might have hurt yourself." 
 "Oh dear! Let me sit down. I" 
 He let her down, kneeling beside her. She put her 
 hat up from her forehead and straightened it, panting. 
 
 T 
 
 "Are you all right?" 
 
 She leaned back against his support. "I I wanted 
 to make you run," she laughed. "You were so " 
 
 "Was I?" He took her hand and held it against 
 his breast in a passionate apology for his stiffness. 
 "You know I m " 
 
 "What have you done!" she cried. There was 
 blood on his fingers where the bush had torn them. 
 "You ve cut yourself!" 
 
 "It s nothing. . . I wish it were anything for 
 you." 
 
 "Don!" 
 
 He looked away quickly to hide the loosening which 
 he felt in his lips, the moisture in his eyes. She took 
 out her handkerchief, and wiped his fingers silently. 
 " I m not worth it, she said in a low voice of shame. 
 "I m I let Conroy-I-" 
 
 "Don t!" he begged. "You are. You re every 
 thingYou re all I have." 
 
 He raised her hand, smeared with the blood of his,
 
 144 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 and kissed it like a knight. It went tense at the 
 touch of his lips. Oh, Don ! she whispered, droop 
 ing. "Don!" and in another voice, quickly: "Don! 
 Someone will see us!" 
 
 He released her. They returned to the road and 
 went on down the hill, side by side, in the staring 
 sunlight, as silent, as nervous and he as pale and 
 as bewilderedly happy as if they were a newly-mar 
 ried couple coming down the aisle of the church from 
 the altar railing. 
 
 HE made her comfortable under his pine, in a little 
 nook of budded underbrush on the side of a hill over 
 looking the river; and he sat below her, turned so 
 as to look up at her with the glowing face of a shy 
 young passion. She had taken off her hat, and she 
 leaned back against the tree, flushed and smiling and 
 holding him with a deep gaze that twinkled and soft 
 ened and beamed on him. They were rediscovering 
 their past; it had become a new wonder to them, since 
 it had led them to this. "Do you remember the little 
 place we had in Coulton? beside the stream?" she 
 said. "Do you remember the day I found you there? 
 and you called me Miss Margaret ?" 
 
 "May I again? You ve always been Miss Mar 
 garet ." 
 
 Have I ! Of course. Do you like it ? " 
 "Yes." He fondled the name with his voice: "Miss 
 Margaret ! 
 
 "What am I to call you?" 
 
 "I don t know. You called me Don. "
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 145 
 
 "But everyone calls you that. I want a name of 
 my own, too." 
 
 "It does n t sound the same when you say it." 
 
 "How do I say it?" She tried it in varying in 
 flections: "Don? Don. Don!" 
 
 "It s your voice. It s so " He gulped. 
 
 "Why, I have n t a pretty voice, do you think?" 
 
 "I can hear it when I m alone. I can see you, any 
 time, by just closing my eyes." 
 
 "Really! Try it now. Close them." 
 
 "No." He shook his head, his eyes fastened on her, 
 hungrily. "I want to see you really. I shall be 
 alone again soon enough." 
 
 "Why why are you so much alone?" 
 
 "Because I can . . . think of you." 
 
 "Don!" she said earnestly. "You must n t do it. 
 I-You-" 
 
 After you went away from Coulton, I was so lonely 
 I used to go to the ravine to meet you and and here, 
 when I was at college, before you came, I had you all 
 the time." She reached out her hand on the warm 
 impulse of pity, and he took it in both his. "Now 
 I shall have this to remember the softness." 
 
 "Oh, Don, dear,", she pleaded, bending down to 
 him. "If I disappoint you! If I" 
 
 He played with her fingers, watching them whiten 
 and dimple. "You never will again. I know you 
 now. You never will." 
 
 "But when I go away?" 
 
 "You 11 come back." 
 
 She caught his wrist and shook it, as if to wake
 
 146 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 him from this smiling certainty of happiness. "But 
 if I don t? If I go to New York ? Mother has written 
 me that she wants me to spend the winter in New York, 
 studying." 
 
 "Well, I 11 go too." He laughed, confidently. 
 
 To New York ? What will you do there ? 
 
 He did not know. He would find something. If 
 she went abroad to Germany he would wait for her 
 to come back. "It s all right," he said. "Don t 
 worry. I know. I can wait." 
 
 She leaned back against her tree again, gazing out 
 over the river at the far shore, as if it were the un 
 certain future in which he put such trust. When 
 he looked at her, he saw the troubled wrinkle of her 
 forehead, and he said: "Don t don t think of it that 
 way. Go wherever you like. I can wait. I 11 be 
 busy preparing for you until you come back." 
 
 She said, in a shaken voice: "We re so young. 
 It 11 be years before we can be together, really. If 
 I meet someone else . . . and don t . . . come back." 
 
 "You always have. You always will. If you don t, 
 I 11 know it s because he is better. It will always 
 be the same with me now, whether you come or not. 
 I 11 always think of you the same." 
 
 She could not speak, except through the pressure 
 of her fingers. He answered it with the trust of his 
 eyes. "You 11 not worry about it?" 
 
 She shook her head, blinded. "I 11 try," she 
 promised, chokingly. "I 11 try to come back always 
 for always." 
 
 He held her hand against his cheek. "Thanks," 
 he whispered, in a speechless gratitude.
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 147 
 
 THAT day was to remain with him, in living memory, 
 as a joy that was not to be forgotten unless he forgot 
 his own identity. It was to become as essentially 
 a part of him as the memory of a vision might be part 
 of the life and religion of a saint. The view of the 
 river shining among the branches, the fallen trees 
 in the underbrush, the yellow sunlight, the green 
 shadows, her face against the brown trunk of the 
 tree, the warm surrender of her hand the memory 
 of these was to be about him in his future like thoughts 
 of home in exile. They were to give to all women a sub 
 tle quality of wood-enchantment, as if they reminded 
 him of nymphs and graces known in some forgotten, far- 
 off golden land. And they were to make the smallest 
 patch of grass and trees poetical to him, love-haunted, 
 at once heart-gladdening and full of painful longings 
 even though it were only a green square in a great 
 city, noisy with traffic and shabby with the dust from 
 the worn pavements of thronged streets. 
 
 And as if he were conscious of the momentous in 
 fluence of the hour or perhaps as instinctively as 
 the plant that turns itself to the ripening of the sun 
 lighthe gave himself up to her, without any reserve 
 of his secrets, returning to her the homage of all the 
 dreams which she had inspired, the flowering of the 
 past which she had suddenly made perfect. It marked 
 the change in him from mere dreaming to aggressive 
 idealism. He was no longer afraid of himself or of 
 her, resolved that whatever he believed of her should 
 be made true; and she heard him at first with shame 
 and protestations, with pity, with tenderness, and at 
 last with a humbled gratitude and a secret pledge
 
 148 . DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 to be worthy of such devotion if it were possible until, 
 like a pair of children under their tree, she leaning 
 against his shoulder,, holding hands, they looked out 
 on the future with shining eyes, trusting it with the 
 hope of their hearts. 
 
 She was to be a singer, perhaps in grand opera, 
 surely on the concert stage; and he was to keep busy 
 with his books while she was working with her music. 
 They would meet in New York that London of am 
 bitious young Canadians. He would find something 
 there for him to do; "They have so much money," 
 he said, "they 11 not miss the few thousands I 11 
 need." He inspired her, for the moment, with some 
 of his confidence, and she tried to trust herself as much 
 as he trusted her. When she fell silent, regretting 
 the loss of girlish irresponsibility and heart-freedom 
 which these plans required of her, feeling her hand 
 held where her inclination was only reluctantly 
 settled, he saw the shadow in her face again, and said : 
 "Don t worry, now. Leave it to me. I 11 make it 
 come true. I always have." 
 
 She sighed. "It is n t that. It is n t you. It s 
 myself I m afraid of." 
 
 "I know," he said. "I 11 make you come true, 
 too." 
 
 She smiled doubtfully, watching a cloud that had 
 furled itself across the sun, above the far shore of 
 the river, low on the horizon. How low it was the 
 sun! "What time is it?" She drew her watch from 
 her belt. "Goodness!" she cried. "It s nearly 
 six o clock."
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 149 
 
 "Oh well," he said. "Who cares?" 
 
 She caught up her hat frantically. "It will take 
 us an hour to get back. The Kimballs " 
 
 He came down to realities, troubled by her alarm. 
 "I know a short cut." 
 
 "Come! Quick! We must hurry." 
 
 He started off confidently on his "short cut"; and 
 she followed, pinning her hat as she went. 
 
 THEY lost their way in the green twilight of the 
 woods. It was dusk before they came out upon an un 
 known road and saw their street-car line. It was 
 almost dark when he left her reluctantly, at the Kim- 
 ball gate. And when he was sitting at his window, 
 his lamp unlighted smiling at the sky above the spire 
 of St. Stephen s Mrs. Kimball was saying to the 
 defiant girl: "Very well. Very well. I 11 write to 
 your mother at once then. I shall no longer be re 
 sponsible for you, if you do such things. That will do. 
 
 XI 
 
 ALTHOUGH he had been late for supper, Mrs. Stewart 
 had kept him a plate of potatoes and meat warm in the 
 oven, and he had eaten them without thanking her for 
 the trouble she had taken for him, and without paying 
 any attention to her complaint that Conroy had not 
 yet come to the table. And now, shut in his room, he 
 remembered Conroy only to pity him for having missed
 
 150 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 the ecstasy of such days as this; and looking out over 
 the rustling maples that lined the street and reached 
 their topmost branches almost to the level of his win 
 dow-sill, he watched the stars brightening peacefully 
 in the dark blue of the sky, above the blind roofs of 
 the houses on the slope below him, feeling himself in 
 tune with the joyful order of the universe and pitying 
 the busy absorption of the inmates of those houses, 
 imprisoned under their shingles, ignorant of the happy 
 night that sparkled above them in its eternal calm. He 
 went over the memory of his afternoon, incident by 
 incident, like a miser counting the day s gains ; and he 
 only turned from it to thoughts of a future rich with 
 the golden promise of many such days. The moon 
 swung itself up among the horizon clouds, majestically ; 
 and it was no longer to him the skull of a dead world, 
 hung in the heavens as a memento mori to this still 
 warm earth and its inhabitants; it was the moon of 
 lovers, the glimmering summer moon, whose light was 
 all poetry and pallid gentleness and quiet thoughts. 
 He rested his chin in his hands and smiled at it like 
 a boy listening to a fairy tale. 
 
 It was midnight before he heard Conroy stumbling 
 up the porch steps. He lit his lamp, and began to 
 unlace his shoes, guiltily aware that Conroy would be 
 surprised to find him up so late. It was this thought 
 that made him ask his cousin, as soon as he came in, 
 "Well, what kept you?" When he received no answer, 
 he looked over his shoulder, smiling confusedly, and 
 saw Conroy standing with his hand on the doorknob, 
 swaying.
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 151 
 
 His hat was broken and crushed down on his eyes. 
 His necktie was awry, his waistcoat torn open. He 
 swung the door shut with a lurch, and grunted Uh 1 
 
 Don stood up and watched him stumble across the 
 room to his cot and sit down on it heavily. "Wha kep 
 me, uh?" He tried to hang his hat on the bed post, 
 dropped it on the floor, and laughed feebly. "Nothin 
 kep me stayed. Lossofun. As the Dean wha kep 
 me. As the Dean." He waved his hand. "Fullows 
 said I was fraid t t throw brick through s win 
 dow. Uh? Wha say?" 
 
 Don turned his back, sickened by the sight of that 
 imbecile face, with the glazed eyes and the swollen lips. 
 Conroy mumbled: "You I m eck hie spelled." 
 
 "Expelled!" 
 
 "Ever been ek spelled, uh? Man on each arms n 
 legs throw y over a fence. Lossofun." 
 
 IT was not until the next morning that Don heard the 
 story from a sick and repentant Conroy. He had won 
 a bet on a Varsity baseball game, and, with his win 
 nings, he had celebrated the victory with Pittsey and 
 some others of the coterie. Pittsey and he had "taken 
 too much. On a dare from the others, they two had 
 gone back to Residence and thrown stones, in a drunken 
 folly, through the Dean s windows. They had both 
 been caught, the others escaping in the darkness; the 
 Dean had told them that they might consider them 
 selves expelled from the University; and when they 
 had tried to attack him, they had been put out of the 
 college grounds by the beadle and the janitor and the
 
 152 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 hired men of the houses. "It was a regular riot," he 
 
 said weakly, "and those d d cads, after getting us 
 
 into it, ran away and left us." He turned on his 
 side with his face to the wall, faint with nausea, and 
 he abandoned himself to a sulky despair, refusing to 
 reply to Don s half-hearted attempts to console him 
 with the hope that the affair might be hushed up, and 
 not even speaking when Don said, " I m going to see the 
 Dean as soon as I ve had breakfast." 
 
 He had small hope of aiding his cousin, but what 
 hope he had was increased by the Dean s attitude of 
 mind. "I should be very sorry," he said frankly, "to 
 see McLean expelled. I understand, as well as you do, 
 that he has been led into these escapades by older boys 
 than he. But I m afraid the affair is not in my hands, 
 since it is not a matter of house discipline, your cousin 
 being no longer in Residence. The President already 
 knows of the incident it was impossible to conceal it 
 and he will, no doubt, act as he sees fit. I can promise 
 you most willingly, that I shall use my influence to 
 have McLean treated leniently, and I should advise you 
 to see the President yourself." 
 
 But the President in his public office with his sec 
 retary standing before his world as the head of the 
 University, had no such paternal view to take of Con- 
 roy s offense. He listened to Don s stammering appeal 
 with a stern face. The Dean, he said curtly. " No ! 
 Such drunken vandalism is a disgrace to the University. 
 I will recommend the expulsion of every student whom 
 I can connect with it. And Don left his hope in that 
 office when he went out.
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 153 
 
 He returned to his room, intending to advise Conroy 
 that he had better hurry home and throw himself on 
 his father s mercy before the Board could meet to pass 
 sentence upon him; but Conroy had dressed and left 
 the house, and Mrs. Stewart did not know where he had 
 gone. Don waited for him all the afternoon, trying to 
 feel worried and depressed, but unable to do so because 
 of the happy thoughts of Margaret that kept singing 
 in his mind like music. And the sum of his reflections 
 was a sentimental foresight that whatever grief or cal 
 amity might fall on him in his future, it would strike 
 him only a glancing blow so long as he had her affec 
 tion to fortify him. 
 
 At five o clock, he went to meet her, hastening 
 through the mild sunlight with a rising spirit; and he 
 greeted her with a smile which he concealed hypocriti 
 cally when he saw her expression. He thought that she 
 had heard the bad news of Conroy. 
 
 She said, abruptly: "Mrs. Kimball has written to 
 mother." And standing on the street corner, digging 
 the ferule of her parasol into the grass of the "boule 
 vard," she told him of the scene of the previous even 
 ing, how Mrs. Kimball had scolded her, how she had 
 defied the woman, how the daughters had taken part 
 with their mother against her, and how, finally, they 
 had written to Mrs. Richardson, refusing to have in 
 their house any girl who would go unchaperoned into 
 the woods with a Varsity student and remain there 
 until after nightfall. She was still defiant, still unre 
 pentant. "I ve written, too," she said, "but I know 
 mother 11 not understand. If she does n t come up
 
 154 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 here to take me away, she 11 write for me to go to her. 
 
 "And leave your music?" He had been counting 
 on another month of meetings at the least, to bring her 
 so near to him that she would never be able to go free 
 and forgetful of him again. 
 
 The term is practically over now. There s nothing 
 left but the examinations. I m not taking them." 
 When she looked up at him, she cried : Well, it s your 
 own fault! Why did n t you see what time it was?" 
 
 He had no thought of defending himself. He was 
 dumb on the edge of the gulf of years the three years 
 of his college course at the very least which separated 
 him from New York and the hope of winning her. 
 
 His helplessness irritated her; he had been so confi 
 dent of his plans, under the pine, that she had believed 
 he would see some way of writing to her mother and 
 defending her. "What are you going to do?" 
 
 He took out his watch and looked at it dazedly, shak 
 ing his head in answer to her question; for it was as 
 if the stroke of the disaster had broken the continuity 
 of his life ; and with his future suddenly gone from him, 
 he tried to pick up the broken strands that were left, 
 and found himself wondering simply what day of the 
 week it was and what day the morrow would be. 
 
 The sight of her tears brought him to himself. He 
 said hoarsely : Don t. Don t. I 11 fix it. I 11 do some 
 thing. Give me time to think. It is n t any worse 
 than it was the day I got your mother s letter." He 
 turned her quickly into a side street, talking at random 
 in his attempts to reassure her and almost in tears him 
 self. "It will all come out all right. I ll think of
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 155 
 
 something. Your mother See the way she came 
 around, about the letter. She did n t forbid you to let 
 me call or anything. Look! Here are some people 
 coming. Don t let them see you" 
 
 She put up her parasol and screened her face from 
 the passersby. He went the rest of the way in a miser 
 able silence, she holding the parasol down against him 
 too. When he left her at the gate, he pleaded: "I ll 
 know to-morrow. I 11 meet you there. Don t " 
 
 She cut him short with a blind gesture of dismissal. 
 She could not tell him that she had been crying with 
 anger and self-pity because of the insolence of the Kim- 
 balls, and with disappointment because he had not 
 thought of any way to defend her from them. She 
 went indoors without a backward glance at him. 
 
 He began an interminable walk that led him in cir 
 cles of thought, around and around, to no plan, to no 
 conclusion, to no hope. She was going to leave him, 
 for three years at least. There was nothing he could 
 do, nothing he could say, to prevent it. She was going 
 to leave him. And would she be waiting for him on the 
 other side of that desert of separation? He was tor 
 mented by the fear that she might not. She was going 
 to leave him. And suddenly he felt desperate, in revolt 
 against the fate that was persecuting him, ready to 
 do anything that would break this tyranny of circum 
 stances and set him free to model his life to his desire. 
 
 HE did not return to the boarding-house for supper, 
 and when he did return he found Conroy and his friend 
 Pittsey, evidently waiting for him, in the room.
 
 156 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 "Hello!" they greeted his despondence. "What does 
 His Holiness say?" 
 
 He sat down, wearily, to tell them of his interviews 
 with "His Holiness" as they called the Dean and 
 with the President, whom Pittsey referred to as "Old 
 Skeesicks." And he concluded, in a hopeless resigna 
 tion that was more for himself than Conroy: "You d 
 better go home and tell your father, before the Board 
 meets. You d better not let him hear the first of it 
 from them." 
 
 "Not on your life!" Conroy replied. "I m not going 
 home. 
 
 "What are you going to do?" 
 
 " I m going to get out of reach, until this blows over. 
 He looked at Pittsey as if referring the leadership in 
 their plans to him; and Pittsey, having emptied his 
 lungs of cigarette smoke, explained: "We re going to 
 New York." 
 
 Don stared, incredulously. Pittsey, with his hat on 
 the back of his head, his chair tilted, smiled an amused 
 challenge to his amazement. 
 
 "New But but what are you going to do? " 
 
 Conroy replied recklessly: "Oh we 11 find some 
 thing, I guess. Pittsey is going into newspaper work. 
 He has a brother there. I have enough money to keep 
 me for a month or two till the governor comes around 
 again. 
 
 Don cried: "But supposing he does n t come 
 round ! 
 
 "Well, Great Scott !" Conroy said, "I m not a three- 
 year-old, and I m sick of being treated as if I were.
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 157 
 
 This government kindergarten business makes me tired. 
 What s the use of hanging around here for four years ? 
 You don t learn anything that 11 ever be any good to 
 you. We 11 have to strike out for ourselves sometime, 
 and we might as well face it now as any other day!" 
 
 Don looked from one to the other, silenced. 
 
 You 11 never learn to swim until you go into the 
 water," Pittsey put in airily. He reached a text-book 
 that was lying on Don s table, and began to turn over 
 the leaves. Conroy smoked feverishly. It was evident 
 to Don that their minds were made up. He looked at 
 them almost with envy. They were going to do what 
 he would, too if he dared. 
 
 Then Pittsey, tossing the book back on the table with 
 a gesture of decision, said: "Expelled? We 11 expel 
 them! The pompous flat-heads with their machine- 
 made college education, we 11 expel them out of our 
 lives. Eh, Mac?" And without bitterness, as if the 
 whole affair were a lark to him, alert and self-assured, 
 he began to make fun of the college, the professors, the 
 lectures, the students, the country everything that 
 they were leaving; and Conroy listened, fascinated, 
 smiling when Pittsey smiled and agreeing with 
 everything in resolute nods, his teeth bitten in 
 to his pipe. "What s the use of staying here?" 
 Pittsey demanded, his close-set black eyes sparkling on 
 Don s gloomy abstraction. "Everything s scaled to 
 the wage of a dollar a day. They Keep their savings 
 in an old sock. A fellow never gets an increase in salary 
 until he gets married; and then they raise him every 
 time his wife has a baby. As for literature ! He flicked
 
 158 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 his cigarette ashes on the floor. "They don t charge you 
 anything for printing your stuff unless you want to 
 bring out a book. You have to pay for a book. There s 
 money in writing school readers, I understand and 
 City Directories. If they want anything to read after 
 they leave school, they buy a set of Dickens or Thack 
 eray, and enjoy the latest thing in literature. I d 
 sooner write ads for a New York department store on 
 a salary of three thousand a year." 
 
 Don heard him without heeding him. . . They 
 were going to New York ! At one stroke they were set 
 ting themselves free! He crossed his knees to hide a 
 trembling that took him in the legs, standing on the 
 verge of a resolution, afraid of the leap. . . At a 
 pause in Pittsey s babble, he asked Conroy : When are 
 you going?" 
 
 "I m waiting for my month s check from the gov 
 ernor. It ought to be here Monday. Why?" 
 
 Both Pittsey and he saw something in Don s face. 
 They watched him in a puzzled silence. He blinked 
 and swallowed like a boy about to make his first dive. 
 Well, he said, pale, I may go with you. 
 
 "What!" 
 
 "Wha-a-at!!" 
 
 "I ve been thinking of it for some time. . . I 11 
 never pass these exams. . . I ve been saving every 
 cent I could. . . I had a quarrel with my father 
 at Christmas about not studying law " He gulped 
 on his secret, with an expression of beseeching them not 
 to press him for the whole truth. 
 
 Pittsey came to his relief with a shrill laugh.
 
 THE DAY-DREAMEE 159 
 
 Caesar s ghost!" he cried. "The three of us. Let s 
 eat on it. Come on. It s my treat. Come on. Have 
 a feed on me at Durkin s. Conroy was staring at his 
 cousin, over the pipe which he held, forgotten, at his 
 lips. "Eh, Mac?" Pittsey prodded him. 
 
 Don smiled tremulously at Conroy, and said "I I m 
 hungry enough." 
 
 "Come on, then!" 
 
 XII 
 
 THEY went; and they made their plans together, over 
 beefsteak and potatoes, as daringly as three musketeers 
 of romance conspiring to overturn a dynasty with their 
 rapiers. They returned, through the quiet streets, in 
 a line abreast, all keyed up to Pittsey s high spirits, 
 swaggering and talking as freely as if they were irre 
 sponsible young tourists in a foreign land as indeed 
 they seemed to Don, when he looked around at the shops 
 and the houses that watched him with such an alien 
 impassiveness as he paraded by. Pittsey left them at 
 Mrs. Stewart s door, and went off whistling martially; 
 but his spirit presided over the flushed council which 
 Don and Conroy kept in session until two o clock on 
 Sunday morning, perfecting their plans in detail, 
 counting their money and encouraging their hopes. 
 
 In pursuance of those plans, Don, the next day, 
 wrote to his mother that, after all, his father had been 
 right ; that he felt he would be better at work ; that Con 
 roy as she would probably hear from the McLeans
 
 160 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 had gotten into trouble at the University and was leav 
 ing for New York in a few days; and that he had 
 decided to accompany his cousin. 
 
 They would be better together. They had saved 
 enough money to keep them until they could find some 
 thing to do. He was sorry that this would prevent him 
 from spending his summer holiday in Coulton, but if 
 all went well as he was sure it would he could be 
 home for a happy Christmas. 
 
 "Frank can take my place at the University," he 
 concluded. "His success will make up with father for 
 my failure. I intend to do better where I am going. 
 I will think of you and write to you every day. Address 
 me, for the present, at the General Post Office, New 
 York City." 
 
 He did not add any messages of affection; he felt 
 that in his present mood, they would be hypocritical. 
 
 He wrote to his aunt that Conroy as she would prob 
 ably hear from Conroy himself was leaving the Uni 
 versity on account of a breach of college discipline for 
 which he had been blamed although he was by no means 
 the ringleader in it; that he, himself, had decided he 
 could not afford to waste three years more on his edu 
 cation; and that they were going to make a start 
 together in New York. 
 
 No doubt it would seem very foolish to her, but Con 
 roy was afraid to go home and face Uncle John. For 
 his own part, he had quarrelled with his father at 
 Christmas, about refusing to study law, and in order to 
 avoid further trouble he was taking his affairs into his 
 own hands. They were both well supplied with money ;
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 161 
 
 she need not worry about that. He owed most of his to 
 her, but he was going to earn now, and he hoped to be 
 able to repay her although, of course, he could never 
 repay her for her kindness. 
 
 She was not to worry about Conroy. Everything 
 would come out all right. They would look after each 
 other. They had plenty of money. 
 
 And then, finding that he was repeating himself and 
 arriving no nearer an end, he subscribed himself, 
 abruptly, "Your affectionate nephew," and was done. 
 
 He addressed his envelopes with a heavy apprehen 
 sion of the grief and anxiety which they would bring 
 to Coulton ; but he consoled himself, in the hopefulness 
 of youth, with the assurance that grief was a passing 
 accident of life which would be forgotten in the rosy 
 future to follow. He saw himself returning with Con 
 roy to Coulton, for their Christmas holiday, with 
 money in their pockets and success in their smiles ; and 
 he felt that the joy of such a reunion would more than 
 compensate for the partings which were necessary to 
 make it possible. 
 
 He spent his afternoon erasing his name from his 
 college texts so that he might sell them second-hand, 
 tearing up his note-books and papers, and packing his 
 trunk. He underlined, in Emerson s Essays, the sen 
 tence: "One of the benefits of a college education is 
 to show the boy its little avail." He put the proof of 
 Margaret s photograph between the first pages of the 
 Essay on Love, tied up the volume with a shoe-string, 
 and hid it in the bottom of his trunk beside the bible 
 
 which his mother had given him at Christmas. And 
 
 11
 
 162 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 he carried himself, through all these preparations, with 
 the air of a man who has taken his decision and is 
 resolved to act on it without further thought. 
 
 CONROY S check came in the morning mail. And they 
 were ready all but Pittsey. He was waiting for word 
 from his brother, who, it seemed, was an actor of uncer 
 tain address, generally written to "in care " of a dram 
 atic paper because he was more often "on the road" 
 than in New York. Pittsey had mailed his letter Sat 
 urday morning; he should have a reply on Tuesday; 
 in any case they would wait no later than Tuesday 
 morning. Conroy hurried to the bank to cash his check, 
 and Don accompanied him part of the way, going to 
 sell his books to a second-hand dealer. They agreed to 
 meet again at the railroad offices to buy their tickets. 
 
 But the first dealer to whom Don offered his volumes, 
 haggled interminably over the purchase, offering so 
 little for them that Don refused to sell them and carried 
 them to a second dealer who would give less than the 
 first. They were finally sold at such a loss that Don 
 felt too poor to pay his street-car fare to the ticket 
 office, and he walked, ruefully fingering the few silver 
 coins in the pocket of his trousers and despising the 
 commercial world that made second-hand book-dealers 
 what they were. Half way to their rendezvous, Conroy 
 hailed him from the rear platform of a passing street 
 car, beckoning him warningly to turn back, his face 
 as ghastly as if he were waving a red flag to save a 
 railway train from destruction. Don ran after the car, 
 alarmed, and saw Conroy alighting at a street corner.
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 163 
 
 They met in the middle of a block. Conroy drew him 
 into a doorway. 
 
 "They they wouldn t cash it," he gasped. "He 
 telegraphed them to stop payment. He must know. 
 They must have written from the University. He 11 
 be coming himself. What 11 I do?" 
 
 Don wiped his forehead; the walking and the run 
 ning had made him hot, and this new catastrophe 
 brought the perspiration out on him like a fear. "I 
 can buy the tickets," he said faintly. "You d better 
 go and stay with Pittsey. He 11 not find you there." 
 
 "What 11 we do?" 
 
 "What? Why, we 11 go to New York, I suppose. 
 There is n t anything else to do now. 
 
 "He ll follow us." 
 
 "Well, if he can t find you here, how will he I don t 
 know. Ask Pittsey. Go and ask Pittsey." He dis 
 liked the part of a plotter. 
 
 Conroy saw himself cast off, like a drowning man, to 
 his own frantic struggles. "You you won t leave 
 me?" he faltered. 
 
 Don asked plaintively: "Why should I leave you? 
 I 11 see you to-night. Stay with Pittsey." He found 
 himself looking to Pittsey s high spirits as an intoxi 
 cant against depression. He added guiltily as he helped 
 Conroy aboard another car: "I 11 hide your things 
 under your bed in case he comes." 
 
 He came. 
 
 And he must have come hard on the heels of his tele 
 gram, for he arrived at the boarding house soon after 
 midday, and mounted heavily to the boys room after
 
 164 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 a gruff "I 11 find them" addressed to Mrs. Stewart at 
 the foot of the stairs. He filled the doorway like a huge 
 and angry obstruction to their plans. Where is he ? " 
 he demanded. 
 
 Don answered, at bay : He s not here. He s out. 
 
 "What s he been doing?" 
 
 Don stammered a confused explanation of Conroy s 
 misbehavior, apologetically. Mr. McLean heard him 
 through with a worried glare, blocking the door. "Why 
 didn t you write and tell me what was going on?" 
 
 "I didn t know. He didn t let me know. He left 
 me here when he went into Residence. I could n t 
 afford" 
 
 Mr. McLean tossed his hat on the bed, and sat down 
 in a chair that received him creakingly. He s had too 
 much money," he summed it up. His bulky shoulders 
 sank down on him in a way that gave him an appear 
 ance of stricken weariness, and though he kept his eyes 
 fixed on Don it was with a blank gaze that did not 
 seem to see the boy. Things have been made too easy 
 for him. He fingered his beard, and plucked it impa 
 tiently, frowning. "Should have looked after him." 
 
 "He he s all right," Don tried to console him. 
 "It was n t his fault. The boys he got in with they 
 led him on to it." 
 
 "Does he say what he s going to do?" 
 
 "Well" Don drew a long breath "I m leaving 
 college. I quarrelled with father about studying law. 
 I m going to New York with a friend who knows the 
 city and Conroy wants to go with me. We 11 find 
 something to do there some work. We re wasting our
 
 THE DAY-DREAMEE 165 
 
 time here. I think it 11 be a good thing for him. We 11 
 not have enough money to more than pay board." 
 
 His uncle had focussed a surprised stare on him. 
 "What sort of work?" 
 
 "Why, anything we can find." 
 
 Mr. McLean made a mouth and shook his head. New 
 York!" he said. "Ten thousand people are looking for 
 work in New York. Where is he 1 I 11 take him home 
 with me." 
 
 "I m afraid he won t go, sir," Don replied with a 
 sudden daring. "He s afraid and I guess he s 
 ashamed. He knew you were coming ; they refused pay 
 ment on his check at the bank. He would n t come back 
 here with me for fear you d find him." 
 
 "Where is he?" 
 
 "I don t know." 
 
 Mr. McLean shifted irritably in his chair. "Wants 
 to run away, does he?" 
 
 "He s he s not He hasn t been doing anything 
 very wrong," Don pleaded, "except the drinking, and 
 that he s been led into that." 
 
 Mr. McLean did not listen. He took a cigar from 
 an upper pocket of his waistcoat, struck a match and 
 puckered his eyes on the smoke. "Huh!" he granted 
 over his thoughts. He began to scrutinize Don medi 
 tatively, and the boy looked away. It was evident 
 that a decision was coming out of the silence. Don did 
 not speak. 
 
 His uncle asked: "Do you know what it is to earn 
 your own living away from home?" 
 
 "No."
 
 166 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 "No. Neither does he." He relapsed into thought 
 again. 
 
 Don waited. 
 
 Do you know what it is to be on the streets without 
 enough to eat 1 No. He chewed his cigar. He grum 
 bled : It would n t hurt him to learn. He shook his 
 head. He muttered, in his beard: "Boys nowadays 
 Huh!" 
 
 Suddenly he asked: "How much money have you?" 
 
 I have a hundred and fifty-seven dollars. And Con 
 has a little I don t know how much twenty-some dol 
 lars." 
 
 He smoked. "Will you look after him?" 
 
 ^"Yes." . 
 
 After another interval of communion with his cigar, 
 he demanded: "Will you write to me?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 Will you promise not to write to me for money for 
 him unless he has n t enough to buy food ? 
 
 "I 11 promise not to write to you for money at all." 
 
 No, you won t. I don t want that. I want him to 
 have to work, but I don t want him to have to starve. 
 . . And you re not to let him know that I m sending 
 you money for him, do you understand?" 
 
 "I 11 not let him know anything about it unless you 
 wish me to." 
 
 "Don t let him know that I m sending him money 
 that s all." 
 
 "Aunt Jane," Don hinted. "Is she to know?" 
 
 Mr. McLean looked at him with an amused apprecia 
 tion of his opinion of Aunt Jane s ability to keep a
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 167 
 
 secret. "No one s to know but you and me. No one, 
 now, understand?" 
 
 Don understood. 
 
 Mr. McLean reflected slowly. "Now look here," he 
 said, I could take him home and put him to work, but 
 I don t want to make a whipped cur of him. And I 
 don t want to treat him the way the old people treated 
 me. I want him to find his feet if he can. And I 
 want you to help him." 
 
 Yes, sir. I understand. 
 
 "When are you going?" 
 
 "To-morrow." 
 
 "To-morrow, eh? What does your father say?" 
 
 "I don t know. I haven t heard from him yet." 
 
 "Running away, too, are you?" He stretched out 
 his thick leg with a chuckle and went down in his pock 
 et for a roll of bills. He took off several for himself 
 and held out the remainder to Don, with his cigar fum 
 ing in his mouth and his eyes closed against the bite of 
 smoke that drifted into them. "Here." 
 
 I don t need that, sir. Don said. I have enough. 
 Aunt Jane Has been " 
 
 Here ! " he choked, one hand in his pocket, the other 
 filled with bills. 
 
 Don took them from him to relieve him. He removed 
 his cigar from below his nose, caught his breath, and 
 said: " Twenty dollars won t see him far. " He reached 
 for his hat. "They 11 teach you something about 
 money before you re there, long." 
 
 Don smiled crookedly over his embarrassment of 
 riches.
 
 168 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 "It s time you learned. Good-bye." 
 
 Good-bye, sir, Don said gratefully. When his un 
 cle was in the doorway again, he remembered to ask: 
 "What 11 I tell him Conroy? He 11 know you ve 
 been here. 
 
 "Tell him?" Mr. McLean answered savagely. 
 "Tell him I think it 11 do him good to go down to 
 New York and get some sense bumped into him. Tell 
 him we 11 say no more about it if he comes back to me 
 at Christmas with some honest wages in his pocket. 
 Tell him I hope he 11 learn what it is to have a good 
 home and everything provided for him. That s what 
 you 11 tell him and it s true. . . If it isn t too 
 late," he added, in another voice, "we 11 make a man 
 of him yet. 
 
 Don heard him stumping down the stairs. When he 
 heard the front door shut with a slam, he turned over 
 the roll of bills, and grinning fiercely he reached his 
 arms up over his head, menacing the ceiling with the 
 triumphant defiance of a prisoner who cries out insults 
 on the walls of the dungeon he is about to leave. 
 
 HE ran out, with the news, to find Conroy and Pitt- 
 sey; and Conroy received it with a doleful relief that 
 failed to see why Don was so elated. The rest of the 
 afternoon was taken up with paying Mrs. Stewart, mov 
 ing baggage and buying tickets, for they were to start 
 on the early morning train. It was not until after sup 
 per that Don was free to call on "Miss Margaret," 
 whom he had not seen since Saturday. "No, I can t 
 come in," he told the maid, warned by the lights that
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 169 
 
 the Kimballs were in the parlor. "Tell her I 11 only 
 keep her a moment." 
 
 He saw her come downstairs, as if from the isolation 
 of her bedroom. He held out his hand to her from 
 the threshold. He said, in a rush: "I ve come to say 
 good-bye. I m starting, in the morning, for New York 
 with Conroy. We re leaving college. If you write 
 to us at the General Post Office, New York or if 
 you re there to send me your address. We leave 
 to-morrow morning." 
 
 She cried, under her breath, "You re not!" 
 
 He smiled at her reassuringly, feeling the startled 
 grip of her fingers but unable to see her face because 
 she had her back to the dim light. Our baggage is at 
 the station." 
 
 She backed him out on the porch and shut the door 
 behind her. "You re not! You must n t! It s 
 Why! What are you doing!" 
 
 He laughed. "I was only wasting time here. I told 
 you I d make things come out right. 
 
 "Right!" 
 
 "I couldn t wait three years to begin. I want to be 
 at work. I want to be nearer the together you." 
 
 She dropped his hand as if it had stung her. "Don!" 
 It was all she could say, but the tone was eloquent of 
 emotions which he had not expected. He waited, stiff. 
 She went on, with a shudder in her voice: "Oh, you 
 must n t. I m not I m not sure. . . of myself. I 
 did n t mean to. I thought Oh!" And she began to 
 sob. 
 
 He put on his hat. He opened his mouth to get his
 
 170 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 breath. He found himself hoping insanely that he would 
 not have to speak, because his throat was trembling and 
 his lips were sticking to his teeth. He heard her, at a 
 distance from him, weeping in a vast hush that had set 
 tled down on him like the peace tkat broods over ruins 
 in a desert, among sands, at night. 
 
 She was saying: "You promised You said you d 
 wait. I told you I told you I d try. I did n t know 
 How could I? I didn t mean I I thought we d be 
 good friends . . . and write. I I m not ready yet. 
 I don t want to think of of marrying any one yet. I 
 want to be free." 
 
 He was conscious only of the need of getting away 
 somewhere, alone. He stumbled to the edge of the porch. 
 At a cry from her, he stopped there. She came to him 
 in the darkness and pleaded: "Don t! Don t! Don t 
 do it. Don t leave college." 
 
 "It s too late," he said hoarsely, and gathering her 
 into his arms, with a sort of despairing longing for 
 what might have been, he found her wet cheek with his 
 lips, and kissed her. "Good-bye," he whispered. 
 Don t cry. It s all right. I can stand it. I m used 
 to it. I can wait." 
 
 She released herself with a sudden effort and disap 
 peared into the house. 
 
 HE returned to his room, fighting with himself to 
 maintain his resolution to endure this disappointment 
 too, to wait for her, to work for her, to be true to her 
 in spite of her. But even while he was saying to himself 
 "I can wait! I can wait!" another voice was asking
 
 THE DAY-DREAMER 171 
 
 him whether it was worth waiting for, whether this 
 belauded love was not all vanity and vexation, 
 whether there could be anything divine in a sentiment 
 which had brought him nothing but disappointment 
 after disappointment, whether he was not playing the 
 fool to his hopes and living in a delusion and building 
 his future on another make-believe. He sat down at 
 his bare table in a room which held nothing of his, now, 
 but his packed valise; and overcome by the desolation 
 of the moment that stood empty between his past and 
 his future, he struggled against the tears that choked 
 him, clinging to his ideals, repeating blindly I can 
 wait! I can wait!"
 
 PAKT III 
 THE IDEALIST
 
 PITTSE Y knew the ropes, " as he expressed it. He 
 knew where to find cheap lodgings in New York, 
 and he knew enough not to remain in them. "We don t 
 board," he said. "Oh, no! Not in New York! We 
 camp. Wait till I show you. We rent a flat at twenty 
 dollars a month. We furnish it for twenty dollars 
 more. We do our own cooking on a gas stove that 
 goes with the flat. Wait till I show you! I have n t 
 been camp cook for nothing. Porridge and boiled 
 eggs and coffee for breakfast. Delicatessen and stewed 
 prunes for luncheon. Beefsteak and boiled potatoes 
 and tea for dinner. Wait till I show you ! I ve been 
 here before, many s the time, many s the time. As 
 Napoleon did n t say : The man who storms New York, 
 conquers on his commissariat ! Leave it to me. 
 
 They left it to him. He foraged for them at the 
 stations on their way down, refusing to let them pay 
 dining-car prices for their meals. He conducted 
 them across the New Jersey ferry, pointing out the 
 high buildings that loomed mountainously above the 
 New York shore, under a sky that was pale with the 
 reflected glare of hidden street lights. He led them 
 to a fly-blown restaurant and fed them on corned-beef 
 hash "browned in the pan," coffee and "wheats." 
 He found them a cheap hotel where they left their 
 
 175
 
 176 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 valises, in a bedroom that smelled like the inside of 
 a rusty stove. ("Good enough," he said. "The 
 proprietor says it ain t been slep in since his wife 
 died in it.") He piloted them across town to the 
 lights of "the Bialto," and went through the crowds 
 with his hat on the back of his head, laughing and 
 talking like a city boy taking hisi gaping country 
 cousins around the "fair." And he gave to the ex 
 pedition an air of adventurous dare-deviltry, of youth 
 ful self-sufficiency and hope, that kept Don and Con- 
 roy in a continual flutter of excitement despite the 
 bewilderment of their strange surroundings that would, 
 otherwise, have disheartened them. 
 
 To Donald, indeed, the day had been like one of 
 those wild dreams in which disconnected scenes with 
 out locality and incidents without consequence follow 
 past in an untiring vividness, each snap-shotted by 
 itself with the distinctness of an isolated experience 
 and each snatched away to give place, in a flash, to 
 the next. And this was true not only of the railway 
 journey with its fields and houses, fences and roads, 
 whipping past his window, like the telegraph poles, 
 in kaleidoscopic monotony; it was true also of the 
 city which he approached across a Dantesque black 
 water in which the lights of the ferry-boat reeled 
 weirdly on the swells that rose out of a darkness and 
 engulfed them a mediaeval city, apparently built on 
 a hill, window above blazing window, its edge sup 
 ported in the water on slimed piles and its towers 
 mysteriously dark against a wan sky without a star. 
 
 He went to bed, that night, amid uneasy millions
 
 THE IDEALIST 177 
 
 of strange peoples, on a continent of crowded houses 
 and stone streets that was barren of grass and trees 
 or the soil in which they could take root or the natural 
 light to grow them. He saw Margaret and the Uni 
 versity and the life he had lived, as far from him as 
 Penelope and Ithaca were from the Grecian wanderer 
 of the school books when he looked back at the memory 
 of his home from the lurid half-light of Hades. He 
 fell asleep, construing to the clackety-clack of the car 
 wheels of his railway ride: "Then answering him 
 prosephe polumetis Odusseus O King Alcinous 
 panton arideikete laSn truly it is a beautiful thing 
 truly it is a beautiful thing" . . . Dexter barked. 
 He looked up from his book to see a girl coming toward 
 him through the trees. 
 
 HE woke to a sunshine which made him feel that, 
 at least, he was still in the old familiar world, though 
 in such a bewilder ingly new part of it; and he woke 
 to find Pittsey already planning their housekeeping 
 with an almost "bridal enthusiasm," as he himself 
 said. 
 
 That enthusiasm carried them through the remainder 
 of the week undepressed by the size of the city which 
 they had undertaken to carry by assault. It found 
 them three rooms on the top floor of an old brown- 
 stone house that had once been a family residence, in 
 one of those streets leading into Fifth Avenue which 
 have long since been overtaken by the encroachments 
 of the business district. A barber had the basement. 
 A publisher of cheap music occupied the ground floor.
 
 178 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 Modistes and milliners crowded the second story. At 
 the rear of the top floor, there were two rooms, lit 
 with skylights and a dark kitchen the size of a pantry 
 to be had for $24 a month. These had once been 
 studios, but the whole house had fallen into disrepair, 
 its artistic tenants had abandoned it, and the owner 
 was holding it and its neighbors for sale to any specu 
 lator who might wish to pull it down and put a 
 modern office building on the site. He let the boys 
 have the "top floor rear" on condition that they agree 
 to accept two weeks notice to leave at any moment. 
 "Three times eight are twenty-four," Pittsey calcu 
 lated. "It suits us to the fraction of a cent." 
 
 The rooms are not very large, Conroy said doubt 
 fully. 
 
 "They re not large enough for exercise, that s 
 certain," Pittsey replied. "But they build them small 
 in New York to leave more room for exercise out of 
 doors." And the joke served to carry them over a 
 doleful examination of their poverty-stricken apart 
 ment. 
 
 The stairs, as they went down, were bare as far as 
 the next landing. Below, they were slippery with a 
 worn linoleum. The last flight was more prosperously 
 covered with a new cocoa matting. "It looks like the 
 gradual reappearance of vegetation in a descent of 
 the Alps," Pittsey laughed. They had to laugh with 
 him. 
 
 They swept up the plaster of a fallen ceiling in the 
 rear room, mopped the uneven floor, and scraped the 
 dirt from the windows until Pittsey stopped them. 
 ("Be economical," he said. "If you take that stuff
 
 THE IDEALIST 179 
 
 off, we 11 have to buy blinds.") They shopped to 
 gether in department stores and the "emporiums" 
 of second-hand furniture, buying three camp cots 
 for $1.87 each, a dining-room table for $3.00, four 
 kitchen chairs- "one for company" at 75 cents each, 
 cotton blankets, excelsior mattresses, cotton-batting 
 comfortables, blue china dishes, knives and forks with 
 wooden handles, kitchen utensils of tin, some hanging 
 shelves for their library and a blank book for keeping 
 accounts "on a basis of three." They celebrated their 
 house-warming with a dinner of potatoes boiled in their 
 "jackets," steak served in the pan in which it had 
 been fried, fresh bread and a pat of butter in the 
 grocer s wooden dish. They ate from a spread of news 
 papers in lieu of a table-cloth. And they laughed so 
 heartily at Pittsey s foolery that he had to warn them 
 to be careful. ("Don t raise the roof. More of that 
 ceiling will be coming down on us.") 
 
 It was not until Conroy lit his pipe that the sub 
 ject in the background of all their thoughts was 
 brought out into the conversation. "Well," he said, 
 "to-morrow we start to look for work. What are you 
 going to do, Pitt?" 
 
 "Me? I m going to start a newspaper article for 
 a Saturday supplement on Camping Out in New 
 York City. How about you?" 
 
 Conroy reddened. "I think I know enough about 
 the governor s business to be able to get something all 
 right. What are you going to do, Don?" 
 
 Don answered, truthfully: "I don t know. I 
 have n t decided yet." 
 
