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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wild Olive, by Basil King
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Wild Olive
+
+Author: Basil King
+
+Release Date: August 18, 2004 [EBook #13212]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WILD OLIVE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "There are a hundred men beating the mountain to find you"]
+
+
+
+
+The Wild Olive
+
+A Novel
+
+By the author of
+The Inner Shrine
+
+
+Illustrated by
+Lucius Hitchcock
+
+New York
+Grosset & Dunlap
+Publishers
+
+
+
+Published by Arrangement with Harper & Brothers
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1910, by Harper & Brothers
+All Rights Reserved
+
+
+Published May, 1910
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+
+
+
+Part I
+
+Ford
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+
+Finding himself in the level wood-road, whose open aisle drew a long,
+straight streak across the sky, still luminous with the late-lingering
+Adirondack twilight, the tall young fugitive, hatless, coatless, and
+barefooted, paused a minute for reflection. As he paused, he listened; but
+all distinctiveness of sound was lost in the play of the wind, up hill and
+down dale, through chasm and over crag, in those uncounted leagues of
+forest. It was only a summer wind, soft and from the south; but its murmur
+had the sweep of the eternal breath, while, when it waxed in power, it
+rose like the swell of some great cosmic organ. Through the pines and in
+the underbrush it whispered and crackled and crashed, with a variety of
+effect strangely bewildering to the young man's city-nurtured senses.
+There were minutes when he felt that not only the four country constables
+whom he had escaped were about to burst upon him, but that weird armies of
+gnomes were ready to trample him down.
+
+Out of the confusion of wood-noises, in which his unpractised ear could
+distinguish nothing, he waited for a repetition of the shots which a few
+hours ago had been the protest of his guards; but, none coming, he sped on
+again. He weighed the danger of running in the open against the
+opportunities for speed, and decided in favor of the latter. Hitherto, in
+accordance with a woodcraft invented to meet the emergency, and entirely
+his own, he had avoided anything in the nature of a road or a pathway, in
+order to take advantage of the tracklessness which formed his obvious
+protection; but now he judged the moment come for putting actual space
+between his pursuers and himself. How near, or how far behind him, they
+might be he could not guess. If he had covered ground, they would have
+covered it too, since they were men born to the mountains, while he had
+been bred in towns. His hope lay in the possibility that in this
+wilderness he might be lost to their ken, as a mote is lost in the
+air--though he built something on the chance that, in sympathy with the
+feeling in his favor pervading the simpler population of the region, they
+had given negative connivance to his escape. These thoughts, far from
+stimulating a false confidence, urged him to greater speed.
+
+And yet, even as he fled, he had a consciousness of abandoning
+something--perhaps of deserting something--which brought a strain of
+regret into this minute of desperate excitement. Without having had time
+to count the cost or reckon the result, he felt he was giving up the
+fight. He, or his counsel for him, had contested the ground with all the
+resourceful ingenuity known to the American legal practitioner. He was
+told that, in spite of the seeming finality of what had happened that
+morning, there were still loopholes through which the defence might be
+carried on. In the space of a few hours Fate had offered him the choice
+between two courses, neither of them fertile in promises of success. The
+one was long and tedious, with a possibility of ultimate justification;
+the other short and speedy, with the accepted imputation of guilt. He had
+chosen the latter--instinctively and on the spur of the moment; and while
+he might have repeated at leisure the decision he had made in haste, he
+knew even now that he was leaving the ways and means of proving his
+innocence behind him. The perception came, not as the result of a process
+of thought, but as a regretful, scarcely detected sensation.
+
+He had dashed at first into the broken country, hilly rather than
+mountainous, which from the shores of Lake Champlain gradually gathers
+strength, as it rolls inland, to toss up the crests of the Adirondacks.
+Here, burying himself in the woods, he skirted the unkempt farms, whose
+cottage lights, just beginning to burn, served him as signals to keep
+farther off. When forced to cross one of the sterile fields, he crawled
+low, blotting himself out among the bowlders. At times a patch of tall,
+tasselled Indian corn, interlaced with wandering pumpkin vines, gave him
+cover, till he regained the shelter of the vast Appalachian mother-forest
+which, after climbing Cumberlands, Alleghanies, Catskills, and
+Adirondacks, here clambers down, in long reaches of ash and maple, juniper
+and pine, toward the lowlands of the north.
+
+As far as he had yet been able to formulate a plan of flight, it was to
+seek his safety among the hills. The necessity of the instant was driving
+him toward the open country and the lake, but he hoped to double soon upon
+his tracks, finding his way back to the lumber camps, whose friendly
+spiriting from bunk-house to bunk-house would baffle pursuit. Once he had
+gained even a few hours' security, he would be able to some extent to pick
+and choose his way.
+
+He steered himself by the peak of Graytop, black against the last
+coral-tinted glow of the sunset, as a sailor steers by a star. There was
+further assurance that he was not losing himself or wandering in a circle,
+when from some chance outlook he ventured to glance backward and saw the
+pinnacle of Windy Mountain or the dome of the Pilot straight behind him.
+There lay the natural retreats of the lynx, the bear, and the outlaw like
+himself; and, as he fled farther from them, it was with the same frenzied
+instinct to return that the driven stag must feel toward the bed of fern
+from which he has been roused. But, for the minute, there was one
+imperative necessity--to go on--to go on anywhere, anyhow, so long as it
+took him far enough from the spot where masked men had loosed the
+handcuffs from his wrists and stray shots had come ringing after him. In
+his path there were lakelets, which he swam, and streams, which he forded.
+Over the low hills he scrambled through an undergrowth so dense that even
+the snake or the squirrel might have avoided it, to find some easier way.
+Now and then, as he dragged himself up the more barren ascents, the loose
+soil gave way beneath his steps in miniature avalanches of stone and sand,
+over which he crept, clinging to tufts of grass or lightly rooted
+saplings, to rise at last with hands scratched and feet bleeding. Then, on
+again!--frantically, as the hare runs and as the crow flies, without
+swerving--on, with the sole aim of gaining time and covering distance!
+
+He was not a native of the mountains. Though in the two years spent among
+them he had come to acknowledge their charm, it was only as a man learns
+to love an alien mistress, whose alternating moods of savagery and
+softness hold him with a spell of which he is half afraid. More than any
+one suspected or he could have explained, his reckless life had been the
+rebellion of his man-trained, urban instinct against the domination of
+this supreme earth-force, to which he was of no more value than a falling
+leaf or a dissolving cloud. Even now, as he flung himself on the forest's
+protection, it was not with the solace of the son returning to the mother;
+it was rather as a man might take refuge from a lion in a mammoth cavern,
+where the darkness only conceals dangers.
+
+After the struggle with crude nature the smooth, grass-carpeted
+wagon-track brought him more than a physical sense of comfort. It not only
+made his flight swift and easy, but it had been marked out by man, for
+man's purposes and to meet man's need. It was the result of a human
+intelligence; it led to a human goal. It was possible that it might lead
+even him into touch with human sympathies With the thought, he became
+conscious all at once that he was famished and fatigued. Up to the present
+he had been as little aware of a body as a spirit on its way between two
+worlds. It had ached and sweated and bled; but he had not noticed it. The
+electric fluid could not have seemed more tireless or iron more insensate.
+But now, when the hardship was somewhat relaxed, he was forced back on the
+perception that he was faint and hungry His speed slackened; his shoulders
+sagged; the long second wind, which had lasted so well, began to shorten.
+For the first time it occurred to him to wonder how long his strength
+would hold out.
+
+It was then that he noticed a deflection of the wood-road toward the
+north, and down over the brow of the plateau on which for a mile or two
+its evenness had been sustained. It was a new sign that it was tending
+toward some habitation. Half an hour ago he would have taken this to mean
+that he must dash into the forest again; but half an hour ago he had not
+been hungry. He did not say to himself that he would venture to any man's
+door and ask for bread. So far as he knew, he would never venture to any
+man's door again; nevertheless, he kept on, down-hill, and down-hill
+nearer and nearer the lake, and farther and farther from the mountain and
+the lairs of safety.
+
+Suddenly, at a turning, when he was not expecting it, the wood-road
+emerged into a rough clearing. Once more he stopped to reflect and take
+his bearings. It had grown so dark that there was little danger in doing
+so; though, as he peered into the gloom, his nerves were still taut with
+the expectation of shot or capture from behind. Straining his eyes, he
+made out a few acres that had been cleared for their timber, after which
+Nature had been allowed to take her own way again, in unruly growths of
+saplings, tangles of wild vines, and clumps of magenta fireweed.
+
+Without quite knowing why he did so, he crept down the slope, feeling his
+way among the stumps, and stooping low, lest his white shirt, wet and
+clinging limply to his body, might betray him to some keen-eyed marksman.
+Presently one of the old root-hedges, common to the countryside, barred
+his path--a queer, twisted line of long, gray tentacles that had once
+sucked sustenance from the soil, but now reached up idly into a barren
+element, where the wild grape was covering their grotesque nakedness with
+masses of kindly beauty. Below him he saw lights shining clearly like the
+planets, or faintly like the mere star-dust of the sky, while between the
+two degrees of brightness he knew there must lie the bosom of the lake. He
+had come to the little fringe of towns that clings to the borders of
+Champlain, here with the Adirondacks behind him, and there with the
+mountains of Vermont, but keeping close to the great, safe waterway, as
+though distrusting the ruggedness of both.
+
+It was a moment at which to renew his alarm in this proximity to human
+dwellings. Like the tiger that has ventured beyond the edge of the jungle,
+he must slink back at the sight of fire. He turned himself slowly, looking
+up the heights from which he had come down, as they rolled behind him,
+mysterious and hostile, in the growing darkness. Even the sky, from which
+it seemed impossible for the daylight ever to depart, now had an angry red
+glare in it.
+
+He took a step or two toward the forest, and paused again, still staring
+upward. Where was he going? Where _could_ he go? The question presented
+itself with an odd pertinence that drew his set, beardless lips into a
+kind of smile. When he had first made his rush outward the one thing that
+seemed to him essential was to be free; but now he was forced to ask
+himself: For what purpose? Of what use was it to be as free as wind if he
+was to be as homeless? It was not merely that he was homeless for the
+moment; that was nothing; the overwhelming reflection was that he, Norrie
+Ford, could never have a home at all--that there was scarcely a spot
+within the borders of civilized mankind where the law would not hunt him
+out.
+
+This view of his situation was so apparent and yet so new that it held him
+stock-still, gazing into space. He was free--but free only to crawl back
+into the jungle and lie down in it, like a wild beast.
+
+"But I'm not a wild beast," he protested, inwardly. "I'm a man--with
+human rights. By God, I'll never let them go!"
+
+He wheeled round again, toward the lower lands and the lake. The lights
+glowed more brightly as the darkness deepened, each lamp shining from some
+little nest, where men and women were busied with the small tasks and
+interests that made life. This was liberty! This was what he had a claim
+upon! All his instincts were civilized, domestic. He would not go back to
+the forest, to herd with wild nature, when he had a right to lie down
+among his kind. He had slept in the open hundreds of times; but it had
+been from choice. There had been pleasure then, in waking to the smell of
+balsam and opening his eyes upon the stars. But to do the same thing from
+compulsion, because men had closed up their ranks and ejected him from
+their midst, was an outrage he would not accept. In the darkness his head
+went up, while his eyes burned with a fire more intense than that of any
+of the mild beacons from the towns below, as he strode back to the old
+root-hedge and leaped it.
+
+He felt the imprudence, not to say the uselessness, of the movement, as he
+made it; and yet he kept on, finding himself in a field in which cows and
+horses were startled from their munching by his footstep. It was another
+degree nearer to the organized life in which he was entitled to a place.
+Shielded by a shrubbery of sleeping goldenrod, he stole down the slope,
+making his way to the lane along which the beasts went out to pasture and
+came home. Following the trail, he passed a meadow, a potato-field, and a
+patch of Indian corn, till the scent of flowers told him he was coming on
+a garden. A minute later, low, velvety domes of clipped yew rose in the
+foreground, and he knew himself to be in touch with the civilization that
+clung, like a hardy vine, to the coves and promontories of the lake, while
+its tendrils withered as soon as they were flung up toward the mountains.
+Only a few steps more, and, between the yews, he saw the light streaming
+from the open doors and windows of a house.
+
+It was such a house as, during the two years he had spent up in the high
+timber-lands, he had caught sight of only on the rare occasions when he
+came within the precincts of a town--a house whose outward aspect, even at
+night, suggested something of taste, means, and social position for its
+occupants. Slipping nearer still, he saw curtains fluttering in the breeze
+of the August evening, and Virginia creeper dropping in heavily massed
+garlands from the roof of a columned veranda. A French window was open to
+the floor, and within, he could see vaguely, people were seated.
+
+The scene was simple enough, but to the fugitive it had a kind of
+sacredness. It was like a glimpse into the heaven he has lost caught by a
+fallen angel. For the moment he forgot his hunger and weakness, in this
+feast for the heart and eyes. It was with something of the pleasure of
+recognizing long-absent faces that he traced the line of a sofa against
+the wall, and stated to himself that there was a row of prints hanging
+above it. There had been no such details as these to note in his cell, nor
+yet in the courtroom which for months had constituted his only change of
+outlook Insensibly to himself, he crept nearer, drawn by the sheer spell
+of gazing.
+
+Finding a gate leading into the garden, he opened it softly, leaving it
+so, in order to secure his retreat. From the shelter of one of the
+rounded yew-trees he could make his observations more at ease. He
+perceived now that the house stood on a terrace, and turned the garden
+front, its more secluded aspect, in his direction. The high hedges, common
+in these lakeside villages, screened it from the road; while the open
+French window threw a shaft of brightness down the yew-tree walk, casting
+the rest of the garden into gloom.
+
+To Norrie Ford, peeping furtively from behind one of the domes of clipped
+foliage, there was exasperation in the fact that his new position gave him
+no glimpse of the people in the room. His hunger to see them became for
+the minute more insistent than that for food. They represented that human
+society from which he had waked one morning to find himself cut off, as a
+rock is cut off by seismic convulsion from the mainland of which it has
+formed a part. It was in a sort of effort to span the gulf separating him
+from his own past that he peered now into this room, whose inmates were
+only passing the hours between the evening meal and bedtime. That people
+could sit tranquilly reading books or playing games filled him with a kind
+of wonder.
+
+When he considered it safe he slipped along to what he hoped would prove a
+better point of view, but, finding it no more advantageous, he darted to
+still another. The light lured him as it might lure an insect of the
+night, till presently he stood on the very steps of the terrace. He knew
+the danger of his situation, but he could not bring himself to turn and
+steal away till he had fixed the picture of that cheerful interior firmly
+on his memory. The risk was great, but the glimpse of life was worth it.
+
+With powers of observation quickened by his plight, he noted that the
+home was just such a one as that from which he had sprung--one where old
+engravings hung on the walls, while books filled the shelves, and papers
+and periodicals strewed the tables. The furnishings spoke of comfort and a
+modest dignity. Obliquely in his line of vision he could see two children,
+seated at a table and poring over a picture-book The boy, a manly urchin,
+might have been fourteen, the girl a year or two younger. Her curls fell
+over the hand and arm supporting her cheek, so that Ford could only guess
+at the blue eyes concealed behind them. Now and then the boy turned a page
+before she was ready, whereupon followed pretty cries of protestation. It
+was perhaps this mimic quarrel that called forth a remark from some one
+sitting within the shadow.
+
+"Evie dear, it's time to go to bed. Billy, I don't believe they let you
+stay up as late as this at home."
+
+"Oh yes, they do," came Billy's answer, given with sturdy assurance. "I
+often stay up till nine."
+
+"Well, it's half past now; so you'd both better come and say good-night."
+
+With one foot resting on the turf and the other raised to the first step
+of the terrace, as he stood with folded arms, Ford watched the little
+scene, in which the children closed their book, pushed back their chairs,
+and crossed the room to say good-night to the two who were seated in the
+shadow. The boy came first, with hands thrust into his trousers pockets in
+a kind of grave nonchalance. The little girl fluttered along behind, but
+broke her journey across the room by stepping into the opening of the long
+window and looking out into the night. Ford stood breathless and
+motionless, expecting her to see him and cry out. But she turned away and
+danced again into the shadow, after which he saw her no more. The silence
+that fell within the room told him that the elders were left alone.
+
+Stealthily, like a thief, Ford crept up the steps and over the turf of the
+terrace. The rising of the wind at that minute drowned all sound of his
+movements, so that he was tempted right on to the veranda, where a coarse
+matting deadened his tread. He dared not hold himself upright on this
+dangerous ground, but, crouching low, he was blotted from sight, while he
+himself could see what passed within. He would only, he said, look once
+more into kindly human faces and steal away as he came.
+
+He could perceive now that the lady who had spoken was an invalid
+reclining in a long chair, lightly covered with a rug. A fragile, dainty
+little creature, her laces, trinkets, and rings revealed her as one
+clinging to the elegancies of another phase of life, though Fate had sent
+her to live, and perhaps to die, here on the edge of the wilderness. He
+made the same observation with regard to the man who sat with his back to
+the window. He was in informal evening dress--a circumstance that, in this
+land of more or less primitive simplicity, spoke of a sense of exile. He
+was slight and middle-aged, and though his face was hidden, Ford received
+the impression of having seen him already, but from another point of view.
+His habit of using a magnifying-glass as, with some difficulty, he read a
+newspaper in the light of a green-shaded lamp, seemed to Ford especially
+familiar, though more pressing thoughts kept him from trying to remember
+where and when he had seen some one do the same thing within the recent
+past.
+
+As he crouched by the window watching them, it came into his mind that
+they were just the sort of people of whom he had least need to be afraid.
+The sordid tragedy up in the mountains had probably interested them
+little, and in any case they could not as yet have heard of his escape. If
+he broke in on them and demanded food, they would give it to him as to
+some common desperado, and be glad to let him go. If there was any one to
+inspire terror, it was he, with his height, and youth, and wildness of
+aspect. He was thinking out the most natural method of playing some small
+comedy of violence, when suddenly the man threw down the paper with a
+sigh. On the instant the lady spoke, as though she had been awaiting her
+cue.
+
+"I don't see why you should feel so about it," she said, making an effort
+to control a cough. "You must have foreseen something of this sort when
+you took up the law."
+
+The answer reached Ford's ears only as a murmur, but he guessed its import
+from the response.
+
+"True," she returned, when he had spoken, "to foresee possibilities is one
+thing, and to meet them is another; but the anticipation does something to
+nerve one for the necessity when it comes."
+
+Again there was a murmur in which Ford could distinguish nothing, but
+again her reply told him what it meant.
+
+"The right and the wrong, as I understand it," she went on, "is something
+with which you have nothing to do. Your part is to administer the law, not
+to judge of how it works."
+
+Once more Ford was unable to catch what was said in reply, but once more
+the lady's speech enlightened him.
+
+"That's the worst of it? Possibly; but it's also the best of it; for since
+it relieves you of responsibility it's foolish for you to feel remorse."
+
+What was the motive of these remarks? Ford found himself possessed of a
+strange curiosity to know. He pressed as closely as he dared to the open
+door, but for the moment nothing more was said. In the silence that
+followed he began again to wonder how he could best make his demand for
+food, when a sound from behind startled him. It was the sound which, among
+all others, caused him the wildest alarm--that of a human footstep. His
+next movement came from the same blind impulse that sends a hunted fox to
+take refuge in a church--eager only for the instant's safety. He had
+sprung to his feet, cleared the threshold, and leaped into the room,
+before the reflection came to him that, if he was caught, he must at least
+be caught game. Wheeling round toward the window-door through which he had
+entered, he stood defiantly, awaiting his pursuers, and heedless of the
+astonished eyes fixed upon him. It was not till some seconds had gone by,
+and he realized that he was not followed, that he glanced about the room.
+When he did so it was to ignore the woman, in order to concentrate all his
+gaze on the little, iron-gray man who, still seated, stared at him, with
+lips parted. In his own turn, Norrie Ford was dumb and wide-eyed in
+amazement It was a long minute before either spoke.
+
+"You?"
+
+"You?"
+
+The monosyllable came simultaneously from each. The little woman got to
+her feet in alarm. There was inquiry as well as terror in her
+face--inquiry to which her husband felt prompted to respond.
+
+"This is the man," he said, in a voice of forced calmness,
+"whom--whom--we've been talking about."
+
+"Not the man--you--?"
+
+"Yes," he nodded, "the man I--I--sentenced to death--this morning."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+
+"Evie!"
+
+Mrs. Wayne went to the door, but on Ford's assurance that her child had
+nothing to fear from him, she paused with her hand on the knob to look in
+curiosity at this wild young man, whose doom lent him a kind of
+fascination. Again, for a minute, all three were silent in the excess of
+their surprise. Wayne himself sat rigid, gazing up at the new-comer with
+strained eyes blurred with partial blindness. Though slightly built and
+delicate, he was not physically timid; and as the seconds went by he was
+able to form an idea as to what had happened. He himself, in view of the
+tumultuous sympathy displayed by hunters and lumber-jacks with the man who
+passed for their boon companion, had advised Ford's removal from the
+pretty toy prison of the county-town to the stronger one at Plattsville.
+It was clear that the prisoner had been helped to escape, either before
+the change had been effected or while it was taking place. There was
+nothing surprising in that; the astonishing thing was that the fugitive
+should have found his way to this house above all others. Mrs. Wayne
+seemed to think so too, for it was she who spoke first, in a tone which
+she tried to make peremptory, in spite of its tremor of fear.
+
+"What did you come here for?"
+
+Ford looked at her for the first time--in a blankness not without a dull
+element of pleasure. It was at least two or three years since he had seen
+anything so dainty--not, in fact, since his own mother died. At all times
+his mind worked slowly, so that he found nothing to reply till she
+repeated her question with a show of increased severity.
+
+"I came here for protection," he said then.
+
+His hesitation and bewildered air imparted assurance to his still
+astonished hosts.
+
+"Isn't it an odd place in which to look for that?" Wayne asked, in an
+excitement, he strove to subdue.
+
+The question was the stimulus Ford needed in order to get his wits into
+play.
+
+"No," he replied, slowly; "I've a right to protection from the man who
+sentenced me to death for a crime of which he knows me innocent."
+
+Wayne concealed a start by smoothing the newspaper over his crossed knees,
+but he was unable to keep a shade of thickness out of his voice as he
+answered:
+
+"You had a fair trial. You were found guilty. You have had the benefit of
+all the resources allowed by the law. You have no right to say I know you
+to be innocent."
+
+Wholly spent, Ford dropped into a chair from which one of the children had
+risen. With his arm hanging limply over the back he sat staring haggardly
+at the judge, as though finding nothing to say.
+
+"I have a right to read any man's mind," he muttered, after a long pause,
+"when it's as transparent as yours. No one had any doubt as to your
+convictions--after your charge."
+
+"That has nothing to do with it. If I charged in your favor, it was
+because I wanted you to have the benefit of every possible plea. When
+those pleas were found insufficient by a jury of your peers--"
+
+Ford emitted a sound that might have been a laugh, had there been mirth in
+it.
+
+"A jury of my peers! A lot of thick-headed country tradesmen, prejudiced
+against me from the start because I'd sometimes kicked up a row in their
+town! They weren't my peers any more than they were yours!"
+
+"The law assumes all men to be equal--"
+
+"Just as it assumes all men to be intelligent--only they're not. The law
+is a very fine theory. The chief thing to be, said against it is that five
+times out of ten it leaves human nature out of account. I'm condemned to
+death, not because I killed a man, but because you lawyers won't admit
+that your theory doesn't work."
+
+He began to speak more easily, with the energy born of his desperate
+situation and his sense of wrong. He sat up straighter; the air of
+dejection with which he had sunk to the chair slipped from him; his gray
+eyes, of the kind called "honest," shot out glances of protest. The elder
+man found himself once more struggling against the wave of sympathy which
+at times in the court-room had been almost too strong for him. He was
+forced to intrench himself mentally within the system he served before
+bracing himself to reply.
+
+"I can't keep you from having your opinion--"
+
+"Nor can I save you from having yours. Look at me, judge!" He was bolt
+upright now, throwing his arms wide with a gesture in which there was more
+appeal than indignation "Look at me! I'm a strong, healthy-bodied,
+healthy-minded fellow of twenty-four; but I'm drenched to the skin, I'm
+half naked, I'm nearly dead with hunger, I'm an outlaw for life--and
+you're responsible for it all."
+
+It was Wayne's turn for protest, and though he winced, he spoke sharply.
+
+"I had my duty to perform--"
+
+"Good God, man, don't sit there and call that thing your duty! You're
+something more than a wheel in a machine. You were a human being before
+you were a judge. With your convictions you should have come down from the
+bench and washed your hands of the whole affair. The very action would
+have given me a chance--"
+
+"You mustn't speak like that to my husband," Mrs. Wayne broke in,
+indignantly, from the doorway. "If you only knew what he has suffered on
+your account--"
+
+"Is it anything like what I've suffered on his?"
+
+"I dare say it's worse. He has scarcely slept or eaten since he knew he
+would have to pass that dreadful sen--"
+
+"Come! come!" Wayne exclaimed, in the impatient tone of a man who puts an
+end to a useless discussion. "We can't spend time on this subject any
+longer. I'm not on my defence--"
+
+"You _are_ on your defence," Ford declared, instantly. "Even your wife
+puts you there. We're not in a courtroom as we were this morning.
+Circumstantial evidence means nothing to us in this isolated house, where
+you're no longer the judge, as I'm no longer the prisoner. We're just two
+naked human beings, stripped of everything but their inborn rights--and I
+claim mine."
+
+"Well--what are they?"
+
+"They're simple enough. I claim the right to have something to eat, and to
+go my way without being molested--or betrayed. You'll admit I'm not
+asking much."
+
+"You may have the food," Mrs. Wayne said, in a tone not without
+compassion. "I'll go and get it."
+
+For a minute or two there was no sound but that of her cough, as she sped
+down a passage. Before speaking, Wayne passed his hand across his brow as
+though in an effort to clear his mental vision.
+
+"No; you don't seem to be asking much. But, as a matter of fact, you're
+demanding my pledge to my country. I undertook to administer its laws--"
+
+Ford sprang up.
+
+"You've done it," he cried, "and I'm the result! You've administered the
+law right up to its hilt, and your duty as a judge is performed. Surely
+you're free now to think of yourself as a man and to treat me as one."
+
+"I might do that, and still think you a man dangerous to leave at large."
+
+"But do you?"
+
+"That's my affair. Whatever your opinion of the courts that have judged
+your case, I must accept their verdict."
+
+"In your official capacity--yes; but not here, as host to the poor dog who
+comes under your roof for shelter. My rights are sacred. Even the wild
+Arab--"
+
+He paused abruptly. Over Wayne's shoulder, through the window still open
+to the terrace, he saw a figure cross the darkness. Could his pursuers be
+waiting outside for their chance to spring on him? A perceptible fraction
+of a second went by before he told himself he must have been mistaken.
+
+"Even the wild Arab would think them so," he concluded, his glance
+shifting rapidly between the judge and the window open behind him.
+
+"But I'm not a wild Arab," Wayne replied. "My first duty is toward my
+country and its organized society."
+
+"I don't think so. Your first duty is toward the man you know you've
+sentenced wrongly. Fate has shown you an unusual mercy in giving you a
+chance to help him."
+
+"I can be sorry for the sentence and yet feel that I could not have acted
+otherwise."
+
+"Then what are you going to do now?"
+
+"What would you expect me to do but hand you back to justice?"
+
+"How?"
+
+There was a suggestion of physical disdain in the tone of the laconic
+question, as well as in the look he fixed on the neat, middle-aged man
+doing his best to be cool and collected Wayne glanced over his shoulder
+toward the telephone on the wall. Norrie Ford understood and spoke
+quickly:
+
+"Yes; you could ring up the police at Greenport, but I could strangle you
+before you crossed the floor."
+
+"So you could; but would you? If you did, should you be any better off?
+Should you be as well off as you are now? As it is, there is a possibility
+of a miscarriage of justice, of which one day you may get the benefit.
+There would be no such possibility then. You would be tracked down within
+forty-eight hours."
+
+"Oh, you needn't argue; I've no intention--" Once more he paused. The same
+shadow had flitted across the dark space outside, this time with a
+distinct flutter of a white dress. He could only think it was some one
+getting help together; and while he went on to finish his sentence in
+words, all his subconscious faculties were at work, seeking an escape from
+the trap in which he was taken.
+
+"I've no intention of doing violence unless I'm driven to it--"
+
+"But if you are driven to it--?"
+
+"I've a right to defend myself. Organized society, as you call it, has put
+me where it has no further claim upon me. I must fight against it
+single-handed--and I'll do it. I shall spare neither man nor woman--nor
+_woman_"--he raised his voice so as to be heard outside--"who stands in my
+way."
+
+He threw back his head and looked defiantly out into the night. As if in
+response to this challenge a tall, white figure suddenly emerged from the
+darkness and stood plainly before him.
+
+It was a girl, whose movements were curiously quick and silent, as she
+beckoned to him, over the head of the judge, who sat with his back toward
+her.
+
+"Then all the more reason why society should protect itself against you,"
+Wayne began again; but Ford was no longer listening. His attention was
+wholly fixed on the girl, who continued to beckon noiselessly, fluttering
+for an instant close to the threshold of the room, then withdrawing
+suddenly to the very edge of the terrace, waving a white scarf in token
+that he should follow her. She had repeated her action again and again,
+beckoning with renewed insistence, before he understood and made up his
+mind.
+
+"I don't say that I refuse to help you," Wayne was saying. "My sympathy
+with you is very sincere. If I can get your sentence commuted--In fact, a
+reprieve is almost certain--"
+
+With a dash as lithe and sudden as that which had brought him in, Ford was
+out on the terrace, following the white dress and the waving scarf which
+were already disappearing down the yew-tree walk. The girl's flight over
+grass and gravel was like nothing so much as that of a bird skimming
+through the air. Ford's own steps crunched loudly on the stillness of the
+night, so that if any one lay in ambush he knew he could not escape. He
+was prepared to hear shots come ringing from any quarter, but he ran on
+with the indifference of a soldier grown used to battle, intent on keeping
+up with the shadow fleeing before him.
+
+He followed her through the garden gate he himself had left open, and down
+the lane leading to the pasture. At the point where he had entered it from
+the right, she turned to the left, keeping away from the mountains and
+parallel with the lake. There was no moon, but the night was clear; and no
+sound but that of the shrill, sustained chorus of insect life.
+
+Beyond the pasture the lane became nothing but a path, zigzagging up a
+hillside between patches of Indian corn. The girl sped over it so lightly
+that Ford would have found it hard to keep her in sight if from time to
+time she had not paused and waited. When he came near enough to see the
+outlines of her form she flew on again, less like a living woman than a
+mountain wraith.
+
+From the top of the hill he could see the dull gleam of the lake with its
+girdle of lamp-lit towns. Here the woodland began again; not the main body
+of the forest, but one of its long arms, thrust down over hill and valley,
+twisting its way in among villages and farm lands. That which had been a
+path now become a trail, along which the girl flitted with the ease of
+habit and familiarity.
+
+In the concentration of his effort to keep the moving white spot in view
+Ford lost count of time. Similarly he had little notion of the distance
+they were covering. He guessed that they had been ten or fifteen minutes
+on the way, and that they might have gone a mile, when, after waiting for
+him to come almost near enough to speak to her, she began moving in a
+direction at an acute angle to that by which they had come. At the same
+time he perceived that they were on the side of a low wooded mountain and
+that they were beating their way round it.
+
+All at once they emerged on a tiny clearing--a grassy ledge on the slope.
+Through the starlight he could see the hillside break away steeply into a
+vaporous gorge, while above him the mountain raised a black dome amid the
+serried points of the sky-line. The dryad-like creature beckoned him
+forward with her scarf, until suddenly she stopped with the decisive pause
+of one who has reached her goal. Coming up with her, he saw her unlock the
+door of a small cabin, which had hitherto not detached itself from the
+surrounding darkness.
+
+"Go in," she whispered. "Don't strike a light. There are biscuits
+somewhere, in a box. Grope for them. There's a couch in a corner."
+
+Without allowing him to speak, she forced him gently over the threshold
+and closed the door upon him. Standing inside in the darkness, he heard
+the grating of her key in the lock, and the rustle of her skirts as she
+sped away.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+
+From the heavy sleep of fatigue Ford woke with the twittering of birds
+that announces the dawn. His first thought before opening his eyes, that
+he was still in his cell, was dispelled by the silky touch of the Sorrento
+rugs on which he lay. He fingered them again and again in a kind of
+wonder, while his still half-slumbering senses struggled for the memory of
+what had happened, and the realization of where he was. When at last he
+was able to reconstruct the events of the preceding night, he raised
+himself on his elbow and peered about him in the dim morning twilight.
+
+The object he discerned most readily was an easel, giving him the secret
+of his refuge. On the wooden walls of the cabin, which was fairly
+spacious, water-color sketches were pinned at intervals, while on the
+mantelpiece above a bricked fireplace one or two stood framed. Over the
+mantelpiece a pair of snow-shoes were crossed as decorations, between
+which hung a view of the city of Quebec. On a lay-figure in a corner was
+thrown carelessly the sort of blanket coat worn by Canadians during winter
+sports. Paints and palettes were arranged on a table by the wall, and on a
+desk in the middle of the room were writing materials and books. More
+books stood in a small suspended bookcase. Beside a comfortable
+reading-chair one or two magazines lay on the floor. His gaze travelled
+last to the large apron, or pinafore, on a peg fastened in a door
+immediately beside his couch. The door suggested an inner room, and he got
+up promptly to explore it. It proved to be cramped and dark, lighted only
+from the larger apartment, which in its turn had but the one high north
+window of the ordinary studio. The small room was little more than a shed
+or "lean-to", serving the purposes of kitchen and storeroom combined. The
+arrangements of the whole cabin showed that some one had built it with a
+view to passing in seclusion a few days at a time without forsaking the
+simpler amenities of civilized life; and it was clear that that "some one"
+was a woman. What interested Ford chiefly for the moment was the discovery
+of a sealed glass jar of water, from which he was able to slake his twenty
+hours' thirst.
+
+Returning to the room in which he had slept, he drew back the green silk
+curtain covering the north light in order to take his bearings. As he had
+guessed on the previous night, the slope on which the cabin was perched
+broke steeply down into a wooded gorge, beyond which the lower hills
+rolled in decreasing magnitude to the shore of Champlain, visible from
+this point of view in glimpses, less as an inland sea than like a chain of
+lakelets. Sunrise over Vermont flooded the waters with tints of rose and
+saffron, but made of the Green Mountains a long, gigantic mass of
+purple-black twisting its jagged outline toward the north into the Hog's
+Back and the Camel's Hump with a kind of monstrous grace. To the east, in
+New York, the Adirondacks, with the sunlight full upon them, shot up
+jade-colored peaks into the electric blue--the scarred pyramid of Graytop
+standing forth dark, detached, and alone, like a battered veteran
+sentinel.
+
+In an access of conscious hatred of this vast panoramic beauty which had
+become the background of his tragedy, Ford pulled the curtain into place
+again and turned once more to the interior of the room. It began to seem
+more strange to him the more it grew familiar. Why was he here? How long
+was he to stay? How was he to get away again? Had this girl caught him
+like a rat in a trap, or did she mean well by him? If, as he supposed, she
+was Wayne's daughter, she would probably not be slow in carrying out her
+father's plan of handing him back to justice--and yet his mind refused to
+connect the wraith of the night before with either police work or
+betrayal. Her appearance had been so dim and fleeting that he could have
+fancied her the dryad of a dream, had it not been for his surroundings.
+
+He began to examine them once more, inspecting the water-colors on the
+wall one by one, in search of some clew to her personality. The first
+sketch was of a nun in a convent garden--the background vaguely French,
+and yet with a difference. The next was of a trapper, or voyageur, pushing
+a canoe into the waters of a wild northern lake. The next was a group of
+wigwams with squaws and children in the foreground. Then came more nuns;
+then more voyageurs with their canoes; then more Indians and wigwams It
+occurred to Ford that the nuns might have been painted from life, the
+voyageurs and Indians from imagination He turned to the two framed
+drawings on the chimney-piece Both represented winter scenes. In the one a
+sturdy voyageur was conveying his wife and small personal belongings
+across the frozen snow on a sled drawn by a team of dogs. In the other a
+woman, apparently the same woman as in the preceding sketch, had fallen in
+the midst of a blinding storm, while a tall man of European
+aspect--decidedly not the voyageur--was standing beside her with a baby in
+his arms. These were clearly fancy pictures, and, so it seemed to Ford,
+the work of one who was trying to recapture some almost forgotten memory.
+In any case he was too deeply engrossed by his own situation to dwell on
+them further.
+
+He wheeled round again toward the centre of the room, impatiently casting
+about him for something to eat. The tin box, from which he had devoured
+all the biscuits, lay empty on the floor, but he picked it up and ate
+hungrily the few crumbs sticking in its corners. He ransacked the small
+dark room in the hope of finding more, but vainly. As far as he could see,
+the cabin had never been used for the purpose it was meant to serve, nor
+ever occupied for more than a few hours at a time. It had probably been
+built in a caprice that had passed with its completion. He guessed
+something from the fact that there was no visible attempt to sketch the
+scene before the door, though the site had evidently been chosen for its
+beauty.
+
+He had nothing by which to measure time, but he knew that precious hours
+which he might have utilized for escape were passing. He began to chafe at
+the delay. With the impulse of youth to be active, he longed to be out,
+where he could at least use his feet. His clothes had dried upon him; in
+spite of his hunger he was refreshed by his night's sleep; he was
+convinced that, once in the open, he could elude capture. He pulled back
+the curtain again in order to reconnoitre. It was well to be as familiar
+as possible with the immediate lay of the land, so as to avail himself of
+any advantages it might offer.
+
+The colors of sunrise had disappeared, and he judged that it must be
+seven or eight o'clock. Between the rifts of the lower hills the lake was
+flashing silver, while where Vermont had been nothing but a mass of
+shadow, blue-green mountains were emerging in a triple row, from which the
+last veils of vapor were being dragged up into the firmament On the left,
+the Adirondacks were receding into translucent dimness, in a lilac haze of
+heat.
+
+With an effort to get back the woodcraft suddenly inspired by his first
+dash for freedom, he ran his eye over the landscape, noting the points
+with which he was familiar. To the west, in a niche between Graytop and
+the double peak of Windy Mountain, he could place the county-town; to the
+north, beyond the pretty headlands and the shining coves, the prison of
+Plattsville was waiting to receive him. Farther to the north was Canada;
+and to the south the great waterway led toward the populous mazes of New
+York.
+
+With an impatience bordering on nervousness he realized that these general
+facts did not help him. He must avoid the prison and the county-town, of
+course; while both New York and Canada offered him ultimate chances. But
+his most pressing dangers lurked in the immediate foreground; and there he
+could see nothing but an unsuggestive slope of ash and pine. The rapidity
+of instinct by which last night he had known exactly what to do gave place
+this morning to his slower and more characteristic mental processes.
+
+He was still gazing outward in perplexity, when, through the trees beyond
+the grassy ledge, he caught the flicker of something white. He pressed
+closer to the pane for a better view, and a few seconds later a girl, whom
+he recognized as the nymph of last night, came out of the forest,
+followed by a fawn-colored collie. She walked smoothly and swiftly,
+carrying a large basket with her right hand, while with her left she
+motioned him away from the window. He stepped back, leaping to the door as
+she unlocked it, in order to relieve her of her burden.
+
+"You mustn't do that," she said, speaking quickly. "You mustn't look out
+of the window or come to the door. There are a hundred men beating the
+mountain to find you."
+
+She closed the door and locked it on the inside. While Ford lifted her
+basket to the desk in the centre of the room she drew the green curtain
+hastily, covering the window. Her movements were so rapid that he could
+catch no glimpse of her face, though he had time to note again the curious
+silence that marked her acts. The dog emitted a low growl.
+
+"You must go in here," she said, decisively, throwing open the door of the
+inner room. "You mustn't speak or look out unless I tell you. I'll bring
+you your breakfast presently. Lie down, Micmac."
+
+The gesture by which she forced him across the threshold was compelling
+rather than commanding. Before he realized that he had obeyed her, he was
+standing alone in the darkness, with the sound of a low voice of liquid
+quality echoing in his ears. Of her face he had got only the hint of dark
+eyes flashing with an eager, non-Caucasian brightness--eyes that drew
+their fire from a source alien to that of any Aryan race.
+
+But he brushed that impression away as foolish. Her words had the
+unmistakable note of cultivation, while a glance at her person showed her
+to be a lady. He could see, too, that her dress, though simple, was
+according to the standard of means and fashion. She was no Pocahontas;
+and yet the thought of Pocahontas came to him. Certainly there was in her
+tones, as well as in her movements, something akin to this vast aboriginal
+nature around him, out of which she seemed to spring as the human element
+in its beauty.
+
+He was still thinking of this when the door opened and she came in again,
+carrying a plate piled high with cold meat and bread-and-butter.
+
+"I'm sorry it's only this," she smiled, as she placed it before him; "but
+I had to take what I could get--and what wouldn't be missed. I'll try to
+do better in future."
+
+He noted the matter-of-fact tone in which she uttered the concluding
+words, as though they were to have plenty of time together; but for the
+moment he was too fiercely hungry to speak. For a few seconds she stood
+off, watching him eat, after which she withdrew, with the light swiftness
+that characterized all her motions.
+
+He had nearly finished his meal when she returned again.
+
+"I've brought you these," she said, not without a touch of shyness,
+against which she struggled by making her tone as commonplace as possible.
+"I shall bring you more things by degrees."
+
+On a chair beside that on which he was sitting she laid a pair of
+slippers, a pair of socks, a shirt, a collar, and a tie.
+
+He jumped up hastily, less in surprise than in confusion.
+
+"I can't take anything of Judge Wayne's--" he began to stammer; but she
+interrupted him.
+
+"I understand your feelings about that," she said, simply. "They're not
+Judge Wayne's; they were my father's. I have plenty more."
+
+In his relief at finding she was not Wayne's daughter he spoke awkwardly.
+
+"Your father? Is he--dead?"
+
+"Yes; he's dead. You needn't be afraid to take the things. He would have
+liked to help a man--in your position."
+
+"In my position? Then you know--who I am?"
+
+"Yes; you're Norrie Ford. I saw that as soon as I chanced on the terrace
+last night."
+
+"And you're not afraid of me?"
+
+"I am--a little," she admitted; "but that doesn't matter."
+
+"You needn't be--" he began to explain, but she checked him again.
+
+"We mustn't talk now. I must shut the door and leave you in the dark all
+day. Men will be passing by, and they mustn't hear you. I shall be
+painting in the studio, so that they won't suspect anything, if you keep
+still."
+
+Allowing him no opportunity to speak again, she closed the door, leaving
+him once more in darkness. Sitting in the constraint she imposed upon him,
+he could hear her moving in the outer room, where, owing to the lightness
+of the wooden partition, it was not difficult to guess what she was doing
+at any given moment. He knew when she opened the outer door and moved the
+easel toward the entrance. He knew when she took down the apron from its
+peg and pinned it on. He knew when she drew up a chair and pretended to
+set to work. In the hour or two of silence that ensued he was sure that,
+whatever she might be doing with her brush, she was keeping eye and ear
+alert in his defence.
+
+Who was she? What interest had she in his fate? What power had raised her
+up to help him? Even yet he had scarcely seen her face; but he had
+received an impression of intelligence. He was sure she was no more than a
+girl--certainly not twenty--and yet she acted with the decision of
+maturity. At the same time there was about her that suggestion of a wild
+origin--that something not wholly tamed to the dictates of civilized
+life--which persisted in his imagination, even if he could not verify it
+in fact.
+
+Twice in the course of the morning he heard voices. Men spoke to her
+through the open doorway, and she replied. Once he distinguished her
+words.
+
+"Oh no," she called out to some one at a distance. "I'm not afraid. He
+won't do me any harm. I've got Micmac with me. I often stay here all day,
+but I shall go home early. Thanks," she added, in response to some further
+hint. "I'd rather not have any one here. I never can paint unless I'm
+quite alone."
+
+Her tone was light, and Ford fancied that as she spoke she smiled at the
+passers-by who had thought it right to warn her against himself; but when,
+a few minutes later, she pushed open the door softly, the gravity that
+seemed more natural to her had returned.
+
+"Several parties of men have gone by," she whispered. "They have no
+suspicion. They won't have, if you keep still. They think you have slipped
+away from here, and have gone back toward the lumber camps. This is your
+lunch," she continued, hastily, placing more food before him. "It will
+have to be your dinner, too. It will be safer for me not to come into this
+room again to-day. You must not go out into the studio till you're sure
+it's dark. No noise. No light. I've put an extra rug on the couch in case
+you're chilly in the night."
+
+She spoke breathlessly, in whispers, and, having finished, slipped away.
+
+"You're awfully good," he whispered back. "Won't you tell me your name?"
+
+"Hush!" she warned him, as she closed the door.
+
+He stood still in the darkness, leaving his food untasted, listening to
+the soft rustle of her movements beyond the wall. Except that he heard no
+more voices, the afternoon passed like the morning. At the end of what
+seemed to him interminable hours he knew by acute attention that she hung
+her apron on its peg, put on her hat, and took up her basket, while Micmac
+rose and shook himself. Presently she closed the door of the cabin and
+locked it on the outside. He fancied he could almost hear her step as she
+sped over the grass and into the forest. Only then did the tension of his
+nerves relax, as, dropping to his chair in the darkness, he began to eat.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+
+The two or three days that followed were much like the first. Each morning
+she came early, bringing him food, and such articles of clothing as she
+thought he could wear. By degrees she provided him with a complete change
+of raiment, and though the fit was tolerable, they laughed together at the
+transformation produced in him. It was the first time he had seen her
+smile, and even in the obscurity of the inner room where she still kept
+him secluded he noted the vividness with which her habitually grave
+features lighted up. Micmac, too, became friendly, inferring with the
+instinct of his race that Ford was an object to be guarded.
+
+"No one would know you now," the girl declared, surveying him with
+satisfaction.
+
+"Were these things all your father's?" he asked, with a new attempt to
+penetrate the mystery of her personality.
+
+"Yes," she returned, absently, continuing her inspection of him. "They
+were sent to me, and I kept them. I never knew why I did; but I suppose it
+was--for this."
+
+"He must have been a tall man?" Ford hazarded, again.
+
+"Yes, he must have been," she returned, unwarily. Then, feeling that the
+admission required some explanation, she added, with a touch of
+embarrassment, "I never saw him--not that I can remember."
+
+"Then he died a long time ago?"
+
+Her reply came reluctantly, after some delay:
+
+"Not so very long--about four years ago now."
+
+"And yet you hadn't seen him since you were a child?"
+
+"There were reasons. We mustn't talk. Some one may pass and hear us."
+
+He could see that her hurry in finishing the small tasks she had come in
+to perform for him arose not so much from precaution as from a desire to
+escape from this particular subject.
+
+"I suppose you could tell me his name?" he persisted.
+
+Her hands moved deftly, producing order among the things he had left in
+confusion, but she remained silent. It was a silence in which he
+recognized an element of protest though he ignored it.
+
+"You could tell me his name?" he asked, again.
+
+"His name," she said, at last, "wouldn't convey anything to you. It
+wouldn't do you any good to know it."
+
+"It would gratify my curiosity. I should think you might do as much as
+that for me."
+
+"I'm doing a great deal for you as it is. I don't think you should ask for
+more."
+
+Her tone was one of reproach rather than of annoyance, and he was left
+with a sense of having committed an indiscretion. The consciousness
+brought with it the perception that in a measure he was growing used to
+his position. He was beginning to take it for granted that this girl
+should come and minister to his wants. She herself did it so simply, so
+much as a matter of course, that the circumstance lost much of its
+strangeness. Now and then he could detect some confusion in her manner as
+she served him, but he could see too that she surmounted it, in view of
+the fact that for him the situation was one of life and death. She was
+clearly not indifferent to elementary social usages; she only saw that the
+case was one in which they did not obtain. In his long, unoccupied hours
+of darkness it distracted his thoughts from his own peril to speculate
+about her; and when she appeared his questions were the more blunt because
+of the small opportunity she allowed for asking them.
+
+"Won't they miss you at home?" he inquired, on the next occasion when she
+entered his cell.
+
+She paused with a look of surprise.
+
+"At home? Where do you mean?"
+
+"Why--where you live; where your mother lives."
+
+"My mother died a few months after I was born."
+
+"Oh! But even so, you live somewhere, don't you?"
+
+"I do; but they don't miss me there, if that's what you want to know."
+
+"I was only afraid," he said, apologetically, "that you were giving me too
+much of your time."
+
+"I've nothing else to do with it. I shall be only too glad if I can help
+you to escape."
+
+"Why? Why should you care about me?"
+
+"I don't," she said, simply; "at least, I don't know that I do."
+
+"Oh, then you're helping me just--on general principles?"
+
+"Quite so."
+
+"Well," he smiled, "mayn't I ask why, again?"
+
+"Because I don't like the law."
+
+"You mean that you don't like the law as a whole?--or--or this law in
+particular?"
+
+"I don't like any law. I don't like anything about it. But," she added,
+resorting to her usual method of escape, "we mustn't talk any more now.
+Some men passed here this morning, and they may be coming back. They've
+given up looking for you; they are convinced you're up in the lumber
+camps, but all the same we must be careful still."
+
+He had no further speech with her that day, and the next she remained at
+the cabin little more than an hour.
+
+"It's just as well for me not to excite curiosity," she explained to him
+before leaving; "and you needn't be uneasy now. They've stopped the hunt
+altogether. They say there's not a spot within a radius of ten miles of
+Greenport that they haven't searched. It would never occur to any one that
+you could be here. Every one knows me; and so the thought that I could be
+helping you would be the last in their minds."
+
+"And have you no remorse at betraying their confidence?"
+
+She shook her head. "Most of them," she declared, "are very well pleased
+to think you've got away; and even if they weren't I should never feel
+remorse for helping any one to evade the law."
+
+"You seem to have a great objection to the law."
+
+"Well, haven't you?"
+
+"Yes; but in my case it's comprehensible."
+
+"So it is in mine--if you only knew."
+
+"Perhaps," he said, looking at her steadily, "this is as good a time as
+any to assure you that the law has done me wrong."
+
+He waited for her to say something; but as she stroked Micmac's head in
+silence, he continued.
+
+"I never committed the crime of which they found me guilty."
+
+He waited again for some intimation of her confidence.
+
+"Their string of circumstantial evidence was plausible enough, I admit.
+The only weak point about it was that it wasn't true."
+
+Even through the obscurity of his refuge he could feel the suspension of
+expression in her bearing, and could imagine it bringing a kind of eclipse
+over her eyes.
+
+"He was very cruel to you--your uncle?--wasn't he?" she asked, at last.
+
+"He was very cantankerous; but that wouldn't be a reason for shooting him
+in his sleep--whatever I may have said when in a rage."
+
+"I should think it might be."
+
+He started. If it were not for the necessity of making no noise he would
+have laughed.
+
+"Are you so bloodthirsty--?" he began.
+
+"Oh no, I'm not; but I should think it is what a man would do. My father
+wouldn't have submitted to it. I know he killed one man; and he may have
+killed two or three."
+
+Ford whistled under his breath.
+
+"So that," he said, after a pause, "your objection to the law
+is--hereditary."
+
+"My objection to the law is because it is unjust. The world is full of
+injustice," she added, indignantly, "and the laws men live by create it."
+
+"And your aim is to defeat them?"
+
+"I can't talk any more now," she said, reverting to an explanatory tone of
+voice. "I must go. I've arranged everything for you for the day. If you
+are very quiet you can sit in the studio and read; but you mustn't look
+out at the window, or even draw back the curtain. If you hear a step
+outside, you must creep in here and shut the door. And you needn't be
+impatient; because I'm going to spend the day working out a plan for your
+escape."
+
+But when she appeared next morning she declined to give details of the
+plan she had in mind. She preferred to work it out alone, she said, and
+give him the outlines only when she had settled them. It chanced to be a
+day of drenching summer rain, and Ford, with a renewed effort to get some
+clew to her identity, expressed his surprise that she should have been
+allowed to venture out.
+
+"Oh, no one worries about what I do," she said, indifferently "I go about
+as I choose."
+
+"So much the better for me," he laughed. "That's how you came to be
+wandering on old Wayne's terrace, just in the nick of time. What stumps me
+is the promptness with which you thought of stowing me away."
+
+"It wasn't promptness, exactly. As a matter of fact, I had worked the
+whole thing out beforehand."
+
+His eyebrows went up incredulously. "For me?"
+
+"No, not for you; for anybody. Ever since my guardian allowed me to build
+the studio--last year--I've imagined how easy it would be for some--some
+hunted person to stay hidden here, almost indefinitely. I've tried to
+fancy it, when I've had nothing better to do."
+
+"You don't seem to have had anything better to do very often," he
+observed, glancing about the cabin.
+
+"If you mean that I haven't painted much, that's quite true. I thought I
+couldn't do without a studio--till I got one. But when I've come here, I'm
+afraid it's generally been to--to indulge in day-dreams."
+
+"Day-dreams of helping prisoners to escape. It wouldn't be every girl's
+fancy, but it's not for me to complain of that."
+
+"My father would have wanted me to do it," she declared, as if in
+self-justification. "A woman once helped him to get out of prison."
+
+"Good for her! Who was she?"
+
+Having asked the question lightly, in a boyish impulse to talk, he was
+surprised to see her show signs of embarrassment.
+
+"She was my mother," she said, after an interval in which she seemed to be
+making up her mind to give the information.
+
+In the manifest difficulty she had in speaking, Ford sprang to her aid.
+
+"That's like the old story of Gilbert à Becket--Thomas à Becket's father,
+you know."
+
+The historical reference was received in silence, as she bent over the
+small task she had in hand.
+
+"He married the woman who helped him out of prison," Ford went on, for her
+enlightenment.
+
+She raised her head and faced him.
+
+"It wasn't like the story of Gilbert à Becket," she said, quietly.
+
+It took some seconds of Ford's slow thinking to puzzle out the meaning of
+this. Even then he might have pondered in vain had it not been for the
+flush that gradually over-spread her features, and brought what he called
+the wild glint into her eyes. When he understood, he reddened in his own
+turn, making matters worse.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he stammered. "I never thought--"
+
+"You needn't beg my pardon," she interrupted, speaking with a catch in her
+breath. "I wanted you to know.... You've asked me so many questions that
+it seemed as if I was ashamed of my father and mother when I didn't
+answer.... I'm not ashamed of them.... I'd rather you knew.... Every one
+does--who knows me."
+
+Half unconsciously he glanced up at the framed sketches on the
+chimney-piece. Her eyes followed him, and she spoke instantly:
+
+"You're quite right. I meant that--for them."
+
+They were standing in the studio, into which she had allowed him to come
+from the stifling darkness of the inner room, on the ground that the rain
+protected them against intrusion from outside. During their conversation
+she had been placing the easel and arranging the work which formed her
+pretext for being there, while Micmac, stretched on the floor, with his
+head between his paws, kept a half-sleepy eye on both of them.
+
+"Your father was a Canadian, then?" he ventured to ask, as she seated
+herself with a palette in her hand.
+
+"He was a Virginian. My mother was the wife of a French-Canadian voyageur.
+I believe she had a strain of Indian blood. The voyageurs and their
+families generally have."
+
+Having recovered her self-possession, she made her statements in the
+matter-of-fact tone she used to hide embarrassment flicking a little color
+into the sketch before her as she spoke. Ford seated himself at a
+distance, gazing at her with a kind of fascination. Here, then, was the
+clew to that something untamed which persisted through all the effects of
+training and education, as a wild flavor will last in a carefully
+cultivated fruit. His curiosity about her was so intense that,
+notwithstanding the difficulty with which she stated her facts, it
+overcame his prompting to spare her.
+
+"And yet," he said, after a long pause, in which he seemed to be
+assimilating the information she had given him--"and yet I don't see how
+that explains _you_."
+
+"I suppose it doesn't--not any more than your situation explains you."
+
+"My situation explains me perfectly, because I'm the victim of a wrong."
+
+"Well, so am I--in another way. I'm made to suffer because I'm the
+daughter of my parents."
+
+"That's a rotten shame," he exclaimed, in boyish sympathy "It isn't your
+fault."
+
+"Of course it isn't," she smiled, wistfully. "And yet I'd rather suffer
+with the parents I have than be happy with any others."
+
+"I suppose that's natural," he admitted, doubtfully.
+
+"I wish I knew more about them," she went on, continuing to give light
+touches to the work before her, and now and then leaning back to get the
+effect. "I never understood why my father was in prison in Canada."
+
+"Perhaps it was when he killed the man," Ford suggested.
+
+"No; that was in Virginia--at least, the first one. His people didn't like
+it. That was the reason for his leaving home. He hated a settled life; and
+so he wandered away into the northwest of Canada. It was in the days when
+they first began to build the railways there--when there were almost no
+people except the trappers and the voyageurs. I was born on the very
+shores of Hudson Bay."
+
+"But you didn't stay there?"
+
+"No. I was only a very little child--not old enough to remember--when my
+father sent me down to Quebec, to the Ursuline nuns. He never saw me
+again. I lived with them till four years ago. I'm eighteen now."
+
+"Why didn't he send you to his people? Hadn't he sisters?--or anything
+like that."
+
+"He tried to, but they wouldn't have anything to do with me."
+
+It was clearly a relief to her to talk about herself. He guessed that she
+rarely had an opportunity of opening her heart to any one. Not till this
+morning had he seen her in the full light of day; and, though but an
+immature judge, he fancied her features had settled themselves into lines
+of reserve and pride from which in happier circumstances they might have
+been free. Her way of twisting her dark hair--which waved over the brows
+from a central parting--into the simplest kind of knot gave her an air of
+sedateness beyond her years. But what he noticed in her particularly was
+her eyes--not so much because they were wild, dark eyes, with the peculiar
+fleeing expression of startled forest things, as because of the pleading,
+apologetic look that comes into the eyes of forest things when they stand
+at bay. It was when--for seconds only--the pupils shone with a jet-like
+blaze that he caught what he called the non-Aryan effect; but that glow
+died out quickly, leaving something of the fugitive appeal which Hawthorne
+saw in the eyes of Beatrice Cenci.
+
+"He offered his sisters a great deal of money," she sighed, "but they
+wouldn't take me."
+
+"Oh? So he had money?"
+
+"He was one of the first Americans to make money in the Canadian
+northwest; but that was after my mother died. She died in the snow, on a
+journey--like that sketch above the fireplace. I've been told that it
+changed my father's life. He had been what they call wild before that--but
+he wasn't so any more. He grew very hard-working and serious. He was one
+of the pioneers of that country--one of the very first to see its
+possibilities. That was how he made his money; and when he died he left it
+to me. I believe it's a good deal."
+
+"Didn't you hate being in the convent?" he asked, suddenly "I should."
+
+"N-no; not exactly. I wasn't unhappy. The Sisters were kind to me. Some of
+them spoiled me. It wasn't until after my father died, and I began to
+realize--who I was, that I grew restless. I felt I should never be happy
+until I was among people of my own kind."
+
+"And how did you get there?"
+
+She smiled faintly to herself before answering.
+
+"I never did. There are no people of my kind."
+
+Embarrassed by the stress she seemed inclined to lay on this circumstance,
+he grasped at the first thought that might divert her from it.
+
+"So you live with a guardian! How do you like that?"
+
+"I should like it well enough if he did--that is, if his wife did. You
+see," she tried to explain, "she's very sweet and gentle, and all that,
+but she's devoted to the proprieties of life, and I seem to represent to
+her--its improprieties. I know it's a trial to her to keep me, and so, in
+a way, it's a trial to me to stay."
+
+"Why do you stay, then?"
+
+"For one reason, because I can't help myself. I have to do what the law
+tells me."
+
+"I see. The law again!"
+
+"Yes; the law again. But I've other reasons besides that."
+
+"Such as--?"
+
+"Well, I'm very fond of their little girl, for one thing. She's the
+greatest darling in the world, and the only creature, except my dog, that
+loves me."
+
+"What's her name?"
+
+The question drove her to painting with closer attention to her work. Ford
+followed something of the progress of her thought by watching the just
+perceptible contraction of her brows into a little frown, and the setting
+of her lips into a curve of determination. They were handsome lips, mobile
+and sensitive--lips that might easily have been disdainful had not the
+inner spirit softened them with a tremor--or it might have been a
+light--of gentleness.
+
+"It isn't worth while to tell you that," she said, after long reflection.
+"It will be safer for you in the end not to know any of our names at all."
+
+"Still--if I escape--I should like to know them."
+
+"If you escape, you may be able to find out."
+
+"Oh, well," he said, with assumed indifference, "since you don't want to
+tell me--"
+
+Going on with her painting, she allowed the subject to drop; but to him
+the opportunity for conversation was too rare a thing to neglect. Not only
+was his youthful impulse toward social self-expression normally strong,
+but his pleasure in talking to a lady--a girl--was undeniable. Sometimes
+in his moments of solitary meditation he said to himself that she was "not
+his type of girl"; but the fact that he had been deprived of feminine
+society for nearly three years made him ready to fall in love with any
+one. If he did not precisely fall in love with this girl, it was only
+because the situation precluded sentiment; and yet it was pleasant to sit
+and watch her paint, and even torment her with his questions.
+
+"So the little girl is one reason for your staying here. What's another?"
+
+She betrayed her own taste for social communion by the readiness with
+which she answered him--
+
+"I don't know that I ought to tell you that; and yet I might as well. It's
+just this: they're not very well off--so I can help. Naturally I like
+that."
+
+"You can help by footing the bills. That's all very fine if you enjoy it,
+but everybody wouldn't."
+
+"They would if they were in my position," she insisted. "When you can help
+in any way it gives you a sense of being of use to some one. I'd rather
+that people needed me, even if they didn't want me, than that they
+shouldn't need me at all."
+
+"They need your money," he declared, with a young man's outspokenness.
+"That's what."
+
+"But that's something, isn't it? When you've no place in the world you're
+glad enough to get one, even if you have to buy it. My guardian and his
+wife mayn't care much to have me, but it's some satisfaction to know that
+they'd get along much worse if I weren't here."
+
+"So should I," he laughed. "What I'm to do when I'm turned adrift without
+you, Heaven only knows. It's curious--the effect imprisonment has on you.
+It takes away your self-reliance. It gives you a helpless feeling, like a
+baby. You want to be free--and yet you're almost afraid of the open air."
+
+He was so much at home with her now that, sitting carelessly astride of
+his chair, with his arms folded on the back, he felt a fraternal element
+in their mutual relation. She bent more closely over her work, and spoke
+without looking up.
+
+"Oh, you'll get along all right. You're that sort."
+
+"That's easy to say."
+
+"You may find it easy to do." Her next words, uttered while she continued
+to flick color into her sketch, caused him to jump with astonishment. "I'd
+go to the Argentine."
+
+"Why not say the moon?"
+
+"For one reason, because the moon is inaccessible."
+
+"So is the Argentine--for me."
+
+"Oh no, it isn't. Other people have reached it."
+
+"Yes: but they weren't in my fix."
+
+"Some of them were probably in worse."
+
+There was a pause, during which she seemed absorbed in her work, while
+Ford sat meditatively whistling under his breath.
+
+"What put the Argentine into your head?" he asked, at last.
+
+"Because I happen to know a good deal about it. Everybody says it's the
+country of new opportunities. I know people who've lived there. The little
+girl I was speaking of just now--whom I'm so fond of--was born there. Her
+father is dead since then, and her mother is married again."
+
+He continued to meditate, emitting the same tuneless, abstracted sound,
+just above his breath.
+
+"I know the name of an American firm out there," she went on. "It's
+Stephens and Jarrott. It's a very good firm to work for. I've often heard
+that. And Mr. Jarrott has helped ever so many--stranded people."
+
+"I should be just his sort, then."
+
+His laugh, as he sprang to his feet, seemed to dismiss an impossible
+subject; and yet as he lay on his couch that evening in the lampless
+darkness the name of Stephens and Jarrott obtruded itself into his visions
+of this girl, who stood between him and peril because she "disliked the
+law," He wondered how far it was dislike, and how far jealous pain. In
+her eagerness to buy the domestic place she had not inherited she reminded
+him of something he had read--or heard--of the wild olive being grafted
+into the olive of the orchard. Well, that would come in the natural course
+of events. Some fine fellow, worthy to be her mate, would see to it. He
+was not without a pleasant belief that in happier circumstances he himself
+might have had the qualifications for the task. He wondered again what her
+name was. He ran through the catalogue of the names he himself would have
+chosen for a heroine--Gladys, Ethel, Mildred Millicent!--none of them
+seemed to suit her. He tried again. Margaret, Beatrice, Lucy, Joan! Joan
+possibly--or he said to himself, in the last inconsequential thoughts as
+he fell asleep, it might be--the Wild Olive.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+
+As the days passed, one much like another, and the retreat seemed more and
+more secure, it was natural that Ford's thoughts should dwell less on his
+own danger and more on the girl who filled his immediate horizon. The care
+with which she foresaw his wants, the ingenuity with which she met them,
+the dignity and simplicity with which she carried herself through
+incidents that to a less delicate tact must have been difficult, would
+have excited his admiration in any case, even if the namelessness which
+helped to make her an impersonal element in the episode had not stirred
+his imagination. He was obliged to remind himself often that she was "not
+his type of girl," in order to confine his heart within the limits which
+the situation imposed.
+
+It worried him, therefore, it even hurt him, that in spite of all the
+openings he had given her, she had never offered him a sign of her belief
+in his innocence. For this reason he took the first occasion when she was
+seated at her easel, with the dog lying at her feet, to lay his case
+before her.
+
+He told her of his overindulged boyhood, as the only child of a wealthy
+New York merchant. He outlined his profitless years at the university,
+where a too free use of money had hindered work. He narrated the disasters
+that had left him at the age of two-and-twenty to begin life for
+himself--his father's bankruptcy, followed by the death of both his
+parents within the year. He had been eager to start in at the foot of the
+ladder and work his way upward, when the proposal was made which proved
+fatal.
+
+Old Chris Ford, his great-uncle, known throughout the Adirondack region as
+"the lumber king," had offered to take him, train him to the lumber
+business, and make him his heir. An eccentric, childless widower, commonly
+believed to have broken his wife's heart by sheer bitterness of tongue,
+old Chris Ford was hated, feared, and flattered by the relatives and
+time-servers who hoped ultimately to profit by his favor. Norrie Ford
+neither flattered nor feared his powerful kinsman, but he hated him with
+the best. His own instincts were city born and bred. He was conscious,
+too, of that aptitude with which the typical New-Yorker is supposed to
+come into being--the capacity to make money. He would have preferred to
+make it on his own ground and in his own way; and had it not been for the
+counsels of those who wished him well, he would have replied to his
+great-uncle's offer with a courteous "No." Wiser heads than his pointed
+out the folly of such a course as that; and so, reluctantly, he entered on
+his apprenticeship.
+
+In the two years that followed he could not see what purpose he served
+other than that of a mark for the old man's poisoned wit. He was taught
+nothing, and paid nothing, and given nothing to do. He slept under his
+great-uncle's roof and ate at his table, but the sharp tongue made the bed
+hard to lie on and the bread difficult to swallow down. Idleness
+reawakened the propensity to vicious habits which he thought he had
+outlived, while the rough society of the lumber camps, in which he sought
+to relieve the tedium of time, extended him the welcome which Falstaff
+and his comrades gave Prince Hal.
+
+The revolt of his self-respect was on the eve of bringing this phase of
+his existence to an end when the low farce turned into tragedy. Old Chris
+Ford was found dead in his bed--shot in his sleep. On the premises there
+had been but three persons, one of whom must have committed the
+crime--Norrie Ford, and Jacob and Amalia Gramm. Jacob and Amalia Gramm had
+been the old man's servants for thirty years. Their faithfulness put them
+beyond suspicion. The possibility of their guilt, having been considered,
+was dismissed with few formalities. The conviction of Norrie Ford became
+easy after that--the more respectable people of the neighborhood being
+agreed that from the evidence presented no other deduction could be drawn.
+The very fact that the old man, by his provocation of the lad, so
+thoroughly deserved his fate made the manner in which he met with it the
+clearer. Even Norrie Ford's friends, the hunters and the lumbermen,
+admitted as much as that, though they were determined that he should never
+suffer for so meritorious an act as long as they could give him a fighting
+chance for freedom.
+
+The girl listened to Ford's narrative with some degree of interest, though
+it contained nothing new to her. She could not have lived at Greenport
+during the period of his trial without being familiar with it all. But
+when he came to explanations in his own defence she followed listlessly.
+Though she leaned back in her chair, and courteously stopped painting,
+while he talked so earnestly, the light in her eyes faded to a lustreless
+gleam, like that of the black pearl. His perception that her thoughts were
+wandering gave him a queer sensation of speaking into a medium in which
+his voice could not carry, cutting short his arguments, and bringing him
+to his conclusion more hurriedly than he had intended.
+
+"I wanted you to know I didn't do it," he finished, in a tone which begged
+for some expression of her belief, "because you've done so much to help
+me."
+
+"Oh, but I should have helped you just the same, whether you had done it
+or not."
+
+"But I suppose it makes some difference to you," he cried, impatiently,
+"to know that I didn't."
+
+"I suppose it would," she admitted, slowly, "if I thought much about it."
+
+"Well, won't you think?" he pleaded---"just to oblige me."
+
+"Perhaps I will, when you're gone; but at present I have to give my mind
+to getting you away. It was to talk about that that I came this morning."
+
+Had she wanted to slip out of giving an opinion on the subject of his
+guilt, she could not have found a better exit. The means of his ultimate
+escape engrossed him even more than the theme of his innocence. When she
+spoke again all his faculties were concentrated into one keen point of
+attention.
+
+"I think the time has come for you to--go."
+
+If her voice trembled on the last word, he did not notice it. The pose of
+his body, the lines of his face, the glint of his gray eyes, were alive
+with interrogation.
+
+"Go?" he asked, just audibly. "When?"
+
+"To-morrow."
+
+"How?"
+
+"I'll tell you that then."
+
+"Why can't you tell me now?"
+
+"I could if I was sure you wouldn't raise objections, but I know you
+will."
+
+"Then there are objections to be raised?"
+
+"There are objections to everything. There's no plan of escape that won't
+expose you to a good many risks. I'd rather you didn't see them in
+advance."
+
+"But isn't it well to be prepared beforehand?"
+
+"You'll have plenty of time for preparation--after you've started. If that
+seems mysterious to you now, you'll know what I mean by it when I come
+to-morrow. I shall be here in the afternoon at six."
+
+With this information Ford was obliged to be content, spending a sleepless
+night and an impatient day, waiting for the time appointed.
+
+She came punctually. For the first time she was not followed by her dog.
+The only change in her appearance he could see was a short skirt of rough
+material instead of her usual linen or muslin.
+
+"Are we going through the woods?" he asked.
+
+"Not far. I shall take you by the trail that led to this spot before I
+built the cabin and made the path." As she spoke she surveyed him. "You'll
+do," she smiled at last. "In those flannels, and with your beard, no one
+would know you for the Norrie Ford of three weeks ago."
+
+It was easy for him to ascribe the glow in her eyes and the quiver in her
+voice to the excitement of the moment; for he could see that she had the
+spirit of adventure. Perhaps it was to conceal some embarrassment under
+his regard that she spoke again, hurriedly.
+
+"We've no time to lose. You needn't take anything from here. We'd better
+start."
+
+He followed her over the threshold, and as she turned to lock the cabin
+he had time to throw a glance of farewell over the familiar hills, now
+transmuted into a haze of amethyst under the westering sun. A second later
+he heard her quick "Come on!" as she struck into the barely perceptible
+path that led upward, around the shoulder of the mountain.
+
+It was a stiff bit of climbing, but she sped along with the dryad-like
+ease she had displayed on the night when she led him to the cabin. Beneath
+the primeval growth of ash and pine there was an underbrush so dense that
+no one but a creature gifted with the inherited instinct of the woods
+could have found the invisible, sinuous line alone possible to the feet.
+But it was there, and she traced it--never pausing never speaking, and
+only looking back from time to time to assure herself that he was in
+sight, until they reached the top of the dome-shaped hill.
+
+They came out suddenly on a rocky terrace, beneath which, a mile below,
+Champlain was spread out in great part of its length, from the dim bluff
+of Crown Point to the far-away, cloud-like mountains of Canada.
+
+"You can sit down a minute here," she said, as he came up.
+
+They found seats among the low scattered bowlders, but neither spoke. It
+was a moment at which to understand the jewelled imagery of the Seer of
+the Apocalypse. Jasper, jacinth, chalcedony, emerald, chrysoprasus, were
+suggested by the still bosom of the lake, towered round by
+light-reflecting mountains. The triple tier of the Vermont shore was
+bottle-green at its base, indigo in the middle height, while its summit
+was a pale undulation of evanescent blue against the jade and topaz of the
+twilight.
+
+"The steamer _Empress of Erin_," the girl said, with what seemed like
+abruptness, "will sail from Montreal on the twenty-eighth, and from Quebec
+on the twenty-ninth. From Rimouski, at the mouth of the river St.
+Lawrence, she will sail on the thirtieth, to touch nowhere else till she
+reaches Ireland. You will take her at Rimouski."
+
+There was a silence, during which he tried to absorb this startling
+information.
+
+"And from here to Rimouski?" he asked, at last.
+
+"From here to Rimouski," she replied, with a gesture toward the lake,
+"your way is there."
+
+There was another silence, while his eyes travelled the long,
+rainbow-colored lake, up to the faint line of mountains where it faded
+into a mist of bluish-green and gold.
+
+"I see the way," he said then, "but I don't see the means of taking it."
+
+"You'll find that in good time. In the mean while you'd better take this."
+From her jacket she drew a paper, which she passed to him. "That's your
+ticket. You'll see," she laughed, apologetically, "that I've taken for you
+what they call a suite, and I've done it for this reason. They're keeping
+a lookout for you on every tramp ship from New York, on every cattle-ship
+from Boston, and on every grain-ship from Montreal; but they're not
+looking for you in the most expensive cabins of the most expensive liners.
+They know you've no money; and if you get out of the country at all, they
+expect it will be as a stoker or a stow-away They'll never think you're
+driving in cabs and staying at the best hotels."
+
+"But I shan't be," he said, simply.
+
+"Oh yes, you will. You'll need money, of course; and I've brought it.
+You'll need a good deal; so I've brought plenty."
+
+She drew out a pocketbook and held it toward him. He looked at it,
+reddening, but made no attempt to take it.
+
+"I can't--I can't--go as far as that," he stammered, hoarsely.
+
+"You mean," she returned, quickly, "that you hesitate to take money from a
+woman. I thought you might. But it isn't from a woman; it's from a man.
+It's from my father. He would have liked to do it. He would have wanted me
+to do it. They keep putting it in the bank for me--just to spend--but I
+never need it. What can I do with money in a place like Greenport? Here,
+take it," she urged, thrusting it into his hands. "You know very well it
+isn't a matter of choice, but of life or death."
+
+With her own fingers she clasped his upon it, drawing back and coloring at
+her boldness. For the first time in their weeks of intercourse she saw in
+him a touch of emotion The phlegmatism by which he had hitherto concealed
+his inward suffering seemed suddenly to desert him. He looked at her with
+lips quivering, while his eyes filled. His weakness only nerved her to be
+stronger, sending her for refuge back into the commonplace.
+
+"They'll expect you at Rimouski, because your luggage will already have
+gone on board at Montreal. Yes," she continued, in reply to his
+astonishment, "I've forwarded all the trunks and boxes that came to me
+from my father. I told my guardian I was sending them to be stored--and I
+am, for you'll store them for me in London when you've done with them.
+Here are the keys."
+
+He made no attempt to refuse them, and she hurried on.
+
+"I sent the trunks for two reasons; first, because there might be things
+in them you could use till you get something better; and then I wanted to
+prevent suspicion arising from your sailing without luggage. Every little
+thing of that sort counts. The trunks have 'H.S.' painted in white letters
+on them; so that you'll have no difficulty in knowing them at sight. I've
+put a name with the same initials on the ticket. You'd better use it till
+you feel it safe to take your own again."
+
+"What name?" he asked, with eager curiosity, beginning to take the ticket
+out of its envelope.
+
+"Never mind now," she said, quickly. "It's just a name--any name. You can
+look at it afterward. We'd better go on."
+
+She made as though she would move, but he detained her.
+
+"Wait a minute. So your name begins with S!"
+
+"Like a good many others," she smiled.
+
+"Then tell me what it is. Don't let me go away without knowing it. You
+can't think what it means to me."
+
+"I should think you'd see what it means to me."
+
+"I don't. What harm can it do you?"
+
+"If you don't see, I'm afraid I can't explain. To be nameless is--- how
+shall I say it?--a sort of protection to me. In helping you, and taking
+care of you, I've done what almost any really nice girl would have shrunk
+from. There are plenty of people who would say is was wrong. And in a
+way--a way I could never make you understand, unless you understand
+already--it's a relief to me that you don't know who I am. And even that
+isn't everything."
+
+"Well--what else?"
+
+"When this little episode is over"--her voice trembled, and it was not
+without some blinking of the eyes that she was able to begin again--"when
+this little episode is over, it will be better for us both--for you as
+well as for me--to know as little about it as possible. The danger isn't
+past by any means; but it's a kind of danger in which ignorance can be
+made to look a good deal like innocence. I shan't know anything about you
+after you've gone, and you know nothing whatever about me."
+
+"That's what I complain of. Suppose I pull the thing off, and make a
+success of myself somewhere else, how should I communicate with you
+again?"
+
+"Why should you communicate with me at all?"
+
+"To pay you back your money, for one thing--"
+
+"Oh, that doesn't matter."
+
+"Perhaps it doesn't from your point of view; but it does from mine. But it
+wouldn't be my only reason in any case."
+
+Something in his voice and in his eyes warned her to rise and interrupt
+him.
+
+"I'm afraid we haven't time to talk about it now," she said, hurriedly.
+"We really must be going on."
+
+"I'm not going to talk about it now," he declared, rising in his turn. "I
+said it would be a reason for my wanting to communicate with you again. I
+shall want to tell you something then; though perhaps by that time you
+won't want to hear it."
+
+"Hadn't we better wait and see?"
+
+"That's what I shall have to do; but how can I come back to you at all if
+I don't know who you are?"
+
+"I shall have to leave that to your ingenuity," she laughed, with an
+attempt to treat the matter lightly. "In the mean time we must hurry on.
+It's absolutely necessary that you should set out by sunset."
+
+She glided into the invisible trail running down the lakeside slope of the
+mountain, so that he was obliged to follow her. As they had climbed up,
+so they descended--the girl steadily and silently in advance. The region
+was dotted with farms; but she kept to the shelter of the woodland, and
+before he expected it they found themselves at the water's edge. A canoe
+drawn up in a cove gave him the first clear hint of her intentions.
+
+It was a pretty little cove, enclosed by two tiny headlands, forming a
+miniature landlocked bay, hidden from view of the lake beyond. Trees
+leaned over it and into it, while the canoe rested on a yard-long beach of
+sand.
+
+"I see," he remarked, after she had allowed him to take his own
+observations. "You want me to go over to Burlington and catch a train to
+Montreal."
+
+She shook her head, smiling, as he thought, rather tremulously.
+
+"I'm afraid I've planned a much longer journey for you. Come and see the
+preparations I've made." They stepped to the side of the canoe, so as to
+look down into it. "That," she pursued, pointing to a small suit-case
+forward of the middle thwart, "will enable you to look like an ordinary
+traveller after you've landed. And that," she added, indicating a package
+in the stern, "contains nothing more nor less than sandwiches. Those are
+bottles of mineral water. The small objects are a corkscrew, a glass, a
+railway timetable a cheap compass, and a cheaper watch. In addition you'll
+find a map of the lake, which you can consult tomorrow morning, after
+you've paddled all night through the part with which you're most
+familiar."
+
+"Where am I going?" he asked, huskily, avoiding her eyes. The nonchalance
+of her tone had not deceived him, and he thought it well not to let their
+glances meet.
+
+"You'll keep to the middle of the lake and go on steadily. You'll have
+all Champlain to yourself to-night, and in daylight there's no reason why
+you shouldn't pass for an ordinary sportsman. All the same, you had better
+rest by day, and go on again in the evening. You'll find lots of little
+secluded coves where you can pull up the canoe and be quite undisturbed.
+I'd do that, if I were you."
+
+He nodded to show that he understood her.
+
+"When you look at the map," she went on, "you'll find that I've traced a
+route for you, after you get above Plattsville. You'll see that it will
+take you past the little French-Canadian village of Deux Etoiles. You
+can't mistake it, because there's a lighthouse, with a revolving light, on
+a rock, just off the shore. You'll be in Canada then. You'd better time
+yourself to go by about nightfall."
+
+He nodded his agreement with her again, and she continued.
+
+"About a mile above the lighthouse, and close in by the eastern shore,
+just where the lake becomes very narrow, there are two little islands
+lying close together. You'll take them as a landmark, because immediately
+opposite them, on the mainland, there's a stretch of forest running for a
+good many miles. There you can land finally. You must drag the canoe right
+up into the wood, and hide it as well as you can. It's my own canoe, so
+that it can lie there till it drops to pieces. Is all that quite clear to
+you?"
+
+Once more he nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Again the sight of his
+emotion braced her to make her tone more matter-of-fact than ever.
+
+"Now, then," she went on, "if you consult the map you'll see that an old
+wood-road runs through the forest, and comes out at the station of Saint
+Jean du Clou Noir. There you can get a train to Quebec.... The road begins
+nearly opposite the two little islands I spoke of.... I don't think
+you'll have any difficulty in finding it.... It's about seven miles to the
+station.... You could walk that easily enough through the night.... I've
+marked a very good train on the time-table--a train that stops at Saint
+Jean du Clou Noir at seven thirty-five ..."
+
+A choking sensation warned her to stop, but she retained the power to
+smile. The sun had set, and the slow northern night was beginning to close
+in. Across the lake the mountains of Vermont were receding into deep
+purple uniformity, while over the crimson of the west a veil of filmy
+black was falling, as though dropped in mid-flight by the angel of the
+dark. Here and there through the dead-turquoise green of the sky one could
+detect the pale glimmer of a star.
+
+"You must go now," she whispered. He began to move the canoe into the
+water.
+
+"I haven't thanked you," he began, unsteadily, holding the canoe by the
+bow, "because you wouldn't let me. As a matter of fact, I don't know how
+to do it--adequately. But if I live at all, my life will belong to you.
+That's all I can say. My life will be a thing for you to dispose of. If
+you ever have need of it--"
+
+"I shan't have," she said, hastily, "but I'll remember what you say."
+
+"Thanks; that's all I ask. For the present I can only hope for the chance
+of making my promise good."
+
+She said nothing in reply, and after a minute's silence he entered the
+canoe. She steadied it herself to allow him to step in. It was not till he
+had done so and had knelt down with the paddle in his hand that, moved by
+a sudden impulse she leaned to him and kissed him. Then, releasing the
+light craft, she allowed it to glide out like a swan on the tiny bay. In
+three strokes of the paddle it had passed between the low, enclosing
+headlands and was out of sight. When she summoned up strength to creep to
+an eminence commanding the lake, it was already little more than a speck,
+moving rapidly northward, over the opal-tinted waters.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+
+On finding himself alone, and relatively free, Ford's first sensation was
+one of insecurity. Having lived for more than a year under orders and
+observation, he had lost for the moment some of his natural confidence in
+his own initiative. Though he struck resolutely up the lake he was aware
+of an inner bewilderment, bordering on physical discomfort, at being his
+own master. For the first half-hour he paddled mechanically, his
+consciousness benumbed by the overwhelming strangeness. As far as he was
+able to formulate his thought at all he felt himself to be in process of a
+new birth, into a new phase of existence. In the darkening of the sky
+above him and of the lake around there came upon him something of the
+mental obscurity that might mark the passage of a transmigrating soul.
+After the subdued excitement of the past weeks, and especially of the past
+hour, the very regularity of his movements now lulled him into a passivity
+only quickened by vague fears. The noiseless leaping forward of the canoe
+beneath him heightened his sense of breaking with the past and hastening
+onward into another life. In that life he would be a new creature, free to
+be a law unto himself.
+
+A new creature! A law unto himself! The ideas were subconscious, and yet
+he found the words framing themselves on his lips. He repeated them
+mentally with some satisfaction as a cluster of lights on his left told
+him he was passing Greenport. Other lights, on a hill, above the town and
+away from it, were probably those of Judge Wayne's villa. He looked at
+them curiously, with an odd sense of detachment, of remoteness, as from
+things belonging to a time with which he had nothing more to do. That was
+over and done with.
+
+It was not until a steamer crossed his bows, not more than a hundred yards
+in front of him, that he began to appreciate his safety. Under the
+protection of the dark, and in the wide loneliness of the waters, he was
+as lost to human sight as a bird in the upper air. The steamer--zigzagging
+down the lake, touching at little ports now on the west bank and now on
+the east--had shot out unexpectedly from behind a point, her double row of
+lights casting a halo in which his canoe must have been visible on the
+waves; and yet she had passed by and taken no note of him. For a second
+such good-fortune had seemed to his nervous imagination beyond the range
+of hope. He stopped paddling he almost stopped breathing, allowing the
+canoe to rock gently on the tide. The steamer puffed and pulsated, beating
+her way directly athwart his course. The throbbing of her engines seemed
+scarcely louder than that of his own heart. He could see people moving on
+the deck, who in their turn must have been able to see him. And yet the
+boat went on, ignoring him, in tacit acknowledgment of his right to the
+lake, of his right to the world.
+
+His sigh of relief became almost a laugh as he began again to paddle
+forward. The incident was like a first victory, an assurance of victories
+to come. The sense of insecurity with whith he had started out gave place,
+minute by minute, to the confidence in himself which was part of his
+normal state of mind. Other small happenings confirmed his self-reliance.
+Once a pleasure party in a rowboat passed so near him that he could hear
+the splash of their oars and the sound of their voices. There was
+something almost miraculous to him in being so close to the commonplace of
+human fellowship. He had the feeling of pleasant inward recognition that
+comes from hearing one's mother-tongue in a foreign land. He stopped
+paddling again, just to catch meaningless fragments of their talk, until
+they floated away into silence and darkness. He would have been sorry to
+have them pass out of ear-shot, were it not for his satisfaction in being
+able to go his way unheeded.
+
+On another occasion he found himself within speaking distance of one of
+the numerous small lakeside hotels. Lights flared from open doors and
+windows, while from the veranda, the garden, and the little pier came
+peals of laughter, or screams and shouts of young people at rough play.
+Now and then he could catch the tones of some youth's teasing, and the
+shrill, pretended irritation of a girl's retort. The noisy cheerfulness of
+it all reached his ears with the reminiscent tenderness of music heard in
+childhood. It represented the kind of life he himself had loved. Before
+the waking nightmare of his troubles began he had been of the unexacting
+type of American lad who counts it a "good time" to sit in summer evenings
+on "porches" or "stoops" or "piazzas," joking with "the boys," flirting
+with "the girls," and chattering on all subjects from the silly to the
+serious, from the local to the sublime. He was of the friendly,
+neighborly, noisy, demonstrative spirit characteristic of his age and
+class. He could have entered into this circle of strangers--strangers for
+the most part, in all probability, to one another--and in ten minutes'
+time been one of them. Their screams, their twang, their slang, their
+gossip, their jolly banter, and their gay ineptitude would have been to
+him like a welcome home. But he was Norrie Ford, known by name and
+misfortune to every one of them. The boys and girls on the pier, the
+elderly women in the rocking-chairs, even the waitresses who, in
+high-heeled shoes and elaborate coiffures, ministered disdainfully to the
+guests in the bare-floored dining-room, had discussed his life, his trial,
+his sentence, his escape, and formed their opinions upon him. Were it
+possible for them to know now that he was lurking out there in the dark,
+watching their silhouettes and listening to their voices, there would be
+such a hue and cry as the lake had not heard since the Indians sighted
+Champlain on its banks.
+
+It was this reflection that first of all stirred the current of his deep,
+slow resentment. During the fifteen months since his arrest he had been
+either too busy, or too anxious, or too sorely puzzled at finding himself
+in so odd a position, to have leisure for positive anger. At the worst of
+times he had never lost the belief that the world, or that portion of the
+world which concerned itself with him, would come to recognize the fact
+that it was making a mistake. He had taken his imprisonment and his trial
+more or less as exciting adventures. Even the words of his sentence lost
+most of their awfulness in his inner conviction that they were empty
+sounds. Of the confused happenings on the night of his escape his clearest
+memory was that he had been hungry, while he thought of the weeks spent in
+the cabin as a "picnic." Just as good spirits had seldom failed him, so
+patience had rarely deserted him. Such ups and downs of emotion as he had
+experienced resulted in the long run in an increase of optimism. In the
+back of his slow mind he kept the expectation, almost the intention, of
+giving his anger play--some time; but only when his rights should have
+been restored to him.
+
+But he felt it coming on him now, before he was prepared for it. It was
+taking him unawares, and without due cause, roused by the chance
+perception that he was cut off from rightful, natural companionship.
+Nothing as yet had brought home to him the meaning of his situation like
+the talk and laughter of these lads and girls, who suddenly became to him
+what Lazarus in Abraham's bosom was to Dives in his torment.
+
+A few dips of the paddle took him out of sight and sound of the hotel; but
+the dull, indignant passion remained in his heart, finding outward vent in
+the violence with which he sent the canoe bounding northward beneath the
+starlight. For the moment it was a blind, objectless passion, directed
+against nothing and no one in particular. He was not skilled in the
+analysis of feeling, or in tracing effect to cause. For an hour or two his
+wrath was the rage of the infuriated animal roaring out its pain,
+regardless of the hand that has inflicted it. Other rowing-parties came
+within hearing distance, but he paid them no attention; lake steamers hove
+in sight, but he had learned how to avoid them; little towns, dotted at
+intervals of a few miles apart, lit up the banks with the lights of homes,
+but their shining domesticity seemed to mock him. The birth of a new
+creature was a painful process; and yet, through all his confused
+sensations and obscure elemental suffering, he kept the conviction that a
+new creature was somehow claiming its right to live.
+
+Peace of mind came to him gradually, as the little towns put out their
+lights, and the lake steamers laid up in tiny ports, and the
+rowing-parties went home to bed. In the smooth, dark level of the lake and
+in the stars there was a soothing quality to which he responded before he
+was aware of doing so. The spacious solitude of the summer night brought
+with it a large calmness of outlook, in which his spirit took a measure of
+comfort. There was a certain bodily pleasure, too, in the regular monotony
+of paddling, while his mental faculties were kept alert by the necessity
+of finding points by which to steer, and fixing his attention upon them.
+So, by degrees, his limited reasoning powers found themselves at work,
+fumbling, with the helplessness of a man whose strong points are physical
+activity and concentration of purpose, for some light on the wild course
+on which he was embarked.
+
+Perhaps his first reflection that had the nature of a conclusion or a
+deduction was on the subject of "old Wayne." Up to the present he had
+regarded him with special ill will, owing to the fact that Wayne, while
+inclining to a belief of his innocence, had nevertheless lent himself to
+the full working of the law. It came to Ford now in the light of a
+discovery that, after all, it was not Wayne's fault. Wayne was in the grip
+of forces that deprived him to a large extent of the power of voluntary
+action. He could scarcely be blamed if he fulfilled the duties he was
+appointed to perform The real responsibility was elsewhere. With whom did
+it lie? For a primitive mind like Ford's the question was not an easy one
+to answer.
+
+For a time he was inclined to call to account the lawyers who had pleaded
+for the State. Had it not been for their arguments he would have been
+acquitted. With an ingenuity he had never supposed to exist they had
+analyzed his career--especially the two years of it spent with Uncle
+Chris--and showed how it led up to the crime as to an inevitable
+consequence. They seemed familiar with everything he had ever done, while
+they were able to prove beyond cavil that certain of his acts were
+inspired by sinister motives which he himself knew to have sprung from
+dissipation at the worst. It was astonishing how plausible their story
+was; and he admitted that if anybody else had been accused, he himself
+would probably have been convinced by it. Certainly, then, the lawyers
+must have been to blame--that is, unless they were only carrying out what
+others had hired them to do.
+
+That qualifying phrase started a new train of thought. Mechanically, dip
+by dip, swaying gently with each stroke as to a kind of rhythm, he drove
+the canoe onward, while he pondered it. It was easy to meditate out here,
+on the wide, empty lake, for no sound broke the midnight stillness but the
+soft swish of the paddle and the skimming of the broad keel along the
+water. It was not by any orderly system of analysis, or synthesis, or
+syllogism, that Ford, as the hours went by, came at last to his final
+conclusion; and yet he reached it with conviction. By a process of
+elimination he absolved judge, jury, legal profession, and local public
+from the greater condemnation. Each had contributed to the error that made
+him an outlaw, but no one contributor was the whole of the great force
+responsible. That force, which had set its component parts to work, and
+plied them till the worst they could do was done, was the body which they
+called Organized Society. To Ford, Organized Society was a new expression.
+He could not remember ever to have heard it till it was used in court.
+There it had been on everybody's lips. Far more than old Chris Ford
+himself it was made to figure as the injured party. Though there was
+little sympathy for the victim in his own person, Organized Society seemed
+to have received in his death a blow that called for the utmost avenging.
+Organized Society was plaintiff in the case, as well as police, jury,
+judge, and public. The single human creature who could not apparently gain
+footing within its fold was Norrie Ford himself. Organized Society had
+cast him out.
+
+He had been told that before, and yet the actual fact had never come home
+to him till now. In prison, in court, in the cabin in the woods, there had
+always been some human hand within reach of his own, some human tie, even
+though it was a chain. However ignoble, there had been a place for him.
+But out here on the great vacant lake there was an isolation that gave
+reality to his expulsion. The last man left on earth would not feel more
+utterly alone.
+
+For the first time since the night of his escape there came back to him
+that vague feeling of deserting something he might have defended, that
+almost physical sensation of regret at not having stood his ground and
+fought till he fell. He began to understand now what it meant. Dip,
+splash, dip, splash, his paddle stirred the dimly shining water, breaking
+into tiny whirlpools the tremulous reflection of the stars. Not for an
+instant did he relax his stroke, though the regret took more definitive
+shape behind him. Convicted and sentenced, he was still part of the life
+of men, just as a man whom others are trying to hurl from a tower is _on_
+the tower till he has fallen. He himself had not fallen; he had jumped
+off, while there was still a chance of keeping his foothold.
+
+It required an hour or two of outward rhythmic movement and confused
+inward feeling to get him ready for his next mental step. He had jumped
+off the tower; true; but he was alive and well, with no bones broken. What
+should he do now? Should he try to tear the tower down? The attempt would
+not be so very ludicrous, seeing he should only have to join
+those--socialists, anarchists, faddists--already at the work. But he
+admired the tower, and preferred to see is stand. If he did anything at
+all, it would be to try to creep back into it.
+
+The reflection gave still another turn to his thoughts. He was passing
+Burlington by this time--the electric lamps throwing broad bands of light
+along the deserted, up-hill streets, between the sleeping houses. It was
+the first city he had seen since leaving New York to begin his useless
+career in the mountains. The sight moved him with an odd curiosity, not
+free from a homesick longing for normal, simple ways of life. He kept the
+canoe at a standstill, looking hungrily up the empty thoroughfares, as a
+poor ghost may gaze at familiar scenes while those it has loved are
+dreaming. By-and-by the city seemed to stir in its sleep. Along the
+waterside he could hear the clatter of some belated or too early wayfarer;
+a weird, intermittent creaking told him that the milk-cart of provincial
+towns was on its beat; from a distant freight-train came the long,
+melancholy wail that locomotives give at night; and then drowsily, but
+with the promptness of one conscientious in his duty, a cock crew. Ford
+knew that somewhere, unseen as yet by him, the dawn was coming, and--again
+like a wandering ghost--sped on.
+
+But he had been looking on the tower which the children of men had
+builded, and had recognized his desire to clamber up into it again. He was
+not without the perception that a more fiery temperament than his
+own--perhaps a nobler one--would have cursed the race that had done him
+wrong, and sought to injure it or shun it. Misty recollections of
+proud-hearted men who had taken this stand came back to him.
+
+"I suppose I ought to do the same," he muttered to himself humbly; "but
+what would be the use when I couldn't keep it up?"
+
+Understanding himself thus well, his purpose became clearer. Like the ant
+or the beaver that has seen its fabric destroyed, he must set patiently to
+work to reconstruct it. He suspected a poor-spirited element in this sort
+of courage; but his instinct forced him within his limitations. By dint of
+keeping there and toiling there he felt sure of his ability to get back to
+the top of the tower in such a way that no one would think he lacked the
+right to be on it.
+
+But he himself would know it. He shrank from that fact with the repugnance
+of an honest nature for what is not straightforward; but the matter was
+past helping. He should be obliged to play the impostor everywhere and
+with every one. He would mingle with men, shake their hands, share their
+friendships, eat their bread, and accept their favors--and deceive them
+under their very noses. Life would become one long trick, one daily feat
+of skill. Any possible success he could win would lack stability, would
+lack reality, because there would be neither truth nor fact behind it.
+
+From the argument that he was innocent he got little comfort. He had
+forfeited his right to make use of that fact any longer. Had he stayed
+where he was he could have shouted it out till they gagged him in the
+death-chair. Now he must be dumb on the subject forevermore. In his
+disappearance there was an acceptation of guilt which he must remain
+powerless to explain away.
+
+Many minutes of dull pain passed in dwelling on that point. He could work
+neither back from it nor forward. His mind could only dwell on it with an
+aching admission of its justice, while he searched the sky for the dawn.
+
+In spite of the crowing of the cock he saw no sign of it--unless it was
+that the mountains on the New York shore detached themselves more
+distinctly from the sky of which they had seemed to form a part. On the
+Vermont side there was nothing but a heaped-up darkness, night piled on
+night, till the eye reached the upper heavens and the stars.
+
+He paddled on, steadily, rhythmically, having no sense of hunger or
+fatigue, while he groped for the clew that was to guide him when he
+stepped on land. He felt the need of a moral programme, of some pillar of
+cloud and fire that would show him a way he should be justified in taking.
+He expressed it to himself by a kind of aspiration which he kept
+repeating, sometimes half aloud:
+
+"O Lord, O Holy One! I want to be a man!"
+
+Suddenly he struck the water with so violent a dash that the canoe swerved
+and headed landward.
+
+"By God!" he muttered, under his breath, "I've got it.... It isn't my
+fault.... It's theirs.... They've put me in this fix.... They've brought
+this dodging, and shifting, and squirming upon me.... The subterfuge isn't
+mine; it's theirs.... They've taken the responsibility from me.... When
+they strip me of rights they strip me of duties.... They've forced me
+where right and wrong don't exist for me any more.... They've pitched me
+out of their Organized Society, and I've had to go.... Now I'm free ...
+and I shall profit by my freedom."
+
+In the excitement of these discoveries he smote the waters again. He
+remembered having said something of the sort on the night of his interview
+with Wayne; but he had not till now grasped its significance. It was the
+emancipation of his conscience. Whatever difficulties he might encounter
+from outside, he should be hampered by no scruples from within. He had
+been relieved of them; they had been taken from him. Since none had a duty
+toward him, he had no duty toward any. If it suited his purposes to juggle
+with men, the blame must rest upon themselves. He could but do his best
+with the maimed existence they had left to him. Self-respect would entail
+observance of the common laws of truth and honesty, but beyond this he
+need never allow consideration for another to come before consideration
+for himself. He was absolved from the necessity in advance. In the region
+in which he should pass his inner life there would be no occupant but
+himself. From the world where men and women had ties of love and pity and
+mutual regard they had cast him out, forcing him into a spiritual limbo
+where none of these things obtained. It was only lawful that he should
+make use of such advantages as his lot allowed him.
+
+There was exaltation in the way in which he grasped this creed as his rule
+of life; and looking up suddenly, he saw the dawn. It had taken him
+unawares, stealing like a gray mist of light over the tops of the Vermont
+hills, lifting their ridges faintly out of night, like the ghosts of so
+many Titans. Among the Adirondacks one high peak caught the first glimmer
+of advancing day, while all the lower range remained a gigantic silhouette
+beneath the perceptibly paling stars. Over Canada the veil was still down,
+but he fancied he could detect a thinner texture to the darkness.
+
+Then, as he passed a wooded headland, came a sleepy twitter, from some
+little pink and yellow bill barely withdrawn from its enfolding wing--to
+be followed by another, and another, and another, till both shores were
+aquiver with that plaintive chirrup, half threnody for the flying
+darkness, half welcome to the sun, like the praise of a choir of children
+roused to sing midnight matins, but still dreaming. Ford's dip was softer
+now, as though he feared to disturb that vibrant drowsiness; but when,
+later, capes and coves began to define themselves through the gray
+gloaming, and, later still, a shimmer of saffron appeared above the
+eastern summits, he knew it was time to think of a refuge from the
+daylight.
+
+The saffron became fire; the fire lit up a heaven of chrysoprase and rose.
+Where the lake had been as a metal mirror for the stars, it rippled and
+dimpled and gleamed with the tints of mother-of-pearl. He knew the sun
+must be on the farther slope of the Green Mountains, because the face they
+turned toward him was dense in shadow, like the unilluminated portion of
+the moon. On the western shore the Adirondacks were rising out of the bath
+of night as dewy fresh as if they had been just created.
+
+But the sun was actually in the sky when he perceived that he no longer
+had the lake to himself. From a village nestling in some hidden cove a
+rowboat pulled out into the open--a fisherman after the morning's catch.
+It was easy enough for Ford to keep at a prudent distance; but the
+companionship caused him an uneasiness that was not dispelled before the
+first morning steamer came pounding from the northward. He fixed his
+attention then on a tiny islet some two or three miles ahead. There were
+trees on it, and probably ferns and grass. Reaching it, he found himself
+in a portion of the lake forest-banked and little frequented. Pastures and
+fields of ripening grain on the most distant slopes of Vermont gave the
+nearest token of life. All about him there was solitude and
+stillness--with the glorious, bracing beauty of the newly risen day.
+
+Landing with stiffened limbs, he drew up the canoe on a bit of sandy
+beach, over which sturdy old bushes, elder and birch, battered by the
+north winds, leaned in friendly, concealing protection. He himself would
+be able to lie down here, among the tall ferns and the stunted
+blueberry-scrub, as secluded and secure as ever he had been in prison.
+
+Being hungry and thirsty, he ate and drank, consulting his map the while
+and fixing approximately his whereabouts. He looked at his little watch
+and wound it up, and fingered the pages of the railway guide he found
+beside it.
+
+The acts brought up the image of the girl who had furnished him with these
+useful accessories to flight. For lack of another name he called her the
+Wild Olive--remembering her yearning, not wholly unlike his own, to be
+grafted back into the good olive-tree of Organized Society. With some
+shame he perceived that he had scarcely thought of her through the night.
+It was astounding to recollect that not twelve hours ago she had kissed
+him and sent him on his journey. To him the gulf between then and now was
+so wide and blank that it might have been twelve weeks, or twelve months,
+or twelve years. It had been the night of the birth of a new creature, of
+the transmigration of a soul; it had no measurement in time, and threw all
+that preceded it into the mists of prenatal ages.
+
+These thoughts passed through his mind as he made a pillow for himself
+with his white flannel jacket, and twisted the ferns above it into a
+shelter from the flies. Having done this, he stood still and pondered.
+
+"Have I really become a new creature?" he asked himself.
+
+There was much in the outward conditions to encourage the fancy, while his
+inner consciousness found it easy to be credulous. Nothing was left of
+Norrie Ford but the mere flesh and bones--the least stable part of
+personality. Norrie Ford was gone--not dead, but gone--blasted,
+annihilated stamped out of existence, by the act of Organized Society. In
+its place the night of transition had called up some one else.
+
+"But who? ... Who am I? ... What am I?"
+
+Above all, a name seemed required to give him entity. It was a repetition
+of his feeling about the Wild Olive--the girl in the cabin in the woods.
+Suddenly he remembered that, if he had found a name for her, she had also
+found one for him--and that it was written on the steamer ticket in his
+pocket. He drew it out, and read:
+
+"Herbert Strange."
+
+He repeated it at first in dull surprise, and then with disapproval. It
+was not the kind of name he would have chosen. It was odd, noticeable--a
+name people would remember He would have preferred something commonplace
+such as might be found for a column or two in any city directory. She had
+probably got it from a novel--or made it up. Girls did such things. It was
+a pity, but there was no help for it now. As Herbert Strange he must go on
+board the steamer, and so he should be called until--
+
+But he was too tired to fix a date for the resumption of his own name or
+the taking of another. Flinging himself on his couch of moss and trailing
+ground-spruce, with the ferns closing over him, and the pines over them,
+he was soon asleep.
+
+
+
+
+
+Part II
+
+Strange
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+
+Dressed in overalls that had once been white, he was superintending the
+stacking of wool in a long, brick-walled, iron-roofed shed in Buenos Aires
+when the thought came to him how easy it had all been. He paused for a
+minute in his work of inspection--standing by an open window, where a
+whiff of fresh air from off the mud-brown Rio de la Plata relieved the
+heavy, greasy smell of the piles of unwashed wool--just to review again
+the past eighteen months. Below him stretched the noisy docks, with their
+row of electric cranes, as regular as a line of street lamps, loading or
+unloading a mile of steamers lying broadside on, and flying all flags but
+the Stars and Stripes. Wines, silk, machinery, textiles were coming out;
+wheat, cattle, hides, and beef were pouring in. In the confusion of
+tongues that reached him he could, on occasions, catch the tones of
+Spaniard, Frenchman, Swede, and Italian, together with all the varieties
+of English speech from Highland Scotch to Cockney; but none of the
+intonations of his native land. The comparative rarity of anything
+American in his city of refuge, while it added to his sense of exile,
+heightened his feeling of security. It was still another of the happy
+circumstances that had helped him.
+
+The strain under which he had lived during this year and a half had
+undoubtedly been great; but he could see now that it had been inward
+strain--the mental strain of unceasing apprehension, the spiritual strain
+of the new creature in casting off the old husk, and adapting itself not
+merely to new surroundings, but to a new life. This had been severe. He
+was not a rover, and still less an adventurer, in any of the senses
+attached to that word. His instincts were for the settled, the
+well-ordered, and the practical. He would have been content with any
+humdrum existence that permitted his peaceable, commercially gifted soul
+to develop in its natural environment. The process, therefore, by which
+Norrie Ford became Herbert Strange, even in his own thoughts, had been one
+of inner travail, though the outward conditions could not have been more
+favorable. Now that he had reached a point where his more obvious
+anxieties were passing away, and the hope of safety was becoming a
+reality, he could look back and see how relatively easy everything had
+been.
+
+He had leisure for reflection because it was the hour for the men's midday
+meal and siesta. He could see them grouped together--some thirty-odd--at
+the far end of the shed--sturdy little Italians, black-eyed, smiling,
+thrifty, dirty, and contented to a degree that made them incomprehensible
+to the ambitious, upward-toiling American set over them. They sat, or
+lounged, on piles of wood, or on the floor, some chattering, most of them
+asleep. He had begun like them. He had stacked wool under orders till he
+had made himself capable of being in command. He had been beneath the
+ladder; and though his foot was only on the lowest rung of it even now, he
+was satisfied to have made this first step upward.
+
+He could not be said to have taken it to his own surprise, since he had
+prepared himself for it, and for other such steps to follow it, knowing
+that they must become feasible in time. He had been given to understand
+that what the Argentine, in common with some other countries, needed most
+was neither men nor capital, but intelligence. Men were pouring in from
+every corner of the globe; capital was keen in looking for its
+opportunity; but for intelligence the demand was always greater than the
+supply.
+
+The first intimation of such a need had come to him on the _Empress of
+Erin_, in mid-Atlantic, by a chance opportunity of the voyage. It was on
+one of the first days of liberty when he had ventured to mix freely with
+his fellow-passengers. Up to the present he had followed the rule of
+conduct adopted at the little Canadian station of Saint Jean du Clou Noir.
+He went into public when necessary, but no oftener. He did then what other
+people did, in the way to attract the least attention. The season favored
+him, for amid the throngs of early autumn travellers, moving from country
+back to town, or from seaside resorts to the mountains he passed
+unnoticed. At Quebec he was one of the crowd of tourists come to see the
+picturesque old town. At Rimouski he was lost among the trainful of people
+from the Canadian maritime provinces taking the Atlantic steamer at a
+convenient port. He lived through each minute in expectation of the law's
+tap on his shoulder; but he acquired the habit of nonchalance. On
+shipboard it was a relief to be able to shut himself up in his cabin--his
+suite!--feigning sickness, but really allowing his taut nerves to relax,
+as he watched first the outlines of the Laurentides, and then the shores
+of Anticosti, and lastly the iron-black coast of Labrador, follow each
+other below the horizon. Two or three appearances at table gave him
+confidence that he had nothing to fear. By degrees he allowed himself to
+walk up and down the deck, where it was a queer sensation to feel that the
+long row of eyes must of necessity be fixed upon him. The mere fact that
+he was wearing another man's clothes--clothes he had found in the cabin
+trunk that had come on board for him--produced a shyness scarcely
+mitigated by the knowledge that he was far from looking grotesque.
+
+Little by little he plucked up courage to enter the smoking-room where the
+tacit, matter-of-course welcome of his own sex seemed to him like
+extraordinary affability. An occasional word from a neighbor, or an
+invitation to "take a hand at poker," or to "have a cocktail," was like an
+assurance to a man who fancies himself dead that he really is alive. He
+joined in no conversations and met no advances, but from the possibilities
+of doing so he would go back to his cabin smiling.
+
+The nearest approach to pleasure he allowed himself was to sit in a corner
+and listen to the talk of his fellow-men. It was sometimes amusing, but
+oftener stupid; it turned largely on food, with irrelevant interludes on
+business. It never went beyond the range of topics possible to the
+American or Canadian merchants, professional men, politicians, and
+saloon-keepers, who form the rank and file of smoking-room society on any
+Atlantic liner; but the Delphic worshipper never listened to Apollo's
+oracle with a more rapt devotion than Ford to this intercommunion of
+souls.
+
+It was in this way that he chanced one day to hear a man speaking of the
+Argentine. The remarks were casual, choppy, and without importance, but
+the speaker evidently knew the ground. Ford had already noticed him,
+because they occupied adjoining steamer-chairs--a tall, sallow Englishman
+of the ineffectual type, with sagging shoulders, a drooping mustache, and
+furtive eyes. Ford had scarcely thought of the Argentine since the girl in
+the cabin had mentioned it--- now ten or twelve days ago; but the
+necessity of having an objective point, and one sufficiently distant
+turned his mind again in that direction.
+
+"Did I hear you speaking yesterday of Buenos Aires?" he ventured to ask,
+on the next occasion when he found himself seated beside his neighbor on
+deck.
+
+The Englishman drew his brier-root pipe from his mouth, glanced sidewise
+from the magazine he was reading, and jerked his head in assent.
+
+"What kind of place did it seem to you?"
+
+"Jolly rotten."
+
+Pondering this reply, Ford might have lost courage to speak again had he
+not caught the eye of the Englishman's wife as she leaned forward and
+peeped at him across her husband's brier-root. There was something in her
+starry glance--an invitation, or an incitement--that impelled him to
+continue.
+
+"I've been told it's the land of new opportunities."
+
+The Englishman grunted without looking up. "I didn't see many."
+
+"May I ask if you saw any?"
+
+"None fit for a white man."
+
+"My husband means none fit for a--gentleman. I liked the place."
+
+From the woman's steely smile and bitter-sweet tones Ford got hints of
+masculine inefficiency and feminine contempt which he had no wish to
+follow up. He knew from fragments of talk overheard in the smoking-room
+that they had tried Mexico, California, and Saskatchewan in addition to
+South America. From the impatience with which she shook the foot just
+visible beneath the steamer-rug, while all the rest of her bearing feigned
+repose, he guessed her humiliation at returning empty to the land she had
+left with an Anglo-Saxon's pioneering hope, beside a husband who could do
+nothing but curse luck. To get over the awkward minute he spoke hurriedly.
+
+"I've heard of a very good house out there--Stephens and Jarrott. Do you
+happen to know anything about them?"
+
+"Wool," the Englishman grunted again. "Wool and wheat. Beastly brutes."
+
+"They were horribly impertinent to my husband," the woman spoke up, with a
+kind of feverish eagerness to have her say. "They actually asked him if
+there was anything he could do. Fancy!"
+
+"Oh, I know people of that sort put a lot of superfluous questions to
+you," Ford said. But the lady hurried on.
+
+"As to questions, there are probably fewer asked you in Argentine than
+anywhere else in the world. It's one of the standing jokes of the place,
+both in Buenos Aires and out in the Camp. Of course, the old Spanish
+families are all right; but when it comes to foreigners a social catechism
+wouldn't do. That's one of the reasons the place didn't agree with us. We
+wanted people to know who we'd been before we got there; but that branch
+of knowledge isn't cultivated."
+
+"More beastly Johnnies in the Argentine passin' under names not their
+own," said the man, moved to speak, at last, "than in all the rest of the
+world put together. Heard a story at the Jockey Club--lot of beastly
+native bounders in the Jockey Club--heard a story at the Jockey Club of a
+little Irish Johnny who'd been cheatin' at cards. Three other asses
+kicked him out. Beggar turned at the door and got in his lick of revenge.
+'Say boys, d'yez know why they call me Mickey Flanagan out here? Because
+it's me na-ame.' Beggar 'd got 'em all there."
+
+Ford nerved himself to laugh, but made an excuse for rising.
+
+"Oh, there's lots of cleverness among them," the lady observed, before he
+had time to get away. "In fact, it's one of the troubles with the
+country--for people like us. There's too much competition in brains. My
+husband hit the right nail on the head when he said there was no chance
+for any beastly Johnny out there, unless he could use his bloomin'
+mind--and for us that was out of the question."
+
+Ford never spoke to them again, but he meditated on their words, finding
+himself at the end of twenty-four hours in possession of a new light.
+"I've got to use my bloomin' mind." The words seemed to offer him the clew
+to life. It was the answer to the question, "What should I do _there_?"
+which positively asked itself, whenever he thought of seeking a refuge in
+this country or in that. It came as a discovery that within himself was
+the power that would enable him to make the best of any country, and the
+country to make the best of him.
+
+He could hardly have explained how his decision to try Argentina had
+become fixed. Until he saw whether or not he should get successfully
+ashore at Liverpool there was a paralysis of all mental effort; but once
+on the train for London his plans appeared before him already formed. The
+country where few questions were asked and the past had no importance was
+clearly the place for him. Within a fortnight he was a second-class
+passenger on board the Royal Mail Steam Packet _Parana_, bound for Buenos
+Aires--thus fulfilling, almost unexpectedly to himself, the suggestion
+made by the girl in the Adirondack cabin, whose star, as he began to
+believe, must rule his fate.
+
+He thought of her now and then, but always with the same curious sense of
+remoteness--or unreality, as of a figure seen in a dream. Were it not for
+the substantial tokens of her actuality he possessed she would have seemed
+to him like the heroine of a play. He would have reproached himself for
+disloyalty if the intensity of each minute as he had to meet it had not
+been an excuse for him. The time would come when the pressure of the
+instant would be less great, and he should be able to get back the emotion
+with which he left her. Perhaps if she had been "his type of girl," her
+image would not have faded so quickly.
+
+There was but one thing for which he was not grateful to her. She had
+fixed the name of Herbert Strange upon him in such a way that he was
+unable to shake it off. His own first name was the unobjectionable
+monosyllable John--though he had always been known by his less familiar
+middle name, Norrie--and as John Ford he could have faced the world with a
+certain amount of bluff. He meant to begin the attempt immediately on
+reaching London, but the difficulty of appearing in a hotel under one name
+while everything he brought with him bore another was patent to him at
+once. Similarly, he could not receive the correspondence incidental to his
+outfit and his passage under the name of Ford in a house where he was
+known as Strange. Having applied for his passage as Strange, he knew it
+would create comment if he asked to be put down in the books as Ford. Do
+what he would he was obliged to appear on the printed list of second-cabin
+passengers as Herbert Strange, and he had made at least one acquaintance
+who would expect to call him so after they reached land.
+
+This was a little, clean-shaven man, in the neighborhood of sixty, always
+dressed at sea as he probably dressed on shore. He wore nothing but black,
+with a white shirt and a ready-made black bow-tie. He might have been a
+butler, an elderly valet, or a member of some discreet religious order in
+street costume. Ford had heard a flippant young Frenchman speak of him as
+an "ancien curé, qui a fait quelque bêtise"; and indeed there was about
+him that stamp of the ecclesiastic which is sometimes ineffaceable.
+
+"I call myself Durand," he said to Ford, using the conveniently ambiguous
+French idiom, "je m'appelle Durand."
+
+"Et je m'appelle Strange, I call myself Strange," Ford had replied,
+claiming the name for the first time without hesitation, but feeling the
+irrevocable nature of the words as soon as he had uttered them.
+
+Out of the crowd of second-rate Europeans of all races who made up the
+second cabin, the man who called himself Strange had selected the man who
+called himself Durand by some obscure instinct of affinity. "He looks like
+an old chap who could give one information," was Strange's own way of
+putting it, not caring to confess that he was feeling after a bit of
+sympathy. But the give and take of information became the basis of their
+friendship, and imparted the first real stimulus to the young man's
+awkward efforts to use his mind.
+
+Monsieur Durand had been thirty years in the Argentine, observing the
+place and the people, native and foreign, with the impartial shrewdness
+only possible to one who sought little for himself. It was a pleasure to
+share the fruits of his experience with one so eager to learn, for young
+men were not in the habit of showing him deference. He could tell Mr.
+Strange many things that would be to his advantage--what to do--what to
+avoid--what sort of place to live in--what he ought to pay--and what sort
+of company to keep.
+
+Yes, he knew the firm of Stephens and Jarrott--an excellent house. There
+was no Mr. Stephens now, only a Mr. Jarrott. Mr. Stephens had belonged to
+the great days of American enterprise in the southern hemisphere, to the
+time of Wheelwright, and Halsey, and Hale. The Civil War had put an end to
+that. Mr. Jarrott had come later--a good man, not generally understood. He
+had suffered a great loss a few years ago in the death of his
+brother-in-law and partner, Mr. Colfax. Mrs. Colfax, a pretty little
+woman, who hadn't old age in her blood either--one could see that--had
+gone back to the United States with her child--but a child!--blond as an
+angel--altogether darling--_tout à fait mignonne_. Monsieur Durand thought
+he remembered hearing that Mrs. Colfax had married again, but he couldn't
+say for certain. What would you? One heard so many things. He knew less of
+the family since the last boy died--the boy to whom he gave lessons in
+Spanish and French. Death hadn't spared the household--taking the three
+sons one after another and leaving father and mother alone. It was a
+thousand pities Mrs. Colfax had taken the little girl away. They loved her
+as if she had been their own--especially after the boys died. An excellent
+house! Mr. Strange couldn't do better than seek an entry there--it is I
+who tell you so--_c'est moi qui vous le dis_.
+
+All this was said in very good English, with occasional lapses into
+French, in a soft, benevolent voice, with slow benedictory movements of
+the hands, more and more suggestive of an ecclesiastic _en civile_--or
+under a cloud. Strange stole an occasional glance into the delicate,
+clear-cut face, where the thin lips were compressed into permanent lines
+of pain, and the sunken brown eyes looked out from under scholarly brows
+with the kind of hopeful anguish a penitent soul might feel in the midst
+of purifying flames. He remembered again that the flippant young Frenchman
+had said, "Un ancien curé, qui a fait quelque bêtise." Was it possible
+that some tragic sin lay under this gentle life? And was the
+four-funnelled, twin-screwed _Parana_ but a ghostly ship bearing a cargo
+of haunted souls into their earthly purgatory?
+
+"But listen, monsieur," the old man began next day. But listen! There
+would be difficulties. Stephens and Jarrott employed only picked men, men
+with some experience--except for the mere manual labor such as the
+Italians could perform. Wouldn't it be well for Mr. Strange to qualify
+himself a little before risking a refusal? Ah, but how? Monsieur Durand
+would explain. There was first the question of Spanish. No one could get
+along in the Argentine without a working knowledge of that tongue.
+Monsieur Durand himself gave lessons in it--and in French--but in the
+English and American colonies of Buenos Aires exclusively. There were
+reasons why he did not care to teach among Catholics, though he himself
+was a fervent one, and he hoped--repentant. He pronounced the last word
+with some emphasis, as though to call Strange's attention to it. If his
+young friend would give him the pleasure of taking a few lessons, they
+could begin even now. It would while away the time on the voyage. He had
+his own method of teaching, a method based on the Berlitz system, but not
+borrowed from it, and, he ventured to say, possessing its own good
+points. For example: _el tabaco--la pipa--los cigarillos. Que es esto?
+Esto es la pipa_. Very simple. In a few weeks' time the pupil is carrying
+on conversations.
+
+It would be an incalculable advantage to Mr. Strange if he could enter on
+his Argentine life with some command of the vernacular. It might even be
+well to defer his search for permanent employment until he could have that
+accomplishment to his credit. If he possessed a little money--even a very
+little--Oh, he did? Then so much the better. He need not live on it
+entirely, but it would be something to fall back on while getting the
+rudiments of his education. In the mean time he could learn a little about
+wool if he picked up jobs--Oh, very humble ones!--they were always to be
+had by the young and able-bodied--at the Mercado Central, one of the great
+wool-markets of the world. He could earn a few pesetas, acquire practical
+experience, and fit himself out in Spanish, all at the same time.
+
+And he could live with relative economy. Monsieur Durand could explain
+that too. In fact, he might get board and lodging in the same house as
+himself, with Mrs. Wilson who conducted a modest home for "gentlemen
+only." Mrs. Wilson was a Protestant--what they called a Methodist, he
+believed--but her house was clean, with a few flowers in the patio, very
+different from the frightful conventillos in which the poor were obliged
+to herd. If Mr. Strange thought it odd that he, Monsieur Durand, should be
+living beneath a Protestant roof--well, there were reasons which were
+difficult to explain.
+
+Later on, perhaps, Mr. Strange might take a season on some great sheep
+estancia out in the Camp, where there were thousands of herds that were
+thousands strong. Monsieur Durand could help him in that too. He could
+introduce him to wealthy proprietors whose sons he had taught. It would be
+a hard life, but it need not be for long. He would live in a mud hut,
+dirty, isolated, with no companionship but that of the Italian laborers
+and their womenkind. But the outdoor existence would do him good; the air
+over the pampas was like wine; and the food would not be as bad as he
+might expect. There would be an abundance of excellent meat, chiefly
+mutton, it was true, which when cooked _à_ la guacho--_carne concuero_,
+they called it in the Camp--roasted in the skin so as to keep all the
+juices in the meat--! A gesture of the hands, accompanied by a succulent
+inspiration between the teeth, gave Strange to understand that there was
+one mitigation at least to life on an Argentine estancia.
+
+To come into actual contact with the sheep, to know Oxfords, Cheviots,
+Leicesters, and Black-faced Downs, to assist at the feedings and washings
+and doctorings and shearings, to follow the crossings and recrossings and
+crossings again, that bred new varieties as if they were roses, to trace
+the processes by which the Argentine pampas supply novel resources to the
+European manufacturer, and the European manufacturer turns out the smart
+young man of London or New York, with his air of wearing "the very
+latest"--all this would not only give Strange a pleasing sense of being at
+the root of things, but form a sort of apprenticeship to his trade.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The men had not yet finished their hour of siesta, but Strange himself was
+at work. Ten minutes were sufficient for his own snack, and he never
+needed rest. Moreover, he was still too new to his position to do other
+than glory in the fact that he was a free being, doing a man's work, and
+earning a man's wage. Out in the Camp he had been too desolate to feel
+that, but here in Buenos Aires, at the very moment when the great city was
+waking to the knowledge of her queenship in the southern world--when the
+commercial hordes of the north were sweeping down in thousands of ships
+across the equator to outdo each other in her markets, it was an inspiring
+thing merely to be alive and busy. He was as proud of Stephens and
+Jarrott's long brick shed, where the sun beat pitilessly on the corrugated
+iron roof, and the smell of wool nearly sickened him, as if it had been a
+Rothschild's counting-house. His position there was just above the lowest;
+but his enthusiasm was independent of trivial things like that. How could
+he lounge about, taking siestas, when work was such a pleasure in itself?
+The shed of which he had the oversight was a model of its kind, not so
+much because his ambition designed to make it so, as because his ardor
+could make it nothing else.
+
+The roar of dock traffic through the open windows drowned everything but
+the loudest sounds, so that busily working, he heard nothing, and paid no
+attention, when some one stopped behind him. He had turned accidentally,
+humming to himself in the sheer joy of his task, when the presence of the
+stranger caused him to blush furiously beneath his tan. He drew himself
+up, like a soldier to attention. He had never seen the head of the firm
+that employed him, but he had heard a young Englishman describe him as
+"looking like a wooden man just coming into life," so that he was enabled
+to recognize him now. He did look something like a wooden man, in that the
+long, lean face, of the tone of parchment, was marked by the few, deep,
+almost perpendicular folds that give all the expression there is to a
+Swiss or German medieval statue of a saint or warrior in painted oak. One
+could see it was a face that rarely smiled, though there was plenty of
+life in the deep-set, gray-blue eyes, together with a force of cautious,
+reserved, and possibly timid, sympathy. Of the middle height and slender,
+with hair just turning from iron-gray to gray, immaculate in white duck,
+and wearing a dignified Panama, he stood looking at Strange--who, tall and
+stalwart in his greasy overalls, held his head high in conscious pride in
+his position in the shed--as Capital might look at Labor. It seemed a long
+time before Mr Jarrott spoke--the natural harshness of his voice softened
+by his quiet manner.
+
+"You're in charge of this gang?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+There was an embarrassed pause. As though not knowing what to say next,
+Mr. Jarrott's gaze travelled down the length of the shed to where the
+Italians, rubbing their sleepy eyes, were preparing for work again.
+
+"You're an American, I believe?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"How old are you?"
+
+"Not quite twenty-six."
+
+"What's your name?"
+
+"Herbert Strange!"
+
+"Ah? One of the Stranges of Virginia?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+There was another long pause, during which the older man's eyes wandered
+once more over the shed and the piles of wool, coming back again to
+Strange.
+
+"You should pick up a little Spanish."
+
+"I've been studying it. Hablo Español, pero no muy bien."
+
+Mr. Jarrott looked at him for a minute in surprise.
+
+"So much the better--tanto mejor," he said, after a brief pause, and
+passed on.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+
+He was again thinking how easy it had been, as he stood, more than three
+years later, on the bluffs of Rosario, watching the sacks of wheat glide
+down the long chute--full seventy feet--into the hold of the _Walmer
+Castle_. The sturdy little Italians who carried the bags from the
+warehouse in long single file might have been those he had superintended
+in the wool-shed in Buenos Aires in the early stages of his rise. But he
+was not superintending these. He superintended the superintendents of
+those who superintended them. Tired with his long day in the office, he
+had come out toward the end of the afternoon not only to get a breath of
+the fresh air off the Parana, but to muse, as he often did, over the odd
+spectacle of the neglected, half-forgotten Spanish settlement, that had
+slumbered for two hundred years, waking to the sense of its destiny as a
+factor of importance in the modern world. Wheat had created Chicago and
+Winnipeg Adam-like from the ground; but it was rejuvenating Rosario de
+Santa Fé Faust-like, with its golden elixir. It interested the man who
+called himself Herbert Strange--resident manager of Stephens and Jarrott's
+great wheat business in this outlet of the great wheat provinces--to watch
+the impulse by which Decrepitude rose and shook itself into Youth. As yet
+the process had scarcely advanced beyond the early stages of surprise.
+The dome of the seventeenth-century Renaissance cathedral accustomed for
+five or six generations to look down on low, one-storied Spanish dwellings
+surrounding patios almost Moorish in their privacy, seemed to lift itself
+in some astonishment over warehouses and flour-mills; while the mingling
+of its sweet old bells with the creaking of cranes and the shrieks of
+steam was like that chorus of the centuries in which there can be no
+blending of the tones.
+
+Strange felt himself so much a part of the rejuvenescence that the
+incongruity gave him no mental nor æsthetic shock. If in his present
+position he took a less naïve pride than in that of three years ago, he
+was conscious none the less of a deep satisfaction in having his part,
+however humble, in the exercise of the world's energies. It gave him a
+sense of oneness with the great primal forces--with the river flowing
+beneath him, two hundred miles to the Atlantic, with the wheat fields
+stretching behind him to the confines of Brazil and the foothills of the
+Andes--to be a moving element in this galvanizing of new life into the
+dormant town, in this finding of new riches in the waiting earth. There
+was, too, a kind of companionship in the steamers moored to the red buoys
+in the river, waiting their turns to come up to the insufficient quays and
+be loaded. They bore such names as _Devonshire_, _Ben Nevis_, and
+_Princess of Wales_. They would go back to the countries where the speech
+was English, and the ideals something like his own. They would go back,
+above all, to the north, to the north that he yearned for with a yearning
+to which time brought no mitigation, to the north which was coming to mean
+for him what heaven means to a soul outside the scope of redemption.
+
+It was only on occasions that this sentiment got possession of him
+strongly. He was generally able to keep it down. Hard work, assisted by
+his natural faculty for singleness of purpose and concentration of
+attention, kept him from lifting the eyes of his heart toward the
+unattainable. Moreover, he had developed an enthusiasm, genuine in its
+way, for the land of his adoption. The elemental hugeness of its
+characteristics--its rivers fifty to a hundred miles in width, its farms a
+hundred thousand acres in extent, its sheep herds and cattle herds
+thousands to the count--were of the kind to appeal to an ardent, strenuous
+nature. There was an exhilarating sense of discovery in coming thus early
+to one of the world's richest sources of supply at a minute when it was
+only beginning to be tapped. Out in the Camp there was an impression of
+fecundity, of earth and animal alike, that seem to relegate poverty and
+its kindred ills to a past that would never return; while down in the Port
+the growth of the city went on like the bursting of some magic, monstrous
+flower. It was impossible not to share in some degree the pride of the
+braggart Argentine.
+
+It was difficult, too, not to love a country in which the way had been
+made so smooth for him. While he knew that he brought to his work those
+qualities most highly prized by men of business, he was astonished
+nevertheless at the rapidity with which he climbed. Men of long experience
+in the country had been more than once passed over, while he got the
+promotion for which they had waited ten and fifteen years. He admired the
+way in which for the most part they concealed their chagrin, but now and
+then some one would give it utterance.
+
+"Hello, grafter!" a little man had said to him, on the day when his
+present appointment had become known among his colleagues.
+
+The speaker was coming down the stairs of the head office in the Avenida
+de Mayo as Strange was going up. His name was Green, and though he had
+been twenty years in Argentine, he haled from Boston. Short and stout,
+with gray hair, a gray complexion, a gray mustache, and wearing gray
+flannels, with a gray felt hat, he produced a general impression of
+neutrality. Strange would have gone on his way unheeding had not the
+snarling tone arrested him. He had ignored this sort of insult more than
+once; but he thought the time had come for ending it. He turned on an
+upper step, looking down on the ashy-faced little man, to whom he had once
+been subordinate and who was now subordinate to him.
+
+"Hello--what?" he asked, with an air of quiet curiosity.
+
+"I said, Hello, grafter," Green repeated, with bravado.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I guess you know that as well as I do."
+
+"I don't. What is it? Out with it. Fire away."
+
+His tranquil air of strength had its effect in overawing the little man,
+though the latter stood firm and began to explain.
+
+"A grafter is a fellow with an underground pull for getting hold of what
+belongs to some one else. At least that's what I understand by it--"
+
+"It's very much what I understand by it, too. But have I ever got hold of
+anything of yours?"
+
+"Yes, confound you! You've taken my job--the job I've waited for ever
+since 1885."
+
+"Did waiting for it make it yours? If so, you would have come by it more
+easily than I did. I worked for it."
+
+"Worked for it? Haven't I worked for it, too? Haven't I been in this
+office for going on seventeen years? Haven't I done what they've paid me
+for--?"
+
+"I dare say. But I've done twice what they've paid me for. That's the
+secret of my pull, and I don't mind giving it away. You mayn't like
+it--some fellows don't; but you'll admit it it's a pull you could have
+had, as well as I. Look here, Green," he continued, in the same quiet
+tone, "I'm sorry for you. If I were in your place, I dare say I should
+feel as you do. But if I _were_ in your place, I'll be hanged if I
+shouldn't make myself fit to get out of it. You're not fit--and that's the
+only reason why you aren't going as resident manager to Rosario. You're
+labelled with the year '1885,' as if you were a bottle of champagne--and
+you've forgotten that champagne is a wine that gets out of date. You're a
+good chap--quite as good as your position--but you're not better than your
+position--and when you are you won't be left in it any longer."
+
+In speaking in this way the man who had been Norrie Ford was consciously
+doing violence to himself. His natural tendency was to be on friendly
+terms with those around him, and he had no prompting stronger than the
+liking to be liked. In normal conditions he was always glad to do a
+kindness; and when he hurt any one's feelings he hurt his own still more.
+Even now, though he felt justified in giving little Green to understand
+his intoleration of impertinence, he was obliged to fortify himself by
+appealing to his creed that he owed no consideration to any one. Little
+Green was protected by a whole world organized in his defence; Norrie Ford
+had been ruined by that world, while Herbert Strange had been born outside
+it. With a temperament like that of a quiet mastiff, he was forced to turn
+himself into something like a wolf.
+
+In spite of the fact that little Green's account of the brief meeting on
+the stairs presented it in the light of the castigation he had
+administered to "that confounded upstart from nobody knows where," Strange
+noticed that it made the clerks in the office, most of whom had been his
+superiors as Green had been, less inclined to bark at his heels. He got
+respect from them, even if he could not win popularity--and from
+popularity, in any case, he had been shut out from the first. No man can
+be popular who works harder than anybody else, shuns companionship, and
+takes his rare amusements alone. He had been obliged to do all three,
+knowing in advance that it would create for him a reputation of an "ugly
+brute" in quarters whence he would have been glad to get good-will.
+
+Finding the lack of popularity a safeguard not only against prying
+curiosity, but against inadvertent self-betrayal, it was with some
+misgiving that he saw his hermit-like seclusion threatened, as he rose
+higher in the business and consequently in the social--scale. In the
+English-speaking colony of Buenos Aires the one advance is likely to bring
+about the other--especially in the case of a good-looking young man,
+evidently bound to make his mark, and apparently of respectable
+antecedents. The first menace of danger had come from Mr. Jarrott himself,
+who had unexpectedly invited his intelligent employee to lunch with him at
+a club, in order to talk over a commission with which Strange was to be
+intrusted. On this occasion he was able to stammer his way out of the
+invitation; but when later, Mr. Skinner, the second partner, made a like
+proposal, he was caught without an excuse, being obliged, with some
+confusion, to eat his meal in a fashionable restaurant in the Calle
+Florida. Oddly enough, both his refusal on the one occasion and his
+acceptance on the other obtained him credit with his elders and superiors,
+as a modest young fellow, too shy to seize an honor, and embarrassed when
+it was thrust upon him.
+
+To Strange both occurrences were so alarming that he put himself into a
+daily attitude of defence, fearing similar attack from Mr. Martin, the
+third member of the firm. He, however, made no sign; and the bomb was
+thrown by his wife. It came in the shape of a card informing Mr. Strange
+that on a certain evening, a few weeks hence, Mrs. Martin would be at
+home, at her residence in Hurlingham. It was briefly indicated that there
+would be dancing, and he was requested to answer if he pleased. The
+general information being engraved, his particular name was written in a
+free bold hand, which he took to be that of one of the daughters of the
+family.
+
+Though he did his best to keep his head, there was everything in that bit
+of pasteboard to throw him into a state of something like excitement. Not
+only were the doors of the world Norrie Ford had known being thrown open
+to Herbert Strange, but the one was being moved by the same thrill--the
+thrill of the feminine--that had been so powerful with the other. He was
+growing more susceptible to it in proportion as it seemed forbidden--just
+as a man in a desert island may dream of the delights of wine.
+
+He had looked at the Misses Martin, but had never supposed they could
+fling a glance at him. He had seen them at the public gathering-places--in
+their box at the opera, in the grand stand at the Jockey Club, in their
+carriage at Palermo or in the Florida. They were handsome girls--blonde
+and dashing--whose New York air was in pleasant contrast to the graceful
+indolence or stolid repose of the dark-eyed ladies of the Argentine, too
+heavily bejewelled and too consciously dressed according to the Paris
+mode. Strange said of the Misses Martin, as he had said of Wild Olive,
+that they were "not his type of girl"--but they were girls--they were
+American girls--they were bright, lively girls, representing the very
+poetry and romance of the world that had turned him out.
+
+It was a foregone conclusion that he should decline their invitation, and
+he did so; but the mere occasion for doing it gave his mind an impetus in
+the direction in which he had been able hitherto to check it. He began
+again to think of the feminine, to dream of it, to long for it. For the
+time being it was the feminine in the abstract--without features or
+personality. As far as it took form at all it was with the dainty,
+nestling seductiveness that belonged to what he called his "type"--a charm
+that had nothing in common with the forest grace of the Wild Olive or the
+dash of the Misses Martin.
+
+Now and then he caught glimpses of it, but it was generally out of reach.
+Soft eyes, of the velvety kind that smote him most deliciously, would lift
+their light upon him through the casement of some old Spanish residence,
+or from the daily procession of carriages moving slowly along the palm
+avenue at Palermo or in the Florida. When this happened he would have a
+day or two of acting foolishly, in the manner of the Bonarense bucks. He
+would stand for hours of his leisure time--if he could get away from the
+office at the minute of the fashionable promenade--on the pavement of the
+Florida, or under a palm-tree in the park, waiting for a particular
+carriage to drive round again and again and again, while he returned the
+sweet gaze which the manners of the country allow an unknown lady to
+bestow, as a rose is allowed to shed its beauty. This being done, he
+would go away, and realize that he had been making himself ridiculous.
+
+Once the incarnation of his dreams came so near him that it was actually
+within his grasp. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil dangled its
+fruit right before his eyes in the person of Mademoiselle Hortense, who
+sang at the Café Florian, while the clients, of whom he was sometimes one,
+smoked and partook of refreshments. She was just the little round, soft,
+dimpling, downy bundle of youth and love he so often saw in his mind's
+eye, and so rarely in reality, and he was ready to fall in love with any
+one. The mutual acquaintance was formed, as a matter of course, over the
+piece of gold he threw into the tambourine, from which, as she passed from
+table to table, she was able to measure her hearer's appreciation of art.
+Those were the days in which he first began to be able to dress well, and
+to have a little money to throw away. For ten days or a fortnight he threw
+it away in considerable sums, being either in love or in a condition like
+it. He respected Mademoiselle Hortense, and had sympathy with her in her
+trials. She was desperately sick of her roving life as he was of Mrs.
+Wilson's boarding-house. She was as eager to marry and settle down as he
+to have a home. The subject was not exactly broached between them, but
+they certainly talked round it. The decisive moment came on the night when
+her troupe was to sail for Montevideo. In the most delicate way in the
+world she gave him to understand that she would remain even at the
+eleventh hour if he were to say the word. She might be on the deck, she
+might be in her berth, and it still would not be too late. He left her at
+nine, and she was to sail at eleven. During the two intervening hours he
+paced the town, a prey to hopes, fears, temptations, distresses. To do him
+justice, it was her broken heart he thought of, not his own. To him she
+was only one of many possibilities; to her, he was the chance of a
+lifetime. She might never, he said to himself, "fall into the clutches of
+so decent a chap again." It was a wild wrestle between common sense and
+folly--so wild that he was relieved to hear a clock strike eleven, and to
+know she must have sailed.
+
+The incident sobered him by showing him how near and how easily he could
+come to a certain form of madness. After that he worked harder than ever,
+and in the course of time got his appointment at Rosario. It was a great
+"rise," not only in position and salary, but also in expectations. Mr.
+Martin had been resident manager at Rosario before he was taken into
+partnership--so who could tell what might happen next?
+
+The first intimation of the change was conveyed by Mr. Jarrott in a manner
+characteristically casual. Strange, being about to leave the private
+office one day, after a consultation on some matter of secondary import,
+was already half-way to the door, while Mr. Jarrott himself was stooping
+to replace a book in the revolving bookcase that stood beside his chair.
+
+"By-the-way," he said, without looking up, "Jenkins is going to represent
+the house in New York. We think you had better take his place at Rosario."
+
+Strange drew himself up to attention. He knew the old man liked his
+subordinates to receive momentous orders as if they came in the routine of
+the day.
+
+"Very well, sir," he said, quietly, betraying no sign of his excitement
+within. Raising himself, Mr. Jarrott looked about uneasily, as if trying
+to find something else to say, while Strange began again to move toward
+the door.
+
+"And Mrs. Jarrott--"
+
+Strange stopped so still that the senior partner paused with that air of
+gentlemanly awkwardness--something like an Englishman's--which he took on
+when he had firmly made up his mind.
+
+"Mrs. Jarrott," he continued, "begs me to say she hopes you will--a--come
+and lunch with us on Sunday next."
+
+There was a long pause, during which the young man searched wildly for
+some formula that would soften his point-blank refusal.
+
+"Mrs. Jarrott is awfully kind," he began at last to stammer, "but if she
+would excuse me--"
+
+"She will expect you on Sunday at half-past twelve."
+
+The words were uttered with that barely perceptible emphasis which, as the
+whole house knew, implied that all had been said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the end the luncheon was no formidable affair. Except for his fear,
+lest it should be the thin edge of the wedge of that American social life
+which it would be perilous for him to enter, he would have enjoyed this
+peep into a comfortable home, after his long exile from anything of the
+sort. In building his house at Palermo, Mr. Jarrott had kept, in the
+outlines at least, to the old Spanish style of architecture, as being most
+suited to the history and climate of the country, though the wealthy
+Argentines themselves preferred to have their residences look--like their
+dresses, jewels, and carriages--as if they had come from Paris. The
+interior patio was spacious, shaded with vines, and gay with flowers,
+while birds, caged or free, were singing everywhere. The rooms
+surrounding it were airy and cool, and adapted to American standards of
+comfort. In the dining-room mahogany, damask, crystal, and silver gave
+Strange an odd feeling of having been wafted back to the days and usages
+of the boyhood of Norrie Ford.
+
+As the only guest he found himself seated on Mrs. Jarrott's right, and
+opposite Miss Queenie Jarrott, the sister of the head of the house. The
+host, as his manner was, spoke little. Miss Jarrott, too, only looked at
+Strange across the table, smiling at him with her large, thin,
+upward-curving smile, comic in spite of itself, and with a certain pathos,
+since she meant it to be charged with sentiment. Over the party at table,
+over the elderly men-servants who waited on them, over the room, over the
+patio, there was--except for the singing of the birds--the hush that
+belongs to a household that never hears the noise or the laughter of
+youth.
+
+Mrs. Jarrott took the brunt of the conversation on herself She was a
+beautiful woman, faded now with the pallor that comes to northern people
+after a long residence in the sub-tropical south, and languid from the
+same cause. Her handsome hazel eyes looked as if they had been used to
+weeping, though they conserved a brightness that imparted animation to her
+face. A white frill round her throat gave the only relief to her plain
+black dress, but she wore many handsome rings, after the Argentine fashion
+as well as a brooch and earrings of black pearls.
+
+She began by asking her guest if it was true, as Mr. Jarrott had informed
+her, that he was not one of the Stranges of Virginia. She thought he must
+be. It would be so odd if he wasn't. There _were_ Stranges in Virginia,
+and had been for a great many generations. In fact, her own family, the
+Colfaxes, had almost intermarried with them. When she said almost, she
+meant that they had intermarried with the same families--the Yorkes, the
+Endsleighs and the Poles. If Mr. Strange did belong to the Virginia
+Stranges, she was sure they could find relatives in common. Oh, he didn't?
+Well, it seemed really as if he must. If Mr. Strange came from New York,
+he probably knew the Wrenns. Her own mother was a Wrenn. She had been Miss
+Wrenn before she was Mrs. Colfax. He thought he had heard of them? Oh,
+probably. They were well-known people--at least they had been in the old
+days--though New York was so very much changed. She rarely went back there
+now, the voyage was so long, but when she did she was quite bewildered.
+Her own family used to be so conservative, keeping to a little circle of
+relatives and friends that rarely went north of Boston or south of
+Philadelphia; but now when she made them a visit she found them surrounded
+by a lot of people who had never been heard of before. She thought it a
+pity that in a country where there were so few distinctions, those which
+existed shouldn't be observed.
+
+It was a relief to Strange when the sweet, languorous monologue,
+punctuated from time to time by a response from himself, or an
+interjectory remark from one of the others, came to an end, and they
+proceeded to the patio for coffee.
+
+It was served in a corner shaded by flowering vines, and presided over by
+a huge green and gray parrot in a cage. The host and hostess being denied
+this form of refreshment took advantage of the moment to stroll arm in arm
+around the court, leaving Miss Jarrott in tête-à-tête with Strange. He
+noticed that as this lady led the way her figure was as lithe as a young
+girl's and her walk singularly graceful. "No one is ever old with a
+carriage like yours," Miss Jarrott had been told, and she believed it. She
+dressed and talked according to her figure, and, had it not been for
+features too heavily accentuated in nose and chin, she might have produced
+an impression of eternal spring-tide. As it was, the comic papers would
+have found her cruelly easy to caricature, had she been a statesman. The
+parrot screamed at her approach, croaking out an air, slightly off the
+key:
+
+/P
+    "Up and down the ba-by goes,
+    Turning out its lit-tle ..."
+P/
+
+Tempted to lapse into prose, it proceeded to cry:
+
+"Wa-al, Polly, how are you to-day? Wa-al, pretty well for an old gal,"
+after which there was a minute of inarticulate grumbling. When coffee was
+poured, and the young man's cigarette alight, Miss Jarrott seized the
+opportunity which her sister-in-law's soft murmur at the table had not
+allowed her.
+
+"It's really funny you should be Mr. Strange, because I've known a young
+lady of the same name. That is, I haven't known her exactly, but I've
+known about her."
+
+Not to show his irritation at the renewal of the subject, Strange presumed
+she was one of the Stranges of Virginia, with right and title to be so
+called.
+
+"She is and she isn't," Miss Jarrot replied. "I know you'll think it funny
+to hear me speak so; but I can't explain I'm like that. I can't always
+explain. I say lots and lots of things that people just have to interpret
+for themselves It's funny I should be like that, isn't it? I wonder why?
+Can you tell me why? And this Miss Strange--I never knew her really--not
+really--but I feel as if I had. I always feel that way about friends of
+friends of mine. I feel as if they were my friends, too. I'd go through
+fire and water for them. Of course that's just an expression but you know
+what I mean, now don't you?"
+
+Having been assured on that point, she continued:
+
+"I'm afraid you'll find us a very quiet household, Mr. Strange, but we're
+in mourning. That is, Mrs. Jarrott is in mourning; and when those dear to
+me are in mourning I always feel that I'm in mourning, too. I'm like that.
+I never can tell why it is, but--I'm like that. My sister-in-law has just
+lost her sister-in-law. Of course that's no relation to me, is it? And yet
+I feel as if it was. I've always called Mrs. Colfax my sister-in-law, and
+I've taught her little girl to call me Aunt Queenie. They lived here once.
+Mr. Colfax was Mrs. Jarrott's brother and Mr. Jarrott's partner. The
+little girl was born here. It was a great loss to my brother when Mr.
+Colfax died. Mrs. Colfax went back to New York and married again. That was
+a blow, too; so we haven't been on the same friendly terms of late years.
+But now I hope it will be different. I'm like that. I always hope. It's
+funny, isn't it? No matter what happens, I always think there's a silver
+lining to the cloud. Now, why should I be like that? Why shouldn't I
+despair, like other people?"
+
+Strange ventured the suggestion that she had been born with a joyous
+temperament.
+
+"Wa-al, pretty well for an old gal!" screamed the parrot ending in a
+croaking laugh.
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," Miss Jarrott mused. "Everybody is different,
+don't you think? And yet it sometimes seems to me that no one can be so
+different as I am. I always hope and hope; and you see, in this case I've
+been justified. We're going to have our little girl again. She's coming to
+make us a long, long visit. Her name is Evelyn; and once we get her here
+we hope she'll stay. Who knows? There may be something to keep her here.
+You never can tell about that. She's an orphan, with no one in the world
+but a stepfather, and he's blind. So who has a better right to her? I
+always think that people who have a right to other people should have
+them, don't you? Besides, he's going to Wiesbaden, to a great oculist
+there, so that Evelyn will come to us as her natural protectors. She's
+nearly eighteen now, and she wasn't eight when she left us. Oh yes, of
+course we've seen her since then--when we've gone to New York--but that
+hasn't been often. She will have changed; she'll have her hair up, and be
+wearing her dresses long; but I shall know her. Oh, you couldn't deceive
+me. I never forget a face. I'm like that. No, nor names either. I should
+remember you, Mr. Strange, if I met you fifty years from now. I noticed
+you when you first began to work for Stephens and Jarrott. So did my
+sister-in-law, but I noticed you first. We've often spoken of you,
+especially after we knew your name was Strange. It seemed to us so
+strange. That's a pun, isn't it? I often make them. We both thought you
+were like what Henry--that's Mr. Jarrott's oldest son--might have grown
+to, if he had been spared to us. We've had a great deal of sorrow--Oh, a
+great deal! It's weaned my sister-in-law away from the world altogether.
+She's like that. My brother, too--he isn't the same man. So when Evelyn
+comes we hope we shall see you often, Mr. Strange. You must begin to look
+on this house as your second home. Indeed, you must. It'll please my
+brother. I've never heard him speak of any young man as he's spoken of
+you. I think he sees the likeness to Henry. That'll be next year when
+Evelyn comes. No, I'm sorry to say it isn't to be this year. She can't
+leave her stepfather till he goes to Wiesbaden. Then she'll be free. Some
+one else is going to Wiesbaden with him. And isn't it funny, it's the same
+Miss Strange--the lady we were speaking of just now."
+
+It was already some months since those words had been spoken, so that he
+had ceased to dwell on them; but at first they haunted him like a snatch
+of an air that passes through the mental hearing, and yet eludes the
+attempt to bring it to the lips. Even if he had had the synthetic
+imagination that easily puts two and two together, he had not the leisure,
+in the excitement of his removal to Rosario and the undertaking of his
+duties there, to follow up a set of clews that were scarcely more palpable
+than odors. Nevertheless the words came back to him from time to time, and
+always with the same odd suggestion of a meaning special--perhaps
+fatal--to himself. They came back to him at this minute, as he stood
+watching the loading of the _Walmer Castle_ and breathing the fresh air
+off the Parana. But if they threatened danger, it was a danger that
+disappeared the instant he turned and faced it--leaving nothing behind but
+the evanescent memory of a memory, such as will sometimes remain from a
+dream about a dream.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+
+Another year had passed before he learned what Miss Jarrott's words were
+to mean to him. Knowledge came then as a flash of revelation in which he
+saw himself and his limitations clearly defined. His success at Rosario
+had been such that he had begun to think himself master of Fate; but Fate
+in half an hour laughingly showed herself mistress of him.