 The fact of the matter was that his knowledge of
 
 180 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 the working world was so vague and his qualifications 
 for any position in it so uncertain that a decision was 
 impossible. There was plenty of work to be had; that 
 was evident from the number of advertisements of 
 "Help Wanted Male" in the morning papers. He 
 had made secret notes of several possibilities: a busi 
 ness "concern" needed a man to manage a shop, "ex 
 perience unnecessary," salary "to begin" $20 a week; 
 a large wholesale firm needed a man of education to 
 act as secretary, salary $25 a week; a dozen employ 
 ment agencies on Sixth Avenue advertised, in chalk, 
 on blackboards beside their doors, for household serv 
 ants, clerks and stenographers, hotel help and private 
 secretaries. He shrank from the personal servitude 
 which most of these vacancies required; he hoped to 
 find some man of large affairs, like his uncle, who 
 needed an honest and faithful young deputy to at 
 tend to the minor details of business management 
 which the head of the house might be unable to over 
 see personally. He was assured of one thing: no 
 matter what his need, he would accept no position in 
 which Margaret could be ashamed to find him. 
 
 All his thoughts of her had some such tinge of 
 defensive bitterness. He would work out his own 
 salvation, unassisted by the encouragement which he 
 had hoped to have from her. He would see to it that 
 she should have no cause to be glad of her desertion of 
 him. He would work for her and wait for her, but 
 he would never tell her so, again. 
 
 "Well," Pittsey said, "let s see where we stand." 
 He cleared a place on the table for the account book
 
 THE IDEALIST 181 
 
 and added up their expenditures. Their furnishing 
 had cost them $12 each; the supply of food in their 
 larder, $3.10; their month s rent, $8 each; their 
 deposit to the gas company, $5; tips and sundries, 
 $1.25. "There you are! For less than twenty-five 
 dollars each, we re set up for life rent paid for a 
 month and money out at interest with the gas company. 
 And unless we get gold-bricked we can live, now, for 
 $3 a week each. ... eh ? " he crowed. How s yon for 
 management ? 
 
 Don was making a rapid calculation that he had 
 enough money of his own to keep him for six months 
 at least. Conroy had laid a ten-dollar bill beside his 
 plate and was searching his pockets for more. "What 
 the dickens," he muttered in his pipe. "I must have 
 lost-" 
 
 Pittsey enjoyed the situation. "I know! I know the 
 feeling. Where did it go, eh? Where did it go? 
 Refrain: But what has become of last year s snow? 
 I 11 write a ballad for one of the weekly comics on 
 it. He made a note on the back of an envelope from 
 his pocket. 
 
 "That s all right, Con," Donald put in. "I 11 
 carry your proportion until you get things going." 
 
 They repaid Pittsey what he had expended for them. 
 He accepted it jocularly. "Now, I m the chef, you 
 know," he said, "but you two have to wash up. Get 
 to work. We re going out to see the sights of a great 
 city, as soon as you ve finished. 
 
 "You go, Don," Conroy said. "I 11 clean up here." 
 They looked at him, surprised. He had an expression
 
 182 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 of nervous despondence. "I m tired," he explained, 
 hastily. "I d sooner go to bed early." 
 
 And Don understood that the fear of the city, 
 against which he himself had been fighting, had found 
 Conroy the weaker in spite of his greater physical 
 strength. 
 
 DON went out alone in the morning Conroy ex 
 cusing himself with the plea that he had some letters 
 to write and he proceeded first to the address of a 
 mining company that had advertised for an educated 
 young man to do desk work. It was a glorious May 
 morning, warm with sunlight and cool with a light 
 breeze; and the crowded pavements were noisy with 
 a joyful activity that seemed to move to the gay tunes 
 of street pianos, as inspiringly as an army on the 
 march. That immense jocundity, which sparkles in 
 the clean air of Manhattan on such days, inspired 
 Don as it inspired the facetious truck-drivers and 
 cab-men abusing each other in a jam of traffic, 
 the good-natured policeman who separated them, the 
 smiling pedestrians who dodged under the horses 
 heads, the loiterers who paused on the curb to grin 
 and comment, the shrill street gamin, the eager men 
 and women hurrying by on the walks with side 
 glances of amusement all the bustling life of that 
 thronged island which seems to catch from its sea 
 breezes some of the recklessness that makes sailors so 
 irresponsible, so apparently care-free, so good-natured 
 in spite of their obscure toil and the uncertainty of 
 their fates.
 
 THE IDEALIST 183 
 
 Don walked with a light step, watching the busy 
 activities of which he felt himself a part, as pleased 
 as a recruit enrolled among veterans and willing to 
 accept the hardships of the campaigns of labor as 
 gaily as they. After all, this was life; this was the 
 work-field of civilization, where labor sowed and 
 sweated ; this was the place for a man to be not back 
 there, among the college loiterers of culture, discuss 
 ing the crops. He swung into Broadway with his 
 head high, looking for the number of the office build 
 ing where he was to begin his service. It was good 
 to be a useful member of society; it gave a man dig 
 nity and assurance. Whatever the object and mean 
 ing of life might be whatever the port to which all 
 this bustle was hastening it was a man s duty to 
 pull on his oar with his fellows below on the benches, 
 not to loaf on deck vainly studying the impenetrable 
 mists that surrounded him. 
 
 He mounted the stone steps of his building and 
 passed between red granite pillars into a hall of tiles 
 and mosaics. A semi-circle of elevators sucked in and 
 poured out two trickling streams of passengers coming 
 and going. A young man in a braided blue uniform 
 gave them the word to start, with a curt c Three ! . . . 
 Go on, Seven! . . . One!" 
 
 Don asked him: "What floor is the Phoenix Com 
 pany on?" 
 
 He dismissed another car before he replied : There s 
 about steen hundred of you fellahs up there already, 
 all after one job. You could n t get out of the cage if 
 you went up. You might s well go an chase yourself
 
 184 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 around the block for an hour or two till they kill a few 
 million of them off. Go ahead, Nine ! 
 
 Don hesitated said meekly, "Thanks" and went 
 out. 
 
 The roar of traffic greeted him with a new note of 
 busy indifference. He stood on the lowest step of the 
 entrance undecided which way to turn, until a mes 
 senger boy bumped him from behind, mischievously, 
 and sent him into the current of passers-by. He was 
 carried down the street to an eddy at the corner. 
 There he took out his notes of "Help Wanted," obliv 
 ious to the "Pulish, sir? Pulish?" of a bootblack 
 whose chairs were under the shelter of an awning 
 beside him. He found the address of the business 
 "concern" that needed a man to manage its shop; and 
 having inquired the way of the insistent polisher, he 
 set out again more soberly. 
 
 The business "concern" proved to be the basement 
 workshop of a little foreigner, in varnish-stained apron 
 and soiled shirt-sleeves, who renovated furniture and 
 sold "antiques." He explained eagerly that he had 
 invented and patented a new process of "tufting" 
 upholstery, and he needed a man to push the patent 
 for him while he was busy in the shop. He expatiated, 
 in a confused but animated dialect, on the money- 
 making possibilities of his machine, puffing out his 
 cheeks and waving his hands. Of course, he would 
 have to have a guarantee. . . . When Don, at last, 
 understood that the needed "manager" was expected 
 to put "fife hundered" dollars into the patent, he 
 merely shook his head and left the man gesticulating.
 
 THE IDEALIST 185 
 
 The sun was hot. His heels were sore with the 
 jarring of the flagstone sidewalks. He went despond 
 ently back through interminable and noisy streets, to 
 the next address in his notes; and he was glad to sit 
 in an outer office there, among a score of other ap 
 plicants for the vacancy, until his turn should come 
 to enter to the manager. Some of his rivals were as 
 young as he, but dressed with a cheap smartness, their 
 trousers turned up at the ankles stylishly, their col 
 lars high above "puff" ties that concealed the absence 
 of a starched shirtfront. Some were older men, piti 
 ably meek and patient in their expressions and their 
 attitudes, neat with the neatness of poverty that tries 
 to maintain a good appearance in clothes brushed 
 threadbare. Some were stolid youths, in bagged and 
 wrinkled trousers, in shoes worn down at the heel, 
 frankly poor and indifferent to it. One was a con 
 sumptive with an echoing cough which he tried to 
 cover, mechanically, behind the long fingers of his 
 clerk s hand, his eyes fixed on the blank wall that 
 faced him, apparently unconscious of the hollow up 
 roar which burst from him with an irritating fre 
 quency on the silence. 
 
 The manager appeared suddenly at the door, over 
 the shoulders of a rejected applicant, and announced 
 with exasperation : Now, there s no use your waiting 
 here if you have n t had experience. We want an 
 experienced man. I told you that before. And you 
 must have references. I 11 not take anyone without 
 good references." 
 
 Don took up his hat and withdrew apologetically.
 
 186 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 He went back to the rooms for luncheon, dragging 
 his steps. A street piano tried to cheer him ; he saw 
 the perspiration on the face of the lean Italian woman 
 who strained at the crank. 
 
 II 
 
 HE received a letter from Margaret, that afternoon, 
 and he read it standing in the portico of the General 
 Post Office, where the traffic of Park Bow meets the 
 traffic of Broadway, in a brawling of cross-currents 
 over worn paving stones, at the bottom of a canyon 
 of high buildings; and with that noise in his ears, 
 pressing upon him the sense of the struggle in which 
 he was engaged, he read her accusations, her defense 
 and her apology blankly, word after word, feeling 
 that it was all an old matter of which he had lost the 
 emotion. He took, with relief, the news that she was 
 going abroad for the summer, with her mother; it 
 would give him time to find his feet" in New York. 
 He missed a hint that Mrs. Richardson s investments 
 had been ill-advised and unprofitable, and that the 
 cheaper living in Germany where the study of music 
 might be continued would be welcome to her. He 
 put the letter in an outer pocket, with his newspaper, 
 and tore open an envelop from his father. 
 
 Mr. Gregg informed him, briefly, that his action 
 had been a cause of great grief to his mother; that
 
 THE IDEALIST 187 
 
 it was unreasonable, without excuse, and rash ; that his 
 home was waiting for him whenever he wished to re 
 turn to it, but that he should have no assistance if 
 he remained away. "I can scarcely believe," he wrote, 
 "that a son of mine will prefer to live on the charity 
 of relatives. A good position can be obtained for you 
 in Coulton. If, at any time, you desire to come back 
 to it, and have not funds, write to me and I shall be 
 glad to forward you your railroad ticket." 
 
 Don tore up the letter and tossed it into the gutter 
 as he crossed the street. No! He was launched. 
 Coulton and the past had already dropped below the 
 horizon behind him. And he could not hope to have 
 Margaret with him again until he reached that shore 
 of his destiny which was still so distant, so uncertain, 
 so far beyond sight of fancy even. He knew that the 
 voyage was not going to be plain sailing in a fair 
 wind; there would be calms and storms and all the 
 delays and accidents of life. But some day, of course, 
 he would arrive; and then (he thought), looking back 
 at the hardships and the despairs, how sorry he should 
 be that they were done with, and how proud that he 
 had . weathered them, and how amused to remember 
 that he had almost given up hope under them, that 
 it had seemed impossible they could ever come to an 
 end, that he had longed for this peaceful conclusion 
 which was now so tame a day compared with the ad 
 venturous struggles that had brought him to it. 
 
 IN that mood he continued his unsuccessful search 
 for employment. Learning the need of "references,"
 
 188 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 he wrote to his uncle and to the Dean of the Uni 
 versity, and received the conventional replies. But 
 these were of no avail to introduce him to work for 
 which he had no particular qualifications, in a city 
 of which he had had no experience, over rivals who 
 had none of his shamefacedness and who elbowed him 
 out of the way with a pushing self-assertion that made 
 him blush for them. He answered every likely ad 
 vertisement and registered with three different em 
 ployment agencies that accepted his $2 fee one day 
 and appeared to have forgotten him on the morrow; 
 and he clung to his hopes with a doggedness that 
 would not admit discouragement. But he became sore 
 with a sort of sulky pride, refusing to unbend to the 
 degrading necessities of his situation; and he made 
 his applications for work as haughtily as a shop-girl 
 who has been asked to show samples and who answers 
 all her customer s inquiries laconically, with a studied 
 indifference. 
 
 Meanwhile, Conroy had become morosely apathetic. 
 He sat in their rooms smoking at a window that 
 looked out on dead walls. He wrote letters to which 
 he never seemed to get any replies. He went out 
 silently, and after being on the streets for hours he 
 came back to his meals tired but without any appetite ; 
 and in conversation with Pittsey, he betrayed an idler s 
 acquaintance with the sights of the waterfront 
 and the Ghetto. He accepted money from Don un 
 happily, unable to meet his cousin s eyes; and he tried 
 to make himself useful by doing more than his share 
 of the housework, by washing the dishes when the 
 other boys were out, and by bringing Italian cheeses
 
 THE IDEALIST 189 
 
 and Chinese preserves back with him from his long 
 absences. Once he bought a bottle of liquid polish 
 and blackened the gas stove. 
 
 In spite of Pittsey s efforts to keep up a cheerful 
 spirit in the apartment, their meals became "lugubri 
 ous feeds" as he complained. "What s wrong with 
 you two?" he remonstrated. "Here you are, seeing 
 New York inexpensively, with all the comforts of 
 home! And you re down in the mouth because a 
 Wall street millionaire has n t offered you a partner 
 ship and a private yacht. What do you expect ? Look 
 at me. If I went to Newspaper Row asking for work, 
 I d never get past the office boys at the doors. But 
 if I send in an article through the mail, and an editor 
 likes it, I get a little check. If I do it again, I have 
 an introduction to Mr. Editor. I keep it up. In six 
 months I begin to ask for a place on the staff. You 
 two start by asking for the place first, and give up 
 hope when the office boy says Nothin doin . What 
 do you expect? Miracles? Don t be so blamed un 
 reasonable. You re not the heroes of a novel, you 
 know; impossibilities are n t going to happen to you 
 just to help out the plot !" 
 
 He was rolling out cracker crumbs with a milk 
 bottle preparatory to baking a dish of what he called 
 "tomato slush." Conroy was cleaning smelts with a 
 penknife. Don was laying the table. 
 
 Conroy said: "Oh, you re all right. You have 
 something to sell. I have nothing and I *m in debt." 
 
 "You need n t worry about that," Don put in. 
 "The money s as much yours as mine." 
 
 "How? . . How is it?"
 
 190 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 "Well I ve saved it out of what I borrowed from 
 Aunt Jane, this winter." 
 
 " Yes, but it s yours. You borrowed it." He tossed 
 a smelt into the pan, with a resigned bitterness. They 
 refuse to lend me a cent." 
 
 Don, his ears tingling, pretended to be silently ab 
 sorbed in the setting of the table; he foresaw some 
 of the difficulties that would develop out of this 
 situation in which his uncle had placed him, and he 
 disliked the double part which he would have to play. 
 His life seemed to him to be becoming confusingly 
 complex, with this duplicity in his relation with Con- 
 roy and with the difficulty of obtaining work by a 
 straightforward application for it. Pittsey s insidious 
 pursuit of a place on a newspaper seemed to him too 
 patiently crafty. There was something degrading in 
 such a crawling policy. 
 
 This was of a piece with the Quixotism which had 
 kept him going, day after day, to old Mr. Vandever, the 
 philanthropic agent of an anonymous millionaire, who 
 was in need of a private secretary according to Mr. 
 Vandever and who had commissioned Mr. Vandever, 
 among other things, to find a suitable young man for 
 the position. Don had watched a score of other ap 
 plicants for the place file from the waiting-room into 
 Mr. Vandever s office, not to reappear; but when he 
 followed, in his turn, he was received by that benev 
 olent old gentleman with a quick smile of relief 
 that was an unspoken acceptance of him as the single 
 likely applicant among all these impossible ones. 
 When he had given up his $3 registration fee "which
 
 THE IDEALIST 191 
 
 was unfortunately necessary in order to pay office 
 rent" he went out a side door warmed by the mild 
 kindliness of Mr. Vandever s manner, touched by the 
 charming tenderness of his old smile, and hopeful 
 with the assurance that his application would be suc 
 cessful "without doubt without reasonable doubt." 
 Mr. Vandever would write to him. When no letter 
 came, and two subsequent calls failed to carry him 
 past the girl who had her desk beside the outer door 
 but showed him the office still crowded in response 
 to the advertisement which still stood in the morning 
 papers he refused to credit the suspicion which he 
 could not help but feel. For if an old man, genial, 
 educated, fine-mannered, sweet-faced and silvery- 
 haired, could be a thief and a hypocrite, then the 
 whole world could be a gigantic swindle, there could 
 be no faith in anyone, and the sunlight on the streets 
 would be a gilding of depravity to make the heart sick. 
 Don could not believe it ; or, rather, instinctively, he 
 would not. He preferred to keep his faith in his kind. 
 When his last call found Mr. Vandever s office to let, 
 he went away without asking any questions, for fear 
 that he might hear something shameful. 
 
 "Besides," Pittsey went on dipping the smelts in 
 milk and rolling them in flour "this is the beginning 
 of the summer, the dull season. Every firm in town 
 is laying off men. You should get your hooks into 
 something now, and be ready to land it in the fall . . . 
 Here, Donald MacDonald, get to work and make us 
 some toast. Do you know which side of the bread to 
 brown ?
 
 192 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 "No," Don answered simply. 
 
 Both sides. Pittsey laughed. You re the poor 
 est pair of kitchen apprentices I ever saw." He 
 bustled around, with the deftness of a restaurant 
 waiter, adding forgotten dishes to the table, watching 
 the "tomato slush" browning in the oven, or turning 
 his smelts in the sputtering frying pan. "Cut your 
 bread thicker," he directed Don. "Your toast will 
 be as dry as cinders . . . Go out and buy us the squeeze 
 of a lemon," he ordered Conroy. "Three for five, 
 they should be. I d make you a fish sauce, if I had 
 a recipe . . . When I graduate out of newspaper work 
 into literature, the first book I write will be a cook 
 book. Butter the size of an egg. He dropped a 
 slice of it into his frying pan. "That s how the 
 common cook books put it. And you re supposed 
 to know it was a hen and not an ostrich that laid the 
 egg! I 11 change all that . . . Not on the top, you 
 clam! Your toast will taste like a gasometer. Do 
 it in the lower oven, on the broiler. Put it up close 
 to the flame." 
 
 The walls of the shabby dining-room had been cov 
 ered with posters, gathered by the enterprising Pittsey 
 from news-stands and book-shops. Between the win 
 dows where a leaking roof had discolored the plaster 
 he had tacked up a collection of printed "letters 
 of rejection" which had come to him, with returned 
 manuscripts, from newspaper offices and the editors 
 of magazines. Don s student lamp lit the table, with 
 its "print table-cloth" (as Pittsey called the spread 
 of newspapers), its sugar in a tobacco tin, its milk
 
 THE IDEALIST 193 
 
 in a bottle, its "poorhouse" dishes and its unpainted 
 kitchen chairs. But the place had come to have a 
 home-like and familiar look to Don; and it had, for 
 him, a tone of youthful defiance of adversity that 
 was loudest in Pittsey s contemptuous display of the 
 editor s regrets that they had not found his contribu 
 tions "available." 
 
 Having put his bread in the oven, Don stood before 
 these letters with the smile which they always encour 
 aged in him. He wished that he might add to them 
 similar letters from all the offices at which he had 
 applied for work; they would fill the wall! When 
 Pittsey became famous as he would, of course, some 
 day what a comment on editorial incapacity this col 
 lection would be! 
 
 Pittsey put his head in the door. "Excuse me for 
 intruding, King Alfred," he said, "but I thought you 
 might like to know that your toast s in flames. 
 
 III 
 
 DON found no work that he could do. Conroy, 
 obviously, was no longer even looking for any. And 
 when Pittsey at last sold a "special" to a Saturday 
 "supplement," the sight of his $8 check received in 
 the morning mail and produced triumphantly at the 
 breakfast table was like the first nugget to a camp 
 of despairing prospectors. "Money!" he gloated. 
 "Eight of them! Hully Gee, look at it, boys! The 
 
 13
 
 194 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 real thing! Would you cash it or have it framed? 
 The Nassau National. Do you suppose they re good 
 for it?" 
 
 The others were smiling doubtfully, between pleas 
 ure in his success and envy of it. He understood the 
 expression. "There s millions where that came 
 from," he said, "and all you need is a pen to dig out 
 some. Why don t you get after it? Why don t you 
 write up the adventures of a poor but honest young 
 man looking for a job in a great, big city, eh?" 
 
 There was no reason why they did not except, per 
 haps, that they could not. 
 
 "Give ovah!" Pittsey retorted. "Any man can 
 write if he only abandons his mind to it. Get a pad 
 of fresh white paper and let yourself go. You might 
 as well be doing something while you re not refusing 
 applications for your valuable services down town. 
 Try it." 
 
 They tried it. Conroy gave it up after a morning 
 spent biting the end of his pen-handle, his face as 
 blank as his paper; he was, apparently, too home-sick 
 and dispirited to have a thought of anything else. 
 Don persisted, tutored by Pittsey, who groaned in 
 private over the stilted English and the philosophic 
 stodginess of his pupil s work. "Put some ginger into 
 it," he counseled. "This is as tame as if you d 
 written it for old Cotton. A newspaper does n t want 
 a not-only-but-also thesis on the subject. It wants 
 some facts. If you have n t any, make some up. You 
 might have written this without ever seeing New York 
 or an employment agency. Are n t some of them 
 fakes some of these agencies?"
 
 THE IDEALIST 195 
 
 Don said he did not know. He objected that he did 
 not wish to write himself up his own experiences. 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "I don t know." 
 
 The fact was as Pittsey slowly learned Don had 
 an obstinate delicacy that shrank from putting any 
 of his own emotions into print. He could not look 
 into his heart and write, as the poet directed. He 
 wrote, as he would talk to a stranger, in generalities, 
 "in twaddle" as Pittsey complained, with a masculine 
 reticence in all things that concerned himself. 
 
 "Well, go ahead," Pittsey said, at last. "Do it 
 your own way." 
 
 He went ahead for three weeks, without a glimmer 
 of encouragement and really without a chance of suc 
 cess. And then he confessed, blushing: "Anyway, I 
 don t see the use of writing stuff like this. I don t 
 see why anyone should care to read it. It does n t 
 really mean anything to anybody, does it?" 
 
 "It s one way of earning a living," Pittsey 
 countered. 
 
 "I know, but Well, if a man s really working, 
 if he s only sawing wood or cleaning the streets or 
 driving a wagon, he s doing something that has to 
 be done. He s helping things along the world, you 
 know civilization. He s " 
 
 Pittsey interrupted him with high laughter. 
 "Well, you are a joke! You re the funniest ever! 
 Let the world get along any way it pleases. It s your 
 getting along that concerns you." 
 
 "Yes, I know," Don mumbled, "but I don t care. 
 It does n t seem worth while to me."
 
 196 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 "Don t do it, then!" 
 
 Well, perhaps I would, if I could. I don t know . . . 
 I can t, anyway." 
 
 "Have you found anything better?" 
 
 Don shook his head. "What s Con doing? Does 
 he ever tell you?" 
 
 Pittsey made a significant movement of his hand to 
 his lips, throwing back his head. 
 
 Don whispered, aghast: "Drinking?" 
 
 Pittsey nodded, with a tolerant smile for Don s 
 blindness. "Don t tell him I told you. He s lost 
 his nerve." 
 
 IT was late that evening. Pittsey had gone to gather 
 material for an article on "Amateur s Night" in a 
 Bowery theatre. Conroy had been sitting beside the 
 dining table for hours, smoking sourly, his feet on a 
 chair before him and his eyes fixed on the toes of his 
 shoes. Don had been preparing to speak to him, cover 
 ing his irresolution by pretending to write a letter while 
 he was trying to make up his mind how to begin. 
 
 He had asked : Found anything to do, Con ? Con 
 roy had grunted: "Not a d thing." And there 
 
 was no more to be said of that matter. 
 
 Ten minutes later, he had asked: "Heard anything 
 from home?" And Conroy had answered, in the same 
 tone as before: "Not a d word." 
 
 Don scratched perfunctorily at the letter which, he 
 knew, he would have to destroy. "Have you written 
 to them?" he asked. 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Why not?"
 
 THE IDEALIST 197 
 
 "Why should I?" 
 
 "Don t you think they d like to hear from you?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 Conroy did not answer. 
 
 Don put down his pen, too nervous to hold it. "You 
 know," he said, "Uncle John asked me to look after 
 you here. He d like to know how you re getting on. 
 
 "Write and tell him then," Conroy replied bitterly. 
 "He ought to be glad to hear." 
 
 "What 11 I tell him?" 
 
 "Tell him what you blame well please." 
 
 Don swallowed. "That you re drinking still?" 
 
 His voice went dry on the last word. The silence 
 stood staring at him, holding its breath. 
 
 Conroy s head turned slowly, his jaws shut on his 
 pipe. His eyes caught the glow from the lamp and 
 glistened with two danger signals of light in his white 
 face. "What do you mean by that?" 
 
 It was too late to draw back. Don arranged his 
 sheets of note-paper with a hand that in some way re 
 minded him of his father s. Then he said, in a tense 
 steadiness : "He blamed me for not writing him, at col 
 lege, about you. I promised him I d write here. He 
 let you come, on that condition that I d look after 
 you, and let him know how you were getting on." 
 
 Conroy flamed up : " You mind your own business. 
 
 "That s my business." 
 
 "No, it is n t! It is n t yours and it is n t his! He 
 threw me off without a cent to starve if I liked 
 down here. W T hat do 1 care about him ?
 
 198 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 No, he did n t. He said he wanted to give you your 
 chance not to take you home like a whipped cur " 
 
 "Who s a whipped cur?" he shouted. 
 
 Don shouted back at him : He said he did n t want 
 you to be a whipped cur! I told him those fellows at 
 college had led you into it the trouble. You said so 
 yourself. Now, here you are, doing the same thing 
 again. 
 
 "You re a liar!" 
 
 "Well, I m not going to lie to him. I m not going 
 to be responsible for you if you drink." 
 
 "You sneak! It s the money, is it? You want to 
 get rid of me to save the miserable dollar a week you ve 
 been doling out to me. If it had n t been for me, you d 
 never have had it to lend." 
 
 Don, his anger exhausted, felt himself oppressed with 
 a great weariness, buffeted in this ignoble quarrel. He 
 put his hands up to his temples, his elbows on the table, 
 gone dumb. 
 
 Conroy went on, crazily: "You need n t be afraid. 
 I 11 pay you back some way. If I don t, you can 
 make out your bill and collect it from mother. 
 
 Don did not reply. 
 
 "Who said I was drinking? What concern is it of 
 yours or his if I am? Why does n t he do some 
 thing to help me along, if he s so blamed anxious about 
 me ? If you d been chucked out, without a cent, in a 
 place where you could n t get a thing to do, you d want 
 something too, to to keep yourself up." 
 
 "You re not without a cent. I 11 give you all the 
 money you want, if you 11 promise not to spend it 
 that way."
 
 THE IDEALIST 199 
 
 Conroy checked his fury, to cry, contemptuously: 
 "Where 11 you get it?" 
 
 Oh, I 11 get it. . . All he wanted was to give you 
 your chance. You would n t have gone back to Coul- 
 ton. You were coming to New York, yourself. Now 
 that he let you come, this is the way you behave ! 
 
 "Is he sending you money for me ? 
 
 "I 11 not tell you." 
 
 "Why did n t you tell me before? Why did you 
 pretend you were lending it to me?" 
 
 "I did n t. I told you it was as much yours as 
 mine." 
 
 "He is sending it." 
 
 You ought to be ashamed of yourself. When every 
 one s trying to help you to to You ought to be 
 ashamed. 
 
 Conroy flung out: "I don t see that you re doing 
 such a lot. You have n t earned a cent yourself." 
 
 "No, but I ve tried to." 
 
 "Well, have n t /? Have n t /?" 
 
 "You re not trying to lately." 
 
 Ah ! Conroy threw out his hands with a snarl of 
 despair. "What s the use? I m down and everyone 
 kicks me ! They won t give me anything to do. Why 
 should they ? I don t know how to do anything. I ve 
 made a mess of my life. He choked up, boyishly. 
 
 "You re not any worse off than I am," Don said, 
 "and I have n t given up. Not by a good deal! I 11 
 stick to it if it comes to selling lead pencils on the 
 street corner. . . . Besides, you can go home at Christ 
 mas, to your father s office, if you wish to. You have
 
 200 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 him behind you, now, if you 11 only show him that 
 you Heavens ! He looked out at his own future 
 that was yet to be made out of nothing, with his own 
 hands. Tf I only had your chance ! 
 
 They were silent. Conroy smoked with a vehemence 
 that subsided to a more thoughtful puffing of his pipe 
 as he calmed down to reason. Don gloomed over the 
 squares and circles which he was drawing on his blotter 
 in a bitter idleness of mind. He recalled his father s 
 phrase "the charity of relatives"; Conroy had brought 
 the meaning of it home to him. Heretofore, he had 
 had no thought of the money; he had been working to 
 make himself a place in the world that would be fit to 
 ask her to share with him; and he had accepted these 
 "loans" from his aunt and his uncle as he would have 
 accepted their good wishes. Now he faced the need of 
 paying them back, of freeing himself from Conroy s 
 reproach, of earning, immediately, enough to make him 
 self independent. 
 
 Conroy interrupted, in contrition: "Say, Don, don t 
 write to him that I ve been I 11 start out to-morrow 
 morning, and find something if if I have to beg 
 for it." 
 
 Don did not reply. He had himself arrived at the 
 same resolve. 
 
 IV 
 
 THE first heat of the New York summer had begun to 
 oppress the dry streets with an intolerable glare of
 
 THE IDEALIST 201 
 
 sun all day and a stifling sluggishness of exhausted air 
 all night ; and Don dragged himself from office to office 
 in his heavy clothing, in his sun-greened felt hat, in 
 his burning winter shoes pale and spiritless. Every 
 one in the city seemed to be short-tempered ; the motor- 
 men of the cable cars, in their hot uniforms, stamped 
 on the ringers of their gongs; the drivers lashed 
 their horses with whips that cracked angrily in the 
 fierce light; the crowds on the sidewalks pushed and 
 fretted under the scant shade of shop-front awnings. 
 It was the time of year when the police records of 
 spring suicides begin to fall off, and the tenement house 
 murders take their places on the sergeants "blotters." 
 
 Don went, jostled and elbowed, up Broadway to Mad 
 ison Square, drawn by the sight of green leaves ahead of 
 him. The working world no longer contented itself 
 with merely ignoring him ; it had turned on him irrita 
 bly and shouldered him out of its way into the gutter, 
 lie stopped at a print-shop window attracted by a snow 
 scene that reminded him of Canada a picture of a 
 dejected wolf on a hill-top looking down, over the 
 drifts, on a little village with lighted windows, the 
 smoke of kitchen chimneys rising straight and still in 
 the frozen air. And Don understood the sneaking 
 droop of that wolf s lean shoulders, and sympathized 
 with it. 
 
 He crossed to the benches under the trees, to sit 
 among the flotsam of the streets, among the idlers and 
 vagabonds who gather into these stagnant pools of 
 Broadway traffic. He turned his back on the activities 
 of the pavement and the sight of all those fortunate
 
 202 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 beings who had cause to be impatient and in haste. He 
 looked at the grass and the leaves, and at the fountain 
 that danced and sparkled mechanically in its pool of 
 water lilies, like something imprisoned there and 
 trained. He remembered his ravine in Coulton and the 
 little water-fall that chuckled over its stones. 
 
 He did not notice a man who passed and repassed him 
 with keen glances, studying his clothes, his shoes, his 
 general air of limp discouragement. But he awoke 
 with a start when this stranger sat down on the bench 
 beside him so heavily that the whole seat jarred; and 
 when the man opened his newspaper and turned to the 
 page of "want ads," Don read the list out of the end 
 of his eye, with the involuntary interest of the unem 
 ployed. "Never seem to get any less," the man said 
 good-naturedly. 
 
 Don looked away, ashamed of having betrayed him 
 self. 
 
 "I s pose they re like that ev ry day in the year," 
 he went on. And when Don did not speak, he added : 
 "I know it s over a year since / looked at em an 
 there was just as many then." He glanced around at 
 Don with a cheerful impudence, and Don nodded. He 
 had colorless eyes under heavy eyebrows; his cheek and 
 chin were blue-black with close shaving. "Yes," he 
 said, dropping his paper to his knee, over a year ago ! 
 I was on the rocks, fer fair sittin down in Union 
 Square with no more backbone than a string o fish 
 readin those ads without expectin to find any thin fer 
 me either." He laughed. "I might ve been readin 
 them yet fer all the good it d a done me. That s
 
 THE IDEALIST 203 
 
 the hell of it in this town. Yuh re on the other side o 
 the fence, lookin at the apples. Yuh can look at em 
 till yer eyes drop out, if yuh don t get a lift over the 
 pickets. 
 
 Don turned again. The man was smiling thoughtfully 
 at the fountain. "An oF frien o mine came along 
 an says: What re yuh doin , Jim? Doin ? I says. 
 Doin nothin ! Carryin the banner ! Poun in the 
 sidewalks ! He says Hell ! he says Why don t yuh 
 get to work? Why? I says. Why don t I? Cause 
 I can t. That s the why! Cause there don t seem to 
 be any work to get? Been to see oF Whitten? he 
 asks me. Whitten ? I says. No ! Who s Whitten ? He 
 does n t say a word. He jus crooks his finger at me. 
 Come along, he says. I 11 put yuh wise. 
 
 He pushed back his hat impatiently. "That s the 
 hell o this town. There s lots o jobs lookin fer 
 young fullahs that re on the square. The trouble is 
 the employers don t know how to find em. This oF 
 guy s a sort o religious crank, an whenever he can 
 pick up a young fullah that s out o work an goin to 
 the dogs, he puts him in the first place that s open. A 
 lot o the best bus ness houses take their han s from 
 him. Yuh see he makes in-quiries an knows his men. 
 It ain t charity either. He makes the office pay fer 
 itself by chargin five dollars. But hell, what s five 
 dollars when yuh get a good thing at fifteen a 
 
 Don broke in, clutching at the opportunity, in a 
 trembling haste: "Do you think I m I m out of 
 work. I d pay him anything. I" 
 
 The man turned with a slow grin that brought the
 
 204 DON-A-DKEAMS 
 
 blood to Don s face. "Well, I m d d! How did 
 
 I come to tell y about it! Well, I m d d!" He 
 
 showed tobacco-stained teeth in a wrinkled smile. "I 
 tell yuh what I 11 do: I 11 take y over to his joint 
 an 1 give y a knock-down to him, eh ? " 
 
 Don s shame passed in a gratitude that swelled in 
 his throat speechlessly. He heard the man say "over 
 on Twelf street, near Sixt Avenuh." They rose to 
 gether. 
 
 The stranger was short and sturdy, with a leg that 
 bowed out behind him, at the calf, like the blade of a 
 sickle; and he walked on his heels, his hands in his 
 trousers pockets, his hat slanted down on his puckered 
 eyes. He talked breezily. Don went in silence, tall 
 beside him, his immature shoulders sloping from his 
 thin neck, his head erect, vacantly smiling. The noises 
 of the street beat around him unheard. A myriad of 
 woman-shoppers rushed back and forth below him. His 
 starved hopes were gorging themselves in a blind greed- 
 iness that saw nothing but their food. 
 
 The man was saying: "Well, it s a great place, ain t 
 it? Get yer start here an rise to any thin any thin ! 
 Get yer start, that s all! It s worth any thin to get 
 yer start. It s a reg lar gold mine, once yuh get yer 
 pick into it. He looked at Don, as if suspicious of his 
 silence. Don appeared to be wistfully studying the 
 faces of the women as they passed. "Girls too," he 
 laughed. "Good-lookers at that! Get yer money an 
 take yer choice. An they dress to do yuh proud. Get 
 yer start, that s all. . . Got any recommends? 
 Eh? Any letters from yer las job?"
 
 THE IDEALIST 205 
 
 Don explained that he had just left college ; that the 
 only letter he had was from the Dean of the University. 
 
 What ! He tilted his hat over one ear, scratching 
 his temple, humorously. "A college education! Well, 
 
 I m d d! Won t ol Whitten warm to that! An 
 
 a Dean! Say, why did n t yuh get pass-me-ons from 
 the President an Gov ner What s-his-name, while yuh 
 were? This s easier n cashin a check. What d yuh 
 want? How d private secret ry to a Fift Avenuh 
 coupon-cutter do yuh ? 
 
 Don laughed rather uncertainly. "I m afraid 
 there s not much chance of that ? 
 
 "Afraid? Hell! Afraid nothin ! I wish t I d 
 had yer chance the day Jim walked me down here. 
 Where the It was down aroun here somewheres." 
 He looked up a side street. Well, if he s moved, we can 
 tree him in the d rect ry. It must be along further." 
 
 Don winked rapidly at the faltering of his hope. The 
 clatter of an elevated train overhead broke in upon him 
 with a return of the old jostled discouragement of these 
 heedless streets. He read the signboards as he walked, 
 vainly trying to occupy his mind in the suspense. 
 
 The man said: "Here y are. I thought the ol 
 
 guy" 
 
 Don tripped on the threshold as he followed in, weak 
 in the knees. A red-haired girl, at a desk, nodded in 
 reply to the man s "Mr. Whitten in ? " looking not at 
 him but at Don. Her hard grey eye pursued him with 
 an indifferent curiosity as he passed through to the 
 inner office. 
 
 Mr. Whitteu rose, peering short-sightedly, and Don,
 
 206 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 as he stood behind his companion s glib explanations, 
 stared at something in the face which he thought he had 
 seen before. The grey beard and moustache were un 
 familiar ; the hair was wrong, but the forehead and the 
 nose, the eyebrows 
 
 "Ah?" Mr. Whittensaid. "Yes. . . I recall you, 
 Mr. Mr. " 
 
 It was the voice 
 
 "Dixon." 
 
 "Exactly! I recall you distinctly." 
 
 It was the voice of Mr. Vandever ! Vandever, no 
 longer clean-shaven, Vandever without his gold-rimmed 
 glasses and his beamingly benign regard but undoubt 
 edly the benevolent Vandever. And Don, for the first 
 time, looked at an old man infamous. 
 
 It held him like a horror. It revolted while it fasci 
 nated him. The squinting eyes, weak without their 
 glasses, were hideously hypocritical. The false smile, 
 the pretence of kindliness, the affected warmth of man 
 ner were a disgusting villainy so incredible to him that 
 he could not take his eyes from them. He did not hear 
 what "Dixon" was saying. He stood gaping until 
 Vandever held out a hand to him, and then the 
 approach of contact with this dishonored old rogue 
 woke him to loathing and shame. He shook his head, 
 red and stammering, refusing the hand-clasp ; he looked 
 at "Dixon" appealingly and saw in the man s face 
 that he, too, was ai partner in the abominable business ; 
 then he turned and hurried from the office with the 
 echo of Dixon s "What the hell!" following him like 
 the vile odor of this degradation from which he fled
 
 THE IDEALIST 207 
 
 holding his breath until he could reach the clean air of 
 the street. 
 
 He ran against a young man who appeared to be hesi 
 tating at the doorway. He began: "Don t go in. 
 They re"- But the suspicion that this might be 
 another "Dixon" stopped his voice; and with a de 
 spairing disgust of mankind, he pulled his hat down on 
 his eyebrows and strode off tragically. 
 
 The young man followed and caught up to him. 
 "What? What did you say?" 
 "They re thieves fakirs." 
 "Oh. . . Thanks. What s the matter?" 
 Don, safe at a distance from the office, leaned against 
 a lamp-post, and between labored breaths explained 
 what had happened. The other smiled easily. "I saw 
 you going in with that tout . I was wondering 
 whether he was on the level, now. The street s full of 
 these con. agents. Don t ever pay them in advance. If 
 they re straight, they 11 only ask a rake-off from your 
 first month s wages." 
 
 "An old man too like that!" Don was trembling 
 like a girl who has been insulted on the streets; and 
 the other watched him, a little amused, a little sorry 
 for him. 
 
 "You re new here?" 
 
 Don nodded, his mind set on the memory of Vande- 
 ver s face. 
 
 "You 11 get used to that sort of thing. There s a 
 lot of it. . . Looking for work?" 
 
 "Yes," he answered, mechanically, staring at the 
 gutter, miserable, in a world of roguery.
 
 208 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 "What have you found?" 
 
 "Nothing! I can t. I can t find anything." 
 
 It was the voice of abject hopelessness. His com 
 panion studied him, debating something with himself. 
 He coughed, "Well," he said, "I don t know where 
 you 11 get anything regular, but there are a lot of little 
 things to do, to earn a dollar of two, if you want to." 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 He smiled at Don s amazement. "Why, all over 
 town. You could try boosting down on the Bowery" 
 
 "Boosting?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "What s that?" 
 
 "Well." He coughed again. "I 11 show you if you 
 care to try it. It s fifty cents for an afternoon a dol 
 lar a day if you work nights too." 
 
 Don clenched his hands. "I 11 do anything. 
 
 He suppressed a smile for this boyish tone of heroic 
 desperation. "Have you had your luncheon?" 
 
 "No. I-" 
 
 "You d better come and have it." 
 
 HE had a low voice and a good manner, an ingratiating 
 gentleness, an attractive quiet address; and to Don he 
 seemed prosperously well-clothed, though a keener eye 
 might have seen that his blue serge was worn shiny on 
 the seams, that his straw hat was a lemon-yellow from
 
 THE IDEALIST 209 
 
 frequent cleanings with acid and sulphur, that his 
 enameled-leather shoes were shabby with a network of 
 small cracks. His features were almost ascetically lean 
 and bony, and he had the mouth of a public speaker 
 that smiled with a slow ease very pleasant to see. After 
 a silence, he always cleared his throat, with a deliberate 
 cough, before he spoke. Altogether, he reminded Don 
 of a young curate whom he had known in his Sunday- 
 school days in Coulton; and unconsciously Don was 
 drawn to him by this memory of his prototype, trusted 
 him, and was ready to confide in him. 
 
 They went to a cheap Hungarian cafe where Don 
 understood neither the names of the dishes nor the 
 ingredients of them; but in a revulsion of emotion, tak 
 ing everything including his food on trust* he was 
 moved to tell this chance acquaintance more of himself 
 and his circumstances than he could have told anyone 
 but an intimate friend ; and it was always, afterwards, 
 a marvel to him that he had done so, for the clerical 
 stranger, after introducing himself as Walter Tower, 
 merely listened and smiled and nodded, with the man 
 ner of an elder who understood, but with no return of 
 confidences in kind. Beyond this sympathetic atten 
 tion, he contented himself with recalling Don to his 
 neglected food. "Yes?" he would say, encouragingly. 
 These Hungarians do not serve butter. We can order 
 some, if you like, but it 11 be unsalted. " Or " Try this 
 dessert. It tastes like Purim cake. Have you ever 
 done any stage work?" And when they had paid the 
 beaming foreigner in shirt sleeves behind a counter 
 
 full of bread and pies and boxes of cheap cigars 
 
 u
 
 210 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 Tower held the door open and passed Don out with the 
 same protective smile, somewhat amused but always 
 sympathetic. 
 
 They took the elevated railroad around the Battery 
 to Chatham Square. 
 
 It was, for Don, a descent into the city s unknown 
 lower regions, but Tower seemed as much at home and 
 as incuriously observant of familiar surroundings as he 
 had been when sauntering along the line of employment 
 agencies on Sixth Avenue.. "This is the Bowery," he 
 said, as they came down the station steps. "The 
 Rogues Highway. " He led silently past the "beer 
 gardens," the "musees, " the "amusement parlors" 
 and all the sour drinking resorts and tinselled "fake 
 shows "of the street, apparently unconscious of the 
 vicious and miserable faces that he met, of the stagger 
 ing drunkenness of ragged men and the pathetic finery 
 of painted women. "This is Suicides Hall, " he 
 explained mildly, as they passed a saloon. "About 
 three girls a month, on the average, drink carbolic acid 
 there. Don t stare," he added. "And don t answer 
 if you re spoken to." Don proceeded, silent with the 
 oppression of spirits which seemed to exhale in the 
 stale air of the street, in the paleness of faces that were 
 marked by the summer heat with a drawn exhaustion 
 instead of a healthy tan, in the hoarse cries of the 
 "barkers" at the doors, and in the smell of spotted 
 fruit that came from the push-carts of peddlers at the 
 curb and from the watermelon rinds in the gutters. 
 
 They stopped before the "Palace of Illusions: The 
 original Bowery Musee," and Tower said "Wait here
 
 THE IDEALIST 211 
 
 a minute." He nodded to the "barker" in the 
 entrance, passed the inner ticket office and disappeared. 
 Don studied the yellowed photographs of a fat woman, 
 an acrobat in tights, a girl in dancing skirts posed on a 
 rustic fence with her back to the seashore, a pugilist 
 menacing a punching bag until Tower came out again 
 with a man of Dixon s type, who looked Don over his 
 hands in his pockets, a cigar in his mouth and said: 
 "A right. We re goin to start the grind in about 
 ten minutes. Got a dime? A right." He turned to 
 Tower. "We re makin three pushes to a take. Yuh 
 don t want to do any spielin , do you? The man we 
 got s a heel." 
 
 "No," Tower said. "I m out of practice. I d 
 sooner boost. 
 
 "A right, bo. String em up. The other boys 11 be 
 along in a shake. 
 
 He went in. Tower put his hand on Don s shoulder 
 and started him up the street again. "We have noth 
 ing to do," he explained, "but to walk up to that door 
 when the man you saw there begins to call out that the 
 show is on. We wait inside, where they have the free 
 performance, until a crowd has gathered; then, when 
 the spieler (they call him) says Right this way, we 
 push over to the box office, pay ten cents and pass in. 
 He 11 give you back your money inside. The idea is to 
 start the crowd going in." 
 
 To a youth of another temperament, it might have 
 been either an amusing adventure or a shocking fall 
 into a lower world; but Don had not the self -detach 
 ment which could either enjoy his surroundings as
 
 212 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 apart from himself or pity himself as above his sur 
 roundings; and he was so accustomed to having events 
 leap upon him unforeseen that he accepted this last 
 bewildering turn of fortune in his usual dazed absorp 
 tion of new sights. It was no more abrupt and strange 
 to him than his meetings with Margaret or his partings 
 from her, his arrival at college or his leaving it, his 
 varying relations with Conroy, with his father, with 
 the whole world, in fact this world of which he never 
 seemed able to discern the motives or foresee the acts. 
 Always, as soon as he had planned a future to the last 
 detail of desire, a turn of the road faced him with the 
 unexpected, and he stood lost. 
 
 At the barker s hoarse cry of "All free, gents. All 
 free. Step right inside," Tower and he, sauntering 
 past the door, appeared to stop and hesitate. It costs 
 yuh nothin , now. It s free gratis, free all free an 
 the fines show on the Bowery. Step right inside." 
 Tower replied to this invitation, "jollying" the barker, 
 and two or three of the passers-by stood to smile and 
 listen. They followed Tower in, for he looked like a 
 visitor to town "doing the Bowery," and his smiling 
 curiosity was infectious. Within, on a raised "bally 
 hoo" platform, there was a "fire-eater" in a Mephisto 
 phelean costume, a long-haired "Hindoo" who danced 
 bare-footed on broken glass, and a perspiring juggler in 
 faded blue tights; and Tower, watching them go 
 through their "stunts," played his part of inquisitive 
 idler with the ease of an actor, making humorous 
 remarks to Don in loud asides that amused his neighbors 
 in the crowd, and challenging the "spieler" with imper-
 
 THE IDEALIST 213 
 
 tinent questions when that eloquent official came out on 
 the platform to eulogize the acts that were to be "wit 
 nessed on the inside f er a dime, ten cents. As soon as 
 the spieler concluded his harangue with "Step this way 
 to the box office, Tower said to Don : Well, it s only a 
 dime. Come on. Let s have some fun with them ; and 
 as he made his way to the wicket taking care to press 
 forward those in front of him with a persuasive shoulder 
 he started a current towards the entrance and drew 
 behind him a following of smiling sight-seers who 
 wished to hear him "have some fun" with the perform 
 ance. Once inside the main hall, with its "side-show" 
 array of booths and small stages, Don and he disap 
 peared behind the curtains of the exit, where the mana 
 ger returned them their dimes and let them out on the 
 street again for the next "push." 
 
 All this occurred with a bewildering rapidity that 
 made it rather difficult for Don to understand ; he was 
 puzzled by Tower s part in it; he did not think about 
 his own. "Do you do this every day?" he asked. 
 
 "No," Tower said, turning him up the street again. 
 "I have n t done it since I first came to town six 
 years ago." 
 
 You re doing it to show me how ? 
 
 "Principally. Yes." 
 
 Don flushed with gratitude. "Thanks." 
 
 "Well," Tower said, "it is n t a highly respectable 
 job, I suppose, but I could n t think of anything else 
 on the spur of the moment anything that you can do. 
 And the show is worth ten cents. It is n t as if you were 
 doing it for one of those fake fronts down the street.
 
 214 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 "It s it s mighty good of you," Don stammered, 
 "taking your time and " 
 
 "Not at all. I ve nothing else to do just now." 
 
 "What do you do generally." 
 
 "When I have an engagement, I act." 
 
 "On the stage?" 
 
 Tower smiled. "Up at the back of the stage, princi 
 pally. Yes. . . How do you like boosting ?" 
 
 "I don t know yet." 
 
 "Well" Tower cleared his throat "it can t do you 
 any hurt. This sort of thing seeing the Bowery- 
 puts you wise to a lot of life. It gives you the under 
 side of a good deal. I d stick at it for a while if I 
 were you. When the theatres open, you can get some 
 sup ing. 
 
 "What s that?" 
 
 "I 11 show you, some day." 
 
 The barker greeted them afresh: "All free, gents. 
 All free on the inside. Step right in. It costs you noth- 
 in . All free." 
 
 Tower stopped. "Is it a free lunch or a public 
 library?" 
 
 The barker waved his hand genially. "Neither, my 
 Christian friend. Neither ner both. If yuh re an 
 eats- em-alive, yuh 11 find yer cage down the street. 
 This is the on y original Palace of Illusions, the fam 
 ous Bowery musee. Step right inside, an keep yer 
 mouth shut an yer eyes open. Free performance, 
 gents. 
 
 Come on, Tower said. Let s see what they give 
 for nothing.
 
 THE IDEALIST 215 
 
 It was not, as Tower had said, a "highly respectable 
 job," but it was the first opportunity that Don had had 
 to do any thing for himself, and he went through it 
 with the nervous seriousness of a resolve to prove him 
 self capable. He felt that he was being given a trial at 
 last; that he owed it to Tower to flinch at nothing; 
 that he must prove himself to himself, to the world, 
 and to the man who had helped him. He crushed 
 down his conscientious scruples against playing the 
 hypocrite and counterfeiting a fresh interest in each 
 of the free performances; and he tried to pay his 
 money into the ticket office with a properly alluring 
 eagerness. After all, the show was worth ten cents, and 
 he was only leading the public on to its own amuse 
 ment. 
 
 When the last "take" was netted, at half -past five, 
 he took his fifty cents from the manager as the first 
 wages of his proven usefulness, and walked out, with 
 Tower, full of a splendid confidence in himself. He had 
 "found his feet" at last, he thought. 
 
 He invited Tower to have dinner with Conroy and 
 Pittsey in their rooms, explaining the circumstances of 
 their house-keeping. And Tower said: "Pittsey? 
 What is his Christian name?" 
 
 "Bert. Herbert." 
 
 "Oh! . . . Don t tell him you met me. I 11 
 call some evening and surprise him." 
 
 Really ! You know him ? He s been here before. 
 
 "Yes. How s he getting on?" 
 
 Don related his friend s successes with pride. 
 "Where did you meet him?"
 
 216 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 I used to know him in Canada. 
 
 "What!" He stopped on a crowded corner. "Are 
 you a Canadian, too?" 
 
 Tower took him by the arm, amusedly, and guided 
 him across the street. "I was born so. There are sev 
 eral thousands of us here in New York you know." 
 
 "Did you know / was?" 
 
 "I supposed so, from your University pin." 
 
 Don put his hand up to it, flushing excitedly. Now 
 I understand why. . . I I could n t make out 
 why you did it. You ve been . . . mighty decent 
 to-" 
 
 Tower tried to make light of this awkward gratitude, 
 turning it off jokingly. Don t mention it not to your 
 friend Pittsey, at any rate. This is your station here. 
 I m going across town." He held out his hand. "Will 
 you He boosting to-morrow ? 
 
 Don closed on his fingers with an eager warmth, as 
 if to detain him until the surprise of the new situation 
 could wear off and leave their parting less abrupt. 
 Won t I though ! Will y ou ? " 
 
 Well, I 11 be down at one o clock to see you started. 
 Till to-morrow, then." He slipped from Don s grasp. 
 "Good-bye." 
 
 As he turned the corner, he nodded and waved his 
 hand to Don, who stood beaming at the foot of the sta 
 tion steps, obstructing the passage. The hot and impa 
 tient men and women who bumped against him and 
 shouldered him out of their way, did not understand 
 that he was no longer a useless impediment to the traffic 
 of the streets, that he was a tried and accepted earner 
 of wages, and one of themselves. He forgave them
 
 THE IDEALIST 217 
 
 with an abstracted smile that carried him into a City 
 Hall train instead of the one which he should have 
 taken to the Battery. 
 
 HE arrived at his rooms for supper, late but jubilant, 
 with a watermelon which he had bought to celebrate 
 his success ; and he was met at the door of the dining- 
 room by an equally jubilant announcement from Con- 
 roy that he, too, had found work in the shipping 
 department of a wholesale grocery. "Answering fake 
 advertisements that s not the way ! I just went from 
 one door to another, all along the street, asking for 
 something to do. They gave me this job when they 
 found out I knew how to put addresses on boxes and 
 barrels, with a brush you know the way they print 
 them." He had learned that art in his father s ware 
 house. "What did you get, Don?" 
 
 "I 11 tell you some day. It s a secret." 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 "Never mind," he laughed. "I met some .one. You 11 
 see." He plumped his watermelon on the table. 
 "Look at that!" 
 
 Pittsey struck an attitude. The first fruits of hon 
 est labor! Gee! Let us gorge." 
 
 They gorged. With the appetites of youth and the 
 sauce of their new enthusiasm, they ate bacon and fried 
 eggs for a summer dinner, laughing and talking as if 
 they were on a picnic, making uncouth gurgles as they 
 devoured the watermelon, and shooting the seeds out the 
 window, by squeezing them between thumb and fore 
 finger, in a hilarious trial of skill. 
 
 "And this," Pittsey said, as he aimed with another
 
 218 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 seed, "this is poverty in New York City! Why, off 
 the Bowery the Italians eat watermelon seeds for des 
 sert. Watch me t rowin good grub out the window. 
 Ping!" 
 
 Don bit a seed to taste it. "Poor beggars," he said. 
 
 "Poor nothing!" Pittsey cried. "I think they have 
 the best of the bargain. There are more seeds than 
 anything else in a watermelon, anyway. 
 
 VI 
 
 THE Bowery is not only a "Rogues Highway" ; it is, to 
 the tenements of the East Side, what the theater district 
 of Broadway is to the rest of the city ; and Don s Mu- 
 see" was a crude but honest house of amusement for 
 the poor and for the slumming parties that came to 
 see the poor amused. It was not one of those "fake 
 fronts" as Tower had called them which allure the 
 morbidly curious with promises of an indecent exhi 
 bition and turn them out a side door, disappointed. 
 Nevertheless, it lived in the heart of a pollution which 
 slowly as Don slowly realized it repelled and sad 
 dened while it puzzled him. Here was life reduced to 
 its lowest terms of bestiality: vice without its disguis 
 ing glitter, suffering that had no illusion to make it 
 noble, and crime miserable in its own hell. Where did 
 this inferno find its place in the scientific universe that
 
 THE IDEALIST 219 
 
 gave to crime the joy of its plunder as it gave the wild 
 beast the joy of its prey? And if Man were merely 
 a higher animal, why were these animals not brutally 
 happy in their dens? 
 
 It was an experience of life for which Don s books 
 had not prepared him. It was a lesson from life itself 
 and not the colorless argument of a theory of life. And 
 confused by the thousand changing incidents that 
 repeated the question incessantly around him, touched 
 in his sympathies and revolted in his ideals, he went 
 about his "boosting" as if bewildered by the noises of 
 the street, staring and distracted. 
 
 Tower did not come on that second afternoon to see 
 him started, and he worked alone, without any smil 
 ing companionship to disguise from him the hypocrisy 
 of his employment. He finished, that day, with a shame 
 of it all which prevented him from telling his room 
 mates what he had been doing ; but he returned to it, on 
 the morrow, in the loyal expectation of seeing Tower; 
 and he continued secretly at his post, day after day, 
 because he could not find any other work to do and 
 because he felt himself bound in gratitude to Tower to 
 avail himself of the opportunity which he owed to his 
 fellow-countryman. The sights which he saw, did, as 
 Tower had promised, put him "wise to a lot of life"; 
 but they had the first effect of driving him in on him 
 self as they would turn a nun to her prayers. The hot 
 and unclean street reminded him by contrast of 
 the fir trees and the underbrush and the rustling cool 
 ness of his woods ; and he took refuge in the memory of 
 these. The women of the pavements, whom he saw
 
 220 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 drinking in the "Beer gardens" or loitering in the side 
 doors of saloons, gave him back that dear ideal of girl 
 ish innocence who had sat beside him under a green 
 bower of branches in a childish idyll and met him 
 like a vision in the snows of an enchanted Sunday 
 morning and looked across a lovers valley at the sun 
 set with him, holding hands, under a quiet pine. And 
 when he received a letter from her, written in Paris, he 
 went to Madison Square to read it among those exiled 
 trees that were as dusty as himself and as lonely for the 
 country and the call of birds. 
 
 She wrote, in voluble good spirits, of an ocean voy 
 age that had apparently been to her a ten days "excur 
 sion" an excursion on which she had not missed a 
 single meal, on which all her fellow-picnickers had 
 been "lovely," on which she had had "such a good 
 time." And this prattle was as sweet to him as poetry. 
 She had seen London and Windsor Castle and a host 
 of her mothers relatives and Westminster Abbey ; and 
 she was now in Paris, but they were only to stay a week ; 
 they were going right on to Germany. It was all inde 
 scribable. He must see it for himself. She had met a 
 charming girl, a "forty-second cousin," who was 
 studying music, too; and they were traveling 
 together, and her cousin spoke French. It was 
 terribly warm, and there were no sodawater 
 fountains not even ice-water at the English hotels. 
 New York was better than that! What was he 
 doing? He must write to her as soon as they were set 
 tled some place. She had to stop now, because her 
 cousin was taking her to an art gallery. She was his 
 "sincerely, Miss Margaret. "
 
 THE IDEALIST 221 
 
 The faint odor of violets her favorite perfume 
 came to him from the paper. He put it back in his 
 breast pocket, folded his arms over it, and smiled at the 
 sun-cracked asphalt of the walk. "Miss Margaret!" 
 
 Next day, he spent his forenoon in Central Park, and 
 thereafter he made daily visits to one or another of the 
 green oases in the city s desert of brick and stone, 
 refreshing himself for the afternoon s work, and pon 
 dering over his new experience of life which that work 
 had given him. His evenings he spent with Conroy, 
 who was full of anecdotes of "Scotty" and "Redney" 
 and the Irish truck-drivers and warehousemen with 
 whom he worked. And when Conroy and Pittsey went 
 out together, Don remained to write his letters to his 
 mother whom he tried to cheer with vague reports 
 that he was well and happy and at work and to his 
 uncle, for whom he had the good news of Conroy s 
 steadiness. He was never interrupted by the expected 
 arrival of the mysterious Tower. He took out his 
 volume of Emerson, one night, but only that he might 
 recover from it his fading picture of Margaret. He 
 cut out the shadowy face and put it in the back of his 
 watch-case where he might look at it, the last thing 
 before going to bed, under pretence of seeing the time ; 
 and his thoughts of her were like an evening prayer to 
 him. 
 
 IT was on one of his trips to Central Park that he saw 
 Tower again from the street car, as Tower was hurry 
 ing down Sixth Avenue towards the theatrical agencies 
 that house near Herald Square and on a characteris-
 
 222 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 tic impulse he dropped from the side-step of the car 
 and ran after Tower to greet him. 
 
 Tower turned, startled, and shook hands apparently 
 confused by the surprise of an unexpected meeting. 
 
 "Where have you been? Why did n t you come to 
 see us?" 
 
 He answered nervously: "I lost your address." 
 
 "But why did n t you You could have found me 
 at the same place, down the Bowery?" 
 
 He met Don s cordiality with a shifting eye. He 
 coughed. "Well," he said, "to tell the truth, I was 
 ashamed to call." 
 
 Don cried: "Why?" 
 
 "Well . . . I m his brother." 
 
 "Whose?" 
 
 "Bert s." 
 
 "Pitt s?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "No ! Really? Why he d-he d have been delighted 
 to-" 
 
 "I should have called before. He wrote me that he 
 was coming." 
 
 "But even so, he" Don frowned over it. 
 
 Tower turned back, up the street, with him. In the 
 first place, I did n t want him to come to New York." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Well. . . I can t tell you that." 
 
 "Oh." 
 
 "I thought that if I did n t answer his letter, he 
 would think better of it, and stay at college. . . Did 
 you tell him you d met me?"
 
 THE IDEALIST 223 
 
 "You asked me not to." 
 
 Yes . . . Yes, so I did. He walked in a troubled 
 silence. " Tower is my stage name." Don did not 
 reply ; he did not know what to say ; he did not under 
 stand the situation at .all. "Where were you going?" 
 Tower asked. . 
 
 "To Central Park for a walk. I saw you from a 
 car." 
 
 "Are you still boosting?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "How do you like it?" 
 
 "Not not very well." 
 
 Tower nodded. They went along together, under the 
 rattle of elevated trains that made conversation impos 
 sible. When they reached the comparative quiet of 59th 
 street and crossed to the gate of the Park, Tower said 
 suddenly: "You see, I ve riot been very prosperous of 
 late, and Bert and the others at home got exagger 
 ated ideas of what I was doing here and I was 
 ashamed to have him know that I d been boosting and 
 all that, this summer, while I was trying to get an 
 engagement and meeting you that way I thought 
 he d guess." His voice faded out on an explanation 
 that contradicted itself. His difficulty communicated 
 itself to Don, who looked down at his feet, guiltily, 
 beginning to see the truth behind this screen of words. 
 "I knew he would n t know who Tower was, even if 
 you told him. It s not the name I use always. I " 
 
 Don plucked a leaf from a bush as he passed it. 
 "He 11 meet you some day, on the street." 
 
 "Yes . That s what I m afrraid of." He
 
 224 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 laughed unexpectedly. "I ve been going around town 
 like a thief." 
 
 The path dipped into an arched tunnel that sup 
 ported the driveway overhead. Their foot-falls rang 
 hollowly on the echo there. When they came out on 
 the silence of a grove, Don said: "It would be better 
 If you come to see him, I 11 not let him know that I ve 
 met you before. He does n t know that I ve been 
 boosting, anyway." 
 
 "Did n t you tell him?" 
 
 "No. I was ashamed to, too." 
 
 "Tower" smiled. "It is n t much of a job, is it? 
 I ve been doing a good deal of it myself." 
 
 With that confession as a bond of sympathy between 
 them, the rest of their conversation was easy ; and Don, 
 seated beside him, on a bench that faced the driveway, 
 learned more of Tower than he had ever expected to 
 know. 
 
 He was one of those wanderers who leave their homes 
 to try their fortunes in large cities and who go from 
 place to place with no certain means of earning a living 
 but with a resourceful knowledge of how to support 
 themselves from day to day. He had begun life as a 
 hotel clerk, and had left his desk to sell tickets in the 
 box office of a theater. Then he had gone as the "press 
 agent" of a theatrical company "on the road"; and 
 when the failure of the company had left him 
 "stranded" in a Western town, he had done some news 
 paper work, managed a news-stand in Chicago, been 
 conductor on a street-car in St. Louis, worked in a cigar 
 shop in Pittsburg, traveled in the cabooses of freight
 
 THE IDEALIST 225 
 
 trains to New England, "clerked it" in Boston, and 
 come to New York as helper to a baggage man on a pas 
 senger boat. Here, fascinated by the life of the 
 "Rialto" which satisfied all his restless cravings for 
 Bohemianism and continual change he had lived in 
 the background of the stage world, a looker-on, play 
 ing "thinking parts" in Broadway theaters, some 
 times assisting in stage management in the cheaper 
 houses and sometimes returning to the ticket wicket of 
 a box office. Lately, he had had a "run of bad luck," 
 and he had been left for the summer with nothing to do 
 but this "boosting" and "spieling" at Coney Island 
 or on the Bowery. He had been going the round of the 
 employment agencies on the morning he met Don, 
 afraid that in his work at the musees he might meet 
 his brother. "As soon as the theatrical season opens," 
 he said, "I 11 be all right." 
 
 "It s mighty hard to find work, is n t it !" Don sym 
 pathized. 
 
 "Why no!" he replied. "I never had any trouble 
 in finding something. The fact of the matter is, I 
 believe that has been the curse of me. I found out how 
 easy it was to get along at a certain level and how hard 
 it was to get above it and I have stopped at merely 
 getting along." 
 
 He gave it in his gentle voice that had for Don such 
 a fascinating note of wisdom and experience ; and Don 
 felt that here was a man who could solve all his prob 
 lems for him. He tried to put in words the effect which 
 the Bowery had had on him and the questions which it 
 had aroused in him ; and Tower listened to his stam- 
 
 15
 
 226 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 mering explanations, nodding across the blundering 
 pauses and keeping his eyes on the sun-lit driveway 
 with a thoughtful attention. 
 
 "Why do we know these people are wrong living 
 that way? Why are they committing suicide and 
 drinking themselves stupid and looking like a lot of 
 miserable condemned wretches terrible faces all eaten 
 up with disease and wretchedness if there s no reason 
 why we should n t be brutes if it s natural for us to 
 be brutes if we are all brutes? That s what I don t 
 understand. If honesty and morality are just poppy 
 cock stuff that we learn when we re children like 
 Santa Glaus why are n t frank dishonesty and frank 
 immorality happy instead of openly miserable and 
 killing themselves?" 
 
 "Tower" shook his head. "I don t know, I m sure. 
 I never thought of them that way. They re just peo 
 ple to me people I meet. I suppose I get along with 
 them so well, because I just take them as I would any 
 one else. . . I can see, though," he added, "why 
 they kept you boosting down there. 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 He looked at Don, as if summing him up, feature by 
 feature. "Because that sort of thing shows in your 
 face." 
 
 How do you mean ? 
 
 Well, any one can see that you re not one of them. 
 
 Don blushed, girlishly. "Neither are you." 
 
 "I act not to be so that no one will think I am. 
 You are n t and any one can see that you re not act 
 ing it"
 
 THE IDEALIST 227 
 
 "I wish I were out of it." 
 
 "Well, I hear they re going to begin rehearsing 
 some early openings next month. There 11 be suping. 
 
 "Is that better?" 
 
 "Oh my, yes. . . . I 11 call on Bert to-night or 
 to-morrow, and then we 11 see what we can do. ... 
 Let s take a walk now, and forget it." 
 
 DON returned to his "boosting," that afternoon, with 
 the hope that he should soon be free of it; but he 
 returned in a disgust of it which made it almost unen 
 durable now that "Tower" had admitted what a 
 degradation it was. The day was steamingly hot and 
 humid; the air was blue with a choking haze; and the 
 stones of the Bowery, still wet from a previous night s 
 rain, seemed sweating, greased, slimy with a thin mud 
 that slipped under the heel. The "barker" in the 
 door of the Musee was shouting impatiently, the pers 
 piration running down his neck into the soiled hand 
 kerchief which he had stuffed inside his collar. The 
 free performance dragged on without spirit. The 
 "spieler" wiped his forehead, his eloquence gone 
 mechanical, a thing learned by rote and feebly repeated. 
 The manager chafed over the meagerness of the audi 
 ences that gathered to all this " bally hooing" and were 
 herded in by Don and his fellow boosters. 
 
 Don did not speak to any of the other "touts"; he 
 had never done so ; and they had never made any 
 approaches to him, knowing as "Tower" had said 
 that he was not one of them. They showed no curiosity 
 concerning him, for curiosity is not encouraged on the
 
 228 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 Bowery. They accepted him as a young fellow down 
 on his luck, and were more indifferent to him than he 
 was to them. One of them asked him for a match and 
 merely nodded at Don s polite reply that he was sorry 
 he had none nodded as if the answer was what he had 
 expected. The manager, in the exit, as Don went out, 
 pleaded hoarsely: "Say, bo, fer G s sake, shove em 
 up. String em. String em." And Don did not 
 reply because he did not understand. 
 
 He was coming out from the second push of the final 
 take returning to his pocket the dime which he had 
 just received from the manager when a hand was laid 
 on his shoulder from behind and he looked around at 
 the grinning Dixon, the man who had been tout for the 
 unspeakable Vandever. 
 
 "Well, I m d !" he said. "If you ain t the 
 
 slickest con on the walk. Yuh took me all right ! Yuh 
 played me fer a sucker." Don stared at his admiring 
 smile of good fellowship. "What sort o back-cappin 
 were yuh tryin to come on me anyway, that day ? 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "Aw, shuffle em. Shuffle em," he laughed. "I m 
 on." 
 
 "I don t understand what you re talking about." 
 
 Dixon spat on the sidewalk and smiled undiscour- 
 aged. "Say, what s the use? I got a graft worth two 
 
 o this d d supper show here if yuh want some 
 
 boostin out on Coney. It s playin too close to the 
 cushion fer me. An these touts I been sizin em up 
 they ain t the thing. They d get the turn called on 
 em, first hand. Yuh re the guy I want. Yuh ve got 
 a mug to steer Mary s little lamb." He saw the dis-
 
 THE IDEALIST 229 
 
 gust of Don s expression, and misunderstood it. 
 Honest, now. I ain t tryin to sting y again. This s 
 on the straight. If yuh want the dough" 
 
 Don had been watching a street car approaching 
 behind Dixon; when it was almost opposite, he darted 
 aside, as if dodging an attempt to catch him, ran out 
 into the roadway and sprang on the step of the car as 
 it clanged at full speed up the street. And looking 
 back over his shoulder, panting, as if in fear of pur 
 suit, he saw the amazed Dixon staring after him, open- 
 mouthed. As he sank into his seat, the shame of hav 
 ing fallen to Dixon s level broke on him in a hot blush. 
 It burned him like a brand of infamy when the con 
 ductor who had seen him running like a pickpocket 
 and had expected a policeman to appear on his trail 
 looked at his money suspiciously, hesitated, and then 
 reluctantly rang up his fare. 
 
 HE was noticeably silent at the dinner table. "What s 
 wrong, Don?" Conroy asked him, when they were 
 washing dishes together. "Have you been fired ?" 
 
 "No, "he said. "I ve left. " 
 
 "What was it? What have you been doing?" 
 
 Don shook his head. He felt that no matter how 
 long he lived, he must carry the guilt of that employ 
 ment with him as a crime which he could not confess. 
 He shuddered to think that some day he might tell her 
 unable to have such a secret between them and that 
 she would despise him for it. 
 
 He went to bed, that night, without looking- at her 
 face in his watch.
 
 230 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 VII 
 
 IT was a part of his young intensity that he should 
 regard this experience on the Bowery as a fall from 
 honor of which he should always bear the mark. He 
 had none of that priggish vanity of self -righteousness 
 which so passionately regrets the soiling of his garment ; 
 and he had little of the sensitive virtue that continues 
 to shudder with abhorrence at thought of the filth 
 which it has touched. But it seemed to him as he 
 tried to explain to the elder Pittsey that "there are 
 laws of morality, like the laws of health, and if a man 
 breaks them he he has to pay for it in the same sort 
 of way ... by being sick morally ... by weak 
 ening himself morally. And I believe that s what s 
 wrong with all those unhappy wretches on the Bowery. 
 They re breaking the laws of morality, and they re 
 suffering for it just the same as they would if they 
 broke the laws of healthy living." 
 
 "But are they?" the other queried, amused. "Are 
 they suffering?" 
 
 "Well, they look as if they were. They kill them 
 selves with carbolic acid, as if they were. 
 
 "That sso." 
 
 "Of course it s so. They can say what they please 
 about man being only a higher animal. If he is only 
 a higher animal, at least he is a higher animal ; and the 
 law of development . . . that has raised him . . . 
 is a real law, and he can t go against it without suffer 
 ing for it. I believe that! *
 
 THE IDEALIST 231 
 
 "Well, that s something to believe-" 
 
 The elder Pittsey had called upon the younger on 
 the previous evening, having obtained the address s 
 he explained from the "folks at home"; and he had 
 been introduced to Don by his proud brother, who car 
 ried himself with a subdued and respectful admiration 
 for Walter and was impressed by the easy friendliness 
 of manner which developed at once between Walter 
 and Don. He even dropped the note of raillery in his 
 relations with Don, when the succeeding days seemed to 
 strengthen that friendliness; and if he was somewhat 
 envious of the way in which Don was admitted to con 
 fidences from which he himself was excluded, he con 
 soled himself by falling back on Conroy for company 
 and left his brother to his choice. 
 
 It followed that Don was free to walk and argue with 
 his new friend as much as he wished ; and Walter Pitt 
 sey was nothing if not a patient listener. The discus 
 sions were rather one-sided, and they were always of 
 abstract questions for Don was still incapable of talk 
 ing of himself but they were the aggressive arguments 
 of an idealist who was beginning to find his voice; and 
 they marked a stage in Don s development from his 
 past to his future. 
 
 They were, of course, merely the attempts of a bewil 
 dered youth to find some working compromise, on 
 which to live, between the barren scepticisms of his edu 
 cation and the instincts which that education could not 
 kill. He was at that most violent period of a man s 
 growth, when the crises of all his fevers come on him to 
 gether, when he is tormented by the passionate uncer 
 tainties of his love and the chilling uncertainties of his
 
 232 DON-A-DEEAMS 
 
 unsettled religious beliefs and the groping uncer 
 tainties of his attempts to find a place in a mad world. 
 He walked the streets, day and night, with Margaret s 
 letters in his pocket, the struggle for existence raging 
 visibly around him ? and the immense void of the sky 
 overhead dwarfing his loneliness or oppressing, by its 
 indifference, his hope. 
 
 IT was the mark of his impracticality that he first 
 grew easy in his mind about his merely worldly pros 
 pects ; for, having earned a few dollars on the Bowery, 
 he accepted them as confirming Walter Pittsey s assur 
 ance that it was always easy to find "something" to do ; 
 and he resigned himself to waiting idly for the theatri 
 cal season to begin. He idled in Central Park, trying 
 to make himself familiar with all the puzzling turns of 
 that labyrinth of walks in the "Ramble," or sitting to 
 smile at the happiness of the children playing in the 
 "Mall," or watching the contented swans floating 
 above their inverted images in the sunlit still waters of 
 the Ponds. He idled in the reading-room of the Astor 
 Library, turning the thumbed pages of the illustrated 
 magazines or drowsing over the philosophical and scien 
 tific essays on Assyrian inscriptions and the disputed 
 authorship of the gospels and the latest experiments in 
 the transmission of electrical energy without the use of 
 wires. He idled in his room, of an evening, reading 
 and re-reading the gossip of the newspapers, or sitting 
 with empty eyes before his memories of Margaret 
 memories that were cast up in pictures of her on the 
 drift of smoke in which he brooded; for he had begun 
 to use tobacco.
 
 THE IDEALIST 233 
 
 % 
 
 He was worried somewhat by Conroy, who borrowed 
 money from him with the careless air of asking for 
 what he knew was his own and spent it ostensibly on 
 theaters and cigars. It was evident from Conroy s 
 talk of "rushing the growler" and "hitting the can" 
 that the men at the warehouse were jovial drinkers; 
 and he himself, on more than, one warm evening, came 
 to his dinner with a sleepy lack of appetite that smelled 
 sourly of beer. Don put the situation before Walter 
 Pittsey, on one of their rounds of the theatrical 
 agencies; and the older man made light of it. "A lit 
 tle beer won t hurt him, you know. It s harmless stuff. 
 Besides, he s old enough to take care of himself. 
 
 "But I m responsible for him, to his father," Don 
 said. "He promised not to drink." 
 
 "Well I should n t make trouble for him, if I were 
 you. He 11 probably go home at Christmas and stay 
 there. Then he 11 be off your hands. Come up to the 
 house to-night, will you ? There s somebody there I d 
 like you to meet." 
 
 He lived on one of the upper floors of a theatrical 
 boarding-house off Sixth Avenue, but he had never be 
 fore invited Don to his room, and Don had been left to 
 gather, from what he heard of the house, that it was 
 the rough Bohemian abode of vaudeville "ham-fatters" 
 as Pittsey called them. Pittsey professed to like the 
 house because the boarders had reduced the mistress of 
 it to a proper meekness of spirit. "The last time she 
 tried to make trouble for them," he had explained, 
 they carried her saucepans and the covers of her kitchen 
 range up to the roof and dropped them down the chim-
 
 234 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 ney. They would n t leave the place, and she had n t 
 the nerve to go to the police court, so she has to get along 
 with them. But I should n t advise you to call on me 
 there. Generally, she does n t answer the door bell. 
 And when she does, she is n t exactly polite." 
 
 Because of this state of things, Don and he had 
 always met at appointed places on street corners or in 
 public squares ; and now Don replied to the invitation 
 to call with a doubt of Mrs. Kahrle s reception of him. 
 Well, the actor said, come at eight o clock and I 11 
 meet you at the door. 
 
 He went to escape from the thought that he should 
 be writing a letter, to his uncle, about Conroy. 
 
 It was an old-fashioned house with a balcony that 
 crossed the sills of the lower windows and connected 
 with the porch steps ; and when Don arrived, that even 
 ing, two girls in summer gowns were sitting with Wal 
 ter Pittsey on the balcony, fanning themselves with 
 newspapers and chatting to him while he smoked. He 
 rose to greet Don and to introduce him to "Miss 
 Arden" and "Miss Morrison"; and because Don could 
 see their faces only dimly and knew that they could 
 not see his he was not embarrassed. He was all the 
 more startled, in his security, when Miss Morrison, as 
 he sat beside her, said in a calm aside : " I suppose you 
 have forgotten me, Mr. Gregg?" 
 
 He stared at her in the half-light, trying to distin 
 guish her features, of which she gave him only the 
 indistinct profile. (Miss Arden was continuing her 
 conversation with Pittsey: "Oh, she fell down in it. 
 Terribly! Terribly! She was n t in the part for a 
 minute.") Don said: "Why no Yes. I "
 
 THE IDEALIST 235 
 
 Miss Morrison waited for him to go on. When he did 
 not, she added, still fanning herself, and without turn 
 ing to him: "Have you forgotten when you went to 
 Miss Morris s school ? 
 
 "Miss Morris s school?" He could see no connection 
 between that almost forgotten past and this meeting 
 with an occupant of Mrs. Kahrle s boarding-house. He 
 laughed nervously. "Perhaps, if I could see you, I" 
 
 Pittsey had struck a match to relight his cigar. She 
 said to him: "Give me that one, Walter. You light 
 another." And reaching the match from him, she 
 turned with it held before her face, at the level of her 
 chin, looked, without a smile, at Don. 
 
 He did not notice the theatricality of the action. He 
 saw only that she had the face of a beautiful mask, and 
 that it was as self-possessed as marble itself, with liv 
 ing eyes that studied him as he stared at her. She said 
 calmly : He does n t remember me. 
 
 He had a confused and vague recollection of having 
 been in this same situation, of having heard her say 
 these same words, before; but he could not remember 
 where it had been, and he found nothing familiar in 
 her face. The match burned out between them. She 
 explained, as she dropped the glowing ember: "I m 
 Rose Morris her little sister." 
 
 He recalled her as a small girl in short dresses, with 
 a scarlet hair ribbon a lonely figure in the playground 
 of Miss Morris s school, where the other children had 
 been suspicious of her as the sister of the tyrant. 
 There had been something "queer" about her. They 
 had accused her of spying on them and of carrying re 
 ports of their behaviour to Miss Morris ; and he felt the
 
 236 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 shame now, of having been a party to such an accusa 
 tion. 
 
 She said : " I should have known you, I think. 
 
 "You ve You ve changed," he apologized. 
 
 She fanned herself in a reflective silence. "Yes, I 
 suppose I have." 
 
 Pittsey put in: "You ve changed your name, at 
 least." 
 
 "I ve added a son, " she said. 
 
 "Oh, my dear," Miss Arden laughed. "How shock 
 ing!" 
 
 She ignored the remark in a way which Don was to 
 find characteristic; and she continued her conversation 
 with him as if she were insensible of the presence of the 
 others. He was surprised to discover from her ques 
 tions that she knew he had gone to college with Conroy 
 and had not completed his Freshman year; that she 
 remembered Frankie and him at the High School, 
 where she had looked up to him from a lower "form." 
 It was evident that she had shared the curiosity of the 
 elder Miss Morris in the progress through life of one 
 of her first pupils. He exchanged smiling reminiscences 
 of Coulton with her, and told her what had become of 
 this one and that one of the companions of their 
 school days, in return for similar gossip concerning 
 others with whom she had remained in touch. And 
 when he left her at Miss Arden s announcement that 
 it was time they were all in their beds -he carried away 
 with him a pleased glow of surprise at having met a 
 stranger who had been, for years and unknown to him, 
 a friendly well-wisher.
 
 THE IDEALIST 237 
 
 He learned from Walter Pittsey that she was on the 
 stage. "She used to be in comic opera, I think," he 
 said, "probably in the chorus. She s aiming at the 
 legitimate now, but I imagine she s not doing much. 
 No temperament. She makes a good show-girl, I sup 
 pose. She ought to be singing in a church choir. 
 
 But it was not her lack of temperament that struck 
 Don in the meetings that followed; it was a strange 
 effect she gave him of being concealed in her own body 
 hidden behind her beauty that attracted an admira 
 tion which did not reach her real self silent, or speak 
 ing as if from a distance of thought. She was younger 
 than Miss Arden, who was a woman of thirty-five, at 
 least, and already puffy under the eyes and hollow in 
 the cheeks where she might have been, at some time, 
 dimpled. And yet Miss Arden seemed younger in heart, 
 chattered more spiritedly and laughed with less reserve. 
 When they made an excursion in the street car to Fort 
 George, on a Sunday afternoon, she was gaily juvenile 
 beside Miss Morris s staid sobriety; and, with Walter 
 Pittsey, she made the life of the party, while Don and 
 Miss Morris listened, watched and smiled. 
 
 They rode between the monotonous fronts of cheap 
 apartment houses, that were rusty with the iron bal 
 conies of fire escapes and overflowing with tenants who 
 hung out the windows panting, or crowded, for air, 
 to the doors. They rode, behind the motorman s insis 
 tent gong, through the games of the street children, and 
 were deafened by competitive shrieks. They came to 
 the hills of the suburbs, covered with patient ceme 
 teries, orphan asylums, homes for the aged and the blind
 
 238 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 all as quiet as prisons the field hospitals for that 
 army of workers encamped in the city below. And 
 they ended on the veranda of a cafe crowning a breezy 
 hilltop above the river valley and facing a peacefully 
 wooded horizon that was smoke-blue in the mist of a 
 humid midsummer afternoon. 
 
 There they ate tricolored ices and drank cool drinks, 
 while Pittsey and Miss Arden discussed the affairs of 
 "the profesh," and Miss Morris turned to the breeze 
 with a thoughtful languor that showed in the slow 
 movements of her eyes as she looked from the rover up 
 the sides of the valley and across the hilltops, peak after 
 peak. When Pittsey proposed that they stroll down the 
 slope through the inviting underwoods, she said : " I 11 
 wait for you here." 
 
 It was Don who remained, by tacit consent of the 
 others, to keep her company. 
 
 She watched a bird soaring and sailing over the val 
 ley; and she asked, without taking her eyes from it: 
 "Won t you smoke?" He replied, in the same tone, 
 that it would be "a crime" to soil such a breeze with 
 the smell of tobacco. The bosom of her light gown rose 
 and fell over a long sigh; she laid her arm along the 
 veranda rail, and the drooping line from her round 
 shoulder to her curved wrist and relaxed hand had the 
 unstudied grace of all her unconscious poses. He 
 smiled with an gesthetie satisfaction in her beauty that 
 repeated the repose of the calm distance and held the 
 color of his mood; and he was the more irritated by 
 the intrusion of the world they had left behind them 
 when she asked abruptly: "Are you going on the
 
 THE IDEALIST 239 
 
 He replied : "I don t know what I m going to do. 
 I m taking anything I can get. . . Why?" 
 
 "Oh," she said, "it s all so hateful!" And with a 
 suddenness that amazed him, he found himself behind 
 the barriers of her silence and admitted to a confidence 
 which though at the time it moved him to a recipro 
 cation in kind he was to look back upon doubtfully, 
 as if it had been an indelicacy. " If I were a man, I d 
 do anything anything but that dig ditches, anything 
 work on a farm, anything. You don t know what it 
 is the managers, the women such vulgarity and to 
 be set up on a platform to be stared at, like a freak in a 
 dime museum! ... If I had learned something 
 something to make a living by ! " But she had only her 
 music and her singing ; and her music was nothing, and 
 her singing was scarcely fit for the chorus. She had 
 gone into the "legitimate" as they called their serious 
 attempts to be dramatic because the life of a chorus 
 girl was a disgusting vanity to her. She had not suc 
 ceeded. "I can t do the things they do to succeed," 
 she said. "And neither can you." 
 
 "No," he replied, "perhaps I can t. . . Though 
 I ve done one thing since I came here a thing I 
 did n t believe I could ever have done. And I never 
 will again. Never!" 
 
 The emotion gave his face a life which she had not 
 seen in it before. She raised her arm on the rail and 
 leaned her cheek against her hand, watching him. 
 
 "Besides," he argued, "what difference does it 
 make whether we succeed or not ? What difference will 
 it make in a hundred years from now so long as we
 
 240 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 don t do anything wrong anything to be ashamed of 
 anything He made a gesture that expressed noth 
 ing at all. 
 
 "Yes," she said. "A hundred years from now!" 
 She gazed out over the valley, thinking of the crowded 
 cemeteries she had passed in the street car. She sighed. 
 "I wonder where we 11 be in a hundred years from 
 now. 
 
 It was after a musing silence that he replied : " I wish 
 I knew." 
 
 "They were happier," she said, "those people in the 
 graveyards. They had something to believe in." She 
 came out of her reverie to find him leaning towards her 
 across the table, saying excitedly : " So ha\ e we ! " 
 
 She stared at him. "What?" 
 
 "Something to believe in." 
 
 She did not reply. 
 
 "I know," he said. "I Ve felt about it just as you 
 do. But look here : if man was an ape, once, if he lived 
 in caves, if he was the savage brute that the Fiji Island 
 ers are now, he rose above it, did n t he ? He grew, and 
 he found out the laws that governed his growth, and 
 he wrote them down, and enforced them, and made a 
 religion of them did n t he? Well, to me, those laws 
 are as real as the laws of gravity every bit! And 
 there s something behind them just as sure as there s 
 matter behind the law of gravity. Yes. They can deny 
 that. Let them ! They have to live in accordance with 
 those laws, and they know it. And so do we. If we do 
 what s wrong, we 11 suffer for it in ourselves just 
 the same as we d suffer in our bodies if we did n t obey 
 the laws of hygiene ! We
 
 THE IDEALIST 241 
 
 She had looked over his head at the unexpected return 
 of the others. He had caught the warning in her 
 expression, and glanced back, sitting up in his chair. 
 
 Miss Arden came smiling. Well! You seemed 
 interested. 
 
 Miss Morris asked, defensively : "Where did you go?" 
 
 Pittsey said, with an amused eye on her: "He s 
 been having one of his serious talks with you, has he?" 
 
 "It s a relief," she replied coolly, "to be talked to, 
 sometimes, as if you had brains. 
 
 Miss Arden laughed, with all the sprightliness of 
 stage comedy. "Ah, my dear, be careful! It s the 
 most dangerous form of flirtation." 
 
 "Do we start back now?" Miss Morris asked, so 
 oblivious to their banter that she saved even Don s 
 shamefacedness. 
 
 They started back, but she remained thoughtfully 
 indifferent to them and to him on the street car. It 
 was not until they were parting at Mrs. Kahrle s door, 
 that she said, in a low aside to him: "Thank you for 
 a delightful afternoon." And her tone of gratitude 
 was so deep with suppressed intensity that it startled 
 him. 
 
 It was the result of that tone and of the qualms 
 of conscience which it awakened in him that when he 
 returned to his room, he sat down to write to his uncle 
 a full report of Conroy s condition and of his own part 
 in it. He felt that he must clear his honor of this affair 
 before he could meet her again. He resolved to tell her 
 of what he had done on the Bowery; and he spent an 
 hour, in the evening, imagining himself telling her and 
 picturing her reception of his confession. 
 
 16
 
 242 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 That was a measure of the difference between his 
 thought of her and his thought of Margaret. He could 
 not have imagined himself making such a confession to 
 Margaret. With a lover s unconscious duplicity, even 
 in his reveries, he concealed from her everything in 
 himself that did not seem worthy of her. 
 
 VIII 
 
 THE "Rialto," on these August mornings, was the 
 resort of all the actors and actresses who were still in 
 search of an engagement for the "season"; and Don 
 accompanied Walter Pittsey, from agency to agency, 
 in the atmosphere of a life that was new to him. Here 
 were the leading men of road companies, bearing them 
 selves with an obvious "stage presence," dressed in the 
 correct summer costume of the footlights and preserv 
 ing the unreality of the stage in the very faultlessness 
 of clothes that had the appearance of being part of a 
 theatrical "wardrobe." Here were comedians, more or 
 less "low," who carried a lighter manner, a necktie 
 fluttering in the breeze, a straw hat slanted over the 
 eyes, a hand waved in an airy greeting as they hurried 
 by. Chorus girls of conspicuous complexions, in gowns 
 of lace and applique, raised their dragging skirts to 
 show silk petticoats of pink or green, and stared through 
 their heavy chiffon veils at the would-b e "ingenues" in 
 their simple frocks. Soubrettes, "heavies," "general 
 utilities" and young graduates from dramatic schools,
 
 THE IDEALIST 243 
 
 walked haughtily past the groups of untrained and awk 
 ward beginners who had registered as Don had with 
 the agent who engaged supers." And they all passed 
 and repassed, met and nodded, bowed and shook hands 
 effusively, in a way that reminded Don of the students 
 in the college corridors, meeting after their Christmas 
 holidays, hailing friends and acknowledging acquaint 
 ances. There was the same air of camaraderie, tem 
 pered by the same marked distinction of distance in the 
 manner of the upper years to the lower ones ; there was 
 the same tone of social irresponsibility in the circle of 
 a privileged life ; and there was the same note of unreal 
 ity and evanescence derived, in this case, from the 
 exaggerated manner of these Bohemians who "made 
 up for the street as if for a stage entrance and walked 
 in the sunshine as if it had been a calcium light. 
 
 But though they reminded him of his college days, it 
 was only to make him happy that he had left those days 
 behind him. His last letter from his mother had brought 
 him word that Frank had passed his "matriculation" 
 with honors, at the head of his school; and Don was 
 glad of the fact that his brother s rivalry could not pur 
 sue him to the Rialto. He contrasted this street with 
 the streets of Coulton, and his liberty here with the life 
 which he might have led at home. The difference for 
 him was all the difference between romantic adventure 
 and drab matter-of-fact. The catchwords of greeting 
 which he heard in the waiting rooms of the agencies 
 "Hello! What luck?" came to him like the crou 
 pier s call to a gambler. Youth pursued opportunity in 
 a game of chance in which futures were at stake, and
 
 244 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 every turn of the hour was watched with eagerness. 
 This was a life to keep the heart beating. 
 
 He had met Kidder, the super s" agent, and been 
 looked on with a favor which was largely of Walter 
 Pittsey s procuring. "You re all right," Pittsey had 
 assured him. "Kidder has a problem here, trying to 
 get intelligent-looking supers. He has to pick up all 
 sorts of bums and muckers to fill up his ranks. I ve 
 asked him to get us something together. I ve told him 
 you 11 stay with him though I II go on the road if 
 I can get a part. He s put us down for an English 
 thing they re going to begin rehearsing next week. 
 
 That, Don felt, would be the beginning of his worldly 
 progress; the rest would be merely a matter of time. 
 And with his new pseudo-scientific theory of religion to 
 comfort his doubts, his future began to regain some of 
 the tints of happiness the misty blue tints of distant 
 peace. The figure in the immediate foreground of his 
 outlook was still Miss Morris; but he had not yet had 
 his confessional tete-a-tete with her, because she gave 
 him no opportunity to do so. She carried herself 
 among the actors on the street as if she were ashamed 
 of being seen with them ; and she admitted to Don that 
 she was sorry to see him there. Why? "Because you 11 
 never make a success of acting," she said. "It s 
 absurd. He tried to make her understand that he was 
 not ambitious. "Then you should be," she replied. 
 "At least you should be taking up some work that you 
 can remain in all your life. I hope you don t intend 
 to keep at this sort of thing." 
 
 "Why not?"
 
 THE IDEALIST 245 
 
 She turned into the door of an office building that 
 was full of theatrical agencies. "Well," she said, 
 curtly, "I supposed that you intended, some day, to 
 settle down." 
 
 He went back toward his room undepressed by her 
 criticism. Evidently, as Walter Pittsey had said, she 
 was out of her element. She should have remained in 
 Coulton, teaching in her sister s school, if settling down 
 made up her idea of the whole end and object of life. 
 
 He hesitated at Madison Square, intending to sit 
 under the trees for a moment and think it all over. But 
 he remembered that he had left the breakfast dishes 
 unwashed on the table; and it had been his turn, that 
 morning, to wash up. He continued down Fifth 
 Avenue, in the scant shade of mid-day, tired by the 
 heat and excitement of a crowded morning. 
 
 As he ascended the stairs to his rooms, Bert Pittsey 
 called over the railing: "Is that you, Don?" 
 