+
+He had been called to Buenos Aires on an errand of piety and affection--to
+bury Monsieur Durand. The poor old unfrocked priest had been gathered to
+his rest, taking his secret with him--penitent, reconciled to the Church,
+and fortified with the Last Sacraments. Strange slipped a crucifix between
+the wax-like fingers, and followed--the only mourner--to the Recoleta
+Cemetery.
+
+Having ordered a cross to mark the grave, he remained in town a day or two
+longer to attend to a small matter which for some time past he had at
+heart and on his conscience. It was now three or four years since he had
+set aside the sum lent him by the girl for whom he had still no other name
+than that of the Wild Olive. He had invested it, and reinvested it, till
+it had become a fund of some importance. Putting it now into the safest
+American securities, he placed them in the hands of a firm of English
+solicitors in Buenos Aires, with directions not only to invest the
+interest from time to time, but--in the event of his death--to follow
+certain sealed instructions with which also he intrusted them. From the
+few hints he was able to give them in this way he had little doubt but
+that her identity could be discovered, and the loan returned.
+
+In taking these steps he could not but see that what would be feasible in
+case of his death must be equally feasible now; but he had two reasons for
+not attempting it. The first was definite and prudential. He was unwilling
+to risk anything that could connect him ever so indirectly with the life
+of Norrie Ford. Secondly, he was conscious of a vague shrinking from the
+payment of this debt otherwise than face to face. Apart from
+considerations of safety, he was unwilling to resort to the commonplace
+channels of business as long as there was a possibility of taking another
+way.
+
+Not that he was eager to see her again. He had questioned himself on that
+point, and knew she had faded from his memory. Except for a vision of
+fugitive dark eyes--eyes of Beatrice Cenci--he could scarcely recall her
+features. Events during the last six years had pressed so fast on each
+other, life had been so full, so ardent, each minute had been so insistent
+that he should give it his whole soul's attention, that the antecedent
+past was gone like the passion no effort can recapture. As far as he could
+see her face at all, it looked at him out of an abyss of oblivion to which
+his mind found it as hard to travel back as a man's imagination to his
+infancy.
+
+It was with some shame that he admitted this. She had saved him--in a
+sense, she had created him. By her sorcery she had raised up Herbert
+Strange out of the ruin of Norrie Ford, and endowed him with young vigor.
+He owed her everything. He had told her so. He had vowed his life to her.
+It was to be hers to dispose of, even at her caprice. It was what he had
+meant in uttering his parting words to her. But, now, that he had the
+power in some degree, he was doing nothing to fulfil his promise. He had
+even lost the desire to make the promise good.
+
+It was not difficult to find excuses for himself. They were ready-made to
+his hand. There was nothing practical that he could do except what he had
+done about the money. Life was not over yet; and some day the chance might
+come to prove himself as high-souled as he should like to be. If he could
+only have been surer that he was inwardly sincere he would not have been
+uneasy over his inactivity.
+
+Then, within a few minutes, the thing happened that placed him in a new
+attitude, not only toward the Wild Olive, but toward all life.
+
+Business with the head office detained him in Buenos Aires longer than he
+had expected. It was business of a few hours at a time, leaving him
+leisure for the theatres and the opera, for strollings at Palermo, and for
+standing stock-still watching the procession of carriages in the Florida
+or the Avenida Sarmiento, in the good Bonarense fashion. He was always
+alone, for he had acquired the art--none too easy--of taking pleasure
+without sharing it.
+
+So he found himself, one bright afternoon, watching the races from the
+lawn of the Hipodromo of the Jockey Club. He was fond of horses, and he
+liked a good race. When he went to the Hipodromo it was for the sporting,
+not the social, aspect of the affair. Nevertheless, as he strolled about,
+he watched for that occasional velvety glance that gave him pleasure, and
+amused himself with the types seated around him, or crossing his
+path--heavy, swarthy Argentines, looking like Italian laborers grown
+rich--their heavy, swarthy wives, come out to display all the jewels that
+could be conveniently worn at once--pretty, dark-eyed girls, already with
+a fatal tendency to embonpoint, wearing diamonds in their ears and round
+their necks as an added glory to costumes fresh from the rue de la
+Paix--grave little boys, in gloves and patent-leather boots, seated
+without budging by their mammas, sucking the tops of their canes in
+imitation of their elder brothers, who wandered about in pairs or groups,
+all of the latest cut, eying the ladies but rarely addressing them--tall
+Englishmen, who looked taller than they were in contrast to the pudgy race
+around them, as the Germans looked lighter and the French more
+blond--Italian opera singers, Parisian actresses Spanish dancers,
+music-hall soubrettes--diplomats of all nations--clerks out for a
+holiday--sailors on shore--tourists come to profit by a spectacle that has
+no equal in the southern world, and little of the kind that is more
+amusing in the north.
+
+As Strange's glance roamed about in search of a response he not
+infrequently received it, for he was a handsome fellow by this time--tall,
+well dressed, and well set up, his trim, fair beard emphasizing the
+clear-cut regularity of his profile, without concealing the kindliness
+that played about the mouth. A little gray on the temples, as well as a
+few tiny wrinkles of concentration about the eyes, gave him an air of
+maturity beyond his age of thirty-two. The Anglo-Saxon influence in the
+Argentine is English--from which cause he had insensibly taken on an
+English air, as his speech had acquired something of the English
+intonation. He was often told that he might pass for an Englishman
+anywhere, and he was glad to think so. It was a reason the less for being
+identified as Norrie Ford. It sometimes seemed to him that he could, in
+case of necessity, go back to North America, to New York, to Greenport, or
+even to the little county town where he had been tried and sentenced to
+death, and run no risk of detection.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The staring of other men first directed his attention toward her. She was
+sitting slightly detached from the party of Americans to whom she clearly
+belonged, and in which the Misses Martin formed the merrily noisy centre.
+Though dressed in white, that fell softly about her feet, and trained on
+the grass sidewise from her chair, her black cuffs, collar and hat
+suggested the last days of mourning. Whether or not she was aware of the
+gaze of the passers-by it was difficult to guess, for her air of demure
+simplicity was proof against penetration. She was one of those dainty
+little creatures who seem to see best with the eyes downcast; but when she
+lifted her dark lashes, the darker from contrast with the golden hair, to
+sweep heaven and earth in a blue glance that belonged less to scrutiny
+than to prayer, the effort seemed to create a shyness causing the lids,
+dusky as some flowers are, to drop heavily into place again, like curtains
+over a masterpiece. It was so that they rose and fell before Strange, her
+eyes meeting his in a look that no Argentine beauty could ever have
+bestowed, in that it was free from coquetry or intention, and wholly
+accidental.
+
+It was in fact this accidental element, with its lack of preparation, that
+gave the electric thrill to both. That is to say, in Strange the thrill
+was electric; as for her, she gave no sign further than that she opened
+her parasol and raised it to shade her face. Having done this she
+continued to sit in undisturbed composure, though she probably saw
+through her fringing lashes that the tall, good-looking young man still
+stood spellbound, not twenty yards away.
+
+Strange, on his part, was aware of the unconventionality of his behavior,
+though he was incapable of moving on. He felt the occasion to be one which
+justified him in transcending the established rules of courtesy. He was
+face to face with the being who met not only all the longings of his
+earthly love, but the higher, purer aspirations that accompanied it. It
+was not, so he said to himself, a chance meeting; it was one which the
+ages had prepared, and led him up to. She was "his type of girl" only in
+so far as she distilled the essence of his gross imaginings and gave them
+in their exquisite reality. So, too, she was the incarnation of his dreams
+only because he had yearned for something mundane of which she was the
+celestial, and the true, embodiment. He had that sense of the
+insufficiency of his own powers of preconception which comes to a blind
+man when he gets his sight and sees a rose.
+
+He was so lost in the wonder of the vision that he had to be awakened as
+from a trance when Miss Jarrott, very young and graceful, crossed the lawn
+and held out her hand.
+
+"Mr. Strange! I didn't know you were in town. My brother never mentioned
+it. He's like that. He never tells. If I didn't guess his thoughts, I
+shouldn't know anything. But I always guess people's thoughts. Why do you
+suppose it is? I don't know. Do you? When I see people, I can tell what
+they're thinking of as well as anything. I'm like that; but I can't tell
+how I do it. I saw you from over there, and I knew you were thinking about
+Evelyn. Now weren't you? Oh, you can't deceive me. You were thinking of
+her just as plain--! Well, now you must come and be introduced."
+
+He felt that he stumbled blindly as he crossed the bit of greensward in
+Miss Jarrott's wake; and yet he kept his head sufficiently to know that he
+was breaking his rules, contradicting his past, and putting himself in
+peril. In being presented to the Misses Martin and their group, he was
+actually entering that Organized Society to which Herbert Strange had no
+attachments, and in which he could thrust down no roots. By sheer force of
+will he might keep a footing there, as a plant that cannot strike into the
+soil may cling to a bare rock. All the same the attempt would be
+dangerous, and might easily lead to his being swept away.
+
+It was in full consciousness, therefore, of the revolution in his life
+that he bowed before the Misses Martin, who received him coldly. He had
+not come to their dance, nor "called," nor shown them any of the
+civilities they were accustomed to look for from young men. Turning their
+attention at once to the other gentlemen about them, they made no effort
+to detain him as Miss Jarrott led him to Miss Colfax.
+
+Here the introduction would have been disappointing if the greatness of
+the event had not been independent of the details with which it happened.
+Strange was not in a condition to notice them, any more than a soul can
+heed the formalities with which it is admitted into heaven. Nearly all his
+impressions were subconscious--to be brought to the surface and dwelt on
+after he went away. It was thus he recorded the facts relating to the gold
+tint--the _teint doré_--of her complexion, the curl of her lashes that
+seemed to him deep chestnut rather than quite black, as well as the little
+tremor about her mouth, which was pensive in repose, and yet smiled with
+the unreserved sweetness of an infant. He could not be said to have taken
+in any of these points at a glance; but they came to him later, vividly,
+enchantingly, in the solitude of his room at the Phoenix Hotel.
+
+What actually passed would have been commonplace in itself had it not been
+for what lay behind. Miss Colfax acknowledged the introduction with a
+fleeting smile and a quick lifting of the curtains of her eyes. He did not
+need that glimpse to know that they were blue, but he got a throb of bliss
+from it, as does one from the gleam of a sunlit sea. To her answers to the
+questions he asked as to when she had arrived, how she liked the
+Argentine, and what she thought of the Hipodromo, he listened less than to
+the silvery timbre of her voice. Mere words were as unimportant to those
+first minutes of subtle ecstasy as to an old Italian opera. The music was
+the thing, and for that he had become one enraptured auditory nerve.
+
+There was no chair for him, so that he was obliged to carry on the
+conversation standing. He did not object to this, as it would give him an
+excuse for passing on. That he was eager to go, to be alone, to think, to
+feel, to suffer, to realize, to trace step by step the minutes of the day
+till they had led him to the supreme instant when his eyes had fallen on
+her, to take the succeeding seconds one by one and extract the
+significance from each, was proof of the power of the spell that had been
+cast upon him.
+
+"And isn't it funny, Evie, dear," Miss Jarrott began, just as he was about
+to take his leave, "that Mr. Strange's name should be--"
+
+"Yes, I've been thinking about that," Miss Colfax fluted, with that pretty
+way she had of speaking with little movement of the lips.
+
+But he was gone. He was gone with those broken sentences ringing in his
+ears--casual and yet haunting--meaningless and yet more than
+pregnant--creeping through the magic music of the afternoon, as a
+death-motive breathes in a love-chant.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+
+After a night of little sleep and much thinking he determined to listen to
+nothing but the love-chant. He came to this decision, not in the
+recklessness of self-will, but after due consideration of his rights. It
+was true that, in biblical phrase, necessity was laid upon him. He could
+no more shut his ears against that entrancing song than he could shut his
+eyes against the daylight. This was not, however, the argument that he
+found most cogent, as it was not the impulse from which he meant to act.
+If he could make this girl his wife it would be something more than a case
+of getting his own way; it would be an instance--probably the highest
+instance--of the assertion of himself against a world organized to destroy
+him. He could not enter that world and form a part of it; but at least he
+could carry off a wife from it, as a lion may leap into a sheepfold and
+snatch a lamb.
+
+It was in this light that he viewed the matter when he accepted Miss
+Jarrott's invitations--now to lunch, now to dinner, now to a seat in their
+box at the opera or in their carriage in the park--during the rest of the
+time he remained in town. It became clear to him that the family viewed
+with approval the attachment that had sprung up between Miss Colfax and
+himself, and were helping it to a happy ending. He even became aware that
+they were growing fond of him--making the discovery with a queer
+sensation of surprise. It was a thing so new in his experience that he
+would have treated the notion as ridiculous had it not been forced upon
+him. Women had shown him favors; one lonely old man, now lying in the
+Recoleta Cemetery, had yearned over him; but a household had never opened
+its heart to him before. And yet there could be no other reading of the
+present situation. He began to think that Mr. Jarrott was delaying his
+departure for Rosario purposely, to keep him near. It was certain that
+into the old man's bearing toward him there had crept something that might
+almost be called paternal, so that their business discussions were much
+like those between father and son. Mrs. Jarrott advanced as far out of the
+circle of her griefs to welcome him as it was possible for her languorous
+spirit to emerge. Miss Jarrott, friendly from the first, attached him to
+the wheels of her social chariot with an air of affectionate possession.
+
+It required no great amount of perspicuity to see that the three elders
+would be glad if Miss Colfax and he were to "make a match of it," and why.
+It would be a means--and a means they could approve--of keeping their
+little girl among them. As matters stood, she was only a visitor, who
+spoke of her flight back to New York as a matter of course.
+
+"I only came," she lisped to Strange, as they sat one day, under the
+parrot's chaperonage, in the shady corner of the patio--"I only came
+because when dear mamma died there was nothing else for me to do.
+Everything happened so unfortunately, do you see? Mamma died, and my
+stepfather went blind, and really I had no home. Of course that doesn't
+matter so much while I'm in mourning--I mean, not having a home--but I
+simply _must_ go back to New York next autumn, in order to 'come out.'"
+
+[Illustration: "Who is Miriam?" was on his lips]
+
+"Aren't you 'out' enough already?"
+
+"Do you see?" she began to explain, with the quaint air of practical
+wisdom he adored in her, "I'm not out at all--and I'm nearly nineteen.
+Dear mamma fretted over it as it was--and if she knew it hadn't been done
+yet--Well something must be managed, but I don't know what. It isn't as if
+Miriam could do anything about it, though she's a great deal older than I
+am, and has seen a lot of social life at Washington and in England. But
+she's out of the question. Dear mamma would never have allowed it. And
+she's no relation to me, besides."
+
+The question, "Who is Miriam?" was on his lips, but he checked it in time.
+He checked all questions as to her relatives and friends whom he did not
+know already. He was purposely making ignorance his bliss as long as
+possible, in the hope that before enlightenment could be forced upon him
+it would be too late for any one to recede.
+
+"Couldn't they do it for you here?" he asked, when he was sure of what he
+meant to say. "I know the Miss Martins--"
+
+"Carrie and Ethel! Oh, well! That isn't quite the same thing. _I_ couldn't
+come out in a place like Buenos Aires--or anywhere, except New York."
+
+"But when you've been through it all, you'll come back here, won't you?"
+
+His eyes sought hers, but he saw only the curtains of the lids--those lids
+with the curious dusk on them, which reminded him of the petals of certain
+pansies.
+
+"That'll--depend," she said, after a minute's hesitation.
+
+"It'll depend--on what?" he persisted, softly.
+
+Before she could answer the parrot interrupted, screaming out a bit of
+doggerel in its hoarse staccato.
+
+"Oh, that bird!" the girl cried, springing up. "I do wish some one would
+wring its neck."
+
+He got no nearer to his point that day, and perhaps he was not eager to.
+The present situation, with its excitements and uncertainties, was too
+blissful to bring to a sudden end. Besides, he was obliged to go through
+some further rehearsing of the creed adopted in the dawn on Lake Champlain
+before his self-justification could be complete. It was not that he was
+questioning his right to act; it was only that he needed to strengthen the
+chain of arguments by which his action must be supported--against himself.
+Within his own heart there was something that pleaded against the breaking
+off of this tender sprig of the true olive to graft it on the wild, in
+addition to which the attitude of the Jarrott family disconcerted him. It
+was one thing to push his rights against a world ready to deny them, but
+it was quite another to take advantage of a trusting affection that came
+more than half-way to meet him. His mind refused to imagine what they
+would do if they could know that behind the origin of Herbert Strange
+there lay the history of Norrie Ford. After all, he was not concerned with
+them, he asserted inwardly, but with himself. They were intrenched within
+a world able to take care of itself; while there was no power whatever to
+protect him, once he made a mistake.
+
+So every night, as he sat in his cheerless hotel room, he reviewed his
+arguments, testing them one by one, strengthening the weak spots according
+to his lights, and weighing the for and against with all the nicety he
+could command. On the one side were love, happiness, position, a home,
+children probably, and whatever else the normal, healthy nature craves;
+on the other, loneliness, abnegation, crucifixion, slow torture, and
+slower death. Was it just to himself to choose the latter, simply because
+human law had made a mistake and put him outside the human race? The
+answer was obvious enough; but while his intelligence made it promptly,
+something else within him--some illogical emotion--seemed to lag behind
+with its corroboration.
+
+This hesitation of his entire being to respond to the bugle-call of his
+need gave to his wooing a certain irregularity--an advance and recession
+like that of the tide. At the very instant when the words of declaration
+were trembling on his lips this doubt about himself would check him. There
+were minutes--moonlit minutes, in the patio, when the birds were hushed,
+and the scent of flowers heavy, and the voices of the older ones stole
+from some lighted room like a soft, human obligato to the melody of the
+night--minutes when he felt that to his "I love you!" hers would come as
+surely as the echo to the sound; and yet he shrank from saying it. Their
+talk would drift near to it, dally with it, flash about it, play attack
+and defence across it, and drift away again, leaving the essential thing
+unspoken. The skill with which she fenced with this most fragile of all
+topics, never losing her guard, never missing her thrust or parry, and yet
+never inflicting anything like a wound, filled him with a sort of rapture.
+It united the innocence of a child to the cleverness of a woman of the
+world, giving an exquisite piquancy to both. In this young creature, who
+could have had no experience of anything of the kind, it was the very
+essence of the feminine.
+
+By dint of vigil and meditation he drew the conclusion that his inner
+hesitancy sprang from the fact that he was not being honest with himself.
+He was shirking knowledge that he ought to face. Up to the present he had
+done his duty in that respect, and done it pluckily. He had not balked at
+the statement that his rôle in the world was that of an impostor--though
+an impostor of the world's own creation. It had been part of the task
+forced upon him "to deceive men under their very noses," as he had
+expressed it to himself that night on Lake Champlain. Whatever vengeance,
+therefore, discovery might call upon him, he could suffer nothing in the
+loss of self-respect. He would be always supported by his inner approval.
+Remorse would be as alien to him as to Prometheus on the rock.
+
+In the present situation he was less sure of that, and there he put his
+finger on his weakness. Seeing shadows flitting in the background he
+dodged them, instead of calling them out into daylight. He was counting on
+happy chances in dealing with the unforeseen, when all his moves should be
+based on the precise information of a general.
+
+Therefore, when, in the corner of the patio, the next opportunity arose
+for asking the question, "Who is Miriam?" he brought it out boldly.
+
+"She's a darling." The unexpected reply was accompanied by a sudden
+lifting of the lashes for a rapturous look and one of the flashing smiles.
+
+"That's high praise--from you."
+
+"She deserves it--from any one!"
+
+"Why? What for? What has she done to win your enthusiasm when other people
+find it so hard?"
+
+"It isn't so hard--only some people go the wrong way to work about it, do
+you see?"
+
+She leaned back in her wicker chair, fanning herself slowly, and smiling
+at him with that air of mingled innocence and provocation which he found
+the most captivating of her charms.
+
+"Do I?" he was tempted to ask.
+
+"Do you? Now, let me think. Really, I never noticed. You'd have to begin
+all over again--if you ever did begin--before I could venture an opinion."
+
+This was pretty, but it was not keeping to the point.
+
+"Evidently Miriam knows how to do it, and when I see her I shall ask her."
+
+"I wish you _could_ see her. You'd adore her. She'd be just your style."
+
+"What makes you think that? Is she so beautiful? What is she like?"
+
+"Oh, I couldn't tell you what she's like. You'd have to see her for
+yourself. No, I don't think I should call her beautiful, though some
+people do. She's awfully attractive anyhow."
+
+"Attractive? In what way?"
+
+"Oh, in a lot of ways. She isn't like anybody else. She's in a class by
+herself. In fact, she has to be, poor thing."
+
+"Why should she be poor thing, with so much to her credit in the way of
+assets?"
+
+"Do you see?--that's something I can't tell you. There's a sort of mystery
+about her. I'm not sure that I understand it very well myself. I only know
+that dear mamma didn't feel that she could take her out, in New York,
+except among our very most intimate friends, where it didn't matter. And
+yet when Lady Bonchurch took her to Washington she got a lot of offers--I
+know that for a fact--and in England, too."
+
+"I seem to be getting deeper in," Strange smiled, with the necessary air
+of speaking carelessly. "Who is Lady Bonchurch?"
+
+"Don't you know? Why, I thought you knew everything. She was the wife of
+the British Ambassador. They took a house at Greenport that year because
+they were afraid about Lord Bonchurch's lungs. It didn't do any good,
+though. He had to give up his post the next winter, and not long after
+that he died. I don't think air is much good for people's lungs, do you? I
+know it wasn't any help to dear mamma. We had all those tedious years at
+Greenport, and in the end--but that's how we came to know Lady Bonchurch,
+and she took a great fancy to Miriam. She said it was a shame a girl like
+that shouldn't have a chance, and so it was. Mamma thought she interfered
+and I suppose she did. Still, you can't blame her much, when she had no
+children of her own, can you?"
+
+"I shouldn't want to blame her if she gave Miriam her chance."
+
+"That's what I've always said. And if Miriam had only wanted to, she could
+have been--well, almost anybody. She had offers and offers in Washington,
+and in England there was a Sir Somebody-or-other who asked her two or
+three times over. He married an actress in the end--and dear mamma thought
+Miriam must be crazy not to have taken him while he was to be had. Dear
+mamma said it would have been such a good thing for me to have some one
+like Miriam--who was under obligations to us, do you see?--in a good
+social position abroad."
+
+"But Miriam didn't see it in that way?"
+
+"She didn't see it in any way. She's terribly exasperating in some
+respects, although she's such a dear. Poor mamma used to be very tried
+about her--and she so ill--and my stepfather going blind--and everything.
+If Miriam had only been in a good social position abroad it would have
+been a place for me to go--instead of having no home--like this."
+
+There was something so touching in her manner that he found it difficult
+not to offer her a home there and then; but the shadows were marching out
+into daylight, and he must watch the procession to the end.
+
+"It seems to have been very inconsiderate of Miriam," he said. "But why do
+you suppose she acted so?"
+
+"Dear mamma thought she was in love with some one--some one we didn't know
+anything about--but I never believed that. In the first place, she didn't
+know any one we didn't know anything about--not before she went to
+Washington with Lady Bonchurch. And besides, she couldn't be in love with
+any one without my knowing it, now could she?"
+
+"I suppose not; unless she made up her mind she wouldn't tell you."
+
+"Oh, I shouldn't want her to tell me. I should see it for myself. She
+wouldn't tell me, in any case--not till things had gone so far that--but I
+never noticed the least sign of it, do you see? and I've a pretty sharp
+eye for that sort of thing at all times. There was just one thing. Dear
+mamma used to say that for a while she used to do a good deal of moping in
+a little studio she had, up in the hills near our house--but you couldn't
+tell anything from that. I've gone and moped there myself when I've felt I
+wanted a good cry--and I wasn't in love with any one."
+
+There was a long silence, during which he sat grave, motionless,
+reflecting. Now and then he placed his extinguished cigarette to his
+lips, with the mechanical motion of a man forgetful of time and place and
+circumstance.
+
+"Well, what are you thinking about?" she inquired, when the pause had
+lasted long enough. He seemed to wake with a start.
+
+"Oh--I--I don't know. I rather fancy I was thinking about--about this
+Miss--after all, you haven't given me any name but Miriam."
+
+"Strange, her name is. The same as yours."
+
+"Oh? You've never told me that."
+
+"Aunt Queenie has, though. But you always seem to shuffle so when it's
+mentioned that I've let it alone. I don't blame you, either; for if
+there's one thing more tedious than another, it's having people for ever
+fussing about your name. There was a girl at our school whose name was
+Fidgett--Jessie Fidgett--a nice, quiet girl, as placid as a church--but I
+do assure you, it got to be so tiresome--well, you know how it would
+be--and so I decided I wouldn't say anything about Miriam's name to you,
+nor about yours to her. Goodness knows, there must be lots of Stranges in
+the world--just as much as Jarrotts."
+
+"So that--after all--her name was Miriam Strange."
+
+"It was, and is, and always will be--if she goes on like this," Miss
+Colfax rejoined, not noticing that he had spoken half-musingly to himself.
+"She was a ward of my step-father's till she came of age," she added, in
+an explanatory tone. "She's a sort of Canadian--or half a Canadian--or
+something--I never could quite make out what. Anyhow, she's a dear. She's
+gone now with my stepfather to Wiesbaden, about his eyes--and you can't
+think what a relief to me it is. If she hadn't, I might have had to go
+myself--and at my age--with all I've got to think about--and my coming
+out--Well, you can see how it would be."
+
+She lifted such sweet blue eyes upon him that he would have seen anything
+she wanted him to see, if he had not been determined to push his inquiries
+until there was nothing left for him to learn.
+
+"Were you fond of him?--your stepfather?"
+
+"Of course--in a way. But everything was so unfortunate I know dear mamma
+thought she was acting for the best when she married him; and if he hadn't
+begun to go blind almost immediately--But he was very kind to mamma, when
+she had to go to the Adirondacks for her health. That was very soon after
+she returned to New York from here--when papa died. But she was so lonely
+in the Adirondacks--and he was a judge--a Mr. Wayne--with a good
+position--and naturally she never dreamed he had anything the matter with
+his eyes--it isn't the sort of thing you'd ever think of asking about
+beforehand--and so it all happened that way, do you see?"
+
+He did see. He could have wished not to see so clearly. He saw with a
+light that dazzled him. Any step would be hazardous now, except one in
+retreat; though he was careful to explain to himself that night that it
+was retreat for reconnoitre, and not for running away. The mere fact that
+the Wild Olive had taken on personality, with a place of some sort in the
+world, brought her near to him again; while the knowledge that he bore her
+name--possibly her father's name--seemed to make him the creation of her
+magic to an even greater degree than he had felt hitherto. He could
+perceive, too, that by living out the suggestions she had made to him in
+the cabin--the Argentine--Stephens and Jarrott--"the very good firm to
+work for"--he had never got beyond her influence, no more than the
+oak-tree gets beyond the acorn that has been its seed. The perception of
+these things would have been enough to puzzle a mind not easily at home in
+the complex, even if the reintroduction of Judge Wayne had not confused
+him further.
+
+It was not astonishing, therefore, that he was seized with a sudden
+longing to get away--a longing for space and solitude, for the pampas and
+the rivers, and, above all, for work. In the free air his spirit would
+throw off its oppression of discomfort, while in a daily routine of
+occupation he often found that difficulties solved themselves.
+
+"If you think that this business of Kent's can get along without me now,"
+he said to Mr. Jarrott, in the private office, next morning, "perhaps I
+had better be getting back to Rosario."
+
+Not a muscle moved in the old man's long, wooden face, but the gray-blue
+eyes threw Strange a curious look.
+
+"Do you want to go?" he asked, after a slight pause.
+
+Strange smiled, with an embarrassment that did not escape observation.
+
+"I've been away longer than I expected--a good deal longer. Things must
+want looking after, I suppose. Green can take my place for a while, but--"
+
+"Green is doing very well--better than I thought he could. He seems to
+have taken a new start, that man."
+
+"I'm not used to loafing, sir. If there's no particular reason for my
+staying on here--"
+
+Mr. Jarrott fitted the tips of his fingers together, and answered slowly.
+
+"There's no particular reason--just now. We've been speaking
+of--of--a--certain changes--But it's too soon--"
+
+"Of course, sir, I don't want to urge my private wishes against--"
+
+"Quite so; quite so; I understand that. A--a--private wishes, you say?"
+
+"Yes, sir; entirely private."
+
+The gray-blue eyes rested on him in a gaze meant to be uninquisitive and
+non-committal, but which, as a matter of fact, expressed something from
+which Strange turned his own glance away.
+
+"Very well; I'd go," the old man said, quietly.
+
+Strange left his cards that afternoon at the house just when he knew Mrs.
+Jarrott would be resting and Miss Jarrott driving with Miss Colfax. At
+seven he took the night boat up the Plata to the Parana.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+
+"Evie, what do you think made Mr. Strange rush away like that? Your uncle
+says he didn't have to--that he might just as well have stayed in town."
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," was Evie's truthful response, as she flitted
+about the dining-room table arranging the flowers before luncheon.
+
+"Your uncle thinks you do," Mrs. Jarrott said, leaning languidly back in
+an arm-chair. Her tone and manner implied that the matter had nothing to
+do with her, though she was willing to speak of it. This was as far as she
+could come to showing an interest in anything outside herself since the
+boys died. She would not have brought up the subject now if the girl's
+pallor during the last few days had not made them uneasy.
+
+"I haven't the least idea," Miss Colfax declared. "I was just as much
+surprised as you were, Aunt Helen."
+
+"Your uncle thinks you must have said something to him--"
+
+"I didn't. I didn't say anything to him whatever. Why should I? He's
+nothing to me."
+
+"Of course he's nothing to you, if you're engaged to Billy Merrow."
+
+Miss Colfax leaned across the table, taking a longer time than necessary
+to give its value to a certain rose.
+
+"I'm not engaged to him now," she said, as if after reflection--"not in
+my own mind, that is."
+
+"But you are in his, I suppose."
+
+"Well, I can't help that, can I?"
+
+"Not unless you write and tell him it's all over."
+
+Miss Colfax stood still, a large red flower raised in protestation.
+
+"That would be the cruellest thing I ever heard of," she exclaimed, with
+conviction. "I don't see how you can bear to make the suggestion."
+
+"Then what are you going to do about it?"
+
+"I needn't do anything just yet. There's no hurry--till I get back to New
+York."
+
+"Do you mean to let him go on thinking--?"
+
+"He'd much rather. Whenever I tell him, it will be too soon for him.
+There's no reason why he should know earlier than he wants to."
+
+"But is that honor, dear?"
+
+"How can I tell?" At so unreasonable a question the blue eyes clouded with
+threatening tears. "I can't go into all those fine points, Aunt Helen, do
+you see? I've just got to do what's right."
+
+Mrs. Jarrot rose with an air of helplessness. She loved her brother's
+daughter tenderly enough, but she admitted to herself that she did not
+understand young girls. Having borne only sons, she had never been called
+upon to struggle with the baffling.
+
+"I hope you're not going to tell any one, Aunt Helen," Evie begged, as
+Mrs. Jarrott seemed about to leave the room. "I shouldn't want Uncle
+Jarrott to know, or Aunt Queenie, either."
+
+"I shall certainly spare them," Mrs. Jarrott said, with what for her was
+asperity. "They would be surprised, to say the least, after the
+encouragement you gave Mr. Strange."
+
+"I didn't give it--he took it. I couldn't stop him."
+
+"Did you want to?"
+
+"I thought of it--sometimes--till I gave up being engaged to Billy."
+
+"And having passed that mental crisis, I suppose it didn't matter."
+
+"Well, the mental crisis, as you call it, left me free. I sha'n't have to
+reproach myself--"
+
+"No; Mr. Merrow will do that for you."
+
+"Of course he will. I expect him to. It would be very queer if he didn't.
+I shall have a dreadful time making him see things my way. And with all
+that hanging over me, I should think I might look for a little sympathy
+from you, Aunt Helen. Lots of girls wouldn't have said anything about it.
+But I told you because I want you to see I'm perfectly straight and
+above-board."
+
+Mrs. Jarrott said no more for the moment, but later in the day she
+confided to her husband that the girl puzzled her. "She mixes me up so
+that I don't know which of us is talking sense." She was not at all sure
+that Evie was fretting about Mr. Strange--though she might be. If she
+wasn't, then she couldn't be well. That was the only explanation of her
+depression and loss of appetite.
+
+"You can bet your life he's thinking of her," Mr. Jarrott said, with the
+lapse from colloquial dignity he permitted himself when he got into his
+house-jacket. "He's praying to her image as if it was a wooden saint."
+
+With the omission of the word wooden this was much what Strange was doing
+at Rosario. Not venturing--in view of all the circumstances--to write to
+her, he could only erect a shrine in his heart, and serve it with a
+devotion very few saints enjoy. He found, however, that absence from her
+did not enable him to form detached and impartial opinions on his
+situation, just as work brought no subconsciously reached solution to the
+problems he had to face. In these respects he was disappointed in the
+results of his unnecessary flight from town.
+
+At the end of two months he was still mentally where he was when he left
+Buenos Aires. His intelligence assured him that he had the right of a man
+who has no rights to seize and carry off what he can; while that nameless
+something else within him refused to ratify the statement. What precise
+part of him raised this obstacle he was at a loss to guess. It could not
+be his conscience, since he had been free of conscience ever since the
+night on Lake Champlain. Still less could it be his heart, seeing that his
+heart was crying out for Evie Colfax more fiercely than a lion roars for
+food. The paralysis of his judgment had become such that he was fast
+approaching the determination to make Love the only arbiter, and let all
+the rest go hang!
+
+He was encouraged in this impulse by the thought that between her and
+himself there was the mysterious bond of something "meant." He believed
+vaguely in a Power, which, with designs as to human destinies, manifests
+its intentions by fitful gleams, vouchsafed somewhat erratically. In this
+way Evie Colfax, as a beautiful, fairy-like child, had been revealed to
+him at the most critical instant of his life. His mind had never hitherto
+gone back willingly to recollections of that night; but now he made the
+excursion into the past with a certain amount of pleasure. He could see
+her still, looking at a picture-book, her face resting on the back of her
+hand, and golden ringlets falling over her bare arm. He could see the
+boy, too. He remembered that his name was Billy. Billy who? he wondered.
+He could hear the sweet, rather fretful voice calling from the shadows:
+
+"Evie dear, it's time to go to bed. Billy, I don't believe they let you
+stay up as late as this at home."
+
+How ridiculous it would have been to remember such trivial details all
+these years if something hadn't been "meant" by it. There was a hint in
+the back of his mind that by the same token something might have been
+"meant" about the Wild Olive, too, but he had not an equal temptation to
+dwell on it. The Wild Olive, he repeated, had never been "his type of
+girl"--not from the very first. It was obviously impossible for a
+superintending Power to "mean" things that were out of the question.
+
+He had got no further than this when the news was conveyed to him by Mrs.
+Green, whom he met accidentally in the street, that Mr. Skinner, the
+second partner, had had a "stroke," and had been ordered to Carlsbad. Mrs.
+Skinner, so Mrs. Green's letters from the Port informed her, was to
+accompany her husband. Furthermore, Miss Colfax was seizing the
+opportunity to travel with them to Southampton, where she would be able to
+join friends who would take her to New York. There was even a rumor that
+Miss Jarrott was to accompany her niece, but Mrs. Green was unable to
+vouch for the truth of it. In any case, she said, there were signs of "a
+regular shaking up," such as comes periodically in any great mercantile
+establishment; and this time, she ventured to hope, Mr. Green would get
+his rights.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+
+The knowledge that it was a juncture at which to execute a daring movement
+acted as an opiate on what would otherwise have been, for Strange, a day
+of frenzy. While to the outward eye he was going quietly about his work,
+he was inwardly calling all his resources to his aid to devise some plan
+for outwitting circumstance. After forty-eight hours of tearing at his
+heart and hacking at his brain, he could think of nothing more original
+than to take the first train down to the Port, ask the girl to be his
+wife, and let life work out the consequence. At the end of two days,
+however, he was saved from a too deliberate defiance of the
+unaccounted-for inner voice, by an official communication from Mr.
+Jarrott.
+
+It was in the brief, dry form of his business conversation, giving no hint
+that there were emotions behind the stilted phraseology, and an old man's
+yearnings. Mr. Skinner was far from well, and would "proceed immediately"
+to Carlsbad. Strange would hand over the business at Rosario to Mr.
+Green--who would become resident manager, _pro tem_ at any rate--and
+present himself in Buenos Aires at the earliest convenient moment. Mr.
+Jarrott would be glad to see him as soon as possible after his arrival.
+
+That was all; but as far as the young man was concerned, it saved the
+situation. On consulting the steamer-list he saw that the Royal Mail
+Steam Packet _Corrientes_ would sail for Southampton in exactly six days'
+time. By dint of working all night with Mr. Green, who was happy to lend
+himself to anything that would show him the last of his rival, he was able
+to take a train to the Port next day. It was half-past six when he arrived
+in Buenos Aires. By half-past eight he had washed, changed to an evening
+suit, and dined. At nine his cab stopped at the door of the house at
+Palermo.
+
+As he followed the elderly man-servant who admitted him, the patio was so
+dim that he made his way but slowly. He made his way but slowly, not only
+because the patio was dim, but because he was trying to get his crowding
+emotions under control before meeting his employer in an interview that
+might be fraught with serious results. For once in his life he was
+unnerved, tremulous, almost afraid. As he passed the open doors and
+windows of unlighted, or dimly lighted, rooms he knew she might be in any
+one of the shadowy recesses. It would have been a relief to hear her at
+the piano, or in conversation, and to know her attention was diverted.
+None the less, he peered about for a glimpse of her, and strained his
+hearing for a sound of her voice. But all was still and silent, except for
+the muffled footfall of the servant leading him to the library at the far
+end of the court.
+
+If she had not moved out unexpectedly from behind a pillar, a little
+fluttering figure in a white frock, he could have kept his self-control.
+If he had not come upon her in this sudden way, when she believed him in
+Rosario, she, too, would not have been caught at a disadvantage. As it
+was, he stood still, as if awe-struck. She gave a little cry, as if
+frightened. It is certain that his movement of the arms was an automatic
+process, not dictated by any order of the brain; and the same may be said
+for the impulse which threw her on his breast. If, after that, the rest
+was not silence, it was little more. What he uttered and she replied was
+scarcely audible to either, though it was understood by both. It was all
+over so quickly that the man-servant had barely thrown open the library
+door, and announced "Mr. Strange," when Strange himself was on the
+threshold.
+
+It was a moment at which to summon all his wits together to attend to
+business; but he was astonished at the coolness and lightness of heart
+with which he did it. After those brief, sudden vows exchanged, it was as
+easy to dismiss Evie Colfax momentarily from his mind as it is to forget
+money troubles on inheriting a fortune. Nevertheless as he got himself
+ready to deal with practical, and probably quite commercial, topics, he
+was fully conscious of the rapture of her love, while he was scarcely less
+aware of a comfort closely akin to joy in feeling that the burden of
+decision had been lifted from him. Since Fate had taken the matter into
+her own hands, she could be charged with the full responsibility.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Jarrott, who was smoking a cigar and sipping his after-dinner coffee,
+was in evening dress, but wore his house-jacket--a circumstance of which
+Strange did not know the significance, though he felt its effect. The old
+man's welcome was not unlike that of a shy father trying to break the
+shackles of reserve with a home-coming son. He pushed Strange gently into
+the most comfortable arm-chair beside which he drew up a small table for
+the cigar-box, the ash-tray, and the matches. He rang for another cup,
+and brought the coffee with his own hands. Strange remembered how often,
+after a hard day's work, he had been made uncomfortable by just such
+awkward, affectionate attentions from poor old Monsieur Durand.
+
+"I didn't expect you so soon," Mr. Jarrott began, when they were both
+seated, "but you've done well to come. I'm afraid we're in for a regular
+upset all round."
+
+"I hope it isn't going to make things harder for you, sir," Strange
+ventured, in the tone of personal concern which his kindly treatment
+seemed to warrant him in taking.
+
+"It won't if I can get the right men into the right places. That'll be the
+tough part of the business. The wool department will suffer by Mr.
+Skinner's absence--he's very ill, in my opinion--and there's only one man
+who can take his place." Strange felt his heart throbbing and the color
+rising to his face. He did not covet the position, for he disliked the
+wool department; but it was undeniably a "rise," and right along the line
+of highest promotion. "That's Jenkins," Mr. Jarrott finished, quietly.
+
+Strange said nothing. After all, he was relieved. Mr. Jarrott did not go
+on at once, but when he did speak Strange fell back into the depths of his
+arm-chair, in an attitude suggestive of physical collapse.
+
+"And if Jenkins came back here," the old man pursued, "you'd have to take
+his place in New York."
+
+Strange concealed his agitation by puffing out successive rings of smoke.
+If he had not long ago considered what he would say should this proposal
+ever be made to him, he would have been even more overcome than he
+actually was. He had meant to oppose the offer with a point-blank refusal,
+but what had happened within the last quarter of an hour had so modified
+this judgment that he could only sit, turning things rapidly over in his
+mind, till more was said.
+
+"There's no harm in--a--telling you," Mr. Jarrott went on again, with that
+hesitancy Strange had begun to associate with important announcements,
+"that--a--Jenkins will be--a--taken into partnership. You won't--a--be
+taken into partnership--a--yet. But you will have a good salary in New
+York. I can--a--promise you that much."
+
+It was because he was unnerved that tears smarted in the young man's eyes
+at the implications in these sentences. He took his time before
+responding, the courtesies of the occasion being served as well by silence
+as by speech.
+
+"I won't try to thank you for all your kindness, sir," he said, with a
+visible effort, "until I've told you something--something that, very
+likely, you won't approve of. I've asked Miss Colfax to marry me, and
+she's consented."
+
+The old man's brows shot up incredulously.
+
+"That's odd," he said, "because not half an hour ago she told my wife
+there was nothing whatever between you--that you hadn't even written to
+her since you went away. Mrs. Jarrott only left this room as you rang the
+door-bell."
+
+"But it was after I rang the door-bell," Strange stammered "that
+I--I--asked her."
+
+"Quick work," was the old man's only comment, but the muscles of his lips
+relaxed slowly, as if rusty from disuse, into one of his rare smiles.
+
+With the assurance of this reception, Strange could afford to sit silent
+till Mr. Jarrott made some further sign.
+
+"By the terms of her father's will," he explained some minutes later, "I'm
+her guardian and trustee. She can't marry without my consent till she
+comes of age. I don't say that in this instance I should--a--withhold my
+consent; but I should feel constrained to--a--give it with conditions."
+
+"If it's anything I can fulfil, sir--"
+
+"No; it wouldn't concern you so much as her. She's very young--and in
+heart she's younger than her age. She knows nothing about men--she can't
+know--and I dare say you're the first young fellow who ever said anything
+to her about--well, you understand what I mean. Mind you, we've no
+objections to you whatever. You are your own credentials; and we take them
+at their face value. You tell me you're an orphan, with no near relations,
+so that there couldn't be any complications on that score. Besides that,
+you're--a likely chap; and I don't mind saying that--a--my ladies--Mrs.
+Jarrott and my sister--have taken rather a fancy to you. It can't do you
+any--a--harm to know as much as that."
+
+Strange murmurred his appreciation, and the old man went on.
+
+"No; you're all right. But, as I said before, she's very young, and if we
+married her to you out of hand we feel that we shouldn't be giving her a
+fair show. We think she ought to have a little more chance to look round
+her, so to speak. In fact, she isn't what ladies call 'out.' She's
+scarcely ever seen a man, except through a window. Consequently, we think
+we must send her back to New York, for a winter at any rate, and trot the
+procession before her. My sister is to undertake it, and they're to sail
+next week. That won't make so much difference to you now, as it would if
+you weren't soon going to follow them."
+
+Strange nodded. He felt himself being wafted to New York, whether he would
+or no.
+
+"Now all I have to say is this: if, when she's regularly started, she
+sees some other young fellow she likes better than you, you're to give her
+up without making a fuss."
+
+"Of course. Naturally, she would have to be free to do as she chose in the
+long run. I'm not afraid of losing her--"
+
+"That'll be your own lookout. You'll be on the spot, and will have as good
+a chance as anybody else. You'll have a better chance; for you'll only
+have to keep what you've won, while any one else would have to start in at
+the beginning. But it's understood that there--a--can be no talk of a
+wedding just yet. She must have next winter to reconsider her promise to
+you, if she wants to."
+
+Strange having admitted the justice of this, the old man rose, and held
+out his hand.
+
+"We'll keep the matter between ourselves--in the family, I mean--for the
+time being," he said, with another slowly breaking smile; "but the ladies
+will want to wish you luck. You must come into the drawing-room and see
+them."
+
+They were half-way to the door when Mr. Jarrott paused.
+
+"And, of course, you'll go to New York? I didn't think it necessary to ask
+you if you cared to make the change."
+
+With the question straight before him, Strange knew that an answer must be
+given. He understood now how it is that there are men and women who find
+it worth their while to thrust their heads into lions' mouths.
+
+"Yes, sir, of course," he answered, quietly; and they went on to join the
+ladies.
+
+
+
+
+
+Part III
+
+Miriam
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+
+On a day when Evie Colfax was nearing Southampton, and Herbert Strange
+sailing northward from the Rio de la Plata, up the coast of Brazil, Miriam
+Strange, in New York, was standing in the embrasure of a large bay-window
+of a fifth-floor apartment, in that section of Fifty-ninth Street that
+skirts the southern limit of Central Park. Her conversation with the man
+beside her turned on subjects which both knew to be only preliminary to
+the business that had brought him in. He inquired about her voyage home
+from Germany, and expressed his sympathy with "poor Wayne" on the
+hopelessness and finality of the Wiesbaden oculist's report. Taking a
+lighter tone, he said, with a gesture toward the vast expanse of autumn
+color on which they were looking down:
+
+"You didn't see anything finer than that in Europe. Come now!"
+
+"No, I didn't--not in its own way. As long as I can look at this I'm
+almost reconciled to living in a town."
+
+As her eyes roamed over the sea of splendor that stretched from their very
+feet, a vision of October gorgeousness against the sky, he was able to
+steal a glance at her. His immediate observation was to the effect that
+the suggestion of wildness--or, more correctly, of a wild origin--was as
+noticeable in her now, a woman of twenty-seven, as it was when he first
+knew her, a girl of nineteen. That she should have brought it with her
+from a childhood passed amid lakes and rivers and hills was natural
+enough--just as it was natural that her voice should have that liquid
+cadence which belongs to people of the forest, though it is rarely caught
+by human speech elsewhere; but that she should have conserved these
+qualities through the training of a woman of the world was more
+remarkable. But there it was, that something woodland-born which London
+and New York had neither submerged nor swept away. It was difficult to say
+in what it consisted, since it eluded the effort to say, "It is this or
+that." It resisted analysis, as it defied description. Though it might
+have been in the look, or in the manner, it conveyed itself to the
+observer's apprehension, otherwise than by the eye or ear, as if it
+appealed to some extra sense. People who had not Charles Conquest's
+closeness of perception spoke of her as "odd," while those who had heard
+the little there was to learn about her, said to each other, "Well, what
+could you expect?" Young men, as a rule, fought shy of her, not so much
+from indifference as from a sense of an indefinable barrier between her
+and themselves so that it was the older men who sought her out. There was
+always some fear on Conquest's part lest the world should so assimilate
+her that her distinctiveness--which was more like an influence that
+radiated than a characteristic that could be seen--would desert her; and
+it was with conscious satisfaction that he noted now, after an absence of
+some months, that it was still there.
+
+He noted, too, the sure lines of her profile--a profile becoming clearer
+cut as she grew older--features wrought with delicacy and yet imbued with
+strength, suggestive of carved ivory. Delicacy imbued with strength was
+betokened, too, by the tall slenderness of her figure, whose silence and
+suppleness of movement came--in Conquest's imagination at least--from her
+far-off forest ancestry.
+
+"I couldn't live anywhere else but here--if it must be in New York," she
+said, turning from the window. "I couldn't do without the sense of woods,
+and space, and sky. I can stand at this window and imagine all sorts of
+things--that the park really does run into the Catskills, as it seems to
+do--that the Catskills run into the Adirondacks--and that the Adirondacks
+take me up to the Laurentides with which my earliest recollections begin."
+
+"I think you're something like Shelley's Venice," he smiled, "a sort of
+'daughter of the earth and ocean.' You never seem to me to belong in just
+the ordinary category--"
+
+She had been afraid of something like this from the minute he was
+announced, and so hastened to cling to the impersonal.
+
+"Then, the apartment is so convenient. Being all on one floor, it is so
+much easier for Mr. Wayne to get about it than if he had stairs to climb.
+I didn't tell you that I've had Mrs. Wayne's room done over for Evie. It's
+so much larger and lighter than her old one--"
+
+He cleared his throat uneasily.
+
+"I remember your saying something of the kind before you went away in the
+spring. It's one of the things I came in to talk about to-day?"
+
+"Indeed?" His change of tone alarmed her. He had taken on the air of a man
+about to break unpleasant news. "Won't you sit down? I'll ring for tea.
+We're not in very good order yet, but the servants can give us that much."
+
+She spoke for the purpose of hiding her uneasiness, just as she felt that
+she should be more sure of herself while handling the teacups than if she
+were sitting idle.
+
+"I've had a letter from Mr. Jarrott," he said, making himself comfortable,
+while she moved the tea-table in front of her. "He wrote to me, partly as
+Stephens and Jarrott's legal adviser, and partly as a friend."
+
+He allowed that information time to sink in before continuing.
+
+"He tells me Miss Jarrott is on her way home, with Evie."
+
+"Yes; Evie herself wrote me that. I got the letter at Cherbourg."
+
+"Then she probably told you about the house."
+
+"The house? What house?"
+
+"The house they've asked me to take for the winter--for Miss Jarrott and
+her."
+
+The tea-things came, giving her the relief of occupation. She said nothing
+for the moment, and her attention seemed concentrated on the rapid, silent
+movements of her own hands among the silver and porcelain. Once she looked
+up, but her glance fell as she saw his small, keen, gray-green eyes
+scanning her obliquely.
+
+"So I'm not to have her?" she said, at last.
+
+"It's only for this winter--"
+
+"Oh, I know. But what's for this winter will be for every winter!"
+
+"And she won't be far away. I've taken the Grant's house in Seventy-second
+Street. They asked for a house in which they could do some entertaining.
+You see, they want to give her a good time--"
+
+"I quite understand all that. Evie has to 'come out.' I've not the least
+doubt that they're managing it in the best way possible. Yes, I see that.
+If I feel a little--well, I won't say hurt--but a little--sorry--it's
+because I've almost brought Evie up. And I suppose I'm the person she's
+most fond of--as far as she's fond of any one."
+
+"I presume she's fond of my nephew, Billy Merrow."
+
+"I hope so. Billy rather teased her into that engagement, you know. She's
+too young to be deeply in love--unless it was with one romantic. And Billy
+isn't that. I'm not sure that there isn't trouble ahead for him."
+
+"Then I shall let him worry through it himself. I've got other things to
+think about."
+
+When she had given him his tea and begun to sip her own, she looked up
+with that particular bright smile which in women means the bracing of the
+courage.
+
+"It'll be all right," she said, with forced conviction. "I know it will.
+It's foolish in me to think I shall miss her, when she will be so near.
+It's only because she and Mr. Wayne are all I've got--"
+
+"They needn't be," he interposed, draining his cup, and setting it down,
+like a man preparing for action.
+
+She knew her own words had exposed her to this, and was vexed with herself
+for speaking in a dangerous situation without due foresight. For a minute
+she could think of nothing to say that would ward off his thrust. She sat
+looking at him rather helplessly, unconsciously appealing to him with her
+eyes to let the subject drop.
+
+If he meant to go on with it, he took his time--flecking a few crumbs from
+his white waistcoat and from his fingertips. In the action he showed
+himself for what he was--a man so neat as just to escape being dapper.
+There was nothing large about him, in either mind or body; while, on the
+contrary, there was much that was keen and able. The incisiveness of the
+face would have been too sharp had it not been saved by the high-bred
+effect of a Roman nose and a handsome mouth and chin. The fair mustache,
+faded now rather than gray, softened the cynicism of the lips without
+concealing it. It was the face of a man accustomed to "see through" other
+men--to "see through" life--compelling its favors from the world rather
+than asking them. The detailed exactness and unobtrusive costliness of
+everything about him, from the pearl in his tie to the polish on his
+boots, were indicative of a will rigorously demanding "the best," and
+taking it. The refusal of it now in the person of the only woman whom he
+had ever wanted as a wife left him puzzled, slightly exasperated, as
+before a phenomenon not to be explained. It was this unusual resistance
+that caused the somewhat impatient tone he took with her.
+
+"It's all nonsense--your living as you do--like a professional trained
+nurse."
+
+"The life of a professional trained nurse isn't nonsense."
+
+"It is for you."
+
+"On the contrary; it's for me, more than for almost any one, to justify my
+right to being in the world."
+
+"Oh, come now! Don't let us begin on that."
+
+"I don't want to begin on it. I'd much rather not. But if you don't, you
+throw away the key that explains everything about me."
+
+"All right," he rejoined, in an argumentative tone. "Let's talk about it,
+then. Let's have it out. You feel your position; granted. Mind you, I've
+always said you wouldn't have done so if it hadn't been for Gertrude
+Wayne. The world to-day has too much common sense to lay stress on a
+circumstance of that kind. Believe me, nobody thinks about it but
+yourself. Did Lady Bonchurch? Did any of her friends? You've got it a
+little bit--just a little bit--on the brain; and the fault isn't yours; it
+belongs to the woman whose soul is gone, I hope, where it's freed from the
+rules of a book of etiquette."
+
+"She meant well--"
+
+"Oh, every failure, and bungler, and mischief-maker means well. That's
+their charter. I'm not concerned with that. I'm speaking of what she did.
+She fixed it in your mind that you were like a sapling sprung from a seed
+blown outside the orchard. You think you can minimize that accident by
+bringing forth as good as any to be found within the pale. Consequently
+you've taken a poor, helpless, blind man off the hands of the people whose
+duty it is to look after him--and who are well able to do it--"
+
+"That isn't the reason," she declared, flushing. "If Mr. Wayne and I live
+together it's because we're used to each other--and in a way he has taken
+the place of my father."
+
+"Oh, come now! That's all very fine. But haven't you got in the back of
+your mind the thought that the wild tree that's known by its good fruit is
+the one that's best worth grafting?"
+
+"If I had--" she began, with color deepening.
+
+"If you had, you'd simply be taking a long way round, when there's a short
+cut home. I'm the orchard, Miriam. All you've got to do is to walk into
+it--with me."
+
+A warmer tone came into his voice as he uttered the concluding words,
+adding to her discomfort. She moved the tea-things about, putting them
+into an unnecessary state of order, before she could reply.
+
+"There's a reason why I couldn't do that," she said, meeting his sharp
+eyes with one of her fugitive glances. "I would have given it to you
+when--when you brought up this subject last spring, only you didn't ask
+me."
+
+"Well, what is it?"
+
+"I couldn't love you."
+
+She forced herself to bring out the words distinctly. He leaned back in
+his chair, threw one leg across the other, and stroked the thin, colorless
+line of his mustache.
+
+"No, I suppose you couldn't," he said, quietly, after considering her
+words.
+
+"So that my answer has to be final."
+
+"I don't see that. Love is only one of the many motives for marriage--and
+not, as I understand it, the highest one. The divorce courts are strewn
+with the wrecks of marriages made for love. Those that stand the test of
+life and time are generally those that have been contracted from some of
+the more solid--and worthier--motives."
+
+"Then I don't know what they are."
+
+"I could explain them to you if you'd let me. As for love--if it's needed
+at all--I could bring enough into hotch-potch as the phrase goes, to do
+for two. I'm over fifty years of age. It never occurred to me that you
+could--care about me--as you might have cared for some one else. But as
+far as I can see, there's no one else. If there was, perhaps I shouldn't
+persist."
+
+She looked up with sudden determination.
+
+"If there was any one else, you--would consider that as settling the
+question?"
+
+"I might. I shouldn't bind myself. It would depend."
+
+"Then I'll tell you; there _is_ some one else." The words caused her to
+flush so painfully that she hastened to qualify them. "That is, there
+might have been."
+
+"What do you mean by--might have been?"
+
+"I mean that, though I don't say I've ever--loved--any man, there was a
+man I might have loved, if it had been possible."
+
+"And why wasn't it possible?"
+
+"I'd rather not tell you. It was a long time ago. He went away. He never
+came back again."
+
+"Did he say he'd come back again?"
+
+She shook her head. She tried to meet his gaze steadily, but it was like
+facing a search-light.
+
+"Were you what you would call--engaged?"
+
+"Oh no." Her confusion deepened. "There was never anything. It was a long
+time ago. I only want you to understand that if I could care for any one
+it would be for him. And if I married you--and he came back--"
+
+"Are you expecting him back?"
+
+She was a long time answering the question. She would not have answered it
+at all had it not been in the hope of getting rid of him.
+
+"Yes."
+
+He took the declaration coolly, and went on.
+
+"Why? What makes you think he'll come?"
+
+"I have no reason. I think he will--that's all."
+
+"Where is he now?"
+
+"I haven't the faintest idea."
+
+"Hasn't he ever written to you?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"And you don't know what's become of him?"
+
+"Not in the least."
+
+"And yet you expect him back?"
+
+She nodded assent.
+
+"You're waiting for him?"
+
+Once more she braced herself to look him in the eyes and answer boldly.
+
+"I am."
+
+He leaned back in his chair and laughed, not loudly, but in good-humored
+derision.
+
+"If that's all that stands between us--"
+
+To her relief he said no more; though she was disappointed that the
+subject should be dropped in a way that made it possible to bring it up
+again. As he was taking his leave she renewed the attempt to end the
+matter once for all.
+
+"I know you think me foolish--" she began.
+
+"No, not foolish; only romantic."
+
+"Then, romantic. Romance is as bad as folly when one is twenty-seven. I
+confess it," she went on, trying to smile, "only that you may understand
+that it's a permanent condition which I sha'n't get over."
+
+"Oh yes, you will."
+
+"Things happened--long ago--such as don't generally happen; and so--I'm
+waiting for him. If he never comes--then I'd rather go
+on--waiting--uselessly."
+
+It was hard to say, but it was said. He laughed again--not quite so
+derisively as before--and went away.
+
+When he had gone, she resumed her seat behind the tea-table. She sat
+looking absently at the floor and musing on the words she had just spoken.
+Not in all the seven or eight years since Norrie Ford went away had she
+acknowledged to her own heart what, within the last few minutes, she had
+declared aloud. The utmost she had ever owned to herself was that she
+"could have loved him." When she refused other men, she did not confess to
+waiting for him; she evaded the question with herself, and found pretexts.
+She would have continued doing so with Conquest, had not his persistency
+driven her to her last stand. But now that she had uttered the words for
+his benefit, she had to repeat them for her own. Notwithstanding her
+passionate love of woods, winds, and waters, she had always been so sane,
+so practical, in the things that pertained to daily life that she
+experienced something like surprise at detecting herself in this condition
+of avowed romance. She had actually been waiting for Norrie Ford to
+return, and say what he had told her he _would_ say, should it ever become
+possible! She was waiting for him still! If he never came she would rather
+go on waiting for him--uselessly! The language almost shocked her; but now
+that the thing was spoken she admitted it was true. It was a light thrown
+on herself--if not precisely a new light, at least one from which all
+shades and colored wrappings that delude the eye and obscure the judgment
+had been struck away.
+
+She smiled to herself to think how little Conquest understood her when he
+ascribed to her the ambition to graft her ungarnered branch on the stock
+of a duly cultivated civilization. She might have had that desire once,
+but it was long past. It was a kind of glory to her now to be outside the
+law--with Norrie Ford. There they were exiles together, in a wild paradise
+with joys of its own, not less sweet than those of any Eden. She had faced
+more than once the question of being "taken into the orchard," as Conquest
+put it. The men who had asked her at various times to marry them had been
+like himself, men of middle age, or approaching it--men of assured
+position either by birth or by attainment. As the wife of any one of them
+her place would have been unquestioned. She had not rejected their offers
+lightly, or from any foregone conclusion. She had taken it as a duty to
+weigh each one seriously as it came; and, leaving the detail of love
+apart, she had asked herself whether it was not right for her to seize the
+occasion of becoming "some one" in the world. Once or twice the position
+offered her was so much in accordance with her tastes that her refusal
+brought with it a certain vague regret. "But I couldn't do it," were the
+words with which she woke from every dream of seeing herself mistress in a
+quiet English park, or a big house in New York. Her habits might be those
+of civilized mankind; but her heart was listening for a call from beyond
+the limits in which men have the recognized right to live. She could put
+no shackles on her freedom to respond to it--if it ever came.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+
+She discovered that Norrie Ford had come back, and that some of her
+expectations were fulfilled by finding him actually seated beside her one
+evening at dinner.
+
+Miss Jarrott's taste in table light was in the direction of candles
+tempered by deep-red shades. As no garish electricity was allowed to
+intrude itself into this soft glow, the result was that only old
+acquaintances among her guests got a satisfactory notion of each other's
+features. It was with a certain sense of discovery that, by peering
+through the rose-colored twilight, Miriam discerned now a Jarrott or a
+Colfax, now an Endsleigh or a Pole--faces more or less well known to her
+which she had not had time to recognize during the few hurried minutes in
+the drawing-room.
+
+It was the dinner of which Evie had said, in explaining her plan of
+campaign to Miriam, "We must kill off the family first of all." It was
+plain that she regarded the duty as a bore; but she was too worldly wise
+not to see that her bread cast upon the waters would return to her. Most
+of the Jarrotts were important; some were wealthy; and one--Mrs. Endsleigh
+Jarrott--was a power in such matters as assemblies and cotillons. The
+ladies Colfax were little less influential; and while the sphere of the
+Poles and Endsleighs was in the world of art, letters, and scholarship,
+rather than in that of fashion and finance, they had the uncontested
+status of good birth. To Evie they represented just so much in the way of
+her social assets, and she was quick in appraising them at their correct
+relative values. Some would be good for a dinner given in her honor,
+others for a dance. The humblest could be counted on for a theatre-party
+or a "tea." She was skilful, too, in presenting her orphan state with a
+touching vividness that enlisted their sympathies on behalf of "poor
+Jack's," or "poor Gertrude's," pretty little girl, according to the side
+of the house on which they recognized the relationship.
+
+With the confusion incidental to the arrival from South America, the
+settling into a new house, and the ordering of new clothes, Miriam had had
+little of the old intimate intercourse with Evie during the six weeks
+since the latter's return. There was no change in their mutual relation;
+it was only that Evie was caught up into the glory of the coming winter,
+and had no time for the apartment in Fifty-ninth Street. It was with
+double pleasure, therefore, that Miriam responded one day to Evie's
+invitation to "come and look at my things," which meant an inspection of
+the frocks and hats that had just come home. They lay about now, in clouds
+like a soft summer sunset, or in gay spots of feathers and flowers, on the
+bed and the sofa in Evie's room, and filled all the chairs except the one
+on which Miriam had retreated into the farthest corner of the bay-window.
+Seated there, not quite in profile, against the light, her head turned and
+slightly inclined, in order to get a better view of Evie's finery, her
+slender figure possessed a sort of Vandyke grace, heightened rather than
+diminished by the long plumes and rich draperies of the month's fashion.
+Evie flitted between closets, wardrobes, and drawers, prattling while she
+worked off that first event of her season, in which the family were to be
+"killed off." She recited the names of those who would "simply _have_ to
+be asked" and of those who could conveniently be omitted.
+
+"And, of course, Popsey Wayne must come," she observed in her practical
+little way. "I dare say he won't want to, poor dear, but it wouldn't do if
+he didn't. Only you, you dear thing, will have to go in with him--to pilot
+him and look after him when the dishes are passed. But I'm going to have
+some one nice on your other side, do you see?--some one awfully nice. We
+shall have to ask a few people outside the family, just to give it relief,
+and save it from looking like Christmas."
+
+"You'll have Billy, I suppose."
+
+Evie took the time to deposit a lace blouse in a drawer, as softly as a
+mother lays a sleeping babe to rest.
+
+"No, I sha'n't ask Billy," she said, while she was still stooping.
+
+"Won't he think that queer?"
+
+"I hope so." She turned from the drawer, and lifted a blue gossamer
+creation from the bed. Miriam smiled indulgently.
+
+"Why? What's the matter? Have you anything to punish him for?"
+
+"I've nothing to punish him for; I've only got something I want to--bring
+home to him." She paused in the middle of the room, with her blue burden
+held in her outstretched arms, somewhat like a baby at a christening. "I
+might as well tell you, Miriam, first as last. You've got to know it some
+time, though I don't want it talked about just yet. I've broken my
+engagement to Billy."
+
+"Broken your engagement! Why, I saw Billy myself this morning. I met him
+as I was coming over. He said he was here last night, and seemed
+particularly cheerful."
+
+"He doesn't know it yet. I'm doing it--by degrees."
+
+"You're doing it by--what?" Miriam rose and came toward her, stopping
+midway to lean on the foot-rail of the bed. "Evie darling, what do you
+mean?"
+
+Evie's eyes brimmed suddenly, and her lip trembled.
+
+"If you're going to be cross about it--"
+
+"I'm not going to be cross about it, but I want you to tell me exactly
+what you're doing."
+
+"Well, I'm telling you. I've broken my engagement, and I want to let Billy
+know it in the kindest way. I don't want to hurt his feelings. You
+wouldn't like me to do that yourself. I'm trying to bring him where he'll
+see things just as I do."
+
+"And may I ask if you're--getting him there?"
+
+"I shall get him there in time. I'm doing lots of things to show him."
+
+"Such as what?"
+
+"Such as not asking him to the dinner, for one thing. He'll know from that
+there's something wrong. He'll make a fuss, and I shall be disagreeable.
+Little by little he'll get to dislike me--and then--"
+
+"And how long do you think it will take for that good work to be
+accomplished?"
+
+"I don't see that that matters. I suppose I may take all the time I need.
+We're both young--"
+
+"And have all your lives to give to it. Is that what you mean?"
+
+"I don't want to give all my life to it, because--I may as well tell you
+that, too, while I'm about it--because I'm engaged to some one else."
+
+"Oh, Evie!"
+
+Miriam went back, like a person defeated, to the chair from which she had
+just risen, while Evie buried herself in the depths of a closet, where she
+remained long enough, as she hoped, to let Miriam's first astonishment
+subside. On coming out she assumed a virtuous tone.
+
+"You see now why I simply _had_ to break with Billy. I couldn't possibly
+keep the two things going together--as some girls would. I'm one of those
+who do right, whatever happens. It's very hard for me--but if people would
+only be a little more sympathetic--"
+
+It was some minutes before Miriam knew just what to say. Even when she
+began to speak she doubted her capacity for making herself understood.
+
+"Evie darling," she said, trying to speak as for a child's comprehension,
+"this is a very serious matter. I don't think you realize how serious it
+is. If you find you don't love Billy well enough, of course you must ask
+him to release you. I should be sorry for that, but I shouldn't blame you.
+But until you've done it you can't give your word to any one."
+
+"Well, I must say I never heard anything like that," Evie declared,
+indignantly. "You do have the strangest ideas, Miriam. Dear mamma used to
+say so, too. I try to defend you, but you make it difficult for me, I must
+say. I never knew any one like you for making things more complicated than
+they need be. You talk of my asking Billy to release me when I released
+myself long ago--in my own mind. That's where I have to look. I must do
+things according to my conscience--and when that's clear--"
+
+"It isn't only a case of conscience, dear; it's one of common sense.
+Conscience has a way of sometimes mistaking the issue, whereas common
+sense can generally be trusted to be right."
+
+"Of course, if you're going to talk that way, Miriam, I don't see what's
+left for me to answer; but it doesn't sound very reverent, I must say. I'm
+trying to look at things in the highest light, and it doesn't strike me as
+the highest light to be unkind to Billy when I needn't be. If you think I
+ought to treat him cruelly you must keep your opinion, but I know you'll
+excuse me if I keep mine."
+
+She carried her head loftily as she bore another gown into the adjoining
+darkness, and Miriam waited patiently till she emerged again.
+
+"Does your other--I hardly know what to call him--does your other fiancé
+know about Billy?"
+
+"Why on earth should he? What good would that do? It will be all over--I
+mean about Billy--before I announce my second engagement, and as the one
+to Billy will never be announced at all there's no use in saying anything
+about it."
+
+"But suppose Billy himself finds out?"
+
+"Billy won't find out anything whatever until I get ready to let him."
+
+The finality of this retort reduced Miriam to silence. She allowed some
+minutes to pass before saying, with some hesitation:
+
+"I suppose you don't mind my knowing--who it is?"
+
+Evie was prepared for this question and answered it promptly.
+
+"I shan't mind your knowing--by-and-by. I want you to meet him first.
+When you've once seen him, I know you'll be more just to me. Till then I'm
+willing to go on being--misunderstood."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+During the three more weeks that intervened before the family dinner
+Miriam got no further light on Evie's love-affairs. She purposely asked no
+questions through fear of seeming to force the girl's confidence, but she
+obtained some relief from thinking that the rival suitor could be no other
+than a certain young Graham, of whom she had heard much from Evie during
+the previous year. His chances then had stood higher than Billy Merrow's;
+and nothing was more possible than a discovery on Evie's part that she
+liked him the better of the two. It was a situation that called for
+sympathy for Billy, but not otherwise for grave anxiety, so that Miriam
+could wait quietly for further out-pourings of Evie's heart, and give her
+mind to the mysteries incidental to the girl's social presentation to the
+world.
+
+Of the ceremonies attendant on this event the "killing off" of the family
+was the one Miriam dreaded most. It was when she came within the periphery
+of this powerful, meritorious, well-to-do circle, representing whatever
+was most honorable in New York, that she chiefly felt herself an alien.
+She could scarcely have explained herself in this respect, since many of
+the clan had been kind to her, and none had ever shown her incivility. It
+was when she confronted them in the mass, when she saw their solidarity,
+their mutual esteem, their sum total of wealth, talents, and good works,
+that she grew conscious of the difference of essence between herself and
+them. Not one of them but had the right to the place he sat in!--a right
+maintained by himself, but acquired by his fathers before him--not one of
+them but was living in the strength of some respectable tradition of which
+he could be proud! Endsleigh Jarrott's father, for example, had been a
+banker, Reginald Pole's the president of a university, Rupert Colfax's a
+judge; and it was something like that with them all. In the midst of so
+much that was classified, certified, and regular she was as obviously a
+foreign element as a fly in amber. She came in as the ward of Philip
+Wayne, who himself was a new-comer and an intruder, since he entered
+merely as "poor Gertrude's second husband," by a marriage which they all
+considered a mistake.
+
+With the desire to be as unobtrusive as possible, she dressed herself in
+black, without ornament of any kind, unaware of the fact that with her
+height of figure, her grace of movement, her ivory tint, and that
+expression of hers which disconcerted people because it was first
+appealing and then proud, she would be more than ever conspicuous against
+the background of brilliant toilets, fine jewels, and assured manners
+which the family would produce for the occasion. As a matter of fact,
+there was a perceptible hush in the hum of talk as she made her entry into
+the drawing-room, ostensibly led by Philip Wayne, but really leading him.
+As she paused near the door, half timid, half bewildered, looking for her
+hostess, it did not help her to feel at ease to see Mrs. Endsleigh
+Jarrott--a Rubens _Maria de Medici_ in white satin and pearls--raise her
+lorgnette and call on a tall young man who stood beside her to take a
+look. There was no time to distinguish anything further before Miss
+Jarrott glided up, with mincing graciousness, to shake hands.
+
+"How do you do! How do you do! So glad you've come. I think you must know
+nearly every one here, so I needn't introduce any one. I hardly ever
+introduce. It's funny, isn't it? They say it's an English custom not to
+introduce, but I don't do it just by nature. I wonder why I
+shouldn't?--but I never do--or almost never. So if you don't happen to
+know your neighbors at table just speak. It was Evie who arranged where
+every one was to sit. _I_ don't know. They say that's English, too--just
+to speak. I believe it's quite a recognized thing in London to say, 'Is
+this your bread or mine?' and then you know each other. Isn't it funny?
+Now I think we're all here. Will you take in Miriam, Mr. Wayne?"
+
+A hasty embrace from Evie--an angelic vision in white--was followed by a
+few words of greeting from Charles Conquest after which Miriam saw Miss
+Jarrott take the arm of Bishop Endsleigh, and the procession began to
+move.
+
+At table Miriam was glad of the dim, rose-colored light. It offered her a
+seclusion into which she could withdraw, tending her services to Wayne.
+She was glad, too, that the family, having so much to say to itself, paid
+her no special attention. She was sufficiently occupied in aiding the
+helpless blind man beside her, and repeating for his benefit the names of
+their fellow-guests. As the large party talked at the top of its lungs,
+Miriam's quiet voice, with its liquid, almost contralto, quality, reached
+her companion's ears unheard by others. She began with Bishop Endsleigh
+who was on Miss Jarrott's right. Then came Mrs. Stephen Colfax; after her
+Mr. Endsleigh Jarrott, who had on his right Mrs. Reginald Pole. Mrs.
+Pole's neighbor was Charles Conquest, whom she shared with Mrs. Rodney
+Wrenn. Now and then Wayne himself would give proof of that increased
+acuteness in his hearing of which he had spoken more than once since his
+blindness had become total. "Colfax Yorke is here," he observed at one
+time. "I hear his voice. He's sitting on our side of the table." "Mrs.
+Endsleigh Jarrott is next but one to you," he said at another time. "She's
+airing her plans for the reconstruction of New York society."
+
+So for a while they kept one another in small talk, affecting the same
+sort of vivacity that obtained around them. It was not till dinner was
+half over that he asked in an undertone:
+
+"Who is your neighbor?"
+
+"I don't know," she managed to whisper back. "He's so taken up with Mrs.
+Endsleigh Jarrott that he hasn't looked this way. I don't think he's any
+member of the family."
+
+"He must be," Wayne replied. "I know his voice. I have some association
+with it, but just what I can't remember."
+
+Miriam herself listened to hear him speak, catching only an irrelevant
+word or two.
+
+"He sounds English," she said then.
+
+"No, he isn't English. That's not my association. It's curious how the
+mind acts. Since I became--since my sight failed--my memory instinctively
+brings me voices instead of faces, when I want to recall anything. Aren't
+you going to speak to him? You've got the formula: Is this your bread or
+mine?"
+
+"It's very convenient, but I don't think I shall use it."
+
+"He'd like you to, I know. I heard him say to Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott as we
+came in--while Queenie Jarrott was talking--that you were he most
+strikingly beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life. How's that for a
+compliment from a perfect stranger?"
+
+"I certainly sha'n't speak to him now. A man who could say that to Mrs.
+Endsleigh, after having seen _her,_ must be wofully wanting in tact."
+
+Mary Pole on Wayne's right claimed his attention and Miriam was left her
+own mistress. Almost at once her attention was arrested by hearing Mrs.
+Endsleigh Jarrott saying in that appealing voice which she counted as the
+secret of her success with men:
+
+"Now do give me your frank opinion, Mr. Strange. You don't know how much I
+should like it. It's far from my idea that we should slavishly copy
+London. You know that, don't you? We've an entirely different stock of
+materials to work with. But I'm firmly convinced that by working on the
+London model we should make society far more general, far more
+representative, and far--oh, _far_--more interesting! Now, what do _you_
+think? Do give me your frank opinion."
+
+Mr. Strange! Her own name was sufficiently uncommon to cause Miriam to
+glance sidewise, in her rapid, fugitive way, at the person who bore it.
+His face was turned from her as he bent toward Mrs. Jarrott, but again she
+heard his voice, and this time more distinctly.
+
+"I'm afraid my opinion wouldn't be of much value. Nevertheless, I know you
+must be right."
+
+"Now I'm disappointed in you," Mrs. Jarrott said, with pretty
+reproachfulness. "You're not taking me seriously. Oh, I see, I see. You're
+just an ordinary man, after all; when I thought for a minute you might
+be--well, a little different. Do take some of that asparagus," she added
+in another tone. "It's simply delicious."
+
+It was while he was helping himself to this delicacy that Miriam got the
+first clear view of his face, half turned as it was toward her. He seemed
+aware that she was observing him, for during the space of some seconds he
+held the silver implements idle in his hands, while he lifted his eyes to
+meet hers. The look they exchanged was significant and long, and yet she
+was never quite sure that she recognized him then. For the minute she was
+only conscious of a sudden, inward shock, to which she was unable to
+ascribe a cause. Something had happened, though she knew not what. Having
+in the course of a few minutes regained her self-control, she could only
+suppose that it was a repetition of that unreasoning panic which had now
+and then brought her to the verge of fainting, when by chance, in London,
+Paris, or New York, she caught a glimpse of some tall figure that carried
+her imagination back to the cabin in the Adirondacks. She had always
+thought that he might appear in some crowd and take her by surprise. She
+had never expected to find him in a gathering that could be called social.
+Still less had she looked to meet him like this, with Philip Wayne who had
+sentenced him to death not three feet away. The mere idea was
+preposterous. And yet--
+
+She glanced at him again. He was listening attentively while Mrs.
+Endsleigh Jarrott's voice ran on:
+
+"People say our society has no traditions. It _has_ traditions. It has the
+traditions of the country village, and it has never outgrown them. We're
+nothing but the country village writ large. New York, Philadelphia,
+Boston, Baltimore--we're the country village over again, with its
+narrowness its sets, its timidity, all writ _so_ large that they hide
+anything like a real society from us. Now isn't it so, Mr. Strange? Don't
+be afraid to give me your frank opinion because that's what I'm asking
+for."
+
+Miriam herself made an effort to seem to be doing something that would
+enable her to sit unnoticed. She was glad that Wayne was engaged by Mary
+Pole so that he could no longer listen to the voice that wakened his
+recollections. She looked again at the tall, carefully dressed man beside
+her, so different in all his externals from anything she imagined Norrie
+Ford could ever become. Norrie Ford was an outlaw and this was a man of
+the world. She felt herself being reassured--and yet disappointed. Her
+first feeling of faintness passed away, enabling her to face the situation
+with greater calm. Under cover of the energetic animation characteristic
+of every American dinner-party at which the guests are intimate, she had
+leisure to think over the one or two hints that were significant. Now and
+then a remark was addressed to her across the table to which she managed
+to return a reply sufficiently apt to give her the appearance of being in
+touch with what was going on around her; but in reality she was taking in
+the fact, with the spirit rather than the mind, that Norrie Ford had
+returned.
+
+She never understood just how and when that assurance came to her. It was
+certainly not by actual recognition of his features, as it was not by
+putting together the few data that came under her observation. Thinking it
+over in after years, she could only say that she "just found herself
+_knowing it_." He was there--beside her. Of that she had no longer a
+doubt.
+
+Her amazement did not develop all at once. Indeed, the position had an odd
+naturalness, like something in a dream. The element of impossibility in
+what had happened was so great that for the time being her mind refused to
+meet it. She was only aware of that vague sense of satisfaction, of inward
+peace, that comes when long-desired ends have been fulfilled.
+
+The main fact being accepted, her outer faculties could respond to the
+call that a dinner-party makes on its least important member. When the
+conversation at her end of the table became general she took her part, and
+later engaged in a three-cornered discussion with Wayne and Mary Pole on
+the subject of an endowed theatre; but all the while her subconscious mind
+was struggling for a theory to account for Norrie Ford's presence in that
+particular room and in that unexpected company. The need of some
+immediate, plausible reason for so astounding an occurrence deadened her
+attention to the comparative quietness with which she accepted his
+coming--now that she had regained her self-control, although she was
+conscious of stirrings of wild joy in this evidence that he had been true
+to her. Had she recalled what she had said to him eight years ago as to
+the Argentine, and the "very good firm to work for," she would have had an
+easy clew, but that had passed from her mind almost with the
+utterance--certainly with his departure He had gone out into the world,
+leaving no more trace behind him than the bird that has flown southward.
+Not once during the intervening years did the thought cross her mind that
+words which she had spoken nearly at haphazard could have acted as a guide
+to him, while still less did she dream that they could have led him into
+the very seat beside her which he was occupying now.
+
+Nevertheless, he was there, and for the present she could dispense with
+the knowledge of the adventures that had brought him. He was there, and
+that was the reason of his coming in itself. He had hewn his way through
+all difficulties to reach her--as Siegfried came to Brunhild, over the
+mountains and through the fire. He had found the means--both the means
+and the daring--to enter and make himself accepted in her own world, her
+own circle, her own family--in so far as she had a family--and to sit
+right down at her side.
+
+She was not surprised at it. She assured herself of that. At the very
+instant when she was saying to Mary Pole, across Philip Wayne's white
+waistcoat, that she had always thought of endowed institutions of creative
+art as belonging to the races of weaker individual initiative--at the very
+instant when she was saying that, she was repeating to herself that the
+directness, the high-handedness, and the success of this kind of exploit
+was exactly what she would have expected of Norrie Ford. It was what she
+_had_ expected of him--in one form or another. It was with a sense of
+inward pride that she remembered that her faith in him had never wavered,
+even though it was not until Conquest forced her that she had confessed
+the fact. She glanced at Conquest across the table now and caught his eye.
+He smiled at her and raised his glass, as though to drink to her health.
+She smiled in return, daringly, triumphantly, as she would not have
+ventured to do an hour ago. She could see him flush with pleasure--a rare
+occurrence--at her unusual graciousness, while she was only rejoicing in
+her escape from him. Under the shadow of the tall man beside her, who had
+achieved the impossible in order to be loyal to her, she felt for the
+first time in her life that she had found a shelter. It mattered nothing
+that he was engrossed with Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott, and that, after the one
+glance, he had not turned toward her again; she was sure he knew that she
+understood him, and that he recognized her power to wait in patience to
+have the mystery explained.
+
+In the drawing-room he was introduced to her. Miss Jarrott led him up and
+made the presentation.
+
+"Miss Strange, I want you to know Mr. Strange. Now isn't that funny? You
+can't think how many times I've thought how interesting it would be to see
+you two meet. It's so unusual to have the same name, especially when it's
+such a strange name as yours. There's a pun. I simply can't help making
+them. My brother says I inherited all the sense of humor in the family. I
+don't know why I do it, but I always see a joke. Can you tell me why I do
+it?"
+
+Neither Strange nor Miriam knew what replies they made, but a conversation
+of some sort went on for a minute or two, after which Miss Jarrott whisked
+him away to present him to some one else. When he had gone Miriam was left
+with a feeling of spiritual chill. While it was impossible to betray a
+previous acquaintance before Miss Jarrott, there had been nothing whatever
+in his bearing to respond to the recognition in hers. There was something
+that might have been conveyed from mind to mind without risk, and he had
+not used the opportunity. In as far as he addressed her at all it had been
+through Miss Jarrott, and he had looked around her and over her rather
+than directly into her eyes.
+
+During the rest of the evening she caught glimpses of him only in the
+distance, talking now to one member of the family, now to another. It was
+clear that Miss Jarrott was, in a way, showing him off, and that he was
+received as some one of importance. She admired the coolness with which he
+carried himself, while her inherited instincts gave her a curious thrill
+of content that these law-making, law-keeping people should be duped.
+
+She hoped he would find an occasion for passing again in her direction.
+If she could have only a word with him it might help to make the situation
+intelligible. But he did not return, and presently she noticed, in looking
+about the room, that he had disappeared. She, too, was eager to be gone.
+Only in solitude could she get control of the surging thoughts, the
+bewildering suggestions, the contradictory suppositions that crowded it on
+her. She saw how useless it was to try to build a theory without at least
+one positive fact to go on.
+
+It was just as they were departing that her opportunity to ask a question
+came. They had said their good-nights to Miss Jarrott and were in the
+hall, waiting for the footman to call their carriage, when Evie, whom they
+had not wanted to disturb, came fluttering after them. She was flushed but
+radiant, and flung herself into Miriam's arms.
+
+"You dear thing! I haven't had time to say a word to you or Popsey Wayne
+the entire evening. But you'll excuse me, won't you? I've had to be civil
+to them all--do you see?--and do them up well. I knew you wouldn't mind. I
+wanted you to have a good time, but I'm afraid you haven't."
+
+"Oh yes," Miriam said, disengaging herself from the girl's embrace. "It's
+been wonderful--it really has. But, Evie dear," she whispered, drawing her
+away from the group of ladies who stood cloaked and hooded, also waiting
+for their carriages, "tell me--who is that Mr. Strange who sat next to
+me?"
+
+Evie's eyes went heavenward, and she took on a look of rapture.
+
+"I hope you liked him."
+
+"I didn't have much chance to see. But why do you hope it?"
+
+"Because--don't you see? Oh, surely you _must_ see--because--he's the
+one."
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+
+Enlightenment came to her in the carriage while she was driving homeward.
+During the five or ten minutes since Evie had spoken she, Miriam, had been
+sitting still and upright in the darkness, making no further attempt to
+see reason through this succession of bewilderments from sheer inability
+to contend against them. For the time being, at any rate, the struggle was
+too much for her. The issues raised by Evie's overwhelming announcement
+were so confusing that she must postpone their consideration. She must
+postpone everything but her own tumultuous passion, which had to be faced
+and mastered instantly. She was fighting with herself, with her own wild
+inward cries of protest, anger, jealousy, and self-pity, trying to
+distinguish each from the others and to silence it by appeal to her years
+of romantic folly, when suddenly Wayne spoke, in the cheery tone of a man
+who has unexpectedly passed a pleasant evening.
+
+"I had a nice long chat with the Great Unknown, who was sitting beside
+you, when the ladies left the dining-room. Who do you think he is?"
+
+After the shocks of the last two hours, she was prepared to hear Wayne
+tell her, in an offhand way, that it was Norrie Ford. Nevertheless, she
+summoned what was left of her stunned faculties and did her best to speak
+carefully.
+
+"I heard them call him Mr. Strange--"
+
+"Odd that was, wasn't it? But it isn't such a very uncommon name. I've met
+other Stranges--"
+
+"Oh yes. So have I."
+
+"Well, who do you think he is? Why, he's Stephens and Jarrott's new man in
+New York. He's taken Jenkins's place. You remember Jenkins, don't you?
+That little man with a lisp. I had a nice long chat with him--Strange, I
+mean. He tells me he's a New-Yorker by birth, but that he went out to the
+Argentine after his father failed in business. Well, _he_ won't fail in
+business, _I_ bet a penny. He's tremendously enthusiastic over the
+Argentine, too. Showed he had his head put on the right way when he went
+there. Wonderful country--the United States of South America some people
+call it. We're missing our opportunities out there. Great volume of trade
+flowing to Europe of which we had almost the monopoly at one time. I had a
+nice long chat with him."
+
+Her tired emotions received a new surprise as Wayne's words directed her
+thoughts to the morning when she had made to Ford the first suggestion of
+the Argentine. She had not precisely forgotten it; she had only thought it
+of too little importance to dwell on. She remembered that she had
+considered the idea practical till she had expressed it, but that his
+opposition had seemed to turn it into the impossible. She had never
+supposed that he might have acted on it--not any more than she had
+expected him to retain her father's name once he had reached a place of
+safety. In spite of the suddenness with which her dreams regarding him had
+been dispelled, it gave her a thrill of satisfaction to think that the
+word which, in a sense, had created him had been hers. To her fierce
+jealousy, with which her pride was wrestling even now, there was a
+measure of comfort in the knowledge that he could never be quite free from
+her, that his existence was rooted in her own.
+
+"Queenie Jarrott tells me," Wayne meandered on, "that her brother thinks
+very highly of this young man. It seems that his business abilities are
+quite remarkable, and they fancy he looks like Henry--the eldest of the
+boys who died. It's extraordinary how his voice reminds me of some
+one--don't know who. It might be--But then again--"
+
+"His voice is like a thousand other voices," she thought it well to say,
+"just as he looks like a thousand other men. He's one of those rather
+tall, rather good-looking, rather well-dressed youngish men--not really
+young--of whom you'll pass twenty within a mile any day in Fifth Avenue,
+and who are as thick as soldiers on a battle-field at the lower end of
+Broadway."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With the data Wayne had given her she worked out the main lines of the
+story during the night; but it was not until she had done so that its full
+significance appeared to her. Having grasped that, she could scarcely wait
+for daylight in order to go to Evie, and yet when morning came she
+abandoned that course as impolitic. Reflection showed her that her
+struggle must be less with Evie than with Ford, while she judged that he
+himself would lose no time in putting the battle in array. He must see as
+plainly as she did that she stood like an army across his path, and that
+he must either retreat before her or show fight. She believed he would do
+the latter and do it soon. She thought it probable that he would appear
+that very day, and that her wisest plan was to await his opening attack.
+The necessity, so unexpectedly laid upon her, of defending the right
+deflected her mind from dwelling too bitterly on her own disillusioning.
+
+The morning having passed without a sign from him, she made her
+arrangements for having the afternoon undisturbed sending Wayne to drive,
+and ordering the servants to admit no one but Mr. Strange, should he
+chance to call. Having intrenched herself behind the fortification of the
+tea-table, she waited. In spite of her preoccupation, or rather because of
+it, she purposely read a book, forcing herself to fix her attention on its
+pages in order to have her mind free from preconceived notions as to how
+she must act and what she must say. Her single concession to herself was
+to put on a new and becoming house dress, whose rich tones of brown and
+amber harmonized with her ivory coloring and emphasized the clear-cut
+distinction of her features. Before taking up her position she surveyed
+herself with the mournful approval which the warrior about to fall may
+give to the perfection of his equipment.
+
+It was half-past four when the servant showed him in. His formal attire
+seemed to her, as he crossed the room, oddly civilized and correct after
+her recollections of him. Notwithstanding her dread of the opening
+minutes, the meeting passed off according to the fixed procedure of the
+drawing-room. It was a relief to both to find that the acts of shaking
+hands and sitting down had been accomplished with matter-of-course
+formality. With the familiar support of afternoon-call conventions
+difficult topics could be treated at greater ease.
+
+"I'm very glad to find you at home," he began, feeling it to be a safe
+opening. "I was almost afraid--"
+
+"I stayed in on purpose," she said, frankly. "I thought you might come."
+
+"I wasn't sure whether or not you knew me last night--"
+
+"I didn't at first. I really hadn't noticed you, though I remembered
+afterward that you were standing with Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott when Mr.
+Wayne and I came into the room. I wonder now if you recognized me?"
+
+"Oh, rather! I knew you were going to be there. I've been in New York a
+month."
+
+"Then you might have come to see me sooner."
+
+"Well, you see--"
+
+He paused and colored, trying to cover up his embarrassment with a smile.
+She allowed her eyes to express interrogation not knowing that her frank
+gaze disconcerted him. She herself went back so eagerly to the days when
+he was the fugitive, Norrie Ford, and she the nameless girl who was
+helping him, that she could not divine his humiliation at being obliged to
+drop his mask. Since becoming engaged to Evie Colfax and returning to New
+York, he perceived more clearly than ever before that his true part in the
+world was that of the respectable, successful man of business which he
+played so skilfully. It cost him an effort she could have no reason to
+suspect to be face to face with the one person in the world who knew him
+as something else.
+
+"You see," he began again, "I had to consider a good many
+things--naturally. It wouldn't have done to give any one an idea that we
+had met before."
+
+"No, of course not. But last night you might have--"
+
+"Last night I had to follow the same tactics. I can't afford to run risks.
+It's rather painful, it's even a bit humiliating--"
+
+"I can imagine that, especially here in New York. In out-of-the-way places
+it must be different. There it doesn't matter. But to be among the very
+people who--"
+
+"You think that there it does matter. I had to consider that. I had to
+make it plain to myself that there was nothing dishonorable in imposing on
+people who had forced me into a false position. I don't say it's
+pleasant--"
+
+"Oh, I know it can't be pleasant. I only wondered a little, as I saw you
+last night, why you let yourself be placed in a position that made it
+necessary."
+
+"I should have wondered at that myself a year ago. I certainly never had
+any intention of doing it. It's almost as much a surprise to me to be here
+as it is to you to see me. I suppose you thought I would never turn up
+again."
+
+"No, I didn't think that. On the contrary, I thought you _would_ turn
+up--only not just here."
+
+It struck him that she was emphasizing that point for a purpose--to bring
+him to another point still. He took a few seconds to reflect before
+deciding that he would follow her lead without further hanging back.
+
+"I shouldn't have returned to New York if I hadn't become engaged to Miss
+Colfax. You know about that, don't you? I think she meant to tell you."
+
+She inclined her head assentingly, without words. He noticed her dark eyes
+resting on him with a kind of pity. He had cherished a faint hope--the
+very faintest--that she might welcome what he had just said
+sympathetically. In the few minutes during which she remained silent that
+hope died.
+
+"I suppose," she said, gently, "that you became engaged to Evie before
+knowing who she was?"
+
+"I fell in love with her before knowing who she was. I'm afraid that when
+I actually asked her to marry me I had heard all there was to learn."
+
+"Then why did you do it?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders with a movement acquired by long residence
+among Latins. His smile conveyed the impossibility of explaining himself
+in a sentence.
+
+"I'll tell you all about it, if you'd like to hear."
+
+"I should like it very much. Remember, I know nothing of what happened
+after--after--"
+
+He noticed a shade of confusion in her manner, and hastened to begin his
+narrative.
+
+Somewhat to her surprise, he sketched his facts in lightly, but dwelt
+strongly on the mental and moral necessities his situation forced on him.
+He related with some detail the formation of his creed of conduct in the
+dawn on Lake Champlain, and showed her that according to its tenets he was
+permitted a kind of action that in other men might be reprehensible. He
+came to the story of Evie last of all, and allowed her to see how
+dominating a part Fate, or Predestination had played in evolving it.
+
+"So you see," he ended, "it was too late then to do anything--but to
+yield."
+
+"Or withdraw," she added, softly.
+
+He stared at her a moment, his body bent slightly forward his elbows
+resting on the arms of his chair. As a matter of fact, he was thinking
+less of her words than of her beauty--so much nobler in type than he
+remembered it.
+
+"Yes," he returned, quietly, "I can see that it would strike you in that
+way. So it did me--at first. But I had to look at the subject all round--"
+
+"I don't need to do that."
+
+He stared at her again. There was a decision in her words which he found
+hard to reconcile with the pity in her eyes and the gentle softness of her
+smile.
+
+"You mean that you don't want to take my--necessities--into
+consideration."
+
+"I mean that when I see the one thing right to do, I don't have to look
+any further."
+
+"The one thing right to do--for you?--or for me?"
+
+"There's no reason why I should intervene at all. I look to you to save me
+from the necessity."
+
+He hesitated a minute before deciding whether to hedge or to meet her
+squarely.
+
+"By giving up Evie and--clearing out," he said, with a perceptible hint of
+defiance.
+
+"I shouldn't lay stress on your--clearing out."
+
+"But you would on my giving up Evie?"
+
+"Don't you see," she began, in an explanatory tone, "I, in my own person,
+have nothing to do with it? It isn't for me to say this should be done or
+that. You can't imagine how hard it is for me to say anything at all; and
+if I speak, it isn't as myself--it's as the voice of a situation. You must
+understand as well as I do what that situation imposes."
+
+"But I don't intend that a situation shall impose anything--on me. I mean
+to act as master--"
+
+"But I'm neither so independent nor so strong--nor is Evie. You don't
+consider her."
+
+"I don't have to consider any one. When I make Evie happy I do all that
+can be asked of me."
+
+"No, you would be called on to _keep_ her happy. And she couldn't remain
+happy if she were married to you. It isn't possible. She couldn't live
+with you any more than--than a humming-bird could live with a hawk."
+
+They both smiled, rather nervously.
+
+"But I'm not a hawk," he insisted. "I'm much more a humming-bird than you
+imagine. You think me some sort of creature of prey because you
+believe--that I did--what I was accused of--"
+
+The circumstances seemed so far off from him now, so incongruous with what
+he had become, that he reverted to them with difficulty.
+
+"I don't attach any importance to that," she said, with a tranquillity
+that startled him. "I suppose I ought to, but I never have. If you killed
+your uncle, it seems to me--very natural. He provoked you. He deserved it.
+My father would have done it certainly."
+
+"But I didn't, you see. That puts another color on the case."
+
+"It doesn't for me. And it doesn't, as it affects Evie. Whether you're
+innocent or guilty--and I don't say I think you to be guilty--I've never
+thought much about it--but whether you're guilty or not, your life is the
+kind of tragedy Evie couldn't share. It would kill her."
+
+"It wouldn't kill her, if she didn't know anything about it."
+
+"But she would know. You can't keep that sort of thing from a wife. She
+wouldn't be married to you a year before she had discovered that you
+were--a--"
+
+"An escaped convict. Why not say it?"
+
+"I wasn't going to say it. But at least she would know that you were a man
+who was pretending to be--something that he wasn't."
+
+"You mean an impostor. Well, I've already explained to you that I'm an
+impostor only because Society itself has made me one, I'm not to blame--"
+
+"I quite see the force of that. But Evie wouldn't. Don't you understand?
+That's my point. She would only see the horror of it, and she would be
+overwhelmed. It wouldn't matter to her that you could bring forward
+arguments in your own defence. She wouldn't be capable of understanding
+them. You must see for yourself that mentally--and spiritually--just as
+bodily--she's as fragile as a butterfly. She couldn't withstand a storm.
+She'd be crushed by it."
+
+"I don't think you do her justice. If she were to discover--I mean, if the
+worst were to come to the worst--well, you can see how it's been with
+yourself. You've known from the beginning all there is to know--and yet--"
+
+"I'm different."
+
+She meant the brief statement to divert his attention from himself, but
+she perceived that it aroused a flash of self-consciousness in both. While
+she could hear herself saying inwardly, "I'd rather go on waiting for
+him--uselessly," he was listening to a silvery voice, as it lisped the
+words, "Dear mamma used to think she was in love with some one; we didn't
+know anything about it." Each reverted to the memory of the lakeside scene
+in which he had said, "My life will belong to you ... a thing for you to
+dispose of ..." and each was afraid that the other was doing so.
+
+All at once she saw herself as she fancied he must see her--a woman
+claiming the fulfilment of an old promise, the payment of a long-standing
+debt. He must think she was making Evie a pretext in her fight for her own
+hand. His vow--if it was a vow--had been the germ of so much romance in
+her mind that she ascribed it to a place in the foreground of his. In all
+she was saying he would understand a demand on her part that he should
+make it good. Very well, then; if he could do her such injustice, he must
+do it. She could not permit the fear of it to inspire her with moral
+cowardice or deter her from doing what was right.
+
+Nevertheless, it helped her to control her agitation to rise and ring for
+tea. She felt the need of some commonplace action to assure herself and
+him that now, at last, she was outside the realm of the romantic. He rose
+as she did, to forestall her at the bell; and as the servant entered with
+the tray, they moved together into the embrasure of the wide bay-window.
+Down below the autumn colors were fading, while leaves, golden-yellow or
+blood-red, were being swirled along the ground.
+
+"I had to do things out there"--his nod was meant to indicate the
+direction of South America--"in a somewhat high-handed manner, and I've
+acquired the habit of it. If I'd stuck at difficulties I shouldn't have
+got anywhere."
+
+She looked at him inquiringly, as though to ask the purport of the
+observation.
+
+"You must see that I'm obliged to put this thing through--on Evie's
+account as much as mine. After getting her to care for me, I can't desert
+her now, whatever happens."
+
+"She wouldn't suffer--after a while. She'd get over it. You might not, but
+she--"
+
+"She shall not get over it, if I can help it. How can you ask me to let
+her?"
+
+"Only on the ground that you love her well enough."
+
+"Would you call that love?"
+
+"In view of all the circumstances, it would be my idea of it."
+
+"Then it wouldn't be mine. The only love I understand is the love that
+fights for its object, in the face of all opposition."
+
+She looked at him a minute with what she tried to make a smile, but which
+became no more than a quivering of the lip and lashes.
+
+"I hope you won't fight," she said, in a tone of appeal, "because it would
+have to be with me. If anything could break my heart, that would."
+
+She knew how near to self-betrayal she had gone, but in her eagerness she
+was reckless of the danger.
+
+"How do you know it wouldn't break mine too?" he asked, with a scrutiny
+that searched her eyes. "But there are times in life when men have just to
+fight--and let their hearts be broken. In becoming responsible for Evie's
+happiness I've given a pledge from which I can't withdraw--"
+
+"But that's where you don't understand her--"
+
+"Possibly; but it's where I understand myself."
+
+"Tea is served, miss," the maid said, coming forward to where they talked
+in undertones. At the same minute there was a shuffling at the door and
+Wayne entered from his drive. Ford would have gone forward to help him,
+but she put out her hand and stopped him.
+
+"He likes to find his way himself," she whispered.
+
+"They tell me there's tea in here," Wayne said, cheerily, from the
+doorway.
+
+"There's more than tea," Miriam replied in as bright a tone as she could
+assume. "There's Mr. Strange, whom you met last night."
+
+"Ah, that's good." Wayne groped his way toward the voices. "How do you do!
+Glad to see you. It's windy out-of-doors. One feels the winter beginning
+to nip."
+
+Ford took the extended hand, and, without seeming to do so, adroitly
+piloted the blind man to a seat as they moved, all three, to the
+tea-table.
+
+For the next ten minutes their talk turned on the common topics of the
+day. As during her conversation with Conquest a few weeks before, Miriam
+found again that the routine of duties of acting as hostess steadied her
+nerves. With Ford aiding her in the little ways to which he had become
+accustomed since his engagement to Evie, hostility was absent from their
+mutual relation, even though opposition remained. That at least was a
+comfort to her; and now and then, as she handed him the bread and butter
+or a plate of cakes to pass to Wayne, their eyes could meet in a glance of
+comprehension.
+
+Wayne was still enjoying his tea when Ford turned to him with an abrupt
+change of tone.
+
+"I'm glad you came in, sir, while I was still here, because there's
+something I particularly want to tell you."
+
+He did not look at Miriam, but he could feel the way in which she sat
+upright and aghast. Wayne turned his sightless eyes, hidden by large
+colored glasses, toward the speaker, and nodded.
+
+"Yes?" he said, interrogatively.
+
+"I would have told you before, only that Miss Jarrott and Miss Colfax
+thought I had better wait till every one got settled. In any case, Mr.
+Jarrott made it a condition before I left Buenos Aires that it shouldn't
+go outside the family till Miss Colfax had had her social winter in New
+York."
+
+Wayne's face grew grave, but not unsympathetic.
+
+"I suppose I know what's coming," he said, quietly.
+
+"It's the sort of thing that was bound to come sooner or later with Miss
+Colfax," Ford smiled, speaking with an air of assurance. "What makes me
+uneasy is that I should be the man to come and tell the news. If it was
+any one you knew better--"
+
+"You've probably heard that I'm not Evie's guardian," Wayne interposed.
+"I've no control at all over what she does."
+
+"I understand that; but to me there's an authority above the legal one--or
+at least on a level with it--and I should be unhappy--we should both be
+unhappy--if we didn't have your consent."
+
+Wayne looked pleased. He was so rarely consulted in the affairs of the
+family, especially since his affliction had forced him aside, that this
+deference was a clew to the young man's character. Nevertheless, he
+allowed some seconds to pass in silence, while Ford threw at Miriam a
+glance of defiance, in which there was also an expression of audacious
+friendliness. She sat rigid and pale, her hands clinching the arms of her
+chair.
+
+"It's a serious matter--of course," Wayne said, after becoming hesitation;
+"but I've great confidence in Henry Jarrott. Next to Evie herself, he's
+the person most concerned--in a certain way. I'm told he thinks well of
+you--"
+
+"He ought to know," Ford broke in, confidently. "I've nothing to show in
+the way of passports, except myself and my work. I've been with him ever
+since I went to South America, and he's been extremely kind to me. The
+only certificate of character I can offer is one from him."
+
+"That's sufficient. We should be sorry to let Evie go, shouldn't we,
+Miriam? She's a sweet child, and very much like her dear mother. But, as
+you say, it was bound to happen one day or another; and we can only be
+glad that--I'm happy to congratulate you, Mr. Strange. Your name, at any
+rate, is a familiar one. It's that of an old boyhood's friend of mine, who
+showed me the honor of placing this young lady in my charge. We called
+him Harry. His full name was Herbert Harrington, but he dropped the first.
+You seem to have taken it up--it's odd, isn't it, Miriam?--and I take it
+as a happy omen."
+
+"Thank you." Ford rose, and made the blind man understand that he was
+holding out his hand, "I shall be more satisfied now for having told you."
+
+Miriam accompanied him into the hall, on pretext of ringing for the lift.
+
+"Oh, why did you do that?" she protested. "Don't you see that it only
+makes things more complicated than they were already?"
+
+"It's my first move," he laughed, with friendly bravado. "Now you can make
+yours."
+
+She gazed at him in puzzled distress as the lift rose.
+
+"I'm coming again," he said, with renewed confidence. "I've a lot more
+things to say."
+
+"And I have only one," she answered, turning back toward the drawing-room.
+
+"He's a nice young fellow," Wayne said, as he heard her enter. He had
+risen and felt his way into the bay-window, where he stood looking outward
+as if he could see. "I suppose it must be all right, since the Jarrotts
+are so enthusiastic Poor little Evie! I hope she'll be happy. It's
+extraordinary how his voice reminds me of--"
+
+She stood still in the middle of the room, waiting for him to continue.
+Nothing he could add would have surprised her now. But he said no more.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+
+Thinking that Ford might come again next afternoon, Miriam went out. On
+her return she found his card--_Mr. Herbert Strange._ The same thing
+occurred the next day, and the next, and so on through the week. She was
+not afraid of seeing him. Now that the worst was known to her, she was
+sure of her mastery of herself, and of her capacity to meet anything. What
+she feared most was her sympathy for him, and the possibility that in some
+unguarded moment of pity he might wring concessions from her which she had
+no right to make. She hoped, too, that time, even a few days' time, would
+help him to work out the honorable course for himself.
+
+Her meetings with Evie were more inevitable, and required greater
+self-repression. She was so used to the part of elder sister, with whom
+all confidences are discussed, that she found it difficult not to speak
+her heart out frankly.
+
+"I heard he had been to see you and Popsey Wayne, and told you," Evie
+said, with her pretty nose just peeping above the bedclothes, at midday,
+on a morning later in the week. It was the day after Evie's first large
+dance, and she had been sleeping late. Miriam sat on the edge of the bed,
+smoothing stray golden tendrils off the flushed, happy little face.
+
+"He did come," Miriam admitted. "Mr. Wayne made no objections. I can't
+say he was glad. You wouldn't expect us to be that, dear, would you?"
+
+"I expect you to like him. It isn't committing you to much to say that.
+But you seem so--so every which way about him."
+
+"I'm not every which way about him. I can't say that I'm any way at all.
+Yes, I do like him--after a fashion. If I make reserves, it's because I'm
+not sure that I think him good enough for my little Evie."
+
+"He's a great deal too good!" Evie exclaimed, rapturously. "Oh, Miriam, if
+you only knew how fond I am of him! I'd die for him--I truly believe I
+would--almost! Oh, it was so stupid last night without him! All these boys
+seem such pigeons beside him. I'm sorry now we're not going to announce
+the engagement at once. I certainly sha'n't change my mind--and it would
+be such fun to be able to say I was engaged before coming out."
+
+"Twice before coming out."
+
+"Oh, well, I only count it once, do you see? Billy's such a goose. You
+should have seen him last night when I forgot two of my dances with
+him--on purpose. He's really getting to dislike me; so that I shall soon
+be able to--to show him."
+
+"I wouldn't be in a hurry about that, dear. There's lots of time. As you
+said the other day, it's no use hurting his feelings--"
+
+Evie sat up suddenly in bed, and looked suspicious.
+
+"So you're taking that stand. Now I know you don't like him. You've got
+something against him, though I can't for the life of me imagine what it
+can be, when you never laid eyes on him till a few days ago. Well, I'm not
+going to change, do you see? You may as well make up your mind to that at
+once. And it will be Billy or no Billy."
+
+Nearer than that Miriam could not approach the subject through fear of
+doing more harm than good. At the end of a week Ford found her at home,
+chiefly because she felt it time he should. She secured again the
+afternoon-call atmosphere; but she noticed that he carried a small
+packet--a large, brownish-yellow envelope, strapped with rubber
+bands--which he kept in his hand. She was struck by the greater ease of
+his entry, and by the renewal of that sense of comradeship which had
+marked his bearing toward her in the old days in the cabin. The small
+comedy of introductory commonplace went off smoothly.
+
+"Well?" he said then, with a little challenging laugh.
+
+"Well--what?"
+
+"I've been waiting for your move. You haven't made it."
+
+She shook her head. "I've no move to make."
+
+"Oh yes, you have--a great big move. You can easily say, Check. I doubt if
+you can make it, Checkmate."
+
+"I'm afraid that's a game I don't know how to play."
+
+He stared at her inquiringly--noting the disdain with which her chin
+tilted and her lip curled, though he could see it was a disdain suffused
+with sweetness.
+
+"Do you mean that you wouldn't--wouldn't give me away?"
+
+"I mean that you're either broaching a topic I don't understand or
+speaking a language I've never learned. If you don't mind, we won't
+discuss the subject, and we'll speak our mother-tongue--the mother-tongue
+of people like you and me."
+
+He stared again. It took him some few seconds to understand her
+phraseology. In proportion as her meaning broke upon him, his face glowed.
+When he spoke it was with enthusiasm for her generosity in taking this
+stand rather than in gratitude for anything he was to gain by it.
+
+"By Jove, you're a brick! You always were. I might have expected that this
+is exactly what you'd say."
+
+"I hope so. I didn't expect that you'd talk of my giving you away, as you
+call it--to any one."
+
+"But you're wrong," he said, with a return to the laughing bravado which
+concealed his inward repugnance to his position. "You're wrong. I'll give
+you that tip now. I'll fight fair. I sha'n't be grateful. I'll profit by
+your magnanimity. Remember it's my part in the world to be unscrupulous.
+It has to be. I've told you so. With me the end justifies the
+means--always; and when the end is to keep my word to Evie, it will make
+no difference to me that you were too high-minded to put the big obstacle
+in my way."
+
+"You'll not expect me to be otherwise than sorry for that--for your sake."
+
+"No, I dare say. But I can't stop to think of what any one feels for my
+sake when I know what I feel for my own."
+
+"Which is only an additional reason for my being--sorry. You don't find
+fault with me for that?"
+
+"I do. I don't want you to be sorry. I want to convince you. I want you to
+see things from my point of view--how I've been placed. Good Lord! it's
+hard enough, without the sense that you're sitting in judgment on me."
+
+"I'm not sitting in judgment on you--except in so far as concerns Evie
+Colfax. If it was anybody else--"
+
+"But it couldn't be anybody else It's Evie or no one. She's everything on
+earth to me. She's to me what electricity is to the wire--that which makes
+it a thing alive."
+
+"To be a thing alive isn't necessarily the highest thing."
+
+"Ah, but that doesn't apply to me. It's all very well for other men to
+say, 'All is lost to save honor.' They have compensations. I haven't. You
+might as well ask a man to think of the highest thing when he's drowning."
+
+"But I should. There have been men who haven't--and they've saved their
+lives by it. But you know what we've called them."
+
+"In my case there'd be only you to call me that--if you wanted to."
+
+"Oh no; there'd be--you."
+
+"I can stand that. I've stood it for eight years already. If you think I
+haven't had times when it's been hell, you're quite mistaken. I wonder if
+you can guess what it means to me--in here"--he tapped his breast--"to go
+round among all these good, kind, honorable people, passing myself off as
+Herbert Strange when all the time I'm Norrie Ford--and a convict? But I'm
+forced to. There's no way out of it."
+
+"Because there's no way out of it isn't a reason for going further in."
+
+"What does that matter? When you're in up to the eyes, what does it matter
+if you go over your head?"
+
+"In this case it would matter to Evie. That's my point. I have to protect
+her--to save her. There's no one but me to do it--and you."
+
+"Don't count on me," he said, savagely. "I've the right, in this wild
+beast's life, to seize anything I can snatch."
+
+He renewed his arguments, going over all the ground again. She listened
+to him as she had once listened to his plea in his defence--her pose
+pensive, her chin resting on her hand, her eyes pitiful. As far as she was
+aware of her own feelings it was merely to take note that a kind of
+yearning over him, an immense sorrow for him and with him, had
+extinguished the fires that a few days ago were burning for herself. It
+was hard to sit there heedless of his exposition and deaf to his
+persuasion. Seeing her inflexible, he became halting in his speech, till
+finally he stopped, still looking at her with an unresenting, dog-like
+gaze of entreaty.
+
+She made no comment when he ceased, and for a time they sat in silence.
+
+"Do you know what this is?" he asked, holding the packet toward her.
+
+She shook her head wonderingly.
+
+"It's what I owe you." She made a gesture of deprecation. "It's the money
+you lent me," he went on. "It's a tremendous satisfaction--that at
+least--to be able to bring it back to you."
+
+"But I don't want it," she stammered, in some agitation.
+
+"Perhaps not. But I want you to have it." He explained to her briefly what
+he had done in the matter.
+
+"Couldn't you give it to something?" she begged, "to some church or
+institution?"
+
+"You can, if you like. I mean to give it to you. You see, I'm not
+returning it with expressions of gratitude, because anything I could say
+would be so inadequate as to be absurd."
+
+He left his chair and came to her, with the packet in his outstretched
+hand. She shrank from it, rising, and retreating into the space of the
+bay-window.
+
+"But I don't want it," she insisted. "I never thought of your returning
+it. I scarcely thought of the incident at all. It had almost passed from
+my memory."
+
+"That's natural enough; but it's equally natural that it shouldn't have
+passed from mine." He came close to her and offered it again. "Do take
+it."
+
+"Put it on the table. Please."
+
+"That isn't the same thing. I want you to take it. I want to put it into
+your own hand, as you put it into mine."
+
+She remembered that she had put it into his hand by closing his fingers
+forcibly upon it, and hastened to prevent anything of that kind now. She
+took it unwillingly, holding it in both hands as if it were a casket.
+
+"That's done," he said, with satisfaction. "You can't imagine what a
+relief it is to have it off my mind."
+
+"I'm sorry you should have felt about it like that."
+
+"You would have felt like that yourself, if you were a man owing money to
+a woman--and especially a woman who was your--enemy."
+
+"Oh!" She cowered, as if he had threatened her.
+
+"I repeat the word," he laughed, uneasily. "Any one is my enemy who comes
+between me and Evie. You'll forgive me if I seem brutal--"
+
+"Yes, I'll forgive you. I'll even accept the word." She was pale and
+nervous, with the kind of nervousness that kept her smiling and still, but
+sent the queer, lambent flashes into her eyes. "Let us say it. I'm your
+enemy, and you pay me the money so as to feel free to strike me as hard as
+you can."
+
+He kept to his laugh, but there was a forced ring in it.
+
+"I don't call that a fair way of putting it, but--"
+
+"I don't see that the way of putting it matters, so long as it's the
+fact."
+
+"It's the fact twisted in a very ingenious fashion. I should say
+that--since I'm going to marry Evie--I want--naturally enough--to feel
+that--that"--he stammered and reddened, seeking a word that would not
+convey an insult--"to feel--that I--met other claims--as well as I could."
+
+He looked her in the eyes with significant directness. His steady gaze, in
+which she saw--or thought she saw--glints of challenge toned down by
+gleams of regret, seemed to say, "Whatever I owe you other than money is
+out of my power to pay." She fully understood that he did not repudiate
+the debt; he was only telling her that since he had given all to Evie, his
+heart was bankrupt. What angered her and kept her silent, fearing she
+would say something she would afterward repent, was the implication that
+she was putting forth her claim for fulfilment.
+
+He still confronted her, with an air of flying humiliation as a flag of
+defiance, while she stood holding the packet in both hands, when the door
+was pushed open, and Evie, radiant from her walk in the cold air and fine
+in autumn furs and plumage, fluttered in. Her blue eyes opened wide on the
+two in the bay-window, but she did not advance from the threshold.
+
+"Dear me, dear me!" she twittered, in her dry little fashion, before they
+had time to realize the fact that she was there. "I hope I'm not
+interrupting you."
+
+"Evie dear, come in." Miriam threw the packet on a table, and went
+forward. Ford followed, trying to regain the appearance of "just making a
+call."
+
+"No, no," Evie cried, waving Miriam back. "I only came--for nothing. That
+is--But I'll go away and come back again. Do you think you'll be long? But
+I suppose if you have secrets--"
+
+Her hand was on the knob again, but Miriam caught her.
+
+"No, darling, you must stay. You're absurd. Mr. Strange and I were
+just--talking."
+
+"Yes, so I saw. That's why I thought I might be _de trap_. How do you do!"
+She put out her left hand carelessly to Ford, her right hand still holding
+the knob, and twisted her little person impatiently. Ford held her hand,
+but she snatched it away. "There's not the least reason why I should stay,
+do you see?" she hurried on. "I only came with a message from Aunt
+Queenie."
+
+"I'm sure it's confidential," Ford laughed, "so I'll make myself scarce."
+
+"You can do just as you like," Evie returned, indifferently. "Cousin
+Colfax Yorke," she added, looking at Miriam, "has telephoned that he can't
+come to dine; and, as it's too late to get anybody else, Aunt Queenie
+thought you might come and make a fourth. It's only ourselves and--- him,"
+she nodded toward Strange.
+
+"Certainly, I'll come, dear--with pleasure."
+
+"And I'll go," Ford said; "but I won't add with pleasure, because that
+would be rude."
+
+When he had gone Evie sniffed about the room, looking at the pictures and
+curios as if she had never seen them before. It was evident that she had
+spied the packet, and was making her way, by a seemingly accidental route,
+toward it. Miriam drifted back to her place in the bay-window, where,
+while apparently watching the traffic in the street below, she kept an eye
+on Evie's manœuvres.
+
+"What on earth can you two have to talk about?" Evie demanded, while she
+seemed intent on examining a cabinet of old porcelain.
+
+"If you're very good, dear," Miriam replied, trying to take an amused,
+offhand tone, "I'll tell you. It was business."
+
+"Business? Why, I thought you hardly knew him."
+
+"You don't have to know people very well to transact business with them.
+He came on a question of--money."
+
+"No, but you don't start up doing business with a person that's just
+dropped down from the clouds--like that." She snapped her fingers to
+indicate precipitous haste.
+
+"Sometimes you do."
+
+"Well, _you_ don't. I know that for a fact." She was inspecting a vase on
+a pedestal in a corner now. It was nearer to the packet. She wheeled round
+suddenly, so that it should take her by surprise. "What's that?"
+
+"You see. It's an envelope with papers in it."
+
+"What sort of papers?"
+
+"I haven't looked at them yet. They have to do with money, or investments,
+or something. I'm never very clear about those things."
+
+"I thought you did all that through Cousin Endsleigh Jarrott and Mr.
+Conquest?"
+
+"This was a little thing I couldn't trouble them with."
+
+"And you went straight off to _him_, when you'd only known him--let me
+see!--how many days?--one, two, three, four--"
+
+"I've gone to people I didn't know at all--sometimes. You have to. If you
+only knew more about investing money--"
+
+"I don't know anything about investing money; but I know this is very
+queer. And you didn't like him--or you said you didn't."
+
+"I said I did, dear--after a fashion--and so I do."
+
+"In that case I should think a good deal would depend upon the fashion.
+Look here. It's addressed--_Miss Strange._ That's his writing. That's how
+he scribbles his name. And there's something written in tiny, tiny letters
+in the corner. What is it?" Without touching the envelope she bent down to
+see. "It's _The Wild Olive_. Now, what in this world can that mean? That's
+not business, anyhow. That means something."
+
+"No, that's not business, but I haven't an idea what it means." Miriam was
+glad to be able to disclaim something. "It was probably on the envelope by
+accident. Some clerk wrote it, and Mr. Strange didn't notice it."
+
+Evie let the explanation pass, while continuing to stare at the object of
+her suspicions.
+
+"That's not papers," she said, at last, pointing as she spoke to something
+protruding between the rubber bands. "There's something in there. It looks
+like a"--she hesitated to find the right article--"it looks like a
+card-case."
+
+"Perhaps it is," Miriam agreed. "But I'm sure I don't know why he should
+bring me a card-case."
+
+"Why don't you look?"
+
+"I wasn't in a hurry; but you can look yourself if you want to."
+
+Evie took offence. "I'm sure I don't want to. That's the last thing."
+
+"I wish you would. Then you'd see."
+
+"I only do it under protest," she declared--"because you force me to." She
+took up the envelope, and began to unloose the rubber bands. "_The Wild
+Olive_" she quoted, half to herself. "Ridiculous! I should think clerks
+might have something better to do than write such things as that--on
+envelopes--on people's business." But her indignation turned to surprise
+when a small flat thing, not unlike a card-case, certainly, tumbled out.
+"What in the name of goodness--?"
+
+Only strong self-control kept Miriam from darting forward to snatch it
+from the floor. She remembered it at once. It was a worn red leather
+pocket-book, which she had last seen when it was fresh and new--sitting in
+the sunset, on the heights above Champlain, and looking at the jewelled
+sea. A card fell from it, on which there was something written. Evie
+dropped on one knee to pick it up. Miriam was sorry to risk anything, but
+she felt constrained to say, as quietly as possible:
+
+"You'd better not read that, dear. It might be private."
+
+Evie slipped the card back into the pocket-book, which she threw on the
+table, where Miriam let it lie. "I won't look at anything else," Evie
+said, with dignity, turning away.
+
+"I want you to," Miriam said, authoritatively. "I beg you to."
+
+Thus commanded, Evie drew forth a flat document, on which she read, in
+ornamental letters, the inscription, _New York, Toronto, and Great Lakes
+Railroad Company_. She unfolded it slowly, looking puzzled.
+
+"It's nothing but a lot of little square things," she said, with some
+disdain.
+
+"The little square things are called coupons, if you know what they are."
+
+"I know they're things people cut--when they have a lot of money. I don't
+know why they cut them; and still less do I know why he should be bringing
+them to you."
+
+Miriam had a sudden inspiration that made her face beam with relief.
+
+"I'll tell you why he brought them to me, dear--though I do it under
+protest, as you say yourself. Your curiosity forces my hand, and makes me
+show it ahead of time. He brought them to me because it's a
+wedding-present for you. When you get married--or begin to get
+married--you can have all that money for your trousseau."
+
+"Aunt Helen is going to give me my trousseau. She said so."
+
+"Then you can have it for anything you like--for house-furnishings or a
+pearl necklace. You know you wanted a pearl necklace--and there's plenty
+for a nice one. Each of those papers is worth a thousand dollars, or
+nearly. And there are--how many?"
+
+"Three. You seem very keen on getting rid of them."
+
+"So I am--to you, darling."
+
+Evie prepared to depart, looking unconvinced.
+
+"It's awfully nice of you--of course. But still--if that's what you had
+meant at first--from the beginning--you would have--Well, I'll tell Aunt
+Queenie you'll come."
+
+Left alone, Miriam made haste to read the card in the pocket-book.
+
+/#
+   _As deep calls to deep, so Spirit speaks to Spirit. It is the only true
+   communion between mutually comprehending souls. But it is
+   unerring--pardoning all, because understanding all, and making the
+   crooked straight._
+#/
+
+She read it more than once. She was not sure that it was meant for her.
+She was not sure that it was in Ford's own handwriting. But in their
+situation it had a meaning; she took it as a message to herself; and as
+she read, and read again, she felt on her face the trickling of one or two
+slow, hard tears.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+
+The result of the dinner that evening was that Evie grew more fretful.
+After the departure of her guests, she evolved a brief formula which she
+used frequently during the next few weeks: "There's something!" With her
+quick eyes and quicker intuitions, it was impossible for her not to see
+that Ford and Miriam possessed common memories of the kind that
+distinguish old acquaintances from new ones. When it did not transpire in
+chance words she caught it in their glances or divined it in the mental
+atmosphere. As autumn passed into early winter she became nervous,
+peevish, and exacting; she lost much from her pretty ways and something
+from her looks. In the family the change was ascribed to the fatigue
+incidental to the sudden round of lunches, dinners, dances, suppers,
+theatre-parties, opera-goings, and "teas" with which American boys and
+girls of a certain age are surfeited pitilessly with pleasure, as
+Strasburg geese are stuffed for paté de foie gras. Ford, however,
+suspected the true reason, and Miriam knew it. They met as seldom as might
+be; and yet, with the many things requiring explanation between them,
+frank conversation became imperative.
+
+"You see how it is already," Miriam said to him. "It's making her unhappy
+from the start. You can't conceal the truth from her very long."
+
+"She isn't fretting about the truth; she's fretting about what she
+imagines."
+
+"She's fretting because she doesn't understand, and she'll go on fretting
+till she does. I'm not sorry. It must show you--"
+
+"It shows me the necessity of our being married as soon as possible, so
+that I may take care of her, and put a stop to it."
+
+"I agree with you that you'd put a stop to it. You'd put a stop to
+everything. She wouldn't live a year--or you wouldn't. Either she'd
+die--or she'd abhor you. And if she didn't die, you'd want to."
+
+"I wish to the Lord I had died--eight years ago. The great mistake I made
+was when the lumber-jacks loosed my hand-cuffs and started me through the
+woods. They called it giving me a chance, and for a few minutes I thought
+it was one. A chance! Good God! I remember feeling, as I ran, that I was
+deserting something. I didn't know what it was just then, but I've
+understood it since. It would have been a pluckier thing to have been in
+my coffin as Norrie Ford--or even doing time--than to be here as Herbert
+Strange."
+
+She said nothing for the moment, but as they walked along side by side he
+shot a glance at her, and saw her coloring. They had met in the park. He
+was going toward the house in Seventy-second Street when she was coming
+away from it. Seizing the opportunity of a few words in private, he had
+turned to stroll back with her.
+
+"I didn't expect you to be here as Herbert Strange," she said, as though
+in self-excuse. "I had to give you a name that was like my own, when I was
+writing letters about your ticket, and sending checks. I had to do
+everything to avoid suspicion at a time when Greenport was watched. I
+thought you might be able to take your own name or something like it--"
+
+He explained to her how that had never been possible.
+
+"Evie fidgets about it," he continued. "She puts together the two facts
+that you and I seem to have known each other, and that my name is
+identical with your father's. She doesn't know what to make of it; she
+only thinks 'there's something.' She hasn't said more than that in words,
+but I see her little mind at work."
+
+"Evie isn't the only one," she informed him. "There's Mr. Wayne. He has to
+be reckoned with. He recognized your voice from the first minute of
+hearing it, though he hasn't said yet that he knows whose it is. He may do
+so at any time. He's very surprising at that sort of thing. I can see him
+listening when you're there, not only to your words, but to your very
+movements, trying to recapture--"
+
+"The upshot of everything," he said, abruptly, "is that I must marry her,
+take her back to the Argentine, where I found her, and where we shall both
+be out of harm's way."
+
+"You wouldn't be out of harm's way. You can't turn your back on it like
+that. You alone might be able to slip through, but not if you have Evie."
+
+"That will be my affair; I'll see to it. I take the full responsibility on
+myself."
+
+"I couldn't let you. Remember that. You can't marry her. Let me say it
+plainly--"
+
+"Oh, you've said it plainly enough."
+
+"If I've said it too plainly, it's because you force me. You're so
+wilful."
+
+"You mean, I'm so determined. What it amounts to is the clash of your
+will against mine; and you refuse to see that I can't give way."
+
+"I see that you must give way. It's in the nature of things. It's
+inevitable. If I didn't know that, do you think I should interfere? Do you
+think I should dare to run the risk of wrecking your happiness if I could
+do anything else? If you knew how I hate doing anything at all--"
+
+"But you needn't. You can just let things be."
+
+"I can't let things be--with all I know; and yet it's impossible for me to
+appeal to any one, except yourself. You put me in a position in which I
+must either betray you or betray those who trust me. Because I can't do
+either--"
+
+"I profit by your noble-mindedness. I told you I would. I'm sorry to have
+to do it--I'll even admit that I'm ashamed of it--and yet there's no other
+course for me. I'm not taking you at an unfair advantage, because I've
+concealed nothing from you from the first. You talk about the difficulty
+of your position, but you don't begin to imagine mine. As if everything
+else wasn't gall to me, I've got your disapproval to add wormwood."
+
+"It isn't my disapproval; it's simply--the situation. My opinion counts
+for nothing--"
+
+"It counts for everything with me--and yet I have to ignore it. But, after
+all," he flung out, bitterly, "it's the old story. I claim the right to
+squeeze out of life such drops of happiness--if you can call it
+happiness--as men have left to me, and you deny it. There it is in a
+nutshell. Because other people have inflicted a great wrong on me, you
+insist that I shall inflict a greater one on myself. And this time it
+wouldn't be only on myself; it would be on poor little Evie. There's
+where it cuts. No, no; I shall go on. I've the right to do it. You must
+stop me if you can. If you don't, or won't--why, then--"
+
+"I can stop you ... if you drive me to extremes ... but it wouldn't be by
+doing ... any of the things you expect."
+
+It was because of the catch in her voice that he stopped in his walk, and
+confronted her. In spite of the little tremor he could see in her no sign
+of yielding, and behind her veil he caught a gleam like that of anger. It
+was at that minute, perhaps, that he became distinctly conscious for the
+first time of a doubt as to the superiority of "his type of girl."
+Notwithstanding the awakening of certain faint perceptions, he had
+hitherto denied within himself that there was anything higher or more
+lovely. But in this girl's unflinching loyalty, and in her tenacious
+clinging to what she considered right, he was getting a new glimpse of
+womanhood, which, however, in no way weakened his determination to resist
+her.
+
+"As far as I see," he said, after long hesitation, "you and I have two
+irreconcilable duties. My duty is to marry Evie; yours is to prevent me.
+In that case there's nothing for either of us but to forge ahead, and see
+who wins. If you win, I shall bear no malice; and I hope you'll be equally
+generous if I do."
+
+"But I don't want to win independently of you. If I did, nothing could be
+easier."
+
+"Then why not do it?"
+
+He tossed up his hand with one of his fatalistic Latin gestures, drawing
+the attention of the passers-by to the man and woman talking so earnestly.
+For this reason, and because she was losing her self-command, she hastened
+to take leave of him.
+
+Arrived at home, it gave her no comfort to find Charles Conquest--the
+most spick and span of middle-aged New-Yorkers--waiting in the
+drawing-room.
+
+"I thought you might come in," he explained, "so I stayed. I have to get
+your signature to the papers about that property in Montreal. I've fixed
+the thing up and we'll sell."
+
+"You said you'd send the papers--"
+
+"That sounds as if you weren't glad to see me," he laughed, "but I'll
+ignore the discourtesy. Here," he added, unfolding the documents, "you put
+your name there--and there--near the L.S."
+
+She carried the papers to her desk, and sat down to write. Conquest took
+the liberty of old friendship to stroll about the room, with his hands
+behind him, humming a little tune.
+
+"Well," he said suddenly, "has he come back?"
+
+He had not approached the subject, beyond alluding to it covertly, since
+the day she had confided to him the confused story of her hopes. She
+blotted her signature carefully thinking out her reply.
+
+"I've given up expecting him," she said at last.
+
+"Ho! ho! So that's out of the way."
+
+She pretended to be scanning the documents before her so as to be able to
+sit with her back to him.
+
+"It isn't, for the reason that there's--no _way_," she said, after some
+hesitation.
+
+"Oh yes, there is," he laughed, "where there's a will."
+
+"But I've no will."
+
+"I have; I've enough for two."
+
+"I'll tell you what you have got," she said, half turning and speaking to
+him over the back of her chair. He drew near her. "You've got a great
+deal of common sense, and I want to ask your advice."
+
+"I can give that, as radium emits light--without ever diminishing the
+original store."
+
+"Then tell me. Has one ever the right to interfere where a man and a
+woman--"
+
+"No, never. You needn't give me any more details, because it's one of the
+questions an oracle finds easiest to answer. No one ever thanks you--"
+
+"I shouldn't be doing it for thanks."
+
+"And you get your own fingers burnt."
+
+"That wouldn't matter. I'd let my fingers burn to the bone if it would do
+any good."
+
+"It wouldn't. You may take my word for it. I know who you're talking
+about. It's Evie Colfax."
+
+She started, looking guilty. "Why should you suppose that?"
+
+"I've got eyes. I've watched her, and I know she's a little minx. Oh, you
+needn't protest. She's a taking little minx, and this time she's in the
+right."
+
+"I'm afraid I don't know what you mean."
+
+"What has Billy Merrow got to offer her, even if he is my nephew? Come
+now! He won't be in a position to marry for the next two or three years.
+Whereas that fellow Strange--"
+
+"Have you heard anything about him?" she asked, breathlessly.
+
+"It isn't what I've heard, it's what I see. He's a very good chap, and a
+first-rate man of business."
+
+"Do you know him well--personally?"
+
+"I meet him around--at the club and other places--and naturally I have
+something to do with him at the office. I like him. If Evie can snap him
+up she'll be doing well for herself. I'm sorry for Billy, of course; but
+he'll have time to break his heart more than once before he'll have money
+enough to do anything else with it. If I'd married at his age--"
+
+This, however, was venturing on delicate ground, so that he broke off,
+wheeling round toward the centre of the drawing-room. She folded the
+documents and brought them to him.
+
+"You know why I didn't send them?" he said, as he took them. "I thought if
+I came myself, you might have something to tell me."
+
+"I haven't; not anything special, that is."
+
+"You've told me something special already--that you're not looking for him
+back."
+
+"I'd rather not talk about it now, if you don't mind."
+
+"Then we'll talk about what goes with it--the other side of the subject."
+
+"There is no other side of the subject."
+
+"Oh, come now, Miriam! You haven't heard all I've got to tell you. You've
+never let me really present my case, as we lawyers say. If you could see
+things as I do--"
+
+"But I can't, and you mustn't ask me to-day. I'm tired--"
+
+"It would rest you."
+
+"No, no; not to-day. Don't you see I'm not--I'm not myself? I've had a
+very trying morning."
+
+"What's the matter? Tell me. I can keep a confidence even if I can't do
+some other things. Come now! I don't like to think you're worried when
+perhaps I could help you. That's what I should be good for, don't you see?
+I could assist you to bear a lot of things--"
+
+His tone, which was so often charged with a slightly mocking banter,
+became tender, and he attempted to take her hand. For a minute it seemed
+as if it might be a relief to trust him, to tell him the whole story and
+follow his counsel; but a second's thought showed her that she could not
+shift the responsibility from herself, and that in the end she should have
+to act alone.
+
+"Not to-day," she pleaded. "I'm not equal to it."
+
+"Then I'll come another day."
+
+"Yes, yes; if you like, only--"
+
+"Some day soon?"
+
+"When you like, only leave me now. Please go away. You won't think I'm
+rude, will you? But I'm not--not as I generally am--"
+
+"Good-bye." He put out his, hand frankly, and smiled so humbly, and yet
+withal so confidently, that she felt as if in spite of herself she might
+yield to his persistence through sheer weariness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To her surprise, the next few weeks passed without incident bringing no
+development in the situation. She saw little of Evie and almost nothing of
+Ford. One or two encounters with Charles Conquest had no result beyond the
+reiteration on his part of a set phrase, "You're coming to it, Miriam,"
+which, while exasperating her nerves, had a kind of hypnotic effect upon
+her will. She felt as if she might be "coming to it." Without calculating
+the probabilities she saw clearly enough that if she married Conquest the
+very act would furnish proof to Ford that her intervention in his affairs
+had been without self-interest. It would even offer some proof to herself,
+the sort of proof that strengthens the resolution and supports what is
+tottering in the pride. Notwithstanding the valor with which she
+struggled her victory over herself was not so complete that she could
+contemplate the destruction of Ford's happiness with absolute confidence
+in the purity of her motives in bringing it to ruin. It was difficult to
+take the highest road when what was left of her own fiercest instincts
+accompanied her on it. That she had fierce instincts she was quite aware.
+It was not for nothing that she had been born almost beyond the confines
+of the civilized earth, of parents for whom law and order and other men's
+rights were as the dead letter. True, she was trying to train the
+inheritance received from them to its finer purposes, as the vine draws
+strange essences from a flinty soil and sublimates them into the
+grape--but it was still their inheritance. While she was proud of it, she
+was afraid of it; and the fact that it leaped with her to separate Norrie
+Ford from Evie Colfax was a reason for distrusting the very impulse she
+knew to be right. Marriage with Conquest presented itself, therefore as a
+refuge--from Ford's suspicion and her own.
+
+For the time being, however, the necessity for doing anything was not
+pressing. Evie was caught into the social machine that had been set going
+on her account, and was not so much whirling in it as being whirled. Her
+energies were so taxed by the task of going round that she had only
+snatches of time and attention to give to her own future. In one of these
+she wrote to her uncle Jarrott, asking his consent to the immediate
+proclamation of her engagement, with his approval of her marriage at the
+end of the winter, though the reasons she gave him were not the same as
+those she advanced to Miriam. To him she dwelt on the maturity of her
+age--twenty by this time--the unchanging nature of her sentiments, and her
+desire to be settled down. To Miriam she was content to say, "There's
+something! and I sha'n't get to the bottom of it till we're married."
+
+Of the opening thus unexpectedly offered her Miriam made full use,
+pointing out the folly or verifying suspicions after marriage rather than
+before.
+
+"Well, I'm going to do it, do you see?" was Evie's only reply. "I know it
+will be all right in the end."
+
+Still a few weeks were to pass, and it was early in the new year before
+Uncle Jarrott's cablegram arrived with the three words, "_If you like_."
+Miriam received the information at the opera, where she had been suddenly
+called on to take the place of Miss Jarrott, laid low with "one of her
+headaches." It was Ford who told her, during an entr'acte, when for a few
+minutes Evie had left the box with the young man who made the fourth in
+the party. Finding themselves alone, Ford and Miriam withdrew as far as
+possible from public observation, speaking in rapid undertones.
+
+"But you'll not let her do it?" Miriam urged.
+
+"I shall, if you will. You can stop it--or posptone it. If you don't, I
+have every right to forge ahead. It's no use going over the old arguments
+again--"
+
+"You put me in an odious position. You want me either to betray you or
+betray the people who've been kind to me. It _would_ be betrayal if I were
+to let you go on."
+
+"Then stop me; it's in your power."
+
+"Very well; I will."
+
+He gave her a quick look, astonished rather than startled, but there was
+no time for further speech before Evie and her companion returned.
+
+It was Miriam's intention to put her plan into immediate execution, but
+she let most of the next day go by without doing anything. Understanding
+his driving her to extremes to be due less to deliberate defiance than to
+a desperate braving of the worst, she was giving him a chance for
+repentance. Just at the closing in of the winter twilight, at the hour
+when he generally appeared, the door was flung open and Billy Merrow
+rushed in excitedly.
+
+"What's all this about Evie?" he shouted, almost before crossing the
+threshold. "I've been there, and no one is at home. What's it about? Who
+has invented the confounded lie?"
+
+She could only guess at his meaning, but she forced him to shake hands and
+calm himself. Turning on the electric light, she saw a young man with
+decidedly tousled reddish hair, and features as haggard as a perfectly
+healthy, honest, freckled face could be.
+
+"Sit down, Billy, and tell me about it."
+
+"I can't; I'm crazy."
+
+"So I see; but tell me what you're crazy about."
+
+"Haven't you heard it? Of course you have. They wouldn't be writing it to
+Uncle Charlie if you didn't know all about it. But I'm hanged if I'll let
+it go on."
+
+Little by little she dragged the story from him. Miss Queenie Jarrott had
+written to Charles Conquest as one of the oldest friends of the family to
+inform him, "somewhat confidentially as yet," of her niece's engagement to
+Mr. Herbert Strange, of Buenos Aires and New York. Uncle Charlie, knowing
+what this would mean to him, had come to break the news and tell him to
+"buck up and take it standing."
+
+"I'll bet you I sha'n't take it lying down," he assured Miriam. "Evie is
+engaged to _me_."
+
+"Yes, Billy, but you see Miss Jarrott didn't know it. That's where the
+mistake has been. You know I've always been opposed to the secrecy of the
+affair, and I advised you and Evie to wait till you could both speak out."
+
+"It isn't so very secret. You know it and so does Uncle Charlie."
+
+"But Evie's own family have been kept in the dark, except that she told
+her aunt in South America. But that's where the mistake comes in, don't
+you see? Miss Jarrott, not having an idea about you, you see--"
+
+"Spreads it round that Evie is engaged to some one else, when she isn't.
+I'll show her who's engaged, when I can find her in. I'm going to sit on
+her door-step till--"
+
+"I wouldn't do anything rash, Billy. Suppose you were to leave it to me?"
+
+"What good would that do? If that old witch is putting it round, the only
+thing for Evie and me to do is to contradict her."
+
+"Has Evie ever given you an idea that anything was wrong?"
+
+"Evie's been the devil. I don't mind saying it to you, because you
+understand the kind of devil she'd be. But Lord! I don't care. It's just
+her way. She's told me to go to the deuce half a dozen times, but she
+knows I won't till she comes with me. Oh, no. Evie's all right--"
+
+"Yes, of course, Evie's all right. But you know, Billy dear, this thing
+requires a great deal of management and straightening out, and I do wish
+you'd let me take charge of it. I know every one concerned, you see, so
+that I could do it better than any one--any one but you, I mean--"
+
+"I understand that all right. I'm not going to be rough on them, but all
+the same--"
+
+She got him to sit down at last, made tea for him, and soothed him. At
+the end of an hour he had undertaken not to molest Miss Jarrott, or to
+fight that "confounded South-American," or to say a word of any kind to
+Evie till she was ready to say a word to him. He became impressed with the
+necessity for diplomatic action and, after some persuasion, promised to
+submit to guidance--at any rate, for a time.
+
+"And now, Billy, I'm going to write a note. The first thing to be done is
+that you should find Mr. Strange and deliver it to him before nine o'clock
+this evening. You'll do it quietly, won't you? and not let him see that
+you are anything more than my messenger. No matter where he is, even in a
+private house, you must see that he gets the note, if at all possible."
+
+When he had sworn to this she wrote a few lines hurriedly. He carried them
+away in the same tumultuous haste with which he had come. After his
+departure she felt herself unexpectedly strong and calm.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+
+The feeling of being equal to anything she might have to face continued
+with her. Now that the moment for action had arrived she had confidence in
+her ability to meet it, since it had to be done. At dinner she was able to
+talk to Wayne on indifferent topics, and later, when he had retired to his
+den to practise his Braile, she sat down in the drawing-room with a book.
+Noticing that she wore the severe black dress in which she had assisted at
+the "killing off" of Evie's family, she brightened it with a few
+unobtrusive jewels, so as to look less like the Tragic Muse. The night
+being cold, a cheerful fire burned on the hearth, beside which she sat
+down and waited.
+
+When he was shown in, about half-past eight, it seemed to her best not to
+rise to receive him. Something in her repose, or in her dignity, gave him
+the impression of arriving before a tribunal, and he began his
+explanations almost from the doorway.
+
+"I got your note. Young Merrow caught me at dinner. I was dining alone, so
+that I could come at once."
+
+"You're very kind. I'm glad you were able to do it. Won't you sit down?"
+
+Without offering her hand, she indicated a high arm-chair suitable for a
+man, on the other side of the hearth. He seated himself with an air of
+expectation, while she gazed pensively at the fire, speaking at last
+without looking up.
+
+"I hear Miss Jarrott has begun to announce your engagement to Evie."
+
+"I understood she was going to, to a few intimate friends."
+
+"And you allowed it?"
+
+"As you see."
+
+"Didn't you know that I should have to take that for a signal?"
+
+"I've never given you to understand that a signal wouldn't come--if you
+required one."
+
+"No; but I hoped--" She broke off, continuing to gaze at the fire. "Do you
+remember," she began again--"do you remember telling me--that evening on
+the shore of Lake Champlain--just before you went away--that if ever I
+needed your life, it would be at my disposal?--to do with as I chose?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"Then I'm going to claim it." She did not look up, but she heard him
+change his position in his chair. "I shouldn't do it if there was any
+other way. I'm sure you understand that. Don't you?" she insisted,
+glancing at him for an answer.
+
+"I know you wouldn't do it, unless you were convinced there was a reason."
+
+"I've tried to be just to you, and to see things from your point of view.
+I do; I assure you. If I were in your position I should feel as you do.
+But I'm not in your position. I'm in one of great responsibility, toward
+Evie and toward her friends."
+
+"I don't see what you owe to them."
+
+[Illustration: Again there was a long silence.]
+
+"I owe them the loyalty that every human being owes to every other."
+
+"To every other--except me."
+
+"I'm loyal to you, at least, whoever else may not be. But it wouldn't be
+loyalty if I let you marry Evie. I'm going to ask you--not to do it--to go
+away--to leave her alone--to go--for good."
+
+There was a long silence. When he spoke, it was hoarsely but otherwise
+without change of tone.
+
+"Is that what you meant?--just now?"
+
+"Yes. That's what I meant."
+
+"Do you intend me to get out of New York, to go back to the South--?"
+
+She lifted her hand in protestation.
+
+"I'm not giving orders or making conditions. New York is large. There's
+room in it for you and Evie, too."
+
+"I dare say. One doesn't require much space to break one's heart in."
+
+"Evie wouldn't break her heart. I know her better than you do. She'd
+suffer for a while, but she'd get over it, and in the end, very soon
+probably--marry some one else."
+
+"How cruel you can be," he said, with a twisted smile.
+
+"I can be, when it's right. In this case I'm only as cruel as--the truth.
+I'm saying it because it must make things easier for you. Your own pain
+will be the less from the knowledge that, in time, Evie will get over
+hers."
+
+"I suppose it ought to be, but--"
+
+He did not finish his sentence, and again there was a long hush, during
+which, while she continued to gaze pensively at the fire, she could hear
+him shifting with nervous frequency in his chair. When at last she
+ventured to look at him he was bowed forward, his elbow supported on his
+knee, and his forehead resting on his hand.
+
+"You'll keep your promise to me?" she persisted, softly, with a kind of
+pitiful relentlessness.
+
+"I'll tell you in a minute."
+
+He jerked out the words in the brusque way in which a man says all that,
+for the moment, he is physically able to utter. She allowed more time to
+elapse. The roar of traffic and the clanging of electric trams came up
+from the street below, but no sound seemed able to penetrate the stillness
+in which they sat. As far as Miriam was conscious of herself at all, it
+was simply to note the curious deadness of her emotions, as though she had
+become a mere machine for doing right, like a clock that strikes
+punctually. Nevertheless, it caused her some surprise when he raised
+himself and said, in a voice that would have been casual on a common
+occasion:
+
+"I suppose you think me a cad?"
+
+"No; why should I?"
+
+"Because I am one."
+
+"I don't know why you should say that, or what it has to do
+with--anything."
+
+"It's about that--that--promise."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"Do you mind if we speak quite frankly? I should like to. I've been
+bluffing that point ever since you and I met again. It's been torture to
+have to do it--damned, humiliating torture; but it's been difficult to do
+anything else. You see, I couldn't even speak of it without seeming to--to
+insult you--that is, unless you took me in just the right way."
+
+His look, his attitude, the tones of his voice, the something woe-begone
+and yet boyish in his expression, recalled irresistibly the days in the
+cabin, when he often wore just this air. She had observed before that when
+they were alone together the years seemed to fall from his manner, while
+he became the immature, inexperienced young fugitive again. She had
+scarcely expected, however, that this lapse into youth would occur
+to-night. She herself felt ages old--as though all the ends of the world
+had come upon her.
+
+"You may say anything you like. There's nothing you could possibly tell me
+that I shouldn't understand."
+
+"Well, then, when I made that promise, I meant to keep it, and to keep it
+in a special way. I thought--of course we were both very young--but I
+thought that, after what had happened--"
+
+"Wait a minute. I want to tell you something before you go on." She
+rallied her spirit's forces for a desperate step, gathering all her life's
+possible happiness into one extravagant handful, and flinging it away, in
+order to save her pride before this man, who was about to tell her that he
+had never been able to love her. "What I am going to say may strike you as
+irrelevant; but if it is, you can ignore it. I expect to be married--in a
+little while--it's practically a settled thing--to Charles Conquest, whom
+I think you know. Now, will you go on, please?"
+
+He stared at her in utter blankness.
+
+"Good God!"
+
+He got up and took a few restless turns up and down the room, his head
+bent, his hands behind his back. He reseated himself when his confused
+impressions grew clearer.
+
+"So that it doesn't matter what I thought about--that promise?"
+
+"Not in the least." She had saved herself. "The one thing important to me
+is that you should have made it."
+
+"And that you can hold me to it," he added, tersely.
+
+"I presume I can do that?"
+
+"You can, unless--unless I find myself in a position to take the promise
+back."
+
+"I can hardly see how that position could come about," she said, with an
+air of wondering.
+
+"I can. You see," he went on in an explanatory tone, "it was an unusual
+sort of promise--a promise made, so to speak, for value received--for
+unusual value received. It wasn't one that a common occasion would have
+called forth. It was offered because you had given me--life."
+
+He rested his arm now on a table that stood between them and, leaning
+toward her, looked her steadily in the eyes.
+
+"I haven't the faintest idea what you're going to say," she remarked,
+rather blankly.
+
+"No, but you'll see. You gave me life. I hold that life in a certain sense
+at your pleasure. It is at your disposal. It must remain at your
+disposal--- until I give it back."
+
+She sat upright in her chair, leaning in her turn on the table, and
+drawing nearer to him.
+
+"I can't imagine what you mean," she said, under her breath and looking a
+little frightened.
+
+"You'll see presently. But don't be alarmed. It's going to be all right.
+As long as I hold the life you gave me," he continued to explain, "I must
+do your bidding. I'm not a free man; I'm--don't be offended--I'm your
+creature. I don't say I was a free man before this came up. I haven't been
+a free man ever since I've been Herbert Strange. I've been the slave of a
+sort of make-believe. I've made believe, and I've felt I was justified.
+Perhaps I was. I'm not quite sure. But I haven't liked it; and now I begin
+to feel that I can't stand it any longer. You follow me, don't you?"
+
+She nodded, still leaning toward him across the table, and not taking her
+eyes from his. He remembered afterward though he paid no heed to it at the
+time, how those eyes grew wide with awe and flashed with strange, lambent
+brightness.
+
+"I told you a few days ago," he pursued, "that there were _times_ when it
+was hell. That was putting it mildly--too mildly. There's been no time
+when it wasn't hell--in here." He tapped his forehead. "I've struggled,
+and fought, and pushed, and swaggered, and bluffed, and had ups and downs,
+and taken heart, and swaggered and bluffed again, and lied all
+through--and I've made Herbert Strange a respectable man of business on
+the high road to success. But when I come near you it all goes to
+pieces--like one of those curiously conserved dead bodies when they're
+brought to the air. There's nothing to them. There's nothing to me--so
+long as I'm Herbert Strange."