 "Yes. What is it?" He supposed that Pittsey 
 wished him to do some shopping for luncheon, and he 
 waited on the step. Hearing no reply, he continued his 
 ascent; and as he approached the landing on which 
 their apartment opened, Pittsey came out his hat in 
 his hand and whispered as he escaped past him: 
 "Your father s in there. Some one s written him that 
 you re gotng on the stage. 
 
 Don s irresolution carried him to the doorway. His 
 father was sitting beside the dining table; it was cov 
 ered with a disorder of stale food and dirty dishes ; and 
 he looked strangely out of place and as if degraded by
 
 246 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 the indignity of his surroundings. He did not rise. 
 At Don s challenging stare, he said : Well, come in. 
 
 Don crossed the threshold. His father scrutinized 
 him silently as if trying to see in his appearance some 
 indication of what had been happening to him in New 
 York. He was pale, shabby, thin, and as dumb as guilt. 
 
 Mr. Gregg pushed away from him a dish of half- 
 eaten porridge that had turned brown in its milk. He 
 put his elbow on the table with the air of beginning an 
 examination. "Your mother hears that you are going 
 on the stage ? Is this true ? 
 
 Don said, thickly: "Yes." 
 
 Mr. Gregg raised his eyebrows. "Do you find that 
 sort of life particularly inviting?" 
 
 Don shook his head. "No." 
 
 "You do it, then, because you feel that you have 
 great dramatic ability ? 
 
 But this sarcasm made Don aware that he was being 
 treated as a child, and recovering from the first instinc 
 tive obedience that had moved his tongue in spite of 
 himself, he refused to reply. 
 
 Mr. Gregg went on, slowly: "Or is it because the 
 wages are so high for beginners ? . . and the prospects 
 of advancement so alluring?" 
 
 Don looked up at him with narrowed eyes, meditat 
 ing a defiant answer. His father put in, quickly, in 
 another tone : Don t misunderstand me, now. I have 
 not come here to find fault with you. I merely wish to 
 know why you are doing it." 
 
 "Because there s nothing else," he replied sullenly. 
 
 His father refused to accept the challenge of his man-
 
 THE IDEALIST 247 
 
 ner, but looked down, frowning, at the bare floor, his 
 eyes concealed by his heavy grey eyebrows. "Surely 
 you don t think that?" he said. "Surely you under 
 stand that there s a place in life made ready for you 
 in Coulton that there s honest work for you there, 
 among your friends, among your schoolmates, with a 
 home for you to live in and your mother. . . She 
 has not had a happy minute, you know, since you left. 
 
 Don fumbled with his hat; this manner of attack 
 unnerved him. He had not expected gentleness. 
 
 "I don t understand you," Mr. Gregg continued. "I 
 have never professed to. I had to leave these things to 
 your mother. But I have never been consciously unkind 
 to you. I have tried to do my duty to you. And it 
 seems to me that you have behaved in a way that is 
 cruel to your mother and most undutiful to me. Why 
 is it? Why are you here? What is it you wish to do 
 with your life ? Surely, as your parents, we are entitled 
 to some consideration to some explanation." 
 
 He was asking for a confidence which he should never 
 have had to ask for. It was too late. It was too late 
 for him to ask from the young man what he had 
 repelled in the child and never encouraged in the boy. 
 Don struggled with himself to speak, but when he 
 raised his eyes to his father, he saw only the tyrant of 
 his past, now impotent. The figure of oppression had 
 shrunken; he was old and worried, and he had even a 
 provincial appearance in his lawyer s frock coat and 
 his collar that was out of style. He was pathetic, but he 
 was not lovable. 
 
 Don stammered: "I can t I can t explain."
 
 248 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 Why not?" 
 
 "I can t go back that s all. I can t go back." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 Don shook his head, his face averted. There was a 
 long silence. He leaned back against the jamb of the 
 door, and his eyes fell on a frying pan that was on the 
 end of the table. The bacon fat in it had jellied disgust 
 ingly. He found himself wishing that he had washed 
 up before his father came. 
 
 Mr. Gregg continued : " I came down with your uncle, 
 who is taking Conroy home. He wished you to return 
 with us. Will you go with him if you will not with 
 me?" When he received no answer, he said more 
 sharply: "You understand that he will not assist you 
 to remain here. Any arrangement which he made with 
 you terminates on your cousin s leaving. If you are 
 determined to defy us, you must do so without his assis 
 tance." 
 
 Don saw and despised the diplomacy with which his 
 father had manoeuvred in order to arrive with this ulti 
 matum. He said: "He has n t assisted me." 
 
 "Don t lie, sir!" his father snapped. 
 
 "I don t lie." 
 
 "You tell a falsehood!" 
 
 "I borrowed money from him. I" 
 
 "Exactly." 
 
 "I 11 pay it back." 
 
 "No doubt. You are apparently" He glanced at 
 the table "living in luxury here. Have you earned a 
 single penny yet ? 
 
 Don shut his lips. He felt that no matter what a son
 
 THE IDEALIST 249 
 
 of his had done, he could not have stung him with such 
 a taunt as that. And his tnought showed in his face. 
 
 "Well, then," his father cried, "answer me! What 
 do you hope to do here? Why did you leave college? 
 Why do you refuse to come home ? Do you hear ? He 
 brought his fist down on the table with a blow that 
 jarred the dishes. "Answer me!" 
 
 Don threw out a hand in one of those nervous and fu 
 tile gestures that were characteristic of him. "Because 
 I can t! Because I won t! Because there s nothing 
 there the life nothing! I hate it. I d die first." 
 
 The lawyer pointed a keen finger at him. "You 11 
 die here or you 11 do worse. You ve been here now 
 a whole summer, and you re no farther ahead than you 
 were the day you came. Don t think you can deceive 
 me. I know you. You re as foolish as unpractical 
 as a girl. You ve been living on the money you had 
 from your aunt and your uncle. When you have n t 
 that you 11 have nothing. You re living a beggar s 
 life now, and you refuse to come home because there 
 you d have to work. The fear of work drove you to 
 college. You idled for a whole year, and when your 
 examinations impended you ran away. You re a lazy 
 loafer. You 11 come home and get to work or you 11 
 stay here and starve. Your uncle will help you no 
 more. I 11 see to that ! 
 
 Don swallowed, white. "Thanks. If you won t help 
 me, at least you can " 
 
 Help you ! Help you to what ? 
 
 He threw his hat on the table. "I don t want your 
 help. I don t want anybody s help. I m going to live
 
 250 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 my life in my own way." He took up the frying pan 
 and the coffee pot and carried them into the kitchen. 
 "Leave me alone; that s all. I can take care of my 
 self." 
 
 He began to clear off the table, filling the kettle and 
 making the dishes ready in the washpan. He was 
 trembling with a resentful determination, tall, fragile, 
 pitiful in this ludicrous occupation of scullion. 
 
 When he went into the kitchen, his father wiped his 
 forehead, his eyes wandering over the poor discom 
 forts of the room which he had thought to find Don 
 eager to leave baffled, but still resolved to take the 
 son home to the mother and save him from this 
 folly. He had tried sarcasm, gentleness, abuse and 
 anger ; he had played all the tricks which his trade uses 
 to draw the truth from the witness in the box ! and as 
 yet he did not even understand what it was that his son 
 was concealing from him, what had brought the boy 
 here, what kept him here, what he hoped to find here 
 that he could not find at home. 
 
 He lighted a cigar which he had accepted from his 
 brother-in-law on their railroad journey together; and 
 he smoked it as if he did not know that it was in his 
 mouth his eyes darting from point to point of the evi 
 dence which he had gathered from Mr. McLean, from 
 Pittsey and from Don himself his eyebrows working 
 sometimes shaking his head, and more than once clos 
 ing his hands on a parental impulse to thrash the young 
 fool into submission and take him home by the ear. 
 
 Don washed and dried the dishes, emptied the water 
 into the sink, scoured the pan, hung up the dish rag,
 
 THE IDEALIST 251 
 
 washed his hands, and at last had no further excuse to 
 keep him from the dining-room. 
 
 He did not look at his father. He filled his pipe and 
 sat down beside the window. 
 
 "Well," Mr. Gregg said, with a calculated mildness, 
 "if you are going to stay here, will you tell me what 
 you intend to do?" 
 
 "I don t know." 
 
 "You re going on the stage?" 
 
 "Yes. I m going on the stage." 
 
 "As your life work?" 
 
 "I suppose so." 
 
 "You have no training for it." 
 
 "No." 
 
 "You hope to succeed at it?" 
 
 "I don t hope to succeed very well at anything." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "I don t care whether I do or not." 
 
 "You don t care whether you succeed or not?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "There are other things in life more important." 
 
 "What are they?" 
 
 "Oh, you know them as well as I do." 
 
 Mr. Gregg studied his cigar with an admirable self- 
 restraint. "You hope to marry, I suppose." 
 
 "I suppose so." 
 
 To support your wife and children ? 
 
 "I suppose so." 
 
 "On the stage?" 
 
 "Or in some other way."
 
 252 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 "You have n t decided how?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Do you appreciate the difficulty of making an hon 
 est living for a wife and family in a city where you 
 have no friends, no relatives? You are starting out, 
 here, like a man in a new country, and you are leaving 
 behind you, in Coulton, all the assistance that would 
 make the way easy for you. 
 
 I understand all that. I can t go back to Coulton. 
 
 Mr. Gregg sprang the next question like a trap : 
 "Who is the young woman?" 
 
 Don did not answer. 
 
 "Is it Miss Morris?" 
 
 He flushed resentfully. 
 
 "Do you think she would sooner have you on the 
 stage than in some honest employment? ... Do 
 you think she would be happier here than in Coulton? 
 . . . Do you?" 
 
 Don put down his pipe and stood up to face his 
 father. "What s the use?" he said wildly. "What s 
 the use of all this? I could n t make you understand 
 if we were to keep this up forever. You don t The 
 things that are important to you, to Coulton, I don t 
 care that for. He tossed them away with his bony hand. 
 "The things that make up my life if I were to tell 
 you you d laugh at me. Why can t you leave me 
 alone ? Why can t you go away and leave me alone ? 
 
 "Because, unfortunately, you re my son. Because 
 your mother worries herself sick about you. Because 
 she s ill and weak, and this is killing her. Because" 
 He raised his voice in a trembling passion "you owe
 
 THE IDEALIST 253 
 
 it to her, you ungrateful dog, to go back there and 
 behave yourself. Do you think I care! If it 
 were n t for her God! that it should be in 
 your power to make a woman suffer, and lie 
 sleepless, and watch me as if I were a brute that had 
 driven you out of the house!" He clenched his hands, 
 with a terrible face. You callous young hound ! This 
 is the important thing in life ! To make every one 
 miserable that loves you! To kill the mother that 
 almost gave her life for you once already! To break 
 up the home that sheltered you ! Oh, you whelp ! 
 You-" 
 
 Stop ! Don gasped. The horror of the accusation 
 was more than he could bear to listen to. "I won t 
 1 won t He caught up his hat and ran to the door. 
 "I won t-" 
 
 His father heard him slip and fall on the stairs. 
 He stood holding to the table, until he heard nothing 
 but the noises from the street echoing in a dull rumble 
 in the air-court outside the window. Then he sat down 
 to wait. 
 
 Don did not return. 
 
 HE did not return until late at night, and then he came 
 limping, to find Bert Pittsey sitting alone at the dining 
 table working on one of his "specials." Conroy had 
 packed his trunk and departed with his father. There 
 had been no messages left for Don, except a note from 
 his uncle enclosing a small check and advising him to 
 return home. 
 
 He sat down to write a letter of frantic affection to
 
 254 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 his mother, appealing to her not to worry about him, 
 exonerating his father from all responsibility for his 
 misbehaviour and promising an impossible success for 
 himself and an end of all trouble for her in the near 
 future. His hand, wet with perspiration, stuck to the 
 pages as his pen trembled across them. 
 
 He wrote another letter to his uncle, returning the 
 check with thanks. He ate bread and butter at mid 
 night, chewing mechanically, his eyes fixed on the lamp ; 
 and then he went to his bed, alone, abandoned, with a 
 sinking tremor of nervous apprehension that lay like a 
 nightmare on him in the stifling darkness and heat of 
 the room. 
 
 IX 
 
 HE woke defiant. He ignored the implied reprobation 
 of Bert Pittsey s silence concerning Conroy s depar 
 ture, although he knew that Pittsey must despise him 
 for having betrayed Conroy to his father. He ignored 
 Conroy s upbraidings, received in a letter which he 
 destroyed without reply. He arranged that Walter 
 Pittsey should take the vacant share in the apartment, 
 and made no explanation to his friend, although he 
 could see that Walter expected one. He told himself 
 that he had done what was right; and he did not care 
 what any one thought of it. He was going to live his 
 own life in his own way. 
 
 In that mood of bitter isolation, a letter from Mar 
 garet in Leipzig, came to him like a message of affec-
 
 THE IDEALIST 255 
 
 tionate trust, although there was nothing in it but her 
 usual friendship. She was worried by the fact that the 
 failure of Mrs. Richardson s investments had forced 
 them to practise the meanest economies. "I shall have 
 to earn my living now, without joking. Do you want 
 any more music lessons? Do you remember your first 
 one? Are you keeping up your practice? Do not be 
 surprised if you see me in New York suddenly, because 
 we are actually afraid of being left here without money, 
 so far from home, and mother is tired of traveling on 
 nothing. I do not know what may happen. How are 
 you getting on ? Write to me here. 
 
 He wrote her a long impassioned reply that was a 
 sort of confession of faith in her and in all the ideals 
 which he associated with her in his thoughts; and he 
 went to his rehearsals, with Walter Pittsey, in the 
 stilted manner of a martyr who has been fortified by a 
 secret communion with a priest of his religion. 
 
 He found that Miss Morris had been engaged as a 
 "walking lady" an "extra" like himself. He sup 
 posedfrom the way in which she avoided him that 
 Walter Pittsey had told her how he had betrayed his 
 cousin. 
 
 FOR the first week, of course, he was drilled in his street 
 clothes, on a stripped stage, in the choking twilight of 
 a closed theater, suffering all the indignities of being 
 driven, with the herd of "supers," by a raucous stage 
 manager who continually exhorted them to "put more 
 guts" into their work an expression which revolted 
 Don like an indecency. But with the dress rehearsal
 
 256 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 came the excitement of "making up" under Pittsey s 
 direction for Pittsey was acting as the "head of the 
 supers"; and when Don had put on the top hat, the 
 frock coat and the other morning wear of an English 
 gentleman of fashion on the stage, he smiled at himself 
 in the pier glass of the dressing room, stroking, like 
 a dandy, with his gloved fingers, the gummed moustache 
 that was tickling on his upper lip. For the first time, 
 the element of "make-believe" in the work appealed to 
 him. 
 
 Kidder, the agent who not only furnished the super 
 numeraries but acted as a sort of overseer of them when 
 they were not on the stage came into the room on his 
 round of the theaters, and complimented Don on his 
 appearance. "That looks well on you," he said, with 
 intent to flatter; for in his business of supplying 
 "extras," he found it difficult to get youths of Don s 
 intelligence and more difficult still to retain them. His 
 praise was sweet to Don ; and it added the final touch 
 to his pleasure to find himself in a profession where 
 such amenities were practised. 
 
 He raced upstairs after Pittsey, to take his place 
 among those others who were to represent a crowd of 
 promenaders on the Strand, in the first scene 
 of the play; and now the game of make-be 
 lieve was gorgeously colored and dazzlingly alight. 
 He smiled at the boys in their grease-paint that 
 gave them the complexion of young Sioux, and at the 
 girls in their rouge that added, in its exaggeration of 
 unreality, a charm of something romantic to their 
 young cheeks. When the stage manager called : Take
 
 THE IDEALIST 257 
 
 your places. Take your places!" and the rehearsal 
 began, Don sauntered out into the sunny glare of the 
 calcium light and saw Miss Morris coming across the 
 boards toward him, a haughty English beauty in a 
 summer gown, under a flowered parasol. He raised 
 his hat to her, smiling gallantly. 
 
 She dropped her handkerchief, startled by the change 
 which the grease paint and the false moustache and the 
 fine clothes had made in him. He picked it up* for her, 
 with a flourish. He shook hands with her, shoulder- 
 high. May I have the pleasure of a turn on the Strand 
 with you ? " he asked gaily. Most certainly. I should 
 be delighted ! she replied, in the game ; and they 
 returned together to the wings, Miss Morris gone ner 
 vous with the knowledge that the stage manager had 
 been watching their by-play. 
 
 "All right," he said to them gruffly. "Leave that 
 business in. It 11 do. Go ahead." He called to the 
 others: "Not so fast there. This s no foot race." 
 
 Pittsey warned them, when they met in the opposite 
 wings: "You re in luck that he did n t call you down. 
 You d better not put in anything else that you don t 
 get from him." 
 
 Don slapped his leg with his cane. "Had to do it," 
 he laughed. "I could n t leave the lady to pick up her 
 own handkerchief." 
 
 But he did almost leave it to her to pick up, on the 
 opening night of the play; for as soon as he stepped 
 out on the stage, he was aware that the footlights stood 
 at the mouth of a black cave from which the audience, 
 like some huge animal with a thousand pairs of eyes, 
 
 17
 
 258 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 was watching, in a malevolent silence, every movement 
 of the actors ; and he went stiff with an attack of stage 
 fright. Miss Morris steadied him with a cordial clasp 
 of the hand. "It s all right, she said under her voice. 
 ".No one is looking at us, you know. We re only to fill 
 in a background. You turn around with me." He 
 recovered himself as soon as their turning brought her 
 between him and the audience. He laughed at himself 
 when they reached the wings. 
 
 The scene was a "box-set," representing a jewelry 
 shop with stools and counters; and the promenade of 
 supers passed across an opening in the rear wall of the 
 set, where gaps of white gauze represented the plate 
 glass of two huge display windows and a double door. 
 While the first act worked itself out, in the loud voices 
 of the principal actors near the footlights, Miss Morris 
 and he crossed and recrossed the windows in this stream 
 of "extras," or stood chatting with Walter Pittsey in 
 the wings until it should be their turn to cross again. 
 Her cheeks were flaming with rouge ; her eyebrows were 
 pencilled; her eyelashes were as thick as black pins 
 with " cosmetique " ; and these artificialities gave her 
 beauty a coquettish enticement for Don. He was grate 
 ful to her for having held him up when he had faltered 
 over the handkerchief. She smiled and chatted rather 
 archly, enjoying his good spirits and the way in which 
 his eyes clung to her, admiringly. 
 
 It was near the end of the act that he asked her, 
 apropos of nothing: "By the way, how did my father 
 know I had met you here?" 
 
 They were in the middle of their passage across the
 
 THE IDEALIST 259 
 
 stage, and as they neared the wings her public smile of 
 high society slowly froze. "Perhaps," she said, "be 
 cause I wrote my sister so." 
 
 "Oh." They moved into the shadow behind the 
 reflector of the calcium light. Did you tell her that I 
 was. . . going in for this sort of thing?" 
 
 There was a note of defiance in her flat "Yes." 
 
 He stood in front of her, studying the reflection of 
 that tone in her face. He hesitated to believe what it 
 implied. "She must have told him so," he suggested. 
 
 "I asked her to." 
 
 "You!" 
 
 I wanted them to stop you, she said, uncompromis 
 ingly. "I did n t think you should do it." 
 
 He did not reply. She opened her parasol, prepara 
 tory to taking her turn again in the promenade. When 
 she looked up at him, she found him smiling doubtfully. 
 
 "You re as bad as I am," he said. 
 
 She did not understand him, being ignorant of his 
 affair with Conroy. "I beg" 
 
 They were interrupted by a cry down the stage the 
 cry that was the signal for all the street crowd to rush 
 to the windows of the shop and gaze in at an actor 
 who was shouting Police ! Thieves ! Police ! Don 
 lost her in the jostle. When the curtain fell on the act, 
 he went downstairs to the supers dressing room, with 
 an expression of face that puzzled Walter Pittsey. 
 
 It puzzled Miss Morris even more when he joined her 
 in the background of the next scene; and his amused 
 explanation that her treachery relieved him of the 
 guilt of his own left her still in the dark. She did not
 
 260 DON-A-DEEAMS 
 
 get his point of view. While he was telling her of his 
 quarrel with his father, she took his father s part 
 against him, in her thoughts; and when he made a 
 clean breast of his betrayal of Conroy, she sympathized 
 with his victim and blamed him. She was accustomed 
 to judge actions by the wisdom and justice of their 
 results; the fact that he considered only the moral 
 impulse that inspired the act escaped her. She was 
 relieved by his smiling forgiveness of her interference 
 in his affairs, but she did not see why this interference 
 should draw him to her. 
 
 They were separated by the movement of the play and 
 did not meet again until the third act, set to represent 
 an English lawn party in which they safat one of a 
 number of rustic tables among stage trees. It was 
 necessary that they should appear to be engaged in an 
 animated conversation, oblivious to the actions of the 
 principals who spoke their lines in the foreground of 
 the scene ; and she asked him how he liked his new pro 
 fession of actor. He replied that he liked it very much 
 but he could not tell why. Certainly it would enable 
 him to live without borrowing. He was to be paid 75 
 cents a performance; so that, with the two mat 
 inees, he would receive six dollars a week. He 
 was looking around for something to do in the idle 
 mornings. "At any rate, it s better than boosting on 
 Bowery, he said ; and he proceeded to tell her of that 
 adventure. 
 
 It led up to the problems which he had discussed with 
 Walter Pittsey in Central Park, and thence to the ques 
 tion of religion which he had broached with her on the
 
 THE IDEALIST 261 
 
 veranda of the cafe at Fort George. And looking out 
 thoughtfully at the actors strutting and posturing 
 against the glow of the footlights, he tried to tell her of 
 another conclusion which had come to him in his soli 
 tary debates with himself. 
 
 Almost the first thing I can remember, he said, is 
 the Christmas eve when I found out that there was no 
 Santa Claus. I don t think I can t tell you what 
 a shock it was." He smiled. Nothing that has hap 
 pened to me since about religion hit me harder. . . 
 But don t you see that there is a Santa Claus! He 
 is n t a man in a fur coat and a reindeer sleigh and 
 all that but he is the spirit of Christmas, is n t he? 
 They ve personified that, and made a saint of him, and 
 invented legends about him for the children but 
 when we re no longer children, and don t believe in 
 him, we still have that Christmas spirit and it s that 
 that gives presents and makes us feel kindly towards 
 one another, and makes Christmas what it is. . . Is n t 
 it ? . . . Well, that s the way it is about these other 
 things. They re true if they re not true in the way 
 we used to think they were." 
 
 She nodded, somewhat nervously. She felt the 
 absurdity of such a conversation in such surroundings, 
 and she was afraid that someone might overhear it. 
 She was relieved when the stage dialogue gave them the 
 cue to retire into the wings, where they parted. 
 
 NEVERTHELESS, she admired in him this almost ludi 
 crous earnestness, as one admires in another a quality 
 which shame conceals in oneself. She gave up her
 
 262 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 attempts to inspire him with her own aversion for the 
 stage ; and seeing the childish pleasure which he had in 
 his work, she tried to help him by her criticisms and 
 her counsel. She had been trained in a "dramatic 
 school," and she endeavored to give him the benefit of 
 that training in her advice. She found, to her greater 
 bewilderment, that he did not wish to be an actor ; that 
 the very thought of coming out before the opera glasses 
 and mimicking love or grief or any of his private emo 
 tions, was enough to make him blush. "I could n t," 
 he said. "Really I know I could n t." It was rather 
 a joke to masquerade, unknown to the public, in the 
 ranks of the silent; but imagine He looked out at the 
 leading man making stage love to the leading woman in 
 a voice to reach the galleries. Imagine him doing that ! 
 
 "Well, for goodness sake," she said, "what do you 
 want to do ? And why don t you find out, and go ahead 
 and do it?" 
 
 "I am. I want to live. And I am living." 
 
 "That s all very well for the present but what 
 about your future? You don t intend to be a super all 
 your life?" 
 
 "I don t intend anything, any more," he replied con 
 tentedly. "I in tired of planning futures that never 
 work out. Things will develop in their own way. I m 
 not troubling about them." 
 
 She turned ,way from him with a gesture of exas 
 peration which he did not understand; and she went 
 from him to Pittsey who had been watching Don and 
 her together with the mild curiosity that was natural 
 to him.
 
 THE IDEALIST 263 
 
 He had been wondering why she remained so long an 
 "extra" in this company, instead of finding a better 
 engagement with some other, now that the season had 
 well begun and all the stages were busy. When he 
 asked her whether she had any prospect of a "part," 
 she answered, languidly, "No," as if she had lost her 
 interest and her ambition. He had learned from Miss 
 Arden that she was eking out her small salary by pos 
 ing during the day, in costume, for magazine illus 
 trators. He had learned also that she and Don had 
 made a morning excursion together to the Bronx. And 
 when he tried to rouse her from the indifferent silence 
 which she maintained with him, he found that she 
 responded most readily to talk of Don. 
 
 "You used to know him, in Canada, did n t you?" 
 
 "Yes," sh!e said, "I Ve known him since the first 
 day he came to school a little fellow in black- velvet 
 knickerbockers and a Scotch cap. When my sister 
 introduced him to me, he said How do you do? with 
 a little old-fashioned bow that impressed me so much 
 I Ve never forgotten it. I could n t open my mouth to 
 him after that. 
 
 When Pittsey spoke of the pleasure which Don 
 seemed to find in his "suping," she replied: "He ought 
 to make an actor. I remember at school once, in the 
 winter, he pretended he was dead and the boys 
 buried him in a snow bank. They almost smothered 
 him. And how I cried when I saw them doing it ! ... 
 He was sent home for having snow down his neck and 
 up his sleeves and in his ears." 
 
 She relapsed into a sort of staring meditation. He
 
 264 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 did not break in upon it, a little ashamed of having 
 gone about to spy on her secret. 
 
 ON the forenoon of the following Sunday a fresh 
 September morning that came cool at the end of a hot 
 week Don and she rode to Central Park together, on 
 top of a Fifth Avenue stage. The street was busy with 
 its "church parade," with its holiday traffic, with its 
 throngs of sightseers and visitors to town ; the bus was 
 as crowded as an excursion boat; and the wind that 
 blew down the clean pavement newly washed with 
 rain floated the lashes of the cabbies whfps, fluttered 
 laces and feathers and the extravagant veils of "Fall 
 millinery," tossed black coat-tails, caught at top hats, 
 and moulded over feminine small knees the flowing 
 draperies of clinging skirts. Under the glinting sun 
 light, it gave movement and animation to the solemnity 
 of Sunday finery and curiosity s slow stare. It sparkled 
 like a breeze on water. It rocked the church bells in a 
 continuous chime. 
 
 She leaned back against the back of their seat, look 
 ing down on the bravery of fashion inscrutably, her 
 face made more beautiful by the softening blur of her 
 brown veil. Don clung to his perch, bending forward, 
 in all ungraceful angles, his head continually turning, 
 and clutching at his hat. The hollow rumble of the bus 
 axles, jolting in their hubs, thrilled him with the return
 
 THE IDEALIST 265 
 
 of a childish excitement ; for it was the sound that the 
 circus wagons had made, passing in a street parade 
 which he had seen when he had been no taller than the 
 glittering spokes of the gilded wagon wheels. And 
 although he did not recall any conscious memory of 
 that gala day, the magic of the sound made the world 
 poetical again, made every woman s face beautiful to 
 him, every couple in a hansom cab a pair of smiling 
 lovers, every glimpse of the lives around him the entic 
 ing illustration of a story-book of romances of which 
 the pages were being turned so rapidly that he could 
 not read. 
 
 "This is the way / d like to go through life," he 
 cried. "Would n t you?" And when she did not seem 
 to understand, he explained, with a wave of the hand : 
 "Up above it all, where nobody notices you looking 
 down at it as you go by." 
 
 She nodded, content to humour him in whatever he 
 said. 
 
 "I would n t like to climb down into it even into 
 one of those carriages. A liveried coachman and foot 
 man, like sentinels on their box, drove past with a bored 
 couple in an open landau. "Imagine living under 
 guard, like that!" he laughed. A butler stood at atten 
 tion beside a door which he had opened for an old lady 
 whom a footman was escorting solemnly down the steps. 
 " In a brownstone prison like that!" An automobile 
 came slowly toward them, quivering impatiently with 
 the pulse of its checked engine, crawling among the 
 cabs and carriages, a stout man beside the chauffeur 
 shaking corpulently with the vibration of the machine.
 
 266 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 "Though I should rather like that!" The man looked 
 up at the roof seats of the stage, as if in a habit of obser 
 vation which nothing escaped ; and for the appreciable 
 moment of* passing, Don returned a stare that seemed 
 suddenly to focus on him, and stay set, as if waiting for 
 a nod of recognition. 
 
 The machine shot forward into an opening between 
 the two streams of carriages ; the man, still staring, dis 
 appeared with a backward jerk of the head that brought 
 his hand up to the brim of his hat. Don said: "He 
 thought he knew me ! " But as soon as he had said it, 
 he saw that it had been she at whom the stare had been 
 directed; and he saw, too, that the recognition 
 had not been welcome. He scrutinized the mem 
 ory of the man s face a clean-shaven plump 
 face with protruding eyeballs that were round 
 under skinny eyelids, like a bird s. He wondered 
 to what scenes of her unknown past this unexpected 
 apparition belonged. 
 
 She did not speak. He felt that she was separated 
 from him by her thoughts, and he amused himself with 
 the faces he saw and the houses he passed, wilfully 
 fixing his attention, with a microscopic intensity, on the 
 intricate design of a lace curtain in a window, on the 
 twisted scroll-work of an iron gate, on a child in a blue 
 reefer and brown leather gaiters, on a policeman with 
 a swollen nose that shone in the sunlight picking out 
 details as if with a search-light and seeing them so 
 brilliantly that it seemed he had never seen such things 
 before. This game carried him to the end of their ride ; 
 and when they had climbed down from the driver s box,
 
 THE IDEALIST 267 
 
 over the rim and hub of the wheel, he stood beside her 
 on the curbstone, stiff, and with a strange sensation of 
 having lost his outlook and reduced his height. He 
 looked down at his legs. They feel so short, he said. 
 I feel as if I had been cut off at the knees. 
 
 When he returned his thoughts to her, a little ashamed 
 of his whimsicality, he found her drawn back from the 
 approach of an automobile in which he recognized the 
 man who had stared at her. The chauffeur stopped the 
 machine beside them. The man raised his hat, smiling 
 familiarly. "Jump in and have a ride." 
 
 She replied, in her coldest tones: "No, thank you." 
 . "What are you doing now?" 
 
 "Mr. Gregg," she said, "this is Mr. Polk." 
 
 Polk merely nodded. "Yes. How d you do?" He 
 passed his eyes over Don from the faded band of his 
 hat to the worn hem of his trouser legs with the same 
 absent-minded observation which Don had noticed in 
 him before. He said: "Been in to see Jimmy lately? 
 He s making up a couple of road companies. How ve 
 you been, eh? You re looking tip-top." 
 
 "Mr. Gregg is from Canada, too," she said, turning 
 to Don with the politest smile. 
 
 "On the stage?" 
 
 "Yes. It was such a beautiful morning we could n t 
 resist the top seat on it. 
 
 Polk blinked rapidly. "Oh? Yes. Well- Go ahead, 
 Jack. See you later." 
 
 The automobile coughed, exploded and kicked for 
 ward with a jerk. Polk waved his hand indifferently 
 and was gone again.
 
 268 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 Don looked after him, bewildered by this unexpected 
 arrival, this absurd conversation and this abrupt depar 
 ture. Why ! . . He must have followed us ! " 
 
 "This is our gate, is n t it?" She stepped down into 
 the roadway. "Is the Museum open on Sunday morn 
 ings?" 
 
 He followed her. "Who is he?" 
 
 "Peter Polk." 
 
 Don had seen the name on the bill boards. The play- 
 writer?" 
 
 If you wish to call them plays. 
 
 "You Ve " 
 
 She interrupted: "I would sooner talk of something 
 pleasant if you don t mind." As they turned into a 
 by-path, she added apologetically: "I don t want the 
 thought of him to spoil our morning." She raised her 
 veil, tying it around the crown of her hat, took off her 
 gloves, tucked them into her belt and opened her para 
 sol over herself and Don as if deliberately conferring on 
 him the intimacy of smiles and friendship which she 
 had refused to Polk. "Is n t this jolly!" 
 
 SHE was strikingly dressed in shades of brown even 
 to her parasol, her veil and her russet shoes and every 
 passer-by paid her the tribute of an admiring stare. She 
 appeared so unconscious of this that Don was free to 
 enjoy it for her, to be flattered for her, and to enjoy 
 also the feeling it gave him of passing, distinguished 
 but indifferent, above the gaze of the world. With the 
 graceful carriage of a stage beauty, she walked untir 
 ingly, through the shady windings of the paths, under 
 tall elms, among grey beeches of which the leaves were
 
 THE IDEALIST 269 
 
 yellowing, between the reddening hedges of underbrush 
 from which the squirrels peeped. She was amused by 
 his knowledge of the paths to be taken. She admired 
 every little view of wood and water which he pointed 
 out. She gave herself up to the simple pleasures of the 
 moment with a charming unreserve that was like a con 
 tinual compliment to him. 
 
 He had never seen her so light-hearted before, and 
 never so uncritically friendly in her acceptance of his 
 opinions and his points of view. Although she said 
 nothing of that part of her life to which Polk belonged, 
 she recalled almost wistfully her past in Coulton, 
 including Don in her memories and astonishing him 
 again by the vividness of her recollection of his small 
 doings. She had been in that photograph of the Sun 
 day school picnic in which he had been posed among so 
 many little girls that "Miss Margaret" had been jeal 
 ous of them ; she remembered, from the teasing he had 
 suffered in school, how he had given that picture to a 
 girl who had destroyed it; and she confessed that she 
 had hated the little wretch. When he was somewhat 
 blushingly surprised that she had been so interested in 
 him, even so long ago, she said : Oh, Edith used to come 
 home and talk at the table about the queer little boy she 
 was teaching. I knew all about you long before I ever 
 met you. We used to wonder what you would be when 
 you grew up." 
 
 "I m afraid. . . I m rather a disappointment." 
 
 "You are in some ways," she replied lightly. "In 
 other ways you re not. 
 
 "What ways?" 
 
 "Oh, now," she laughed, "that would be telling."
 
 270 DON-4-DREAMS 
 
 He joined in her amusement. "I know," he said, 
 "I m an awful ass. I ve tried to change really, I 
 have but I can t do it. I wake up next morning and 
 find myself back where I began. Your sister my 
 father Bert Pittsey everyone has tried to help me, 
 but they can t. I 11 get into trouble, some day, I 
 know. 
 
 "We all do that." 
 
 "Yes, but you try to avoid it. I seem to walk right 
 into it with my eyes shut. 
 
 "Never mind. Don t let us worry about it." 
 " I don t ! " he said. That s the trouble ! 
 "Well," she sighed, "some days I think you re right. 
 You are on a morning like this, anyway ! 
 
 SHE even accepted his invitation to have luncheon at 
 the Terrace, and protected him from extravagance 
 by giving a ridiculous order of oysters and ice-cream 
 making a joke of it, enjoying with him the amazement 
 of the waiter, ignoring the curiosity of the people about 
 her and devoting her eyes to Don as if they two were 
 alone in a solitary holiday of sunshine and autumn 
 trees. . . - 
 
 Now what shall we do ?" he asked, while the waiter 
 was gone for his change. 
 
 "Get a package of cigarettes," she whispered, as if 
 proposing a forbidden wickedness, and we 11 go where 
 you can have a quiet smoke." 
 
 He laughed. "I know the very place! as good as a 
 hay-loft!" 
 
 It was around an arm of the lake, at the foot of an 
 unfrequented path that led to the water s edge and
 
 THE IDEALIST 271 
 
 ended beside a clump of syringa bushes and a rustic 
 bench. The very place, she agreed. Is n t it lovely 
 to be out among real trees, instead of painted stage imi 
 tations ! And the ducks, too ! She sat down, making 
 herself comfortable, as if for a long tete-a-tete. Now 
 light up and talk to me. . . Tell me Tell me why 
 you left college ? 
 
 She turned toward him, sideways in the seat, her 
 back against the arm of it, studying him unobserved, 
 with an expression of face that might have put him on 
 his guard if he had seen it. 
 
 He drew the first contented puffs of his cigarette and 
 replied: "I don t believe I can. It was all mixed up. 
 I felt I was wasting my time there. I wanted to be at 
 work. Conroy and Pittsey were leaving together, com 
 ing to New York. I had quarreled with my father about 
 not studying law. Then besides" He stopped, con 
 fused. "There were other things. I thought someone 
 Oh, I could n t tell you. It was all mixed up. I 
 misunderstood, I guess. I made a mistake." 
 
 At his "I thought someone" her eyes widened on 
 him, unwinking, with the almost painful eagerness of 
 a sportsman who has seen the stirring of his game. She 
 waited so. 
 
 He smoked in a silent embarrassment that was, in 
 itself, a confession of the truth. He was thinking of 
 that parting on the steps of the Kimball porch, of his 
 blank despair, and of Margaret sobbing in the dark 
 ness. 
 
 She said, at last: "Your father did n t wish to send 
 you to college, did he ? " 
 
 "No. . . I had failed on my entrance exams."
 
 272 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 "I remember. . . Yes. That was the spring that 
 Miss What was her name? I remember seeing you, 
 often, on Park street with her. 
 
 "Miss Richardson!" 
 
 She did not appear to notice his surprise. She seemed 
 indifferently interested in the toe of her shoe, which 
 she was prodding with the point of her parasol. What 
 became of her?" 
 
 "She s in Germany studying music. Did you 
 know her?" 
 
 "No. I knew the family she was stopping with 
 next door to your aunt s. . . Is she going to be 
 abroad long?" 
 
 "I I don t know. I suppose so. If they can stay. 
 I think they ve been rather unfortunate about 
 money." 
 
 She said gently: "She seemed such a sweet girl." 
 
 She raised to him again that penetrating and watch 
 ful scrutiny. -He was unaware of it, gazing out at the 
 water. Her tone, as if speaking only of the past 
 "She was such a sweet girl" had recalled to him all 
 the dear tremors of those days that seemed so far away, 
 that were so hopelessly ended. In a flash of thought, 
 he saw himself, now, drifting in a life that promised 
 him no future, a "super," earning 75 cents a night, 
 without any prospect of advancement and resigned to 
 his failure in this city that had no work for him. The 
 interval that had passed since he had left her, had not 
 brought them nearer together; it had separated them 
 by every unsuccessful effort that he had made to earn 
 the right to love her. He saw her as the impossible 
 prize of a contest in which he had been a loser. He saw
 
 THE IDEALIST 273 
 
 her, surrounded by a light of lost dreams, immeas 
 urably beyond him, a hope that was past. 
 
 His face twitched with a twinge that seemed to strike 
 from his heart. To Miss Morris, it was the face of a 
 boy who had been disappointed in love, who had thrown 
 away his career and left college because someone had 
 taken the young hope out of his future and left him 
 merely "living now" as he had said without plan, 
 without ambition. She smiled, but tenderly, at the 
 folly of it. How like him it was! 
 
 He was startled by the touch of her hand on his arm 
 the hand in which she held her gloves. He thought 
 that she was giving them to him, and he took them 
 absent-mindedly. "Put them in your pocket for me," 
 she said. "I m afraid I 11 lose them." 
 
 He wondered why she was blushing. 
 
 HE was to wonder at her again when they parted at 
 the door of Mrs. Kahrle s boarding-house. "I ve had 
 such a good time," she said. "Have youl Have you 
 been happy?" And when he assured her that he had 
 been, she added: "That s good. I enjoyed myself 
 so much." She shook hands, lingering with a manner 
 of having something still unspoken. "Don t worry 
 about things you know. They 11 all come out right, 
 won t they?" 
 
 I hope so, he replied, puzzled. 
 
 f That s right, she said. Good-bye. Her smile 
 dwelt on him as if she were trying to say with her eyes 
 some encouragement which she had, apparently, not 
 put into words. "Good-bye till to-morrow." 
 
 18
 
 274 DON-A-DKEAMS 
 
 XI 
 
 HE did not try to understand what it was that lay glim 
 mering at the bottom of that deep look of hers. Her 
 talk of Coulton and of "Miss Richardson" had put 
 before him a whole picture of his life, from the days 
 when he had played with little "Miss Margaret" in the 
 broken summer-house, down to the last written words 
 which he had received from her in Leipzig ; and he went 
 back over it all, incident by incident, and chapter by 
 chapter, as if it were a printed story of which he had 
 yet to read the end. Was it possible that, so far as she 
 was concerned, it was already ended? Was she gone 
 out of his life forever ? Was his future to be a disjoined 
 series of new incidents to which she would be a 
 stranger ? 
 
 He revolted against the thought as if against a 
 change in his own identity. Surely love could not be 
 such an impotent tragedy. Surely he was not wrecked 
 here in a life that had settled down to mere aimless 
 regret. Surely it was a very law of existence that his 
 future should be a development of his past. He said 
 to himself that it must be so, that it should be so, that 
 he would make it so. With a determined effort he 
 threw off the depression that had fastened on him ; and 
 by a trick of imagination he made himself feel a confi 
 dent expectation that Margaret would come back to him 
 and that his life would continue to fulfil the promise 
 with which it had begun. 
 
 When he returned to his rooms, both the Pittseys were
 
 THE IDEALIST 275 
 
 out, and he opened his trunk and began to re-read his 
 collection of her letters, brooding over them fondly and 
 striving to recall every detail of this past that had 
 threatened to escape him. He opened the back of his 
 watchcase, to find that her face was almost lost in the 
 lustrous brown of the "unfixed" proof, as if it, too, 
 were trying to fade away from him ! And he sat gazing 
 at it in an attempt to stamp it forever on the memory 
 of his retina until the light had quite obliterated it. 
 Then he closed his eyes and smiled when he saw the 
 after-image of her face, glancing aside in the pose of 
 girlish shyness which he loved. That picture should 
 never fade. He would summon it back every hour of 
 the day, so that it might be glowing in the darkness 
 when he gave himself up to the last sleepy thoughts of 
 her at night. 
 
 She would return to him from Europe ; he would be 
 waiting, ready for her, in some position which should 
 not be unworthy of her; their lives would join in a 
 happy completion of the destiny foreshadowed by their 
 past. Of that he made himself feel sure. For he was 
 not merely an unconscious idealist, now ; he was becom 
 ing a visionary. He not only believed in what was the 
 unsupported tissue of his hope ; he was making the hope 
 itself and then believing in it. 
 
 IT occurred to him when he met Miss Morris on the 
 stage again, and was greeted by her with an almost 
 eager smile that she had just such a confidence in him, 
 and that she had intended to let him know as much in 
 her parting from him on Sunday afternoon. He felt 
 that he had shared his past with her; that she had
 
 276 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 watched him always with interest; and that she 
 believed in him still. 
 
 "Well, what have you been doing?" she asked, as 
 soon as they were paired off in their promenade. 
 
 "I ve been making plans. 
 
 Have you ? What sort ? 
 
 "Why I feel that I ve been drifting. I ve been 
 trying to take a course again, and sail it." 
 
 She said, feelingly : Oh, I m so glad ! What have 
 you decided to do?" 
 
 She surprised him by the warmth of her curiosity, 
 questioning him with an eagerness that had an air of 
 triumph, as if she had tried to awaken his ambition and 
 was flattered by her success. He guessed that she too 
 had been planning for him; and he said: "I have n t 
 found out. Tell me can t you suggest something?" 
 
 "Oh, a thousand things!" She laughed. "For 
 instance, here you are, behind the scenes, watching the 
 machinery of a play with a college education and lots 
 of imagination, I know. Why don t you begin to write 
 plays?" 
 
 "Like Peter Polk?" he joked. 
 
 She winced. Please Please 
 
 I beg your pardon. . . Do you really mean it ? " 
 
 "Most certainly. Why not? You could act, if you 
 would let yourself but if you don t want to come out 
 and read lines yourself, you certainly can t object to 
 writing them for others. And I m sure you could do 
 it." 
 
 He trussed himself up with his cane, holding it across 
 his back in the crooks of his elbows, and frowning out
 
 THE IDEALIST 277 
 
 at the parade of supers in the calcium light. I tried to 
 write newspaper stuff for Bert Pittsey. And I 
 could n t do it at all." 
 
 Newspaper stuff ! she said contemptuously. No ! 
 But surely you could write the dialogue of a play. 
 Look at that Polk. He can hardly write a readable letter. 
 But he knows how people talk, and he knows how to 
 put them on the stage." 
 
 He looked around at her in sudden surprise. "Do 
 you know, " he said, I believe I could ! I used to make 
 them up plays for figures cut out of pictures pic 
 tures from the old Graphic long ago. Would n t 
 it be fun! if I could!" 
 
 She touched him on the arm, to start him out for 
 their turn in the procession. "Of course you could. 
 It s the very thing you could do. It s what Edith said 
 when she heard you were going to study law that you 
 had too much imagination for law or business or any 
 thing else unless you took to poetry. And no one can 
 make a living out of poetry, whereas Polk has made 
 thousands of dollars out of his Tommy Tenderfoot 
 alone. . . I thought of it once, myself, and got a lot 
 of books on the technique of the Drama and all that. 
 I 11 let you have them, if you wish. But I had no 
 invention. I had to fall back on trying to dramatize 
 novels. While you " 
 
 He scarcely heard her. His imagination had leaped 
 to her suggestion like a child to a new toy. To earn 
 his living by writing plays! It would be a game of 
 "pretend" such as he had used to play with Frankie. 
 It would be played in this glittering world of the
 
 278 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 theater, away from office drudgery and the slavery of 
 business, above all the deceits and conventions and suf 
 ferings and vices of real life, looking down on the work- 
 a-day world as he had looked down from the top of 
 the Fifth Avenue stage with Margaret beside him, in 
 an endless happiness. He felt that a door which he had 
 been groping for in darkness had suddenly been opened 
 to him. It was work a future everything! 
 
 "It it would be great!" he said. "Would n t it?" 
 
 "It would be the very thing for you. I wonder you 
 did n t think of it yourself." 
 
 He smiled up at the calcium light, as if it were the 
 wholesome sunshine on his face. "I could n t see any 
 future for me here and still I liked it so much. I 
 hated to leave it. I did n t know what to do." 
 
 The cry from the jeweler s counter broke in on them. 
 They exchanged parting smiles as they were separated 
 by the crowd the smile of congratulation and the 
 smile of ambition ; for Don, at last, had found an object 
 and a task in life. 
 
 He walked to her door, that night, to borrow her few 
 books ; and he went to the Astor Library, next morning, 
 to look over the list of volumes on the "Drama. He was 
 not discouraged when he found hundreds of titles under 
 that head ; the more guides, he thought, the surer travel 
 ing. He confided to Walter Pittsey that he had serious 
 thoughts of trying to write a play, and Pittsey nodded : 
 "Why not?" He had been through the play writing 
 period himself, and was tolerant. 
 
 "There s a pile of money in it," Bert Pittsey said, 
 and you re nearer it in the theater than the rest of us 
 outside.
 