+
+"But you _are_ Herbert Strange. You can't help yourself--now."
+
+"Herbert Strange goes back into the nothingness out of which he was born
+the minute I become Norrie Ford again."
+
+"But you can't do that!"
+
+She drew herself up hastily, with a gasp.
+
+"It's exactly what I mean to do." He spoke very slowly "I'm going to be a
+free man, and my own master, even if it leads me where--where they meant
+to put me when you snatched me away. I'm going back to my fellow-men, to
+the body corporate--"
+
+She rose in agitation, and drew back from him toward the chimney-piece.
+"So that if--if anything happens," she said, "I shall have driven you to
+it. That's how you get your revenge."
+
+"Not at all. I'm not coming to this decision suddenly, or in a spirit of
+revenge, in any way." He followed her, standing near her, on the
+hearth-rug. "I can truthfully say," he went on in his slow, explanatory
+fashion, "that there's been no time, since the minute I made my first dash
+for liberty, when I haven't known, in the bottom of my heart, what a good
+thing it would have been if I hadn't done it. I've come to see--I've _had_
+to--- that the death-chair would have been better, with self-respect, than
+freedom to go and come, with the necessity to gag every one, every minute
+of the day, and every day in the year, and all the time, with lies. If
+that seems far-fetched to you--"
+
+"No, it doesn't."
+
+"Well, if it did you'd see it wasn't, if you were in my place for a month.
+I didn't mind it so much at first. I stood it by day and just suffered by
+night--till the Jarrotts began to be so kind to me, and I came to New
+York--and--and--and Evie!"
+
+"I'm sorry I've spoken to you as I have," she said, hastily. "If I'd known
+you felt like that--"
+
+"You were quite right. I always understood that. But I can't go on with
+it. If Evie marries me now, it shall be knowing who I am."
+
+"You don't mean that you could possibly tell her?"
+
+"I'm going to tell every one."
+
+She stifled a little cry. "Then it will be my doing!"
+
+"It will be your doing--up to a point. But it will be something for you to
+be proud of, not to regret. You've only brought my mistake so clearly
+before me that even I can't stand it--when I've stood so much. You ask me
+to turn my back on Evie and sneak away. You've got the right to command,
+and there's nothing for me but to obey you. But I can't help seeing the
+sort of life that would be left to me after I'd carried out your orders.
+It wouldn't only be the loss of Evie--I may lose her in any case--it would
+be the loss of everything within myself that's enabled me hitherto merely
+to hold up my head--and bluff."
+
+"I might withdraw what I've just asked you to do. Perhaps we could find
+some other way."
+
+He laughed with grim lightness.
+
+"You're weakening. That's not like you. And it wouldn't do any good now.
+Even if we did patch up some other scheme, there would still remain what
+you talked about a minute ago--the loyalty that every human being owes to
+every other."
+
+"But I thought you didn't recognize that?"
+
+"I said I didn't. But in here"--he tapped his fingers over the heart--"I
+did, and I do. You've brought me to see it."
+
+"That's very noble, but you saw it for yourself--"
+
+"Through a glass--darkly; now I can look at the thing in clear daylight,
+and see what I have to do."
+
+She dropped into her chair again, looking up at him. He stood with his
+back to the fire, holding his head high, his bearing marked by a dogged,
+perhaps forced, serenity.
+
+"But what _can_ you do?" she asked, after considering his words. "You're
+so involved. All this business--and the people in South America--"
+
+"Oh, there are ways and means. I haven't made plans, but I've thought,
+from time to time, of what I should do if I ever came to just this pass.
+The first thing would be to tell the few people who are most concerned,
+confidentially. Then I should go back to South America, and settle things
+give me your respect again--not even the little you've given me
+hitherto--and God knows that can't have been much. I could stand anything
+in the world--anything--rather than that you should come to that."
+
+"But I shouldn't, when I myself had dissuaded you--"
+
+"No, no; don't try. You'd be doing wrong. You've been to me so high and
+holy that I don't like to think you haven't the strength to go on to the
+end. I've got it, because you've given it me. Don't detract from your own
+gift by holding me back from using it. You found me a prisoner--or an
+escaped one--and I've been a prisoner all these years, the prisoner of
+something worse than chains. Now I'm going free. Look!" he cried, with
+sudden inspiration. "I'll show you how it's done. You'll see how easy it
+will be."
+
+He moved to cross the room.
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+She sprang up as if to hold him back, but his finger was on the bell.
+
+"You don't mind, I hope?" he asked; but he had rung before she could give
+an answer. The maid appeared in the doorway.
+
+"Ask Mr. Wayne if he would be good enough to come in here a minute. Tell
+him Mr. Strange particularly wants to see him."
+
+He went back to his place by the fireside, where he stood apparently calm,
+showing no sign of excitement except in heightened color and the stillness
+of nervous tension Miriam sank into her chair again.
+
+"Don't do anything rash," she pleaded. "Wait till to-morrow There will
+always be time. For God's sake!"
+
+If he heard her he paid no attention, and presently Wayne appeared. He
+hesitated a minute on the threshold, and during that instant Ford could
+see that he looked ashy and older, as if something had aged him suddenly.
+His hands trembled, too, as he felt his way in.
+
+"Good-evening," he said, speaking into the air as blind men do. "I thought
+I heard your voice."
+
+Having groped his way across the room and reached the table that stood
+between the arm-chairs Miriam and Ford had occupied, he stopped. He stood
+there, with fingers drumming soundlessly on the polished wood, waiting for
+some one to speak.
+
+In spite of the confidence with which he had rung the bell, Ford found it
+difficult now to begin. It was only after one or two inarticulate attempts
+that he was able to say anything.
+
+"I asked you to come in, sir," he began, haltingly, "to tell you something
+very special. Miss Strange knows it already.... If I've done wrong in not
+telling you before ... you'll see I'm prepared to take my punishment....
+My name isn't Strange ... it isn't Herbert."
+
+"I know it isn't."
+
+The words slipped out in a sharp tone, not quite nervous, but thin and
+worn. Miriam's attitude grew tense. Ford took a step forward from the
+fireside. With his arm flung over the back of his chair, and his knee
+resting on the seat of it, he strained across the table, as if to
+annihilate the space between Wayne and himself.
+
+"You _knew_?"
+
+The blind man nodded. When he spoke it was again into the air.
+
+"Yes; I knew. You're Norrie Ford. I ought to say I've only known it
+latterly--about a fortnight now."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Oh, it just came to me--by degrees, I think."
+
+"Why didn't you say something about it?"
+
+"I thought I wouldn't. It has worried me, but I thought I'd keep still."
+
+"Do you mean that you were going to let everything--go on?"
+
+"I weighed all the considerations. That's the decision I came to. You must
+understand," he went on to explain, in a voice that was now tremulous as
+well as thin, "that I'd had you a good deal on my mind, during these past
+eight years. I sentenced you to death when I almost knew you were
+innocent. It was my duty. I couldn't help it. The facts told dead against
+you. Every one admitted that. True, the evidence might have been twisted
+to tell against old Gramm and his wife, but they hadn't been dissipated,
+and they hadn't been indicted, and they hadn't gone round making threats
+against Chris Ford's life like you."
+
+"I didn't mean them. It was nothing but a boy's rage--"
+
+"Yes, but you made them; and when the old man was found--But I'll not go
+into that now. I only want to say that, while I couldn't acquit you with
+my intelligence, I felt constrained to do it in my heart, especially when
+everything was over, and it was too late. The incident has been the one
+thing in my professional career that I've most regretted. I don't quite
+blame myself. I had to do my duty. And yet it was a relief to me when you
+got away. I don't know that I could have acted differently, but--but I
+liked you. I've gone on liking you. I've often thought about you, and
+wondered what had become of you. And one day--not long ago--as I was going
+over the old ground once more, I saw I'd been thinking about--_you_.
+That's how it came to me."
+
+"And you were going to remain silent, and let me marry Evie?"
+
+The blind man reflected.
+
+"I saw what was to be said against it. But I weighed all the evidence
+carefully. You were an injured man; you'd made a great fight and you'd
+won--as far as one man can win against the world. I came to the conclusion
+that I wasn't called on to strike you down a second time, after you'd
+scrambled up so pluckily. Evie is very dear to me; I don't say that I
+should see her married to you without some misgiving; but I decided that
+you deserved her. It was a great responsibility to take, but I took it and
+made up my mind to--let her go."
+
+"Oh, you're a good man! I didn't think there was such mercy in the world."
+
+Ford flung out the words in a cry that was half a groan and half a shout
+of triumph. Miriam choked back a sob. The neat little man shrugged his
+shoulders deprecatingly.
+
+"There's one thing I should like to ask," he pursued, "among the many that
+I don't know anything about, and that I don't care to inquire into. How
+did you come by the name of this lady's father, my old friend Herbert
+Strange?"
+
+Ford and Miriam exchanged swift glances. She shook her head, and he took
+his cue.
+
+"I happened to see it in a--a sort of--paper. I had no idea it was that of
+a real person. I fancied it had come out of a novel--- or something like
+that. I didn't mean to keep it, but it got fastened on me."
+
+"Very odd," was his only comment. "Isn't it, Miriam?
+
+"Now," he _added_, "I suppose you've had all you want of me, so I'll say
+good-night."
+
+He held out his hand, which Ford grasped, clinched rather, in both his
+own.
+
+"God bless you!" Wayne murmured, still tremulously. "God bless you--my
+boy, and bring everything out right. Miriam, I suppose you'll come in and
+see me before you go to bed."
+
+They watched him shuffle his way out of the room, and watched the door
+long after he had closed it. When at last Miriam turned her eyes on Ford
+they were luminous with the relief of her own defeat.
+
+"You see!" she cried, triumphantly. "You see the difference between him
+and me--between his spirit and mine! Now which of us was right?"
+
+"You were."
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+
+The one thing clear to Miriam on the following day was that she had ruined
+everything with astonishing completeness--a curious result to come from
+what she was firmly convinced was "doing right." She had calculated that,
+by a moderate measure of suffering to Evie, and a large one to Ford,
+Evie's ultimate welfare at least would be secured. Now everything was
+being brought to grief together. Out of such a wreck nothing could be
+saved.
+
+With Ford's desire to break the force which made him an impostor she had
+sympathy, but his willingness to risk his life in order to be in harmony
+with law and order again was not so easy for her to understand. While
+education, training and taste kept her, in her own person, within the
+restrictions of civilized life, yet the part of a free-lance in the world
+appealed to her strongly atavistic instincts far more directly than
+membership in a disciplined regular army. The guerilla fighter must of
+necessity be put to shifts--even moral shifts--which the common soldier,
+trained and commanded by others, can be spared; but her heart was with the
+man roving in the hills on his own account. That Ford should deliberately
+seek chains in barracks, when by her surrender on the subject of Evie she
+had made it possible for him still to keep the liberty of the field, was
+to her at once incomprehensible and awful. She had not only the sense of
+watching a man rushing upon Fate, but the knowledge that she herself had
+given him the impetus; while she was fully alive to the fact that when he
+fell everything she cared for in the world would fall with him.
+
+Her mind was too resourceful, her spirit too energetic, to permit of her
+sitting in helpless anguish over his new determination. She was already
+busy with plans for counteracting him, in one of which at least she saw
+elements of hope. Having conceived its possibilities, she was eager to go
+and test them; but she had decided not to leave the house until she knew
+that Ford was really putting his plans into execution. The minute Evie
+learned the fatal news she would have need of her, and she dared not put
+herself out of the child's reach. Her first duty must be toward the
+fragile little creature, who would be crushed like a trampled flower.
+
+Shortly before noon she was summoned to the telephone, where Evie was
+asking if she should find her in. Miriam judged from the tones of the
+transmitted voice that the worst had been made known. She was not,
+however, prepared for the briskness with which, ten minutes later, Evie
+whisked into the room, her cheeks aglow with excitement and her heavenly
+eyes dancing with a purely earthly sparkle.
+
+"Isn't this awful?" she cried, before Miriam could take her into her
+loving arms. "Isn't it appalling? But it's not a surprise to me--not in
+the least. I knew there was something. Haven't I said so? I almost knew
+that his name wasn't Strange. If I hadn't been so busy with my coming
+out--and everything--I should have been sure of it. I haven't had time to
+think of it--do you see? With a lunch somewhere every day at half-past
+one," she hurried on, breathlessly, "and a tea at half-past four, and a
+dinner at eight, and a dance at eleven, and very likely the theatre or the
+opera in between--well, you can see I haven't been able to give much
+attention to anything else; but I knew, from the very time when I was in
+Buenos Aires, that there was something queer about that name. I never saw
+a man so sensitive when any one spoke about his name, not in all my life
+before--and you know down there it's the commonest thing--why, they're so
+suspicious on that point that they'd almost doubt that mine was Evie
+Colfax."
+
+She threw her muff in one direction, her boa in another, and her gloves in
+still another.
+
+"But, Evie darling, you surely didn't think--"
+
+"Of course I never thought of anything like this. I didn't really think of
+anything at all. If I'd begun to give my mind to it, I should probably
+have hit on something a great deal worse."
+
+"What do you mean, dear? Worse--than what?"
+
+"Worse than just being accused of shooting your uncle--and it was only his
+great-uncle, too. I might have thought of forgery or something
+dishonorable, though I should know he wasn't capable of it. Being accused
+isn't much. You can accuse _any one_--you could accuse _me_. That doesn't
+prove anything when he says he didn't do it. Of course he didn't do it.
+Can't any one _see_? My goodness! I wish they'd let me make the laws. I'd
+show them. Just think! To put a man like that in prison--- and say they'd
+do such awful things to him--and make him change his name--and everything.
+It's perfectly scandalous. It's an outrage. I shouldn't think such things
+would be allowed. They wouldn't be allowed in the Argentine. Why, there
+was a man out there who killed his father-in-law--actually _killed_
+him--and they didn't do anything to him at all. I've seen him lots of
+times. Aunt Queenie has pointed him out to me. He used to have the box
+next but two to ours at the opera. And to think they should take a man
+like Herbert, and worry him like that--it makes me so indignant I'd like
+to--"
+
+Evie ground her teeth, threw her clinched fists outward, and twitched her
+skirts about the room in the prettiest possible passion of righteous
+anger.
+
+"But, darling," Miriam asked, in a puzzled voice, "what are you going to
+do about it?"
+
+Evie wheeled round haughtily.
+
+"Do about it? What would you expect me to do about it? I'm going to tell
+every one he didn't do it--that's what I'm going to do about it. But of
+course we're not to speak of it just yet--outside ourselves, you know.
+He's going to Buenos Aires to tell Uncle Jarrott he didn't do it--and when
+he comes back we're going to make it generally known. Oh, there's to be
+law about it--and everything. He means to change his name again to what it
+was before--Ford, the name was--and I must say, Miriam, I like that a good
+deal better than Strange, if you don't mind my telling you. It seems odd
+to have so many Stranges--and I must say I never could get used to the
+idea of having exactly the same name as yours. It was almost like not
+being married outside the family--and I should hate to marry a relation.
+That part of it comes as a pleasant surprise, do you see? I'd made up my
+mind to Strange, and thought there was no way of getting rid of it, unless
+I--but I wasn't looking ahead to anything of _that_ kind. I hope I shall
+never--"
+
+"So, darling, you're going to be true to him?"
+
+"True to him? Of course I'm going to be true to him. Why shouldn't I be?
+I'm going to be more true to him now than I was before. He's so noble
+about it, too. I wish you could have seen the way he broke it to me. Aunt
+Queenie said she never saw anything so affecting, not even on the stage.
+She was there, you know. Herbert felt he couldn't go over it all twice,
+and he thought I should need some one to support me through the shock. I
+didn't--not a bit. But I wish you could have been there, just to see him."
+
+"I can fancy it, dear."
+
+"Of course I know now what you've been fidgeting about ever since he came
+to New York. He says you recognized him--that you'd seen him at Greenport.
+Oh, I knew there was something. But I must say, Miriam, I think you might
+have told me confidentially, and not let it come on me as such a blow as
+this. Not that I take it as a blow, though, of course, it upsets things
+terribly. We can't announce our engagement for ever so long, and Aunt
+Queenie is rushing round in the motor now to take back what she wrote to a
+few people yesterday. I can't imagine what she'll tell them, because I
+charged her on her sacred honor not to give them the idea it was broken
+off, although I'd rather they thought it was broken off than that I hadn't
+been engaged at all."
+
+"Miss Jarrott takes it quietly, then?"
+
+"Quietly! I wish you could see her. She thinks there never was anything so
+romantic. Why, she cried over him, and kissed him, and said she'd always
+be his friend if every one else in the world were to turn against him. As
+a matter of fact, the poor old dear is head over heels in love with
+him--do you see?--in that sort of old-maid way--you know the kind of
+thing I mean. She thinks there's nobody like him, and neither there is. I
+shall miss him frightfully while he's down there telling Uncle Jarrott. I
+shall skip half my invitations and go regularly into retreat till he comes
+back. There's lots more he's going to tell me then--all about what Popsey
+Wayne had to do with it--and everything. I'm glad he doesn't want to do it
+now, because my head is reeling as it is. I've so many things to think
+of--and so much responsibility coming on me all at once--and--"
+
+"Are you going to do anything about Billy?"
+
+"Well, I can postpone that, at any rate. Thank goodness, there's _one_
+silver lining to the cloud. I was going to give him a pretty strong hint
+to-night, seeing Aunt Queenie has begun writing notes around, but now I
+can let him simmer for a while longer. He won't be able to say I haven't
+let him down easy, poor old boy. And, Miriam dear," she continued,
+gathering up her various articles of apparel, preparatory to taking leave,
+"you'll keep just as quiet about it as you can, like a dear, won't you? We
+don't mean to say a word about it outside ourselves till Herbert comes
+back from seeing Uncle Jarrott. That's my advice--and it's all our
+advice--I mean, Aunt Queenie's, too. Then they're going to law--or
+something. I know you _won't_ say anything about it, but I thought I'd
+just put you on your guard."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If Evie's way of taking it was a new revelation to Miriam, of her own
+miscalculation, it was also a new incentive to setting to work as promptly
+as possible to repair what she could of the mischief she had made. With
+Evie's limitations she might never know more of the seriousness of her
+situation than a bird of the nature of the battle raging near its nest;
+while if even Ford "went to law," as Evie put it, and he came off
+victorious, there might still be chances for their happiness. To anything
+else Miriam was indifferent, as a man in the excitement of saving his
+children from fire or storm is dead to his own sensations. It was with
+impetuous, almost frenzied, eagerness, therefore, that she went to the
+telephone to ring up Charles Conquest, asking to be allowed to see him
+privately at his office during the afternoon.
+
+In what she had made up her mind to do the fact that she was planning for
+herself an unnecessary measure of sacrifice was no deterrent. She was in a
+mood in which self-immolation seemed the natural penalty of her mistakes.
+She was not without the knowledge that money could buy the help she
+purposed to obtain by direct intervention; but her inherited instincts,
+scornful of roundabout methods, urged her to pay the price in something
+more personal than coin. It replied in some degree to her self-accusation,
+it assuaged the bitterness of her self-condemnation, to know that she was
+to be the active agent in putting right that which her errors of judgment
+had put wrong. To her essentially primitive soul atonement by proxy was as
+much out of the question as to the devotee beneath the wheels of
+Juggernaut. Somewhere in the background of her thought there were faint
+prudential protests against throwing herself away; but she disdained them,
+as a Latin or a Teuton disdains the Anglo-Saxon's preference for a court
+of law to the pistol of the duellist. It was something outside the realm
+of reason. Reckless impulses subdued by convent restraint or civilized
+requirements awoke with a start all the more violent because of their long
+sleep, driving her to do that which she knew other women would have done
+otherwise or not at all.
+
+She was aware, therefore, of limitations in the sacrifice she was making;
+she was even aware that, in the true sense, it was no sacrifice whatever.
+She was offering herself up because she chose to--in a kind of
+wilfulness--but a passionate wilfulness which claimed that for her at
+least there was no other way. Other women, wiser women, women behind whom
+there was a long, moderation-loving past, might obey the laws that prompt
+to the economy of one's self; she could only follow those blind urgings
+which drove her forefathers to fight when they might have remained at
+peace, or whipped them forth into the wild places of the earth when they
+could have stayed in quiet homes. The hard way in preference to the easy
+way was in her blood. She could no more have resisted taking it now than
+she could have held herself back eight years ago from befriending Norrie
+Ford against the law.
+
+Nevertheless, it was a support to her to remember that Conquest's manner
+on the occasions when business brought her to his office was always a
+little different from that which he assumed when they met outside. He was
+much more the professional man with his client, a little the friend, but
+not at all the lover--if he was a lover anywhere. Having welcomed her now
+with just the right shade of cordiality, he made her sit at a little
+distance from his desk, while he himself returned to the revolving-chair
+at which he had been writing when she entered. After the preliminary
+greetings, he put on, unconsciously, the questioning air a business man
+takes at the beginning of an interview which he has been invited to
+accord.
+
+"I came--about Evie."
+
+Now that she was there it was less easy to begin than she had expected.
+
+"Quite so. I knew there was a hitch. I've just had a mysterious note from
+Queenie Jarrott which I haven't been able to make out. Can't they hit it
+off?"
+
+"It's a good deal more serious than that. Mr. Strange came to see Mr.
+Wayne and me last night. I may as well tell you as simply as I can. His
+name isn't Strange at all."
+
+"Ho! ho! What's up?"
+
+"Did you ever hear the name of--Norrie Ford?"
+
+"Good Lord, yes! I can't quite remember--Let's see. Norrie Ford? I know
+the name as well as I know my own. Wasn't that the case--why, yes, it must
+have been--wasn't that the case Wayne was mixed up in six or eight years
+ago?"
+
+"Yes, it was."
+
+"The fellow gave 'em all the slip, didn't he?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Hadn't he been commuted to a life sentence--?"
+
+"Mr. Wayne hoped it would be done, but it hadn't been done yet. He was
+still under sentence of--death."
+
+"Yes, yes, yes. It comes back to me. We thought Wayne hadn't displayed
+much energy or ability of foresight--or something. I remember there was
+talk about it, and in the newspapers there was even a cock-and-bull story
+that Wayne had connived at his escape. Well, what has that got to do with
+Evie?"
+
+"It has everything to do with her."
+
+Conquest's little gray-green eyes blinked as if against the blaze of their
+own light, while his features sharpened to their utmost incisiveness.
+
+"You don't mean to say--?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"Well, upon--my--!" The exclamation trailed off into a silent effort to
+take in this extraordinary piece of intelligence "Do you mean to say the
+scamp had the cheek--? Oh no, it isn't possible. Come now!"
+
+"It was exactly as I'm going to tell you, but I don't think you should
+call him a scamp. You see, he's engaged to Evie--"
+
+"He's not engaged to her now?"
+
+"He is. She means to be true to him. So do we all."
+
+Two little scarlet spots burned in her cheeks, but it was not more in the
+way of emotion than a warm partisanship on Evie's account demanded.
+
+"Well, I'm blowed!" He swung one leg across the other, making his chair
+describe a semicircle.
+
+"Perhaps you won't be so much--blowed, when you hear all I have to tell
+you."
+
+"Go ahead; I'm more interested than if it was a dime novel."
+
+As lucidly as she could she gave him the outline of Ford's romance,
+dwelling as he had done in relating it to her, less on its incidents than
+on its mental and moral effect upon himself. She suppressed the narrative
+of the weeks spent in the cabin and based her report entirely on
+information received from Ford. For testimony as to his life and character
+in the Argentine she had the evidence of Miss Jarrott, while on the
+subject of his business abilities--no small point with a New York business
+man, as she was astute enough to see--there could be no better authority
+than Conquest himself, who, as Stephens and Jarrott's American legal
+adviser, had had ample opportunity of judging. She was gratified to note
+that as her story progressed it called forth sympathetic looks, and an
+occasional appreciative exclamation, while now and then he slapped his
+thigh as a mark of the kind of amused astonishment that verges on
+approbation.
+
+"So we couldn't desert him now, after she's been so brave, could we?" she
+pleaded, with some amount of confidence; "and especially when he's engaged
+to Evie."
+
+"I suppose we can't desert him, if he's sane."
+
+"Oh, he's sane."
+
+"Then why the deuce, when he was so well out of harm's way, didn't he stay
+there?"
+
+"Because of his love for Evie, don't you see?" She had to explain Ford's
+moral development and psychological state all over again, until he could
+see it with some measure of comprehension.
+
+"It certainly is the queerest story I ever heard," he declared, in
+enjoyment of its dramatic elements, "and we're all in it, aren't we? It's
+like seeing yourself in a play."
+
+"I thought you would look at it in that way. As soon as I began wondering
+what we could do--this morning--I saw that, after Evie, you were the
+person most concerned."
+
+"Who? I? Why am I concerned? I've got nothing to do with it!"
+
+"No, of course not, except as Stephens and Jarrott's lawyer. When their
+representative in New York--"
+
+"Oh, but my dear girl, my duties don't involve me in anything of this
+kind. I'm the legal adviser to the firm, but I've nothing to do with the
+private affairs of their employees."
+
+"Mr. Jarrott is very fond of Mr. Strange--"
+
+"Perhaps this will cool his affection."
+
+"I don't think it will as long as Evie insists on marrying him. I'm sure
+they mean to stand by him."
+
+"They won't be able to stand by him long, if the law gives him--what it
+meant to give him before."
+
+"Oh, but you don't think there's any danger of that?"
+
+"I don't know about it," he said, shaking his head, ominously. "The fact
+that he comes back and gives himself up isn't an argument in favor of his
+innocence. There's generally remorse behind that dodge."
+
+"Then isn't that all the more reason why we should help him?"
+
+"Help him? How?"
+
+"By trying to win his case for him."
+
+He looked at her with eyes twinkling while his fingers concealed the smile
+behind his colorless mustache.
+
+"And how would you propose to set about that?"
+
+"I don't know, but I suppose you do. There must be ways. He's leaving as
+soon as he can for South America. He thinks it may be months before he
+gets back. I thought that--perhaps--in the mean time--while he won't be
+able to do anything for himself--you might see--"
+
+"Yes, yes; go on," he said, as she hesitated.
+
+"You might see if there is any evidence that could be found--that wasn't
+found before--isn't that the way they do it?--and have it ready--for him
+when he came back."
+
+"For a wedding present."
+
+"It _would_ be a wedding present--to all of us. It would be for Evie's
+sake. You know how I love her. She's the dearest thing to me in the world.
+If I could only secure her happiness like that--"
+
+"You mean, if I could secure it."
+
+"You'd be doing it actively, but I should want to co-operate."
+
+"In what way?"
+
+She sat very still. She was sure he understood her by the sudden rigidity
+of his pose, while his eyes stopped twinkling, and his fingers ceased to
+travel along the line of his mustache. Her eyes fell before the scrutiny
+in his, but she lifted them again for one of her quick, wild glances.
+
+"In any way you like."
+
+She tried to make her utterance distinct, matter of fact, not too
+significant, but she failed. In spite of herself, her words conveyed all
+their meaning. The brief pause that followed was not less eloquent, nor
+did it break the spell when Conquest gave a short little laugh that might
+have been nervous and, changing his posture, leaned forward on his desk
+and scribbled on the blotting-pad. While he would never have admitted it,
+it was a relief to him, too, not to be obliged to face her.
+
+He was not shocked, neither was he quite surprised. He was accustomed to
+the thought that a woman's love was a thing to purchase. One man bought it
+from her father for a couple of oxen, another from herself for an
+establishment and a diamond tiara. It was the same principle in both
+cases. He had never considered Miriam Strange as being without a price;
+his difficulty had been in knowing what it was. The establishment and the
+diamond tiara having proved as indifferent to her as the yoke of oxen, he
+was thrown back upon the alternative of heroic deeds. He had more than
+once suspected that these might win her if they had only been in his line.
+There being few opportunities for that kind of endeavor as the head of a
+large and lucrative legal practice, the suggestion only left him cynical.
+In the bottom of his heart he had long wished to dazzle, by some act of
+prowess, the eyes that saw him only as a respectable man of middle age,
+but the desire had merely mocked him with the kind of derision which
+impotence gets from youth. It seemed now a stroke of luck which almost
+merited being termed an act of Providence that there should have come a
+call for exactly his variety of "derringdo" from the very quarter in which
+he could make it tell.
+
+"We've never gone in for any criminal business here," he said, after long
+reflection, while he continued to scribble aimlessly, "but, of course,
+we're in touch with the people who take it up."
+
+"I thought you might be."
+
+"But it's only fair to tell you that if your motive is to save time for
+our friend in question--"
+
+"That _is_ my motive--the only one."
+
+"Then you could get in touch with them, too."
+
+"But I don't want to."
+
+"Still I think you should consider it. The best legal advice in the world
+can be--bought--for money."
+
+"I know that."
+
+Lifting his eyes in a sharp look, he saw her head lilted back with her own
+special air of deliberate temerity.
+
+"Oh, very well, then," he said, quietly, resuming his scribbling again.
+After this warning he felt justified in taking her at her word.
+
+With that as a beginning she knew she had gained her first great point. In
+answer to his questions she told the story over again, displaying, as he
+remembered afterward--but long afterward--a surprising familiarity with
+its details. She made suggestions which he noted as marked by some acumen,
+and laid stress on the value of the aid they might expect privately from
+Philip Wayne. The beauty and eagerness in her face fired the almost
+atrophied enthusiasm in his own heart, while he could not but see that
+this entirely altruistic interest had brought them in half an hour nearer
+together than they had ever been before. It was what they had never had
+till now--a bond in common. In spite of the persistency of his efforts and
+his assertions, he had never hitherto got nearer her than a statue on a
+pedestal gets to its neighbor in a similar situation but now at last they
+were down on the same earth together. This was more than reason enough for
+his taking up the cause of Norrie Ford, consecrating to it all his
+resources, mental and material, and winning it.
+
+In the course of an hour or two their understanding was complete, but he
+did not refer again to the conditions of their tacit compact. It was she
+who felt that sufficient had not been said--that the sincerity with which
+she subscribed to it had not been duly emphasized. She was at the door on
+the point of going away when she braced herself to look at him and say:
+
+"You can't realize what all this means to me. If we succeed--that is, if
+you succeed--I hardly dare to tell you of the extent to which I shall be
+grateful."
+
+He felt already some of the hero's magnanimity as to claiming his reward.
+
+"You needn't think about that," he smiled. "I sha'n't. If by making Evie
+happy I can serve you, I shall not ask for gratitude."
+
+She looked down at her muff and smoothed its fur, then glanced up swiftly.
+"No; but I shall want to give it."
+
+With that she was gone--lighter of heart than a few hours ago it had
+seemed to her possible ever to be again. Her joy was the joy of the
+captain who feels that he has saved his ship, though his own wound is
+fatal.
+
+
+
+
+
+Part IV
+
+Conquest
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+
+Among the three or four qualities Conquest most approved of in himself,
+not the least was a certain capacity for the patient acquisition of the
+world's more enviable properties. He had the gift of knowing what he
+wanted, recognizing it when he saw it, and waiting for it till it came
+within his reach. From his youth upward he had been a connoisseur of
+quality rather than a lover of abundance, while he owned to a talent for
+seeing the value of things which other people overlooked, and throwing
+them into relief when the objects became his. As far back as the time when
+the modest paternal heritage had been divided between his brothers and
+sisters and himself, he had been astute enough to leave the bulk of it to
+them, contenting himself with one or two bits of ancestral furniture and a
+few old books, which were now known by all to have been the only things
+worth having. Throughout his life he had followed this principle of
+acquiring unobtrusively but getting exactly what he wanted. It was so that
+he bought his first horse, so that he bought his first motor, so that he
+purchased the land where he afterward built his house--in a distant,
+desolate stretch of Fifth Avenue which his acquaintances told him would be
+hopelessly out of reach, but where, not many years after, most of them
+were too late to join him.
+
+In building his house, too, he took his time, allowing his friends to
+make their experiments around him, while he studied the great art of "how
+not to do it." One of his neighbors erected a Flemish château, another a
+Florentine palazzo, and a third a François Premier _hôtel_; but his plot
+of ground remained an unkempt tangle of mullein and blue succory. In the
+end he put up a sober, handsome development on a style which the humbler
+passers-by often called, with approval, "good, plain American," but whose
+point of departure was Georgian. He had the instinct for that which
+springs out of the soil. For this reason he did not shrink from an Early
+Victorian note--the first note of the modern, prosperous New York--in
+decoration; and the same taste impelled him toward the American in art.
+While Neighbor Smith displayed his Gainsboroughs, and Neighbor Jones his
+Rousseaus or Daubignys, Conquest quietly picked up a thing here and
+there--always under excellent advice--which no picture-dealer had been
+able to dispose of, because it came from some studio in Twenty-third
+Street. Hung on his walls, it produced that much-sought-for effect of
+"having been always there." He was not a Chauvinist, nor had he any
+sympathy with the intolerantly patriotic. He was merely a lover of the
+indigenous.
+
+In much the same way he had sought for--and waited for--a wife. He had
+been rashly put down as "not a marrying man," when he was only taking his
+time. He had seen plainly of excellent possibilities--fine women, handsome
+women, clever women, good women--any of whom presumably he could have had
+for the asking; but none was, in his own phraseology, "just the right
+thing." He wanted something unusual, and yet not exotic--something
+obvious, which no one else had observed--something cultivated, and yet
+native--something as exquisite as any hothouse orchid, but with the keen,
+fresh scent of the American woods and waters on its bloom. It was not a
+thing to be picked up every day, and so he kept on the lookout for it, and
+waited. Even when he found it, he was not certain, on the spur of the
+moment, that it would prove exactly what he had in mind. So he waited
+longer. He watched the effect of time and experience upon it, until he was
+quite sure. He knew the risk he was running that some one else might
+snatch it up; but his principle had always been to let everything, no
+matter how coveted, go, rather than buy in haste.
+
+Lest such an attitude toward Miriam Strange should seem cold-blooded, it
+should be said in his defence that he considered the aggregate of his
+sentiments to be--love. She was to be more than "something better than his
+dog, a little dearer than his horse," more than the living, responsive
+soul among his chattels. There was that in her which appealed to his
+desire, and to something more deeply seated in him still. After satisfying
+ear, eye, and intelligence, there was in her nature a whole undiscovered
+region, undivined, undefined, wakening the imagination, and stirring the
+speculative faculties, like the subconscious elements in personality. In
+her wild, non-Aryan glances he saw the flame of eyes that flashed on him
+out of a past unknown to history; in the liquid cadences of her voice he
+heard the echo of the speech that had sounded in the land before Plymouth
+was a stockade or Manhattan was a farm; in her presence he found a claim
+that antedated everything sprung of Hudson, Cabot, or Columbus. The
+slender thread that attached her to the ages of nomadic mystery made her
+for him the indigenous spirit, reborn in a woman of the world.
+
+Knowing himself too old to be dominated by a passion, and too experienced
+to be snared by wiles, he estimated his feelings as being those of love,
+as he understood the word. He conceded the fact that love, like every
+other desire, must work to win, and proceeded to set about his task
+according to his usual methods of persistent, unobtrusive siege. It was
+long before Miriam became aware of what he was doing, and her surprise as
+she drew back was not quite so great as his to see her do it. He was so
+accustomed to success--after taking the trouble to insure it--that he was
+astonished, and a little angry, to find his usual tactics fail. He did not
+believe that she was beyond his grasp; he perceived only that he had taken
+the wrong way to get her. That there was a right way there could be no
+question; and he knew that by patient, unremitting search he should find
+it.
+
+He had, therefore, several sources of satisfaction in espousing the cause
+of Norrie Ford. The amplitude of his legal knowledge would be to him as
+gay feathers to the cock; while the contemplation of the prize added to
+his self-approval in never doubting that it could be won.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was early March when Ford sailed away, leaving his affairs in
+Conquest's charge, at the latter's own request. He in his turn placed them
+in the hands of Kilcup and Warren, who made a specialty of that branch of
+the law. The reward was immediate, in that frequent talks with Miriam
+became a matter of course.
+
+His trained mind was prompt to seize the fact that these interviews took
+place on a basis different from that of their meetings in the past. Where
+he had been seeking to gain an end he was now on probation. He had been
+told--or practically told--that what he had been asking would be granted,
+as soon as certain conditions were fulfilled. It became to him, therefore,
+a matter of honor, in some degree one of professional etiquette, to fulfil
+the conditions before referring to the reward. Instead of a suitor
+pressing his suit, he became the man of business recounting the points
+scored, or still to be scored, in a common enterprise. In keeping her
+informed of each new step that Kilcup and Warren were taking, he
+maintained an attitude of distant respect, of which she could have nothing
+to complain.
+
+Expecting an equal reserve on her part, it was with some surprise that he
+saw her assume the initiative in cordiality. He called it cordiality,
+because he dared not make it a stronger word. Her manner went back to the
+spontaneous friendliness that had marked their intercourse before she
+began to see what he was aiming at, while into it she threw an infusion of
+something that had not hitherto been there. When he came with the
+information that a fresh bit of evidence had been discovered, or a new
+light thrown on an old one, she listened with interest--just the right
+kind of interest--and made pretexts to detain him, sometimes with Wayne as
+a third, sometimes without, for the pleasure of his own company. Now and
+then, as spring came on, they would all three, at her suggestion, cross
+the street, and stroll in the park together. Leaving Wayne on some
+convenient seat, they would prolong their own walk, talking with the
+unguarded confidence of mutual trust. It was she who furnished the
+topics--books, music, politics, people, anything that chanced to be
+uppermost. When he decided to purchase an automobile a whole new world of
+consultation was opened up. They visited establishments together, and
+drove with Wayne into the country to test machines. Returning Conquest
+would dine informally, in morning dress, with them; or else, from time to
+time he would invite them to a restaurant. By-and-by he took to organizing
+little dinners at his own house, ostensibly to cheer up Wayne, but really
+to see Miriam at his table.
+
+In all this there was nothing remarkable, as between old friends, except
+the contrast with her bearing toward him during the past year. He had
+expected that when Norrie Ford went finally free she would fulfil her
+contract, and fulfil it well; but he had not expected this instalment of
+graciousness in advance. It set him to pondering, to looking in the
+mirror, to refining on that careful dressing which he had already made an
+art. After all, a man in the fifties was young as long as he looked young,
+and according as one took the point of view.
+
+Except when Ford's affairs came directly under discussion he occupied,
+seemingly, a secondary place in their thoughts. Miriam rarely spoke of him
+at all, and if Conquest brought up his name more frequently it was because
+his professional interest in the numerous "nice points" of the case was
+becoming keen. He talked them over with her, partly because of his
+pleasure in the intelligence with which she grasped them, and partly
+because their intimacy deepened in proportion as the hope strengthened
+that Ford's innocence would be proved.
+
+It was June before Miriam heard from South America. Two or three letters
+to Evie had already come, guardedly written, telling little more than the
+incidents of Ford's voyage and arrival. It was to Miriam he wrote what he
+actually had at heart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The great moment has come and gone," she read to Conquest. "I have seen
+Mr. Jarrott, and made a clean breast of everything. It was harder than I
+expected, though I expected it would be pretty hard. I think I felt
+sorrier for him than for myself, which is saying a good deal. He not only
+takes it to heart, but feels it as a cut to his pride. I can see that that
+thought is uppermost. What he feels is not so much the fact that _I_
+deceived him as that I deceived _him_. I can understand it, too. In a
+country where there is such a lot of this sort of thing, he has never been
+touched by it before. It has been a kind of boast that his men were always
+the genuine article. If one of them is called Smith, it is because he _is_
+a Smith, and not a Vere de Vere in hiding. But that isn't all. He took me
+into his family--into his very heart. He showed that, when I told him. He
+tried not to, but he couldn't help it. I tell you it hurt--_me_. I won't
+try to write about it. I'll tell you everything face to face, when I get
+up to the mark, if I ever do. Apparently my letters hadn't prepared him
+for the thing at all. He thought it was to be something to do with Evie,
+though he might have known I wouldn't have chucked up everything for that.
+The worst of it is, he's no good at seeing things all round. He can't take
+my point of view a bit. It is impossible to explain the fix I was put in,
+because he can see nothing but the one fact that I pulled the wool over
+his eyes--_his_ eyes, that had never suffered sacrilege before. I
+sympathize with him in that, and yet I think he might try to see that
+there's something to be said on my side. He doesn't, and he never
+will--which only hurts me the more.
+
+"As for Evie, he wouldn't let me mention her name. I didn't insist,
+because it was too painful--I mean, too painful to see how he took it. He
+said, in about ten words, that Evie had not been any more engaged than if
+she had given her word to a man of air, and that there was no reason why
+she should be spoken of. We left it there. I couldn't deny that, and it
+was no use saying any more. The only reply to him must be given by Evie
+herself. He is writing to her, and so am I. I wish you would help her to
+see that she must consider herself quite free, and that she isn't to
+undertake what she may not have the strength to carry out. I realize more
+and more that I was asking her to do the impossible."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was an hour or two after reading this, when Conquest had gone away,
+that Evie herself--as dainty as spring, in flowered muslin and a Leghorn
+hat crowned with a wreath of roses--came fluttering in.
+
+"I've had the queerest letter from Uncle Jarrott," she began,
+breathlessly. "The poor old dear--well, something must be the matter with
+him. I can't for the life of me imagine what Herbert can have told him,
+but he doesn't understand a bit."
+
+Miriam locked her own letter in her desk, saying as she did so:
+
+"How does he show it?--that he doesn't understand."
+
+"Why, he simply talks wild--that's how he shows it. He says I am not to
+consider myself engaged to Herbert--that I was never engaged to him at
+all. I wonder what he calls it, if it isn't engaged, when I have a
+ring--and everything."
+
+"It is rather mystifying." Miriam tried to smile. "I suppose he means that
+having given your word to Herbert Strange, you're not to consider yourself
+bound to Norrie Ford, unless you want to."
+
+"Pff! I don't care anything about that. I never liked the name of
+Herbert--or Strange, either. I told you that before. All the same, I wish
+Uncle Jarrott would have a little sense."
+
+"Suppose--I mean, just suppose, dear--he felt it his duty to forbid your
+engagement altogether. What would you do then?"
+
+"It wouldn't be very nice of him, I must say. He was as pleased as Punch
+over it when I was down there. If he's so capricious, I don't see how he
+can blame me."
+
+"Blame you, for what, dear?"
+
+"For staying engaged--if it's all right."
+
+"But if he thought it wasn't all right?"
+
+"You do, don't you?"
+
+Evie, who had been prancing about the room, turned sharply on Miriam, who
+was still at her desk.
+
+"That isn't the question--"
+
+"No, but it's _a_ question. I presume you don't mind my asking it?"
+
+"You may ask me anything, darling--of course. But this is your uncle
+Jarrott's affair, and yours. It wouldn't do for me--"
+
+"Oh, that's so like you Miriam. You'd exasperate a saint--the way you
+won't give your opinion when you've got one. I wish I could ask Billy.
+He'd know. But of course I couldn't, when he thinks I'm still engaged to
+_him_."
+
+"What do you want to ask him, Evie, dear?"
+
+"Well, he's a lawyer. He could tell me all about what it's all about. I'm
+sure _I_ don't know. I didn't think it was anything--and yet here's Uncle
+Jarrott writing as if it was something awful. He's written to Aunt
+Queenie, too. Of course I must stand by Herbert, whatever happens--if it
+isn't very bad; but you can see yourself that I don't want to be mixed up
+in a--a--in a scandal."
+
+"It would hardly be a scandal, dear; but there would be some--some
+publicity about it."
+
+"I don't mind publicity. I'm used to that, with my name in the paper every
+other day. It was in this morning. Did you see it?--the Gresley's dance.
+Only I do wish they would call me Evelyn, and not Evie. It sounds so
+familiar."
+
+"I'm afraid they'd put more in about you than just that."
+
+"Would they? What?" Her eyes danced already, in anticipation.
+
+"I can't tell you exactly what; but it would be things you wouldn't like."
+
+Evie twitched about the room, making little clicking sounds with her lips,
+as signs of meditation.
+
+"Well, I mean to be true to him--a while longer," she said, at last, as if
+coming to a conclusion. "I'm not going to let Uncle Jarrott think I'm just
+a puppet to be jerked on a string. The idea! When he was as pleased as
+Punch about it himself. And Aunt Helen said she'd give me my trousseau. I
+suppose I sha'n't get that now. But there's the money you offered me for
+the pearl necklace. Only I'd much rather have the pearl--Well, I'll be
+true to him, do you see? We're leaving for Newport the day after
+to-morrow. They say there hasn't been such a brilliant summer for a long
+time as they expect this year. Thank goodness, there's something to take
+my mind off all this care and worry and responsiblity, otherwise I think I
+should pass away. But I shall show Uncle Jarrott that he can't do just as
+he likes with me, anyhow."
+
+Evie and Miss Jarrott went to Newport, and it was the beginning of July
+before Miriam heard from Ford again. Once more she read to Conquest such
+portions of the letter as she thought he would find of interest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It is all over now," Ford wrote, "between Stephens and Jarrott and me.
+I'm out of the concern for good. It was something of a wrench, and I'm
+glad it is past. I didn't see the old man again. I wanted to thank him and
+say good-bye, but he dodged me. Perhaps it is just as well. Even if I were
+to meet him now, I shouldn't make the attempt again. I confess to feeling
+a little hurt, but I thoroughly understand him. He is one of those
+men--you meet them now and again--survivals from the old school--with a
+sense of rectitude so exact that they can only see in a straight line. It
+is all right. Don't think that I complain. It is almost as much for his
+sake as for my own that I wish he could have taken what I call a more
+comprehensive view of me. I know he suffers--and I shall never be able to
+tell him how sorry I am till we get into the kingdom of heaven. In fact, I
+can't explain anything to any one, except you, which must be an excuse for
+my long letters. I try to keep you posted in what I'm going through, so
+that you may convey as much or as little of it as you think fit to Evie. I
+can't tell her much, and I see from the little notes she writes me that
+she doesn't yet understand.
+
+"The cat seems to be quite out of the bag in the office, though I haven't
+said a word to any one, and I know Mr. Jarrott wouldn't. Pride and sore
+feeling will keep him from ever speaking of me again, except when he can't
+help it. I don't mean to say that the men know exactly what it is, but
+they know enough to set them guessing. They are jolly nice about it, too,
+even the fellows who were hardly decent to me in the old days. Little
+Green--the chap from Boston who succeeded me at Rosario; I must have told
+you about him--and his wife can't do enough for me, and I know they mean
+it."
+
+There was a silence of some weeks before he wrote again.
+
+"I shall not get away from here as soon as I expected, as my private
+affairs are not easily settled up. This city grows so fast that I have had
+a good part of my savings in real estate. I am getting rid of it by
+degrees, but it takes time to sell to advantage. I may say that I am doing
+very well, for which I am not sorry, as I shall need the money for my
+trial. I hope you don't mind my referring to it, because I look forward to
+it with something you might almost call glee. To get back where I started
+will be like waking from a bad dream. I can't believe that Justice will
+make the same mistake twice--and even if she does I would rather she had
+the chance. I am much encouraged by the last reports from Kilcup and
+Warren. I've long felt that it was Jacob Gramm who did for my poor uncle,
+though I didn't like to accuse him of it when the proofs seemed all the
+other way. He certainly had more reason to do the trick than I had, for my
+uncle had been a brute to him for thirty years, while he had only worried
+me for two. He wasn't half a bad old chap, either--old Gramm--and it was
+one of the mysteries of the place to me that he could have stood it so
+long. The only explanation I could find was that he had a kind of
+affection for the old man, such as a dog will sometimes have for a master
+who beats him, or a woman for a drunken husband. I believe the moment came
+when he simply found himself at the end of his tether of endurance--and
+he just did for him. His grief, when it was all over, was real enough.
+Nobody could doubt that. In fact, it was so evidently genuine that the
+theory I am putting forward now only came to me of late years. I think
+there is something in it, and I believe the further they go the more they
+will find to support it. Now that the old chap is dead I should have less
+scruple in following it up--especially if the old lady is gone too. She
+was a bit of a vixen, but the husband was a good old sort. I liked him."
+
+Some weeks later he wrote:
+
+"I wander about this place a good deal like a ghost in its old haunts.
+Everything here is so temporary, so changing--much more so than in New
+York--that one's footprints are very quickly washed away. Outside the
+office almost no one remembers me. It is curious to think that I was once
+so happy here--and so hopeful. There was always a kind of hell in my
+heart, but I kept it banked down, as we do the earth's internal fires,
+beneath a tolerably solid crust. Yesterday, finding myself at the
+Hipodromo, I stood for a while on the spot where I first saw Evie. It used
+to seem to me a bit of enchanted ground, but I feel now as if I ought to
+erect a gravestone there. Poor little Evie! How right you were about it
+all. It was madness on my part to think she could ever climb up my
+Calvary. My excuse is that I didn't imagine it was going to be so steep. I
+even hoped she would never see that there was a Calvary at all. Her notes
+are still pitifully ignorant of the real state of things.
+
+"And speaking of gravestones, I went out the other day to the Recoleta
+Cemetery, and looked at the grave of my poor old friend, Monsieur Durand.
+Everything neat, and in good order. It gives me a peculiar satisfaction
+to see that the decorum he loved reigns where he 'sleeps.' I never knew
+his secret--except that rumor put him down for an unfrocked priest.
+
+"I doubt if I shall get away from here till the beginning of October; but
+when I do, everything will be in trim for what I sometimes think of as my
+resurrection."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These letters, and others like them, Miriam shared conscientiously with
+Conquest. It was part of the loyalty she had vowed to him in her heart
+that she should keep nothing from him, except what was sanctified and
+sealed forever, as her own private history. In the impulse to give her
+life as a ransom for Norrie Ford's she was eager to do it without
+reserves, or repinings, or backward looks--without even a wish that it had
+been possible to make any other use of it. If she was not entirely
+successful in the last feat, she was fairly equal to the rest, so that in
+allowing himself to be misled Conquest could scarcely be charged with
+fatuity. With his combined advantages, personal and otherwise, it was not
+astonishing that a woman should be in love with him; and if that woman
+proved to be Miriam Strange, one could only say that the unexpected had
+happened, as it often does. If, in view of all the circumstances, he
+dressed better than ever, and gave his little dinners more frequently,
+while happiness toned down the sharpness of his handsome profile to a
+softer line, he had little in common with Malvolio.
+
+And what he had began to drop away from him. Insensibly he came to see
+that the display of his legal knowledge, of his carefully chosen ties, of
+his splendid equipment in house, horses, and automobiles, had something of
+the major-domo's strut in parti-colored hose. The day came when he
+understood that the effort to charm her by the parade of these things was
+like the appeal to divine grace by means of grinding on a prayer-mill. It
+was a long step to take, both in thought and emotion, leading him to see
+love, marriage, women's hearts, and all kindred subjects, from a different
+point of view. Love in particular began to appear to him as more than the
+sum total of approbation bestowed on an object to be acquired. Though he
+was not prepared to give it a new definition, it was clear that the old
+one was no longer sufficient for his needs. The mere fact that this woman,
+whom he had vainly tempted with gifts--whom he was still hoping to capture
+by prowess--could come to him of her own accord, had a transforming effect
+on himself. If he ever got her--by purchase, conquest, or any other form
+of acquisition--he had expected to be proud; he had never dreamed of this
+curious happiness, that almost made him humble.
+
+It was a new conception of life to think that there were things in it that
+might be given, but which could not be bought; as it was a new revelation
+of himself to perceive that there were treasures in his dry heart which
+had never before been drawn on. This discovery was made almost
+accidentally. He stumbled on it, as men have stumbled on Koh-i-noors and
+Cullinanes lying in the sand.
+
+"What I really came to tell you," he said to her, on one occasion, as they
+strolled side by side in the Park, "is that I am going away to-morrow--to
+the West--to Omaha."
+
+"Isn't that rather sudden?"
+
+"Rather. I've thought for the last few days I might do it. The fact is,
+they've found Amalia Gramm."
+
+She stopped with a sudden start of interrogation, moving on again at once.
+It was a hot September evening, at the hour when twilight merges into
+night. They had left Wayne on a favorite seat, and having finished their
+own walk northward, were returning to pick him up and take him home. It
+was just dark enough for the thin crescent of the harvest moon to be
+pendulous above the city, while a rim of lighted windows in high façades
+framed the tree-tops The peace of the quiet path in which they rambled
+seemed the more sylvan because of the clang and rumble of the streets, as
+a room will appear more secluded and secure when there is a storm outside.
+
+"They've found her living with some nieces out there," he went on to
+explain. "She appears to have been half over the world since old Gramm
+died--home to Germany--back to America--to Denver--to Chicago--to
+Milwaukee--to the Lord knows where--and now she has fetched up in Omaha.
+She strikes me in the light of an unquiet spirit. It seems she has nephews
+and nieces all over the lot--and as she has the ten thousand dollars old
+Chris Ford left them--"
+
+"Are they going to bring her here?"
+
+"They can't--bedridden--paralyzed, or something. They've got to take her
+testimony on the spot. I want to be there when they do it. There are
+certain questions which it is most important to have asked. In a way, it
+is not my business; but I'm going to make it mine. I've mulled over the
+thing so long that I think I see the psychology of the whole drama."
+
+"I can never thank you enough for the interest you've shown," she said,
+after a brief silence.
+
+He gave his short, nervous laugh.
+
+"Nor I you for giving me the chance to show it. That's where the kindness
+comes in. It's made a different world for me, and me a different man in
+it. If anybody had told me last winter that I should spend the whole
+summer in town working on a criminal case--"
+
+"You shouldn't have done that. I wanted you to go away as usual."
+
+"And leave you here?"
+
+"I shouldn't have minded--as long as Mr. Wayne preferred to stay. It's so
+hard for him to get about, anywhere but in the place he's accustomed to.
+New York in summer isn't as bad as people made me think."
+
+"I too have found that true. To me it has been a very happy time. But
+perhaps my reasons were different from yours."
+
+She reflected a minute before uttering her next words, but decided to say
+them.
+
+"I fancy our reasons were the same."
+
+The low voice, the simplicity of the sentence, the meanings in it and
+behind it, made him tremble. It was then, perhaps, that he began to see
+most clearly the true nature of love, both as given and received.
+
+"I don't think they can be," he ventured, hoping to draw her on to say
+something more; but she did not respond.
+
+After all, he reflected, as they continued their walk more or less in
+silence, too many words would only spoil the minute's bliss. There was,
+too, a pleasure in standing afar off to view the promised land almost
+equal to that of marching into it--especially when, as now, he was given
+to understand that its milk and honey were awaiting him.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+
+It was the middle of October when Evie wrote from Lenox to say she would
+come to town to meet Ford on his arrival, begging Miriam to give her
+shelter for a night or two. The Grants remaining abroad, Miss Jarrott had
+taken the house in Seventy-second Street for another winter, but as Evie
+would run up to New York alone she preferred for the minute to be Miriam's
+guest.
+
+"The fact is, I'm worried to death," she wrote, confidentially "and you
+must help me to see daylight through this tangled mass of everybody saying
+different things. Aunt Queenie has gone completely back on Herbert, just
+because Uncle Jarrott has. That doesn't strike me as very loyal, I must
+say. I shouldn't think it right to desert anybody, unless I wanted to. I
+wouldn't do it because some one else told me to--not if he was my brother
+ten times over. I mean to be just as true to Herbert as I can Not that he
+makes it very easy for me, because he has broken altogether with Uncle
+Jarrott--and that seems to me the maddest thing. I certainly sha'n't get
+my trousseau from Aunt Helen now. I don't see what we're all coming to.
+Everybody is so queer, and they keep hinting things they won't say out, as
+if there was some mystery. I do wish I could talk to Billy about it. Of
+course I can't--the way matters stand. And speaking of Billy, that rich
+Mr. Bird--you remember I told you about him last winter--has asked me to
+marry him. Just think! I forget how much he has a year, but it's something
+awful. Of course I told him I couldn't give him a definite answer yet--but
+that if he insisted on it I should have to make it No. He said he didn't
+insist--that he'd rather wait till I had time to make up my mind, if I
+didn't keep him dangling. I told him I wouldn't keep him doing anything
+whatever, and that if he dangled at all it would be entirely of his own
+accord. I think he liked my spirit, so he said he'd wait. We left it
+there, which was the wisest way--though I must say I didn't like his
+presuming on his money to think I would make a difference between him and
+the others. Money doesn't mean anything to me, though dear mamma hoped she
+would live to see me well established. She didn't, poor darling, but
+that's no reason why I shouldn't try to carry out her wishes. All the
+same, I mean to be true to Herbert just as long as possible; and so you
+may expect me on the twenty-ninth."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If there was much in this letter that Miriam found disturbing, it was not
+the thought that Evie might be false to Ford, or that Ford might suffer,
+which alarmed her most. There was something in her that cried out in fear
+before the possibility that Norrie Ford might be free again. Her strength
+having sprung so largely from the hope of restoring the plans she had
+marred, the destruction of the motive left her weak; but worse than that
+was the knowledge that, though she had tried to empty her heart completely
+of its cravings, only its surface had been drained. It was to get
+assurance rather than to give information that she read fragments of
+Evie's letter to Conquest, on the evening of his return from Omaha. He had
+come to give her the news of his success. That it was good news was
+evident in his face when he entered the room; and, almost afraid to hear
+it, she had broached the subject of her anxiety about Evie first.
+
+"She's going to give him the sack; that's what _she's_ going to give him,"
+Conquest said, conclusively, while Miriam folded the dashingly scribbled
+sheets. "You needn't be worried about her in the least. Miss Evie knows
+her way about as cleverly as a homing bee. She'll do well for herself
+whatever else she may not do. _Come now_!"
+
+"I'm not thinking of that so much as that she should do her duty."
+
+"Duty! Pooh! That sort of little creature has no duty--the word doesn't
+apply to it. Evie is the most skilful mixture of irresponsible impulse and
+shrewd calculation you'll find in New York. She'll use both her gifts with
+perfect heartlessness, and yet in such a way that even her guardian angel
+won't know just where to find fault with her."
+
+"But she must marry Mr. Ford--now."
+
+He was too busy with his own side of the subject to notice that her
+assertion had the intensity of a cry. He had a man's lack of interest in
+another man's love-affairs while he was blissfully absorbed in his own.
+
+"You might as well tell a swallow that it must migrate--now," he laughed.
+"Poor Ford will feel it, I've no doubt; but we shall make up to him for a
+good deal of it. We're going to pull him through."
+
+For the instant her anxiety was diverted into another channel. "Does that
+mean that Amalia Gramm has told you anything?"
+
+"She's told us everything. I thought she would. I don't feel at liberty to
+give you the details before they come out at the proper time and place;
+but there's no harm in saying that my analysis of the old woman's
+psychological state was not so very far wrong. There's no question about
+it any longer. We'll pull him through. And, by George, he's worth it!"
+
+The concluding exclamation, uttered with so much sincerity, took her by
+surprise, transmuting the pressure about her heart into a mist of sudden
+tears. Tears came to her rarely, hardly, and seldom with relief. She was
+especially unwilling that Conquest should notice them now; but the attempt
+to dash them away only caused them to fall faster. She could see him
+watching her in a kind of sympathetic curiosity, slightly surprised in his
+turn at the unexpected emotion, and trying to divine its cause. Unable to
+bear his gaze any longer, she got up brusquely from her chair, retreating
+into the bay-window, where--the curtains being undrawn--she stood looking
+down on the sea of lights, as beings above the firmament might look down
+on stars. He waited a minute, and came near her only when he judged that
+he might do so discreetly.
+
+"You're unnerved," he said, with tender kindliness. "That's why you're
+upset. You've had too much on your mind. You're too willing to take all
+the care on your own shoulders, and not let other people hustle for
+themselves."
+
+She was pressing her handkerchief against her lips, so she made no reply.
+The moment seemed to him one at which he might go forward a little more
+boldly. All the circumstances warranted an advance from his position of
+reserve.
+
+"You need me," he ventured to say, with that quiet assurance which in a
+lover means much. "I understand you as no one else does in the world."
+
+Her brimming eyes gave him a look which was only pathetic, but which he
+took to be one of assent.
+
+"I've always told you I could help you," he went on, with tranquil
+earnestness, "and I could. You've too many burdens to carry alone--burdens
+that don't belong to you, but which, I know, you'll never lay down. Well,
+I'll share them. There's Wayne, now. He's too much for you, by yourself--I
+don't mean from the material point of view, but--the whole thing. It wears
+on you. It's bound to. Wayne is my friend just as much as yours. He's my
+responsibility--so long as you take it in that light. I've been thinking
+of him a lot lately--and I see how, in my house--could put him
+up--ideally."
+
+Still pressing her handkerchief against her lips with her right hand, she
+put out her left in a gesture of deprecation. He understood it as one of
+encouragement, and went on.
+
+"You must come and look at my house. You've never really seen it, and I
+think you'd like it. I think you'd like--everything I've got everything to
+make you happy; and if you'll only let me do it, you'll make me happy,
+too."
+
+She felt able to speak at last. Her eyes were still brimming as she turned
+toward him, but brimming only as pools are when the rain is over.
+
+"I want you to be happy. You're so good ... and kind ... and you've done
+so much for me ... you deserve it."
+
+She turned away from him again. With her arm on the woodwork of the
+window, she rested her forehead rather wearily on her hand. He understood
+so little of what was passing within her that she found it a relief to
+suspend for the minute her comedy of spontaneous happiness, letting her
+heart ache unrestrainedly. Her left hand hanging limp and free, she made
+no effort to withdraw it when she felt him clasp it in his own. Since she
+had subscribed to the treaty months ago, since she had insisted on doing
+it rightly or wrongly, it made little difference when and how she carried
+the conditions out. So they stood hand in hand together, tacitly, but, as
+each knew, quite effectually, plighted. In her silence, her resignation,
+her evident consent he read the proof of that love which, to his mind, no
+longer needed words.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Late that night, after he had gone away, she wrote to Evie, beseeching her
+to be true to Ford. The letter was so passionate, so little like herself,
+that she was afraid of destroying it if she waited till morning, so she
+posted it without delay. The answer came within forty-eight hours, in the
+shape of a telegram from Evie. She was coming to town at once, though it
+wanted still three or four days to Ford's arrival.
+
+It was a white little Evie, with drawn face, who threw herself into
+Miriam's arms at the station, clutching at her with a convulsive sob.
+
+"Miriam, I can't do it," she whispered, in a kind of terror. "They say
+he's going to be put in--_jail_!"
+
+Her voice rose on the last word, so that one or two people paused in their
+rush past to glance at the pitifully tragic little face.
+
+"Hush, darling," Miriam whispered back. "You'll tell me about it as we go
+home."
+
+But in the motor Evie could only cry, clinging to Miriam as she used to do
+in troubled moments in childhood. Arrived at the apartment, Wayne had to
+be faced with some measure of self-control, and then came dinner. At table
+Evie, outwardly mistress of herself by this time, talked feverish
+nonsense about their common friends in Lenox, after which she made an
+excuse for retiring early. It was only in the bedroom, when they were
+secure from interruption that Miriam heard what Evie had to tell. She was
+tearless now, and rather indignant.
+
+"I've had the strangest letter from Herbert," she declared excitedly, as
+soon as Miriam entered the room. "I couldn't have believed he wrote it in
+his senses if Aunt Queenie hadn't heard the Same thing from Uncle Jarrott.
+He says he's got to go to--_jail_."
+
+There was the same rising inflexion on the last word, suggestive of a
+shriek of horror, that Miriam had noticed in the station. In her white
+peignoir, her golden hair streaming over her shoulders, and her hands
+flung wide apart with an appealing dramatic gesture, Evie was not unlike
+some vision of a youthful Christian martyr, in spite of the hair-brush in
+her hand. Miriam sat down sidewise on the edge of the couch, looking up at
+the child in pity. She felt that it was useless to let her remain in
+darkness any longer.
+
+"Of course he has to," she said, trying to make her tone as matter of fact
+as might be. "Didn't you know it?"
+
+"Know it! Did _you_?"
+
+Evie stepped forward, bending over Miriam as if she meant to strike her.
+
+"I knew it in a general way, darling. I suppose, when he gives himself to
+the police--"
+
+"The police!" Evie screamed. "Am I to be engaged to a man who--gives
+himself up to the police?"
+
+"It will only be for a little while, dear--"
+
+"I don't care whether it's for a little while or foreverit can't _be_.
+What is he thinking of? What are _you_ thinking of? Don't you _see_? How
+can I face the world--with all my invitations--when the man I'm engaged to
+is--in jail?"
+
+Evie's hands flew up in a still more eloquent gesture, while the blue
+eyes, usually so soft and veiled, were wide with flaming interrogation.
+
+"I knew that--in some ways--it might be hard for you--"
+
+Evie laughed, a little silvery mirthless ripple of scorn.
+
+"I must say, Miriam, you choose your words skilfully. But you're wrong, do
+you see? There's no way in which it can be hard for me, because there's no
+way in which it's possible."
+
+"Oh yes, there is, dear--if you love him."
+
+"That has nothing to do with it. Of course I love him. Haven't I said so?
+But that doesn't make any difference. Can't I love him without being
+engaged to--to--to a man who has to go to jail?"
+
+"Certainly; but you can't love him if you don't feel that you must--that
+you simply _must_--stand by his side."
+
+"There you go again, Miriam, with your queer ideas. It's exactly what any
+one would expect you to say."
+
+"I hope so."
+
+"Oh, you needn't hope so, because they would--any one who knew you. But I
+have to do what's right. I know what I feel in my conscience--and I have
+to follow it. And besides, I couldn't--I couldn't"--her voice began to
+rise again--"I couldn't face it--I couldn't bear it--not if I loved him a
+great deal better than I do."
+
+"That's something you must think about very seriously, dear--"
+
+"I don't have to!" she cried, with a stamp of her foot. "I know it
+already. It wouldn't make any difference if I thought about it a thousand
+years. I couldn't be engaged to a man who was in jail, not if I worshipped
+the ground he trod on."
+
+"But when he's innocent, darling--"
+
+"It's jail, just the same. I can't be engaged to people just because
+they're innocent. It isn't right to expect it of me. And, anyhow," she
+added, passionately, "I can't do it. It would kill me. I should never lift
+my head again. I can't--I can't. It's hateful of any one to say I ought
+to. I'm surprised at you, Miriam, when you know how dear mamma would have
+forbidden it. It's all very well for you to give advice, when you have no
+family--and no one to think about--and hardly any invitations-- Well, I
+can't, and there's an end of it. If that's your idea of love, then, I must
+say, my conception is a little different. I've always had high ideals, and
+I feel obliged to hold to them, however you may condemn me."
+
+She ended with a catch in her breath something like a sob.
+
+"But I'm not condemning you, Evie dear. If you feel what you say, there's
+nothing for it but to see Mr. Ford and tell him so."
+
+At this suggestion Evie sobered. She was a long time silent before she
+observed, in a voice that had become suddenly calm and significantly
+casual, "That's easy for you to say."
+
+"If you speak to him as decidedly as to me, I should think it would be
+easy for you to do."
+
+"And still easier for you."
+
+Evie spoke in that tone of unintentional intention which is most pointed.
+It was not lost on Miriam, who recoiled from the mere thought. It seemed
+to her better to ignore the hint, but Evie, with feverish eagerness,
+refused to let it pass.
+
+"Did you hear what I said?" she persisted, sharply.
+
+"I heard it, dear; but it didn't seem to me to mean anything."
+
+"That would depend on whether you heard it only with the ear or in the
+heart."
+
+"You know that everything that has to do with you is in my heart."
+
+"Well, then?"
+
+"But if you mean by that that I should tell Mr. Ford you're not going to
+marry him--why, it's out of the question."
+
+"Then who's to tell him? _I_ can't. It's not to be expected."
+
+"But, darling, you must. This is awful."
+
+Miriam got up and went toward her, but Evie, who was nervously brushing
+her hair, edged away.
+
+"Of course it's awful, but I don't see the use of making it worse than it
+need be. He'll feel it a great deal more if he sees me, and so shall I."
+
+"And what shall I feel?" Miriam spoke unguardedly, but Evie was too
+preoccupied to notice the bitterness of the tone.
+
+"I don't see why you should feel anything at all. It's nothing to you--or
+very little. It wouldn't be your fault; not any more than it's the
+postman's if he has to bring you a letter with bad news."
+
+Miriam went back to her place on the edge of the couch, where with her
+forehead bowed for a minute on her hand she sat reflecting. An
+overwhelming desire for confidence, for sympathy perhaps, for the
+clearing up of mysteries in any case, was impelling her to tell Evie all
+that had ever happened between Ford and herself. It had been necessary to
+maintain so many reserves that possibly this new light would enable Evie
+to see her own duty more straightforwardly.
+
+"Darling," she began, "I want to tell you something--"
+
+But before she could proceed Evie flung the hair-brush on the floor and
+uttered a great swelling sob. With her hands hanging at her sidess and her
+golden head thrown back, she wept with the abandonment of a child, while
+suggesting the seraphic suffering of a grieving angel by some old master.
+
+In an instant Miriam had her in her arms. It was the appeal she had never
+been able to resist.
+
+"There, there, my pet," she said, soothingly, drawing her to the couch.
+"Come to Miriam, who loves you. There, there."
+
+Evie clung to her piteously, with flower-like face tilted outward and
+upward for the greater convenience of weeping.
+
+"Oh, I'm so lonely!" she sobbed. "I'm so lonely ... I I wish dear mamma
+... hadn't died."
+
+Miriam pressed her the more closely.
+
+"I'm so lonely ... and everything's so strange ... and I don't know what
+to do ... and he's going to be put in jail ... and you're so unkind to
+me.... Oh, dear! ... I can't tell him ... I can't tell him ... I can't ...
+I can't ..."
+
+She pillowed her head on Miriam's shoulder, like a child that would force
+a caress from the hand that has just been striking it. The action filled
+Miriam with that kind of self-reproach which the weak creature inspires so
+easily in the strong. In spite of her knowledge to the contrary, she had
+the feeling of having acted selfishly.
+
+"No, darling," she said, at last, as Evie's sobs subdued into convulsive
+tremblings, "you needn't tell him. I'll see him. He'll understand how hard
+it's been for you. It's been hard for every one--and especially for you,
+darling. I'll do my best. You know I will. And I'm sure he'll understand.
+There, there," she comforted, as Evie's tears broke out afresh. "Have your
+cry out, dear. It will do you good. There, there."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So Evie went back next day to Lenox, while Miriam waited for Ford.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+
+A few days later she read his name, in a morning paper, in the _Asiatic's_
+list of passengers the steamer having arrived at quarantine the night
+before: Mr. John Norrie Ford. Though flung carelessly into a paragraph
+printed in small type, it seemed to blaze in fire on the page! It was as
+if all America must rise at it. As she looked from the window it was with
+something like surprise that she saw the stream of traffic roaring onward,
+heedless of the fact that this dread name was being hawked in the streets
+and sold at the news-stands. She sent out for the evening papers that
+appear at midday, being relieved and astonished to find that as yet it had
+created no sensation.
+
+She was not deceived by his ease of manner when he appeared at the
+apartment in the afternoon. Though he carried his head loftily, and smiled
+with his habitual air of confidence, she could see that the deep waters of
+the proud had gone over his soul. Their ebb had streaked his hair and
+beard with white, and deepened the wrinkles that meant concentrated will
+into the furrows that come of suffering. She was more or less prepared for
+that. It was the outward manifestation of what she had read between the
+lines of the letters he had written her. As he crossed the room, with hand
+outstretched, her one conscious thought was of the chance to be a woman
+and a helpmeet Evie had flung away. She had noticed how, on the very
+threshold, he had glanced twice about the room, expecting to find her
+there.
+
+They did not speak of her at once. They talked of commonplace introductory
+things--the voyage, the arrival, the hotel at which he was
+staying--anything that would help her, and perhaps him, to control the
+preliminary nervousness. There was no sign of it, however, on his part,
+while she felt her own spirit rising, as it always did, to meet
+emergencies. Presently she mentioned her fears regarding his use of his
+true name.
+
+"No; it isn't dangerous," he assured her, "because I'm out of danger now.
+Thank the Lord, that's all over. I don't have to live with a great hulking
+terror behind me any longer. I'm a man like any other. You can't imagine
+what it means to be yourself, and not to care who knows it. I'm afraid I
+parade my name just like a boy with a new watch, who wants to tell every
+one the time. So far no one has paid any particular attention; but I dare
+say that will come. Is Evie here?"
+
+"She's not here--to-day."
+
+"Why not?" he asked, sharply. "She said she would be. She said she'd come
+to town--"
+
+"She did come to town, but she thought she'd better not--stay."
+
+"Not stay? Why shouldn't she stay? Is anything up? You don't mean that
+Miss Jarrott--?"
+
+"No; Miss Jarrott had nothing to do with it. I know her brother has
+written to her, in the way you must be prepared for. But she couldn't have
+kept Evie from waiting for you, if Evie herself--"
+
+"Had wanted to," he finished, as she seemed to hesitate at the words.
+
+Since she said nothing to modify this assertion, she hoped he would
+comprehend its gravity. Indeed, he seemed to be trying to attenuate that
+when he spoke next.
+
+"I suppose she had engagements--or something."
+
+"She did have engagements--but she could have put them off."
+
+"Only she didn't care to. I see."
+
+She allowed him time to accept this fact before going on.
+
+"Her return to Lenox," she said then, "wasn't because of her engagements."
+
+"Then it must have been because of me. Didn't she want to see me?"
+
+"She didn't want to tell you what she felt she would have to say."
+
+"Oh! So that was it."
+
+He continued to sit looking at her with an expression of interrogation,
+though it was evident from his eyes that his questions had been answered.
+They sat in the same relative positions as on the night of their last long
+talk together, he in his big arm-chair, she in her low one. It struck her
+as strange--while he stared at her with that gaze of inquiry from which
+the inquiry was gone--that she, who meant so little to his inner life,
+should be called on again to live through with him minutes that must
+forever remain memorable in his existence.
+
+"Poor little thing! So she funked telling me."
+
+The comment was made musingly, to himself, but she took it as if addressed
+to her.
+
+"She wasn't equal to it."
+
+"But you are. You're equal to anything. Aren't you?" He smiled with that
+peculiar twisted smile which she had noticed at other times, when he was
+concealing pain.
+
+"One is generally equal to what one has to do. All the same," she added,
+with an impulse she could not repress, "I'm sorry to be always associated
+in your mind with things that must be hard for you."
+
+"You're associated in my mind with everything that's high and noble.
+That's the only memory I shall ever have of you. You've been with me
+through some of the dark spots of my life; but if it hadn't been for you I
+shouldn't have found the way."
+
+"Thank you. I'm glad you can say that. I should be even more sorry than I
+am to give you this news to-day, if it were not that perhaps I can explain
+things a little better than Evie could."
+
+"I don't imagine that they require much explanation. I've seen from Evie's
+letters that--"
+
+"That she was afraid of--the situation. She hasn't changed toward you."
+
+"Do you mean by that that she still--cares anything about me?"
+
+"She says she does."
+
+"But you don't believe her."
+
+"I'm not entitled to an opinion. It's something you and she must work out
+together. All I can do is to tell you what may give you a little hope."
+
+She watched for the brightening effect of these words upon him, but he sat
+looking absently at the floor, as if he had not heard them.
+
+"Evie is afraid," she continued, "but I think it's only fair to remember
+that the circumstances might well frighten any young girl of her sort."
+
+He showed that he followed her by nodding assent, though he neither lifted
+his head nor spoke.
+
+"She wanted me to tell you that while the--the trial--and other
+things--are going on, she couldn't be engaged to you--I'm using her own
+expression, but she didn't say that, when it was all over and you were
+free, she wouldn't marry you. I noticed that."
+
+He looked up quickly.
+
+"I'm not sure that I catch your drift."
+
+"I mean that when it's all over, and everything has ended as you hope it
+will, it may be quite possible for you to win her back."
+
+He stared at her, with an incredulous lifting of the eyebrows
+
+"Would you advise me to try?"
+
+"It isn't a matter I could give advice about. I'm showing you what might
+be possible, but--"
+
+"No, no. That sort of thing doesn't work. There was just a chance that
+Evie might have stuck to me spontaneously but since she didn't--"
+
+"Since she didn't--what?"
+
+"She was quite right not to. I admit that. It's in the order of things.
+She followed her instinct rather than her heart--I'm ready to believe
+that--but there are times in life when instinct is a pretty good guide."
+
+"Am I to understand that you're not--hurt?--or disappointed? Because in
+that case--"
+
+"I don't know whether I am or not. That's frank. I'm feeling so many
+things all at once that I can hardly distinguish one emotion from another,
+or tell which is strongest. I only know--it's become quite plain to
+me--that a little creature like Evie couldn't find a happy home in my
+life, any more than a humming-bird, as you once called her, could make its
+nest among crags."
+
+"Do you mean by that," she asked, slowly, "that
+you're--definitely--letting her go?"
+
+"I mean that, Evie being what she is, and I being what life has made
+me--Isn't it perfectly evident? Can you fancy us tied together--now?"
+
+"I never could fancy it. I haven't concealed that from you at any time.
+But since you loved her, and she loved you--"
+
+"That was true enough--in its way. In its way, it's still true. Evie still
+loves the man I was, perhaps, and the man I was loves her. The difference
+is that the man I was isn't sitting here in front of you."
+
+"One changes with years, of course. I didn't suppose one could change in a
+few months, like that."
+
+"One changes with experience--above all, with that kind of experience
+which people generally call--suffering. That's the great Alchemist; and he
+often transmutes our silver into gold. In my case, Evie was silver; but
+I've found there's something else that stands for--"
+
+"So that," she interposed, quickly, "you're not sorry that Evie--?"
+
+He got up, restlessly, and stood with his back to the empty fireplace.
+
+"It isn't a case for sorrow," he replied, after a minute's thinking, "as
+it isn't one for joy. It's one purely for acceptance. When I first knew
+Evie I was still something of a kid. It was so all the more because the
+kid element in me had never had full play. I was arrogant, and cock-sure
+and certain of my ability to manipulate the world to suit myself. That was
+all Evie saw, and she liked it. In as far as she had it in her to fall in
+love with anything, she fell in love with it."
+
+He took a turn or two across the room, coming back to his stand on the
+hearth-rug.
+
+"I've travelled far since then," he continued; "I've _had_ to travel far.
+Evie hasn't been able to come with me; and that's all there is to the
+story. It isn't her fault; because when I asked her, I had no intention of
+taking this particular way."
+
+"It was I who drove you into that," she said, with a hint of remorse.
+
+"Yes--you--and conscience--and whatever else I honor most. I give you the
+credit first of all, because, if it hadn't been for you, I shouldn't have
+had the moral energy to assert my true self against the false one. Isn't
+it curious that, after having made me Herbert Strange, it should be you
+who turned me into Norrie Ford again? It means that you exercise supreme
+power over me--a kind of creative power. You can make of me what you care
+to. It's no wonder that I've come to see----" He paused, in doubt as to
+how to express himself, while her eyes were fixed on him in troubled
+questioning. "It's no wonder," he went on again, "that I've come to see
+everything in a truer light--Evie as well as all the rest of it."
+
+With a renewed impulse to move about, he strode toward the bay-window,
+where he stood for a few seconds, looking out and trying to co-ordinate
+his thoughts. Wheeling round again, he drew up a small chair close to
+hers, seating himself sidewise, with his arm resting on the back. He
+looked like a man anxious to explain himself.
+
+"You're blaming me, I think, because I don't take Evie's defection more to
+heart. Isn't that so?"
+
+"I'm not blaming you. I may be a little surprised at it."
+
+"You wouldn't be surprised at it, if you knew all I've been through. It's
+difficult to explain to you--"
+
+"There's no reason why you should try."
+
+"But I want to try. I want you to know. You see," he pursued, speaking
+slowly, as if searching for the right words--"you see, it's largely a
+question of progress--of growth. Trouble has two stages. In the first, you
+think it hard luck that you should have to meet it. In the second, you see
+that, having met it, and gone through it, you come out into a region of
+big experience, where everything is larger and nobler than you thought it
+was before. Now, you'd probably think me blatant if I said that I feel
+myself emerging into--_that_."
+
+"No, I shouldn't. As a matter of fact, I know you're doing it."
+
+"Well, then, having got there--out into that new kind of world"--he
+sketched the vision with one of his Latin gestures--"I discover that--for
+one reason or another--poor little Evie has stayed on the far side of it.
+She couldn't pass the first gate with me, or the second, or the third, to
+say nothing of those I have still to go through. You know I'm not
+criticising, or finding fault with her, don't you?"
+
+She assured him of that.
+
+"And yet, I must go on, you see. There's no waiting or turning back for
+me, any more than for a dying man. No matter who goes or who stays, I must
+press forward. If Evie can't make the journey with me, I can only feel
+relieved that she's able to slip out of it--but I must still go on. I
+can't look back; I can't even be sorry--because I'm coming into the new,
+big land. You see what I mean?"
+
+She signified again that she followed him.
+
+"But the finding of a new land doesn't take anything from the old one. It
+only enlarges the world. Europe didn't become different because they
+discovered America. The only change was in their getting to know a country
+where the mountains were higher, and the rivers broader, and the sunshine
+brighter, and where there was a chance for the race to expand. Evie
+remains what she was. The only difference is that my eyes have been opened
+to--a new ideal."
+
+It was impossible for her not to guess at what he meant. Independently of
+words, his earnest eyes told their tale, while he bent toward her like a
+man not quite able to restrain himself. In the ensuing seconds of silence
+she had time to be aware of three distinct phases of emotion within her
+consciousness, following each other so rapidly as to seem simultaneous. A
+throb of reckless joy in the perception that he loved her was succeeded by
+the knowledge that loyalty to Conquest must make rejoicing vain, while it
+flashed on her that, having duped herself once in regard to him, she must
+not risk the humiliating experience a second time. It was this last
+reflection that prevailed, keeping her still and unresponsive. After all,
+his new ideal might be something--or some one--quite different from what
+her fond imagining was so ready to believe.
+
+"I suppose," she said, vaguely, for the sake of saying something, "that
+trial is the first essential to maturity. We need it for our ripening, as
+the flowers and fruit need wind and rain."
+
+"And there are things in life," he returned, quickly, "that no immature
+creature can see. That's the point I want you to notice. It explains me.
+In a way, it's an excuse for me."
+
+"I don't need excuses for you," she hastened to say, "any more than I
+require to have anything explained."
+
+"No; of course not. You don't care anything about it. It's only I who do.
+But I care so much that I want you to understand why it was that--that--I
+didn't care before."
+
+She felt the prompting to stop him, to silence him, but once more she held
+herself back. There was still a possibility that she was mistaking him,
+and her pride was on its guard.
+
+"It was because I didn't know any better," he burst out, in naïve
+self-reproach. "It was because I couldn't recognize the high, the fine
+thing when I saw it. I've had that experience in other ways, and with just
+the same result. It was like that when I first began to hear good music. I
+couldn't make it out--it was nothing but a crash of sounds. I preferred
+the ditties and dances of a musical comedy; and it was only by degrees
+that I began to find them flat. Then my ear caught something of the
+wonderful things in the symphonies that used to bore me. You see, I'm
+slow--I'm stupid--"
+
+"Not at all," she smiled. "It's quite a common experience."
+
+"But I'm like that all through, with everything. I've been like that--with
+women. I used to be attracted by quite an ordinary sort. It's taken me
+years--all these years, till I'm thirty-three--to see that there's a
+perfect expression of the human type, just as there's a perfect expression
+of any kind of art. And I've found it."
+
+He bent farther forward, nearer to her. There was a light in his face that
+seemed to her to denote enthusiasm quite as much as love. To her wider
+experience in emotions this discovery of himself, which was involved in
+his discovery of her, was rather youthful, provoking a faint smile.
+
+"You're to be congratulated, then," she said, with an air of distant
+friendliness. "It isn't every one who's so fortunate."
+
+"That's true. There's only one man in the world who's more fortunate than
+I. That's Conquest."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+In the brusqueness with which she started she pushed her chair slightly
+back from him. It was to conceal her agitation that she rose, steadying
+herself on the back of the chair in which she had been seated.
+
+"Conquest saw what I didn't--till it was too late."
+
+He was on his feet now, facing her, with the chair between them.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't say any more," she begged, though without
+overemphasis of pleading. She was anxious, for her own sake as well as for
+his, to keep to the tone of the colloquial.
+
+"I don't see why I shouldn't. I'm not going to say anything to shock you.
+I know you're going to marry Conquest. You told me so before I went away,
+and----"
+
+"I should like to remind you that Mr. Conquest is the best friend you
+have. When you hear what he's done for you, you will see that you owe him
+more than you do any man in the world."
+
+"I know that. I'm the last to forget it. But it can't do any harm to tell
+the woman--who's going to be his wife--that I owe her even more than I do
+him."
+
+"It can't do any harm, perhaps; but when I ask you not to----"
+
+"I can't obey you. I shouldn't be a man if I went through life without
+some expression of my--gratitude; and now's the only time to make it.
+There are things which I wasn't free to say before, because I was bound
+to Evie--and which it will soon be too late for you to listen to, because
+you'll be bound to him. You're not bound to him yet----"
+
+"I _am_ bound to him," she said, in a tone in which there were all the
+regrets he had no reason to divine. "I don't know what you think of
+saying; but whatever it is, I implore you not to say it."
+
+"It's precisely because you don't know that I feel the necessity of
+telling you. It's something I owe you. It's like a debt. It isn't as if we
+were just any man and any woman. We're a man and a woman in a very special
+relation to each other. No matter what happens, nothing can change that.
+And it isn't as if we were going to live in the same world, in the same
+way. You will be Conquest's wife--a great lady in New York. I shall
+be--well, Heaven only knows what I shall be, but nothing that's likely to
+cross your path again. All the same, it won't hurt you, it wouldn't hurt
+any woman, however good, to hear what I'm going to tell you. It wouldn't
+hurt any man--not even Conquest--that it should be said to his wife--in
+the way that I shall say it. If it could, I wouldn't----"
+
+"Wait a minute," she said, suddenly. "Let me ask you something." She took
+a step toward him, though her hand rested still on the back of the chair.
+"If I know it already," she continued, looking him in the eyes, "there
+would be no necessity for you to speak?"
+
+He took the time to consider this in all its bearings.
+
+"I'd rather tell you in my own words," he said, at last; "but if you
+assure me that you know, I shall be satisfied."
+
+She took a step nearer to him still. Only the tips of her fingers now
+rested on the back of the chair, to which she held, as to a bulwark.
+Before she spoke she glanced round the room, as though afraid lest the
+doors and walls might mistake her words for a confession.
+
+"Then I do know," she said, quietly.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+
+"The old lady was willing enough to talk," Conquest assured Ford, in his
+narrative of the taking of Amalia Gramm's testimony. "There's nothing more
+loquacious than remorse. I figured on that before going out to Omaha."
+
+"But if she had no hand in the crime, I don't see where the remorse comes
+in."
+
+"It comes in vicariously. She feels it for Jacob, since Jacob didn't live
+to feel it for himself. It involves a subtle element of wifely devotion
+which I guess you're too young, or too inexperienced, to understand. She
+was glad old Jacob was gone, so that she could make his confession with
+impunity. She was willing to make any atonement within _her_ power, since
+it was too late to call _him_ to account."
+
+"Isn't that a bit far-fetched?"
+
+"Possibly--except to a priest, or a lawyer, or a woman herself. It isn't
+often that a woman's heroism works in a straight line, like a soldier's,
+or a fireman's. It generally pops at you round some queer corner, where it
+takes you by surprise. Before leaving Omaha I'd come to see that Amalia
+Gramm was by no means the least valiant of her sex."
+
+Conquest's smoking-room, with its space and height, its deep leather
+arm-chairs, its shaded lamps, its cheerful fire, suggested a club rather
+than a private dwelling, and invited the most taciturn guest to
+confidence. Ford stretched himself before the blaze with an enjoyment
+rendered keener by the thought that it might be long before he had
+occasion to don a dinner-jacket again, or taste such a good Havana. Though
+it was only the evening of his arrival, he was eager to give himself up.
+Now that he had "squared himself," as he expressed it, with Miriam
+Strange, he felt he had put the last touch to his preparations. Kilcup and
+Warren were holding him back for a day or two, but his own promptings were
+for haste.
+
+"I admit," Conquest continued to explain, as he fidgeted about the room,
+moving a chair here, or an ash-tray there, with the fussiness of an old
+bachelor of housekeeping tastes--"I admit that I thought the old woman was
+trying it on at first. But I came to the conclusion that she had told a
+true story from the start. When she gave her evidence at your trial she
+thought you were--the man."
+
+"There's nothing surprising in that. They almost made me think so, too."
+
+"It did look fishy, my friend. You won't mind my saying that much. Clearer
+heads than your jury of village store-keepers and Adirondack farmers might
+have given the same verdict. But old lady Gramm's responsibility hadn't
+begun then. It was a matter of two or three years before she came to
+see--as women do see things about the men they live with--that the hand
+which did the job was Jacob's. By that time you had disappeared into
+space, and she didn't feel bound to give the old chap away. She says she
+would have done it if it could have saved you; but since you had saved
+yourself, she confined her attentions to shielding Jacob. You may credit
+as much or as little of that as you please; but I believe the bulk of it.
+In any case, since it does the trick for us we have no reason to complain.
+Come now!"
+
+"I'm not going to complain of anything. It's been a rum experience all
+through, but I can't say that, in certain aspects, I haven't enjoyed it. I
+_have_ enjoyed it. If it weren't for the necessity of deceiving people who
+are decent to you, I'd go through it all again."
+
+"That's game," Conquest said, approvingly, as he worked round to the
+hearth-rug, where he stood cutting the end of a cigar, with Ford's long
+figure stretched out obliquely before him.
+
+"I would," Ford assured him. "I'd go through it all again, like a shot.
+It's been a lark from--I won't say from start to finish--but certainly
+from the minute--let me see just when!--certainly from the minute when
+Miss Strange beckoned to me, over old Wayne's shoulder."
+
+An odd look came by degrees into Conquest's face--the look of pitying
+amusement with which one listens to queer things said by some one in
+delirium. He kept the cutter fixed in the end of the cigar, too much
+astonished to complete his task.
+
+"Since Miss Strange did--_what_?"
+
+Ford was too deeply absorbed in his own meditations to notice the tone.
+
+"I mean, since she pulled me through."
+
+Conquest's face broke into a broad smile.
+
+"Are you dreaming, old chap? Or have you 'got 'em again'?"
+
+"I'm going back in the story," Ford explained, with a hint of impatience.
+"I'm talking about the night when Miss Strange saved me."
+
+"Miss Strange saved you? How?"
+
+Ford raised himself slowly in his chair, his long legs stretched out
+straight before him, and his body bent stiffly forward, as he stared up at
+Conquest, in puzzled interrogation.
+
+"Do you mean to say," he asked, incredulously, "that she hasn't told
+you--_that_?"
+
+"Perhaps you'll be good enough to tell me yourself. I'll be hanged if I
+know what you're talking about."
+
+There was suppressed irritation in the way in which he tore off the end of
+the cigar and struck a match. Ford let himself sink back into the chair
+again.
+
+"So she never told you! By George, that's like her! It's just what I might
+have expected."
+
+"Look here," Conquest said, sharply, "did you know Miss Strange before you
+came up here from South America?" He stood with his cigar unlighted, for
+he had let the match burn down to his fingers before attempting to apply
+it. "Was your taking the name of Strange," he demanded with sudden
+inspiration, "merely an accident, as I've supposed it was--or had it
+anything to do with her?"
+
+"It wasn't an accident, and it did have something to do with her."
+
+"Just so! And you kept it dark!"
+
+Something in Conquest's intonation caused Ford to look up. He saw a man
+with face suddenly growing gray, as though a light had gone out of it. He
+was disturbed only to the point of feeling that he had spoken tactlessly,
+and proceeded to repair the error.
+
+"I kept it dark for obvious reasons. If Miss Strange didn't tell you about
+it, it's because she isn't the kind of person to talk of an incident in
+which her own part was so noble. I'll give you the whole story now."
+
+"I should be obliged to you," Conquest said, dryly.
+
+He sat down on the very edge of one of the big arm-chairs, leaning
+forward, and fingering his still unlighted cigar nervously, as he watched
+Ford puff out successive rings of smoke before beginning. He was less on
+his guard to screen the intenseness with which he listened, because Ford
+spoke at first in a dreamy way, without looking in his direction.
+
+With more insight into the circumstances surrounding him Ford would have
+told his tale with greater reticence. As it was he spoke with enthusiasm,
+an enthusiasm born of an honest desire that Conquest should see the woman
+he was about to marry in the full beauty of her character. In regard to
+this he himself had made the discovery so slowly and so recently that he
+was animated by something like a convert's zeal. Beginning his narrative
+quietly, in a reminiscent vein, with intervals in which he lapsed
+altogether into meditation, he was presently fired with all the animation
+in a story-teller when he perceives he is holding his hearer spellbound.
+As a matter of fact, he was moved not so much by the desire of convincing
+Conquest of Miriam Strange's nobility, as by the impulse to do her
+justice, once in his life at least, in language of his own.
+
+It was a naïve bit of eloquence, of which no detail was lost on the
+experienced man of the world, who sat twirling his cigar with nervous
+fingers, his eyes growing keener in proportion as his face became more
+gray. It was part of his professional acquirement to be able to draw his
+deductions from some snatch of human drama as he listened to its
+unfolding. His quickness and accuracy of judgment had, indeed, been a
+large element in his success; so that the habit of years enabled him to
+preserve a certain calmness of comprehension now. It lost nothing in being
+a studied calmness, since the forcing of his faculties within restraint
+concentrated their acumen.
+
+Ford concluded with what for him was an almost lyric outburst.
+
+"By George! Conquest, I didn't know there were such women in the world.
+She's been a revelation to me--as art and religion are revelations to
+other people. She came to me as the angel came to Peter in the prison;
+but, like Peter, I didn't know it was an angel. There's a sort of glory
+about her--a glory which it takes a higher sense than any I've got to see
+and understand. After all she's done for me--after all this time--I'm only
+now beginning to get glimpses of it; but it's merely as we get glimpses of
+an infinite beyond, because we see the stars. She's a mystery to me, in
+the same way that genius is a mystery, or holiness. I didn't appreciate
+her because I hadn't the soul, and yet it's in seeing that I hadn't the
+soul that I begin to get it. That's curious, isn't it? She's like some
+heavenly spirit that's passed by me, and touched me into newness of life."
+
+His ardor was so sincere, his hymn of praise so spontaneous that he
+expected some sort of echo back. It seemed to him that even if Conquest
+did not join in this chant in honor of the woman who presumably loved him,
+whom more presumably still he loved, it would be but natural for him to
+applaud it. Ford knew that if any one else had sung of Miriam Strange as
+he had just been singing, he would have leaped to his feet and wrung the
+man's hand till it ached. It surprised him, therefore, it disappointed
+him, that Conquest should sit unmoved, unless the spark-like twinkle of
+his little eyes could be taken as emotion.
+
+It was a relief to Conquest to get up, scratch another match, and light
+his cigar at last, turning his back so that it should not be seen that his
+fingers trembled. When he was sure of himself he faced about again, taking
+his seat.
+
+"It's the most amazing story I ever heard," was his only comment, in
+response to Ford's look of expectation.
+
+"I hoped it might strike you as something more than--amazing," Ford
+ventured, after a minute's waiting for a more appreciative word.
+
+"Perhaps it will when I get my breath. You must give me time for that. Do
+you actually tell me that she kept you in her studio for weeks----?"
+
+"Three weeks and four days, to be exact."
+
+"And that she furnished you with food and clothing----?"
+
+"And money--but I paid that back."
+
+"And got you away in that ingenious fashion----?"
+
+"Just as I've told you."
+
+"Amazing! Simply amazing! And," he added, with some bitterness, "you came
+back here--and you and she together--took us all in."
+
+Ford drew his cigar from his lips, and, turning in his chair, faced
+Conquest in an attitude and with a look which could not be misinterpreted.
+
+"I came back here, and took you all in--if you like. Miss Strange had
+nothing to do with it. She didn't even expect me."
+
+The last sentence gave Conquest the opening he was looking for, but now
+that he had it, he hesitated to make use of it. In his memory were the
+very words Miriam Strange had stammered out to him in the sort of
+confession no woman ever makes willingly: "Things happened ... such as
+don't generally happen ... and even if he never comes ... I'd rather go on
+waiting for him ... uselessly." It was all growing clear to him, and yet
+not so clear but that there was time even now to let the matter drop into
+the limbo of things it is best not to know too much about. It was against
+his better judgment, then--his better judgment as a barrister-at-law--that
+he found himself saying:
+
+"She didn't expect you at that day and date, perhaps: but she probably
+looked for you some time."
+
+"Possibly; but if so, I know little or nothing about it."
+
+The reply, delivered with a certain dignified force of intention, recalled
+Conquest to a sense of his own interests. He had too often counselled his
+clients to let sleeping dogs lie, not to be aware of the advantage of
+doing it himself; and so, restraining his jealous curiosity, he turned the
+conversation back to the evidence of Amalia Gramm.
+
+During the next half-hour he manifested that talent--partly native and
+partly born of practice--which he had often commended in himself, of
+talking about one thing and thinking of another. His exposition of the
+line to be adopted in Ford's defence was perfectly lucid, when all the
+while he was saying to himself that this was the man whom Miriam Strange
+had waited for through eight romantic years.
+
+The fact leaped at him, but it was part of his profession not to be afraid
+of facts. If they possessed adverse qualities one recognized them boldly,
+in the practise of law, chiefly with a view of circumventing them. The
+matter presented itself first of all, not as one involving emotional or
+moral issues, but as an annoying arrangement of circumstances which might
+cheat him out of what he had honestly acquired. He had no intention of
+being cheated by any one whatever; and as he made a rapid summary of the
+points of the case he saw that the balance of probabilities was in his
+favor. It was to make that clear to Ford that he led the conversation back
+again to the subject of his adventures, tempting him to repeat at least a
+portion of his hymn of praise. By the time he had finished it Conquest was
+able to resume the friendly, confidential tone with which they had begun
+the evening.
+
+"It's very satisfactory to me, old man," he said, between quiet puffs at
+his cigar, "to know that you think so highly of Miss Strange, because--I
+don't know whether you have heard it--she and I are to be married before
+long."
+
+He looked to see Ford disconcerted by this announcement and was surprised
+to see him take it coolly.
+
+"Yes; I knew that. I've meant to congratulate you when the time came. I
+should say it had come now."
+
+There was a candor about him that Conquest could scarcely discredit,
+though he was unwilling to trust it too far.
+
+"Thanks, old man. I scarcely expected you to be so well posted. May I ask
+how--?"
+
+"Oh, I've known it a long time. Miss Strange told me before I went to
+South America last spring."
+
+This evidence of a confidential relation between the two gave him a second
+shock, but he postponed its consideration, contenting himself for the
+moment with making it plain to Ford that "Hands off!" must be the first
+rule of the game. His next move was meant to carry the play into the
+opponent's quarters.
+
+"As a matter of fact, I've never congratulated _you_," he said, with
+apparent tranquillity. "I've known about you and Evie for some time past,
+but--"
+
+"Oh, that's all off. In the existing circumstances Evie didn't feel
+like--keeping the thing up."
+
+"That's too bad. You've been pretty hard hit--what? When a fellow is as
+game as you a girl should stand by him, come now! But I know Evie. I've
+known her from her cradle. She'll back round, you'll see. When we've
+pulled you through, as we're going to, she'll take another view of things.
+I know for a fact that she's been head over heels in love with you ever
+since her trip to Buenos Aires."
+
+As Ford made no remark, Conquest felt it well to drive the point home.
+
+"We can all help in that, old boy; and you can count on us--both on Miss
+Strange and me. No one has such influence over Evie as Miriam, and I know
+she's very keen on seeing you and her--you and Evie, I mean--hit it off. I
+don't mind telling you that, as a matter of fact, it's been Miriam's
+anxiety on Evie's account that has mixed me up in your case at all. I
+don't say that I haven't got interested in you for your own sake; but it
+was she who stirred me up in the first place. It's going to mean a lot to
+her to see you get through--and marry Evie."
+
+Ford smiled--his odd, twisted smile--but as he said nothing, Conquest
+decided to let the subject drop. He had, in fact, gone as far as his
+present judgment would carry him, and anything farther might lead to a
+false step. In a situation alive with claims and counter-claims, with
+yearnings of the heart and promptings of the higher law, he could preserve
+his rights only by a walk as wary as the treading of a tight-rope.
+
+This became clearer to him later in the night, when Ford had gone away,
+and he was left free to review the circumstances with that clarity of
+co-ordination he had so often brought to bear on other men's affairs. Out
+of the mass of data he selected two conditions as being the only ones of
+importance.
+
+If Miriam Strange was marrying him because she loved him, nothing else
+needed to be considered. This fact would subordinate everything to itself;
+and there were many arguments to support the assumption that she was doing
+so. One by one he marshalled them before him, from the first faint
+possibility up to the crowning proof that there was no earthly reason for
+her marrying him at all, unless she wanted to. He had pointed that out to
+her clearly, on the day when she came to him to make her terms. He had
+been guilty on that occasion of a foolish generosity, for that it went
+with a common-sense honesty to take advantage of another's ignorance, or
+impulsiveness, was part of his business creed. Nevertheless, having shown
+her this uncalled-for favor, he did not regret it now, since it put the
+spontaneous, voluntary nature of her act beyond dispute.
+
+To a late hour of the night he wandered about the great silent rooms of
+the house which he had made the expression of himself. Stored with costly,
+patiently selected comforts, it lacked only the last requisite which was
+to impart the living touch. Having chosen this essential with so much
+care, and begun to feel for her something far more vital than the pride of
+possession which had been his governing emotion hitherto, it was an agony
+with many aspects to think he might have to let her go.
+
+That there was this possibility was undeniable. It was the second of the
+two paramount considerations. Though Ford's enthusiasm tried to make
+itself enthusiasm and no more, there had been little difficulty in seeing
+what it was. All the same, it would be a passion to pity and ignore, if on
+Miriam's side there was nothing to respond to it. But it was here that,
+in spite of all his arguments, Conquest's doubts began. With much curious
+ignorance of women, there was a point of view from which he knew them
+well. It was out of many a poignant bit of domestic history, of which his
+profession had made him the confidant, that he had distilled the
+observation made to Ford earlier in the evening: "It isn't often that a
+woman's heroism works in a straight line, like a soldier's or a
+fireman's." Notwithstanding her directness, he could see Miriam Strange as
+just the type of woman to whom these words might be applicable. If by
+marrying a man whom she did not love she thought she could help another
+whom she did love, a culpable sacrifice was just the thing of which she
+would be capable. He called it culpable sacrifice with some emphasis for
+in his eyes all sacrifice was culpable. It was more than culpable, in that
+it verged on the absurd. There were few teachings of an illogical
+religion, few promptings of a misdirected energy, for which he had a
+greater scorn than the precept that the strong should suffer for the weak,
+or one man for another. Every man for himself and the survival of the
+fittest was the doctrine by which he lived; and his abhorrence of anything
+else was the more intense for the moment because he found himself in a
+situation where he might be expected to repudiate his faith.
+
+But there it was, that something in public opinion which, in certain
+circumstances, might challenge him--might ask him for magnanimity, might
+appeal to him for mercy, might demand that he make two other human beings
+happy while he denied himself. It was preposterous, it was grotesque, but
+it was there. He could hear its voice already, explaining that since
+Miriam Strange had given him her word in an excess of self-devotion, it
+was his duty to let her off. He could see the line of argument; he could
+hear the applause following on his noble act. He had heard it
+before--especially in the theatre--and his soul had shaken with laughter.
+He had read of it in novels, only to toss such books aside. "The beauty of
+renunciation," he had often said, "appeals to the morbid, the sickly, and
+the sentimental. It has no function among the healthy and the sane." He
+had not only said that, but he had believed it. He believed it still, and
+lived by it. By doing so he had amassed his modest fortune and won a
+respected position in the world. He had not got on into middle life
+without meeting the occasion more than once when he could have saved
+others--a brother, or a sister, or a friend--and forborne to save himself.
+He had felt the temptation and resisted it, with the result that he was up
+in the world when he might have been down in it, and envied by those who
+would have despised him without hesitation when they had got out of him
+all he could give. He could look back now and see the folly it would have
+been had he yielded to impulses that every sentimentalist would have
+praised. He was fully conscious that the moment of danger might be on the
+point of returning again, and that he must be prepared for it.
+
+He was able to strengthen himself with the greater conviction because of
+his belief in the sanctity of rights. The securing of rights, the defining
+of rights, the protection of rights, had been his trade ever since he was
+twenty-five. The invasion of rights was among the darkest crimes in his
+calendar. In the present case his own rights could not be called into
+question; they were inviolable. Miriam Strange had come to him
+deliberately, and for due consideration had signed herself away. He had
+spared nothing, in time, pains, or money, to fulfil his part of the
+compact. It would be monstrous, therefore, if he were to be cheated of his
+reward. That either Ford or Miriam would attempt this he did not believe,
+even if between them the worst, from his point of view, was at the worst;
+but that an absurd, elusive principle which called itself chivalry, but
+really was effeminacy of will, might try to disarm him by an appeal to
+scruples he contemned, was the possibility he feared. He feared it because
+he estimated at its worth the force of restraint a sentimental
+civilization and a naïve people can bring to bear, in silent pressure,
+upon the individual. While he knew himself to be strong in his power of
+resistance, he knew too that the mightiest swimmer can go down at last in
+a smiling, unrippled sea.
+
+His exasperation was as much with his doubt about himself as with the
+impalpable forces threatening him, as he strode fiercely from room to
+room, turning out the flaring lights before going to bed. After all, his
+final resolutions were pitifully insufficient, in view of the tragic
+element--for he took it tragically--that had suddenly crept into his life.
+While his gleam of happiness was in danger of going out, the sole means he
+could find of keeping it aglow was in deciding on a prudent ignoring of
+whatever did not meet the eye, on a discreet assumption that what he had
+been dreaming for the past few months was true. As a matter of fact, there
+was nothing to show him that it wasn't true; and it was only common sense
+to let the first move toward clearing his vision come from the other side
+rather than from his.
+
+And yet it was precisely this passive attitude which he found himself next
+day least able to maintain. If he needed anything further to teach him
+that love was love, it was this restless, prying jealousy, making it
+impossible to let well enough alone. After a trying day at the office,
+during which he irritated his partners and worried his clerks, he
+presented himself late in the afternoon at Miriam's apartment at the hour
+when he generally went to his club, and he knew she would not expect him.
+Thinking to surprise Ford with her--like the suspicious husband in a
+French play, he owned to himself, grimly--he experienced something akin to
+disappointment to find her drinking tea with two old ladies, whom he
+outstayed. During the ceremonies of their leave-taking he watched Miriam
+closely, seeking for some impossible proof that she either loved Ford or
+did not love him, and getting nothing but a renewed and maddening
+conviction of her grace and quiet charm.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What about Evie's happiness?"
+
+Miriam raised her eyebrows inquiringly at the question before stooping to
+put out the spirit-lamp.
+
+"Well, what about it?" she asked, without looking up.
+
+"Oh, nothing--except that we don't seem to be securing it."
+
+She gazed at him now, with an expression frankly puzzled. He had refused
+tea, but she kept her accustomed place behind the tea-table, while he
+stretched himself comfortably in the low arm-chair by the hearth, which
+she often occupied herself.
+
+"Don't you remember?" he went on. "Evie's happiness was the motive of our
+little--agreement."
+
+He endeavored to make his tone playful, but there was a something sharp
+and aggressive in his manner, at which she colored slightly, no less than
+at his words.
+
+"I suppose," she said, as if after meditation, "Evie's happiness isn't in
+our hands."
+
+"True; but there's a good deal that _is_ in our hands. There's, for
+example--our own."
+
+"Up to a point--yes."
+
+"And up to that point we should take care of it. Shouldn't we?"
+
+"I dare say. But I don't know what you mean."
+
+He gave the nervous little laugh which helped him over moments of
+embarrassment.
+
+"Ford was with me last night. He said it was all off between him and
+Evie."
+
+"I thought he might tell you that."
+
+"So that," he went on, forcing a smile, with which his voice and manner
+were not in accord, "our undertaking having failed, the bottom's out of
+everything. Don't you see?"
+
+She was so astonished that she walked into his trap, just as he expected.
+
+"I don't see in the least. I thought our undertaking--as you call it--was
+going to be particularly successful."
+
+"Successful--how?"
+
+He dropped his smile and looked interrogative, his bit of acting still
+keeping her off her guard.
+
+"Why, if Amalia Gramm's testimony is all you think it's going to be----"
+
+"Oh, I see. That's the way you look at it."
+
+"Isn't it the way you look at it, too?"
+
+He smiled again, indulgently, but with significance.
+
+"No; I confess it isn't--at least, it hasn't been. I thought--perhaps I
+was wrong--that our interest was in getting Ford off, so that he could
+marry Evie. Since he isn't going to marry her, why--naturally--we don't
+care so much--whether he gets off or not."
+
+"Oh, but----"
+
+She checked herself; she even grew a little pale. She began to see dimly
+whither he was leading her.
+
+"Of course I don't say we should chuck him over," he went on; "but it
+isn't the same thing any longer, is it? I think it only fair to point that
+out to you, because it gives you reasonable ground for reconsidering
+your--decision."
+
+"Oh, but I don't want to."
+
+While she had said exactly what he hoped to hear, she had not said it as
+he hoped to hear it. There were shades of tone even to impetuosity, and
+this one lacked the note his ear was listening for. None the less, he told
+himself, a wise man would have stopped right there; and he was conscious
+of his folly in persisting, while he still persisted.
+
+"That's for you to decide, of course. Only if we go on, it must be
+understood that we've somewhat shifted our ground."
+
+"I haven't shifted mine."
+
+"Not as you understand it yourself--as, possibly, you've understood it all
+along. But you have, as I see things. When you came to me--to my
+office----"
+
+She put up her hand as though she would have screened her face, but
+controlled herself to listen quietly.
+
+"Your object, then," Conquest continued, cruelly, "was to get Ford off, so
+that he might marry Evie. Now, I understand it to be simply--to get him
+off."
+
+She looked at him with eyes full of distress or protest. It was a minute
+or two before she spoke.
+
+"I don't see the necessity for such close definition."
+
+"I do. I want you to know exactly what you're doing. I want you to see
+that you're paying a higher price than you need pay--for the services
+rendered."
+
+He had got her now just where he had been trying to put her. He had snared
+her, or given her an opportunity, according as she chose to take it. She
+could have availed herself of the latter by a look or a simple intonation,
+for the craving of his heart was such that his perceptions were acute for
+the slightest hint. Had she known that, it would have been easy for her to
+respond to him, playing her part with the loyalty with which she had begun
+it. As it was, his cold manner and his slightly mocking tone betrayed her.
+Her answer was meant to give him the kind of assurance she thought he was
+looking for; and she couched it in the language she supposed he would most
+easily understand. In the things it said and did not say her very
+sincerity was what stabbed him.
+
+"I hope it won't be necessary to bring this subject up again. I know what
+I undertook, and I'm anxious to fulfil it. I should be very much hurt if I
+wasn't allowed to, just because you had scruples about taking me at my
+word. You've been so--so splendid--in doing your part that I should feel
+humiliated if I didn't do mine."
+
+There was earnestness in her regard and a suggestion of haughtiness in the
+tilt of her head. The Wise Man within him bade him be content, and this
+time he listened to the voice. He did her the justice to remember, too,
+that she was offering him all he had ever asked of her; and if he was
+dissatisfied, it was because he had increased his demands without telling
+her.
+
+It was by a transition of topic that he saw he could nail her to her
+purpose.
+
+"By-the-way," he said, when they had got on neutral ground again, and
+were speaking of Wayne, "I wish you would come and see what I think of
+doing for him. There are two rooms back of my library--too dark for my
+use--but that wouldn't matter to him, poor fellow--"
+
+He saw that she was nerving herself not to flinch at this confrontation
+with the practical. He saw too that her courage and her self-command would
+have deceived any one but him. The very pluck with which she nodded her
+comprehension of his idea, and her sympathy with it, enraged him to a
+point at which, so it seemed to him, he could have struck her. Had she
+cried off from her bargain he could have borne it far more easily. That
+would at least have given him a sense of superiority, and helped him to be
+magnanimous; while this readiness to pay put him in the wrong, and drove
+him to exact the uttermost farthing of his rights. On a weak woman he
+might have taken pity; but this strong creature, who refused to sue to him
+by so much as the quiver of an eyelid, and rejected his concessions before
+he had time to put them forth, exasperated every nerve that had been wont
+to tingle to his sense of power. Since she had asked no quarter, why
+should he give it?--above all, when to give quarter was against his
+principles.
+
+"And perhaps," he pursued, in an even voice, showing no sign of the
+tempest within, "that would be as good a time as any for you to look over
+the entire house. If there are any changes you would like to have
+made----"
+
+"I don't think there will be."
+
+"All the same, I should like you to see. A man's house, however well
+arranged, isn't always right for a woman's occupancy; and so----"
+
+"Very well; I'll come."
+
+"When?"
+
+"I'll come to-morrow."
+
+"About four?"
+
+"Yes; about four. That would suit me perfectly."
+
+She spoke frankly, and even smiled faintly, with just such a shadow of a
+blush as the situation called for. The Wise Man within him begged him once
+more to be content. If, the Wise Man argued, this well-poised serenity was
+not love, it was something so like it that the distinction would require a
+splitting of hairs. Conquest strove to listen and obey; but even as he did
+so he was aware again of that rage of impotence which finds its easiest
+outlet in violence. As he rose to take his leave, with all the outward
+signs of friendly ceremoniousness, he had time to be appalled at the
+perception that he, the middle-aged, spick-and-span New-Yorker, should so
+fully understand how it is that a certain type of frenzied brute can kill
+the woman whom he passionately loves, but who is hopelessly out of reach.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+
+Except when his business instincts were on the alert, Ford's slowness of
+perception was perhaps most apparent in his judgment of character and his
+analysis of other people's motives. Taking men and women as he found them,
+he had little tendency to speculate as to the impulses within their lives,
+any more than as to the furnishings behind their house-fronts. A human
+being was all exterior to him, something like a street. Even in matters
+that touched him closely, the act alone was his concern; and he dealt with
+its consequences, without, as a rule, much inquisitive probing of its
+cause.
+
+So when Miriam Strange elected to marry Conquest, he accepted the settled
+fact, for the time being, in the spirit in which he would have taken some
+disastrous manifestation of natural phenomena. Investigation of the motive
+of such a step was as little in his line as it would have been in the case
+of a destructive storm at sea. To his essentially simple way of viewing
+life it was something to be lamented, but to be borne as best one was
+able, while one said as little as one could about it.
+
+And yet, somewhere in the wide, rarely explored regions of his nature
+there were wonderings, questionings, yearnings protests, cries, that
+forced themselves to the surface now and then, as the boiling waters
+within the earth gush out in geyser springs. It required urgent pressure
+to impel them forth, but when they came it was with violence. Such an
+occasion had been his night on Lake Champlain; such another was the
+evening when he announced to Miriam his intention of becoming Norrie Ford
+again. When these moments came they took him by surprise, even though
+afterward he was able to recognize the fact that they had been long
+preparing.
+
+It was in this way, without warning, that his heart had sprung on him the
+question: Why should she marry him? At the minute when Conquest was
+leaving Miriam, he, Ford, was tramping the streets of New York, watching
+them grow alive with light, in glaring, imaginative ugliness--ugliness so
+dazzling in its audacity and so fanciful in its crude commercialism that
+it had the power to thrill. It was perhaps the electric stimulus of sheer
+light that quickened the pace of his slow mentality from the march of
+acceptance to the rush of protest, at an instant when he thought he had
+resigned himself to the facts.
+
+Why should she marry Conquest? He was shouldering his way through the
+crowds when the question made itself heard, with a curious illuminating
+force that suggested its own answer. He was walking, partly to work off
+the tension of the strain under which these few days were passing, and
+partly because he had got the idea that he was being shadowed. He had no
+profound objection to that, though he would have preferred to give himself
+up of his own free will rather than to be arrested. Perhaps, after all, it
+was only an accident that had caused him to catch sight of the same two
+men at different moments through the day, and just now it amused him to
+put them to the test by leading them a dance. He had come to the
+conclusion that he had been mistaken, or that he had outwitted them, when
+this odd question, irrelevant to anything he had directly in his thoughts,
+presented itself as though it had been asked by some voice outside him:
+Why should she marry him?
+
+Up to the present his unanalytical mind would have replied--as it would
+have replied to the same query concerning any one else--that she was
+marrying him "because she wanted to." That would have seemed to him to
+cover the whole ground of any one's affairs; but all at once it had become
+insufficient. It was as if the street had suddenly become insufficient as
+a highway, breaking into a chasm. He stopped abruptly, confronting, as it
+were, that bewildering void which a psychological situation invariably
+seemed to him. To get into a place where his few straightforward formulæ
+did not apply gave him that sense of distress which every creature feels
+out of its native element.
+
+It was a proof of the dependence with which, in matters requiring mental
+or emotional experience, he had come to lean on Miriam Strange, as well as
+of the directness with which he appealed to her for help, that he should
+face about on the instant, and turn his steps toward her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Only a few minutes earlier she had seen Conquest go, and in the interval
+since his departure she had had time to detect the windings of his
+strategy, and to be content with the skill with which she had met them.
+She understood him thoroughly, both in his fear of letting her go and his
+shame at holding her. Standing in her wide bay-window, her slight figure
+erect, her hands behind her back, she looked down, without seeing it, on
+the spangled city, as angels intent on their own high thoughts might pass
+over the Milky Way. She smiled faintly to herself, thinking how she
+should lead this kindly man, who for her sake had done so much for Norrie
+Ford, back to a sense of security and self-respect. When Norrie Ford went
+free she meant to live for nothing else but the happiness of the man who
+had cleared his name and given him back to the world. It would be a kind
+of consecration to her, like that of the nun who forsakes the dearest ties
+for a life of good works and prayer. Conquest had told her that she was
+paying a bigger price than she needed to pay for the services rendered,
+but that depended somewhat on the value one set on the services. In this
+case she would not have been content in paying less. To do so would seem
+to indicate that she was not grateful. Since perceiving his compunction as
+to claiming his reward, she was aware of an elation, an exaltation, in
+forcing it upon him.
+
+She was in the glow of this sentiment when Ford was ushered in. He was so
+vitally in her thoughts that, though she did not expect him, his presence
+gave her no surprise. It helped her, in fact, to sustain the romantic
+quality in her mood to treat his coming as a matter of course, and make it
+a natural incident to the moment.
+
+"Come and look down on the stars," she said, in the tone she might have
+used to another member of her household who had appeared accidentally.
+"The view here, in the evening, makes one feel as if one had been wafted
+above the sky."
+
+She half-turned toward him, but did not offer her hand as he took his
+place by her side. For a few seconds he said nothing, and when he spoke
+she accepted his words in the manner in which she had taken his coming.
+
+"So you're going to marry Conquest!"
+
+It was to show that the abrupt remark had not perturbed her that she
+nodded her head assentingly, still with the smile that had greeted his
+arrival.
+
+"Why?"
+
+In spite of her efforts she manifested some surprise.
+
+"What makes you ask that question--now?"
+
+"Because it never occurred to me before that there might be a special
+reason."
+
+"Well, there is one."
+
+"Has it anything to do with me?"
+
+She backed away from him slightly, to the side curve of the window, where
+it joined the straight line of the wall. In this position she had him more
+directly in view.
+
+"I said there was a reason," she answered, after some hesitation. "I
+didn't say I would tell you what it was."
+
+"No, but you will, won't you?"
+
+"I don't see why you should want to know."
+
+"Is that quite true?" he queried, with a somewhat startling fixing of his
+eyes upon her. "Don't you see? Can't you imagine?"
+
+"I don't see why--in such circumstances as these--any man should want to
+know what a woman doesn't tell him."
+
+"Then I'll explain to you. I want to know, because ... I think ... you're
+marrying Conquest ... when you don't love him ..."
+
+"He never asked me to love him. He said he could do without that."
+
+"... while ... you do love ... some one else."
+
+She reflected before speaking. Under his piercing look she took on once
+more the appealing expression of forest creatures at bay.
+
+"Even if that were true," she said, at last, "there would be no harm in
+it as long as there was what you asked me for at first--a special reason."
+
+"Is there ever a reason for a step like that? I don't believe it."
+
+"But I do believe it, you see. That makes a difference."
+
+"It would make a still greater difference if I begged you not to do it,
+wouldn't it?"
+
+She shook her head. "It wouldn't--now."
+
+"I let you see yesterday that I--I loved you."
+
+"Since you force me to acknowledge it--yes."
+
+"And you've shown me," he ventured, "within the last minute, that
+you--love me."
+
+Her figure grew more erect against the background of exterior darkness.
+Even the hand that rested on the woodwork of the window became tense.
+Lambent fire in her eyes--the light that he used to call non-Aryan--took
+the place of the fugitive glance of the woodland animal; but she kept her
+composure.
+
+"Well, what then?"
+
+"Then you'd be committing a sacrilege against yourself--if you married any
+one else but me."
+
+If her heart bounded at the words, she did nothing to betray it.
+
+"You say that, because it seems so to you. I take another view of it. Love
+to me does not necessarily mean marriage, any more than marriage
+necessarily implies love. There have been happy marriages without love,
+and there can be honorable love that doesn't ask marriage as its object.
+If I married you now, I should seem to myself to be deserting a high
+impulse for a lower one."
+
+"There's only one sort of impulse to love."
+
+"Not to my love. I know what you mean--but my love has more than one
+prompting, and the highest is--or I hope it is--to try to do what's
+right."
+
+"But this would not be right."
+
+"I'm the only judge of that."
+
+"Not if we love each other. In that case I become a judge of it, too."
+
+Once more she reflected. In speaking she lifted her head and looked at him
+frankly.
+
+"Very well; I'll admit it. Perhaps it's true. In any case, I'd rather
+things were clear to you. It will help us both. I'll tell you what I'm
+doing, and why I'm doing it."
+
+It was one of those occasions when a woman's emotion is so great that she
+seems to have none at all. As iron is said to come to a degree of heat so
+intense that it does not burn, so Miriam Strange seemed to herself to have
+reached a stage where the sheer truth, simple and without reserve, could
+bring no shame to her womanhood. Words that could not have passed her lips
+either before that evening or after it escaped her in the subsequent
+minutes as a matter of course.
+
+"I entered into your life twice, and each time I did you harm. On the
+first occasion I turned you into Herbert Strange, and sent you out on a
+career of deception; on the second, I came between you and Evie, and
+brought you to the present pass, where you're facing death again, as you
+were eight or nine years ago. It's no use to tell you that I wanted to do
+my best, because good intentions are not much excuse for the trouble they
+often cause. But I'm ready to say this: that whenever you've suffered,
+I've suffered more. That's especially true of what's happened in the last
+six months. And when I saw how much I had put wrong, it was a comfort to
+think there was something at least that I could put right again."
+
+"But you've put nothing wrong. That's what I should like to convince you
+of."
+
+"I've put you in a position of danger. When I see that, I see enough to
+act upon."
+
+"It's a very slight danger."
+
+"It is now, because I've made it slight. It wasn't--before I went to Mr.
+Conquest."
+
+"You went to him--what for?"
+
+"He wanted me to marry him. He had wanted it for a long time. I told him I
+would do so, on condition that he found the evidence that would prove you
+innocent."
+
+Ford laughed harshly, and rather loudly, stopping suddenly, as though he
+had ceased to see the joke.
+
+"So that's it! That's why Conquest has been so devilishly kind. I wondered
+at his interest--or at least I should have wondered if I'd had the time.
+As a matter of fact, I took it for granted that he should help me, as a
+drowning man takes it for granted that the chance passer-by should pull
+him out. It wasn't till this evening--about half an hour ago--By Jove! I
+ran right up against it."
+
+"You ran right up against--what?"
+
+"Against the truth. It came in a flash--just like that." He snapped his
+fingers. "You're selling yourself--to get me off."
+
+She seemed to grow straighter, taller. For the minute he saw nothing but
+the blaze of her eyes.
+
+"Well? Why shouldn't I? My mother sold herself--to get a man off. He was
+my father. I'm proud of her. She did the best she could with her life. I'm
+doing the best I can with mine."
+
+"But I shouldn't be doing the best I can with mine--if I let you
+continue."
+
+"Isn't it too late for you to stop me? If I've sold myself as you put it,
+the price has been paid in. Mr. Conquest has secured the evidence that
+will acquit you. It will be used. That's all I care about--much."
+
+She saw the hot color surge into his cheeks and brows. It seemed to her
+that his eyes grew red as the blood left his lips. She had never before
+been called on to confront a man angry with a passion beyond his control,
+but instinct told her what the signs were. Instinct told her, too, that,
+however confused his own sensations might be, his anger was not so much
+resentment against anything she might have done as it was despair at
+having lost her. She had guessed already that he would be seized with a
+blind impulse to strike, as soon as he came to a realizing sense of her
+action; though she had not expected the moment of his fury till after he
+went free. Till then, she had thought, he would be partially unconscious
+of his pain, just as a soldier fighting will run along for a while without
+feeling a bullet in his flesh. The anticipation of an awakening on his
+part some time enabled her to see beyond the madness of this instinct,
+even though the words he threw at her struck like stones. The very fact
+that she could see how he labored with himself to keep them back gave her
+strength to take them without flinching.
+
+"You ... dared...? Without ... my ... permission...?"
+
+"I'd done so many things without your permission that it seemed I could
+venture that far."
+
+"You were wrong. It was--too far."
+
+"It wasn't too far--when I loved you."
+
+She uttered the words in a matter-of-fact voice, without a tremor. She
+foresaw their effect in bringing him to himself In his next words his tone
+had already softened slightly to one of protest.
+
+"But I could have done it so much better--! so much more easily--!
+without----"
+
+"I could have done that too. Mr. Conquest pointed it out to me. He took no
+advantage of my ignorance. As a matter of fact, I wasn't ignorant at all.
+I was extremely clear-sighted and wise. My love for you made me so. I
+knew--I felt it--that money might fail to do what I wanted. But I knew too
+that there was one thing that wouldn't fail. If you were innocent--and I
+wasn't wholly sure that you were--I knew there was one energy that would
+surely prove you so--and that was Charles Conquest's desire to have me as
+his wife. I took the course in which there was least risk of failure--and
+you see----"
+
+A little gesture, triumphant in its suggestion, finished her sentence.
+
+"What I see is this," Ford answered, thickly, "that I'm to hold my life at
+the cost of your degradation."
+
+"Degradation? That's a hard word. But as applied to me--I don't know what
+it means."
+
+"Isn't it degradation?--to enter into a marriage in which you put no
+love?"
+
+There was a kind of superb indifference in her answer.
+
+[Illustration: "I'm to hold my life at the cost of your degradation"]
+
+"You may call it degradation if you choose. I shouldn't. As long as you go
+free, you can call my action anything you like. I dare say," she admitted,
+"you're quite right, from the highest moral--and modern--point of view;
+but that doesn't appeal to me. You see--you've got to make allowances for
+it--I'm not a child of your civilization. I'm not a child of any
+civilization at all. At best I'm like the wild creature that submits to
+being tamed because it doesn't know what else to do--but remains wild at
+heart. I used to think I could come into your system of law and order if
+any one would take me. But now I know I shall always be outside it. The
+very word you've just used of me shows me that. You say I'm to be
+degraded--it's your civilized point of view. I have no comprehension of
+that whatever. Because I love you I want to save you. I don't care
+anything about the means so long as I reach the end. To undo the harm I've
+done to you I'd freely give my body to be burned; so why shoudn't I--? No,
+no," she cried, as he made as though he would approach her, "keep away.
+Don't come near me! I can only talk to you like this--at a distance. I
+shall never say these things again--but I want to tell you--to explain to
+you--I should like you to understand."
+
+She repeated herself haltingly because, as Ford held back from approaching
+her, a sudden spasm passed over his face, while he hung his head, and
+compressed his lips in a way that made him seem surprisingly boyish all at
+once, and touched that maternal tenderness in her that had always formed
+such a large part of her yearning over him. It was the kind of tenderness
+that steadied her own nerve, and kept her dry-eyed and strong, as she saw
+him reel to a chair, and flinging his arms on the table beside it, bow
+himself down on them, while his form shook convulsively. She had no shame
+for him. She understood perfectly that the pressure of years had been
+brought to bear on the complex emotions of the moment--to which reaction
+from his brief anger and his bitter words added an element of remorse--to
+cause this honest, manly nature that had never made any pretence of being
+stronger than it was, to give way to the instant's weakness. She was sure
+he would never have done it in the presence of any one but her, and she
+was thrilled with a curious joy at this proof of their spiritual intimacy.
+What was difficult was not the keeping of her own self-control, but the
+holding herself back from crossing the room and laying a hand on his
+shoulder, in token of their oneness at heart; but there, she felt, the
+forbidden line would be passed. She could only wait--it was not long--till
+he was calm again. Then he pulled himself together, got up heavily, and
+obviously refrained from looking her in the face. In the act and the
+attitude there was something so boylike, so natural, so entirely lacking
+in the dignity of grief, that if she had any impulse to let her own tears
+flow it was then.
+
+But she knew it to be one of those minutes when a woman has to be strong
+for herself and for the man, too, even though she break down afterward.
+The necessity of coming to an understanding with him, once for all,
+impelled her to the economy of her forces, while the nervous snapping of
+his fortitude had given her an opportunity she could not afford to lose.
+
+"So I want you to see," she went on, quietly, as though no interruption
+had occurred, "that having gained my point in helping to--to get you off,
+it's to some extent a matter of indifference what you think of me--what
+any one thinks of me--just as it was when I hid you in my studio, nearly
+nine years ago. You must put it down to my being of wild origin and not
+wholly amenable to civilized dictates. I can only do what the inward
+urging drives me on to do--just as my mother did--and my father. If it's
+degrading--"
+
+Raising his head at last, he strode toward her. He put his hands rigidly
+behind his back, as if to show her that he pinioned them there in token
+that she had nothing to fear from him. His eyes were red, and there was
+still a painful tightening about his lips.
+
+"You'll have to let me take that back," he muttered, unsteadily. "I didn't
+know what I was saying. It's come on me so suddenly that it's broken me
+all up. I haven't realized till this evening what--what everything meant.
+It seemed to me then that I couldn't stand it."
+
+"But you can."
+
+"Yes, I can," he replied, doggedly. "One can stand anything. If I reached
+my limit for a minute, it was in seeing that you have to suffer for my
+sake----"
+
+"Wouldn't you suffer for mine?"
+
+"I couldn't. Suffering for your sake would become such a joy----"
+
+"That it wouldn't be suffering. That's just it. That's what I feel,
+exactly. It isn't hard for me to do what I'm doing because I know--I
+_know_--I'm helping to save your honor if not your life. I don't believe
+money would have done it. Mr. Conquest reminded me that the best legal
+services can be bought, but I never thought for an instant that you could
+secure zeal such as his for anything less than I offered him. And he's
+been so superb! He's given himself up to the thing absolutely. He's
+followed every trail with a scent--- with a certainty--your other men,
+your Kilcup and Warren, would never have been capable of. I've seen that;
+I'm sure of it. He has a wonderful mind, and in his way he has the kindest
+heart in the world. I'm very, very fond of him, and I'm deeply grateful.
+Next to seeing you free, I don't think I have any desire in life so
+strong as to make him happy. I dare say that isn't civilized either--but
+it's what I feel. And so we must think of this," she continued, eagerly
+explanative; "we must be loyal to him, you and I, as the first of all our
+duties. Don't you think so?"
+
+He withdrew his eyes from hers before answering. His power of resistance
+was broken. The signs of struggle were visible, and yet the quixotic
+element in his own nature helped him to respond to that in hers.
+
+"I'll try," he muttered, looking on the ground.
+
+"You'll do more than try--you'll succeed. Only very small souls could
+grudge him what he's earned when he's worked so hard and given himself so
+unstintingly. The very fact that you and I know that we love each other
+will make it easier to be true to him."
+
+"Conquest must know that we love each other, too," he declared, with some
+bitterness.
+
+"Perhaps he does; but, you see, every one has a different way of looking
+at life, and I don't think that with him it's a thing that counts greatly.
+I'm not sure that I understand him in that respect. I only know that you
+and I, who owe him so much, can repay him by giving him what he asks for.
+Will you promise me to do it?"
+
+He continued to look downward, as though finding it hard to give his word;
+but when he raised his eyes again, he flung back his head with his old air
+of resolution.
+
+"I'll promise to do anything you ask me throughout our lives. I don't
+admit that Conquest should demand this thing or that he had any right to
+let you offer it. But since you want to give it--and I can show you no
+other token of my love--and shall never again be able to tell you that I
+adore you--that I _adore_ you--I promise--to obey."
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+
+The inspection of the house was over, and they had come back to the
+drawing-room for tea. Conquest had lavished pains on the occasion, putting
+flowers in the rooms, and strewing handsome objects carelessly about, so
+as to impart to the great shell as much as possible the air of being lived
+in. To the tea-table he had given particular attention, ordering out the
+most ornamental silver and the costliest porcelain, and placing the table
+itself just where she would probably have it in days to come, so as to get
+the effect she produced in sitting there, as he liked to do with a new
+picture or piece of furniture.
+
+On her part, Miriam had made the rounds of the rooms with conscientious
+care, observing, admiring, suggesting, with just that mingling of shyness
+and interest with which a woman in her situation would view her future
+home. Having got, by intuition, the idea that he was watching for some
+flaw in her manner, she was determined that he should find none. It was
+the beginning of that lifelong schooling to his service to which she had
+vowed herself, though the effort would have been easier had he not
+rendered her self-conscious by scanning her so keenly out of his little
+gray-green eyes. Nevertheless, she was pleased with the manner in which
+she was acquitting herself, giving him his tea and taking her own with no
+sign of embarrassment. As on the preceding day, it was this perfection of
+acting, as he chose to call it, that exasperated his restless suspicion
+more than any display of weakness.
+
+The thought that she was keeping her true self locked against him had,
+during the last twenty-four hours, become an obsession, making it
+impossible for him to eat or to sleep. In her serene, impeccable bearing
+he saw nothing but the bars up and the blinds drawn down. An instant of
+faltering or self-betrayal would have admitted him to at least a glimpse
+of what was passing within; but through this well-balanced graciousness it
+was as difficult to get at her soul as to read the mind of the Venus of
+Milo in the marble nobility of her face. He had led her from room to room,
+describing one, explaining another, and apologizing for a third, but all
+the while trying to break down her guard, only to find, as they returned
+to the point at which they started, that he had failed. It was with nerves
+all unstrung, and with a lack of self-command he would have been, in his
+saner senses, the first to condemn, that he strode up at last and rapped
+sharply at the door of her barricaded citadel.
+
+"Why did you never tell me that you knew Norrie Ford--years ago?"
+
+He was putting his empty cup on the table as he spoke, so that he could
+avoid looking at her. She was glad of this respite from his gaze, for she
+found the question startling. Before the scrutiny of his eyes was turned
+on her again she had herself in hand.
+
+"I should probably have told you some time."
+
+"Very likely. The odd thing is that you didn't tell me at once."
+
+"It wasn't so odd--given all the circumstances."
+
+"It wasn't so odd, given some of the circumstances; but given them
+all--_all_--I should say, I ought to have known."
+
+She allowed a few seconds to pass.
+
+"I suppose," she said, slowly, then, "that may fairly be considered a
+matter of opinion. I don't see, however, that it makes much
+difference--since you know now."
+
+"My knowing or not knowing now isn't quite the point. The fact of
+importance is that you never told me."
+
+"I'm sorry you should take it in that way; but since I didn't--and the
+matter is beyond remedy--I suppose we shouldn't gain anything by
+discussing it."
+
+"I don't know about that. It seems to me a subject that ought to
+be--aired."
+
+She tried to smile down his aggressiveness, succeeding partially, in that
+he subdued the quarrelsomeness of his voice and manner to that affectation
+of banter behind which he concealed habitually his real self, and by which
+he most easily deceived her.
+
+"Very well," she laughed; "I'm quite ready to air it; only I don't know
+just how it's to be done."
+
+"Suppose you were to tell me what happened, in your own language?"
+
+"If Mr. Ford has told you already, as I imagine he has, I don't see that
+my language can be very different from his. All the same, I'll try, since
+you want me to."
+
+"Just so."
+
+During the few minutes she took to collect her thoughts he could see sweep
+over her features one of those swift, light changes--as delicate as the
+ripple of summer wind on water--which transformed her in an instant from
+the woman of the world to the forest maid, the spirit of the indigenous.
+The mystery of the nomadic ages was in her eyes again as she began her
+narrative, wistfully, and reminiscently.
+
+"You see, I'd been thinking a good deal of my father and mother. I hadn't
+known about them very long, and I lived with their memory. The Mother
+Superior had told me a few things--all she knew, I suppose--before I left
+the convent at Quebec; and Mr. and Mrs. Wayne--especially Mrs. Wayne--had
+added the rest. That was the chief reason why I wanted the studio--so that
+I could get away from the house, which was so oppressive to me, and--so it
+seemed to me--live with them, with nothing but the woods and the hills and
+the sky about me. I could be very happy then--painting thinge I fancied
+they might have done, and pinning them up on the wall. I dare say it was
+foolish, but----"
+
+"It was very natural. Go on."
+
+"And then came up all this excitement about Norrie Ford. For months the
+whole region talked of nothing else. Nearly every one believed he had shot
+his uncle, but, except in the villages, the sympathy with him was
+tremendous. Some people--especially the hotel-keepers and those who
+depended on the tourist travel--were for law and order; but others said
+that old Chris Ford had got no more than he deserved. That was the way
+they used to talk. Mr. Wayne was on the side of law and order,
+too--naturally--till the trial came on; and then he began----"
+
+"I know all about that. Go on."
+
+"My own sympathy was with the man in prison. I used to dream about him. I
+remembered what Mrs. Wayne had told me my mother had done for my father. I
+was proud of that. Though I knew only vaguely what it was, I was sure it
+was what I should have done, too. So when there was talk of breaking into
+the jail and helping Norrie to escape, I used to think how easily I could
+keep any one hidden in my studio. I don't mean I thought of it as a
+practical thing; it was just a dream."
+
+"But a dream that came true."
+
+"Yes; it came true. It was wonderful. It was the day Mr. Wayne sentenced
+him. I knew what he was suffering--Mr. Wayne, I mean. We were all
+suffering; even Mrs. Wayne, who in her gentle way was generally so hard.
+Some people thought Mr. Wayne needn't have done it; and I suppose it was
+just his conscientiousness--because he had such a horror of the
+thing--that drove him on to it. He thought he mustn't shirk his duty. But
+that night at the house was awful. We dressed for dinner, and tried to act
+as if nothing frightful had happened--but it was as if the hangman was
+sitting with us at the table. At last I couldn't endure it. I went out
+into the garden--you remember it was one of those gardens with clipped
+yews. Out there, in the air, I stopped thinking of Mr. Wayne and his
+distress to think of Norrie Ford. It seemed to me as if, in some strange
+way, he belonged to me--that I ought to do something--as my mother had
+done for my father. And then--all of a sudden--I saw him creep in."
+
+"How did you know it was he?"
+
+"I thought it must be, though I was only sure of it when I was on the
+terrace and saw his face. He crept along and crept along--Oh, such a
+forlorn, hopeless, outcast figure! My heart ached at the sight of him. I
+didn't know what he meant to do, and at first I had no intention of
+attempting anything. It was by degrees that my own thought about the
+studio came back to me. By that time he was on the veranda of the house,
+and I was afraid he meant to kill Mr. Wayne. I went after him. I thought I
+would entice him away and hide him. But the minute he heard my footstep he
+leaped into the house. The next I saw, he was talking to Mr. and Mrs.
+Wayne--and something told me he wouldn't hurt them. After that I watched
+my chance till he looked outward, and then I beckoned to him. That's how
+it happened."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"After that everything was easy. He must have told you. I kept him in the
+studio for three weeks, and brought him food--and clothing of my father's.
+It seemed to me that my father was doing everything--not I. That's what
+made it so simple. I know my father would have wanted me to do it. I was
+only the agent in carrying out his will."
+
+"That's one way of looking at it," Conquest said, grimly.
+
+"It's the only way I've ever looked at it; the only way I ever shall."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It was a romantic situation," he observed, when she had given him the
+outlines of the rest of the story. "I wonder you didn't fall in love with
+him."
+
+He smoothed the colorless line of his mustache, as though concealing a
+smile. He had recaptured the teasing tone he liked to employ toward her,
+though its nervous sharpness would have betrayed him had she suspected his
+real thoughts. While she said nothing in response, the tilt of her head
+was that which he associated with her moods of indignation or pride.
+
+"Perhaps you did," he persisted. Then, as she remained silent, "Did you?"
+
+She resolved on a bold step--the audacity of that perfect candor she had
+always taken as a guide.
+
+"I don't know that one could call it that," she said, quietly.
+
+He drew a quick inward breath, clinching his teeth, but keeping his fixed
+smile.
+
+"But you don't know that one couldn't."
+
+"I can't define what I felt at all."
+
+"It was just enough," he pursued, in his bantering tone, "to keep
+you--looking for him back--as you told me--that day."
+
+She lifted her eyes in a swift glance of reproach.
+
+"It was that--then."
+
+"But it's more--now. Isn't it?"
+
+She met him squarely.
+
+"I don't think you've any right to ask."
+
+He laughed aloud, somewhat shrilly.
+
+"That's good!--considering we're to be man and wife."
+
+"We're to be man and wife on a very distinct understanding to which I'm
+perfectly loyal. I mean to be loyal to it always--and to you. I shall give
+you everything you ever asked for. If there are some things--one thing in
+particular--out of my power to give you, I've said so from the first, and
+you've told me you could do without them. If what I can't give you I've
+given to some one else--because--because--I couldn't help it--that's my
+secret, and I claim the right to guard it."
+
+They faced one another across the table piled with ornate silver. He had
+not lost his smile.
+
+"You've the merit of being clear," was his only comment.
+
+"You force me to be clear," she declared, with heightened color, "and a
+little angry. When you asked me to be your wife--long ago--I told you
+there were certain conditions I could never fulfil--and you waived them.
+On that ground I'm ready to meet all your wishes, and make you a good wife
+to the utmost of my power. I'm eager to do it--because I honor and respect
+you as women don't always honor and respect the very men they love. I've
+told Norrie Ford, and I repeat it to you, that after seeing him go free
+and restored to his place among men, the most ardent desire of my life is
+to make you happy. I'm perfectly true; I'm perfectly sincere. What more
+can you ask of me?"
+
+He looked at her searchingly, while he thought hard and rapidly. He could
+not complain that the bars were up and the blinds drawn any longer. On the
+contrary, she had let him see into the recesses of her life with a clarity
+that startled him, as pure truth startles often. As he sat musing, his
+pretence at cynicism fell from him, together with something of his
+furbished air of youth. She saw him grow graver, grayer, older, under her
+very eyes, and was moved with compunction--with compassion. Her face still
+aglow and her hands clasped in her lap, she leaned to him across the
+table, speaking in the rich, low voice that always thrilled him.
+
+"What I feel for you is ... something so much like ... love ... that you
+would never have known the difference ... if you hadn't wrung it from me."
+
+Though he toyed aimlessly with some small silver object on the table and
+did not look up, her words sent a tremor through his frame. The Wise Man
+within him was very eloquent, repeating again and again the sentence she
+herself had used a minute or two ago: What more could he ask of her? What
+more _could_ he ask of her, indeed, after this assurance right out of the
+earnestness and honesty of her pure heart? It was enough to satisfy men
+with far greater claims than he had ever put forth, and far more
+pretension than he had ever dreamed of cherishing. The Wise Man supplied
+him with two or three phrases of reply--neat little phrases, that would
+have bound her forever, and yet saved his self-esteem. He turned them over
+in his mind and on his tongue, trying to add a touch of glamour while he
+kept them terse. He could feel the Wise Man fidgeting impatiently, just as
+he could feel her flaming, expectant eyes upon him; and still he toyed
+with the small silver object aimlessly, conscious of a certain bitter joy
+in his soul's suspense. He had not yet looked up, nor polished the Wise
+Man's phrases to his taste, when a footman threw the door open, and Norrie
+Ford himself walked in.
+
+The meeting was saved from awkwardness chiefly by Ford's own lack of
+embarrassment. As he crossed the room and shook hands, first with Miriam,
+then with Conquest, there was a subdued elation in his manner and glance
+that reduced small considerations to nothing.
+
+"No; I won't sit down," he explained, hurriedly, and not without
+excitement, "because I only looked in for a minute. I've got a cab waiting
+for me outside. The fact is, I ran in to say good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye?" Miriam questioned.
+
+"Not for long, I hope. I'm off--to give myself up."
+
+"But why to-night?" Conquest asked. "What's the rush?"
+
+"Only that I want to get my word in first. They've got their eye on me. I
+thought it yesterday, and I know it to-day. I want them to see that I'm
+not afraid of them, and so I'm asking their hospitality for to-night. I've
+got my bag in the cab, and everything ship-shape. I couldn't do it
+without coming round for a last word with you, old man; and I was going to
+see you afterward, Miss Strange. But since I've found you here----"
+
+"You won't have to," she finished, brightly. "I'm glad to be able to save
+your time. I'm confident we're not losing you for long; and as I know
+you're eager, I can only wish you God-speed, and be glad to see you go"
+
+She held out her hand, frankly, strongly, as one who has no fear.
+
+"Now," she added, turning to Conquest, "I'll ask you to see me to my
+motor. I shall leave you and Mr Ford together, as I know you must have
+some last detail to arrange."
+
+Ford protested, but she gathered up her gloves and furs, and both men
+accompanied her to the street.
+
+It was an autumn evening, drizzling and dark. Up and down Fifth Avenue the
+wet pavements reflected the electric lamps like blurred mirrors. There
+were few passengers on foot, but an occasional motor whizzed weirdly out
+of the dark and into it. It was because there were no other people to be
+seen that two men standing in the rain attracted the attention of the
+three who descended Conquest's steps together.
+
+"There they are," Ford said, jerkily. "By George! they've got ahead of
+me."
+
+Instinctively Miriam clutched his arm, while one of the two strangers came
+forward apologetically.
+
+"You're Mr. John Norrie Ford, ain't you?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"I'm very sorry, sir, but I've got a warrant for your arrest."
+
+"That's all right," Ford said, cheerily. "I was on my way to you, anyhow.
+You'll find my bag in the cab, and everything ready. We'll drive, if it's
+all the same to you."
+
+"Yes, sir. Sure thing, sir."
+
+The man dropped back a few paces courteously, while Ford turned to his
+friends. His air was buoyant. Miriam, too, reflected the radiance of her
+vision of his triumph. Conquest alone, looking small and white and
+shrivelled in the rain, showed care and fear.
+
+"I don't think there's anything special to say," Ford remarked, with the
+awkwardness of a simple nature at an emotional crisis. "I'm not very good
+at thanks. Miss Strange knows that already. But it's all in here"--he
+tapped his breast, with a characteristic gesture--"very sacred, very
+strong."
+
+"We know that," Conquest said, unsteadily, with an embarrassment like
+Ford's own.
+
+"Well, then--good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye."
+
+With a long pressure of the hand to each, he turned toward his cab. Of the
+two strangers, one took his place beside the driver on the box, while the
+other held the door open for Ford to enter. His foot was already on the
+step when Miriam cried, "Wait!"
+
+He turned toward her as she glided across the wet pavement.
+
+"Good-bye, good-bye," she whispered again; and drawing down his face to
+hers, she kissed him, as she had kissed him once before, beside the waters
+of Champlain.
+
+As she drew back from him, Ford's countenance wore the uplifted look of a
+knight who has received the consecration to his quest. Even the two
+strangers bowed their heads, as though they had witnessed the bestowal of
+a sacrament. To Miriam herself it was the seal set on a past that could
+never be reopened. She felt the definiteness with which it was ended, as
+she heard, on her way back to Conquest's side, the door slammed, while the
+cab lumbered away. It seemed to her that Conquest shrank from her as she
+approached him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"You'll come to-morrow? I shall be home about five."
+
+Conquest had put her into her motor, drawn the rugs about her, and closed
+the door. As he did so, she noticed something slow and broken in his
+movements. Leaning from the open window, she held out her hand, but he
+barely touched it.
+
+"No," he said, hoarsely, "I shall not come to-morrow."
+
+"Then, the next day."
+
+"No, nor the next day."
+
+"Well, when you can. If you let me know, I shall stay in, whenever it may
+be."
+
+"You needn't stay in. I'm not coming any more."
+
+"Oh, don't say that. Don't say that," she pleaded. "You hurt me."
+
+"I can't come, Miriam. Don't you see? Isn't it plain enough? I can't come.
+I thought I could. I tried to think I could hold you--in spite of
+everything. But I can't. I _can't_."
+
+"You can hold me--if I stay. I want to stay. You mustn't let me go. I want
+you to be happy. You deserve it. You've done so much for me--and _him_."
+
+It was the stress she laid on the last word--a suggestion of something
+triumphant and enraptured beyond restraint--that made him bound back to
+the centre of the pavement.
+
+"Go on, Laporte," he said to the chauffeur, in a sharp voice. "Miss
+Strange is ready."
+
+"No, no," Miriam cried, stretching both hands toward him. "I'm not ready.
+Keep me. I want to stay."
+
+"Go on!" he cried, sternly, as the chauffeur hesitated. "Miss Strange is
+quite ready. She must go."
+
+Standing by the curb, he watched the motor glide off into the misty,
+lamplit darkness. He was watching it still, as it overtook the carriage in
+which Norrie Ford had just driven away. As the two vehicles passed abreast
+out of his range of vision, he knew they were bearing Ford and Miriam side
+by side into Life.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wild Olive, by Basil King
+
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diff --git a/old/13212-h/13212-h.htm b/old/13212-h/13212-h.htm
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+<!DOCTYPE html
+     PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+     "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+<html>
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
+<title>The Wild Olive, by Basil King [Author of The Inner Shrine]</title>
+<style type="text/css" title="Default">
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+    a:hover { background-color: #ffffcc }
+
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+    div.chapter div.image p {
+      margin: 5px;
+    }
+
+    div.chapter div.image p:before {
+      content: "Illustration: ";
+    }
+
+    hr {
+      height: 1px;
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+    }
+
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+      margin-left:10%;
+      margin-right:10%;
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+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wild Olive, by Basil King
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Wild Olive
+
+Author: Basil King
+
+Release Date: August 18, 2004 [EBook #13212]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WILD OLIVE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<div id="frontis"><p id="img01"><img src="images/illus01.png" alt="&quot;There are a hundred men beating the mountain to find you&quot;" /><br />&quot;There are a hundred men beating the mountain to find you&quot;</p></div>
+
+
+<div id="tp">
+
+<h1 class="title">The Wild Olive</h1>
+
+<h2>A Novel</h2>
+
+<h2 class="author">By the author of<br />
+The Inner Shrine</h2>
+
+<h2 class="author">[Basil King]</h2>
+
+<h2 class="illustrator">Illustrated by<br />
+Lucius Hitchcock</h2>
+
+<h3>New York<br />
+Grosset &amp; Dunlap<br />
+Publishers</h3>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h4>Published by Arrangement with Harper &amp; Brothers</h4>
+</div>
+
+
+<div id="verso">
+<div class="copyright"><div class="line">Copyright, 1910, by Harper &amp; Brothers</div>
+<div class="line">All Rights Reserved</div></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="copyright"><div class="line">Published May, 1910</div>
+<div class="line">Printed in the United States of America</div></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="part" id="p1">
+<h2>Part I</h2>
+<h3>Ford</h3>
+
+
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch01">
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>Finding himself in the level wood-road, whose open aisle drew a long,
+straight streak across the sky, still luminous with the late-lingering
+Adirondack twilight, the tall young fugitive, hatless, coatless, and
+barefooted, paused a minute for reflection. As he paused, he listened; but
+all distinctiveness of sound was lost in the play of the wind, up hill and
+down dale, through chasm and over crag, in those uncounted leagues of
+forest. It was only a summer wind, soft and from the south; but its murmur
+had the sweep of the eternal breath, while, when it waxed in power, it
+rose like the swell of some great cosmic organ. Through the pines and in
+the underbrush it whispered and crackled and crashed, with a variety of
+effect strangely bewildering to the young man's city-nurtured senses.
+There were minutes when he felt that not only the four country constables
+whom he had escaped were about to burst upon him, but that weird armies of
+gnomes were ready to trample him down.</p>
+
+<p>Out of the confusion of wood-noises, in which his unpractised ear could
+distinguish nothing, he waited for a repetition of the shots which a few
+hours ago had been the protest of his guards; but, none coming, he sped on
+again. He weighed the danger of running in the open against the
+opportunities for speed, and decided in favor of the latter. Hitherto, in
+accordance with a woodcraft invented to meet the emergency, and entirely
+his own, he had avoided anything in the nature of a road or a pathway, in
+order to take advantage of the tracklessness which formed his obvious
+protection; but now he judged the moment come for putting actual space
+between his pursuers and himself. How near, or how far behind him, they
+might be he could not guess. If he had covered ground, they would have
+covered it too, since they were men born to the mountains, while he had
+been bred in towns. His hope lay in the possibility that in this
+wilderness he might be lost to their ken, as a mote is lost in the
+air&mdash;though he built something on the chance that, in sympathy with the
+feeling in his favor pervading the simpler population of the region, they
+had given negative connivance to his escape. These thoughts, far from
+stimulating a false confidence, urged him to greater speed.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, even as he fled, he had a consciousness of abandoning
+something&mdash;perhaps of deserting something&mdash;which brought a strain of
+regret into this minute of desperate excitement. Without having had time
+to count the cost or reckon the result, he felt he was giving up the
+fight. He, or his counsel for him, had contested the ground with all the
+resourceful ingenuity known to the American legal practitioner. He was
+told that, in spite of the seeming finality of what had happened that
+morning, there were still loopholes through which the defence might be
+carried on. In the space of a few hours Fate had offered him the choice
+between two courses, neither of them fertile in promises of success. The
+one was long and tedious, with a possibility of ultimate justification;
+the other short and speedy, with the accepted imputation of guilt. He had
+chosen the latter&mdash;instinctively and on the spur of the moment; and while
+he might have repeated at leisure the decision he had made in haste, he
+knew even now that he was leaving the ways and means of proving his
+innocence behind him. The perception came, not as the result of a process
+of thought, but as a regretful, scarcely detected sensation.</p>
+
+<p>He had dashed at first into the broken country, hilly rather than
+mountainous, which from the shores of Lake Champlain gradually gathers
+strength, as it rolls inland, to toss up the crests of the Adirondacks.
+Here, burying himself in the woods, he skirted the unkempt farms, whose
+cottage lights, just beginning to burn, served him as signals to keep
+farther off. When forced to cross one of the sterile fields, he crawled
+low, blotting himself out among the bowlders. At times a patch of tall,
+tasselled Indian corn, interlaced with wandering pumpkin vines, gave him
+cover, till he regained the shelter of the vast Appalachian mother-forest
+which, after climbing Cumberlands, Alleghanies, Catskills, and
+Adirondacks, here clambers down, in long reaches of ash and maple, juniper
+and pine, toward the lowlands of the north.</p>
+
+<p>As far as he had yet been able to formulate a plan of flight, it was to
+seek his safety among the hills. The necessity of the instant was driving
+him toward the open country and the lake, but he hoped to double soon upon
+his tracks, finding his way back to the lumber camps, whose friendly
+spiriting from bunk-house to bunk-house would baffle pursuit. Once he had
+gained even a few hours' security, he would be able to some extent to pick
+and choose his way.</p>
+
+<p>He steered himself by the peak of Graytop, black against the last
+coral-tinted glow of the sunset, as a sailor steers by a star. There was
+further assurance that he was not losing himself or wandering in a circle,
+when from some chance outlook he ventured to glance backward and saw the
+pinnacle of Windy Mountain or the dome of the Pilot straight behind him.
+There lay the natural retreats of the lynx, the bear, and the outlaw like
+himself; and, as he fled farther from them, it was with the same frenzied
+instinct to return that the driven stag must feel toward the bed of fern
+from which he has been roused. But, for the minute, there was one
+imperative necessity&mdash;to go on&mdash;to go on anywhere, anyhow, so long as it
+took him far enough from the spot where masked men had loosed the
+handcuffs from his wrists and stray shots had come ringing after him. In
+his path there were lakelets, which he swam, and streams, which he forded.
+Over the low hills he scrambled through an undergrowth so dense that even
+the snake or the squirrel might have avoided it, to find some easier way.
+Now and then, as he dragged himself up the more barren ascents, the loose
+soil gave way beneath his steps in miniature avalanches of stone and sand,
+over which he crept, clinging to tufts of grass or lightly rooted
+saplings, to rise at last with hands scratched and feet bleeding. Then, on
+again!--frantically, as the hare runs and as the crow flies, without
+swerving&mdash;on, with the sole aim of gaining time and covering distance!</p>
+
+<p>He was not a native of the mountains. Though in the two years spent among
+them he had come to acknowledge their charm, it was only as a man learns
+to love an alien mistress, whose alternating moods of savagery and
+softness hold him with a spell of which he is half afraid. More than any
+one suspected or he could have explained, his reckless life had been the
+rebellion of his man-trained, urban instinct against the domination of
+this supreme earth-force, to which he was of no more value than a falling
+leaf or a dissolving cloud. Even now, as he flung himself on the forest's
+protection, it was not with the solace of the son returning to the mother;
+it was rather as a man might take refuge from a lion in a mammoth cavern,
+where the darkness only conceals dangers.</p>
+
+<p>After the struggle with crude nature the smooth, grass-carpeted
+wagon-track brought him more than a physical sense of comfort. It not only
+made his flight swift and easy, but it had been marked out by man, for
+man's purposes and to meet man's need. It was the result of a human
+intelligence; it led to a human goal. It was possible that it might lead
+even him into touch with human sympathies With the thought, he became
+conscious all at once that he was famished and fatigued. Up to the present
+he had been as little aware of a body as a spirit on its way between two
+worlds. It had ached and sweated and bled; but he had not noticed it. The
+electric fluid could not have seemed more tireless or iron more insensate.
+But now, when the hardship was somewhat relaxed, he was forced back on the
+perception that he was faint and hungry His speed slackened; his shoulders
+sagged; the long second wind, which had lasted so well, began to shorten.
+For the first time it occurred to him to wonder how long his strength
+would hold out.</p>
+
+<p>It was then that he noticed a deflection of the wood-road toward the
+north, and down over the brow of the plateau on which for a mile or two
+its evenness had been sustained. It was a new sign that it was tending
+toward some habitation. Half an hour ago he would have taken this to mean
+that he must dash into the forest again; but half an hour ago he had not
+been hungry. He did not say to himself that he would venture to any man's
+door and ask for bread. So far as he knew, he would never venture to any
+man's door again; nevertheless, he kept on, down-hill, and down-hill
+nearer and nearer the lake, and farther and farther from the mountain and
+the lairs of safety.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, at a turning, when he was not expecting it, the wood-road
+emerged into a rough clearing. Once more he stopped to reflect and take
+his bearings. It had grown so dark that there was little danger in doing
+so; though, as he peered into the gloom, his nerves were still taut with
+the expectation of shot or capture from behind. Straining his eyes, he
+made out a few acres that had been cleared for their timber, after which
+Nature had been allowed to take her own way again, in unruly growths of
+saplings, tangles of wild vines, and clumps of magenta fireweed.</p>
+
+<p>Without quite knowing why he did so, he crept down the slope, feeling his
+way among the stumps, and stooping low, lest his white shirt, wet and
+clinging limply to his body, might betray him to some keen-eyed marksman.
+Presently one of the old root-hedges, common to the countryside, barred
+his path&mdash;a queer, twisted line of long, gray tentacles that had once
+sucked sustenance from the soil, but now reached up idly into a barren
+element, where the wild grape was covering their grotesque nakedness with
+masses of kindly beauty. Below him he saw lights shining clearly like the
+planets, or faintly like the mere star-dust of the sky, while between the
+two degrees of brightness he knew there must lie the bosom of the lake. He
+had come to the little fringe of towns that clings to the borders of
+Champlain, here with the Adirondacks behind him, and there with the
+mountains of Vermont, but keeping close to the great, safe waterway, as
+though distrusting the ruggedness of both.</p>
+
+<p>It was a moment at which to renew his alarm in this proximity to human
+dwellings. Like the tiger that has ventured beyond the edge of the jungle,
+he must slink back at the sight of fire. He turned himself slowly, looking
+up the heights from which he had come down, as they rolled behind him,
+mysterious and hostile, in the growing darkness. Even the sky, from which
+it seemed impossible for the daylight ever to depart, now had an angry red
+glare in it.</p>
+
+<p>He took a step or two toward the forest, and paused again, still staring
+upward. Where was he going? Where <i>could</i> he go? The question presented
+itself with an odd pertinence that drew his set, beardless lips into a
+kind of smile. When he had first made his rush outward the one thing that
+seemed to him essential was to be free; but now he was forced to ask
+himself: For what purpose? Of what use was it to be as free as wind if he
+was to be as homeless? It was not merely that he was homeless for the
+moment; that was nothing; the overwhelming reflection was that he, Norrie
+Ford, could never have a home at all&mdash;that there was scarcely a spot
+within the borders of civilized mankind where the law would not hunt him
+out.</p>
+
+<p>This view of his situation was so apparent and yet so new that it held him
+stock-still, gazing into space. He was free&mdash;but free only to crawl back
+into the jungle and lie down in it, like a wild beast.</p>
+
+<p>"But I'm not a wild beast," he protested, inwardly. "I'm a man&mdash;with
+human rights. By God, I'll never let them go!"</p>
+
+<p>He wheeled round again, toward the lower lands and the lake. The lights
+glowed more brightly as the darkness deepened, each lamp shining from some
+little nest, where men and women were busied with the small tasks and
+interests that made life. This was liberty! This was what he had a claim
+upon! All his instincts were civilized, domestic. He would not go back to
+the forest, to herd with wild nature, when he had a right to lie down
+among his kind. He had slept in the open hundreds of times; but it had
+been from choice. There had been pleasure then, in waking to the smell of
+balsam and opening his eyes upon the stars. But to do the same thing from
+compulsion, because men had closed up their ranks and ejected him from
+their midst, was an outrage he would not accept. In the darkness his head
+went up, while his eyes burned with a fire more intense than that of any
+of the mild beacons from the towns below, as he strode back to the old
+root-hedge and leaped it.</p>
+
+<p>He felt the imprudence, not to say the uselessness, of the movement, as he
+made it; and yet he kept on, finding himself in a field in which cows and
+horses were startled from their munching by his footstep. It was another
+degree nearer to the organized life in which he was entitled to a place.
+Shielded by a shrubbery of sleeping goldenrod, he stole down the slope,
+making his way to the lane along which the beasts went out to pasture and
+came home. Following the trail, he passed a meadow, a potato-field, and a
+patch of Indian corn, till the scent of flowers told him he was coming on
+a garden. A minute later, low, velvety domes of clipped yew rose in the
+foreground, and he knew himself to be in touch with the civilization that
+clung, like a hardy vine, to the coves and promontories of the lake, while
+its tendrils withered as soon as they were flung up toward the mountains.
+Only a few steps more, and, between the yews, he saw the light streaming
+from the open doors and windows of a house.</p>
+
+<p>It was such a house as, during the two years he had spent up in the high
+timber-lands, he had caught sight of only on the rare occasions when he
+came within the precincts of a town&mdash;a house whose outward aspect, even at
+night, suggested something of taste, means, and social position for its
+occupants. Slipping nearer still, he saw curtains fluttering in the breeze
+of the August evening, and Virginia creeper dropping in heavily massed
+garlands from the roof of a columned veranda. A French window was open to
+the floor, and within, he could see vaguely, people were seated.</p>
+
+<p>The scene was simple enough, but to the fugitive it had a kind of
+sacredness. It was like a glimpse into the heaven he has lost caught by a
+fallen angel. For the moment he forgot his hunger and weakness, in this
+feast for the heart and eyes. It was with something of the pleasure of
+recognizing long-absent faces that he traced the line of a sofa against
+the wall, and stated to himself that there was a row of prints hanging
+above it. There had been no such details as these to note in his cell, nor
+yet in the courtroom which for months had constituted his only change of
+outlook Insensibly to himself, he crept nearer, drawn by the sheer spell
+of gazing.</p>
+
+<p>Finding a gate leading into the garden, he opened it softly, leaving it
+so, in order to secure his retreat. From the shelter of one of the
+rounded yew-trees he could make his observations more at ease. He
+perceived now that the house stood on a terrace, and turned the garden
+front, its more secluded aspect, in his direction. The high hedges, common
+in these lakeside villages, screened it from the road; while the open
+French window threw a shaft of brightness down the yew-tree walk, casting
+the rest of the garden into gloom.</p>
+
+<p>To Norrie Ford, peeping furtively from behind one of the domes of clipped
+foliage, there was exasperation in the fact that his new position gave him
+no glimpse of the people in the room. His hunger to see them became for
+the minute more insistent than that for food. They represented that human
+society from which he had waked one morning to find himself cut off, as a
+rock is cut off by seismic convulsion from the mainland of which it has
+formed a part. It was in a sort of effort to span the gulf separating him
+from his own past that he peered now into this room, whose inmates were
+only passing the hours between the evening meal and bedtime. That people
+could sit tranquilly reading books or playing games filled him with a kind
+of wonder.</p>
+
+<p>When he considered it safe he slipped along to what he hoped would prove a
+better point of view, but, finding it no more advantageous, he darted to
+still another. The light lured him as it might lure an insect of the
+night, till presently he stood on the very steps of the terrace. He knew
+the danger of his situation, but he could not bring himself to turn and
+steal away till he had fixed the picture of that cheerful interior firmly
+on his memory. The risk was great, but the glimpse of life was worth it.</p>
+
+<p>With powers of observation quickened by his plight, he noted that the
+home was just such a one as that from which he had sprung&mdash;one where old
+engravings hung on the walls, while books filled the shelves, and papers
+and periodicals strewed the tables. The furnishings spoke of comfort and a
+modest dignity. Obliquely in his line of vision he could see two children,
+seated at a table and poring over a picture-book The boy, a manly urchin,
+might have been fourteen, the girl a year or two younger. Her curls fell
+over the hand and arm supporting her cheek, so that Ford could only guess
+at the blue eyes concealed behind them. Now and then the boy turned a page
+before she was ready, whereupon followed pretty cries of protestation. It
+was perhaps this mimic quarrel that called forth a remark from some one
+sitting within the shadow.</p>
+
+<p>"Evie dear, it's time to go to bed. Billy, I don't believe they let you
+stay up as late as this at home."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, they do," came Billy's answer, given with sturdy assurance. "I
+often stay up till nine."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it's half past now; so you'd both better come and say good-night."</p>
+
+<p>With one foot resting on the turf and the other raised to the first step
+of the terrace, as he stood with folded arms, Ford watched the little
+scene, in which the children closed their book, pushed back their chairs,
+and crossed the room to say good-night to the two who were seated in the
+shadow. The boy came first, with hands thrust into his trousers pockets in
+a kind of grave nonchalance. The little girl fluttered along behind, but
+broke her journey across the room by stepping into the opening of the long
+window and looking out into the night. Ford stood breathless and
+motionless, expecting her to see him and cry out. But she turned away and
+danced again into the shadow, after which he saw her no more. The silence
+that fell within the room told him that the elders were left alone.</p>
+
+<p>Stealthily, like a thief, Ford crept up the steps and over the turf of the
+terrace. The rising of the wind at that minute drowned all sound of his
+movements, so that he was tempted right on to the veranda, where a coarse
+matting deadened his tread. He dared not hold himself upright on this
+dangerous ground, but, crouching low, he was blotted from sight, while he
+himself could see what passed within. He would only, he said, look once
+more into kindly human faces and steal away as he came.</p>
+
+<p>He could perceive now that the lady who had spoken was an invalid
+reclining in a long chair, lightly covered with a rug. A fragile, dainty
+little creature, her laces, trinkets, and rings revealed her as one
+clinging to the elegancies of another phase of life, though Fate had sent
+her to live, and perhaps to die, here on the edge of the wilderness. He
+made the same observation with regard to the man who sat with his back to
+the window. He was in informal evening dress&mdash;a circumstance that, in this
+land of more or less primitive simplicity, spoke of a sense of exile. He
+was slight and middle-aged, and though his face was hidden, Ford received
+the impression of having seen him already, but from another point of view.
+His habit of using a magnifying-glass as, with some difficulty, he read a
+newspaper in the light of a green-shaded lamp, seemed to Ford especially
+familiar, though more pressing thoughts kept him from trying to remember
+where and when he had seen some one do the same thing within the recent
+past.</p>
+
+<p>As he crouched by the window watching them, it came into his mind that
+they were just the sort of people of whom he had least need to be afraid.
+The sordid tragedy up in the mountains had probably interested them
+little, and in any case they could not as yet have heard of his escape. If
+he broke in on them and demanded food, they would give it to him as to
+some common desperado, and be glad to let him go. If there was any one to
+inspire terror, it was he, with his height, and youth, and wildness of
+aspect. He was thinking out the most natural method of playing some small
+comedy of violence, when suddenly the man threw down the paper with a
+sigh. On the instant the lady spoke, as though she had been awaiting her
+cue.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see why you should feel so about it," she said, making an effort
+to control a cough. "You must have foreseen something of this sort when
+you took up the law."</p>
+
+<p>The answer reached Ford's ears only as a murmur, but he guessed its import
+from the response.</p>
+
+<p>"True," she returned, when he had spoken, "to foresee possibilities is one
+thing, and to meet them is another; but the anticipation does something to
+nerve one for the necessity when it comes."</p>
+
+<p>Again there was a murmur in which Ford could distinguish nothing, but
+again her reply told him what it meant.</p>
+
+<p>"The right and the wrong, as I understand it," she went on, "is something
+with which you have nothing to do. Your part is to administer the law, not
+to judge of how it works."</p>
+
+<p>Once more Ford was unable to catch what was said in reply, but once more
+the lady's speech enlightened him.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the worst of it? Possibly; but it's also the best of it; for since
+it relieves you of responsibility it's foolish for you to feel remorse."</p>
+
+<p>What was the motive of these remarks? Ford found himself possessed of a
+strange curiosity to know. He pressed as closely as he dared to the open
+door, but for the moment nothing more was said. In the silence that
+followed he began again to wonder how he could best make his demand for
+food, when a sound from behind startled him. It was the sound which, among
+all others, caused him the wildest alarm&mdash;that of a human footstep. His
+next movement came from the same blind impulse that sends a hunted fox to
+take refuge in a church&mdash;eager only for the instant's safety. He had
+sprung to his feet, cleared the threshold, and leaped into the room,
+before the reflection came to him that, if he was caught, he must at least
+be caught game. Wheeling round toward the window-door through which he had
+entered, he stood defiantly, awaiting his pursuers, and heedless of the
+astonished eyes fixed upon him. It was not till some seconds had gone by,
+and he realized that he was not followed, that he glanced about the room.
+When he did so it was to ignore the woman, in order to concentrate all his
+gaze on the little, iron-gray man who, still seated, stared at him, with
+lips parted. In his own turn, Norrie Ford was dumb and wide-eyed in
+amazement It was a long minute before either spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"You?"</p>
+
+<p>"You?"</p>
+
+<p>The monosyllable came simultaneously from each. The little woman got to
+her feet in alarm. There was inquiry as well as terror in her
+face&mdash;inquiry to which her husband felt prompted to respond.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the man," he said, in a voice of forced calmness,
+"whom&mdash;whom&mdash;we've been talking about."</p>
+
+<p>"Not the man&mdash;you&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he nodded, "the man I&mdash;I&mdash;sentenced to death&mdash;this morning."</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch02">
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>"Evie!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wayne went to the door, but on Ford's assurance that her child had
+nothing to fear from him, she paused with her hand on the knob to look in
+curiosity at this wild young man, whose doom lent him a kind of
+fascination. Again, for a minute, all three were silent in the excess of
+their surprise. Wayne himself sat rigid, gazing up at the new-comer with
+strained eyes blurred with partial blindness. Though slightly built and
+delicate, he was not physically timid; and as the seconds went by he was
+able to form an idea as to what had happened. He himself, in view of the
+tumultuous sympathy displayed by hunters and lumber-jacks with the man who
+passed for their boon companion, had advised Ford's removal from the
+pretty toy prison of the county-town to the stronger one at Plattsville.
+It was clear that the prisoner had been helped to escape, either before
+the change had been effected or while it was taking place. There was
+nothing surprising in that; the astonishing thing was that the fugitive
+should have found his way to this house above all others. Mrs. Wayne
+seemed to think so too, for it was she who spoke first, in a tone which
+she tried to make peremptory, in spite of its tremor of fear.</p>
+
+<p>"What did you come here for?"</p>
+
+<p>Ford looked at her for the first time&mdash;in a blankness not without a dull
+element of pleasure. It was at least two or three years since he had seen
+anything so dainty&mdash;not, in fact, since his own mother died. At all times
+his mind worked slowly, so that he found nothing to reply till she
+repeated her question with a show of increased severity.</p>
+
+<p>"I came here for protection," he said then.</p>
+
+<p>His hesitation and bewildered air imparted assurance to his still
+astonished hosts.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it an odd place in which to look for that?" Wayne asked, in an
+excitement, he strove to subdue.</p>
+
+<p>The question was the stimulus Ford needed in order to get his wits into
+play.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he replied, slowly; "I've a right to protection from the man who
+sentenced me to death for a crime of which he knows me innocent."</p>
+
+<p>Wayne concealed a start by smoothing the newspaper over his crossed knees,
+but he was unable to keep a shade of thickness out of his voice as he
+answered:</p>
+
+<p>"You had a fair trial. You were found guilty. You have had the benefit of
+all the resources allowed by the law. You have no right to say I know you
+to be innocent."</p>
+
+<p>Wholly spent, Ford dropped into a chair from which one of the children had
+risen. With his arm hanging limply over the back he sat staring haggardly
+at the judge, as though finding nothing to say.</p>
+
+<p>"I have a right to read any man's mind," he muttered, after a long pause,
+"when it's as transparent as yours. No one had any doubt as to your
+convictions&mdash;after your charge."</p>
+
+<p>"That has nothing to do with it. If I charged in your favor, it was
+because I wanted you to have the benefit of every possible plea. When
+those pleas were found insufficient by a jury of your peers&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Ford emitted a sound that might have been a laugh, had there been mirth in
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"A jury of my peers! A lot of thick-headed country tradesmen, prejudiced
+against me from the start because I'd sometimes kicked up a row in their
+town! They weren't my peers any more than they were yours!"</p>
+
+<p>"The law assumes all men to be equal&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Just as it assumes all men to be intelligent&mdash;only they're not. The law
+is a very fine theory. The chief thing to be, said against it is that five
+times out of ten it leaves human nature out of account. I'm condemned to
+death, not because I killed a man, but because you lawyers won't admit
+that your theory doesn't work."</p>
+
+<p>He began to speak more easily, with the energy born of his desperate
+situation and his sense of wrong. He sat up straighter; the air of
+dejection with which he had sunk to the chair slipped from him; his gray
+eyes, of the kind called "honest," shot out glances of protest. The elder
+man found himself once more struggling against the wave of sympathy which
+at times in the court-room had been almost too strong for him. He was
+forced to intrench himself mentally within the system he served before
+bracing himself to reply.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't keep you from having your opinion&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Nor can I save you from having yours. Look at me, judge!" He was bolt
+upright now, throwing his arms wide with a gesture in which there was more
+appeal than indignation "Look at me! I'm a strong, healthy-bodied,
+healthy-minded fellow of twenty-four; but I'm drenched to the skin, I'm
+half naked, I'm nearly dead with hunger, I'm an outlaw for life&mdash;and
+you're responsible for it all."</p>
+
+<p>It was Wayne's turn for protest, and though he winced, he spoke sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"I had my duty to perform&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Good God, man, don't sit there and call that thing your duty! You're
+something more than a wheel in a machine. You were a human being before
+you were a judge. With your convictions you should have come down from the
+bench and washed your hands of the whole affair. The very action would
+have given me a chance&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You mustn't speak like that to my husband," Mrs. Wayne broke in,
+indignantly, from the doorway. "If you only knew what he has suffered on
+your account&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Is it anything like what I've suffered on his?"</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say it's worse. He has scarcely slept or eaten since he knew he
+would have to pass that dreadful sen&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Come! come!" Wayne exclaimed, in the impatient tone of a man who puts an
+end to a useless discussion. "We can't spend time on this subject any
+longer. I'm not on my defence&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You <i>are</i> on your defence," Ford declared, instantly. "Even your wife
+puts you there. We're not in a courtroom as we were this morning.
+Circumstantial evidence means nothing to us in this isolated house, where
+you're no longer the judge, as I'm no longer the prisoner. We're just two
+naked human beings, stripped of everything but their inborn rights&mdash;and I
+claim mine."</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;what are they?"</p>
+
+<p>"They're simple enough. I claim the right to have something to eat, and to
+go my way without being molested&mdash;or betrayed. You'll admit I'm not
+asking much."</p>
+
+<p>"You may have the food," Mrs. Wayne said, in a tone not without
+compassion. "I'll go and get it."</p>
+
+<p>For a minute or two there was no sound but that of her cough, as she sped
+down a passage. Before speaking, Wayne passed his hand across his brow as
+though in an effort to clear his mental vision.</p>
+
+<p>"No; you don't seem to be asking much. But, as a matter of fact, you're
+demanding my pledge to my country. I undertook to administer its laws&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Ford sprang up.</p>
+
+<p>"You've done it," he cried, "and I'm the result! You've administered the
+law right up to its hilt, and your duty as a judge is performed. Surely
+you're free now to think of yourself as a man and to treat me as one."</p>
+
+<p>"I might do that, and still think you a man dangerous to leave at large."</p>
+
+<p>"But do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's my affair. Whatever your opinion of the courts that have judged
+your case, I must accept their verdict."</p>
+
+<p>"In your official capacity&mdash;yes; but not here, as host to the poor dog who
+comes under your roof for shelter. My rights are sacred. Even the wild
+Arab&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He paused abruptly. Over Wayne's shoulder, through the window still open
+to the terrace, he saw a figure cross the darkness. Could his pursuers be
+waiting outside for their chance to spring on him? A perceptible fraction
+of a second went by before he told himself he must have been mistaken.</p>
+
+<p>"Even the wild Arab would think them so," he concluded, his glance
+shifting rapidly between the judge and the window open behind him.</p>
+
+<p>"But I'm not a wild Arab," Wayne replied. "My first duty is toward my
+country and its organized society."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think so. Your first duty is toward the man you know you've
+sentenced wrongly. Fate has shown you an unusual mercy in giving you a
+chance to help him."</p>
+
+<p>"I can be sorry for the sentence and yet feel that I could not have acted
+otherwise."</p>
+
+<p>"Then what are you going to do now?"</p>
+
+<p>"What would you expect me to do but hand you back to justice?"</p>
+
+<p>"How?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a suggestion of physical disdain in the tone of the laconic
+question, as well as in the look he fixed on the neat, middle-aged man
+doing his best to be cool and collected Wayne glanced over his shoulder
+toward the telephone on the wall. Norrie Ford understood and spoke
+quickly:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; you could ring up the police at Greenport, but I could strangle you
+before you crossed the floor."</p>
+
+<p>"So you could; but would you? If you did, should you be any better off?
+Should you be as well off as you are now? As it is, there is a possibility
+of a miscarriage of justice, of which one day you may get the benefit.
+There would be no such possibility then. You would be tracked down within
+forty-eight hours."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you needn't argue; I've no intention&mdash;" Once more he paused. The same
+shadow had flitted across the dark space outside, this time with a
+distinct flutter of a white dress. He could only think it was some one
+getting help together; and while he went on to finish his sentence in
+words, all his subconscious faculties were at work, seeking an escape from
+the trap in which he was taken.</p>
+
+<p>"I've no intention of doing violence unless I'm driven to it&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But if you are driven to it&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've a right to defend myself. Organized society, as you call it, has put
+me where it has no further claim upon me. I must fight against it
+single-handed&mdash;and I'll do it. I shall spare neither man nor woman&mdash;nor
+<i>woman</i>"&mdash;he raised his voice so as to be heard outside&mdash;"who stands in my
+way."</p>
+
+<p>He threw back his head and looked defiantly out into the night. As if in
+response to this challenge a tall, white figure suddenly emerged from the
+darkness and stood plainly before him.</p>
+
+<p>It was a girl, whose movements were curiously quick and silent, as she
+beckoned to him, over the head of the judge, who sat with his back toward
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"Then all the more reason why society should protect itself against you,"
+Wayne began again; but Ford was no longer listening. His attention was
+wholly fixed on the girl, who continued to beckon noiselessly, fluttering
+for an instant close to the threshold of the room, then withdrawing
+suddenly to the very edge of the terrace, waving a white scarf in token
+that he should follow her. She had repeated her action again and again,
+beckoning with renewed insistence, before he understood and made up his
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't say that I refuse to help you," Wayne was saying. "My sympathy
+with you is very sincere. If I can get your sentence commuted&mdash;In fact, a
+reprieve is almost certain&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>With a dash as lithe and sudden as that which had brought him in, Ford was
+out on the terrace, following the white dress and the waving scarf which
+were already disappearing down the yew-tree walk. The girl's flight over
+grass and gravel was like nothing so much as that of a bird skimming
+through the air. Ford's own steps crunched loudly on the stillness of the
+night, so that if any one lay in ambush he knew he could not escape. He
+was prepared to hear shots come ringing from any quarter, but he ran on
+with the indifference of a soldier grown used to battle, intent on keeping
+up with the shadow fleeing before him.</p>
+
+<p>He followed her through the garden gate he himself had left open, and down
+the lane leading to the pasture. At the point where he had entered it from
+the right, she turned to the left, keeping away from the mountains and
+parallel with the lake. There was no moon, but the night was clear; and no
+sound but that of the shrill, sustained chorus of insect life.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the pasture the lane became nothing but a path, zigzagging up a
+hillside between patches of Indian corn. The girl sped over it so lightly
+that Ford would have found it hard to keep her in sight if from time to
+time she had not paused and waited. When he came near enough to see the
+outlines of her form she flew on again, less like a living woman than a
+mountain wraith.</p>
+
+<p>From the top of the hill he could see the dull gleam of the lake with its
+girdle of lamp-lit towns. Here the woodland began again; not the main body
+of the forest, but one of its long arms, thrust down over hill and valley,
+twisting its way in among villages and farm lands. That which had been a
+path now become a trail, along which the girl flitted with the ease of
+habit and familiarity.</p>
+
+<p>In the concentration of his effort to keep the moving white spot in view
+Ford lost count of time. Similarly he had little notion of the distance
+they were covering. He guessed that they had been ten or fifteen minutes
+on the way, and that they might have gone a mile, when, after waiting for
+him to come almost near enough to speak to her, she began moving in a
+direction at an acute angle to that by which they had come. At the same
+time he perceived that they were on the side of a low wooded mountain and
+that they were beating their way round it.</p>
+
+<p>All at once they emerged on a tiny clearing&mdash;a grassy ledge on the slope.
+Through the starlight he could see the hillside break away steeply into a
+vaporous gorge, while above him the mountain raised a black dome amid the
+serried points of the sky-line. The dryad-like creature beckoned him
+forward with her scarf, until suddenly she stopped with the decisive pause
+of one who has reached her goal. Coming up with her, he saw her unlock the
+door of a small cabin, which had hitherto not detached itself from the
+surrounding darkness.</p>
+
+<p>"Go in," she whispered. "Don't strike a light. There are biscuits
+somewhere, in a box. Grope for them. There's a couch in a corner."</p>
+
+<p>Without allowing him to speak, she forced him gently over the threshold
+and closed the door upon him. Standing inside in the darkness, he heard
+the grating of her key in the lock, and the rustle of her skirts as she
+sped away.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch03">
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>From the heavy sleep of fatigue Ford woke with the twittering of birds
+that announces the dawn. His first thought before opening his eyes, that
+he was still in his cell, was dispelled by the silky touch of the Sorrento
+rugs on which he lay. He fingered them again and again in a kind of
+wonder, while his still half-slumbering senses struggled for the memory of
+what had happened, and the realization of where he was. When at last he
+was able to reconstruct the events of the preceding night, he raised
+himself on his elbow and peered about him in the dim morning twilight.</p>
+
+<p>The object he discerned most readily was an easel, giving him the secret
+of his refuge. On the wooden walls of the cabin, which was fairly
+spacious, water-color sketches were pinned at intervals, while on the
+mantelpiece above a bricked fireplace one or two stood framed. Over the
+mantelpiece a pair of snow-shoes were crossed as decorations, between
+which hung a view of the city of Quebec. On a lay-figure in a corner was
+thrown carelessly the sort of blanket coat worn by Canadians during winter
+sports. Paints and palettes were arranged on a table by the wall, and on a
+desk in the middle of the room were writing materials and books. More
+books stood in a small suspended bookcase. Beside a comfortable
+reading-chair one or two magazines lay on the floor. His gaze travelled
+last to the large apron, or pinafore, on a peg fastened in a door
+immediately beside his couch. The door suggested an inner room, and he got
+up promptly to explore it. It proved to be cramped and dark, lighted only
+from the larger apartment, which in its turn had but the one high north
+window of the ordinary studio. The small room was little more than a shed
+or "lean-to", serving the purposes of kitchen and storeroom combined. The
+arrangements of the whole cabin showed that some one had built it with a
+view to passing in seclusion a few days at a time without forsaking the
+simpler amenities of civilized life; and it was clear that that "some one"
+was a woman. What interested Ford chiefly for the moment was the discovery
+of a sealed glass jar of water, from which he was able to slake his twenty
+hours' thirst.</p>
+
+<p>Returning to the room in which he had slept, he drew back the green silk
+curtain covering the north light in order to take his bearings. As he had
+guessed on the previous night, the slope on which the cabin was perched
+broke steeply down into a wooded gorge, beyond which the lower hills
+rolled in decreasing magnitude to the shore of Champlain, visible from
+this point of view in glimpses, less as an inland sea than like a chain of
+lakelets. Sunrise over Vermont flooded the waters with tints of rose and
+saffron, but made of the Green Mountains a long, gigantic mass of
+purple-black twisting its jagged outline toward the north into the Hog's
+Back and the Camel's Hump with a kind of monstrous grace. To the east, in
+New York, the Adirondacks, with the sunlight full upon them, shot up
+jade-colored peaks into the electric blue&mdash;the scarred pyramid of Graytop
+standing forth dark, detached, and alone, like a battered veteran
+sentinel.</p>
+
+<p>In an access of conscious hatred of this vast panoramic beauty which had
+become the background of his tragedy, Ford pulled the curtain into place
+again and turned once more to the interior of the room. It began to seem
+more strange to him the more it grew familiar. Why was he here? How long
+was he to stay? How was he to get away again? Had this girl caught him
+like a rat in a trap, or did she mean well by him? If, as he supposed, she
+was Wayne's daughter, she would probably not be slow in carrying out her
+father's plan of handing him back to justice&mdash;and yet his mind refused to
+connect the wraith of the night before with either police work or
+betrayal. Her appearance had been so dim and fleeting that he could have
+fancied her the dryad of a dream, had it not been for his surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>He began to examine them once more, inspecting the water-colors on the
+wall one by one, in search of some clew to her personality. The first
+sketch was of a nun in a convent garden&mdash;the background vaguely French,
+and yet with a difference. The next was of a trapper, or voyageur, pushing
+a canoe into the waters of a wild northern lake. The next was a group of
+wigwams with squaws and children in the foreground. Then came more nuns;
+then more voyageurs with their canoes; then more Indians and wigwams It
+occurred to Ford that the nuns might have been painted from life, the
+voyageurs and Indians from imagination He turned to the two framed
+drawings on the chimney-piece Both represented winter scenes. In the one a
+sturdy voyageur was conveying his wife and small personal belongings
+across the frozen snow on a sled drawn by a team of dogs. In the other a
+woman, apparently the same woman as in the preceding sketch, had fallen in
+the midst of a blinding storm, while a tall man of European
+aspect&mdash;decidedly not the voyageur&mdash;was standing beside her with a baby in
+his arms. These were clearly fancy pictures, and, so it seemed to Ford,
+the work of one who was trying to recapture some almost forgotten memory.
+In any case he was too deeply engrossed by his own situation to dwell on
+them further.</p>
+
+<p>He wheeled round again toward the centre of the room, impatiently casting
+about him for something to eat. The tin box, from which he had devoured
+all the biscuits, lay empty on the floor, but he picked it up and ate
+hungrily the few crumbs sticking in its corners. He ransacked the small
+dark room in the hope of finding more, but vainly. As far as he could see,
+the cabin had never been used for the purpose it was meant to serve, nor
+ever occupied for more than a few hours at a time. It had probably been
+built in a caprice that had passed with its completion. He guessed
+something from the fact that there was no visible attempt to sketch the
+scene before the door, though the site had evidently been chosen for its
+beauty.</p>
+
+<p>He had nothing by which to measure time, but he knew that precious hours
+which he might have utilized for escape were passing. He began to chafe at
+the delay. With the impulse of youth to be active, he longed to be out,
+where he could at least use his feet. His clothes had dried upon him; in
+spite of his hunger he was refreshed by his night's sleep; he was
+convinced that, once in the open, he could elude capture. He pulled back
+the curtain again in order to reconnoitre. It was well to be as familiar
+as possible with the immediate lay of the land, so as to avail himself of
+any advantages it might offer.</p>
+
+<p>The colors of sunrise had disappeared, and he judged that it must be
+seven or eight o'clock. Between the rifts of the lower hills the lake was
+flashing silver, while where Vermont had been nothing but a mass of
+shadow, blue-green mountains were emerging in a triple row, from which the
+last veils of vapor were being dragged up into the firmament On the left,
+the Adirondacks were receding into translucent dimness, in a lilac haze of
+heat.</p>
+
+<p>With an effort to get back the woodcraft suddenly inspired by his first
+dash for freedom, he ran his eye over the landscape, noting the points
+with which he was familiar. To the west, in a niche between Graytop and
+the double peak of Windy Mountain, he could place the county-town; to the
+north, beyond the pretty headlands and the shining coves, the prison of
+Plattsville was waiting to receive him. Farther to the north was Canada;
+and to the south the great waterway led toward the populous mazes of New
+York.</p>
+
+<p>With an impatience bordering on nervousness he realized that these general
+facts did not help him. He must avoid the prison and the county-town, of
+course; while both New York and Canada offered him ultimate chances. But
+his most pressing dangers lurked in the immediate foreground; and there he
+could see nothing but an unsuggestive slope of ash and pine. The rapidity
+of instinct by which last night he had known exactly what to do gave place
+this morning to his slower and more characteristic mental processes.</p>
+
+<p>He was still gazing outward in perplexity, when, through the trees beyond
+the grassy ledge, he caught the flicker of something white. He pressed
+closer to the pane for a better view, and a few seconds later a girl, whom
+he recognized as the nymph of last night, came out of the forest,
+followed by a fawn-colored collie. She walked smoothly and swiftly,
+carrying a large basket with her right hand, while with her left she
+motioned him away from the window. He stepped back, leaping to the door as
+she unlocked it, in order to relieve her of her burden.</p>
+
+<p>"You mustn't do that," she said, speaking quickly. "You mustn't look out
+of the window or come to the door. There are a hundred men beating the
+mountain to find you."</p>
+
+<p>She closed the door and locked it on the inside. While Ford lifted her
+basket to the desk in the centre of the room she drew the green curtain
+hastily, covering the window. Her movements were so rapid that he could
+catch no glimpse of her face, though he had time to note again the curious
+silence that marked her acts. The dog emitted a low growl.</p>
+
+<p>"You must go in here," she said, decisively, throwing open the door of the
+inner room. "You mustn't speak or look out unless I tell you. I'll bring
+you your breakfast presently. Lie down, Micmac."</p>
+
+<p>The gesture by which she forced him across the threshold was compelling
+rather than commanding. Before he realized that he had obeyed her, he was
+standing alone in the darkness, with the sound of a low voice of liquid
+quality echoing in his ears. Of her face he had got only the hint of dark
+eyes flashing with an eager, non-Caucasian brightness&mdash;eyes that drew
+their fire from a source alien to that of any Aryan race.</p>
+
+<p>But he brushed that impression away as foolish. Her words had the
+unmistakable note of cultivation, while a glance at her person showed her
+to be a lady. He could see, too, that her dress, though simple, was
+according to the standard of means and fashion. She was no Pocahontas;
+and yet the thought of Pocahontas came to him. Certainly there was in her
+tones, as well as in her movements, something akin to this vast aboriginal
+nature around him, out of which she seemed to spring as the human element
+in its beauty.</p>
+
+<p>He was still thinking of this when the door opened and she came in again,
+carrying a plate piled high with cold meat and bread-and-butter.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry it's only this," she smiled, as she placed it before him; "but
+I had to take what I could get&mdash;and what wouldn't be missed. I'll try to
+do better in future."</p>
+
+<p>He noted the matter-of-fact tone in which she uttered the concluding
+words, as though they were to have plenty of time together; but for the
+moment he was too fiercely hungry to speak. For a few seconds she stood
+off, watching him eat, after which she withdrew, with the light swiftness
+that characterized all her motions.</p>
+
+<p>He had nearly finished his meal when she returned again.</p>
+
+<p>"I've brought you these," she said, not without a touch of shyness,
+against which she struggled by making her tone as commonplace as possible.
+"I shall bring you more things by degrees."</p>
+
+<p>On a chair beside that on which he was sitting she laid a pair of
+slippers, a pair of socks, a shirt, a collar, and a tie.</p>
+
+<p>He jumped up hastily, less in surprise than in confusion.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't take anything of Judge Wayne's&mdash;" he began to stammer; but she
+interrupted him.</p>
+
+<p>"I understand your feelings about that," she said, simply. "They're not
+Judge Wayne's; they were my father's. I have plenty more."</p>
+
+<p>In his relief at finding she was not Wayne's daughter he spoke awkwardly.</p>
+
+<p>"Your father? Is he&mdash;dead?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; he's dead. You needn't be afraid to take the things. He would have
+liked to help a man&mdash;in your position."</p>
+
+<p>"In my position? Then you know&mdash;who I am?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; you're Norrie Ford. I saw that as soon as I chanced on the terrace
+last night."</p>
+
+<p>"And you're not afraid of me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am&mdash;a little," she admitted; "but that doesn't matter."</p>
+
+<p>"You needn't be&mdash;" he began to explain, but she checked him again.</p>
+
+<p>"We mustn't talk now. I must shut the door and leave you in the dark all
+day. Men will be passing by, and they mustn't hear you. I shall be
+painting in the studio, so that they won't suspect anything, if you keep
+still."</p>
+
+<p>Allowing him no opportunity to speak again, she closed the door, leaving
+him once more in darkness. Sitting in the constraint she imposed upon him,
+he could hear her moving in the outer room, where, owing to the lightness
+of the wooden partition, it was not difficult to guess what she was doing
+at any given moment. He knew when she opened the outer door and moved the
+easel toward the entrance. He knew when she took down the apron from its
+peg and pinned it on. He knew when she drew up a chair and pretended to
+set to work. In the hour or two of silence that ensued he was sure that,
+whatever she might be doing with her brush, she was keeping eye and ear
+alert in his defence.</p>
+
+<p>Who was she? What interest had she in his fate? What power had raised her
+up to help him? Even yet he had scarcely seen her face; but he had
+received an impression of intelligence. He was sure she was no more than a
+girl&mdash;certainly not twenty&mdash;and yet she acted with the decision of
+maturity. At the same time there was about her that suggestion of a wild
+origin&mdash;that something not wholly tamed to the dictates of civilized
+life&mdash;which persisted in his imagination, even if he could not verify it
+in fact.</p>
+
+<p>Twice in the course of the morning he heard voices. Men spoke to her
+through the open doorway, and she replied. Once he distinguished her
+words.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no," she called out to some one at a distance. "I'm not afraid. He
+won't do me any harm. I've got Micmac with me. I often stay here all day,
+but I shall go home early. Thanks," she added, in response to some further
+hint. "I'd rather not have any one here. I never can paint unless I'm
+quite alone."</p>
+
+<p>Her tone was light, and Ford fancied that as she spoke she smiled at the
+passers-by who had thought it right to warn her against himself; but when,
+a few minutes later, she pushed open the door softly, the gravity that
+seemed more natural to her had returned.</p>
+
+<p>"Several parties of men have gone by," she whispered. "They have no
+suspicion. They won't have, if you keep still. They think you have slipped
+away from here, and have gone back toward the lumber camps. This is your
+lunch," she continued, hastily, placing more food before him. "It will
+have to be your dinner, too. It will be safer for me not to come into this
+room again to-day. You must not go out into the studio till you're sure
+it's dark. No noise. No light. I've put an extra rug on the couch in case
+you're chilly in the night."</p>
+
+<p>She spoke breathlessly, in whispers, and, having finished, slipped away.</p>
+
+<p>"You're awfully good," he whispered back. "Won't you tell me your name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!" she warned him, as she closed the door.</p>
+
+<p>He stood still in the darkness, leaving his food untasted, listening to
+the soft rustle of her movements beyond the wall. Except that he heard no
+more voices, the afternoon passed like the morning. At the end of what
+seemed to him interminable hours he knew by acute attention that she hung
+her apron on its peg, put on her hat, and took up her basket, while Micmac
+rose and shook himself. Presently she closed the door of the cabin and
+locked it on the outside. He fancied he could almost hear her step as she
+sped over the grass and into the forest. Only then did the tension of his
+nerves relax, as, dropping to his chair in the darkness, he began to eat.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch04">
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>The two or three days that followed were much like the first. Each morning
+she came early, bringing him food, and such articles of clothing as she
+thought he could wear. By degrees she provided him with a complete change
+of raiment, and though the fit was tolerable, they laughed together at the
+transformation produced in him. It was the first time he had seen her
+smile, and even in the obscurity of the inner room where she still kept
+him secluded he noted the vividness with which her habitually grave
+features lighted up. Micmac, too, became friendly, inferring with the
+instinct of his race that Ford was an object to be guarded.</p>
+
+<p>"No one would know you now," the girl declared, surveying him with
+satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>"Were these things all your father's?" he asked, with a new attempt to
+penetrate the mystery of her personality.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she returned, absently, continuing her inspection of him. "They
+were sent to me, and I kept them. I never knew why I did; but I suppose it
+was&mdash;for this."</p>
+
+<p>"He must have been a tall man?" Ford hazarded, again.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he must have been," she returned, unwarily. Then, feeling that the
+admission required some explanation, she added, with a touch of
+embarrassment, "I never saw him&mdash;not that I can remember."</p>
+
+<p>"Then he died a long time ago?"</p>
+
+<p>Her reply came reluctantly, after some delay:</p>
+
+<p>"Not so very long&mdash;about four years ago now."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet you hadn't seen him since you were a child?"</p>
+
+<p>"There were reasons. We mustn't talk. Some one may pass and hear us."</p>
+
+<p>He could see that her hurry in finishing the small tasks she had come in
+to perform for him arose not so much from precaution as from a desire to
+escape from this particular subject.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you could tell me his name?" he persisted.</p>
+
+<p>Her hands moved deftly, producing order among the things he had left in
+confusion, but she remained silent. It was a silence in which he
+recognized an element of protest though he ignored it.</p>
+
+<p>"You could tell me his name?" he asked, again.</p>
+
+<p>"His name," she said, at last, "wouldn't convey anything to you. It
+wouldn't do you any good to know it."</p>
+
+<p>"It would gratify my curiosity. I should think you might do as much as
+that for me."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm doing a great deal for you as it is. I don't think you should ask for
+more."</p>
+
+<p>Her tone was one of reproach rather than of annoyance, and he was left
+with a sense of having committed an indiscretion. The consciousness
+brought with it the perception that in a measure he was growing used to
+his position. He was beginning to take it for granted that this girl
+should come and minister to his wants. She herself did it so simply, so
+much as a matter of course, that the circumstance lost much of its
+strangeness. Now and then he could detect some confusion in her manner as
+she served him, but he could see too that she surmounted it, in view of
+the fact that for him the situation was one of life and death. She was
+clearly not indifferent to elementary social usages; she only saw that the
+case was one in which they did not obtain. In his long, unoccupied hours
+of darkness it distracted his thoughts from his own peril to speculate
+about her; and when she appeared his questions were the more blunt because
+of the small opportunity she allowed for asking them.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't they miss you at home?" he inquired, on the next occasion when she
+entered his cell.</p>
+
+<p>She paused with a look of surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"At home? Where do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;where you live; where your mother lives."</p>
+
+<p>"My mother died a few months after I was born."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! But even so, you live somewhere, don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do; but they don't miss me there, if that's what you want to know."</p>
+
+<p>"I was only afraid," he said, apologetically, "that you were giving me too
+much of your time."</p>
+
+<p>"I've nothing else to do with it. I shall be only too glad if I can help
+you to escape."</p>
+
+<p>"Why? Why should you care about me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't," she said, simply; "at least, I don't know that I do."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, then you're helping me just&mdash;on general principles?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite so."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he smiled, "mayn't I ask why, again?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I don't like the law."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean that you don't like the law as a whole?&mdash;or&mdash;or this law in
+particular?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't like any law. I don't like anything about it. But," she added,
+resorting to her usual method of escape, "we mustn't talk any more now.
+Some men passed here this morning, and they may be coming back. They've
+given up looking for you; they are convinced you're up in the lumber
+camps, but all the same we must be careful still."</p>
+
+<p>He had no further speech with her that day, and the next she remained at
+the cabin little more than an hour.</p>
+
+<p>"It's just as well for me not to excite curiosity," she explained to him
+before leaving; "and you needn't be uneasy now. They've stopped the hunt
+altogether. They say there's not a spot within a radius of ten miles of
+Greenport that they haven't searched. It would never occur to any one that
+you could be here. Every one knows me; and so the thought that I could be
+helping you would be the last in their minds."</p>
+
+<p>"And have you no remorse at betraying their confidence?"</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head. "Most of them," she declared, "are very well pleased
+to think you've got away; and even if they weren't I should never feel
+remorse for helping any one to evade the law."</p>
+
+<p>"You seem to have a great objection to the law."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, haven't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; but in my case it's comprehensible."</p>
+
+<p>"So it is in mine&mdash;if you only knew."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps," he said, looking at her steadily, "this is as good a time as
+any to assure you that the law has done me wrong."</p>
+
+<p>He waited for her to say something; but as she stroked Micmac's head in
+silence, he continued.</p>
+
+<p>"I never committed the crime of which they found me guilty."</p>
+
+<p>He waited again for some intimation of her confidence.</p>
+
+<p>"Their string of circumstantial evidence was plausible enough, I admit.
+The only weak point about it was that it wasn't true."</p>
+
+<p>Even through the obscurity of his refuge he could feel the suspension of
+expression in her bearing, and could imagine it bringing a kind of eclipse
+over her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"He was very cruel to you&mdash;your uncle?&mdash;wasn't he?" she asked, at last.</p>
+
+<p>"He was very cantankerous; but that wouldn't be a reason for shooting him
+in his sleep&mdash;whatever I may have said when in a rage."</p>
+
+<p>"I should think it might be."</p>
+
+<p>He started. If it were not for the necessity of making no noise he would
+have laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you so bloodthirsty&mdash;?" he began.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no, I'm not; but I should think it is what a man would do. My father
+wouldn't have submitted to it. I know he killed one man; and he may have
+killed two or three."</p>
+
+<p>Ford whistled under his breath.</p>
+
+<p>"So that," he said, after a pause, "your objection to the law
+is&mdash;hereditary."</p>
+
+<p>"My objection to the law is because it is unjust. The world is full of
+injustice," she added, indignantly, "and the laws men live by create it."</p>
+
+<p>"And your aim is to defeat them?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't talk any more now," she said, reverting to an explanatory tone of
+voice. "I must go. I've arranged everything for you for the day. If you
+are very quiet you can sit in the studio and read; but you mustn't look
+out at the window, or even draw back the curtain. If you hear a step
+outside, you must creep in here and shut the door. And you needn't be
+impatient; because I'm going to spend the day working out a plan for your
+escape."</p>
+
+<p>But when she appeared next morning she declined to give details of the
+plan she had in mind. She preferred to work it out alone, she said, and
+give him the outlines only when she had settled them. It chanced to be a
+day of drenching summer rain, and Ford, with a renewed effort to get some
+clew to her identity, expressed his surprise that she should have been
+allowed to venture out.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no one worries about what I do," she said, indifferently "I go about
+as I choose."</p>
+
+<p>"So much the better for me," he laughed. "That's how you came to be
+wandering on old Wayne's terrace, just in the nick of time. What stumps me
+is the promptness with which you thought of stowing me away."</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't promptness, exactly. As a matter of fact, I had worked the
+whole thing out beforehand."</p>
+
+<p>His eyebrows went up incredulously. "For me?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, not for you; for anybody. Ever since my guardian allowed me to build
+the studio&mdash;last year&mdash;I've imagined how easy it would be for some&mdash;some
+hunted person to stay hidden here, almost indefinitely. I've tried to
+fancy it, when I've had nothing better to do."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't seem to have had anything better to do very often," he
+observed, glancing about the cabin.</p>
+
+<p>"If you mean that I haven't painted much, that's quite true. I thought I
+couldn't do without a studio&mdash;till I got one. But when I've come here, I'm
+afraid it's generally been to&mdash;to indulge in day-dreams."</p>
+
+<p>"Day-dreams of helping prisoners to escape. It wouldn't be every girl's
+fancy, but it's not for me to complain of that."</p>
+
+<p>"My father would have wanted me to do it," she declared, as if in
+self-justification. "A woman once helped him to get out of prison."</p>
+
+<p>"Good for her! Who was she?"</p>
+
+<p>Having asked the question lightly, in a boyish impulse to talk, he was
+surprised to see her show signs of embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>"She was my mother," she said, after an interval in which she seemed to be
+making up her mind to give the information.</p>
+
+<p>In the manifest difficulty she had in speaking, Ford sprang to her aid.</p>
+
+<p>"That's like the old story of Gilbert &agrave; Becket&mdash;Thomas &agrave; Becket's father,
+you know."</p>
+
+<p>The historical reference was received in silence, as she bent over the
+small task she had in hand.</p>
+
+<p>"He married the woman who helped him out of prison," Ford went on, for her
+enlightenment.</p>
+
+<p>She raised her head and faced him.</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't like the story of Gilbert &agrave; Becket," she said, quietly.</p>
+
+<p>It took some seconds of Ford's slow thinking to puzzle out the meaning of
+this. Even then he might have pondered in vain had it not been for the
+flush that gradually over-spread her features, and brought what he called
+the wild glint into her eyes. When he understood, he reddened in his own
+turn, making matters worse.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon," he stammered. "I never thought&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You needn't beg my pardon," she interrupted, speaking with a catch in her
+breath. "I wanted you to know.... You've asked me so many questions that
+it seemed as if I was ashamed of my father and mother when I didn't
+answer.... I'm not ashamed of them.... I'd rather you knew.... Every one
+does&mdash;who knows me."</p>
+
+<p>Half unconsciously he glanced up at the framed sketches on the
+chimney-piece. Her eyes followed him, and she spoke instantly:</p>
+
+<p>"You're quite right. I meant that&mdash;for them."</p>
+
+<p>They were standing in the studio, into which she had allowed him to come
+from the stifling darkness of the inner room, on the ground that the rain
+protected them against intrusion from outside. During their conversation
+she had been placing the easel and arranging the work which formed her
+pretext for being there, while Micmac, stretched on the floor, with his
+head between his paws, kept a half-sleepy eye on both of them.</p>
+
+<p>"Your father was a Canadian, then?" he ventured to ask, as she seated
+herself with a palette in her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"He was a Virginian. My mother was the wife of a French-Canadian voyageur.
+I believe she had a strain of Indian blood. The voyageurs and their
+families generally have."</p>
+
+<p>Having recovered her self-possession, she made her statements in the
+matter-of-fact tone she used to hide embarrassment flicking a little color
+into the sketch before her as she spoke. Ford seated himself at a
+distance, gazing at her with a kind of fascination. Here, then, was the
+clew to that something untamed which persisted through all the effects of
+training and education, as a wild flavor will last in a carefully
+cultivated fruit. His curiosity about her was so intense that,
+notwithstanding the difficulty with which she stated her facts, it
+overcame his prompting to spare her.</p>
+
+<p>"And yet," he said, after a long pause, in which he seemed to be
+assimilating the information she had given him&mdash;"and yet I don't see how
+that explains <i>you</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose it doesn't&mdash;not any more than your situation explains you."</p>
+
+<p>"My situation explains me perfectly, because I'm the victim of a wrong."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, so am I&mdash;in another way. I'm made to suffer because I'm the
+daughter of my parents."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a rotten shame," he exclaimed, in boyish sympathy "It isn't your
+fault."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it isn't," she smiled, wistfully. "And yet I'd rather suffer
+with the parents I have than be happy with any others."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose that's natural," he admitted, doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I knew more about them," she went on, continuing to give light
+touches to the work before her, and now and then leaning back to get the
+effect. "I never understood why my father was in prison in Canada."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps it was when he killed the man," Ford suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"No; that was in Virginia&mdash;at least, the first one. His people didn't like
+it. That was the reason for his leaving home. He hated a settled life; and
+so he wandered away into the northwest of Canada. It was in the days when
+they first began to build the railways there&mdash;when there were almost no
+people except the trappers and the voyageurs. I was born on the very
+shores of Hudson Bay."</p>
+
+<p>"But you didn't stay there?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. I was only a very little child&mdash;not old enough to remember&mdash;when my
+father sent me down to Quebec, to the Ursuline nuns. He never saw me
+again. I lived with them till four years ago. I'm eighteen now."</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't he send you to his people? Hadn't he sisters?&mdash;or anything
+like that."</p>
+
+<p>"He tried to, but they wouldn't have anything to do with me."</p>
+
+<p>It was clearly a relief to her to talk about herself. He guessed that she
+rarely had an opportunity of opening her heart to any one. Not till this
+morning had he seen her in the full light of day; and, though but an
+immature judge, he fancied her features had settled themselves into lines
+of reserve and pride from which in happier circumstances they might have
+been free. Her way of twisting her dark hair&mdash;which waved over the brows
+from a central parting&mdash;into the simplest kind of knot gave her an air of
+sedateness beyond her years. But what he noticed in her particularly was
+her eyes&mdash;not so much because they were wild, dark eyes, with the peculiar
+fleeing expression of startled forest things, as because of the pleading,
+apologetic look that comes into the eyes of forest things when they stand
+at bay. It was when&mdash;for seconds only&mdash;the pupils shone with a jet-like
+blaze that he caught what he called the non-Aryan effect; but that glow
+died out quickly, leaving something of the fugitive appeal which Hawthorne
+saw in the eyes of Beatrice Cenci.</p>
+
+<p>"He offered his sisters a great deal of money," she sighed, "but they
+wouldn't take me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh? So he had money?"</p>
+
+<p>"He was one of the first Americans to make money in the Canadian
+northwest; but that was after my mother died. She died in the snow, on a
+journey&mdash;like that sketch above the fireplace. I've been told that it
+changed my father's life. He had been what they call wild before that&mdash;but
+he wasn't so any more. He grew very hard-working and serious. He was one
+of the pioneers of that country&mdash;one of the very first to see its
+possibilities. That was how he made his money; and when he died he left it
+to me. I believe it's a good deal."</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't you hate being in the convent?" he asked, suddenly "I should."</p>
+
+<p>"N-no; not exactly. I wasn't unhappy. The Sisters were kind to me. Some of
+them spoiled me. It wasn't until after my father died, and I began to
+realize&mdash;who I was, that I grew restless. I felt I should never be happy
+until I was among people of my own kind."</p>
+
+<p>"And how did you get there?"</p>
+
+<p>She smiled faintly to herself before answering.</p>
+
+<p>"I never did. There are no people of my kind."</p>
+
+<p>Embarrassed by the stress she seemed inclined to lay on this circumstance,
+he grasped at the first thought that might divert her from it.</p>
+
+<p>"So you live with a guardian! How do you like that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should like it well enough if he did&mdash;that is, if his wife did. You
+see," she tried to explain, "she's very sweet and gentle, and all that,
+but she's devoted to the proprieties of life, and I seem to represent to
+her&mdash;its improprieties. I know it's a trial to her to keep me, and so, in
+a way, it's a trial to me to stay."</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you stay, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"For one reason, because I can't help myself. I have to do what the law
+tells me."</p>
+
+<p>"I see. The law again!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; the law again. But I've other reasons besides that."</p>
+
+<p>"Such as&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm very fond of their little girl, for one thing. She's the
+greatest darling in the world, and the only creature, except my dog, that
+loves me."</p>
+
+<p>"What's her name?"</p>
+
+<p>The question drove her to painting with closer attention to her work. Ford
+followed something of the progress of her thought by watching the just
+perceptible contraction of her brows into a little frown, and the setting
+of her lips into a curve of determination. They were handsome lips, mobile
+and sensitive&mdash;lips that might easily have been disdainful had not the
+inner spirit softened them with a tremor&mdash;or it might have been a
+light&mdash;of gentleness.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't worth while to tell you that," she said, after long reflection.
+"It will be safer for you in the end not to know any of our names at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Still&mdash;if I escape&mdash;I should like to know them."</p>
+
+<p>"If you escape, you may be able to find out."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well," he said, with assumed indifference, "since you don't want to
+tell me&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Going on with her painting, she allowed the subject to drop; but to him
+the opportunity for conversation was too rare a thing to neglect. Not only
+was his youthful impulse toward social self-expression normally strong,
+but his pleasure in talking to a lady&mdash;a girl&mdash;was undeniable. Sometimes
+in his moments of solitary meditation he said to himself that she was "not
+his type of girl"; but the fact that he had been deprived of feminine
+society for nearly three years made him ready to fall in love with any
+one. If he did not precisely fall in love with this girl, it was only
+because the situation precluded sentiment; and yet it was pleasant to sit
+and watch her paint, and even torment her with his questions.</p>
+
+<p>"So the little girl is one reason for your staying here. What's another?"</p>
+
+<p>She betrayed her own taste for social communion by the readiness with
+which she answered him&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know that I ought to tell you that; and yet I might as well. It's
+just this: they're not very well off&mdash;so I can help. Naturally I like
+that."</p>
+
+<p>"You can help by footing the bills. That's all very fine if you enjoy it,
+but everybody wouldn't."</p>
+
+<p>"They would if they were in my position," she insisted. "When you can help
+in any way it gives you a sense of being of use to some one. I'd rather
+that people needed me, even if they didn't want me, than that they
+shouldn't need me at all."</p>
+
+<p>"They need your money," he declared, with a young man's outspokenness.
+"That's what."</p>
+
+<p>"But that's something, isn't it? When you've no place in the world you're
+glad enough to get one, even if you have to buy it. My guardian and his
+wife mayn't care much to have me, but it's some satisfaction to know that
+they'd get along much worse if I weren't here."</p>
+
+<p>"So should I," he laughed. "What I'm to do when I'm turned adrift without
+you, Heaven only knows. It's curious&mdash;the effect imprisonment has on you.
+It takes away your self-reliance. It gives you a helpless feeling, like a
+baby. You want to be free&mdash;and yet you're almost afraid of the open air."</p>
+
+<p>He was so much at home with her now that, sitting carelessly astride of
+his chair, with his arms folded on the back, he felt a fraternal element
+in their mutual relation. She bent more closely over her work, and spoke
+without looking up.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you'll get along all right. You're that sort."</p>
+
+<p>"That's easy to say."</p>
+
+<p>"You may find it easy to do." Her next words, uttered while she continued
+to flick color into her sketch, caused him to jump with astonishment. "I'd
+go to the Argentine."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not say the moon?"</p>
+
+<p>"For one reason, because the moon is inaccessible."</p>
+
+<p>"So is the Argentine&mdash;for me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no, it isn't. Other people have reached it."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes: but they weren't in my fix."</p>
+
+<p>"Some of them were probably in worse."</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause, during which she seemed absorbed in her work, while
+Ford sat meditatively whistling under his breath.</p>
+
+<p>"What put the Argentine into your head?" he asked, at last.</p>
+
+<p>"Because I happen to know a good deal about it. Everybody says it's the
+country of new opportunities. I know people who've lived there. The little
+girl I was speaking of just now&mdash;whom I'm so fond of&mdash;was born there. Her
+father is dead since then, and her mother is married again."</p>
+
+<p>He continued to meditate, emitting the same tuneless, abstracted sound,
+just above his breath.</p>
+
+<p>"I know the name of an American firm out there," she went on. "It's
+Stephens and Jarrott. It's a very good firm to work for. I've often heard
+that. And Mr. Jarrott has helped ever so many&mdash;stranded people."</p>
+
+<p>"I should be just his sort, then."</p>
+
+<p>His laugh, as he sprang to his feet, seemed to dismiss an impossible
+subject; and yet as he lay on his couch that evening in the lampless
+darkness the name of Stephens and Jarrott obtruded itself into his visions
+of this girl, who stood between him and peril because she "disliked the
+law," He wondered how far it was dislike, and how far jealous pain. In
+her eagerness to buy the domestic place she had not inherited she reminded
+him of something he had read&mdash;or heard&mdash;of the wild olive being grafted
+into the olive of the orchard. Well, that would come in the natural course
+of events. Some fine fellow, worthy to be her mate, would see to it. He
+was not without a pleasant belief that in happier circumstances he himself
+might have had the qualifications for the task. He wondered again what her
+name was. He ran through the catalogue of the names he himself would have
+chosen for a heroine&mdash;Gladys, Ethel, Mildred Millicent!--none of them
+seemed to suit her. He tried again. Margaret, Beatrice, Lucy, Joan! Joan
+possibly&mdash;or he said to himself, in the last inconsequential thoughts as
+he fell asleep, it might be&mdash;the Wild Olive.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch05">
+<h3>V</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>As the days passed, one much like another, and the retreat seemed more and
+more secure, it was natural that Ford's thoughts should dwell less on his
+own danger and more on the girl who filled his immediate horizon. The care
+with which she foresaw his wants, the ingenuity with which she met them,
+the dignity and simplicity with which she carried herself through
+incidents that to a less delicate tact must have been difficult, would
+have excited his admiration in any case, even if the namelessness which
+helped to make her an impersonal element in the episode had not stirred
+his imagination. He was obliged to remind himself often that she was "not
+his type of girl," in order to confine his heart within the limits which
+the situation imposed.</p>
+
+<p>It worried him, therefore, it even hurt him, that in spite of all the
+openings he had given her, she had never offered him a sign of her belief
+in his innocence. For this reason he took the first occasion when she was
+seated at her easel, with the dog lying at her feet, to lay his case
+before her.</p>
+
+<p>He told her of his overindulged boyhood, as the only child of a wealthy
+New York merchant. He outlined his profitless years at the university,
+where a too free use of money had hindered work. He narrated the disasters
+that had left him at the age of two-and-twenty to begin life for
+himself&mdash;his father's bankruptcy, followed by the death of both his
+parents within the year. He had been eager to start in at the foot of the
+ladder and work his way upward, when the proposal was made which proved
+fatal.</p>
+
+<p>Old Chris Ford, his great-uncle, known throughout the Adirondack region as
+"the lumber king," had offered to take him, train him to the lumber
+business, and make him his heir. An eccentric, childless widower, commonly
+believed to have broken his wife's heart by sheer bitterness of tongue,
+old Chris Ford was hated, feared, and flattered by the relatives and
+time-servers who hoped ultimately to profit by his favor. Norrie Ford
+neither flattered nor feared his powerful kinsman, but he hated him with
+the best. His own instincts were city born and bred. He was conscious,
+too, of that aptitude with which the typical New-Yorker is supposed to
+come into being&mdash;the capacity to make money. He would have preferred to
+make it on his own ground and in his own way; and had it not been for the
+counsels of those who wished him well, he would have replied to his
+great-uncle's offer with a courteous "No." Wiser heads than his pointed
+out the folly of such a course as that; and so, reluctantly, he entered on
+his apprenticeship.</p>
+
+<p>In the two years that followed he could not see what purpose he served
+other than that of a mark for the old man's poisoned wit. He was taught
+nothing, and paid nothing, and given nothing to do. He slept under his
+great-uncle's roof and ate at his table, but the sharp tongue made the bed
+hard to lie on and the bread difficult to swallow down. Idleness
+reawakened the propensity to vicious habits which he thought he had
+outlived, while the rough society of the lumber camps, in which he sought
+to relieve the tedium of time, extended him the welcome which Falstaff
+and his comrades gave Prince Hal.</p>
+
+<p>The revolt of his self-respect was on the eve of bringing this phase of
+his existence to an end when the low farce turned into tragedy. Old Chris
+Ford was found dead in his bed&mdash;shot in his sleep. On the premises there
+had been but three persons, one of whom must have committed the
+crime&mdash;Norrie Ford, and Jacob and Amalia Gramm. Jacob and Amalia Gramm had
+been the old man's servants for thirty years. Their faithfulness put them
+beyond suspicion. The possibility of their guilt, having been considered,
+was dismissed with few formalities. The conviction of Norrie Ford became
+easy after that&mdash;the more respectable people of the neighborhood being
+agreed that from the evidence presented no other deduction could be drawn.
+The very fact that the old man, by his provocation of the lad, so
+thoroughly deserved his fate made the manner in which he met with it the
+clearer. Even Norrie Ford's friends, the hunters and the lumbermen,
+admitted as much as that, though they were determined that he should never
+suffer for so meritorious an act as long as they could give him a fighting
+chance for freedom.</p>
+
+<p>The girl listened to Ford's narrative with some degree of interest, though
+it contained nothing new to her. She could not have lived at Greenport
+during the period of his trial without being familiar with it all. But
+when he came to explanations in his own defence she followed listlessly.
+Though she leaned back in her chair, and courteously stopped painting,
+while he talked so earnestly, the light in her eyes faded to a lustreless
+gleam, like that of the black pearl. His perception that her thoughts were
+wandering gave him a queer sensation of speaking into a medium in which
+his voice could not carry, cutting short his arguments, and bringing him
+to his conclusion more hurriedly than he had intended.</p>
+
+<p>"I wanted you to know I didn't do it," he finished, in a tone which begged
+for some expression of her belief, "because you've done so much to help
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but I should have helped you just the same, whether you had done it
+or not."</p>
+
+<p>"But I suppose it makes some difference to you," he cried, impatiently,
+"to know that I didn't."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose it would," she admitted, slowly, "if I thought much about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, won't you think?" he pleaded&mdash;-"just to oblige me."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I will, when you're gone; but at present I have to give my mind
+to getting you away. It was to talk about that that I came this morning."</p>
+
+<p>Had she wanted to slip out of giving an opinion on the subject of his
+guilt, she could not have found a better exit. The means of his ultimate
+escape engrossed him even more than the theme of his innocence. When she
+spoke again all his faculties were concentrated into one keen point of
+attention.</p>
+
+<p>"I think the time has come for you to&mdash;go."</p>
+
+<p>If her voice trembled on the last word, he did not notice it. The pose of
+his body, the lines of his face, the glint of his gray eyes, were alive
+with interrogation.</p>
+
+<p>"Go?" he asked, just audibly. "When?"</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"How?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you that then."</p>
+
+<p>"Why can't you tell me now?"</p>
+
+<p>"I could if I was sure you wouldn't raise objections, but I know you
+will."</p>
+
+<p>"Then there are objections to be raised?"</p>
+
+<p>"There are objections to everything. There's no plan of escape that won't
+expose you to a good many risks. I'd rather you didn't see them in
+advance."</p>
+
+<p>"But isn't it well to be prepared beforehand?"</p>
+
+<p>"You'll have plenty of time for preparation&mdash;after you've started. If that
+seems mysterious to you now, you'll know what I mean by it when I come
+to-morrow. I shall be here in the afternoon at six."</p>
+
+<p>With this information Ford was obliged to be content, spending a sleepless
+night and an impatient day, waiting for the time appointed.</p>
+
+<p>She came punctually. For the first time she was not followed by her dog.
+The only change in her appearance he could see was a short skirt of rough
+material instead of her usual linen or muslin.</p>
+
+<p>"Are we going through the woods?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Not far. I shall take you by the trail that led to this spot before I
+built the cabin and made the path." As she spoke she surveyed him. "You'll
+do," she smiled at last. "In those flannels, and with your beard, no one
+would know you for the Norrie Ford of three weeks ago."</p>
+
+<p>It was easy for him to ascribe the glow in her eyes and the quiver in her
+voice to the excitement of the moment; for he could see that she had the
+spirit of adventure. Perhaps it was to conceal some embarrassment under
+his regard that she spoke again, hurriedly.</p>
+
+<p>"We've no time to lose. You needn't take anything from here. We'd better
+start."</p>
+
+<p>He followed her over the threshold, and as she turned to lock the cabin
+he had time to throw a glance of farewell over the familiar hills, now
+transmuted into a haze of amethyst under the westering sun. A second later
+he heard her quick "Come on!" as she struck into the barely perceptible
+path that led upward, around the shoulder of the mountain.</p>
+
+<p>It was a stiff bit of climbing, but she sped along with the dryad-like
+ease she had displayed on the night when she led him to the cabin. Beneath
+the primeval growth of ash and pine there was an underbrush so dense that
+no one but a creature gifted with the inherited instinct of the woods
+could have found the invisible, sinuous line alone possible to the feet.
+But it was there, and she traced it&mdash;never pausing never speaking, and
+only looking back from time to time to assure herself that he was in
+sight, until they reached the top of the dome-shaped hill.</p>
+
+<p>They came out suddenly on a rocky terrace, beneath which, a mile below,
+Champlain was spread out in great part of its length, from the dim bluff
+of Crown Point to the far-away, cloud-like mountains of Canada.</p>
+
+<p>"You can sit down a minute here," she said, as he came up.</p>
+
+<p>They found seats among the low scattered bowlders, but neither spoke. It
+was a moment at which to understand the jewelled imagery of the Seer of
+the Apocalypse. Jasper, jacinth, chalcedony, emerald, chrysoprasus, were
+suggested by the still bosom of the lake, towered round by
+light-reflecting mountains. The triple tier of the Vermont shore was
+bottle-green at its base, indigo in the middle height, while its summit
+was a pale undulation of evanescent blue against the jade and topaz of the
+twilight.</p>
+
+<p>"The steamer <i>Empress of Erin</i>," the girl said, with what seemed like
+abruptness, "will sail from Montreal on the twenty-eighth, and from Quebec
+on the twenty-ninth. From Rimouski, at the mouth of the river St.
+Lawrence, she will sail on the thirtieth, to touch nowhere else till she
+reaches Ireland. You will take her at Rimouski."</p>
+
+<p>There was a silence, during which he tried to absorb this startling
+information.</p>
+
+<p>"And from here to Rimouski?" he asked, at last.</p>
+
+<p>"From here to Rimouski," she replied, with a gesture toward the lake,
+"your way is there."</p>
+
+<p>There was another silence, while his eyes travelled the long,
+rainbow-colored lake, up to the faint line of mountains where it faded
+into a mist of bluish-green and gold.</p>
+
+<p>"I see the way," he said then, "but I don't see the means of taking it."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll find that in good time. In the mean while you'd better take this."
+From her jacket she drew a paper, which she passed to him. "That's your
+ticket. You'll see," she laughed, apologetically, "that I've taken for you
+what they call a suite, and I've done it for this reason. They're keeping
+a lookout for you on every tramp ship from New York, on every cattle-ship
+from Boston, and on every grain-ship from Montreal; but they're not
+looking for you in the most expensive cabins of the most expensive liners.
+They know you've no money; and if you get out of the country at all, they
+expect it will be as a stoker or a stow-away They'll never think you're
+driving in cabs and staying at the best hotels."</p>
+
+<p>"But I shan't be," he said, simply.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, you will. You'll need money, of course; and I've brought it.
+You'll need a good deal; so I've brought plenty."</p>
+
+<p>She drew out a pocketbook and held it toward him. He looked at it,
+reddening, but made no attempt to take it.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't&mdash;I can't&mdash;go as far as that," he stammered, hoarsely.</p>
+
+<p>"You mean," she returned, quickly, "that you hesitate to take money from a
+woman. I thought you might. But it isn't from a woman; it's from a man.
+It's from my father. He would have liked to do it. He would have wanted me
+to do it. They keep putting it in the bank for me&mdash;just to spend&mdash;but I
+never need it. What can I do with money in a place like Greenport? Here,
+take it," she urged, thrusting it into his hands. "You know very well it
+isn't a matter of choice, but of life or death."</p>
+
+<p>With her own fingers she clasped his upon it, drawing back and coloring at
+her boldness. For the first time in their weeks of intercourse she saw in
+him a touch of emotion The phlegmatism by which he had hitherto concealed
+his inward suffering seemed suddenly to desert him. He looked at her with
+lips quivering, while his eyes filled. His weakness only nerved her to be
+stronger, sending her for refuge back into the commonplace.</p>
+
+<p>"They'll expect you at Rimouski, because your luggage will already have
+gone on board at Montreal. Yes," she continued, in reply to his
+astonishment, "I've forwarded all the trunks and boxes that came to me
+from my father. I told my guardian I was sending them to be stored&mdash;and I
+am, for you'll store them for me in London when you've done with them.
+Here are the keys."</p>
+
+<p>He made no attempt to refuse them, and she hurried on.</p>
+
+<p>"I sent the trunks for two reasons; first, because there might be things
+in them you could use till you get something better; and then I wanted to
+prevent suspicion arising from your sailing without luggage. Every little
+thing of that sort counts. The trunks have 'H.S.' painted in white letters
+on them; so that you'll have no difficulty in knowing them at sight. I've
+put a name with the same initials on the ticket. You'd better use it till
+you feel it safe to take your own again."</p>
+
+<p>"What name?" he asked, with eager curiosity, beginning to take the ticket
+out of its envelope.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind now," she said, quickly. "It's just a name&mdash;any name. You can
+look at it afterward. We'd better go on."</p>
+
+<p>She made as though she would move, but he detained her.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a minute. So your name begins with S!"</p>
+
+<p>"Like a good many others," she smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Then tell me what it is. Don't let me go away without knowing it. You
+can't think what it means to me."</p>
+
+<p>"I should think you'd see what it means to me."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't. What harm can it do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you don't see, I'm afraid I can't explain. To be nameless is&mdash;- how
+shall I say it?&mdash;a sort of protection to me. In helping you, and taking
+care of you, I've done what almost any really nice girl would have shrunk
+from. There are plenty of people who would say is was wrong. And in a
+way&mdash;a way I could never make you understand, unless you understand
+already&mdash;it's a relief to me that you don't know who I am. And even that
+isn't everything."</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;what else?"</p>
+
+<p>"When this little episode is over"&mdash;her voice trembled, and it was not
+without some blinking of the eyes that she was able to begin again&mdash;"when
+this little episode is over, it will be better for us both&mdash;for you as
+well as for me&mdash;to know as little about it as possible. The danger isn't
+past by any means; but it's a kind of danger in which ignorance can be
+made to look a good deal like innocence. I shan't know anything about you
+after you've gone, and you know nothing whatever about me."</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I complain of. Suppose I pull the thing off, and make a
+success of myself somewhere else, how should I communicate with you
+again?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why should you communicate with me at all?"</p>
+
+<p>"To pay you back your money, for one thing&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that doesn't matter."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps it doesn't from your point of view; but it does from mine. But it
+wouldn't be my only reason in any case."</p>
+
+<p>Something in his voice and in his eyes warned her to rise and interrupt
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid we haven't time to talk about it now," she said, hurriedly.
+"We really must be going on."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not going to talk about it now," he declared, rising in his turn. "I
+said it would be a reason for my wanting to communicate with you again. I
+shall want to tell you something then; though perhaps by that time you
+won't want to hear it."</p>
+
+<p>"Hadn't we better wait and see?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I shall have to do; but how can I come back to you at all if
+I don't know who you are?"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall have to leave that to your ingenuity," she laughed, with an
+attempt to treat the matter lightly. "In the mean time we must hurry on.
+It's absolutely necessary that you should set out by sunset."</p>
+
+<p>She glided into the invisible trail running down the lakeside slope of the
+mountain, so that he was obliged to follow her. As they had climbed up,
+so they descended&mdash;the girl steadily and silently in advance. The region
+was dotted with farms; but she kept to the shelter of the woodland, and
+before he expected it they found themselves at the water's edge. A canoe
+drawn up in a cove gave him the first clear hint of her intentions.</p>
+
+<p>It was a pretty little cove, enclosed by two tiny headlands, forming a
+miniature landlocked bay, hidden from view of the lake beyond. Trees
+leaned over it and into it, while the canoe rested on a yard-long beach of
+sand.</p>
+
+<p>"I see," he remarked, after she had allowed him to take his own
+observations. "You want me to go over to Burlington and catch a train to
+Montreal."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head, smiling, as he thought, rather tremulously.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I've planned a much longer journey for you. Come and see the
+preparations I've made." They stepped to the side of the canoe, so as to
+look down into it. "That," she pursued, pointing to a small suit-case
+forward of the middle thwart, "will enable you to look like an ordinary
+traveller after you've landed. And that," she added, indicating a package
+in the stern, "contains nothing more nor less than sandwiches. Those are
+bottles of mineral water. The small objects are a corkscrew, a glass, a
+railway timetable a cheap compass, and a cheaper watch. In addition you'll
+find a map of the lake, which you can consult tomorrow morning, after
+you've paddled all night through the part with which you're most
+familiar."</p>
+
+<p>"Where am I going?" he asked, huskily, avoiding her eyes. The nonchalance
+of her tone had not deceived him, and he thought it well not to let their
+glances meet.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll keep to the middle of the lake and go on steadily. You'll have
+all Champlain to yourself to-night, and in daylight there's no reason why
+you shouldn't pass for an ordinary sportsman. All the same, you had better
+rest by day, and go on again in the evening. You'll find lots of little
+secluded coves where you can pull up the canoe and be quite undisturbed.
+I'd do that, if I were you."</p>
+
+<p>He nodded to show that he understood her.</p>
+
+<p>"When you look at the map," she went on, "you'll find that I've traced a
+route for you, after you get above Plattsville. You'll see that it will
+take you past the little French-Canadian village of Deux Etoiles. You
+can't mistake it, because there's a lighthouse, with a revolving light, on
+a rock, just off the shore. You'll be in Canada then. You'd better time
+yourself to go by about nightfall."</p>
+
+<p>He nodded his agreement with her again, and she continued.</p>
+
+<p>"About a mile above the lighthouse, and close in by the eastern shore,
+just where the lake becomes very narrow, there are two little islands
+lying close together. You'll take them as a landmark, because immediately
+opposite them, on the mainland, there's a stretch of forest running for a
+good many miles. There you can land finally. You must drag the canoe right
+up into the wood, and hide it as well as you can. It's my own canoe, so
+that it can lie there till it drops to pieces. Is all that quite clear to
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>Once more he nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Again the sight of his
+emotion braced her to make her tone more matter-of-fact than ever.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, then," she went on, "if you consult the map you'll see that an old
+wood-road runs through the forest, and comes out at the station of Saint
+Jean du Clou Noir. There you can get a train to Quebec.... The road begins
+nearly opposite the two little islands I spoke of.... I don't think
+you'll have any difficulty in finding it.... It's about seven miles to the
+station.... You could walk that easily enough through the night.... I've
+marked a very good train on the time-table&mdash;a train that stops at Saint
+Jean du Clou Noir at seven thirty-five ..."</p>
+
+<p>A choking sensation warned her to stop, but she retained the power to
+smile. The sun had set, and the slow northern night was beginning to close
+in. Across the lake the mountains of Vermont were receding into deep
+purple uniformity, while over the crimson of the west a veil of filmy
+black was falling, as though dropped in mid-flight by the angel of the
+dark. Here and there through the dead-turquoise green of the sky one could
+detect the pale glimmer of a star.</p>
+
+<p>"You must go now," she whispered. He began to move the canoe into the
+water.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't thanked you," he began, unsteadily, holding the canoe by the
+bow, "because you wouldn't let me. As a matter of fact, I don't know how
+to do it&mdash;adequately. But if I live at all, my life will belong to you.
+That's all I can say. My life will be a thing for you to dispose of. If
+you ever have need of it&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I shan't have," she said, hastily, "but I'll remember what you say."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks; that's all I ask. For the present I can only hope for the chance
+of making my promise good."</p>
+
+<p>She said nothing in reply, and after a minute's silence he entered the
+canoe. She steadied it herself to allow him to step in. It was not till he
+had done so and had knelt down with the paddle in his hand that, moved by
+a sudden impulse she leaned to him and kissed him. Then, releasing the
+light craft, she allowed it to glide out like a swan on the tiny bay. In
+three strokes of the paddle it had passed between the low, enclosing
+headlands and was out of sight. When she summoned up strength to creep to
+an eminence commanding the lake, it was already little more than a speck,
+moving rapidly northward, over the opal-tinted waters.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch06">
+<h3>VI</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>On finding himself alone, and relatively free, Ford's first sensation was
+one of insecurity. Having lived for more than a year under orders and
+observation, he had lost for the moment some of his natural confidence in
+his own initiative. Though he struck resolutely up the lake he was aware
+of an inner bewilderment, bordering on physical discomfort, at being his
+own master. For the first half-hour he paddled mechanically, his
+consciousness benumbed by the overwhelming strangeness. As far as he was
+able to formulate his thought at all he felt himself to be in process of a
+new birth, into a new phase of existence. In the darkening of the sky
+above him and of the lake around there came upon him something of the
+mental obscurity that might mark the passage of a transmigrating soul.
+After the subdued excitement of the past weeks, and especially of the past
+hour, the very regularity of his movements now lulled him into a passivity
+only quickened by vague fears. The noiseless leaping forward of the canoe
+beneath him heightened his sense of breaking with the past and hastening
+onward into another life. In that life he would be a new creature, free to
+be a law unto himself.</p>
+
+<p>A new creature! A law unto himself! The ideas were subconscious, and yet
+he found the words framing themselves on his lips. He repeated them
+mentally with some satisfaction as a cluster of lights on his left told
+him he was passing Greenport. Other lights, on a hill, above the town and
+away from it, were probably those of Judge Wayne's villa. He looked at
+them curiously, with an odd sense of detachment, of remoteness, as from
+things belonging to a time with which he had nothing more to do. That was
+over and done with.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until a steamer crossed his bows, not more than a hundred yards
+in front of him, that he began to appreciate his safety. Under the
+protection of the dark, and in the wide loneliness of the waters, he was
+as lost to human sight as a bird in the upper air. The steamer&mdash;zigzagging
+down the lake, touching at little ports now on the west bank and now on
+the east&mdash;had shot out unexpectedly from behind a point, her double row of
+lights casting a halo in which his canoe must have been visible on the
+waves; and yet she had passed by and taken no note of him. For a second
+such good-fortune had seemed to his nervous imagination beyond the range
+of hope. He stopped paddling he almost stopped breathing, allowing the
+canoe to rock gently on the tide. The steamer puffed and pulsated, beating
+her way directly athwart his course. The throbbing of her engines seemed
+scarcely louder than that of his own heart. He could see people moving on
+the deck, who in their turn must have been able to see him. And yet the
+boat went on, ignoring him, in tacit acknowledgment of his right to the
+lake, of his right to the world.</p>
+
+<p>His sigh of relief became almost a laugh as he began again to paddle
+forward. The incident was like a first victory, an assurance of victories
+to come. The sense of insecurity with whith he had started out gave place,
+minute by minute, to the confidence in himself which was part of his
+normal state of mind. Other small happenings confirmed his self-reliance.
+Once a pleasure party in a rowboat passed so near him that he could hear
+the splash of their oars and the sound of their voices. There was
+something almost miraculous to him in being so close to the commonplace of
+human fellowship. He had the feeling of pleasant inward recognition that
+comes from hearing one's mother-tongue in a foreign land. He stopped
+paddling again, just to catch meaningless fragments of their talk, until
+they floated away into silence and darkness. He would have been sorry to
+have them pass out of ear-shot, were it not for his satisfaction in being
+able to go his way unheeded.</p>
+
+<p>On another occasion he found himself within speaking distance of one of
+the numerous small lakeside hotels. Lights flared from open doors and
+windows, while from the veranda, the garden, and the little pier came
+peals of laughter, or screams and shouts of young people at rough play.
+Now and then he could catch the tones of some youth's teasing, and the
+shrill, pretended irritation of a girl's retort. The noisy cheerfulness of
+it all reached his ears with the reminiscent tenderness of music heard in
+childhood. It represented the kind of life he himself had loved. Before
+the waking nightmare of his troubles began he had been of the unexacting
+type of American lad who counts it a "good time" to sit in summer evenings
+on "porches" or "stoops" or "piazzas," joking with "the boys," flirting
+with "the girls," and chattering on all subjects from the silly to the
+serious, from the local to the sublime. He was of the friendly,
+neighborly, noisy, demonstrative spirit characteristic of his age and
+class. He could have entered into this circle of strangers&mdash;strangers for
+the most part, in all probability, to one another&mdash;and in ten minutes'
+time been one of them. Their screams, their twang, their slang, their
+gossip, their jolly banter, and their gay ineptitude would have been to
+him like a welcome home. But he was Norrie Ford, known by name and
+misfortune to every one of them. The boys and girls on the pier, the
+elderly women in the rocking-chairs, even the waitresses who, in
+high-heeled shoes and elaborate coiffures, ministered disdainfully to the
+guests in the bare-floored dining-room, had discussed his life, his trial,
+his sentence, his escape, and formed their opinions upon him. Were it
+possible for them to know now that he was lurking out there in the dark,
+watching their silhouettes and listening to their voices, there would be
+such a hue and cry as the lake had not heard since the Indians sighted
+Champlain on its banks.</p>
+
+<p>It was this reflection that first of all stirred the current of his deep,
+slow resentment. During the fifteen months since his arrest he had been
+either too busy, or too anxious, or too sorely puzzled at finding himself
+in so odd a position, to have leisure for positive anger. At the worst of
+times he had never lost the belief that the world, or that portion of the
+world which concerned itself with him, would come to recognize the fact
+that it was making a mistake. He had taken his imprisonment and his trial
+more or less as exciting adventures. Even the words of his sentence lost
+most of their awfulness in his inner conviction that they were empty
+sounds. Of the confused happenings on the night of his escape his clearest
+memory was that he had been hungry, while he thought of the weeks spent in
+the cabin as a "picnic." Just as good spirits had seldom failed him, so
+patience had rarely deserted him. Such ups and downs of emotion as he had
+experienced resulted in the long run in an increase of optimism. In the
+back of his slow mind he kept the expectation, almost the intention, of
+giving his anger play&mdash;some time; but only when his rights should have
+been restored to him.</p>
+
+<p>But he felt it coming on him now, before he was prepared for it. It was
+taking him unawares, and without due cause, roused by the chance
+perception that he was cut off from rightful, natural companionship.
+Nothing as yet had brought home to him the meaning of his situation like
+the talk and laughter of these lads and girls, who suddenly became to him
+what Lazarus in Abraham's bosom was to Dives in his torment.</p>
+
+<p>A few dips of the paddle took him out of sight and sound of the hotel; but
+the dull, indignant passion remained in his heart, finding outward vent in
+the violence with which he sent the canoe bounding northward beneath the
+starlight. For the moment it was a blind, objectless passion, directed
+against nothing and no one in particular. He was not skilled in the
+analysis of feeling, or in tracing effect to cause. For an hour or two his
+wrath was the rage of the infuriated animal roaring out its pain,
+regardless of the hand that has inflicted it. Other rowing-parties came
+within hearing distance, but he paid them no attention; lake steamers hove
+in sight, but he had learned how to avoid them; little towns, dotted at
+intervals of a few miles apart, lit up the banks with the lights of homes,
+but their shining domesticity seemed to mock him. The birth of a new
+creature was a painful process; and yet, through all his confused
+sensations and obscure elemental suffering, he kept the conviction that a
+new creature was somehow claiming its right to live.</p>
+
+<p>Peace of mind came to him gradually, as the little towns put out their
+lights, and the lake steamers laid up in tiny ports, and the
+rowing-parties went home to bed. In the smooth, dark level of the lake and
+in the stars there was a soothing quality to which he responded before he
+was aware of doing so. The spacious solitude of the summer night brought
+with it a large calmness of outlook, in which his spirit took a measure of
+comfort. There was a certain bodily pleasure, too, in the regular monotony
+of paddling, while his mental faculties were kept alert by the necessity
+of finding points by which to steer, and fixing his attention upon them.
+So, by degrees, his limited reasoning powers found themselves at work,
+fumbling, with the helplessness of a man whose strong points are physical
+activity and concentration of purpose, for some light on the wild course
+on which he was embarked.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps his first reflection that had the nature of a conclusion or a
+deduction was on the subject of "old Wayne." Up to the present he had
+regarded him with special ill will, owing to the fact that Wayne, while
+inclining to a belief of his innocence, had nevertheless lent himself to
+the full working of the law. It came to Ford now in the light of a
+discovery that, after all, it was not Wayne's fault. Wayne was in the grip
+of forces that deprived him to a large extent of the power of voluntary
+action. He could scarcely be blamed if he fulfilled the duties he was
+appointed to perform The real responsibility was elsewhere. With whom did
+it lie? For a primitive mind like Ford's the question was not an easy one
+to answer.</p>
+
+<p>For a time he was inclined to call to account the lawyers who had pleaded
+for the State. Had it not been for their arguments he would have been
+acquitted. With an ingenuity he had never supposed to exist they had
+analyzed his career&mdash;especially the two years of it spent with Uncle
+Chris&mdash;and showed how it led up to the crime as to an inevitable
+consequence. They seemed familiar with everything he had ever done, while
+they were able to prove beyond cavil that certain of his acts were
+inspired by sinister motives which he himself knew to have sprung from
+dissipation at the worst. It was astonishing how plausible their story
+was; and he admitted that if anybody else had been accused, he himself
+would probably have been convinced by it. Certainly, then, the lawyers
+must have been to blame&mdash;that is, unless they were only carrying out what
+others had hired them to do.</p>
+
+<p>That qualifying phrase started a new train of thought. Mechanically, dip
+by dip, swaying gently with each stroke as to a kind of rhythm, he drove
+the canoe onward, while he pondered it. It was easy to meditate out here,
+on the wide, empty lake, for no sound broke the midnight stillness but the
+soft swish of the paddle and the skimming of the broad keel along the
+water. It was not by any orderly system of analysis, or synthesis, or
+syllogism, that Ford, as the hours went by, came at last to his final
+conclusion; and yet he reached it with conviction. By a process of
+elimination he absolved judge, jury, legal profession, and local public
+from the greater condemnation. Each had contributed to the error that made
+him an outlaw, but no one contributor was the whole of the great force
+responsible. That force, which had set its component parts to work, and
+plied them till the worst they could do was done, was the body which they
+called Organized Society. To Ford, Organized Society was a new expression.
+He could not remember ever to have heard it till it was used in court.
+There it had been on everybody's lips. Far more than old Chris Ford
+himself it was made to figure as the injured party. Though there was
+little sympathy for the victim in his own person, Organized Society seemed
+to have received in his death a blow that called for the utmost avenging.
+Organized Society was plaintiff in the case, as well as police, jury,
+judge, and public. The single human creature who could not apparently gain
+footing within its fold was Norrie Ford himself. Organized Society had
+cast him out.</p>
+
+<p>He had been told that before, and yet the actual fact had never come home
+to him till now. In prison, in court, in the cabin in the woods, there had
+always been some human hand within reach of his own, some human tie, even
+though it was a chain. However ignoble, there had been a place for him.
+But out here on the great vacant lake there was an isolation that gave
+reality to his expulsion. The last man left on earth would not feel more
+utterly alone.</p>
+
+<p>For the first time since the night of his escape there came back to him
+that vague feeling of deserting something he might have defended, that
+almost physical sensation of regret at not having stood his ground and
+fought till he fell. He began to understand now what it meant. Dip,
+splash, dip, splash, his paddle stirred the dimly shining water, breaking
+into tiny whirlpools the tremulous reflection of the stars. Not for an
+instant did he relax his stroke, though the regret took more definitive
+shape behind him. Convicted and sentenced, he was still part of the life
+of men, just as a man whom others are trying to hurl from a tower is <i>on</i>
+the tower till he has fallen. He himself had not fallen; he had jumped
+off, while there was still a chance of keeping his foothold.</p>
+
+<p>It required an hour or two of outward rhythmic movement and confused
+inward feeling to get him ready for his next mental step. He had jumped
+off the tower; true; but he was alive and well, with no bones broken. What
+should he do now? Should he try to tear the tower down? The attempt would
+not be so very ludicrous, seeing he should only have to join
+those&mdash;socialists, anarchists, faddists&mdash;already at the work. But he
+admired the tower, and preferred to see is stand. If he did anything at
+all, it would be to try to creep back into it.</p>
+
+<p>The reflection gave still another turn to his thoughts. He was passing
+Burlington by this time&mdash;the electric lamps throwing broad bands of light
+along the deserted, up-hill streets, between the sleeping houses. It was
+the first city he had seen since leaving New York to begin his useless
+career in the mountains. The sight moved him with an odd curiosity, not
+free from a homesick longing for normal, simple ways of life. He kept the
+canoe at a standstill, looking hungrily up the empty thoroughfares, as a
+poor ghost may gaze at familiar scenes while those it has loved are
+dreaming. By-and-by the city seemed to stir in its sleep. Along the
+waterside he could hear the clatter of some belated or too early wayfarer;
+a weird, intermittent creaking told him that the milk-cart of provincial
+towns was on its beat; from a distant freight-train came the long,
+melancholy wail that locomotives give at night; and then drowsily, but
+with the promptness of one conscientious in his duty, a cock crew. Ford
+knew that somewhere, unseen as yet by him, the dawn was coming, and&mdash;again
+like a wandering ghost&mdash;sped on.</p>
+
+<p>But he had been looking on the tower which the children of men had
+builded, and had recognized his desire to clamber up into it again. He was
+not without the perception that a more fiery temperament than his
+own&mdash;perhaps a nobler one&mdash;would have cursed the race that had done him
+wrong, and sought to injure it or shun it. Misty recollections of
+proud-hearted men who had taken this stand came back to him.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I ought to do the same," he muttered to himself humbly; "but
+what would be the use when I couldn't keep it up?"</p>
+
+<p>Understanding himself thus well, his purpose became clearer. Like the ant
+or the beaver that has seen its fabric destroyed, he must set patiently to
+work to reconstruct it. He suspected a poor-spirited element in this sort
+of courage; but his instinct forced him within his limitations. By dint of
+keeping there and toiling there he felt sure of his ability to get back to
+the top of the tower in such a way that no one would think he lacked the
+right to be on it.</p>
+
+<p>But he himself would know it. He shrank from that fact with the repugnance
+of an honest nature for what is not straightforward; but the matter was
+past helping. He should be obliged to play the impostor everywhere and
+with every one. He would mingle with men, shake their hands, share their
+friendships, eat their bread, and accept their favors&mdash;and deceive them
+under their very noses. Life would become one long trick, one daily feat
+of skill. Any possible success he could win would lack stability, would
+lack reality, because there would be neither truth nor fact behind it.</p>
+
+<p>From the argument that he was innocent he got little comfort. He had
+forfeited his right to make use of that fact any longer. Had he stayed
+where he was he could have shouted it out till they gagged him in the
+death-chair. Now he must be dumb on the subject forevermore. In his
+disappearance there was an acceptation of guilt which he must remain
+powerless to explain away.</p>
+
+<p>Many minutes of dull pain passed in dwelling on that point. He could work
+neither back from it nor forward. His mind could only dwell on it with an
+aching admission of its justice, while he searched the sky for the dawn.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the crowing of the cock he saw no sign of it&mdash;unless it was
+that the mountains on the New York shore detached themselves more
+distinctly from the sky of which they had seemed to form a part. On the
+Vermont side there was nothing but a heaped-up darkness, night piled on
+night, till the eye reached the upper heavens and the stars.</p>
+
+<p>He paddled on, steadily, rhythmically, having no sense of hunger or
+fatigue, while he groped for the clew that was to guide him when he
+stepped on land. He felt the need of a moral programme, of some pillar of
+cloud and fire that would show him a way he should be justified in taking.
+He expressed it to himself by a kind of aspiration which he kept
+repeating, sometimes half aloud:</p>
+
+<p>"O Lord, O Holy One! I want to be a man!"</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he struck the water with so violent a dash that the canoe swerved
+and headed landward.</p>
+
+<p>"By God!" he muttered, under his breath, "I've got it.... It isn't my
+fault.... It's theirs.... They've put me in this fix.... They've brought
+this dodging, and shifting, and squirming upon me.... The subterfuge isn't
+mine; it's theirs.... They've taken the responsibility from me.... When
+they strip me of rights they strip me of duties.... They've forced me
+where right and wrong don't exist for me any more.... They've pitched me
+out of their Organized Society, and I've had to go.... Now I'm free ...
+and I shall profit by my freedom."</p>
+
+<p>In the excitement of these discoveries he smote the waters again. He
+remembered having said something of the sort on the night of his interview
+with Wayne; but he had not till now grasped its significance. It was the
+emancipation of his conscience. Whatever difficulties he might encounter
+from outside, he should be hampered by no scruples from within. He had
+been relieved of them; they had been taken from him. Since none had a duty
+toward him, he had no duty toward any. If it suited his purposes to juggle
+with men, the blame must rest upon themselves. He could but do his best
+with the maimed existence they had left to him. Self-respect would entail
+observance of the common laws of truth and honesty, but beyond this he
+need never allow consideration for another to come before consideration
+for himself. He was absolved from the necessity in advance. In the region
+in which he should pass his inner life there would be no occupant but
+himself. From the world where men and women had ties of love and pity and
+mutual regard they had cast him out, forcing him into a spiritual limbo
+where none of these things obtained. It was only lawful that he should
+make use of such advantages as his lot allowed him.</p>
+
+<p>There was exaltation in the way in which he grasped this creed as his rule
+of life; and looking up suddenly, he saw the dawn. It had taken him
+unawares, stealing like a gray mist of light over the tops of the Vermont
+hills, lifting their ridges faintly out of night, like the ghosts of so
+many Titans. Among the Adirondacks one high peak caught the first glimmer
+of advancing day, while all the lower range remained a gigantic silhouette
+beneath the perceptibly paling stars. Over Canada the veil was still down,
+but he fancied he could detect a thinner texture to the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>Then, as he passed a wooded headland, came a sleepy twitter, from some
+little pink and yellow bill barely withdrawn from its enfolding wing&mdash;to
+be followed by another, and another, and another, till both shores were
+aquiver with that plaintive chirrup, half threnody for the flying
+darkness, half welcome to the sun, like the praise of a choir of children
+roused to sing midnight matins, but still dreaming. Ford's dip was softer
+now, as though he feared to disturb that vibrant drowsiness; but when,
+later, capes and coves began to define themselves through the gray
+gloaming, and, later still, a shimmer of saffron appeared above the
+eastern summits, he knew it was time to think of a refuge from the
+daylight.</p>
+
+<p>The saffron became fire; the fire lit up a heaven of chrysoprase and rose.
+Where the lake had been as a metal mirror for the stars, it rippled and
+dimpled and gleamed with the tints of mother-of-pearl. He knew the sun
+must be on the farther slope of the Green Mountains, because the face they
+turned toward him was dense in shadow, like the unilluminated portion of
+the moon. On the western shore the Adirondacks were rising out of the bath
+of night as dewy fresh as if they had been just created.</p>
+
+<p>But the sun was actually in the sky when he perceived that he no longer
+had the lake to himself. From a village nestling in some hidden cove a
+rowboat pulled out into the open&mdash;a fisherman after the morning's catch.
+It was easy enough for Ford to keep at a prudent distance; but the
+companionship caused him an uneasiness that was not dispelled before the
+first morning steamer came pounding from the northward. He fixed his
+attention then on a tiny islet some two or three miles ahead. There were
+trees on it, and probably ferns and grass. Reaching it, he found himself
+in a portion of the lake forest-banked and little frequented. Pastures and
+fields of ripening grain on the most distant slopes of Vermont gave the
+nearest token of life. All about him there was solitude and
+stillness&mdash;with the glorious, bracing beauty of the newly risen day.</p>
+
+<p>Landing with stiffened limbs, he drew up the canoe on a bit of sandy
+beach, over which sturdy old bushes, elder and birch, battered by the
+north winds, leaned in friendly, concealing protection. He himself would
+be able to lie down here, among the tall ferns and the stunted
+blueberry-scrub, as secluded and secure as ever he had been in prison.</p>
+
+<p>Being hungry and thirsty, he ate and drank, consulting his map the while
+and fixing approximately his whereabouts. He looked at his little watch
+and wound it up, and fingered the pages of the railway guide he found
+beside it.</p>
+
+<p>The acts brought up the image of the girl who had furnished him with these
+useful accessories to flight. For lack of another name he called her the
+Wild Olive&mdash;remembering her yearning, not wholly unlike his own, to be
+grafted back into the good olive-tree of Organized Society. With some
+shame he perceived that he had scarcely thought of her through the night.
+It was astounding to recollect that not twelve hours ago she had kissed
+him and sent him on his journey. To him the gulf between then and now was
+so wide and blank that it might have been twelve weeks, or twelve months,
+or twelve years. It had been the night of the birth of a new creature, of
+the transmigration of a soul; it had no measurement in time, and threw all
+that preceded it into the mists of prenatal ages.</p>
+
+<p>These thoughts passed through his mind as he made a pillow for himself
+with his white flannel jacket, and twisted the ferns above it into a
+shelter from the flies. Having done this, he stood still and pondered.</p>
+
+<p>"Have I really become a new creature?" he asked himself.</p>
+
+<p>There was much in the outward conditions to encourage the fancy, while his
+inner consciousness found it easy to be credulous. Nothing was left of
+Norrie Ford but the mere flesh and bones&mdash;the least stable part of
+personality. Norrie Ford was gone&mdash;not dead, but gone&mdash;blasted,
+annihilated stamped out of existence, by the act of Organized Society. In
+its place the night of transition had called up some one else.</p>
+
+<p>"But who? ... Who am I? ... What am I?"</p>
+
+<p>Above all, a name seemed required to give him entity. It was a repetition
+of his feeling about the Wild Olive&mdash;the girl in the cabin in the woods.
+Suddenly he remembered that, if he had found a name for her, she had also
+found one for him&mdash;and that it was written on the steamer ticket in his
+pocket. He drew it out, and read:</p>
+
+<p>"Herbert Strange."</p>
+
+<p>He repeated it at first in dull surprise, and then with disapproval. It
+was not the kind of name he would have chosen. It was odd, noticeable&mdash;a
+name people would remember He would have preferred something commonplace
+such as might be found for a column or two in any city directory. She had
+probably got it from a novel&mdash;or made it up. Girls did such things. It was
+a pity, but there was no help for it now. As Herbert Strange he must go on
+board the steamer, and so he should be called until&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>But he was too tired to fix a date for the resumption of his own name or
+the taking of another. Flinging himself on his couch of moss and trailing
+ground-spruce, with the ferns closing over him, and the pines over them,
+he was soon asleep.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="part" id="p2">
+<h2>Part II</h2>
+
+<h3>Strange</h3>
+
+
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch07">
+<h3>VII</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>Dressed in overalls that had once been white, he was superintending the
+stacking of wool in a long, brick-walled, iron-roofed shed in Buenos Aires
+when the thought came to him how easy it had all been. He paused for a
+minute in his work of inspection&mdash;standing by an open window, where a
+whiff of fresh air from off the mud-brown Rio de la Plata relieved the
+heavy, greasy smell of the piles of unwashed wool&mdash;just to review again
+the past eighteen months. Below him stretched the noisy docks, with their
+row of electric cranes, as regular as a line of street lamps, loading or
+unloading a mile of steamers lying broadside on, and flying all flags but
+the Stars and Stripes. Wines, silk, machinery, textiles were coming out;
+wheat, cattle, hides, and beef were pouring in. In the confusion of
+tongues that reached him he could, on occasions, catch the tones of
+Spaniard, Frenchman, Swede, and Italian, together with all the varieties
+of English speech from Highland Scotch to Cockney; but none of the
+intonations of his native land. The comparative rarity of anything
+American in his city of refuge, while it added to his sense of exile,
+heightened his feeling of security. It was still another of the happy
+circumstances that had helped him.</p>
+
+<p>The strain under which he had lived during this year and a half had
+undoubtedly been great; but he could see now that it had been inward
+strain&mdash;the mental strain of unceasing apprehension, the spiritual strain
+of the new creature in casting off the old husk, and adapting itself not
+merely to new surroundings, but to a new life. This had been severe. He
+was not a rover, and still less an adventurer, in any of the senses
+attached to that word. His instincts were for the settled, the
+well-ordered, and the practical. He would have been content with any
+humdrum existence that permitted his peaceable, commercially gifted soul
+to develop in its natural environment. The process, therefore, by which
+Norrie Ford became Herbert Strange, even in his own thoughts, had been one
+of inner travail, though the outward conditions could not have been more
+favorable. Now that he had reached a point where his more obvious
+anxieties were passing away, and the hope of safety was becoming a
+reality, he could look back and see how relatively easy everything had
+been.</p>
+
+<p>He had leisure for reflection because it was the hour for the men's midday
+meal and siesta. He could see them grouped together&mdash;some thirty-odd&mdash;at
+the far end of the shed&mdash;sturdy little Italians, black-eyed, smiling,
+thrifty, dirty, and contented to a degree that made them incomprehensible
+to the ambitious, upward-toiling American set over them. They sat, or
+lounged, on piles of wood, or on the floor, some chattering, most of them
+asleep. He had begun like them. He had stacked wool under orders till he
+had made himself capable of being in command. He had been beneath the
+ladder; and though his foot was only on the lowest rung of it even now, he
+was satisfied to have made this first step upward.</p>
+
+<p>He could not be said to have taken it to his own surprise, since he had
+prepared himself for it, and for other such steps to follow it, knowing
+that they must become feasible in time. He had been given to understand
+that what the Argentine, in common with some other countries, needed most
+was neither men nor capital, but intelligence. Men were pouring in from
+every corner of the globe; capital was keen in looking for its
+opportunity; but for intelligence the demand was always greater than the
+supply.</p>
+
+<p>The first intimation of such a need had come to him on the <i>Empress of
+Erin</i>, in mid-Atlantic, by a chance opportunity of the voyage. It was on
+one of the first days of liberty when he had ventured to mix freely with
+his fellow-passengers. Up to the present he had followed the rule of
+conduct adopted at the little Canadian station of Saint Jean du Clou Noir.
+He went into public when necessary, but no oftener. He did then what other
+people did, in the way to attract the least attention. The season favored
+him, for amid the throngs of early autumn travellers, moving from country
+back to town, or from seaside resorts to the mountains he passed
+unnoticed. At Quebec he was one of the crowd of tourists come to see the
+picturesque old town. At Rimouski he was lost among the trainful of people
+from the Canadian maritime provinces taking the Atlantic steamer at a
+convenient port. He lived through each minute in expectation of the law's
+tap on his shoulder; but he acquired the habit of nonchalance. On
+shipboard it was a relief to be able to shut himself up in his cabin&mdash;his
+suite!--feigning sickness, but really allowing his taut nerves to relax,
+as he watched first the outlines of the Laurentides, and then the shores
+of Anticosti, and lastly the iron-black coast of Labrador, follow each
+other below the horizon. Two or three appearances at table gave him
+confidence that he had nothing to fear. By degrees he allowed himself to
+walk up and down the deck, where it was a queer sensation to feel that the
+long row of eyes must of necessity be fixed upon him. The mere fact that
+he was wearing another man's clothes&mdash;clothes he had found in the cabin
+trunk that had come on board for him&mdash;produced a shyness scarcely
+mitigated by the knowledge that he was far from looking grotesque.</p>
+
+<p>Little by little he plucked up courage to enter the smoking-room where the
+tacit, matter-of-course welcome of his own sex seemed to him like
+extraordinary affability. An occasional word from a neighbor, or an
+invitation to "take a hand at poker," or to "have a cocktail," was like an
+assurance to a man who fancies himself dead that he really is alive. He
+joined in no conversations and met no advances, but from the possibilities
+of doing so he would go back to his cabin smiling.</p>
+
+<p>The nearest approach to pleasure he allowed himself was to sit in a corner
+and listen to the talk of his fellow-men. It was sometimes amusing, but
+oftener stupid; it turned largely on food, with irrelevant interludes on
+business. It never went beyond the range of topics possible to the
+American or Canadian merchants, professional men, politicians, and
+saloon-keepers, who form the rank and file of smoking-room society on any
+Atlantic liner; but the Delphic worshipper never listened to Apollo's
+oracle with a more rapt devotion than Ford to this intercommunion of
+souls.</p>
+
+<p>It was in this way that he chanced one day to hear a man speaking of the
+Argentine. The remarks were casual, choppy, and without importance, but
+the speaker evidently knew the ground. Ford had already noticed him,
+because they occupied adjoining steamer-chairs&mdash;a tall, sallow Englishman
+of the ineffectual type, with sagging shoulders, a drooping mustache, and
+furtive eyes. Ford had scarcely thought of the Argentine since the girl in
+the cabin had mentioned it&mdash;- now ten or twelve days ago; but the
+necessity of having an objective point, and one sufficiently distant
+turned his mind again in that direction.</p>
+
+<p>"Did I hear you speaking yesterday of Buenos Aires?" he ventured to ask,
+on the next occasion when he found himself seated beside his neighbor on
+deck.</p>
+
+<p>The Englishman drew his brier-root pipe from his mouth, glanced sidewise
+from the magazine he was reading, and jerked his head in assent.</p>
+
+<p>"What kind of place did it seem to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Jolly rotten."</p>
+
+<p>Pondering this reply, Ford might have lost courage to speak again had he
+not caught the eye of the Englishman's wife as she leaned forward and
+peeped at him across her husband's brier-root. There was something in her
+starry glance&mdash;an invitation, or an incitement&mdash;that impelled him to
+continue.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been told it's the land of new opportunities."</p>
+
+<p>The Englishman grunted without looking up. "I didn't see many."</p>
+
+<p>"May I ask if you saw any?"</p>
+
+<p>"None fit for a white man."</p>
+
+<p>"My husband means none fit for a&mdash;gentleman. I liked the place."</p>
+
+<p>From the woman's steely smile and bitter-sweet tones Ford got hints of
+masculine inefficiency and feminine contempt which he had no wish to
+follow up. He knew from fragments of talk overheard in the smoking-room
+that they had tried Mexico, California, and Saskatchewan in addition to
+South America. From the impatience with which she shook the foot just
+visible beneath the steamer-rug, while all the rest of her bearing feigned
+repose, he guessed her humiliation at returning empty to the land she had
+left with an Anglo-Saxon's pioneering hope, beside a husband who could do
+nothing but curse luck. To get over the awkward minute he spoke hurriedly.</p>
+
+<p>"I've heard of a very good house out there&mdash;Stephens and Jarrott. Do you
+happen to know anything about them?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wool," the Englishman grunted again. "Wool and wheat. Beastly brutes."</p>
+
+<p>"They were horribly impertinent to my husband," the woman spoke up, with a
+kind of feverish eagerness to have her say. "They actually asked him if
+there was anything he could do. Fancy!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I know people of that sort put a lot of superfluous questions to
+you," Ford said. But the lady hurried on.</p>
+
+<p>"As to questions, there are probably fewer asked you in Argentine than
+anywhere else in the world. It's one of the standing jokes of the place,
+both in Buenos Aires and out in the Camp. Of course, the old Spanish
+families are all right; but when it comes to foreigners a social catechism
+wouldn't do. That's one of the reasons the place didn't agree with us. We
+wanted people to know who we'd been before we got there; but that branch
+of knowledge isn't cultivated."</p>
+
+<p>"More beastly Johnnies in the Argentine passin' under names not their
+own," said the man, moved to speak, at last, "than in all the rest of the
+world put together. Heard a story at the Jockey Club&mdash;lot of beastly
+native bounders in the Jockey Club&mdash;heard a story at the Jockey Club of a
+little Irish Johnny who'd been cheatin' at cards. Three other asses
+kicked him out. Beggar turned at the door and got in his lick of revenge.
+'Say boys, d'yez know why they call me Mickey Flanagan out here? Because
+it's me na-ame.' Beggar 'd got 'em all there."</p>
+
+<p>Ford nerved himself to laugh, but made an excuse for rising.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, there's lots of cleverness among them," the lady observed, before he
+had time to get away. "In fact, it's one of the troubles with the
+country&mdash;for people like us. There's too much competition in brains. My
+husband hit the right nail on the head when he said there was no chance
+for any beastly Johnny out there, unless he could use his bloomin'
+mind&mdash;and for us that was out of the question."</p>
+
+<p>Ford never spoke to them again, but he meditated on their words, finding
+himself at the end of twenty-four hours in possession of a new light.
+"I've got to use my bloomin' mind." The words seemed to offer him the clew
+to life. It was the answer to the question, "What should I do <i>there</i>?"
+which positively asked itself, whenever he thought of seeking a refuge in
+this country or in that. It came as a discovery that within himself was
+the power that would enable him to make the best of any country, and the
+country to make the best of him.</p>
+
+<p>He could hardly have explained how his decision to try Argentina had
+become fixed. Until he saw whether or not he should get successfully
+ashore at Liverpool there was a paralysis of all mental effort; but once
+on the train for London his plans appeared before him already formed. The
+country where few questions were asked and the past had no importance was
+clearly the place for him. Within a fortnight he was a second-class
+passenger on board the Royal Mail Steam Packet <i>Parana</i>, bound for Buenos
+Aires&mdash;thus fulfilling, almost unexpectedly to himself, the suggestion
+made by the girl in the Adirondack cabin, whose star, as he began to
+believe, must rule his fate.</p>
+
+<p>He thought of her now and then, but always with the same curious sense of
+remoteness&mdash;or unreality, as of a figure seen in a dream. Were it not for
+the substantial tokens of her actuality he possessed she would have seemed
+to him like the heroine of a play. He would have reproached himself for
+disloyalty if the intensity of each minute as he had to meet it had not
+been an excuse for him. The time would come when the pressure of the
+instant would be less great, and he should be able to get back the emotion
+with which he left her. Perhaps if she had been "his type of girl," her
+image would not have faded so quickly.</p>
+
+<p>There was but one thing for which he was not grateful to her. She had
+fixed the name of Herbert Strange upon him in such a way that he was
+unable to shake it off. His own first name was the unobjectionable
+monosyllable John&mdash;though he had always been known by his less familiar
+middle name, Norrie&mdash;and as John Ford he could have faced the world with a
+certain amount of bluff. He meant to begin the attempt immediately on
+reaching London, but the difficulty of appearing in a hotel under one name
+while everything he brought with him bore another was patent to him at
+once. Similarly, he could not receive the correspondence incidental to his
+outfit and his passage under the name of Ford in a house where he was
+known as Strange. Having applied for his passage as Strange, he knew it
+would create comment if he asked to be put down in the books as Ford. Do
+what he would he was obliged to appear on the printed list of second-cabin
+passengers as Herbert Strange, and he had made at least one acquaintance
+who would expect to call him so after they reached land.</p>
+
+<p>This was a little, clean-shaven man, in the neighborhood of sixty, always
+dressed at sea as he probably dressed on shore. He wore nothing but black,
+with a white shirt and a ready-made black bow-tie. He might have been a
+butler, an elderly valet, or a member of some discreet religious order in
+street costume. Ford had heard a flippant young Frenchman speak of him as
+an "ancien cur&eacute;, qui a fait quelque b&ecirc;tise"; and indeed there was about
+him that stamp of the ecclesiastic which is sometimes ineffaceable.</p>
+
+<p>"I call myself Durand," he said to Ford, using the conveniently ambiguous
+French idiom, "je m'appelle Durand."</p>
+
+<p>"Et je m'appelle Strange, I call myself Strange," Ford had replied,
+claiming the name for the first time without hesitation, but feeling the
+irrevocable nature of the words as soon as he had uttered them.</p>
+
+<p>Out of the crowd of second-rate Europeans of all races who made up the
+second cabin, the man who called himself Strange had selected the man who
+called himself Durand by some obscure instinct of affinity. "He looks like
+an old chap who could give one information," was Strange's own way of
+putting it, not caring to confess that he was feeling after a bit of
+sympathy. But the give and take of information became the basis of their
+friendship, and imparted the first real stimulus to the young man's
+awkward efforts to use his mind.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Durand had been thirty years in the Argentine, observing the
+place and the people, native and foreign, with the impartial shrewdness
+only possible to one who sought little for himself. It was a pleasure to
+share the fruits of his experience with one so eager to learn, for young
+men were not in the habit of showing him deference. He could tell Mr.
+Strange many things that would be to his advantage&mdash;what to do&mdash;what to
+avoid&mdash;what sort of place to live in&mdash;what he ought to pay&mdash;and what sort
+of company to keep.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, he knew the firm of Stephens and Jarrott&mdash;an excellent house. There
+was no Mr. Stephens now, only a Mr. Jarrott. Mr. Stephens had belonged to
+the great days of American enterprise in the southern hemisphere, to the
+time of Wheelwright, and Halsey, and Hale. The Civil War had put an end to
+that. Mr. Jarrott had come later&mdash;a good man, not generally understood. He
+had suffered a great loss a few years ago in the death of his
+brother-in-law and partner, Mr. Colfax. Mrs. Colfax, a pretty little
+woman, who hadn't old age in her blood either&mdash;one could see that&mdash;had
+gone back to the United States with her child&mdash;but a child!--blond as an
+angel&mdash;altogether darling&mdash;<i>tout &agrave; fait mignonne</i>. Monsieur Durand thought
+he remembered hearing that Mrs. Colfax had married again, but he couldn't
+say for certain. What would you? One heard so many things. He knew less of
+the family since the last boy died&mdash;the boy to whom he gave lessons in
+Spanish and French. Death hadn't spared the household&mdash;taking the three
+sons one after another and leaving father and mother alone. It was a
+thousand pities Mrs. Colfax had taken the little girl away. They loved her
+as if she had been their own&mdash;especially after the boys died. An excellent
+house! Mr. Strange couldn't do better than seek an entry there&mdash;it is I
+who tell you so&mdash;<i>c'est moi qui vous le dis</i>.</p>
+
+<p>All this was said in very good English, with occasional lapses into
+French, in a soft, benevolent voice, with slow benedictory movements of
+the hands, more and more suggestive of an ecclesiastic <i>en civile</i>&mdash;or
+under a cloud. Strange stole an occasional glance into the delicate,
+clear-cut face, where the thin lips were compressed into permanent lines
+of pain, and the sunken brown eyes looked out from under scholarly brows
+with the kind of hopeful anguish a penitent soul might feel in the midst
+of purifying flames. He remembered again that the flippant young Frenchman
+had said, "Un ancien cur&eacute;, qui a fait quelque b&ecirc;tise." Was it possible
+that some tragic sin lay under this gentle life? And was the
+four-funnelled, twin-screwed <i>Parana</i> but a ghostly ship bearing a cargo
+of haunted souls into their earthly purgatory?</p>
+
+<p>"But listen, monsieur," the old man began next day. But listen! There
+would be difficulties. Stephens and Jarrott employed only picked men, men
+with some experience&mdash;except for the mere manual labor such as the
+Italians could perform. Wouldn't it be well for Mr. Strange to qualify
+himself a little before risking a refusal? Ah, but how? Monsieur Durand
+would explain. There was first the question of Spanish. No one could get
+along in the Argentine without a working knowledge of that tongue.
+Monsieur Durand himself gave lessons in it&mdash;and in French&mdash;but in the
+English and American colonies of Buenos Aires exclusively. There were
+reasons why he did not care to teach among Catholics, though he himself
+was a fervent one, and he hoped&mdash;repentant. He pronounced the last word
+with some emphasis, as though to call Strange's attention to it. If his
+young friend would give him the pleasure of taking a few lessons, they
+could begin even now. It would while away the time on the voyage. He had
+his own method of teaching, a method based on the Berlitz system, but not
+borrowed from it, and, he ventured to say, possessing its own good
+points. For example: <i>el tabaco&mdash;la pipa&mdash;los cigarillos. Que es esto?
+Esto es la pipa</i>. Very simple. In a few weeks' time the pupil is carrying
+on conversations.</p>
+
+<p>It would be an incalculable advantage to Mr. Strange if he could enter on
+his Argentine life with some command of the vernacular. It might even be
+well to defer his search for permanent employment until he could have that
+accomplishment to his credit. If he possessed a little money&mdash;even a very
+little&mdash;Oh, he did? Then so much the better. He need not live on it
+entirely, but it would be something to fall back on while getting the
+rudiments of his education. In the mean time he could learn a little about
+wool if he picked up jobs&mdash;Oh, very humble ones!--they were always to be
+had by the young and able-bodied&mdash;at the Mercado Central, one of the great
+wool-markets of the world. He could earn a few pesetas, acquire practical
+experience, and fit himself out in Spanish, all at the same time.</p>
+
+<p>And he could live with relative economy. Monsieur Durand could explain
+that too. In fact, he might get board and lodging in the same house as
+himself, with Mrs. Wilson who conducted a modest home for "gentlemen
+only." Mrs. Wilson was a Protestant&mdash;what they called a Methodist, he
+believed&mdash;but her house was clean, with a few flowers in the patio, very
+different from the frightful conventillos in which the poor were obliged
+to herd. If Mr. Strange thought it odd that he, Monsieur Durand, should be
+living beneath a Protestant roof&mdash;well, there were reasons which were
+difficult to explain.</p>
+
+<p>Later on, perhaps, Mr. Strange might take a season on some great sheep
+estancia out in the Camp, where there were thousands of herds that were
+thousands strong. Monsieur Durand could help him in that too. He could
+introduce him to wealthy proprietors whose sons he had taught. It would be
+a hard life, but it need not be for long. He would live in a mud hut,
+dirty, isolated, with no companionship but that of the Italian laborers
+and their womenkind. But the outdoor existence would do him good; the air
+over the pampas was like wine; and the food would not be as bad as he
+might expect. There would be an abundance of excellent meat, chiefly
+mutton, it was true, which when cooked <i>&agrave;</i> la guacho&mdash;<i>carne concuero</i>,
+they called it in the Camp&mdash;roasted in the skin so as to keep all the
+juices in the meat&mdash;! A gesture of the hands, accompanied by a succulent
+inspiration between the teeth, gave Strange to understand that there was
+one mitigation at least to life on an Argentine estancia.</p>
+
+<p>To come into actual contact with the sheep, to know Oxfords, Cheviots,
+Leicesters, and Black-faced Downs, to assist at the feedings and washings
+and doctorings and shearings, to follow the crossings and recrossings and
+crossings again, that bred new varieties as if they were roses, to trace
+the processes by which the Argentine pampas supply novel resources to the
+European manufacturer, and the European manufacturer turns out the smart
+young man of London or New York, with his air of wearing "the very
+latest"&mdash;all this would not only give Strange a pleasing sense of being at
+the root of things, but form a sort of apprenticeship to his trade.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The men had not yet finished their hour of siesta, but Strange himself was
+at work. Ten minutes were sufficient for his own snack, and he never
+needed rest. Moreover, he was still too new to his position to do other
+than glory in the fact that he was a free being, doing a man's work, and
+earning a man's wage. Out in the Camp he had been too desolate to feel
+that, but here in Buenos Aires, at the very moment when the great city was
+waking to the knowledge of her queenship in the southern world&mdash;when the
+commercial hordes of the north were sweeping down in thousands of ships
+across the equator to outdo each other in her markets, it was an inspiring
+thing merely to be alive and busy. He was as proud of Stephens and
+Jarrott's long brick shed, where the sun beat pitilessly on the corrugated
+iron roof, and the smell of wool nearly sickened him, as if it had been a
+Rothschild's counting-house. His position there was just above the lowest;
+but his enthusiasm was independent of trivial things like that. How could
+he lounge about, taking siestas, when work was such a pleasure in itself?
+The shed of which he had the oversight was a model of its kind, not so
+much because his ambition designed to make it so, as because his ardor
+could make it nothing else.</p>
+
+<p>The roar of dock traffic through the open windows drowned everything but
+the loudest sounds, so that busily working, he heard nothing, and paid no
+attention, when some one stopped behind him. He had turned accidentally,
+humming to himself in the sheer joy of his task, when the presence of the
+stranger caused him to blush furiously beneath his tan. He drew himself
+up, like a soldier to attention. He had never seen the head of the firm
+that employed him, but he had heard a young Englishman describe him as
+"looking like a wooden man just coming into life," so that he was enabled
+to recognize him now. He did look something like a wooden man, in that the
+long, lean face, of the tone of parchment, was marked by the few, deep,
+almost perpendicular folds that give all the expression there is to a
+Swiss or German medieval statue of a saint or warrior in painted oak. One
+could see it was a face that rarely smiled, though there was plenty of
+life in the deep-set, gray-blue eyes, together with a force of cautious,
+reserved, and possibly timid, sympathy. Of the middle height and slender,
+with hair just turning from iron-gray to gray, immaculate in white duck,
+and wearing a dignified Panama, he stood looking at Strange&mdash;who, tall and
+stalwart in his greasy overalls, held his head high in conscious pride in
+his position in the shed&mdash;as Capital might look at Labor. It seemed a long
+time before Mr Jarrott spoke&mdash;the natural harshness of his voice softened
+by his quiet manner.</p>
+
+<p>"You're in charge of this gang?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>There was an embarrassed pause. As though not knowing what to say next,
+Mr. Jarrott's gaze travelled down the length of the shed to where the
+Italians, rubbing their sleepy eyes, were preparing for work again.</p>
+
+<p>"You're an American, I believe?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"How old are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not quite twenty-six."</p>
+
+<p>"What's your name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Herbert Strange!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah? One of the Stranges of Virginia?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir."</p>
+
+<p>There was another long pause, during which the older man's eyes wandered
+once more over the shed and the piles of wool, coming back again to
+Strange.</p>
+
+<p>"You should pick up a little Spanish."</p>
+
+<p>"I've been studying it. Hablo Espa&ntilde;ol, pero no muy bien."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Jarrott looked at him for a minute in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"So much the better&mdash;tanto mejor," he said, after a brief pause, and
+passed on.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch08">
+<h3>VIII</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>He was again thinking how easy it had been, as he stood, more than three
+years later, on the bluffs of Rosario, watching the sacks of wheat glide
+down the long chute&mdash;full seventy feet&mdash;into the hold of the <i>Walmer
+Castle</i>. The sturdy little Italians who carried the bags from the
+warehouse in long single file might have been those he had superintended
+in the wool-shed in Buenos Aires in the early stages of his rise. But he
+was not superintending these. He superintended the superintendents of
+those who superintended them. Tired with his long day in the office, he
+had come out toward the end of the afternoon not only to get a breath of
+the fresh air off the Parana, but to muse, as he often did, over the odd
+spectacle of the neglected, half-forgotten Spanish settlement, that had
+slumbered for two hundred years, waking to the sense of its destiny as a
+factor of importance in the modern world. Wheat had created Chicago and
+Winnipeg Adam-like from the ground; but it was rejuvenating Rosario de
+Santa F&eacute; Faust-like, with its golden elixir. It interested the man who
+called himself Herbert Strange&mdash;resident manager of Stephens and Jarrott's
+great wheat business in this outlet of the great wheat provinces&mdash;to watch
+the impulse by which Decrepitude rose and shook itself into Youth. As yet
+the process had scarcely advanced beyond the early stages of surprise.
+The dome of the seventeenth-century Renaissance cathedral accustomed for
+five or six generations to look down on low, one-storied Spanish dwellings
+surrounding patios almost Moorish in their privacy, seemed to lift itself
+in some astonishment over warehouses and flour-mills; while the mingling
+of its sweet old bells with the creaking of cranes and the shrieks of
+steam was like that chorus of the centuries in which there can be no
+blending of the tones.</p>
+
+<p>Strange felt himself so much a part of the rejuvenescence that the
+incongruity gave him no mental nor &aelig;sthetic shock. If in his present
+position he took a less na&iuml;ve pride than in that of three years ago, he
+was conscious none the less of a deep satisfaction in having his part,
+however humble, in the exercise of the world's energies. It gave him a
+sense of oneness with the great primal forces&mdash;with the river flowing
+beneath him, two hundred miles to the Atlantic, with the wheat fields
+stretching behind him to the confines of Brazil and the foothills of the
+Andes&mdash;to be a moving element in this galvanizing of new life into the
+dormant town, in this finding of new riches in the waiting earth. There
+was, too, a kind of companionship in the steamers moored to the red buoys
+in the river, waiting their turns to come up to the insufficient quays and
+be loaded. They bore such names as <i>Devonshire</i>, <i>Ben Nevis</i>, and
+<i>Princess of Wales</i>. They would go back to the countries where the speech
+was English, and the ideals something like his own. They would go back,
+above all, to the north, to the north that he yearned for with a yearning
+to which time brought no mitigation, to the north which was coming to mean
+for him what heaven means to a soul outside the scope of redemption.</p>
+
+<p>It was only on occasions that this sentiment got possession of him
+strongly. He was generally able to keep it down. Hard work, assisted by
+his natural faculty for singleness of purpose and concentration of
+attention, kept him from lifting the eyes of his heart toward the
+unattainable. Moreover, he had developed an enthusiasm, genuine in its
+way, for the land of his adoption. The elemental hugeness of its
+characteristics&mdash;its rivers fifty to a hundred miles in width, its farms a
+hundred thousand acres in extent, its sheep herds and cattle herds
+thousands to the count&mdash;were of the kind to appeal to an ardent, strenuous
+nature. There was an exhilarating sense of discovery in coming thus early
+to one of the world's richest sources of supply at a minute when it was
+only beginning to be tapped. Out in the Camp there was an impression of
+fecundity, of earth and animal alike, that seem to relegate poverty and
+its kindred ills to a past that would never return; while down in the Port
+the growth of the city went on like the bursting of some magic, monstrous
+flower. It was impossible not to share in some degree the pride of the
+braggart Argentine.</p>
+
+<p>It was difficult, too, not to love a country in which the way had been
+made so smooth for him. While he knew that he brought to his work those
+qualities most highly prized by men of business, he was astonished
+nevertheless at the rapidity with which he climbed. Men of long experience
+in the country had been more than once passed over, while he got the
+promotion for which they had waited ten and fifteen years. He admired the
+way in which for the most part they concealed their chagrin, but now and
+then some one would give it utterance.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, grafter!" a little man had said to him, on the day when his
+present appointment had become known among his colleagues.</p>
+
+<p>The speaker was coming down the stairs of the head office in the Avenida
+de Mayo as Strange was going up. His name was Green, and though he had
+been twenty years in Argentine, he haled from Boston. Short and stout,
+with gray hair, a gray complexion, a gray mustache, and wearing gray
+flannels, with a gray felt hat, he produced a general impression of
+neutrality. Strange would have gone on his way unheeding had not the
+snarling tone arrested him. He had ignored this sort of insult more than
+once; but he thought the time had come for ending it. He turned on an
+upper step, looking down on the ashy-faced little man, to whom he had once
+been subordinate and who was now subordinate to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello&mdash;what?" he asked, with an air of quiet curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>"I said, Hello, grafter," Green repeated, with bravado.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"I guess you know that as well as I do."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't. What is it? Out with it. Fire away."</p>
+
+<p>His tranquil air of strength had its effect in overawing the little man,
+though the latter stood firm and began to explain.</p>
+
+<p>"A grafter is a fellow with an underground pull for getting hold of what
+belongs to some one else. At least that's what I understand by it&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It's very much what I understand by it, too. But have I ever got hold of
+anything of yours?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, confound you! You've taken my job&mdash;the job I've waited for ever
+since 1885."</p>
+
+<p>"Did waiting for it make it yours? If so, you would have come by it more
+easily than I did. I worked for it."</p>
+
+<p>"Worked for it? Haven't I worked for it, too? Haven't I been in this
+office for going on seventeen years? Haven't I done what they've paid me
+for&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say. But I've done twice what they've paid me for. That's the
+secret of my pull, and I don't mind giving it away. You mayn't like
+it&mdash;some fellows don't; but you'll admit it it's a pull you could have
+had, as well as I. Look here, Green," he continued, in the same quiet
+tone, "I'm sorry for you. If I were in your place, I dare say I should
+feel as you do. But if I <i>were</i> in your place, I'll be hanged if I
+shouldn't make myself fit to get out of it. You're not fit&mdash;and that's the
+only reason why you aren't going as resident manager to Rosario. You're
+labelled with the year '1885,' as if you were a bottle of champagne&mdash;and
+you've forgotten that champagne is a wine that gets out of date. You're a
+good chap&mdash;quite as good as your position&mdash;but you're not better than your
+position&mdash;and when you are you won't be left in it any longer."</p>
+
+<p>In speaking in this way the man who had been Norrie Ford was consciously
+doing violence to himself. His natural tendency was to be on friendly
+terms with those around him, and he had no prompting stronger than the
+liking to be liked. In normal conditions he was always glad to do a
+kindness; and when he hurt any one's feelings he hurt his own still more.
+Even now, though he felt justified in giving little Green to understand
+his intoleration of impertinence, he was obliged to fortify himself by
+appealing to his creed that he owed no consideration to any one. Little
+Green was protected by a whole world organized in his defence; Norrie Ford
+had been ruined by that world, while Herbert Strange had been born outside
+it. With a temperament like that of a quiet mastiff, he was forced to turn
+himself into something like a wolf.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the fact that little Green's account of the brief meeting on
+the stairs presented it in the light of the castigation he had
+administered to "that confounded upstart from nobody knows where," Strange
+noticed that it made the clerks in the office, most of whom had been his
+superiors as Green had been, less inclined to bark at his heels. He got
+respect from them, even if he could not win popularity&mdash;and from
+popularity, in any case, he had been shut out from the first. No man can
+be popular who works harder than anybody else, shuns companionship, and
+takes his rare amusements alone. He had been obliged to do all three,
+knowing in advance that it would create for him a reputation of an "ugly
+brute" in quarters whence he would have been glad to get good-will.</p>
+
+<p>Finding the lack of popularity a safeguard not only against prying
+curiosity, but against inadvertent self-betrayal, it was with some
+misgiving that he saw his hermit-like seclusion threatened, as he rose
+higher in the business and consequently in the social&mdash;scale. In the
+English-speaking colony of Buenos Aires the one advance is likely to bring
+about the other&mdash;especially in the case of a good-looking young man,
+evidently bound to make his mark, and apparently of respectable
+antecedents. The first menace of danger had come from Mr. Jarrott himself,
+who had unexpectedly invited his intelligent employee to lunch with him at
+a club, in order to talk over a commission with which Strange was to be
+intrusted. On this occasion he was able to stammer his way out of the
+invitation; but when later, Mr. Skinner, the second partner, made a like
+proposal, he was caught without an excuse, being obliged, with some
+confusion, to eat his meal in a fashionable restaurant in the Calle
+Florida. Oddly enough, both his refusal on the one occasion and his
+acceptance on the other obtained him credit with his elders and superiors,
+as a modest young fellow, too shy to seize an honor, and embarrassed when
+it was thrust upon him.</p>
+
+<p>To Strange both occurrences were so alarming that he put himself into a
+daily attitude of defence, fearing similar attack from Mr. Martin, the
+third member of the firm. He, however, made no sign; and the bomb was
+thrown by his wife. It came in the shape of a card informing Mr. Strange
+that on a certain evening, a few weeks hence, Mrs. Martin would be at
+home, at her residence in Hurlingham. It was briefly indicated that there
+would be dancing, and he was requested to answer if he pleased. The
+general information being engraved, his particular name was written in a
+free bold hand, which he took to be that of one of the daughters of the
+family.</p>
+
+<p>Though he did his best to keep his head, there was everything in that bit
+of pasteboard to throw him into a state of something like excitement. Not
+only were the doors of the world Norrie Ford had known being thrown open
+to Herbert Strange, but the one was being moved by the same thrill&mdash;the
+thrill of the feminine&mdash;that had been so powerful with the other. He was
+growing more susceptible to it in proportion as it seemed forbidden&mdash;just
+as a man in a desert island may dream of the delights of wine.</p>
+
+<p>He had looked at the Misses Martin, but had never supposed they could
+fling a glance at him. He had seen them at the public gathering-places&mdash;in
+their box at the opera, in the grand stand at the Jockey Club, in their
+carriage at Palermo or in the Florida. They were handsome girls&mdash;blonde
+and dashing&mdash;whose New York air was in pleasant contrast to the graceful
+indolence or stolid repose of the dark-eyed ladies of the Argentine, too
+heavily bejewelled and too consciously dressed according to the Paris
+mode. Strange said of the Misses Martin, as he had said of Wild Olive,
+that they were "not his type of girl"&mdash;but they were girls&mdash;they were
+American girls&mdash;they were bright, lively girls, representing the very
+poetry and romance of the world that had turned him out.</p>
+
+<p>It was a foregone conclusion that he should decline their invitation, and
+he did so; but the mere occasion for doing it gave his mind an impetus in
+the direction in which he had been able hitherto to check it. He began
+again to think of the feminine, to dream of it, to long for it. For the
+time being it was the feminine in the abstract&mdash;without features or
+personality. As far as it took form at all it was with the dainty,
+nestling seductiveness that belonged to what he called his "type"&mdash;a charm
+that had nothing in common with the forest grace of the Wild Olive or the
+dash of the Misses Martin.</p>
+
+<p>Now and then he caught glimpses of it, but it was generally out of reach.
+Soft eyes, of the velvety kind that smote him most deliciously, would lift
+their light upon him through the casement of some old Spanish residence,
+or from the daily procession of carriages moving slowly along the palm
+avenue at Palermo or in the Florida. When this happened he would have a
+day or two of acting foolishly, in the manner of the Bonarense bucks. He
+would stand for hours of his leisure time&mdash;if he could get away from the
+office at the minute of the fashionable promenade&mdash;on the pavement of the
+Florida, or under a palm-tree in the park, waiting for a particular
+carriage to drive round again and again and again, while he returned the
+sweet gaze which the manners of the country allow an unknown lady to
+bestow, as a rose is allowed to shed its beauty. This being done, he
+would go away, and realize that he had been making himself ridiculous.</p>
+
+<p>Once the incarnation of his dreams came so near him that it was actually
+within his grasp. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil dangled its
+fruit right before his eyes in the person of Mademoiselle Hortense, who
+sang at the Caf&eacute; Florian, while the clients, of whom he was sometimes one,
+smoked and partook of refreshments. She was just the little round, soft,
+dimpling, downy bundle of youth and love he so often saw in his mind's
+eye, and so rarely in reality, and he was ready to fall in love with any
+one. The mutual acquaintance was formed, as a matter of course, over the
+piece of gold he threw into the tambourine, from which, as she passed from
+table to table, she was able to measure her hearer's appreciation of art.
+Those were the days in which he first began to be able to dress well, and
+to have a little money to throw away. For ten days or a fortnight he threw
+it away in considerable sums, being either in love or in a condition like
+it. He respected Mademoiselle Hortense, and had sympathy with her in her
+trials. She was desperately sick of her roving life as he was of Mrs.
+Wilson's boarding-house. She was as eager to marry and settle down as he
+to have a home. The subject was not exactly broached between them, but
+they certainly talked round it. The decisive moment came on the night when
+her troupe was to sail for Montevideo. In the most delicate way in the
+world she gave him to understand that she would remain even at the
+eleventh hour if he were to say the word. She might be on the deck, she
+might be in her berth, and it still would not be too late. He left her at
+nine, and she was to sail at eleven. During the two intervening hours he
+paced the town, a prey to hopes, fears, temptations, distresses. To do him
+justice, it was her broken heart he thought of, not his own. To him she
+was only one of many possibilities; to her, he was the chance of a
+lifetime. She might never, he said to himself, "fall into the clutches of
+so decent a chap again." It was a wild wrestle between common sense and
+folly&mdash;so wild that he was relieved to hear a clock strike eleven, and to
+know she must have sailed.</p>
+
+<p>The incident sobered him by showing him how near and how easily he could
+come to a certain form of madness. After that he worked harder than ever,
+and in the course of time got his appointment at Rosario. It was a great
+"rise," not only in position and salary, but also in expectations. Mr.
+Martin had been resident manager at Rosario before he was taken into
+partnership&mdash;so who could tell what might happen next?</p>
+
+<p>The first intimation of the change was conveyed by Mr. Jarrott in a manner
+characteristically casual. Strange, being about to leave the private
+office one day, after a consultation on some matter of secondary import,
+was already half-way to the door, while Mr. Jarrott himself was stooping
+to replace a book in the revolving bookcase that stood beside his chair.</p>
+
+<p>"By-the-way," he said, without looking up, "Jenkins is going to represent
+the house in New York. We think you had better take his place at Rosario."</p>
+
+<p>Strange drew himself up to attention. He knew the old man liked his
+subordinates to receive momentous orders as if they came in the routine of
+the day.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, sir," he said, quietly, betraying no sign of his excitement
+within. Raising himself, Mr. Jarrott looked about uneasily, as if trying
+to find something else to say, while Strange began again to move toward
+the door.</p>
+
+<p>"And Mrs. Jarrott&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Strange stopped so still that the senior partner paused with that air of
+gentlemanly awkwardness&mdash;something like an Englishman's&mdash;which he took on
+when he had firmly made up his mind.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Jarrott," he continued, "begs me to say she hopes you will&mdash;a&mdash;come
+and lunch with us on Sunday next."</p>
+
+<p>There was a long pause, during which the young man searched wildly for
+some formula that would soften his point-blank refusal.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Jarrott is awfully kind," he began at last to stammer, "but if she
+would excuse me&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"She will expect you on Sunday at half-past twelve."</p>
+
+<p>The words were uttered with that barely perceptible emphasis which, as the
+whole house knew, implied that all had been said.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>In the end the luncheon was no formidable affair. Except for his fear,
+lest it should be the thin edge of the wedge of that American social life
+which it would be perilous for him to enter, he would have enjoyed this
+peep into a comfortable home, after his long exile from anything of the
+sort. In building his house at Palermo, Mr. Jarrott had kept, in the
+outlines at least, to the old Spanish style of architecture, as being most
+suited to the history and climate of the country, though the wealthy
+Argentines themselves preferred to have their residences look&mdash;like their
+dresses, jewels, and carriages&mdash;as if they had come from Paris. The
+interior patio was spacious, shaded with vines, and gay with flowers,
+while birds, caged or free, were singing everywhere. The rooms
+surrounding it were airy and cool, and adapted to American standards of
+comfort. In the dining-room mahogany, damask, crystal, and silver gave
+Strange an odd feeling of having been wafted back to the days and usages
+of the boyhood of Norrie Ford.</p>
+
+<p>As the only guest he found himself seated on Mrs. Jarrott's right, and
+opposite Miss Queenie Jarrott, the sister of the head of the house. The
+host, as his manner was, spoke little. Miss Jarrott, too, only looked at
+Strange across the table, smiling at him with her large, thin,
+upward-curving smile, comic in spite of itself, and with a certain pathos,
+since she meant it to be charged with sentiment. Over the party at table,
+over the elderly men-servants who waited on them, over the room, over the
+patio, there was&mdash;except for the singing of the birds&mdash;the hush that
+belongs to a household that never hears the noise or the laughter of
+youth.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jarrott took the brunt of the conversation on herself She was a
+beautiful woman, faded now with the pallor that comes to northern people
+after a long residence in the sub-tropical south, and languid from the
+same cause. Her handsome hazel eyes looked as if they had been used to
+weeping, though they conserved a brightness that imparted animation to her
+face. A white frill round her throat gave the only relief to her plain
+black dress, but she wore many handsome rings, after the Argentine fashion
+as well as a brooch and earrings of black pearls.</p>
+
+<p>She began by asking her guest if it was true, as Mr. Jarrott had informed
+her, that he was not one of the Stranges of Virginia. She thought he must
+be. It would be so odd if he wasn't. There <i>were</i> Stranges in Virginia,
+and had been for a great many generations. In fact, her own family, the
+Colfaxes, had almost intermarried with them. When she said almost, she
+meant that they had intermarried with the same families&mdash;the Yorkes, the
+Endsleighs and the Poles. If Mr. Strange did belong to the Virginia
+Stranges, she was sure they could find relatives in common. Oh, he didn't?
+Well, it seemed really as if he must. If Mr. Strange came from New York,
+he probably knew the Wrenns. Her own mother was a Wrenn. She had been Miss
+Wrenn before she was Mrs. Colfax. He thought he had heard of them? Oh,
+probably. They were well-known people&mdash;at least they had been in the old
+days&mdash;though New York was so very much changed. She rarely went back there
+now, the voyage was so long, but when she did she was quite bewildered.