 THE IDEALIST 279 
 
 "I don t care so much about the money," Don 
 replied. "It s the the fun of it." 
 
 "Oh go on," Bert replied. "Take the money. You 
 may need it some day. 
 
 "All right," Don laughed. "Since you are so press 
 ing." 
 
 He was in high spirits. He took optimistically the 
 news from his mother that Frankie s departure for col 
 lege had left the house very empty, and that Conroy 
 was giving Uncle John so much trouble that the "poor 
 man" looked ten years older. It would all come out 
 right. Everything would come out right. He tried to 
 cheer Miss Morris with that hope when she caught the 
 rib-point of her umbrella in the gauze netting of the 
 jeweler s window and was called a "fool" by the stage 
 manager. I am a fool, she said bitterly, for having 
 brought myself down to the level of such beasts." 
 
 "Never mind," he joked. "When we get that play 
 written, you 11 have the lead to do, and you 11 help 
 me abuse the stage manager." 
 
 You 11 have forgotten me by that time. 
 
 "Forgotten you ! Oh say, what do you think I am !" 
 
 They were sitting at their table under their stage tree. 
 She looked around her scornfully at her neighbors. I 
 think you re the only person here I d I d care to be 
 remembered by." 
 
 "That s pleasant!" 
 
 She turned her eyes to him. "It s true. 
 
 It struck him that she had changed since their first 
 meeting, that she had come to the surface, that she was 
 no longer hidden behind the mask of her beauty; for
 
 280 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 the expression of face with which she said "It s true !" 
 was alive with a sort of proud emotion that confessed 
 friendship and invited its return. 
 
 He said, humbly: "It s It s mighty good of you 
 to say so. You ve been kindness itself to me here." 
 
 She put her elbows on the table and leaned forward 
 toward him in her chair. "Because I wanted you to 
 like me, she said in a low voice. Do you f . . . . 
 Because," she went on fiercely, "I ve hated myself so 
 in this life here that I thought you would despise 
 me. And I I ve done despicable things. Polk he 
 was in one of them before I learned what such men 
 are. You don t know. You can t because you re 
 you re different." 
 
 He tried to speak, with a confused smile. 
 
 "No," she said, with the same desperate rapidity of 
 utterance, don t say that. Don t say anything. I m 
 they ve That brute has upset me. I should n t be 
 saying such things. I can t help it. I I have to speak 
 or I shall be crying. Don t look at me. He fixed his 
 eyes on the floor, bewildered. "I hated everyone. I 
 looked at them and hated them. It s your fault that 
 She choked. "You must n t judge me. You came to 
 me from Coulton, and that afternoon at Fort George 
 from the life I d run away from and you spoke to 
 me from it. It was that. That s why I wanted you to 
 go away, to go home and you would n t. And I 
 was n t strong enough myself I wanted to see you 
 and talk to you. You must n t judge me. You can t 
 you can t understand. It s " 
 
 The cue came: "Lady Whortley, the tenantry are
 
 THE IDEALIST 281 
 
 waiting on the lawn." When Don looked up, she was 
 lost in the exit of the supers. 
 
 He followed her, amazed by this outburst, which he 
 could not understand. He wished to assure her tha t 
 of course he liked her ; that he had always had the great 
 est admiration and respect for her; that, if he had not 
 shown it, it was because he had been a little in awe of 
 her. As for her accusations against herself, they were 
 foolish (he would tell her). She must not let herself 
 think such things. She was everything that was high- 
 minded, he knew. It was only her own over-sensitive 
 ness that accused her of imaginary defects. 
 
 He tried to meet her in the wings, but she avoided 
 him by not coming from the women s dressing-room 
 until the instant that she was to go on the stage; and 
 the play kept them separated there. He decided to 
 meet her at the stage entrance and escort her to her 
 boarding-house; but when the last curtain had fallen 
 and he hurried to the supers dressing-room to get into 
 his street clothes, he found that Walter Pittsey and Mr. 
 Kidder were waiting to speak to him. "I m going to 
 Boston, Pittsey explained, to open an agency for Mr. 
 Kidder. He wants you to take charge here, in my place. 
 What do you say ? 
 
 "Why why, yes, of course," Don stammered, as if 
 reluctantly. "If Mr. Kidder wants me to" 
 
 Kidder, instead of being offended as Pittsey 
 seemed to fear he might be put in, rather apologeti 
 cally: "I m going to have something better for you, 
 pretty soon. You look after these boys, now. See that 
 they take care of their costumes ; that s the main thing.
 
 282 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 Pittsey 11 explain all that. Come and see me to-morrow 
 morning and I 11 give you the new pay roll. Two of 
 the boys are quitting to-night. He patted Don on the 
 shoulder, flatteringly, as he turned away. "I got 
 something up my sleeve for you." 
 
 Don had to remain with Pittsey until the last 
 of the "boys" had departed and the last article 
 of their wardrobe had been hung on its appointed hook ; 
 and then Walter accompanied him on his way back to 
 their rooms, giving him instructions in his duties as 
 time-keeper and "head of the supers." "It s ten a 
 week, you know," Pittsey said, "and a chance to get 
 some sort of little thinking part if one turns up. You 
 do the square thing by Kidder, and he 11 shove you." 
 
 "Shall I have the the same place on the stage, with 
 Miss Morris?" Don asked. 
 
 Pittsey smiled at a street lamp. Certainly unless, 
 as I said, the stage manager wants some one to do a lit 
 tle bit and asks Kidder or puts you into it, himself. 
 You 11 not have anything new to do, immediately 
 except in the dressing-rooms. One of the new men will 
 take my place in the ranks." 
 
 Oh, I see, Don said, relieved. He added, on second 
 thoughts : " I m sorry you re going. I 11 be lost with 
 out you. 
 
 Pittsey laughed. "Oh, you 11 get along." 
 
 "I don t mean that," Don said. "I don t care 
 about that. You ve been so If it had n t been for 
 you 
 
 "That s all right, old man," Pittsey put in, hastily. 
 "I m only worried about the apartment about my 
 share in it. I " He turned to watch a passing car,
 
 THE IDEALIST 283 
 
 with a pretended interest, touched by Don s gratitude 
 but nervously afraid of this expression of it. 
 
 Don said, out of the silence: "I wish Miss Morris 
 . . . was n t a woman." 
 
 "Was n t a" 
 
 So that she could take it. You and she you re the 
 best friends I ve had. She does n t seem very happy, 
 alone that way. Pittsey looked at him with a quizzical 
 lift of the eyebrow; but he went on, innocently: "It s 
 pretty hard for a girl. I d give anything to be able 
 to help her the way you did me. We get on so 
 well together, too. . . Funny thing to-night she 
 thought I did n t like her." 
 
 He spoke as if he were thinking aloud ; and Pittsey, 
 as if ashamed of overhearing him, checked him with: 
 "Perhaps Bert 11 know some one to come in with 
 you." 
 
 As they turned up the old and broken brownstone 
 steps that mounted from the street to the front door of 
 their lodgings, Don said : For that matter now that 
 I m getting ten a week we could keep the place for 
 you till you come back. And Walter was still remon 
 strating against this folly, when they entered the "din 
 ing-room" and were confronted by Conroy, soiled and 
 disheveled, eating at the table. 
 
 XII 
 
 HE had run away from home ; that was evident at once 
 from the sulky and defiant way in which he received
 
 284 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 their surprised greetings. "Why, what happened?" 
 Don cried. He answered, brutally: "I don t know that 
 it s any of your business." He continued eating in a 
 surly indifference to them, as if they were a pair of in 
 truders. They stood awkwardly, staring at him, until 
 Walter Pittsey, with a shrug of the shoulder, turned 
 into the other room. Don heard him talking in low 
 tones to his brother, who was already in bed. There 
 were only three beds three cots so narrow that it 
 was impossible for more than one person to sleep in 
 any one of them. 
 
 You might have let us know that you were coming, 
 Don said. + 
 
 I don t have to report my movements to you. I m 
 done with you. You mind your own affairs and I 11 
 mind mine." 
 
 Don sat down, sick at heart. Conroy finished his sup 
 per and shoved back his chair. He swayed and 
 stumbled as he crossed to the bedroom door. He threw 
 it open with his foot, and went in to his cot the cot 
 in which Walter Pittsey had been sleeping. He sat 
 down on the side of it and began to take off his shoes. 
 
 Walter came out. "Well," he said, as he shut the 
 door behind him, "this is no place for me." 
 
 "No," Don replied, "nor for me either. I might as 
 well get out now. I can t live here not with this sort 
 of thing." 
 
 Nonsense ! He 11 be all right in the morning. 
 He 11 sleep it off." 
 
 "No. . . No. . . He thinks I It s no use. 
 You know what I did. I did it because I had to but
 
 THE IDEALIST 285 
 
 he 11 never forgive it. I might as well get out now. 
 It 11 be a dog s life. Where are you going?" 
 
 "Don t be absurd." He put down his hat. "I m 
 not going any place. Lend me your mattress, and I 11 
 sleep on the floor." 
 
 Don shook his head. 
 
 "But if he needed looking after before, " Pittsey 
 coaxed, "he 11 need it a hundred times more now. He 
 won t have a sou to pay rent. You don t intend to 
 leave it all to Bert, do you ? 
 
 "No, but-" 
 
 Well, then, don t be foolish. Lend me your mat 
 tress and a blanket, and I 11 sleep here. 
 
 "It s no use," Don said. "I can t stay." 
 
 However, after a weakening argument, he comprom 
 ised by sleeping on the floor himself, giving Walter the 
 bare springs of the cot which they had carried out 
 into the dining-room. He heard Conroy snoring in a 
 heavy stupor through the night; and in the morning 
 he was willing to accept his cousin s enmity as freeing 
 him from a responsibility which he did not feel himself 
 able to discharge. 
 
 Their breakfast was a constrained and unhappy meal, 
 in spite of Bert Pittsey s attempt to make a joke of 
 the night s discomforts. "Your back must look like a 
 waffle, Walt," he laughed, "with the pattern of those 
 springs on it." 
 
 "Well," Walter replied, "I did n t notice you put 
 ting yourself out any. 
 
 Bert flushed at his brotherly dig. Conroy carried 
 himself as if Walter had been justly punished for his
 
 286 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 impertinent intrusion on the apartment. Don refused 
 to join in any attempts to achieve a more companionable 
 mood. They finished the meal as they had begun it. 
 
 Don helped Walter to pack his trunk and accom 
 panied him to Kidder s office; and when they had said 
 good-bye at the railway station, Don went to the library 
 and sat down to his books with a sigh of relief. He felt 
 that he had returned to solitude, and he was glad of it. 
 He was ready, now, for his future, his salary assured 
 and his work before him. 
 
 He spent the greater part of the day in the library, 
 lunching at a ten-cent restaurant so as to avoid a mid 
 day meeting with Conroy. He did not think of Miss 
 Morris, until he met her on the stage, that night; and 
 then she was so smilingly oblivious to what had passed 
 between them on the previous evening that he was 
 unable to refer to it. They talked about his play-writ 
 ing, about his new responsibilities in the dressing-room, 
 about Conroy s return and about Walter Pittsey s 
 departure ; and he looked out on the world of his stage 
 work and his petty worries from the charmed circle of 
 her friendship, feeling himself solaced and protected 
 in it. 
 
 When he received a letter from his uncle, asking him 
 to take charge of $30 a month for Conroy s mainte 
 nance, on the old conditions, he talked this letter over 
 with her; and they agreed that it would be better to 
 have Conroy independent of him. Get them to send it 
 to the other Pittsey, she advised. He 11 only quarrel 
 with you more than ever. 
 
 That s so, he said. Bert has his confidence still. 
 And he may know how to handle him.
 
 THE IDEALIST 287 
 
 But Pittsey did not look on the proposal with any 
 favor. "I don t exactly relish being keeper to a remit 
 tance man myself," he objected. "Why can t they 
 send him the money, if they want him to have it?" 
 
 "Well, for one thing, he d not keep enough of it to 
 pay his rent here." 
 
 "That s so," Pittsey reflected. "But I d have to fix 
 it up some way so that he won t turn sour on me, too." 
 
 Fix it any way you please, Don said. I can t do 
 anything with him, and if we don t take the money for 
 him, we 11 either have to pay for him ourselves or turn 
 him out on the street. 
 
 Don wrote his uncle and explained the situation ; and 
 Mr. McLean, in his reply, accepted the inevitable. He 
 must not return," he wrote. "I will not have his 
 mother worried. I will send enough for his support. 
 Perhaps if we let him go his own gait he will come out 
 all right. Keep him out of trouble. If anything goes 
 wrong, write me." 
 
 Don accepted these instructions as releasing him 
 from all but the most casual supervision, and he 
 returned eagerly to his books. From reading of how 
 to write plays, he had begun to read plays them 
 selves; and he haunted old book shops for the second 
 hand volumes of "plays for amateurs and profes 
 sionals," and carried them about in his pockets and 
 studied them on the benches of the public squares or 
 under the falling leaves of Central Park. The only 
 dramas which he could see performed were at the few 
 theaters that gave matinees on other days than Wed 
 nesdays and Saturdays; for on those latter afternoons 
 he was on the stage himself. But he found an
 
 288 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 extravaganza called "The Enchanted Castle" that had 
 a matinee on Thursday; and this gorgeous spectacle 
 appealed to him like a fairy tale. 
 
 The dramas that depicted life did not invite him to 
 attempt any imitation of them, but he felt that it would 
 be a pure joy to plan such a play as this "Enchanted 
 Castle"; and he amused himself by picturing a ballet 
 for it not in the "wizard s cavern," but in the great 
 hall of an ice palace, of which all the floors were shining 
 ice, transparently blue; and the walls were blocks of 
 snow, like a white marble, sparkling in raised designs 
 of frost; and from the arched ceilings hung great 
 chandeliers that were pendant icicles supporting a 
 myriad of lights ; and on a throne that looked as if it 
 had been carved from a frozen waterfall, sat the god 
 dess of Winter, in ermine and white velvets, holding 
 her wand of silver tipped with a great pearl, and look 
 ing down on her Amazons with their icy breastplates 
 and their frost-spangled skirts. He was returning, 
 unconsciously, to all he had ever imagined of Santa 
 Claus s palace that stood on the top of a mountainous 
 iceberg and was peopled by fairies who arrived and 
 departed on floating clouds. He imagined Winter as 
 a neglected divinity who envied the praises which man 
 kind and especially the poets, gave to her sisters of the 
 Spring, the Summer and the Autumn. He saw the 
 Prince, her devoted lover, in a drifted forest (that was 
 his ravine at Coulton on a larger scale) sitting on some 
 broken fir branches with a dog crouched in the snow 
 beside him when suddenly the dog barked and he 
 looked up to see that the side of the hill had opened
 
 THE IDEALIST 289 
 
 just where there had stood a huge rock dripping with 
 ice, and from this cave a band of nymphs rushed out 
 and surrounded him with a circle of spears and then 
 Winter herself came into the sunlight and waved them 
 back and said : For this is he ! " 
 
 She had come to reward him for his devotion ! 
 
 He gathered up his books from the reading table, 
 returned them at the library desk, and hurried out to 
 the street to be alone among the multitudes of the city 
 with this new make-believe. 
 
 She led him into her underground palace which 
 proved to be an Aladdin s cave encrusted with precious 
 stones set in ice its floors covered with the skins of 
 polar bears, its walls shining with theatrical stalactites 
 like the wizard s cavern ; and when they were alone in 
 a wonderful secret chamber out of the Arabian Nights, 
 they sat down to a Homeric feast of nectar and ambro 
 sia. She told him how she had watched over him in the 
 woods, patting him on the cheeks with snow flakes and 
 caressing him with the winds. She had longed to speak 
 to him, but but intercourse with mortals was forbid 
 den by the gods ; and now, having sworn her attendant 
 nymphs to secrecy, she was daring all the angers of 
 Olympus by making herself visible to him and receiv 
 ing him here in this enchanted cave which she had 
 made for him unknown to Jupiter. 
 
 He walked up Broadway, listening to her complaints 
 of loneliness, of the disregard of men who had become 
 afraid of her since they began to herd together in cities 
 and avoid the bracing airs and healthful exercises of 
 the winter; and he tried to console her with his own 
 
 19
 
 290 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 fervent admiration, reminding her of his life-long 
 adoration and his love of the snow. She interrupted 
 him with a melancholy smile, to say: "And you even 
 you will forget me. The city will take you. You 
 will build a home and sit by your fireside with your 
 wife and children, and shudder when you hear me call 
 ing to you mournfully outside among the frozen 
 drifts." 
 
 "Here you! Look where yuh re goin , will yuh?" 
 A policeman thrust him back from "Dead Man s 
 Curve," as a cable car swung around it with a frantic 
 clang of its gong. "D* yuh want to go home n an 
 amb lance ! 
 
 He picked up his hat, and brushing it with his coat 
 sleeve as he went, he hurried to the safety of the 
 benches in the center of the square. There he sat down 
 with his drama, still trembling from the fright, but still 
 smiling excitedly. He saw himself pleading with her to 
 take him away from the world which he despised, to 
 keep him with her hidden. He saw that she would not 
 be able to resist him. She would carry him on a cloud 
 to her summer palace in the unexplored North. A 
 jealous nymph would betray her. The ballet in the great 
 hall would be interrupted by the arrival of Jupiter, with 
 stage thunder. The gods would sentence her to lose her 
 immortality and her throne; she would return with 
 him to the world, where they would live together 
 through the last act in a little cottage in the woods. 
 And she because she shared with him the common 
 menace of death and was linked to him by a doom that 
 made love a fearful and precarious joy she would be
 
 THE IDEALIST 291 
 
 more happy, now, than she had ever been in the splen 
 did ennui of her divinity. 
 
 It was, to him, the plot of a great play. He was blind 
 to the incongruity of his Santa Glaus palace and his 
 Homeric mythology; he saw nothing unworthy in his 
 chorus-girl nymphs; he accepted it all as a thing so 
 beautiful that it almost brought tears to his eyes. He 
 hastened to his rooms to put the outlines of it on paper 
 before he should forget them ; and he noticed, then, for 
 the first time, that it had begun to rain. 
 
 He found, in his box, a letter from Margaret. "Dear 
 Don, it read, we are coming home. I can t tell you. 
 It s mother s fault. Mr. Berwick warned her against 
 doing just what she did and now the money s gone and 
 I m glad of it because the worry s over. I m trying 
 to be brave and not frightened, but I wish you were here 
 to tell me what to do. I 11 have to earn my own living, 
 you know. If there s anything left it will not be more 
 than enough for her. I want to see you as soon as we 
 get to New York. I m sure you ll be able to tell me. 
 You must because I won t go back home and take music 
 pupils and wear made-over dresses like Maud Browning, 
 and the only thing is to find something in New York. 
 I can sing, you know, and play a little, and there ought 
 to be something. 
 
 "I must tell you, though, not to meet me at the boat 
 because I quarreled with mother about a man here. 
 You never saw such shoes as he wore! He actually 
 dared to ask mother if he could marry me without ever 
 asking me what / thought about it and I believe she 
 wanted me to because he had money. I did n t dare to
 
 292 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 tell her so, but I told her I would n t look at him if he 
 were the only man in the world. She behaved shame 
 fully about it. I m going to make her leave me in New 
 York when she goes up to Canada to see if Mr. Berwick 
 can t do anything for us and I 11 write to you when 
 she s gone because you know ever since Mrs. Kimball 
 wrote her about the time we were out together that day 
 she has been saying things about you and perhaps she 
 would n t leave me if she knew you, awful you, were in 
 the city. Have a plan ready for me. You were always 
 good at plans, were n t you? I know this letter is 
 frightfully mixed up but I have to have it posted 
 before she comes back from buying the tickets and I 
 have no time to read it over. I hope you will be glad to 
 see me. 7 shall." 
 
 There was a postscript to say that if he were out of 
 town "or anything," he was to write her, "Poste 
 Restante," at the New York General Post Office. 
 
 He read the letter over to see what boat she was com 
 ing on, or when she had sailed. There was, of course, 
 no word of it. The thought that she might have arrived 
 already, on the same steamship as her letter, came on 
 him in a warm tremble of weakness. 
 
 She was poor ! She would have to earn her living 
 in New York with him ! They would be together, on 
 the level of a common poverty ! . . . He looked up 
 from the letter with a stupefied expression of guilty 
 joy ; for he was as if only partly awakened from sleep, 
 his brain was still befuddled with the imaginary scenes 
 of his play, and he confused reality with the pictures 
 of his dreams and accepted her letter as an announce-
 
 THE IDEALIST 293 
 
 ment that his goddess had been deprived of her divinity 
 and exiled to earth with him. 
 
 The music publisher s sign on the door before him 
 stared at him insistently. He blinked at it as one 
 might rub the eyes. Then he laughed, somewhat shame 
 facedly, and ran up the stairs, taking two of the steps 
 at a time. 
 
 XIII 
 
 "WELL," Miss Morris said, "what is it?" 
 
 "Whatis-what?" 
 
 Is it good news you ve had ? Has someone left you 
 a fortune 1 You re very much less interested in us than 
 you are in something that s going on inside you. 
 
 Don looked confused. "It s something I wanted to 
 ask you about. I can t not here." The lawn party 
 was seated all around them. "It s something private. 
 
 She studied him with an appearance of apprehension. 
 "Has Mr. Kidder-" 
 
 No, no. It s nothing like that. Let me walk home 
 with you to-night. I can t tell you here." 
 
 She looked down at the handle of her parasol and be 
 gan to finger the tassel. She, said nervously : "How are 
 the plays getting on? Have you started to write one 
 yet ? I was thinking, the other day, .of a good plot about 
 I can t remember But you must have thought of 
 hundreds by this time, have n t you?" Her smile 
 seemed to tremble on her lips in a way he had never seen 
 her smile flutter before.
 
 294 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 Why, yes ! I thought of one to-day. What was it ? " 
 He laughed, for no reason, unless it was that she her 
 self seemed on the point of laughter. Let me see ! " 
 
 "You re like me. I can t remember mine. It was 
 something about 
 
 Oh, I know, he broke in. * It was like the thing I 
 saw The Enchanted Castle. It was about a 
 Prince" 
 
 He began to tell her, and she made a good pretence 
 of listening, though her eyes would have betrayed her if 
 she had raised them to him. She nodded or said Yes ? 
 to encourage him whenever he paused. He broke down 
 with Oh, I can t tell you. I have n t it clear yet. I " 
 She said : Tell me on our way home to-night. 
 
 They rose together. "I may be kept," he explained, 
 "in the dressing-room. Sometimes the boys " 
 
 "I 11 wait," she said. "Don t try to hurry them." 
 
 HE had kept her waiting at least five minutes, standing 
 inside the stage entrance in her waterproof, listening to 
 the rain. She wore a little cap with a red feather in it ; 
 her cheeks were burning. "Have you no umbrella?" 
 she cried. Or rubbers ? 
 
 "Yours will cover us both. It was n t raining very 
 hard when I came. My shoes don t leak." 
 
 But you must get rubbers, she scolded, letting him 
 take her umbrella from her. "You 11 catch your death 
 of cold." 
 
 He opened the door for her. "I 11 get them in the 
 morning first thing." He put up the umbrella and 
 held it over her. She went up the street with him, lee-
 
 THE IDEALIST 295 
 
 turing him on the care of his health. At the corner, she 
 took his arm and stopped him on the curb. "I ve half 
 a mind to take a car, she said. 
 
 "No, don t," he coaxed. "I want I have something 
 to ask you. Let us get off Broadway. Let us walk up 
 Fifth Avenue. It will be quieter. 
 
 "Well, promise me you 11 never do it again," she 
 said, with a fond severity. 
 
 Never again ! Come on. 
 
 She tripped across the shining wet asphalt, on his 
 arm, her skirts gathered above her ankles, as 
 heedless of the rain as a Frenchwoman in a picture. 
 When they came to the double file of electric globes that 
 shone mistily, two by two, like a saluting guard, up the 
 slope of Fifth Avenue, in the white obscurity of fog and 
 rain, he said: "You remember in the Park the other 
 day you asked me about Miss Richardson?" 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 "I ve just had a letter from her. She s coming to 
 New York." 
 
 "Oh?" 
 
 She 11 have to earn her living. They ve lost what 
 ever money they had. Her mother invested it in 
 stocks, I think. She wants me to tell her what to do 
 for work. 
 
 She had drawn back a little from him, at the first 
 word of Miss Richardson, and a point of the umbrella 
 had caught her cap. She felt her feather now to see 
 that it was not broken and took his arm again. She 
 asked: "What can she do?" 
 
 He explained the circumstances, as well as he could.
 
 296 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 She listened, rather coldly. What do you think ? " he 
 asked, at last. 
 
 I think you should advise her to go back to Canada. 
 I don t see that she could do anything here." 
 
 Unless she went on the stage, he suggested. With 
 her singing " 
 
 She cried out indignantly against such a proposal. 
 He did not know what the stage was, for a girl ! She 
 would not want her worst enemy to take up that life. 
 "It s all right," she said, "if you re born into it if 
 your parents are actors. But for an unprotected girl- 
 like her with no one to help her fight her battles " 
 
 "I thought perhaps you d help her." 
 
 "Me? I can t fight my own! No. Tell her to stay at 
 home. She 11 regret it every day of her life, if she 
 doesn t." 
 
 He gloomed at the pavement, in silence. She saw 
 that he was disappointed. "Why should she bother you 
 about it?" she demanded. "I thought she had quar 
 relled with you ? 
 
 "Quarrelled?" 
 
 "Yes. That day in the Park, you said" 
 
 He shook his head. She never quarrelled with me. " 
 
 "You re friends still after what happened?" 
 
 "Nothing happened," he said. "I thought she I 
 misunderstood her, I suppose. It was my own fault." 
 
 "Then you want her to come here?" 
 
 Her tone did not warn him. "Ye-es," he confessed 
 doubtfully, "if there s anything she can do." 
 
 She had released his arm. "Why?" she asked, re 
 straining herself. What is it ? What is there between 
 you?"
 
 THE IDEALIST 297 
 
 "Nothing on her side except friendship." 
 
 She broke out angrily: "I thought you had more 
 sense ! To go on making yourself miserable about a girl 
 that never cared two straws about you. I don t see what 
 you see in her what men ever see in girls like her silly 
 little creatures. She s just using you or wants to 
 because you re here in New York and she thinks you 
 can help her. She ruined your college your course at 
 college for you, and now she 11 you 11 let her do the 
 same thing here. I thought you had more sense !" 
 
 "Don t . . . say such things," he replied gently. 
 
 I will ! " she cried. It s the truth. She jerked 
 the umbrella down in front of her against a slant of 
 light from a street lamp. "It d be just like you to 
 throw yourself away on a chit like that who would n t 
 half appreciate you." 
 
 "Please, don t, he pleaded. "I You don t under 
 stand. I" 
 
 I will, too ! Her voice broke. I think too much of 
 you to see you doing such a thing without toying to 
 stop you. Let her stay away or let her go back to 
 Canada. You were just beginning to get along all right 
 again when she must come upsetting all our plans and 
 making you miserable. She threw away all her dignity, 
 all her reserve. "Have n t I tried to Have n t I a 
 right to Don t you even care enough for me to to let 
 me tell you to let me help you?" 
 
 You don t know, he said. You don t understand. 
 She s been ever since I can remember we ve been 
 . . . My whole life has has grown up with her. All 
 that sbest " 
 
 "And have n t I ? Ever since you were a little fellow
 
 298 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 your first day at school and ever since And now, 
 When we were I won t let her ! She has no more claim 
 on you than anyone else. Friendship ! She d throw 
 you over in a minute, would n t she? Has she ever 
 said Has she ever promised " 
 
 "It is n t her. It s myself." He glanced at her 
 timidly, and saw only her mouth, in the white light of 
 the electric globe before them, the rest of her face being 
 in the shadow of the umbrella ; but her lips were tragic 
 ally drawn and twisted ; and the sight of them silenced 
 him. He understood that he was giving her pain as 
 he seemed to give everybody pain his mother, his 
 father, Margaret sobbing on the porch, his cousin Con- 
 roy, who hated him. He felt helplessly guilty, without 
 knowing what it was in him that grieved and disap 
 pointed every one who 1 had any affection for him. 
 
 "Well then," she said hoarsely, "I won t let you. 
 You must n t do it. It s some false idea of honor. I 
 Your other friends have have rights, too. You owe us 
 something." She had regained some sort of control of 
 herself with an effort that left her voice uncertain, un 
 strung. You have been trying to wreck your whole life 
 on account of her. You failed in your examinations for 
 the university with her. You ran away from college 
 on account of her. And now you want to It s a 
 shame ! She turned with him into the cross street on 
 which she lived, and taking his arm again, she said: 
 Don t you even think enough of me to take my advice f 
 Are n t we even even friends enough for that?" 
 
 "You re everything that s You re the best friend 
 I ever had."
 
 THE IDEALIST 299 
 
 Well then, let me be that. Let me help you. I m 
 sure I care for you more than she does. And if you 11 
 do things for her, why can t you do them for me?" 
 
 "I will. I-" 
 
 "Then give her up. Let her go. If she has no more 
 than friendship for you, let me give you that. What is 
 there He felt her trembling against his arm. What 
 do you want her to be? Ask me I 11 " Her voice 
 gave out in a whisper, ashamed. 
 
 "Oh, please " Her kindness, her affectionate kind 
 ness, almost brought tears to his eyes. " I m always 
 I make every one miserable. I disappoint every one." 
 
 "No, you you would n t now. Not after that. " She 
 spoke as if through blood in her throat. "You 
 would n t make me ashamed. You re too " 
 
 They stood at the foot of her steps, the rain beating 
 on the umbrella. He could see her face only as a white 
 dimness. "T-take the umbrella," she said, her teeth 
 chattering. "I m so cold. The rain s so cold. I 
 Don t Her hand found his in the darkness, and he 
 felt it shaking. . . . "Good". . . She turned 
 with a little hysteric catch of breath that was half a sob, 
 and she stumbled heavily up the steps, bent forward as 
 if the climb were a mile high. 
 
 He could not see her in the shadow of the doorway. 
 He thought he heard her voice. Then the door shut 
 with a sharp, nervous suddenness. 
 
 He began to walk home, wet and shivering, through 
 the drenched streets. What was it, in him, that disap 
 pointed everybody ? Why did n t they let him live his 
 own life in his own way, and be satisfied with that?
 
 300 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 Why were they always interfering with him trying to 
 make him do what they wished, instead of what he 
 knew was best for him? Here was Miss Morris, now. 
 What did she know about Margaret that she should 
 turn on him so? 
 
 He stepped out angrily, glaring at the pavement ahead 
 of him, and splashing from the curbstones into the run 
 ning gutters as he crossed the streets. The avenue was 
 deserted, except for an occasional belated cab that 
 dragged by, on its noiseless tires, behind a slow clatter 
 of tired hoofs, the driver muffled to the ears in his rain 
 cape, his fares shut in behind the misted panes of win 
 dows that were as dark as those of the closed houses 
 which Don passed. He strode down the shining flag 
 stones, alone with his indignation and driven by it, 
 swinging his clenched hand. 
 
 It was the very violence of his pace that brought him 
 relief, at last ; for the blood drove through his body with 
 a brisk exhilaration that was irresistible. He threw 
 back his shoulders, to fill his lungs ; he put his chin up ; 
 his frown began to change from a worried glower to an 
 expression of defiance. . . If they were all against 
 him, why, let them be so ! Let it rain ! What did he 
 care ? The whole world had been against him. Fortune 
 had done its worst. And in spite of it in spite of 
 everything he had won Margaret back to join him; 
 his life was working out in the way he had planned ; and 
 his happiness was already almost upon him, like the 
 burst of sunshine in which this black downpour would 
 come to an end in the morning. 
 
 He swung along with a confident step, spurning the
 
 THE IDEALIST 301 
 
 wet stones underfoot. He felt the water in his shoes 
 and smiled as if it were a part of the universal malevo 
 lence which he despised. He summed up his defiance of 
 adversity (and Miss Morris) in an absurb resolve that 
 he would never buy rubbers never !
 
 PAET IV 
 THE VISIONARY
 
 HE looked around him at the boarding-house parlor, his 
 hat in his hand with an appearance of having sud 
 denly dashed in there, at the end of a long run, and 
 stopped dead, in the midst of empty chairs standing 
 before the yellowed keyboard of an old grand piano, 
 and facing the double doors that were closed like a par 
 tition at the end of the room. Her letter Margaret s 
 letter received on the previous evening, had given him 
 the address ; and every thought of every minute, since, 
 had been rushing toward this moment of his arrival 
 breathlessly. The maid who had answered the doorbell 
 had gone upstairs to tell her that he had come. He 
 heard his heart beating in his ears, and the stuffy silence 
 of the room seemed to be listening, with a ghostly atten 
 tion, to the pulse of his emotion. He turned away, to 
 face the machine-made lace curtains that hung like a 
 faded and simpering coquetry before two over-dressed 
 old windows old windows that had once been the smil 
 ing eyes of a home and still made a pathetic pretence 
 of welcoming the homeless, boarder. 
 
 He heard the maid coming down the stairs. He 
 waited for the step that should thrill him. "Well?" 
 Margaret said, from the doorway. 
 
 She was smiling, with an air of having taken advan- 
 
 20 305
 
 306 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 tage of him, of having studied him while he was un 
 aware of her; and he caught, at once, in that smile, a 
 new expression of friendly criticism, of amused toler 
 ance, that marked some unexpected change in her. She 
 came to him to give him her hand. His voice clung to 
 his throat, in a lump. "Why did n t you come last 
 night?" 
 
 "I I had to work," he said. 
 
 She withdrew her hand, still smiling. Oh, I forgot 
 that you were a working man now ! 
 
 Her somewhat formal affectation of parlor gaiety had 
 the effect, on him, of an insincerity; he could not find 
 a reply. 
 
 She reached a cushion that stood uncompromisingly 
 in the angle of a sofa arm, shook it and sat down against 
 it. Won t you take a chair ? 
 
 The nearest was a little spindle-shanked pretence of 
 elegance that had been gilded with a brush. "I m 
 afraid that will break with you, she warned him. He 
 had to cross the room to a bow-legged parlor chair that 
 was all curves and discomfort ; and the distance that lay 
 between them, then, was chilling. 
 
 "We arrived Wednesday," she said, as if he had 
 asked her for that information. "Mother left at six 
 o clock last night. So, you see, I did n t waste any time, 
 did I?" 
 
 He shook his head, unable to get his eyes past the 
 worn seam of the carpet that divided them. She had 
 changed. She was older, more self-possessed, with an 
 air of having come back from travel to see him from a 
 new point of view 1 . Even her clothes were strange ; for, 
 in his expectation, he had thought of her as dressed in
 
 THE VISIONARY 307 
 
 the summer gown and be-ribboned hat in which he had 
 last seen her ; and she wore heavy English walking shoes, 
 a plain black skirt, a cloth waist with bands of ruching 
 at her wrists and collar He dropped his eyes quickly 
 when, from that collar, he reached her smile again. 
 
 "Tell me about yourself," she said. . . "How is 
 Conroy?" 
 
 "He s . . . well." 
 
 "Are you together still?" 
 
 Yes. We live together. 
 
 "What is he doing?" 
 
 Nothing, I think. His father sends him money. 
 
 But you re at work ? 
 
 "Yes," he answered dumbly. 
 
 "Well . . . Now," she said, with a determined 
 brightness, "have you made a plan for me?" 
 
 He shook his head. "I" 
 
 Oh, but you must have, she cried, in another voice. 
 "I ve depended on you. I left everything until I 
 should see you." 
 
 "Did n t you . . . think of anything yourself?" 
 
 "How could I? I did n t know of anything to think 
 of. I thought you 
 
 He found her staring at him in an angry dismay. He 
 gulped miserably. "I have n t found anything for my 
 selfexcept suping and trying to write plays." 
 
 "What is suping ?" 
 
 "In the theater like the chorus only you don t 
 have to sing." 
 
 "And that s all you ve thought of!" she cried. 
 
 He did not reply. 
 
 She rose, stiffly. She said : Then I suppose I 11 have
 
 308 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 to find something myself. Thank you. I m glad " 
 
 "Wait." He sprang up, dropping his hat. "Don t 
 go. I 11 I 11 think of something. I could n t think 
 of anything but seeing you. I forgot. I did n t have 
 time. There s something. I 11 find something. I know 
 a girl here Miss Morris. She 11 know. She s from 
 Coulton. I asked her. She I only suggested the stage 
 because I thought, with your singing and that, you d 
 be able to I did n t know of anything else. I thought 
 when we met we d be able to talk it over. I thought 
 you d know, yourself. 
 
 "Well! Why did n t you say so!" 
 
 "I " He looked around the room, as if vaguely ac 
 cusing it of being the cause of his discomfiture. "I 
 thought you would come out where we could talk." 
 
 She left him, to go upstairs for her hat ; and he stood 
 gazing at the empty doorway as if he saw there, still, 
 the expression of her face when she had turned from 
 him, as if he saw in that expression the visible failure 
 of this meeting of which he had hoped so much. With 
 a look of panic, he turned to pick up his hat, and crush 
 ing it down on his head he began to walk up and down 
 the room, biting his lip, his whole face working in a des 
 perate effort to think of something to do, something to 
 say, by which to regain the ground that he had lost. 
 
 When she came downstairs again, she found him pale, 
 but tremblingly cool. He said, at once, as soon as he 
 had opened the door for her : Your letter took me so by 
 surprise I was looking forward so to seeing you that 
 I did n t think how anxious you would be to find some 
 thing at once. How long have you? When will your 
 mother be back?"
 
 THE VISIONARY 309 
 
 She replied, still somewhat resentfully: "In a week, 
 at most. 
 
 "That will give us plenty of time. There s your 
 singing, now ; you should be able to do something with 
 that. 77 (He had remembered Pittsey s criticism of Miss 
 Morris : She ought to be singing in a church choir. ) 
 "You could get something in some of the churches or 
 in some of the big concerts in the choruses at least. 
 And you could get singing pupils or piano pupils 
 more easily here than at home, I should think. I 11 ask 
 Miss Morris about it. She should know. 
 
 "Yes, but I can t sing. I found that out in Germany. 
 And my playing is is elementary. None of the big 
 men would even teach me, over there. They said Come 
 back in three years and we 11 see ! " 
 
 "Well, even so." He was determinedly undiscour- 
 aged. "This is n t Germany. You could go on study 
 ing at the same time." He talked, with his eyes fixed 
 before him, conscious that he was trying to deceive her, 
 as well as himself ; but he felt that he was compelled to 
 play the part compelled by her expectation of aid from 
 him and he felt, too, that all this matter of earning 
 a livelihood was a thing of no importance so he had her 
 with him. 
 
 She asked him what he had been doing, and he told 
 her. He accepted meekly her criticism of his failure to 
 get anything but his ridiculous stage work. "I have 
 my mornings free to look for something better, he ex 
 plained, "and I m using my experience at the Classic 
 to do some play-writing." 
 
 "You should n t have left college," she said, in the 
 manner of a challenge.
 
 310 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 "No," he admitted, humbly. "However, it can t be 
 helped now." He had no thought of reproaching her 
 for her part in that fiasco. 
 
 She asked, in a gentler voice : "Where shall we go ?" 
 
 "Up the Avenue?" he suggested. 
 
 "Very well." 
 
 If, an hour earlier, he could have foreseen the per 
 functory conversation of that walk, it would have de 
 pressed him like a disillusionment ; but in the agonized 
 moments of his panic in the boarding-house parlor, he 
 had consented to the mutilation of his hope, he had him 
 self used the knife on it, and he had met her, at the 
 doorway again, aware that she like Miss Morris, like 
 his father, like all the other agents of opposing circum 
 stance was an enemy of his philosophy of life ; that he 
 must love her without the thought of any reward from 
 her. And he saw this without any sentimental self-pity, 
 without any false heroics, as a thing to be reckoned with 
 in his attempts to realize the future which he had 
 planned. 
 
 It gave his manner a tinge of melancholy, as if he 
 were years older than she ; and he listened and replied 
 to her, without looking at her, his eyes on the humid- 
 blue vista of the avenue that was so stone-bare in the 
 autumn mist. 
 
 She detailed, at great length, the story of her quarrel 
 with her mother; and he gathered from it that Mrs. 
 Richardson, being frivolous and fond of travel, was 
 tired of dragging her daughter about with her, wished 
 her to get married and begrudged her the money spent 
 on her tuition. It was Margaret s opinion that her
 
 THE VISIONARY 311 
 
 study of music was to be the serious pursuit of her life ; 
 her mother considered a musical education merely an 
 aid to matrimony, an alluring Springtime accomplish 
 ment for young ladies who had not yet mated and built 
 their nests. These opinions had clashed when Margaret 
 had rejected the man who wore such detestable shoes. 
 They were still at war. The financial crisis had made 
 the struggle more desperate. Mrs. Richardson evi 
 dently looked for an immediate marriage to relieve her 
 of the expense of a daughter. Margaret planned to 
 make herself self-supporting so that she might be free 
 to follow her ambitions. Don was to help her. He 
 promised that he would. 
 
 HE came to his evening s meeting with Miss Morris, 
 resolved to appeal again to her for aid ; but since their 
 parting in the rain at Mrs. Kahrle s steps, she had had 
 an unfrank manner that made confidences impossible. 
 She had not met his eyes squarely when he confronted 
 her with his usual friendliness. Her smile, in their 
 stage promenades, had been merely formal. Several 
 times, seated at the rustic table with her, he had looked 
 up to find her watching him with a thoughtful intensity 
 that startled him. She maintained an oblique reserve, 
 a sort of sidelong watchful silence which let him know 
 that she was thinking of him, and made him feel that 
 she was disappointed in him, but left it impossible for 
 him to defend himself. 
 
 Now, when he tried to make her meet him frankly 
 with her blame by telling her that Margaret had 
 arrived and confessing the girl s unhappy circum-
 
 312 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 stances she listened without a word. And when he 
 asked her for help, for advice at least, she replied : "I 
 can t help her. I could n t help myself." 
 
 "Will you let me bring her to call on you? If you 
 were to meet her 
 
 She shook her head. "What is the use? I can do 
 nothing for her. She will be better in Canada. 
 
 "You are very unjust to her," he said, hurt. 
 
 She did not reply. He nursed his resentment until, 
 in a later scene, he caught her regarding him with a 
 tragic dumb gaze that overcame him, like a memory of 
 his mother s grief, with a strickening remorse; and 
 when they met again, he said : You asked me, once, not 
 to judge you and you re doing that now, when you 
 should n t, when you don t understand. You don t 
 know how it hurts me. 
 
 She brought her hand up, as if to brush back a stray 
 ing hair from her forehead, shutting her eyes for the 
 instant that her hand covered them. "No," she said. 
 "It syou." 
 
 "How is it?" he argued. " What have I done ? I m 
 what I always have been. . . I can t change. I 
 can t be untrue to myself. I m I m not very happy, 
 but I should despise myself if I did that. 
 
 He did not look at her in the long silence that fol 
 lowed. As she left him, she said: "I m not accusing 
 you. Only ... I can t help you to do what you 
 wish. Don t ask me please." 
 
 WHEN he had left Margaret, after that first meeting, 
 he had been numb with a cold depression of spirits. He
 
 THE VISIONARY 313 
 
 had been not merely discouraged ; he had been too down 
 cast to feel discouragement. And his revival had been 
 due to one of those unreasonable operations of his tem 
 perament which he could not justify, which he could 
 not explain, which were as much a mystery to him as 
 they were to Miss Morris and to everyone else. It was 
 as if his affection for Margaret were stronger when he 
 was alone than when he was with her; as if his imagi 
 nation made her a dearer figure in his absent thought 
 than she was in her own person. And in the days that 
 followed, no matter how worried and unhappy he was 
 while he was with her, as soon as he had left her he was 
 tormented by the same restless longings, the same ar 
 dors that had kept him true to his dreams of her in all 
 the time they had been separated. 
 
 On the morning after his unsuccessful appeal to Miss 
 Morris for aid, he awoke as eager to see the girl as 
 ever. He brushed his shabby clothes microscopi 
 cally; he polished his shoes with elaborate care; he 
 gulped his breakfast; and it was not until he was on 
 the street that he remembered he had no encouraging 
 news to take to her and no new plan to suggest. He 
 turned aside from the direct route to her door, and 
 wandered about the pavements trying to think of some 
 excuse for such an early call. 
 
 He loitered at the art-shop windows, seeing her as 
 beautiful as a plaster "Clytie," as regal as " Queen 
 Louise" descending palace steps, as tender as the 
 drooping maiden of a "Lovers Quarrel." He stood 
 before the display of photographs at a theater door, 
 gazing at a vision of her as a prima donna in grand
 
 314 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 opera in an opera of which he had written the libretto 
 with her photograph on a gilded easel, in the foyer, 
 opposite his own. In a bookshop, he saw her buying 
 a set of his collected plays. All the windows that he 
 passed were filled with presents which the future held 
 for her. A hansom cab was drawn up before a florist s 
 door while he was ordering 
 
 He frowned in an attempt to concentrate his mind 
 on some practical solution of her present difficulties; 
 and he even bought a morning newspaper to read the 
 "want" advertisements again. But there was no sit 
 uation vacant that she could fill; and he could think 
 of nothing except the possibility that she had thought 
 of something herself. He went apologetically to con 
 sult her, with the paper in his pocket as an excuse. 
 
 The maid who came to the door told him that "Miss 
 Richards" had just gone out. 
 
 He hurried back toward Broadway in the hope of 
 overtaking her. He thought he saw her in the distance 
 but a nearer view showed that it was not she. He be 
 gan to wander about from street to street in the idle 
 hope of coming on her suddenly, his whole mind occu 
 pied by that absurd chance, in the insane longing of 
 love that is a torture of impossible expectation, of a 
 wish so strong that it seems a surety. 
 
 He spent the morning chasing this will-o -the-wisp, 
 alternating between a mood of pity in which he saw 
 her going from office to office in search of employment, 
 alone and discouraged and a glorious foresight of a 
 future in which she should be as fortunate as he. Now 
 the streets were crowded with the rich in spirit, who
 
 THE VISIONARY 315 
 
 passed him by as a street beggar asking, for her, only 
 the alms of a little happiness. And now, the houses 
 and the people and all the activities of the world were 
 the background and the unregarded chorus for a life 
 that was to hold, with her, the glaring center of the 
 stage. 
 
 It was a brisk, chill morning. He wore a Spring 
 overcoat of which the collar was so soiled that he had 
 turned it up to conceal its condition from anyone who 
 might walk behind him. He had lost one of his gloves, 
 and for that reason he carried his left hand in the 
 pocket of his coat. His face was lean; his eyes had a 
 wistful emptiness; his hair, untrimmed, came down in 
 a ragged fringe on the upturned collar of his coat. 
 
 II 
 
 SHE had been to the studio of a Mr. Barber, a teacher 
 of singing whom she had known in Canada ; and when 
 Don called on her, in the afternoon, she had the wor 
 ried look of discouragement which he understood so 
 well. She had been told that there was nothing for her 
 in her singing or her music nothing. The church 
 choirs were out of the question, for they paid no sal 
 aries worth speaking of, except to the soloists, and she 
 had not voice enough for solo parts. The grand opera 
 chorus and all other such had been filled up since 
 the "trying out" in August. There was no possibility 
 of getting piano pupils unless she could find a position
 
 316 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 as music teacher in some girl s school; and even for 
 that, she would need influence, " pull." In short, she 
 must recognize that in New York the competition was 
 so keen, musicians were so numerous and the average 
 of ability was so high, that it was impossible for her to 
 support herself as so many young women supported 
 themselves in smaller cities. It would be easier for her 
 among friends and relatives, in the circle of family 
 acquaintances. "In fact," she said, "he told me to go 
 home!" 
 
 "That sail right," Don replied doggedly. "Tnat s 
 what they always tell you." 
 
 "But what am I to do?" 
 
 "Stay here. Something will turn up. It s bound 
 to." 
 
 She cried impatiently: "But something has to turn 
 up or I can t stay!" 
 
 "I know. That s the fix I was in. That s why I 
 took what I m doing now. So did Miss Morris. She 
 had her singing and her music, like you." 
 
 "On the stage, you mean? You know Mother 
 would n t let me!" 
 
 "Well," he said, wearily, "I don t see what your 
 mother has to do with it if she won t help you. It 
 was the same way with my father. He tried to stop 
 me." 
 
 She stared, fascinated, at this daring suggestion of 
 revolt. 
 
 In the pause of silence he found himself tired of the 
 whole discussion. The morning s walk had fatigued 
 his body, and the strain of the morning s expectation
 
 THE VISIONARY 317 
 
 had fatigued his mind. He felt the difference between 
 those morning fancies and this talk of the merely sor 
 did problems of life. He said : Well, when shall I see 
 you again?" 
 
 "You re not going?" she cried, as he stood up. 
 
 "I ought to go back. I have things to do." 
 
 "Oh please don t leave me like this! What am I 
 to do? You have n t told me what to do!" 
 
 "I wish I knew. I don t seem to be able" 
 
 "But you must," she insisted, giving way to her 
 panic. "What am I to do? I must get something. I 
 can t go You don t want me to go home, do you ? 
 
 He shook his head, looking dully at the carpet. "I 
 don t seem to be able " 
 
 "You had plans enough once," she cried. "The 
 day you got me into trouble with Mrs. Kimball 
 
 The memory of that afternoon under the pine re 
 turned to him with bitterness. Yes, he said. But 
 it was different then." 
 
 "How was it different?" 
 
 "You were different." 
 
 "Thank you!" There were indignant tears in her 
 eyes. "I might have expected You Oh!" She 
 turned with a gesture that recalled to him their part 
 ing at the gate on the day she had told him of her 
 quarrel with Mrs. Kimball and she was out of the 
 room before he could speak. He followed her to the 
 hall in time to see her reach the landing of the floor 
 above. He put on his hat and went out to the street. 
 
 There he found a loneliness of soul so calm and so 
 self-centered that the whole city seemed to hush to let
 
 318 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 him pass. It was not that she had quarrelled with him, 
 for in the mood that had overtaken him he was indif 
 ferent to her anger ; and it was not that he did not love 
 her as passionately as ever, though there was a despair 
 of love in his thought. It was merely that he had 
 found her separated from him by that space of mental 
 isolation which seems to divide every one person from 
 every other, the cold interplanetary space which sur 
 rounds what we call souls and separates them as 
 eternally as the worlds of the solar system. He had 
 found her a centered identity following an orbit of 
 thoughts and interests within which she saw him revolv 
 ing, drawn by a superior attraction. Love might bring 
 them a little nearer together ; he felt, now, that it could 
 never really merge them in an absolute unity of inter 
 est and outlook. And this old tragedy of affection had 
 come on him with a deadening chill of banishment and 
 desertion. 
 
 He told himself that he must find her something to 
 do. He assured himself that he would do so. But he 
 knew that whether he succeeded in that endeavor or 
 failed in it, whether she remained in New York or went 
 away, whether he won her or lost her for life, she would 
 be, always, as she was now, a fellow-human looking out 
 at him from the closed chamber of her identity as he 
 looked out at her. He was alone in the wiorld alone 
 even with her. He might help her and love her, as he 
 might love and help anybody; but he could not share 
 with her his imprisonment in being. The walls were 
 up between them. They spoke through grated win 
 dowswhich) Death, at last, would close.
 
 THE VISIONARY 319 
 
 WITH this mood of pessimism still heavy on him, he 
 returned to the apartment, feeling himself strangely 
 alien in those familiar surroundings. He threw his 
 overcoat and his hat on the cot in the dining-room, 
 reminding himself, as if with an effort, that it wlas the 
 cot which he had brought out for Walter Pittsey and 
 had never taken back to the room in which the other 
 two boys slept ; and it seemed that the incidents of that 
 night had occurred a long time ago. Conroy was sit 
 ting with his head and arms on the table, apparently 
 dozing. Bert Pittsey was busy in the little kitchen, 
 from which there came an odor of scorched fat. 
 
 "Hello, you noble Thespian," he greeted Don. 
 "Give us an impersonation of a man setting a table, 
 will you? My hands are full." 
 
 "What s the matter with Mm?" 
 
 Pittsey laughed. "He s tired. He has had a hard 
 day." 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 "His money came this morning." 
 
 Don s isolation had raised him above fellow-sym 
 pathy, like a judge. He walked deliberately around 
 the table, and putting a hand on Conroy s head he 
 rolled it over on the arm to look at the boy s face. It 
 was the flushed and bloated face of semi-drunkenness. 
 Ach ! " he said, with a shudder of disgust. 
 
 Conroy roused himself, blinking. "What s the 
 
 "Get up out of that!" 
 
 He glared, his eyes inflamed and still befogged with 
 sleep. "What s chewing youl" 
 
 Don turned his back, without replying, and went to
 
 320 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 the pantry for the dishes. We want to set the table, 
 Pittsey explained pacifically. Your dinner s ready. 
 
 Conroy mumbled that he did not need any dinner, 
 and went grumbling to the bedroom. Don, as he laid 
 1 the table, heard him splashing water in the wash-basin. 
 They sat down to their meal without him ; and Pittsey 
 was carving the burned steak, in the gloom of Don s 
 silence, when Conroy came out of the bedroom and con 
 fronted his cousin across the table. 
 
 "The next time you put your hands on me," he 
 threatened, "you 11 get into trouble." 
 
 Don did not look at him. "Go away," he said. "I 
 don t want to talk to you. 
 
 "No! Don t you? Oh? Well, I want to talk to 
 you!" 
 
 "You ought to be ashamed of yourself. What would 
 Aunt Jane say if she or Uncle John 
 
 "You mind your" 
 
 "Making a drunken brute of yourself. You re a 
 disgrace. It makes me sick to see you." The blood 
 went to his head, in a blinding passion. "You ought 
 to be locked up somewhere ! Drinking ! You have n t 
 done a thing but drink since you came back here get 
 ting worse every day brutalizing yourself. Where 
 where do you think this is going to end ? In the gutter ! 
 On the streets ! The town drunkard ! In jail ! You re 
 growing worse every day worse! You re " 
 
 "Here!" Pittsey thrust a plate into Don s hanus. 
 "What s the use of starting a row. Sit down and eat 
 your dinner. Have some sense about you." 
 
 Conroy took a long breath, his anger checked by
 
 THE VISIONARY 321 
 
 i 
 
 Don s unexpected attack on him. "What do you think 
 of that?" he appealed to Pittsey. "Is n t that 
 Is n t it? G ! If you d heard your father talking 
 about you, going home on the train! You!" He 
 pointed, his hand shaking. The supe ! Gee ! If your 
 father-" 
 
 Pittsey took him by the arm. "For Heaven s sake, 
 cut it out. Sit down and eat your dinner." 
 
 "I m not saying anything," he protested, as Pitt 
 sey forced him into his chair. "It s that sup ing 
 sneak. Shut him up." 
 
 "Go on and eat your dinners, both of you before 
 it turns cold. Here ! Get busy with this. 
 
 But peace was not to be so easily restored. Conroy 
 alternately worried his steak and attacked his cousin, 
 who ate in a silence of evident contempt and disgust. 
 Pittsey spread a newspaper beside his plate and read 
 it, satisfied that the quarrel would subside now that 
 Don was quiet. Conroy continued intermittently to 
 point the moral that if he had disappointed his father, 
 Don had done as much and more. "You ought to hear 
 what they say about you at home ! With your mother 
 sick in bed from worrying about you, and your father 
 ashamed to hear you mentioned ! You re a great one 
 to talk, you are! . . . Sup ing, on the stage with a 
 lot of chorus girls. I have n t fallen as low as that, 
 any way. . . If you had left me alone before, 
 there d have been no trouble. Sneaking home letters 
 about me. I told them what you were borrowing 
 money, and playing the cad to get rid of me. 
 
 "Oh drop it," Pittsey said, turning his paper. 
 21
 
 322 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 "I won t drop it! He started it. The snivelling 
 codfish." 
 
 He went on, in the same strain, endlessly. Don did 
 not speak until he had finished his meal. Then as he 
 rose to get his pipe, he said: "I want you to under 
 stand that I m not going to be a party to any more 
 of this. If you intend to live like a beast, your father 
 shall know of it, I 11 not help conceal it any longer. 
 . . . And what s more," he broke out, "I won t 
 live with it myself. I d as soon live in a bar room. 
 1 can t and I won t! You 11 behave yourself or I 11 
 write to Uncle John and get out of here altogether." 
 
 "Well, say," Conroy sneered, "we 11 miss you, 
 won t we? You can get out of here just as quick as 
 you please. If you don t, / will !" 
 
 Don waved his hand excitedly. "That s all right. 
 I 11 go. You may roll in the gutter if you like it. 
 You 11 not splash me with your mud any more. 
 
 Pittsey rose to check him. Don reached his hat and 
 coat. "That s enough now, Bert," he said. "I I 11 
 move out my things to-morrow morning. I ve had 
 enough. It s been impossible for me to live here, ever 
 since he came back. I can t live this way, and I 
 won t." 
 
 He went out to the street again, like a poet to soli 
 tude. Everyone misjudged him, quarrelled with him, 
 or was disappointed in him. He admitted that the 
 cause, no doubt, was in himself ; but he could not change 
 himself. He could not, for example, continue to be a 
 silent spectator of Conroy s downfall and make a joke 
 of it, as Pittsey could. He would write his uncle so, 
 and be done with the whole worry. He would take a
 
 THE VISIONARY 323 
 
 room where he might live alone, as he had lived at col 
 lege. He saw himself in a garret that was lamp-lit and 
 peaceful, with the frost on the windows and nothing 
 but the sloping roof between him and the stars. He 
 would have his plays to work on his books to read 
 Margaret to think of. He would have her, there, as 
 she had been before this change in her. She could not 
 rob him of that past, of the memory of her and the o\d 
 ideal; he could live with that, as he had been living. 
 It was enough. It was the better part. He was alone 
 in the world ; they were all strangers to him ; he would 
 escape them and be happy. 
 
 HE did not call on Margaret in the morning. He wrote 
 his letter to his uncle, and went out to look for a room. 
 And he found one in an old red-brick house that had 
 been built in the days when this part of the city was 
 Greenwich village. 
 
 The landlady, who was the wife of a police sergeant, 
 lived on the first floor and rented the rest of her house. 
 The back room on the top story had the sloping roof 
 and the dormer window for which Don had been long 
 ing; it had also a little iron bed with a mattress that 
 was still dented from the weight of its former occu 
 pants, and a "Franklin" grate-stove that had warmed 
 a long procession of young art students, writers and 
 poor Bohemians through the first bitter winters of 
 their struggles in New York. There never was a finer 
 stove to broil a chop into," the woman said, "er a slice 
 o toast. An yuh can get a good meal any time aroun 
 the corner to the rest runt. " 
 
 She asked four dollars a week rent, but when she
 
 324 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 found that Don could not take the room at such a price, 
 she let him have it for $2.50, on condition that he sup 
 ply his own towels and bedding. 
 
 "I m givin t to yuh fer less than I w u d to any 
 other livin soul alive," she said. And Don thanked 
 her with all the gratitude of innocence. 
 
 In an "express" wagon drawn by a broken-kneed 
 white horse, he moved his trunk, his share of the bed 
 ding, a kitchen chair and some cooking utensils. He 
 settled his accounts with Pittsey, who said nothing 
 either in blame or regret. Then he went in peace to eat 
 his luncheon in the "rest runt" which Mrs. McGahn 
 had recommended. 
 
 It was that little French resort of unsuccessful Bo 
 hemians which used to be known to New York by the 
 significant name, "The Cafe of Failures," because of 
 its clientele. 
 
 Ill 
 
 FORTIFIED by a bowl of watery soup and a tasteless 
 fricassee of chicken, he started out to call on Margaret, 
 more hopeful of the success of his relations with her 
 since he had solved his other problems of intercourse 
 by the simple process of elimination ; and as he walked, 
 he dramatized a scene of apologies and explanations, 
 in which he would plead that he could better help her 
 now that he could give his whole time to her, and she 
 instead of criticising and accusing him would discuss 
 her situation in a friendly confidence that would be
 
 THE VISIONARY 325 
 
 wholly encouraging. Her smile that had lost none of 
 its dimples would lose its suggestion of superiority; 
 instead of looking at him with the open gaze which 
 promised nothing because it concealed nothing, she 
 would return to the girlish shy glance that was so dear 
 to his memory. She would recognize his greater experi 
 ence of life and defer to him. She would accept his 
 more cheerful outlook on the future and be willing to 
 continue her search for employment without this rasp 
 ing anxiety which made such a discord of their friend 
 ship. 
 
 He found himself, unexpectedly, at her door. The 
 smiling maid let him in, amused by the frequency of 
 his visits. He waited in the familiar parlor, awakened 
 to apprehension by the approach of a meeting for which 
 he suddenly found himself quite unprepared. 
 
 When Margaret appeared, silently, in the doorway, 
 he rose, startled; for she had the pale and set face of 
 an actress entering upon the stage again after the climax 
 of a tragedy. She looked at him, looked away from 
 him, and crossed in front of him to give him her back 
 from the window. 
 
 The silence that ensued seemed to him an hour long. 
 
 He began bravely: "I wanted to explain. I had 
 been worried worried about Conroy and about other 
 things. I had n t had time, scarcely, to think to plan 
 for you; and " 
 
 "You need n t trouble yourself," she put in. "I m 
 going home." 
 
 He took a step toward her and stopped, helplessly. 
 There was an anguish of disappointment in his Why ?
 
 326 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 "Mother has written me." She did not turn around. 
 "She has n t even enough money to come for me. She 
 could only send me" He quivered at the choke in 
 her voice "my railroad ticket. She can get me a 
 place in the Saint Katherine s School for Girls, teach 
 ing music. She added, bitterly : And deportment ! 
 
 "Don t go." 
 
 "What else can I do?" she cried, facing him with 
 the accusation of her tears. "I can t stay here. You 
 No one " 
 
 I will, he pleaded. Don t go. Give me a chance. 
 Come and see Kidder with me. Take anything until 
 we find out. This sort of thing can t be done in a day. 
 Take it until we can get something better." 
 
 "Take what?" 
 
 "The extra worklike Miss Morris. It 11 only 
 be five or six dollars a week, but it 11 help pay ex 
 penses until I have lots of money. Don t go. I 
 It 11 be the end of everything." Her silence embold 
 ened him. "I ve been waiting here for you. I knew 
 you d come, to study, to go on the stage the concert 
 stage. And I ve been waiting. That s why I thought 
 this theatrical work would be good to be near you. 
 . . And now, if you give it all up and go away, there 
 won t be anything for either of us. There s nothing 
 for you, up there, teaching music in a girls school." 
 He ended, faintly: "And there s nothing here for 
 me, if you go." 
 
 She replied, with some of her old spirit: "You 
 did n t seem to care whether I went or not!" 
 
 "I know. It has n t been Everyone has been
 
 THE VISIONARY 327 
 
 against me, worrying me. Conroy was drinking and 
 quarrelling with me. I was worried about them at 
 home. Mother s ill and they blame me for it my 
 father does. I did n t care, as long as I knew you were 
 coming. I would n t give up" 
 
 "Well," she said, putting all that aside, "what do 
 you think I can do?" 
 
 "You can do what Miss Morris has been doing. 
 There s nothing to be ashamed of in this extra work. 
 Perhaps Kidder can get you in The Rajah s Ruby 
 with me. You can go on studying your music and your 
 singing." 
 
 "But five or six dollars would n t pay my board." 
 
 That s only the beginning. I m getting ten a week 
 already. You can work up into some of the smaller 
 parts. Besides, you don t have to board. We Con 
 roy and Pittsey and I have been living for about five 
 dollars a week each, and I believe I can do it for less, 
 where I am now." 
 
 She said, out of her thoughts: "It s horrible to be 
 poor ! 
 
 "It s not as horrible here as it would be at home." 
 
 "No." She sat down, sighing with the inward ten 
 sion of anxiety. "I d do anything rather than that. 
 . . . It would be Miss Gary s place. She used to 
 be music teacher at Saint Kitt s, and took us out for 
 our walks, like a governess. . . Who s Mr. Kid 
 der?" 
 
 "He s the agent the man who engages the extras. 
 We had better go right away. There may be some 
 thing waiting now."
 
 328 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 She rose, half reluctantly, lingering at the window. 
 "I don t know what Mother will say!" She ended 
 her hesitation with And I don t care ! She turned 
 to him, rigid. "I 11 have to take the respon 
 sibility of my own life some day. I might as well 
 begin now." 
 
 He saw the fear against which she was fighting. 
 "Don t be afraid," he said, pityingly. "I 11 help." 
 
 "Yes." She glanced back at the window that gave 
 a glimpse of the street, a glimpse of that city of stran 
 gers in which their struggle would be so unbefriended, 
 their poverty so forlorn. "It It frightens one a little, 
 does n t it?" 
 
 He answered, in the same voice, with a faltering 
 smile : "It s worse when you wake up at night. 
 
 They looked at each other, standing in a silence that 
 gave ear to the muffled tumult of the street traffic, 
 rumbling like the menace of a surf. She sighed again. 
 "Well," she said. "I 11 put on my things." 
 
 She left him. He drew himself up slowly and stood 
 waiting, his eyes alight, his whole face alight, with an 
 emotion of defiant hope and tenderness. Here was 
 the battle ; and he was ready for it. It was the world 
 against him, for the prize of all his dreams. He settled 
 his coat collar and drew a long breath. 
 
 When he heard her coming down the stairs, he step 
 ped out into the hall and met her confidently. "If 
 he s not there this afternoon," he said, "we 11 be 
 sure to find him in the morning." 
 
 BUT he was there smoking an after-dinner cigar, with
 
 THE VISIONARY 329 
 
 his hat side-tilted on his head, seated before his office 
 desk waiting for his stenographer to return from 
 luncheon. He received them with a genial nod, with 
 out rising until Don introduced her formally; then 
 he took off his hat and held out his huge hand to her 
 rather amusedly. "Sit down. Sit down," he said. 
 "What can I do for you, eh?" 
 
 Don brought her an office chair and stood beside her 
 protectingly while he explained what Kidder could do 
 for them ; and Kidder listened with the grave air of an 
 elder in a child s game. "Well," he said, "let s see 
 now. Let s see where we re at." He took up some 
 sheets of tabulated reports from his desk, and went 
 through them solemnly. "Never been on the stage be 
 fore, eh?" 
 
 "No," Don answered for her. "We re Is it 
 We d like to be together in The Rajah s Ruby, if we 
 could." 
 
 "Uh-huh?" He took up a pen. "About five-foot- 
 eight or nine? . . . Let s see, now." 
 
 His pen travelled down a column of names one by 
 one. He paused, reflected, and made a deciding check 
 mark. That 11 be all right. Report to Mrs. Connors, 
 Monday, at the Classic. He looked up at the entrance 
 of his stenographer. Here, he said to her. Trans 
 fer Miss Delancey to rehearsals for The White 
 Feather. Miss Richardson here" He pointed over 
 his shoulder with his pen handle "takes her place 
 with the Ruby. Same height." 
 
 "Well?" He returned to Don. "Keepin warm 
 these days? The Ruby looks like an all season run,
 
 330 DON-A-DEEAMS 
 
 don t it?" His desk telephone interrupted him. 
 "Yes. . . Yes. . . Right away. . . Oh, ten 
 minutes. . . Sure." He took up his hat and his 
 cigar together. "Take Miss Richardson s signature. 
 That 11 be all right," he put aside Don s thanks. 
 "I 11 be back in an hour," he said over his shoulder 
 to his stenographer and left them to her. 
 
 She chewed a nonchalant cud of gum while Margaret 
 signed her name on the line that was vacant for it. 
 And still chewing, she had returned to her typewriting, 
 indifferent to them, before they were aware that their 
 business with her was finished. 
 
 "That was easy," Don said, in the elevator. 
 
 Margaret had her thoughts. She replied only: "I 
 don t think he s a gentleman, do you?" 
 
 "Well, he s been mighty kind to me. I don t know 
 what I should have done without him and Walter 
 Pittsey. They have all Everyone has been kind to 
 me." 
 
 She looked at him with an expression which he mis 
 took for incredulity. He tried to reply to it by telling 
 her of his first discouraging days in New York and of 
 the aid that had come to end them ; and this recital was 
 a revelation of character that was not lost on her, any 
 more than Kidder s manner of receiving him had been. 
 
 She said, with an unexpected smile: "You have n t 
 changed a bit." 
 
 "Did you want me to?" 
 
 She looked back at his interview with Kidder. "No. 
 Not if it makes people be nice to you. 
 
 "Well, all right then," he said gaily. "I m satis 
 fied if you are !
 
 THE VISIONARY 331 
 
 He was full of hope, voluble of encouragement, gal 
 lant with a protective deference that was as winning 
 as flattery. He walked the noisy streets in a devoted 
 attention to her, that seemed to leave him oblivious to 
 everything else. Even when he spoke of himself, it 
 was only to give her his experience as an aid to her in 
 making her plans. And all this single-hearted and un 
 conscious devotion came appealingly to her in her mood 
 of loneliness and fear for herself. 
 
 They wandered about until she was tired, and then 
 he took her to the galleries of the Fifth Avenue art 
 dealers, where she could sit on plush-upholstered seats 
 and talk of Europe and the Louvre. He confessed that 
 he had always liked landscapes with roads in them 
 roads up which you might imagine yourself walking 
 to a house that just showed its roof over a hill or pic 
 tures of men and women who were saying something 
 which you could guess. 
 
 "But don t you like the color? the poetry?" 
 
 He studied the row of landscapes before him. Yes, 
 I think I do. But I like them best when there s some 
 thing to invite you to get inside them and explore, 
 don t you know?" 
 
 "Oh, you re a Philistine," she teased him. 
 
 "Am I? . . . Oh well, never mind; you re not, 
 any way," he said; and he said it with such an inno 
 cent pride in her that she could not laugh at him. 
 
 When it was time for her to return to her boarding- 
 house for dinner, she faced the prospect of loneliness 
 with a reluctance which he was quick to see ; and they 
 went together to a little Sixth Avenue restaurant where
 
 332 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 they ate fried oysters and potatoes with a daring sense 
 of freedom from conventionality and the restraint of 
 parents. 
 
 "This is better than Coulton," he said, smiling 
 across the small table. 
 
 "Or teaching deportment in Saint Kitt s!" She 
 exaggerated a shudder. Ugh ! What a life ! 
 
 The oysters were greasily cooked; the restaurant 
 smelled of a rancid kitchen; the table cloth was as 
 soiled as the waiter s linen; but if they were sensible 
 of these drawbacks, the fact was not apparent. He was 
 too happy to see anything but her ; and she, obviously, 
 enjoyed his happiness. He kept his eyes on her like a 
 courtier, finding her face even sweeter than when it 
 had been more girlish, and dwelling in the unabashed 
 friendliness of her smile without wishing it more 
 demure. He enjoyed the almost domestic pleasure of 
 sharing food with her; and when he recalled his old 
 vision of her pouring coffee at the breakfast table, he 
 blushed with a feeling of guilt in that anticipation, for 
 it seemed a treachery to her new camaraderie. 
 
 To any spectator of their dinner, she would have 
 appeared a merely pretty young woman, of a slight 
 and Puritanic figure with a suggestion of provinciality 
 in her simple ruchings and her low heels dining 
 poorly, in a smelly restaurant, with a thin, a shabby, 
 an amusingly adoring young man who might be an ill- 
 paid clerk and who was certainly a stupid conversa 
 tionalist. The romance of the situation was all in their 
 own minds; as romance has a way of being. But he 
 felt that he had won in his first bout with the world 
 that was trying to separate her from him, and this din-
 
 THE VISIONARY 333 
 
 ner was to remain in his history of himself as wonderful 
 as a royal fete, as one of the gala occasions of his life, as 
 an incident for poets, like a wedding day. 
 
 IV 
 
 HE came to the evening s performance of "The Rajah s 
 Ruby" full of blissful and quiet thoughts; and he 
 replied to Miss Morris s silent scrutiny with the bare 
 announcement that Miss Richardson was to join the 
 company on Monday night. He was unmoved by her 
 stubborn insistence that he was "making a mistake." 
 He asked, cheerfully: "How? Why am I?" 
 
 She answered by asking whether he had done any 
 writing on his play; and he had to explain that his 
 quarrel with Conroy had upset him, but that now 
 in his own room, alone with^his manuscript he would 
 be able to give all his time to his ambitions. The ex 
 planation did not seem to satisfy her, though she did 
 not voice any criticism of it. She asked: "Does her 
 mother know what she s doing?" 
 
 No, he said. She s not doing it as a permanent 
 thing. She s only coming here until she finds an open 
 ing for her music." 
 
 "You know, as well as I do, that she 11 never find 
 an opening for her music in New York." 
 
 He replied calmly: "I know that she can do this 
 extra work until she has time to find something better. 
 That s all she expects." 
 
 Miss Morris said nothing more, and he left her to
 
 334 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 accept the situation as best she could. But at the mat 
 inee of the following day which was Saturday he 
 made another appeal to her to be kind to Miss Richard 
 son. "She has n t a friend in town but me and you, 
 it you 11 be her friend. You know how it is to come 
 to strange work like this, without any one to tell you 
 anything. A word or two from you would mean so 
 much to her. . . She can t go back home anymore 
 than you or I. She has n t a penny but what she 11 
 earn. They ve lost everything. . . I m sure you 11 
 like her. She-" 
 
 "If I do anything for her," she broke out, "it 11 
 not be for her sake. But I think you re making a mis 
 take. You re doing wrong. You should have sent her 
 home where she belongs. She s out of her place here, 
 and neither you nor anyone else can make her succeed 
 in it." 
 
 "That may be true," he said diplomatically, "but 
 it can t hurt her to try and it can t hurt us to give 
 her what little help we can. Can it?" 
 
 She answered "No," but with an evident reserva 
 tion; and what the reservation was, he was to under 
 stand after a conversation which they had in the lawn- 
 party scene, that evening. 
 
 She said: "I ve had an offer of a good part in a new 
 play by Mr. Polk. And I m goint to take it. I want 
 you to wait until you hear from me." 
 
 " Wait ? I don t under " 
 
 "I have some influence with him." She did not look 
 at him. "He is taking a theatre of his own, to produce 
 his own plays, independently. There may be some-
 
 THE VISIONARY 335 
 
 thing for you. I think I can get something for you 
 better than this at least." 
 
 "Oh say, you re you re awfully kind," he stam 
 mered. "You don t know how I appreciate I" 
 
 "Don t" She caught herself up. "Don t thank 
 me, I mean not until you see whether I can do it or 
 not. I want you to to trust me; that s all. I want 
 you to believe that I 11 do anything to help you, ex 
 cept what I don t think is wise for you. I mean about 
 her. And I want you if you hear anything if any 
 one says anything against me not to believe it until 
 you ask me. 
 
 He was reminded of a sentence in a letter from 
 Walter Pittsey received several days before: "I 
 have heard a weird story, here, about your friend 
 Miss M. and a playwright. How is she ? But his curi 
 osity had not risen to the bait ; he had felt himself too 
 indebted to Miss Morris to listen to gossip about her; 
 and he had so replied to Pittsey. 
 
 He replied, now, to her: "I would n t believe any 
 thing against you, if you told me yourself." 
 
 She did not speak. The stage dialogue was rapidly 
 riearing the conclusion of their scene together. He 
 asked her if he might walk with her to her door, after 
 the play. "Thank you," she said. "No." And the 
 strain of emotion on her voice warned him not to make 
 her talk. 
 
 They parted in silence, not to meet again that night. 
 
 He was sorry that he could not overcome her hostil 
 ity to Margaret; but since that hostility was insuper 
 able, he was glad that she was leaving the company.
 
 336 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 In spite of his gratitude to her, he felt that there was 
 something not quite open and natural about her; the 
 very violence of those emotional outbursts which he 
 had unwittingly provoked in her, in the past, had made 
 him uneasy concerning the unknown depths from 
 which they came. It was as if she were continually 
 striking matches in the darkness with a disconcerting 
 suddenness as she had on the evening of their first 
 meeting and as suddenly dropping the match and 
 withdrawing into the darkness again. She had known 
 him for years, and yet in all those years she had kept 
 herself hidden from him. She had never told him any 
 thing of her past with Polk ; and she had spoken guard 
 edly, now, of her "influence" with the playwright. In 
 short, she had repelled Don by her lack of frankness 
 in all matters concerning herself, though she had 
 attracted him and bound him to her by the sincerity 
 of her kindly interest in his welfare. 
 
 Well, she, too, was leaving him now, he thought ; and 
 that secession would eliminate another of his prob 
 lems. His life was becoming more simple ; it was nar 
 rowing down to his relations with Margaret ; it was be 
 ginning to flow quietly in a still, deep stream. As he 
 walked home after the play, under a moon that looked 
 down, untroubled, on the fretful street lights, he felt 
 himself walking towards peace, guided by that placid 
 hermit of the night, that mild philosopher of the white 
 silences. Its influence possessed him with an unques 
 tioning contentment. He felt, rather than argued, 
 the presence in the world of an unseen Power for good 
 that had led mankind from barbarity to civilization 
 along a progress of which simple faith had been the
 
 THE VISIONARY 337 
 
 blind compass. He felt at peace with the world, at 
 peace with the heavens, at peace with himself. He 
 felt at peace even with his love content to give all and 
 expect nothing, satisfied to be near her so that he might 
 help her, willing to wait without a word of encourage 
 ment, so certain of his goal that he did not even raise 
 his eyes to see how far it was away. 
 
 His little room received him like a home. He kin 
 dled a fire of small wooden blocks which he had bought 
 for two cents a bundle, from "Tony," the Italian ven 
 dor down the street; and he warmed the dregs of his 
 breakfast s pot of coffee, to drink it sitting on the side 
 of his bed, holding his cup on his knee, smiling, like 
 a camper in the wilderness who looks back, from the 
 rise of a hill, over the difficult and tangled valleys he 
 has crossed. 
 
 HE went to church with her in the morning to a house 
 of fashionable worship on Fifth Avenue unconscious 
 of the fact that he was no longer in revolt against the 
 "police of organized religion"; and he listened, like 
 a child at the theater, to the music and the singing and 
 the literary eloquence of a minister who flattered and 
 smiled on his congregation. But when Margaret asked 
 him what he had thought of the sermon, he had to con 
 fess that he had not heard it. "I was thinking of the 
 little church at home," he said. "I m glad I went, 
 are n t you ? 
 
 "I 11 not go to that church again!" 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "They judge you by your clothes. That was some 
 
 sort of servants gallery the usher put us in." 
 22
 
 338 DON-A-DEEAMS 
 
 He looked down at himself guiltily. "I suppose I do 
 need a new pair of shoes." 
 
 Yes, and a new hat, and a new overcoat, and a new 
 suit of clothes, and a new necktie and a pair of gloves." 
 
 "I can get the hat, anyway," he said; and he said 
 it with such a disproportionate accent of hopefulness 
 that she had to laugh at him. 
 
 "You are certainly an optimist!" 
 
 But when he wished her to take her midday meal 
 with him at his French cafe, she said: "No. I d feel 
 as if I were eating your new hat. You call for me 
 again at half-past two." And she escaped into her 
 boarding-house while he was still laughing at her little 
 joke. 
 
 He thought that he had never been happier. It was 
 so calm and so assured a happiness, derived from such 
 heart-easing friendliness, such practical and smiling 
 friendliness, and so dear. If it were to continue all 
 liis life long, it would be enough. 
 
 She was even more practical in the afternoon. On 
 their way to the Park, she made him tell her about his 
 quarrel with Conroy, about his father and his mother, 
 about his play-writing and his future plans. And 
 v/hen he led her to the bench on which Miss Morris 
 and he had sat, beside the water explaining. "The 
 last time I sat here I did n t think I d ever" 
 she interrupted him to ask : " What shall I tell 
 Mother ?" 
 
 He did not know. He suggested that she tell as little 
 as possible. "Just write that there s a prospect of 
 doing better with your music here than at home. 
 Something may turn up any day now. And it s just
 
 THE VISIONARY 339 
 
 possible, you know," he hinted reluctantly, "that your 
 mother may be that she 11 not object to having you 
 to letting you make your own plans." 
 
 "That she 11 be glad to have me off her hands? I 
 should n t be surprised. 
 
 "It would settle all the trouble as far as she s con 
 cerned. 
 
 "I had n t thought of that." 
 
 "Then you could take your own time about finding 
 something better." 
 
 "Well," she agreed, accepting this easy method of 
 postponing her worries. "Now tell me what I 11 have 
 to do, meanwhile, in The Rajah s Ruby ." 
 
 Miss Morris has left the company, he said. She 
 played with me. And I m going to get the stage mana 
 ger to put you in her place, if I can. You 11 have 
 really nothing to do. He described what there was to 
 describe in her part. "We re just to make up the 
 background. It will be all right. Don t worry. 
 You 11 see to-morrow night. 
 
 She nodded, sunken back in the arm of the rustic 
 bench, looking down at the muddy lip of the lake 
 where the fallen leaves were black in the water. She 
 was not beautiful in the way that Miss Morris would 
 have been in such a pose; but she was so ten 
 derly fragile, with her small shoulders and the 
 frail lines of her girlish figure so innocent 
 in the large meditation of her eyes, so appeal- 
 ingly unprotected and so sweet that Don turned 
 away from the sight of her, trembling with a 
 new sense of the fearful and delicious privilege of be 
 ing the only barrier between her and adversity.
 
 340 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 "I must find a room at once," she said. "I can t 
 pay ten dollars a week board. 
 
 He mastered a tone of commonplace to reply: "I 
 think there s one vacant in the house that I m in 
 on the floor below me. That would be better than 
 going to a strange place. I could look after you a little 
 there. It should n t be more than three dollars. I 
 get mine for two-fifty." 
 
 "Heated?" 
 
 "No-o. I heat it." 
 
 "Then you re paying too much. I was asking one 
 of the women at the boarding-house. 
 
 "Mrs. McGahn said she .was giving it to me for less 
 than she would to anyone else. 
 
 "The old blarney! And you believed her. I think 
 it s / that had better come and look after you a little." 
 
 "Do!" 
 
 She laughed. "What is Mrs. McGahn like?" 
 
 He described the house and its mistress, explained 
 the arrangements he had made for his meals, and esti 
 mated the cost of them; and while he talked his eyes 
 were fixed on the rosy promise of having her under his 
 roof, and he smiled and smiled. When she agreed to 
 call on Mrs. McGahn with him that evening, to look at 
 the vacant room, he accepted the future as already a 
 thing accomplished. "Then when you re all settled," 
 he said, "we can get to work in real earnest and see 
 what we can find for you. It s always better to wait 
 not to accept the first thing that offers. Make a 
 choice and take the best." 
 
 "To hear you, one would think I d been besieged 
 with offers."
 
 THE VISIONARY 341 
 
 "Well, perhaps you will be." 
 
 "Yes! Per-haps!" She stood up, settling her jacket 
 at the waist with spread hands, arms akimbo; and 
 there was something so intimate in this little feminine 
 attitude of the boudoir, that it came to him as a mark 
 of the unconstraint of friendship at which they had 
 arrived. "It s time we were having our suppers." 
 
 "Sha n t we have supper together?" 
 
 No. You must economize. Mine is paid for in ad 
 vance. You may call for me at seven." 
 
 MRS. McGAHN received them in a parlor full of all the 
 old furniture and all the accumulated bric-a-brac of 
 thirty years of housekeeping. She received them with 
 a suspicion which neither of them understood, and she 
 listened to Don, staring, silent, and wrapped majesti 
 cally in her black shawl. "I don t rent rooms t any 
 unmarried women, she said, except I know who they 
 is." 
 
 "Oh, I beg your pardon," Don apologized. "Mrs. 
 McGahn, this is Miss Richardson." 
 
 Margaret shook hands with her in a manner that 
 evidently had some effect. She wavered, looking from 
 one to the other, but she seemed still unsatisfied. 
 
 "Miss Richardson is studying music here," Don 
 explained. "She does n t wish to board any longer. I 
 suggested that there was a room empty here which you 
 might let her have." 
 
 She asked Margaret: "Where re yer yer folks?" 
 
 "My mother has gone back to Canada. We have 
 b een boarding. I thought this would be cheaper." 
 She smiled, amused.
 
 342 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 "Well," Mrs. McGahn defended herself, "I can 
 see yuh re decent, but I ve got to be careful, an yer 
 comin in on me this way Are y all alone in N 
 York?" 
 
 "Yes. Mr. Gregg is the only friend I have here. We 
 used to know each other at home." 
 
 "How old are yuh?" 
 
 "Nearly twenty." 
 
 "Yes? Well now! Canadyens! I thought they was 
 all Injuns up there." 
 
 "Oh no," the girl laughed. "Not all of us." 
 
 "Have yuh been long in N York?" 
 
 Just a few days. 
 
 "Aw?" She turned to Don, twinkling. "Yuh re 
 engaged, are yuh?" 
 
 He said "Yes," and then corrected himself hastily 
 "Oh no, no!" blushing scarlet. 
 
 She glanced from one to the other with an illumined 
 smile. "Yuh re a pair o kids. Come along, girl. 
 I 11 show yuh the room." 
 
 Don was so confused by his slip of the tongue that he 
 did not follow them, and they kept him waiting an 
 unconscionably long time for their return; but when 
 they came, Mrs. McGahn was blarneying and mother 
 ing the girl in a garrulous kindness, and Margaret had 
 engaged the room. She and Don had to refuse an 
 invitation to sit in the parlor and "chat a while." 
 "Some other night, then," Mrs. McGahn said, follow 
 ing them to the door. "It s open to yuh any time 
 yuh 11 be wantin in. He smokes in the kitchen when 
 he s home at all, an I 11 not butt in meself. Don t
 
 THE VISIONARY 343 
 
 be backward about usin it. It won t be the first lolly- 
 gaggin in there. Yuh need n t be a bit afeard o 
 that." 
 
 After a self-conscious silence that carried them to 
 the street corner, they both, suddenly, laughed an 
 apologetic laugh that pretended to accept Mrs. Mc- 
 Gahn s insinuations as absurd. 
 
 LIFE in New York had seemed to Don a sort of multi 
 tudinous obscurity in which individuals were merely 
 atoms of a homogeneous mass, living, thinking and 
 acting in groups of thousands; and it had seemed to 
 him that death, there, would be worse than death at sea. 
 He had found himself walking the streets in the midst 
 of activities in which he had no part, like a ghost ; and 
 he had been as unregarded as if he had been indeed 
 invisible. But now, on this memorable Monday, he was 
 to begin acquiring a new point of view ; he was to find 
 that what had been a desert to one person could be an 
 Eden for two ; he was to learn that the indifference of 
 the city could be as happy as the indifference of the 
 fields. 
 
 He went with a swinging stride, from Mrs. McGahn s 
 doorway up the cold November streets, through an iron 
 rumble of cars and wagons, as much alone with his 
 thoughts as if he were walking on the seashore beside the 
 continual and meaningless rush and thunder of waves.
 
 344 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 He went with Margaret to hire a cart for the moving of 
 her trunks, to interview Kidder about getting her Miss 
 Morris s place in the background of the "The Rajah s 
 Ruby," and to see Mrs. Connors at the "Classic" about 
 the costume for the part; and in the street-cars, as on 
 the sidewalks, they seemed shut in together by the busy 
 unconcern of the city as they had been once by the 
 storm on their umbrella, long ago happy in the isola 
 tion of their common interests. Even when she forced 
 him into a "gents furnishing store" and helped him to 
 choose a new hat, the clerk remained studiously indif 
 ferent to her coquettish participation in the purchase 
 And they ate luncheon, in a crowded "dairy restaur 
 ant," without so much as meeting a curious glance. 
 
 "Two checks," she directed the waitress. He at 
 tempted to protest that it was his "treat," and that 
 her luncheon should be charged on his check. She 
 said: "I 11 never come with you again unless you let 
 me pay my own way." He was wise enough to leave 
 her that mark of her independence withou any fur 
 ther argument; and she allowed him to escort her back 
 to Mrs. McGahn s, where she wished to spend the after 
 noon writing letters and arranging her room. 
 
 He employed a vacant hour by strolling up the 
 Avenue to call on Pittsey ; and he found there a bitter 
 letter from his aunt, upbraiding him for deserting Con- 
 roy after having, in the first place, induced the boy to 
 run away to New York. He accepted her injustice with 
 a calloused insensibility. A note from his uncle asked 
 him to keep an eye on the prodigal, at least; and he 
 tried to satisfy the obligation by asking Pittsey how 
 Conroy was getting on.
 
 THE VISIONARY 345 
 
 "Don t know," Pittsey answered laconically. "Don t 
 see much of him. I m taking a staff position on the 
 paper, next week, and I 11 see less of him then." 
 
 "How will you get the housework done?" 
 
 "Oh, he s found a woman to come in for three 
 hours a day, to straighten up the rooms and cook us our 
 dinner. 
 
 "Where did he find her?" 
 
 "Search me. I don t know. I have n t seen her 
 yet." 
 
 Well, Don said, good-bye. I hope you have suc 
 cess on the paper. 
 
 "Thanks. I 11 surely have my hands full. So 
 long." 
 
 Don returned to his garret, glad that he was free of 
 his old life. He sat smoking, with his feet on the fender 
 of the stove, so occupied with his thoughts of the girl 
 below him that he did not think to light a fire. He lay 
 down on his bed, covered himself with his overcoat, and 
 fell asleep to dream of Coulton. He was wakened in 
 the darkness by her knocking on his door. 
 
 Hurry ! Hurry ! " she cried. We 11 be late ! 
 
 THEY arrived in time thanks to the laughing haste 
 they made in the restaurant and on the street but he 
 found two new supers in the dressing-room, he had to 
 show them how to "make up," and he was kept so busy 
 helping them that he had not time to think of her. He 
 was still powdering the hair on his temples, to give it 
 the grey of approaching middle-age, when the call-boy 
 shouted in the door : All up ! " And he had to run
 
 346 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 for the stage, pressing upon his upper lip his false 
 moustache, of which the gum had not yet dried. 
 
 It followed that he did not see her until the curtain 
 had risen on the act. He lifted his hat as he ap 
 proached her in the promenade, but she gave him a 
 frightened glance and tried to pass him without speak 
 ing; and when he said "Don t you know me?" con 
 fronting her smilingly, she stepped back from him with 
 a start of bewilderment, bumping into the two girls who 
 were behind her. He saved the situation by stepping be 
 tween her and the audience. "All right," he whis 
 pered. " Walk across the way you were going. Didn t 
 you know me?" 
 
 When he had brought her safely to the wings, she 
 stammered indignantly: "I I thought it was another 
 of those One of those men spoke to me. 
 
 "Who? Where?" 
 
 "Over on the other side." She pointed him out; 
 and Don recognized him as an unwholesome-looking 
 youth named Cousin, whom the other supers had nick 
 named "Delicate Pete." 
 
 "What did he say?" 
 
 "Something about it being a fine day for a walk." 
 
 Don laughed. "Perhaps he thought he knew you." 
 
 "Well," she said, with a half -humorous exaspera 
 tion, "I don t see how he could. I should n t know 
 myself. I feel like a silly, plastered up this way. I 
 can hardly see ! " Her lashes were thick with cosmetique. 
 "And you ! You re the color of a wooden Indian the 
 ones they have in front of cigar stores. I should think 
 you d feel perfectly absurd."
 
 THE VISIONARY 347 
 
 This was a point of view which he had not expected. 
 He felt himself shrink from the figure of a Pall Mall 
 dandy to something grotesque. You have to put it on 
 the paint," he excused himself, his smile fading. 
 "We d look ghastly in this light, without it." 
 
 She frowned out at the sauntering chorus in the 
 glare of the calcium light. "You look worse than 
 ghastly with it!" 
 
 That remark struck him as rudely as a blow. When 
 he spoke again, it was to say, in a brave attempt to 
 stand up to the situation: "I guess ... it s our 
 turn ... to cross." 
 
 She hung back. " D)o we have to go out there again ? 
 Do you think anyone in the audience might recognize 
 me?" 
 
 "I 11 walk on that side." 
 
 She crossed, stiff with embarrassment, her eyes fixed 
 on the boards. "Oh dear," she said. "What do we 
 have to do in the next scene?" 
 
 "Are n t you going to like it?" he asked, in such a 
 disappointed tone that she replied: "I don t suppose 
 it matters whether I like it or not. I 11 do it, any 
 way. 
 
 They went to and fro, several times, in silence, Don 
 crestfallen and gloomy, and she regarding her unfamil 
 iar surroundings with critical distaste. "My gown 
 does n t even fit me," she complained. He did not con 
 fess that he thought she was as pretty as a bridesmaid 
 in it. "They all look so shoddy," she said, a moment 
 later. " It is n t a bit like what I thought it would be. 
 And when he tried to turn the conversation by warning*
 
 348 DON-A-DEEAMS 
 
 her to be careful with her parasol that Miss Morris 
 "got into trouble with the stage manager for catching 
 it in things" she asked abruptly: "Was she like these 
 other girls?" 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Because she was n t very nice, if she was. In the 
 dressing room Well, they are n t very nice, the way 
 they talk some of them." 
 
 "I m sorry you don t like it," he apologized hum 
 bly: "It s only for a short time, you know till we 
 find something better. Besides some of them I ve 
 met are not like that. Those that are graduates 
 of the dramatic schools I 11 introduce you to some 
 of them. I think you 11 find them better." 
 
 "Well." 
 
 He piloted her through the rush to the jeweler s win 
 dow when the alarm was given inside the shop ; and 
 after the curtain had fallen, he saw her safely on her 
 way down to her dressing-room again. 
 
 In the scenes that followed he watched her across the 
 stage, and tried to smile encouragingly when he caught 
 her eye. She seemed to be getting on better; she had 
 evidently struck up an acquaintance with a "Miss 
 Adara Doran," whom Don had found to be in spite 
 of her name quite untheatrical and rather pleasant. 
 He began to feel more hopeful. Perhaps, as she became 
 more accustomed to her surroundings, she would be 
 more contented. 
 