+Her own family used to be so conservative, keeping to a little circle of
+relatives and friends that rarely went north of Boston or south of
+Philadelphia; but now when she made them a visit she found them surrounded
+by a lot of people who had never been heard of before. She thought it a
+pity that in a country where there were so few distinctions, those which
+existed shouldn't be observed.</p>
+
+<p>It was a relief to Strange when the sweet, languorous monologue,
+punctuated from time to time by a response from himself, or an
+interjectory remark from one of the others, came to an end, and they
+proceeded to the patio for coffee.</p>
+
+<p>It was served in a corner shaded by flowering vines, and presided over by
+a huge green and gray parrot in a cage. The host and hostess being denied
+this form of refreshment took advantage of the moment to stroll arm in arm
+around the court, leaving Miss Jarrott in t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te with Strange. He
+noticed that as this lady led the way her figure was as lithe as a young
+girl's and her walk singularly graceful. "No one is ever old with a
+carriage like yours," Miss Jarrott had been told, and she believed it. She
+dressed and talked according to her figure, and, had it not been for
+features too heavily accentuated in nose and chin, she might have produced
+an impression of eternal spring-tide. As it was, the comic papers would
+have found her cruelly easy to caricature, had she been a statesman. The
+parrot screamed at her approach, croaking out an air, slightly off the
+key:</p>
+
+<blockquote class="poetry"><div class="stanza">
+<div class="line">    "Up and down the ba-by goes,</div>
+<div class="line">    Turning out its lit-tle ..."</div>
+</div></blockquote>
+
+<p>Tempted to lapse into prose, it proceeded to cry:</p>
+
+<p>"Wa-al, Polly, how are you to-day? Wa-al, pretty well for an old gal,"
+after which there was a minute of inarticulate grumbling. When coffee was
+poured, and the young man's cigarette alight, Miss Jarrott seized the
+opportunity which her sister-in-law's soft murmur at the table had not
+allowed her.</p>
+
+<p>"It's really funny you should be Mr. Strange, because I've known a young
+lady of the same name. That is, I haven't known her exactly, but I've
+known about her."</p>
+
+<p>Not to show his irritation at the renewal of the subject, Strange presumed
+she was one of the Stranges of Virginia, with right and title to be so
+called.</p>
+
+<p>"She is and she isn't," Miss Jarrot replied. "I know you'll think it funny
+to hear me speak so; but I can't explain I'm like that. I can't always
+explain. I say lots and lots of things that people just have to interpret
+for themselves It's funny I should be like that, isn't it? I wonder why?
+Can you tell me why? And this Miss Strange&mdash;I never knew her really&mdash;not
+really&mdash;but I feel as if I had. I always feel that way about friends of
+friends of mine. I feel as if they were my friends, too. I'd go through
+fire and water for them. Of course that's just an expression but you know
+what I mean, now don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>Having been assured on that point, she continued:</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid you'll find us a very quiet household, Mr. Strange, but we're
+in mourning. That is, Mrs. Jarrott is in mourning; and when those dear to
+me are in mourning I always feel that I'm in mourning, too. I'm like that.
+I never can tell why it is, but&mdash;I'm like that. My sister-in-law has just
+lost her sister-in-law. Of course that's no relation to me, is it? And yet
+I feel as if it was. I've always called Mrs. Colfax my sister-in-law, and
+I've taught her little girl to call me Aunt Queenie. They lived here once.
+Mr. Colfax was Mrs. Jarrott's brother and Mr. Jarrott's partner. The
+little girl was born here. It was a great loss to my brother when Mr.
+Colfax died. Mrs. Colfax went back to New York and married again. That was
+a blow, too; so we haven't been on the same friendly terms of late years.
+But now I hope it will be different. I'm like that. I always hope. It's
+funny, isn't it? No matter what happens, I always think there's a silver
+lining to the cloud. Now, why should I be like that? Why shouldn't I
+despair, like other people?"</p>
+
+<p>Strange ventured the suggestion that she had been born with a joyous
+temperament.</p>
+
+<p>"Wa-al, pretty well for an old gal!" screamed the parrot ending in a
+croaking laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure I don't know," Miss Jarrott mused. "Everybody is different,
+don't you think? And yet it sometimes seems to me that no one can be so
+different as I am. I always hope and hope; and you see, in this case I've
+been justified. We're going to have our little girl again. She's coming to
+make us a long, long visit. Her name is Evelyn; and once we get her here
+we hope she'll stay. Who knows? There may be something to keep her here.
+You never can tell about that. She's an orphan, with no one in the world
+but a stepfather, and he's blind. So who has a better right to her? I
+always think that people who have a right to other people should have
+them, don't you? Besides, he's going to Wiesbaden, to a great oculist
+there, so that Evelyn will come to us as her natural protectors. She's
+nearly eighteen now, and she wasn't eight when she left us. Oh yes, of
+course we've seen her since then&mdash;when we've gone to New York&mdash;but that
+hasn't been often. She will have changed; she'll have her hair up, and be
+wearing her dresses long; but I shall know her. Oh, you couldn't deceive
+me. I never forget a face. I'm like that. No, nor names either. I should
+remember you, Mr. Strange, if I met you fifty years from now. I noticed
+you when you first began to work for Stephens and Jarrott. So did my
+sister-in-law, but I noticed you first. We've often spoken of you,
+especially after we knew your name was Strange. It seemed to us so
+strange. That's a pun, isn't it? I often make them. We both thought you
+were like what Henry&mdash;that's Mr. Jarrott's oldest son&mdash;might have grown
+to, if he had been spared to us. We've had a great deal of sorrow&mdash;Oh, a
+great deal! It's weaned my sister-in-law away from the world altogether.
+She's like that. My brother, too&mdash;he isn't the same man. So when Evelyn
+comes we hope we shall see you often, Mr. Strange. You must begin to look
+on this house as your second home. Indeed, you must. It'll please my
+brother. I've never heard him speak of any young man as he's spoken of
+you. I think he sees the likeness to Henry. That'll be next year when
+Evelyn comes. No, I'm sorry to say it isn't to be this year. She can't
+leave her stepfather till he goes to Wiesbaden. Then she'll be free. Some
+one else is going to Wiesbaden with him. And isn't it funny, it's the same
+Miss Strange&mdash;the lady we were speaking of just now."</p>
+
+<p>It was already some months since those words had been spoken, so that he
+had ceased to dwell on them; but at first they haunted him like a snatch
+of an air that passes through the mental hearing, and yet eludes the
+attempt to bring it to the lips. Even if he had had the synthetic
+imagination that easily puts two and two together, he had not the leisure,
+in the excitement of his removal to Rosario and the undertaking of his
+duties there, to follow up a set of clews that were scarcely more palpable
+than odors. Nevertheless the words came back to him from time to time, and
+always with the same odd suggestion of a meaning special&mdash;perhaps
+fatal&mdash;to himself. They came back to him at this minute, as he stood
+watching the loading of the <i>Walmer Castle</i> and breathing the fresh air
+off the Parana. But if they threatened danger, it was a danger that
+disappeared the instant he turned and faced it&mdash;leaving nothing behind but
+the evanescent memory of a memory, such as will sometimes remain from a
+dream about a dream.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch09">
+<h3>IX</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>Another year had passed before he learned what Miss Jarrott's words were
+to mean to him. Knowledge came then as a flash of revelation in which he
+saw himself and his limitations clearly defined. His success at Rosario
+had been such that he had begun to think himself master of Fate; but Fate
+in half an hour laughingly showed herself mistress of him.</p>
+
+<p>He had been called to Buenos Aires on an errand of piety and affection&mdash;to
+bury Monsieur Durand. The poor old unfrocked priest had been gathered to
+his rest, taking his secret with him&mdash;penitent, reconciled to the Church,
+and fortified with the Last Sacraments. Strange slipped a crucifix between
+the wax-like fingers, and followed&mdash;the only mourner&mdash;to the Recoleta
+Cemetery.</p>
+
+<p>Having ordered a cross to mark the grave, he remained in town a day or two
+longer to attend to a small matter which for some time past he had at
+heart and on his conscience. It was now three or four years since he had
+set aside the sum lent him by the girl for whom he had still no other name
+than that of the Wild Olive. He had invested it, and reinvested it, till
+it had become a fund of some importance. Putting it now into the safest
+American securities, he placed them in the hands of a firm of English
+solicitors in Buenos Aires, with directions not only to invest the
+interest from time to time, but&mdash;in the event of his death&mdash;to follow
+certain sealed instructions with which also he intrusted them. From the
+few hints he was able to give them in this way he had little doubt but
+that her identity could be discovered, and the loan returned.</p>
+
+<p>In taking these steps he could not but see that what would be feasible in
+case of his death must be equally feasible now; but he had two reasons for
+not attempting it. The first was definite and prudential. He was unwilling
+to risk anything that could connect him ever so indirectly with the life
+of Norrie Ford. Secondly, he was conscious of a vague shrinking from the
+payment of this debt otherwise than face to face. Apart from
+considerations of safety, he was unwilling to resort to the commonplace
+channels of business as long as there was a possibility of taking another
+way.</p>
+
+<p>Not that he was eager to see her again. He had questioned himself on that
+point, and knew she had faded from his memory. Except for a vision of
+fugitive dark eyes&mdash;eyes of Beatrice Cenci&mdash;he could scarcely recall her
+features. Events during the last six years had pressed so fast on each
+other, life had been so full, so ardent, each minute had been so insistent
+that he should give it his whole soul's attention, that the antecedent
+past was gone like the passion no effort can recapture. As far as he could
+see her face at all, it looked at him out of an abyss of oblivion to which
+his mind found it as hard to travel back as a man's imagination to his
+infancy.</p>
+
+<p>It was with some shame that he admitted this. She had saved him&mdash;in a
+sense, she had created him. By her sorcery she had raised up Herbert
+Strange out of the ruin of Norrie Ford, and endowed him with young vigor.
+He owed her everything. He had told her so. He had vowed his life to her.
+It was to be hers to dispose of, even at her caprice. It was what he had
+meant in uttering his parting words to her. But, now, that he had the
+power in some degree, he was doing nothing to fulfil his promise. He had
+even lost the desire to make the promise good.</p>
+
+<p>It was not difficult to find excuses for himself. They were ready-made to
+his hand. There was nothing practical that he could do except what he had
+done about the money. Life was not over yet; and some day the chance might
+come to prove himself as high-souled as he should like to be. If he could
+only have been surer that he was inwardly sincere he would not have been
+uneasy over his inactivity.</p>
+
+<p>Then, within a few minutes, the thing happened that placed him in a new
+attitude, not only toward the Wild Olive, but toward all life.</p>
+
+<p>Business with the head office detained him in Buenos Aires longer than he
+had expected. It was business of a few hours at a time, leaving him
+leisure for the theatres and the opera, for strollings at Palermo, and for
+standing stock-still watching the procession of carriages in the Florida
+or the Avenida Sarmiento, in the good Bonarense fashion. He was always
+alone, for he had acquired the art&mdash;none too easy&mdash;of taking pleasure
+without sharing it.</p>
+
+<p>So he found himself, one bright afternoon, watching the races from the
+lawn of the Hipodromo of the Jockey Club. He was fond of horses, and he
+liked a good race. When he went to the Hipodromo it was for the sporting,
+not the social, aspect of the affair. Nevertheless, as he strolled about,
+he watched for that occasional velvety glance that gave him pleasure, and
+amused himself with the types seated around him, or crossing his
+path&mdash;heavy, swarthy Argentines, looking like Italian laborers grown
+rich&mdash;their heavy, swarthy wives, come out to display all the jewels that
+could be conveniently worn at once&mdash;pretty, dark-eyed girls, already with
+a fatal tendency to embonpoint, wearing diamonds in their ears and round
+their necks as an added glory to costumes fresh from the rue de la
+Paix&mdash;grave little boys, in gloves and patent-leather boots, seated
+without budging by their mammas, sucking the tops of their canes in
+imitation of their elder brothers, who wandered about in pairs or groups,
+all of the latest cut, eying the ladies but rarely addressing them&mdash;tall
+Englishmen, who looked taller than they were in contrast to the pudgy race
+around them, as the Germans looked lighter and the French more
+blond&mdash;Italian opera singers, Parisian actresses Spanish dancers,
+music-hall soubrettes&mdash;diplomats of all nations&mdash;clerks out for a
+holiday&mdash;sailors on shore&mdash;tourists come to profit by a spectacle that has
+no equal in the southern world, and little of the kind that is more
+amusing in the north.</p>
+
+<p>As Strange's glance roamed about in search of a response he not
+infrequently received it, for he was a handsome fellow by this time&mdash;tall,
+well dressed, and well set up, his trim, fair beard emphasizing the
+clear-cut regularity of his profile, without concealing the kindliness
+that played about the mouth. A little gray on the temples, as well as a
+few tiny wrinkles of concentration about the eyes, gave him an air of
+maturity beyond his age of thirty-two. The Anglo-Saxon influence in the
+Argentine is English&mdash;from which cause he had insensibly taken on an
+English air, as his speech had acquired something of the English
+intonation. He was often told that he might pass for an Englishman
+anywhere, and he was glad to think so. It was a reason the less for being
+identified as Norrie Ford. It sometimes seemed to him that he could, in
+case of necessity, go back to North America, to New York, to Greenport, or
+even to the little county town where he had been tried and sentenced to
+death, and run no risk of detection.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The staring of other men first directed his attention toward her. She was
+sitting slightly detached from the party of Americans to whom she clearly
+belonged, and in which the Misses Martin formed the merrily noisy centre.
+Though dressed in white, that fell softly about her feet, and trained on
+the grass sidewise from her chair, her black cuffs, collar and hat
+suggested the last days of mourning. Whether or not she was aware of the
+gaze of the passers-by it was difficult to guess, for her air of demure
+simplicity was proof against penetration. She was one of those dainty
+little creatures who seem to see best with the eyes downcast; but when she
+lifted her dark lashes, the darker from contrast with the golden hair, to
+sweep heaven and earth in a blue glance that belonged less to scrutiny
+than to prayer, the effort seemed to create a shyness causing the lids,
+dusky as some flowers are, to drop heavily into place again, like curtains
+over a masterpiece. It was so that they rose and fell before Strange, her
+eyes meeting his in a look that no Argentine beauty could ever have
+bestowed, in that it was free from coquetry or intention, and wholly
+accidental.</p>
+
+<p>It was in fact this accidental element, with its lack of preparation, that
+gave the electric thrill to both. That is to say, in Strange the thrill
+was electric; as for her, she gave no sign further than that she opened
+her parasol and raised it to shade her face. Having done this she
+continued to sit in undisturbed composure, though she probably saw
+through her fringing lashes that the tall, good-looking young man still
+stood spellbound, not twenty yards away.</p>
+
+<p>Strange, on his part, was aware of the unconventionality of his behavior,
+though he was incapable of moving on. He felt the occasion to be one which
+justified him in transcending the established rules of courtesy. He was
+face to face with the being who met not only all the longings of his
+earthly love, but the higher, purer aspirations that accompanied it. It
+was not, so he said to himself, a chance meeting; it was one which the
+ages had prepared, and led him up to. She was "his type of girl" only in
+so far as she distilled the essence of his gross imaginings and gave them
+in their exquisite reality. So, too, she was the incarnation of his dreams
+only because he had yearned for something mundane of which she was the
+celestial, and the true, embodiment. He had that sense of the
+insufficiency of his own powers of preconception which comes to a blind
+man when he gets his sight and sees a rose.</p>
+
+<p>He was so lost in the wonder of the vision that he had to be awakened as
+from a trance when Miss Jarrott, very young and graceful, crossed the lawn
+and held out her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Strange! I didn't know you were in town. My brother never mentioned
+it. He's like that. He never tells. If I didn't guess his thoughts, I
+shouldn't know anything. But I always guess people's thoughts. Why do you
+suppose it is? I don't know. Do you? When I see people, I can tell what
+they're thinking of as well as anything. I'm like that; but I can't tell
+how I do it. I saw you from over there, and I knew you were thinking about
+Evelyn. Now weren't you? Oh, you can't deceive me. You were thinking of
+her just as plain&mdash;! Well, now you must come and be introduced."</p>
+
+<p>He felt that he stumbled blindly as he crossed the bit of greensward in
+Miss Jarrott's wake; and yet he kept his head sufficiently to know that he
+was breaking his rules, contradicting his past, and putting himself in
+peril. In being presented to the Misses Martin and their group, he was
+actually entering that Organized Society to which Herbert Strange had no
+attachments, and in which he could thrust down no roots. By sheer force of
+will he might keep a footing there, as a plant that cannot strike into the
+soil may cling to a bare rock. All the same the attempt would be
+dangerous, and might easily lead to his being swept away.</p>
+
+<p>It was in full consciousness, therefore, of the revolution in his life
+that he bowed before the Misses Martin, who received him coldly. He had
+not come to their dance, nor "called," nor shown them any of the
+civilities they were accustomed to look for from young men. Turning their
+attention at once to the other gentlemen about them, they made no effort
+to detain him as Miss Jarrott led him to Miss Colfax.</p>
+
+<p>Here the introduction would have been disappointing if the greatness of
+the event had not been independent of the details with which it happened.
+Strange was not in a condition to notice them, any more than a soul can
+heed the formalities with which it is admitted into heaven. Nearly all his
+impressions were subconscious&mdash;to be brought to the surface and dwelt on
+after he went away. It was thus he recorded the facts relating to the gold
+tint&mdash;the <i>teint dor&eacute;</i>&mdash;of her complexion, the curl of her lashes that
+seemed to him deep chestnut rather than quite black, as well as the little
+tremor about her mouth, which was pensive in repose, and yet smiled with
+the unreserved sweetness of an infant. He could not be said to have taken
+in any of these points at a glance; but they came to him later, vividly,
+enchantingly, in the solitude of his room at the Phoenix Hotel.</p>
+
+<p>What actually passed would have been commonplace in itself had it not been
+for what lay behind. Miss Colfax acknowledged the introduction with a
+fleeting smile and a quick lifting of the curtains of her eyes. He did not
+need that glimpse to know that they were blue, but he got a throb of bliss
+from it, as does one from the gleam of a sunlit sea. To her answers to the
+questions he asked as to when she had arrived, how she liked the
+Argentine, and what she thought of the Hipodromo, he listened less than to
+the silvery timbre of her voice. Mere words were as unimportant to those
+first minutes of subtle ecstasy as to an old Italian opera. The music was
+the thing, and for that he had become one enraptured auditory nerve.</p>
+
+<p>There was no chair for him, so that he was obliged to carry on the
+conversation standing. He did not object to this, as it would give him an
+excuse for passing on. That he was eager to go, to be alone, to think, to
+feel, to suffer, to realize, to trace step by step the minutes of the day
+till they had led him to the supreme instant when his eyes had fallen on
+her, to take the succeeding seconds one by one and extract the
+significance from each, was proof of the power of the spell that had been
+cast upon him.</p>
+
+<p>"And isn't it funny, Evie, dear," Miss Jarrott began, just as he was about
+to take his leave, "that Mr. Strange's name should be&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I've been thinking about that," Miss Colfax fluted, with that pretty
+way she had of speaking with little movement of the lips.</p>
+
+<p>But he was gone. He was gone with those broken sentences ringing in his
+ears&mdash;casual and yet haunting&mdash;meaningless and yet more than
+pregnant&mdash;creeping through the magic music of the afternoon, as a
+death-motive breathes in a love-chant.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch10">
+<h3>X</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>After a night of little sleep and much thinking he determined to listen to
+nothing but the love-chant. He came to this decision, not in the
+recklessness of self-will, but after due consideration of his rights. It
+was true that, in biblical phrase, necessity was laid upon him. He could
+no more shut his ears against that entrancing song than he could shut his
+eyes against the daylight. This was not, however, the argument that he
+found most cogent, as it was not the impulse from which he meant to act.
+If he could make this girl his wife it would be something more than a case
+of getting his own way; it would be an instance&mdash;probably the highest
+instance&mdash;of the assertion of himself against a world organized to destroy
+him. He could not enter that world and form a part of it; but at least he
+could carry off a wife from it, as a lion may leap into a sheepfold and
+snatch a lamb.</p>
+
+<p>It was in this light that he viewed the matter when he accepted Miss
+Jarrott's invitations&mdash;now to lunch, now to dinner, now to a seat in their
+box at the opera or in their carriage in the park&mdash;during the rest of the
+time he remained in town. It became clear to him that the family viewed
+with approval the attachment that had sprung up between Miss Colfax and
+himself, and were helping it to a happy ending. He even became aware that
+they were growing fond of him&mdash;making the discovery with a queer
+sensation of surprise. It was a thing so new in his experience that he
+would have treated the notion as ridiculous had it not been forced upon
+him. Women had shown him favors; one lonely old man, now lying in the
+Recoleta Cemetery, had yearned over him; but a household had never opened
+its heart to him before. And yet there could be no other reading of the
+present situation. He began to think that Mr. Jarrott was delaying his
+departure for Rosario purposely, to keep him near. It was certain that
+into the old man's bearing toward him there had crept something that might
+almost be called paternal, so that their business discussions were much
+like those between father and son. Mrs. Jarrott advanced as far out of the
+circle of her griefs to welcome him as it was possible for her languorous
+spirit to emerge. Miss Jarrott, friendly from the first, attached him to
+the wheels of her social chariot with an air of affectionate possession.</p>
+
+<p>It required no great amount of perspicuity to see that the three elders
+would be glad if Miss Colfax and he were to "make a match of it," and why.
+It would be a means&mdash;and a means they could approve&mdash;of keeping their
+little girl among them. As matters stood, she was only a visitor, who
+spoke of her flight back to New York as a matter of course.</p>
+
+<p>"I only came," she lisped to Strange, as they sat one day, under the
+parrot's chaperonage, in the shady corner of the patio&mdash;"I only came
+because when dear mamma died there was nothing else for me to do.
+Everything happened so unfortunately, do you see? Mamma died, and my
+stepfather went blind, and really I had no home. Of course that doesn't
+matter so much while I'm in mourning&mdash;I mean, not having a home&mdash;but I
+simply <i>must</i> go back to New York next autumn, in order to 'come out.'"</p>
+
+<div class="image" id="img02"><p><a href="images/illus02.png">"Who is Miriam?" was on his lips</a></p></div>
+
+<p>"Aren't you 'out' enough already?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you see?" she began to explain, with the quaint air of practical
+wisdom he adored in her, "I'm not out at all&mdash;and I'm nearly nineteen.
+Dear mamma fretted over it as it was&mdash;and if she knew it hadn't been done
+yet&mdash;Well something must be managed, but I don't know what. It isn't as if
+Miriam could do anything about it, though she's a great deal older than I
+am, and has seen a lot of social life at Washington and in England. But
+she's out of the question. Dear mamma would never have allowed it. And
+she's no relation to me, besides."</p>
+
+<p>The question, "Who is Miriam?" was on his lips, but he checked it in time.
+He checked all questions as to her relatives and friends whom he did not
+know already. He was purposely making ignorance his bliss as long as
+possible, in the hope that before enlightenment could be forced upon him
+it would be too late for any one to recede.</p>
+
+<p>"Couldn't they do it for you here?" he asked, when he was sure of what he
+meant to say. "I know the Miss Martins&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Carrie and Ethel! Oh, well! That isn't quite the same thing. <i>I</i> couldn't
+come out in a place like Buenos Aires&mdash;or anywhere, except New York."</p>
+
+<p>"But when you've been through it all, you'll come back here, won't you?"</p>
+
+<p>His eyes sought hers, but he saw only the curtains of the lids&mdash;those lids
+with the curious dusk on them, which reminded him of the petals of certain
+pansies.</p>
+
+<p>"That'll&mdash;depend," she said, after a minute's hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>"It'll depend&mdash;on what?" he persisted, softly.</p>
+
+<p>Before she could answer the parrot interrupted, screaming out a bit of
+doggerel in its hoarse staccato.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that bird!" the girl cried, springing up. "I do wish some one would
+wring its neck."</p>
+
+<p>He got no nearer to his point that day, and perhaps he was not eager to.
+The present situation, with its excitements and uncertainties, was too
+blissful to bring to a sudden end. Besides, he was obliged to go through
+some further rehearsing of the creed adopted in the dawn on Lake Champlain
+before his self-justification could be complete. It was not that he was
+questioning his right to act; it was only that he needed to strengthen the
+chain of arguments by which his action must be supported&mdash;against himself.
+Within his own heart there was something that pleaded against the breaking
+off of this tender sprig of the true olive to graft it on the wild, in
+addition to which the attitude of the Jarrott family disconcerted him. It
+was one thing to push his rights against a world ready to deny them, but
+it was quite another to take advantage of a trusting affection that came
+more than half-way to meet him. His mind refused to imagine what they
+would do if they could know that behind the origin of Herbert Strange
+there lay the history of Norrie Ford. After all, he was not concerned with
+them, he asserted inwardly, but with himself. They were intrenched within
+a world able to take care of itself; while there was no power whatever to
+protect him, once he made a mistake.</p>
+
+<p>So every night, as he sat in his cheerless hotel room, he reviewed his
+arguments, testing them one by one, strengthening the weak spots according
+to his lights, and weighing the for and against with all the nicety he
+could command. On the one side were love, happiness, position, a home,
+children probably, and whatever else the normal, healthy nature craves;
+on the other, loneliness, abnegation, crucifixion, slow torture, and
+slower death. Was it just to himself to choose the latter, simply because
+human law had made a mistake and put him outside the human race? The
+answer was obvious enough; but while his intelligence made it promptly,
+something else within him&mdash;some illogical emotion&mdash;seemed to lag behind
+with its corroboration.</p>
+
+<p>This hesitation of his entire being to respond to the bugle-call of his
+need gave to his wooing a certain irregularity&mdash;an advance and recession
+like that of the tide. At the very instant when the words of declaration
+were trembling on his lips this doubt about himself would check him. There
+were minutes&mdash;moonlit minutes, in the patio, when the birds were hushed,
+and the scent of flowers heavy, and the voices of the older ones stole
+from some lighted room like a soft, human obligato to the melody of the
+night&mdash;minutes when he felt that to his "I love you!" hers would come as
+surely as the echo to the sound; and yet he shrank from saying it. Their
+talk would drift near to it, dally with it, flash about it, play attack
+and defence across it, and drift away again, leaving the essential thing
+unspoken. The skill with which she fenced with this most fragile of all
+topics, never losing her guard, never missing her thrust or parry, and yet
+never inflicting anything like a wound, filled him with a sort of rapture.
+It united the innocence of a child to the cleverness of a woman of the
+world, giving an exquisite piquancy to both. In this young creature, who
+could have had no experience of anything of the kind, it was the very
+essence of the feminine.</p>
+
+<p>By dint of vigil and meditation he drew the conclusion that his inner
+hesitancy sprang from the fact that he was not being honest with himself.
+He was shirking knowledge that he ought to face. Up to the present he had
+done his duty in that respect, and done it pluckily. He had not balked at
+the statement that his r&ocirc;le in the world was that of an impostor&mdash;though
+an impostor of the world's own creation. It had been part of the task
+forced upon him "to deceive men under their very noses," as he had
+expressed it to himself that night on Lake Champlain. Whatever vengeance,
+therefore, discovery might call upon him, he could suffer nothing in the
+loss of self-respect. He would be always supported by his inner approval.
+Remorse would be as alien to him as to Prometheus on the rock.</p>
+
+<p>In the present situation he was less sure of that, and there he put his
+finger on his weakness. Seeing shadows flitting in the background he
+dodged them, instead of calling them out into daylight. He was counting on
+happy chances in dealing with the unforeseen, when all his moves should be
+based on the precise information of a general.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, when, in the corner of the patio, the next opportunity arose
+for asking the question, "Who is Miriam?" he brought it out boldly.</p>
+
+<p>"She's a darling." The unexpected reply was accompanied by a sudden
+lifting of the lashes for a rapturous look and one of the flashing smiles.</p>
+
+<p>"That's high praise&mdash;from you."</p>
+
+<p>"She deserves it&mdash;from any one!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why? What for? What has she done to win your enthusiasm when other people
+find it so hard?"</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't so hard&mdash;only some people go the wrong way to work about it, do
+you see?"</p>
+
+<p>She leaned back in her wicker chair, fanning herself slowly, and smiling
+at him with that air of mingled innocence and provocation which he found
+the most captivating of her charms.</p>
+
+<p>"Do I?" he was tempted to ask.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you? Now, let me think. Really, I never noticed. You'd have to begin
+all over again&mdash;if you ever did begin&mdash;before I could venture an opinion."</p>
+
+<p>This was pretty, but it was not keeping to the point.</p>
+
+<p>"Evidently Miriam knows how to do it, and when I see her I shall ask her."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you <i>could</i> see her. You'd adore her. She'd be just your style."</p>
+
+<p>"What makes you think that? Is she so beautiful? What is she like?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I couldn't tell you what she's like. You'd have to see her for
+yourself. No, I don't think I should call her beautiful, though some
+people do. She's awfully attractive anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>"Attractive? In what way?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, in a lot of ways. She isn't like anybody else. She's in a class by
+herself. In fact, she has to be, poor thing."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should she be poor thing, with so much to her credit in the way of
+assets?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you see?&mdash;that's something I can't tell you. There's a sort of mystery
+about her. I'm not sure that I understand it very well myself. I only know
+that dear mamma didn't feel that she could take her out, in New York,
+except among our very most intimate friends, where it didn't matter. And
+yet when Lady Bonchurch took her to Washington she got a lot of offers&mdash;I
+know that for a fact&mdash;and in England, too."</p>
+
+<p>"I seem to be getting deeper in," Strange smiled, with the necessary air
+of speaking carelessly. "Who is Lady Bonchurch?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you know? Why, I thought you knew everything. She was the wife of
+the British Ambassador. They took a house at Greenport that year because
+they were afraid about Lord Bonchurch's lungs. It didn't do any good,
+though. He had to give up his post the next winter, and not long after
+that he died. I don't think air is much good for people's lungs, do you? I
+know it wasn't any help to dear mamma. We had all those tedious years at
+Greenport, and in the end&mdash;but that's how we came to know Lady Bonchurch,
+and she took a great fancy to Miriam. She said it was a shame a girl like
+that shouldn't have a chance, and so it was. Mamma thought she interfered
+and I suppose she did. Still, you can't blame her much, when she had no
+children of her own, can you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't want to blame her if she gave Miriam her chance."</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I've always said. And if Miriam had only wanted to, she could
+have been&mdash;well, almost anybody. She had offers and offers in Washington,
+and in England there was a Sir Somebody-or-other who asked her two or
+three times over. He married an actress in the end&mdash;and dear mamma thought
+Miriam must be crazy not to have taken him while he was to be had. Dear
+mamma said it would have been such a good thing for me to have some one
+like Miriam&mdash;who was under obligations to us, do you see?&mdash;in a good
+social position abroad."</p>
+
+<p>"But Miriam didn't see it in that way?"</p>
+
+<p>"She didn't see it in any way. She's terribly exasperating in some
+respects, although she's such a dear. Poor mamma used to be very tried
+about her&mdash;and she so ill&mdash;and my stepfather going blind&mdash;and everything.
+If Miriam had only been in a good social position abroad it would have
+been a place for me to go&mdash;instead of having no home&mdash;like this."</p>
+
+<p>There was something so touching in her manner that he found it difficult
+not to offer her a home there and then; but the shadows were marching out
+into daylight, and he must watch the procession to the end.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems to have been very inconsiderate of Miriam," he said. "But why do
+you suppose she acted so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dear mamma thought she was in love with some one&mdash;some one we didn't know
+anything about&mdash;but I never believed that. In the first place, she didn't
+know any one we didn't know anything about&mdash;not before she went to
+Washington with Lady Bonchurch. And besides, she couldn't be in love with
+any one without my knowing it, now could she?"</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose not; unless she made up her mind she wouldn't tell you."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I shouldn't want her to tell me. I should see it for myself. She
+wouldn't tell me, in any case&mdash;not till things had gone so far that&mdash;but I
+never noticed the least sign of it, do you see? and I've a pretty sharp
+eye for that sort of thing at all times. There was just one thing. Dear
+mamma used to say that for a while she used to do a good deal of moping in
+a little studio she had, up in the hills near our house&mdash;but you couldn't
+tell anything from that. I've gone and moped there myself when I've felt I
+wanted a good cry&mdash;and I wasn't in love with any one."</p>
+
+<p>There was a long silence, during which he sat grave, motionless,
+reflecting. Now and then he placed his extinguished cigarette to his
+lips, with the mechanical motion of a man forgetful of time and place and
+circumstance.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what are you thinking about?" she inquired, when the pause had
+lasted long enough. He seemed to wake with a start.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;I&mdash;I don't know. I rather fancy I was thinking about&mdash;about this
+Miss&mdash;after all, you haven't given me any name but Miriam."</p>
+
+<p>"Strange, her name is. The same as yours."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh? You've never told me that."</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Queenie has, though. But you always seem to shuffle so when it's
+mentioned that I've let it alone. I don't blame you, either; for if
+there's one thing more tedious than another, it's having people for ever
+fussing about your name. There was a girl at our school whose name was
+Fidgett&mdash;Jessie Fidgett&mdash;a nice, quiet girl, as placid as a church&mdash;but I
+do assure you, it got to be so tiresome&mdash;well, you know how it would
+be&mdash;and so I decided I wouldn't say anything about Miriam's name to you,
+nor about yours to her. Goodness knows, there must be lots of Stranges in
+the world&mdash;just as much as Jarrotts."</p>
+
+<p>"So that&mdash;after all&mdash;her name was Miriam Strange."</p>
+
+<p>"It was, and is, and always will be&mdash;if she goes on like this," Miss
+Colfax rejoined, not noticing that he had spoken half-musingly to himself.
+"She was a ward of my step-father's till she came of age," she added, in
+an explanatory tone. "She's a sort of Canadian&mdash;or half a Canadian&mdash;or
+something&mdash;I never could quite make out what. Anyhow, she's a dear. She's
+gone now with my stepfather to Wiesbaden, about his eyes&mdash;and you can't
+think what a relief to me it is. If she hadn't, I might have had to go
+myself&mdash;and at my age&mdash;with all I've got to think about&mdash;and my coming
+out&mdash;Well, you can see how it would be."</p>
+
+<p>She lifted such sweet blue eyes upon him that he would have seen anything
+she wanted him to see, if he had not been determined to push his inquiries
+until there was nothing left for him to learn.</p>
+
+<p>"Were you fond of him?&mdash;your stepfather?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course&mdash;in a way. But everything was so unfortunate I know dear mamma
+thought she was acting for the best when she married him; and if he hadn't
+begun to go blind almost immediately&mdash;But he was very kind to mamma, when
+she had to go to the Adirondacks for her health. That was very soon after
+she returned to New York from here&mdash;when papa died. But she was so lonely
+in the Adirondacks&mdash;and he was a judge&mdash;a Mr. Wayne&mdash;with a good
+position&mdash;and naturally she never dreamed he had anything the matter with
+his eyes&mdash;it isn't the sort of thing you'd ever think of asking about
+beforehand&mdash;and so it all happened that way, do you see?"</p>
+
+<p>He did see. He could have wished not to see so clearly. He saw with a
+light that dazzled him. Any step would be hazardous now, except one in
+retreat; though he was careful to explain to himself that night that it
+was retreat for reconnoitre, and not for running away. The mere fact that
+the Wild Olive had taken on personality, with a place of some sort in the
+world, brought her near to him again; while the knowledge that he bore her
+name&mdash;possibly her father's name&mdash;seemed to make him the creation of her
+magic to an even greater degree than he had felt hitherto. He could
+perceive, too, that by living out the suggestions she had made to him in
+the cabin&mdash;the Argentine&mdash;Stephens and Jarrott&mdash;"the very good firm to
+work for"&mdash;he had never got beyond her influence, no more than the
+oak-tree gets beyond the acorn that has been its seed. The perception of
+these things would have been enough to puzzle a mind not easily at home in
+the complex, even if the reintroduction of Judge Wayne had not confused
+him further.</p>
+
+<p>It was not astonishing, therefore, that he was seized with a sudden
+longing to get away&mdash;a longing for space and solitude, for the pampas and
+the rivers, and, above all, for work. In the free air his spirit would
+throw off its oppression of discomfort, while in a daily routine of
+occupation he often found that difficulties solved themselves.</p>
+
+<p>"If you think that this business of Kent's can get along without me now,"
+he said to Mr. Jarrott, in the private office, next morning, "perhaps I
+had better be getting back to Rosario."</p>
+
+<p>Not a muscle moved in the old man's long, wooden face, but the gray-blue
+eyes threw Strange a curious look.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you want to go?" he asked, after a slight pause.</p>
+
+<p>Strange smiled, with an embarrassment that did not escape observation.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been away longer than I expected&mdash;a good deal longer. Things must
+want looking after, I suppose. Green can take my place for a while, but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Green is doing very well&mdash;better than I thought he could. He seems to
+have taken a new start, that man."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not used to loafing, sir. If there's no particular reason for my
+staying on here&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Jarrott fitted the tips of his fingers together, and answered slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"There's no particular reason&mdash;just now. We've been speaking
+of&mdash;of&mdash;a&mdash;certain changes&mdash;But it's too soon&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, sir, I don't want to urge my private wishes against&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite so; quite so; I understand that. A&mdash;a&mdash;private wishes, you say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir; entirely private."</p>
+
+<p>The gray-blue eyes rested on him in a gaze meant to be uninquisitive and
+non-committal, but which, as a matter of fact, expressed something from
+which Strange turned his own glance away.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well; I'd go," the old man said, quietly.</p>
+
+<p>Strange left his cards that afternoon at the house just when he knew Mrs.
+Jarrott would be resting and Miss Jarrott driving with Miss Colfax. At
+seven he took the night boat up the Plata to the Parana.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch11">
+<h3>XI</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>"Evie, what do you think made Mr. Strange rush away like that? Your uncle
+says he didn't have to&mdash;that he might just as well have stayed in town."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure I don't know," was Evie's truthful response, as she flitted
+about the dining-room table arranging the flowers before luncheon.</p>
+
+<p>"Your uncle thinks you do," Mrs. Jarrott said, leaning languidly back in
+an arm-chair. Her tone and manner implied that the matter had nothing to
+do with her, though she was willing to speak of it. This was as far as she
+could come to showing an interest in anything outside herself since the
+boys died. She would not have brought up the subject now if the girl's
+pallor during the last few days had not made them uneasy.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't the least idea," Miss Colfax declared. "I was just as much
+surprised as you were, Aunt Helen."</p>
+
+<p>"Your uncle thinks you must have said something to him&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't. I didn't say anything to him whatever. Why should I? He's
+nothing to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course he's nothing to you, if you're engaged to Billy Merrow."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Colfax leaned across the table, taking a longer time than necessary
+to give its value to a certain rose.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not engaged to him now," she said, as if after reflection&mdash;"not in
+my own mind, that is."</p>
+
+<p>"But you are in his, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I can't help that, can I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not unless you write and tell him it's all over."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Colfax stood still, a large red flower raised in protestation.</p>
+
+<p>"That would be the cruellest thing I ever heard of," she exclaimed, with
+conviction. "I don't see how you can bear to make the suggestion."</p>
+
+<p>"Then what are you going to do about it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I needn't do anything just yet. There's no hurry&mdash;till I get back to New
+York."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean to let him go on thinking&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"He'd much rather. Whenever I tell him, it will be too soon for him.
+There's no reason why he should know earlier than he wants to."</p>
+
+<p>"But is that honor, dear?"</p>
+
+<p>"How can I tell?" At so unreasonable a question the blue eyes clouded with
+threatening tears. "I can't go into all those fine points, Aunt Helen, do
+you see? I've just got to do what's right."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jarrot rose with an air of helplessness. She loved her brother's
+daughter tenderly enough, but she admitted to herself that she did not
+understand young girls. Having borne only sons, she had never been called
+upon to struggle with the baffling.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you're not going to tell any one, Aunt Helen," Evie begged, as
+Mrs. Jarrott seemed about to leave the room. "I shouldn't want Uncle
+Jarrott to know, or Aunt Queenie, either."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall certainly spare them," Mrs. Jarrott said, with what for her was
+asperity. "They would be surprised, to say the least, after the
+encouragement you gave Mr. Strange."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't give it&mdash;he took it. I couldn't stop him."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you want to?"</p>
+
+<p>"I thought of it&mdash;sometimes&mdash;till I gave up being engaged to Billy."</p>
+
+<p>"And having passed that mental crisis, I suppose it didn't matter."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, the mental crisis, as you call it, left me free. I sha'n't have to
+reproach myself&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No; Mr. Merrow will do that for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course he will. I expect him to. It would be very queer if he didn't.
+I shall have a dreadful time making him see things my way. And with all
+that hanging over me, I should think I might look for a little sympathy
+from you, Aunt Helen. Lots of girls wouldn't have said anything about it.
+But I told you because I want you to see I'm perfectly straight and
+above-board."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jarrott said no more for the moment, but later in the day she
+confided to her husband that the girl puzzled her. "She mixes me up so
+that I don't know which of us is talking sense." She was not at all sure
+that Evie was fretting about Mr. Strange&mdash;though she might be. If she
+wasn't, then she couldn't be well. That was the only explanation of her
+depression and loss of appetite.</p>
+
+<p>"You can bet your life he's thinking of her," Mr. Jarrott said, with the
+lapse from colloquial dignity he permitted himself when he got into his
+house-jacket. "He's praying to her image as if it was a wooden saint."</p>
+
+<p>With the omission of the word wooden this was much what Strange was doing
+at Rosario. Not venturing&mdash;in view of all the circumstances&mdash;to write to
+her, he could only erect a shrine in his heart, and serve it with a
+devotion very few saints enjoy. He found, however, that absence from her
+did not enable him to form detached and impartial opinions on his
+situation, just as work brought no subconsciously reached solution to the
+problems he had to face. In these respects he was disappointed in the
+results of his unnecessary flight from town.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of two months he was still mentally where he was when he left
+Buenos Aires. His intelligence assured him that he had the right of a man
+who has no rights to seize and carry off what he can; while that nameless
+something else within him refused to ratify the statement. What precise
+part of him raised this obstacle he was at a loss to guess. It could not
+be his conscience, since he had been free of conscience ever since the
+night on Lake Champlain. Still less could it be his heart, seeing that his
+heart was crying out for Evie Colfax more fiercely than a lion roars for
+food. The paralysis of his judgment had become such that he was fast
+approaching the determination to make Love the only arbiter, and let all
+the rest go hang!</p>
+
+<p>He was encouraged in this impulse by the thought that between her and
+himself there was the mysterious bond of something "meant." He believed
+vaguely in a Power, which, with designs as to human destinies, manifests
+its intentions by fitful gleams, vouchsafed somewhat erratically. In this
+way Evie Colfax, as a beautiful, fairy-like child, had been revealed to
+him at the most critical instant of his life. His mind had never hitherto
+gone back willingly to recollections of that night; but now he made the
+excursion into the past with a certain amount of pleasure. He could see
+her still, looking at a picture-book, her face resting on the back of her
+hand, and golden ringlets falling over her bare arm. He could see the
+boy, too. He remembered that his name was Billy. Billy who? he wondered.
+He could hear the sweet, rather fretful voice calling from the shadows:</p>
+
+<p>"Evie dear, it's time to go to bed. Billy, I don't believe they let you
+stay up as late as this at home."</p>
+
+<p>How ridiculous it would have been to remember such trivial details all
+these years if something hadn't been "meant" by it. There was a hint in
+the back of his mind that by the same token something might have been
+"meant" about the Wild Olive, too, but he had not an equal temptation to
+dwell on it. The Wild Olive, he repeated, had never been "his type of
+girl"&mdash;not from the very first. It was obviously impossible for a
+superintending Power to "mean" things that were out of the question.</p>
+
+<p>He had got no further than this when the news was conveyed to him by Mrs.
+Green, whom he met accidentally in the street, that Mr. Skinner, the
+second partner, had had a "stroke," and had been ordered to Carlsbad. Mrs.
+Skinner, so Mrs. Green's letters from the Port informed her, was to
+accompany her husband. Furthermore, Miss Colfax was seizing the
+opportunity to travel with them to Southampton, where she would be able to
+join friends who would take her to New York. There was even a rumor that
+Miss Jarrott was to accompany her niece, but Mrs. Green was unable to
+vouch for the truth of it. In any case, she said, there were signs of "a
+regular shaking up," such as comes periodically in any great mercantile
+establishment; and this time, she ventured to hope, Mr. Green would get
+his rights.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch12">
+<h3>XII</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>The knowledge that it was a juncture at which to execute a daring movement
+acted as an opiate on what would otherwise have been, for Strange, a day
+of frenzy. While to the outward eye he was going quietly about his work,
+he was inwardly calling all his resources to his aid to devise some plan
+for outwitting circumstance. After forty-eight hours of tearing at his
+heart and hacking at his brain, he could think of nothing more original
+than to take the first train down to the Port, ask the girl to be his
+wife, and let life work out the consequence. At the end of two days,
+however, he was saved from a too deliberate defiance of the
+unaccounted-for inner voice, by an official communication from Mr.
+Jarrott.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the brief, dry form of his business conversation, giving no hint
+that there were emotions behind the stilted phraseology, and an old man's
+yearnings. Mr. Skinner was far from well, and would "proceed immediately"
+to Carlsbad. Strange would hand over the business at Rosario to Mr.
+Green&mdash;who would become resident manager, <i>pro tem</i> at any rate&mdash;and
+present himself in Buenos Aires at the earliest convenient moment. Mr.
+Jarrott would be glad to see him as soon as possible after his arrival.</p>
+
+<p>That was all; but as far as the young man was concerned, it saved the
+situation. On consulting the steamer-list he saw that the Royal Mail
+Steam Packet <i>Corrientes</i> would sail for Southampton in exactly six days'
+time. By dint of working all night with Mr. Green, who was happy to lend
+himself to anything that would show him the last of his rival, he was able
+to take a train to the Port next day. It was half-past six when he arrived
+in Buenos Aires. By half-past eight he had washed, changed to an evening
+suit, and dined. At nine his cab stopped at the door of the house at
+Palermo.</p>
+
+<p>As he followed the elderly man-servant who admitted him, the patio was so
+dim that he made his way but slowly. He made his way but slowly, not only
+because the patio was dim, but because he was trying to get his crowding
+emotions under control before meeting his employer in an interview that
+might be fraught with serious results. For once in his life he was
+unnerved, tremulous, almost afraid. As he passed the open doors and
+windows of unlighted, or dimly lighted, rooms he knew she might be in any
+one of the shadowy recesses. It would have been a relief to hear her at
+the piano, or in conversation, and to know her attention was diverted.
+None the less, he peered about for a glimpse of her, and strained his
+hearing for a sound of her voice. But all was still and silent, except for
+the muffled footfall of the servant leading him to the library at the far
+end of the court.</p>
+
+<p>If she had not moved out unexpectedly from behind a pillar, a little
+fluttering figure in a white frock, he could have kept his self-control.
+If he had not come upon her in this sudden way, when she believed him in
+Rosario, she, too, would not have been caught at a disadvantage. As it
+was, he stood still, as if awe-struck. She gave a little cry, as if
+frightened. It is certain that his movement of the arms was an automatic
+process, not dictated by any order of the brain; and the same may be said
+for the impulse which threw her on his breast. If, after that, the rest
+was not silence, it was little more. What he uttered and she replied was
+scarcely audible to either, though it was understood by both. It was all
+over so quickly that the man-servant had barely thrown open the library
+door, and announced "Mr. Strange," when Strange himself was on the
+threshold.</p>
+
+<p>It was a moment at which to summon all his wits together to attend to
+business; but he was astonished at the coolness and lightness of heart
+with which he did it. After those brief, sudden vows exchanged, it was as
+easy to dismiss Evie Colfax momentarily from his mind as it is to forget
+money troubles on inheriting a fortune. Nevertheless as he got himself
+ready to deal with practical, and probably quite commercial, topics, he
+was fully conscious of the rapture of her love, while he was scarcely less
+aware of a comfort closely akin to joy in feeling that the burden of
+decision had been lifted from him. Since Fate had taken the matter into
+her own hands, she could be charged with the full responsibility.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Mr. Jarrott, who was smoking a cigar and sipping his after-dinner coffee,
+was in evening dress, but wore his house-jacket&mdash;a circumstance of which
+Strange did not know the significance, though he felt its effect. The old
+man's welcome was not unlike that of a shy father trying to break the
+shackles of reserve with a home-coming son. He pushed Strange gently into
+the most comfortable arm-chair beside which he drew up a small table for
+the cigar-box, the ash-tray, and the matches. He rang for another cup,
+and brought the coffee with his own hands. Strange remembered how often,
+after a hard day's work, he had been made uncomfortable by just such
+awkward, affectionate attentions from poor old Monsieur Durand.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't expect you so soon," Mr. Jarrott began, when they were both
+seated, "but you've done well to come. I'm afraid we're in for a regular
+upset all round."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope it isn't going to make things harder for you, sir," Strange
+ventured, in the tone of personal concern which his kindly treatment
+seemed to warrant him in taking.</p>
+
+<p>"It won't if I can get the right men into the right places. That'll be the
+tough part of the business. The wool department will suffer by Mr.
+Skinner's absence&mdash;he's very ill, in my opinion&mdash;and there's only one man
+who can take his place." Strange felt his heart throbbing and the color
+rising to his face. He did not covet the position, for he disliked the
+wool department; but it was undeniably a "rise," and right along the line
+of highest promotion. "That's Jenkins," Mr. Jarrott finished, quietly.</p>
+
+<p>Strange said nothing. After all, he was relieved. Mr. Jarrott did not go
+on at once, but when he did speak Strange fell back into the depths of his
+arm-chair, in an attitude suggestive of physical collapse.</p>
+
+<p>"And if Jenkins came back here," the old man pursued, "you'd have to take
+his place in New York."</p>
+
+<p>Strange concealed his agitation by puffing out successive rings of smoke.
+If he had not long ago considered what he would say should this proposal
+ever be made to him, he would have been even more overcome than he
+actually was. He had meant to oppose the offer with a point-blank refusal,
+but what had happened within the last quarter of an hour had so modified
+this judgment that he could only sit, turning things rapidly over in his
+mind, till more was said.</p>
+
+<p>"There's no harm in&mdash;a&mdash;telling you," Mr. Jarrott went on again, with that
+hesitancy Strange had begun to associate with important announcements,
+"that&mdash;a&mdash;Jenkins will be&mdash;a&mdash;taken into partnership. You won't&mdash;a&mdash;be
+taken into partnership&mdash;a&mdash;yet. But you will have a good salary in New
+York. I can&mdash;a&mdash;promise you that much."</p>
+
+<p>It was because he was unnerved that tears smarted in the young man's eyes
+at the implications in these sentences. He took his time before
+responding, the courtesies of the occasion being served as well by silence
+as by speech.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't try to thank you for all your kindness, sir," he said, with a
+visible effort, "until I've told you something&mdash;something that, very
+likely, you won't approve of. I've asked Miss Colfax to marry me, and
+she's consented."</p>
+
+<p>The old man's brows shot up incredulously.</p>
+
+<p>"That's odd," he said, "because not half an hour ago she told my wife
+there was nothing whatever between you&mdash;that you hadn't even written to
+her since you went away. Mrs. Jarrott only left this room as you rang the
+door-bell."</p>
+
+<p>"But it was after I rang the door-bell," Strange stammered "that
+I&mdash;I&mdash;asked her."</p>
+
+<p>"Quick work," was the old man's only comment, but the muscles of his lips
+relaxed slowly, as if rusty from disuse, into one of his rare smiles.</p>
+
+<p>With the assurance of this reception, Strange could afford to sit silent
+till Mr. Jarrott made some further sign.</p>
+
+<p>"By the terms of her father's will," he explained some minutes later, "I'm
+her guardian and trustee. She can't marry without my consent till she
+comes of age. I don't say that in this instance I should&mdash;a&mdash;withhold my
+consent; but I should feel constrained to&mdash;a&mdash;give it with conditions."</p>
+
+<p>"If it's anything I can fulfil, sir&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No; it wouldn't concern you so much as her. She's very young&mdash;and in
+heart she's younger than her age. She knows nothing about men&mdash;she can't
+know&mdash;and I dare say you're the first young fellow who ever said anything
+to her about&mdash;well, you understand what I mean. Mind you, we've no
+objections to you whatever. You are your own credentials; and we take them
+at their face value. You tell me you're an orphan, with no near relations,
+so that there couldn't be any complications on that score. Besides that,
+you're&mdash;a likely chap; and I don't mind saying that&mdash;a&mdash;my ladies&mdash;Mrs.
+Jarrott and my sister&mdash;have taken rather a fancy to you. It can't do you
+any&mdash;a&mdash;harm to know as much as that."</p>
+
+<p>Strange murmurred his appreciation, and the old man went on.</p>
+
+<p>"No; you're all right. But, as I said before, she's very young, and if we
+married her to you out of hand we feel that we shouldn't be giving her a
+fair show. We think she ought to have a little more chance to look round
+her, so to speak. In fact, she isn't what ladies call 'out.' She's
+scarcely ever seen a man, except through a window. Consequently, we think
+we must send her back to New York, for a winter at any rate, and trot the
+procession before her. My sister is to undertake it, and they're to sail
+next week. That won't make so much difference to you now, as it would if
+you weren't soon going to follow them."</p>
+
+<p>Strange nodded. He felt himself being wafted to New York, whether he would
+or no.</p>
+
+<p>"Now all I have to say is this: if, when she's regularly started, she
+sees some other young fellow she likes better than you, you're to give her
+up without making a fuss."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. Naturally, she would have to be free to do as she chose in the
+long run. I'm not afraid of losing her&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That'll be your own lookout. You'll be on the spot, and will have as good
+a chance as anybody else. You'll have a better chance; for you'll only
+have to keep what you've won, while any one else would have to start in at
+the beginning. But it's understood that there&mdash;a&mdash;can be no talk of a
+wedding just yet. She must have next winter to reconsider her promise to
+you, if she wants to."</p>
+
+<p>Strange having admitted the justice of this, the old man rose, and held
+out his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll keep the matter between ourselves&mdash;in the family, I mean&mdash;for the
+time being," he said, with another slowly breaking smile; "but the ladies
+will want to wish you luck. You must come into the drawing-room and see
+them."</p>
+
+<p>They were half-way to the door when Mr. Jarrott paused.</p>
+
+<p>"And, of course, you'll go to New York? I didn't think it necessary to ask
+you if you cared to make the change."</p>
+
+<p>With the question straight before him, Strange knew that an answer must be
+given. He understood now how it is that there are men and women who find
+it worth their while to thrust their heads into lions' mouths.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, of course," he answered, quietly; and they went on to join the
+ladies.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="part" id="p3">
+<h2>Part III</h2>
+
+<h3>Miriam</h3>
+
+
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch13">
+<h3>XIII</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>On a day when Evie Colfax was nearing Southampton, and Herbert Strange
+sailing northward from the Rio de la Plata, up the coast of Brazil, Miriam
+Strange, in New York, was standing in the embrasure of a large bay-window
+of a fifth-floor apartment, in that section of Fifty-ninth Street that
+skirts the southern limit of Central Park. Her conversation with the man
+beside her turned on subjects which both knew to be only preliminary to
+the business that had brought him in. He inquired about her voyage home
+from Germany, and expressed his sympathy with "poor Wayne" on the
+hopelessness and finality of the Wiesbaden oculist's report. Taking a
+lighter tone, he said, with a gesture toward the vast expanse of autumn
+color on which they were looking down:</p>
+
+<p>"You didn't see anything finer than that in Europe. Come now!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I didn't&mdash;not in its own way. As long as I can look at this I'm
+almost reconciled to living in a town."</p>
+
+<p>As her eyes roamed over the sea of splendor that stretched from their very
+feet, a vision of October gorgeousness against the sky, he was able to
+steal a glance at her. His immediate observation was to the effect that
+the suggestion of wildness&mdash;or, more correctly, of a wild origin&mdash;was as
+noticeable in her now, a woman of twenty-seven, as it was when he first
+knew her, a girl of nineteen. That she should have brought it with her
+from a childhood passed amid lakes and rivers and hills was natural
+enough&mdash;just as it was natural that her voice should have that liquid
+cadence which belongs to people of the forest, though it is rarely caught
+by human speech elsewhere; but that she should have conserved these
+qualities through the training of a woman of the world was more
+remarkable. But there it was, that something woodland-born which London
+and New York had neither submerged nor swept away. It was difficult to say
+in what it consisted, since it eluded the effort to say, "It is this or
+that." It resisted analysis, as it defied description. Though it might
+have been in the look, or in the manner, it conveyed itself to the
+observer's apprehension, otherwise than by the eye or ear, as if it
+appealed to some extra sense. People who had not Charles Conquest's
+closeness of perception spoke of her as "odd," while those who had heard
+the little there was to learn about her, said to each other, "Well, what
+could you expect?" Young men, as a rule, fought shy of her, not so much
+from indifference as from a sense of an indefinable barrier between her
+and themselves so that it was the older men who sought her out. There was
+always some fear on Conquest's part lest the world should so assimilate
+her that her distinctiveness&mdash;which was more like an influence that
+radiated than a characteristic that could be seen&mdash;would desert her; and
+it was with conscious satisfaction that he noted now, after an absence of
+some months, that it was still there.</p>
+
+<p>He noted, too, the sure lines of her profile&mdash;a profile becoming clearer
+cut as she grew older&mdash;features wrought with delicacy and yet imbued with
+strength, suggestive of carved ivory. Delicacy imbued with strength was
+betokened, too, by the tall slenderness of her figure, whose silence and
+suppleness of movement came&mdash;in Conquest's imagination at least&mdash;from her
+far-off forest ancestry.</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't live anywhere else but here&mdash;if it must be in New York," she
+said, turning from the window. "I couldn't do without the sense of woods,
+and space, and sky. I can stand at this window and imagine all sorts of
+things&mdash;that the park really does run into the Catskills, as it seems to
+do&mdash;that the Catskills run into the Adirondacks&mdash;and that the Adirondacks
+take me up to the Laurentides with which my earliest recollections begin."</p>
+
+<p>"I think you're something like Shelley's Venice," he smiled, "a sort of
+'daughter of the earth and ocean.' You never seem to me to belong in just
+the ordinary category&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She had been afraid of something like this from the minute he was
+announced, and so hastened to cling to the impersonal.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, the apartment is so convenient. Being all on one floor, it is so
+much easier for Mr. Wayne to get about it than if he had stairs to climb.
+I didn't tell you that I've had Mrs. Wayne's room done over for Evie. It's
+so much larger and lighter than her old one&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He cleared his throat uneasily.</p>
+
+<p>"I remember your saying something of the kind before you went away in the
+spring. It's one of the things I came in to talk about to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed?" His change of tone alarmed her. He had taken on the air of a man
+about to break unpleasant news. "Won't you sit down? I'll ring for tea.
+We're not in very good order yet, but the servants can give us that much."</p>
+
+<p>She spoke for the purpose of hiding her uneasiness, just as she felt that
+she should be more sure of herself while handling the teacups than if she
+were sitting idle.</p>
+
+<p>"I've had a letter from Mr. Jarrott," he said, making himself comfortable,
+while she moved the tea-table in front of her. "He wrote to me, partly as
+Stephens and Jarrott's legal adviser, and partly as a friend."</p>
+
+<p>He allowed that information time to sink in before continuing.</p>
+
+<p>"He tells me Miss Jarrott is on her way home, with Evie."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; Evie herself wrote me that. I got the letter at Cherbourg."</p>
+
+<p>"Then she probably told you about the house."</p>
+
+<p>"The house? What house?"</p>
+
+<p>"The house they've asked me to take for the winter&mdash;for Miss Jarrott and
+her."</p>
+
+<p>The tea-things came, giving her the relief of occupation. She said nothing
+for the moment, and her attention seemed concentrated on the rapid, silent
+movements of her own hands among the silver and porcelain. Once she looked
+up, but her glance fell as she saw his small, keen, gray-green eyes
+scanning her obliquely.</p>
+
+<p>"So I'm not to have her?" she said, at last.</p>
+
+<p>"It's only for this winter&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I know. But what's for this winter will be for every winter!"</p>
+
+<p>"And she won't be far away. I've taken the Grant's house in Seventy-second
+Street. They asked for a house in which they could do some entertaining.
+You see, they want to give her a good time&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I quite understand all that. Evie has to 'come out.' I've not the least
+doubt that they're managing it in the best way possible. Yes, I see that.
+If I feel a little&mdash;well, I won't say hurt&mdash;but a little&mdash;sorry&mdash;it's
+because I've almost brought Evie up. And I suppose I'm the person she's
+most fond of&mdash;as far as she's fond of any one."</p>
+
+<p>"I presume she's fond of my nephew, Billy Merrow."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope so. Billy rather teased her into that engagement, you know. She's
+too young to be deeply in love&mdash;unless it was with one romantic. And Billy
+isn't that. I'm not sure that there isn't trouble ahead for him."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I shall let him worry through it himself. I've got other things to
+think about."</p>
+
+<p>When she had given him his tea and begun to sip her own, she looked up
+with that particular bright smile which in women means the bracing of the
+courage.</p>
+
+<p>"It'll be all right," she said, with forced conviction. "I know it will.
+It's foolish in me to think I shall miss her, when she will be so near.
+It's only because she and Mr. Wayne are all I've got&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"They needn't be," he interposed, draining his cup, and setting it down,
+like a man preparing for action.</p>
+
+<p>She knew her own words had exposed her to this, and was vexed with herself
+for speaking in a dangerous situation without due foresight. For a minute
+she could think of nothing to say that would ward off his thrust. She sat
+looking at him rather helplessly, unconsciously appealing to him with her
+eyes to let the subject drop.</p>
+
+<p>If he meant to go on with it, he took his time&mdash;flecking a few crumbs from
+his white waistcoat and from his fingertips. In the action he showed
+himself for what he was&mdash;a man so neat as just to escape being dapper.
+There was nothing large about him, in either mind or body; while, on the
+contrary, there was much that was keen and able. The incisiveness of the
+face would have been too sharp had it not been saved by the high-bred
+effect of a Roman nose and a handsome mouth and chin. The fair mustache,
+faded now rather than gray, softened the cynicism of the lips without
+concealing it. It was the face of a man accustomed to "see through" other
+men&mdash;to "see through" life&mdash;compelling its favors from the world rather
+than asking them. The detailed exactness and unobtrusive costliness of
+everything about him, from the pearl in his tie to the polish on his
+boots, were indicative of a will rigorously demanding "the best," and
+taking it. The refusal of it now in the person of the only woman whom he
+had ever wanted as a wife left him puzzled, slightly exasperated, as
+before a phenomenon not to be explained. It was this unusual resistance
+that caused the somewhat impatient tone he took with her.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all nonsense&mdash;your living as you do&mdash;like a professional trained
+nurse."</p>
+
+<p>"The life of a professional trained nurse isn't nonsense."</p>
+
+<p>"It is for you."</p>
+
+<p>"On the contrary; it's for me, more than for almost any one, to justify my
+right to being in the world."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, come now! Don't let us begin on that."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to begin on it. I'd much rather not. But if you don't, you
+throw away the key that explains everything about me."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he rejoined, in an argumentative tone. "Let's talk about it,
+then. Let's have it out. You feel your position; granted. Mind you, I've
+always said you wouldn't have done so if it hadn't been for Gertrude
+Wayne. The world to-day has too much common sense to lay stress on a
+circumstance of that kind. Believe me, nobody thinks about it but
+yourself. Did Lady Bonchurch? Did any of her friends? You've got it a
+little bit&mdash;just a little bit&mdash;on the brain; and the fault isn't yours; it
+belongs to the woman whose soul is gone, I hope, where it's freed from the
+rules of a book of etiquette."</p>
+
+<p>"She meant well&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, every failure, and bungler, and mischief-maker means well. That's
+their charter. I'm not concerned with that. I'm speaking of what she did.
+She fixed it in your mind that you were like a sapling sprung from a seed
+blown outside the orchard. You think you can minimize that accident by
+bringing forth as good as any to be found within the pale. Consequently
+you've taken a poor, helpless, blind man off the hands of the people whose
+duty it is to look after him&mdash;and who are well able to do it&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That isn't the reason," she declared, flushing. "If Mr. Wayne and I live
+together it's because we're used to each other&mdash;and in a way he has taken
+the place of my father."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, come now! That's all very fine. But haven't you got in the back of
+your mind the thought that the wild tree that's known by its good fruit is
+the one that's best worth grafting?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I had&mdash;" she began, with color deepening.</p>
+
+<p>"If you had, you'd simply be taking a long way round, when there's a short
+cut home. I'm the orchard, Miriam. All you've got to do is to walk into
+it&mdash;with me."</p>
+
+<p>A warmer tone came into his voice as he uttered the concluding words,
+adding to her discomfort. She moved the tea-things about, putting them
+into an unnecessary state of order, before she could reply.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a reason why I couldn't do that," she said, meeting his sharp
+eyes with one of her fugitive glances. "I would have given it to you
+when&mdash;when you brought up this subject last spring, only you didn't ask
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't love you."</p>
+
+<p>She forced herself to bring out the words distinctly. He leaned back in
+his chair, threw one leg across the other, and stroked the thin, colorless
+line of his mustache.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I suppose you couldn't," he said, quietly, after considering her
+words.</p>
+
+<p>"So that my answer has to be final."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see that. Love is only one of the many motives for marriage&mdash;and
+not, as I understand it, the highest one. The divorce courts are strewn
+with the wrecks of marriages made for love. Those that stand the test of
+life and time are generally those that have been contracted from some of
+the more solid&mdash;and worthier&mdash;motives."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I don't know what they are."</p>
+
+<p>"I could explain them to you if you'd let me. As for love&mdash;if it's needed
+at all&mdash;I could bring enough into hotch-potch as the phrase goes, to do
+for two. I'm over fifty years of age. It never occurred to me that you
+could&mdash;care about me&mdash;as you might have cared for some one else. But as
+far as I can see, there's no one else. If there was, perhaps I shouldn't
+persist."</p>
+
+<p>She looked up with sudden determination.</p>
+
+<p>"If there was any one else, you&mdash;would consider that as settling the
+question?"</p>
+
+<p>"I might. I shouldn't bind myself. It would depend."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'll tell you; there <i>is</i> some one else." The words caused her to
+flush so painfully that she hastened to qualify them. "That is, there
+might have been."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by&mdash;might have been?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that, though I don't say I've ever&mdash;loved&mdash;any man, there was a
+man I might have loved, if it had been possible."</p>
+
+<p>"And why wasn't it possible?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'd rather not tell you. It was a long time ago. He went away. He never
+came back again."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he say he'd come back again?"</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head. She tried to meet his gaze steadily, but it was like
+facing a search-light.</p>
+
+<p>"Were you what you would call&mdash;engaged?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no." Her confusion deepened. "There was never anything. It was a long
+time ago. I only want you to understand that if I could care for any one
+it would be for him. And if I married you&mdash;and he came back&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Are you expecting him back?"</p>
+
+<p>She was a long time answering the question. She would not have answered it
+at all had it not been in the hope of getting rid of him.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>He took the declaration coolly, and went on.</p>
+
+<p>"Why? What makes you think he'll come?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have no reason. I think he will&mdash;that's all."</p>
+
+<p>"Where is he now?"</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't the faintest idea."</p>
+
+<p>"Hasn't he ever written to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never."</p>
+
+<p>"And you don't know what's become of him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not in the least."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet you expect him back?"</p>
+
+<p>She nodded assent.</p>
+
+<p>"You're waiting for him?"</p>
+
+<p>Once more she braced herself to look him in the eyes and answer boldly.</p>
+
+<p>"I am."</p>
+
+<p>He leaned back in his chair and laughed, not loudly, but in good-humored
+derision.</p>
+
+<p>"If that's all that stands between us&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>To her relief he said no more; though she was disappointed that the
+subject should be dropped in a way that made it possible to bring it up
+again. As he was taking his leave she renewed the attempt to end the
+matter once for all.</p>
+
+<p>"I know you think me foolish&mdash;" she began.</p>
+
+<p>"No, not foolish; only romantic."</p>
+
+<p>"Then, romantic. Romance is as bad as folly when one is twenty-seven. I
+confess it," she went on, trying to smile, "only that you may understand
+that it's a permanent condition which I sha'n't get over."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, you will."</p>
+
+<p>"Things happened&mdash;long ago&mdash;such as don't generally happen; and so&mdash;I'm
+waiting for him. If he never comes&mdash;then I'd rather go
+on&mdash;waiting&mdash;uselessly."</p>
+
+<p>It was hard to say, but it was said. He laughed again&mdash;not quite so
+derisively as before&mdash;and went away.</p>
+
+<p>When he had gone, she resumed her seat behind the tea-table. She sat
+looking absently at the floor and musing on the words she had just spoken.
+Not in all the seven or eight years since Norrie Ford went away had she
+acknowledged to her own heart what, within the last few minutes, she had
+declared aloud. The utmost she had ever owned to herself was that she
+"could have loved him." When she refused other men, she did not confess to
+waiting for him; she evaded the question with herself, and found pretexts.
+She would have continued doing so with Conquest, had not his persistency
+driven her to her last stand. But now that she had uttered the words for
+his benefit, she had to repeat them for her own. Notwithstanding her
+passionate love of woods, winds, and waters, she had always been so sane,
+so practical, in the things that pertained to daily life that she
+experienced something like surprise at detecting herself in this condition
+of avowed romance. She had actually been waiting for Norrie Ford to
+return, and say what he had told her he <i>would</i> say, should it ever become
+possible! She was waiting for him still! If he never came she would rather
+go on waiting for him&mdash;uselessly! The language almost shocked her; but now
+that the thing was spoken she admitted it was true. It was a light thrown
+on herself&mdash;if not precisely a new light, at least one from which all
+shades and colored wrappings that delude the eye and obscure the judgment
+had been struck away.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled to herself to think how little Conquest understood her when he
+ascribed to her the ambition to graft her ungarnered branch on the stock
+of a duly cultivated civilization. She might have had that desire once,
+but it was long past. It was a kind of glory to her now to be outside the
+law&mdash;with Norrie Ford. There they were exiles together, in a wild paradise
+with joys of its own, not less sweet than those of any Eden. She had faced
+more than once the question of being "taken into the orchard," as Conquest
+put it. The men who had asked her at various times to marry them had been
+like himself, men of middle age, or approaching it&mdash;men of assured
+position either by birth or by attainment. As the wife of any one of them
+her place would have been unquestioned. She had not rejected their offers
+lightly, or from any foregone conclusion. She had taken it as a duty to
+weigh each one seriously as it came; and, leaving the detail of love
+apart, she had asked herself whether it was not right for her to seize the
+occasion of becoming "some one" in the world. Once or twice the position
+offered her was so much in accordance with her tastes that her refusal
+brought with it a certain vague regret. "But I couldn't do it," were the
+words with which she woke from every dream of seeing herself mistress in a
+quiet English park, or a big house in New York. Her habits might be those
+of civilized mankind; but her heart was listening for a call from beyond
+the limits in which men have the recognized right to live. She could put
+no shackles on her freedom to respond to it&mdash;if it ever came.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch14">
+<h3>XIV</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>She discovered that Norrie Ford had come back, and that some of her
+expectations were fulfilled by finding him actually seated beside her one
+evening at dinner.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Jarrott's taste in table light was in the direction of candles
+tempered by deep-red shades. As no garish electricity was allowed to
+intrude itself into this soft glow, the result was that only old
+acquaintances among her guests got a satisfactory notion of each other's
+features. It was with a certain sense of discovery that, by peering
+through the rose-colored twilight, Miriam discerned now a Jarrott or a
+Colfax, now an Endsleigh or a Pole&mdash;faces more or less well known to her
+which she had not had time to recognize during the few hurried minutes in
+the drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p>It was the dinner of which Evie had said, in explaining her plan of
+campaign to Miriam, "We must kill off the family first of all." It was
+plain that she regarded the duty as a bore; but she was too worldly wise
+not to see that her bread cast upon the waters would return to her. Most
+of the Jarrotts were important; some were wealthy; and one&mdash;Mrs. Endsleigh
+Jarrott&mdash;was a power in such matters as assemblies and cotillons. The
+ladies Colfax were little less influential; and while the sphere of the
+Poles and Endsleighs was in the world of art, letters, and scholarship,
+rather than in that of fashion and finance, they had the uncontested
+status of good birth. To Evie they represented just so much in the way of
+her social assets, and she was quick in appraising them at their correct
+relative values. Some would be good for a dinner given in her honor,
+others for a dance. The humblest could be counted on for a theatre-party
+or a "tea." She was skilful, too, in presenting her orphan state with a
+touching vividness that enlisted their sympathies on behalf of "poor
+Jack's," or "poor Gertrude's," pretty little girl, according to the side
+of the house on which they recognized the relationship.</p>
+
+<p>With the confusion incidental to the arrival from South America, the
+settling into a new house, and the ordering of new clothes, Miriam had had
+little of the old intimate intercourse with Evie during the six weeks
+since the latter's return. There was no change in their mutual relation;
+it was only that Evie was caught up into the glory of the coming winter,
+and had no time for the apartment in Fifty-ninth Street. It was with
+double pleasure, therefore, that Miriam responded one day to Evie's
+invitation to "come and look at my things," which meant an inspection of
+the frocks and hats that had just come home. They lay about now, in clouds
+like a soft summer sunset, or in gay spots of feathers and flowers, on the
+bed and the sofa in Evie's room, and filled all the chairs except the one
+on which Miriam had retreated into the farthest corner of the bay-window.
+Seated there, not quite in profile, against the light, her head turned and
+slightly inclined, in order to get a better view of Evie's finery, her
+slender figure possessed a sort of Vandyke grace, heightened rather than
+diminished by the long plumes and rich draperies of the month's fashion.
+Evie flitted between closets, wardrobes, and drawers, prattling while she
+worked off that first event of her season, in which the family were to be
+"killed off." She recited the names of those who would "simply <i>have</i> to
+be asked" and of those who could conveniently be omitted.</p>
+
+<p>"And, of course, Popsey Wayne must come," she observed in her practical
+little way. "I dare say he won't want to, poor dear, but it wouldn't do if
+he didn't. Only you, you dear thing, will have to go in with him&mdash;to pilot
+him and look after him when the dishes are passed. But I'm going to have
+some one nice on your other side, do you see?&mdash;some one awfully nice. We
+shall have to ask a few people outside the family, just to give it relief,
+and save it from looking like Christmas."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll have Billy, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>Evie took the time to deposit a lace blouse in a drawer, as softly as a
+mother lays a sleeping babe to rest.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I sha'n't ask Billy," she said, while she was still stooping.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't he think that queer?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hope so." She turned from the drawer, and lifted a blue gossamer
+creation from the bed. Miriam smiled indulgently.</p>
+
+<p>"Why? What's the matter? Have you anything to punish him for?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've nothing to punish him for; I've only got something I want to&mdash;bring
+home to him." She paused in the middle of the room, with her blue burden
+held in her outstretched arms, somewhat like a baby at a christening. "I
+might as well tell you, Miriam, first as last. You've got to know it some
+time, though I don't want it talked about just yet. I've broken my
+engagement to Billy."</p>
+
+<p>"Broken your engagement! Why, I saw Billy myself this morning. I met him
+as I was coming over. He said he was here last night, and seemed
+particularly cheerful."</p>
+
+<p>"He doesn't know it yet. I'm doing it&mdash;by degrees."</p>
+
+<p>"You're doing it by&mdash;what?" Miriam rose and came toward her, stopping
+midway to lean on the foot-rail of the bed. "Evie darling, what do you
+mean?"</p>
+
+<p>Evie's eyes brimmed suddenly, and her lip trembled.</p>
+
+<p>"If you're going to be cross about it&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not going to be cross about it, but I want you to tell me exactly
+what you're doing."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm telling you. I've broken my engagement, and I want to let Billy
+know it in the kindest way. I don't want to hurt his feelings. You
+wouldn't like me to do that yourself. I'm trying to bring him where he'll
+see things just as I do."</p>
+
+<p>"And may I ask if you're&mdash;getting him there?"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall get him there in time. I'm doing lots of things to show him."</p>
+
+<p>"Such as what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Such as not asking him to the dinner, for one thing. He'll know from that
+there's something wrong. He'll make a fuss, and I shall be disagreeable.
+Little by little he'll get to dislike me&mdash;and then&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And how long do you think it will take for that good work to be
+accomplished?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see that that matters. I suppose I may take all the time I need.
+We're both young&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And have all your lives to give to it. Is that what you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to give all my life to it, because&mdash;I may as well tell you
+that, too, while I'm about it&mdash;because I'm engaged to some one else."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Evie!"</p>
+
+<p>Miriam went back, like a person defeated, to the chair from which she had
+just risen, while Evie buried herself in the depths of a closet, where she
+remained long enough, as she hoped, to let Miriam's first astonishment
+subside. On coming out she assumed a virtuous tone.</p>
+
+<p>"You see now why I simply <i>had</i> to break with Billy. I couldn't possibly
+keep the two things going together&mdash;as some girls would. I'm one of those
+who do right, whatever happens. It's very hard for me&mdash;but if people would
+only be a little more sympathetic&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>It was some minutes before Miriam knew just what to say. Even when she
+began to speak she doubted her capacity for making herself understood.</p>
+
+<p>"Evie darling," she said, trying to speak as for a child's comprehension,
+"this is a very serious matter. I don't think you realize how serious it
+is. If you find you don't love Billy well enough, of course you must ask
+him to release you. I should be sorry for that, but I shouldn't blame you.
+But until you've done it you can't give your word to any one."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I must say I never heard anything like that," Evie declared,
+indignantly. "You do have the strangest ideas, Miriam. Dear mamma used to
+say so, too. I try to defend you, but you make it difficult for me, I must
+say. I never knew any one like you for making things more complicated than
+they need be. You talk of my asking Billy to release me when I released
+myself long ago&mdash;in my own mind. That's where I have to look. I must do
+things according to my conscience&mdash;and when that's clear&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't only a case of conscience, dear; it's one of common sense.
+Conscience has a way of sometimes mistaking the issue, whereas common
+sense can generally be trusted to be right."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, if you're going to talk that way, Miriam, I don't see what's
+left for me to answer; but it doesn't sound very reverent, I must say. I'm
+trying to look at things in the highest light, and it doesn't strike me as
+the highest light to be unkind to Billy when I needn't be. If you think I
+ought to treat him cruelly you must keep your opinion, but I know you'll
+excuse me if I keep mine."</p>
+
+<p>She carried her head loftily as she bore another gown into the adjoining
+darkness, and Miriam waited patiently till she emerged again.</p>
+
+<p>"Does your other&mdash;I hardly know what to call him&mdash;does your other fianc&eacute;
+know about Billy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why on earth should he? What good would that do? It will be all over&mdash;I
+mean about Billy&mdash;before I announce my second engagement, and as the one
+to Billy will never be announced at all there's no use in saying anything
+about it."</p>
+
+<p>"But suppose Billy himself finds out?"</p>
+
+<p>"Billy won't find out anything whatever until I get ready to let him."</p>
+
+<p>The finality of this retort reduced Miriam to silence. She allowed some
+minutes to pass before saying, with some hesitation:</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you don't mind my knowing&mdash;who it is?"</p>
+
+<p>Evie was prepared for this question and answered it promptly.</p>
+
+<p>"I shan't mind your knowing&mdash;by-and-by. I want you to meet him first.
+When you've once seen him, I know you'll be more just to me. Till then I'm
+willing to go on being&mdash;misunderstood."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>During the three more weeks that intervened before the family dinner
+Miriam got no further light on Evie's love-affairs. She purposely asked no
+questions through fear of seeming to force the girl's confidence, but she
+obtained some relief from thinking that the rival suitor could be no other
+than a certain young Graham, of whom she had heard much from Evie during
+the previous year. His chances then had stood higher than Billy Merrow's;
+and nothing was more possible than a discovery on Evie's part that she
+liked him the better of the two. It was a situation that called for
+sympathy for Billy, but not otherwise for grave anxiety, so that Miriam
+could wait quietly for further out-pourings of Evie's heart, and give her
+mind to the mysteries incidental to the girl's social presentation to the
+world.</p>
+
+<p>Of the ceremonies attendant on this event the "killing off" of the family
+was the one Miriam dreaded most. It was when she came within the periphery
+of this powerful, meritorious, well-to-do circle, representing whatever
+was most honorable in New York, that she chiefly felt herself an alien.
+She could scarcely have explained herself in this respect, since many of
+the clan had been kind to her, and none had ever shown her incivility. It
+was when she confronted them in the mass, when she saw their solidarity,
+their mutual esteem, their sum total of wealth, talents, and good works,
+that she grew conscious of the difference of essence between herself and
+them. Not one of them but had the right to the place he sat in!--a right
+maintained by himself, but acquired by his fathers before him&mdash;not one of
+them but was living in the strength of some respectable tradition of which
+he could be proud! Endsleigh Jarrott's father, for example, had been a
+banker, Reginald Pole's the president of a university, Rupert Colfax's a
+judge; and it was something like that with them all. In the midst of so
+much that was classified, certified, and regular she was as obviously a
+foreign element as a fly in amber. She came in as the ward of Philip
+Wayne, who himself was a new-comer and an intruder, since he entered
+merely as "poor Gertrude's second husband," by a marriage which they all
+considered a mistake.</p>
+
+<p>With the desire to be as unobtrusive as possible, she dressed herself in
+black, without ornament of any kind, unaware of the fact that with her
+height of figure, her grace of movement, her ivory tint, and that
+expression of hers which disconcerted people because it was first
+appealing and then proud, she would be more than ever conspicuous against
+the background of brilliant toilets, fine jewels, and assured manners
+which the family would produce for the occasion. As a matter of fact,
+there was a perceptible hush in the hum of talk as she made her entry into
+the drawing-room, ostensibly led by Philip Wayne, but really leading him.
+As she paused near the door, half timid, half bewildered, looking for her
+hostess, it did not help her to feel at ease to see Mrs. Endsleigh
+Jarrott&mdash;a Rubens <i>Maria de Medici</i> in white satin and pearls&mdash;raise her
+lorgnette and call on a tall young man who stood beside her to take a
+look. There was no time to distinguish anything further before Miss
+Jarrott glided up, with mincing graciousness, to shake hands.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you do! How do you do! So glad you've come. I think you must know
+nearly every one here, so I needn't introduce any one. I hardly ever
+introduce. It's funny, isn't it? They say it's an English custom not to
+introduce, but I don't do it just by nature. I wonder why I
+shouldn't?&mdash;but I never do&mdash;or almost never. So if you don't happen to
+know your neighbors at table just speak. It was Evie who arranged where
+every one was to sit. <i>I</i> don't know. They say that's English, too&mdash;just
+to speak. I believe it's quite a recognized thing in London to say, 'Is
+this your bread or mine?' and then you know each other. Isn't it funny?
+Now I think we're all here. Will you take in Miriam, Mr. Wayne?"</p>
+
+<p>A hasty embrace from Evie&mdash;an angelic vision in white&mdash;was followed by a
+few words of greeting from Charles Conquest after which Miriam saw Miss
+Jarrott take the arm of Bishop Endsleigh, and the procession began to
+move.</p>
+
+<p>At table Miriam was glad of the dim, rose-colored light. It offered her a
+seclusion into which she could withdraw, tending her services to Wayne.
+She was glad, too, that the family, having so much to say to itself, paid
+her no special attention. She was sufficiently occupied in aiding the
+helpless blind man beside her, and repeating for his benefit the names of
+their fellow-guests. As the large party talked at the top of its lungs,
+Miriam's quiet voice, with its liquid, almost contralto, quality, reached
+her companion's ears unheard by others. She began with Bishop Endsleigh
+who was on Miss Jarrott's right. Then came Mrs. Stephen Colfax; after her
+Mr. Endsleigh Jarrott, who had on his right Mrs. Reginald Pole. Mrs.
+Pole's neighbor was Charles Conquest, whom she shared with Mrs. Rodney
+Wrenn. Now and then Wayne himself would give proof of that increased
+acuteness in his hearing of which he had spoken more than once since his
+blindness had become total. "Colfax Yorke is here," he observed at one
+time. "I hear his voice. He's sitting on our side of the table." "Mrs.
+Endsleigh Jarrott is next but one to you," he said at another time. "She's
+airing her plans for the reconstruction of New York society."</p>
+
+<p>So for a while they kept one another in small talk, affecting the same
+sort of vivacity that obtained around them. It was not till dinner was
+half over that he asked in an undertone:</p>
+
+<p>"Who is your neighbor?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," she managed to whisper back. "He's so taken up with Mrs.
+Endsleigh Jarrott that he hasn't looked this way. I don't think he's any
+member of the family."</p>
+
+<p>"He must be," Wayne replied. "I know his voice. I have some association
+with it, but just what I can't remember."</p>
+
+<p>Miriam herself listened to hear him speak, catching only an irrelevant
+word or two.</p>
+
+<p>"He sounds English," she said then.</p>
+
+<p>"No, he isn't English. That's not my association. It's curious how the
+mind acts. Since I became&mdash;since my sight failed&mdash;my memory instinctively
+brings me voices instead of faces, when I want to recall anything. Aren't
+you going to speak to him? You've got the formula: Is this your bread or
+mine?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's very convenient, but I don't think I shall use it."</p>
+
+<p>"He'd like you to, I know. I heard him say to Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott as we
+came in&mdash;while Queenie Jarrott was talking&mdash;that you were he most
+strikingly beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life. How's that for a
+compliment from a perfect stranger?"</p>
+
+<p>"I certainly sha'n't speak to him now. A man who could say that to Mrs.
+Endsleigh, after having seen <i>her,</i> must be wofully wanting in tact."</p>
+
+<p>Mary Pole on Wayne's right claimed his attention and Miriam was left her
+own mistress. Almost at once her attention was arrested by hearing Mrs.
+Endsleigh Jarrott saying in that appealing voice which she counted as the
+secret of her success with men:</p>
+
+<p>"Now do give me your frank opinion, Mr. Strange. You don't know how much I
+should like it. It's far from my idea that we should slavishly copy
+London. You know that, don't you? We've an entirely different stock of
+materials to work with. But I'm firmly convinced that by working on the
+London model we should make society far more general, far more
+representative, and far&mdash;oh, <i>far</i>&mdash;more interesting! Now, what do <i>you</i>
+think? Do give me your frank opinion."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Strange! Her own name was sufficiently uncommon to cause Miriam to
+glance sidewise, in her rapid, fugitive way, at the person who bore it.
+His face was turned from her as he bent toward Mrs. Jarrott, but again she
+heard his voice, and this time more distinctly.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid my opinion wouldn't be of much value. Nevertheless, I know you
+must be right."</p>
+
+<p>"Now I'm disappointed in you," Mrs. Jarrott said, with pretty
+reproachfulness. "You're not taking me seriously. Oh, I see, I see. You're
+just an ordinary man, after all; when I thought for a minute you might
+be&mdash;well, a little different. Do take some of that asparagus," she added
+in another tone. "It's simply delicious."</p>
+
+<p>It was while he was helping himself to this delicacy that Miriam got the
+first clear view of his face, half turned as it was toward her. He seemed
+aware that she was observing him, for during the space of some seconds he
+held the silver implements idle in his hands, while he lifted his eyes to
+meet hers. The look they exchanged was significant and long, and yet she
+was never quite sure that she recognized him then. For the minute she was
+only conscious of a sudden, inward shock, to which she was unable to
+ascribe a cause. Something had happened, though she knew not what. Having
+in the course of a few minutes regained her self-control, she could only
+suppose that it was a repetition of that unreasoning panic which had now
+and then brought her to the verge of fainting, when by chance, in London,
+Paris, or New York, she caught a glimpse of some tall figure that carried
+her imagination back to the cabin in the Adirondacks. She had always
+thought that he might appear in some crowd and take her by surprise. She
+had never expected to find him in a gathering that could be called social.
+Still less had she looked to meet him like this, with Philip Wayne who had
+sentenced him to death not three feet away. The mere idea was
+preposterous. And yet&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>She glanced at him again. He was listening attentively while Mrs.
+Endsleigh Jarrott's voice ran on:</p>
+
+<p>"People say our society has no traditions. It <i>has</i> traditions. It has the
+traditions of the country village, and it has never outgrown them. We're
+nothing but the country village writ large. New York, Philadelphia,
+Boston, Baltimore&mdash;we're the country village over again, with its
+narrowness its sets, its timidity, all writ <i>so</i> large that they hide
+anything like a real society from us. Now isn't it so, Mr. Strange? Don't
+be afraid to give me your frank opinion because that's what I'm asking
+for."</p>
+
+<p>Miriam herself made an effort to seem to be doing something that would
+enable her to sit unnoticed. She was glad that Wayne was engaged by Mary
+Pole so that he could no longer listen to the voice that wakened his
+recollections. She looked again at the tall, carefully dressed man beside
+her, so different in all his externals from anything she imagined Norrie
+Ford could ever become. Norrie Ford was an outlaw and this was a man of
+the world. She felt herself being reassured&mdash;and yet disappointed. Her
+first feeling of faintness passed away, enabling her to face the situation
+with greater calm. Under cover of the energetic animation characteristic
+of every American dinner-party at which the guests are intimate, she had
+leisure to think over the one or two hints that were significant. Now and
+then a remark was addressed to her across the table to which she managed
+to return a reply sufficiently apt to give her the appearance of being in
+touch with what was going on around her; but in reality she was taking in
+the fact, with the spirit rather than the mind, that Norrie Ford had
+returned.</p>
+
+<p>She never understood just how and when that assurance came to her. It was
+certainly not by actual recognition of his features, as it was not by
+putting together the few data that came under her observation. Thinking it
+over in after years, she could only say that she "just found herself
+<i>knowing it</i>." He was there&mdash;beside her. Of that she had no longer a
+doubt.</p>
+
+<p>Her amazement did not develop all at once. Indeed, the position had an odd
+naturalness, like something in a dream. The element of impossibility in
+what had happened was so great that for the time being her mind refused to
+meet it. She was only aware of that vague sense of satisfaction, of inward
+peace, that comes when long-desired ends have been fulfilled.</p>
+
+<p>The main fact being accepted, her outer faculties could respond to the
+call that a dinner-party makes on its least important member. When the
+conversation at her end of the table became general she took her part, and
+later engaged in a three-cornered discussion with Wayne and Mary Pole on
+the subject of an endowed theatre; but all the while her subconscious mind
+was struggling for a theory to account for Norrie Ford's presence in that
+particular room and in that unexpected company. The need of some
+immediate, plausible reason for so astounding an occurrence deadened her
+attention to the comparative quietness with which she accepted his
+coming&mdash;now that she had regained her self-control, although she was
+conscious of stirrings of wild joy in this evidence that he had been true
+to her. Had she recalled what she had said to him eight years ago as to
+the Argentine, and the "very good firm to work for," she would have had an
+easy clew, but that had passed from her mind almost with the
+utterance&mdash;certainly with his departure He had gone out into the world,
+leaving no more trace behind him than the bird that has flown southward.
+Not once during the intervening years did the thought cross her mind that
+words which she had spoken nearly at haphazard could have acted as a guide
+to him, while still less did she dream that they could have led him into
+the very seat beside her which he was occupying now.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, he was there, and for the present she could dispense with
+the knowledge of the adventures that had brought him. He was there, and
+that was the reason of his coming in itself. He had hewn his way through
+all difficulties to reach her&mdash;as Siegfried came to Brunhild, over the
+mountains and through the fire. He had found the means&mdash;both the means
+and the daring&mdash;to enter and make himself accepted in her own world, her
+own circle, her own family&mdash;in so far as she had a family&mdash;and to sit
+right down at her side.</p>
+
+<p>She was not surprised at it. She assured herself of that. At the very
+instant when she was saying to Mary Pole, across Philip Wayne's white
+waistcoat, that she had always thought of endowed institutions of creative
+art as belonging to the races of weaker individual initiative&mdash;at the very
+instant when she was saying that, she was repeating to herself that the
+directness, the high-handedness, and the success of this kind of exploit
+was exactly what she would have expected of Norrie Ford. It was what she
+<i>had</i> expected of him&mdash;in one form or another. It was with a sense of
+inward pride that she remembered that her faith in him had never wavered,
+even though it was not until Conquest forced her that she had confessed
+the fact. She glanced at Conquest across the table now and caught his eye.
+He smiled at her and raised his glass, as though to drink to her health.
+She smiled in return, daringly, triumphantly, as she would not have
+ventured to do an hour ago. She could see him flush with pleasure&mdash;a rare
+occurrence&mdash;at her unusual graciousness, while she was only rejoicing in
+her escape from him. Under the shadow of the tall man beside her, who had
+achieved the impossible in order to be loyal to her, she felt for the
+first time in her life that she had found a shelter. It mattered nothing
+that he was engrossed with Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott, and that, after the one
+glance, he had not turned toward her again; she was sure he knew that she
+understood him, and that he recognized her power to wait in patience to
+have the mystery explained.</p>
+
+<p>In the drawing-room he was introduced to her. Miss Jarrott led him up and
+made the presentation.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Strange, I want you to know Mr. Strange. Now isn't that funny? You
+can't think how many times I've thought how interesting it would be to see
+you two meet. It's so unusual to have the same name, especially when it's
+such a strange name as yours. There's a pun. I simply can't help making
+them. My brother says I inherited all the sense of humor in the family. I
+don't know why I do it, but I always see a joke. Can you tell me why I do
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>Neither Strange nor Miriam knew what replies they made, but a conversation
+of some sort went on for a minute or two, after which Miss Jarrott whisked
+him away to present him to some one else. When he had gone Miriam was left
+with a feeling of spiritual chill. While it was impossible to betray a
+previous acquaintance before Miss Jarrott, there had been nothing whatever
+in his bearing to respond to the recognition in hers. There was something
+that might have been conveyed from mind to mind without risk, and he had
+not used the opportunity. In as far as he addressed her at all it had been
+through Miss Jarrott, and he had looked around her and over her rather
+than directly into her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>During the rest of the evening she caught glimpses of him only in the
+distance, talking now to one member of the family, now to another. It was
+clear that Miss Jarrott was, in a way, showing him off, and that he was
+received as some one of importance. She admired the coolness with which he
+carried himself, while her inherited instincts gave her a curious thrill
+of content that these law-making, law-keeping people should be duped.</p>
+
+<p>She hoped he would find an occasion for passing again in her direction.
+If she could have only a word with him it might help to make the situation
+intelligible. But he did not return, and presently she noticed, in looking
+about the room, that he had disappeared. She, too, was eager to be gone.
+Only in solitude could she get control of the surging thoughts, the
+bewildering suggestions, the contradictory suppositions that crowded it on
+her. She saw how useless it was to try to build a theory without at least
+one positive fact to go on.</p>
+
+<p>It was just as they were departing that her opportunity to ask a question
+came. They had said their good-nights to Miss Jarrott and were in the
+hall, waiting for the footman to call their carriage, when Evie, whom they
+had not wanted to disturb, came fluttering after them. She was flushed but
+radiant, and flung herself into Miriam's arms.</p>
+
+<p>"You dear thing! I haven't had time to say a word to you or Popsey Wayne
+the entire evening. But you'll excuse me, won't you? I've had to be civil
+to them all&mdash;do you see?&mdash;and do them up well. I knew you wouldn't mind. I
+wanted you to have a good time, but I'm afraid you haven't."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes," Miriam said, disengaging herself from the girl's embrace. "It's
+been wonderful&mdash;it really has. But, Evie dear," she whispered, drawing her
+away from the group of ladies who stood cloaked and hooded, also waiting
+for their carriages, "tell me&mdash;who is that Mr. Strange who sat next to
+me?"</p>
+
+<p>Evie's eyes went heavenward, and she took on a look of rapture.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you liked him."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't have much chance to see. But why do you hope it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because&mdash;don't you see? Oh, surely you <i>must</i> see&mdash;because&mdash;he's the
+one."</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch15">
+<h3>XV</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>Enlightenment came to her in the carriage while she was driving homeward.
+During the five or ten minutes since Evie had spoken she, Miriam, had been
+sitting still and upright in the darkness, making no further attempt to
+see reason through this succession of bewilderments from sheer inability
+to contend against them. For the time being, at any rate, the struggle was
+too much for her. The issues raised by Evie's overwhelming announcement
+were so confusing that she must postpone their consideration. She must
+postpone everything but her own tumultuous passion, which had to be faced
+and mastered instantly. She was fighting with herself, with her own wild
+inward cries of protest, anger, jealousy, and self-pity, trying to
+distinguish each from the others and to silence it by appeal to her years
+of romantic folly, when suddenly Wayne spoke, in the cheery tone of a man
+who has unexpectedly passed a pleasant evening.</p>
+
+<p>"I had a nice long chat with the Great Unknown, who was sitting beside
+you, when the ladies left the dining-room. Who do you think he is?"</p>
+
+<p>After the shocks of the last two hours, she was prepared to hear Wayne
+tell her, in an offhand way, that it was Norrie Ford. Nevertheless, she
+summoned what was left of her stunned faculties and did her best to speak
+carefully.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard them call him Mr. Strange&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Odd that was, wasn't it? But it isn't such a very uncommon name. I've met
+other Stranges&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes. So have I."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, who do you think he is? Why, he's Stephens and Jarrott's new man in
+New York. He's taken Jenkins's place. You remember Jenkins, don't you?
+That little man with a lisp. I had a nice long chat with him&mdash;Strange, I
+mean. He tells me he's a New-Yorker by birth, but that he went out to the
+Argentine after his father failed in business. Well, <i>he</i> won't fail in
+business, <i>I</i> bet a penny. He's tremendously enthusiastic over the
+Argentine, too. Showed he had his head put on the right way when he went
+there. Wonderful country&mdash;the United States of South America some people
+call it. We're missing our opportunities out there. Great volume of trade
+flowing to Europe of which we had almost the monopoly at one time. I had a
+nice long chat with him."</p>
+
+<p>Her tired emotions received a new surprise as Wayne's words directed her
+thoughts to the morning when she had made to Ford the first suggestion of
+the Argentine. She had not precisely forgotten it; she had only thought it
+of too little importance to dwell on. She remembered that she had
+considered the idea practical till she had expressed it, but that his
+opposition had seemed to turn it into the impossible. She had never
+supposed that he might have acted on it&mdash;not any more than she had
+expected him to retain her father's name once he had reached a place of
+safety. In spite of the suddenness with which her dreams regarding him had
+been dispelled, it gave her a thrill of satisfaction to think that the
+word which, in a sense, had created him had been hers. To her fierce
+jealousy, with which her pride was wrestling even now, there was a
+measure of comfort in the knowledge that he could never be quite free from
+her, that his existence was rooted in her own.</p>
+
+<p>"Queenie Jarrott tells me," Wayne meandered on, "that her brother thinks
+very highly of this young man. It seems that his business abilities are
+quite remarkable, and they fancy he looks like Henry&mdash;the eldest of the
+boys who died. It's extraordinary how his voice reminds me of some
+one&mdash;don't know who. It might be&mdash;But then again&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"His voice is like a thousand other voices," she thought it well to say,
+"just as he looks like a thousand other men. He's one of those rather
+tall, rather good-looking, rather well-dressed youngish men&mdash;not really
+young&mdash;of whom you'll pass twenty within a mile any day in Fifth Avenue,
+and who are as thick as soldiers on a battle-field at the lower end of
+Broadway."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>With the data Wayne had given her she worked out the main lines of the
+story during the night; but it was not until she had done so that its full
+significance appeared to her. Having grasped that, she could scarcely wait
+for daylight in order to go to Evie, and yet when morning came she
+abandoned that course as impolitic. Reflection showed her that her
+struggle must be less with Evie than with Ford, while she judged that he
+himself would lose no time in putting the battle in array. He must see as
+plainly as she did that she stood like an army across his path, and that
+he must either retreat before her or show fight. She believed he would do
+the latter and do it soon. She thought it probable that he would appear
+that very day, and that her wisest plan was to await his opening attack.
+The necessity, so unexpectedly laid upon her, of defending the right
+deflected her mind from dwelling too bitterly on her own disillusioning.</p>
+
+<p>The morning having passed without a sign from him, she made her
+arrangements for having the afternoon undisturbed sending Wayne to drive,
+and ordering the servants to admit no one but Mr. Strange, should he
+chance to call. Having intrenched herself behind the fortification of the
+tea-table, she waited. In spite of her preoccupation, or rather because of
+it, she purposely read a book, forcing herself to fix her attention on its
+pages in order to have her mind free from preconceived notions as to how
+she must act and what she must say. Her single concession to herself was
+to put on a new and becoming house dress, whose rich tones of brown and
+amber harmonized with her ivory coloring and emphasized the clear-cut
+distinction of her features. Before taking up her position she surveyed
+herself with the mournful approval which the warrior about to fall may
+give to the perfection of his equipment.</p>
+
+<p>It was half-past four when the servant showed him in. His formal attire
+seemed to her, as he crossed the room, oddly civilized and correct after
+her recollections of him. Notwithstanding her dread of the opening
+minutes, the meeting passed off according to the fixed procedure of the
+drawing-room. It was a relief to both to find that the acts of shaking
+hands and sitting down had been accomplished with matter-of-course
+formality. With the familiar support of afternoon-call conventions
+difficult topics could be treated at greater ease.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm very glad to find you at home," he began, feeling it to be a safe
+opening. "I was almost afraid&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I stayed in on purpose," she said, frankly. "I thought you might come."</p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't sure whether or not you knew me last night&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't at first. I really hadn't noticed you, though I remembered
+afterward that you were standing with Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott when Mr.
+Wayne and I came into the room. I wonder now if you recognized me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, rather! I knew you were going to be there. I've been in New York a
+month."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you might have come to see me sooner."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you see&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He paused and colored, trying to cover up his embarrassment with a smile.
+She allowed her eyes to express interrogation not knowing that her frank
+gaze disconcerted him. She herself went back so eagerly to the days when
+he was the fugitive, Norrie Ford, and she the nameless girl who was
+helping him, that she could not divine his humiliation at being obliged to
+drop his mask. Since becoming engaged to Evie Colfax and returning to New
+York, he perceived more clearly than ever before that his true part in the
+world was that of the respectable, successful man of business which he
+played so skilfully. It cost him an effort she could have no reason to
+suspect to be face to face with the one person in the world who knew him
+as something else.</p>
+
+<p>"You see," he began again, "I had to consider a good many
+things&mdash;naturally. It wouldn't have done to give any one an idea that we
+had met before."</p>
+
+<p>"No, of course not. But last night you might have&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Last night I had to follow the same tactics. I can't afford to run risks.
+It's rather painful, it's even a bit humiliating&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I can imagine that, especially here in New York. In out-of-the-way places
+it must be different. There it doesn't matter. But to be among the very
+people who&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You think that there it does matter. I had to consider that. I had to
+make it plain to myself that there was nothing dishonorable in imposing on
+people who had forced me into a false position. I don't say it's
+pleasant&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I know it can't be pleasant. I only wondered a little, as I saw you
+last night, why you let yourself be placed in a position that made it
+necessary."</p>
+
+<p>"I should have wondered at that myself a year ago. I certainly never had
+any intention of doing it. It's almost as much a surprise to me to be here
+as it is to you to see me. I suppose you thought I would never turn up
+again."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I didn't think that. On the contrary, I thought you <i>would</i> turn
+up&mdash;only not just here."</p>
+
+<p>It struck him that she was emphasizing that point for a purpose&mdash;to bring
+him to another point still. He took a few seconds to reflect before
+deciding that he would follow her lead without further hanging back.</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't have returned to New York if I hadn't become engaged to Miss
+Colfax. You know about that, don't you? I think she meant to tell you."</p>
+
+<p>She inclined her head assentingly, without words. He noticed her dark eyes
+resting on him with a kind of pity. He had cherished a faint hope&mdash;the
+very faintest&mdash;that she might welcome what he had just said
+sympathetically. In the few minutes during which she remained silent that
+hope died.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose," she said, gently, "that you became engaged to Evie before
+knowing who she was?"</p>
+
+<p>"I fell in love with her before knowing who she was. I'm afraid that when
+I actually asked her to marry me I had heard all there was to learn."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why did you do it?"</p>
+
+<p>He shrugged his shoulders with a movement acquired by long residence
+among Latins. His smile conveyed the impossibility of explaining himself
+in a sentence.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you all about it, if you'd like to hear."</p>
+
+<p>"I should like it very much. Remember, I know nothing of what happened
+after&mdash;after&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He noticed a shade of confusion in her manner, and hastened to begin his
+narrative.</p>
+
+<p>Somewhat to her surprise, he sketched his facts in lightly, but dwelt
+strongly on the mental and moral necessities his situation forced on him.
+He related with some detail the formation of his creed of conduct in the
+dawn on Lake Champlain, and showed her that according to its tenets he was
+permitted a kind of action that in other men might be reprehensible. He
+came to the story of Evie last of all, and allowed her to see how
+dominating a part Fate, or Predestination had played in evolving it.</p>
+
+<p>"So you see," he ended, "it was too late then to do anything&mdash;but to
+yield."</p>
+
+<p>"Or withdraw," she added, softly.</p>
+
+<p>He stared at her a moment, his body bent slightly forward his elbows
+resting on the arms of his chair. As a matter of fact, he was thinking
+less of her words than of her beauty&mdash;so much nobler in type than he
+remembered it.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he returned, quietly, "I can see that it would strike you in that
+way. So it did me&mdash;at first. But I had to look at the subject all round&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't need to do that."</p>
+
+<p>He stared at her again. There was a decision in her words which he found
+hard to reconcile with the pity in her eyes and the gentle softness of her
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>"You mean that you don't want to take my&mdash;necessities&mdash;into
+consideration."</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that when I see the one thing right to do, I don't have to look
+any further."</p>
+
+<p>"The one thing right to do&mdash;for you?&mdash;or for me?"</p>
+
+<p>"There's no reason why I should intervene at all. I look to you to save me
+from the necessity."</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated a minute before deciding whether to hedge or to meet her
+squarely.</p>
+
+<p>"By giving up Evie and&mdash;clearing out," he said, with a perceptible hint of
+defiance.</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't lay stress on your&mdash;clearing out."</p>
+
+<p>"But you would on my giving up Evie?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you see," she began, in an explanatory tone, "I, in my own person,
+have nothing to do with it? It isn't for me to say this should be done or
+that. You can't imagine how hard it is for me to say anything at all; and
+if I speak, it isn't as myself&mdash;it's as the voice of a situation. You must
+understand as well as I do what that situation imposes."</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't intend that a situation shall impose anything&mdash;on me. I mean
+to act as master&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But I'm neither so independent nor so strong&mdash;nor is Evie. You don't
+consider her."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't have to consider any one. When I make Evie happy I do all that
+can be asked of me."</p>
+
+<p>"No, you would be called on to <i>keep</i> her happy. And she couldn't remain
+happy if she were married to you. It isn't possible. She couldn't live
+with you any more than&mdash;than a humming-bird could live with a hawk."</p>
+
+<p>They both smiled, rather nervously.</p>
+
+<p>"But I'm not a hawk," he insisted. "I'm much more a humming-bird than you
+imagine. You think me some sort of creature of prey because you
+believe&mdash;that I did&mdash;what I was accused of&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The circumstances seemed so far off from him now, so incongruous with what
+he had become, that he reverted to them with difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't attach any importance to that," she said, with a tranquillity
+that startled him. "I suppose I ought to, but I never have. If you killed
+your uncle, it seems to me&mdash;very natural. He provoked you. He deserved it.
+My father would have done it certainly."</p>
+
+<p>"But I didn't, you see. That puts another color on the case."</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't for me. And it doesn't, as it affects Evie. Whether you're
+innocent or guilty&mdash;and I don't say I think you to be guilty&mdash;I've never
+thought much about it&mdash;but whether you're guilty or not, your life is the
+kind of tragedy Evie couldn't share. It would kill her."</p>
+
+<p>"It wouldn't kill her, if she didn't know anything about it."</p>
+
+<p>"But she would know. You can't keep that sort of thing from a wife. She
+wouldn't be married to you a year before she had discovered that you
+were&mdash;a&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"An escaped convict. Why not say it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't going to say it. But at least she would know that you were a man
+who was pretending to be&mdash;something that he wasn't."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean an impostor. Well, I've already explained to you that I'm an
+impostor only because Society itself has made me one, I'm not to blame&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I quite see the force of that. But Evie wouldn't. Don't you understand?
+That's my point. She would only see the horror of it, and she would be
+overwhelmed. It wouldn't matter to her that you could bring forward
+arguments in your own defence. She wouldn't be capable of understanding
+them. You must see for yourself that mentally&mdash;and spiritually&mdash;just as
+bodily&mdash;she's as fragile as a butterfly. She couldn't withstand a storm.
+She'd be crushed by it."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think you do her justice. If she were to discover&mdash;I mean, if the
+worst were to come to the worst&mdash;well, you can see how it's been with
+yourself. You've known from the beginning all there is to know&mdash;and yet&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm different."</p>
+
+<p>She meant the brief statement to divert his attention from himself, but
+she perceived that it aroused a flash of self-consciousness in both. While
+she could hear herself saying inwardly, "I'd rather go on waiting for
+him&mdash;uselessly," he was listening to a silvery voice, as it lisped the
+words, "Dear mamma used to think she was in love with some one; we didn't
+know anything about it." Each reverted to the memory of the lakeside scene
+in which he had said, "My life will belong to you ... a thing for you to
+dispose of ..." and each was afraid that the other was doing so.</p>
+
+<p>All at once she saw herself as she fancied he must see her&mdash;a woman
+claiming the fulfilment of an old promise, the payment of a long-standing
+debt. He must think she was making Evie a pretext in her fight for her own
+hand. His vow&mdash;if it was a vow&mdash;had been the germ of so much romance in
+her mind that she ascribed it to a place in the foreground of his. In all
+she was saying he would understand a demand on her part that he should
+make it good. Very well, then; if he could do her such injustice, he must
+do it. She could not permit the fear of it to inspire her with moral
+cowardice or deter her from doing what was right.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, it helped her to control her agitation to rise and ring for
+tea. She felt the need of some commonplace action to assure herself and
+him that now, at last, she was outside the realm of the romantic. He rose
+as she did, to forestall her at the bell; and as the servant entered with
+the tray, they moved together into the embrasure of the wide bay-window.
+Down below the autumn colors were fading, while leaves, golden-yellow or
+blood-red, were being swirled along the ground.</p>
+
+<p>"I had to do things out there"&mdash;his nod was meant to indicate the
+direction of South America&mdash;"in a somewhat high-handed manner, and I've
+acquired the habit of it. If I'd stuck at difficulties I shouldn't have
+got anywhere."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him inquiringly, as though to ask the purport of the
+observation.</p>
+
+<p>"You must see that I'm obliged to put this thing through&mdash;on Evie's
+account as much as mine. After getting her to care for me, I can't desert
+her now, whatever happens."</p>
+
+<p>"She wouldn't suffer&mdash;after a while. She'd get over it. You might not, but
+she&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"She shall not get over it, if I can help it. How can you ask me to let
+her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only on the ground that you love her well enough."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you call that love?"</p>
+
+<p>"In view of all the circumstances, it would be my idea of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Then it wouldn't be mine. The only love I understand is the love that
+fights for its object, in the face of all opposition."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him a minute with what she tried to make a smile, but which
+became no more than a quivering of the lip and lashes.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you won't fight," she said, in a tone of appeal, "because it would
+have to be with me. If anything could break my heart, that would."</p>
+
+<p>She knew how near to self-betrayal she had gone, but in her eagerness she
+was reckless of the danger.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know it wouldn't break mine too?" he asked, with a scrutiny
+that searched her eyes. "But there are times in life when men have just to
+fight&mdash;and let their hearts be broken. In becoming responsible for Evie's
+happiness I've given a pledge from which I can't withdraw&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But that's where you don't understand her&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Possibly; but it's where I understand myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Tea is served, miss," the maid said, coming forward to where they talked
+in undertones. At the same minute there was a shuffling at the door and
+Wayne entered from his drive. Ford would have gone forward to help him,
+but she put out her hand and stopped him.</p>
+
+<p>"He likes to find his way himself," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"They tell me there's tea in here," Wayne said, cheerily, from the
+doorway.</p>
+
+<p>"There's more than tea," Miriam replied in as bright a tone as she could
+assume. "There's Mr. Strange, whom you met last night."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, that's good." Wayne groped his way toward the voices. "How do you do!
+Glad to see you. It's windy out-of-doors. One feels the winter beginning
+to nip."</p>
+
+<p>Ford took the extended hand, and, without seeming to do so, adroitly
+piloted the blind man to a seat as they moved, all three, to the
+tea-table.</p>
+
+<p>For the next ten minutes their talk turned on the common topics of the
+day. As during her conversation with Conquest a few weeks before, Miriam
+found again that the routine of duties of acting as hostess steadied her
+nerves. With Ford aiding her in the little ways to which he had become
+accustomed since his engagement to Evie, hostility was absent from their
+mutual relation, even though opposition remained. That at least was a
+comfort to her; and now and then, as she handed him the bread and butter
+or a plate of cakes to pass to Wayne, their eyes could meet in a glance of
+comprehension.</p>
+
+<p>Wayne was still enjoying his tea when Ford turned to him with an abrupt
+change of tone.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad you came in, sir, while I was still here, because there's
+something I particularly want to tell you."</p>
+
+<p>He did not look at Miriam, but he could feel the way in which she sat
+upright and aghast. Wayne turned his sightless eyes, hidden by large
+colored glasses, toward the speaker, and nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?" he said, interrogatively.</p>
+
+<p>"I would have told you before, only that Miss Jarrott and Miss Colfax
+thought I had better wait till every one got settled. In any case, Mr.
+Jarrott made it a condition before I left Buenos Aires that it shouldn't
+go outside the family till Miss Colfax had had her social winter in New
+York."</p>
+
+<p>Wayne's face grew grave, but not unsympathetic.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I know what's coming," he said, quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the sort of thing that was bound to come sooner or later with Miss
+Colfax," Ford smiled, speaking with an air of assurance. "What makes me
+uneasy is that I should be the man to come and tell the news. If it was
+any one you knew better&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You've probably heard that I'm not Evie's guardian," Wayne interposed.
+"I've no control at all over what she does."</p>
+
+<p>"I understand that; but to me there's an authority above the legal one&mdash;or
+at least on a level with it&mdash;and I should be unhappy&mdash;we should both be
+unhappy&mdash;if we didn't have your consent."</p>
+
+<p>Wayne looked pleased. He was so rarely consulted in the affairs of the
+family, especially since his affliction had forced him aside, that this
+deference was a clew to the young man's character. Nevertheless, he
+allowed some seconds to pass in silence, while Ford threw at Miriam a
+glance of defiance, in which there was also an expression of audacious
+friendliness. She sat rigid and pale, her hands clinching the arms of her
+chair.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a serious matter&mdash;of course," Wayne said, after becoming hesitation;
+"but I've great confidence in Henry Jarrott. Next to Evie herself, he's
+the person most concerned&mdash;in a certain way. I'm told he thinks well of
+you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"He ought to know," Ford broke in, confidently. "I've nothing to show in
+the way of passports, except myself and my work. I've been with him ever
+since I went to South America, and he's been extremely kind to me. The
+only certificate of character I can offer is one from him."</p>
+
+<p>"That's sufficient. We should be sorry to let Evie go, shouldn't we,
+Miriam? She's a sweet child, and very much like her dear mother. But, as
+you say, it was bound to happen one day or another; and we can only be
+glad that&mdash;I'm happy to congratulate you, Mr. Strange. Your name, at any
+rate, is a familiar one. It's that of an old boyhood's friend of mine, who
+showed me the honor of placing this young lady in my charge. We called
+him Harry. His full name was Herbert Harrington, but he dropped the first.
+You seem to have taken it up&mdash;it's odd, isn't it, Miriam?&mdash;and I take it
+as a happy omen."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you." Ford rose, and made the blind man understand that he was
+holding out his hand, "I shall be more satisfied now for having told you."</p>
+
+<p>Miriam accompanied him into the hall, on pretext of ringing for the lift.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, why did you do that?" she protested. "Don't you see that it only
+makes things more complicated than they were already?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's my first move," he laughed, with friendly bravado. "Now you can make
+yours."</p>
+
+<p>She gazed at him in puzzled distress as the lift rose.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm coming again," he said, with renewed confidence. "I've a lot more
+things to say."</p>
+
+<p>"And I have only one," she answered, turning back toward the drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p>"He's a nice young fellow," Wayne said, as he heard her enter. He had
+risen and felt his way into the bay-window, where he stood looking outward
+as if he could see. "I suppose it must be all right, since the Jarrotts
+are so enthusiastic Poor little Evie! I hope she'll be happy. It's
+extraordinary how his voice reminds me of&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She stood still in the middle of the room, waiting for him to continue.
+Nothing he could add would have surprised her now. But he said no more.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch16">
+<h3>XVI</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>Thinking that Ford might come again next afternoon, Miriam went out. On
+her return she found his card&mdash;<i>Mr. Herbert Strange.</i> The same thing
+occurred the next day, and the next, and so on through the week. She was
+not afraid of seeing him. Now that the worst was known to her, she was
+sure of her mastery of herself, and of her capacity to meet anything. What
+she feared most was her sympathy for him, and the possibility that in some
+unguarded moment of pity he might wring concessions from her which she had
+no right to make. She hoped, too, that time, even a few days' time, would
+help him to work out the honorable course for himself.</p>
+
+<p>Her meetings with Evie were more inevitable, and required greater
+self-repression. She was so used to the part of elder sister, with whom
+all confidences are discussed, that she found it difficult not to speak
+her heart out frankly.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard he had been to see you and Popsey Wayne, and told you," Evie
+said, with her pretty nose just peeping above the bedclothes, at midday,
+on a morning later in the week. It was the day after Evie's first large
+dance, and she had been sleeping late. Miriam sat on the edge of the bed,
+smoothing stray golden tendrils off the flushed, happy little face.</p>
+
+<p>"He did come," Miriam admitted. "Mr. Wayne made no objections. I can't
+say he was glad. You wouldn't expect us to be that, dear, would you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I expect you to like him. It isn't committing you to much to say that.
+But you seem so&mdash;so every which way about him."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not every which way about him. I can't say that I'm any way at all.
+Yes, I do like him&mdash;after a fashion. If I make reserves, it's because I'm
+not sure that I think him good enough for my little Evie."</p>
+
+<p>"He's a great deal too good!" Evie exclaimed, rapturously. "Oh, Miriam, if
+you only knew how fond I am of him! I'd die for him&mdash;I truly believe I
+would&mdash;almost! Oh, it was so stupid last night without him! All these boys
+seem such pigeons beside him. I'm sorry now we're not going to announce
+the engagement at once. I certainly sha'n't change my mind&mdash;and it would
+be such fun to be able to say I was engaged before coming out."</p>
+
+<p>"Twice before coming out."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well, I only count it once, do you see? Billy's such a goose. You
+should have seen him last night when I forgot two of my dances with
+him&mdash;on purpose. He's really getting to dislike me; so that I shall soon
+be able to&mdash;to show him."</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't be in a hurry about that, dear. There's lots of time. As you
+said the other day, it's no use hurting his feelings&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Evie sat up suddenly in bed, and looked suspicious.</p>
+
+<p>"So you're taking that stand. Now I know you don't like him. You've got
+something against him, though I can't for the life of me imagine what it
+can be, when you never laid eyes on him till a few days ago. Well, I'm not
+going to change, do you see? You may as well make up your mind to that at
+once. And it will be Billy or no Billy."</p>
+
+<p>Nearer than that Miriam could not approach the subject through fear of
+doing more harm than good. At the end of a week Ford found her at home,
+chiefly because she felt it time he should. She secured again the
+afternoon-call atmosphere; but she noticed that he carried a small
+packet&mdash;a large, brownish-yellow envelope, strapped with rubber
+bands&mdash;which he kept in his hand. She was struck by the greater ease of
+his entry, and by the renewal of that sense of comradeship which had
+marked his bearing toward her in the old days in the cabin. The small
+comedy of introductory commonplace went off smoothly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" he said then, with a little challenging laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;what?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've been waiting for your move. You haven't made it."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head. "I've no move to make."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, you have&mdash;a great big move. You can easily say, Check. I doubt if
+you can make it, Checkmate."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid that's a game I don't know how to play."</p>
+
+<p>He stared at her inquiringly&mdash;noting the disdain with which her chin
+tilted and her lip curled, though he could see it was a disdain suffused
+with sweetness.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean that you wouldn't&mdash;wouldn't give me away?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that you're either broaching a topic I don't understand or
+speaking a language I've never learned. If you don't mind, we won't
+discuss the subject, and we'll speak our mother-tongue&mdash;the mother-tongue
+of people like you and me."</p>
+
+<p>He stared again. It took him some few seconds to understand her
+phraseology. In proportion as her meaning broke upon him, his face glowed.
+When he spoke it was with enthusiasm for her generosity in taking this
+stand rather than in gratitude for anything he was to gain by it.</p>
+
+<p>"By Jove, you're a brick! You always were. I might have expected that this
+is exactly what you'd say."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope so. I didn't expect that you'd talk of my giving you away, as you
+call it&mdash;to any one."</p>
+
+<p>"But you're wrong," he said, with a return to the laughing bravado which
+concealed his inward repugnance to his position. "You're wrong. I'll give
+you that tip now. I'll fight fair. I sha'n't be grateful. I'll profit by
+your magnanimity. Remember it's my part in the world to be unscrupulous.
+It has to be. I've told you so. With me the end justifies the
+means&mdash;always; and when the end is to keep my word to Evie, it will make
+no difference to me that you were too high-minded to put the big obstacle
+in my way."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll not expect me to be otherwise than sorry for that&mdash;for your sake."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I dare say. But I can't stop to think of what any one feels for my
+sake when I know what I feel for my own."</p>
+
+<p>"Which is only an additional reason for my being&mdash;sorry. You don't find
+fault with me for that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do. I don't want you to be sorry. I want to convince you. I want you to
+see things from my point of view&mdash;how I've been placed. Good Lord! it's
+hard enough, without the sense that you're sitting in judgment on me."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not sitting in judgment on you&mdash;except in so far as concerns Evie
+Colfax. If it was anybody else&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But it couldn't be anybody else It's Evie or no one. She's everything on
+earth to me. She's to me what electricity is to the wire&mdash;that which makes
+it a thing alive."</p>
+
+<p>"To be a thing alive isn't necessarily the highest thing."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, but that doesn't apply to me. It's all very well for other men to
+say, 'All is lost to save honor.' They have compensations. I haven't. You
+might as well ask a man to think of the highest thing when he's drowning."</p>
+
+<p>"But I should. There have been men who haven't&mdash;and they've saved their
+lives by it. But you know what we've called them."</p>
+
+<p>"In my case there'd be only you to call me that&mdash;if you wanted to."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no; there'd be&mdash;you."</p>
+
+<p>"I can stand that. I've stood it for eight years already. If you think I
+haven't had times when it's been hell, you're quite mistaken. I wonder if
+you can guess what it means to me&mdash;in here"&mdash;he tapped his breast&mdash;"to go
+round among all these good, kind, honorable people, passing myself off as
+Herbert Strange when all the time I'm Norrie Ford&mdash;and a convict? But I'm
+forced to. There's no way out of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Because there's no way out of it isn't a reason for going further in."</p>
+
+<p>"What does that matter? When you're in up to the eyes, what does it matter
+if you go over your head?"</p>
+
+<p>"In this case it would matter to Evie. That's my point. I have to protect
+her&mdash;to save her. There's no one but me to do it&mdash;and you."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't count on me," he said, savagely. "I've the right, in this wild
+beast's life, to seize anything I can snatch."</p>
+
+<p>He renewed his arguments, going over all the ground again. She listened
+to him as she had once listened to his plea in his defence&mdash;her pose
+pensive, her chin resting on her hand, her eyes pitiful. As far as she was
+aware of her own feelings it was merely to take note that a kind of
+yearning over him, an immense sorrow for him and with him, had
+extinguished the fires that a few days ago were burning for herself. It
+was hard to sit there heedless of his exposition and deaf to his
+persuasion. Seeing her inflexible, he became halting in his speech, till
+finally he stopped, still looking at her with an unresenting, dog-like
+gaze of entreaty.</p>
+
+<p>She made no comment when he ceased, and for a time they sat in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know what this is?" he asked, holding the packet toward her.</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head wonderingly.</p>
+
+<p>"It's what I owe you." She made a gesture of deprecation. "It's the money
+you lent me," he went on. "It's a tremendous satisfaction&mdash;that at
+least&mdash;to be able to bring it back to you."</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't want it," she stammered, in some agitation.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps not. But I want you to have it." He explained to her briefly what
+he had done in the matter.</p>
+
+<p>"Couldn't you give it to something?" she begged, "to some church or
+institution?"</p>
+
+<p>"You can, if you like. I mean to give it to you. You see, I'm not
+returning it with expressions of gratitude, because anything I could say
+would be so inadequate as to be absurd."</p>
+
+<p>He left his chair and came to her, with the packet in his outstretched
+hand. She shrank from it, rising, and retreating into the space of the
+bay-window.</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't want it," she insisted. "I never thought of your returning
+it. I scarcely thought of the incident at all. It had almost passed from
+my memory."</p>
+
+<p>"That's natural enough; but it's equally natural that it shouldn't have
+passed from mine." He came close to her and offered it again. "Do take
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"Put it on the table. Please."</p>
+
+<p>"That isn't the same thing. I want you to take it. I want to put it into
+your own hand, as you put it into mine."</p>
+
+<p>She remembered that she had put it into his hand by closing his fingers
+forcibly upon it, and hastened to prevent anything of that kind now. She
+took it unwillingly, holding it in both hands as if it were a casket.</p>
+
+<p>"That's done," he said, with satisfaction. "You can't imagine what a
+relief it is to have it off my mind."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry you should have felt about it like that."</p>
+
+<p>"You would have felt like that yourself, if you were a man owing money to
+a woman&mdash;and especially a woman who was your&mdash;enemy."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" She cowered, as if he had threatened her.</p>
+
+<p>"I repeat the word," he laughed, uneasily. "Any one is my enemy who comes
+between me and Evie. You'll forgive me if I seem brutal&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I'll forgive you. I'll even accept the word." She was pale and
+nervous, with the kind of nervousness that kept her smiling and still, but
+sent the queer, lambent flashes into her eyes. "Let us say it. I'm your
+enemy, and you pay me the money so as to feel free to strike me as hard as
+you can."</p>
+
+<p>He kept to his laugh, but there was a forced ring in it.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't call that a fair way of putting it, but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see that the way of putting it matters, so long as it's the
+fact."</p>
+
+<p>"It's the fact twisted in a very ingenious fashion. I should say
+that&mdash;since I'm going to marry Evie&mdash;I want&mdash;naturally enough&mdash;to feel
+that&mdash;that"&mdash;he stammered and reddened, seeking a word that would not
+convey an insult&mdash;"to feel&mdash;that I&mdash;met other claims&mdash;as well as I could."</p>
+
+<p>He looked her in the eyes with significant directness. His steady gaze, in
+which she saw&mdash;or thought she saw&mdash;glints of challenge toned down by
+gleams of regret, seemed to say, "Whatever I owe you other than money is
+out of my power to pay." She fully understood that he did not repudiate
+the debt; he was only telling her that since he had given all to Evie, his
+heart was bankrupt. What angered her and kept her silent, fearing she
+would say something she would afterward repent, was the implication that
+she was putting forth her claim for fulfilment.</p>
+
+<p>He still confronted her, with an air of flying humiliation as a flag of
+defiance, while she stood holding the packet in both hands, when the door
+was pushed open, and Evie, radiant from her walk in the cold air and fine
+in autumn furs and plumage, fluttered in. Her blue eyes opened wide on the
+two in the bay-window, but she did not advance from the threshold.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me, dear me!" she twittered, in her dry little fashion, before they
+had time to realize the fact that she was there. "I hope I'm not
+interrupting you."</p>
+
+<p>"Evie dear, come in." Miriam threw the packet on a table, and went
+forward. Ford followed, trying to regain the appearance of "just making a
+call."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no," Evie cried, waving Miriam back. "I only came&mdash;for nothing. That
+is&mdash;But I'll go away and come back again. Do you think you'll be long? But
+I suppose if you have secrets&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Her hand was on the knob again, but Miriam caught her.</p>
+
+<p>"No, darling, you must stay. You're absurd. Mr. Strange and I were
+just&mdash;talking."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, so I saw. That's why I thought I might be <i>de trap</i>. How do you do!"
+She put out her left hand carelessly to Ford, her right hand still holding
+the knob, and twisted her little person impatiently. Ford held her hand,
+but she snatched it away. "There's not the least reason why I should stay,
+do you see?" she hurried on. "I only came with a message from Aunt
+Queenie."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure it's confidential," Ford laughed, "so I'll make myself scarce."</p>
+
+<p>"You can do just as you like," Evie returned, indifferently. "Cousin
+Colfax Yorke," she added, looking at Miriam, "has telephoned that he can't
+come to dine; and, as it's too late to get anybody else, Aunt Queenie
+thought you might come and make a fourth. It's only ourselves and&mdash;- him,"
+she nodded toward Strange.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, I'll come, dear&mdash;with pleasure."</p>
+
+<p>"And I'll go," Ford said; "but I won't add with pleasure, because that
+would be rude."</p>
+
+<p>When he had gone Evie sniffed about the room, looking at the pictures and
+curios as if she had never seen them before. It was evident that she had
+spied the packet, and was making her way, by a seemingly accidental route,
+toward it. Miriam drifted back to her place in the bay-window, where,
+while apparently watching the traffic in the street below, she kept an eye
+on Evie's man&#339;uvres.</p>
+
+<p>"What on earth can you two have to talk about?" Evie demanded, while she
+seemed intent on examining a cabinet of old porcelain.</p>
+
+<p>"If you're very good, dear," Miriam replied, trying to take an amused,
+offhand tone, "I'll tell you. It was business."</p>
+
+<p>"Business? Why, I thought you hardly knew him."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't have to know people very well to transact business with them.
+He came on a question of&mdash;money."</p>
+
+<p>"No, but you don't start up doing business with a person that's just
+dropped down from the clouds&mdash;like that." She snapped her fingers to
+indicate precipitous haste.</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes you do."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, <i>you</i> don't. I know that for a fact." She was inspecting a vase on
+a pedestal in a corner now. It was nearer to the packet. She wheeled round
+suddenly, so that it should take her by surprise. "What's that?"</p>
+
+<p>"You see. It's an envelope with papers in it."</p>
+
+<p>"What sort of papers?"</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't looked at them yet. They have to do with money, or investments,
+or something. I'm never very clear about those things."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you did all that through Cousin Endsleigh Jarrott and Mr.
+Conquest?"</p>
+
+<p>"This was a little thing I couldn't trouble them with."</p>
+
+<p>"And you went straight off to <i>him</i>, when you'd only known him&mdash;let me
+see!--how many days?&mdash;one, two, three, four&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I've gone to people I didn't know at all&mdash;sometimes. You have to. If you
+only knew more about investing money&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know anything about investing money; but I know this is very
+queer. And you didn't like him&mdash;or you said you didn't."</p>
+
+<p>"I said I did, dear&mdash;after a fashion&mdash;and so I do."</p>
+
+<p>"In that case I should think a good deal would depend upon the fashion.
+Look here. It's addressed&mdash;<i>Miss Strange.</i> That's his writing. That's how
+he scribbles his name. And there's something written in tiny, tiny letters
+in the corner. What is it?" Without touching the envelope she bent down to
+see. "It's <i>The Wild Olive</i>. Now, what in this world can that mean? That's
+not business, anyhow. That means something."</p>
+
+<p>"No, that's not business, but I haven't an idea what it means." Miriam was
+glad to be able to disclaim something. "It was probably on the envelope by
+accident. Some clerk wrote it, and Mr. Strange didn't notice it."</p>
+
+<p>Evie let the explanation pass, while continuing to stare at the object of
+her suspicions.</p>
+
+<p>"That's not papers," she said, at last, pointing as she spoke to something
+protruding between the rubber bands. "There's something in there. It looks
+like a"&mdash;she hesitated to find the right article&mdash;"it looks like a
+card-case."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps it is," Miriam agreed. "But I'm sure I don't know why he should
+bring me a card-case."</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you look?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't in a hurry; but you can look yourself if you want to."</p>
+
+<p>Evie took offence. "I'm sure I don't want to. That's the last thing."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you would. Then you'd see."</p>
+
+<p>"I only do it under protest," she declared&mdash;"because you force me to." She
+took up the envelope, and began to unloose the rubber bands. "<i>The Wild
+Olive</i>" she quoted, half to herself. "Ridiculous! I should think clerks
+might have something better to do than write such things as that&mdash;on
+envelopes&mdash;on people's business." But her indignation turned to surprise
+when a small flat thing, not unlike a card-case, certainly, tumbled out.
+"What in the name of goodness&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>Only strong self-control kept Miriam from darting forward to snatch it
+from the floor. She remembered it at once. It was a worn red leather
+pocket-book, which she had last seen when it was fresh and new&mdash;sitting in
+the sunset, on the heights above Champlain, and looking at the jewelled
+sea. A card fell from it, on which there was something written. Evie
+dropped on one knee to pick it up. Miriam was sorry to risk anything, but
+she felt constrained to say, as quietly as possible:</p>
+
+<p>"You'd better not read that, dear. It might be private."</p>
+
+<p>Evie slipped the card back into the pocket-book, which she threw on the
+table, where Miriam let it lie. "I won't look at anything else," Evie
+said, with dignity, turning away.</p>
+
+<p>"I want you to," Miriam said, authoritatively. "I beg you to."</p>
+
+<p>Thus commanded, Evie drew forth a flat document, on which she read, in
+ornamental letters, the inscription, <i>New York, Toronto, and Great Lakes
+Railroad Company</i>. She unfolded it slowly, looking puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>"It's nothing but a lot of little square things," she said, with some
+disdain.</p>
+
+<p>"The little square things are called coupons, if you know what they are."</p>
+
+<p>"I know they're things people cut&mdash;when they have a lot of money. I don't
+know why they cut them; and still less do I know why he should be bringing
+them to you."</p>
+
+<p>Miriam had a sudden inspiration that made her face beam with relief.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you why he brought them to me, dear&mdash;though I do it under
+protest, as you say yourself. Your curiosity forces my hand, and makes me
+show it ahead of time. He brought them to me because it's a
+wedding-present for you. When you get married&mdash;or begin to get
+married&mdash;you can have all that money for your trousseau."</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Helen is going to give me my trousseau. She said so."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you can have it for anything you like&mdash;for house-furnishings or a
+pearl necklace. You know you wanted a pearl necklace&mdash;and there's plenty
+for a nice one. Each of those papers is worth a thousand dollars, or
+nearly. And there are&mdash;how many?"</p>
+
+<p>"Three. You seem very keen on getting rid of them."</p>
+
+<p>"So I am&mdash;to you, darling."</p>
+
+<p>Evie prepared to depart, looking unconvinced.</p>
+
+<p>"It's awfully nice of you&mdash;of course. But still&mdash;if that's what you had
+meant at first&mdash;from the beginning&mdash;you would have&mdash;Well, I'll tell Aunt
+Queenie you'll come."</p>
+
+<p>Left alone, Miriam made haste to read the card in the pocket-book.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>
+   <i>As deep calls to deep, so Spirit speaks to Spirit. It is the only true
+   communion between mutually comprehending souls. But it is
+   unerring&mdash;pardoning all, because understanding all, and making the
+   crooked straight.</i>
+</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>She read it more than once. She was not sure that it was meant for her.
+She was not sure that it was in Ford's own handwriting. But in their
+situation it had a meaning; she took it as a message to herself; and as
+she read, and read again, she felt on her face the trickling of one or two
+slow, hard tears.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch17">
+<h3>XVII</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>The result of the dinner that evening was that Evie grew more fretful.
+After the departure of her guests, she evolved a brief formula which she
+used frequently during the next few weeks: "There's something!" With her
+quick eyes and quicker intuitions, it was impossible for her not to see
+that Ford and Miriam possessed common memories of the kind that
+distinguish old acquaintances from new ones. When it did not transpire in
+chance words she caught it in their glances or divined it in the mental
+atmosphere. As autumn passed into early winter she became nervous,
+peevish, and exacting; she lost much from her pretty ways and something
+from her looks. In the family the change was ascribed to the fatigue
+incidental to the sudden round of lunches, dinners, dances, suppers,
+theatre-parties, opera-goings, and "teas" with which American boys and
+girls of a certain age are surfeited pitilessly with pleasure, as
+Strasburg geese are stuffed for pat&eacute; de foie gras. Ford, however,
+suspected the true reason, and Miriam knew it. They met as seldom as might
+be; and yet, with the many things requiring explanation between them,
+frank conversation became imperative.</p>
+
+<p>"You see how it is already," Miriam said to him. "It's making her unhappy
+from the start. You can't conceal the truth from her very long."</p>
+
+<p>"She isn't fretting about the truth; she's fretting about what she
+imagines."</p>
+
+<p>"She's fretting because she doesn't understand, and she'll go on fretting
+till she does. I'm not sorry. It must show you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It shows me the necessity of our being married as soon as possible, so
+that I may take care of her, and put a stop to it."</p>
+
+<p>"I agree with you that you'd put a stop to it. You'd put a stop to
+everything. She wouldn't live a year&mdash;or you wouldn't. Either she'd
+die&mdash;or she'd abhor you. And if she didn't die, you'd want to."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish to the Lord I had died&mdash;eight years ago. The great mistake I made
+was when the lumber-jacks loosed my hand-cuffs and started me through the
+woods. They called it giving me a chance, and for a few minutes I thought
+it was one. A chance! Good God! I remember feeling, as I ran, that I was
+deserting something. I didn't know what it was just then, but I've
+understood it since. It would have been a pluckier thing to have been in
+my coffin as Norrie Ford&mdash;or even doing time&mdash;than to be here as Herbert
+Strange."</p>
+
+<p>She said nothing for the moment, but as they walked along side by side he
+shot a glance at her, and saw her coloring. They had met in the park. He
+was going toward the house in Seventy-second Street when she was coming
+away from it. Seizing the opportunity of a few words in private, he had
+turned to stroll back with her.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't expect you to be here as Herbert Strange," she said, as though
+in self-excuse. "I had to give you a name that was like my own, when I was
+writing letters about your ticket, and sending checks. I had to do
+everything to avoid suspicion at a time when Greenport was watched. I
+thought you might be able to take your own name or something like it&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He explained to her how that had never been possible.</p>
+
+<p>"Evie fidgets about it," he continued. "She puts together the two facts
+that you and I seem to have known each other, and that my name is
+identical with your father's. She doesn't know what to make of it; she
+only thinks 'there's something.' She hasn't said more than that in words,
+but I see her little mind at work."</p>
+
+<p>"Evie isn't the only one," she informed him. "There's Mr. Wayne. He has to
+be reckoned with. He recognized your voice from the first minute of
+hearing it, though he hasn't said yet that he knows whose it is. He may do
+so at any time. He's very surprising at that sort of thing. I can see him
+listening when you're there, not only to your words, but to your very
+movements, trying to recapture&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The upshot of everything," he said, abruptly, "is that I must marry her,
+take her back to the Argentine, where I found her, and where we shall both
+be out of harm's way."</p>
+
+<p>"You wouldn't be out of harm's way. You can't turn your back on it like
+that. You alone might be able to slip through, but not if you have Evie."</p>
+
+<p>"That will be my affair; I'll see to it. I take the full responsibility on
+myself."</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't let you. Remember that. You can't marry her. Let me say it
+plainly&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you've said it plainly enough."</p>
+
+<p>"If I've said it too plainly, it's because you force me. You're so
+wilful."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean, I'm so determined. What it amounts to is the clash of your
+will against mine; and you refuse to see that I can't give way."</p>
+
+<p>"I see that you must give way. It's in the nature of things. It's
+inevitable. If I didn't know that, do you think I should interfere? Do you
+think I should dare to run the risk of wrecking your happiness if I could
+do anything else? If you knew how I hate doing anything at all&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But you needn't. You can just let things be."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't let things be&mdash;with all I know; and yet it's impossible for me to
+appeal to any one, except yourself. You put me in a position in which I
+must either betray you or betray those who trust me. Because I can't do
+either&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I profit by your noble-mindedness. I told you I would. I'm sorry to have
+to do it&mdash;I'll even admit that I'm ashamed of it&mdash;and yet there's no other
+course for me. I'm not taking you at an unfair advantage, because I've
+concealed nothing from you from the first. You talk about the difficulty
+of your position, but you don't begin to imagine mine. As if everything
+else wasn't gall to me, I've got your disapproval to add wormwood."</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't my disapproval; it's simply&mdash;the situation. My opinion counts
+for nothing&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It counts for everything with me&mdash;and yet I have to ignore it. But, after
+all," he flung out, bitterly, "it's the old story. I claim the right to
+squeeze out of life such drops of happiness&mdash;if you can call it
+happiness&mdash;as men have left to me, and you deny it. There it is in a
+nutshell. Because other people have inflicted a great wrong on me, you
+insist that I shall inflict a greater one on myself. And this time it
+wouldn't be only on myself; it would be on poor little Evie. There's
+where it cuts. No, no; I shall go on. I've the right to do it. You must
+stop me if you can. If you don't, or won't&mdash;why, then&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I can stop you ... if you drive me to extremes ... but it wouldn't be by
+doing ... any of the things you expect."</p>
+
+<p>It was because of the catch in her voice that he stopped in his walk, and
+confronted her. In spite of the little tremor he could see in her no sign
+of yielding, and behind her veil he caught a gleam like that of anger. It
+was at that minute, perhaps, that he became distinctly conscious for the
+first time of a doubt as to the superiority of "his type of girl."
+Notwithstanding the awakening of certain faint perceptions, he had
+hitherto denied within himself that there was anything higher or more
+lovely. But in this girl's unflinching loyalty, and in her tenacious
+clinging to what she considered right, he was getting a new glimpse of
+womanhood, which, however, in no way weakened his determination to resist
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"As far as I see," he said, after long hesitation, "you and I have two
+irreconcilable duties. My duty is to marry Evie; yours is to prevent me.
+In that case there's nothing for either of us but to forge ahead, and see
+who wins. If you win, I shall bear no malice; and I hope you'll be equally
+generous if I do."</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't want to win independently of you. If I did, nothing could be
+easier."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why not do it?"</p>
+
+<p>He tossed up his hand with one of his fatalistic Latin gestures, drawing
+the attention of the passers-by to the man and woman talking so earnestly.
+For this reason, and because she was losing her self-command, she hastened
+to take leave of him.</p>
+
+<p>Arrived at home, it gave her no comfort to find Charles Conquest&mdash;the
+most spick and span of middle-aged New-Yorkers&mdash;waiting in the
+drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you might come in," he explained, "so I stayed. I have to get
+your signature to the papers about that property in Montreal. I've fixed
+the thing up and we'll sell."</p>
+
+<p>"You said you'd send the papers&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That sounds as if you weren't glad to see me," he laughed, "but I'll
+ignore the discourtesy. Here," he added, unfolding the documents, "you put
+your name there&mdash;and there&mdash;near the L.S."</p>
+
+<p>She carried the papers to her desk, and sat down to write. Conquest took
+the liberty of old friendship to stroll about the room, with his hands
+behind him, humming a little tune.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he said suddenly, "has he come back?"</p>
+
+<p>He had not approached the subject, beyond alluding to it covertly, since
+the day she had confided to him the confused story of her hopes. She
+blotted her signature carefully thinking out her reply.</p>
+
+<p>"I've given up expecting him," she said at last.</p>
+
+<p>"Ho! ho! So that's out of the way."</p>
+
+<p>She pretended to be scanning the documents before her so as to be able to
+sit with her back to him.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't, for the reason that there's&mdash;no <i>way</i>," she said, after some
+hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, there is," he laughed, "where there's a will."</p>
+
+<p>"But I've no will."</p>
+
+<p>"I have; I've enough for two."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you what you have got," she said, half turning and speaking to
+him over the back of her chair. He drew near her. "You've got a great
+deal of common sense, and I want to ask your advice."</p>
+
+<p>"I can give that, as radium emits light&mdash;without ever diminishing the
+original store."</p>
+
+<p>"Then tell me. Has one ever the right to interfere where a man and a
+woman&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, never. You needn't give me any more details, because it's one of the
+questions an oracle finds easiest to answer. No one ever thanks you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't be doing it for thanks."</p>
+
+<p>"And you get your own fingers burnt."</p>
+
+<p>"That wouldn't matter. I'd let my fingers burn to the bone if it would do
+any good."</p>
+
+<p>"It wouldn't. You may take my word for it. I know who you're talking
+about. It's Evie Colfax."</p>
+
+<p>She started, looking guilty. "Why should you suppose that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've got eyes. I've watched her, and I know she's a little minx. Oh, you
+needn't protest. She's a taking little minx, and this time she's in the
+right."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I don't know what you mean."</p>
+
+<p>"What has Billy Merrow got to offer her, even if he is my nephew? Come
+now! He won't be in a position to marry for the next two or three years.
+Whereas that fellow Strange&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Have you heard anything about him?" she asked, breathlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't what I've heard, it's what I see. He's a very good chap, and a
+first-rate man of business."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know him well&mdash;personally?"</p>
+
+<p>"I meet him around&mdash;at the club and other places&mdash;and naturally I have
+something to do with him at the office. I like him. If Evie can snap him
+up she'll be doing well for herself. I'm sorry for Billy, of course; but
+he'll have time to break his heart more than once before he'll have money
+enough to do anything else with it. If I'd married at his age&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>This, however, was venturing on delicate ground, so that he broke off,
+wheeling round toward the centre of the drawing-room. She folded the
+documents and brought them to him.</p>
+
+<p>"You know why I didn't send them?" he said, as he took them. "I thought if
+I came myself, you might have something to tell me."</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't; not anything special, that is."</p>
+
+<p>"You've told me something special already&mdash;that you're not looking for him
+back."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd rather not talk about it now, if you don't mind."</p>
+
+<p>"Then we'll talk about what goes with it&mdash;the other side of the subject."</p>
+
+<p>"There is no other side of the subject."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, come now, Miriam! You haven't heard all I've got to tell you. You've
+never let me really present my case, as we lawyers say. If you could see
+things as I do&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But I can't, and you mustn't ask me to-day. I'm tired&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It would rest you."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no; not to-day. Don't you see I'm not&mdash;I'm not myself? I've had a
+very trying morning."</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter? Tell me. I can keep a confidence even if I can't do
+some other things. Come now! I don't like to think you're worried when
+perhaps I could help you. That's what I should be good for, don't you see?
+I could assist you to bear a lot of things&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>His tone, which was so often charged with a slightly mocking banter,
+became tender, and he attempted to take her hand. For a minute it seemed
+as if it might be a relief to trust him, to tell him the whole story and
+follow his counsel; but a second's thought showed her that she could not
+shift the responsibility from herself, and that in the end she should have
+to act alone.</p>
+
+<p>"Not to-day," she pleaded. "I'm not equal to it."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'll come another day."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes; if you like, only&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Some day soon?"</p>
+
+<p>"When you like, only leave me now. Please go away. You won't think I'm
+rude, will you? But I'm not&mdash;not as I generally am&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye." He put out his, hand frankly, and smiled so humbly, and yet
+withal so confidently, that she felt as if in spite of herself she might
+yield to his persistence through sheer weariness.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>To her surprise, the next few weeks passed without incident bringing no
+development in the situation. She saw little of Evie and almost nothing of
+Ford. One or two encounters with Charles Conquest had no result beyond the
+reiteration on his part of a set phrase, "You're coming to it, Miriam,"
+which, while exasperating her nerves, had a kind of hypnotic effect upon
+her will. She felt as if she might be "coming to it." Without calculating
+the probabilities she saw clearly enough that if she married Conquest the
+very act would furnish proof to Ford that her intervention in his affairs
+had been without self-interest. It would even offer some proof to herself,
+the sort of proof that strengthens the resolution and supports what is
+tottering in the pride. Notwithstanding the valor with which she
+struggled her victory over herself was not so complete that she could
+contemplate the destruction of Ford's happiness with absolute confidence
+in the purity of her motives in bringing it to ruin. It was difficult to
+take the highest road when what was left of her own fiercest instincts
+accompanied her on it. That she had fierce instincts she was quite aware.
+It was not for nothing that she had been born almost beyond the confines
+of the civilized earth, of parents for whom law and order and other men's
+rights were as the dead letter. True, she was trying to train the
+inheritance received from them to its finer purposes, as the vine draws
+strange essences from a flinty soil and sublimates them into the
+grape&mdash;but it was still their inheritance. While she was proud of it, she
+was afraid of it; and the fact that it leaped with her to separate Norrie
+Ford from Evie Colfax was a reason for distrusting the very impulse she
+knew to be right. Marriage with Conquest presented itself, therefore as a
+refuge&mdash;from Ford's suspicion and her own.</p>
+
+<p>For the time being, however, the necessity for doing anything was not
+pressing. Evie was caught into the social machine that had been set going
+on her account, and was not so much whirling in it as being whirled. Her
+energies were so taxed by the task of going round that she had only
+snatches of time and attention to give to her own future. In one of these
+she wrote to her uncle Jarrott, asking his consent to the immediate
+proclamation of her engagement, with his approval of her marriage at the
+end of the winter, though the reasons she gave him were not the same as
+those she advanced to Miriam. To him she dwelt on the maturity of her
+age&mdash;twenty by this time&mdash;the unchanging nature of her sentiments, and her
+desire to be settled down. To Miriam she was content to say, "There's
+something! and I sha'n't get to the bottom of it till we're married."</p>
+
+<p>Of the opening thus unexpectedly offered her Miriam made full use,
+pointing out the folly or verifying suspicions after marriage rather than
+before.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm going to do it, do you see?" was Evie's only reply. "I know it
+will be all right in the end."</p>
+
+<p>Still a few weeks were to pass, and it was early in the new year before
+Uncle Jarrott's cablegram arrived with the three words, "<i>If you like</i>."
+Miriam received the information at the opera, where she had been suddenly
+called on to take the place of Miss Jarrott, laid low with "one of her
+headaches." It was Ford who told her, during an entr'acte, when for a few
+minutes Evie had left the box with the young man who made the fourth in
+the party. Finding themselves alone, Ford and Miriam withdrew as far as
+possible from public observation, speaking in rapid undertones.</p>
+
+<p>"But you'll not let her do it?" Miriam urged.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall, if you will. You can stop it&mdash;or posptone it. If you don't, I
+have every right to forge ahead. It's no use going over the old arguments
+again&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You put me in an odious position. You want me either to betray you or
+betray the people who've been kind to me. It <i>would</i> be betrayal if I were
+to let you go on."</p>
+
+<p>"Then stop me; it's in your power."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well; I will."</p>
+
+<p>He gave her a quick look, astonished rather than startled, but there was
+no time for further speech before Evie and her companion returned.</p>
+
+<p>It was Miriam's intention to put her plan into immediate execution, but
+she let most of the next day go by without doing anything. Understanding
+his driving her to extremes to be due less to deliberate defiance than to
+a desperate braving of the worst, she was giving him a chance for
+repentance. Just at the closing in of the winter twilight, at the hour
+when he generally appeared, the door was flung open and Billy Merrow
+rushed in excitedly.</p>
+
+<p>"What's all this about Evie?" he shouted, almost before crossing the
+threshold. "I've been there, and no one is at home. What's it about? Who
+has invented the confounded lie?"</p>
+
+<p>She could only guess at his meaning, but she forced him to shake hands and
+calm himself. Turning on the electric light, she saw a young man with
+decidedly tousled reddish hair, and features as haggard as a perfectly
+healthy, honest, freckled face could be.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down, Billy, and tell me about it."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't; I'm crazy."</p>
+
+<p>"So I see; but tell me what you're crazy about."</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't you heard it? Of course you have. They wouldn't be writing it to
+Uncle Charlie if you didn't know all about it. But I'm hanged if I'll let
+it go on."</p>
+
+<p>Little by little she dragged the story from him. Miss Queenie Jarrott had
+written to Charles Conquest as one of the oldest friends of the family to
+inform him, "somewhat confidentially as yet," of her niece's engagement to
+Mr. Herbert Strange, of Buenos Aires and New York. Uncle Charlie, knowing
+what this would mean to him, had come to break the news and tell him to
+"buck up and take it standing."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll bet you I sha'n't take it lying down," he assured Miriam. "Evie is
+engaged to <i>me</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Billy, but you see Miss Jarrott didn't know it. That's where the
+mistake has been. You know I've always been opposed to the secrecy of the
+affair, and I advised you and Evie to wait till you could both speak out."</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't so very secret. You know it and so does Uncle Charlie."</p>
+
+<p>"But Evie's own family have been kept in the dark, except that she told
+her aunt in South America. But that's where the mistake comes in, don't
+you see? Miss Jarrott, not having an idea about you, you see&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Spreads it round that Evie is engaged to some one else, when she isn't.