 While the stage-hands were setting out the last prop 
 erties for the lawn-party scene, he picked his way 
 through the crowd of waiting supers, in search of her,
 
 THE VISIONARY 349 
 
 eager to join her so that she might have no difficulty 
 in finding the little table at which they were to sit to 
 gether. As he crossed behind the back-drop, to gain 
 that side of the stage to which she would enter from 
 the women s dressing-rooms, he passed "Delicate Pete" 
 coming in the opposite direction. Don nodded. There 
 was a sort of defiant impudence in the smile Cousin 
 gave him in response, but he thought nothing of it until 
 he turned into the wings and came suddenly on Mar 
 garet standing to meet him in an attitude of being 
 still at bay. The deadly paleness of her face flooded 
 with blood at sight of him. She gasped: "He he " 
 She blinked dry eyes, staring, outraged. "He said 
 something awful to me." 
 
 "The same one? Cousin? That same man?" He 
 scarcely waited for her feeble "Yes." All the accumu 
 lated disappointments of the evening rose together in 
 him in a rage. He hurried back after the super, his 
 hands clenched. He saw Cousin standing among his 
 fellows, his back turned. The others parted instinc 
 tively, staring at the wrath in Don s eyes. He caught 
 Cousin by the collar, jerked him around, and struck 
 him a blow in the face; the super threw up his arms 
 blindly; and Don struck him three times, with his 
 closed fist, on the mouth, placing the blows in a white 
 heat of anger that made him as clear-sighted and appar 
 ently as deliberate as if the whole thing were done in 
 cold blood. Then he threw Cousin off, and stepped 
 back into the grasp of the stage manager. 
 
 "Get out!" He was swung around. "Get out!" 
 He was thrust into the arms of a scene shifter who
 
 350 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 rushed him off to the stairs and shoved him down with 
 a force that would have thrown him headlong if he had 
 not saved himself by catching the handrail. The mana 
 ger followed him with Cousin, who was bleeding at the 
 nose and mouth. "You re both discharged. Don t 
 either of you come back to that stage. Get your things 
 off now, and get out." 
 
 Don hung up his hat and coat. "I 11 have to wait, 
 he said. "I look after the costumes for Mr. Kidder." 
 
 The stage manager, with an angry oath by way of 
 dismissal, turned and went back to his work. It was 
 the sight of "Delicate Pete" bleeding into the wash 
 bowl that brought Don to a sense of what had hap 
 pened. 
 
 He had been as if poised above his own actions, 
 watching himself, in a sort of double-consciousness that 
 always came on him in such moments of excitement; 
 and every aspect of the swift instants through which 
 he had moved had imprinted itself on his visual mem 
 ory as clearly as if he had seen it with the cool atten 
 tion of an unmoved spectator. Now, all those sensa 
 tionsCousin s impudent smile, the sight of Margaret 
 drawn up to meet another attack, the shameful suffer 
 ing of her face the eyes of the supers as they fell back 
 in front of him, the crackle of Cousin s starched collar 
 in the grasp of his hand, the blind movement of the 
 super s arms guarding his eyes while he choked with 
 open mouth, squirming to avoid the blows that struck 
 brutally on his bleeding lips the sudden roughness 
 that had seized Don himself from behind and whirled 
 him away dizzily and thrown him at the stairs down
 
 THE VISIONARY 351 
 
 which he stumbled all these sensations, all these pic 
 tures came back on him, together with the emotions 
 which should have accompanied them, like the recollec 
 tion of a drunken crime which now assailed his sober con 
 sciousness with a sickening poignancy, vivid and revolt 
 ing. He sat down in a nervous collapse. He put his 
 elbows on his knees, his head in his hands; the cold 
 perspiration gathered on his face; he shuddered with 
 the faintness of vertigo. 
 
 What would Margaret say? What would Kidder 
 say? Where would he find work? His anger had 
 passed from him like the fumes of liquor and left him 
 sitting with these questions, in the midst of the wreck 
 w r hich he had pulled down on himself. 
 
 A sudden, violent blow on the back of his head 
 brought him to his feet in time to see Cousin running 
 from the room in fear of pursuit. He looked at the 
 shoe with which he had been struck, lying where 
 Cousin had dropped it. He put his hand up to the 
 bruise, and rubbed it, dazed. 
 
 He was standing so, staring at nothing, when the 
 supers came in at the end of the act and crowded 
 around him with questions. He shook his head, like an 
 idiot. "Tell Miss Kichardson to wait for me," he said. 
 Ask her to wait for me at the door. Tell her it 11 be 
 all right. Tell her to wait. Tell her to wait for me." 
 
 His message, and the news that he had been dismissed 
 from the company, came to her through Miss Doran 
 in the dressing-room, where she had remained, too 
 hysterical to return to the stage. And when Don had
 
 352 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 seen the last of the supers costumes on the hooks, the 
 room deserted, and the lights out lingering over his 
 duties as if he thought in that way to postpone the fact 
 of his dismissal he met her at the stage entrance with 
 such a look of guilt and apology and b roken appeal 
 against her blame that it went to her heart like the 
 sight of tears. "Oh Don," she cried, "why, why did 
 you bother with me ? Why did n t you let me go home ? 
 I I ve only made trouble. I " 
 
 Wait," he said, hurrying her out to the refuge of 
 the darker street. "Don t. . . It s nothing. 
 We re all right." 
 
 She took his arm, clinging to him as they walked, 
 neither of them paying any attention to the direction 
 in which they were going, "You should n t have done 
 it. You should have let me go. 
 
 "No, no. It is n t that It s all right. I 11 find 
 something else with Kidder. I did n t know. I did n t 
 understand how it would all seem to you. Miss Morris 
 I should have known better than try to to associate 
 you with those cads. Miss Morris warned me." 
 
 Ah ! she sobbed, what use am I ? What is there 
 that I can do if I can t do even thisl I was ungrateful. 
 I said things to hurt you. I did n t even try to help 
 you by being cheerful, by accepting what you got for 
 me." 
 
 "Don t," he pleaded. "You-" 
 
 She shook his arm, almost angrily. "I did! I be 
 haved shamefully. And any other girl, instead of 
 appealing to you, would have slapped his face for him ! 
 The pig! What did you do to him?"
 
 THE VISIONARY 353 
 
 "I struck him . . . two or three times . . . 
 in the face. 
 
 "And they discharged youf" 
 
 "He was bleeding. They don t allow fighting on the 
 stage. They discharged us both." 
 
 "I don t care!" she cried defiantly. "I m glad! 
 It was no place for you, either. You re too good to be 
 among such such people. I m glad it happened. 
 It 11 do them good." She added, in another spirit: 
 "You 11 be able to find something else to do, won t 
 you?" 
 
 "Yes! Yes! Of course! Kidder will find. me some 
 thing. And Miss Morris, before she left, told me she 
 would get something better for me in Folk s theater 
 Peter Polk, the dramatist. She has some influence with 
 him. She has known him a long time. I 11 be all 
 right. It s not that. It s you. 
 
 Oh me I I can go home and teach deportment. I 
 don t seem to have sense enough for anything better." 
 
 "We must start out to-morrow morning and find 
 you something, some way not on the stage, I mean." 
 
 "Why do you bother with me? Always always 
 I Ve disappointed you. It was my fault that you left 
 college. Now I ve made trouble for you here." 
 
 He caught her hand up against his side, pressing it 
 with the arm on which she had been leaning. You re 
 you re all that made life worth living." 
 
 The voice silenced her, shamed her, oppressed her 
 with her unworthiness and exalted her with the sin- 
 cerity of his belief in her. It was the voice of a deter 
 mined loyalty, at once so proud of her and so humble 
 
 23
 
 354 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 in its pride, that it might have made a queen worthy 
 of her throne. She looked out, with wet eyes, on the 
 street of theater crowds which had suddenly, at the 
 turn of a corner, confronted them with its hansom cabs 
 and its cafe lights and its midnight gaiety ; and she felt 
 herself uplifted above it, beside him, in the isolation 
 of a coinpanionship so intensely realized that for a be 
 wildering moment he seemed not a separate person but 
 a part of her. Then she drooped her head, like a woman 
 returning from an altar rail where she has received 
 the eucharist ; for she had indeed, in that moment, par 
 taken of the sacrament of love, and she felt her emotion 
 glowing through her like a holy spirit. In that 
 moment the great miracle of the young heart had 
 wrought its almost divine change in her. From that 
 moment, she was no longer a soul free in the midst 
 of its fellows ; she had surrendered herself to the need 
 of the man beside her, and, through him, to the great 
 fraternity of human suffering and the office of bearing 
 into the still unseeded future the wonder and agony of 
 human life. 
 
 He felt the quivering of her hand on his arm. "Are 
 you cold?" 
 
 "No," she said gently. "Don t worry about me." 
 
 SHE accompanied him, thereafter, in a silence which 
 gave him no hint of her thoughts ; and supposing that she 
 was silent because she was despondent, he tried to encour 
 age her with his usual assurances that everything would 
 "come out right," that they would begin their cam 
 paign "really" in the morning, that he had done wrong
 
 THE VISIONARY 355 
 
 to temporize by accepting a position on the stage for 
 her, that he should have "stood out" for something 
 better. She had not the heart to reply to any of his 
 extravagant misstatements of her case, for she could 
 understand that he was talking to keep up his own 
 courage; but she said, at last: "Yes, yes. It will be all 
 right, of course. Don t worry about it any more to 
 night. We 11 begin fresh in the morning." 
 
 "You re not thinking of going home?" he asked 
 timidly. 
 
 "No," she said. "I 11 stay with you." 
 
 She said it with an accent as of resignation that 
 spurred him on to new promises. "You 11 never regret 
 it. / never have. It s hard at first, but once you get 
 your start made, you have opportunities opportunities 
 that you d never find at home. There was Miss Mor 
 ris, for example: she had made friends with "one of 
 the most successful dramatists in America," and he 
 had actually come to her and offered her "a leading 
 part in one of his companies." There was Bert Pitt- 
 sey, taking a staff position on "one of the best papers 
 in New York." There was Walter Pittsey, at the head 
 of a theatrical agency in Boston, with every prospect 
 of rising to a high place among the managers of the 
 "trust." 
 
 Their street when they turned into it was empty, 
 the houses dark. The city seemed to be sleeping in an 
 immense contempt of their misfortune, and his voice 
 sounded small and impudent, in the optimism of a pig 
 my, the boast of an impotence so inconsiderable that 
 silence received it without so much as an echo. She
 
 356 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 said, at their door: "You must get a good night s rest, 
 now. Don t worry. Don t think of it any more to 
 night. Promise me, will you?" 
 
 He promised her. They tip-toed upstairs to their 
 rooms, careful not to awaken the household. They 
 exchanged a whispered good-night in the hall. He lit 
 his lamp, locked his door, and sat down on the side of 
 his bed, exhausted, all his bravado gone from him, con 
 fronting doggedly the renewal of a struggle in which 
 he had been beaten down to defeat after defeat. 
 
 VI 
 
 "You should have waited," Kidder said irritably. "You 
 should have waited till you had him outside. This sort 
 of thing hurts me a whole lot with the managers, you 
 understand. They ve been raking me on the phone 
 for it this morning, and I don t like it. I can t afford 
 to send up supers that scrap behind the scenes. You 
 ought ve known better." 
 
 "I did it without, thinking." 
 
 "You ought n t to do things without thinking. The 
 stage s no place for anybody that does things without 
 thinking. And it s no place for a girl that can t take 
 care of herself without starting a row like that. This 
 sort of thing makes a lot of trouble for me. They 
 jump on me. They take it out of me. I don t like it." 
 
 It was evident that he did not like it. It was evident 
 also that he intended to make Don suffer for the criti-
 
 THE VISIONARY 357 
 
 cisms which he himself had borne. " I m sorry, Don 
 said, miserably. 
 
 "You should n t have done it. I had a lot of con 
 fidence in you. I gave you one of the best things I had. 
 I made a place for this Miss What- s-her-name too. 
 Shoved her in over another girl. And that s a thing 
 stage managers don t like, either having their com 
 pany broken up that way. It leaves me open to a lot of 
 hot roasting the whole business." 
 
 "I m sorry. If you 11 give me another chance " 
 
 "I can t give you another chance like that. I 
 have n t got it." 
 
 "Have n t you anything?" 
 
 Kidder hesitated, swung around in his swivel chair, 
 and began to look over his typewritten lists. Don 
 waited, as shamefacedly as a schoolboy who has been 
 lectured before a whole classroom for Kidder s non 
 chalant stenographer had been rustling papers at the 
 other side of the office. The telephone rang, and Kid 
 der left Don s fate in the scales while he busied himself 
 witm more important affairs. When he had hung up 
 the "receiver," he took another glance at his lists, and 
 said, without turning around: "No. I have n t any 
 thing. I m filled up. I may have an opening next 
 week, in Appomattox I don t know. It 11 only be 
 fifty cents a night, anyhow. I can get lots of hobos for 
 these war plays. That s all I ve got." 
 
 He returned to the opening of his letters and left 
 Don to take himself out of the office. 
 
 Fifty cents a night ! That would be, with two mat 
 inees, four dollars a week. He was paying two dollars
 
 358 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 and fifty cents for his room. The dollar and a half 
 remaining would scarcely pay his car fares ! 
 
 He did not ring for the elevator. He walked down 
 the four flights of stairs in some sort of confused notion 
 that he could not afford to ride. He faced the street, 
 appalled. It was as busy as Kidder with his mail. 
 
 When he remembered Miss Morris, he set out again 
 in frantic haste, almost running, his single glove rolled 
 into a ball in his hand, his hat tilted down over his eyes 
 by the bruise on the back of his head, swallowing dryly. 
 He came, breathless, to the steps of Mrs. Kahrle s 
 boarding-house. The door opened a grudging crack to 
 him. She ain t here, the woman said, and shut him 
 out. 
 
 He found himself, instantaneously, calm. He was 
 like a man in quicksand, who finds that his panic is 
 plunging him deeper, and who stiffens into rigidity, 
 motionless, to wait for the arrival of help. "This is all 
 right," he told himself. "These things happen, of 
 course. We must wait. When I see Kidder again, 
 he It not be so bad-tempered. It s a matter of waiting 
 a few days. I can write to Miss Morris. I can write 
 to Walter Pittsey and get his advice. I have plenty of 
 time. I don t have to see Margaret for two or three 
 hours yet. I must think of something to tell her." 
 
 He was as tired as if he had been running a race; 
 and the worry and excitement had given him a drag 
 ging ache in the small of his back. He found himself 
 shaking with cold. He buttoned his light overcoat, 
 sank his hands in his pockets, and went down Broad 
 way huddled in on himself against the wind. He
 
 THE VISIONARY 359 
 
 thought of the aid he had once received from his aunt 
 and he remembered her last letter. He knew that 
 his uncle, appealed to, would advise him to return 
 home. He had no longer the companionship such as 
 it had been of Conroy and Bert Pittsey to help him. 
 Miss Morris was, after all, a doubtful ally who might 
 turn against him because of Margaret. He was alone 
 as he had so desired to be in the face of a calamity 
 that made him feel the want of friends. He was alone, 
 unable to help himself. And Margaret was depending 
 on him ! 
 
 An apathy of despair began to mute his thoughts, 
 and he struggled against it, with an instinct of self- 
 preservation, as if it were a suicidal impulse. "See 
 now, he told himself. At this time yesterday, every 
 thing was going as well as possible. She was on the 
 stage with you. You were both lodging in the one 
 house. You were looking forward to a winter with 
 her, to promotions, to gradual increases of salary, to a 
 future that should grow from day to day into the great 
 est happiness. Well, twenty-four hours can t have 
 changed it all. It s impossible! Or if one day has 
 made all the difference, another day can restore it. 
 What are you afraid of? Nonsense! You have come 
 through narrower squeaks than this. Look where you 
 were the day you were starting for New York or the 
 day you met Pittsey on Sixth Avenue. You had n t 
 even four dollars a week, then. And she was in 
 Europe!" 
 
 But the situation was not to be talked down. There 
 remained the facts that he had used up all his savings,
 
 360 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 that his work for Kidder would not pay his expenses, 
 that he knew of nothing which Margaret could do. He 
 came on the forlorn hope that there might be an impor 
 tant letter of some sort waiting him at his old rooms; 
 and in another rush of panic-stricken activity he hur 
 ried towards that improbability as if it had been the 
 most certain aid. He saw the streets cold, unfriendly, 
 crowded, as busy as machinery, and as remorseless. He 
 was always to remember them in that aspect as an 
 exhausted swimmer, struggling to reach shore, will 
 remember the horrible composure of level water that 
 engulfed his feeble agonies without so much as showing 
 a shudder on its vast blank of cruelty. 
 
 Conroy opened the door to him, blocking it with a 
 challenging scowl. 
 
 "Are there any letters for me here?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Is Bert in?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 Don saw a woman s hat and veil on the dining-room 
 table. He looked inquiringly at his cousin; and Con 
 roy shut the door on that look as if he considered it an 
 impertinence. 
 
 Don turned towards his lodgings, too weak to drag 
 himself any further. He was conscious only of the 
 physical need of rest. At thought of the shelter of his 
 room, he ached, body and mind, for the closed door and 
 the bed that awaited him. 
 
 MARGARET, at midday, knocked to discover whether he 
 had returned; and he put on cheerfulness like a mask
 
 THE VISIONARY 361 
 
 to meet her. "Are you ready for luncheon?" he 
 asked. 
 
 "When did you come in? There s been a man here 
 looking for you. He left word that he d be back at 
 two." 
 
 "Forme?" 
 
 "Yes, for you. Mrs. McGahn said she thought he 
 said his name was Pitty. " 
 
 "Oh." His voice went flat. "It must ve been Bert 
 Pittsey." 
 
 "What did Mr. Kidder say?" 
 
 "He 11 have a place for me next week, all right. 
 There s no difficulty about that. We must find some 
 thing for you, now. We 11 talk it over at luncheon." 
 
 "We 11 do no such thing," she said. "I m not go 
 ing to have you worried about me. I have a plan of 
 my own. I m going to see someone this afternoon." 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 "I 11 not tell you. If you ask me another word 
 about it, I 11 have my lunch alone. 
 
 "Then I 11 not tell you about Kidder," he said, 
 with a desperate affectation of gaiety. 
 
 He felt like a man who has just learned that he is 
 incurably ill of a fatal disease, and who returns home 
 to deceive his family so that they may be spared at 
 least a few weeks of useless grief. He knew that such 
 luncheons as this were numbered ; and with the reck 
 lessness of the condemned he coaxed her to have a table 
 d hote dinner with him at his French restaurant. 
 "You 11 feel the need of it before the afternoon s 
 done," he said.
 
 362 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 "We ought to economise." 
 
 "Well, let us have one last splurge." 
 
 It was, after all, a rather dismal splurge, for they 
 were both playing their parts with an effort, and their 
 lack of appetite betrayed them. "You re not eating 
 anything, he accused her. She replied : " I m doing 
 as well as you." A moment later, he came out of a 
 staring abstraction to find her studying him. She 
 blushed and looked down at her plate. He had a guilty 
 feeling that she had read his thoughts. They received 
 their dessert in silence. 
 
 "Have you heard from your mother?" he asked 
 suddenly. 
 
 She admitted, with reluctance, that she had. 
 
 "What does she say?" 
 
 "Now, I m not going to tell you," she answered. 
 "I ve told you I m not going home and that s all. 
 You Ve had worry enough about me. I 11 tell you 
 about it when the proper time comes." She glanced 
 at her watch. "It s time you were meeting Mr. Pitt- 
 sey, now." 
 
 Where are you May I take you to the car ? 
 
 "Yes." They rose together. "And you re not to 
 worry about me, will you?" 
 
 He shook his head, without meeting the tender anxiety 
 of her scrutiny. And he parted from her at the steps 
 of an elevated station still guiltily averting his eyes. 
 
 To pay for their dinner, he had "broken" his last 
 ten-dollar bill. He wondered whether he might bor 
 row a little money from Bert Pittsey. He supposed 
 that Pittsey was coming to see him about some new
 
 THE VISIONARY 363 
 
 difficulty with Conroy; and he- returned to his lodgings 
 in an empty despondence. 
 
 As he mounted the steps to Mrs. McGahn s door, he 
 saw that someone was watching him through one of the 
 front windows. As he stepped into the hall, he saw 
 Walter Pittsey standing in the doorway of the parlor, 
 waiting for him. He stopped, incredulous. 
 
 "Well, Don Quixote," Walter said, with his usual 
 mild amusement, "I hear you ve been slaughtering 
 supers. 
 
 "Why, where did you come from?" Don cried. "I 
 thought it was Bert! When did you arrive?" 
 
 He coughed. Come in here. He took Don by the 
 elbow and led him into the parlor. It was Miss Morris 
 who rose from a chair beside the window and came to 
 greet him with her slow smile. 
 
 Don took her hand in silence, looking from her con 
 spiring eyes to Pittsey s and back again. "What is 
 it ? " he asked, beginning to tremble at the expectation 
 of he did not know what. 
 
 She said, teasingly : Did n t I tell you to wait until 
 you heard from me?" 
 
 He stared at the promise which her words implied, 
 and her face slowly retreated from him as if he had 
 looked at her through the wrong end of a telescope. 
 He was dizzily aware that the floor and ceiling of 
 the room were working up and down like the top and 
 bottom of a bellows. He clung to her hand. "I think 
 . . . I d better sit down, he said. The floor s 
 Pittsey s arm was around him. He stumbled towards a 
 chair. "The floor s "
 
 364 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 They helped him to one of Mrs. McGahn s horse-hair 
 sofas. Someone chafed his hands. Someone unbut 
 toned his collar. He heard tense and anxious voices, 
 in the faint distance. "I m all right," he said. "I 
 was walking. I m tired. I" His voice faded away 
 above him as he rocked down slowly into darkness. 
 
 He came back to consciousness at the chill touch of a 
 wet handkerchief on his forehead and the prickle of am 
 monia fumes in his nostrils ; and he opened his eyes on 
 a splitting headache that seemed to tear his brain. 
 "Thanks," he said, looking up at Miss Morris who was 
 bending over him. "I m better, thanks." She put 
 back the wet hair from his forehead and drew the palm 
 of her hand caressingly down his cheek. There were 
 tears in her eyes, but before he could be sure that he 
 had seen them, she had risen and Mrs. McGahn stood 
 in her place, holding a pocket flask of liquor from which 
 Pittsey poured a little into a glass. 
 
 "Swallow this." 
 
 It ran down his throat like fire. He coughed and 
 sputtered, laughing almost hysterically. In a few 
 moments he was sitting up again, trying to smile rather 
 wanly at his collapse. Then they told him what they 
 had come to tell. 
 
 Mr. Folk s treasurer had written to Pittsey in Bos 
 ton asking him to take charge of the "ticket office end" 
 of the new theater. "We used to work together at the 
 c^d Academy," Pittsey explained in an aside. And 
 Pittsey s influence with the treasurer had joined Miss 
 Morris s applications to Polk to procure for Don a posi 
 tion in the ticket office at $25 a week. "I saw Kidder
 
 THE VISIONARY 365 
 
 this morning, just after you were there," Pittsey hur 
 ried on, and he told me what you d been doing. I ve 
 been trying to connect with you ever since. Kidder 
 said I must have passed you in the elevator as I came 
 up." 
 
 Don shook his head, worried by the pain behind his 
 eyes and by Pittsey s evasive explanations. I did n t 
 come down in the elevator. I walked. I ve been walk 
 ing ever since." He straightened up, shining-eyed. 
 "How am I ever going to to thank you two. I " 
 
 "Don t thank me," Pittsey interrupted. "It was 
 Miss Morris." 
 
 "What a story!" she said. "I had n t thought of 
 the office. I was trying to get you into the company." 
 
 In the light of gratitude in which he saw her, she 
 seemed even more beautiful than she had ever been be 
 fore ; and he looked at her with an expression of face 
 which made Pittsey put in hastily: "The first thing 
 you do, you buy a new overcoat and a new suit of 
 clothes. Kuffman goes by exteriors. Get your hair 
 cut a la Manhattan and never let him see you smoking 
 a pipe. 
 
 "I need shoes, too," Don acknowledged simply. 
 
 Pittsey rose. "I 11 call for you to-morrow morning 
 and see you outfitted. Then I 11 introduce you to your 
 new job ." 
 
 "Wait a moment," Don pleaded. "I want to" 
 
 No ; you must go to your room now and have a 
 sleep," Miss Morris said, bidding him good-bye. 
 "I 11 see you to-morrow, too." And disengaging 
 themselves from Don s confused thanks, they went
 
 366 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 away together, waving to him gaily as they turned on 
 the sidewalk and saw him watching them from the 
 open door. 
 
 VII 
 
 IT seems that the sailor who survives a shipwreck ac 
 cepts the fact of his escape not as a warning of the dan 
 gers of his life but as an assurance that they are not 
 deadly, and goes to sea again with a veteran s contempt 
 of storms. The crisis through which Don had passed 
 did nothing to reform his impracticality, but rather 
 developed and confirmed it. "Did n t I tell you we d 
 be all right," he exulted to Margaret, celebrating his 
 good fortune in an evening at the theater. "You cer 
 tainly did," she laughed, "but you did n t look as if 
 you believed it." 
 
 "I did, though," he assured her; and he thought 
 that he was telling the truth. All the time, I felt cer 
 tain of it. It 11 Now it s your turn. We 11 organ 
 ize your campaign now, won t we?" 
 
 She nodded, to conceal thought. She had not told 
 him what success her afternoon s quest had had, but she 
 had admitted that her mother s letter had ordered her 
 home peremptorily and that she had tried to make the 
 gentle reply that turns away wrath even while it re 
 fuses obedience. She was doubtful of the issue of her 
 evasion. "I 11 hear in a day or two. 
 
 "Well, don t worry," he counselled her. "I have 
 If you run out of money, you must let me stake you 
 until you find what you wish.
 
 THE VISIONARY 367 
 
 She touched his arm to silence him as the lights were 
 lowered and the curtain rose ; and she let her hand 
 remain on his sleeve either absent-mindedly, or as an 
 applogy for turning from him, or merely as a sort of 
 place-mark in their conversation, like a finger on the 
 page of an interrupted reading. It was to Don the 
 tingling pole of an emotion that quivered through him 
 electrically; he sat rigid, for fear that his slightest 
 movement might break the current coming to him out 
 of the darkness in a circuit of friendship and sympathy 
 that joined her to him among all these strangers, 
 secretly, like the hidden clasp of fingers. When, at 
 length, she drew back slowly, he relaxed to an easier 
 position with a sigh. 
 
 The play was a "costume drama" in which the love 
 of a court beauty caused duels and intrigues and vari 
 ous dissensions among gentlemen in perukes and satin 
 smalls ; and Don listened and watched with his soul in 
 his eyes. It inspired him with the desire to do great 
 deeds, to be famous, to live a colored and wonderful 
 life. It filled him with high desires of love and mag 
 nanimity. It raised him above the sordid common 
 places of his commercial days. It intoxicated him with 
 that wine of romance which makes the historical novel 
 the cordial bottle of a shop-wearied civilization. Be 
 tween the acts, to the quickened sympathy of the girl 
 beside him, he freed himself of an almost vinous need 
 of confiding to someone his ambitions, his vague plans, 
 his shy hopes of a future as a playwright, laughing at 
 himself tentatively but touched to find that she did not 
 laugh too. "I never had a chance to work before," he 
 said. "I have always been worried by all sorts of
 
 368 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 things and upset. Now, with twenty-five dollars a 
 week, and lots of time to myself, I 11 be able to do 
 something something worth while." And on their 
 way back to their lodgings all his worries untangled, 
 and his future as straight and level as the street before 
 him he walked with her on his arm, as stiffly as a 
 schoolboy who marches beside the music of a military 
 band, almost strutting, his face stern with ambition and 
 as pale as if the shock and glory of battle were await 
 ing him at the foot of the street. 
 
 WALTER Pittsey took him, in the morning, to be "out 
 fitted," and lent him money for his purchases, and 
 advised him on the styles with the experience of a man 
 to whom the art of economical good dressing has been 
 a study. Pittsey knew where to find ready-made cloth 
 ing that could not be known from tailor-made ; he chose 
 a necktie with deliberation ; he spent an hour in search 
 of an overcoat that should fill out Don s shoulders and 
 still" preserve the distinction of his lean height ; he made 
 Don try on several different styles of shoes, frowning 
 and shaking his head as he studied over them; and 
 when he had finished, Don, for thirty dollars, was 
 apparently a young gentleman of fashion dressed in 
 the faultless simplicity of quiet good taste. "Now," 
 Pittsey said, "I ve noticed that you have the English 
 trick of saying sir to your elders. You had better 
 cut it out with Kuffman; he does n t understand that 
 sort of thing, you know. Just behave with him as you 
 did with Kidder, at first as if Well, I suppose if
 
 THE VISIONARY 369 
 
 you were conscious of it, you could n t do it. But 
 don t, for anything, let him think you need the job ." 
 
 The warning was not necessary ; for Don was already, 
 unconsciously, playing the part for which his clothes 
 had made him up. He had luncheon with Pittsey, and 
 he accepted the assiduous deference of the waiter with 
 a pleasant condescension. He accepted Kuffman, as 
 he had accepted Kidder, in that boyish indifference of 
 disinterest which had impressed the supers agent. He 
 was, in fact, content to leave all intercourse with Kuff 
 man in Pittsey s hands. And since the ticket office 
 was to be opened on the morrow, he was able to devote 
 himself to helping Pittsey arrange the tickets in the 
 pigeon-holed case beside the grated window, while he 
 listened attentively to the instructions which Pittsey 
 gave him concerning his small duties as relief man at 
 the wicket during the "off" hours. 
 
 "You 11 have to remember that you re a nickel-in- 
 the-slot machine," Pittsey counselled, "and nothing 
 more. The person outside puts in his money and gets 
 his ticket. Never talk. Answer questions politely, but 
 that s all. It s the only way to do the work. Never 
 never never talk to anyone through those bars." 
 
 Kuffman, who was one of those fat men that over 
 dress like dowagers, came into the office to give final 
 directions about the tickets that were to be placed for 
 sale at various hotel desks ; and he asked Don suddenly : 
 "Where did you get the necktie?" 
 
 Don turned, in his embarrassment, to Pittsey. 
 "Where did we get it?" 
 
 24
 
 370 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 Pittsey coughed deliberately. " Do you like it ? I 
 have the mate to it. We saw them in s win 
 dow" He named a fashionable haberdasher " and 
 I bought one myself." 
 
 Kuffman admired the tie in silence and went out. 
 " Here," Pittsey said, opening his pen-knife, " you d 
 better cut the label off that tie. And the next time he 
 asks you about your clothes don t turn to me as if I 
 were your valet." 
 
 Don obeyed him, bewildered. " Why did he ask me ? " 
 
 "I suppose because he wanted to know." 
 
 "But you did n t tell him." 
 "Oh, get wise, " Pittsey laughed. " Get wise. " 
 
 There were to be other incidents of a like nature in 
 Don s ticket-office experience, but they did not seem to 
 increase his stock of that sort of wisdom which Pittsey 
 wished him to acquire. It was not long, however, be 
 fore the fact that Don was a Canadian became known 
 to his theatrical associates, and his simplicity was ex 
 cused by them as the natural ignorance of a foreigner 
 who in his own country would doubtless be "wise" 
 to the strangest of native ways. Pittsey lost his 
 patience for a moment when he found. that he must 
 teach his assistant even the art of "making change," 
 for Don tried to subtract the price of a ticket from a 
 five-dollar bill, as if he were doing "mental arithme 
 tic," instead of using his coins as counters after the 
 manner of the experienced clerk. But he was so eager 
 to learn, so grateful for his tuition, and so full of ad 
 miration for his teacher that Pittsey could not remain 
 angry with him. And his evident honesty, his devotion
 
 THE VISIONARY 371 
 
 to his duties which he accepted as a most sobering 
 responsibility and his engaging gentleness with the 
 public, were qualifications for office that easily out 
 weighed his defects. 
 
 He was to find it his good fortune that he was re 
 quired to be merely an automaton in his work. Shut 
 in behind the brass rods of his window and the wire 
 screen of his locked door, he was to see the public go 
 past in a procession of speaking heads and open hands 
 that asked and were answered, gave, received and dis 
 appeared. There was to be something pleasant to him 
 in the fact that although he could hear the slightest 
 whisper of the purchaser at the open window, he had to 
 raise his own voice to make himself heard in reply ; that 
 he could speak in an amused aside to Pittsey without be 
 ing overheard by the expectant head at the wicket; and 
 that the office, glowing with light and warmth, was as 
 comfortable as home to him, while all the rest of the 
 world seemed to be coming, like hungry street-children 
 to a bake-shop window, to stare in at him from the cold 
 darkness, red-nosed and with numb hands. 
 
 But these impressions were still in the future; for 
 the present he was busy arranging the office to Pitt 
 sey s taste, with some of the glad anticipations of a 
 young housewife moving into a new home. Miss Mor 
 ris looked in on them for a moment, on her way from 
 rehearsals, but she understood from Pittsey s manner 
 that the ticket office was not to be used for social calls, 
 and she withdrew as soon as possible. Let me come 
 and see you," Don proposed, as she went. 
 
 "But I m rehearsing morning, noon and night,"
 
 372 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 she said. "We shall have to wait till Sunday unless 
 I can meet you, some day, at lunch time. I 11 try. 
 
 She did not ask him about Margaret, nor did she men 
 tion Polk ; and Don, with his faculty for self-deception, 
 did not try to look below the smiling surface of her 
 friendliness. 
 
 When the office had been closed for the night, he went 
 with Pittsey to have dinner at the latter s hotel; but 
 he went wondering how Margaret had spent the day 
 and wishing that he could think of an excuse for escap 
 ing to her. He could not, in friendship, refuse to dine 
 with Walter, but he was glad when Bert Pittsey joined 
 them at table his pocket full of newspapers and his 
 head full of chatter for his arrival relieved Don of 
 the burden of conversation, and left him to his 
 thoughts ; and while he ate distractedly he went over in 
 memory all the impressions of his busy day, and re 
 called Margaret, across the crowded interval of separ 
 ation, as if he had not seen her for a month. 
 
 Bert, in his new position as "cub reporter," was 
 doing what he called "leg work," and he had adven 
 tures to relate. He gave his account of them with his 
 usual air of young deviltry. "Had an assignment this 
 afternoon to root out a story of an old curb-market 
 stock-sharp who was marrying a woman that owned a 
 Sixth Avenue restaurant. They ve been boarding in 
 the same house. I could n t see either of them, so I 
 had to imagine them. I imagined him a Wall street 
 millionaire who had fallen in love with the beautiful 
 waitress who used to feed him his lunch. It made a 
 great story! The only trouble with reporting is that
 
 THE VISIONARY 373 
 
 you re hampered by the facts in the case. I could n t 
 say that he d fallen in love with her over a plate of 
 corn-beef hash. I had to make it It is said this and 
 It is reported that. That s the sort of thing that 
 drives so many discouraged newspaper men into maga 
 zine work." 
 
 Walter heard him with the air of an elder brother 
 listening to a precocious younger one. Don did not 
 hear him at all until Conroy s name, mentioned in the 
 conversation, caught his ear. Then he looked up to 
 catch Bert saying, in a low aside to Walter: "There s 
 a lady in the case. And suddenly he remembered the 
 hat and veil which he had seen on the dining-room 
 table. 
 
 What s the matter?" he asked. 
 
 But Bert Pittsey refused to tell. "Excuse me," he 
 said. "I don t muddle in any private affairs unless 
 for purposes of publication." 
 
 "Who is she?" 
 
 He bowed, like a politician declining to be inter 
 viewed. "I have nothing whatever to say on that sub 
 ject at present." 
 
 "She was there was n t she? when I called the 
 other day?" 
 
 "Very sorry, boys, very sorry. But you 11 have to 
 excuse me to-day. Fine weather we re having, is it 
 not?" 
 
 Walter laughed. "You had better keep out of it," 
 he advised Dion. "You 11 only get yourself into more 
 trouble." 
 
 "Me too," Bert said. "I intend to dissolve partner-
 
 374 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 ship with your gentle cousin as soon as possible, and I 
 desire that we shall part without any formal blows." 
 That was all that Don could learn of the matter. He 
 thought it over. With the arrival of coffee and cigars, 
 he concluded to let the affair rest until Pittsey s dis 
 solution of partnership should make it possible to dis 
 cover the whole truth. When Walter proposed that 
 they finish the night at a theater, Don said: "I ought 
 to go I have some letters I should write." But AVal- 
 ter would not hear of such a way of wasting an evening. 
 "You have n t many more nights free," he said. And 
 Don went with them irresolutely. 
 
 IT was nearly midnight when he returned to his lodg 
 ings, but as he came cautiously upstairs he saw a 
 thread of light under Margaret s door. He tapped on 
 a panel and called, under his voice: "How have you 
 been?" 
 
 The door burst open as if it had been set on a spring. 
 Margaret confronted him. "Someone She s coming! 
 She knows I was on the stage. Someone has told her!" 
 
 Confused by the suddenness of the light in his 
 eyes and by the anxious appeal for aid that sounded in 
 the hoarse repression of her voice, he stammered: 
 "Wh-what? Who?" 
 
 "Mother! Someone! She does n t say who. She s 
 coming on her way now. She won t wait for me 
 to go. She s coming for me. What shall I do?" 
 
 She waited for him to answer. He said, at last, 
 inadequately: "Well, tell her you won t go." 
 
 "But she 11 make me!" 
 
 "How can she?"
 
 THE VISIONARY 375 
 
 "She s she s my mother! I can t" 
 
 "Well," he said weakly, "suppose she is. She can t 
 take you if you don t want to go." 
 
 She stepped into the hall and drew the door to, be 
 hind her. But what can I say ? What can I tell her ? 
 I I ve failed to get anything. I ve been going all 
 day yesterday too and there is n t anything noth 
 ing! They all tell me I m not far enough advanced, 
 that I should go home and study, and come down again 
 in a year or two. I have nothing to tell her not even 
 a prospect of anything. I can t I have to I won t 
 have even a home. I have n t any money 
 
 He put in eagerly : That s all right. I have plenty 
 now enough for both of us." 
 
 "But if I don t I may never. It may be years. 
 I-" 
 
 "I don t care as long as you stay." 
 
 "But I can t! I can t do that. Don t you under 
 stand?" 
 
 The hall was dark; he could not see her face. But 
 there was an almost tearful exasperation in her voice, 
 and he hurried to plead against that tone: "Don t 
 leave me now, when everything s beginning to go right, 
 when I m just beginning to be able to help you. I 
 can t let you go. What right has s/ie? What has she 
 to offer" 
 
 "But you She s my mother. That s her right. 
 I can t tell her I have n t anything to tell her. It s 
 you it s we that have no right." 
 
 "Well, what can I do? What do you want me to 
 do? Shall /see her?" 
 
 "What good would that do?"
 
 376 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 There was a despair of him in her voice. He reached 
 her hand in the darkness, as if to hold her to the friendly 
 sympathy of the past few days. "Don t Don t 
 
 "But Don," she whispered, coming as if uncon 
 sciously to the arm that supported her, "what are we to 
 do? I know I don t want to go. I don t want to 
 leave you." Her hand was on his shoulder; he held 
 her like a lover. " We must be practical. We can t " 
 
 "I will," he choked. "I 11 think of something. 
 Don t let her take you away. I could n t live here now, 
 without you. I" 
 
 There was the rustle of a stealthy movement on the 
 landing below them. She tried to draw back. He held 
 her to a hurried "Good-night" and the kiss that ac 
 companied it. He felt her relax in his arms. "Good 
 night," she whispered, warm against his cheek and 
 immediately she was gone. 
 
 He fumbled his way upstairs to his room, in the blind 
 darkness, mechanically, every conscious faculty of his 
 mind still entangled, bewildered, enraptured by the 
 transport and sudden ecstacy of that caress. 
 
 VIII 
 
 THE thought with which he awoke in the morning was 
 the resolve to which he had held himself as he fell 
 asleep overnight: that he must do something decisive 
 at once. He had no time to lose; her mother might 
 arrive at any moment; they must be prepared with a 
 plan of action to meet her.
 
 THE VISIONARY 377 
 
 There was one plan that was the obvious solution 
 of their difficulty ; but he found something repellent in 
 the thought that he should take advantage of Mar 
 garet s situation to force her where her heart, perhaps, 
 did not yet make her willing to go. He had looked 
 forward to their marriage as a sort of crowning event 
 for his success in life, when he would be able to offer 
 her the happiness of his prosperity and give her a home 
 worthy of her and of his love. He could not ask her 
 to share a garret with him. He had even a ridiculous 
 shame of letting her see the poverty of his wardrobe, 
 of introducing her to the makeshifts of his dressing 
 room. His ideal of her demanded that she should be 
 won by nobility and devotion, after the long persuasion 
 of a courtship not hurried into marriage like a girl 
 of the tenements, against her will, by the pleading of a 
 lover who would use her necessity to force her. 
 
 But in the meantime he might lose her. He must 
 find a way to temporize. He must find it at once. And 
 although it was not yet seven o clock by his watch, he 
 washed and dressed as if he had not a second to spare. 
 The first thing to do was to consult with her. He knew 
 that she would be awake. He tip-toed downstairs and 
 tapped on her door. "Yes?" she answered. 
 
 "Come out," he said. "I 11 wait at the front door 
 for you." 
 
 He heard her patter, bare-footed, across the floor. 
 He went below and stood outside on the old "stoop," 
 looking down on the hurry of clerks and shop-girls on 
 their way to the elevated trains that would return them 
 to drudgery. The sky was a sombre wash of smudged 
 grey, heavy, unrefreshed, as if the day had been wak-
 
 378 DON-A-DEEAMS 
 
 ened too soon and was still sulky for lack of sleep. The 
 air was thick with the chill and odor of night-damps. 
 He buttoned his overcoat resolutely and put on his 
 gloves. Now, he said to himself, let us see. What 
 shall we do?" 
 
 The question was still unanswered though he was 
 pacing up and down the pavement with it, vainly try 
 ing to think when he saw her descending the steps to 
 the sidewalk. He hastened to meet her. "Have you 
 thought of anything?" 
 
 She blushed faintly. "No." 
 
 "We must," he said. "Your mother may arrive any 
 moment now. Does she know your address ? 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "She 11 come direct to the house, then?" 
 
 "I suppose so." 
 
 "Let us get away from here." 
 
 He turned his back on the bustle of Sixth Avenue 
 and led her toward the quieter streets of old Green 
 wich. She went in a silence which left the affair wholly 
 in his hands ; and he frowned over it diligently. 
 
 He began: "It won t cost me ten dollars a week to 
 live now, and I have twenty-five. Why can t you take 
 the rest the fifteen for as long as you 11 need it, 
 and just tell your mother that you have money to keep 
 you here and you intend to stay?" 
 
 "Because I" He did not understand her confu 
 sion. "Because I can t." 
 
 "Why can t you?" 
 
 "How can I? I have no There s no reason why 
 you" 
 
 "Yes there is. There s every reason." She shook
 
 THE VISIONARY 379 
 
 her head. "Yes there is," he insisted. "I ve been 
 waiting I Ve been planning here, working and every 
 thingbecause I knew you d come to New York. And 
 now, ever since you ve been here, I ve been I ve 
 been so Have n t you been happy? Do you want to 
 go?" 
 
 "No," she said gently. "I don t, Don. But it 
 perhaps it would be wiser for me to go home for a while 
 and then come back again." She added hastily, seeing 
 the tragic change in his face : "I 11 come back. Then 
 when you r re when you re more sure of everything 
 This is the first time you ve had an opportunity to do 
 your work, without being worried and upset. I don t 
 know that I shall ever find anything. Not for years. 
 I need to study. I could do that at home study 
 while I m teaching. We could write to each other. 
 We could . . . wait." 
 
 Wait ! His voice was almost a groan. Have n t 
 I waited? Have n t I been waiting all my life?" She 
 took his arm to check him. He went on passionately: 
 I can t wait. I can t live here alone. I can t let you 
 go again. I can t. 
 
 "Ssh!" She looked askance at the windows they 
 were passing. "If we If I did n t go, and then any 
 thing happened, I d be" 
 
 "What do I care what happens as long as you don t 
 go ! You could n t be any worse off than you d be at 
 home. Besides, nothing can happen. I 11 see to that. 
 Stay with me. Don t leave me. I " 
 
 "Oh Don!" She clung to his arm. "We must be 
 practical." 
 
 "Practical! What do I care whether we re practi-
 
 380 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 cal or not as long as we re happy. I won t let you go ! 
 I won t give you up ! If you leave me again, I 11 I 11 
 go after you. 
 
 A man, approaching, stared as he came, and then, 
 when he was near enough to see their expressions, he 
 looked away guiltily, as if he had spied on a family 
 quarrel. When he had passed, Margaret said, broken 
 ly : "It s so unreasonable ! Blaming me ! It s only 
 for your sake" 
 
 "Then stay for my sake," he pleaded. "I m only 
 here I m only working for you. The money s for 
 you. Everything I do is for you." She fumbled at 
 the handkerchief in the bosom of her jacket. "We ve 
 been so happy. And now, with my work come out right 
 and all to go away and leave it You won t ! Say 
 you won t." 
 
 She wiped her eyes in a frantic shame of such 
 public emotion. "But what will we dot." 
 
 "We 11 do what we have been doing. Was n t that 
 all right? I have my work now, and what do we care 
 how long it takes to find yours? We 11 find it some 
 day, just as I ve found mine, and we 11 be together, 
 and happy. You were happy, were n t you?" 
 
 "Yes. Yes." 
 
 Well then, what does anything else matter ? That s 
 all I ask, to have you with me, so that I can be happy 
 and try to make you happy. Your mother can t do it 
 any more than my father can make me happy. She 
 has n t anything to offer you except what will make us 
 both miserable. She has n t even money. You 11 
 have to work at what you don t like. And here you 
 can wait until you find what you do like."
 
 THE VISIONARY 381 
 
 He did not voice the thought that was behind this 
 temporizing the thought that in the days to come he 
 would win her to the act that would relieve her of all 
 necessity of finding work for herself. But she knew 
 that the thought was there, and she accepted it unsaid. 
 
 They had walked into a street that ended in a cul-de- 
 sac, and they had to stop and retrace their steps; but 
 his arguments, his pleadings, his promises went on 
 without interruption, in a current against which she no 
 longer tried to struggle. They lost themselves in a 
 maze of those old Greenwich by-paths that wandered 
 in aimless turns and circlings between rows of quaint 
 red-brick houses with colonial doors and brass knockers. 
 They came unexpectedly on a busy thoroughfare, noisy 
 with street-car traffic, and he did not recognize it ; but 
 by this time she had surrendered her last objection, 
 and they made a truce of their troubles in their at 
 tempts to discover where they were. A policeman 
 directed them to a street that would return them to 
 Sixth Avenue. They went back toward their little 
 restaurant, for breakfast, in the silence of hunger and 
 spent emotions. 
 
 He regained his usual optimism at the table, but he 
 found that he could not raise her from her despondent 
 apprehensions, and he had to content himself with the 
 thought that after her mother had come and gone she 
 would return to happiness. He parted from her in the 
 hallway outside her door, exacting her meek promise 
 that she would allow nothing to force her to leave him. 
 He held her hand, lingering, on a desire to make a fonder 
 leave-taking; but she seemed withdrawn from him by 
 her anxiety, and he was afraid to intrude his love on
 
 382 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 her. "Good-bye," he said. "I shall not be able to 
 have luncheon with you, but I 11 be here at six o clock. 
 She replied, dispiritedly: "Good-bye." 
 
 THE million interests of his morning s work rushed in 
 over the thought of her in a confusion of incessant 
 demands on his attention ; for Pittsey, in order to break 
 in his assistant to his duties, stood back from the wicket 
 and made Don "handle the sale," interfering only to 
 prevent an error or straighten out a snarl. "Sink or 
 swim," he said, when Don faltered and wiped his fore 
 head. "It s the only way you 11 ever learn." Long 
 before noon Don s head was aching and his wrists were 
 weak, but his hands were beginning to move deftly, his 
 voice came calm, and he had moments when he gained 
 that mental detachment of the expert ticket seller who 
 can do two things at once and watch himself doing them 
 as if the thought and the action were the functions of 
 two separate minds. "Now," Pittsey said, "you had 
 better get your lunch and have a smoke. Don t come 
 back here for an hour." 
 
 Don dropped his duties like a weight, with the feeling 
 that he could not have supported the strain for another 
 five minutes. Miss Morris was waiting for him in the 
 foyer. Goodness ! He took his breath, smiling and 
 shaking his head at her. " I m almost done out. 
 
 "Come along," she laughed. "What you need is a 
 beefsteak and a glass of ale." 
 
 They went to a chop-house where he took the beef 
 steak but, to her amusement, declined the ale. She 
 watched his plate like a grandmother, making him eat, 
 
 \
 
 THE VISIONAEY 383 
 
 but refusing to let him talk ; and he was so grateful to 
 her for her thoughtfulness that he did not ask himself 
 whether it had not been she who had found a way to 
 let Mrs. Richardson know that Margaret was on the 
 stage. She spoke of indifferent matters : of her change 
 of boarding-house, of Mr. Folk s new play, of the hope 
 that if Folk s theater were a success she might not 
 have "to leave Broadway" all winter, of Miss Arden s 
 "hit" in a comic opera, of the affairs of the "profes 
 sion" at large. He listened, too tired to do more than 
 smile. He returned with her to the theater, rested and 
 refreshed. 
 
 The afternoon passed as quickly as the morning had, 
 but with less strain; for the first rush for tickets was 
 over, and he worked with greater ease. When the box 
 office closed, he excused himself to Walter, on the plea 
 of an "engagement," and cut through the crowds to his 
 car like the most breathless of those New Yorkers whose 
 haste he had once envied as he sat idle in Union Square. 
 
 He ran upstairs to her room and rapped joyfully. 
 Mrs. McGahn opened the door to him. He stared. 
 "Where is she?" 
 
 She s here. But it s no thanks to you I Come in 
 here." 
 
 "What s the matter?" He came in wonderingly, 
 and stopped, frightened, at the sight of Margaret lying 
 on a sofa. Is she sick ? 
 
 Sick ! If she ain t, it s a wonder ! I d be sick me- 
 self!" 
 
 "Mother s been here," Margaret said faintly, her 
 back to him.
 
 384 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 "An you re the sweet one!" Mrs. McGahn broke 
 in. To go off an leave her to fight yer battles f er yuh. 
 What re yuh thinkin of, to do it, man?" 
 
 He did not reply to her. He had scarcely heard her. 
 He came to the foot of the sofa as awkwardly as a boy 
 in a sick room. "What s the matter?" 
 
 She rolled her head on the cushion. "I 11 have to 
 go home." 
 
 He dropped his hat. "Why?" 
 
 "Why?" Mrs. McGahn echoed. "Why! Because 
 she s the girl s mother, ain t she?" She stopped at 
 the ghastliness of his face. "Well, dang yuh," she 
 cried in a humorous Irish exasperation, "yuh re the 
 biggest fool alive. If yuh want the girl, why don t yuh 
 marry her ? Shilly-shallyin , an kissin in the halls at 
 night, an tormentin her with yer goin s on! Why 
 don t yuh marry her an tell her mother to go off an 
 mind her bus ness? Here!" She closed the door and 
 came back to front him like a magistrate. "What re 
 yuh up to, young man? Will yuh marry her, er will 
 yuh not? Fer, by the jukes, now, if yuh won t, yuh 11 
 go out o here this blessed minut an the girl 11 go 
 home in the mornin to where she belongs ! Now ! Out 
 with it!" 
 
 Margaret struggled to get up, rising on her elbow. 
 "Mrs. McGahn!" she cried piteously. 
 
 "Be still, you." She rounded on Don again. "It s 
 take it er leave it! She can t stay here an I won t 
 have her here. She s her mother s daughter until 
 she s a wedded woman an out o danger. An home 
 she 11 go!"
 
 THE VISIONARY 385 
 
 Don did not so much as look at her. He was appeal 
 ing to the girl with his eyes. "Don t go." he said 
 hoarsely. If you if you 11 do it. If you care enough 
 for me to let me" 
 
 Mrs. McGahn, with a sudden understanding of what 
 he was trying to say, took him by the arm and drew 
 him to Margaret s side. Here ! she said, and turning 
 from them, she marched out of the room. 
 
 IX 
 
 WHEN she looked in again, Dion was sitting on the edge 
 of the sofa, in the dusk; the girl was in his arms; she 
 was crying on his shoulder. Mrs. McGahn smiled. 
 "Well?" 
 
 Don looked around with a drawn face. Is she back, 
 Mrs. Richardson?" 
 
 No, she ain t, she blustered, exaggeratingly. An 
 she won t be, till mornin . I put her out o the house, 
 hot-foot. Persecutin the child!" 
 
 "I told her I would n t go until the morning, until 
 I had seen you, Margaret sobbed. 
 
 "That will give us plenty of time." He asked Mrs. 
 McGahn shakily: "Do you know anyone around here 
 who 11 do to" 
 
 " Are yuhCath lies?" 
 
 "No. We re-" 
 
 "Neither am I. If yuh d been Cath lics, I 11 be 
 
 26
 
 386 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 danged if I know how they marry. I m Orange meself, 
 an so s Dan. Who s yer min ster?" 
 
 I don t know. I have n t any. He shook his head, 
 in a helpless perplexity. 
 
 She snorted. "Yuh young heathen! Yuh deserve 
 no better than bein married be an alderman. That 11 
 teach yuh to go to church. It s well f er yuh that I m 
 a married woman with daughters like me." She 
 waved him to the door. "Go get a cab an a weddin 
 ring!" She wailed: "An my dinner in the oven!" 
 She stopped him : "Wait ! Do yuh know the size ? No ! 
 There s a man now ! As helpless as the babe at a 
 christ nin ! Have y even a bit o string? No, not a 
 bit ! She caught up Margaret s glove from the 
 dresser. "Take that to a jeweler s. Go on! Be off 
 with yuh! Take yer hat, man!" She drove him out, 
 and he went clutching the glove in one hand, his hat in 
 the other. She called down the stairs after him : " It s 
 a four wheeler yuh 11 want, mind yuh ! She shrieked, 
 at the next landing : An a witness ! I m one ! 
 Yuh 11 want two!" 
 
 IF Don had any clear idea of what he was doing at the 
 time, certainly he had no clear recollection, afterwards, 
 of how he had done it. He found what he supposed was 
 a jeweler s shop though subsequently, in pointing it 
 out to Margaret, he saw that it was a pawnbroker s. 
 He bought a ring that must have been an "unre 
 deemed pledge" without knowing what he paid for it. 
 The man behind the glass show-case called him back to 
 give him the glove, which he had forgotten; and he
 
 THE VISIONARY 387 
 
 drifted down the street, looking for a livery stable, 
 holding the ring in his bare hand like a child with a 
 penny, struggling absent-mindedly to put on the glove 
 which was Margaret s and bewildered to find that 
 his hand had grown too large for it. The hostler of a 
 boarding-stable directed him to a livery near by, and he 
 succeeded in hiring a cab, though he had the feeling 
 that he was speaking a foreign language and had diffi 
 culty in finding his words. The livery man understood 
 the situation when Don, trying to pay in advance, found 
 that the money he had in his hand was a wedding ring. 
 "That s all right," the man grinned. "I been there. 
 Put that in yer vest pocket an ferget where it is. " And 
 he and the driver, having sympathetically helped Don 
 to remember the address of Walter Pittsey s hotel, shut 
 him in the cab and started the horses. 
 
 That drive was to remain in his memory as a smell 
 of mildewed leather-cushions and a sea-sickening dark 
 ness of rocking pitches, with street lights swimming by 
 on the shores. He disembarked at a blazing hotel front 
 and walked wide to the desk, over the black and white 
 marble squares of a tesselated floor. Walter Pittsey 
 was nowhere to be found. The clerk, after answering 
 several futile questions, edged away from him and pre 
 tended to be busy looking up nothing in the telephone 
 directory. Don wandered back to his cab, remembered 
 Bert Pittsey, and gave the address to the driver on the 
 box. He stood beside the front wheels until the man 
 said: "Yes ur. Jus get inside now an we 11 start. 
 See yuh shut the door. 
 
 It followed, naturally, that Don held the door shut
 
 388 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 until the cab had stopped at Pittsey s number. Then, 
 alighting from the door which he had been holding, he 
 found himself in the middle of the street and had diffi 
 culty in distinguishing the house. 
 
 Pittsey said afterwards : He came in on me without 
 knocking, and he looked as if he had just been wakened 
 up and did n t quite. know where he was." It struck 
 Don at the time that Pittsey behaved as if he had been 
 invited out to see a three-alarm fire ; for, after his first 
 staring amazement half -risen from the dining table, 
 with a knife in his hand he shouted and snatched at 
 his overcoat and came laughing. 
 
 "Where s he? Conroy?" Don asked, in the carriage. 
 
 "He s running a quiet wedding of his own," Bert 
 said; and because Don could not make sense of the re 
 ply, he did not ask any more questions. 
 
 He was worried by a sinking sensation in his stomach 
 which had made it difficult for him to judge the length 
 and reach of his legs, particularly in going up or coming 
 downstairs. For that reason, he left it to Pittsey to 
 tell Mrs. McGahn that the cab was at the door; and 
 when the voluble landlady appeared, behind her voice 
 like an actor who is heard shouting in the wings be 
 fore he makes his entrance on the stage Don sank back 
 against the cushions, under cover of her garrulity, in a 
 personal silence that was aware of Margaret at his side 
 in every tingling nerve. 
 
 He lost her again when he came on the confusing 
 necessity of remembering his name, his age, his color 
 and the number of times that he had been married be 
 forefilling out the document required by law. He
 
 THE VISIONARY 389 
 
 signed it laboriously and gave up the pen to Pittsey, 
 after trying to put it in his pencil pocket. He moved 
 like a dummy to his place before a table in the minis 
 ter s parlor, being divided against himself by the fact 
 that the affair reminded him of his first rehearsal in 
 "The Rajah s Ruby" until he was asked to repeat, 
 after the clergyman, the words of the service, and then 
 he stood, with Margaret, as if in the infant class at 
 Sabbath school, shakily reciting verses which he did not 
 understand. He put the ring on her finger as clumsily 
 as if he were trying to thread a needle ; and when Mrs. 
 McGahn whispered loudly "Salute yer bride! Kiss 
 yer wife ! " he kissed her beside the nose, stiff with an 
 intensity of emotion, the tears in his eyes. 
 
 Pittsey wrung his hand. "Good boy!" he said. 
 "You did it well." And Don smiled the foolish smile 
 of bridegrooms. 
 
 "Now," Mrs. McGahn announced, "yuh 11 all come 
 back an have yer weddin supper with me if that 
 woman has n t burned it to flitters. Pittsey was pay 
 ing the minister. Margaret was looking, a little fright 
 ened, at her husband as if she did not quite recognize 
 him. "Come along with yuh! All of yuh! Will yuh 
 come, Mr. Cobbett ? The Reverend J. Sanderson Cob- 
 bett excused himself in a low voice that contrasted with 
 her excited pitch of hospitality. She was not discour 
 aged. " Come along, Mr. Pitty. I can t offer yuh wed 
 din cake an wine" Pittsey saw the desire of escape 
 in Don s look of misery but Dan 11 make y a punch 
 that 11 keep yuh grinnin fer a whole honeymoon" 
 
 " I m afraid you 11 have to make it a wedding break-
 
 390 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 fast, Mrs. McGowan," he excused them. "I ordered 
 supper for them at their hotel." 
 
 There ! she said. I knowed I d be disappointed 
 some way. Never mind ! I ve had a weddin any 
 way. " She cuddled Margaret. "Yuh spoke up like 
 a trump, girl. Come along. Drive me home, now. 
 Sure I m an ol fool." She had suddenly been over 
 taken in her turn by the usual desire to weep. "I s pose 
 Dan 11 be growlin fer his grub like a bear with a sore 
 ear. Yuh re young yet. God give yuh happiness. 
 Yuh 11 be good to her, Mr. Gregg, now. She s give yuh 
 all she s got," 
 
 She crammed with good advice the few minutes of 
 the drive back to her home; and she kissed Margaret 
 at the cab-door, and ran upstairs for the girl s valise 
 which she had packed ready and kissed her again 
 when she came back with it. When she saw that Don 
 had not his bag, she lost her tender emotion in the 
 scolding haste of helping him to get it. By this time 
 her husband was at the door and all the lodgers were 
 in the windows; and when Pittsey at last got the cab 
 under way, she threw an old slipper after them, and 
 hit one of the gaping street-children on the head with it. 
 They escaped while she was trying to comfort the in 
 jured youngster. 
 
 A worthy woman, Pittsey said. Next to a wake, 
 they do enjoy a wedding. Where am I taking you now?" 
 
 They did not know. Don explained, rather uncer 
 tainly, that he had not made any arrangements of any 
 sort. "Mrs. McGahn " 
 
 "Enough said," Pittsey interrupted. "Let me dis-
 
 THE VISIONARY 391 
 
 pose of you. Your cousin has divorced me for a hand 
 somer girl and I have a flat on my hands. I m giving 
 up housekeeping, and I 11 sell the outfit. Or if you 
 don t want to buy, I 11 give it to you. Anyway, take 
 it for the time being, until you find a better place. I m 
 going to join Walt. You get your suppers, and by the 
 time you arrive at my former rooms you 11 find them 
 ready for you and the key of the dining room under 
 the door mat. Turn it to your left and walk in. The 
 rent won t be due for a week." 
 
 Don was as incapable of argument as he was of sug 
 gesting any better plan; and Pittsey, having stopped 
 the cab at a street corner, shook hands with them smil 
 ingly, gave directions to the cabman and watched them 
 drive off. 
 
 They went in darkness, in silence, side by side. At 
 the turning of a corner, Don said, out of an emotion 
 that had evidently been throttling him: "We re 
 we re married ! 
 
 "Oh Don," she cried, "we should n t have! We 
 should n t have done it!" 
 
 He put an arm about her. "Wait!" he exulted. 
 
 "Just wait till I show you. Just you just you wait ! 
 We 11 be the happiest!" 
 
 IT is the triumph of the imaginative man that he makes 
 the best lover in the world; and Don s love had been, 
 for so long, the faith of his life that even the realities
 
 392 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 of married intercourse did not more than ritualize it 
 into a religion. If Margaret had been unable to appre 
 ciate it in its silent devotions, she thrilled and glowed 
 to it now that it had become voluble and formulary. 
 And like so many women who marry young, her maiden 
 sentiment was a pale and mild affection compared with 
 the passionate surrender of the wife. Even the dis 
 comforts of their honeymoon days in Pittsey s flat were 
 lost in the sunrise flush of happiness that made all 
 beautiful. Even her mother s anger softened into a 
 natural misunderstanding which the girl sympathized 
 with and forgave. . 
 
 As for Don, he had arrived at the promised land. 
 His great dream had come true. He felt that no hope 
 could be too extravagant since this impossibility had 
 come to pass. He hurried home at night, from the long 
 day s separation, eager to bill and coo, to plan new joys 
 for their future and to recall the vicissitudes of their 
 past. He had to discover when it was that she had 
 really, first, begun to love him. He had to be assured 
 endlessly that she was happy. He had to sit over their 
 late supper, basking in the comforts of domesticity, con 
 trasting these full days of their companionship with 
 the hungry ones he had come through. If she 
 smiled at the wildness of his castle-building, he replied : 
 "Well, would you have believed, a month ago, that 
 we d be here 1 You leave this to me. I 11 do it. First 
 we 11 move into a comfortable flat. Then I 11 write 
 the bulliest play ever and get Miss Morris the lead in 
 it. Then I m going to get Conroy on his feet. Then, 
 as soon as the theater closes for the summer, we re go-
 
 THE VISIONARY 393 
 
 ing on our honeymoon to Coulton to see mother. 
 Then" 
 
 Meanwhile, Miss Morris had not returned to the 
 theater, and when he attempted to see her, he was told 
 that she was ill. When he learned from Walter Pittsey 
 that she had left Polk s company, he endeavored to find 
 out what had happened; and Pittsey replied, oracu 
 larly: "You know more about it than I do." Subse 
 quently, Don heard that she had "gone on the road." 
 Finally, he read in a dramatic paper that she was lead 
 ing woman in a San Francisco stock company; and he 
 wrote to her. But he did not understand her part 
 much less her purpose in bringing about the events 
 that had led up to his hasty marriage ; and he did not 
 understand why she had fallen back into that strange 
 silence of life from which she had so suddenly emerged 
 upon him. 
 
 He moved to a little, uptown, top-floor flat which 
 Margaret and he furnished "on the instalment plan," 
 dignifying the tiny front room with a rented piano for 
 her and a library writing-table for him. She was to 
 practise her music while he wrote on his plays. They 
 settled down to that dual program of ambitious work, 
 happy in their nest under the eaves. Walter Pittsey 
 became a frequent visitor, and Margaret encouraged 
 him to come, because he tried to aid arid advise Don in 
 his play-writing. He even endeavored to interest Polk 
 in one of Don s manuscripts, and was not surprised 
 to find that Polk though he pronounced the play itself 
 "awful stuff, awful" was puzzled and amused by 
 Don as if by a new specimen of young human nature to
 
 394= DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 be studied and perhaps reproduced. He drew Don out, 
 at their odd meetings in the box office, professed to see 
 possibilities in Don s "Winter" as a sort of spectacular 
 extravaganza, asked him to write it out, and quizzed 
 him, with the soberest countenance, about his views of 
 life. Only to Pittsey, Polk confessed: "I don t believe 
 he 11 write a play, if he lives to be a thousand. 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "I 11 tell you why. He gulped his glass of whiskey 
 and water, at the bar. "For the same reason that no 
 woman has ever written a big play. Did you ever think 
 of it? Lots of women have written first-class novels. 
 One or two have written great poetry. Almost none have 
 written any music worth considering. And fewer still 
 have written even passable plays. And I 11 tell you 
 why ! Because women are sensitive and emotional and 
 artistic, but they re not strong enough to subdue emo 
 tion to the ends of art, d you see? And the more stiff 
 the laws of your art, the more impossible it is for them 
 to handle it. Music s bad enough ! Pure emotion ex 
 pressed in rules of harmony that are like mathematics ! 
 
 But a play, man! Why a play s the most d d 
 
 intricate piece of mechanism that was ever put together. 
 And to make it live, you have to be the master of life 
 as well as the slave of it." He laughed abruptly. 
 "That s the truth I m telling you. I just read it in 
 a newspaper." 
 
 "And you think that s the trouble with Gregg?" 
 
 That s the trouble with Gregg. He s as sensitive as 
 a woman, but he lives like a woman, and he 11 never 
 write a d d thing ! He s too deep in his own emo-
 
 THE VISIONARY 395 
 
 tions." He added: "Lucky beggar! Life s worth 
 while when you can live it as much as he does. 
 
 "He s happy, certainly." 
 
 Happy ! Of course, he s happy. He s too happy 
 to write. And when he s miserable, he 11 be too miser 
 able to write." 
 
 "Well," Pittsey reflected, "I suppose it 11 not hurt 
 him to try. 
 
 No. And he 11 be happier trying than he would be 
 if he had in it him to succeed." 
 
 He was certainly happy, trying though he was per 
 haps happier talking about how happy both Margaret 
 and he were to be when he should succeed. He worked 
 at his manuscript of "Winter" undiscouraged by the 
 sudden abatement of Walter s enthusiasm; but he did 
 nothing to force himself into the way of success. He 
 had a faith in his future that made him almost court a 
 present obscurity ; and he looked out on the world from 
 the grating of his ticket window, amused to see that the 
 public mistook him for what he seemed to be. His let 
 ters to his mother were full of dark hints of this faith in 
 himself, but to no one else did he write a word of it. He 
 did not write to his aunt or his uncle at all ; for he had 
 learned the whole truth of Conroy s lady in the case, 
 and he preferred rather to be silent than to be a hypo 
 crite. 
 
 That "lady" was the young woman whom Conroy 
 had found to do the housework at the time Bert Pittsey 
 took his staff position on the newspaper. He had found 
 her in want, on the streets. And he was living with her, 
 now an idle "remittance man" no one knew quite
 
 396 DON-A-DEEAMS 
 
 where. When Bert Pittsey wished to see him, he looked 
 either in the smoking-room of the Mills Hotel, south of 
 Washington Square, or in a little Italian caffe and music 
 hall, near by, in Sullivan Street. Don, too, had gone to 
 see him at this "charity house," but Conroy had refused 
 to recognize him, beyond leaving the smoking-room 
 when he saw his cousin come in; and Don had hurried 
 away, ashamed of the appearance of having spied on 
 his old friend s degradation. 
 
 It touched him, like a tragedy. He brooded over the 
 thought of Conroy wandering about those foul streets 
 of the tenements, alone, or befriended only by a woman 
 more unfortunate and unhappy than he. By contrast 
 with Don s own happiness the picture was to him appal 
 ling. He remembered their boyish companionship in 
 Coulton and the day that Conroy had brought Margaret 
 to the little ravine. He foresaw another meeting that 
 would bring Margaret to Conroy and insensibly reclaim 
 the outcast and make him, in time, a part of a new life 
 in which they three would be united as they had been 
 once. And Don foresaw that meeting and its issue 
 so vividly that he believed he had only to arrange it in 
 order to make his most impossible hopes come true. 
 
 He spoke of it to Bert Pittsey, and Pittsey shook his 
 head. "I don t believe you can do anything for him 
 unless you put new nerves into his stomach. I talked 
 to him after you left us, that time. He knows what 
 he s doing, but he can t stop. The craving s too strong 
 for him. You had better leave him alone. 
 
 "But if we were to get him away from it? If we 
 were to get him into a sanitarium ? 
 
 "If! If! How are you to do it? As soon as you
 
 THE VISIONARY 397 
 
 try to interfere with him, he flies off the handle. He 
 knows he can t help himself but he just has bull-headed- 
 ness enough not to allow anyone else to help him." 
 
 Don thought it over. "If I can arrange a plan, will 
 you join me?" 
 
 Pittsey nodded. Sure enough. I m game. 
 
 But Don could think of no practical plan. He could 
 foresee a hundred different successful conclusions for 
 his efforts, but not the details of a single method of at 
 taining these ends. It was not until the approach of 
 Christmas that the vaguest idea of a possible procedure 
 occurred to him. Then, arranging with Margaret a 
 Christmas Eve dinner to which they were to invite the 
 Pittseys, he said suddenly: "And Conroy! Why 
 could n t we get Conroy ? 
 
 Do you think we could ? She had heard the whole 
 story from Don, and it had not left her hopeful. "Do 
 you think he d come ? 
 
 "Yes. If we go the right way about it. I must get 
 Bert to help. If we could once get him here 
 
 "I hope he won t spoil the dinner." 
 
 He did not sympathize with this consideration of the 
 young hostess. Nonsense ! " he cried. What does it 
 matter about the dinner?" He hastened to explain, 
 apologetically, when he saw her expression: "No, of 
 course not! He 11 not spoil it. He 11 be the jolliest 
 of the lot of us. You should have seen some of the din 
 ners we had in our old rooms one on the day he first 
 found work here. He 11 be all right, if we can only get 
 him. I must ask Bert." 
 
 His mother, a few days before, had sent him a bundle 
 of the Christmas numbers of the illustrated English
 
 398 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 papers, full of just such pictures as Frankie and he 
 used to tack up on the walls of their playroom ; and they 
 had come to him with such an almost tearful memory 
 of the life he had left, that he saw in them, now, a pow 
 erful agent to help him in his appeal to Conroy. "I 11 
 go with Bert," he said, "and try to have a talk with 
 him. I 11 take those papers mother sent, as an excuse. 
 And if he won t see me, I 11 mail them to him, and 
 write him a letter." 
 
 He imagined the letter a Christmas letter of elo 
 quent good-feeling and a manly offer to let bygones be 
 and begin the future afresh. Remembering his Dickens, 
 he had faith in the influence of the season of peace and 
 goodwill to aid him in his miracle of regeneration. 
 
 HE made his attempt on one of those unseasonable wet 
 nights that make Christmas week in New York a time of 
 drizzling misery and bedraggledness. Down among the 
 tenements the streets were brimful of muddy slush; the 
 trestles of the elevated railroad dripped a fluid grime ; 
 the street lights struggled against the fog with the 
 feebleness of guttered candles; the damp air freshened 
 the evil odors of the quarter to a pungency that seemed 
 to Don to reach his palate. He shivered, with his collar 
 to his ears, hugging his bundle of Christmas papers 
 under his arm, trying to convince himself that all this 
 doubled ugliness of wet filth and poverty would aid him 
 in his attack on Conroy. But he no longer tried to con 
 vince Pittsey, who was tired by his long day s work on 
 scattered "assignments" and inclined to be sarcastic 
 in his replies to Don s optimism. They went in silence, 
 slipping on the uneven flagstones on which the fog had
 
 THE VISIONARY 399 
 
 congealed in a film of ice. When they came to the many- 
 windowed block of the Mills Hotel, as square and 
 formal as a prison of cells, Pittsey said : "You wait out 
 side for me here until I see him. He 11 quarrel with 
 me for bringing you if I take you in." 
 
 Don waited. After the first few minutes, he was en 
 couraged to think that at least Bert had found Conroy 
 where they had planned to find him probably smoking 
 and playing solitaire at one of the little tables in that 
 room of homeless loafers with its cement floor and its 
 vile smells of cheap tobacco. And if he was there, it 
 was proof that he was sober, since the rules of the house 
 admitted no drunkards to enjoy its steam heat and its 
 comfortable chairs. As the interval of waiting length 
 ened dismally, he repented having allowed Bert to go 
 in alone, for he had no faith in the adroitness of Pitt 
 sey s address and he feared that the whole undertaking 
 might be brought to failure by a false beginning. Sev 
 eral times he had made up his mind to follow in and try 
 to save the situation, but each time the resolution ex 
 hausted itself in gazing through the swing doors at the 
 lighted hall where several of the better-dressed patrons 
 of the house stood talking. After all, it would be wiser 
 to wait until he heard what Pittsey had to say. 
 
 He was at the door again, standing irresolute, with 
 his hand on it, unable to gather the impulse to push it 
 open. He saw Pittsey coming 1 hurriedly, with his head 
 down. He threw back the door. "It s no go, Pittsey 
 said. Come away. Come away. 
 
 Don came as far as the sidewalk, but stopped there. 
 "What does he say?" 
 
 "Oh say !" Pittsey answered angrily. "It s not
 
 400 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 a question of what he says ! Leave him alone ! He s 
 enjoying the delights of his private inferno hot enough 
 without us coming down here to poke it up for him. 
 
 "Would n t he come to the dinner?" 
 
 Pittsey was walking up the street, Don hanging back 
 reluctantly. "No. He won t come to the dinner. He 
 does n t even want to hear that there s a dinner for 
 him to come to. Say ! He rounded on Don suddenly. 
 He has the willies, if you know what that is. You 11 
 only drive him into trouble just as you ve always 
 done. And it s a dirty shame to be bothering him. We 
 can t do anything for him, and he knows it. He can t 
 do anything for himself and he knows it. What he 
 needs is chloroform to put him out of his misery. I 
 don t believe in this particular form of vivisection, if 
 you want to know ! 
 
 It It seems to me that if we re ever going to get 
 him away, we we ought to be able to do it now while 
 he s-" 
 
 Yes ! Well, if you could see his face when he s try 
 ing not to talk about it, you would n t relish the job." 
 
 Don turned over the papers in his hand, looking down 
 at them. "I wish you d taken these in to him." 
 
 Go and take them yourself. Do ! " 
 
 "Is n t there any place I could leave them for him ? 
 I d rather write." 
 
 Pittsey laughed harshly. "By all means, write!" 
 
 "Could I leave them at the hotel?" 
 
 No. He s not known at the hotel any more than a 
 hundred other tramps that come in there to get warm." 
 
 Don winced. "How about the place the other place 
 where you"
 
 THE VISIONARY 401 
 
 They were standing under a corner light, and Don, 
 for all his meekness, was stubbornly unmoved by Pitt- 
 sey s impatience to be away and done with the whole 
 matter. 
 
 "Look here," Pittsey said. "If I take you there and 
 leave them for him, that s all. You can do what you 
 like about it. I 11 not wait another minute for you, you 
 understand ? 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Come on then." 
 
 He walked as rapidly as his uncertain footing per 
 mitted, and Don staggered along beside him, between 
 the dull glow of little shop-front windows and the 
 churned sludge of the gutters, seeing only these two 
 features of the streets, for his eyes were busy picking 
 out a foothold on the treacherous stones. Pittsey 
 stopped before a basement saloon that was down three 
 stone steps below the level of the sidewalk. "Give me 
 your papers. He left Don gazing at an arch of frosted 
 gas globes bearing the sign "Gaffe Sociale." On a 
 board beside the entrance, there had once been painted : 
 "Giuoco di Boccia. " Through the dirty windows he 
 saw a fat Italian serving drinks over the bar Italians 
 sitting at round tables with their feet in sawdust more 
 Italians playing a game of billiards that included five 
 pins set up as if for a miniature game of bowls. When 
 ever the door opened, he smelled a warm odor of damp 
 sawdust and stale beer, and he heard the squeak of a 
 violin and the punctuating loud note of a cornet. He 
 saw Pittsey pass the papers over the bar and turn back 
 to the door again. And with a sudden resolution, Don 
 
 26
 
 402 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 stumbled down the steps and met him. "I m going to 
 wait and see him," he said. "You need n t stay." 
 
 Pittsey passed him without replying, and disap 
 peared up the steps into the fog. Don went in, shut the 
 door behind him and faced a tragic adventure. 
 
 XI 
 
 HE was aware, at once, that the bar-room was only a sort 
 of foyer to a larger music hall in which he could see an 
 audience seated at tables before a little stage on which 
 a woman stood to sing; and he hurried into that hall 
 in the hope of escaping notice in the larger gathering. 
 He found a table in a corner and sat down trembling 
 with audacity. A soiled waiter polished off the beer 
 stains from the table top and bent to take his order. 
 He said, throatily: "Bring me a cigar." 
 
 It came in a glass with three matches a long "rat- 
 tail" Italian cigar. He lit it and drew one puff that 
 had the taste of scorched rags. He held it, fuming, be 
 fore him, and waited for Conroy to appear, watching 
 the animated faces of Italians whose excited volubility 
 had no meaning for him, and listening to the screaming 
 high notes of the cantatrice who sang with a distortion 
 of mouth that might have been studied in a dentist s 
 chair. It was all as unreal to him as lunacy; and an 
 old man with a basket of macaroons on his arm, who 
 wandered from table to table mumbling "Bene cotti, 
 bene cotti," had a horrid face as brown and 
 wrinkled as a baked apple that made .the whole
 
 THE VISIONARY 403 
 
 scene in some way confusedly hideous to Don. 
 He stared at three Italians at a table who were blowing 
 out the matches with which a fourth tried to light his 
 cigar, making an unearthly laughter at a little girl 
 who drank from a glass of beer primly and dried her 
 lips with a dirty handkerchief after each sip at the 
 foreign faces, the exaggerated gestures, the sudden 
 movements of strange men, who had for him only the 
 semi-human appearance of so many monkeys doing 
 tricks. 
 
 He was leaning his elbow on the table, his head 
 on his arm, relapsed into a blank depression of spirits 
 beaten upon by the loud music and suffocated by 
 the foul smells when Conroy appeared at the entrance 
 of the hall, and Don ducked his head to hide his face. 
 He looked up under his fingers. Conroy had seated 
 himself at a table against the opposite wall. "When the 
 waiter turned away from him, Don could see him, as 
 pale as despair, shabby, unshaven, staring listlessly. 
 Don shut his eyes. The heat had dried them so that 
 the touch of tears was painful. 
 
 When he looked again, the waiter had returned with 
 a glass of liquor and the bundle of papers which Pittsey 
 had left at the bar ; and Conroy, after vainly trying to 
 understand the man s explanation in Italian, nodded 
 and tried to smile and sent him away. He drank half 
 the glass at a gulp and settled back in his chair, drum 
 ming on the table with shaking fingers. 
 
 The woman on the stage was singing the "Marseil 
 laise." She followed it with "The Watch on the 
 Rhine, the Russian national anthem, and the Austrian. 
 She announced "God Save Or Caween," and Conroy
 
 404 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 frowned at her. Her voice rang in the little hall with 
 the deep notes of the old song. It soared with the 
 triumph of "Senda her veectorious, happa an gloree- 
 ous," and Conroy drew down the brim of his hat and 
 muttered. It faded into a whisper, sweet as old mem 
 ories, with its prayerful "Goda save or ca-ween. " 
 And Conroy tried to drown it in the draught of poison 
 ous whiskey that was left in his glass. 
 
 For that song had come on him as it had come on 
 Don with the perfume of old days from the life he 
 had lost. It had seized and shaken him, as remembered 
 music will. He called for more drink, fearfully aware 
 of the approach of that self -horror against which he 
 had been fighting when Pittsey came to aid it afraid 
 of the weakness of vain regret, struggling up from the 
 terrible despondency that was clutching at him. And 
 the tune haunted him with the loyal voices of youths 
 singing together, with the clink of social glasses at a 
 college dinner drinking the queen s health, with the far 
 note of a military band across the sunny campus. He 
 fought against it, working the muscles of his face. He 
 drank more liquor desperately, his brain beginning to 
 reel in the vertigo of drunkenness, with vivid pictures 
 of home, the laugh of voices dearly familiar to him, the 
 flash of smiling faces as confused as in a dream, and 
 like a dream stirring a torturing regret. He tried to 
 listen to the woman singing "The Star Spangled Ban 
 ner," and for an instant he got it clear in his ears, but 
 the riot of memory burst in again and he fought it back, 
 struggling with trembling lips and fingers that twitched 
 on his glass. 
 
 He turned frantically to the bundle of papers on the
 
 THE VISIONARY 405 
 
 table and tore off the wrapper and spread the first one 
 eagerly. He began with the advertisements, but he 
 could read only the forms of the words; they had no 
 meaning and they marched crazily to the tune in his 
 head. He turned to the pictures. And these were the 
 old fond pictures of snow and sunset, of country homes, 
 of jolly plum-pudding dinners, of girls skating in furs 
 or dancing under the holly. They were the embodiment 
 to his eyes of all that his young Christmas had aspired 
 to be. The million memories of boyhood and youth, of 
 college days and homecoming, of Christmas holidays and 
 Christmas sports stung and tormented him. He turned 
 the pages in a trance of thought, page after page, fas 
 cinated. And when he looked up from them he found 
 a nightmare life around him, dinning discordant music 
 in his ears, choking him with the thick heat and the 
 odor of unclean bodies. He ripped the paper up with 
 an oath and threw it on the floor. Then he rose un 
 steadily and staggered out of the hall. 
 
 Don, after one guilty moment of hesitation, shoved 
 back his chair and followed. He came into the bar 
 room as the street door slammed at Conroy s heels. He 
 ran out to the sidewalk and stood facing a curtain of 
 fog behind which Conroy had been lost in an instant. 
 He wandered about the streets, shuddering with the 
 cold and with the horror of having helped to agonize 
 despair. When he came on an elevated station, he 
 accepted the futility of his hope, and turned home 
 wards. 
 
 And Conroy, driven from the shelter of his familiar 
 haunts, where he was a known and in the sodden way 
 of bar-rooms an honored customer, went lurching
 
 406 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 from one saloon to another, attempting, by stupefying 
 himself in a wild debauch, to escape the remorse that 
 drove him along the streets. He had received a Christ 
 mas letter that morning from his mother, and the money 
 that she had sent him made a trail behind him as he 
 went. He came to a saloon full of negroes in lower 
 Sullivan street; and in paying the barkeeper he drew 
 out a handful of bills and displayed them with a reck 
 lessness that had its inevitable issue, for when he left 
 that bar-room two wolfish mulattos followed him to the 
 street ; and the fog closed over the thugs and their vic 
 tim. 
 
 In the morning he was found lying in a passageway 
 that led to a rear tenement, his pockets rifled, insensible 
 from the blow of a black-jack on the back of his head. 
 
 THERE was no Christmas Eve dinner in Don s flat that 
 next day. Conroy lay in the hospital, unconscious, be 
 tween life and death. Bert Pittsey had accused Don of 
 being the blundering cause of each step in his cousin s 
 downfall and the wilful agent of his last undoing. 
 Miss Morris s silence had left him no doubt of her dis 
 gust of him. All the failures of his life had crushed 
 down on him together and buried him in the depths. 
 
 He sat at midnight, before his writing table, unable 
 to go to bed, staring as if he had seen a ghost ; and the 
 ghost that he had seen was the memory of his dead past, 
 risen to rebuke him with the crimes of his incapacity. 
 He saw his mother with that face of sorrow which had 
 so often looked out on him from his dreams. He saw 
 his father leaning across the cluttered dining-table, 
 glaring at him in angry accusation. He saw Miss Mor-
 
 THE VISIONARY 407 
 
 ris watching him from the crowded stage of "The 
 Rajah s Ruby," dumbly tragical. The glazed eyes of 
 Conroy s hatred stared at him like the dull eyes of the 
 dead. He shuddered at the thought that some day Mar 
 garet s face might join that company of malevolence 
 and accuse him of the wreck of her life. 
 
 Above all, he saw himself moving like a blind fool 
 through this unregarded misery, the execrated cause of 
 it, ruthless and hateful. The elder Miss Morris s cold 
 smile changed into Mrs. McGahn s large-mouthed and 
 voluble exasperation. Walter Pittsey s "Don Quixote" 
 echoed from some forgotten record of his memory with 
 a contemptuous accent. Kidder lectured him. The 
 stage manager of The Ruby cursed him. Every dis 
 graceful incident of his life rose to point its finger at 
 him ; and he took his head in his hands and groaned. 
 
 His very imagination, that had been turned always 
 on the future, cast its light back on his past, now, and 
 illumined it with a baleful vividness. For the first time 
 he saw himself as one might see a character in a book, 
 among the men and women, friends and relatives who 
 had moved and talked and loved and sorrowed around 
 him. He watched them, as one would watch a play, 
 sitting above them, above himself, above life, observing 
 and understanding it all. And slowly, as he watched, 
 the shame of his part in it detached itself from him. 
 He began to study it with a curious aloofness. It had 
 an appearance of unreality, of an illusion from which 
 he had escaped. The illusion of life ! 
 
 He looked up at the wall before him with the eyes 
 of a trance seeing the city lying asleep below him, the 
 men and women in their beds, insensible, like discarded
 
 408 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 marionettes. Overhead, the moon and the stars stood in 
 their appointed places amid the mystery of space ; and 
 the haste and labor of the day were silly to remember, 
 mocked at by the quiet sarcasm of old night. "Life!" 
 he thought. "Life, the great illusion !" He smiled the 
 derisive phantom of a smile; and that smile, he felt, 
 was to be, forever after, the secret aspect and expres 
 sion of his thought ; his happiness was to be of that com 
 plexion ; his failures, his sorrows, his tragedies were to 
 wear at last something of that same face. 
 
 It reminded him of his Emerson, and he reached the 
 volume from the row before him, unseeingly, his mind 
 busy with his thoughts. He turned to a remembered 
 passage in the essay on "Illusions." He read: "There 
 is no chance and no anarchy in the universe. All is 
 system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in 
 his sphere. The young mortal enters the hall of the 
 firmament; there he is alone with them alone, they 
 pouring on him benedictions and gifts and beckoning 
 him up to their thrones. On the instant, and inces 
 santly, fall snowstorms of illusions. He fancies himself 
 in a vast crowd which sways this way and that and 
 whose movements and doings he must obey; he fancies 
 himself poor, orphaned, insignificant. The mad crowd 
 drives hither and thither, now furiously commanding 
 this thing to be done, now that. What is he that he 
 should resist their will, and think or act for himself? 
 Every moment new changes and new showers of de 
 ception to baffle and distract him. And when, by and 
 by, for an instant, the air clears and the cloud lifts a 
 little, there are the gods still sitting around him on 
 their thrones they alone with him alone."
 
 THE VISIONARY 409 
 
 The air had cleared! The cloud had lifted! The 
 visionary had caught the first full sight of that vision 
 which was to make the world less real to him thereafter 
 than the matter of his thought. The idealist had fought 
 his way, through the opposition of science and the reali 
 ties, to his possession of the great ideal. The dreamer 
 had made life itself the dream. Don, full-grown, was 
 ready to achieve his destiny. 
 
 At the ringing of the electric bell of his apartment, 
 he rose mechanically ; and still staring before him with 
 blind eyes, he went to open his door. 
 
 Bert Pittsey was shaking the snow from his hat brim, 
 in the outer hall. "They ve operated on Conroy," he 
 said in a manner that was roughly apologetic. He 11 
 recover. I thought you d like to know. 
 
 Don passed his hand across his eyes. "Yes. 
 Thanks," he said thickly. "Won t you come in?" 
 
 Bert studied him. "Were you asleep?" 
 
 "No-o." 
 
 "Walt was afraid you might be. He would n t come 
 up. He s downstairs." 
 
 Don shook his head, meaninglessly. 
 
 "I think I 11 get him. He has some news for you 
 from Polk." 
 
 He disappeared down the stairs. Don went back into 
 his room and sat down to wait, in a sort of numb indif 
 ference. He reached an empty pipe and held it with 
 the mouthpiece against his pursed lips. "Come in," 
 he said. 
 
 Walter Pittsey smiled down at him. "I was afraid 
 that you might be in bed. I saw Polk this evening. He 
 says there s something in your Winter something
 
 410 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 that he thinks he could work up into an extravaganza. 
 He wants to see you about it. He 11 probably offer to 
 buy it from you. What do you say ? 
 
 He waited, expecting the boyish delight which did 
 not appear. Don did not raise his eyes. "He can have 
 it." 
 
 Walter coughed. "Well, you don t seem much ex 
 cited!" 
 
 He laid aside his pipe. "Sit down, won t you? I 11 
 get Margaret. 
 
 He went down the inner hall to their bedroom. Wal 
 ter Pittsey looked around at Bert. They exchanged 
 glances of amused perplexity. The younger brother 
 laughed : He s one too many for me. 
 
 But if Don was not enthusiastic, Margaret, in dress 
 ing gown and "mules," more than made up his lack of 
 spirit. Oh Don ! she cried. Your first play ! 
 What did he say? Tell me! Tell me everything!" 
 
 Walter told her what little there was to tell ; and Bert 
 added his quota of good news about Conroy. "His 
 father arrived at six o clock. There was a pressure on 
 the brain. They operated to relieve it, and they re 
 going to take him home as soon as he can be moved. He 
 wants to go. He turned to Don. That bump on the 
 head has done the business for him." 
 
 Don smiled, crookedly. "I I hope He did not 
 say what he hoped. He leaned forward in his chair 
 and put his face in his hands. "I m I ve had a 
 bad day, I guess, he faltered. "I feel . . . rather 
 . . . knocked out myself." 
 
 Margaret went to him, and knelt on the floor beside
 
 THE VISIONARY 411 
 
 him, and put her arm across his shoulders. "Don," 
 she whispered. What is it ? Are you ill ? " 
 
 He did not answer. 
 
 She tried to draw his hands from his face, to see him. 
 She found his fingers wet. "0 oh!" She looked up 
 at the Pittseys, her lips trembling. 
 
 They caught up their hats and hurried each other 
 silently out of the room. 
 
 AND that was the beginning of a success in life that 
 realized all Don s dreams. Polk had found "some 
 thing" in his "Winter"; he had found, in fact, the 
 promise which the years were to develop, and he took 
 the process of development in hand. The story of 
 Don s progress has already been followed by the dram 
 atic critics to various conclusions, for they are still 
 uncertain whether he is "a possible successor to the 
 Shakespeare of The Tempest and The Midsummer 
 Night s Dream ," or only "an emasculated lyric-opera 
 librettist with a disordered fancy and a naturalistic 
 technique." He says himself, to Margaret: "I don t 
 know and I don t care what I am. At one time, I 
 thought I was a fool because everyone else thought 
 so. Now they tell me I m a genius and, naturally. 
 I ha ma doots. In either case, he has found him 
 self ; he has found his work ; he is happy. 
 
 He has kept his promise to Miss Morris. She came 
 back from San Francisco to play the lead in The Magic 
 Ring," and she made her name in it. When she mar 
 ried Kuffman, she was already known as "the most 
 beautiful woman on the American stage ; Kuffman has
 
 412 DON-A-DREAMS 
 
 worked all the oracles to make her famous, and though 
 some of the critics still complain that she is stiff, the 
 public is convinced that she is a great and classical 
 tragedienne. To Don she has become a somewhat pa 
 thetic puzzle. Her husband worships her worships her 
 "like a graven image" as Bert Pittsey says. It was 
 Pittsey who nicknamed the pair "Pygmalion and Gala 
 tea." He is the dramatic critic of an evening paper, 
 now ; and no matter what he writes he tries to write it 
 flippantly. When he is asked why he does not attack 
 the theatrical trust, he explains : My brother is in it. 
 It s bad taste to air a purely family quarrel in the news 
 papers, don t you think?" And when Walter hears of 
 this he clears his throat and smiles. 
 
 For the rest : Don spends a frequent " honeymoon " in 
 Coulton where Conroy, now soberly settled down, is 
 managing a department of his father s business, and F. 
 Grayson Gregg is the junior partner in the law firm of 
 "Gregg and Gregg," and Mr. Gregg no longer tries 
 to hide from himself that he is not as proud of Frank as 
 he is of his other son, the dramatist. Don still finds 
 his mother, in her invalid chair beside the window, wait 
 ing to welcome him with her remembered smile. The 
 peephole still remains in the frosted glass of the nurs 
 ery door through which he looked at Santa Claus. Mar 
 garet and he can still make a smiling pilgrimage to the 
 little ravine where they used to read the "Faerie 
 Queene" together; and there as if the breath of the 
 firs refreshed the unquenchable youth in him she 
 finds him still a lover, still a poet in spite of any disil 
 lusionment, still a gentle solitary, and still Don-a- 
 Dreams.
 
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