+I'll show her who's engaged, when I can find her in. I'm going to sit on
+her door-step till&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't do anything rash, Billy. Suppose you were to leave it to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"What good would that do? If that old witch is putting it round, the only
+thing for Evie and me to do is to contradict her."</p>
+
+<p>"Has Evie ever given you an idea that anything was wrong?"</p>
+
+<p>"Evie's been the devil. I don't mind saying it to you, because you
+understand the kind of devil she'd be. But Lord! I don't care. It's just
+her way. She's told me to go to the deuce half a dozen times, but she
+knows I won't till she comes with me. Oh, no. Evie's all right&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, of course, Evie's all right. But you know, Billy dear, this thing
+requires a great deal of management and straightening out, and I do wish
+you'd let me take charge of it. I know every one concerned, you see, so
+that I could do it better than any one&mdash;any one but you, I mean&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I understand that all right. I'm not going to be rough on them, but all
+the same&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She got him to sit down at last, made tea for him, and soothed him. At
+the end of an hour he had undertaken not to molest Miss Jarrott, or to
+fight that "confounded South-American," or to say a word of any kind to
+Evie till she was ready to say a word to him. He became impressed with the
+necessity for diplomatic action and, after some persuasion, promised to
+submit to guidance&mdash;at any rate, for a time.</p>
+
+<p>"And now, Billy, I'm going to write a note. The first thing to be done is
+that you should find Mr. Strange and deliver it to him before nine o'clock
+this evening. You'll do it quietly, won't you? and not let him see that
+you are anything more than my messenger. No matter where he is, even in a
+private house, you must see that he gets the note, if at all possible."</p>
+
+<p>When he had sworn to this she wrote a few lines hurriedly. He carried them
+away in the same tumultuous haste with which he had come. After his
+departure she felt herself unexpectedly strong and calm.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch18">
+<h3>XVIII</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>The feeling of being equal to anything she might have to face continued
+with her. Now that the moment for action had arrived she had confidence in
+her ability to meet it, since it had to be done. At dinner she was able to
+talk to Wayne on indifferent topics, and later, when he had retired to his
+den to practise his Braile, she sat down in the drawing-room with a book.
+Noticing that she wore the severe black dress in which she had assisted at
+the "killing off" of Evie's family, she brightened it with a few
+unobtrusive jewels, so as to look less like the Tragic Muse. The night
+being cold, a cheerful fire burned on the hearth, beside which she sat
+down and waited.</p>
+
+<p>When he was shown in, about half-past eight, it seemed to her best not to
+rise to receive him. Something in her repose, or in her dignity, gave him
+the impression of arriving before a tribunal, and he began his
+explanations almost from the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>"I got your note. Young Merrow caught me at dinner. I was dining alone, so
+that I could come at once."</p>
+
+<p>"You're very kind. I'm glad you were able to do it. Won't you sit down?"</p>
+
+<p>Without offering her hand, she indicated a high arm-chair suitable for a
+man, on the other side of the hearth. He seated himself with an air of
+expectation, while she gazed pensively at the fire, speaking at last
+without looking up.</p>
+
+<p>"I hear Miss Jarrott has begun to announce your engagement to Evie."</p>
+
+<p>"I understood she was going to, to a few intimate friends."</p>
+
+<p>"And you allowed it?"</p>
+
+<p>"As you see."</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't you know that I should have to take that for a signal?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've never given you to understand that a signal wouldn't come&mdash;if you
+required one."</p>
+
+<p>"No; but I hoped&mdash;" She broke off, continuing to gaze at the fire. "Do you
+remember," she began again&mdash;"do you remember telling me&mdash;that evening on
+the shore of Lake Champlain&mdash;just before you went away&mdash;that if ever I
+needed your life, it would be at my disposal?&mdash;to do with as I chose?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'm going to claim it." She did not look up, but she heard him
+change his position in his chair. "I shouldn't do it if there was any
+other way. I'm sure you understand that. Don't you?" she insisted,
+glancing at him for an answer.</p>
+
+<p>"I know you wouldn't do it, unless you were convinced there was a reason."</p>
+
+<p>"I've tried to be just to you, and to see things from your point of view.
+I do; I assure you. If I were in your position I should feel as you do.
+But I'm not in your position. I'm in one of great responsibility, toward
+Evie and toward her friends."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see what you owe to them."</p>
+
+<div class="image" id="img03"><p><a href="images/illus03.png">Again there was a long silence.</a></p></div>
+
+<p>"I owe them the loyalty that every human being owes to every other."</p>
+
+<p>"To every other&mdash;except me."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm loyal to you, at least, whoever else may not be. But it wouldn't be
+loyalty if I let you marry Evie. I'm going to ask you&mdash;not to do it&mdash;to go
+away&mdash;to leave her alone&mdash;to go&mdash;for good."</p>
+
+<p>There was a long silence. When he spoke, it was hoarsely but otherwise
+without change of tone.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that what you meant?&mdash;just now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. That's what I meant."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you intend me to get out of New York, to go back to the South&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>She lifted her hand in protestation.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not giving orders or making conditions. New York is large. There's
+room in it for you and Evie, too."</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say. One doesn't require much space to break one's heart in."</p>
+
+<p>"Evie wouldn't break her heart. I know her better than you do. She'd
+suffer for a while, but she'd get over it, and in the end, very soon
+probably&mdash;marry some one else."</p>
+
+<p>"How cruel you can be," he said, with a twisted smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I can be, when it's right. In this case I'm only as cruel as&mdash;the truth.
+I'm saying it because it must make things easier for you. Your own pain
+will be the less from the knowledge that, in time, Evie will get over
+hers."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose it ought to be, but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He did not finish his sentence, and again there was a long hush, during
+which, while she continued to gaze pensively at the fire, she could hear
+him shifting with nervous frequency in his chair. When at last she
+ventured to look at him he was bowed forward, his elbow supported on his
+knee, and his forehead resting on his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll keep your promise to me?" she persisted, softly, with a kind of
+pitiful relentlessness.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you in a minute."</p>
+
+<p>He jerked out the words in the brusque way in which a man says all that,
+for the moment, he is physically able to utter. She allowed more time to
+elapse. The roar of traffic and the clanging of electric trams came up
+from the street below, but no sound seemed able to penetrate the stillness
+in which they sat. As far as Miriam was conscious of herself at all, it
+was simply to note the curious deadness of her emotions, as though she had
+become a mere machine for doing right, like a clock that strikes
+punctually. Nevertheless, it caused her some surprise when he raised
+himself and said, in a voice that would have been casual on a common
+occasion:</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you think me a cad?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; why should I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I am one."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know why you should say that, or what it has to do
+with&mdash;anything."</p>
+
+<p>"It's about that&mdash;that&mdash;promise."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mind if we speak quite frankly? I should like to. I've been
+bluffing that point ever since you and I met again. It's been torture to
+have to do it&mdash;damned, humiliating torture; but it's been difficult to do
+anything else. You see, I couldn't even speak of it without seeming to&mdash;to
+insult you&mdash;that is, unless you took me in just the right way."</p>
+
+<p>His look, his attitude, the tones of his voice, the something woe-begone
+and yet boyish in his expression, recalled irresistibly the days in the
+cabin, when he often wore just this air. She had observed before that when
+they were alone together the years seemed to fall from his manner, while
+he became the immature, inexperienced young fugitive again. She had
+scarcely expected, however, that this lapse into youth would occur
+to-night. She herself felt ages old&mdash;as though all the ends of the world
+had come upon her.</p>
+
+<p>"You may say anything you like. There's nothing you could possibly tell me
+that I shouldn't understand."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, when I made that promise, I meant to keep it, and to keep it
+in a special way. I thought&mdash;of course we were both very young&mdash;but I
+thought that, after what had happened&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a minute. I want to tell you something before you go on." She
+rallied her spirit's forces for a desperate step, gathering all her life's
+possible happiness into one extravagant handful, and flinging it away, in
+order to save her pride before this man, who was about to tell her that he
+had never been able to love her. "What I am going to say may strike you as
+irrelevant; but if it is, you can ignore it. I expect to be married&mdash;in a
+little while&mdash;it's practically a settled thing&mdash;to Charles Conquest, whom
+I think you know. Now, will you go on, please?"</p>
+
+<p>He stared at her in utter blankness.</p>
+
+<p>"Good God!"</p>
+
+<p>He got up and took a few restless turns up and down the room, his head
+bent, his hands behind his back. He reseated himself when his confused
+impressions grew clearer.</p>
+
+<p>"So that it doesn't matter what I thought about&mdash;that promise?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not in the least." She had saved herself. "The one thing important to me
+is that you should have made it."</p>
+
+<p>"And that you can hold me to it," he added, tersely.</p>
+
+<p>"I presume I can do that?"</p>
+
+<p>"You can, unless&mdash;unless I find myself in a position to take the promise
+back."</p>
+
+<p>"I can hardly see how that position could come about," she said, with an
+air of wondering.</p>
+
+<p>"I can. You see," he went on in an explanatory tone, "it was an unusual
+sort of promise&mdash;a promise made, so to speak, for value received&mdash;for
+unusual value received. It wasn't one that a common occasion would have
+called forth. It was offered because you had given me&mdash;life."</p>
+
+<p>He rested his arm now on a table that stood between them and, leaning
+toward her, looked her steadily in the eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't the faintest idea what you're going to say," she remarked,
+rather blankly.</p>
+
+<p>"No, but you'll see. You gave me life. I hold that life in a certain sense
+at your pleasure. It is at your disposal. It must remain at your
+disposal&mdash;- until I give it back."</p>
+
+<p>She sat upright in her chair, leaning in her turn on the table, and
+drawing nearer to him.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't imagine what you mean," she said, under her breath and looking a
+little frightened.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll see presently. But don't be alarmed. It's going to be all right.
+As long as I hold the life you gave me," he continued to explain, "I must
+do your bidding. I'm not a free man; I'm&mdash;don't be offended&mdash;I'm your
+creature. I don't say I was a free man before this came up. I haven't been
+a free man ever since I've been Herbert Strange. I've been the slave of a
+sort of make-believe. I've made believe, and I've felt I was justified.
+Perhaps I was. I'm not quite sure. But I haven't liked it; and now I begin
+to feel that I can't stand it any longer. You follow me, don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>She nodded, still leaning toward him across the table, and not taking her
+eyes from his. He remembered afterward though he paid no heed to it at the
+time, how those eyes grew wide with awe and flashed with strange, lambent
+brightness.</p>
+
+<p>"I told you a few days ago," he pursued, "that there were <i>times</i> when it
+was hell. That was putting it mildly&mdash;too mildly. There's been no time
+when it wasn't hell&mdash;in here." He tapped his forehead. "I've struggled,
+and fought, and pushed, and swaggered, and bluffed, and had ups and downs,
+and taken heart, and swaggered and bluffed again, and lied all
+through&mdash;and I've made Herbert Strange a respectable man of business on
+the high road to success. But when I come near you it all goes to
+pieces&mdash;like one of those curiously conserved dead bodies when they're
+brought to the air. There's nothing to them. There's nothing to me&mdash;so
+long as I'm Herbert Strange."</p>
+
+<p>"But you <i>are</i> Herbert Strange. You can't help yourself&mdash;now."</p>
+
+<p>"Herbert Strange goes back into the nothingness out of which he was born
+the minute I become Norrie Ford again."</p>
+
+<p>"But you can't do that!"</p>
+
+<p>She drew herself up hastily, with a gasp.</p>
+
+<p>"It's exactly what I mean to do." He spoke very slowly "I'm going to be a
+free man, and my own master, even if it leads me where&mdash;where they meant
+to put me when you snatched me away. I'm going back to my fellow-men, to
+the body corporate&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She rose in agitation, and drew back from him toward the chimney-piece.
+"So that if&mdash;if anything happens," she said, "I shall have driven you to
+it. That's how you get your revenge."</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all. I'm not coming to this decision suddenly, or in a spirit of
+revenge, in any way." He followed her, standing near her, on the
+hearth-rug. "I can truthfully say," he went on in his slow, explanatory
+fashion, "that there's been no time, since the minute I made my first dash
+for liberty, when I haven't known, in the bottom of my heart, what a good
+thing it would have been if I hadn't done it. I've come to see&mdash;I've <i>had</i>
+to&mdash;- that the death-chair would have been better, with self-respect, than
+freedom to go and come, with the necessity to gag every one, every minute
+of the day, and every day in the year, and all the time, with lies. If
+that seems far-fetched to you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, it doesn't."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if it did you'd see it wasn't, if you were in my place for a month.
+I didn't mind it so much at first. I stood it by day and just suffered by
+night&mdash;till the Jarrotts began to be so kind to me, and I came to New
+York&mdash;and&mdash;and&mdash;and Evie!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry I've spoken to you as I have," she said, hastily. "If I'd known
+you felt like that&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You were quite right. I always understood that. But I can't go on with
+it. If Evie marries me now, it shall be knowing who I am."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean that you could possibly tell her?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to tell every one."</p>
+
+<p>She stifled a little cry. "Then it will be my doing!"</p>
+
+<p>"It will be your doing&mdash;up to a point. But it will be something for you to
+be proud of, not to regret. You've only brought my mistake so clearly
+before me that even I can't stand it&mdash;when I've stood so much. You ask me
+to turn my back on Evie and sneak away. You've got the right to command,
+and there's nothing for me but to obey you. But I can't help seeing the
+sort of life that would be left to me after I'd carried out your orders.
+It wouldn't only be the loss of Evie&mdash;I may lose her in any case&mdash;it would
+be the loss of everything within myself that's enabled me hitherto merely
+to hold up my head&mdash;and bluff."</p>
+
+<p>"I might withdraw what I've just asked you to do. Perhaps we could find
+some other way."</p>
+
+<p>He laughed with grim lightness.</p>
+
+<p>"You're weakening. That's not like you. And it wouldn't do any good now.
+Even if we did patch up some other scheme, there would still remain what
+you talked about a minute ago&mdash;the loyalty that every human being owes to
+every other."</p>
+
+<p>"But I thought you didn't recognize that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I said I didn't. But in here"&mdash;he tapped his fingers over the heart&mdash;"I
+did, and I do. You've brought me to see it."</p>
+
+<p>"That's very noble, but you saw it for yourself&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Through a glass&mdash;darkly; now I can look at the thing in clear daylight,
+and see what I have to do."</p>
+
+<p>She dropped into her chair again, looking up at him. He stood with his
+back to the fire, holding his head high, his bearing marked by a dogged,
+perhaps forced, serenity.</p>
+
+<p>"But what <i>can</i> you do?" she asked, after considering his words. "You're
+so involved. All this business&mdash;and the people in South America&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, there are ways and means. I haven't made plans, but I've thought,
+from time to time, of what I should do if I ever came to just this pass.
+The first thing would be to tell the few people who are most concerned,
+confidentially. Then I should go back to South America, and settle things
+give me your respect again&mdash;not even the little you've given me
+hitherto&mdash;and God knows that can't have been much. I could stand anything
+in the world&mdash;anything&mdash;rather than that you should come to that."</p>
+
+<p>"But I shouldn't, when I myself had dissuaded you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no; don't try. You'd be doing wrong. You've been to me so high and
+holy that I don't like to think you haven't the strength to go on to the
+end. I've got it, because you've given it me. Don't detract from your own
+gift by holding me back from using it. You found me a prisoner&mdash;or an
+escaped one&mdash;and I've been a prisoner all these years, the prisoner of
+something worse than chains. Now I'm going free. Look!" he cried, with
+sudden inspiration. "I'll show you how it's done. You'll see how easy it
+will be."</p>
+
+<p>He moved to cross the room.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you going to do?"</p>
+
+<p>She sprang up as if to hold him back, but his finger was on the bell.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mind, I hope?" he asked; but he had rung before she could give
+an answer. The maid appeared in the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>"Ask Mr. Wayne if he would be good enough to come in here a minute. Tell
+him Mr. Strange particularly wants to see him."</p>
+
+<p>He went back to his place by the fireside, where he stood apparently calm,
+showing no sign of excitement except in heightened color and the stillness
+of nervous tension Miriam sank into her chair again.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't do anything rash," she pleaded. "Wait till to-morrow There will
+always be time. For God's sake!"</p>
+
+<p>If he heard her he paid no attention, and presently Wayne appeared. He
+hesitated a minute on the threshold, and during that instant Ford could
+see that he looked ashy and older, as if something had aged him suddenly.
+His hands trembled, too, as he felt his way in.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-evening," he said, speaking into the air as blind men do. "I thought
+I heard your voice."</p>
+
+<p>Having groped his way across the room and reached the table that stood
+between the arm-chairs Miriam and Ford had occupied, he stopped. He stood
+there, with fingers drumming soundlessly on the polished wood, waiting for
+some one to speak.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the confidence with which he had rung the bell, Ford found it
+difficult now to begin. It was only after one or two inarticulate attempts
+that he was able to say anything.</p>
+
+<p>"I asked you to come in, sir," he began, haltingly, "to tell you something
+very special. Miss Strange knows it already.... If I've done wrong in not
+telling you before ... you'll see I'm prepared to take my punishment....
+My name isn't Strange ... it isn't Herbert."</p>
+
+<p>"I know it isn't."</p>
+
+<p>The words slipped out in a sharp tone, not quite nervous, but thin and
+worn. Miriam's attitude grew tense. Ford took a step forward from the
+fireside. With his arm flung over the back of his chair, and his knee
+resting on the seat of it, he strained across the table, as if to
+annihilate the space between Wayne and himself.</p>
+
+<p>"You <i>knew</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>The blind man nodded. When he spoke it was again into the air.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I knew. You're Norrie Ford. I ought to say I've only known it
+latterly&mdash;about a fortnight now."</p>
+
+<p>"How?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it just came to me&mdash;by degrees, I think."</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you say something about it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I thought I wouldn't. It has worried me, but I thought I'd keep still."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean that you were going to let everything&mdash;go on?"</p>
+
+<p>"I weighed all the considerations. That's the decision I came to. You must
+understand," he went on to explain, in a voice that was now tremulous as
+well as thin, "that I'd had you a good deal on my mind, during these past
+eight years. I sentenced you to death when I almost knew you were
+innocent. It was my duty. I couldn't help it. The facts told dead against
+you. Every one admitted that. True, the evidence might have been twisted
+to tell against old Gramm and his wife, but they hadn't been dissipated,
+and they hadn't been indicted, and they hadn't gone round making threats
+against Chris Ford's life like you."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't mean them. It was nothing but a boy's rage&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but you made them; and when the old man was found&mdash;But I'll not go
+into that now. I only want to say that, while I couldn't acquit you with
+my intelligence, I felt constrained to do it in my heart, especially when
+everything was over, and it was too late. The incident has been the one
+thing in my professional career that I've most regretted. I don't quite
+blame myself. I had to do my duty. And yet it was a relief to me when you
+got away. I don't know that I could have acted differently, but&mdash;but I
+liked you. I've gone on liking you. I've often thought about you, and
+wondered what had become of you. And one day&mdash;not long ago&mdash;as I was going
+over the old ground once more, I saw I'd been thinking about&mdash;<i>you</i>.
+That's how it came to me."</p>
+
+<p>"And you were going to remain silent, and let me marry Evie?"</p>
+
+<p>The blind man reflected.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw what was to be said against it. But I weighed all the evidence
+carefully. You were an injured man; you'd made a great fight and you'd
+won&mdash;as far as one man can win against the world. I came to the conclusion
+that I wasn't called on to strike you down a second time, after you'd
+scrambled up so pluckily. Evie is very dear to me; I don't say that I
+should see her married to you without some misgiving; but I decided that
+you deserved her. It was a great responsibility to take, but I took it and
+made up my mind to&mdash;let her go."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you're a good man! I didn't think there was such mercy in the world."</p>
+
+<p>Ford flung out the words in a cry that was half a groan and half a shout
+of triumph. Miriam choked back a sob. The neat little man shrugged his
+shoulders deprecatingly.</p>
+
+<p>"There's one thing I should like to ask," he pursued, "among the many that
+I don't know anything about, and that I don't care to inquire into. How
+did you come by the name of this lady's father, my old friend Herbert
+Strange?"</p>
+
+<p>Ford and Miriam exchanged swift glances. She shook her head, and he took
+his cue.</p>
+
+<p>"I happened to see it in a&mdash;a sort of&mdash;paper. I had no idea it was that of
+a real person. I fancied it had come out of a novel&mdash;- or something like
+that. I didn't mean to keep it, but it got fastened on me."</p>
+
+<p>"Very odd," was his only comment. "Isn't it, Miriam?</p>
+
+<p>"Now," he <i>added</i>, "I suppose you've had all you want of me, so I'll say
+good-night."</p>
+
+<p>He held out his hand, which Ford grasped, clinched rather, in both his
+own.</p>
+
+<p>"God bless you!" Wayne murmured, still tremulously. "God bless you&mdash;my
+boy, and bring everything out right. Miriam, I suppose you'll come in and
+see me before you go to bed."</p>
+
+<p>They watched him shuffle his way out of the room, and watched the door
+long after he had closed it. When at last Miriam turned her eyes on Ford
+they were luminous with the relief of her own defeat.</p>
+
+<p>"You see!" she cried, triumphantly. "You see the difference between him
+and me&mdash;between his spirit and mine! Now which of us was right?"</p>
+
+<p>"You were."</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch19">
+<h3>XIX</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>The one thing clear to Miriam on the following day was that she had ruined
+everything with astonishing completeness&mdash;a curious result to come from
+what she was firmly convinced was "doing right." She had calculated that,
+by a moderate measure of suffering to Evie, and a large one to Ford,
+Evie's ultimate welfare at least would be secured. Now everything was
+being brought to grief together. Out of such a wreck nothing could be
+saved.</p>
+
+<p>With Ford's desire to break the force which made him an impostor she had
+sympathy, but his willingness to risk his life in order to be in harmony
+with law and order again was not so easy for her to understand. While
+education, training and taste kept her, in her own person, within the
+restrictions of civilized life, yet the part of a free-lance in the world
+appealed to her strongly atavistic instincts far more directly than
+membership in a disciplined regular army. The guerilla fighter must of
+necessity be put to shifts&mdash;even moral shifts&mdash;which the common soldier,
+trained and commanded by others, can be spared; but her heart was with the
+man roving in the hills on his own account. That Ford should deliberately
+seek chains in barracks, when by her surrender on the subject of Evie she
+had made it possible for him still to keep the liberty of the field, was
+to her at once incomprehensible and awful. She had not only the sense of
+watching a man rushing upon Fate, but the knowledge that she herself had
+given him the impetus; while she was fully alive to the fact that when he
+fell everything she cared for in the world would fall with him.</p>
+
+<p>Her mind was too resourceful, her spirit too energetic, to permit of her
+sitting in helpless anguish over his new determination. She was already
+busy with plans for counteracting him, in one of which at least she saw
+elements of hope. Having conceived its possibilities, she was eager to go
+and test them; but she had decided not to leave the house until she knew
+that Ford was really putting his plans into execution. The minute Evie
+learned the fatal news she would have need of her, and she dared not put
+herself out of the child's reach. Her first duty must be toward the
+fragile little creature, who would be crushed like a trampled flower.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly before noon she was summoned to the telephone, where Evie was
+asking if she should find her in. Miriam judged from the tones of the
+transmitted voice that the worst had been made known. She was not,
+however, prepared for the briskness with which, ten minutes later, Evie
+whisked into the room, her cheeks aglow with excitement and her heavenly
+eyes dancing with a purely earthly sparkle.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't this awful?" she cried, before Miriam could take her into her
+loving arms. "Isn't it appalling? But it's not a surprise to me&mdash;not in
+the least. I knew there was something. Haven't I said so? I almost knew
+that his name wasn't Strange. If I hadn't been so busy with my coming
+out&mdash;and everything&mdash;I should have been sure of it. I haven't had time to
+think of it&mdash;do you see? With a lunch somewhere every day at half-past
+one," she hurried on, breathlessly, "and a tea at half-past four, and a
+dinner at eight, and a dance at eleven, and very likely the theatre or the
+opera in between&mdash;well, you can see I haven't been able to give much
+attention to anything else; but I knew, from the very time when I was in
+Buenos Aires, that there was something queer about that name. I never saw
+a man so sensitive when any one spoke about his name, not in all my life
+before&mdash;and you know down there it's the commonest thing&mdash;why, they're so
+suspicious on that point that they'd almost doubt that mine was Evie
+Colfax."</p>
+
+<p>She threw her muff in one direction, her boa in another, and her gloves in
+still another.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Evie darling, you surely didn't think&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I never thought of anything like this. I didn't really think of
+anything at all. If I'd begun to give my mind to it, I should probably
+have hit on something a great deal worse."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean, dear? Worse&mdash;than what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Worse than just being accused of shooting your uncle&mdash;and it was only his
+great-uncle, too. I might have thought of forgery or something
+dishonorable, though I should know he wasn't capable of it. Being accused
+isn't much. You can accuse <i>any one</i>&mdash;you could accuse <i>me</i>. That doesn't
+prove anything when he says he didn't do it. Of course he didn't do it.
+Can't any one <i>see</i>? My goodness! I wish they'd let me make the laws. I'd
+show them. Just think! To put a man like that in prison&mdash;- and say they'd
+do such awful things to him&mdash;and make him change his name&mdash;and everything.
+It's perfectly scandalous. It's an outrage. I shouldn't think such things
+would be allowed. They wouldn't be allowed in the Argentine. Why, there
+was a man out there who killed his father-in-law&mdash;actually <i>killed</i>
+him&mdash;and they didn't do anything to him at all. I've seen him lots of
+times. Aunt Queenie has pointed him out to me. He used to have the box
+next but two to ours at the opera. And to think they should take a man
+like Herbert, and worry him like that&mdash;it makes me so indignant I'd like
+to&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Evie ground her teeth, threw her clinched fists outward, and twitched her
+skirts about the room in the prettiest possible passion of righteous
+anger.</p>
+
+<p>"But, darling," Miriam asked, in a puzzled voice, "what are you going to
+do about it?"</p>
+
+<p>Evie wheeled round haughtily.</p>
+
+<p>"Do about it? What would you expect me to do about it? I'm going to tell
+every one he didn't do it&mdash;that's what I'm going to do about it. But of
+course we're not to speak of it just yet&mdash;outside ourselves, you know.
+He's going to Buenos Aires to tell Uncle Jarrott he didn't do it&mdash;and when
+he comes back we're going to make it generally known. Oh, there's to be
+law about it&mdash;and everything. He means to change his name again to what it
+was before&mdash;Ford, the name was&mdash;and I must say, Miriam, I like that a good
+deal better than Strange, if you don't mind my telling you. It seems odd
+to have so many Stranges&mdash;and I must say I never could get used to the
+idea of having exactly the same name as yours. It was almost like not
+being married outside the family&mdash;and I should hate to marry a relation.
+That part of it comes as a pleasant surprise, do you see? I'd made up my
+mind to Strange, and thought there was no way of getting rid of it, unless
+I&mdash;but I wasn't looking ahead to anything of <i>that</i> kind. I hope I shall
+never&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"So, darling, you're going to be true to him?"</p>
+
+<p>"True to him? Of course I'm going to be true to him. Why shouldn't I be?
+I'm going to be more true to him now than I was before. He's so noble
+about it, too. I wish you could have seen the way he broke it to me. Aunt
+Queenie said she never saw anything so affecting, not even on the stage.
+She was there, you know. Herbert felt he couldn't go over it all twice,
+and he thought I should need some one to support me through the shock. I
+didn't&mdash;not a bit. But I wish you could have been there, just to see him."</p>
+
+<p>"I can fancy it, dear."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I know now what you've been fidgeting about ever since he came
+to New York. He says you recognized him&mdash;that you'd seen him at Greenport.
+Oh, I knew there was something. But I must say, Miriam, I think you might
+have told me confidentially, and not let it come on me as such a blow as
+this. Not that I take it as a blow, though, of course, it upsets things
+terribly. We can't announce our engagement for ever so long, and Aunt
+Queenie is rushing round in the motor now to take back what she wrote to a
+few people yesterday. I can't imagine what she'll tell them, because I
+charged her on her sacred honor not to give them the idea it was broken
+off, although I'd rather they thought it was broken off than that I hadn't
+been engaged at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Jarrott takes it quietly, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quietly! I wish you could see her. She thinks there never was anything so
+romantic. Why, she cried over him, and kissed him, and said she'd always
+be his friend if every one else in the world were to turn against him. As
+a matter of fact, the poor old dear is head over heels in love with
+him&mdash;do you see?&mdash;in that sort of old-maid way&mdash;you know the kind of
+thing I mean. She thinks there's nobody like him, and neither there is. I
+shall miss him frightfully while he's down there telling Uncle Jarrott. I
+shall skip half my invitations and go regularly into retreat till he comes
+back. There's lots more he's going to tell me then&mdash;all about what Popsey
+Wayne had to do with it&mdash;and everything. I'm glad he doesn't want to do it
+now, because my head is reeling as it is. I've so many things to think
+of&mdash;and so much responsibility coming on me all at once&mdash;and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going to do anything about Billy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I can postpone that, at any rate. Thank goodness, there's <i>one</i>
+silver lining to the cloud. I was going to give him a pretty strong hint
+to-night, seeing Aunt Queenie has begun writing notes around, but now I
+can let him simmer for a while longer. He won't be able to say I haven't
+let him down easy, poor old boy. And, Miriam dear," she continued,
+gathering up her various articles of apparel, preparatory to taking leave,
+"you'll keep just as quiet about it as you can, like a dear, won't you? We
+don't mean to say a word about it outside ourselves till Herbert comes
+back from seeing Uncle Jarrott. That's my advice&mdash;and it's all our
+advice&mdash;I mean, Aunt Queenie's, too. Then they're going to law&mdash;or
+something. I know you <i>won't</i> say anything about it, but I thought I'd
+just put you on your guard."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>If Evie's way of taking it was a new revelation to Miriam, of her own
+miscalculation, it was also a new incentive to setting to work as promptly
+as possible to repair what she could of the mischief she had made. With
+Evie's limitations she might never know more of the seriousness of her
+situation than a bird of the nature of the battle raging near its nest;
+while if even Ford "went to law," as Evie put it, and he came off
+victorious, there might still be chances for their happiness. To anything
+else Miriam was indifferent, as a man in the excitement of saving his
+children from fire or storm is dead to his own sensations. It was with
+impetuous, almost frenzied, eagerness, therefore, that she went to the
+telephone to ring up Charles Conquest, asking to be allowed to see him
+privately at his office during the afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>In what she had made up her mind to do the fact that she was planning for
+herself an unnecessary measure of sacrifice was no deterrent. She was in a
+mood in which self-immolation seemed the natural penalty of her mistakes.
+She was not without the knowledge that money could buy the help she
+purposed to obtain by direct intervention; but her inherited instincts,
+scornful of roundabout methods, urged her to pay the price in something
+more personal than coin. It replied in some degree to her self-accusation,
+it assuaged the bitterness of her self-condemnation, to know that she was
+to be the active agent in putting right that which her errors of judgment
+had put wrong. To her essentially primitive soul atonement by proxy was as
+much out of the question as to the devotee beneath the wheels of
+Juggernaut. Somewhere in the background of her thought there were faint
+prudential protests against throwing herself away; but she disdained them,
+as a Latin or a Teuton disdains the Anglo-Saxon's preference for a court
+of law to the pistol of the duellist. It was something outside the realm
+of reason. Reckless impulses subdued by convent restraint or civilized
+requirements awoke with a start all the more violent because of their long
+sleep, driving her to do that which she knew other women would have done
+otherwise or not at all.</p>
+
+<p>She was aware, therefore, of limitations in the sacrifice she was making;
+she was even aware that, in the true sense, it was no sacrifice whatever.
+She was offering herself up because she chose to&mdash;in a kind of
+wilfulness&mdash;but a passionate wilfulness which claimed that for her at
+least there was no other way. Other women, wiser women, women behind whom
+there was a long, moderation-loving past, might obey the laws that prompt
+to the economy of one's self; she could only follow those blind urgings
+which drove her forefathers to fight when they might have remained at
+peace, or whipped them forth into the wild places of the earth when they
+could have stayed in quiet homes. The hard way in preference to the easy
+way was in her blood. She could no more have resisted taking it now than
+she could have held herself back eight years ago from befriending Norrie
+Ford against the law.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, it was a support to her to remember that Conquest's manner
+on the occasions when business brought her to his office was always a
+little different from that which he assumed when they met outside. He was
+much more the professional man with his client, a little the friend, but
+not at all the lover&mdash;if he was a lover anywhere. Having welcomed her now
+with just the right shade of cordiality, he made her sit at a little
+distance from his desk, while he himself returned to the revolving-chair
+at which he had been writing when she entered. After the preliminary
+greetings, he put on, unconsciously, the questioning air a business man
+takes at the beginning of an interview which he has been invited to
+accord.</p>
+
+<p>"I came&mdash;about Evie."</p>
+
+<p>Now that she was there it was less easy to begin than she had expected.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite so. I knew there was a hitch. I've just had a mysterious note from
+Queenie Jarrott which I haven't been able to make out. Can't they hit it
+off?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's a good deal more serious than that. Mr. Strange came to see Mr.
+Wayne and me last night. I may as well tell you as simply as I can. His
+name isn't Strange at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Ho! ho! What's up?"</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ever hear the name of&mdash;Norrie Ford?"</p>
+
+<p>"Good Lord, yes! I can't quite remember&mdash;Let's see. Norrie Ford? I know
+the name as well as I know my own. Wasn't that the case&mdash;why, yes, it must
+have been&mdash;wasn't that the case Wayne was mixed up in six or eight years
+ago?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it was."</p>
+
+<p>"The fellow gave 'em all the slip, didn't he?"</p>
+
+<p>She nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Hadn't he been commuted to a life sentence&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Wayne hoped it would be done, but it hadn't been done yet. He was
+still under sentence of&mdash;death."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, yes. It comes back to me. We thought Wayne hadn't displayed
+much energy or ability of foresight&mdash;or something. I remember there was
+talk about it, and in the newspapers there was even a cock-and-bull story
+that Wayne had connived at his escape. Well, what has that got to do with
+Evie?"</p>
+
+<p>"It has everything to do with her."</p>
+
+<p>Conquest's little gray-green eyes blinked as if against the blaze of their
+own light, while his features sharpened to their utmost incisiveness.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean to say&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, upon&mdash;my&mdash;!" The exclamation trailed off into a silent effort to
+take in this extraordinary piece of intelligence "Do you mean to say the
+scamp had the cheek&mdash;? Oh no, it isn't possible. Come now!"</p>
+
+<p>"It was exactly as I'm going to tell you, but I don't think you should
+call him a scamp. You see, he's engaged to Evie&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"He's not engaged to her now?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is. She means to be true to him. So do we all."</p>
+
+<p>Two little scarlet spots burned in her cheeks, but it was not more in the
+way of emotion than a warm partisanship on Evie's account demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm blowed!" He swung one leg across the other, making his chair
+describe a semicircle.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you won't be so much&mdash;blowed, when you hear all I have to tell
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"Go ahead; I'm more interested than if it was a dime novel."</p>
+
+<p>As lucidly as she could she gave him the outline of Ford's romance,
+dwelling as he had done in relating it to her, less on its incidents than
+on its mental and moral effect upon himself. She suppressed the narrative
+of the weeks spent in the cabin and based her report entirely on
+information received from Ford. For testimony as to his life and character
+in the Argentine she had the evidence of Miss Jarrott, while on the
+subject of his business abilities&mdash;no small point with a New York business
+man, as she was astute enough to see&mdash;there could be no better authority
+than Conquest himself, who, as Stephens and Jarrott's American legal
+adviser, had had ample opportunity of judging. She was gratified to note
+that as her story progressed it called forth sympathetic looks, and an
+occasional appreciative exclamation, while now and then he slapped his
+thigh as a mark of the kind of amused astonishment that verges on
+approbation.</p>
+
+<p>"So we couldn't desert him now, after she's been so brave, could we?" she
+pleaded, with some amount of confidence; "and especially when he's engaged
+to Evie."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose we can't desert him, if he's sane."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he's sane."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why the deuce, when he was so well out of harm's way, didn't he stay
+there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because of his love for Evie, don't you see?" She had to explain Ford's
+moral development and psychological state all over again, until he could
+see it with some measure of comprehension.</p>
+
+<p>"It certainly is the queerest story I ever heard," he declared, in
+enjoyment of its dramatic elements, "and we're all in it, aren't we? It's
+like seeing yourself in a play."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you would look at it in that way. As soon as I began wondering
+what we could do&mdash;this morning&mdash;I saw that, after Evie, you were the
+person most concerned."</p>
+
+<p>"Who? I? Why am I concerned? I've got nothing to do with it!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, of course not, except as Stephens and Jarrott's lawyer. When their
+representative in New York&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but my dear girl, my duties don't involve me in anything of this
+kind. I'm the legal adviser to the firm, but I've nothing to do with the
+private affairs of their employees."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Jarrott is very fond of Mr. Strange&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps this will cool his affection."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think it will as long as Evie insists on marrying him. I'm sure
+they mean to stand by him."</p>
+
+<p>"They won't be able to stand by him long, if the law gives him&mdash;what it
+meant to give him before."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but you don't think there's any danger of that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know about it," he said, shaking his head, ominously. "The fact
+that he comes back and gives himself up isn't an argument in favor of his
+innocence. There's generally remorse behind that dodge."</p>
+
+<p>"Then isn't that all the more reason why we should help him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Help him? How?"</p>
+
+<p>"By trying to win his case for him."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her with eyes twinkling while his fingers concealed the smile
+behind his colorless mustache.</p>
+
+<p>"And how would you propose to set about that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, but I suppose you do. There must be ways. He's leaving as
+soon as he can for South America. He thinks it may be months before he
+gets back. I thought that&mdash;perhaps&mdash;in the mean time&mdash;while he won't be
+able to do anything for himself&mdash;you might see&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes; go on," he said, as she hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"You might see if there is any evidence that could be found&mdash;that wasn't
+found before&mdash;isn't that the way they do it?&mdash;and have it ready&mdash;for him
+when he came back."</p>
+
+<p>"For a wedding present."</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>would</i> be a wedding present&mdash;to all of us. It would be for Evie's
+sake. You know how I love her. She's the dearest thing to me in the world.
+If I could only secure her happiness like that&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You mean, if I could secure it."</p>
+
+<p>"You'd be doing it actively, but I should want to co-operate."</p>
+
+<p>"In what way?"</p>
+
+<p>She sat very still. She was sure he understood her by the sudden rigidity
+of his pose, while his eyes stopped twinkling, and his fingers ceased to
+travel along the line of his mustache. Her eyes fell before the scrutiny
+in his, but she lifted them again for one of her quick, wild glances.</p>
+
+<p>"In any way you like."</p>
+
+<p>She tried to make her utterance distinct, matter of fact, not too
+significant, but she failed. In spite of herself, her words conveyed all
+their meaning. The brief pause that followed was not less eloquent, nor
+did it break the spell when Conquest gave a short little laugh that might
+have been nervous and, changing his posture, leaned forward on his desk
+and scribbled on the blotting-pad. While he would never have admitted it,
+it was a relief to him, too, not to be obliged to face her.</p>
+
+<p>He was not shocked, neither was he quite surprised. He was accustomed to
+the thought that a woman's love was a thing to purchase. One man bought it
+from her father for a couple of oxen, another from herself for an
+establishment and a diamond tiara. It was the same principle in both
+cases. He had never considered Miriam Strange as being without a price;
+his difficulty had been in knowing what it was. The establishment and the
+diamond tiara having proved as indifferent to her as the yoke of oxen, he
+was thrown back upon the alternative of heroic deeds. He had more than
+once suspected that these might win her if they had only been in his line.
+There being few opportunities for that kind of endeavor as the head of a
+large and lucrative legal practice, the suggestion only left him cynical.
+In the bottom of his heart he had long wished to dazzle, by some act of
+prowess, the eyes that saw him only as a respectable man of middle age,
+but the desire had merely mocked him with the kind of derision which
+impotence gets from youth. It seemed now a stroke of luck which almost
+merited being termed an act of Providence that there should have come a
+call for exactly his variety of "derringdo" from the very quarter in which
+he could make it tell.</p>
+
+<p>"We've never gone in for any criminal business here," he said, after long
+reflection, while he continued to scribble aimlessly, "but, of course,
+we're in touch with the people who take it up."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you might be."</p>
+
+<p>"But it's only fair to tell you that if your motive is to save time for
+our friend in question&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That <i>is</i> my motive&mdash;the only one."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you could get in touch with them, too."</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't want to."</p>
+
+<p>"Still I think you should consider it. The best legal advice in the world
+can be&mdash;bought&mdash;for money."</p>
+
+<p>"I know that."</p>
+
+<p>Lifting his eyes in a sharp look, he saw her head lilted back with her own
+special air of deliberate temerity.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, very well, then," he said, quietly, resuming his scribbling again.
+After this warning he felt justified in taking her at her word.</p>
+
+<p>With that as a beginning she knew she had gained her first great point. In
+answer to his questions she told the story over again, displaying, as he
+remembered afterward&mdash;but long afterward&mdash;a surprising familiarity with
+its details. She made suggestions which he noted as marked by some acumen,
+and laid stress on the value of the aid they might expect privately from
+Philip Wayne. The beauty and eagerness in her face fired the almost
+atrophied enthusiasm in his own heart, while he could not but see that
+this entirely altruistic interest had brought them in half an hour nearer
+together than they had ever been before. It was what they had never had
+till now&mdash;a bond in common. In spite of the persistency of his efforts and
+his assertions, he had never hitherto got nearer her than a statue on a
+pedestal gets to its neighbor in a similar situation but now at last they
+were down on the same earth together. This was more than reason enough for
+his taking up the cause of Norrie Ford, consecrating to it all his
+resources, mental and material, and winning it.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of an hour or two their understanding was complete, but he
+did not refer again to the conditions of their tacit compact. It was she
+who felt that sufficient had not been said&mdash;that the sincerity with which
+she subscribed to it had not been duly emphasized. She was at the door on
+the point of going away when she braced herself to look at him and say:</p>
+
+<p>"You can't realize what all this means to me. If we succeed&mdash;that is, if
+you succeed&mdash;I hardly dare to tell you of the extent to which I shall be
+grateful."</p>
+
+<p>He felt already some of the hero's magnanimity as to claiming his reward.</p>
+
+<p>"You needn't think about that," he smiled. "I sha'n't. If by making Evie
+happy I can serve you, I shall not ask for gratitude."</p>
+
+<p>She looked down at her muff and smoothed its fur, then glanced up swiftly.
+"No; but I shall want to give it."</p>
+
+<p>With that she was gone&mdash;lighter of heart than a few hours ago it had
+seemed to her possible ever to be again. Her joy was the joy of the
+captain who feels that he has saved his ship, though his own wound is
+fatal.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="part" id="p4">
+<h2>Part IV</h2>
+
+<h3>Conquest</h3>
+
+
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch20">
+<h3>XX</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>Among the three or four qualities Conquest most approved of in himself,
+not the least was a certain capacity for the patient acquisition of the
+world's more enviable properties. He had the gift of knowing what he
+wanted, recognizing it when he saw it, and waiting for it till it came
+within his reach. From his youth upward he had been a connoisseur of
+quality rather than a lover of abundance, while he owned to a talent for
+seeing the value of things which other people overlooked, and throwing
+them into relief when the objects became his. As far back as the time when
+the modest paternal heritage had been divided between his brothers and
+sisters and himself, he had been astute enough to leave the bulk of it to
+them, contenting himself with one or two bits of ancestral furniture and a
+few old books, which were now known by all to have been the only things
+worth having. Throughout his life he had followed this principle of
+acquiring unobtrusively but getting exactly what he wanted. It was so that
+he bought his first horse, so that he bought his first motor, so that he
+purchased the land where he afterward built his house&mdash;in a distant,
+desolate stretch of Fifth Avenue which his acquaintances told him would be
+hopelessly out of reach, but where, not many years after, most of them
+were too late to join him.</p>
+
+<p>In building his house, too, he took his time, allowing his friends to
+make their experiments around him, while he studied the great art of "how
+not to do it." One of his neighbors erected a Flemish ch&acirc;teau, another a
+Florentine palazzo, and a third a Fran&ccedil;ois Premier <i>h&ocirc;tel</i>; but his plot
+of ground remained an unkempt tangle of mullein and blue succory. In the
+end he put up a sober, handsome development on a style which the humbler
+passers-by often called, with approval, "good, plain American," but whose
+point of departure was Georgian. He had the instinct for that which
+springs out of the soil. For this reason he did not shrink from an Early
+Victorian note&mdash;the first note of the modern, prosperous New York&mdash;in
+decoration; and the same taste impelled him toward the American in art.
+While Neighbor Smith displayed his Gainsboroughs, and Neighbor Jones his
+Rousseaus or Daubignys, Conquest quietly picked up a thing here and
+there&mdash;always under excellent advice&mdash;which no picture-dealer had been
+able to dispose of, because it came from some studio in Twenty-third
+Street. Hung on his walls, it produced that much-sought-for effect of
+"having been always there." He was not a Chauvinist, nor had he any
+sympathy with the intolerantly patriotic. He was merely a lover of the
+indigenous.</p>
+
+<p>In much the same way he had sought for&mdash;and waited for&mdash;a wife. He had
+been rashly put down as "not a marrying man," when he was only taking his
+time. He had seen plainly of excellent possibilities&mdash;fine women, handsome
+women, clever women, good women&mdash;any of whom presumably he could have had
+for the asking; but none was, in his own phraseology, "just the right
+thing." He wanted something unusual, and yet not exotic&mdash;something
+obvious, which no one else had observed&mdash;something cultivated, and yet
+native&mdash;something as exquisite as any hothouse orchid, but with the keen,
+fresh scent of the American woods and waters on its bloom. It was not a
+thing to be picked up every day, and so he kept on the lookout for it, and
+waited. Even when he found it, he was not certain, on the spur of the
+moment, that it would prove exactly what he had in mind. So he waited
+longer. He watched the effect of time and experience upon it, until he was
+quite sure. He knew the risk he was running that some one else might
+snatch it up; but his principle had always been to let everything, no
+matter how coveted, go, rather than buy in haste.</p>
+
+<p>Lest such an attitude toward Miriam Strange should seem cold-blooded, it
+should be said in his defence that he considered the aggregate of his
+sentiments to be&mdash;love. She was to be more than "something better than his
+dog, a little dearer than his horse," more than the living, responsive
+soul among his chattels. There was that in her which appealed to his
+desire, and to something more deeply seated in him still. After satisfying
+ear, eye, and intelligence, there was in her nature a whole undiscovered
+region, undivined, undefined, wakening the imagination, and stirring the
+speculative faculties, like the subconscious elements in personality. In
+her wild, non-Aryan glances he saw the flame of eyes that flashed on him
+out of a past unknown to history; in the liquid cadences of her voice he
+heard the echo of the speech that had sounded in the land before Plymouth
+was a stockade or Manhattan was a farm; in her presence he found a claim
+that antedated everything sprung of Hudson, Cabot, or Columbus. The
+slender thread that attached her to the ages of nomadic mystery made her
+for him the indigenous spirit, reborn in a woman of the world.</p>
+
+<p>Knowing himself too old to be dominated by a passion, and too experienced
+to be snared by wiles, he estimated his feelings as being those of love,
+as he understood the word. He conceded the fact that love, like every
+other desire, must work to win, and proceeded to set about his task
+according to his usual methods of persistent, unobtrusive siege. It was
+long before Miriam became aware of what he was doing, and her surprise as
+she drew back was not quite so great as his to see her do it. He was so
+accustomed to success&mdash;after taking the trouble to insure it&mdash;that he was
+astonished, and a little angry, to find his usual tactics fail. He did not
+believe that she was beyond his grasp; he perceived only that he had taken
+the wrong way to get her. That there was a right way there could be no
+question; and he knew that by patient, unremitting search he should find
+it.</p>
+
+<p>He had, therefore, several sources of satisfaction in espousing the cause
+of Norrie Ford. The amplitude of his legal knowledge would be to him as
+gay feathers to the cock; while the contemplation of the prize added to
+his self-approval in never doubting that it could be won.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>It was early March when Ford sailed away, leaving his affairs in
+Conquest's charge, at the latter's own request. He in his turn placed them
+in the hands of Kilcup and Warren, who made a specialty of that branch of
+the law. The reward was immediate, in that frequent talks with Miriam
+became a matter of course.</p>
+
+<p>His trained mind was prompt to seize the fact that these interviews took
+place on a basis different from that of their meetings in the past. Where
+he had been seeking to gain an end he was now on probation. He had been
+told&mdash;or practically told&mdash;that what he had been asking would be granted,
+as soon as certain conditions were fulfilled. It became to him, therefore,
+a matter of honor, in some degree one of professional etiquette, to fulfil
+the conditions before referring to the reward. Instead of a suitor
+pressing his suit, he became the man of business recounting the points
+scored, or still to be scored, in a common enterprise. In keeping her
+informed of each new step that Kilcup and Warren were taking, he
+maintained an attitude of distant respect, of which she could have nothing
+to complain.</p>
+
+<p>Expecting an equal reserve on her part, it was with some surprise that he
+saw her assume the initiative in cordiality. He called it cordiality,
+because he dared not make it a stronger word. Her manner went back to the
+spontaneous friendliness that had marked their intercourse before she
+began to see what he was aiming at, while into it she threw an infusion of
+something that had not hitherto been there. When he came with the
+information that a fresh bit of evidence had been discovered, or a new
+light thrown on an old one, she listened with interest&mdash;just the right
+kind of interest&mdash;and made pretexts to detain him, sometimes with Wayne as
+a third, sometimes without, for the pleasure of his own company. Now and
+then, as spring came on, they would all three, at her suggestion, cross
+the street, and stroll in the park together. Leaving Wayne on some
+convenient seat, they would prolong their own walk, talking with the
+unguarded confidence of mutual trust. It was she who furnished the
+topics&mdash;books, music, politics, people, anything that chanced to be
+uppermost. When he decided to purchase an automobile a whole new world of
+consultation was opened up. They visited establishments together, and
+drove with Wayne into the country to test machines. Returning Conquest
+would dine informally, in morning dress, with them; or else, from time to
+time he would invite them to a restaurant. By-and-by he took to organizing
+little dinners at his own house, ostensibly to cheer up Wayne, but really
+to see Miriam at his table.</p>
+
+<p>In all this there was nothing remarkable, as between old friends, except
+the contrast with her bearing toward him during the past year. He had
+expected that when Norrie Ford went finally free she would fulfil her
+contract, and fulfil it well; but he had not expected this instalment of
+graciousness in advance. It set him to pondering, to looking in the
+mirror, to refining on that careful dressing which he had already made an
+art. After all, a man in the fifties was young as long as he looked young,
+and according as one took the point of view.</p>
+
+<p>Except when Ford's affairs came directly under discussion he occupied,
+seemingly, a secondary place in their thoughts. Miriam rarely spoke of him
+at all, and if Conquest brought up his name more frequently it was because
+his professional interest in the numerous "nice points" of the case was
+becoming keen. He talked them over with her, partly because of his
+pleasure in the intelligence with which she grasped them, and partly
+because their intimacy deepened in proportion as the hope strengthened
+that Ford's innocence would be proved.</p>
+
+<p>It was June before Miriam heard from South America. Two or three letters
+to Evie had already come, guardedly written, telling little more than the
+incidents of Ford's voyage and arrival. It was to Miriam he wrote what he
+actually had at heart.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>"The great moment has come and gone," she read to Conquest. "I have seen
+Mr. Jarrott, and made a clean breast of everything. It was harder than I
+expected, though I expected it would be pretty hard. I think I felt
+sorrier for him than for myself, which is saying a good deal. He not only
+takes it to heart, but feels it as a cut to his pride. I can see that that
+thought is uppermost. What he feels is not so much the fact that <i>I</i>
+deceived him as that I deceived <i>him</i>. I can understand it, too. In a
+country where there is such a lot of this sort of thing, he has never been
+touched by it before. It has been a kind of boast that his men were always
+the genuine article. If one of them is called Smith, it is because he <i>is</i>
+a Smith, and not a Vere de Vere in hiding. But that isn't all. He took me
+into his family&mdash;into his very heart. He showed that, when I told him. He
+tried not to, but he couldn't help it. I tell you it hurt&mdash;<i>me</i>. I won't
+try to write about it. I'll tell you everything face to face, when I get
+up to the mark, if I ever do. Apparently my letters hadn't prepared him
+for the thing at all. He thought it was to be something to do with Evie,
+though he might have known I wouldn't have chucked up everything for that.
+The worst of it is, he's no good at seeing things all round. He can't take
+my point of view a bit. It is impossible to explain the fix I was put in,
+because he can see nothing but the one fact that I pulled the wool over
+his eyes&mdash;<i>his</i> eyes, that had never suffered sacrilege before. I
+sympathize with him in that, and yet I think he might try to see that
+there's something to be said on my side. He doesn't, and he never
+will&mdash;which only hurts me the more.</p>
+
+<p>"As for Evie, he wouldn't let me mention her name. I didn't insist,
+because it was too painful&mdash;I mean, too painful to see how he took it. He
+said, in about ten words, that Evie had not been any more engaged than if
+she had given her word to a man of air, and that there was no reason why
+she should be spoken of. We left it there. I couldn't deny that, and it
+was no use saying any more. The only reply to him must be given by Evie
+herself. He is writing to her, and so am I. I wish you would help her to
+see that she must consider herself quite free, and that she isn't to
+undertake what she may not have the strength to carry out. I realize more
+and more that I was asking her to do the impossible."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>It was an hour or two after reading this, when Conquest had gone away,
+that Evie herself&mdash;as dainty as spring, in flowered muslin and a Leghorn
+hat crowned with a wreath of roses&mdash;came fluttering in.</p>
+
+<p>"I've had the queerest letter from Uncle Jarrott," she began,
+breathlessly. "The poor old dear&mdash;well, something must be the matter with
+him. I can't for the life of me imagine what Herbert can have told him,
+but he doesn't understand a bit."</p>
+
+<p>Miriam locked her own letter in her desk, saying as she did so:</p>
+
+<p>"How does he show it?&mdash;that he doesn't understand."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, he simply talks wild&mdash;that's how he shows it. He says I am not to
+consider myself engaged to Herbert&mdash;that I was never engaged to him at
+all. I wonder what he calls it, if it isn't engaged, when I have a
+ring&mdash;and everything."</p>
+
+<p>"It is rather mystifying." Miriam tried to smile. "I suppose he means that
+having given your word to Herbert Strange, you're not to consider yourself
+bound to Norrie Ford, unless you want to."</p>
+
+<p>"Pff! I don't care anything about that. I never liked the name of
+Herbert&mdash;or Strange, either. I told you that before. All the same, I wish
+Uncle Jarrott would have a little sense."</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose&mdash;I mean, just suppose, dear&mdash;he felt it his duty to forbid your
+engagement altogether. What would you do then?"</p>
+
+<p>"It wouldn't be very nice of him, I must say. He was as pleased as Punch
+over it when I was down there. If he's so capricious, I don't see how he
+can blame me."</p>
+
+<p>"Blame you, for what, dear?"</p>
+
+<p>"For staying engaged&mdash;if it's all right."</p>
+
+<p>"But if he thought it wasn't all right?"</p>
+
+<p>"You do, don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>Evie, who had been prancing about the room, turned sharply on Miriam, who
+was still at her desk.</p>
+
+<p>"That isn't the question&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, but it's <i>a</i> question. I presume you don't mind my asking it?"</p>
+
+<p>"You may ask me anything, darling&mdash;of course. But this is your uncle
+Jarrott's affair, and yours. It wouldn't do for me&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's so like you Miriam. You'd exasperate a saint&mdash;the way you
+won't give your opinion when you've got one. I wish I could ask Billy.
+He'd know. But of course I couldn't, when he thinks I'm still engaged to
+<i>him</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want to ask him, Evie, dear?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he's a lawyer. He could tell me all about what it's all about. I'm
+sure <i>I</i> don't know. I didn't think it was anything&mdash;and yet here's Uncle
+Jarrott writing as if it was something awful. He's written to Aunt
+Queenie, too. Of course I must stand by Herbert, whatever happens&mdash;if it
+isn't very bad; but you can see yourself that I don't want to be mixed up
+in a&mdash;a&mdash;in a scandal."</p>
+
+<p>"It would hardly be a scandal, dear; but there would be some&mdash;some
+publicity about it."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't mind publicity. I'm used to that, with my name in the paper every
+other day. It was in this morning. Did you see it?&mdash;the Gresley's dance.
+Only I do wish they would call me Evelyn, and not Evie. It sounds so
+familiar."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid they'd put more in about you than just that."</p>
+
+<p>"Would they? What?" Her eyes danced already, in anticipation.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't tell you exactly what; but it would be things you wouldn't like."</p>
+
+<p>Evie twitched about the room, making little clicking sounds with her lips,
+as signs of meditation.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I mean to be true to him&mdash;a while longer," she said, at last, as if
+coming to a conclusion. "I'm not going to let Uncle Jarrott think I'm just
+a puppet to be jerked on a string. The idea! When he was as pleased as
+Punch about it himself. And Aunt Helen said she'd give me my trousseau. I
+suppose I sha'n't get that now. But there's the money you offered me for
+the pearl necklace. Only I'd much rather have the pearl&mdash;Well, I'll be
+true to him, do you see? We're leaving for Newport the day after
+to-morrow. They say there hasn't been such a brilliant summer for a long
+time as they expect this year. Thank goodness, there's something to take
+my mind off all this care and worry and responsiblity, otherwise I think I
+should pass away. But I shall show Uncle Jarrott that he can't do just as
+he likes with me, anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>Evie and Miss Jarrott went to Newport, and it was the beginning of July
+before Miriam heard from Ford again. Once more she read to Conquest such
+portions of the letter as she thought he would find of interest.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>"It is all over now," Ford wrote, "between Stephens and Jarrott and me.
+I'm out of the concern for good. It was something of a wrench, and I'm
+glad it is past. I didn't see the old man again. I wanted to thank him and
+say good-bye, but he dodged me. Perhaps it is just as well. Even if I were
+to meet him now, I shouldn't make the attempt again. I confess to feeling
+a little hurt, but I thoroughly understand him. He is one of those
+men&mdash;you meet them now and again&mdash;survivals from the old school&mdash;with a
+sense of rectitude so exact that they can only see in a straight line. It
+is all right. Don't think that I complain. It is almost as much for his
+sake as for my own that I wish he could have taken what I call a more
+comprehensive view of me. I know he suffers&mdash;and I shall never be able to
+tell him how sorry I am till we get into the kingdom of heaven. In fact, I
+can't explain anything to any one, except you, which must be an excuse for
+my long letters. I try to keep you posted in what I'm going through, so
+that you may convey as much or as little of it as you think fit to Evie. I
+can't tell her much, and I see from the little notes she writes me that
+she doesn't yet understand.</p>
+
+<p>"The cat seems to be quite out of the bag in the office, though I haven't
+said a word to any one, and I know Mr. Jarrott wouldn't. Pride and sore
+feeling will keep him from ever speaking of me again, except when he can't
+help it. I don't mean to say that the men know exactly what it is, but
+they know enough to set them guessing. They are jolly nice about it, too,
+even the fellows who were hardly decent to me in the old days. Little
+Green&mdash;the chap from Boston who succeeded me at Rosario; I must have told
+you about him&mdash;and his wife can't do enough for me, and I know they mean
+it."</p>
+
+<p>There was a silence of some weeks before he wrote again.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall not get away from here as soon as I expected, as my private
+affairs are not easily settled up. This city grows so fast that I have had
+a good part of my savings in real estate. I am getting rid of it by
+degrees, but it takes time to sell to advantage. I may say that I am doing
+very well, for which I am not sorry, as I shall need the money for my
+trial. I hope you don't mind my referring to it, because I look forward to
+it with something you might almost call glee. To get back where I started
+will be like waking from a bad dream. I can't believe that Justice will
+make the same mistake twice&mdash;and even if she does I would rather she had
+the chance. I am much encouraged by the last reports from Kilcup and
+Warren. I've long felt that it was Jacob Gramm who did for my poor uncle,
+though I didn't like to accuse him of it when the proofs seemed all the
+other way. He certainly had more reason to do the trick than I had, for my
+uncle had been a brute to him for thirty years, while he had only worried
+me for two. He wasn't half a bad old chap, either&mdash;old Gramm&mdash;and it was
+one of the mysteries of the place to me that he could have stood it so
+long. The only explanation I could find was that he had a kind of
+affection for the old man, such as a dog will sometimes have for a master
+who beats him, or a woman for a drunken husband. I believe the moment came
+when he simply found himself at the end of his tether of endurance&mdash;and
+he just did for him. His grief, when it was all over, was real enough.
+Nobody could doubt that. In fact, it was so evidently genuine that the
+theory I am putting forward now only came to me of late years. I think
+there is something in it, and I believe the further they go the more they
+will find to support it. Now that the old chap is dead I should have less
+scruple in following it up&mdash;especially if the old lady is gone too. She
+was a bit of a vixen, but the husband was a good old sort. I liked him."</p>
+
+<p>Some weeks later he wrote:</p>
+
+<p>"I wander about this place a good deal like a ghost in its old haunts.
+Everything here is so temporary, so changing&mdash;much more so than in New
+York&mdash;that one's footprints are very quickly washed away. Outside the
+office almost no one remembers me. It is curious to think that I was once
+so happy here&mdash;and so hopeful. There was always a kind of hell in my
+heart, but I kept it banked down, as we do the earth's internal fires,
+beneath a tolerably solid crust. Yesterday, finding myself at the
+Hipodromo, I stood for a while on the spot where I first saw Evie. It used
+to seem to me a bit of enchanted ground, but I feel now as if I ought to
+erect a gravestone there. Poor little Evie! How right you were about it
+all. It was madness on my part to think she could ever climb up my
+Calvary. My excuse is that I didn't imagine it was going to be so steep. I
+even hoped she would never see that there was a Calvary at all. Her notes
+are still pitifully ignorant of the real state of things.</p>
+
+<p>"And speaking of gravestones, I went out the other day to the Recoleta
+Cemetery, and looked at the grave of my poor old friend, Monsieur Durand.
+Everything neat, and in good order. It gives me a peculiar satisfaction
+to see that the decorum he loved reigns where he 'sleeps.' I never knew
+his secret&mdash;except that rumor put him down for an unfrocked priest.</p>
+
+<p>"I doubt if I shall get away from here till the beginning of October; but
+when I do, everything will be in trim for what I sometimes think of as my
+resurrection."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>These letters, and others like them, Miriam shared conscientiously with
+Conquest. It was part of the loyalty she had vowed to him in her heart
+that she should keep nothing from him, except what was sanctified and
+sealed forever, as her own private history. In the impulse to give her
+life as a ransom for Norrie Ford's she was eager to do it without
+reserves, or repinings, or backward looks&mdash;without even a wish that it had
+been possible to make any other use of it. If she was not entirely
+successful in the last feat, she was fairly equal to the rest, so that in
+allowing himself to be misled Conquest could scarcely be charged with
+fatuity. With his combined advantages, personal and otherwise, it was not
+astonishing that a woman should be in love with him; and if that woman
+proved to be Miriam Strange, one could only say that the unexpected had
+happened, as it often does. If, in view of all the circumstances, he
+dressed better than ever, and gave his little dinners more frequently,
+while happiness toned down the sharpness of his handsome profile to a
+softer line, he had little in common with Malvolio.</p>
+
+<p>And what he had began to drop away from him. Insensibly he came to see
+that the display of his legal knowledge, of his carefully chosen ties, of
+his splendid equipment in house, horses, and automobiles, had something of
+the major-domo's strut in parti-colored hose. The day came when he
+understood that the effort to charm her by the parade of these things was
+like the appeal to divine grace by means of grinding on a prayer-mill. It
+was a long step to take, both in thought and emotion, leading him to see
+love, marriage, women's hearts, and all kindred subjects, from a different
+point of view. Love in particular began to appear to him as more than the
+sum total of approbation bestowed on an object to be acquired. Though he
+was not prepared to give it a new definition, it was clear that the old
+one was no longer sufficient for his needs. The mere fact that this woman,
+whom he had vainly tempted with gifts&mdash;whom he was still hoping to capture
+by prowess&mdash;could come to him of her own accord, had a transforming effect
+on himself. If he ever got her&mdash;by purchase, conquest, or any other form
+of acquisition&mdash;he had expected to be proud; he had never dreamed of this
+curious happiness, that almost made him humble.</p>
+
+<p>It was a new conception of life to think that there were things in it that
+might be given, but which could not be bought; as it was a new revelation
+of himself to perceive that there were treasures in his dry heart which
+had never before been drawn on. This discovery was made almost
+accidentally. He stumbled on it, as men have stumbled on Koh-i-noors and
+Cullinanes lying in the sand.</p>
+
+<p>"What I really came to tell you," he said to her, on one occasion, as they
+strolled side by side in the Park, "is that I am going away to-morrow&mdash;to
+the West&mdash;to Omaha."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't that rather sudden?"</p>
+
+<p>"Rather. I've thought for the last few days I might do it. The fact is,
+they've found Amalia Gramm."</p>
+
+<p>She stopped with a sudden start of interrogation, moving on again at once.
+It was a hot September evening, at the hour when twilight merges into
+night. They had left Wayne on a favorite seat, and having finished their
+own walk northward, were returning to pick him up and take him home. It
+was just dark enough for the thin crescent of the harvest moon to be
+pendulous above the city, while a rim of lighted windows in high fa&ccedil;ades
+framed the tree-tops The peace of the quiet path in which they rambled
+seemed the more sylvan because of the clang and rumble of the streets, as
+a room will appear more secluded and secure when there is a storm outside.</p>
+
+<p>"They've found her living with some nieces out there," he went on to
+explain. "She appears to have been half over the world since old Gramm
+died&mdash;home to Germany&mdash;back to America&mdash;to Denver&mdash;to Chicago&mdash;to
+Milwaukee&mdash;to the Lord knows where&mdash;and now she has fetched up in Omaha.
+She strikes me in the light of an unquiet spirit. It seems she has nephews
+and nieces all over the lot&mdash;and as she has the ten thousand dollars old
+Chris Ford left them&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Are they going to bring her here?"</p>
+
+<p>"They can't&mdash;bedridden&mdash;paralyzed, or something. They've got to take her
+testimony on the spot. I want to be there when they do it. There are
+certain questions which it is most important to have asked. In a way, it
+is not my business; but I'm going to make it mine. I've mulled over the
+thing so long that I think I see the psychology of the whole drama."</p>
+
+<p>"I can never thank you enough for the interest you've shown," she said,
+after a brief silence.</p>
+
+<p>He gave his short, nervous laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Nor I you for giving me the chance to show it. That's where the kindness
+comes in. It's made a different world for me, and me a different man in
+it. If anybody had told me last winter that I should spend the whole
+summer in town working on a criminal case&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You shouldn't have done that. I wanted you to go away as usual."</p>
+
+<p>"And leave you here?"</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't have minded&mdash;as long as Mr. Wayne preferred to stay. It's so
+hard for him to get about, anywhere but in the place he's accustomed to.
+New York in summer isn't as bad as people made me think."</p>
+
+<p>"I too have found that true. To me it has been a very happy time. But
+perhaps my reasons were different from yours."</p>
+
+<p>She reflected a minute before uttering her next words, but decided to say
+them.</p>
+
+<p>"I fancy our reasons were the same."</p>
+
+<p>The low voice, the simplicity of the sentence, the meanings in it and
+behind it, made him tremble. It was then, perhaps, that he began to see
+most clearly the true nature of love, both as given and received.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think they can be," he ventured, hoping to draw her on to say
+something more; but she did not respond.</p>
+
+<p>After all, he reflected, as they continued their walk more or less in
+silence, too many words would only spoil the minute's bliss. There was,
+too, a pleasure in standing afar off to view the promised land almost
+equal to that of marching into it&mdash;especially when, as now, he was given
+to understand that its milk and honey were awaiting him.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch21">
+<h3>XXI</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>It was the middle of October when Evie wrote from Lenox to say she would
+come to town to meet Ford on his arrival, begging Miriam to give her
+shelter for a night or two. The Grants remaining abroad, Miss Jarrott had
+taken the house in Seventy-second Street for another winter, but as Evie
+would run up to New York alone she preferred for the minute to be Miriam's
+guest.</p>
+
+<p>"The fact is, I'm worried to death," she wrote, confidentially "and you
+must help me to see daylight through this tangled mass of everybody saying
+different things. Aunt Queenie has gone completely back on Herbert, just
+because Uncle Jarrott has. That doesn't strike me as very loyal, I must
+say. I shouldn't think it right to desert anybody, unless I wanted to. I
+wouldn't do it because some one else told me to&mdash;not if he was my brother
+ten times over. I mean to be just as true to Herbert as I can Not that he
+makes it very easy for me, because he has broken altogether with Uncle
+Jarrott&mdash;and that seems to me the maddest thing. I certainly sha'n't get
+my trousseau from Aunt Helen now. I don't see what we're all coming to.
+Everybody is so queer, and they keep hinting things they won't say out, as
+if there was some mystery. I do wish I could talk to Billy about it. Of
+course I can't&mdash;the way matters stand. And speaking of Billy, that rich
+Mr. Bird&mdash;you remember I told you about him last winter&mdash;has asked me to
+marry him. Just think! I forget how much he has a year, but it's something
+awful. Of course I told him I couldn't give him a definite answer yet&mdash;but
+that if he insisted on it I should have to make it No. He said he didn't
+insist&mdash;that he'd rather wait till I had time to make up my mind, if I
+didn't keep him dangling. I told him I wouldn't keep him doing anything
+whatever, and that if he dangled at all it would be entirely of his own
+accord. I think he liked my spirit, so he said he'd wait. We left it
+there, which was the wisest way&mdash;though I must say I didn't like his
+presuming on his money to think I would make a difference between him and
+the others. Money doesn't mean anything to me, though dear mamma hoped she
+would live to see me well established. She didn't, poor darling, but
+that's no reason why I shouldn't try to carry out her wishes. All the
+same, I mean to be true to Herbert just as long as possible; and so you
+may expect me on the twenty-ninth."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>If there was much in this letter that Miriam found disturbing, it was not
+the thought that Evie might be false to Ford, or that Ford might suffer,
+which alarmed her most. There was something in her that cried out in fear
+before the possibility that Norrie Ford might be free again. Her strength
+having sprung so largely from the hope of restoring the plans she had
+marred, the destruction of the motive left her weak; but worse than that
+was the knowledge that, though she had tried to empty her heart completely
+of its cravings, only its surface had been drained. It was to get
+assurance rather than to give information that she read fragments of
+Evie's letter to Conquest, on the evening of his return from Omaha. He had
+come to give her the news of his success. That it was good news was
+evident in his face when he entered the room; and, almost afraid to hear
+it, she had broached the subject of her anxiety about Evie first.</p>
+
+<p>"She's going to give him the sack; that's what <i>she's</i> going to give him,"
+Conquest said, conclusively, while Miriam folded the dashingly scribbled
+sheets. "You needn't be worried about her in the least. Miss Evie knows
+her way about as cleverly as a homing bee. She'll do well for herself
+whatever else she may not do. <i>Come now</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not thinking of that so much as that she should do her duty."</p>
+
+<p>"Duty! Pooh! That sort of little creature has no duty&mdash;the word doesn't
+apply to it. Evie is the most skilful mixture of irresponsible impulse and
+shrewd calculation you'll find in New York. She'll use both her gifts with
+perfect heartlessness, and yet in such a way that even her guardian angel
+won't know just where to find fault with her."</p>
+
+<p>"But she must marry Mr. Ford&mdash;now."</p>
+
+<p>He was too busy with his own side of the subject to notice that her
+assertion had the intensity of a cry. He had a man's lack of interest in
+another man's love-affairs while he was blissfully absorbed in his own.</p>
+
+<p>"You might as well tell a swallow that it must migrate&mdash;now," he laughed.
+"Poor Ford will feel it, I've no doubt; but we shall make up to him for a
+good deal of it. We're going to pull him through."</p>
+
+<p>For the instant her anxiety was diverted into another channel. "Does that
+mean that Amalia Gramm has told you anything?"</p>
+
+<p>"She's told us everything. I thought she would. I don't feel at liberty to
+give you the details before they come out at the proper time and place;
+but there's no harm in saying that my analysis of the old woman's
+psychological state was not so very far wrong. There's no question about
+it any longer. We'll pull him through. And, by George, he's worth it!"</p>
+
+<p>The concluding exclamation, uttered with so much sincerity, took her by
+surprise, transmuting the pressure about her heart into a mist of sudden
+tears. Tears came to her rarely, hardly, and seldom with relief. She was
+especially unwilling that Conquest should notice them now; but the attempt
+to dash them away only caused them to fall faster. She could see him
+watching her in a kind of sympathetic curiosity, slightly surprised in his
+turn at the unexpected emotion, and trying to divine its cause. Unable to
+bear his gaze any longer, she got up brusquely from her chair, retreating
+into the bay-window, where&mdash;the curtains being undrawn&mdash;she stood looking
+down on the sea of lights, as beings above the firmament might look down
+on stars. He waited a minute, and came near her only when he judged that
+he might do so discreetly.</p>
+
+<p>"You're unnerved," he said, with tender kindliness. "That's why you're
+upset. You've had too much on your mind. You're too willing to take all
+the care on your own shoulders, and not let other people hustle for
+themselves."</p>
+
+<p>She was pressing her handkerchief against her lips, so she made no reply.
+The moment seemed to him one at which he might go forward a little more
+boldly. All the circumstances warranted an advance from his position of
+reserve.</p>
+
+<p>"You need me," he ventured to say, with that quiet assurance which in a
+lover means much. "I understand you as no one else does in the world."</p>
+
+<p>Her brimming eyes gave him a look which was only pathetic, but which he
+took to be one of assent.</p>
+
+<p>"I've always told you I could help you," he went on, with tranquil
+earnestness, "and I could. You've too many burdens to carry alone&mdash;burdens
+that don't belong to you, but which, I know, you'll never lay down. Well,
+I'll share them. There's Wayne, now. He's too much for you, by yourself&mdash;I
+don't mean from the material point of view, but&mdash;the whole thing. It wears
+on you. It's bound to. Wayne is my friend just as much as yours. He's my
+responsibility&mdash;so long as you take it in that light. I've been thinking
+of him a lot lately&mdash;and I see how, in my house&mdash;could put him
+up&mdash;ideally."</p>
+
+<p>Still pressing her handkerchief against her lips with her right hand, she
+put out her left in a gesture of deprecation. He understood it as one of
+encouragement, and went on.</p>
+
+<p>"You must come and look at my house. You've never really seen it, and I
+think you'd like it. I think you'd like&mdash;everything I've got everything to
+make you happy; and if you'll only let me do it, you'll make me happy,
+too."</p>
+
+<p>She felt able to speak at last. Her eyes were still brimming as she turned
+toward him, but brimming only as pools are when the rain is over.</p>
+
+<p>"I want you to be happy. You're so good ... and kind ... and you've done
+so much for me ... you deserve it."</p>
+
+<p>She turned away from him again. With her arm on the woodwork of the
+window, she rested her forehead rather wearily on her hand. He understood
+so little of what was passing within her that she found it a relief to
+suspend for the minute her comedy of spontaneous happiness, letting her
+heart ache unrestrainedly. Her left hand hanging limp and free, she made
+no effort to withdraw it when she felt him clasp it in his own. Since she
+had subscribed to the treaty months ago, since she had insisted on doing
+it rightly or wrongly, it made little difference when and how she carried
+the conditions out. So they stood hand in hand together, tacitly, but, as
+each knew, quite effectually, plighted. In her silence, her resignation,
+her evident consent he read the proof of that love which, to his mind, no
+longer needed words.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Late that night, after he had gone away, she wrote to Evie, beseeching her
+to be true to Ford. The letter was so passionate, so little like herself,
+that she was afraid of destroying it if she waited till morning, so she
+posted it without delay. The answer came within forty-eight hours, in the
+shape of a telegram from Evie. She was coming to town at once, though it
+wanted still three or four days to Ford's arrival.</p>
+
+<p>It was a white little Evie, with drawn face, who threw herself into
+Miriam's arms at the station, clutching at her with a convulsive sob.</p>
+
+<p>"Miriam, I can't do it," she whispered, in a kind of terror. "They say
+he's going to be put in&mdash;<i>jail</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice rose on the last word, so that one or two people paused in their
+rush past to glance at the pitifully tragic little face.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, darling," Miriam whispered back. "You'll tell me about it as we go
+home."</p>
+
+<p>But in the motor Evie could only cry, clinging to Miriam as she used to do
+in troubled moments in childhood. Arrived at the apartment, Wayne had to
+be faced with some measure of self-control, and then came dinner. At table
+Evie, outwardly mistress of herself by this time, talked feverish
+nonsense about their common friends in Lenox, after which she made an
+excuse for retiring early. It was only in the bedroom, when they were
+secure from interruption that Miriam heard what Evie had to tell. She was
+tearless now, and rather indignant.</p>
+
+<p>"I've had the strangest letter from Herbert," she declared excitedly, as
+soon as Miriam entered the room. "I couldn't have believed he wrote it in
+his senses if Aunt Queenie hadn't heard the Same thing from Uncle Jarrott.
+He says he's got to go to&mdash;<i>jail</i>."</p>
+
+<p>There was the same rising inflexion on the last word, suggestive of a
+shriek of horror, that Miriam had noticed in the station. In her white
+peignoir, her golden hair streaming over her shoulders, and her hands
+flung wide apart with an appealing dramatic gesture, Evie was not unlike
+some vision of a youthful Christian martyr, in spite of the hair-brush in
+her hand. Miriam sat down sidewise on the edge of the couch, looking up at
+the child in pity. She felt that it was useless to let her remain in
+darkness any longer.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course he has to," she said, trying to make her tone as matter of fact
+as might be. "Didn't you know it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Know it! Did <i>you</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>Evie stepped forward, bending over Miriam as if she meant to strike her.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew it in a general way, darling. I suppose, when he gives himself to
+the police&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The police!" Evie screamed. "Am I to be engaged to a man who&mdash;gives
+himself up to the police?"</p>
+
+<p>"It will only be for a little while, dear&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care whether it's for a little while or foreverit can't <i>be</i>.
+What is he thinking of? What are <i>you</i> thinking of? Don't you <i>see</i>? How
+can I face the world&mdash;with all my invitations&mdash;when the man I'm engaged to
+is&mdash;in jail?"</p>
+
+<p>Evie's hands flew up in a still more eloquent gesture, while the blue
+eyes, usually so soft and veiled, were wide with flaming interrogation.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew that&mdash;in some ways&mdash;it might be hard for you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Evie laughed, a little silvery mirthless ripple of scorn.</p>
+
+<p>"I must say, Miriam, you choose your words skilfully. But you're wrong, do
+you see? There's no way in which it can be hard for me, because there's no
+way in which it's possible."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, there is, dear&mdash;if you love him."</p>
+
+<p>"That has nothing to do with it. Of course I love him. Haven't I said so?
+But that doesn't make any difference. Can't I love him without being
+engaged to&mdash;to&mdash;to a man who has to go to jail?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly; but you can't love him if you don't feel that you must&mdash;that
+you simply <i>must</i>&mdash;stand by his side."</p>
+
+<p>"There you go again, Miriam, with your queer ideas. It's exactly what any
+one would expect you to say."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope so."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you needn't hope so, because they would&mdash;any one who knew you. But I
+have to do what's right. I know what I feel in my conscience&mdash;and I have
+to follow it. And besides, I couldn't&mdash;I couldn't"&mdash;her voice began to
+rise again&mdash;"I couldn't face it&mdash;I couldn't bear it&mdash;not if I loved him a
+great deal better than I do."</p>
+
+<p>"That's something you must think about very seriously, dear&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't have to!" she cried, with a stamp of her foot. "I know it
+already. It wouldn't make any difference if I thought about it a thousand
+years. I couldn't be engaged to a man who was in jail, not if I worshipped
+the ground he trod on."</p>
+
+<p>"But when he's innocent, darling&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It's jail, just the same. I can't be engaged to people just because
+they're innocent. It isn't right to expect it of me. And, anyhow," she
+added, passionately, "I can't do it. It would kill me. I should never lift
+my head again. I can't&mdash;I can't. It's hateful of any one to say I ought
+to. I'm surprised at you, Miriam, when you know how dear mamma would have
+forbidden it. It's all very well for you to give advice, when you have no
+family&mdash;and no one to think about&mdash;and hardly any invitations&mdash; Well, I
+can't, and there's an end of it. If that's your idea of love, then, I must
+say, my conception is a little different. I've always had high ideals, and
+I feel obliged to hold to them, however you may condemn me."</p>
+
+<p>She ended with a catch in her breath something like a sob.</p>
+
+<p>"But I'm not condemning you, Evie dear. If you feel what you say, there's
+nothing for it but to see Mr. Ford and tell him so."</p>
+
+<p>At this suggestion Evie sobered. She was a long time silent before she
+observed, in a voice that had become suddenly calm and significantly
+casual, "That's easy for you to say."</p>
+
+<p>"If you speak to him as decidedly as to me, I should think it would be
+easy for you to do."</p>
+
+<p>"And still easier for you."</p>
+
+<p>Evie spoke in that tone of unintentional intention which is most pointed.
+It was not lost on Miriam, who recoiled from the mere thought. It seemed
+to her better to ignore the hint, but Evie, with feverish eagerness,
+refused to let it pass.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you hear what I said?" she persisted, sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard it, dear; but it didn't seem to me to mean anything."</p>
+
+<p>"That would depend on whether you heard it only with the ear or in the
+heart."</p>
+
+<p>"You know that everything that has to do with you is in my heart."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"But if you mean by that that I should tell Mr. Ford you're not going to
+marry him&mdash;why, it's out of the question."</p>
+
+<p>"Then who's to tell him? <i>I</i> can't. It's not to be expected."</p>
+
+<p>"But, darling, you must. This is awful."</p>
+
+<p>Miriam got up and went toward her, but Evie, who was nervously brushing
+her hair, edged away.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it's awful, but I don't see the use of making it worse than it
+need be. He'll feel it a great deal more if he sees me, and so shall I."</p>
+
+<p>"And what shall I feel?" Miriam spoke unguardedly, but Evie was too
+preoccupied to notice the bitterness of the tone.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see why you should feel anything at all. It's nothing to you&mdash;or
+very little. It wouldn't be your fault; not any more than it's the
+postman's if he has to bring you a letter with bad news."</p>
+
+<p>Miriam went back to her place on the edge of the couch, where with her
+forehead bowed for a minute on her hand she sat reflecting. An
+overwhelming desire for confidence, for sympathy perhaps, for the
+clearing up of mysteries in any case, was impelling her to tell Evie all
+that had ever happened between Ford and herself. It had been necessary to
+maintain so many reserves that possibly this new light would enable Evie
+to see her own duty more straightforwardly.</p>
+
+<p>"Darling," she began, "I want to tell you something&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But before she could proceed Evie flung the hair-brush on the floor and
+uttered a great swelling sob. With her hands hanging at her sidess and her
+golden head thrown back, she wept with the abandonment of a child, while
+suggesting the seraphic suffering of a grieving angel by some old master.</p>
+
+<p>In an instant Miriam had her in her arms. It was the appeal she had never
+been able to resist.</p>
+
+<p>"There, there, my pet," she said, soothingly, drawing her to the couch.
+"Come to Miriam, who loves you. There, there."</p>
+
+<p>Evie clung to her piteously, with flower-like face tilted outward and
+upward for the greater convenience of weeping.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm so lonely!" she sobbed. "I'm so lonely ... I I wish dear mamma
+... hadn't died."</p>
+
+<p>Miriam pressed her the more closely.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so lonely ... and everything's so strange ... and I don't know what
+to do ... and he's going to be put in jail ... and you're so unkind to
+me.... Oh, dear! ... I can't tell him ... I can't tell him ... I can't ...
+I can't ..."</p>
+
+<p>She pillowed her head on Miriam's shoulder, like a child that would force
+a caress from the hand that has just been striking it. The action filled
+Miriam with that kind of self-reproach which the weak creature inspires so
+easily in the strong. In spite of her knowledge to the contrary, she had
+the feeling of having acted selfishly.</p>
+
+<p>"No, darling," she said, at last, as Evie's sobs subdued into convulsive
+tremblings, "you needn't tell him. I'll see him. He'll understand how hard
+it's been for you. It's been hard for every one&mdash;and especially for you,
+darling. I'll do my best. You know I will. And I'm sure he'll understand.
+There, there," she comforted, as Evie's tears broke out afresh. "Have your
+cry out, dear. It will do you good. There, there."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>So Evie went back next day to Lenox, while Miriam waited for Ford.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch22">
+<h3>XXII</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>A few days later she read his name, in a morning paper, in the <i>Asiatic's</i>
+list of passengers the steamer having arrived at quarantine the night
+before: Mr. John Norrie Ford. Though flung carelessly into a paragraph
+printed in small type, it seemed to blaze in fire on the page! It was as
+if all America must rise at it. As she looked from the window it was with
+something like surprise that she saw the stream of traffic roaring onward,
+heedless of the fact that this dread name was being hawked in the streets
+and sold at the news-stands. She sent out for the evening papers that
+appear at midday, being relieved and astonished to find that as yet it had
+created no sensation.</p>
+
+<p>She was not deceived by his ease of manner when he appeared at the
+apartment in the afternoon. Though he carried his head loftily, and smiled
+with his habitual air of confidence, she could see that the deep waters of
+the proud had gone over his soul. Their ebb had streaked his hair and
+beard with white, and deepened the wrinkles that meant concentrated will
+into the furrows that come of suffering. She was more or less prepared for
+that. It was the outward manifestation of what she had read between the
+lines of the letters he had written her. As he crossed the room, with hand
+outstretched, her one conscious thought was of the chance to be a woman
+and a helpmeet Evie had flung away. She had noticed how, on the very
+threshold, he had glanced twice about the room, expecting to find her
+there.</p>
+
+<p>They did not speak of her at once. They talked of commonplace introductory
+things&mdash;the voyage, the arrival, the hotel at which he was
+staying&mdash;anything that would help her, and perhaps him, to control the
+preliminary nervousness. There was no sign of it, however, on his part,
+while she felt her own spirit rising, as it always did, to meet
+emergencies. Presently she mentioned her fears regarding his use of his
+true name.</p>
+
+<p>"No; it isn't dangerous," he assured her, "because I'm out of danger now.
+Thank the Lord, that's all over. I don't have to live with a great hulking
+terror behind me any longer. I'm a man like any other. You can't imagine
+what it means to be yourself, and not to care who knows it. I'm afraid I
+parade my name just like a boy with a new watch, who wants to tell every
+one the time. So far no one has paid any particular attention; but I dare
+say that will come. Is Evie here?"</p>
+
+<p>"She's not here&mdash;to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" he asked, sharply. "She said she would be. She said she'd come
+to town&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"She did come to town, but she thought she'd better not&mdash;stay."</p>
+
+<p>"Not stay? Why shouldn't she stay? Is anything up? You don't mean that
+Miss Jarrott&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; Miss Jarrott had nothing to do with it. I know her brother has
+written to her, in the way you must be prepared for. But she couldn't have
+kept Evie from waiting for you, if Evie herself&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Had wanted to," he finished, as she seemed to hesitate at the words.</p>
+
+<p>Since she said nothing to modify this assertion, she hoped he would
+comprehend its gravity. Indeed, he seemed to be trying to attenuate that
+when he spoke next.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose she had engagements&mdash;or something."</p>
+
+<p>"She did have engagements&mdash;but she could have put them off."</p>
+
+<p>"Only she didn't care to. I see."</p>
+
+<p>She allowed him time to accept this fact before going on.</p>
+
+<p>"Her return to Lenox," she said then, "wasn't because of her engagements."</p>
+
+<p>"Then it must have been because of me. Didn't she want to see me?"</p>
+
+<p>"She didn't want to tell you what she felt she would have to say."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! So that was it."</p>
+
+<p>He continued to sit looking at her with an expression of interrogation,
+though it was evident from his eyes that his questions had been answered.
+They sat in the same relative positions as on the night of their last long
+talk together, he in his big arm-chair, she in her low one. It struck her
+as strange&mdash;while he stared at her with that gaze of inquiry from which
+the inquiry was gone&mdash;that she, who meant so little to his inner life,
+should be called on again to live through with him minutes that must
+forever remain memorable in his existence.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor little thing! So she funked telling me."</p>
+
+<p>The comment was made musingly, to himself, but she took it as if addressed
+to her.</p>
+
+<p>"She wasn't equal to it."</p>
+
+<p>"But you are. You're equal to anything. Aren't you?" He smiled with that
+peculiar twisted smile which she had noticed at other times, when he was
+concealing pain.</p>
+
+<p>"One is generally equal to what one has to do. All the same," she added,
+with an impulse she could not repress, "I'm sorry to be always associated
+in your mind with things that must be hard for you."</p>
+
+<p>"You're associated in my mind with everything that's high and noble.
+That's the only memory I shall ever have of you. You've been with me
+through some of the dark spots of my life; but if it hadn't been for you I
+shouldn't have found the way."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you. I'm glad you can say that. I should be even more sorry than I
+am to give you this news to-day, if it were not that perhaps I can explain
+things a little better than Evie could."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't imagine that they require much explanation. I've seen from Evie's
+letters that&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That she was afraid of&mdash;the situation. She hasn't changed toward you."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean by that that she still&mdash;cares anything about me?"</p>
+
+<p>"She says she does."</p>
+
+<p>"But you don't believe her."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not entitled to an opinion. It's something you and she must work out
+together. All I can do is to tell you what may give you a little hope."</p>
+
+<p>She watched for the brightening effect of these words upon him, but he sat
+looking absently at the floor, as if he had not heard them.</p>
+
+<p>"Evie is afraid," she continued, "but I think it's only fair to remember
+that the circumstances might well frighten any young girl of her sort."</p>
+
+<p>He showed that he followed her by nodding assent, though he neither lifted
+his head nor spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"She wanted me to tell you that while the&mdash;the trial&mdash;and other
+things&mdash;are going on, she couldn't be engaged to you&mdash;I'm using her own
+expression, but she didn't say that, when it was all over and you were
+free, she wouldn't marry you. I noticed that."</p>
+
+<p>He looked up quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not sure that I catch your drift."</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that when it's all over, and everything has ended as you hope it
+will, it may be quite possible for you to win her back."</p>
+
+<p>He stared at her, with an incredulous lifting of the eyebrows</p>
+
+<p>"Would you advise me to try?"</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't a matter I could give advice about. I'm showing you what might
+be possible, but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no. That sort of thing doesn't work. There was just a chance that
+Evie might have stuck to me spontaneously but since she didn't&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Since she didn't&mdash;what?"</p>
+
+<p>"She was quite right not to. I admit that. It's in the order of things.
+She followed her instinct rather than her heart&mdash;I'm ready to believe
+that&mdash;but there are times in life when instinct is a pretty good guide."</p>
+
+<p>"Am I to understand that you're not&mdash;hurt?&mdash;or disappointed? Because in
+that case&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know whether I am or not. That's frank. I'm feeling so many
+things all at once that I can hardly distinguish one emotion from another,
+or tell which is strongest. I only know&mdash;it's become quite plain to
+me&mdash;that a little creature like Evie couldn't find a happy home in my
+life, any more than a humming-bird, as you once called her, could make its
+nest among crags."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean by that," she asked, slowly, "that
+you're&mdash;definitely&mdash;letting her go?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that, Evie being what she is, and I being what life has made
+me&mdash;Isn't it perfectly evident? Can you fancy us tied together&mdash;now?"</p>
+
+<p>"I never could fancy it. I haven't concealed that from you at any time.
+But since you loved her, and she loved you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That was true enough&mdash;in its way. In its way, it's still true. Evie still
+loves the man I was, perhaps, and the man I was loves her. The difference
+is that the man I was isn't sitting here in front of you."</p>
+
+<p>"One changes with years, of course. I didn't suppose one could change in a
+few months, like that."</p>
+
+<p>"One changes with experience&mdash;above all, with that kind of experience
+which people generally call&mdash;suffering. That's the great Alchemist; and he
+often transmutes our silver into gold. In my case, Evie was silver; but
+I've found there's something else that stands for&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"So that," she interposed, quickly, "you're not sorry that Evie&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>He got up, restlessly, and stood with his back to the empty fireplace.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't a case for sorrow," he replied, after a minute's thinking, "as
+it isn't one for joy. It's one purely for acceptance. When I first knew
+Evie I was still something of a kid. It was so all the more because the
+kid element in me had never had full play. I was arrogant, and cock-sure
+and certain of my ability to manipulate the world to suit myself. That was
+all Evie saw, and she liked it. In as far as she had it in her to fall in
+love with anything, she fell in love with it."</p>
+
+<p>He took a turn or two across the room, coming back to his stand on the
+hearth-rug.</p>
+
+<p>"I've travelled far since then," he continued; "I've <i>had</i> to travel far.
+Evie hasn't been able to come with me; and that's all there is to the
+story. It isn't her fault; because when I asked her, I had no intention of
+taking this particular way."</p>
+
+<p>"It was I who drove you into that," she said, with a hint of remorse.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;you&mdash;and conscience&mdash;and whatever else I honor most. I give you the
+credit first of all, because, if it hadn't been for you, I shouldn't have
+had the moral energy to assert my true self against the false one. Isn't
+it curious that, after having made me Herbert Strange, it should be you
+who turned me into Norrie Ford again? It means that you exercise supreme
+power over me&mdash;a kind of creative power. You can make of me what you care
+to. It's no wonder that I've come to see&mdash;&mdash;" He paused, in doubt as to
+how to express himself, while her eyes were fixed on him in troubled
+questioning. "It's no wonder," he went on again, "that I've come to see
+everything in a truer light&mdash;Evie as well as all the rest of it."</p>
+
+<p>With a renewed impulse to move about, he strode toward the bay-window,
+where he stood for a few seconds, looking out and trying to co-ordinate
+his thoughts. Wheeling round again, he drew up a small chair close to
+hers, seating himself sidewise, with his arm resting on the back. He
+looked like a man anxious to explain himself.</p>
+
+<p>"You're blaming me, I think, because I don't take Evie's defection more to
+heart. Isn't that so?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not blaming you. I may be a little surprised at it."</p>
+
+<p>"You wouldn't be surprised at it, if you knew all I've been through. It's
+difficult to explain to you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"There's no reason why you should try."</p>
+
+<p>"But I want to try. I want you to know. You see," he pursued, speaking
+slowly, as if searching for the right words&mdash;"you see, it's largely a
+question of progress&mdash;of growth. Trouble has two stages. In the first, you
+think it hard luck that you should have to meet it. In the second, you see
+that, having met it, and gone through it, you come out into a region of
+big experience, where everything is larger and nobler than you thought it
+was before. Now, you'd probably think me blatant if I said that I feel
+myself emerging into&mdash;<i>that</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I shouldn't. As a matter of fact, I know you're doing it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, having got there&mdash;out into that new kind of world"&mdash;he
+sketched the vision with one of his Latin gestures&mdash;"I discover that&mdash;for
+one reason or another&mdash;poor little Evie has stayed on the far side of it.
+She couldn't pass the first gate with me, or the second, or the third, to
+say nothing of those I have still to go through. You know I'm not
+criticising, or finding fault with her, don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>She assured him of that.</p>
+
+<p>"And yet, I must go on, you see. There's no waiting or turning back for
+me, any more than for a dying man. No matter who goes or who stays, I must
+press forward. If Evie can't make the journey with me, I can only feel
+relieved that she's able to slip out of it&mdash;but I must still go on. I
+can't look back; I can't even be sorry&mdash;because I'm coming into the new,
+big land. You see what I mean?"</p>
+
+<p>She signified again that she followed him.</p>
+
+<p>"But the finding of a new land doesn't take anything from the old one. It
+only enlarges the world. Europe didn't become different because they
+discovered America. The only change was in their getting to know a country
+where the mountains were higher, and the rivers broader, and the sunshine
+brighter, and where there was a chance for the race to expand. Evie
+remains what she was. The only difference is that my eyes have been opened
+to&mdash;a new ideal."</p>
+
+<p>It was impossible for her not to guess at what he meant. Independently of
+words, his earnest eyes told their tale, while he bent toward her like a
+man not quite able to restrain himself. In the ensuing seconds of silence
+she had time to be aware of three distinct phases of emotion within her
+consciousness, following each other so rapidly as to seem simultaneous. A
+throb of reckless joy in the perception that he loved her was succeeded by
+the knowledge that loyalty to Conquest must make rejoicing vain, while it
+flashed on her that, having duped herself once in regard to him, she must
+not risk the humiliating experience a second time. It was this last
+reflection that prevailed, keeping her still and unresponsive. After all,
+his new ideal might be something&mdash;or some one&mdash;quite different from what
+her fond imagining was so ready to believe.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose," she said, vaguely, for the sake of saying something, "that
+trial is the first essential to maturity. We need it for our ripening, as
+the flowers and fruit need wind and rain."</p>
+
+<p>"And there are things in life," he returned, quickly, "that no immature
+creature can see. That's the point I want you to notice. It explains me.
+In a way, it's an excuse for me."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't need excuses for you," she hastened to say, "any more than I
+require to have anything explained."</p>
+
+<p>"No; of course not. You don't care anything about it. It's only I who do.
+But I care so much that I want you to understand why it was that&mdash;that&mdash;I
+didn't care before."</p>
+
+<p>She felt the prompting to stop him, to silence him, but once more she held
+herself back. There was still a possibility that she was mistaking him,
+and her pride was on its guard.</p>
+
+<p>"It was because I didn't know any better," he burst out, in na&iuml;ve
+self-reproach. "It was because I couldn't recognize the high, the fine
+thing when I saw it. I've had that experience in other ways, and with just
+the same result. It was like that when I first began to hear good music. I
+couldn't make it out&mdash;it was nothing but a crash of sounds. I preferred
+the ditties and dances of a musical comedy; and it was only by degrees
+that I began to find them flat. Then my ear caught something of the
+wonderful things in the symphonies that used to bore me. You see, I'm
+slow&mdash;I'm stupid&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all," she smiled. "It's quite a common experience."</p>
+
+<p>"But I'm like that all through, with everything. I've been like that&mdash;with
+women. I used to be attracted by quite an ordinary sort. It's taken me
+years&mdash;all these years, till I'm thirty-three&mdash;to see that there's a
+perfect expression of the human type, just as there's a perfect expression
+of any kind of art. And I've found it."</p>
+
+<p>He bent farther forward, nearer to her. There was a light in his face that
+seemed to her to denote enthusiasm quite as much as love. To her wider
+experience in emotions this discovery of himself, which was involved in
+his discovery of her, was rather youthful, provoking a faint smile.</p>
+
+<p>"You're to be congratulated, then," she said, with an air of distant
+friendliness. "It isn't every one who's so fortunate."</p>
+
+<p>"That's true. There's only one man in the world who's more fortunate than
+I. That's Conquest."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!"</p>
+
+<p>In the brusqueness with which she started she pushed her chair slightly
+back from him. It was to conceal her agitation that she rose, steadying
+herself on the back of the chair in which she had been seated.</p>
+
+<p>"Conquest saw what I didn't&mdash;till it was too late."</p>
+
+<p>He was on his feet now, facing her, with the chair between them.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you wouldn't say any more," she begged, though without
+overemphasis of pleading. She was anxious, for her own sake as well as for
+his, to keep to the tone of the colloquial.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see why I shouldn't. I'm not going to say anything to shock you.
+I know you're going to marry Conquest. You told me so before I went away,
+and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to remind you that Mr. Conquest is the best friend you
+have. When you hear what he's done for you, you will see that you owe him
+more than you do any man in the world."</p>
+
+<p>"I know that. I'm the last to forget it. But it can't do any harm to tell
+the woman&mdash;who's going to be his wife&mdash;that I owe her even more than I do
+him."</p>
+
+<p>"It can't do any harm, perhaps; but when I ask you not to&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't obey you. I shouldn't be a man if I went through life without
+some expression of my&mdash;gratitude; and now's the only time to make it.
+There are things which I wasn't free to say before, because I was bound
+to Evie&mdash;and which it will soon be too late for you to listen to, because
+you'll be bound to him. You're not bound to him yet&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>am</i> bound to him," she said, in a tone in which there were all the
+regrets he had no reason to divine. "I don't know what you think of
+saying; but whatever it is, I implore you not to say it."</p>
+
+<p>"It's precisely because you don't know that I feel the necessity of
+telling you. It's something I owe you. It's like a debt. It isn't as if we
+were just any man and any woman. We're a man and a woman in a very special
+relation to each other. No matter what happens, nothing can change that.
+And it isn't as if we were going to live in the same world, in the same
+way. You will be Conquest's wife&mdash;a great lady in New York. I shall
+be&mdash;well, Heaven only knows what I shall be, but nothing that's likely to
+cross your path again. All the same, it won't hurt you, it wouldn't hurt
+any woman, however good, to hear what I'm going to tell you. It wouldn't
+hurt any man&mdash;not even Conquest&mdash;that it should be said to his wife&mdash;in
+the way that I shall say it. If it could, I wouldn't&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a minute," she said, suddenly. "Let me ask you something." She took
+a step toward him, though her hand rested still on the back of the chair.
+"If I know it already," she continued, looking him in the eyes, "there
+would be no necessity for you to speak?"</p>
+
+<p>He took the time to consider this in all its bearings.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd rather tell you in my own words," he said, at last; "but if you
+assure me that you know, I shall be satisfied."</p>
+
+<p>She took a step nearer to him still. Only the tips of her fingers now
+rested on the back of the chair, to which she held, as to a bulwark.
+Before she spoke she glanced round the room, as though afraid lest the
+doors and walls might mistake her words for a confession.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I do know," she said, quietly.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch23">
+<h3>XXIII</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>"The old lady was willing enough to talk," Conquest assured Ford, in his
+narrative of the taking of Amalia Gramm's testimony. "There's nothing more
+loquacious than remorse. I figured on that before going out to Omaha."</p>
+
+<p>"But if she had no hand in the crime, I don't see where the remorse comes
+in."</p>
+
+<p>"It comes in vicariously. She feels it for Jacob, since Jacob didn't live
+to feel it for himself. It involves a subtle element of wifely devotion
+which I guess you're too young, or too inexperienced, to understand. She
+was glad old Jacob was gone, so that she could make his confession with
+impunity. She was willing to make any atonement within <i>her</i> power, since
+it was too late to call <i>him</i> to account."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't that a bit far-fetched?"</p>
+
+<p>"Possibly&mdash;except to a priest, or a lawyer, or a woman herself. It isn't
+often that a woman's heroism works in a straight line, like a soldier's,
+or a fireman's. It generally pops at you round some queer corner, where it
+takes you by surprise. Before leaving Omaha I'd come to see that Amalia
+Gramm was by no means the least valiant of her sex."</p>
+
+<p>Conquest's smoking-room, with its space and height, its deep leather
+arm-chairs, its shaded lamps, its cheerful fire, suggested a club rather
+than a private dwelling, and invited the most taciturn guest to
+confidence. Ford stretched himself before the blaze with an enjoyment
+rendered keener by the thought that it might be long before he had
+occasion to don a dinner-jacket again, or taste such a good Havana. Though
+it was only the evening of his arrival, he was eager to give himself up.
+Now that he had "squared himself," as he expressed it, with Miriam
+Strange, he felt he had put the last touch to his preparations. Kilcup and
+Warren were holding him back for a day or two, but his own promptings were
+for haste.</p>
+
+<p>"I admit," Conquest continued to explain, as he fidgeted about the room,
+moving a chair here, or an ash-tray there, with the fussiness of an old
+bachelor of housekeeping tastes&mdash;"I admit that I thought the old woman was
+trying it on at first. But I came to the conclusion that she had told a
+true story from the start. When she gave her evidence at your trial she
+thought you were&mdash;the man."</p>
+
+<p>"There's nothing surprising in that. They almost made me think so, too."</p>
+
+<p>"It did look fishy, my friend. You won't mind my saying that much. Clearer
+heads than your jury of village store-keepers and Adirondack farmers might
+have given the same verdict. But old lady Gramm's responsibility hadn't
+begun then. It was a matter of two or three years before she came to
+see&mdash;as women do see things about the men they live with&mdash;that the hand
+which did the job was Jacob's. By that time you had disappeared into
+space, and she didn't feel bound to give the old chap away. She says she
+would have done it if it could have saved you; but since you had saved
+yourself, she confined her attentions to shielding Jacob. You may credit
+as much or as little of that as you please; but I believe the bulk of it.
+In any case, since it does the trick for us we have no reason to complain.
+Come now!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not going to complain of anything. It's been a rum experience all
+through, but I can't say that, in certain aspects, I haven't enjoyed it. I
+<i>have</i> enjoyed it. If it weren't for the necessity of deceiving people who
+are decent to you, I'd go through it all again."</p>
+
+<p>"That's game," Conquest said, approvingly, as he worked round to the
+hearth-rug, where he stood cutting the end of a cigar, with Ford's long
+figure stretched out obliquely before him.</p>
+
+<p>"I would," Ford assured him. "I'd go through it all again, like a shot.
+It's been a lark from&mdash;I won't say from start to finish&mdash;but certainly
+from the minute&mdash;let me see just when!--certainly from the minute when
+Miss Strange beckoned to me, over old Wayne's shoulder."</p>
+
+<p>An odd look came by degrees into Conquest's face&mdash;the look of pitying
+amusement with which one listens to queer things said by some one in
+delirium. He kept the cutter fixed in the end of the cigar, too much
+astonished to complete his task.</p>
+
+<p>"Since Miss Strange did&mdash;<i>what</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>Ford was too deeply absorbed in his own meditations to notice the tone.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean, since she pulled me through."</p>
+
+<p>Conquest's face broke into a broad smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you dreaming, old chap? Or have you 'got 'em again'?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going back in the story," Ford explained, with a hint of impatience.
+"I'm talking about the night when Miss Strange saved me."</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Strange saved you? How?"</p>
+
+<p>Ford raised himself slowly in his chair, his long legs stretched out
+straight before him, and his body bent stiffly forward, as he stared up at
+Conquest, in puzzled interrogation.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean to say," he asked, incredulously, "that she hasn't told
+you&mdash;<i>that</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you'll be good enough to tell me yourself. I'll be hanged if I
+know what you're talking about."</p>
+
+<p>There was suppressed irritation in the way in which he tore off the end of
+the cigar and struck a match. Ford let himself sink back into the chair
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"So she never told you! By George, that's like her! It's just what I might
+have expected."</p>
+
+<p>"Look here," Conquest said, sharply, "did you know Miss Strange before you
+came up here from South America?" He stood with his cigar unlighted, for
+he had let the match burn down to his fingers before attempting to apply
+it. "Was your taking the name of Strange," he demanded with sudden
+inspiration, "merely an accident, as I've supposed it was&mdash;or had it
+anything to do with her?"</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't an accident, and it did have something to do with her."</p>
+
+<p>"Just so! And you kept it dark!"</p>
+
+<p>Something in Conquest's intonation caused Ford to look up. He saw a man
+with face suddenly growing gray, as though a light had gone out of it. He
+was disturbed only to the point of feeling that he had spoken tactlessly,
+and proceeded to repair the error.</p>
+
+<p>"I kept it dark for obvious reasons. If Miss Strange didn't tell you about
+it, it's because she isn't the kind of person to talk of an incident in
+which her own part was so noble. I'll give you the whole story now."</p>
+
+<p>"I should be obliged to you," Conquest said, dryly.</p>
+
+<p>He sat down on the very edge of one of the big arm-chairs, leaning
+forward, and fingering his still unlighted cigar nervously, as he watched
+Ford puff out successive rings of smoke before beginning. He was less on
+his guard to screen the intenseness with which he listened, because Ford
+spoke at first in a dreamy way, without looking in his direction.</p>
+
+<p>With more insight into the circumstances surrounding him Ford would have
+told his tale with greater reticence. As it was he spoke with enthusiasm,
+an enthusiasm born of an honest desire that Conquest should see the woman
+he was about to marry in the full beauty of her character. In regard to
+this he himself had made the discovery so slowly and so recently that he
+was animated by something like a convert's zeal. Beginning his narrative
+quietly, in a reminiscent vein, with intervals in which he lapsed
+altogether into meditation, he was presently fired with all the animation
+in a story-teller when he perceives he is holding his hearer spellbound.
+As a matter of fact, he was moved not so much by the desire of convincing
+Conquest of Miriam Strange's nobility, as by the impulse to do her
+justice, once in his life at least, in language of his own.</p>
+
+<p>It was a na&iuml;ve bit of eloquence, of which no detail was lost on the
+experienced man of the world, who sat twirling his cigar with nervous
+fingers, his eyes growing keener in proportion as his face became more
+gray. It was part of his professional acquirement to be able to draw his
+deductions from some snatch of human drama as he listened to its
+unfolding. His quickness and accuracy of judgment had, indeed, been a
+large element in his success; so that the habit of years enabled him to
+preserve a certain calmness of comprehension now. It lost nothing in being
+a studied calmness, since the forcing of his faculties within restraint
+concentrated their acumen.</p>
+
+<p>Ford concluded with what for him was an almost lyric outburst.</p>
+
+<p>"By George! Conquest, I didn't know there were such women in the world.
+She's been a revelation to me&mdash;as art and religion are revelations to
+other people. She came to me as the angel came to Peter in the prison;
+but, like Peter, I didn't know it was an angel. There's a sort of glory
+about her&mdash;a glory which it takes a higher sense than any I've got to see
+and understand. After all she's done for me&mdash;after all this time&mdash;I'm only
+now beginning to get glimpses of it; but it's merely as we get glimpses of
+an infinite beyond, because we see the stars. She's a mystery to me, in
+the same way that genius is a mystery, or holiness. I didn't appreciate
+her because I hadn't the soul, and yet it's in seeing that I hadn't the
+soul that I begin to get it. That's curious, isn't it? She's like some
+heavenly spirit that's passed by me, and touched me into newness of life."</p>
+
+<p>His ardor was so sincere, his hymn of praise so spontaneous that he
+expected some sort of echo back. It seemed to him that even if Conquest
+did not join in this chant in honor of the woman who presumably loved him,
+whom more presumably still he loved, it would be but natural for him to
+applaud it. Ford knew that if any one else had sung of Miriam Strange as
+he had just been singing, he would have leaped to his feet and wrung the
+man's hand till it ached. It surprised him, therefore, it disappointed
+him, that Conquest should sit unmoved, unless the spark-like twinkle of
+his little eyes could be taken as emotion.</p>
+
+<p>It was a relief to Conquest to get up, scratch another match, and light
+his cigar at last, turning his back so that it should not be seen that his
+fingers trembled. When he was sure of himself he faced about again, taking
+his seat.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the most amazing story I ever heard," was his only comment, in
+response to Ford's look of expectation.</p>
+
+<p>"I hoped it might strike you as something more than&mdash;amazing," Ford
+ventured, after a minute's waiting for a more appreciative word.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps it will when I get my breath. You must give me time for that. Do
+you actually tell me that she kept you in her studio for weeks&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Three weeks and four days, to be exact."</p>
+
+<p>"And that she furnished you with food and clothing&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"And money&mdash;but I paid that back."</p>
+
+<p>"And got you away in that ingenious fashion&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just as I've told you."</p>
+
+<p>"Amazing! Simply amazing! And," he added, with some bitterness, "you came
+back here&mdash;and you and she together&mdash;took us all in."</p>
+
+<p>Ford drew his cigar from his lips, and, turning in his chair, faced
+Conquest in an attitude and with a look which could not be misinterpreted.</p>
+
+<p>"I came back here, and took you all in&mdash;if you like. Miss Strange had
+nothing to do with it. She didn't even expect me."</p>
+
+<p>The last sentence gave Conquest the opening he was looking for, but now
+that he had it, he hesitated to make use of it. In his memory were the
+very words Miriam Strange had stammered out to him in the sort of
+confession no woman ever makes willingly: "Things happened ... such as
+don't generally happen ... and even if he never comes ... I'd rather go on
+waiting for him ... uselessly." It was all growing clear to him, and yet
+not so clear but that there was time even now to let the matter drop into
+the limbo of things it is best not to know too much about. It was against
+his better judgment, then&mdash;his better judgment as a barrister-at-law&mdash;that
+he found himself saying:</p>
+
+<p>"She didn't expect you at that day and date, perhaps: but she probably
+looked for you some time."</p>
+
+<p>"Possibly; but if so, I know little or nothing about it."</p>
+
+<p>The reply, delivered with a certain dignified force of intention, recalled
+Conquest to a sense of his own interests. He had too often counselled his
+clients to let sleeping dogs lie, not to be aware of the advantage of
+doing it himself; and so, restraining his jealous curiosity, he turned the
+conversation back to the evidence of Amalia Gramm.</p>
+
+<p>During the next half-hour he manifested that talent&mdash;partly native and
+partly born of practice&mdash;which he had often commended in himself, of
+talking about one thing and thinking of another. His exposition of the
+line to be adopted in Ford's defence was perfectly lucid, when all the
+while he was saying to himself that this was the man whom Miriam Strange
+had waited for through eight romantic years.</p>
+
+<p>The fact leaped at him, but it was part of his profession not to be afraid
+of facts. If they possessed adverse qualities one recognized them boldly,
+in the practise of law, chiefly with a view of circumventing them. The
+matter presented itself first of all, not as one involving emotional or
+moral issues, but as an annoying arrangement of circumstances which might
+cheat him out of what he had honestly acquired. He had no intention of
+being cheated by any one whatever; and as he made a rapid summary of the
+points of the case he saw that the balance of probabilities was in his
+favor. It was to make that clear to Ford that he led the conversation back
+again to the subject of his adventures, tempting him to repeat at least a
+portion of his hymn of praise. By the time he had finished it Conquest was
+able to resume the friendly, confidential tone with which they had begun
+the evening.</p>
+
+<p>"It's very satisfactory to me, old man," he said, between quiet puffs at
+his cigar, "to know that you think so highly of Miss Strange, because&mdash;I
+don't know whether you have heard it&mdash;she and I are to be married before
+long."</p>
+
+<p>He looked to see Ford disconcerted by this announcement and was surprised
+to see him take it coolly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I knew that. I've meant to congratulate you when the time came. I
+should say it had come now."</p>
+
+<p>There was a candor about him that Conquest could scarcely discredit,
+though he was unwilling to trust it too far.</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks, old man. I scarcely expected you to be so well posted. May I ask
+how&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I've known it a long time. Miss Strange told me before I went to
+South America last spring."</p>
+
+<p>This evidence of a confidential relation between the two gave him a second
+shock, but he postponed its consideration, contenting himself for the
+moment with making it plain to Ford that "Hands off!" must be the first
+rule of the game. His next move was meant to carry the play into the
+opponent's quarters.</p>
+
+<p>"As a matter of fact, I've never congratulated <i>you</i>," he said, with
+apparent tranquillity. "I've known about you and Evie for some time past,
+but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's all off. In the existing circumstances Evie didn't feel
+like&mdash;keeping the thing up."</p>
+
+<p>"That's too bad. You've been pretty hard hit&mdash;what? When a fellow is as
+game as you a girl should stand by him, come now! But I know Evie. I've
+known her from her cradle. She'll back round, you'll see. When we've
+pulled you through, as we're going to, she'll take another view of things.
+I know for a fact that she's been head over heels in love with you ever
+since her trip to Buenos Aires."</p>
+
+<p>As Ford made no remark, Conquest felt it well to drive the point home.</p>
+
+<p>"We can all help in that, old boy; and you can count on us&mdash;both on Miss
+Strange and me. No one has such influence over Evie as Miriam, and I know
+she's very keen on seeing you and her&mdash;you and Evie, I mean&mdash;hit it off. I
+don't mind telling you that, as a matter of fact, it's been Miriam's
+anxiety on Evie's account that has mixed me up in your case at all. I
+don't say that I haven't got interested in you for your own sake; but it
+was she who stirred me up in the first place. It's going to mean a lot to
+her to see you get through&mdash;and marry Evie."</p>
+
+<p>Ford smiled&mdash;his odd, twisted smile&mdash;but as he said nothing, Conquest
+decided to let the subject drop. He had, in fact, gone as far as his
+present judgment would carry him, and anything farther might lead to a
+false step. In a situation alive with claims and counter-claims, with
+yearnings of the heart and promptings of the higher law, he could preserve
+his rights only by a walk as wary as the treading of a tight-rope.</p>
+
+<p>This became clearer to him later in the night, when Ford had gone away,
+and he was left free to review the circumstances with that clarity of
+co-ordination he had so often brought to bear on other men's affairs. Out
+of the mass of data he selected two conditions as being the only ones of
+importance.</p>
+
+<p>If Miriam Strange was marrying him because she loved him, nothing else
+needed to be considered. This fact would subordinate everything to itself;
+and there were many arguments to support the assumption that she was doing
+so. One by one he marshalled them before him, from the first faint
+possibility up to the crowning proof that there was no earthly reason for
+her marrying him at all, unless she wanted to. He had pointed that out to
+her clearly, on the day when she came to him to make her terms. He had
+been guilty on that occasion of a foolish generosity, for that it went
+with a common-sense honesty to take advantage of another's ignorance, or
+impulsiveness, was part of his business creed. Nevertheless, having shown
+her this uncalled-for favor, he did not regret it now, since it put the
+spontaneous, voluntary nature of her act beyond dispute.</p>
+
+<p>To a late hour of the night he wandered about the great silent rooms of
+the house which he had made the expression of himself. Stored with costly,
+patiently selected comforts, it lacked only the last requisite which was
+to impart the living touch. Having chosen this essential with so much
+care, and begun to feel for her something far more vital than the pride of
+possession which had been his governing emotion hitherto, it was an agony
+with many aspects to think he might have to let her go.</p>
+
+<p>That there was this possibility was undeniable. It was the second of the
+two paramount considerations. Though Ford's enthusiasm tried to make
+itself enthusiasm and no more, there had been little difficulty in seeing
+what it was. All the same, it would be a passion to pity and ignore, if on
+Miriam's side there was nothing to respond to it. But it was here that,
+in spite of all his arguments, Conquest's doubts began. With much curious
+ignorance of women, there was a point of view from which he knew them
+well. It was out of many a poignant bit of domestic history, of which his
+profession had made him the confidant, that he had distilled the
+observation made to Ford earlier in the evening: "It isn't often that a
+woman's heroism works in a straight line, like a soldier's or a
+fireman's." Notwithstanding her directness, he could see Miriam Strange as
+just the type of woman to whom these words might be applicable. If by
+marrying a man whom she did not love she thought she could help another
+whom she did love, a culpable sacrifice was just the thing of which she
+would be capable. He called it culpable sacrifice with some emphasis for
+in his eyes all sacrifice was culpable. It was more than culpable, in that
+it verged on the absurd. There were few teachings of an illogical
+religion, few promptings of a misdirected energy, for which he had a
+greater scorn than the precept that the strong should suffer for the weak,
+or one man for another. Every man for himself and the survival of the
+fittest was the doctrine by which he lived; and his abhorrence of anything
+else was the more intense for the moment because he found himself in a
+situation where he might be expected to repudiate his faith.</p>
+
+<p>But there it was, that something in public opinion which, in certain
+circumstances, might challenge him&mdash;might ask him for magnanimity, might
+appeal to him for mercy, might demand that he make two other human beings
+happy while he denied himself. It was preposterous, it was grotesque, but
+it was there. He could hear its voice already, explaining that since
+Miriam Strange had given him her word in an excess of self-devotion, it
+was his duty to let her off. He could see the line of argument; he could
+hear the applause following on his noble act. He had heard it
+before&mdash;especially in the theatre&mdash;and his soul had shaken with laughter.
+He had read of it in novels, only to toss such books aside. "The beauty of
+renunciation," he had often said, "appeals to the morbid, the sickly, and
+the sentimental. It has no function among the healthy and the sane." He
+had not only said that, but he had believed it. He believed it still, and
+lived by it. By doing so he had amassed his modest fortune and won a
+respected position in the world. He had not got on into middle life
+without meeting the occasion more than once when he could have saved
+others&mdash;a brother, or a sister, or a friend&mdash;and forborne to save himself.
+He had felt the temptation and resisted it, with the result that he was up
+in the world when he might have been down in it, and envied by those who
+would have despised him without hesitation when they had got out of him
+all he could give. He could look back now and see the folly it would have
+been had he yielded to impulses that every sentimentalist would have
+praised. He was fully conscious that the moment of danger might be on the
+point of returning again, and that he must be prepared for it.</p>
+
+<p>He was able to strengthen himself with the greater conviction because of
+his belief in the sanctity of rights. The securing of rights, the defining
+of rights, the protection of rights, had been his trade ever since he was
+twenty-five. The invasion of rights was among the darkest crimes in his
+calendar. In the present case his own rights could not be called into
+question; they were inviolable. Miriam Strange had come to him
+deliberately, and for due consideration had signed herself away. He had
+spared nothing, in time, pains, or money, to fulfil his part of the
+compact. It would be monstrous, therefore, if he were to be cheated of his
+reward. That either Ford or Miriam would attempt this he did not believe,
+even if between them the worst, from his point of view, was at the worst;
+but that an absurd, elusive principle which called itself chivalry, but
+really was effeminacy of will, might try to disarm him by an appeal to
+scruples he contemned, was the possibility he feared. He feared it because
+he estimated at its worth the force of restraint a sentimental
+civilization and a na&iuml;ve people can bring to bear, in silent pressure,
+upon the individual. While he knew himself to be strong in his power of
+resistance, he knew too that the mightiest swimmer can go down at last in
+a smiling, unrippled sea.</p>
+
+<p>His exasperation was as much with his doubt about himself as with the
+impalpable forces threatening him, as he strode fiercely from room to
+room, turning out the flaring lights before going to bed. After all, his
+final resolutions were pitifully insufficient, in view of the tragic
+element&mdash;for he took it tragically&mdash;that had suddenly crept into his life.
+While his gleam of happiness was in danger of going out, the sole means he
+could find of keeping it aglow was in deciding on a prudent ignoring of
+whatever did not meet the eye, on a discreet assumption that what he had
+been dreaming for the past few months was true. As a matter of fact, there
+was nothing to show him that it wasn't true; and it was only common sense
+to let the first move toward clearing his vision come from the other side
+rather than from his.</p>
+
+<p>And yet it was precisely this passive attitude which he found himself next
+day least able to maintain. If he needed anything further to teach him
+that love was love, it was this restless, prying jealousy, making it
+impossible to let well enough alone. After a trying day at the office,
+during which he irritated his partners and worried his clerks, he
+presented himself late in the afternoon at Miriam's apartment at the hour
+when he generally went to his club, and he knew she would not expect him.
+Thinking to surprise Ford with her&mdash;like the suspicious husband in a
+French play, he owned to himself, grimly&mdash;he experienced something akin to
+disappointment to find her drinking tea with two old ladies, whom he
+outstayed. During the ceremonies of their leave-taking he watched Miriam
+closely, seeking for some impossible proof that she either loved Ford or
+did not love him, and getting nothing but a renewed and maddening
+conviction of her grace and quiet charm.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>"What about Evie's happiness?"</p>
+
+<p>Miriam raised her eyebrows inquiringly at the question before stooping to
+put out the spirit-lamp.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what about it?" she asked, without looking up.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, nothing&mdash;except that we don't seem to be securing it."</p>
+
+<p>She gazed at him now, with an expression frankly puzzled. He had refused
+tea, but she kept her accustomed place behind the tea-table, while he
+stretched himself comfortably in the low arm-chair by the hearth, which
+she often occupied herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you remember?" he went on. "Evie's happiness was the motive of our
+little&mdash;agreement."</p>
+
+<p>He endeavored to make his tone playful, but there was a something sharp
+and aggressive in his manner, at which she colored slightly, no less than
+at his words.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose," she said, as if after meditation, "Evie's happiness isn't in
+our hands."</p>
+
+<p>"True; but there's a good deal that <i>is</i> in our hands. There's, for
+example&mdash;our own."</p>
+
+<p>"Up to a point&mdash;yes."</p>
+
+<p>"And up to that point we should take care of it. Shouldn't we?"</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say. But I don't know what you mean."</p>
+
+<p>He gave the nervous little laugh which helped him over moments of
+embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>"Ford was with me last night. He said it was all off between him and
+Evie."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought he might tell you that."</p>
+
+<p>"So that," he went on, forcing a smile, with which his voice and manner
+were not in accord, "our undertaking having failed, the bottom's out of
+everything. Don't you see?"</p>
+
+<p>She was so astonished that she walked into his trap, just as he expected.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see in the least. I thought our undertaking&mdash;as you call it&mdash;was
+going to be particularly successful."</p>
+
+<p>"Successful&mdash;how?"</p>
+
+<p>He dropped his smile and looked interrogative, his bit of acting still
+keeping her off her guard.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, if Amalia Gramm's testimony is all you think it's going to be&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I see. That's the way you look at it."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it the way you look at it, too?"</p>
+
+<p>He smiled again, indulgently, but with significance.</p>
+
+<p>"No; I confess it isn't&mdash;at least, it hasn't been. I thought&mdash;perhaps I
+was wrong&mdash;that our interest was in getting Ford off, so that he could
+marry Evie. Since he isn't going to marry her, why&mdash;naturally&mdash;we don't
+care so much&mdash;whether he gets off or not."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She checked herself; she even grew a little pale. She began to see dimly
+whither he was leading her.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I don't say we should chuck him over," he went on; "but it
+isn't the same thing any longer, is it? I think it only fair to point that
+out to you, because it gives you reasonable ground for reconsidering
+your&mdash;decision."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but I don't want to."</p>
+
+<p>While she had said exactly what he hoped to hear, she had not said it as
+he hoped to hear it. There were shades of tone even to impetuosity, and
+this one lacked the note his ear was listening for. None the less, he told
+himself, a wise man would have stopped right there; and he was conscious
+of his folly in persisting, while he still persisted.</p>
+
+<p>"That's for you to decide, of course. Only if we go on, it must be
+understood that we've somewhat shifted our ground."</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't shifted mine."</p>
+
+<p>"Not as you understand it yourself&mdash;as, possibly, you've understood it all
+along. But you have, as I see things. When you came to me&mdash;to my
+office&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She put up her hand as though she would have screened her face, but
+controlled herself to listen quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Your object, then," Conquest continued, cruelly, "was to get Ford off, so
+that he might marry Evie. Now, I understand it to be simply&mdash;to get him
+off."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him with eyes full of distress or protest. It was a minute
+or two before she spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see the necessity for such close definition."</p>
+
+<p>"I do. I want you to know exactly what you're doing. I want you to see
+that you're paying a higher price than you need pay&mdash;for the services
+rendered."</p>
+
+<p>He had got her now just where he had been trying to put her. He had snared
+her, or given her an opportunity, according as she chose to take it. She
+could have availed herself of the latter by a look or a simple intonation,
+for the craving of his heart was such that his perceptions were acute for
+the slightest hint. Had she known that, it would have been easy for her to
+respond to him, playing her part with the loyalty with which she had begun
+it. As it was, his cold manner and his slightly mocking tone betrayed her.
+Her answer was meant to give him the kind of assurance she thought he was
+looking for; and she couched it in the language she supposed he would most
+easily understand. In the things it said and did not say her very
+sincerity was what stabbed him.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope it won't be necessary to bring this subject up again. I know what
+I undertook, and I'm anxious to fulfil it. I should be very much hurt if I
+wasn't allowed to, just because you had scruples about taking me at my
+word. You've been so&mdash;so splendid&mdash;in doing your part that I should feel
+humiliated if I didn't do mine."</p>
+
+<p>There was earnestness in her regard and a suggestion of haughtiness in the
+tilt of her head. The Wise Man within him bade him be content, and this
+time he listened to the voice. He did her the justice to remember, too,
+that she was offering him all he had ever asked of her; and if he was
+dissatisfied, it was because he had increased his demands without telling
+her.</p>
+
+<p>It was by a transition of topic that he saw he could nail her to her
+purpose.</p>
+
+<p>"By-the-way," he said, when they had got on neutral ground again, and
+were speaking of Wayne, "I wish you would come and see what I think of
+doing for him. There are two rooms back of my library&mdash;too dark for my
+use&mdash;but that wouldn't matter to him, poor fellow&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He saw that she was nerving herself not to flinch at this confrontation
+with the practical. He saw too that her courage and her self-command would
+have deceived any one but him. The very pluck with which she nodded her
+comprehension of his idea, and her sympathy with it, enraged him to a
+point at which, so it seemed to him, he could have struck her. Had she
+cried off from her bargain he could have borne it far more easily. That
+would at least have given him a sense of superiority, and helped him to be
+magnanimous; while this readiness to pay put him in the wrong, and drove
+him to exact the uttermost farthing of his rights. On a weak woman he
+might have taken pity; but this strong creature, who refused to sue to him
+by so much as the quiver of an eyelid, and rejected his concessions before
+he had time to put them forth, exasperated every nerve that had been wont
+to tingle to his sense of power. Since she had asked no quarter, why
+should he give it?&mdash;above all, when to give quarter was against his
+principles.</p>
+
+<p>"And perhaps," he pursued, in an even voice, showing no sign of the
+tempest within, "that would be as good a time as any for you to look over
+the entire house. If there are any changes you would like to have
+made&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think there will be."</p>
+
+<p>"All the same, I should like you to see. A man's house, however well
+arranged, isn't always right for a woman's occupancy; and so&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Very well; I'll come."</p>
+
+<p>"When?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll come to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"About four?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; about four. That would suit me perfectly."</p>
+
+<p>She spoke frankly, and even smiled faintly, with just such a shadow of a
+blush as the situation called for. The Wise Man within him begged him once
+more to be content. If, the Wise Man argued, this well-poised serenity was
+not love, it was something so like it that the distinction would require a
+splitting of hairs. Conquest strove to listen and obey; but even as he did
+so he was aware again of that rage of impotence which finds its easiest
+outlet in violence. As he rose to take his leave, with all the outward
+signs of friendly ceremoniousness, he had time to be appalled at the
+perception that he, the middle-aged, spick-and-span New-Yorker, should so
+fully understand how it is that a certain type of frenzied brute can kill
+the woman whom he passionately loves, but who is hopelessly out of reach.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch24">
+<h3>XXIV</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>Except when his business instincts were on the alert, Ford's slowness of
+perception was perhaps most apparent in his judgment of character and his
+analysis of other people's motives. Taking men and women as he found them,
+he had little tendency to speculate as to the impulses within their lives,
+any more than as to the furnishings behind their house-fronts. A human
+being was all exterior to him, something like a street. Even in matters
+that touched him closely, the act alone was his concern; and he dealt with
+its consequences, without, as a rule, much inquisitive probing of its
+cause.</p>
+
+<p>So when Miriam Strange elected to marry Conquest, he accepted the settled
+fact, for the time being, in the spirit in which he would have taken some
+disastrous manifestation of natural phenomena. Investigation of the motive
+of such a step was as little in his line as it would have been in the case
+of a destructive storm at sea. To his essentially simple way of viewing
+life it was something to be lamented, but to be borne as best one was
+able, while one said as little as one could about it.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, somewhere in the wide, rarely explored regions of his nature
+there were wonderings, questionings, yearnings protests, cries, that
+forced themselves to the surface now and then, as the boiling waters
+within the earth gush out in geyser springs. It required urgent pressure
+to impel them forth, but when they came it was with violence. Such an
+occasion had been his night on Lake Champlain; such another was the
+evening when he announced to Miriam his intention of becoming Norrie Ford
+again. When these moments came they took him by surprise, even though
+afterward he was able to recognize the fact that they had been long
+preparing.</p>
+
+<p>It was in this way, without warning, that his heart had sprung on him the
+question: Why should she marry him? At the minute when Conquest was
+leaving Miriam, he, Ford, was tramping the streets of New York, watching
+them grow alive with light, in glaring, imaginative ugliness&mdash;ugliness so
+dazzling in its audacity and so fanciful in its crude commercialism that
+it had the power to thrill. It was perhaps the electric stimulus of sheer
+light that quickened the pace of his slow mentality from the march of
+acceptance to the rush of protest, at an instant when he thought he had
+resigned himself to the facts.</p>
+
+<p>Why should she marry Conquest? He was shouldering his way through the
+crowds when the question made itself heard, with a curious illuminating
+force that suggested its own answer. He was walking, partly to work off
+the tension of the strain under which these few days were passing, and
+partly because he had got the idea that he was being shadowed. He had no
+profound objection to that, though he would have preferred to give himself
+up of his own free will rather than to be arrested. Perhaps, after all, it
+was only an accident that had caused him to catch sight of the same two
+men at different moments through the day, and just now it amused him to
+put them to the test by leading them a dance. He had come to the
+conclusion that he had been mistaken, or that he had outwitted them, when
+this odd question, irrelevant to anything he had directly in his thoughts,
+presented itself as though it had been asked by some voice outside him:
+Why should she marry him?</p>
+
+<p>Up to the present his unanalytical mind would have replied&mdash;as it would
+have replied to the same query concerning any one else&mdash;that she was
+marrying him "because she wanted to." That would have seemed to him to
+cover the whole ground of any one's affairs; but all at once it had become
+insufficient. It was as if the street had suddenly become insufficient as
+a highway, breaking into a chasm. He stopped abruptly, confronting, as it
+were, that bewildering void which a psychological situation invariably
+seemed to him. To get into a place where his few straightforward formul&aelig;
+did not apply gave him that sense of distress which every creature feels
+out of its native element.</p>
+
+<p>It was a proof of the dependence with which, in matters requiring mental
+or emotional experience, he had come to lean on Miriam Strange, as well as
+of the directness with which he appealed to her for help, that he should
+face about on the instant, and turn his steps toward her.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Only a few minutes earlier she had seen Conquest go, and in the interval
+since his departure she had had time to detect the windings of his
+strategy, and to be content with the skill with which she had met them.
+She understood him thoroughly, both in his fear of letting her go and his
+shame at holding her. Standing in her wide bay-window, her slight figure
+erect, her hands behind her back, she looked down, without seeing it, on
+the spangled city, as angels intent on their own high thoughts might pass
+over the Milky Way. She smiled faintly to herself, thinking how she
+should lead this kindly man, who for her sake had done so much for Norrie
+Ford, back to a sense of security and self-respect. When Norrie Ford went
+free she meant to live for nothing else but the happiness of the man who
+had cleared his name and given him back to the world. It would be a kind
+of consecration to her, like that of the nun who forsakes the dearest ties
+for a life of good works and prayer. Conquest had told her that she was
+paying a bigger price than she needed to pay for the services rendered,
+but that depended somewhat on the value one set on the services. In this
+case she would not have been content in paying less. To do so would seem
+to indicate that she was not grateful. Since perceiving his compunction as
+to claiming his reward, she was aware of an elation, an exaltation, in
+forcing it upon him.</p>
+
+<p>She was in the glow of this sentiment when Ford was ushered in. He was so
+vitally in her thoughts that, though she did not expect him, his presence
+gave her no surprise. It helped her, in fact, to sustain the romantic
+quality in her mood to treat his coming as a matter of course, and make it
+a natural incident to the moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Come and look down on the stars," she said, in the tone she might have
+used to another member of her household who had appeared accidentally.
+"The view here, in the evening, makes one feel as if one had been wafted
+above the sky."</p>
+
+<p>She half-turned toward him, but did not offer her hand as he took his
+place by her side. For a few seconds he said nothing, and when he spoke
+she accepted his words in the manner in which she had taken his coming.</p>
+
+<p>"So you're going to marry Conquest!"</p>
+
+<p>It was to show that the abrupt remark had not perturbed her that she
+nodded her head assentingly, still with the smile that had greeted his
+arrival.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>In spite of her efforts she manifested some surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"What makes you ask that question&mdash;now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because it never occurred to me before that there might be a special
+reason."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, there is one."</p>
+
+<p>"Has it anything to do with me?"</p>
+
+<p>She backed away from him slightly, to the side curve of the window, where
+it joined the straight line of the wall. In this position she had him more
+directly in view.</p>
+
+<p>"I said there was a reason," she answered, after some hesitation. "I
+didn't say I would tell you what it was."</p>
+
+<p>"No, but you will, won't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see why you should want to know."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that quite true?" he queried, with a somewhat startling fixing of his
+eyes upon her. "Don't you see? Can't you imagine?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see why&mdash;in such circumstances as these&mdash;any man should want to
+know what a woman doesn't tell him."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'll explain to you. I want to know, because ... I think ... you're
+marrying Conquest ... when you don't love him ..."</p>
+
+<p>"He never asked me to love him. He said he could do without that."</p>
+
+<p>"... while ... you do love ... some one else."</p>
+
+<p>She reflected before speaking. Under his piercing look she took on once
+more the appealing expression of forest creatures at bay.</p>
+
+<p>"Even if that were true," she said, at last, "there would be no harm in
+it as long as there was what you asked me for at first&mdash;a special reason."</p>
+
+<p>"Is there ever a reason for a step like that? I don't believe it."</p>
+
+<p>"But I do believe it, you see. That makes a difference."</p>
+
+<p>"It would make a still greater difference if I begged you not to do it,
+wouldn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head. "It wouldn't&mdash;now."</p>
+
+<p>"I let you see yesterday that I&mdash;I loved you."</p>
+
+<p>"Since you force me to acknowledge it&mdash;yes."</p>
+
+<p>"And you've shown me," he ventured, "within the last minute, that
+you&mdash;love me."</p>
+
+<p>Her figure grew more erect against the background of exterior darkness.
+Even the hand that rested on the woodwork of the window became tense.
+Lambent fire in her eyes&mdash;the light that he used to call non-Aryan&mdash;took
+the place of the fugitive glance of the woodland animal; but she kept her
+composure.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then you'd be committing a sacrilege against yourself&mdash;if you married any
+one else but me."</p>
+
+<p>If her heart bounded at the words, she did nothing to betray it.</p>
+
+<p>"You say that, because it seems so to you. I take another view of it. Love
+to me does not necessarily mean marriage, any more than marriage
+necessarily implies love. There have been happy marriages without love,
+and there can be honorable love that doesn't ask marriage as its object.
+If I married you now, I should seem to myself to be deserting a high
+impulse for a lower one."</p>
+
+<p>"There's only one sort of impulse to love."</p>
+
+<p>"Not to my love. I know what you mean&mdash;but my love has more than one
+prompting, and the highest is&mdash;or I hope it is&mdash;to try to do what's
+right."</p>
+
+<p>"But this would not be right."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm the only judge of that."</p>
+
+<p>"Not if we love each other. In that case I become a judge of it, too."</p>
+
+<p>Once more she reflected. In speaking she lifted her head and looked at him
+frankly.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well; I'll admit it. Perhaps it's true. In any case, I'd rather
+things were clear to you. It will help us both. I'll tell you what I'm
+doing, and why I'm doing it."</p>
+
+<p>It was one of those occasions when a woman's emotion is so great that she
+seems to have none at all. As iron is said to come to a degree of heat so
+intense that it does not burn, so Miriam Strange seemed to herself to have
+reached a stage where the sheer truth, simple and without reserve, could
+bring no shame to her womanhood. Words that could not have passed her lips
+either before that evening or after it escaped her in the subsequent
+minutes as a matter of course.</p>
+
+<p>"I entered into your life twice, and each time I did you harm. On the
+first occasion I turned you into Herbert Strange, and sent you out on a
+career of deception; on the second, I came between you and Evie, and
+brought you to the present pass, where you're facing death again, as you
+were eight or nine years ago. It's no use to tell you that I wanted to do
+my best, because good intentions are not much excuse for the trouble they
+often cause. But I'm ready to say this: that whenever you've suffered,
+I've suffered more. That's especially true of what's happened in the last
+six months. And when I saw how much I had put wrong, it was a comfort to
+think there was something at least that I could put right again."</p>
+
+<p>"But you've put nothing wrong. That's what I should like to convince you
+of."</p>
+
+<p>"I've put you in a position of danger. When I see that, I see enough to
+act upon."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a very slight danger."</p>
+
+<p>"It is now, because I've made it slight. It wasn't&mdash;before I went to Mr.
+Conquest."</p>
+
+<p>"You went to him&mdash;what for?"</p>
+
+<p>"He wanted me to marry him. He had wanted it for a long time. I told him I
+would do so, on condition that he found the evidence that would prove you
+innocent."</p>
+
+<p>Ford laughed harshly, and rather loudly, stopping suddenly, as though he
+had ceased to see the joke.</p>
+
+<p>"So that's it! That's why Conquest has been so devilishly kind. I wondered
+at his interest&mdash;or at least I should have wondered if I'd had the time.
+As a matter of fact, I took it for granted that he should help me, as a
+drowning man takes it for granted that the chance passer-by should pull
+him out. It wasn't till this evening&mdash;about half an hour ago&mdash;By Jove! I
+ran right up against it."</p>
+
+<p>"You ran right up against&mdash;what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Against the truth. It came in a flash&mdash;just like that." He snapped his
+fingers. "You're selling yourself&mdash;to get me off."</p>
+
+<p>She seemed to grow straighter, taller. For the minute he saw nothing but
+the blaze of her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Well? Why shouldn't I? My mother sold herself&mdash;to get a man off. He was
+my father. I'm proud of her. She did the best she could with her life. I'm
+doing the best I can with mine."</p>
+
+<p>"But I shouldn't be doing the best I can with mine&mdash;if I let you
+continue."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it too late for you to stop me? If I've sold myself as you put it,
+the price has been paid in. Mr. Conquest has secured the evidence that
+will acquit you. It will be used. That's all I care about&mdash;much."</p>
+
+<p>She saw the hot color surge into his cheeks and brows. It seemed to her
+that his eyes grew red as the blood left his lips. She had never before
+been called on to confront a man angry with a passion beyond his control,
+but instinct told her what the signs were. Instinct told her, too, that,
+however confused his own sensations might be, his anger was not so much
+resentment against anything she might have done as it was despair at
+having lost her. She had guessed already that he would be seized with a
+blind impulse to strike, as soon as he came to a realizing sense of her
+action; though she had not expected the moment of his fury till after he
+went free. Till then, she had thought, he would be partially unconscious
+of his pain, just as a soldier fighting will run along for a while without
+feeling a bullet in his flesh. The anticipation of an awakening on his
+part some time enabled her to see beyond the madness of this instinct,
+even though the words he threw at her struck like stones. The very fact
+that she could see how he labored with himself to keep them back gave her
+strength to take them without flinching.</p>
+
+<p>"You ... dared...? Without ... my ... permission...?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'd done so many things without your permission that it seemed I could
+venture that far."</p>
+
+<p>"You were wrong. It was&mdash;too far."</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't too far&mdash;when I loved you."</p>
+
+<p>She uttered the words in a matter-of-fact voice, without a tremor. She
+foresaw their effect in bringing him to himself In his next words his tone
+had already softened slightly to one of protest.</p>
+
+<p>"But I could have done it so much better&mdash;! so much more easily&mdash;!
+without&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I could have done that too. Mr. Conquest pointed it out to me. He took no
+advantage of my ignorance. As a matter of fact, I wasn't ignorant at all.
+I was extremely clear-sighted and wise. My love for you made me so. I
+knew&mdash;I felt it&mdash;that money might fail to do what I wanted. But I knew too
+that there was one thing that wouldn't fail. If you were innocent&mdash;and I
+wasn't wholly sure that you were&mdash;I knew there was one energy that would
+surely prove you so&mdash;and that was Charles Conquest's desire to have me as
+his wife. I took the course in which there was least risk of failure&mdash;and
+you see&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>A little gesture, triumphant in its suggestion, finished her sentence.</p>
+
+<p>"What I see is this," Ford answered, thickly, "that I'm to hold my life at
+the cost of your degradation."</p>
+
+<p>"Degradation? That's a hard word. But as applied to me&mdash;I don't know what
+it means."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it degradation?&mdash;to enter into a marriage in which you put no
+love?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a kind of superb indifference in her answer.</p>
+
+<div class="image" id="img04"><p><a href="images/illus04.png">"I'm to hold my life at the cost of your degradation"</a></p></div>
+
+<p>"You may call it degradation if you choose. I shouldn't. As long as you go
+free, you can call my action anything you like. I dare say," she admitted,
+"you're quite right, from the highest moral&mdash;and modern&mdash;point of view;
+but that doesn't appeal to me. You see&mdash;you've got to make allowances for
+it&mdash;I'm not a child of your civilization. I'm not a child of any
+civilization at all. At best I'm like the wild creature that submits to
+being tamed because it doesn't know what else to do&mdash;but remains wild at
+heart. I used to think I could come into your system of law and order if
+any one would take me. But now I know I shall always be outside it. The
+very word you've just used of me shows me that. You say I'm to be
+degraded&mdash;it's your civilized point of view. I have no comprehension of
+that whatever. Because I love you I want to save you. I don't care
+anything about the means so long as I reach the end. To undo the harm I've
+done to you I'd freely give my body to be burned; so why shoudn't I&mdash;? No,
+no," she cried, as he made as though he would approach her, "keep away.
+Don't come near me! I can only talk to you like this&mdash;at a distance. I
+shall never say these things again&mdash;but I want to tell you&mdash;to explain to
+you&mdash;I should like you to understand."</p>
+
+<p>She repeated herself haltingly because, as Ford held back from approaching
+her, a sudden spasm passed over his face, while he hung his head, and
+compressed his lips in a way that made him seem surprisingly boyish all at
+once, and touched that maternal tenderness in her that had always formed
+such a large part of her yearning over him. It was the kind of tenderness
+that steadied her own nerve, and kept her dry-eyed and strong, as she saw
+him reel to a chair, and flinging his arms on the table beside it, bow
+himself down on them, while his form shook convulsively. She had no shame
+for him. She understood perfectly that the pressure of years had been
+brought to bear on the complex emotions of the moment&mdash;to which reaction
+from his brief anger and his bitter words added an element of remorse&mdash;to
+cause this honest, manly nature that had never made any pretence of being
+stronger than it was, to give way to the instant's weakness. She was sure
+he would never have done it in the presence of any one but her, and she
+was thrilled with a curious joy at this proof of their spiritual intimacy.
+What was difficult was not the keeping of her own self-control, but the
+holding herself back from crossing the room and laying a hand on his
+shoulder, in token of their oneness at heart; but there, she felt, the
+forbidden line would be passed. She could only wait&mdash;it was not long&mdash;till
+he was calm again. Then he pulled himself together, got up heavily, and
+obviously refrained from looking her in the face. In the act and the
+attitude there was something so boylike, so natural, so entirely lacking
+in the dignity of grief, that if she had any impulse to let her own tears
+flow it was then.</p>
+
+<p>But she knew it to be one of those minutes when a woman has to be strong
+for herself and for the man, too, even though she break down afterward.
+The necessity of coming to an understanding with him, once for all,
+impelled her to the economy of her forces, while the nervous snapping of
+his fortitude had given her an opportunity she could not afford to lose.</p>
+
+<p>"So I want you to see," she went on, quietly, as though no interruption
+had occurred, "that having gained my point in helping to&mdash;to get you off,
+it's to some extent a matter of indifference what you think of me&mdash;what
+any one thinks of me&mdash;just as it was when I hid you in my studio, nearly
+nine years ago. You must put it down to my being of wild origin and not
+wholly amenable to civilized dictates. I can only do what the inward
+urging drives me on to do&mdash;just as my mother did&mdash;and my father. If it's
+degrading&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Raising his head at last, he strode toward her. He put his hands rigidly
+behind his back, as if to show her that he pinioned them there in token
+that she had nothing to fear from him. His eyes were red, and there was
+still a painful tightening about his lips.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll have to let me take that back," he muttered, unsteadily. "I didn't
+know what I was saying. It's come on me so suddenly that it's broken me
+all up. I haven't realized till this evening what&mdash;what everything meant.
+It seemed to me then that I couldn't stand it."</p>
+
+<p>"But you can."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I can," he replied, doggedly. "One can stand anything. If I reached
+my limit for a minute, it was in seeing that you have to suffer for my
+sake&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Wouldn't you suffer for mine?"</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't. Suffering for your sake would become such a joy&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That it wouldn't be suffering. That's just it. That's what I feel,
+exactly. It isn't hard for me to do what I'm doing because I know&mdash;I
+<i>know</i>&mdash;I'm helping to save your honor if not your life. I don't believe
+money would have done it. Mr. Conquest reminded me that the best legal
+services can be bought, but I never thought for an instant that you could
+secure zeal such as his for anything less than I offered him. And he's
+been so superb! He's given himself up to the thing absolutely. He's
+followed every trail with a scent&mdash;- with a certainty&mdash;your other men,
+your Kilcup and Warren, would never have been capable of. I've seen that;
+I'm sure of it. He has a wonderful mind, and in his way he has the kindest
+heart in the world. I'm very, very fond of him, and I'm deeply grateful.
+Next to seeing you free, I don't think I have any desire in life so
+strong as to make him happy. I dare say that isn't civilized either&mdash;but
+it's what I feel. And so we must think of this," she continued, eagerly
+explanative; "we must be loyal to him, you and I, as the first of all our
+duties. Don't you think so?"</p>
+
+<p>He withdrew his eyes from hers before answering. His power of resistance
+was broken. The signs of struggle were visible, and yet the quixotic
+element in his own nature helped him to respond to that in hers.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll try," he muttered, looking on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll do more than try&mdash;you'll succeed. Only very small souls could
+grudge him what he's earned when he's worked so hard and given himself so
+unstintingly. The very fact that you and I know that we love each other
+will make it easier to be true to him."</p>
+
+<p>"Conquest must know that we love each other, too," he declared, with some
+bitterness.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps he does; but, you see, every one has a different way of looking
+at life, and I don't think that with him it's a thing that counts greatly.
+I'm not sure that I understand him in that respect. I only know that you
+and I, who owe him so much, can repay him by giving him what he asks for.
+Will you promise me to do it?"</p>
+
+<p>He continued to look downward, as though finding it hard to give his word;
+but when he raised his eyes again, he flung back his head with his old air
+of resolution.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll promise to do anything you ask me throughout our lives. I don't
+admit that Conquest should demand this thing or that he had any right to
+let you offer it. But since you want to give it&mdash;and I can show you no
+other token of my love&mdash;and shall never again be able to tell you that I
+adore you&mdash;that I <i>adore</i> you&mdash;I promise&mdash;to obey."</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch25">
+<h3>XXV</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>The inspection of the house was over, and they had come back to the
+drawing-room for tea. Conquest had lavished pains on the occasion, putting
+flowers in the rooms, and strewing handsome objects carelessly about, so
+as to impart to the great shell as much as possible the air of being lived
+in. To the tea-table he had given particular attention, ordering out the
+most ornamental silver and the costliest porcelain, and placing the table
+itself just where she would probably have it in days to come, so as to get
+the effect she produced in sitting there, as he liked to do with a new
+picture or piece of furniture.</p>
+
+<p>On her part, Miriam had made the rounds of the rooms with conscientious
+care, observing, admiring, suggesting, with just that mingling of shyness
+and interest with which a woman in her situation would view her future
+home. Having got, by intuition, the idea that he was watching for some
+flaw in her manner, she was determined that he should find none. It was
+the beginning of that lifelong schooling to his service to which she had
+vowed herself, though the effort would have been easier had he not
+rendered her self-conscious by scanning her so keenly out of his little
+gray-green eyes. Nevertheless, she was pleased with the manner in which
+she was acquitting herself, giving him his tea and taking her own with no
+sign of embarrassment. As on the preceding day, it was this perfection of
+acting, as he chose to call it, that exasperated his restless suspicion
+more than any display of weakness.</p>
+
+<p>The thought that she was keeping her true self locked against him had,
+during the last twenty-four hours, become an obsession, making it
+impossible for him to eat or to sleep. In her serene, impeccable bearing
+he saw nothing but the bars up and the blinds drawn down. An instant of
+faltering or self-betrayal would have admitted him to at least a glimpse
+of what was passing within; but through this well-balanced graciousness it
+was as difficult to get at her soul as to read the mind of the Venus of
+Milo in the marble nobility of her face. He had led her from room to room,
+describing one, explaining another, and apologizing for a third, but all
+the while trying to break down her guard, only to find, as they returned
+to the point at which they started, that he had failed. It was with nerves
+all unstrung, and with a lack of self-command he would have been, in his
+saner senses, the first to condemn, that he strode up at last and rapped
+sharply at the door of her barricaded citadel.</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you never tell me that you knew Norrie Ford&mdash;years ago?"</p>
+
+<p>He was putting his empty cup on the table as he spoke, so that he could
+avoid looking at her. She was glad of this respite from his gaze, for she
+found the question startling. Before the scrutiny of his eyes was turned
+on her again she had herself in hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I should probably have told you some time."</p>
+
+<p>"Very likely. The odd thing is that you didn't tell me at once."</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't so odd&mdash;given all the circumstances."</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't so odd, given some of the circumstances; but given them
+all&mdash;<i>all</i>&mdash;I should say, I ought to have known."</p>
+
+<p>She allowed a few seconds to pass.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose," she said, slowly, then, "that may fairly be considered a
+matter of opinion. I don't see, however, that it makes much
+difference&mdash;since you know now."</p>
+
+<p>"My knowing or not knowing now isn't quite the point. The fact of
+importance is that you never told me."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry you should take it in that way; but since I didn't&mdash;and the
+matter is beyond remedy&mdash;I suppose we shouldn't gain anything by
+discussing it."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know about that. It seems to me a subject that ought to
+be&mdash;aired."</p>
+
+<p>She tried to smile down his aggressiveness, succeeding partially, in that
+he subdued the quarrelsomeness of his voice and manner to that affectation
+of banter behind which he concealed habitually his real self, and by which
+he most easily deceived her.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," she laughed; "I'm quite ready to air it; only I don't know
+just how it's to be done."</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose you were to tell me what happened, in your own language?"</p>
+
+<p>"If Mr. Ford has told you already, as I imagine he has, I don't see that
+my language can be very different from his. All the same, I'll try, since
+you want me to."</p>
+
+<p>"Just so."</p>
+
+<p>During the few minutes she took to collect her thoughts he could see sweep
+over her features one of those swift, light changes&mdash;as delicate as the
+ripple of summer wind on water&mdash;which transformed her in an instant from
+the woman of the world to the forest maid, the spirit of the indigenous.
+The mystery of the nomadic ages was in her eyes again as she began her
+narrative, wistfully, and reminiscently.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, I'd been thinking a good deal of my father and mother. I hadn't
+known about them very long, and I lived with their memory. The Mother
+Superior had told me a few things&mdash;all she knew, I suppose&mdash;before I left
+the convent at Quebec; and Mr. and Mrs. Wayne&mdash;especially Mrs. Wayne&mdash;had
+added the rest. That was the chief reason why I wanted the studio&mdash;so that
+I could get away from the house, which was so oppressive to me, and&mdash;so it
+seemed to me&mdash;live with them, with nothing but the woods and the hills and
+the sky about me. I could be very happy then&mdash;painting thinge I fancied
+they might have done, and pinning them up on the wall. I dare say it was
+foolish, but&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It was very natural. Go on."</p>
+
+<p>"And then came up all this excitement about Norrie Ford. For months the
+whole region talked of nothing else. Nearly every one believed he had shot
+his uncle, but, except in the villages, the sympathy with him was
+tremendous. Some people&mdash;especially the hotel-keepers and those who
+depended on the tourist travel&mdash;were for law and order; but others said
+that old Chris Ford had got no more than he deserved. That was the way
+they used to talk. Mr. Wayne was on the side of law and order,
+too&mdash;naturally&mdash;till the trial came on; and then he began&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I know all about that. Go on."</p>
+
+<p>"My own sympathy was with the man in prison. I used to dream about him. I
+remembered what Mrs. Wayne had told me my mother had done for my father. I
+was proud of that. Though I knew only vaguely what it was, I was sure it
+was what I should have done, too. So when there was talk of breaking into
+the jail and helping Norrie to escape, I used to think how easily I could
+keep any one hidden in my studio. I don't mean I thought of it as a
+practical thing; it was just a dream."</p>
+
+<p>"But a dream that came true."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; it came true. It was wonderful. It was the day Mr. Wayne sentenced
+him. I knew what he was suffering&mdash;Mr. Wayne, I mean. We were all
+suffering; even Mrs. Wayne, who in her gentle way was generally so hard.
+Some people thought Mr. Wayne needn't have done it; and I suppose it was
+just his conscientiousness&mdash;because he had such a horror of the
+thing&mdash;that drove him on to it. He thought he mustn't shirk his duty. But
+that night at the house was awful. We dressed for dinner, and tried to act
+as if nothing frightful had happened&mdash;but it was as if the hangman was
+sitting with us at the table. At last I couldn't endure it. I went out
+into the garden&mdash;you remember it was one of those gardens with clipped
+yews. Out there, in the air, I stopped thinking of Mr. Wayne and his
+distress to think of Norrie Ford. It seemed to me as if, in some strange
+way, he belonged to me&mdash;that I ought to do something&mdash;as my mother had
+done for my father. And then&mdash;all of a sudden&mdash;I saw him creep in."</p>
+
+<p>"How did you know it was he?"</p>
+
+<p>"I thought it must be, though I was only sure of it when I was on the
+terrace and saw his face. He crept along and crept along&mdash;Oh, such a
+forlorn, hopeless, outcast figure! My heart ached at the sight of him. I
+didn't know what he meant to do, and at first I had no intention of
+attempting anything. It was by degrees that my own thought about the
+studio came back to me. By that time he was on the veranda of the house,
+and I was afraid he meant to kill Mr. Wayne. I went after him. I thought I
+would entice him away and hide him. But the minute he heard my footstep he
+leaped into the house. The next I saw, he was talking to Mr. and Mrs.
+Wayne&mdash;and something told me he wouldn't hurt them. After that I watched
+my chance till he looked outward, and then I beckoned to him. That's how
+it happened."</p>
+
+<p>"And then?"</p>
+
+<p>"After that everything was easy. He must have told you. I kept him in the
+studio for three weeks, and brought him food&mdash;and clothing of my father's.
+It seemed to me that my father was doing everything&mdash;not I. That's what
+made it so simple. I know my father would have wanted me to do it. I was
+only the agent in carrying out his will."</p>
+
+<p>"That's one way of looking at it," Conquest said, grimly.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the only way I've ever looked at it; the only way I ever shall."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>"It was a romantic situation," he observed, when she had given him the
+outlines of the rest of the story. "I wonder you didn't fall in love with
+him."</p>
+
+<p>He smoothed the colorless line of his mustache, as though concealing a
+smile. He had recaptured the teasing tone he liked to employ toward her,
+though its nervous sharpness would have betrayed him had she suspected his
+real thoughts. While she said nothing in response, the tilt of her head
+was that which he associated with her moods of indignation or pride.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you did," he persisted. Then, as she remained silent, "Did you?"</p>
+
+<p>She resolved on a bold step&mdash;the audacity of that perfect candor she had
+always taken as a guide.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know that one could call it that," she said, quietly.</p>
+
+<p>He drew a quick inward breath, clinching his teeth, but keeping his fixed
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>"But you don't know that one couldn't."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't define what I felt at all."</p>
+
+<p>"It was just enough," he pursued, in his bantering tone, "to keep
+you&mdash;looking for him back&mdash;as you told me&mdash;that day."</p>
+
+<p>She lifted her eyes in a swift glance of reproach.</p>
+
+<p>"It was that&mdash;then."</p>
+
+<p>"But it's more&mdash;now. Isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>She met him squarely.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think you've any right to ask."</p>
+
+<p>He laughed aloud, somewhat shrilly.</p>
+
+<p>"That's good!--considering we're to be man and wife."</p>
+
+<p>"We're to be man and wife on a very distinct understanding to which I'm
+perfectly loyal. I mean to be loyal to it always&mdash;and to you. I shall give
+you everything you ever asked for. If there are some things&mdash;one thing in
+particular&mdash;out of my power to give you, I've said so from the first, and
+you've told me you could do without them. If what I can't give you I've
+given to some one else&mdash;because&mdash;because&mdash;I couldn't help it&mdash;that's my
+secret, and I claim the right to guard it."</p>
+
+<p>They faced one another across the table piled with ornate silver. He had
+not lost his smile.</p>
+
+<p>"You've the merit of being clear," was his only comment.</p>
+
+<p>"You force me to be clear," she declared, with heightened color, "and a
+little angry. When you asked me to be your wife&mdash;long ago&mdash;I told you
+there were certain conditions I could never fulfil&mdash;and you waived them.
+On that ground I'm ready to meet all your wishes, and make you a good wife
+to the utmost of my power. I'm eager to do it&mdash;because I honor and respect
+you as women don't always honor and respect the very men they love. I've
+told Norrie Ford, and I repeat it to you, that after seeing him go free
+and restored to his place among men, the most ardent desire of my life is
+to make you happy. I'm perfectly true; I'm perfectly sincere. What more
+can you ask of me?"</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her searchingly, while he thought hard and rapidly. He could
+not complain that the bars were up and the blinds drawn any longer. On the
+contrary, she had let him see into the recesses of her life with a clarity
+that startled him, as pure truth startles often. As he sat musing, his
+pretence at cynicism fell from him, together with something of his
+furbished air of youth. She saw him grow graver, grayer, older, under her
+very eyes, and was moved with compunction&mdash;with compassion. Her face still
+aglow and her hands clasped in her lap, she leaned to him across the
+table, speaking in the rich, low voice that always thrilled him.</p>
+
+<p>"What I feel for you is ... something so much like ... love ... that you
+would never have known the difference ... if you hadn't wrung it from me."</p>
+
+<p>Though he toyed aimlessly with some small silver object on the table and
+did not look up, her words sent a tremor through his frame. The Wise Man
+within him was very eloquent, repeating again and again the sentence she
+herself had used a minute or two ago: What more could he ask of her? What
+more <i>could</i> he ask of her, indeed, after this assurance right out of the
+earnestness and honesty of her pure heart? It was enough to satisfy men
+with far greater claims than he had ever put forth, and far more
+pretension than he had ever dreamed of cherishing. The Wise Man supplied
+him with two or three phrases of reply&mdash;neat little phrases, that would
+have bound her forever, and yet saved his self-esteem. He turned them over
+in his mind and on his tongue, trying to add a touch of glamour while he
+kept them terse. He could feel the Wise Man fidgeting impatiently, just as
+he could feel her flaming, expectant eyes upon him; and still he toyed
+with the small silver object aimlessly, conscious of a certain bitter joy
+in his soul's suspense. He had not yet looked up, nor polished the Wise
+Man's phrases to his taste, when a footman threw the door open, and Norrie
+Ford himself walked in.</p>
+
+<p>The meeting was saved from awkwardness chiefly by Ford's own lack of
+embarrassment. As he crossed the room and shook hands, first with Miriam,
+then with Conquest, there was a subdued elation in his manner and glance
+that reduced small considerations to nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"No; I won't sit down," he explained, hurriedly, and not without
+excitement, "because I only looked in for a minute. I've got a cab waiting
+for me outside. The fact is, I ran in to say good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye?" Miriam questioned.</p>
+
+<p>"Not for long, I hope. I'm off&mdash;to give myself up."</p>
+
+<p>"But why to-night?" Conquest asked. "What's the rush?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only that I want to get my word in first. They've got their eye on me. I
+thought it yesterday, and I know it to-day. I want them to see that I'm
+not afraid of them, and so I'm asking their hospitality for to-night. I've
+got my bag in the cab, and everything ship-shape. I couldn't do it
+without coming round for a last word with you, old man; and I was going to
+see you afterward, Miss Strange. But since I've found you here&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You won't have to," she finished, brightly. "I'm glad to be able to save
+your time. I'm confident we're not losing you for long; and as I know
+you're eager, I can only wish you God-speed, and be glad to see you go"</p>
+
+<p>She held out her hand, frankly, strongly, as one who has no fear.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," she added, turning to Conquest, "I'll ask you to see me to my
+motor. I shall leave you and Mr Ford together, as I know you must have
+some last detail to arrange."</p>
+
+<p>Ford protested, but she gathered up her gloves and furs, and both men
+accompanied her to the street.</p>
+
+<p>It was an autumn evening, drizzling and dark. Up and down Fifth Avenue the
+wet pavements reflected the electric lamps like blurred mirrors. There
+were few passengers on foot, but an occasional motor whizzed weirdly out
+of the dark and into it. It was because there were no other people to be
+seen that two men standing in the rain attracted the attention of the
+three who descended Conquest's steps together.</p>
+
+<p>"There they are," Ford said, jerkily. "By George! they've got ahead of
+me."</p>
+
+<p>Instinctively Miriam clutched his arm, while one of the two strangers came
+forward apologetically.</p>
+
+<p>"You're Mr. John Norrie Ford, ain't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm very sorry, sir, but I've got a warrant for your arrest."</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right," Ford said, cheerily. "I was on my way to you, anyhow.
+You'll find my bag in the cab, and everything ready. We'll drive, if it's
+all the same to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir. Sure thing, sir."</p>
+
+<p>The man dropped back a few paces courteously, while Ford turned to his
+friends. His air was buoyant. Miriam, too, reflected the radiance of her
+vision of his triumph. Conquest alone, looking small and white and
+shrivelled in the rain, showed care and fear.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think there's anything special to say," Ford remarked, with the
+awkwardness of a simple nature at an emotional crisis. "I'm not very good
+at thanks. Miss Strange knows that already. But it's all in here"&mdash;he
+tapped his breast, with a characteristic gesture&mdash;"very sacred, very
+strong."</p>
+
+<p>"We know that," Conquest said, unsteadily, with an embarrassment like
+Ford's own.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then&mdash;good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>With a long pressure of the hand to each, he turned toward his cab. Of the
+two strangers, one took his place beside the driver on the box, while the
+other held the door open for Ford to enter. His foot was already on the
+step when Miriam cried, "Wait!"</p>
+
+<p>He turned toward her as she glided across the wet pavement.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, good-bye," she whispered again; and drawing down his face to
+hers, she kissed him, as she had kissed him once before, beside the waters
+of Champlain.</p>
+
+<p>As she drew back from him, Ford's countenance wore the uplifted look of a
+knight who has received the consecration to his quest. Even the two
+strangers bowed their heads, as though they had witnessed the bestowal of
+a sacrament. To Miriam herself it was the seal set on a past that could
+never be reopened. She felt the definiteness with which it was ended, as
+she heard, on her way back to Conquest's side, the door slammed, while the
+cab lumbered away. It seemed to her that Conquest shrank from her as she
+approached him.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>"You'll come to-morrow? I shall be home about five."</p>
+
+<p>Conquest had put her into her motor, drawn the rugs about her, and closed
+the door. As he did so, she noticed something slow and broken in his
+movements. Leaning from the open window, she held out her hand, but he
+barely touched it.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said, hoarsely, "I shall not come to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Then, the next day."</p>
+
+<p>"No, nor the next day."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, when you can. If you let me know, I shall stay in, whenever it may
+be."</p>
+
+<p>"You needn't stay in. I'm not coming any more."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't say that. Don't say that," she pleaded. "You hurt me."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't come, Miriam. Don't you see? Isn't it plain enough? I can't come.
+I thought I could. I tried to think I could hold you&mdash;in spite of
+everything. But I can't. I <i>can't</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"You can hold me&mdash;if I stay. I want to stay. You mustn't let me go. I want
+you to be happy. You deserve it. You've done so much for me&mdash;and <i>him</i>."</p>
+
+<p>It was the stress she laid on the last word&mdash;a suggestion of something
+triumphant and enraptured beyond restraint&mdash;that made him bound back to
+the centre of the pavement.</p>
+
+<p>"Go on, Laporte," he said to the chauffeur, in a sharp voice. "Miss
+Strange is ready."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no," Miriam cried, stretching both hands toward him. "I'm not ready.
+Keep me. I want to stay."</p>
+
+<p>"Go on!" he cried, sternly, as the chauffeur hesitated. "Miss Strange is
+quite ready. She must go."</p>
+
+<p>Standing by the curb, he watched the motor glide off into the misty,
+lamplit darkness. He was watching it still, as it overtook the carriage in
+which Norrie Ford had just driven away. As the two vehicles passed abreast
+out of his range of vision, he knew they were bearing Ford and Miriam side
+by side into Life.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wild Olive, by Basil King
+
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+</pre>
+
+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wild Olive, by Basil King
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Wild Olive
+
+Author: Basil King
+
+Release Date: August 18, 2004 [EBook #13212]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WILD OLIVE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "There are a hundred men beating the mountain to find you"]
+
+
+
+
+The Wild Olive
+
+A Novel
+
+By the author of
+The Inner Shrine
+
+
+Illustrated by
+Lucius Hitchcock
+
+New York
+Grosset & Dunlap
+Publishers
+
+
+
+Published by Arrangement with Harper & Brothers
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1910, by Harper & Brothers
+All Rights Reserved
+
+
+Published May, 1910
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+
+
+
+Part I
+
+Ford
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+
+Finding himself in the level wood-road, whose open aisle drew a long,
+straight streak across the sky, still luminous with the late-lingering
+Adirondack twilight, the tall young fugitive, hatless, coatless, and
+barefooted, paused a minute for reflection. As he paused, he listened; but
+all distinctiveness of sound was lost in the play of the wind, up hill and
+down dale, through chasm and over crag, in those uncounted leagues of
+forest. It was only a summer wind, soft and from the south; but its murmur
+had the sweep of the eternal breath, while, when it waxed in power, it
+rose like the swell of some great cosmic organ. Through the pines and in
+the underbrush it whispered and crackled and crashed, with a variety of
+effect strangely bewildering to the young man's city-nurtured senses.
+There were minutes when he felt that not only the four country constables
+whom he had escaped were about to burst upon him, but that weird armies of
+gnomes were ready to trample him down.
+
+Out of the confusion of wood-noises, in which his unpractised ear could
+distinguish nothing, he waited for a repetition of the shots which a few
+hours ago had been the protest of his guards; but, none coming, he sped on
+again. He weighed the danger of running in the open against the
+opportunities for speed, and decided in favor of the latter. Hitherto, in
+accordance with a woodcraft invented to meet the emergency, and entirely
+his own, he had avoided anything in the nature of a road or a pathway, in
+order to take advantage of the tracklessness which formed his obvious
+protection; but now he judged the moment come for putting actual space
+between his pursuers and himself. How near, or how far behind him, they
+might be he could not guess. If he had covered ground, they would have
+covered it too, since they were men born to the mountains, while he had
+been bred in towns. His hope lay in the possibility that in this
+wilderness he might be lost to their ken, as a mote is lost in the
+air--though he built something on the chance that, in sympathy with the
+feeling in his favor pervading the simpler population of the region, they
+had given negative connivance to his escape. These thoughts, far from
+stimulating a false confidence, urged him to greater speed.
+
+And yet, even as he fled, he had a consciousness of abandoning
+something--perhaps of deserting something--which brought a strain of
+regret into this minute of desperate excitement. Without having had time
+to count the cost or reckon the result, he felt he was giving up the
+fight. He, or his counsel for him, had contested the ground with all the
+resourceful ingenuity known to the American legal practitioner. He was
+told that, in spite of the seeming finality of what had happened that
+morning, there were still loopholes through which the defence might be
+carried on. In the space of a few hours Fate had offered him the choice
+between two courses, neither of them fertile in promises of success. The
+one was long and tedious, with a possibility of ultimate justification;
+the other short and speedy, with the accepted imputation of guilt. He had
+chosen the latter--instinctively and on the spur of the moment; and while
+he might have repeated at leisure the decision he had made in haste, he
+knew even now that he was leaving the ways and means of proving his
+innocence behind him. The perception came, not as the result of a process
+of thought, but as a regretful, scarcely detected sensation.
+
+He had dashed at first into the broken country, hilly rather than
+mountainous, which from the shores of Lake Champlain gradually gathers
+strength, as it rolls inland, to toss up the crests of the Adirondacks.
+Here, burying himself in the woods, he skirted the unkempt farms, whose
+cottage lights, just beginning to burn, served him as signals to keep
+farther off. When forced to cross one of the sterile fields, he crawled
+low, blotting himself out among the bowlders. At times a patch of tall,
+tasselled Indian corn, interlaced with wandering pumpkin vines, gave him
+cover, till he regained the shelter of the vast Appalachian mother-forest
+which, after climbing Cumberlands, Alleghanies, Catskills, and
+Adirondacks, here clambers down, in long reaches of ash and maple, juniper
+and pine, toward the lowlands of the north.
+
+As far as he had yet been able to formulate a plan of flight, it was to
+seek his safety among the hills. The necessity of the instant was driving
+him toward the open country and the lake, but he hoped to double soon upon
+his tracks, finding his way back to the lumber camps, whose friendly
+spiriting from bunk-house to bunk-house would baffle pursuit. Once he had
+gained even a few hours' security, he would be able to some extent to pick
+and choose his way.
+
+He steered himself by the peak of Graytop, black against the last
+coral-tinted glow of the sunset, as a sailor steers by a star. There was
+further assurance that he was not losing himself or wandering in a circle,
+when from some chance outlook he ventured to glance backward and saw the
+pinnacle of Windy Mountain or the dome of the Pilot straight behind him.
+There lay the natural retreats of the lynx, the bear, and the outlaw like
+himself; and, as he fled farther from them, it was with the same frenzied
+instinct to return that the driven stag must feel toward the bed of fern
+from which he has been roused. But, for the minute, there was one
+imperative necessity--to go on--to go on anywhere, anyhow, so long as it
+took him far enough from the spot where masked men had loosed the
+handcuffs from his wrists and stray shots had come ringing after him. In
+his path there were lakelets, which he swam, and streams, which he forded.
+Over the low hills he scrambled through an undergrowth so dense that even
+the snake or the squirrel might have avoided it, to find some easier way.
+Now and then, as he dragged himself up the more barren ascents, the loose
+soil gave way beneath his steps in miniature avalanches of stone and sand,
+over which he crept, clinging to tufts of grass or lightly rooted
+saplings, to rise at last with hands scratched and feet bleeding. Then, on
+again!--frantically, as the hare runs and as the crow flies, without
+swerving--on, with the sole aim of gaining time and covering distance!
+
+He was not a native of the mountains. Though in the two years spent among
+them he had come to acknowledge their charm, it was only as a man learns
+to love an alien mistress, whose alternating moods of savagery and
+softness hold him with a spell of which he is half afraid. More than any
+one suspected or he could have explained, his reckless life had been the
+rebellion of his man-trained, urban instinct against the domination of
+this supreme earth-force, to which he was of no more value than a falling
+leaf or a dissolving cloud. Even now, as he flung himself on the forest's
+protection, it was not with the solace of the son returning to the mother;
+it was rather as a man might take refuge from a lion in a mammoth cavern,
+where the darkness only conceals dangers.
+
+After the struggle with crude nature the smooth, grass-carpeted
+wagon-track brought him more than a physical sense of comfort. It not only
+made his flight swift and easy, but it had been marked out by man, for
+man's purposes and to meet man's need. It was the result of a human
+intelligence; it led to a human goal. It was possible that it might lead
+even him into touch with human sympathies With the thought, he became
+conscious all at once that he was famished and fatigued. Up to the present
+he had been as little aware of a body as a spirit on its way between two
+worlds. It had ached and sweated and bled; but he had not noticed it. The
+electric fluid could not have seemed more tireless or iron more insensate.
+But now, when the hardship was somewhat relaxed, he was forced back on the
+perception that he was faint and hungry His speed slackened; his shoulders
+sagged; the long second wind, which had lasted so well, began to shorten.
+For the first time it occurred to him to wonder how long his strength
+would hold out.
+
+It was then that he noticed a deflection of the wood-road toward the
+north, and down over the brow of the plateau on which for a mile or two
+its evenness had been sustained. It was a new sign that it was tending
+toward some habitation. Half an hour ago he would have taken this to mean
+that he must dash into the forest again; but half an hour ago he had not
+been hungry. He did not say to himself that he would venture to any man's
+door and ask for bread. So far as he knew, he would never venture to any
+man's door again; nevertheless, he kept on, down-hill, and down-hill
+nearer and nearer the lake, and farther and farther from the mountain and
+the lairs of safety.
+
+Suddenly, at a turning, when he was not expecting it, the wood-road
+emerged into a rough clearing. Once more he stopped to reflect and take
+his bearings. It had grown so dark that there was little danger in doing
+so; though, as he peered into the gloom, his nerves were still taut with
+the expectation of shot or capture from behind. Straining his eyes, he
+made out a few acres that had been cleared for their timber, after which
+Nature had been allowed to take her own way again, in unruly growths of
+saplings, tangles of wild vines, and clumps of magenta fireweed.
+
+Without quite knowing why he did so, he crept down the slope, feeling his
+way among the stumps, and stooping low, lest his white shirt, wet and
+clinging limply to his body, might betray him to some keen-eyed marksman.
+Presently one of the old root-hedges, common to the countryside, barred
+his path--a queer, twisted line of long, gray tentacles that had once
+sucked sustenance from the soil, but now reached up idly into a barren
+element, where the wild grape was covering their grotesque nakedness with
+masses of kindly beauty. Below him he saw lights shining clearly like the
+planets, or faintly like the mere star-dust of the sky, while between the
+two degrees of brightness he knew there must lie the bosom of the lake. He
+had come to the little fringe of towns that clings to the borders of
+Champlain, here with the Adirondacks behind him, and there with the
+mountains of Vermont, but keeping close to the great, safe waterway, as
+though distrusting the ruggedness of both.
+
+It was a moment at which to renew his alarm in this proximity to human
+dwellings. Like the tiger that has ventured beyond the edge of the jungle,
+he must slink back at the sight of fire. He turned himself slowly, looking
+up the heights from which he had come down, as they rolled behind him,
+mysterious and hostile, in the growing darkness. Even the sky, from which
+it seemed impossible for the daylight ever to depart, now had an angry red
+glare in it.
+
+He took a step or two toward the forest, and paused again, still staring
+upward. Where was he going? Where _could_ he go? The question presented
+itself with an odd pertinence that drew his set, beardless lips into a
+kind of smile. When he had first made his rush outward the one thing that
+seemed to him essential was to be free; but now he was forced to ask
+himself: For what purpose? Of what use was it to be as free as wind if he
+was to be as homeless? It was not merely that he was homeless for the
+moment; that was nothing; the overwhelming reflection was that he, Norrie
+Ford, could never have a home at all--that there was scarcely a spot
+within the borders of civilized mankind where the law would not hunt him
+out.
+
+This view of his situation was so apparent and yet so new that it held him
+stock-still, gazing into space. He was free--but free only to crawl back
+into the jungle and lie down in it, like a wild beast.
+
+"But I'm not a wild beast," he protested, inwardly. "I'm a man--with
+human rights. By God, I'll never let them go!"
+
+He wheeled round again, toward the lower lands and the lake. The lights
+glowed more brightly as the darkness deepened, each lamp shining from some
+little nest, where men and women were busied with the small tasks and
+interests that made life. This was liberty! This was what he had a claim
+upon! All his instincts were civilized, domestic. He would not go back to
+the forest, to herd with wild nature, when he had a right to lie down
+among his kind. He had slept in the open hundreds of times; but it had
+been from choice. There had been pleasure then, in waking to the smell of
+balsam and opening his eyes upon the stars. But to do the same thing from
+compulsion, because men had closed up their ranks and ejected him from
+their midst, was an outrage he would not accept. In the darkness his head
+went up, while his eyes burned with a fire more intense than that of any
+of the mild beacons from the towns below, as he strode back to the old
+root-hedge and leaped it.
+
+He felt the imprudence, not to say the uselessness, of the movement, as he
+made it; and yet he kept on, finding himself in a field in which cows and
+horses were startled from their munching by his footstep. It was another
+degree nearer to the organized life in which he was entitled to a place.
+Shielded by a shrubbery of sleeping goldenrod, he stole down the slope,
+making his way to the lane along which the beasts went out to pasture and
+came home. Following the trail, he passed a meadow, a potato-field, and a
+patch of Indian corn, till the scent of flowers told him he was coming on
+a garden. A minute later, low, velvety domes of clipped yew rose in the
+foreground, and he knew himself to be in touch with the civilization that
+clung, like a hardy vine, to the coves and promontories of the lake, while
+its tendrils withered as soon as they were flung up toward the mountains.
+Only a few steps more, and, between the yews, he saw the light streaming
+from the open doors and windows of a house.
+
+It was such a house as, during the two years he had spent up in the high
+timber-lands, he had caught sight of only on the rare occasions when he
+came within the precincts of a town--a house whose outward aspect, even at
+night, suggested something of taste, means, and social position for its
+occupants. Slipping nearer still, he saw curtains fluttering in the breeze
+of the August evening, and Virginia creeper dropping in heavily massed
+garlands from the roof of a columned veranda. A French window was open to
+the floor, and within, he could see vaguely, people were seated.
+
+The scene was simple enough, but to the fugitive it had a kind of
+sacredness. It was like a glimpse into the heaven he has lost caught by a
+fallen angel. For the moment he forgot his hunger and weakness, in this
+feast for the heart and eyes. It was with something of the pleasure of
+recognizing long-absent faces that he traced the line of a sofa against
+the wall, and stated to himself that there was a row of prints hanging
+above it. There had been no such details as these to note in his cell, nor
+yet in the courtroom which for months had constituted his only change of
+outlook Insensibly to himself, he crept nearer, drawn by the sheer spell
+of gazing.
+
+Finding a gate leading into the garden, he opened it softly, leaving it
+so, in order to secure his retreat. From the shelter of one of the
+rounded yew-trees he could make his observations more at ease. He
+perceived now that the house stood on a terrace, and turned the garden
+front, its more secluded aspect, in his direction. The high hedges, common
+in these lakeside villages, screened it from the road; while the open
+French window threw a shaft of brightness down the yew-tree walk, casting
+the rest of the garden into gloom.
+
+To Norrie Ford, peeping furtively from behind one of the domes of clipped
+foliage, there was exasperation in the fact that his new position gave him
+no glimpse of the people in the room. His hunger to see them became for
+the minute more insistent than that for food. They represented that human
+society from which he had waked one morning to find himself cut off, as a
+rock is cut off by seismic convulsion from the mainland of which it has
+formed a part. It was in a sort of effort to span the gulf separating him
+from his own past that he peered now into this room, whose inmates were
+only passing the hours between the evening meal and bedtime. That people
+could sit tranquilly reading books or playing games filled him with a kind
+of wonder.
+
+When he considered it safe he slipped along to what he hoped would prove a
+better point of view, but, finding it no more advantageous, he darted to
+still another. The light lured him as it might lure an insect of the
+night, till presently he stood on the very steps of the terrace. He knew
+the danger of his situation, but he could not bring himself to turn and
+steal away till he had fixed the picture of that cheerful interior firmly
+on his memory. The risk was great, but the glimpse of life was worth it.
+
+With powers of observation quickened by his plight, he noted that the
+home was just such a one as that from which he had sprung--one where old
+engravings hung on the walls, while books filled the shelves, and papers
+and periodicals strewed the tables. The furnishings spoke of comfort and a
+modest dignity. Obliquely in his line of vision he could see two children,
+seated at a table and poring over a picture-book The boy, a manly urchin,
+might have been fourteen, the girl a year or two younger. Her curls fell
+over the hand and arm supporting her cheek, so that Ford could only guess
+at the blue eyes concealed behind them. Now and then the boy turned a page
+before she was ready, whereupon followed pretty cries of protestation. It
+was perhaps this mimic quarrel that called forth a remark from some one
+sitting within the shadow.
+
+"Evie dear, it's time to go to bed. Billy, I don't believe they let you
+stay up as late as this at home."
+
+"Oh yes, they do," came Billy's answer, given with sturdy assurance. "I
+often stay up till nine."
+
+"Well, it's half past now; so you'd both better come and say good-night."
+
+With one foot resting on the turf and the other raised to the first step
+of the terrace, as he stood with folded arms, Ford watched the little
+scene, in which the children closed their book, pushed back their chairs,
+and crossed the room to say good-night to the two who were seated in the
+shadow. The boy came first, with hands thrust into his trousers pockets in
+a kind of grave nonchalance. The little girl fluttered along behind, but
+broke her journey across the room by stepping into the opening of the long
+window and looking out into the night. Ford stood breathless and
+motionless, expecting her to see him and cry out. But she turned away and
+danced again into the shadow, after which he saw her no more. The silence
+that fell within the room told him that the elders were left alone.
+
+Stealthily, like a thief, Ford crept up the steps and over the turf of the
+terrace. The rising of the wind at that minute drowned all sound of his
+movements, so that he was tempted right on to the veranda, where a coarse
+matting deadened his tread. He dared not hold himself upright on this
+dangerous ground, but, crouching low, he was blotted from sight, while he
+himself could see what passed within. He would only, he said, look once
+more into kindly human faces and steal away as he came.
+
+He could perceive now that the lady who had spoken was an invalid
+reclining in a long chair, lightly covered with a rug. A fragile, dainty
+little creature, her laces, trinkets, and rings revealed her as one
+clinging to the elegancies of another phase of life, though Fate had sent
+her to live, and perhaps to die, here on the edge of the wilderness. He
+made the same observation with regard to the man who sat with his back to
+the window. He was in informal evening dress--a circumstance that, in this
+land of more or less primitive simplicity, spoke of a sense of exile. He
+was slight and middle-aged, and though his face was hidden, Ford received
+the impression of having seen him already, but from another point of view.
+His habit of using a magnifying-glass as, with some difficulty, he read a
+newspaper in the light of a green-shaded lamp, seemed to Ford especially
+familiar, though more pressing thoughts kept him from trying to remember
+where and when he had seen some one do the same thing within the recent
+past.
+
+As he crouched by the window watching them, it came into his mind that
+they were just the sort of people of whom he had least need to be afraid.
+The sordid tragedy up in the mountains had probably interested them
+little, and in any case they could not as yet have heard of his escape. If
+he broke in on them and demanded food, they would give it to him as to
+some common desperado, and be glad to let him go. If there was any one to
+inspire terror, it was he, with his height, and youth, and wildness of
+aspect. He was thinking out the most natural method of playing some small
+comedy of violence, when suddenly the man threw down the paper with a
+sigh. On the instant the lady spoke, as though she had been awaiting her
+cue.
+
+"I don't see why you should feel so about it," she said, making an effort
+to control a cough. "You must have foreseen something of this sort when
+you took up the law."
+
+The answer reached Ford's ears only as a murmur, but he guessed its import
+from the response.
+
+"True," she returned, when he had spoken, "to foresee possibilities is one
+thing, and to meet them is another; but the anticipation does something to
+nerve one for the necessity when it comes."
+
+Again there was a murmur in which Ford could distinguish nothing, but
+again her reply told him what it meant.
+
+"The right and the wrong, as I understand it," she went on, "is something
+with which you have nothing to do. Your part is to administer the law, not
+to judge of how it works."
+
+Once more Ford was unable to catch what was said in reply, but once more
+the lady's speech enlightened him.
+
+"That's the worst of it? Possibly; but it's also the best of it; for since
+it relieves you of responsibility it's foolish for you to feel remorse."
+
+What was the motive of these remarks? Ford found himself possessed of a
+strange curiosity to know. He pressed as closely as he dared to the open
+door, but for the moment nothing more was said. In the silence that
+followed he began again to wonder how he could best make his demand for
+food, when a sound from behind startled him. It was the sound which, among
+all others, caused him the wildest alarm--that of a human footstep. His
+next movement came from the same blind impulse that sends a hunted fox to
+take refuge in a church--eager only for the instant's safety. He had
+sprung to his feet, cleared the threshold, and leaped into the room,
+before the reflection came to him that, if he was caught, he must at least
+be caught game. Wheeling round toward the window-door through which he had
+entered, he stood defiantly, awaiting his pursuers, and heedless of the
+astonished eyes fixed upon him. It was not till some seconds had gone by,
+and he realized that he was not followed, that he glanced about the room.
+When he did so it was to ignore the woman, in order to concentrate all his
+gaze on the little, iron-gray man who, still seated, stared at him, with
+lips parted. In his own turn, Norrie Ford was dumb and wide-eyed in
+amazement It was a long minute before either spoke.
+
+"You?"
+
+"You?"
+
+The monosyllable came simultaneously from each. The little woman got to
+her feet in alarm. There was inquiry as well as terror in her
+face--inquiry to which her husband felt prompted to respond.
+
+"This is the man," he said, in a voice of forced calmness,
+"whom--whom--we've been talking about."
+
+"Not the man--you--?"
+
+"Yes," he nodded, "the man I--I--sentenced to death--this morning."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+
+"Evie!"
+
+Mrs. Wayne went to the door, but on Ford's assurance that her child had
+nothing to fear from him, she paused with her hand on the knob to look in
+curiosity at this wild young man, whose doom lent him a kind of
+fascination. Again, for a minute, all three were silent in the excess of
+their surprise. Wayne himself sat rigid, gazing up at the new-comer with
+strained eyes blurred with partial blindness. Though slightly built and
+delicate, he was not physically timid; and as the seconds went by he was
+able to form an idea as to what had happened. He himself, in view of the
+tumultuous sympathy displayed by hunters and lumber-jacks with the man who
+passed for their boon companion, had advised Ford's removal from the
+pretty toy prison of the county-town to the stronger one at Plattsville.
+It was clear that the prisoner had been helped to escape, either before
+the change had been effected or while it was taking place. There was
+nothing surprising in that; the astonishing thing was that the fugitive
+should have found his way to this house above all others. Mrs. Wayne
+seemed to think so too, for it was she who spoke first, in a tone which
+she tried to make peremptory, in spite of its tremor of fear.
+
+"What did you come here for?"
+
+Ford looked at her for the first time--in a blankness not without a dull
+element of pleasure. It was at least two or three years since he had seen
+anything so dainty--not, in fact, since his own mother died. At all times
+his mind worked slowly, so that he found nothing to reply till she
+repeated her question with a show of increased severity.
+
+"I came here for protection," he said then.
+
+His hesitation and bewildered air imparted assurance to his still
+astonished hosts.
+
+"Isn't it an odd place in which to look for that?" Wayne asked, in an
+excitement, he strove to subdue.
+
+The question was the stimulus Ford needed in order to get his wits into
+play.
+
+"No," he replied, slowly; "I've a right to protection from the man who
+sentenced me to death for a crime of which he knows me innocent."
+
+Wayne concealed a start by smoothing the newspaper over his crossed knees,
+but he was unable to keep a shade of thickness out of his voice as he
+answered:
+
+"You had a fair trial. You were found guilty. You have had the benefit of
+all the resources allowed by the law. You have no right to say I know you
+to be innocent."
+
+Wholly spent, Ford dropped into a chair from which one of the children had
+risen. With his arm hanging limply over the back he sat staring haggardly
+at the judge, as though finding nothing to say.
+
+"I have a right to read any man's mind," he muttered, after a long pause,
+"when it's as transparent as yours. No one had any doubt as to your
+convictions--after your charge."
+
+"That has nothing to do with it. If I charged in your favor, it was
+because I wanted you to have the benefit of every possible plea. When
+those pleas were found insufficient by a jury of your peers--"
+
+Ford emitted a sound that might have been a laugh, had there been mirth in
+it.
+
+"A jury of my peers! A lot of thick-headed country tradesmen, prejudiced
+against me from the start because I'd sometimes kicked up a row in their
+town! They weren't my peers any more than they were yours!"
+
+"The law assumes all men to be equal--"
+
+"Just as it assumes all men to be intelligent--only they're not. The law
+is a very fine theory. The chief thing to be, said against it is that five
+times out of ten it leaves human nature out of account. I'm condemned to
+death, not because I killed a man, but because you lawyers won't admit
+that your theory doesn't work."
+
+He began to speak more easily, with the energy born of his desperate
+situation and his sense of wrong. He sat up straighter; the air of
+dejection with which he had sunk to the chair slipped from him; his gray
+eyes, of the kind called "honest," shot out glances of protest. The elder
+man found himself once more struggling against the wave of sympathy which
+at times in the court-room had been almost too strong for him. He was
+forced to intrench himself mentally within the system he served before
+bracing himself to reply.
+
+"I can't keep you from having your opinion--"
+
+"Nor can I save you from having yours. Look at me, judge!" He was bolt
+upright now, throwing his arms wide with a gesture in which there was more
+appeal than indignation "Look at me! I'm a strong, healthy-bodied,
+healthy-minded fellow of twenty-four; but I'm drenched to the skin, I'm
+half naked, I'm nearly dead with hunger, I'm an outlaw for life--and
+you're responsible for it all."
+
+It was Wayne's turn for protest, and though he winced, he spoke sharply.
+
+"I had my duty to perform--"
+
+"Good God, man, don't sit there and call that thing your duty! You're
+something more than a wheel in a machine. You were a human being before
+you were a judge. With your convictions you should have come down from the
+bench and washed your hands of the whole affair. The very action would
+have given me a chance--"
+
+"You mustn't speak like that to my husband," Mrs. Wayne broke in,
+indignantly, from the doorway. "If you only knew what he has suffered on
+your account--"
+
+"Is it anything like what I've suffered on his?"
+
+"I dare say it's worse. He has scarcely slept or eaten since he knew he
+would have to pass that dreadful sen--"
+
+"Come! come!" Wayne exclaimed, in the impatient tone of a man who puts an
+end to a useless discussion. "We can't spend time on this subject any
+longer. I'm not on my defence--"
+
+"You _are_ on your defence," Ford declared, instantly. "Even your wife
+puts you there. We're not in a courtroom as we were this morning.
+Circumstantial evidence means nothing to us in this isolated house, where
+you're no longer the judge, as I'm no longer the prisoner. We're just two
+naked human beings, stripped of everything but their inborn rights--and I
+claim mine."
+
+"Well--what are they?"
+
+"They're simple enough. I claim the right to have something to eat, and to
+go my way without being molested--or betrayed. You'll admit I'm not
+asking much."
+
+"You may have the food," Mrs. Wayne said, in a tone not without
+compassion. "I'll go and get it."
+
+For a minute or two there was no sound but that of her cough, as she sped
+down a passage. Before speaking, Wayne passed his hand across his brow as
+though in an effort to clear his mental vision.
+
+"No; you don't seem to be asking much. But, as a matter of fact, you're
+demanding my pledge to my country. I undertook to administer its laws--"
+
+Ford sprang up.
+
+"You've done it," he cried, "and I'm the result! You've administered the
+law right up to its hilt, and your duty as a judge is performed. Surely
+you're free now to think of yourself as a man and to treat me as one."
+
+"I might do that, and still think you a man dangerous to leave at large."
+
+"But do you?"
+
+"That's my affair. Whatever your opinion of the courts that have judged
+your case, I must accept their verdict."
+
+"In your official capacity--yes; but not here, as host to the poor dog who
+comes under your roof for shelter. My rights are sacred. Even the wild
+Arab--"
+
+He paused abruptly. Over Wayne's shoulder, through the window still open
+to the terrace, he saw a figure cross the darkness. Could his pursuers be
+waiting outside for their chance to spring on him? A perceptible fraction
+of a second went by before he told himself he must have been mistaken.
+
+"Even the wild Arab would think them so," he concluded, his glance
+shifting rapidly between the judge and the window open behind him.
+
+"But I'm not a wild Arab," Wayne replied. "My first duty is toward my
+country and its organized society."
+
+"I don't think so. Your first duty is toward the man you know you've
+sentenced wrongly. Fate has shown you an unusual mercy in giving you a
+chance to help him."
+
+"I can be sorry for the sentence and yet feel that I could not have acted
+otherwise."
+
+"Then what are you going to do now?"
+
+"What would you expect me to do but hand you back to justice?"
+
+"How?"
+
+There was a suggestion of physical disdain in the tone of the laconic
+question, as well as in the look he fixed on the neat, middle-aged man
+doing his best to be cool and collected Wayne glanced over his shoulder
+toward the telephone on the wall. Norrie Ford understood and spoke
+quickly:
+
+"Yes; you could ring up the police at Greenport, but I could strangle you
+before you crossed the floor."
+
+"So you could; but would you? If you did, should you be any better off?
+Should you be as well off as you are now? As it is, there is a possibility
+of a miscarriage of justice, of which one day you may get the benefit.
+There would be no such possibility then. You would be tracked down within
+forty-eight hours."
+
+"Oh, you needn't argue; I've no intention--" Once more he paused. The same
+shadow had flitted across the dark space outside, this time with a
+distinct flutter of a white dress. He could only think it was some one
+getting help together; and while he went on to finish his sentence in
+words, all his subconscious faculties were at work, seeking an escape from
+the trap in which he was taken.
+
+"I've no intention of doing violence unless I'm driven to it--"
+
+"But if you are driven to it--?"
+
+"I've a right to defend myself. Organized society, as you call it, has put
+me where it has no further claim upon me. I must fight against it
+single-handed--and I'll do it. I shall spare neither man nor woman--nor
+_woman_"--he raised his voice so as to be heard outside--"who stands in my
+way."
+
+He threw back his head and looked defiantly out into the night. As if in
+response to this challenge a tall, white figure suddenly emerged from the
+darkness and stood plainly before him.
+
+It was a girl, whose movements were curiously quick and silent, as she
+beckoned to him, over the head of the judge, who sat with his back toward
+her.
+
+"Then all the more reason why society should protect itself against you,"
+Wayne began again; but Ford was no longer listening. His attention was
+wholly fixed on the girl, who continued to beckon noiselessly, fluttering
+for an instant close to the threshold of the room, then withdrawing
+suddenly to the very edge of the terrace, waving a white scarf in token
+that he should follow her. She had repeated her action again and again,
+beckoning with renewed insistence, before he understood and made up his
+mind.
+
+"I don't say that I refuse to help you," Wayne was saying. "My sympathy
+with you is very sincere. If I can get your sentence commuted--In fact, a
+reprieve is almost certain--"
+
+With a dash as lithe and sudden as that which had brought him in, Ford was
+out on the terrace, following the white dress and the waving scarf which
+were already disappearing down the yew-tree walk. The girl's flight over
+grass and gravel was like nothing so much as that of a bird skimming
+through the air. Ford's own steps crunched loudly on the stillness of the
+night, so that if any one lay in ambush he knew he could not escape. He
+was prepared to hear shots come ringing from any quarter, but he ran on
+with the indifference of a soldier grown used to battle, intent on keeping
+up with the shadow fleeing before him.
+
+He followed her through the garden gate he himself had left open, and down
+the lane leading to the pasture. At the point where he had entered it from
+the right, she turned to the left, keeping away from the mountains and
+parallel with the lake. There was no moon, but the night was clear; and no
+sound but that of the shrill, sustained chorus of insect life.
+
+Beyond the pasture the lane became nothing but a path, zigzagging up a
+hillside between patches of Indian corn. The girl sped over it so lightly
+that Ford would have found it hard to keep her in sight if from time to
+time she had not paused and waited. When he came near enough to see the
+outlines of her form she flew on again, less like a living woman than a
+mountain wraith.
+
+From the top of the hill he could see the dull gleam of the lake with its
+girdle of lamp-lit towns. Here the woodland began again; not the main body
+of the forest, but one of its long arms, thrust down over hill and valley,
+twisting its way in among villages and farm lands. That which had been a
+path now become a trail, along which the girl flitted with the ease of
+habit and familiarity.
+
+In the concentration of his effort to keep the moving white spot in view
+Ford lost count of time. Similarly he had little notion of the distance
+they were covering. He guessed that they had been ten or fifteen minutes
+on the way, and that they might have gone a mile, when, after waiting for
+him to come almost near enough to speak to her, she began moving in a
+direction at an acute angle to that by which they had come. At the same
+time he perceived that they were on the side of a low wooded mountain and
+that they were beating their way round it.
+
+All at once they emerged on a tiny clearing--a grassy ledge on the slope.
+Through the starlight he could see the hillside break away steeply into a
+vaporous gorge, while above him the mountain raised a black dome amid the
+serried points of the sky-line. The dryad-like creature beckoned him
+forward with her scarf, until suddenly she stopped with the decisive pause
+of one who has reached her goal. Coming up with her, he saw her unlock the
+door of a small cabin, which had hitherto not detached itself from the
+surrounding darkness.
+
+"Go in," she whispered. "Don't strike a light. There are biscuits
+somewhere, in a box. Grope for them. There's a couch in a corner."
+
+Without allowing him to speak, she forced him gently over the threshold
+and closed the door upon him. Standing inside in the darkness, he heard
+the grating of her key in the lock, and the rustle of her skirts as she
+sped away.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+
+From the heavy sleep of fatigue Ford woke with the twittering of birds
+that announces the dawn. His first thought before opening his eyes, that
+he was still in his cell, was dispelled by the silky touch of the Sorrento
+rugs on which he lay. He fingered them again and again in a kind of
+wonder, while his still half-slumbering senses struggled for the memory of
+what had happened, and the realization of where he was. When at last he
+was able to reconstruct the events of the preceding night, he raised
+himself on his elbow and peered about him in the dim morning twilight.
+
+The object he discerned most readily was an easel, giving him the secret
+of his refuge. On the wooden walls of the cabin, which was fairly
+spacious, water-color sketches were pinned at intervals, while on the
+mantelpiece above a bricked fireplace one or two stood framed. Over the
+mantelpiece a pair of snow-shoes were crossed as decorations, between
+which hung a view of the city of Quebec. On a lay-figure in a corner was
+thrown carelessly the sort of blanket coat worn by Canadians during winter
+sports. Paints and palettes were arranged on a table by the wall, and on a
+desk in the middle of the room were writing materials and books. More
+books stood in a small suspended bookcase. Beside a comfortable
+reading-chair one or two magazines lay on the floor. His gaze travelled
+last to the large apron, or pinafore, on a peg fastened in a door
+immediately beside his couch. The door suggested an inner room, and he got
+up promptly to explore it. It proved to be cramped and dark, lighted only
+from the larger apartment, which in its turn had but the one high north
+window of the ordinary studio. The small room was little more than a shed
+or "lean-to", serving the purposes of kitchen and storeroom combined. The
+arrangements of the whole cabin showed that some one had built it with a
+view to passing in seclusion a few days at a time without forsaking the
+simpler amenities of civilized life; and it was clear that that "some one"
+was a woman. What interested Ford chiefly for the moment was the discovery
+of a sealed glass jar of water, from which he was able to slake his twenty
+hours' thirst.
+
+Returning to the room in which he had slept, he drew back the green silk
+curtain covering the north light in order to take his bearings. As he had
+guessed on the previous night, the slope on which the cabin was perched
+broke steeply down into a wooded gorge, beyond which the lower hills
+rolled in decreasing magnitude to the shore of Champlain, visible from
+this point of view in glimpses, less as an inland sea than like a chain of
+lakelets. Sunrise over Vermont flooded the waters with tints of rose and
+saffron, but made of the Green Mountains a long, gigantic mass of
+purple-black twisting its jagged outline toward the north into the Hog's
+Back and the Camel's Hump with a kind of monstrous grace. To the east, in
+New York, the Adirondacks, with the sunlight full upon them, shot up
+jade-colored peaks into the electric blue--the scarred pyramid of Graytop
+standing forth dark, detached, and alone, like a battered veteran
+sentinel.
+
+In an access of conscious hatred of this vast panoramic beauty which had
+become the background of his tragedy, Ford pulled the curtain into place
+again and turned once more to the interior of the room. It began to seem
+more strange to him the more it grew familiar. Why was he here? How long
+was he to stay? How was he to get away again? Had this girl caught him
+like a rat in a trap, or did she mean well by him? If, as he supposed, she
+was Wayne's daughter, she would probably not be slow in carrying out her
+father's plan of handing him back to justice--and yet his mind refused to
+connect the wraith of the night before with either police work or
+betrayal. Her appearance had been so dim and fleeting that he could have
+fancied her the dryad of a dream, had it not been for his surroundings.
+
+He began to examine them once more, inspecting the water-colors on the
+wall one by one, in search of some clew to her personality. The first
+sketch was of a nun in a convent garden--the background vaguely French,
+and yet with a difference. The next was of a trapper, or voyageur, pushing
+a canoe into the waters of a wild northern lake. The next was a group of
+wigwams with squaws and children in the foreground. Then came more nuns;
+then more voyageurs with their canoes; then more Indians and wigwams It
+occurred to Ford that the nuns might have been painted from life, the
+voyageurs and Indians from imagination He turned to the two framed
+drawings on the chimney-piece Both represented winter scenes. In the one a
+sturdy voyageur was conveying his wife and small personal belongings
+across the frozen snow on a sled drawn by a team of dogs. In the other a
+woman, apparently the same woman as in the preceding sketch, had fallen in
+the midst of a blinding storm, while a tall man of European
+aspect--decidedly not the voyageur--was standing beside her with a baby in
+his arms. These were clearly fancy pictures, and, so it seemed to Ford,
+the work of one who was trying to recapture some almost forgotten memory.
+In any case he was too deeply engrossed by his own situation to dwell on
+them further.
+
+He wheeled round again toward the centre of the room, impatiently casting
+about him for something to eat. The tin box, from which he had devoured
+all the biscuits, lay empty on the floor, but he picked it up and ate
+hungrily the few crumbs sticking in its corners. He ransacked the small
+dark room in the hope of finding more, but vainly. As far as he could see,
+the cabin had never been used for the purpose it was meant to serve, nor
+ever occupied for more than a few hours at a time. It had probably been
+built in a caprice that had passed with its completion. He guessed
+something from the fact that there was no visible attempt to sketch the
+scene before the door, though the site had evidently been chosen for its
+beauty.
+
+He had nothing by which to measure time, but he knew that precious hours
+which he might have utilized for escape were passing. He began to chafe at
+the delay. With the impulse of youth to be active, he longed to be out,
+where he could at least use his feet. His clothes had dried upon him; in
+spite of his hunger he was refreshed by his night's sleep; he was
+convinced that, once in the open, he could elude capture. He pulled back
+the curtain again in order to reconnoitre. It was well to be as familiar
+as possible with the immediate lay of the land, so as to avail himself of
+any advantages it might offer.
+
+The colors of sunrise had disappeared, and he judged that it must be
+seven or eight o'clock. Between the rifts of the lower hills the lake was
+flashing silver, while where Vermont had been nothing but a mass of
+shadow, blue-green mountains were emerging in a triple row, from which the
+last veils of vapor were being dragged up into the firmament On the left,
+the Adirondacks were receding into translucent dimness, in a lilac haze of
+heat.
+
+With an effort to get back the woodcraft suddenly inspired by his first
+dash for freedom, he ran his eye over the landscape, noting the points
+with which he was familiar. To the west, in a niche between Graytop and
+the double peak of Windy Mountain, he could place the county-town; to the
+north, beyond the pretty headlands and the shining coves, the prison of
+Plattsville was waiting to receive him. Farther to the north was Canada;
+and to the south the great waterway led toward the populous mazes of New
+York.
+
+With an impatience bordering on nervousness he realized that these general
+facts did not help him. He must avoid the prison and the county-town, of
+course; while both New York and Canada offered him ultimate chances. But
+his most pressing dangers lurked in the immediate foreground; and there he
+could see nothing but an unsuggestive slope of ash and pine. The rapidity
+of instinct by which last night he had known exactly what to do gave place
+this morning to his slower and more characteristic mental processes.
+
+He was still gazing outward in perplexity, when, through the trees beyond
+the grassy ledge, he caught the flicker of something white. He pressed
+closer to the pane for a better view, and a few seconds later a girl, whom
+he recognized as the nymph of last night, came out of the forest,
+followed by a fawn-colored collie. She walked smoothly and swiftly,
+carrying a large basket with her right hand, while with her left she
+motioned him away from the window. He stepped back, leaping to the door as
+she unlocked it, in order to relieve her of her burden.
+
+"You mustn't do that," she said, speaking quickly. "You mustn't look out
+of the window or come to the door. There are a hundred men beating the
+mountain to find you."
+
+She closed the door and locked it on the inside. While Ford lifted her
+basket to the desk in the centre of the room she drew the green curtain
+hastily, covering the window. Her movements were so rapid that he could
+catch no glimpse of her face, though he had time to note again the curious
+silence that marked her acts. The dog emitted a low growl.
+
+"You must go in here," she said, decisively, throwing open the door of the
+inner room. "You mustn't speak or look out unless I tell you. I'll bring
+you your breakfast presently. Lie down, Micmac."
+
+The gesture by which she forced him across the threshold was compelling
+rather than commanding. Before he realized that he had obeyed her, he was
+standing alone in the darkness, with the sound of a low voice of liquid
+quality echoing in his ears. Of her face he had got only the hint of dark
+eyes flashing with an eager, non-Caucasian brightness--eyes that drew
+their fire from a source alien to that of any Aryan race.
+
+But he brushed that impression away as foolish. Her words had the
+unmistakable note of cultivation, while a glance at her person showed her
+to be a lady. He could see, too, that her dress, though simple, was
+according to the standard of means and fashion. She was no Pocahontas;
+and yet the thought of Pocahontas came to him. Certainly there was in her
+tones, as well as in her movements, something akin to this vast aboriginal
+nature around him, out of which she seemed to spring as the human element
+in its beauty.
+
+He was still thinking of this when the door opened and she came in again,
+carrying a plate piled high with cold meat and bread-and-butter.
+
+"I'm sorry it's only this," she smiled, as she placed it before him; "but
+I had to take what I could get--and what wouldn't be missed. I'll try to
+do better in future."
+
+He noted the matter-of-fact tone in which she uttered the concluding
+words, as though they were to have plenty of time together; but for the
+moment he was too fiercely hungry to speak. For a few seconds she stood
+off, watching him eat, after which she withdrew, with the light swiftness
+that characterized all her motions.
+
+He had nearly finished his meal when she returned again.
+
+"I've brought you these," she said, not without a touch of shyness,
+against which she struggled by making her tone as commonplace as possible.
+"I shall bring you more things by degrees."
+
+On a chair beside that on which he was sitting she laid a pair of
+slippers, a pair of socks, a shirt, a collar, and a tie.
+
+He jumped up hastily, less in surprise than in confusion.
+
+"I can't take anything of Judge Wayne's--" he began to stammer; but she
+interrupted him.
+
+"I understand your feelings about that," she said, simply. "They're not
+Judge Wayne's; they were my father's. I have plenty more."
+
+In his relief at finding she was not Wayne's daughter he spoke awkwardly.
+
+"Your father? Is he--dead?"
+
+"Yes; he's dead. You needn't be afraid to take the things. He would have
+liked to help a man--in your position."
+
+"In my position? Then you know--who I am?"
+
+"Yes; you're Norrie Ford. I saw that as soon as I chanced on the terrace
+last night."
+
+"And you're not afraid of me?"
+
+"I am--a little," she admitted; "but that doesn't matter."
+
+"You needn't be--" he began to explain, but she checked him again.
+
+"We mustn't talk now. I must shut the door and leave you in the dark all
+day. Men will be passing by, and they mustn't hear you. I shall be
+painting in the studio, so that they won't suspect anything, if you keep
+still."
+
+Allowing him no opportunity to speak again, she closed the door, leaving
+him once more in darkness. Sitting in the constraint she imposed upon him,
+he could hear her moving in the outer room, where, owing to the lightness
+of the wooden partition, it was not difficult to guess what she was doing
+at any given moment. He knew when she opened the outer door and moved the
+easel toward the entrance. He knew when she took down the apron from its
+peg and pinned it on. He knew when she drew up a chair and pretended to
+set to work. In the hour or two of silence that ensued he was sure that,
+whatever she might be doing with her brush, she was keeping eye and ear
+alert in his defence.
+
+Who was she? What interest had she in his fate? What power had raised her
+up to help him? Even yet he had scarcely seen her face; but he had
+received an impression of intelligence. He was sure she was no more than a
+girl--certainly not twenty--and yet she acted with the decision of
+maturity. At the same time there was about her that suggestion of a wild
+origin--that something not wholly tamed to the dictates of civilized
+life--which persisted in his imagination, even if he could not verify it
+in fact.
+
+Twice in the course of the morning he heard voices. Men spoke to her
+through the open doorway, and she replied. Once he distinguished her
+words.
+
+"Oh no," she called out to some one at a distance. "I'm not afraid. He
+won't do me any harm. I've got Micmac with me. I often stay here all day,
+but I shall go home early. Thanks," she added, in response to some further
+hint. "I'd rather not have any one here. I never can paint unless I'm
+quite alone."
+
+Her tone was light, and Ford fancied that as she spoke she smiled at the
+passers-by who had thought it right to warn her against himself; but when,
+a few minutes later, she pushed open the door softly, the gravity that
+seemed more natural to her had returned.
+
+"Several parties of men have gone by," she whispered. "They have no
+suspicion. They won't have, if you keep still. They think you have slipped
+away from here, and have gone back toward the lumber camps. This is your
+lunch," she continued, hastily, placing more food before him. "It will
+have to be your dinner, too. It will be safer for me not to come into this
+room again to-day. You must not go out into the studio till you're sure
+it's dark. No noise. No light. I've put an extra rug on the couch in case
+you're chilly in the night."
+
+She spoke breathlessly, in whispers, and, having finished, slipped away.
+
+"You're awfully good," he whispered back. "Won't you tell me your name?"
+
+"Hush!" she warned him, as she closed the door.
+
+He stood still in the darkness, leaving his food untasted, listening to
+the soft rustle of her movements beyond the wall. Except that he heard no
+more voices, the afternoon passed like the morning. At the end of what
+seemed to him interminable hours he knew by acute attention that she hung
+her apron on its peg, put on her hat, and took up her basket, while Micmac
+rose and shook himself. Presently she closed the door of the cabin and
+locked it on the outside. He fancied he could almost hear her step as she
+sped over the grass and into the forest. Only then did the tension of his
+nerves relax, as, dropping to his chair in the darkness, he began to eat.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+
+The two or three days that followed were much like the first. Each morning
+she came early, bringing him food, and such articles of clothing as she
+thought he could wear. By degrees she provided him with a complete change
+of raiment, and though the fit was tolerable, they laughed together at the
+transformation produced in him. It was the first time he had seen her
+smile, and even in the obscurity of the inner room where she still kept
+him secluded he noted the vividness with which her habitually grave
+features lighted up. Micmac, too, became friendly, inferring with the
+instinct of his race that Ford was an object to be guarded.
+
+"No one would know you now," the girl declared, surveying him with
+satisfaction.
+
+"Were these things all your father's?" he asked, with a new attempt to
+penetrate the mystery of her personality.
+
+"Yes," she returned, absently, continuing her inspection of him. "They
+were sent to me, and I kept them. I never knew why I did; but I suppose it
+was--for this."
+
+"He must have been a tall man?" Ford hazarded, again.
+
+"Yes, he must have been," she returned, unwarily. Then, feeling that the
+admission required some explanation, she added, with a touch of
+embarrassment, "I never saw him--not that I can remember."
+
+"Then he died a long time ago?"
+
+Her reply came reluctantly, after some delay:
+
+"Not so very long--about four years ago now."
+
+"And yet you hadn't seen him since you were a child?"
+
+"There were reasons. We mustn't talk. Some one may pass and hear us."
+
+He could see that her hurry in finishing the small tasks she had come in
+to perform for him arose not so much from precaution as from a desire to
+escape from this particular subject.
+
+"I suppose you could tell me his name?" he persisted.
+
+Her hands moved deftly, producing order among the things he had left in
+confusion, but she remained silent. It was a silence in which he
+recognized an element of protest though he ignored it.
+
+"You could tell me his name?" he asked, again.
+
+"His name," she said, at last, "wouldn't convey anything to you. It
+wouldn't do you any good to know it."
+
+"It would gratify my curiosity. I should think you might do as much as
+that for me."
+
+"I'm doing a great deal for you as it is. I don't think you should ask for
+more."
+
+Her tone was one of reproach rather than of annoyance, and he was left
+with a sense of having committed an indiscretion. The consciousness
+brought with it the perception that in a measure he was growing used to
+his position. He was beginning to take it for granted that this girl
+should come and minister to his wants. She herself did it so simply, so
+much as a matter of course, that the circumstance lost much of its
+strangeness. Now and then he could detect some confusion in her manner as
+she served him, but he could see too that she surmounted it, in view of
+the fact that for him the situation was one of life and death. She was
+clearly not indifferent to elementary social usages; she only saw that the
+case was one in which they did not obtain. In his long, unoccupied hours
+of darkness it distracted his thoughts from his own peril to speculate
+about her; and when she appeared his questions were the more blunt because
+of the small opportunity she allowed for asking them.
+
+"Won't they miss you at home?" he inquired, on the next occasion when she
+entered his cell.
+
+She paused with a look of surprise.
+
+"At home? Where do you mean?"
+
+"Why--where you live; where your mother lives."
+
+"My mother died a few months after I was born."
+
+"Oh! But even so, you live somewhere, don't you?"
+
+"I do; but they don't miss me there, if that's what you want to know."
+
+"I was only afraid," he said, apologetically, "that you were giving me too
+much of your time."
+
+"I've nothing else to do with it. I shall be only too glad if I can help
+you to escape."
+
+"Why? Why should you care about me?"
+
+"I don't," she said, simply; "at least, I don't know that I do."
+
+"Oh, then you're helping me just--on general principles?"
+
+"Quite so."
+
+"Well," he smiled, "mayn't I ask why, again?"
+
+"Because I don't like the law."
+
+"You mean that you don't like the law as a whole?--or--or this law in
+particular?"
+
+"I don't like any law. I don't like anything about it. But," she added,
+resorting to her usual method of escape, "we mustn't talk any more now.
+Some men passed here this morning, and they may be coming back. They've
+given up looking for you; they are convinced you're up in the lumber
+camps, but all the same we must be careful still."
+
+He had no further speech with her that day, and the next she remained at
+the cabin little more than an hour.
+
+"It's just as well for me not to excite curiosity," she explained to him
+before leaving; "and you needn't be uneasy now. They've stopped the hunt
+altogether. They say there's not a spot within a radius of ten miles of
+Greenport that they haven't searched. It would never occur to any one that
+you could be here. Every one knows me; and so the thought that I could be
+helping you would be the last in their minds."
+
+"And have you no remorse at betraying their confidence?"
+
+She shook her head. "Most of them," she declared, "are very well pleased
+to think you've got away; and even if they weren't I should never feel
+remorse for helping any one to evade the law."
+
+"You seem to have a great objection to the law."
+
+"Well, haven't you?"
+
+"Yes; but in my case it's comprehensible."
+
+"So it is in mine--if you only knew."
+
+"Perhaps," he said, looking at her steadily, "this is as good a time as
+any to assure you that the law has done me wrong."
+
+He waited for her to say something; but as she stroked Micmac's head in
+silence, he continued.
+
+"I never committed the crime of which they found me guilty."
+
+He waited again for some intimation of her confidence.
+
+"Their string of circumstantial evidence was plausible enough, I admit.
+The only weak point about it was that it wasn't true."
+
+Even through the obscurity of his refuge he could feel the suspension of
+expression in her bearing, and could imagine it bringing a kind of eclipse
+over her eyes.
+
+"He was very cruel to you--your uncle?--wasn't he?" she asked, at last.
+
+"He was very cantankerous; but that wouldn't be a reason for shooting him
+in his sleep--whatever I may have said when in a rage."
+
+"I should think it might be."
+
+He started. If it were not for the necessity of making no noise he would
+have laughed.
+
+"Are you so bloodthirsty--?" he began.
+
+"Oh no, I'm not; but I should think it is what a man would do. My father
+wouldn't have submitted to it. I know he killed one man; and he may have
+killed two or three."
+
+Ford whistled under his breath.
+
+"So that," he said, after a pause, "your objection to the law
+is--hereditary."
+
+"My objection to the law is because it is unjust. The world is full of
+injustice," she added, indignantly, "and the laws men live by create it."
+
+"And your aim is to defeat them?"
+
+"I can't talk any more now," she said, reverting to an explanatory tone of
+voice. "I must go. I've arranged everything for you for the day. If you
+are very quiet you can sit in the studio and read; but you mustn't look
+out at the window, or even draw back the curtain. If you hear a step
+outside, you must creep in here and shut the door. And you needn't be
+impatient; because I'm going to spend the day working out a plan for your
+escape."
+
+But when she appeared next morning she declined to give details of the
+plan she had in mind. She preferred to work it out alone, she said, and
+give him the outlines only when she had settled them. It chanced to be a
+day of drenching summer rain, and Ford, with a renewed effort to get some
+clew to her identity, expressed his surprise that she should have been
+allowed to venture out.
+
+"Oh, no one worries about what I do," she said, indifferently "I go about
+as I choose."
+
+"So much the better for me," he laughed. "That's how you came to be
+wandering on old Wayne's terrace, just in the nick of time. What stumps me
+is the promptness with which you thought of stowing me away."
+
+"It wasn't promptness, exactly. As a matter of fact, I had worked the
+whole thing out beforehand."
+
+His eyebrows went up incredulously. "For me?"
+
+"No, not for you; for anybody. Ever since my guardian allowed me to build
+the studio--last year--I've imagined how easy it would be for some--some
+hunted person to stay hidden here, almost indefinitely. I've tried to
+fancy it, when I've had nothing better to do."
+
+"You don't seem to have had anything better to do very often," he
+observed, glancing about the cabin.
+
+"If you mean that I haven't painted much, that's quite true. I thought I
+couldn't do without a studio--till I got one. But when I've come here, I'm
+afraid it's generally been to--to indulge in day-dreams."
+
+"Day-dreams of helping prisoners to escape. It wouldn't be every girl's
+fancy, but it's not for me to complain of that."
+
+"My father would have wanted me to do it," she declared, as if in
+self-justification. "A woman once helped him to get out of prison."
+
+"Good for her! Who was she?"
+
+Having asked the question lightly, in a boyish impulse to talk, he was
+surprised to see her show signs of embarrassment.
+
+"She was my mother," she said, after an interval in which she seemed to be
+making up her mind to give the information.
+
+In the manifest difficulty she had in speaking, Ford sprang to her aid.
+
+"That's like the old story of Gilbert à Becket--Thomas à Becket's father,
+you know."
+
+The historical reference was received in silence, as she bent over the
+small task she had in hand.
+
+"He married the woman who helped him out of prison," Ford went on, for her
+enlightenment.
+
+She raised her head and faced him.
+
+"It wasn't like the story of Gilbert à Becket," she said, quietly.
+
+It took some seconds of Ford's slow thinking to puzzle out the meaning of
+this. Even then he might have pondered in vain had it not been for the
+flush that gradually over-spread her features, and brought what he called
+the wild glint into her eyes. When he understood, he reddened in his own
+turn, making matters worse.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he stammered. "I never thought--"
+
+"You needn't beg my pardon," she interrupted, speaking with a catch in her
+breath. "I wanted you to know.... You've asked me so many questions that
+it seemed as if I was ashamed of my father and mother when I didn't
+answer.... I'm not ashamed of them.... I'd rather you knew.... Every one
+does--who knows me."
+
+Half unconsciously he glanced up at the framed sketches on the
+chimney-piece. Her eyes followed him, and she spoke instantly:
+
+"You're quite right. I meant that--for them."
+
+They were standing in the studio, into which she had allowed him to come
+from the stifling darkness of the inner room, on the ground that the rain
+protected them against intrusion from outside. During their conversation
+she had been placing the easel and arranging the work which formed her
+pretext for being there, while Micmac, stretched on the floor, with his
+head between his paws, kept a half-sleepy eye on both of them.
+
+"Your father was a Canadian, then?" he ventured to ask, as she seated
+herself with a palette in her hand.
+
+"He was a Virginian. My mother was the wife of a French-Canadian voyageur.
+I believe she had a strain of Indian blood. The voyageurs and their
+families generally have."
+
+Having recovered her self-possession, she made her statements in the
+matter-of-fact tone she used to hide embarrassment flicking a little color
+into the sketch before her as she spoke. Ford seated himself at a
+distance, gazing at her with a kind of fascination. Here, then, was the
+clew to that something untamed which persisted through all the effects of
+training and education, as a wild flavor will last in a carefully
+cultivated fruit. His curiosity about her was so intense that,
+notwithstanding the difficulty with which she stated her facts, it
+overcame his prompting to spare her.
+
+"And yet," he said, after a long pause, in which he seemed to be
+assimilating the information she had given him--"and yet I don't see how
+that explains _you_."
+
+"I suppose it doesn't--not any more than your situation explains you."
+
+"My situation explains me perfectly, because I'm the victim of a wrong."
+
+"Well, so am I--in another way. I'm made to suffer because I'm the
+daughter of my parents."
+
+"That's a rotten shame," he exclaimed, in boyish sympathy "It isn't your
+fault."
+
+"Of course it isn't," she smiled, wistfully. "And yet I'd rather suffer
+with the parents I have than be happy with any others."
+
+"I suppose that's natural," he admitted, doubtfully.
+
+"I wish I knew more about them," she went on, continuing to give light
+touches to the work before her, and now and then leaning back to get the
+effect. "I never understood why my father was in prison in Canada."
+
+"Perhaps it was when he killed the man," Ford suggested.
+
+"No; that was in Virginia--at least, the first one. His people didn't like
+it. That was the reason for his leaving home. He hated a settled life; and
+so he wandered away into the northwest of Canada. It was in the days when
+they first began to build the railways there--when there were almost no
+people except the trappers and the voyageurs. I was born on the very
+shores of Hudson Bay."
+
+"But you didn't stay there?"
+
+"No. I was only a very little child--not old enough to remember--when my
+father sent me down to Quebec, to the Ursuline nuns. He never saw me
+again. I lived with them till four years ago. I'm eighteen now."
+
+"Why didn't he send you to his people? Hadn't he sisters?--or anything
+like that."
+
+"He tried to, but they wouldn't have anything to do with me."
+
+It was clearly a relief to her to talk about herself. He guessed that she
+rarely had an opportunity of opening her heart to any one. Not till this
+morning had he seen her in the full light of day; and, though but an
+immature judge, he fancied her features had settled themselves into lines
+of reserve and pride from which in happier circumstances they might have
+been free. Her way of twisting her dark hair--which waved over the brows
+from a central parting--into the simplest kind of knot gave her an air of
+sedateness beyond her years. But what he noticed in her particularly was
+her eyes--not so much because they were wild, dark eyes, with the peculiar
+fleeing expression of startled forest things, as because of the pleading,
+apologetic look that comes into the eyes of forest things when they stand
+at bay. It was when--for seconds only--the pupils shone with a jet-like
+blaze that he caught what he called the non-Aryan effect; but that glow
+died out quickly, leaving something of the fugitive appeal which Hawthorne
+saw in the eyes of Beatrice Cenci.
+
+"He offered his sisters a great deal of money," she sighed, "but they
+wouldn't take me."
+
+"Oh? So he had money?"
+
+"He was one of the first Americans to make money in the Canadian
+northwest; but that was after my mother died. She died in the snow, on a
+journey--like that sketch above the fireplace. I've been told that it
+changed my father's life. He had been what they call wild before that--but
+he wasn't so any more. He grew very hard-working and serious. He was one
+of the pioneers of that country--one of the very first to see its
+possibilities. That was how he made his money; and when he died he left it
+to me. I believe it's a good deal."
+
+"Didn't you hate being in the convent?" he asked, suddenly "I should."
+
+"N-no; not exactly. I wasn't unhappy. The Sisters were kind to me. Some of
+them spoiled me. It wasn't until after my father died, and I began to
+realize--who I was, that I grew restless. I felt I should never be happy
+until I was among people of my own kind."
+
+"And how did you get there?"
+
+She smiled faintly to herself before answering.
+
+"I never did. There are no people of my kind."
+
+Embarrassed by the stress she seemed inclined to lay on this circumstance,
+he grasped at the first thought that might divert her from it.
+
+"So you live with a guardian! How do you like that?"
+
+"I should like it well enough if he did--that is, if his wife did. You
+see," she tried to explain, "she's very sweet and gentle, and all that,
+but she's devoted to the proprieties of life, and I seem to represent to
+her--its improprieties. I know it's a trial to her to keep me, and so, in
+a way, it's a trial to me to stay."
+
+"Why do you stay, then?"
+
+"For one reason, because I can't help myself. I have to do what the law
+tells me."
+
+"I see. The law again!"
+
+"Yes; the law again. But I've other reasons besides that."
+
+"Such as--?"
+
+"Well, I'm very fond of their little girl, for one thing. She's the
+greatest darling in the world, and the only creature, except my dog, that
+loves me."
+
+"What's her name?"
+
+The question drove her to painting with closer attention to her work. Ford
+followed something of the progress of her thought by watching the just
+perceptible contraction of her brows into a little frown, and the setting
+of her lips into a curve of determination. They were handsome lips, mobile
+and sensitive--lips that might easily have been disdainful had not the
+inner spirit softened them with a tremor--or it might have been a
+light--of gentleness.
+
+"It isn't worth while to tell you that," she said, after long reflection.
+"It will be safer for you in the end not to know any of our names at all."
+
+"Still--if I escape--I should like to know them."
+
+"If you escape, you may be able to find out."
+
+"Oh, well," he said, with assumed indifference, "since you don't want to
+tell me--"
+
+Going on with her painting, she allowed the subject to drop; but to him
+the opportunity for conversation was too rare a thing to neglect. Not only
+was his youthful impulse toward social self-expression normally strong,
+but his pleasure in talking to a lady--a girl--was undeniable. Sometimes
+in his moments of solitary meditation he said to himself that she was "not
+his type of girl"; but the fact that he had been deprived of feminine
+society for nearly three years made him ready to fall in love with any
+one. If he did not precisely fall in love with this girl, it was only
+because the situation precluded sentiment; and yet it was pleasant to sit
+and watch her paint, and even torment her with his questions.
+
+"So the little girl is one reason for your staying here. What's another?"
+
+She betrayed her own taste for social communion by the readiness with
+which she answered him--
+
+"I don't know that I ought to tell you that; and yet I might as well. It's
+just this: they're not very well off--so I can help. Naturally I like
+that."
+
+"You can help by footing the bills. That's all very fine if you enjoy it,
+but everybody wouldn't."
+
+"They would if they were in my position," she insisted. "When you can help
+in any way it gives you a sense of being of use to some one. I'd rather
+that people needed me, even if they didn't want me, than that they
+shouldn't need me at all."
+
+"They need your money," he declared, with a young man's outspokenness.
+"That's what."
+
+"But that's something, isn't it? When you've no place in the world you're
+glad enough to get one, even if you have to buy it. My guardian and his
+wife mayn't care much to have me, but it's some satisfaction to know that
+they'd get along much worse if I weren't here."
+
+"So should I," he laughed. "What I'm to do when I'm turned adrift without
+you, Heaven only knows. It's curious--the effect imprisonment has on you.
+It takes away your self-reliance. It gives you a helpless feeling, like a
+baby. You want to be free--and yet you're almost afraid of the open air."
+
+He was so much at home with her now that, sitting carelessly astride of
+his chair, with his arms folded on the back, he felt a fraternal element
+in their mutual relation. She bent more closely over her work, and spoke
+without looking up.
+
+"Oh, you'll get along all right. You're that sort."
+
+"That's easy to say."
+
+"You may find it easy to do." Her next words, uttered while she continued
+to flick color into her sketch, caused him to jump with astonishment. "I'd
+go to the Argentine."
+
+"Why not say the moon?"
+
+"For one reason, because the moon is inaccessible."
+
+"So is the Argentine--for me."
+
+"Oh no, it isn't. Other people have reached it."
+
+"Yes: but they weren't in my fix."
+
+"Some of them were probably in worse."
+
+There was a pause, during which she seemed absorbed in her work, while
+Ford sat meditatively whistling under his breath.
+
+"What put the Argentine into your head?" he asked, at last.
+
+"Because I happen to know a good deal about it. Everybody says it's the
+country of new opportunities. I know people who've lived there. The little
+girl I was speaking of just now--whom I'm so fond of--was born there. Her
+father is dead since then, and her mother is married again."
+
+He continued to meditate, emitting the same tuneless, abstracted sound,
+just above his breath.
+
+"I know the name of an American firm out there," she went on. "It's
+Stephens and Jarrott. It's a very good firm to work for. I've often heard
+that. And Mr. Jarrott has helped ever so many--stranded people."
+
+"I should be just his sort, then."
+
+His laugh, as he sprang to his feet, seemed to dismiss an impossible
+subject; and yet as he lay on his couch that evening in the lampless
+darkness the name of Stephens and Jarrott obtruded itself into his visions
+of this girl, who stood between him and peril because she "disliked the
+law," He wondered how far it was dislike, and how far jealous pain. In
+her eagerness to buy the domestic place she had not inherited she reminded
+him of something he had read--or heard--of the wild olive being grafted
+into the olive of the orchard. Well, that would come in the natural course
+of events. Some fine fellow, worthy to be her mate, would see to it. He
+was not without a pleasant belief that in happier circumstances he himself
+might have had the qualifications for the task. He wondered again what her
+name was. He ran through the catalogue of the names he himself would have
+chosen for a heroine--Gladys, Ethel, Mildred Millicent!--none of them
+seemed to suit her. He tried again. Margaret, Beatrice, Lucy, Joan! Joan
+possibly--or he said to himself, in the last inconsequential thoughts as
+he fell asleep, it might be--the Wild Olive.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+
+As the days passed, one much like another, and the retreat seemed more and
+more secure, it was natural that Ford's thoughts should dwell less on his
+own danger and more on the girl who filled his immediate horizon. The care
+with which she foresaw his wants, the ingenuity with which she met them,
+the dignity and simplicity with which she carried herself through
+incidents that to a less delicate tact must have been difficult, would
+have excited his admiration in any case, even if the namelessness which
+helped to make her an impersonal element in the episode had not stirred
+his imagination. He was obliged to remind himself often that she was "not
+his type of girl," in order to confine his heart within the limits which
+the situation imposed.
+
+It worried him, therefore, it even hurt him, that in spite of all the
+openings he had given her, she had never offered him a sign of her belief
+in his innocence. For this reason he took the first occasion when she was
+seated at her easel, with the dog lying at her feet, to lay his case
+before her.
+
+He told her of his overindulged boyhood, as the only child of a wealthy
+New York merchant. He outlined his profitless years at the university,
+where a too free use of money had hindered work. He narrated the disasters
+that had left him at the age of two-and-twenty to begin life for
+himself--his father's bankruptcy, followed by the death of both his
+parents within the year. He had been eager to start in at the foot of the
+ladder and work his way upward, when the proposal was made which proved
+fatal.
+
+Old Chris Ford, his great-uncle, known throughout the Adirondack region as
+"the lumber king," had offered to take him, train him to the lumber
+business, and make him his heir. An eccentric, childless widower, commonly
+believed to have broken his wife's heart by sheer bitterness of tongue,
+old Chris Ford was hated, feared, and flattered by the relatives and
+time-servers who hoped ultimately to profit by his favor. Norrie Ford
+neither flattered nor feared his powerful kinsman, but he hated him with
+the best. His own instincts were city born and bred. He was conscious,
+too, of that aptitude with which the typical New-Yorker is supposed to
+come into being--the capacity to make money. He would have preferred to
+make it on his own ground and in his own way; and had it not been for the
+counsels of those who wished him well, he would have replied to his
+great-uncle's offer with a courteous "No." Wiser heads than his pointed
+out the folly of such a course as that; and so, reluctantly, he entered on
+his apprenticeship.
+
+In the two years that followed he could not see what purpose he served
+other than that of a mark for the old man's poisoned wit. He was taught
+nothing, and paid nothing, and given nothing to do. He slept under his
+great-uncle's roof and ate at his table, but the sharp tongue made the bed
+hard to lie on and the bread difficult to swallow down. Idleness
+reawakened the propensity to vicious habits which he thought he had
+outlived, while the rough society of the lumber camps, in which he sought
+to relieve the tedium of time, extended him the welcome which Falstaff
+and his comrades gave Prince Hal.
+
+The revolt of his self-respect was on the eve of bringing this phase of
+his existence to an end when the low farce turned into tragedy. Old Chris
+Ford was found dead in his bed--shot in his sleep. On the premises there
+had been but three persons, one of whom must have committed the
+crime--Norrie Ford, and Jacob and Amalia Gramm. Jacob and Amalia Gramm had
+been the old man's servants for thirty years. Their faithfulness put them
+beyond suspicion. The possibility of their guilt, having been considered,
+was dismissed with few formalities. The conviction of Norrie Ford became
+easy after that--the more respectable people of the neighborhood being
+agreed that from the evidence presented no other deduction could be drawn.
+The very fact that the old man, by his provocation of the lad, so
+thoroughly deserved his fate made the manner in which he met with it the
+clearer. Even Norrie Ford's friends, the hunters and the lumbermen,
+admitted as much as that, though they were determined that he should never
+suffer for so meritorious an act as long as they could give him a fighting
+chance for freedom.
+
+The girl listened to Ford's narrative with some degree of interest, though
+it contained nothing new to her. She could not have lived at Greenport
+during the period of his trial without being familiar with it all. But
+when he came to explanations in his own defence she followed listlessly.
+Though she leaned back in her chair, and courteously stopped painting,
+while he talked so earnestly, the light in her eyes faded to a lustreless
+gleam, like that of the black pearl. His perception that her thoughts were
+wandering gave him a queer sensation of speaking into a medium in which
+his voice could not carry, cutting short his arguments, and bringing him
+to his conclusion more hurriedly than he had intended.
+
+"I wanted you to know I didn't do it," he finished, in a tone which begged
+for some expression of her belief, "because you've done so much to help
+me."
+
+"Oh, but I should have helped you just the same, whether you had done it
+or not."
+
+"But I suppose it makes some difference to you," he cried, impatiently,
+"to know that I didn't."
+
+"I suppose it would," she admitted, slowly, "if I thought much about it."
+
+"Well, won't you think?" he pleaded---"just to oblige me."
+
+"Perhaps I will, when you're gone; but at present I have to give my mind
+to getting you away. It was to talk about that that I came this morning."
+
+Had she wanted to slip out of giving an opinion on the subject of his
+guilt, she could not have found a better exit. The means of his ultimate
+escape engrossed him even more than the theme of his innocence. When she
+spoke again all his faculties were concentrated into one keen point of
+attention.
+
+"I think the time has come for you to--go."
+
+If her voice trembled on the last word, he did not notice it. The pose of
+his body, the lines of his face, the glint of his gray eyes, were alive
+with interrogation.
+
+"Go?" he asked, just audibly. "When?"
+
+"To-morrow."
+
+"How?"
+
+"I'll tell you that then."
+
+"Why can't you tell me now?"
+
+"I could if I was sure you wouldn't raise objections, but I know you
+will."
+
+"Then there are objections to be raised?"
+
+"There are objections to everything. There's no plan of escape that won't
+expose you to a good many risks. I'd rather you didn't see them in
+advance."
+
+"But isn't it well to be prepared beforehand?"
+
+"You'll have plenty of time for preparation--after you've started. If that
+seems mysterious to you now, you'll know what I mean by it when I come
+to-morrow. I shall be here in the afternoon at six."
+
+With this information Ford was obliged to be content, spending a sleepless
+night and an impatient day, waiting for the time appointed.
+
+She came punctually. For the first time she was not followed by her dog.
+The only change in her appearance he could see was a short skirt of rough
+material instead of her usual linen or muslin.
+
+"Are we going through the woods?" he asked.
+
+"Not far. I shall take you by the trail that led to this spot before I
+built the cabin and made the path." As she spoke she surveyed him. "You'll
+do," she smiled at last. "In those flannels, and with your beard, no one
+would know you for the Norrie Ford of three weeks ago."
+
+It was easy for him to ascribe the glow in her eyes and the quiver in her
+voice to the excitement of the moment; for he could see that she had the
+spirit of adventure. Perhaps it was to conceal some embarrassment under
+his regard that she spoke again, hurriedly.
+
+"We've no time to lose. You needn't take anything from here. We'd better
+start."
+
+He followed her over the threshold, and as she turned to lock the cabin
+he had time to throw a glance of farewell over the familiar hills, now
+transmuted into a haze of amethyst under the westering sun. A second later
+he heard her quick "Come on!" as she struck into the barely perceptible
+path that led upward, around the shoulder of the mountain.
+
+It was a stiff bit of climbing, but she sped along with the dryad-like
+ease she had displayed on the night when she led him to the cabin. Beneath
+the primeval growth of ash and pine there was an underbrush so dense that
+no one but a creature gifted with the inherited instinct of the woods
+could have found the invisible, sinuous line alone possible to the feet.
+But it was there, and she traced it--never pausing never speaking, and
+only looking back from time to time to assure herself that he was in
+sight, until they reached the top of the dome-shaped hill.
+
+They came out suddenly on a rocky terrace, beneath which, a mile below,
+Champlain was spread out in great part of its length, from the dim bluff
+of Crown Point to the far-away, cloud-like mountains of Canada.
+
+"You can sit down a minute here," she said, as he came up.
+
+They found seats among the low scattered bowlders, but neither spoke. It
+was a moment at which to understand the jewelled imagery of the Seer of
+the Apocalypse. Jasper, jacinth, chalcedony, emerald, chrysoprasus, were
+suggested by the still bosom of the lake, towered round by
+light-reflecting mountains. The triple tier of the Vermont shore was
+bottle-green at its base, indigo in the middle height, while its summit
+was a pale undulation of evanescent blue against the jade and topaz of the
+twilight.
+
+"The steamer _Empress of Erin_," the girl said, with what seemed like
+abruptness, "will sail from Montreal on the twenty-eighth, and from Quebec
+on the twenty-ninth. From Rimouski, at the mouth of the river St.
+Lawrence, she will sail on the thirtieth, to touch nowhere else till she
+reaches Ireland. You will take her at Rimouski."
+
+There was a silence, during which he tried to absorb this startling
+information.
+
+"And from here to Rimouski?" he asked, at last.
+
+"From here to Rimouski," she replied, with a gesture toward the lake,
+"your way is there."
+
+There was another silence, while his eyes travelled the long,
+rainbow-colored lake, up to the faint line of mountains where it faded
+into a mist of bluish-green and gold.
+
+"I see the way," he said then, "but I don't see the means of taking it."
+
+"You'll find that in good time. In the mean while you'd better take this."
+From her jacket she drew a paper, which she passed to him. "That's your
+ticket. You'll see," she laughed, apologetically, "that I've taken for you
+what they call a suite, and I've done it for this reason. They're keeping
+a lookout for you on every tramp ship from New York, on every cattle-ship
+from Boston, and on every grain-ship from Montreal; but they're not
+looking for you in the most expensive cabins of the most expensive liners.
+They know you've no money; and if you get out of the country at all, they
+expect it will be as a stoker or a stow-away They'll never think you're
+driving in cabs and staying at the best hotels."
+
+"But I shan't be," he said, simply.
+
+"Oh yes, you will. You'll need money, of course; and I've brought it.
+You'll need a good deal; so I've brought plenty."
+
+She drew out a pocketbook and held it toward him. He looked at it,
+reddening, but made no attempt to take it.
+
+"I can't--I can't--go as far as that," he stammered, hoarsely.
+
+"You mean," she returned, quickly, "that you hesitate to take money from a
+woman. I thought you might. But it isn't from a woman; it's from a man.
+It's from my father. He would have liked to do it. He would have wanted me
+to do it. They keep putting it in the bank for me--just to spend--but I
+never need it. What can I do with money in a place like Greenport? Here,
+take it," she urged, thrusting it into his hands. "You know very well it
+isn't a matter of choice, but of life or death."
+
+With her own fingers she clasped his upon it, drawing back and coloring at
+her boldness. For the first time in their weeks of intercourse she saw in
+him a touch of emotion The phlegmatism by which he had hitherto concealed
+his inward suffering seemed suddenly to desert him. He looked at her with
+lips quivering, while his eyes filled. His weakness only nerved her to be
+stronger, sending her for refuge back into the commonplace.
+
+"They'll expect you at Rimouski, because your luggage will already have
+gone on board at Montreal. Yes," she continued, in reply to his
+astonishment, "I've forwarded all the trunks and boxes that came to me
+from my father. I told my guardian I was sending them to be stored--and I
+am, for you'll store them for me in London when you've done with them.
+Here are the keys."
+
+He made no attempt to refuse them, and she hurried on.
+
+"I sent the trunks for two reasons; first, because there might be things
+in them you could use till you get something better; and then I wanted to
+prevent suspicion arising from your sailing without luggage. Every little
+thing of that sort counts. The trunks have 'H.S.' painted in white letters
+on them; so that you'll have no difficulty in knowing them at sight. I've
+put a name with the same initials on the ticket. You'd better use it till
+you feel it safe to take your own again."
+
+"What name?" he asked, with eager curiosity, beginning to take the ticket
+out of its envelope.
+
+"Never mind now," she said, quickly. "It's just a name--any name. You can
+look at it afterward. We'd better go on."
+
+She made as though she would move, but he detained her.
+
+"Wait a minute. So your name begins with S!"
+
+"Like a good many others," she smiled.
+
+"Then tell me what it is. Don't let me go away without knowing it. You
+can't think what it means to me."
+
+"I should think you'd see what it means to me."
+
+"I don't. What harm can it do you?"
+
+"If you don't see, I'm afraid I can't explain. To be nameless is--- how
+shall I say it?--a sort of protection to me. In helping you, and taking
+care of you, I've done what almost any really nice girl would have shrunk
+from. There are plenty of people who would say is was wrong. And in a
+way--a way I could never make you understand, unless you understand
+already--it's a relief to me that you don't know who I am. And even that
+isn't everything."
+
+"Well--what else?"
+
+"When this little episode is over"--her voice trembled, and it was not
+without some blinking of the eyes that she was able to begin again--"when
+this little episode is over, it will be better for us both--for you as
+well as for me--to know as little about it as possible. The danger isn't
+past by any means; but it's a kind of danger in which ignorance can be
+made to look a good deal like innocence. I shan't know anything about you
+after you've gone, and you know nothing whatever about me."
+
+"That's what I complain of. Suppose I pull the thing off, and make a
+success of myself somewhere else, how should I communicate with you
+again?"
+
+"Why should you communicate with me at all?"
+
+"To pay you back your money, for one thing--"
+
+"Oh, that doesn't matter."
+
+"Perhaps it doesn't from your point of view; but it does from mine. But it
+wouldn't be my only reason in any case."
+
+Something in his voice and in his eyes warned her to rise and interrupt
+him.
+
+"I'm afraid we haven't time to talk about it now," she said, hurriedly.
+"We really must be going on."
+
+"I'm not going to talk about it now," he declared, rising in his turn. "I
+said it would be a reason for my wanting to communicate with you again. I
+shall want to tell you something then; though perhaps by that time you
+won't want to hear it."
+
+"Hadn't we better wait and see?"
+
+"That's what I shall have to do; but how can I come back to you at all if
+I don't know who you are?"
+
+"I shall have to leave that to your ingenuity," she laughed, with an
+attempt to treat the matter lightly. "In the mean time we must hurry on.
+It's absolutely necessary that you should set out by sunset."
+
+She glided into the invisible trail running down the lakeside slope of the
+mountain, so that he was obliged to follow her. As they had climbed up,
+so they descended--the girl steadily and silently in advance. The region
+was dotted with farms; but she kept to the shelter of the woodland, and
+before he expected it they found themselves at the water's edge. A canoe
+drawn up in a cove gave him the first clear hint of her intentions.
+
+It was a pretty little cove, enclosed by two tiny headlands, forming a
+miniature landlocked bay, hidden from view of the lake beyond. Trees
+leaned over it and into it, while the canoe rested on a yard-long beach of
+sand.
+
+"I see," he remarked, after she had allowed him to take his own
+observations. "You want me to go over to Burlington and catch a train to
+Montreal."
+
+She shook her head, smiling, as he thought, rather tremulously.
+
+"I'm afraid I've planned a much longer journey for you. Come and see the
+preparations I've made." They stepped to the side of the canoe, so as to
+look down into it. "That," she pursued, pointing to a small suit-case
+forward of the middle thwart, "will enable you to look like an ordinary
+traveller after you've landed. And that," she added, indicating a package
+in the stern, "contains nothing more nor less than sandwiches. Those are
+bottles of mineral water. The small objects are a corkscrew, a glass, a
+railway timetable a cheap compass, and a cheaper watch. In addition you'll
+find a map of the lake, which you can consult tomorrow morning, after
+you've paddled all night through the part with which you're most
+familiar."
+
+"Where am I going?" he asked, huskily, avoiding her eyes. The nonchalance
+of her tone had not deceived him, and he thought it well not to let their
+glances meet.
+
+"You'll keep to the middle of the lake and go on steadily. You'll have
+all Champlain to yourself to-night, and in daylight there's no reason why
+you shouldn't pass for an ordinary sportsman. All the same, you had better
+rest by day, and go on again in the evening. You'll find lots of little
+secluded coves where you can pull up the canoe and be quite undisturbed.
+I'd do that, if I were you."
+
+He nodded to show that he understood her.
+
+"When you look at the map," she went on, "you'll find that I've traced a
+route for you, after you get above Plattsville. You'll see that it will
+take you past the little French-Canadian village of Deux Etoiles. You
+can't mistake it, because there's a lighthouse, with a revolving light, on
+a rock, just off the shore. You'll be in Canada then. You'd better time
+yourself to go by about nightfall."
+
+He nodded his agreement with her again, and she continued.
+
+"About a mile above the lighthouse, and close in by the eastern shore,
+just where the lake becomes very narrow, there are two little islands
+lying close together. You'll take them as a landmark, because immediately
+opposite them, on the mainland, there's a stretch of forest running for a
+good many miles. There you can land finally. You must drag the canoe right
+up into the wood, and hide it as well as you can. It's my own canoe, so
+that it can lie there till it drops to pieces. Is all that quite clear to
+you?"
+
+Once more he nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Again the sight of his
+emotion braced her to make her tone more matter-of-fact than ever.
+
+"Now, then," she went on, "if you consult the map you'll see that an old
+wood-road runs through the forest, and comes out at the station of Saint
+Jean du Clou Noir. There you can get a train to Quebec.... The road begins
+nearly opposite the two little islands I spoke of.... I don't think
+you'll have any difficulty in finding it.... It's about seven miles to the
+station.... You could walk that easily enough through the night.... I've
+marked a very good train on the time-table--a train that stops at Saint
+Jean du Clou Noir at seven thirty-five ..."
+
+A choking sensation warned her to stop, but she retained the power to
+smile. The sun had set, and the slow northern night was beginning to close
+in. Across the lake the mountains of Vermont were receding into deep
+purple uniformity, while over the crimson of the west a veil of filmy
+black was falling, as though dropped in mid-flight by the angel of the
+dark. Here and there through the dead-turquoise green of the sky one could
+detect the pale glimmer of a star.
+
+"You must go now," she whispered. He began to move the canoe into the
+water.
+
+"I haven't thanked you," he began, unsteadily, holding the canoe by the
+bow, "because you wouldn't let me. As a matter of fact, I don't know how
+to do it--adequately. But if I live at all, my life will belong to you.
+That's all I can say. My life will be a thing for you to dispose of. If
+you ever have need of it--"
+
+"I shan't have," she said, hastily, "but I'll remember what you say."
+
+"Thanks; that's all I ask. For the present I can only hope for the chance
+of making my promise good."
+
+She said nothing in reply, and after a minute's silence he entered the
+canoe. She steadied it herself to allow him to step in. It was not till he
+had done so and had knelt down with the paddle in his hand that, moved by
+a sudden impulse she leaned to him and kissed him. Then, releasing the
+light craft, she allowed it to glide out like a swan on the tiny bay. In
+three strokes of the paddle it had passed between the low, enclosing
+headlands and was out of sight. When she summoned up strength to creep to
+an eminence commanding the lake, it was already little more than a speck,
+moving rapidly northward, over the opal-tinted waters.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+
+On finding himself alone, and relatively free, Ford's first sensation was
+one of insecurity. Having lived for more than a year under orders and
+observation, he had lost for the moment some of his natural confidence in
+his own initiative. Though he struck resolutely up the lake he was aware
+of an inner bewilderment, bordering on physical discomfort, at being his
+own master. For the first half-hour he paddled mechanically, his
+consciousness benumbed by the overwhelming strangeness. As far as he was
+able to formulate his thought at all he felt himself to be in process of a
+new birth, into a new phase of existence. In the darkening of the sky
+above him and of the lake around there came upon him something of the
+mental obscurity that might mark the passage of a transmigrating soul.
+After the subdued excitement of the past weeks, and especially of the past
+hour, the very regularity of his movements now lulled him into a passivity
+only quickened by vague fears. The noiseless leaping forward of the canoe
+beneath him heightened his sense of breaking with the past and hastening
+onward into another life. In that life he would be a new creature, free to
+be a law unto himself.
+
+A new creature! A law unto himself! The ideas were subconscious, and yet
+he found the words framing themselves on his lips. He repeated them
+mentally with some satisfaction as a cluster of lights on his left told
+him he was passing Greenport. Other lights, on a hill, above the town and
+away from it, were probably those of Judge Wayne's villa. He looked at
+them curiously, with an odd sense of detachment, of remoteness, as from
+things belonging to a time with which he had nothing more to do. That was
+over and done with.
+
+It was not until a steamer crossed his bows, not more than a hundred yards
+in front of him, that he began to appreciate his safety. Under the
+protection of the dark, and in the wide loneliness of the waters, he was
+as lost to human sight as a bird in the upper air. The steamer--zigzagging
+down the lake, touching at little ports now on the west bank and now on
+the east--had shot out unexpectedly from behind a point, her double row of
+lights casting a halo in which his canoe must have been visible on the
+waves; and yet she had passed by and taken no note of him. For a second
+such good-fortune had seemed to his nervous imagination beyond the range
+of hope. He stopped paddling he almost stopped breathing, allowing the
+canoe to rock gently on the tide. The steamer puffed and pulsated, beating
+her way directly athwart his course. The throbbing of her engines seemed
+scarcely louder than that of his own heart. He could see people moving on
+the deck, who in their turn must have been able to see him. And yet the
+boat went on, ignoring him, in tacit acknowledgment of his right to the
+lake, of his right to the world.
+
+His sigh of relief became almost a laugh as he began again to paddle
+forward. The incident was like a first victory, an assurance of victories
+to come. The sense of insecurity with whith he had started out gave place,
+minute by minute, to the confidence in himself which was part of his
+normal state of mind. Other small happenings confirmed his self-reliance.
+Once a pleasure party in a rowboat passed so near him that he could hear
+the splash of their oars and the sound of their voices. There was
+something almost miraculous to him in being so close to the commonplace of
+human fellowship. He had the feeling of pleasant inward recognition that
+comes from hearing one's mother-tongue in a foreign land. He stopped
+paddling again, just to catch meaningless fragments of their talk, until
+they floated away into silence and darkness. He would have been sorry to
+have them pass out of ear-shot, were it not for his satisfaction in being
+able to go his way unheeded.
+
+On another occasion he found himself within speaking distance of one of
+the numerous small lakeside hotels. Lights flared from open doors and
+windows, while from the veranda, the garden, and the little pier came
+peals of laughter, or screams and shouts of young people at rough play.
+Now and then he could catch the tones of some youth's teasing, and the
+shrill, pretended irritation of a girl's retort. The noisy cheerfulness of
+it all reached his ears with the reminiscent tenderness of music heard in
+childhood. It represented the kind of life he himself had loved. Before
+the waking nightmare of his troubles began he had been of the unexacting
+type of American lad who counts it a "good time" to sit in summer evenings
+on "porches" or "stoops" or "piazzas," joking with "the boys," flirting
+with "the girls," and chattering on all subjects from the silly to the
+serious, from the local to the sublime. He was of the friendly,
+neighborly, noisy, demonstrative spirit characteristic of his age and
+class. He could have entered into this circle of strangers--strangers for
+the most part, in all probability, to one another--and in ten minutes'
+time been one of them. Their screams, their twang, their slang, their
+gossip, their jolly banter, and their gay ineptitude would have been to
+him like a welcome home. But he was Norrie Ford, known by name and
+misfortune to every one of them. The boys and girls on the pier, the
+elderly women in the rocking-chairs, even the waitresses who, in
+high-heeled shoes and elaborate coiffures, ministered disdainfully to the
+guests in the bare-floored dining-room, had discussed his life, his trial,
+his sentence, his escape, and formed their opinions upon him. Were it
+possible for them to know now that he was lurking out there in the dark,
+watching their silhouettes and listening to their voices, there would be
+such a hue and cry as the lake had not heard since the Indians sighted
+Champlain on its banks.
+
+It was this reflection that first of all stirred the current of his deep,
+slow resentment. During the fifteen months since his arrest he had been
+either too busy, or too anxious, or too sorely puzzled at finding himself
+in so odd a position, to have leisure for positive anger. At the worst of
+times he had never lost the belief that the world, or that portion of the
+world which concerned itself with him, would come to recognize the fact
+that it was making a mistake. He had taken his imprisonment and his trial
+more or less as exciting adventures. Even the words of his sentence lost
+most of their awfulness in his inner conviction that they were empty
+sounds. Of the confused happenings on the night of his escape his clearest
+memory was that he had been hungry, while he thought of the weeks spent in
+the cabin as a "picnic." Just as good spirits had seldom failed him, so
+patience had rarely deserted him. Such ups and downs of emotion as he had
+experienced resulted in the long run in an increase of optimism. In the
+back of his slow mind he kept the expectation, almost the intention, of
+giving his anger play--some time; but only when his rights should have
+been restored to him.
+
+But he felt it coming on him now, before he was prepared for it. It was
+taking him unawares, and without due cause, roused by the chance
+perception that he was cut off from rightful, natural companionship.
+Nothing as yet had brought home to him the meaning of his situation like
+the talk and laughter of these lads and girls, who suddenly became to him
+what Lazarus in Abraham's bosom was to Dives in his torment.
+
+A few dips of the paddle took him out of sight and sound of the hotel; but
+the dull, indignant passion remained in his heart, finding outward vent in
+the violence with which he sent the canoe bounding northward beneath the
+starlight. For the moment it was a blind, objectless passion, directed
+against nothing and no one in particular. He was not skilled in the
+analysis of feeling, or in tracing effect to cause. For an hour or two his
+wrath was the rage of the infuriated animal roaring out its pain,
+regardless of the hand that has inflicted it. Other rowing-parties came
+within hearing distance, but he paid them no attention; lake steamers hove
+in sight, but he had learned how to avoid them; little towns, dotted at
+intervals of a few miles apart, lit up the banks with the lights of homes,
+but their shining domesticity seemed to mock him. The birth of a new
+creature was a painful process; and yet, through all his confused
+sensations and obscure elemental suffering, he kept the conviction that a
+new creature was somehow claiming its right to live.
+
+Peace of mind came to him gradually, as the little towns put out their
+lights, and the lake steamers laid up in tiny ports, and the
+rowing-parties went home to bed. In the smooth, dark level of the lake and
+in the stars there was a soothing quality to which he responded before he
+was aware of doing so. The spacious solitude of the summer night brought
+with it a large calmness of outlook, in which his spirit took a measure of
+comfort. There was a certain bodily pleasure, too, in the regular monotony
+of paddling, while his mental faculties were kept alert by the necessity
+of finding points by which to steer, and fixing his attention upon them.
+So, by degrees, his limited reasoning powers found themselves at work,
+fumbling, with the helplessness of a man whose strong points are physical
+activity and concentration of purpose, for some light on the wild course
+on which he was embarked.
+
+Perhaps his first reflection that had the nature of a conclusion or a
+deduction was on the subject of "old Wayne." Up to the present he had
+regarded him with special ill will, owing to the fact that Wayne, while
+inclining to a belief of his innocence, had nevertheless lent himself to
+the full working of the law. It came to Ford now in the light of a
+discovery that, after all, it was not Wayne's fault. Wayne was in the grip
+of forces that deprived him to a large extent of the power of voluntary
+action. He could scarcely be blamed if he fulfilled the duties he was
+appointed to perform The real responsibility was elsewhere. With whom did
+it lie? For a primitive mind like Ford's the question was not an easy one
+to answer.
+
+For a time he was inclined to call to account the lawyers who had pleaded
+for the State. Had it not been for their arguments he would have been
+acquitted. With an ingenuity he had never supposed to exist they had
+analyzed his career--especially the two years of it spent with Uncle
+Chris--and showed how it led up to the crime as to an inevitable
+consequence. They seemed familiar with everything he had ever done, while
+they were able to prove beyond cavil that certain of his acts were
+inspired by sinister motives which he himself knew to have sprung from
+dissipation at the worst. It was astonishing how plausible their story
+was; and he admitted that if anybody else had been accused, he himself
+would probably have been convinced by it. Certainly, then, the lawyers
+must have been to blame--that is, unless they were only carrying out what
+others had hired them to do.
+
+That qualifying phrase started a new train of thought. Mechanically, dip
+by dip, swaying gently with each stroke as to a kind of rhythm, he drove
+the canoe onward, while he pondered it. It was easy to meditate out here,
+on the wide, empty lake, for no sound broke the midnight stillness but the
+soft swish of the paddle and the skimming of the broad keel along the
+water. It was not by any orderly system of analysis, or synthesis, or
+syllogism, that Ford, as the hours went by, came at last to his final
+conclusion; and yet he reached it with conviction. By a process of
+elimination he absolved judge, jury, legal profession, and local public
+from the greater condemnation. Each had contributed to the error that made
+him an outlaw, but no one contributor was the whole of the great force
+responsible. That force, which had set its component parts to work, and
+plied them till the worst they could do was done, was the body which they
+called Organized Society. To Ford, Organized Society was a new expression.
+He could not remember ever to have heard it till it was used in court.
+There it had been on everybody's lips. Far more than old Chris Ford
+himself it was made to figure as the injured party. Though there was
+little sympathy for the victim in his own person, Organized Society seemed
+to have received in his death a blow that called for the utmost avenging.
+Organized Society was plaintiff in the case, as well as police, jury,
+judge, and public. The single human creature who could not apparently gain
+footing within its fold was Norrie Ford himself. Organized Society had
+cast him out.
+
+He had been told that before, and yet the actual fact had never come home
+to him till now. In prison, in court, in the cabin in the woods, there had
+always been some human hand within reach of his own, some human tie, even
+though it was a chain. However ignoble, there had been a place for him.
+But out here on the great vacant lake there was an isolation that gave
+reality to his expulsion. The last man left on earth would not feel more
+utterly alone.
+
+For the first time since the night of his escape there came back to him
+that vague feeling of deserting something he might have defended, that
+almost physical sensation of regret at not having stood his ground and
+fought till he fell. He began to understand now what it meant. Dip,
+splash, dip, splash, his paddle stirred the dimly shining water, breaking
+into tiny whirlpools the tremulous reflection of the stars. Not for an
+instant did he relax his stroke, though the regret took more definitive
+shape behind him. Convicted and sentenced, he was still part of the life
+of men, just as a man whom others are trying to hurl from a tower is _on_
+the tower till he has fallen. He himself had not fallen; he had jumped
+off, while there was still a chance of keeping his foothold.
+
+It required an hour or two of outward rhythmic movement and confused
+inward feeling to get him ready for his next mental step. He had jumped
+off the tower; true; but he was alive and well, with no bones broken. What
+should he do now? Should he try to tear the tower down? The attempt would
+not be so very ludicrous, seeing he should only have to join
+those--socialists, anarchists, faddists--already at the work. But he
+admired the tower, and preferred to see is stand. If he did anything at
+all, it would be to try to creep back into it.
+
+The reflection gave still another turn to his thoughts. He was passing
+Burlington by this time--the electric lamps throwing broad bands of light
+along the deserted, up-hill streets, between the sleeping houses. It was
+the first city he had seen since leaving New York to begin his useless
+career in the mountains. The sight moved him with an odd curiosity, not
+free from a homesick longing for normal, simple ways of life. He kept the
+canoe at a standstill, looking hungrily up the empty thoroughfares, as a
+poor ghost may gaze at familiar scenes while those it has loved are
+dreaming. By-and-by the city seemed to stir in its sleep. Along the
+waterside he could hear the clatter of some belated or too early wayfarer;
+a weird, intermittent creaking told him that the milk-cart of provincial
+towns was on its beat; from a distant freight-train came the long,
+melancholy wail that locomotives give at night; and then drowsily, but
+with the promptness of one conscientious in his duty, a cock crew. Ford
+knew that somewhere, unseen as yet by him, the dawn was coming, and--again
+like a wandering ghost--sped on.
+
+But he had been looking on the tower which the children of men had
+builded, and had recognized his desire to clamber up into it again. He was
+not without the perception that a more fiery temperament than his
+own--perhaps a nobler one--would have cursed the race that had done him
+wrong, and sought to injure it or shun it. Misty recollections of
+proud-hearted men who had taken this stand came back to him.
+
+"I suppose I ought to do the same," he muttered to himself humbly; "but
+what would be the use when I couldn't keep it up?"
+
+Understanding himself thus well, his purpose became clearer. Like the ant
+or the beaver that has seen its fabric destroyed, he must set patiently to
+work to reconstruct it. He suspected a poor-spirited element in this sort
+of courage; but his instinct forced him within his limitations. By dint of
+keeping there and toiling there he felt sure of his ability to get back to
+the top of the tower in such a way that no one would think he lacked the
+right to be on it.
+
+But he himself would know it. He shrank from that fact with the repugnance
+of an honest nature for what is not straightforward; but the matter was
+past helping. He should be obliged to play the impostor everywhere and
+with every one. He would mingle with men, shake their hands, share their
+friendships, eat their bread, and accept their favors--and deceive them
+under their very noses. Life would become one long trick, one daily feat
+of skill. Any possible success he could win would lack stability, would
+lack reality, because there would be neither truth nor fact behind it.
+
+From the argument that he was innocent he got little comfort. He had
+forfeited his right to make use of that fact any longer. Had he stayed
+where he was he could have shouted it out till they gagged him in the
+death-chair. Now he must be dumb on the subject forevermore. In his
+disappearance there was an acceptation of guilt which he must remain
+powerless to explain away.
+
+Many minutes of dull pain passed in dwelling on that point. He could work
+neither back from it nor forward. His mind could only dwell on it with an
+aching admission of its justice, while he searched the sky for the dawn.
+
+In spite of the crowing of the cock he saw no sign of it--unless it was
+that the mountains on the New York shore detached themselves more
+distinctly from the sky of which they had seemed to form a part. On the
+Vermont side there was nothing but a heaped-up darkness, night piled on
+night, till the eye reached the upper heavens and the stars.
+
+He paddled on, steadily, rhythmically, having no sense of hunger or
+fatigue, while he groped for the clew that was to guide him when he
+stepped on land. He felt the need of a moral programme, of some pillar of
+cloud and fire that would show him a way he should be justified in taking.
+He expressed it to himself by a kind of aspiration which he kept
+repeating, sometimes half aloud:
+
+"O Lord, O Holy One! I want to be a man!"
+
+Suddenly he struck the water with so violent a dash that the canoe swerved
+and headed landward.
+
+"By God!" he muttered, under his breath, "I've got it.... It isn't my
+fault.... It's theirs.... They've put me in this fix.... They've brought
+this dodging, and shifting, and squirming upon me.... The subterfuge isn't
+mine; it's theirs.... They've taken the responsibility from me.... When
+they strip me of rights they strip me of duties.... They've forced me
+where right and wrong don't exist for me any more.... They've pitched me
+out of their Organized Society, and I've had to go.... Now I'm free ...
+and I shall profit by my freedom."
+
+In the excitement of these discoveries he smote the waters again. He
+remembered having said something of the sort on the night of his interview
+with Wayne; but he had not till now grasped its significance. It was the
+emancipation of his conscience. Whatever difficulties he might encounter
+from outside, he should be hampered by no scruples from within. He had
+been relieved of them; they had been taken from him. Since none had a duty
+toward him, he had no duty toward any. If it suited his purposes to juggle
+with men, the blame must rest upon themselves. He could but do his best
+with the maimed existence they had left to him. Self-respect would entail
+observance of the common laws of truth and honesty, but beyond this he
+need never allow consideration for another to come before consideration
+for himself. He was absolved from the necessity in advance. In the region
+in which he should pass his inner life there would be no occupant but
+himself. From the world where men and women had ties of love and pity and
+mutual regard they had cast him out, forcing him into a spiritual limbo
+where none of these things obtained. It was only lawful that he should
+make use of such advantages as his lot allowed him.
+
+There was exaltation in the way in which he grasped this creed as his rule
+of life; and looking up suddenly, he saw the dawn. It had taken him
+unawares, stealing like a gray mist of light over the tops of the Vermont
+hills, lifting their ridges faintly out of night, like the ghosts of so
+many Titans. Among the Adirondacks one high peak caught the first glimmer
+of advancing day, while all the lower range remained a gigantic silhouette
+beneath the perceptibly paling stars. Over Canada the veil was still down,
+but he fancied he could detect a thinner texture to the darkness.
+
+Then, as he passed a wooded headland, came a sleepy twitter, from some
+little pink and yellow bill barely withdrawn from its enfolding wing--to
+be followed by another, and another, and another, till both shores were
+aquiver with that plaintive chirrup, half threnody for the flying
+darkness, half welcome to the sun, like the praise of a choir of children
+roused to sing midnight matins, but still dreaming. Ford's dip was softer
+now, as though he feared to disturb that vibrant drowsiness; but when,
+later, capes and coves began to define themselves through the gray
+gloaming, and, later still, a shimmer of saffron appeared above the
+eastern summits, he knew it was time to think of a refuge from the
+daylight.
+
+The saffron became fire; the fire lit up a heaven of chrysoprase and rose.
+Where the lake had been as a metal mirror for the stars, it rippled and
+dimpled and gleamed with the tints of mother-of-pearl. He knew the sun
+must be on the farther slope of the Green Mountains, because the face they
+turned toward him was dense in shadow, like the unilluminated portion of
+the moon. On the western shore the Adirondacks were rising out of the bath
+of night as dewy fresh as if they had been just created.
+
+But the sun was actually in the sky when he perceived that he no longer
+had the lake to himself. From a village nestling in some hidden cove a
+rowboat pulled out into the open--a fisherman after the morning's catch.
+It was easy enough for Ford to keep at a prudent distance; but the
+companionship caused him an uneasiness that was not dispelled before the
+first morning steamer came pounding from the northward. He fixed his
+attention then on a tiny islet some two or three miles ahead. There were
+trees on it, and probably ferns and grass. Reaching it, he found himself
+in a portion of the lake forest-banked and little frequented. Pastures and
+fields of ripening grain on the most distant slopes of Vermont gave the
+nearest token of life. All about him there was solitude and
+stillness--with the glorious, bracing beauty of the newly risen day.
+
+Landing with stiffened limbs, he drew up the canoe on a bit of sandy
+beach, over which sturdy old bushes, elder and birch, battered by the
+north winds, leaned in friendly, concealing protection. He himself would
+be able to lie down here, among the tall ferns and the stunted
+blueberry-scrub, as secluded and secure as ever he had been in prison.
+
+Being hungry and thirsty, he ate and drank, consulting his map the while
+and fixing approximately his whereabouts. He looked at his little watch
+and wound it up, and fingered the pages of the railway guide he found
+beside it.
+
+The acts brought up the image of the girl who had furnished him with these
+useful accessories to flight. For lack of another name he called her the
+Wild Olive--remembering her yearning, not wholly unlike his own, to be
+grafted back into the good olive-tree of Organized Society. With some
+shame he perceived that he had scarcely thought of her through the night.
+It was astounding to recollect that not twelve hours ago she had kissed
+him and sent him on his journey. To him the gulf between then and now was
+so wide and blank that it might have been twelve weeks, or twelve months,
+or twelve years. It had been the night of the birth of a new creature, of
+the transmigration of a soul; it had no measurement in time, and threw all
+that preceded it into the mists of prenatal ages.
+
+These thoughts passed through his mind as he made a pillow for himself
+with his white flannel jacket, and twisted the ferns above it into a
+shelter from the flies. Having done this, he stood still and pondered.
+
+"Have I really become a new creature?" he asked himself.
+
+There was much in the outward conditions to encourage the fancy, while his
+inner consciousness found it easy to be credulous. Nothing was left of
+Norrie Ford but the mere flesh and bones--the least stable part of
+personality. Norrie Ford was gone--not dead, but gone--blasted,
+annihilated stamped out of existence, by the act of Organized Society. In
+its place the night of transition had called up some one else.
+
+"But who? ... Who am I? ... What am I?"
+
+Above all, a name seemed required to give him entity. It was a repetition
+of his feeling about the Wild Olive--the girl in the cabin in the woods.
+Suddenly he remembered that, if he had found a name for her, she had also
+found one for him--and that it was written on the steamer ticket in his
+pocket. He drew it out, and read:
+
+"Herbert Strange."
+
+He repeated it at first in dull surprise, and then with disapproval. It
+was not the kind of name he would have chosen. It was odd, noticeable--a
+name people would remember He would have preferred something commonplace
+such as might be found for a column or two in any city directory. She had
+probably got it from a novel--or made it up. Girls did such things. It was
+a pity, but there was no help for it now. As Herbert Strange he must go on
+board the steamer, and so he should be called until--
+
+But he was too tired to fix a date for the resumption of his own name or
+the taking of another. Flinging himself on his couch of moss and trailing
+ground-spruce, with the ferns closing over him, and the pines over them,
+he was soon asleep.
+
+
+
+
+
+Part II
+
+Strange
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+
+Dressed in overalls that had once been white, he was superintending the
+stacking of wool in a long, brick-walled, iron-roofed shed in Buenos Aires
+when the thought came to him how easy it had all been. He paused for a
+minute in his work of inspection--standing by an open window, where a
+whiff of fresh air from off the mud-brown Rio de la Plata relieved the
+heavy, greasy smell of the piles of unwashed wool--just to review again
+the past eighteen months. Below him stretched the noisy docks, with their
+row of electric cranes, as regular as a line of street lamps, loading or
+unloading a mile of steamers lying broadside on, and flying all flags but
+the Stars and Stripes. Wines, silk, machinery, textiles were coming out;
+wheat, cattle, hides, and beef were pouring in. In the confusion of
+tongues that reached him he could, on occasions, catch the tones of
+Spaniard, Frenchman, Swede, and Italian, together with all the varieties
+of English speech from Highland Scotch to Cockney; but none of the
+intonations of his native land. The comparative rarity of anything
+American in his city of refuge, while it added to his sense of exile,
+heightened his feeling of security. It was still another of the happy
+circumstances that had helped him.
+
+The strain under which he had lived during this year and a half had
+undoubtedly been great; but he could see now that it had been inward
+strain--the mental strain of unceasing apprehension, the spiritual strain
+of the new creature in casting off the old husk, and adapting itself not
+merely to new surroundings, but to a new life. This had been severe. He
+was not a rover, and still less an adventurer, in any of the senses
+attached to that word. His instincts were for the settled, the
+well-ordered, and the practical. He would have been content with any
+humdrum existence that permitted his peaceable, commercially gifted soul
+to develop in its natural environment. The process, therefore, by which
+Norrie Ford became Herbert Strange, even in his own thoughts, had been one
+of inner travail, though the outward conditions could not have been more
+favorable. Now that he had reached a point where his more obvious
+anxieties were passing away, and the hope of safety was becoming a
+reality, he could look back and see how relatively easy everything had
+been.
+
+He had leisure for reflection because it was the hour for the men's midday
+meal and siesta. He could see them grouped together--some thirty-odd--at
+the far end of the shed--sturdy little Italians, black-eyed, smiling,
+thrifty, dirty, and contented to a degree that made them incomprehensible
+to the ambitious, upward-toiling American set over them. They sat, or
+lounged, on piles of wood, or on the floor, some chattering, most of them
+asleep. He had begun like them. He had stacked wool under orders till he
+had made himself capable of being in command. He had been beneath the
+ladder; and though his foot was only on the lowest rung of it even now, he
+was satisfied to have made this first step upward.
+
+He could not be said to have taken it to his own surprise, since he had
+prepared himself for it, and for other such steps to follow it, knowing
+that they must become feasible in time. He had been given to understand
+that what the Argentine, in common with some other countries, needed most
+was neither men nor capital, but intelligence. Men were pouring in from
+every corner of the globe; capital was keen in looking for its
+opportunity; but for intelligence the demand was always greater than the
+supply.
+
+The first intimation of such a need had come to him on the _Empress of
+Erin_, in mid-Atlantic, by a chance opportunity of the voyage. It was on
+one of the first days of liberty when he had ventured to mix freely with
+his fellow-passengers. Up to the present he had followed the rule of
+conduct adopted at the little Canadian station of Saint Jean du Clou Noir.
+He went into public when necessary, but no oftener. He did then what other
+people did, in the way to attract the least attention. The season favored
+him, for amid the throngs of early autumn travellers, moving from country
+back to town, or from seaside resorts to the mountains he passed
+unnoticed. At Quebec he was one of the crowd of tourists come to see the
+picturesque old town. At Rimouski he was lost among the trainful of people
+from the Canadian maritime provinces taking the Atlantic steamer at a
+convenient port. He lived through each minute in expectation of the law's
+tap on his shoulder; but he acquired the habit of nonchalance. On
+shipboard it was a relief to be able to shut himself up in his cabin--his
+suite!--feigning sickness, but really allowing his taut nerves to relax,
+as he watched first the outlines of the Laurentides, and then the shores
+of Anticosti, and lastly the iron-black coast of Labrador, follow each
+other below the horizon. Two or three appearances at table gave him
+confidence that he had nothing to fear. By degrees he allowed himself to
+walk up and down the deck, where it was a queer sensation to feel that the
+long row of eyes must of necessity be fixed upon him. The mere fact that
+he was wearing another man's clothes--clothes he had found in the cabin
+trunk that had come on board for him--produced a shyness scarcely
+mitigated by the knowledge that he was far from looking grotesque.
+
+Little by little he plucked up courage to enter the smoking-room where the
+tacit, matter-of-course welcome of his own sex seemed to him like
+extraordinary affability. An occasional word from a neighbor, or an
+invitation to "take a hand at poker," or to "have a cocktail," was like an
+assurance to a man who fancies himself dead that he really is alive. He
+joined in no conversations and met no advances, but from the possibilities
+of doing so he would go back to his cabin smiling.
+
+The nearest approach to pleasure he allowed himself was to sit in a corner
+and listen to the talk of his fellow-men. It was sometimes amusing, but
+oftener stupid; it turned largely on food, with irrelevant interludes on
+business. It never went beyond the range of topics possible to the
+American or Canadian merchants, professional men, politicians, and
+saloon-keepers, who form the rank and file of smoking-room society on any
+Atlantic liner; but the Delphic worshipper never listened to Apollo's
+oracle with a more rapt devotion than Ford to this intercommunion of
+souls.
+
+It was in this way that he chanced one day to hear a man speaking of the
+Argentine. The remarks were casual, choppy, and without importance, but
+the speaker evidently knew the ground. Ford had already noticed him,
+because they occupied adjoining steamer-chairs--a tall, sallow Englishman
+of the ineffectual type, with sagging shoulders, a drooping mustache, and
+furtive eyes. Ford had scarcely thought of the Argentine since the girl in
+the cabin had mentioned it--- now ten or twelve days ago; but the
+necessity of having an objective point, and one sufficiently distant
+turned his mind again in that direction.
+
+"Did I hear you speaking yesterday of Buenos Aires?" he ventured to ask,
+on the next occasion when he found himself seated beside his neighbor on
+deck.
+
+The Englishman drew his brier-root pipe from his mouth, glanced sidewise
+from the magazine he was reading, and jerked his head in assent.
+
+"What kind of place did it seem to you?"
+
+"Jolly rotten."
+
+Pondering this reply, Ford might have lost courage to speak again had he
+not caught the eye of the Englishman's wife as she leaned forward and
+peeped at him across her husband's brier-root. There was something in her
+starry glance--an invitation, or an incitement--that impelled him to
+continue.
+
+"I've been told it's the land of new opportunities."
+
+The Englishman grunted without looking up. "I didn't see many."
+
+"May I ask if you saw any?"
+
+"None fit for a white man."
+
+"My husband means none fit for a--gentleman. I liked the place."
+
+From the woman's steely smile and bitter-sweet tones Ford got hints of
+masculine inefficiency and feminine contempt which he had no wish to
+follow up. He knew from fragments of talk overheard in the smoking-room
+that they had tried Mexico, California, and Saskatchewan in addition to
+South America. From the impatience with which she shook the foot just
+visible beneath the steamer-rug, while all the rest of her bearing feigned
+repose, he guessed her humiliation at returning empty to the land she had
+left with an Anglo-Saxon's pioneering hope, beside a husband who could do
+nothing but curse luck. To get over the awkward minute he spoke hurriedly.
+
+"I've heard of a very good house out there--Stephens and Jarrott. Do you
+happen to know anything about them?"
+
+"Wool," the Englishman grunted again. "Wool and wheat. Beastly brutes."
+
+"They were horribly impertinent to my husband," the woman spoke up, with a
+kind of feverish eagerness to have her say. "They actually asked him if
+there was anything he could do. Fancy!"
+
+"Oh, I know people of that sort put a lot of superfluous questions to
+you," Ford said. But the lady hurried on.
+
+"As to questions, there are probably fewer asked you in Argentine than
+anywhere else in the world. It's one of the standing jokes of the place,
+both in Buenos Aires and out in the Camp. Of course, the old Spanish
+families are all right; but when it comes to foreigners a social catechism
+wouldn't do. That's one of the reasons the place didn't agree with us. We
+wanted people to know who we'd been before we got there; but that branch
+of knowledge isn't cultivated."
+
+"More beastly Johnnies in the Argentine passin' under names not their
+own," said the man, moved to speak, at last, "than in all the rest of the
+world put together. Heard a story at the Jockey Club--lot of beastly
+native bounders in the Jockey Club--heard a story at the Jockey Club of a
+little Irish Johnny who'd been cheatin' at cards. Three other asses
+kicked him out. Beggar turned at the door and got in his lick of revenge.
+'Say boys, d'yez know why they call me Mickey Flanagan out here? Because
+it's me na-ame.' Beggar 'd got 'em all there."
+
+Ford nerved himself to laugh, but made an excuse for rising.
+
+"Oh, there's lots of cleverness among them," the lady observed, before he
+had time to get away. "In fact, it's one of the troubles with the
+country--for people like us. There's too much competition in brains. My
+husband hit the right nail on the head when he said there was no chance
+for any beastly Johnny out there, unless he could use his bloomin'
+mind--and for us that was out of the question."
+
+Ford never spoke to them again, but he meditated on their words, finding
+himself at the end of twenty-four hours in possession of a new light.
+"I've got to use my bloomin' mind." The words seemed to offer him the clew
+to life. It was the answer to the question, "What should I do _there_?"
+which positively asked itself, whenever he thought of seeking a refuge in
+this country or in that. It came as a discovery that within himself was
+the power that would enable him to make the best of any country, and the
+country to make the best of him.
+
+He could hardly have explained how his decision to try Argentina had
+become fixed. Until he saw whether or not he should get successfully
+ashore at Liverpool there was a paralysis of all mental effort; but once
+on the train for London his plans appeared before him already formed. The
+country where few questions were asked and the past had no importance was
+clearly the place for him. Within a fortnight he was a second-class
+passenger on board the Royal Mail Steam Packet _Parana_, bound for Buenos
+Aires--thus fulfilling, almost unexpectedly to himself, the suggestion
+made by the girl in the Adirondack cabin, whose star, as he began to
+believe, must rule his fate.
+
+He thought of her now and then, but always with the same curious sense of
+remoteness--or unreality, as of a figure seen in a dream. Were it not for
+the substantial tokens of her actuality he possessed she would have seemed
+to him like the heroine of a play. He would have reproached himself for
+disloyalty if the intensity of each minute as he had to meet it had not
+been an excuse for him. The time would come when the pressure of the
+instant would be less great, and he should be able to get back the emotion
+with which he left her. Perhaps if she had been "his type of girl," her
+image would not have faded so quickly.
+
+There was but one thing for which he was not grateful to her. She had
+fixed the name of Herbert Strange upon him in such a way that he was
+unable to shake it off. His own first name was the unobjectionable
+monosyllable John--though he had always been known by his less familiar
+middle name, Norrie--and as John Ford he could have faced the world with a
+certain amount of bluff. He meant to begin the attempt immediately on
+reaching London, but the difficulty of appearing in a hotel under one name
+while everything he brought with him bore another was patent to him at
+once. Similarly, he could not receive the correspondence incidental to his
+outfit and his passage under the name of Ford in a house where he was
+known as Strange. Having applied for his passage as Strange, he knew it
+would create comment if he asked to be put down in the books as Ford. Do
+what he would he was obliged to appear on the printed list of second-cabin
+passengers as Herbert Strange, and he had made at least one acquaintance
+who would expect to call him so after they reached land.
+
+This was a little, clean-shaven man, in the neighborhood of sixty, always
+dressed at sea as he probably dressed on shore. He wore nothing but black,
+with a white shirt and a ready-made black bow-tie. He might have been a
+butler, an elderly valet, or a member of some discreet religious order in
+street costume. Ford had heard a flippant young Frenchman speak of him as
+an "ancien curé, qui a fait quelque bêtise"; and indeed there was about
+him that stamp of the ecclesiastic which is sometimes ineffaceable.
+
+"I call myself Durand," he said to Ford, using the conveniently ambiguous
+French idiom, "je m'appelle Durand."
+
+"Et je m'appelle Strange, I call myself Strange," Ford had replied,
+claiming the name for the first time without hesitation, but feeling the
+irrevocable nature of the words as soon as he had uttered them.
+
+Out of the crowd of second-rate Europeans of all races who made up the
+second cabin, the man who called himself Strange had selected the man who
+called himself Durand by some obscure instinct of affinity. "He looks like
+an old chap who could give one information," was Strange's own way of
+putting it, not caring to confess that he was feeling after a bit of
+sympathy. But the give and take of information became the basis of their
+friendship, and imparted the first real stimulus to the young man's
+awkward efforts to use his mind.
+
+Monsieur Durand had been thirty years in the Argentine, observing the
+place and the people, native and foreign, with the impartial shrewdness
+only possible to one who sought little for himself. It was a pleasure to
+share the fruits of his experience with one so eager to learn, for young
+men were not in the habit of showing him deference. He could tell Mr.
+Strange many things that would be to his advantage--what to do--what to
+avoid--what sort of place to live in--what he ought to pay--and what sort
+of company to keep.
+
+Yes, he knew the firm of Stephens and Jarrott--an excellent house. There
+was no Mr. Stephens now, only a Mr. Jarrott. Mr. Stephens had belonged to
+the great days of American enterprise in the southern hemisphere, to the
+time of Wheelwright, and Halsey, and Hale. The Civil War had put an end to
+that. Mr. Jarrott had come later--a good man, not generally understood. He
+had suffered a great loss a few years ago in the death of his
+brother-in-law and partner, Mr. Colfax. Mrs. Colfax, a pretty little
+woman, who hadn't old age in her blood either--one could see that--had
+gone back to the United States with her child--but a child!--blond as an
+angel--altogether darling--_tout à fait mignonne_. Monsieur Durand thought
+he remembered hearing that Mrs. Colfax had married again, but he couldn't
+say for certain. What would you? One heard so many things. He knew less of
+the family since the last boy died--the boy to whom he gave lessons in
+Spanish and French. Death hadn't spared the household--taking the three
+sons one after another and leaving father and mother alone. It was a
+thousand pities Mrs. Colfax had taken the little girl away. They loved her
+as if she had been their own--especially after the boys died. An excellent
+house! Mr. Strange couldn't do better than seek an entry there--it is I
+who tell you so--_c'est moi qui vous le dis_.
+
+All this was said in very good English, with occasional lapses into
+French, in a soft, benevolent voice, with slow benedictory movements of
+the hands, more and more suggestive of an ecclesiastic _en civile_--or
+under a cloud. Strange stole an occasional glance into the delicate,
+clear-cut face, where the thin lips were compressed into permanent lines
+of pain, and the sunken brown eyes looked out from under scholarly brows
+with the kind of hopeful anguish a penitent soul might feel in the midst
+of purifying flames. He remembered again that the flippant young Frenchman
+had said, "Un ancien curé, qui a fait quelque bêtise." Was it possible
+that some tragic sin lay under this gentle life? And was the
+four-funnelled, twin-screwed _Parana_ but a ghostly ship bearing a cargo
+of haunted souls into their earthly purgatory?
+
+"But listen, monsieur," the old man began next day. But listen! There
+would be difficulties. Stephens and Jarrott employed only picked men, men
+with some experience--except for the mere manual labor such as the
+Italians could perform. Wouldn't it be well for Mr. Strange to qualify
+himself a little before risking a refusal? Ah, but how? Monsieur Durand
+would explain. There was first the question of Spanish. No one could get
+along in the Argentine without a working knowledge of that tongue.
+Monsieur Durand himself gave lessons in it--and in French--but in the
+English and American colonies of Buenos Aires exclusively. There were
+reasons why he did not care to teach among Catholics, though he himself
+was a fervent one, and he hoped--repentant. He pronounced the last word
+with some emphasis, as though to call Strange's attention to it. If his
+young friend would give him the pleasure of taking a few lessons, they
+could begin even now. It would while away the time on the voyage. He had
+his own method of teaching, a method based on the Berlitz system, but not
+borrowed from it, and, he ventured to say, possessing its own good
+points. For example: _el tabaco--la pipa--los cigarillos. Que es esto?
+Esto es la pipa_. Very simple. In a few weeks' time the pupil is carrying
+on conversations.
+
+It would be an incalculable advantage to Mr. Strange if he could enter on
+his Argentine life with some command of the vernacular. It might even be
+well to defer his search for permanent employment until he could have that
+accomplishment to his credit. If he possessed a little money--even a very
+little--Oh, he did? Then so much the better. He need not live on it
+entirely, but it would be something to fall back on while getting the
+rudiments of his education. In the mean time he could learn a little about
+wool if he picked up jobs--Oh, very humble ones!--they were always to be
+had by the young and able-bodied--at the Mercado Central, one of the great
+wool-markets of the world. He could earn a few pesetas, acquire practical
+experience, and fit himself out in Spanish, all at the same time.
+
+And he could live with relative economy. Monsieur Durand could explain
+that too. In fact, he might get board and lodging in the same house as
+himself, with Mrs. Wilson who conducted a modest home for "gentlemen
+only." Mrs. Wilson was a Protestant--what they called a Methodist, he
+believed--but her house was clean, with a few flowers in the patio, very
+different from the frightful conventillos in which the poor were obliged
+to herd. If Mr. Strange thought it odd that he, Monsieur Durand, should be
+living beneath a Protestant roof--well, there were reasons which were
+difficult to explain.
+
+Later on, perhaps, Mr. Strange might take a season on some great sheep
+estancia out in the Camp, where there were thousands of herds that were
+thousands strong. Monsieur Durand could help him in that too. He could
+introduce him to wealthy proprietors whose sons he had taught. It would be
+a hard life, but it need not be for long. He would live in a mud hut,
+dirty, isolated, with no companionship but that of the Italian laborers
+and their womenkind. But the outdoor existence would do him good; the air
+over the pampas was like wine; and the food would not be as bad as he
+might expect. There would be an abundance of excellent meat, chiefly
+mutton, it was true, which when cooked _à_ la guacho--_carne concuero_,
+they called it in the Camp--roasted in the skin so as to keep all the
+juices in the meat--! A gesture of the hands, accompanied by a succulent
+inspiration between the teeth, gave Strange to understand that there was
+one mitigation at least to life on an Argentine estancia.
+
+To come into actual contact with the sheep, to know Oxfords, Cheviots,
+Leicesters, and Black-faced Downs, to assist at the feedings and washings
+and doctorings and shearings, to follow the crossings and recrossings and
+crossings again, that bred new varieties as if they were roses, to trace
+the processes by which the Argentine pampas supply novel resources to the
+European manufacturer, and the European manufacturer turns out the smart
+young man of London or New York, with his air of wearing "the very
+latest"--all this would not only give Strange a pleasing sense of being at
+the root of things, but form a sort of apprenticeship to his trade.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The men had not yet finished their hour of siesta, but Strange himself was
+at work. Ten minutes were sufficient for his own snack, and he never
+needed rest. Moreover, he was still too new to his position to do other
+than glory in the fact that he was a free being, doing a man's work, and
+earning a man's wage. Out in the Camp he had been too desolate to feel
+that, but here in Buenos Aires, at the very moment when the great city was
+waking to the knowledge of her queenship in the southern world--when the
+commercial hordes of the north were sweeping down in thousands of ships
+across the equator to outdo each other in her markets, it was an inspiring
+thing merely to be alive and busy. He was as proud of Stephens and
+Jarrott's long brick shed, where the sun beat pitilessly on the corrugated
+iron roof, and the smell of wool nearly sickened him, as if it had been a
+Rothschild's counting-house. His position there was just above the lowest;
+but his enthusiasm was independent of trivial things like that. How could
+he lounge about, taking siestas, when work was such a pleasure in itself?
+The shed of which he had the oversight was a model of its kind, not so
+much because his ambition designed to make it so, as because his ardor
+could make it nothing else.
+
+The roar of dock traffic through the open windows drowned everything but
+the loudest sounds, so that busily working, he heard nothing, and paid no
+attention, when some one stopped behind him. He had turned accidentally,
+humming to himself in the sheer joy of his task, when the presence of the
+stranger caused him to blush furiously beneath his tan. He drew himself
+up, like a soldier to attention. He had never seen the head of the firm
+that employed him, but he had heard a young Englishman describe him as
+"looking like a wooden man just coming into life," so that he was enabled
+to recognize him now. He did look something like a wooden man, in that the
+long, lean face, of the tone of parchment, was marked by the few, deep,
+almost perpendicular folds that give all the expression there is to a
+Swiss or German medieval statue of a saint or warrior in painted oak. One
+could see it was a face that rarely smiled, though there was plenty of
+life in the deep-set, gray-blue eyes, together with a force of cautious,
+reserved, and possibly timid, sympathy. Of the middle height and slender,
+with hair just turning from iron-gray to gray, immaculate in white duck,
+and wearing a dignified Panama, he stood looking at Strange--who, tall and
+stalwart in his greasy overalls, held his head high in conscious pride in
+his position in the shed--as Capital might look at Labor. It seemed a long
+time before Mr Jarrott spoke--the natural harshness of his voice softened
+by his quiet manner.
+
+"You're in charge of this gang?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+There was an embarrassed pause. As though not knowing what to say next,
+Mr. Jarrott's gaze travelled down the length of the shed to where the
+Italians, rubbing their sleepy eyes, were preparing for work again.
+
+"You're an American, I believe?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"How old are you?"
+
+"Not quite twenty-six."
+
+"What's your name?"
+
+"Herbert Strange!"
+
+"Ah? One of the Stranges of Virginia?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+There was another long pause, during which the older man's eyes wandered
+once more over the shed and the piles of wool, coming back again to
+Strange.
+
+"You should pick up a little Spanish."
+
+"I've been studying it. Hablo Español, pero no muy bien."
+
+Mr. Jarrott looked at him for a minute in surprise.
+
+"So much the better--tanto mejor," he said, after a brief pause, and
+passed on.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+
+He was again thinking how easy it had been, as he stood, more than three
+years later, on the bluffs of Rosario, watching the sacks of wheat glide
+down the long chute--full seventy feet--into the hold of the _Walmer
+Castle_. The sturdy little Italians who carried the bags from the
+warehouse in long single file might have been those he had superintended
+in the wool-shed in Buenos Aires in the early stages of his rise. But he
+was not superintending these. He superintended the superintendents of
+those who superintended them. Tired with his long day in the office, he
+had come out toward the end of the afternoon not only to get a breath of
+the fresh air off the Parana, but to muse, as he often did, over the odd
+spectacle of the neglected, half-forgotten Spanish settlement, that had
+slumbered for two hundred years, waking to the sense of its destiny as a
+factor of importance in the modern world. Wheat had created Chicago and
+Winnipeg Adam-like from the ground; but it was rejuvenating Rosario de
+Santa Fé Faust-like, with its golden elixir. It interested the man who
+called himself Herbert Strange--resident manager of Stephens and Jarrott's
+great wheat business in this outlet of the great wheat provinces--to watch
+the impulse by which Decrepitude rose and shook itself into Youth. As yet
+the process had scarcely advanced beyond the early stages of surprise.
+The dome of the seventeenth-century Renaissance cathedral accustomed for
+five or six generations to look down on low, one-storied Spanish dwellings
+surrounding patios almost Moorish in their privacy, seemed to lift itself
+in some astonishment over warehouses and flour-mills; while the mingling
+of its sweet old bells with the creaking of cranes and the shrieks of
+steam was like that chorus of the centuries in which there can be no
+blending of the tones.
+
+Strange felt himself so much a part of the rejuvenescence that the
+incongruity gave him no mental nor æsthetic shock. If in his present
+position he took a less naïve pride than in that of three years ago, he
+was conscious none the less of a deep satisfaction in having his part,
+however humble, in the exercise of the world's energies. It gave him a
+sense of oneness with the great primal forces--with the river flowing
+beneath him, two hundred miles to the Atlantic, with the wheat fields
+stretching behind him to the confines of Brazil and the foothills of the
+Andes--to be a moving element in this galvanizing of new life into the
+dormant town, in this finding of new riches in the waiting earth. There
+was, too, a kind of companionship in the steamers moored to the red buoys
+in the river, waiting their turns to come up to the insufficient quays and
+be loaded. They bore such names as _Devonshire_, _Ben Nevis_, and
+_Princess of Wales_. They would go back to the countries where the speech
+was English, and the ideals something like his own. They would go back,
+above all, to the north, to the north that he yearned for with a yearning
+to which time brought no mitigation, to the north which was coming to mean
+for him what heaven means to a soul outside the scope of redemption.
+
+It was only on occasions that this sentiment got possession of him
+strongly. He was generally able to keep it down. Hard work, assisted by
+his natural faculty for singleness of purpose and concentration of
+attention, kept him from lifting the eyes of his heart toward the
+unattainable. Moreover, he had developed an enthusiasm, genuine in its
+way, for the land of his adoption. The elemental hugeness of its
+characteristics--its rivers fifty to a hundred miles in width, its farms a
+hundred thousand acres in extent, its sheep herds and cattle herds
+thousands to the count--were of the kind to appeal to an ardent, strenuous
+nature. There was an exhilarating sense of discovery in coming thus early
+to one of the world's richest sources of supply at a minute when it was
+only beginning to be tapped. Out in the Camp there was an impression of
+fecundity, of earth and animal alike, that seem to relegate poverty and
+its kindred ills to a past that would never return; while down in the Port
+the growth of the city went on like the bursting of some magic, monstrous
+flower. It was impossible not to share in some degree the pride of the
+braggart Argentine.
+
+It was difficult, too, not to love a country in which the way had been
+made so smooth for him. While he knew that he brought to his work those
+qualities most highly prized by men of business, he was astonished
+nevertheless at the rapidity with which he climbed. Men of long experience
+in the country had been more than once passed over, while he got the
+promotion for which they had waited ten and fifteen years. He admired the
+way in which for the most part they concealed their chagrin, but now and
+then some one would give it utterance.
+
+"Hello, grafter!" a little man had said to him, on the day when his
+present appointment had become known among his colleagues.
+
+The speaker was coming down the stairs of the head office in the Avenida
+de Mayo as Strange was going up. His name was Green, and though he had
+been twenty years in Argentine, he haled from Boston. Short and stout,
+with gray hair, a gray complexion, a gray mustache, and wearing gray
+flannels, with a gray felt hat, he produced a general impression of
+neutrality. Strange would have gone on his way unheeding had not the
+snarling tone arrested him. He had ignored this sort of insult more than
+once; but he thought the time had come for ending it. He turned on an
+upper step, looking down on the ashy-faced little man, to whom he had once
+been subordinate and who was now subordinate to him.
+
+"Hello--what?" he asked, with an air of quiet curiosity.
+
+"I said, Hello, grafter," Green repeated, with bravado.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I guess you know that as well as I do."
+
+"I don't. What is it? Out with it. Fire away."
+
+His tranquil air of strength had its effect in overawing the little man,
+though the latter stood firm and began to explain.
+
+"A grafter is a fellow with an underground pull for getting hold of what
+belongs to some one else. At least that's what I understand by it--"
+
+"It's very much what I understand by it, too. But have I ever got hold of
+anything of yours?"
+
+"Yes, confound you! You've taken my job--the job I've waited for ever
+since 1885."
+
+"Did waiting for it make it yours? If so, you would have come by it more
+easily than I did. I worked for it."
+
+"Worked for it? Haven't I worked for it, too? Haven't I been in this
+office for going on seventeen years? Haven't I done what they've paid me
+for--?"
+
+"I dare say. But I've done twice what they've paid me for. That's the
+secret of my pull, and I don't mind giving it away. You mayn't like
+it--some fellows don't; but you'll admit it it's a pull you could have
+had, as well as I. Look here, Green," he continued, in the same quiet
+tone, "I'm sorry for you. If I were in your place, I dare say I should
+feel as you do. But if I _were_ in your place, I'll be hanged if I
+shouldn't make myself fit to get out of it. You're not fit--and that's the
+only reason why you aren't going as resident manager to Rosario. You're
+labelled with the year '1885,' as if you were a bottle of champagne--and
+you've forgotten that champagne is a wine that gets out of date. You're a
+good chap--quite as good as your position--but you're not better than your
+position--and when you are you won't be left in it any longer."
+
+In speaking in this way the man who had been Norrie Ford was consciously
+doing violence to himself. His natural tendency was to be on friendly
+terms with those around him, and he had no prompting stronger than the
+liking to be liked. In normal conditions he was always glad to do a
+kindness; and when he hurt any one's feelings he hurt his own still more.
+Even now, though he felt justified in giving little Green to understand
+his intoleration of impertinence, he was obliged to fortify himself by
+appealing to his creed that he owed no consideration to any one. Little
+Green was protected by a whole world organized in his defence; Norrie Ford
+had been ruined by that world, while Herbert Strange had been born outside
+it. With a temperament like that of a quiet mastiff, he was forced to turn
+himself into something like a wolf.
+
+In spite of the fact that little Green's account of the brief meeting on
+the stairs presented it in the light of the castigation he had
+administered to "that confounded upstart from nobody knows where," Strange
+noticed that it made the clerks in the office, most of whom had been his
+superiors as Green had been, less inclined to bark at his heels. He got
+respect from them, even if he could not win popularity--and from
+popularity, in any case, he had been shut out from the first. No man can
+be popular who works harder than anybody else, shuns companionship, and
+takes his rare amusements alone. He had been obliged to do all three,
+knowing in advance that it would create for him a reputation of an "ugly
+brute" in quarters whence he would have been glad to get good-will.
+
+Finding the lack of popularity a safeguard not only against prying
+curiosity, but against inadvertent self-betrayal, it was with some
+misgiving that he saw his hermit-like seclusion threatened, as he rose
+higher in the business and consequently in the social--scale. In the
+English-speaking colony of Buenos Aires the one advance is likely to bring
+about the other--especially in the case of a good-looking young man,
+evidently bound to make his mark, and apparently of respectable
+antecedents. The first menace of danger had come from Mr. Jarrott himself,
+who had unexpectedly invited his intelligent employee to lunch with him at
+a club, in order to talk over a commission with which Strange was to be
+intrusted. On this occasion he was able to stammer his way out of the
+invitation; but when later, Mr. Skinner, the second partner, made a like
+proposal, he was caught without an excuse, being obliged, with some
+confusion, to eat his meal in a fashionable restaurant in the Calle
+Florida. Oddly enough, both his refusal on the one occasion and his
+acceptance on the other obtained him credit with his elders and superiors,
+as a modest young fellow, too shy to seize an honor, and embarrassed when
+it was thrust upon him.
+
+To Strange both occurrences were so alarming that he put himself into a
+daily attitude of defence, fearing similar attack from Mr. Martin, the
+third member of the firm. He, however, made no sign; and the bomb was
+thrown by his wife. It came in the shape of a card informing Mr. Strange
+that on a certain evening, a few weeks hence, Mrs. Martin would be at
+home, at her residence in Hurlingham. It was briefly indicated that there
+would be dancing, and he was requested to answer if he pleased. The
+general information being engraved, his particular name was written in a
+free bold hand, which he took to be that of one of the daughters of the
+family.
+
+Though he did his best to keep his head, there was everything in that bit
+of pasteboard to throw him into a state of something like excitement. Not
+only were the doors of the world Norrie Ford had known being thrown open
+to Herbert Strange, but the one was being moved by the same thrill--the
+thrill of the feminine--that had been so powerful with the other. He was
+growing more susceptible to it in proportion as it seemed forbidden--just
+as a man in a desert island may dream of the delights of wine.
+
+He had looked at the Misses Martin, but had never supposed they could
+fling a glance at him. He had seen them at the public gathering-places--in
+their box at the opera, in the grand stand at the Jockey Club, in their
+carriage at Palermo or in the Florida. They were handsome girls--blonde
+and dashing--whose New York air was in pleasant contrast to the graceful
+indolence or stolid repose of the dark-eyed ladies of the Argentine, too
+heavily bejewelled and too consciously dressed according to the Paris
+mode. Strange said of the Misses Martin, as he had said of Wild Olive,
+that they were "not his type of girl"--but they were girls--they were
+American girls--they were bright, lively girls, representing the very
+poetry and romance of the world that had turned him out.
+
+It was a foregone conclusion that he should decline their invitation, and
+he did so; but the mere occasion for doing it gave his mind an impetus in
+the direction in which he had been able hitherto to check it. He began
+again to think of the feminine, to dream of it, to long for it. For the
+time being it was the feminine in the abstract--without features or
+personality. As far as it took form at all it was with the dainty,
+nestling seductiveness that belonged to what he called his "type"--a charm
+that had nothing in common with the forest grace of the Wild Olive or the
+dash of the Misses Martin.
+
+Now and then he caught glimpses of it, but it was generally out of reach.
+Soft eyes, of the velvety kind that smote him most deliciously, would lift
+their light upon him through the casement of some old Spanish residence,
+or from the daily procession of carriages moving slowly along the palm
+avenue at Palermo or in the Florida. When this happened he would have a
+day or two of acting foolishly, in the manner of the Bonarense bucks. He
+would stand for hours of his leisure time--if he could get away from the
+office at the minute of the fashionable promenade--on the pavement of the
+Florida, or under a palm-tree in the park, waiting for a particular
+carriage to drive round again and again and again, while he returned the
+sweet gaze which the manners of the country allow an unknown lady to
+bestow, as a rose is allowed to shed its beauty. This being done, he
+would go away, and realize that he had been making himself ridiculous.
+
+Once the incarnation of his dreams came so near him that it was actually
+within his grasp. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil dangled its
+fruit right before his eyes in the person of Mademoiselle Hortense, who
+sang at the Café Florian, while the clients, of whom he was sometimes one,
+smoked and partook of refreshments. She was just the little round, soft,
+dimpling, downy bundle of youth and love he so often saw in his mind's
+eye, and so rarely in reality, and he was ready to fall in love with any
+one. The mutual acquaintance was formed, as a matter of course, over the
+piece of gold he threw into the tambourine, from which, as she passed from
+table to table, she was able to measure her hearer's appreciation of art.
+Those were the days in which he first began to be able to dress well, and
+to have a little money to throw away. For ten days or a fortnight he threw
+it away in considerable sums, being either in love or in a condition like
+it. He respected Mademoiselle Hortense, and had sympathy with her in her
+trials. She was desperately sick of her roving life as he was of Mrs.
+Wilson's boarding-house. She was as eager to marry and settle down as he
+to have a home. The subject was not exactly broached between them, but
+they certainly talked round it. The decisive moment came on the night when
+her troupe was to sail for Montevideo. In the most delicate way in the
+world she gave him to understand that she would remain even at the
+eleventh hour if he were to say the word. She might be on the deck, she
+might be in her berth, and it still would not be too late. He left her at
+nine, and she was to sail at eleven. During the two intervening hours he
+paced the town, a prey to hopes, fears, temptations, distresses. To do him
+justice, it was her broken heart he thought of, not his own. To him she
+was only one of many possibilities; to her, he was the chance of a
+lifetime. She might never, he said to himself, "fall into the clutches of
+so decent a chap again." It was a wild wrestle between common sense and
+folly--so wild that he was relieved to hear a clock strike eleven, and to
+know she must have sailed.
+
+The incident sobered him by showing him how near and how easily he could
+come to a certain form of madness. After that he worked harder than ever,
+and in the course of time got his appointment at Rosario. It was a great
+"rise," not only in position and salary, but also in expectations. Mr.
+Martin had been resident manager at Rosario before he was taken into
+partnership--so who could tell what might happen next?
+
+The first intimation of the change was conveyed by Mr. Jarrott in a manner
+characteristically casual. Strange, being about to leave the private
+office one day, after a consultation on some matter of secondary import,
+was already half-way to the door, while Mr. Jarrott himself was stooping
+to replace a book in the revolving bookcase that stood beside his chair.
+
+"By-the-way," he said, without looking up, "Jenkins is going to represent
+the house in New York. We think you had better take his place at Rosario."
+
+Strange drew himself up to attention. He knew the old man liked his
+subordinates to receive momentous orders as if they came in the routine of
+the day.
+
+"Very well, sir," he said, quietly, betraying no sign of his excitement
+within. Raising himself, Mr. Jarrott looked about uneasily, as if trying
+to find something else to say, while Strange began again to move toward
+the door.
+
+"And Mrs. Jarrott--"
+
+Strange stopped so still that the senior partner paused with that air of
+gentlemanly awkwardness--something like an Englishman's--which he took on
+when he had firmly made up his mind.
+
+"Mrs. Jarrott," he continued, "begs me to say she hopes you will--a--come
+and lunch with us on Sunday next."
+
+There was a long pause, during which the young man searched wildly for
+some formula that would soften his point-blank refusal.
+
+"Mrs. Jarrott is awfully kind," he began at last to stammer, "but if she
+would excuse me--"
+
+"She will expect you on Sunday at half-past twelve."
+
+The words were uttered with that barely perceptible emphasis which, as the
+whole house knew, implied that all had been said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the end the luncheon was no formidable affair. Except for his fear,
+lest it should be the thin edge of the wedge of that American social life
+which it would be perilous for him to enter, he would have enjoyed this
+peep into a comfortable home, after his long exile from anything of the
+sort. In building his house at Palermo, Mr. Jarrott had kept, in the
+outlines at least, to the old Spanish style of architecture, as being most
+suited to the history and climate of the country, though the wealthy
+Argentines themselves preferred to have their residences look--like their
+dresses, jewels, and carriages--as if they had come from Paris. The
+interior patio was spacious, shaded with vines, and gay with flowers,
+while birds, caged or free, were singing everywhere. The rooms
+surrounding it were airy and cool, and adapted to American standards of
+comfort. In the dining-room mahogany, damask, crystal, and silver gave
+Strange an odd feeling of having been wafted back to the days and usages
+of the boyhood of Norrie Ford.
+
+As the only guest he found himself seated on Mrs. Jarrott's right, and
+opposite Miss Queenie Jarrott, the sister of the head of the house. The
+host, as his manner was, spoke little. Miss Jarrott, too, only looked at
+Strange across the table, smiling at him with her large, thin,
+upward-curving smile, comic in spite of itself, and with a certain pathos,
+since she meant it to be charged with sentiment. Over the party at table,
+over the elderly men-servants who waited on them, over the room, over the
+patio, there was--except for the singing of the birds--the hush that
+belongs to a household that never hears the noise or the laughter of
+youth.
+
+Mrs. Jarrott took the brunt of the conversation on herself She was a
+beautiful woman, faded now with the pallor that comes to northern people
+after a long residence in the sub-tropical south, and languid from the
+same cause. Her handsome hazel eyes looked as if they had been used to
+weeping, though they conserved a brightness that imparted animation to her
+face. A white frill round her throat gave the only relief to her plain
+black dress, but she wore many handsome rings, after the Argentine fashion
+as well as a brooch and earrings of black pearls.
+
+She began by asking her guest if it was true, as Mr. Jarrott had informed
+her, that he was not one of the Stranges of Virginia. She thought he must
+be. It would be so odd if he wasn't. There _were_ Stranges in Virginia,
+and had been for a great many generations. In fact, her own family, the
+Colfaxes, had almost intermarried with them. When she said almost, she
+meant that they had intermarried with the same families--the Yorkes, the
+Endsleighs and the Poles. If Mr. Strange did belong to the Virginia
+Stranges, she was sure they could find relatives in common. Oh, he didn't?
+Well, it seemed really as if he must. If Mr. Strange came from New York,
+he probably knew the Wrenns. Her own mother was a Wrenn. She had been Miss
+Wrenn before she was Mrs. Colfax. He thought he had heard of them? Oh,
+probably. They were well-known people--at least they had been in the old
+days--though New York was so very much changed. She rarely went back there
+now, the voyage was so long, but when she did she was quite bewildered.
+Her own family used to be so conservative, keeping to a little circle of
+relatives and friends that rarely went north of Boston or south of
+Philadelphia; but now when she made them a visit she found them surrounded
+by a lot of people who had never been heard of before. She thought it a
+pity that in a country where there were so few distinctions, those which
+existed shouldn't be observed.
+
+It was a relief to Strange when the sweet, languorous monologue,
+punctuated from time to time by a response from himself, or an
+interjectory remark from one of the others, came to an end, and they
+proceeded to the patio for coffee.
+
+It was served in a corner shaded by flowering vines, and presided over by
+a huge green and gray parrot in a cage. The host and hostess being denied
+this form of refreshment took advantage of the moment to stroll arm in arm
+around the court, leaving Miss Jarrott in tête-à-tête with Strange. He
+noticed that as this lady led the way her figure was as lithe as a young
+girl's and her walk singularly graceful. "No one is ever old with a
+carriage like yours," Miss Jarrott had been told, and she believed it. She
+dressed and talked according to her figure, and, had it not been for
+features too heavily accentuated in nose and chin, she might have produced
+an impression of eternal spring-tide. As it was, the comic papers would
+have found her cruelly easy to caricature, had she been a statesman. The
+parrot screamed at her approach, croaking out an air, slightly off the
+key:
+
+    "Up and down the ba-by goes,
+    Turning out its lit-tle ..."
+
+Tempted to lapse into prose, it proceeded to cry:
+
+"Wa-al, Polly, how are you to-day? Wa-al, pretty well for an old gal,"
+after which there was a minute of inarticulate grumbling. When coffee was
+poured, and the young man's cigarette alight, Miss Jarrott seized the
+opportunity which her sister-in-law's soft murmur at the table had not
+allowed her.
+
+"It's really funny you should be Mr. Strange, because I've known a young
+lady of the same name. That is, I haven't known her exactly, but I've
+known about her."
+
+Not to show his irritation at the renewal of the subject, Strange presumed
+she was one of the Stranges of Virginia, with right and title to be so
+called.
+
+"She is and she isn't," Miss Jarrot replied. "I know you'll think it funny
+to hear me speak so; but I can't explain I'm like that. I can't always
+explain. I say lots and lots of things that people just have to interpret
+for themselves It's funny I should be like that, isn't it? I wonder why?
+Can you tell me why? And this Miss Strange--I never knew her really--not
+really--but I feel as if I had. I always feel that way about friends of
+friends of mine. I feel as if they were my friends, too. I'd go through
+fire and water for them. Of course that's just an expression but you know
+what I mean, now don't you?"
+
+Having been assured on that point, she continued:
+
+"I'm afraid you'll find us a very quiet household, Mr. Strange, but we're
+in mourning. That is, Mrs. Jarrott is in mourning; and when those dear to
+me are in mourning I always feel that I'm in mourning, too. I'm like that.
+I never can tell why it is, but--I'm like that. My sister-in-law has just
+lost her sister-in-law. Of course that's no relation to me, is it? And yet
+I feel as if it was. I've always called Mrs. Colfax my sister-in-law, and
+I've taught her little girl to call me Aunt Queenie. They lived here once.
+Mr. Colfax was Mrs. Jarrott's brother and Mr. Jarrott's partner. The
+little girl was born here. It was a great loss to my brother when Mr.
+Colfax died. Mrs. Colfax went back to New York and married again. That was
+a blow, too; so we haven't been on the same friendly terms of late years.
+But now I hope it will be different. I'm like that. I always hope. It's
+funny, isn't it? No matter what happens, I always think there's a silver
+lining to the cloud. Now, why should I be like that? Why shouldn't I
+despair, like other people?"
+
+Strange ventured the suggestion that she had been born with a joyous
+temperament.
+
+"Wa-al, pretty well for an old gal!" screamed the parrot ending in a
+croaking laugh.
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," Miss Jarrott mused. "Everybody is different,
+don't you think? And yet it sometimes seems to me that no one can be so
+different as I am. I always hope and hope; and you see, in this case I've
+been justified. We're going to have our little girl again. She's coming to
+make us a long, long visit. Her name is Evelyn; and once we get her here
+we hope she'll stay. Who knows? There may be something to keep her here.
+You never can tell about that. She's an orphan, with no one in the world
+but a stepfather, and he's blind. So who has a better right to her? I
+always think that people who have a right to other people should have
+them, don't you? Besides, he's going to Wiesbaden, to a great oculist
+there, so that Evelyn will come to us as her natural protectors. She's
+nearly eighteen now, and she wasn't eight when she left us. Oh yes, of
+course we've seen her since then--when we've gone to New York--but that
+hasn't been often. She will have changed; she'll have her hair up, and be
+wearing her dresses long; but I shall know her. Oh, you couldn't deceive
+me. I never forget a face. I'm like that. No, nor names either. I should
+remember you, Mr. Strange, if I met you fifty years from now. I noticed
+you when you first began to work for Stephens and Jarrott. So did my
+sister-in-law, but I noticed you first. We've often spoken of you,
+especially after we knew your name was Strange. It seemed to us so
+strange. That's a pun, isn't it? I often make them. We both thought you
+were like what Henry--that's Mr. Jarrott's oldest son--might have grown
+to, if he had been spared to us. We've had a great deal of sorrow--Oh, a
+great deal! It's weaned my sister-in-law away from the world altogether.
+She's like that. My brother, too--he isn't the same man. So when Evelyn
+comes we hope we shall see you often, Mr. Strange. You must begin to look
+on this house as your second home. Indeed, you must. It'll please my
+brother. I've never heard him speak of any young man as he's spoken of
+you. I think he sees the likeness to Henry. That'll be next year when
+Evelyn comes. No, I'm sorry to say it isn't to be this year. She can't
+leave her stepfather till he goes to Wiesbaden. Then she'll be free. Some
+one else is going to Wiesbaden with him. And isn't it funny, it's the same
+Miss Strange--the lady we were speaking of just now."
+
+It was already some months since those words had been spoken, so that he
+had ceased to dwell on them; but at first they haunted him like a snatch
+of an air that passes through the mental hearing, and yet eludes the
+attempt to bring it to the lips. Even if he had had the synthetic
+imagination that easily puts two and two together, he had not the leisure,
+in the excitement of his removal to Rosario and the undertaking of his
+duties there, to follow up a set of clews that were scarcely more palpable
+than odors. Nevertheless the words came back to him from time to time, and
+always with the same odd suggestion of a meaning special--perhaps
+fatal--to himself. They came back to him at this minute, as he stood
+watching the loading of the _Walmer Castle_ and breathing the fresh air
+off the Parana. But if they threatened danger, it was a danger that
+disappeared the instant he turned and faced it--leaving nothing behind but
+the evanescent memory of a memory, such as will sometimes remain from a
+dream about a dream.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+
+Another year had passed before he learned what Miss Jarrott's words were
+to mean to him. Knowledge came then as a flash of revelation in which he
+saw himself and his limitations clearly defined. His success at Rosario
+had been such that he had begun to think himself master of Fate; but Fate
+in half an hour laughingly showed herself mistress of him.
+
+He had been called to Buenos Aires on an errand of piety and affection--to
+bury Monsieur Durand. The poor old unfrocked priest had been gathered to
+his rest, taking his secret with him--penitent, reconciled to the Church,
+and fortified with the Last Sacraments. Strange slipped a crucifix between
+the wax-like fingers, and followed--the only mourner--to the Recoleta
+Cemetery.
+
+Having ordered a cross to mark the grave, he remained in town a day or two
+longer to attend to a small matter which for some time past he had at
+heart and on his conscience. It was now three or four years since he had
+set aside the sum lent him by the girl for whom he had still no other name
+than that of the Wild Olive. He had invested it, and reinvested it, till
+it had become a fund of some importance. Putting it now into the safest
+American securities, he placed them in the hands of a firm of English
+solicitors in Buenos Aires, with directions not only to invest the
+interest from time to time, but--in the event of his death--to follow
+certain sealed instructions with which also he intrusted them. From the
+few hints he was able to give them in this way he had little doubt but
+that her identity could be discovered, and the loan returned.
+
+In taking these steps he could not but see that what would be feasible in
+case of his death must be equally feasible now; but he had two reasons for
+not attempting it. The first was definite and prudential. He was unwilling
+to risk anything that could connect him ever so indirectly with the life
+of Norrie Ford. Secondly, he was conscious of a vague shrinking from the
+payment of this debt otherwise than face to face. Apart from
+considerations of safety, he was unwilling to resort to the commonplace
+channels of business as long as there was a possibility of taking another
+way.
+
+Not that he was eager to see her again. He had questioned himself on that
+point, and knew she had faded from his memory. Except for a vision of
+fugitive dark eyes--eyes of Beatrice Cenci--he could scarcely recall her
+features. Events during the last six years had pressed so fast on each
+other, life had been so full, so ardent, each minute had been so insistent
+that he should give it his whole soul's attention, that the antecedent
+past was gone like the passion no effort can recapture. As far as he could
+see her face at all, it looked at him out of an abyss of oblivion to which
+his mind found it as hard to travel back as a man's imagination to his
+infancy.
+
+It was with some shame that he admitted this. She had saved him--in a
+sense, she had created him. By her sorcery she had raised up Herbert
+Strange out of the ruin of Norrie Ford, and endowed him with young vigor.
+He owed her everything. He had told her so. He had vowed his life to her.
+It was to be hers to dispose of, even at her caprice. It was what he had
+meant in uttering his parting words to her. But, now, that he had the
+power in some degree, he was doing nothing to fulfil his promise. He had
+even lost the desire to make the promise good.
+
+It was not difficult to find excuses for himself. They were ready-made to
+his hand. There was nothing practical that he could do except what he had
+done about the money. Life was not over yet; and some day the chance might
+come to prove himself as high-souled as he should like to be. If he could
+only have been surer that he was inwardly sincere he would not have been
+uneasy over his inactivity.
+
+Then, within a few minutes, the thing happened that placed him in a new
+attitude, not only toward the Wild Olive, but toward all life.
+
+Business with the head office detained him in Buenos Aires longer than he
+had expected. It was business of a few hours at a time, leaving him
+leisure for the theatres and the opera, for strollings at Palermo, and for
+standing stock-still watching the procession of carriages in the Florida
+or the Avenida Sarmiento, in the good Bonarense fashion. He was always
+alone, for he had acquired the art--none too easy--of taking pleasure
+without sharing it.
+
+So he found himself, one bright afternoon, watching the races from the
+lawn of the Hipodromo of the Jockey Club. He was fond of horses, and he
+liked a good race. When he went to the Hipodromo it was for the sporting,
+not the social, aspect of the affair. Nevertheless, as he strolled about,
+he watched for that occasional velvety glance that gave him pleasure, and
+amused himself with the types seated around him, or crossing his
+path--heavy, swarthy Argentines, looking like Italian laborers grown
+rich--their heavy, swarthy wives, come out to display all the jewels that
+could be conveniently worn at once--pretty, dark-eyed girls, already with
+a fatal tendency to embonpoint, wearing diamonds in their ears and round
+their necks as an added glory to costumes fresh from the rue de la
+Paix--grave little boys, in gloves and patent-leather boots, seated
+without budging by their mammas, sucking the tops of their canes in
+imitation of their elder brothers, who wandered about in pairs or groups,
+all of the latest cut, eying the ladies but rarely addressing them--tall
+Englishmen, who looked taller than they were in contrast to the pudgy race
+around them, as the Germans looked lighter and the French more
+blond--Italian opera singers, Parisian actresses Spanish dancers,
+music-hall soubrettes--diplomats of all nations--clerks out for a
+holiday--sailors on shore--tourists come to profit by a spectacle that has
+no equal in the southern world, and little of the kind that is more
+amusing in the north.
+
+As Strange's glance roamed about in search of a response he not
+infrequently received it, for he was a handsome fellow by this time--tall,
+well dressed, and well set up, his trim, fair beard emphasizing the
+clear-cut regularity of his profile, without concealing the kindliness
+that played about the mouth. A little gray on the temples, as well as a
+few tiny wrinkles of concentration about the eyes, gave him an air of
+maturity beyond his age of thirty-two. The Anglo-Saxon influence in the
+Argentine is English--from which cause he had insensibly taken on an
+English air, as his speech had acquired something of the English
+intonation. He was often told that he might pass for an Englishman
+anywhere, and he was glad to think so. It was a reason the less for being
+identified as Norrie Ford. It sometimes seemed to him that he could, in
+case of necessity, go back to North America, to New York, to Greenport, or
+even to the little county town where he had been tried and sentenced to
+death, and run no risk of detection.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The staring of other men first directed his attention toward her. She was
+sitting slightly detached from the party of Americans to whom she clearly
+belonged, and in which the Misses Martin formed the merrily noisy centre.
+Though dressed in white, that fell softly about her feet, and trained on
+the grass sidewise from her chair, her black cuffs, collar and hat
+suggested the last days of mourning. Whether or not she was aware of the
+gaze of the passers-by it was difficult to guess, for her air of demure
+simplicity was proof against penetration. She was one of those dainty
+little creatures who seem to see best with the eyes downcast; but when she
+lifted her dark lashes, the darker from contrast with the golden hair, to
+sweep heaven and earth in a blue glance that belonged less to scrutiny
+than to prayer, the effort seemed to create a shyness causing the lids,
+dusky as some flowers are, to drop heavily into place again, like curtains
+over a masterpiece. It was so that they rose and fell before Strange, her
+eyes meeting his in a look that no Argentine beauty could ever have
+bestowed, in that it was free from coquetry or intention, and wholly
+accidental.
+
+It was in fact this accidental element, with its lack of preparation, that
+gave the electric thrill to both. That is to say, in Strange the thrill
+was electric; as for her, she gave no sign further than that she opened
+her parasol and raised it to shade her face. Having done this she
+continued to sit in undisturbed composure, though she probably saw
+through her fringing lashes that the tall, good-looking young man still
+stood spellbound, not twenty yards away.
+
+Strange, on his part, was aware of the unconventionality of his behavior,
+though he was incapable of moving on. He felt the occasion to be one which
+justified him in transcending the established rules of courtesy. He was
+face to face with the being who met not only all the longings of his
+earthly love, but the higher, purer aspirations that accompanied it. It
+was not, so he said to himself, a chance meeting; it was one which the
+ages had prepared, and led him up to. She was "his type of girl" only in
+so far as she distilled the essence of his gross imaginings and gave them
+in their exquisite reality. So, too, she was the incarnation of his dreams
+only because he had yearned for something mundane of which she was the
+celestial, and the true, embodiment. He had that sense of the
+insufficiency of his own powers of preconception which comes to a blind
+man when he gets his sight and sees a rose.
+
+He was so lost in the wonder of the vision that he had to be awakened as
+from a trance when Miss Jarrott, very young and graceful, crossed the lawn
+and held out her hand.
+
+"Mr. Strange! I didn't know you were in town. My brother never mentioned
+it. He's like that. He never tells. If I didn't guess his thoughts, I
+shouldn't know anything. But I always guess people's thoughts. Why do you
+suppose it is? I don't know. Do you? When I see people, I can tell what
+they're thinking of as well as anything. I'm like that; but I can't tell
+how I do it. I saw you from over there, and I knew you were thinking about
+Evelyn. Now weren't you? Oh, you can't deceive me. You were thinking of
+her just as plain--! Well, now you must come and be introduced."
+
+He felt that he stumbled blindly as he crossed the bit of greensward in
+Miss Jarrott's wake; and yet he kept his head sufficiently to know that he
+was breaking his rules, contradicting his past, and putting himself in
+peril. In being presented to the Misses Martin and their group, he was
+actually entering that Organized Society to which Herbert Strange had no
+attachments, and in which he could thrust down no roots. By sheer force of
+will he might keep a footing there, as a plant that cannot strike into the
+soil may cling to a bare rock. All the same the attempt would be
+dangerous, and might easily lead to his being swept away.
+
+It was in full consciousness, therefore, of the revolution in his life
+that he bowed before the Misses Martin, who received him coldly. He had
+not come to their dance, nor "called," nor shown them any of the
+civilities they were accustomed to look for from young men. Turning their
+attention at once to the other gentlemen about them, they made no effort
+to detain him as Miss Jarrott led him to Miss Colfax.
+
+Here the introduction would have been disappointing if the greatness of
+the event had not been independent of the details with which it happened.
+Strange was not in a condition to notice them, any more than a soul can
+heed the formalities with which it is admitted into heaven. Nearly all his
+impressions were subconscious--to be brought to the surface and dwelt on
+after he went away. It was thus he recorded the facts relating to the gold
+tint--the _teint doré_--of her complexion, the curl of her lashes that
+seemed to him deep chestnut rather than quite black, as well as the little
+tremor about her mouth, which was pensive in repose, and yet smiled with
+the unreserved sweetness of an infant. He could not be said to have taken
+in any of these points at a glance; but they came to him later, vividly,
+enchantingly, in the solitude of his room at the Phoenix Hotel.
+
+What actually passed would have been commonplace in itself had it not been
+for what lay behind. Miss Colfax acknowledged the introduction with a
+fleeting smile and a quick lifting of the curtains of her eyes. He did not
+need that glimpse to know that they were blue, but he got a throb of bliss
+from it, as does one from the gleam of a sunlit sea. To her answers to the
+questions he asked as to when she had arrived, how she liked the
+Argentine, and what she thought of the Hipodromo, he listened less than to
+the silvery timbre of her voice. Mere words were as unimportant to those
+first minutes of subtle ecstasy as to an old Italian opera. The music was
+the thing, and for that he had become one enraptured auditory nerve.
+
+There was no chair for him, so that he was obliged to carry on the
+conversation standing. He did not object to this, as it would give him an
+excuse for passing on. That he was eager to go, to be alone, to think, to
+feel, to suffer, to realize, to trace step by step the minutes of the day
+till they had led him to the supreme instant when his eyes had fallen on
+her, to take the succeeding seconds one by one and extract the
+significance from each, was proof of the power of the spell that had been
+cast upon him.
+
+"And isn't it funny, Evie, dear," Miss Jarrott began, just as he was about
+to take his leave, "that Mr. Strange's name should be--"
+
+"Yes, I've been thinking about that," Miss Colfax fluted, with that pretty
+way she had of speaking with little movement of the lips.
+
+But he was gone. He was gone with those broken sentences ringing in his
+ears--casual and yet haunting--meaningless and yet more than
+pregnant--creeping through the magic music of the afternoon, as a
+death-motive breathes in a love-chant.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+
+After a night of little sleep and much thinking he determined to listen to
+nothing but the love-chant. He came to this decision, not in the
+recklessness of self-will, but after due consideration of his rights. It
+was true that, in biblical phrase, necessity was laid upon him. He could
+no more shut his ears against that entrancing song than he could shut his
+eyes against the daylight. This was not, however, the argument that he
+found most cogent, as it was not the impulse from which he meant to act.
+If he could make this girl his wife it would be something more than a case
+of getting his own way; it would be an instance--probably the highest
+instance--of the assertion of himself against a world organized to destroy
+him. He could not enter that world and form a part of it; but at least he
+could carry off a wife from it, as a lion may leap into a sheepfold and
+snatch a lamb.
+
+It was in this light that he viewed the matter when he accepted Miss
+Jarrott's invitations--now to lunch, now to dinner, now to a seat in their
+box at the opera or in their carriage in the park--during the rest of the
+time he remained in town. It became clear to him that the family viewed
+with approval the attachment that had sprung up between Miss Colfax and
+himself, and were helping it to a happy ending. He even became aware that
+they were growing fond of him--making the discovery with a queer
+sensation of surprise. It was a thing so new in his experience that he
+would have treated the notion as ridiculous had it not been forced upon
+him. Women had shown him favors; one lonely old man, now lying in the
+Recoleta Cemetery, had yearned over him; but a household had never opened
+its heart to him before. And yet there could be no other reading of the
+present situation. He began to think that Mr. Jarrott was delaying his
+departure for Rosario purposely, to keep him near. It was certain that
+into the old man's bearing toward him there had crept something that might
+almost be called paternal, so that their business discussions were much
+like those between father and son. Mrs. Jarrott advanced as far out of the
+circle of her griefs to welcome him as it was possible for her languorous
+spirit to emerge. Miss Jarrott, friendly from the first, attached him to
+the wheels of her social chariot with an air of affectionate possession.
+
+It required no great amount of perspicuity to see that the three elders
+would be glad if Miss Colfax and he were to "make a match of it," and why.
+It would be a means--and a means they could approve--of keeping their
+little girl among them. As matters stood, she was only a visitor, who
+spoke of her flight back to New York as a matter of course.
+
+"I only came," she lisped to Strange, as they sat one day, under the
+parrot's chaperonage, in the shady corner of the patio--"I only came
+because when dear mamma died there was nothing else for me to do.
+Everything happened so unfortunately, do you see? Mamma died, and my
+stepfather went blind, and really I had no home. Of course that doesn't
+matter so much while I'm in mourning--I mean, not having a home--but I
+simply _must_ go back to New York next autumn, in order to 'come out.'"
+
+[Illustration: "Who is Miriam?" was on his lips]
+
+"Aren't you 'out' enough already?"
+
+"Do you see?" she began to explain, with the quaint air of practical
+wisdom he adored in her, "I'm not out at all--and I'm nearly nineteen.
+Dear mamma fretted over it as it was--and if she knew it hadn't been done
+yet--Well something must be managed, but I don't know what. It isn't as if
+Miriam could do anything about it, though she's a great deal older than I
+am, and has seen a lot of social life at Washington and in England. But
+she's out of the question. Dear mamma would never have allowed it. And
+she's no relation to me, besides."
+
+The question, "Who is Miriam?" was on his lips, but he checked it in time.
+He checked all questions as to her relatives and friends whom he did not
+know already. He was purposely making ignorance his bliss as long as
+possible, in the hope that before enlightenment could be forced upon him
+it would be too late for any one to recede.
+
+"Couldn't they do it for you here?" he asked, when he was sure of what he
+meant to say. "I know the Miss Martins--"
+
+"Carrie and Ethel! Oh, well! That isn't quite the same thing. _I_ couldn't
+come out in a place like Buenos Aires--or anywhere, except New York."
+
+"But when you've been through it all, you'll come back here, won't you?"
+
+His eyes sought hers, but he saw only the curtains of the lids--those lids
+with the curious dusk on them, which reminded him of the petals of certain
+pansies.
+
+"That'll--depend," she said, after a minute's hesitation.
+
+"It'll depend--on what?" he persisted, softly.
+
+Before she could answer the parrot interrupted, screaming out a bit of
+doggerel in its hoarse staccato.
+
+"Oh, that bird!" the girl cried, springing up. "I do wish some one would
+wring its neck."
+
+He got no nearer to his point that day, and perhaps he was not eager to.
+The present situation, with its excitements and uncertainties, was too
+blissful to bring to a sudden end. Besides, he was obliged to go through
+some further rehearsing of the creed adopted in the dawn on Lake Champlain
+before his self-justification could be complete. It was not that he was
+questioning his right to act; it was only that he needed to strengthen the
+chain of arguments by which his action must be supported--against himself.
+Within his own heart there was something that pleaded against the breaking
+off of this tender sprig of the true olive to graft it on the wild, in
+addition to which the attitude of the Jarrott family disconcerted him. It
+was one thing to push his rights against a world ready to deny them, but
+it was quite another to take advantage of a trusting affection that came
+more than half-way to meet him. His mind refused to imagine what they
+would do if they could know that behind the origin of Herbert Strange
+there lay the history of Norrie Ford. After all, he was not concerned with
+them, he asserted inwardly, but with himself. They were intrenched within
+a world able to take care of itself; while there was no power whatever to
+protect him, once he made a mistake.
+
+So every night, as he sat in his cheerless hotel room, he reviewed his
+arguments, testing them one by one, strengthening the weak spots according
+to his lights, and weighing the for and against with all the nicety he
+could command. On the one side were love, happiness, position, a home,
+children probably, and whatever else the normal, healthy nature craves;
+on the other, loneliness, abnegation, crucifixion, slow torture, and
+slower death. Was it just to himself to choose the latter, simply because
+human law had made a mistake and put him outside the human race? The
+answer was obvious enough; but while his intelligence made it promptly,
+something else within him--some illogical emotion--seemed to lag behind
+with its corroboration.
+
+This hesitation of his entire being to respond to the bugle-call of his
+need gave to his wooing a certain irregularity--an advance and recession
+like that of the tide. At the very instant when the words of declaration
+were trembling on his lips this doubt about himself would check him. There
+were minutes--moonlit minutes, in the patio, when the birds were hushed,
+and the scent of flowers heavy, and the voices of the older ones stole
+from some lighted room like a soft, human obligato to the melody of the
+night--minutes when he felt that to his "I love you!" hers would come as
+surely as the echo to the sound; and yet he shrank from saying it. Their
+talk would drift near to it, dally with it, flash about it, play attack
+and defence across it, and drift away again, leaving the essential thing
+unspoken. The skill with which she fenced with this most fragile of all
+topics, never losing her guard, never missing her thrust or parry, and yet
+never inflicting anything like a wound, filled him with a sort of rapture.
+It united the innocence of a child to the cleverness of a woman of the
+world, giving an exquisite piquancy to both. In this young creature, who
+could have had no experience of anything of the kind, it was the very
+essence of the feminine.
+
+By dint of vigil and meditation he drew the conclusion that his inner
+hesitancy sprang from the fact that he was not being honest with himself.
+He was shirking knowledge that he ought to face. Up to the present he had
+done his duty in that respect, and done it pluckily. He had not balked at
+the statement that his rôle in the world was that of an impostor--though
+an impostor of the world's own creation. It had been part of the task
+forced upon him "to deceive men under their very noses," as he had
+expressed it to himself that night on Lake Champlain. Whatever vengeance,
+therefore, discovery might call upon him, he could suffer nothing in the
+loss of self-respect. He would be always supported by his inner approval.
+Remorse would be as alien to him as to Prometheus on the rock.
+
+In the present situation he was less sure of that, and there he put his
+finger on his weakness. Seeing shadows flitting in the background he
+dodged them, instead of calling them out into daylight. He was counting on
+happy chances in dealing with the unforeseen, when all his moves should be
+based on the precise information of a general.
+
+Therefore, when, in the corner of the patio, the next opportunity arose
+for asking the question, "Who is Miriam?" he brought it out boldly.
+
+"She's a darling." The unexpected reply was accompanied by a sudden
+lifting of the lashes for a rapturous look and one of the flashing smiles.
+
+"That's high praise--from you."
+
+"She deserves it--from any one!"
+
+"Why? What for? What has she done to win your enthusiasm when other people
+find it so hard?"
+
+"It isn't so hard--only some people go the wrong way to work about it, do
+you see?"
+
+She leaned back in her wicker chair, fanning herself slowly, and smiling
+at him with that air of mingled innocence and provocation which he found
+the most captivating of her charms.
+
+"Do I?" he was tempted to ask.
+
+"Do you? Now, let me think. Really, I never noticed. You'd have to begin
+all over again--if you ever did begin--before I could venture an opinion."
+
+This was pretty, but it was not keeping to the point.
+
+"Evidently Miriam knows how to do it, and when I see her I shall ask her."
+
+"I wish you _could_ see her. You'd adore her. She'd be just your style."
+
+"What makes you think that? Is she so beautiful? What is she like?"
+
+"Oh, I couldn't tell you what she's like. You'd have to see her for
+yourself. No, I don't think I should call her beautiful, though some
+people do. She's awfully attractive anyhow."
+
+"Attractive? In what way?"
+
+"Oh, in a lot of ways. She isn't like anybody else. She's in a class by
+herself. In fact, she has to be, poor thing."
+
+"Why should she be poor thing, with so much to her credit in the way of
+assets?"
+
+"Do you see?--that's something I can't tell you. There's a sort of mystery
+about her. I'm not sure that I understand it very well myself. I only know
+that dear mamma didn't feel that she could take her out, in New York,
+except among our very most intimate friends, where it didn't matter. And
+yet when Lady Bonchurch took her to Washington she got a lot of offers--I
+know that for a fact--and in England, too."
+
+"I seem to be getting deeper in," Strange smiled, with the necessary air
+of speaking carelessly. "Who is Lady Bonchurch?"
+
+"Don't you know? Why, I thought you knew everything. She was the wife of
+the British Ambassador. They took a house at Greenport that year because
+they were afraid about Lord Bonchurch's lungs. It didn't do any good,
+though. He had to give up his post the next winter, and not long after
+that he died. I don't think air is much good for people's lungs, do you? I
+know it wasn't any help to dear mamma. We had all those tedious years at
+Greenport, and in the end--but that's how we came to know Lady Bonchurch,
+and she took a great fancy to Miriam. She said it was a shame a girl like
+that shouldn't have a chance, and so it was. Mamma thought she interfered
+and I suppose she did. Still, you can't blame her much, when she had no
+children of her own, can you?"
+
+"I shouldn't want to blame her if she gave Miriam her chance."
+
+"That's what I've always said. And if Miriam had only wanted to, she could
+have been--well, almost anybody. She had offers and offers in Washington,
+and in England there was a Sir Somebody-or-other who asked her two or
+three times over. He married an actress in the end--and dear mamma thought
+Miriam must be crazy not to have taken him while he was to be had. Dear
+mamma said it would have been such a good thing for me to have some one
+like Miriam--who was under obligations to us, do you see?--in a good
+social position abroad."
+
+"But Miriam didn't see it in that way?"
+
+"She didn't see it in any way. She's terribly exasperating in some
+respects, although she's such a dear. Poor mamma used to be very tried
+about her--and she so ill--and my stepfather going blind--and everything.
+If Miriam had only been in a good social position abroad it would have
+been a place for me to go--instead of having no home--like this."
+
+There was something so touching in her manner that he found it difficult
+not to offer her a home there and then; but the shadows were marching out
+into daylight, and he must watch the procession to the end.
+
+"It seems to have been very inconsiderate of Miriam," he said. "But why do
+you suppose she acted so?"
+
+"Dear mamma thought she was in love with some one--some one we didn't know
+anything about--but I never believed that. In the first place, she didn't
+know any one we didn't know anything about--not before she went to
+Washington with Lady Bonchurch. And besides, she couldn't be in love with
+any one without my knowing it, now could she?"
+
+"I suppose not; unless she made up her mind she wouldn't tell you."
+
+"Oh, I shouldn't want her to tell me. I should see it for myself. She
+wouldn't tell me, in any case--not till things had gone so far that--but I
+never noticed the least sign of it, do you see? and I've a pretty sharp
+eye for that sort of thing at all times. There was just one thing. Dear
+mamma used to say that for a while she used to do a good deal of moping in
+a little studio she had, up in the hills near our house--but you couldn't
+tell anything from that. I've gone and moped there myself when I've felt I
+wanted a good cry--and I wasn't in love with any one."
+
+There was a long silence, during which he sat grave, motionless,
+reflecting. Now and then he placed his extinguished cigarette to his
+lips, with the mechanical motion of a man forgetful of time and place and
+circumstance.
+
+"Well, what are you thinking about?" she inquired, when the pause had
+lasted long enough. He seemed to wake with a start.
+
+"Oh--I--I don't know. I rather fancy I was thinking about--about this
+Miss--after all, you haven't given me any name but Miriam."
+
+"Strange, her name is. The same as yours."
+
+"Oh? You've never told me that."
+
+"Aunt Queenie has, though. But you always seem to shuffle so when it's
+mentioned that I've let it alone. I don't blame you, either; for if
+there's one thing more tedious than another, it's having people for ever
+fussing about your name. There was a girl at our school whose name was
+Fidgett--Jessie Fidgett--a nice, quiet girl, as placid as a church--but I
+do assure you, it got to be so tiresome--well, you know how it would
+be--and so I decided I wouldn't say anything about Miriam's name to you,
+nor about yours to her. Goodness knows, there must be lots of Stranges in
+the world--just as much as Jarrotts."
+
+"So that--after all--her name was Miriam Strange."
+
+"It was, and is, and always will be--if she goes on like this," Miss
+Colfax rejoined, not noticing that he had spoken half-musingly to himself.
+"She was a ward of my step-father's till she came of age," she added, in
+an explanatory tone. "She's a sort of Canadian--or half a Canadian--or
+something--I never could quite make out what. Anyhow, she's a dear. She's
+gone now with my stepfather to Wiesbaden, about his eyes--and you can't
+think what a relief to me it is. If she hadn't, I might have had to go
+myself--and at my age--with all I've got to think about--and my coming
+out--Well, you can see how it would be."
+
+She lifted such sweet blue eyes upon him that he would have seen anything
+she wanted him to see, if he had not been determined to push his inquiries
+until there was nothing left for him to learn.
+
+"Were you fond of him?--your stepfather?"
+
+"Of course--in a way. But everything was so unfortunate I know dear mamma
+thought she was acting for the best when she married him; and if he hadn't
+begun to go blind almost immediately--But he was very kind to mamma, when
+she had to go to the Adirondacks for her health. That was very soon after
+she returned to New York from here--when papa died. But she was so lonely
+in the Adirondacks--and he was a judge--a Mr. Wayne--with a good
+position--and naturally she never dreamed he had anything the matter with
+his eyes--it isn't the sort of thing you'd ever think of asking about
+beforehand--and so it all happened that way, do you see?"
+
+He did see. He could have wished not to see so clearly. He saw with a
+light that dazzled him. Any step would be hazardous now, except one in
+retreat; though he was careful to explain to himself that night that it
+was retreat for reconnoitre, and not for running away. The mere fact that
+the Wild Olive had taken on personality, with a place of some sort in the
+world, brought her near to him again; while the knowledge that he bore her
+name--possibly her father's name--seemed to make him the creation of her
+magic to an even greater degree than he had felt hitherto. He could
+perceive, too, that by living out the suggestions she had made to him in
+the cabin--the Argentine--Stephens and Jarrott--"the very good firm to
+work for"--he had never got beyond her influence, no more than the
+oak-tree gets beyond the acorn that has been its seed. The perception of
+these things would have been enough to puzzle a mind not easily at home in
+the complex, even if the reintroduction of Judge Wayne had not confused
+him further.
+
+It was not astonishing, therefore, that he was seized with a sudden
+longing to get away--a longing for space and solitude, for the pampas and
+the rivers, and, above all, for work. In the free air his spirit would
+throw off its oppression of discomfort, while in a daily routine of
+occupation he often found that difficulties solved themselves.
+
+"If you think that this business of Kent's can get along without me now,"
+he said to Mr. Jarrott, in the private office, next morning, "perhaps I
+had better be getting back to Rosario."
+
+Not a muscle moved in the old man's long, wooden face, but the gray-blue
+eyes threw Strange a curious look.
+
+"Do you want to go?" he asked, after a slight pause.
+
+Strange smiled, with an embarrassment that did not escape observation.
+
+"I've been away longer than I expected--a good deal longer. Things must
+want looking after, I suppose. Green can take my place for a while, but--"
+
+"Green is doing very well--better than I thought he could. He seems to
+have taken a new start, that man."
+
+"I'm not used to loafing, sir. If there's no particular reason for my
+staying on here--"
+
+Mr. Jarrott fitted the tips of his fingers together, and answered slowly.
+
+"There's no particular reason--just now. We've been speaking
+of--of--a--certain changes--But it's too soon--"
+
+"Of course, sir, I don't want to urge my private wishes against--"
+
+"Quite so; quite so; I understand that. A--a--private wishes, you say?"
+
+"Yes, sir; entirely private."
+
+The gray-blue eyes rested on him in a gaze meant to be uninquisitive and
+non-committal, but which, as a matter of fact, expressed something from
+which Strange turned his own glance away.
+
+"Very well; I'd go," the old man said, quietly.
+
+Strange left his cards that afternoon at the house just when he knew Mrs.
+Jarrott would be resting and Miss Jarrott driving with Miss Colfax. At
+seven he took the night boat up the Plata to the Parana.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+
+"Evie, what do you think made Mr. Strange rush away like that? Your uncle
+says he didn't have to--that he might just as well have stayed in town."
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," was Evie's truthful response, as she flitted
+about the dining-room table arranging the flowers before luncheon.
+
+"Your uncle thinks you do," Mrs. Jarrott said, leaning languidly back in
+an arm-chair. Her tone and manner implied that the matter had nothing to
+do with her, though she was willing to speak of it. This was as far as she
+could come to showing an interest in anything outside herself since the
+boys died. She would not have brought up the subject now if the girl's
+pallor during the last few days had not made them uneasy.
+
+"I haven't the least idea," Miss Colfax declared. "I was just as much
+surprised as you were, Aunt Helen."
+
+"Your uncle thinks you must have said something to him--"
+
+"I didn't. I didn't say anything to him whatever. Why should I? He's
+nothing to me."
+
+"Of course he's nothing to you, if you're engaged to Billy Merrow."
+
+Miss Colfax leaned across the table, taking a longer time than necessary
+to give its value to a certain rose.
+
+"I'm not engaged to him now," she said, as if after reflection--"not in
+my own mind, that is."
+
+"But you are in his, I suppose."
+
+"Well, I can't help that, can I?"
+
+"Not unless you write and tell him it's all over."
+
+Miss Colfax stood still, a large red flower raised in protestation.
+
+"That would be the cruellest thing I ever heard of," she exclaimed, with
+conviction. "I don't see how you can bear to make the suggestion."
+
+"Then what are you going to do about it?"
+
+"I needn't do anything just yet. There's no hurry--till I get back to New
+York."
+
+"Do you mean to let him go on thinking--?"
+
+"He'd much rather. Whenever I tell him, it will be too soon for him.
+There's no reason why he should know earlier than he wants to."
+
+"But is that honor, dear?"
+
+"How can I tell?" At so unreasonable a question the blue eyes clouded with
+threatening tears. "I can't go into all those fine points, Aunt Helen, do
+you see? I've just got to do what's right."
+
+Mrs. Jarrot rose with an air of helplessness. She loved her brother's
+daughter tenderly enough, but she admitted to herself that she did not
+understand young girls. Having borne only sons, she had never been called
+upon to struggle with the baffling.
+
+"I hope you're not going to tell any one, Aunt Helen," Evie begged, as
+Mrs. Jarrott seemed about to leave the room. "I shouldn't want Uncle
+Jarrott to know, or Aunt Queenie, either."
+
+"I shall certainly spare them," Mrs. Jarrott said, with what for her was
+asperity. "They would be surprised, to say the least, after the
+encouragement you gave Mr. Strange."
+
+"I didn't give it--he took it. I couldn't stop him."
+
+"Did you want to?"
+
+"I thought of it--sometimes--till I gave up being engaged to Billy."
+
+"And having passed that mental crisis, I suppose it didn't matter."
+
+"Well, the mental crisis, as you call it, left me free. I sha'n't have to
+reproach myself--"
+
+"No; Mr. Merrow will do that for you."
+
+"Of course he will. I expect him to. It would be very queer if he didn't.
+I shall have a dreadful time making him see things my way. And with all
+that hanging over me, I should think I might look for a little sympathy
+from you, Aunt Helen. Lots of girls wouldn't have said anything about it.
+But I told you because I want you to see I'm perfectly straight and
+above-board."
+
+Mrs. Jarrott said no more for the moment, but later in the day she
+confided to her husband that the girl puzzled her. "She mixes me up so
+that I don't know which of us is talking sense." She was not at all sure
+that Evie was fretting about Mr. Strange--though she might be. If she
+wasn't, then she couldn't be well. That was the only explanation of her
+depression and loss of appetite.
+
+"You can bet your life he's thinking of her," Mr. Jarrott said, with the
+lapse from colloquial dignity he permitted himself when he got into his
+house-jacket. "He's praying to her image as if it was a wooden saint."
+
+With the omission of the word wooden this was much what Strange was doing
+at Rosario. Not venturing--in view of all the circumstances--to write to
+her, he could only erect a shrine in his heart, and serve it with a
+devotion very few saints enjoy. He found, however, that absence from her
+did not enable him to form detached and impartial opinions on his
+situation, just as work brought no subconsciously reached solution to the
+problems he had to face. In these respects he was disappointed in the
+results of his unnecessary flight from town.
+
+At the end of two months he was still mentally where he was when he left
+Buenos Aires. His intelligence assured him that he had the right of a man
+who has no rights to seize and carry off what he can; while that nameless
+something else within him refused to ratify the statement. What precise
+part of him raised this obstacle he was at a loss to guess. It could not
+be his conscience, since he had been free of conscience ever since the
+night on Lake Champlain. Still less could it be his heart, seeing that his
+heart was crying out for Evie Colfax more fiercely than a lion roars for
+food. The paralysis of his judgment had become such that he was fast
+approaching the determination to make Love the only arbiter, and let all
+the rest go hang!
+
+He was encouraged in this impulse by the thought that between her and
+himself there was the mysterious bond of something "meant." He believed
+vaguely in a Power, which, with designs as to human destinies, manifests
+its intentions by fitful gleams, vouchsafed somewhat erratically. In this
+way Evie Colfax, as a beautiful, fairy-like child, had been revealed to
+him at the most critical instant of his life. His mind had never hitherto
+gone back willingly to recollections of that night; but now he made the
+excursion into the past with a certain amount of pleasure. He could see
+her still, looking at a picture-book, her face resting on the back of her
+hand, and golden ringlets falling over her bare arm. He could see the
+boy, too. He remembered that his name was Billy. Billy who? he wondered.
+He could hear the sweet, rather fretful voice calling from the shadows:
+
+"Evie dear, it's time to go to bed. Billy, I don't believe they let you
+stay up as late as this at home."
+
+How ridiculous it would have been to remember such trivial details all
+these years if something hadn't been "meant" by it. There was a hint in
+the back of his mind that by the same token something might have been
+"meant" about the Wild Olive, too, but he had not an equal temptation to
+dwell on it. The Wild Olive, he repeated, had never been "his type of
+girl"--not from the very first. It was obviously impossible for a
+superintending Power to "mean" things that were out of the question.
+
+He had got no further than this when the news was conveyed to him by Mrs.
+Green, whom he met accidentally in the street, that Mr. Skinner, the
+second partner, had had a "stroke," and had been ordered to Carlsbad. Mrs.
+Skinner, so Mrs. Green's letters from the Port informed her, was to
+accompany her husband. Furthermore, Miss Colfax was seizing the
+opportunity to travel with them to Southampton, where she would be able to
+join friends who would take her to New York. There was even a rumor that
+Miss Jarrott was to accompany her niece, but Mrs. Green was unable to
+vouch for the truth of it. In any case, she said, there were signs of "a
+regular shaking up," such as comes periodically in any great mercantile
+establishment; and this time, she ventured to hope, Mr. Green would get
+his rights.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+
+The knowledge that it was a juncture at which to execute a daring movement
+acted as an opiate on what would otherwise have been, for Strange, a day
+of frenzy. While to the outward eye he was going quietly about his work,
+he was inwardly calling all his resources to his aid to devise some plan
+for outwitting circumstance. After forty-eight hours of tearing at his
+heart and hacking at his brain, he could think of nothing more original
+than to take the first train down to the Port, ask the girl to be his
+wife, and let life work out the consequence. At the end of two days,
+however, he was saved from a too deliberate defiance of the
+unaccounted-for inner voice, by an official communication from Mr.
+Jarrott.
+
+It was in the brief, dry form of his business conversation, giving no hint
+that there were emotions behind the stilted phraseology, and an old man's
+yearnings. Mr. Skinner was far from well, and would "proceed immediately"
+to Carlsbad. Strange would hand over the business at Rosario to Mr.
+Green--who would become resident manager, _pro tem_ at any rate--and
+present himself in Buenos Aires at the earliest convenient moment. Mr.
+Jarrott would be glad to see him as soon as possible after his arrival.
+
+That was all; but as far as the young man was concerned, it saved the
+situation. On consulting the steamer-list he saw that the Royal Mail
+Steam Packet _Corrientes_ would sail for Southampton in exactly six days'
+time. By dint of working all night with Mr. Green, who was happy to lend
+himself to anything that would show him the last of his rival, he was able
+to take a train to the Port next day. It was half-past six when he arrived
+in Buenos Aires. By half-past eight he had washed, changed to an evening
+suit, and dined. At nine his cab stopped at the door of the house at
+Palermo.
+
+As he followed the elderly man-servant who admitted him, the patio was so
+dim that he made his way but slowly. He made his way but slowly, not only
+because the patio was dim, but because he was trying to get his crowding
+emotions under control before meeting his employer in an interview that
+might be fraught with serious results. For once in his life he was
+unnerved, tremulous, almost afraid. As he passed the open doors and
+windows of unlighted, or dimly lighted, rooms he knew she might be in any
+one of the shadowy recesses. It would have been a relief to hear her at
+the piano, or in conversation, and to know her attention was diverted.
+None the less, he peered about for a glimpse of her, and strained his
+hearing for a sound of her voice. But all was still and silent, except for
+the muffled footfall of the servant leading him to the library at the far
+end of the court.
+
+If she had not moved out unexpectedly from behind a pillar, a little
+fluttering figure in a white frock, he could have kept his self-control.
+If he had not come upon her in this sudden way, when she believed him in
+Rosario, she, too, would not have been caught at a disadvantage. As it
+was, he stood still, as if awe-struck. She gave a little cry, as if
+frightened. It is certain that his movement of the arms was an automatic
+process, not dictated by any order of the brain; and the same may be said
+for the impulse which threw her on his breast. If, after that, the rest
+was not silence, it was little more. What he uttered and she replied was
+scarcely audible to either, though it was understood by both. It was all
+over so quickly that the man-servant had barely thrown open the library
+door, and announced "Mr. Strange," when Strange himself was on the
+threshold.
+
+It was a moment at which to summon all his wits together to attend to
+business; but he was astonished at the coolness and lightness of heart
+with which he did it. After those brief, sudden vows exchanged, it was as
+easy to dismiss Evie Colfax momentarily from his mind as it is to forget
+money troubles on inheriting a fortune. Nevertheless as he got himself
+ready to deal with practical, and probably quite commercial, topics, he
+was fully conscious of the rapture of her love, while he was scarcely less
+aware of a comfort closely akin to joy in feeling that the burden of
+decision had been lifted from him. Since Fate had taken the matter into
+her own hands, she could be charged with the full responsibility.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Jarrott, who was smoking a cigar and sipping his after-dinner coffee,
+was in evening dress, but wore his house-jacket--a circumstance of which
+Strange did not know the significance, though he felt its effect. The old
+man's welcome was not unlike that of a shy father trying to break the
+shackles of reserve with a home-coming son. He pushed Strange gently into
+the most comfortable arm-chair beside which he drew up a small table for
+the cigar-box, the ash-tray, and the matches. He rang for another cup,
+and brought the coffee with his own hands. Strange remembered how often,
+after a hard day's work, he had been made uncomfortable by just such
+awkward, affectionate attentions from poor old Monsieur Durand.
+
+"I didn't expect you so soon," Mr. Jarrott began, when they were both
+seated, "but you've done well to come. I'm afraid we're in for a regular
+upset all round."
+
+"I hope it isn't going to make things harder for you, sir," Strange
+ventured, in the tone of personal concern which his kindly treatment
+seemed to warrant him in taking.
+
+"It won't if I can get the right men into the right places. That'll be the
+tough part of the business. The wool department will suffer by Mr.
+Skinner's absence--he's very ill, in my opinion--and there's only one man
+who can take his place." Strange felt his heart throbbing and the color
+rising to his face. He did not covet the position, for he disliked the
+wool department; but it was undeniably a "rise," and right along the line
+of highest promotion. "That's Jenkins," Mr. Jarrott finished, quietly.
+
+Strange said nothing. After all, he was relieved. Mr. Jarrott did not go
+on at once, but when he did speak Strange fell back into the depths of his
+arm-chair, in an attitude suggestive of physical collapse.
+
+"And if Jenkins came back here," the old man pursued, "you'd have to take
+his place in New York."
+
+Strange concealed his agitation by puffing out successive rings of smoke.
+If he had not long ago considered what he would say should this proposal
+ever be made to him, he would have been even more overcome than he
+actually was. He had meant to oppose the offer with a point-blank refusal,
+but what had happened within the last quarter of an hour had so modified
+this judgment that he could only sit, turning things rapidly over in his
+mind, till more was said.
+
+"There's no harm in--a--telling you," Mr. Jarrott went on again, with that
+hesitancy Strange had begun to associate with important announcements,
+"that--a--Jenkins will be--a--taken into partnership. You won't--a--be
+taken into partnership--a--yet. But you will have a good salary in New
+York. I can--a--promise you that much."
+
+It was because he was unnerved that tears smarted in the young man's eyes
+at the implications in these sentences. He took his time before
+responding, the courtesies of the occasion being served as well by silence
+as by speech.
+
+"I won't try to thank you for all your kindness, sir," he said, with a
+visible effort, "until I've told you something--something that, very
+likely, you won't approve of. I've asked Miss Colfax to marry me, and
+she's consented."
+
+The old man's brows shot up incredulously.
+
+"That's odd," he said, "because not half an hour ago she told my wife
+there was nothing whatever between you--that you hadn't even written to
+her since you went away. Mrs. Jarrott only left this room as you rang the
+door-bell."
+
+"But it was after I rang the door-bell," Strange stammered "that
+I--I--asked her."
+
+"Quick work," was the old man's only comment, but the muscles of his lips
+relaxed slowly, as if rusty from disuse, into one of his rare smiles.
+
+With the assurance of this reception, Strange could afford to sit silent
+till Mr. Jarrott made some further sign.
+
+"By the terms of her father's will," he explained some minutes later, "I'm
+her guardian and trustee. She can't marry without my consent till she
+comes of age. I don't say that in this instance I should--a--withhold my
+consent; but I should feel constrained to--a--give it with conditions."
+
+"If it's anything I can fulfil, sir--"
+
+"No; it wouldn't concern you so much as her. She's very young--and in
+heart she's younger than her age. She knows nothing about men--she can't
+know--and I dare say you're the first young fellow who ever said anything
+to her about--well, you understand what I mean. Mind you, we've no
+objections to you whatever. You are your own credentials; and we take them
+at their face value. You tell me you're an orphan, with no near relations,
+so that there couldn't be any complications on that score. Besides that,
+you're--a likely chap; and I don't mind saying that--a--my ladies--Mrs.
+Jarrott and my sister--have taken rather a fancy to you. It can't do you
+any--a--harm to know as much as that."
+
+Strange murmurred his appreciation, and the old man went on.
+
+"No; you're all right. But, as I said before, she's very young, and if we
+married her to you out of hand we feel that we shouldn't be giving her a
+fair show. We think she ought to have a little more chance to look round
+her, so to speak. In fact, she isn't what ladies call 'out.' She's
+scarcely ever seen a man, except through a window. Consequently, we think
+we must send her back to New York, for a winter at any rate, and trot the
+procession before her. My sister is to undertake it, and they're to sail
+next week. That won't make so much difference to you now, as it would if
+you weren't soon going to follow them."
+
+Strange nodded. He felt himself being wafted to New York, whether he would
+or no.
+
+"Now all I have to say is this: if, when she's regularly started, she
+sees some other young fellow she likes better than you, you're to give her
+up without making a fuss."
+
+"Of course. Naturally, she would have to be free to do as she chose in the
+long run. I'm not afraid of losing her--"
+
+"That'll be your own lookout. You'll be on the spot, and will have as good
+a chance as anybody else. You'll have a better chance; for you'll only
+have to keep what you've won, while any one else would have to start in at
+the beginning. But it's understood that there--a--can be no talk of a
+wedding just yet. She must have next winter to reconsider her promise to
+you, if she wants to."
+
+Strange having admitted the justice of this, the old man rose, and held
+out his hand.
+
+"We'll keep the matter between ourselves--in the family, I mean--for the
+time being," he said, with another slowly breaking smile; "but the ladies
+will want to wish you luck. You must come into the drawing-room and see
+them."
+
+They were half-way to the door when Mr. Jarrott paused.
+
+"And, of course, you'll go to New York? I didn't think it necessary to ask
+you if you cared to make the change."
+
+With the question straight before him, Strange knew that an answer must be
+given. He understood now how it is that there are men and women who find
+it worth their while to thrust their heads into lions' mouths.
+
+"Yes, sir, of course," he answered, quietly; and they went on to join the
+ladies.
+
+
+
+
+
+Part III
+
+Miriam
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+
+On a day when Evie Colfax was nearing Southampton, and Herbert Strange
+sailing northward from the Rio de la Plata, up the coast of Brazil, Miriam
+Strange, in New York, was standing in the embrasure of a large bay-window
+of a fifth-floor apartment, in that section of Fifty-ninth Street that
+skirts the southern limit of Central Park. Her conversation with the man
+beside her turned on subjects which both knew to be only preliminary to
+the business that had brought him in. He inquired about her voyage home
+from Germany, and expressed his sympathy with "poor Wayne" on the
+hopelessness and finality of the Wiesbaden oculist's report. Taking a
+lighter tone, he said, with a gesture toward the vast expanse of autumn
+color on which they were looking down:
+
+"You didn't see anything finer than that in Europe. Come now!"
+
+"No, I didn't--not in its own way. As long as I can look at this I'm
+almost reconciled to living in a town."
+
+As her eyes roamed over the sea of splendor that stretched from their very
+feet, a vision of October gorgeousness against the sky, he was able to
+steal a glance at her. His immediate observation was to the effect that
+the suggestion of wildness--or, more correctly, of a wild origin--was as
+noticeable in her now, a woman of twenty-seven, as it was when he first
+knew her, a girl of nineteen. That she should have brought it with her
+from a childhood passed amid lakes and rivers and hills was natural
+enough--just as it was natural that her voice should have that liquid
+cadence which belongs to people of the forest, though it is rarely caught
+by human speech elsewhere; but that she should have conserved these
+qualities through the training of a woman of the world was more
+remarkable. But there it was, that something woodland-born which London
+and New York had neither submerged nor swept away. It was difficult to say
+in what it consisted, since it eluded the effort to say, "It is this or
+that." It resisted analysis, as it defied description. Though it might
+have been in the look, or in the manner, it conveyed itself to the
+observer's apprehension, otherwise than by the eye or ear, as if it
+appealed to some extra sense. People who had not Charles Conquest's
+closeness of perception spoke of her as "odd," while those who had heard
+the little there was to learn about her, said to each other, "Well, what
+could you expect?" Young men, as a rule, fought shy of her, not so much
+from indifference as from a sense of an indefinable barrier between her
+and themselves so that it was the older men who sought her out. There was
+always some fear on Conquest's part lest the world should so assimilate
+her that her distinctiveness--which was more like an influence that
+radiated than a characteristic that could be seen--would desert her; and
+it was with conscious satisfaction that he noted now, after an absence of
+some months, that it was still there.
+
+He noted, too, the sure lines of her profile--a profile becoming clearer
+cut as she grew older--features wrought with delicacy and yet imbued with
+strength, suggestive of carved ivory. Delicacy imbued with strength was
+betokened, too, by the tall slenderness of her figure, whose silence and
+suppleness of movement came--in Conquest's imagination at least--from her
+far-off forest ancestry.
+
+"I couldn't live anywhere else but here--if it must be in New York," she
+said, turning from the window. "I couldn't do without the sense of woods,
+and space, and sky. I can stand at this window and imagine all sorts of
+things--that the park really does run into the Catskills, as it seems to
+do--that the Catskills run into the Adirondacks--and that the Adirondacks
+take me up to the Laurentides with which my earliest recollections begin."
+
+"I think you're something like Shelley's Venice," he smiled, "a sort of
+'daughter of the earth and ocean.' You never seem to me to belong in just
+the ordinary category--"
+
+She had been afraid of something like this from the minute he was
+announced, and so hastened to cling to the impersonal.
+
+"Then, the apartment is so convenient. Being all on one floor, it is so
+much easier for Mr. Wayne to get about it than if he had stairs to climb.
+I didn't tell you that I've had Mrs. Wayne's room done over for Evie. It's
+so much larger and lighter than her old one--"
+
+He cleared his throat uneasily.
+
+"I remember your saying something of the kind before you went away in the
+spring. It's one of the things I came in to talk about to-day?"
+
+"Indeed?" His change of tone alarmed her. He had taken on the air of a man
+about to break unpleasant news. "Won't you sit down? I'll ring for tea.
+We're not in very good order yet, but the servants can give us that much."
+
+She spoke for the purpose of hiding her uneasiness, just as she felt that
+she should be more sure of herself while handling the teacups than if she
+were sitting idle.
+
+"I've had a letter from Mr. Jarrott," he said, making himself comfortable,
+while she moved the tea-table in front of her. "He wrote to me, partly as
+Stephens and Jarrott's legal adviser, and partly as a friend."
+
+He allowed that information time to sink in before continuing.
+
+"He tells me Miss Jarrott is on her way home, with Evie."
+
+"Yes; Evie herself wrote me that. I got the letter at Cherbourg."
+
+"Then she probably told you about the house."
+
+"The house? What house?"
+
+"The house they've asked me to take for the winter--for Miss Jarrott and
+her."
+
+The tea-things came, giving her the relief of occupation. She said nothing
+for the moment, and her attention seemed concentrated on the rapid, silent
+movements of her own hands among the silver and porcelain. Once she looked
+up, but her glance fell as she saw his small, keen, gray-green eyes
+scanning her obliquely.
+
+"So I'm not to have her?" she said, at last.
+
+"It's only for this winter--"
+
+"Oh, I know. But what's for this winter will be for every winter!"
+
+"And she won't be far away. I've taken the Grant's house in Seventy-second
+Street. They asked for a house in which they could do some entertaining.
+You see, they want to give her a good time--"
+
+"I quite understand all that. Evie has to 'come out.' I've not the least
+doubt that they're managing it in the best way possible. Yes, I see that.
+If I feel a little--well, I won't say hurt--but a little--sorry--it's
+because I've almost brought Evie up. And I suppose I'm the person she's
+most fond of--as far as she's fond of any one."
+
+"I presume she's fond of my nephew, Billy Merrow."
+
+"I hope so. Billy rather teased her into that engagement, you know. She's
+too young to be deeply in love--unless it was with one romantic. And Billy
+isn't that. I'm not sure that there isn't trouble ahead for him."
+
+"Then I shall let him worry through it himself. I've got other things to
+think about."
+
+When she had given him his tea and begun to sip her own, she looked up
+with that particular bright smile which in women means the bracing of the
+courage.
+
+"It'll be all right," she said, with forced conviction. "I know it will.
+It's foolish in me to think I shall miss her, when she will be so near.
+It's only because she and Mr. Wayne are all I've got--"
+
+"They needn't be," he interposed, draining his cup, and setting it down,
+like a man preparing for action.
+
+She knew her own words had exposed her to this, and was vexed with herself
+for speaking in a dangerous situation without due foresight. For a minute
+she could think of nothing to say that would ward off his thrust. She sat
+looking at him rather helplessly, unconsciously appealing to him with her
+eyes to let the subject drop.
+
+If he meant to go on with it, he took his time--flecking a few crumbs from
+his white waistcoat and from his fingertips. In the action he showed
+himself for what he was--a man so neat as just to escape being dapper.
+There was nothing large about him, in either mind or body; while, on the
+contrary, there was much that was keen and able. The incisiveness of the
+face would have been too sharp had it not been saved by the high-bred
+effect of a Roman nose and a handsome mouth and chin. The fair mustache,
+faded now rather than gray, softened the cynicism of the lips without
+concealing it. It was the face of a man accustomed to "see through" other
+men--to "see through" life--compelling its favors from the world rather
+than asking them. The detailed exactness and unobtrusive costliness of
+everything about him, from the pearl in his tie to the polish on his
+boots, were indicative of a will rigorously demanding "the best," and
+taking it. The refusal of it now in the person of the only woman whom he
+had ever wanted as a wife left him puzzled, slightly exasperated, as
+before a phenomenon not to be explained. It was this unusual resistance
+that caused the somewhat impatient tone he took with her.
+
+"It's all nonsense--your living as you do--like a professional trained
+nurse."
+
+"The life of a professional trained nurse isn't nonsense."
+
+"It is for you."
+
+"On the contrary; it's for me, more than for almost any one, to justify my
+right to being in the world."
+
+"Oh, come now! Don't let us begin on that."
+
+"I don't want to begin on it. I'd much rather not. But if you don't, you
+throw away the key that explains everything about me."
+
+"All right," he rejoined, in an argumentative tone. "Let's talk about it,
+then. Let's have it out. You feel your position; granted. Mind you, I've
+always said you wouldn't have done so if it hadn't been for Gertrude
+Wayne. The world to-day has too much common sense to lay stress on a
+circumstance of that kind. Believe me, nobody thinks about it but
+yourself. Did Lady Bonchurch? Did any of her friends? You've got it a
+little bit--just a little bit--on the brain; and the fault isn't yours; it
+belongs to the woman whose soul is gone, I hope, where it's freed from the
+rules of a book of etiquette."
+
+"She meant well--"
+
+"Oh, every failure, and bungler, and mischief-maker means well. That's
+their charter. I'm not concerned with that. I'm speaking of what she did.
+She fixed it in your mind that you were like a sapling sprung from a seed
+blown outside the orchard. You think you can minimize that accident by
+bringing forth as good as any to be found within the pale. Consequently
+you've taken a poor, helpless, blind man off the hands of the people whose
+duty it is to look after him--and who are well able to do it--"
+
+"That isn't the reason," she declared, flushing. "If Mr. Wayne and I live
+together it's because we're used to each other--and in a way he has taken
+the place of my father."
+
+"Oh, come now! That's all very fine. But haven't you got in the back of
+your mind the thought that the wild tree that's known by its good fruit is
+the one that's best worth grafting?"
+
+"If I had--" she began, with color deepening.
+
+"If you had, you'd simply be taking a long way round, when there's a short
+cut home. I'm the orchard, Miriam. All you've got to do is to walk into
+it--with me."
+
+A warmer tone came into his voice as he uttered the concluding words,
+adding to her discomfort. She moved the tea-things about, putting them
+into an unnecessary state of order, before she could reply.
+
+"There's a reason why I couldn't do that," she said, meeting his sharp
+eyes with one of her fugitive glances. "I would have given it to you
+when--when you brought up this subject last spring, only you didn't ask
+me."
+
+"Well, what is it?"
+
+"I couldn't love you."
+
+She forced herself to bring out the words distinctly. He leaned back in
+his chair, threw one leg across the other, and stroked the thin, colorless
+line of his mustache.
+
+"No, I suppose you couldn't," he said, quietly, after considering her
+words.
+
+"So that my answer has to be final."
+
+"I don't see that. Love is only one of the many motives for marriage--and
+not, as I understand it, the highest one. The divorce courts are strewn
+with the wrecks of marriages made for love. Those that stand the test of
+life and time are generally those that have been contracted from some of
+the more solid--and worthier--motives."
+
+"Then I don't know what they are."
+
+"I could explain them to you if you'd let me. As for love--if it's needed
+at all--I could bring enough into hotch-potch as the phrase goes, to do
+for two. I'm over fifty years of age. It never occurred to me that you
+could--care about me--as you might have cared for some one else. But as
+far as I can see, there's no one else. If there was, perhaps I shouldn't
+persist."
+
+She looked up with sudden determination.
+
+"If there was any one else, you--would consider that as settling the
+question?"
+
+"I might. I shouldn't bind myself. It would depend."
+
+"Then I'll tell you; there _is_ some one else." The words caused her to
+flush so painfully that she hastened to qualify them. "That is, there
+might have been."
+
+"What do you mean by--might have been?"
+
+"I mean that, though I don't say I've ever--loved--any man, there was a
+man I might have loved, if it had been possible."
+
+"And why wasn't it possible?"
+
+"I'd rather not tell you. It was a long time ago. He went away. He never
+came back again."
+
+"Did he say he'd come back again?"
+
+She shook her head. She tried to meet his gaze steadily, but it was like
+facing a search-light.
+
+"Were you what you would call--engaged?"
+
+"Oh no." Her confusion deepened. "There was never anything. It was a long
+time ago. I only want you to understand that if I could care for any one
+it would be for him. And if I married you--and he came back--"
+
+"Are you expecting him back?"
+
+She was a long time answering the question. She would not have answered it
+at all had it not been in the hope of getting rid of him.
+
+"Yes."
+
+He took the declaration coolly, and went on.
+
+"Why? What makes you think he'll come?"
+
+"I have no reason. I think he will--that's all."
+
+"Where is he now?"
+
+"I haven't the faintest idea."
+
+"Hasn't he ever written to you?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"And you don't know what's become of him?"
+
+"Not in the least."
+
+"And yet you expect him back?"
+
+She nodded assent.
+
+"You're waiting for him?"
+
+Once more she braced herself to look him in the eyes and answer boldly.
+
+"I am."
+
+He leaned back in his chair and laughed, not loudly, but in good-humored
+derision.
+
+"If that's all that stands between us--"
+
+To her relief he said no more; though she was disappointed that the
+subject should be dropped in a way that made it possible to bring it up
+again. As he was taking his leave she renewed the attempt to end the
+matter once for all.
+
+"I know you think me foolish--" she began.
+
+"No, not foolish; only romantic."
+
+"Then, romantic. Romance is as bad as folly when one is twenty-seven. I
+confess it," she went on, trying to smile, "only that you may understand
+that it's a permanent condition which I sha'n't get over."
+
+"Oh yes, you will."
+
+"Things happened--long ago--such as don't generally happen; and so--I'm
+waiting for him. If he never comes--then I'd rather go
+on--waiting--uselessly."
+
+It was hard to say, but it was said. He laughed again--not quite so
+derisively as before--and went away.
+
+When he had gone, she resumed her seat behind the tea-table. She sat
+looking absently at the floor and musing on the words she had just spoken.
+Not in all the seven or eight years since Norrie Ford went away had she
+acknowledged to her own heart what, within the last few minutes, she had
+declared aloud. The utmost she had ever owned to herself was that she
+"could have loved him." When she refused other men, she did not confess to
+waiting for him; she evaded the question with herself, and found pretexts.
+She would have continued doing so with Conquest, had not his persistency
+driven her to her last stand. But now that she had uttered the words for
+his benefit, she had to repeat them for her own. Notwithstanding her
+passionate love of woods, winds, and waters, she had always been so sane,
+so practical, in the things that pertained to daily life that she
+experienced something like surprise at detecting herself in this condition
+of avowed romance. She had actually been waiting for Norrie Ford to
+return, and say what he had told her he _would_ say, should it ever become
+possible! She was waiting for him still! If he never came she would rather
+go on waiting for him--uselessly! The language almost shocked her; but now
+that the thing was spoken she admitted it was true. It was a light thrown
+on herself--if not precisely a new light, at least one from which all
+shades and colored wrappings that delude the eye and obscure the judgment
+had been struck away.
+
+She smiled to herself to think how little Conquest understood her when he
+ascribed to her the ambition to graft her ungarnered branch on the stock
+of a duly cultivated civilization. She might have had that desire once,
+but it was long past. It was a kind of glory to her now to be outside the
+law--with Norrie Ford. There they were exiles together, in a wild paradise
+with joys of its own, not less sweet than those of any Eden. She had faced
+more than once the question of being "taken into the orchard," as Conquest
+put it. The men who had asked her at various times to marry them had been
+like himself, men of middle age, or approaching it--men of assured
+position either by birth or by attainment. As the wife of any one of them
+her place would have been unquestioned. She had not rejected their offers
+lightly, or from any foregone conclusion. She had taken it as a duty to
+weigh each one seriously as it came; and, leaving the detail of love
+apart, she had asked herself whether it was not right for her to seize the
+occasion of becoming "some one" in the world. Once or twice the position
+offered her was so much in accordance with her tastes that her refusal
+brought with it a certain vague regret. "But I couldn't do it," were the
+words with which she woke from every dream of seeing herself mistress in a
+quiet English park, or a big house in New York. Her habits might be those
+of civilized mankind; but her heart was listening for a call from beyond
+the limits in which men have the recognized right to live. She could put
+no shackles on her freedom to respond to it--if it ever came.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+
+She discovered that Norrie Ford had come back, and that some of her
+expectations were fulfilled by finding him actually seated beside her one
+evening at dinner.
+
+Miss Jarrott's taste in table light was in the direction of candles
+tempered by deep-red shades. As no garish electricity was allowed to
+intrude itself into this soft glow, the result was that only old
+acquaintances among her guests got a satisfactory notion of each other's
+features. It was with a certain sense of discovery that, by peering
+through the rose-colored twilight, Miriam discerned now a Jarrott or a
+Colfax, now an Endsleigh or a Pole--faces more or less well known to her
+which she had not had time to recognize during the few hurried minutes in
+the drawing-room.
+
+It was the dinner of which Evie had said, in explaining her plan of
+campaign to Miriam, "We must kill off the family first of all." It was
+plain that she regarded the duty as a bore; but she was too worldly wise
+not to see that her bread cast upon the waters would return to her. Most
+of the Jarrotts were important; some were wealthy; and one--Mrs. Endsleigh
+Jarrott--was a power in such matters as assemblies and cotillons. The
+ladies Colfax were little less influential; and while the sphere of the
+Poles and Endsleighs was in the world of art, letters, and scholarship,
+rather than in that of fashion and finance, they had the uncontested
+status of good birth. To Evie they represented just so much in the way of
+her social assets, and she was quick in appraising them at their correct
+relative values. Some would be good for a dinner given in her honor,
+others for a dance. The humblest could be counted on for a theatre-party
+or a "tea." She was skilful, too, in presenting her orphan state with a
+touching vividness that enlisted their sympathies on behalf of "poor
+Jack's," or "poor Gertrude's," pretty little girl, according to the side
+of the house on which they recognized the relationship.
+
+With the confusion incidental to the arrival from South America, the
+settling into a new house, and the ordering of new clothes, Miriam had had
+little of the old intimate intercourse with Evie during the six weeks
+since the latter's return. There was no change in their mutual relation;
+it was only that Evie was caught up into the glory of the coming winter,
+and had no time for the apartment in Fifty-ninth Street. It was with
+double pleasure, therefore, that Miriam responded one day to Evie's
+invitation to "come and look at my things," which meant an inspection of
+the frocks and hats that had just come home. They lay about now, in clouds
+like a soft summer sunset, or in gay spots of feathers and flowers, on the
+bed and the sofa in Evie's room, and filled all the chairs except the one
+on which Miriam had retreated into the farthest corner of the bay-window.
+Seated there, not quite in profile, against the light, her head turned and
+slightly inclined, in order to get a better view of Evie's finery, her
+slender figure possessed a sort of Vandyke grace, heightened rather than
+diminished by the long plumes and rich draperies of the month's fashion.
+Evie flitted between closets, wardrobes, and drawers, prattling while she
+worked off that first event of her season, in which the family were to be
+"killed off." She recited the names of those who would "simply _have_ to
+be asked" and of those who could conveniently be omitted.
+
+"And, of course, Popsey Wayne must come," she observed in her practical
+little way. "I dare say he won't want to, poor dear, but it wouldn't do if
+he didn't. Only you, you dear thing, will have to go in with him--to pilot
+him and look after him when the dishes are passed. But I'm going to have
+some one nice on your other side, do you see?--some one awfully nice. We
+shall have to ask a few people outside the family, just to give it relief,
+and save it from looking like Christmas."
+
+"You'll have Billy, I suppose."
+
+Evie took the time to deposit a lace blouse in a drawer, as softly as a
+mother lays a sleeping babe to rest.
+
+"No, I sha'n't ask Billy," she said, while she was still stooping.
+
+"Won't he think that queer?"
+
+"I hope so." She turned from the drawer, and lifted a blue gossamer
+creation from the bed. Miriam smiled indulgently.
+
+"Why? What's the matter? Have you anything to punish him for?"
+
+"I've nothing to punish him for; I've only got something I want to--bring
+home to him." She paused in the middle of the room, with her blue burden
+held in her outstretched arms, somewhat like a baby at a christening. "I
+might as well tell you, Miriam, first as last. You've got to know it some
+time, though I don't want it talked about just yet. I've broken my
+engagement to Billy."
+
+"Broken your engagement! Why, I saw Billy myself this morning. I met him
+as I was coming over. He said he was here last night, and seemed
+particularly cheerful."
+
+"He doesn't know it yet. I'm doing it--by degrees."
+
+"You're doing it by--what?" Miriam rose and came toward her, stopping
+midway to lean on the foot-rail of the bed. "Evie darling, what do you
+mean?"
+
+Evie's eyes brimmed suddenly, and her lip trembled.
+
+"If you're going to be cross about it--"
+
+"I'm not going to be cross about it, but I want you to tell me exactly
+what you're doing."
+
+"Well, I'm telling you. I've broken my engagement, and I want to let Billy
+know it in the kindest way. I don't want to hurt his feelings. You
+wouldn't like me to do that yourself. I'm trying to bring him where he'll
+see things just as I do."
+
+"And may I ask if you're--getting him there?"
+
+"I shall get him there in time. I'm doing lots of things to show him."
+
+"Such as what?"
+
+"Such as not asking him to the dinner, for one thing. He'll know from that
+there's something wrong. He'll make a fuss, and I shall be disagreeable.
+Little by little he'll get to dislike me--and then--"
+
+"And how long do you think it will take for that good work to be
+accomplished?"
+
+"I don't see that that matters. I suppose I may take all the time I need.
+We're both young--"
+
+"And have all your lives to give to it. Is that what you mean?"
+
+"I don't want to give all my life to it, because--I may as well tell you
+that, too, while I'm about it--because I'm engaged to some one else."
+
+"Oh, Evie!"
+
+Miriam went back, like a person defeated, to the chair from which she had
+just risen, while Evie buried herself in the depths of a closet, where she
+remained long enough, as she hoped, to let Miriam's first astonishment
+subside. On coming out she assumed a virtuous tone.
+
+"You see now why I simply _had_ to break with Billy. I couldn't possibly
+keep the two things going together--as some girls would. I'm one of those
+who do right, whatever happens. It's very hard for me--but if people would
+only be a little more sympathetic--"
+
+It was some minutes before Miriam knew just what to say. Even when she
+began to speak she doubted her capacity for making herself understood.
+
+"Evie darling," she said, trying to speak as for a child's comprehension,
+"this is a very serious matter. I don't think you realize how serious it
+is. If you find you don't love Billy well enough, of course you must ask
+him to release you. I should be sorry for that, but I shouldn't blame you.
+But until you've done it you can't give your word to any one."
+
+"Well, I must say I never heard anything like that," Evie declared,
+indignantly. "You do have the strangest ideas, Miriam. Dear mamma used to
+say so, too. I try to defend you, but you make it difficult for me, I must
+say. I never knew any one like you for making things more complicated than
+they need be. You talk of my asking Billy to release me when I released
+myself long ago--in my own mind. That's where I have to look. I must do
+things according to my conscience--and when that's clear--"
+
+"It isn't only a case of conscience, dear; it's one of common sense.
+Conscience has a way of sometimes mistaking the issue, whereas common
+sense can generally be trusted to be right."
+
+"Of course, if you're going to talk that way, Miriam, I don't see what's
+left for me to answer; but it doesn't sound very reverent, I must say. I'm
+trying to look at things in the highest light, and it doesn't strike me as
+the highest light to be unkind to Billy when I needn't be. If you think I
+ought to treat him cruelly you must keep your opinion, but I know you'll
+excuse me if I keep mine."
+
+She carried her head loftily as she bore another gown into the adjoining
+darkness, and Miriam waited patiently till she emerged again.
+
+"Does your other--I hardly know what to call him--does your other fiancé
+know about Billy?"
+
+"Why on earth should he? What good would that do? It will be all over--I
+mean about Billy--before I announce my second engagement, and as the one
+to Billy will never be announced at all there's no use in saying anything
+about it."
+
+"But suppose Billy himself finds out?"
+
+"Billy won't find out anything whatever until I get ready to let him."
+
+The finality of this retort reduced Miriam to silence. She allowed some
+minutes to pass before saying, with some hesitation:
+
+"I suppose you don't mind my knowing--who it is?"
+
+Evie was prepared for this question and answered it promptly.
+
+"I shan't mind your knowing--by-and-by. I want you to meet him first.
+When you've once seen him, I know you'll be more just to me. Till then I'm
+willing to go on being--misunderstood."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+During the three more weeks that intervened before the family dinner
+Miriam got no further light on Evie's love-affairs. She purposely asked no
+questions through fear of seeming to force the girl's confidence, but she
+obtained some relief from thinking that the rival suitor could be no other
+than a certain young Graham, of whom she had heard much from Evie during
+the previous year. His chances then had stood higher than Billy Merrow's;
+and nothing was more possible than a discovery on Evie's part that she
+liked him the better of the two. It was a situation that called for
+sympathy for Billy, but not otherwise for grave anxiety, so that Miriam
+could wait quietly for further out-pourings of Evie's heart, and give her
+mind to the mysteries incidental to the girl's social presentation to the
+world.
+
+Of the ceremonies attendant on this event the "killing off" of the family
+was the one Miriam dreaded most. It was when she came within the periphery
+of this powerful, meritorious, well-to-do circle, representing whatever
+was most honorable in New York, that she chiefly felt herself an alien.
+She could scarcely have explained herself in this respect, since many of
+the clan had been kind to her, and none had ever shown her incivility. It
+was when she confronted them in the mass, when she saw their solidarity,
+their mutual esteem, their sum total of wealth, talents, and good works,
+that she grew conscious of the difference of essence between herself and
+them. Not one of them but had the right to the place he sat in!--a right
+maintained by himself, but acquired by his fathers before him--not one of
+them but was living in the strength of some respectable tradition of which
+he could be proud! Endsleigh Jarrott's father, for example, had been a
+banker, Reginald Pole's the president of a university, Rupert Colfax's a
+judge; and it was something like that with them all. In the midst of so
+much that was classified, certified, and regular she was as obviously a
+foreign element as a fly in amber. She came in as the ward of Philip
+Wayne, who himself was a new-comer and an intruder, since he entered
+merely as "poor Gertrude's second husband," by a marriage which they all
+considered a mistake.
+
+With the desire to be as unobtrusive as possible, she dressed herself in
+black, without ornament of any kind, unaware of the fact that with her
+height of figure, her grace of movement, her ivory tint, and that
+expression of hers which disconcerted people because it was first
+appealing and then proud, she would be more than ever conspicuous against
+the background of brilliant toilets, fine jewels, and assured manners
+which the family would produce for the occasion. As a matter of fact,
+there was a perceptible hush in the hum of talk as she made her entry into
+the drawing-room, ostensibly led by Philip Wayne, but really leading him.
+As she paused near the door, half timid, half bewildered, looking for her
+hostess, it did not help her to feel at ease to see Mrs. Endsleigh
+Jarrott--a Rubens _Maria de Medici_ in white satin and pearls--raise her
+lorgnette and call on a tall young man who stood beside her to take a
+look. There was no time to distinguish anything further before Miss
+Jarrott glided up, with mincing graciousness, to shake hands.
+
+"How do you do! How do you do! So glad you've come. I think you must know
+nearly every one here, so I needn't introduce any one. I hardly ever
+introduce. It's funny, isn't it? They say it's an English custom not to
+introduce, but I don't do it just by nature. I wonder why I
+shouldn't?--but I never do--or almost never. So if you don't happen to
+know your neighbors at table just speak. It was Evie who arranged where
+every one was to sit. _I_ don't know. They say that's English, too--just
+to speak. I believe it's quite a recognized thing in London to say, 'Is
+this your bread or mine?' and then you know each other. Isn't it funny?
+Now I think we're all here. Will you take in Miriam, Mr. Wayne?"
+
+A hasty embrace from Evie--an angelic vision in white--was followed by a
+few words of greeting from Charles Conquest after which Miriam saw Miss
+Jarrott take the arm of Bishop Endsleigh, and the procession began to
+move.
+
+At table Miriam was glad of the dim, rose-colored light. It offered her a
+seclusion into which she could withdraw, tending her services to Wayne.
+She was glad, too, that the family, having so much to say to itself, paid
+her no special attention. She was sufficiently occupied in aiding the
+helpless blind man beside her, and repeating for his benefit the names of
+their fellow-guests. As the large party talked at the top of its lungs,
+Miriam's quiet voice, with its liquid, almost contralto, quality, reached
+her companion's ears unheard by others. She began with Bishop Endsleigh
+who was on Miss Jarrott's right. Then came Mrs. Stephen Colfax; after her
+Mr. Endsleigh Jarrott, who had on his right Mrs. Reginald Pole. Mrs.
+Pole's neighbor was Charles Conquest, whom she shared with Mrs. Rodney
+Wrenn. Now and then Wayne himself would give proof of that increased
+acuteness in his hearing of which he had spoken more than once since his
+blindness had become total. "Colfax Yorke is here," he observed at one
+time. "I hear his voice. He's sitting on our side of the table." "Mrs.
+Endsleigh Jarrott is next but one to you," he said at another time. "She's
+airing her plans for the reconstruction of New York society."
+
+So for a while they kept one another in small talk, affecting the same
+sort of vivacity that obtained around them. It was not till dinner was
+half over that he asked in an undertone:
+
+"Who is your neighbor?"
+
+"I don't know," she managed to whisper back. "He's so taken up with Mrs.
+Endsleigh Jarrott that he hasn't looked this way. I don't think he's any
+member of the family."
+
+"He must be," Wayne replied. "I know his voice. I have some association
+with it, but just what I can't remember."
+
+Miriam herself listened to hear him speak, catching only an irrelevant
+word or two.
+
+"He sounds English," she said then.
+
+"No, he isn't English. That's not my association. It's curious how the
+mind acts. Since I became--since my sight failed--my memory instinctively
+brings me voices instead of faces, when I want to recall anything. Aren't
+you going to speak to him? You've got the formula: Is this your bread or
+mine?"
+
+"It's very convenient, but I don't think I shall use it."
+
+"He'd like you to, I know. I heard him say to Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott as we
+came in--while Queenie Jarrott was talking--that you were he most
+strikingly beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life. How's that for a
+compliment from a perfect stranger?"
+
+"I certainly sha'n't speak to him now. A man who could say that to Mrs.
+Endsleigh, after having seen _her,_ must be wofully wanting in tact."
+
+Mary Pole on Wayne's right claimed his attention and Miriam was left her
+own mistress. Almost at once her attention was arrested by hearing Mrs.
+Endsleigh Jarrott saying in that appealing voice which she counted as the
+secret of her success with men:
+
+"Now do give me your frank opinion, Mr. Strange. You don't know how much I
+should like it. It's far from my idea that we should slavishly copy
+London. You know that, don't you? We've an entirely different stock of
+materials to work with. But I'm firmly convinced that by working on the
+London model we should make society far more general, far more
+representative, and far--oh, _far_--more interesting! Now, what do _you_
+think? Do give me your frank opinion."
+
+Mr. Strange! Her own name was sufficiently uncommon to cause Miriam to
+glance sidewise, in her rapid, fugitive way, at the person who bore it.
+His face was turned from her as he bent toward Mrs. Jarrott, but again she
+heard his voice, and this time more distinctly.
+
+"I'm afraid my opinion wouldn't be of much value. Nevertheless, I know you
+must be right."
+
+"Now I'm disappointed in you," Mrs. Jarrott said, with pretty
+reproachfulness. "You're not taking me seriously. Oh, I see, I see. You're
+just an ordinary man, after all; when I thought for a minute you might
+be--well, a little different. Do take some of that asparagus," she added
+in another tone. "It's simply delicious."
+
+It was while he was helping himself to this delicacy that Miriam got the
+first clear view of his face, half turned as it was toward her. He seemed
+aware that she was observing him, for during the space of some seconds he
+held the silver implements idle in his hands, while he lifted his eyes to
+meet hers. The look they exchanged was significant and long, and yet she
+was never quite sure that she recognized him then. For the minute she was
+only conscious of a sudden, inward shock, to which she was unable to
+ascribe a cause. Something had happened, though she knew not what. Having
+in the course of a few minutes regained her self-control, she could only
+suppose that it was a repetition of that unreasoning panic which had now
+and then brought her to the verge of fainting, when by chance, in London,
+Paris, or New York, she caught a glimpse of some tall figure that carried
+her imagination back to the cabin in the Adirondacks. She had always
+thought that he might appear in some crowd and take her by surprise. She
+had never expected to find him in a gathering that could be called social.
+Still less had she looked to meet him like this, with Philip Wayne who had
+sentenced him to death not three feet away. The mere idea was
+preposterous. And yet--
+
+She glanced at him again. He was listening attentively while Mrs.
+Endsleigh Jarrott's voice ran on:
+
+"People say our society has no traditions. It _has_ traditions. It has the
+traditions of the country village, and it has never outgrown them. We're
+nothing but the country village writ large. New York, Philadelphia,
+Boston, Baltimore--we're the country village over again, with its
+narrowness its sets, its timidity, all writ _so_ large that they hide
+anything like a real society from us. Now isn't it so, Mr. Strange? Don't
+be afraid to give me your frank opinion because that's what I'm asking
+for."
+
+Miriam herself made an effort to seem to be doing something that would
+enable her to sit unnoticed. She was glad that Wayne was engaged by Mary
+Pole so that he could no longer listen to the voice that wakened his
+recollections. She looked again at the tall, carefully dressed man beside
+her, so different in all his externals from anything she imagined Norrie
+Ford could ever become. Norrie Ford was an outlaw and this was a man of
+the world. She felt herself being reassured--and yet disappointed. Her
+first feeling of faintness passed away, enabling her to face the situation
+with greater calm. Under cover of the energetic animation characteristic
+of every American dinner-party at which the guests are intimate, she had
+leisure to think over the one or two hints that were significant. Now and
+then a remark was addressed to her across the table to which she managed
+to return a reply sufficiently apt to give her the appearance of being in
+touch with what was going on around her; but in reality she was taking in
+the fact, with the spirit rather than the mind, that Norrie Ford had
+returned.
+
+She never understood just how and when that assurance came to her. It was
+certainly not by actual recognition of his features, as it was not by
+putting together the few data that came under her observation. Thinking it
+over in after years, she could only say that she "just found herself
+_knowing it_." He was there--beside her. Of that she had no longer a
+doubt.
+
+Her amazement did not develop all at once. Indeed, the position had an odd
+naturalness, like something in a dream. The element of impossibility in
+what had happened was so great that for the time being her mind refused to
+meet it. She was only aware of that vague sense of satisfaction, of inward
+peace, that comes when long-desired ends have been fulfilled.
+
+The main fact being accepted, her outer faculties could respond to the
+call that a dinner-party makes on its least important member. When the
+conversation at her end of the table became general she took her part, and
+later engaged in a three-cornered discussion with Wayne and Mary Pole on
+the subject of an endowed theatre; but all the while her subconscious mind
+was struggling for a theory to account for Norrie Ford's presence in that
+particular room and in that unexpected company. The need of some
+immediate, plausible reason for so astounding an occurrence deadened her
+attention to the comparative quietness with which she accepted his
+coming--now that she had regained her self-control, although she was
+conscious of stirrings of wild joy in this evidence that he had been true
+to her. Had she recalled what she had said to him eight years ago as to
+the Argentine, and the "very good firm to work for," she would have had an
+easy clew, but that had passed from her mind almost with the
+utterance--certainly with his departure He had gone out into the world,
+leaving no more trace behind him than the bird that has flown southward.
+Not once during the intervening years did the thought cross her mind that
+words which she had spoken nearly at haphazard could have acted as a guide
+to him, while still less did she dream that they could have led him into
+the very seat beside her which he was occupying now.
+
+Nevertheless, he was there, and for the present she could dispense with
+the knowledge of the adventures that had brought him. He was there, and
+that was the reason of his coming in itself. He had hewn his way through
+all difficulties to reach her--as Siegfried came to Brunhild, over the
+mountains and through the fire. He had found the means--both the means
+and the daring--to enter and make himself accepted in her own world, her
+own circle, her own family--in so far as she had a family--and to sit
+right down at her side.
+
+She was not surprised at it. She assured herself of that. At the very
+instant when she was saying to Mary Pole, across Philip Wayne's white
+waistcoat, that she had always thought of endowed institutions of creative
+art as belonging to the races of weaker individual initiative--at the very
+instant when she was saying that, she was repeating to herself that the
+directness, the high-handedness, and the success of this kind of exploit
+was exactly what she would have expected of Norrie Ford. It was what she
+_had_ expected of him--in one form or another. It was with a sense of
+inward pride that she remembered that her faith in him had never wavered,
+even though it was not until Conquest forced her that she had confessed
+the fact. She glanced at Conquest across the table now and caught his eye.
+He smiled at her and raised his glass, as though to drink to her health.
+She smiled in return, daringly, triumphantly, as she would not have
+ventured to do an hour ago. She could see him flush with pleasure--a rare
+occurrence--at her unusual graciousness, while she was only rejoicing in
+her escape from him. Under the shadow of the tall man beside her, who had
+achieved the impossible in order to be loyal to her, she felt for the
+first time in her life that she had found a shelter. It mattered nothing
+that he was engrossed with Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott, and that, after the one
+glance, he had not turned toward her again; she was sure he knew that she
+understood him, and that he recognized her power to wait in patience to
+have the mystery explained.
+
+In the drawing-room he was introduced to her. Miss Jarrott led him up and
+made the presentation.
+
+"Miss Strange, I want you to know Mr. Strange. Now isn't that funny? You
+can't think how many times I've thought how interesting it would be to see
+you two meet. It's so unusual to have the same name, especially when it's
+such a strange name as yours. There's a pun. I simply can't help making
+them. My brother says I inherited all the sense of humor in the family. I
+don't know why I do it, but I always see a joke. Can you tell me why I do
+it?"
+
+Neither Strange nor Miriam knew what replies they made, but a conversation
+of some sort went on for a minute or two, after which Miss Jarrott whisked
+him away to present him to some one else. When he had gone Miriam was left
+with a feeling of spiritual chill. While it was impossible to betray a
+previous acquaintance before Miss Jarrott, there had been nothing whatever
+in his bearing to respond to the recognition in hers. There was something
+that might have been conveyed from mind to mind without risk, and he had
+not used the opportunity. In as far as he addressed her at all it had been
+through Miss Jarrott, and he had looked around her and over her rather
+than directly into her eyes.
+
+During the rest of the evening she caught glimpses of him only in the
+distance, talking now to one member of the family, now to another. It was
+clear that Miss Jarrott was, in a way, showing him off, and that he was
+received as some one of importance. She admired the coolness with which he
+carried himself, while her inherited instincts gave her a curious thrill
+of content that these law-making, law-keeping people should be duped.
+
+She hoped he would find an occasion for passing again in her direction.
+If she could have only a word with him it might help to make the situation
+intelligible. But he did not return, and presently she noticed, in looking
+about the room, that he had disappeared. She, too, was eager to be gone.
+Only in solitude could she get control of the surging thoughts, the
+bewildering suggestions, the contradictory suppositions that crowded it on
+her. She saw how useless it was to try to build a theory without at least
+one positive fact to go on.
+
+It was just as they were departing that her opportunity to ask a question
+came. They had said their good-nights to Miss Jarrott and were in the
+hall, waiting for the footman to call their carriage, when Evie, whom they
+had not wanted to disturb, came fluttering after them. She was flushed but
+radiant, and flung herself into Miriam's arms.
+
+"You dear thing! I haven't had time to say a word to you or Popsey Wayne
+the entire evening. But you'll excuse me, won't you? I've had to be civil
+to them all--do you see?--and do them up well. I knew you wouldn't mind. I
+wanted you to have a good time, but I'm afraid you haven't."
+
+"Oh yes," Miriam said, disengaging herself from the girl's embrace. "It's
+been wonderful--it really has. But, Evie dear," she whispered, drawing her
+away from the group of ladies who stood cloaked and hooded, also waiting
+for their carriages, "tell me--who is that Mr. Strange who sat next to
+me?"
+
+Evie's eyes went heavenward, and she took on a look of rapture.
+
+"I hope you liked him."
+
+"I didn't have much chance to see. But why do you hope it?"
+
+"Because--don't you see? Oh, surely you _must_ see--because--he's the
+one."
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+
+Enlightenment came to her in the carriage while she was driving homeward.
+During the five or ten minutes since Evie had spoken she, Miriam, had been
+sitting still and upright in the darkness, making no further attempt to
+see reason through this succession of bewilderments from sheer inability
+to contend against them. For the time being, at any rate, the struggle was
+too much for her. The issues raised by Evie's overwhelming announcement
+were so confusing that she must postpone their consideration. She must
+postpone everything but her own tumultuous passion, which had to be faced
+and mastered instantly. She was fighting with herself, with her own wild
+inward cries of protest, anger, jealousy, and self-pity, trying to
+distinguish each from the others and to silence it by appeal to her years
+of romantic folly, when suddenly Wayne spoke, in the cheery tone of a man
+who has unexpectedly passed a pleasant evening.
+
+"I had a nice long chat with the Great Unknown, who was sitting beside
+you, when the ladies left the dining-room. Who do you think he is?"
+
+After the shocks of the last two hours, she was prepared to hear Wayne
+tell her, in an offhand way, that it was Norrie Ford. Nevertheless, she
+summoned what was left of her stunned faculties and did her best to speak
+carefully.
+
+"I heard them call him Mr. Strange--"
+
+"Odd that was, wasn't it? But it isn't such a very uncommon name. I've met
+other Stranges--"
+
+"Oh yes. So have I."
+
+"Well, who do you think he is? Why, he's Stephens and Jarrott's new man in
+New York. He's taken Jenkins's place. You remember Jenkins, don't you?
+That little man with a lisp. I had a nice long chat with him--Strange, I
+mean. He tells me he's a New-Yorker by birth, but that he went out to the
+Argentine after his father failed in business. Well, _he_ won't fail in
+business, _I_ bet a penny. He's tremendously enthusiastic over the
+Argentine, too. Showed he had his head put on the right way when he went
+there. Wonderful country--the United States of South America some people
+call it. We're missing our opportunities out there. Great volume of trade
+flowing to Europe of which we had almost the monopoly at one time. I had a
+nice long chat with him."
+
+Her tired emotions received a new surprise as Wayne's words directed her
+thoughts to the morning when she had made to Ford the first suggestion of
+the Argentine. She had not precisely forgotten it; she had only thought it
+of too little importance to dwell on. She remembered that she had
+considered the idea practical till she had expressed it, but that his
+opposition had seemed to turn it into the impossible. She had never
+supposed that he might have acted on it--not any more than she had
+expected him to retain her father's name once he had reached a place of
+safety. In spite of the suddenness with which her dreams regarding him had
+been dispelled, it gave her a thrill of satisfaction to think that the
+word which, in a sense, had created him had been hers. To her fierce
+jealousy, with which her pride was wrestling even now, there was a
+measure of comfort in the knowledge that he could never be quite free from
+her, that his existence was rooted in her own.
+
+"Queenie Jarrott tells me," Wayne meandered on, "that her brother thinks
+very highly of this young man. It seems that his business abilities are
+quite remarkable, and they fancy he looks like Henry--the eldest of the
+boys who died. It's extraordinary how his voice reminds me of some
+one--don't know who. It might be--But then again--"
+
+"His voice is like a thousand other voices," she thought it well to say,
+"just as he looks like a thousand other men. He's one of those rather
+tall, rather good-looking, rather well-dressed youngish men--not really
+young--of whom you'll pass twenty within a mile any day in Fifth Avenue,
+and who are as thick as soldiers on a battle-field at the lower end of
+Broadway."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With the data Wayne had given her she worked out the main lines of the
+story during the night; but it was not until she had done so that its full
+significance appeared to her. Having grasped that, she could scarcely wait
+for daylight in order to go to Evie, and yet when morning came she
+abandoned that course as impolitic. Reflection showed her that her
+struggle must be less with Evie than with Ford, while she judged that he
+himself would lose no time in putting the battle in array. He must see as
+plainly as she did that she stood like an army across his path, and that
+he must either retreat before her or show fight. She believed he would do
+the latter and do it soon. She thought it probable that he would appear
+that very day, and that her wisest plan was to await his opening attack.
+The necessity, so unexpectedly laid upon her, of defending the right
+deflected her mind from dwelling too bitterly on her own disillusioning.
+
+The morning having passed without a sign from him, she made her
+arrangements for having the afternoon undisturbed sending Wayne to drive,
+and ordering the servants to admit no one but Mr. Strange, should he
+chance to call. Having intrenched herself behind the fortification of the
+tea-table, she waited. In spite of her preoccupation, or rather because of
+it, she purposely read a book, forcing herself to fix her attention on its
+pages in order to have her mind free from preconceived notions as to how
+she must act and what she must say. Her single concession to herself was
+to put on a new and becoming house dress, whose rich tones of brown and
+amber harmonized with her ivory coloring and emphasized the clear-cut
+distinction of her features. Before taking up her position she surveyed
+herself with the mournful approval which the warrior about to fall may
+give to the perfection of his equipment.
+
+It was half-past four when the servant showed him in. His formal attire
+seemed to her, as he crossed the room, oddly civilized and correct after
+her recollections of him. Notwithstanding her dread of the opening
+minutes, the meeting passed off according to the fixed procedure of the
+drawing-room. It was a relief to both to find that the acts of shaking
+hands and sitting down had been accomplished with matter-of-course
+formality. With the familiar support of afternoon-call conventions
+difficult topics could be treated at greater ease.
+
+"I'm very glad to find you at home," he began, feeling it to be a safe
+opening. "I was almost afraid--"
+
+"I stayed in on purpose," she said, frankly. "I thought you might come."
+
+"I wasn't sure whether or not you knew me last night--"
+
+"I didn't at first. I really hadn't noticed you, though I remembered
+afterward that you were standing with Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott when Mr.
+Wayne and I came into the room. I wonder now if you recognized me?"
+
+"Oh, rather! I knew you were going to be there. I've been in New York a
+month."
+
+"Then you might have come to see me sooner."
+
+"Well, you see--"
+
+He paused and colored, trying to cover up his embarrassment with a smile.
+She allowed her eyes to express interrogation not knowing that her frank
+gaze disconcerted him. She herself went back so eagerly to the days when
+he was the fugitive, Norrie Ford, and she the nameless girl who was
+helping him, that she could not divine his humiliation at being obliged to
+drop his mask. Since becoming engaged to Evie Colfax and returning to New
+York, he perceived more clearly than ever before that his true part in the
+world was that of the respectable, successful man of business which he
+played so skilfully. It cost him an effort she could have no reason to
+suspect to be face to face with the one person in the world who knew him
+as something else.
+
+"You see," he began again, "I had to consider a good many
+things--naturally. It wouldn't have done to give any one an idea that we
+had met before."
+
+"No, of course not. But last night you might have--"
+
+"Last night I had to follow the same tactics. I can't afford to run risks.
+It's rather painful, it's even a bit humiliating--"
+
+"I can imagine that, especially here in New York. In out-of-the-way places
+it must be different. There it doesn't matter. But to be among the very
+people who--"
+
+"You think that there it does matter. I had to consider that. I had to
+make it plain to myself that there was nothing dishonorable in imposing on
+people who had forced me into a false position. I don't say it's
+pleasant--"
+
+"Oh, I know it can't be pleasant. I only wondered a little, as I saw you
+last night, why you let yourself be placed in a position that made it
+necessary."
+
+"I should have wondered at that myself a year ago. I certainly never had
+any intention of doing it. It's almost as much a surprise to me to be here
+as it is to you to see me. I suppose you thought I would never turn up
+again."
+
+"No, I didn't think that. On the contrary, I thought you _would_ turn
+up--only not just here."
+
+It struck him that she was emphasizing that point for a purpose--to bring
+him to another point still. He took a few seconds to reflect before
+deciding that he would follow her lead without further hanging back.
+
+"I shouldn't have returned to New York if I hadn't become engaged to Miss
+Colfax. You know about that, don't you? I think she meant to tell you."
+
+She inclined her head assentingly, without words. He noticed her dark eyes
+resting on him with a kind of pity. He had cherished a faint hope--the
+very faintest--that she might welcome what he had just said
+sympathetically. In the few minutes during which she remained silent that
+hope died.
+
+"I suppose," she said, gently, "that you became engaged to Evie before
+knowing who she was?"
+
+"I fell in love with her before knowing who she was. I'm afraid that when
+I actually asked her to marry me I had heard all there was to learn."
+
+"Then why did you do it?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders with a movement acquired by long residence
+among Latins. His smile conveyed the impossibility of explaining himself
+in a sentence.
+
+"I'll tell you all about it, if you'd like to hear."
+
+"I should like it very much. Remember, I know nothing of what happened
+after--after--"
+
+He noticed a shade of confusion in her manner, and hastened to begin his
+narrative.
+
+Somewhat to her surprise, he sketched his facts in lightly, but dwelt
+strongly on the mental and moral necessities his situation forced on him.
+He related with some detail the formation of his creed of conduct in the
+dawn on Lake Champlain, and showed her that according to its tenets he was
+permitted a kind of action that in other men might be reprehensible. He
+came to the story of Evie last of all, and allowed her to see how
+dominating a part Fate, or Predestination had played in evolving it.
+
+"So you see," he ended, "it was too late then to do anything--but to
+yield."
+
+"Or withdraw," she added, softly.
+
+He stared at her a moment, his body bent slightly forward his elbows
+resting on the arms of his chair. As a matter of fact, he was thinking
+less of her words than of her beauty--so much nobler in type than he
+remembered it.
+
+"Yes," he returned, quietly, "I can see that it would strike you in that
+way. So it did me--at first. But I had to look at the subject all round--"
+
+"I don't need to do that."
+
+He stared at her again. There was a decision in her words which he found
+hard to reconcile with the pity in her eyes and the gentle softness of her
+smile.
+
+"You mean that you don't want to take my--necessities--into
+consideration."
+
+"I mean that when I see the one thing right to do, I don't have to look
+any further."
+
+"The one thing right to do--for you?--or for me?"
+
+"There's no reason why I should intervene at all. I look to you to save me
+from the necessity."
+
+He hesitated a minute before deciding whether to hedge or to meet her
+squarely.
+
+"By giving up Evie and--clearing out," he said, with a perceptible hint of
+defiance.
+
+"I shouldn't lay stress on your--clearing out."
+
+"But you would on my giving up Evie?"
+
+"Don't you see," she began, in an explanatory tone, "I, in my own person,
+have nothing to do with it? It isn't for me to say this should be done or
+that. You can't imagine how hard it is for me to say anything at all; and
+if I speak, it isn't as myself--it's as the voice of a situation. You must
+understand as well as I do what that situation imposes."
+
+"But I don't intend that a situation shall impose anything--on me. I mean
+to act as master--"
+
+"But I'm neither so independent nor so strong--nor is Evie. You don't
+consider her."
+
+"I don't have to consider any one. When I make Evie happy I do all that
+can be asked of me."
+
+"No, you would be called on to _keep_ her happy. And she couldn't remain
+happy if she were married to you. It isn't possible. She couldn't live
+with you any more than--than a humming-bird could live with a hawk."
+
+They both smiled, rather nervously.
+
+"But I'm not a hawk," he insisted. "I'm much more a humming-bird than you
+imagine. You think me some sort of creature of prey because you
+believe--that I did--what I was accused of--"
+
+The circumstances seemed so far off from him now, so incongruous with what
+he had become, that he reverted to them with difficulty.
+
+"I don't attach any importance to that," she said, with a tranquillity
+that startled him. "I suppose I ought to, but I never have. If you killed
+your uncle, it seems to me--very natural. He provoked you. He deserved it.
+My father would have done it certainly."
+
+"But I didn't, you see. That puts another color on the case."
+
+"It doesn't for me. And it doesn't, as it affects Evie. Whether you're
+innocent or guilty--and I don't say I think you to be guilty--I've never
+thought much about it--but whether you're guilty or not, your life is the
+kind of tragedy Evie couldn't share. It would kill her."
+
+"It wouldn't kill her, if she didn't know anything about it."
+
+"But she would know. You can't keep that sort of thing from a wife. She
+wouldn't be married to you a year before she had discovered that you
+were--a--"
+
+"An escaped convict. Why not say it?"
+
+"I wasn't going to say it. But at least she would know that you were a man
+who was pretending to be--something that he wasn't."
+
+"You mean an impostor. Well, I've already explained to you that I'm an
+impostor only because Society itself has made me one, I'm not to blame--"
+
+"I quite see the force of that. But Evie wouldn't. Don't you understand?
+That's my point. She would only see the horror of it, and she would be
+overwhelmed. It wouldn't matter to her that you could bring forward
+arguments in your own defence. She wouldn't be capable of understanding
+them. You must see for yourself that mentally--and spiritually--just as
+bodily--she's as fragile as a butterfly. She couldn't withstand a storm.
+She'd be crushed by it."
+
+"I don't think you do her justice. If she were to discover--I mean, if the
+worst were to come to the worst--well, you can see how it's been with
+yourself. You've known from the beginning all there is to know--and yet--"
+
+"I'm different."
+
+She meant the brief statement to divert his attention from himself, but
+she perceived that it aroused a flash of self-consciousness in both. While
+she could hear herself saying inwardly, "I'd rather go on waiting for
+him--uselessly," he was listening to a silvery voice, as it lisped the
+words, "Dear mamma used to think she was in love with some one; we didn't
+know anything about it." Each reverted to the memory of the lakeside scene
+in which he had said, "My life will belong to you ... a thing for you to
+dispose of ..." and each was afraid that the other was doing so.
+
+All at once she saw herself as she fancied he must see her--a woman
+claiming the fulfilment of an old promise, the payment of a long-standing
+debt. He must think she was making Evie a pretext in her fight for her own
+hand. His vow--if it was a vow--had been the germ of so much romance in
+her mind that she ascribed it to a place in the foreground of his. In all
+she was saying he would understand a demand on her part that he should
+make it good. Very well, then; if he could do her such injustice, he must
+do it. She could not permit the fear of it to inspire her with moral
+cowardice or deter her from doing what was right.
+
+Nevertheless, it helped her to control her agitation to rise and ring for
+tea. She felt the need of some commonplace action to assure herself and
+him that now, at last, she was outside the realm of the romantic. He rose
+as she did, to forestall her at the bell; and as the servant entered with
+the tray, they moved together into the embrasure of the wide bay-window.
+Down below the autumn colors were fading, while leaves, golden-yellow or
+blood-red, were being swirled along the ground.
+
+"I had to do things out there"--his nod was meant to indicate the
+direction of South America--"in a somewhat high-handed manner, and I've
+acquired the habit of it. If I'd stuck at difficulties I shouldn't have
+got anywhere."
+
+She looked at him inquiringly, as though to ask the purport of the
+observation.
+
+"You must see that I'm obliged to put this thing through--on Evie's
+account as much as mine. After getting her to care for me, I can't desert
+her now, whatever happens."
+
+"She wouldn't suffer--after a while. She'd get over it. You might not, but
+she--"
+
+"She shall not get over it, if I can help it. How can you ask me to let
+her?"
+
+"Only on the ground that you love her well enough."
+
+"Would you call that love?"
+
+"In view of all the circumstances, it would be my idea of it."
+
+"Then it wouldn't be mine. The only love I understand is the love that
+fights for its object, in the face of all opposition."
+
+She looked at him a minute with what she tried to make a smile, but which
+became no more than a quivering of the lip and lashes.
+
+"I hope you won't fight," she said, in a tone of appeal, "because it would
+have to be with me. If anything could break my heart, that would."
+
+She knew how near to self-betrayal she had gone, but in her eagerness she
+was reckless of the danger.
+
+"How do you know it wouldn't break mine too?" he asked, with a scrutiny
+that searched her eyes. "But there are times in life when men have just to
+fight--and let their hearts be broken. In becoming responsible for Evie's
+happiness I've given a pledge from which I can't withdraw--"
+
+"But that's where you don't understand her--"
+
+"Possibly; but it's where I understand myself."
+
+"Tea is served, miss," the maid said, coming forward to where they talked
+in undertones. At the same minute there was a shuffling at the door and
+Wayne entered from his drive. Ford would have gone forward to help him,
+but she put out her hand and stopped him.
+
+"He likes to find his way himself," she whispered.
+
+"They tell me there's tea in here," Wayne said, cheerily, from the
+doorway.
+
+"There's more than tea," Miriam replied in as bright a tone as she could
+assume. "There's Mr. Strange, whom you met last night."
+
+"Ah, that's good." Wayne groped his way toward the voices. "How do you do!
+Glad to see you. It's windy out-of-doors. One feels the winter beginning
+to nip."
+
+Ford took the extended hand, and, without seeming to do so, adroitly
+piloted the blind man to a seat as they moved, all three, to the
+tea-table.
+
+For the next ten minutes their talk turned on the common topics of the
+day. As during her conversation with Conquest a few weeks before, Miriam
+found again that the routine of duties of acting as hostess steadied her
+nerves. With Ford aiding her in the little ways to which he had become
+accustomed since his engagement to Evie, hostility was absent from their
+mutual relation, even though opposition remained. That at least was a
+comfort to her; and now and then, as she handed him the bread and butter
+or a plate of cakes to pass to Wayne, their eyes could meet in a glance of
+comprehension.
+
+Wayne was still enjoying his tea when Ford turned to him with an abrupt
+change of tone.
+
+"I'm glad you came in, sir, while I was still here, because there's
+something I particularly want to tell you."
+
+He did not look at Miriam, but he could feel the way in which she sat
+upright and aghast. Wayne turned his sightless eyes, hidden by large
+colored glasses, toward the speaker, and nodded.
+
+"Yes?" he said, interrogatively.
+
+"I would have told you before, only that Miss Jarrott and Miss Colfax
+thought I had better wait till every one got settled. In any case, Mr.
+Jarrott made it a condition before I left Buenos Aires that it shouldn't
+go outside the family till Miss Colfax had had her social winter in New
+York."
+
+Wayne's face grew grave, but not unsympathetic.
+
+"I suppose I know what's coming," he said, quietly.
+
+"It's the sort of thing that was bound to come sooner or later with Miss
+Colfax," Ford smiled, speaking with an air of assurance. "What makes me
+uneasy is that I should be the man to come and tell the news. If it was
+any one you knew better--"
+
+"You've probably heard that I'm not Evie's guardian," Wayne interposed.
+"I've no control at all over what she does."
+
+"I understand that; but to me there's an authority above the legal one--or
+at least on a level with it--and I should be unhappy--we should both be
+unhappy--if we didn't have your consent."
+
+Wayne looked pleased. He was so rarely consulted in the affairs of the
+family, especially since his affliction had forced him aside, that this
+deference was a clew to the young man's character. Nevertheless, he
+allowed some seconds to pass in silence, while Ford threw at Miriam a
+glance of defiance, in which there was also an expression of audacious
+friendliness. She sat rigid and pale, her hands clinching the arms of her
+chair.
+
+"It's a serious matter--of course," Wayne said, after becoming hesitation;
+"but I've great confidence in Henry Jarrott. Next to Evie herself, he's
+the person most concerned--in a certain way. I'm told he thinks well of
+you--"
+
+"He ought to know," Ford broke in, confidently. "I've nothing to show in
+the way of passports, except myself and my work. I've been with him ever
+since I went to South America, and he's been extremely kind to me. The
+only certificate of character I can offer is one from him."
+
+"That's sufficient. We should be sorry to let Evie go, shouldn't we,
+Miriam? She's a sweet child, and very much like her dear mother. But, as
+you say, it was bound to happen one day or another; and we can only be
+glad that--I'm happy to congratulate you, Mr. Strange. Your name, at any
+rate, is a familiar one. It's that of an old boyhood's friend of mine, who
+showed me the honor of placing this young lady in my charge. We called
+him Harry. His full name was Herbert Harrington, but he dropped the first.
+You seem to have taken it up--it's odd, isn't it, Miriam?--and I take it
+as a happy omen."
+
+"Thank you." Ford rose, and made the blind man understand that he was
+holding out his hand, "I shall be more satisfied now for having told you."
+
+Miriam accompanied him into the hall, on pretext of ringing for the lift.
+
+"Oh, why did you do that?" she protested. "Don't you see that it only
+makes things more complicated than they were already?"
+
+"It's my first move," he laughed, with friendly bravado. "Now you can make
+yours."
+
+She gazed at him in puzzled distress as the lift rose.
+
+"I'm coming again," he said, with renewed confidence. "I've a lot more
+things to say."
+
+"And I have only one," she answered, turning back toward the drawing-room.
+
+"He's a nice young fellow," Wayne said, as he heard her enter. He had
+risen and felt his way into the bay-window, where he stood looking outward
+as if he could see. "I suppose it must be all right, since the Jarrotts
+are so enthusiastic Poor little Evie! I hope she'll be happy. It's
+extraordinary how his voice reminds me of--"
+
+She stood still in the middle of the room, waiting for him to continue.
+Nothing he could add would have surprised her now. But he said no more.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+
+Thinking that Ford might come again next afternoon, Miriam went out. On
+her return she found his card--_Mr. Herbert Strange._ The same thing
+occurred the next day, and the next, and so on through the week. She was
+not afraid of seeing him. Now that the worst was known to her, she was
+sure of her mastery of herself, and of her capacity to meet anything. What
+she feared most was her sympathy for him, and the possibility that in some
+unguarded moment of pity he might wring concessions from her which she had
+no right to make. She hoped, too, that time, even a few days' time, would
+help him to work out the honorable course for himself.
+
+Her meetings with Evie were more inevitable, and required greater
+self-repression. She was so used to the part of elder sister, with whom
+all confidences are discussed, that she found it difficult not to speak
+her heart out frankly.
+
+"I heard he had been to see you and Popsey Wayne, and told you," Evie
+said, with her pretty nose just peeping above the bedclothes, at midday,
+on a morning later in the week. It was the day after Evie's first large
+dance, and she had been sleeping late. Miriam sat on the edge of the bed,
+smoothing stray golden tendrils off the flushed, happy little face.
+
+"He did come," Miriam admitted. "Mr. Wayne made no objections. I can't
+say he was glad. You wouldn't expect us to be that, dear, would you?"
+
+"I expect you to like him. It isn't committing you to much to say that.
+But you seem so--so every which way about him."
+
+"I'm not every which way about him. I can't say that I'm any way at all.
+Yes, I do like him--after a fashion. If I make reserves, it's because I'm
+not sure that I think him good enough for my little Evie."
+
+"He's a great deal too good!" Evie exclaimed, rapturously. "Oh, Miriam, if
+you only knew how fond I am of him! I'd die for him--I truly believe I
+would--almost! Oh, it was so stupid last night without him! All these boys
+seem such pigeons beside him. I'm sorry now we're not going to announce
+the engagement at once. I certainly sha'n't change my mind--and it would
+be such fun to be able to say I was engaged before coming out."
+
+"Twice before coming out."
+
+"Oh, well, I only count it once, do you see? Billy's such a goose. You
+should have seen him last night when I forgot two of my dances with
+him--on purpose. He's really getting to dislike me; so that I shall soon
+be able to--to show him."
+
+"I wouldn't be in a hurry about that, dear. There's lots of time. As you
+said the other day, it's no use hurting his feelings--"
+
+Evie sat up suddenly in bed, and looked suspicious.
+
+"So you're taking that stand. Now I know you don't like him. You've got
+something against him, though I can't for the life of me imagine what it
+can be, when you never laid eyes on him till a few days ago. Well, I'm not
+going to change, do you see? You may as well make up your mind to that at
+once. And it will be Billy or no Billy."
+
+Nearer than that Miriam could not approach the subject through fear of
+doing more harm than good. At the end of a week Ford found her at home,
+chiefly because she felt it time he should. She secured again the
+afternoon-call atmosphere; but she noticed that he carried a small
+packet--a large, brownish-yellow envelope, strapped with rubber
+bands--which he kept in his hand. She was struck by the greater ease of
+his entry, and by the renewal of that sense of comradeship which had
+marked his bearing toward her in the old days in the cabin. The small
+comedy of introductory commonplace went off smoothly.
+
+"Well?" he said then, with a little challenging laugh.
+
+"Well--what?"
+
+"I've been waiting for your move. You haven't made it."
+
+She shook her head. "I've no move to make."
+
+"Oh yes, you have--a great big move. You can easily say, Check. I doubt if
+you can make it, Checkmate."
+
+"I'm afraid that's a game I don't know how to play."
+
+He stared at her inquiringly--noting the disdain with which her chin
+tilted and her lip curled, though he could see it was a disdain suffused
+with sweetness.
+
+"Do you mean that you wouldn't--wouldn't give me away?"
+
+"I mean that you're either broaching a topic I don't understand or
+speaking a language I've never learned. If you don't mind, we won't
+discuss the subject, and we'll speak our mother-tongue--the mother-tongue
+of people like you and me."
+
+He stared again. It took him some few seconds to understand her
+phraseology. In proportion as her meaning broke upon him, his face glowed.
+When he spoke it was with enthusiasm for her generosity in taking this
+stand rather than in gratitude for anything he was to gain by it.
+
+"By Jove, you're a brick! You always were. I might have expected that this
+is exactly what you'd say."
+
+"I hope so. I didn't expect that you'd talk of my giving you away, as you
+call it--to any one."
+
+"But you're wrong," he said, with a return to the laughing bravado which
+concealed his inward repugnance to his position. "You're wrong. I'll give
+you that tip now. I'll fight fair. I sha'n't be grateful. I'll profit by
+your magnanimity. Remember it's my part in the world to be unscrupulous.
+It has to be. I've told you so. With me the end justifies the
+means--always; and when the end is to keep my word to Evie, it will make
+no difference to me that you were too high-minded to put the big obstacle
+in my way."
+
+"You'll not expect me to be otherwise than sorry for that--for your sake."
+
+"No, I dare say. But I can't stop to think of what any one feels for my
+sake when I know what I feel for my own."
+
+"Which is only an additional reason for my being--sorry. You don't find
+fault with me for that?"
+
+"I do. I don't want you to be sorry. I want to convince you. I want you to
+see things from my point of view--how I've been placed. Good Lord! it's
+hard enough, without the sense that you're sitting in judgment on me."
+
+"I'm not sitting in judgment on you--except in so far as concerns Evie
+Colfax. If it was anybody else--"
+
+"But it couldn't be anybody else It's Evie or no one. She's everything on
+earth to me. She's to me what electricity is to the wire--that which makes
+it a thing alive."
+
+"To be a thing alive isn't necessarily the highest thing."
+
+"Ah, but that doesn't apply to me. It's all very well for other men to
+say, 'All is lost to save honor.' They have compensations. I haven't. You
+might as well ask a man to think of the highest thing when he's drowning."
+
+"But I should. There have been men who haven't--and they've saved their
+lives by it. But you know what we've called them."
+
+"In my case there'd be only you to call me that--if you wanted to."
+
+"Oh no; there'd be--you."
+
+"I can stand that. I've stood it for eight years already. If you think I
+haven't had times when it's been hell, you're quite mistaken. I wonder if
+you can guess what it means to me--in here"--he tapped his breast--"to go
+round among all these good, kind, honorable people, passing myself off as
+Herbert Strange when all the time I'm Norrie Ford--and a convict? But I'm
+forced to. There's no way out of it."
+
+"Because there's no way out of it isn't a reason for going further in."
+
+"What does that matter? When you're in up to the eyes, what does it matter
+if you go over your head?"
+
+"In this case it would matter to Evie. That's my point. I have to protect
+her--to save her. There's no one but me to do it--and you."
+
+"Don't count on me," he said, savagely. "I've the right, in this wild
+beast's life, to seize anything I can snatch."
+
+He renewed his arguments, going over all the ground again. She listened
+to him as she had once listened to his plea in his defence--her pose
+pensive, her chin resting on her hand, her eyes pitiful. As far as she was
+aware of her own feelings it was merely to take note that a kind of
+yearning over him, an immense sorrow for him and with him, had
+extinguished the fires that a few days ago were burning for herself. It
+was hard to sit there heedless of his exposition and deaf to his
+persuasion. Seeing her inflexible, he became halting in his speech, till
+finally he stopped, still looking at her with an unresenting, dog-like
+gaze of entreaty.
+
+She made no comment when he ceased, and for a time they sat in silence.
+
+"Do you know what this is?" he asked, holding the packet toward her.
+
+She shook her head wonderingly.
+
+"It's what I owe you." She made a gesture of deprecation. "It's the money
+you lent me," he went on. "It's a tremendous satisfaction--that at
+least--to be able to bring it back to you."
+
+"But I don't want it," she stammered, in some agitation.
+
+"Perhaps not. But I want you to have it." He explained to her briefly what
+he had done in the matter.
+
+"Couldn't you give it to something?" she begged, "to some church or
+institution?"
+
+"You can, if you like. I mean to give it to you. You see, I'm not
+returning it with expressions of gratitude, because anything I could say
+would be so inadequate as to be absurd."
+
+He left his chair and came to her, with the packet in his outstretched
+hand. She shrank from it, rising, and retreating into the space of the
+bay-window.
+
+"But I don't want it," she insisted. "I never thought of your returning
+it. I scarcely thought of the incident at all. It had almost passed from
+my memory."
+
+"That's natural enough; but it's equally natural that it shouldn't have
+passed from mine." He came close to her and offered it again. "Do take
+it."
+
+"Put it on the table. Please."
+
+"That isn't the same thing. I want you to take it. I want to put it into
+your own hand, as you put it into mine."
+
+She remembered that she had put it into his hand by closing his fingers
+forcibly upon it, and hastened to prevent anything of that kind now. She
+took it unwillingly, holding it in both hands as if it were a casket.
+
+"That's done," he said, with satisfaction. "You can't imagine what a
+relief it is to have it off my mind."
+
+"I'm sorry you should have felt about it like that."
+
+"You would have felt like that yourself, if you were a man owing money to
+a woman--and especially a woman who was your--enemy."
+
+"Oh!" She cowered, as if he had threatened her.
+
+"I repeat the word," he laughed, uneasily. "Any one is my enemy who comes
+between me and Evie. You'll forgive me if I seem brutal--"
+
+"Yes, I'll forgive you. I'll even accept the word." She was pale and
+nervous, with the kind of nervousness that kept her smiling and still, but
+sent the queer, lambent flashes into her eyes. "Let us say it. I'm your
+enemy, and you pay me the money so as to feel free to strike me as hard as
+you can."
+
+He kept to his laugh, but there was a forced ring in it.
+
+"I don't call that a fair way of putting it, but--"
+
+"I don't see that the way of putting it matters, so long as it's the
+fact."
+
+"It's the fact twisted in a very ingenious fashion. I should say
+that--since I'm going to marry Evie--I want--naturally enough--to feel
+that--that"--he stammered and reddened, seeking a word that would not
+convey an insult--"to feel--that I--met other claims--as well as I could."
+
+He looked her in the eyes with significant directness. His steady gaze, in
+which she saw--or thought she saw--glints of challenge toned down by
+gleams of regret, seemed to say, "Whatever I owe you other than money is
+out of my power to pay." She fully understood that he did not repudiate
+the debt; he was only telling her that since he had given all to Evie, his
+heart was bankrupt. What angered her and kept her silent, fearing she
+would say something she would afterward repent, was the implication that
+she was putting forth her claim for fulfilment.
+
+He still confronted her, with an air of flying humiliation as a flag of
+defiance, while she stood holding the packet in both hands, when the door
+was pushed open, and Evie, radiant from her walk in the cold air and fine
+in autumn furs and plumage, fluttered in. Her blue eyes opened wide on the
+two in the bay-window, but she did not advance from the threshold.
+
+"Dear me, dear me!" she twittered, in her dry little fashion, before they
+had time to realize the fact that she was there. "I hope I'm not
+interrupting you."
+
+"Evie dear, come in." Miriam threw the packet on a table, and went
+forward. Ford followed, trying to regain the appearance of "just making a
+call."
+
+"No, no," Evie cried, waving Miriam back. "I only came--for nothing. That
+is--But I'll go away and come back again. Do you think you'll be long? But
+I suppose if you have secrets--"
+
+Her hand was on the knob again, but Miriam caught her.
+
+"No, darling, you must stay. You're absurd. Mr. Strange and I were
+just--talking."
+
+"Yes, so I saw. That's why I thought I might be _de trap_. How do you do!"
+She put out her left hand carelessly to Ford, her right hand still holding
+the knob, and twisted her little person impatiently. Ford held her hand,
+but she snatched it away. "There's not the least reason why I should stay,
+do you see?" she hurried on. "I only came with a message from Aunt
+Queenie."
+
+"I'm sure it's confidential," Ford laughed, "so I'll make myself scarce."
+
+"You can do just as you like," Evie returned, indifferently. "Cousin
+Colfax Yorke," she added, looking at Miriam, "has telephoned that he can't
+come to dine; and, as it's too late to get anybody else, Aunt Queenie
+thought you might come and make a fourth. It's only ourselves and--- him,"
+she nodded toward Strange.
+
+"Certainly, I'll come, dear--with pleasure."
+
+"And I'll go," Ford said; "but I won't add with pleasure, because that
+would be rude."
+
+When he had gone Evie sniffed about the room, looking at the pictures and
+curios as if she had never seen them before. It was evident that she had
+spied the packet, and was making her way, by a seemingly accidental route,
+toward it. Miriam drifted back to her place in the bay-window, where,
+while apparently watching the traffic in the street below, she kept an eye
+on Evie's manœuvres.
+
+"What on earth can you two have to talk about?" Evie demanded, while she
+seemed intent on examining a cabinet of old porcelain.
+
+"If you're very good, dear," Miriam replied, trying to take an amused,
+offhand tone, "I'll tell you. It was business."
+
+"Business? Why, I thought you hardly knew him."
+
+"You don't have to know people very well to transact business with them.
+He came on a question of--money."
+
+"No, but you don't start up doing business with a person that's just
+dropped down from the clouds--like that." She snapped her fingers to
+indicate precipitous haste.
+
+"Sometimes you do."
+
+"Well, _you_ don't. I know that for a fact." She was inspecting a vase on
+a pedestal in a corner now. It was nearer to the packet. She wheeled round
+suddenly, so that it should take her by surprise. "What's that?"
+
+"You see. It's an envelope with papers in it."
+
+"What sort of papers?"
+
+"I haven't looked at them yet. They have to do with money, or investments,
+or something. I'm never very clear about those things."
+
+"I thought you did all that through Cousin Endsleigh Jarrott and Mr.
+Conquest?"
+
+"This was a little thing I couldn't trouble them with."
+
+"And you went straight off to _him_, when you'd only known him--let me
+see!--how many days?--one, two, three, four--"
+
+"I've gone to people I didn't know at all--sometimes. You have to. If you
+only knew more about investing money--"
+
+"I don't know anything about investing money; but I know this is very
+queer. And you didn't like him--or you said you didn't."
+
+"I said I did, dear--after a fashion--and so I do."
+
+"In that case I should think a good deal would depend upon the fashion.
+Look here. It's addressed--_Miss Strange._ That's his writing. That's how
+he scribbles his name. And there's something written in tiny, tiny letters
+in the corner. What is it?" Without touching the envelope she bent down to
+see. "It's _The Wild Olive_. Now, what in this world can that mean? That's
+not business, anyhow. That means something."
+
+"No, that's not business, but I haven't an idea what it means." Miriam was
+glad to be able to disclaim something. "It was probably on the envelope by
+accident. Some clerk wrote it, and Mr. Strange didn't notice it."
+
+Evie let the explanation pass, while continuing to stare at the object of
+her suspicions.
+
+"That's not papers," she said, at last, pointing as she spoke to something
+protruding between the rubber bands. "There's something in there. It looks
+like a"--she hesitated to find the right article--"it looks like a
+card-case."
+
+"Perhaps it is," Miriam agreed. "But I'm sure I don't know why he should
+bring me a card-case."
+
+"Why don't you look?"
+
+"I wasn't in a hurry; but you can look yourself if you want to."
+
+Evie took offence. "I'm sure I don't want to. That's the last thing."
+
+"I wish you would. Then you'd see."
+
+"I only do it under protest," she declared--"because you force me to." She
+took up the envelope, and began to unloose the rubber bands. "_The Wild
+Olive_" she quoted, half to herself. "Ridiculous! I should think clerks
+might have something better to do than write such things as that--on
+envelopes--on people's business." But her indignation turned to surprise
+when a small flat thing, not unlike a card-case, certainly, tumbled out.
+"What in the name of goodness--?"
+
+Only strong self-control kept Miriam from darting forward to snatch it
+from the floor. She remembered it at once. It was a worn red leather
+pocket-book, which she had last seen when it was fresh and new--sitting in
+the sunset, on the heights above Champlain, and looking at the jewelled
+sea. A card fell from it, on which there was something written. Evie
+dropped on one knee to pick it up. Miriam was sorry to risk anything, but
+she felt constrained to say, as quietly as possible:
+
+"You'd better not read that, dear. It might be private."
+
+Evie slipped the card back into the pocket-book, which she threw on the
+table, where Miriam let it lie. "I won't look at anything else," Evie
+said, with dignity, turning away.
+
+"I want you to," Miriam said, authoritatively. "I beg you to."
+
+Thus commanded, Evie drew forth a flat document, on which she read, in
+ornamental letters, the inscription, _New York, Toronto, and Great Lakes
+Railroad Company_. She unfolded it slowly, looking puzzled.
+
+"It's nothing but a lot of little square things," she said, with some
+disdain.
+
+"The little square things are called coupons, if you know what they are."
+
+"I know they're things people cut--when they have a lot of money. I don't
+know why they cut them; and still less do I know why he should be bringing
+them to you."
+
+Miriam had a sudden inspiration that made her face beam with relief.
+
+"I'll tell you why he brought them to me, dear--though I do it under
+protest, as you say yourself. Your curiosity forces my hand, and makes me
+show it ahead of time. He brought them to me because it's a
+wedding-present for you. When you get married--or begin to get
+married--you can have all that money for your trousseau."
+
+"Aunt Helen is going to give me my trousseau. She said so."
+
+"Then you can have it for anything you like--for house-furnishings or a
+pearl necklace. You know you wanted a pearl necklace--and there's plenty
+for a nice one. Each of those papers is worth a thousand dollars, or
+nearly. And there are--how many?"
+
+"Three. You seem very keen on getting rid of them."
+
+"So I am--to you, darling."
+
+Evie prepared to depart, looking unconvinced.
+
+"It's awfully nice of you--of course. But still--if that's what you had
+meant at first--from the beginning--you would have--Well, I'll tell Aunt
+Queenie you'll come."
+
+Left alone, Miriam made haste to read the card in the pocket-book.
+
+   _As deep calls to deep, so Spirit speaks to Spirit. It is the only true
+   communion between mutually comprehending souls. But it is
+   unerring--pardoning all, because understanding all, and making the
+   crooked straight._
+
+She read it more than once. She was not sure that it was meant for her.
+She was not sure that it was in Ford's own handwriting. But in their
+situation it had a meaning; she took it as a message to herself; and as
+she read, and read again, she felt on her face the trickling of one or two
+slow, hard tears.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+
+The result of the dinner that evening was that Evie grew more fretful.
+After the departure of her guests, she evolved a brief formula which she
+used frequently during the next few weeks: "There's something!" With her
+quick eyes and quicker intuitions, it was impossible for her not to see
+that Ford and Miriam possessed common memories of the kind that
+distinguish old acquaintances from new ones. When it did not transpire in
+chance words she caught it in their glances or divined it in the mental
+atmosphere. As autumn passed into early winter she became nervous,
+peevish, and exacting; she lost much from her pretty ways and something
+from her looks. In the family the change was ascribed to the fatigue
+incidental to the sudden round of lunches, dinners, dances, suppers,
+theatre-parties, opera-goings, and "teas" with which American boys and
+girls of a certain age are surfeited pitilessly with pleasure, as
+Strasburg geese are stuffed for paté de foie gras. Ford, however,
+suspected the true reason, and Miriam knew it. They met as seldom as might
+be; and yet, with the many things requiring explanation between them,
+frank conversation became imperative.
+
+"You see how it is already," Miriam said to him. "It's making her unhappy
+from the start. You can't conceal the truth from her very long."
+
+"She isn't fretting about the truth; she's fretting about what she
+imagines."
+
+"She's fretting because she doesn't understand, and she'll go on fretting
+till she does. I'm not sorry. It must show you--"
+
+"It shows me the necessity of our being married as soon as possible, so
+that I may take care of her, and put a stop to it."
+
+"I agree with you that you'd put a stop to it. You'd put a stop to
+everything. She wouldn't live a year--or you wouldn't. Either she'd
+die--or she'd abhor you. And if she didn't die, you'd want to."
+
+"I wish to the Lord I had died--eight years ago. The great mistake I made
+was when the lumber-jacks loosed my hand-cuffs and started me through the
+woods. They called it giving me a chance, and for a few minutes I thought
+it was one. A chance! Good God! I remember feeling, as I ran, that I was
+deserting something. I didn't know what it was just then, but I've
+understood it since. It would have been a pluckier thing to have been in
+my coffin as Norrie Ford--or even doing time--than to be here as Herbert
+Strange."
+
+She said nothing for the moment, but as they walked along side by side he
+shot a glance at her, and saw her coloring. They had met in the park. He
+was going toward the house in Seventy-second Street when she was coming
+away from it. Seizing the opportunity of a few words in private, he had
+turned to stroll back with her.
+
+"I didn't expect you to be here as Herbert Strange," she said, as though
+in self-excuse. "I had to give you a name that was like my own, when I was
+writing letters about your ticket, and sending checks. I had to do
+everything to avoid suspicion at a time when Greenport was watched. I
+thought you might be able to take your own name or something like it--"
+
+He explained to her how that had never been possible.
+
+"Evie fidgets about it," he continued. "She puts together the two facts
+that you and I seem to have known each other, and that my name is
+identical with your father's. She doesn't know what to make of it; she
+only thinks 'there's something.' She hasn't said more than that in words,
+but I see her little mind at work."
+
+"Evie isn't the only one," she informed him. "There's Mr. Wayne. He has to
+be reckoned with. He recognized your voice from the first minute of
+hearing it, though he hasn't said yet that he knows whose it is. He may do
+so at any time. He's very surprising at that sort of thing. I can see him
+listening when you're there, not only to your words, but to your very
+movements, trying to recapture--"
+
+"The upshot of everything," he said, abruptly, "is that I must marry her,
+take her back to the Argentine, where I found her, and where we shall both
+be out of harm's way."
+
+"You wouldn't be out of harm's way. You can't turn your back on it like
+that. You alone might be able to slip through, but not if you have Evie."
+
+"That will be my affair; I'll see to it. I take the full responsibility on
+myself."
+
+"I couldn't let you. Remember that. You can't marry her. Let me say it
+plainly--"
+
+"Oh, you've said it plainly enough."
+
+"If I've said it too plainly, it's because you force me. You're so
+wilful."
+
+"You mean, I'm so determined. What it amounts to is the clash of your
+will against mine; and you refuse to see that I can't give way."
+
+"I see that you must give way. It's in the nature of things. It's
+inevitable. If I didn't know that, do you think I should interfere? Do you
+think I should dare to run the risk of wrecking your happiness if I could
+do anything else? If you knew how I hate doing anything at all--"
+
+"But you needn't. You can just let things be."
+
+"I can't let things be--with all I know; and yet it's impossible for me to
+appeal to any one, except yourself. You put me in a position in which I
+must either betray you or betray those who trust me. Because I can't do
+either--"
+
+"I profit by your noble-mindedness. I told you I would. I'm sorry to have
+to do it--I'll even admit that I'm ashamed of it--and yet there's no other
+course for me. I'm not taking you at an unfair advantage, because I've
+concealed nothing from you from the first. You talk about the difficulty
+of your position, but you don't begin to imagine mine. As if everything
+else wasn't gall to me, I've got your disapproval to add wormwood."
+
+"It isn't my disapproval; it's simply--the situation. My opinion counts
+for nothing--"
+
+"It counts for everything with me--and yet I have to ignore it. But, after
+all," he flung out, bitterly, "it's the old story. I claim the right to
+squeeze out of life such drops of happiness--if you can call it
+happiness--as men have left to me, and you deny it. There it is in a
+nutshell. Because other people have inflicted a great wrong on me, you
+insist that I shall inflict a greater one on myself. And this time it
+wouldn't be only on myself; it would be on poor little Evie. There's
+where it cuts. No, no; I shall go on. I've the right to do it. You must
+stop me if you can. If you don't, or won't--why, then--"
+
+"I can stop you ... if you drive me to extremes ... but it wouldn't be by
+doing ... any of the things you expect."
+
+It was because of the catch in her voice that he stopped in his walk, and
+confronted her. In spite of the little tremor he could see in her no sign
+of yielding, and behind her veil he caught a gleam like that of anger. It
+was at that minute, perhaps, that he became distinctly conscious for the
+first time of a doubt as to the superiority of "his type of girl."
+Notwithstanding the awakening of certain faint perceptions, he had
+hitherto denied within himself that there was anything higher or more
+lovely. But in this girl's unflinching loyalty, and in her tenacious
+clinging to what she considered right, he was getting a new glimpse of
+womanhood, which, however, in no way weakened his determination to resist
+her.
+
+"As far as I see," he said, after long hesitation, "you and I have two
+irreconcilable duties. My duty is to marry Evie; yours is to prevent me.
+In that case there's nothing for either of us but to forge ahead, and see
+who wins. If you win, I shall bear no malice; and I hope you'll be equally
+generous if I do."
+
+"But I don't want to win independently of you. If I did, nothing could be
+easier."
+
+"Then why not do it?"
+
+He tossed up his hand with one of his fatalistic Latin gestures, drawing
+the attention of the passers-by to the man and woman talking so earnestly.
+For this reason, and because she was losing her self-command, she hastened
+to take leave of him.
+
+Arrived at home, it gave her no comfort to find Charles Conquest--the
+most spick and span of middle-aged New-Yorkers--waiting in the
+drawing-room.
+
+"I thought you might come in," he explained, "so I stayed. I have to get
+your signature to the papers about that property in Montreal. I've fixed
+the thing up and we'll sell."
+
+"You said you'd send the papers--"
+
+"That sounds as if you weren't glad to see me," he laughed, "but I'll
+ignore the discourtesy. Here," he added, unfolding the documents, "you put
+your name there--and there--near the L.S."
+
+She carried the papers to her desk, and sat down to write. Conquest took
+the liberty of old friendship to stroll about the room, with his hands
+behind him, humming a little tune.
+
+"Well," he said suddenly, "has he come back?"
+
+He had not approached the subject, beyond alluding to it covertly, since
+the day she had confided to him the confused story of her hopes. She
+blotted her signature carefully thinking out her reply.
+
+"I've given up expecting him," she said at last.
+
+"Ho! ho! So that's out of the way."
+
+She pretended to be scanning the documents before her so as to be able to
+sit with her back to him.
+
+"It isn't, for the reason that there's--no _way_," she said, after some
+hesitation.
+
+"Oh yes, there is," he laughed, "where there's a will."
+
+"But I've no will."
+
+"I have; I've enough for two."
+
+"I'll tell you what you have got," she said, half turning and speaking to
+him over the back of her chair. He drew near her. "You've got a great
+deal of common sense, and I want to ask your advice."
+
+"I can give that, as radium emits light--without ever diminishing the
+original store."
+
+"Then tell me. Has one ever the right to interfere where a man and a
+woman--"
+
+"No, never. You needn't give me any more details, because it's one of the
+questions an oracle finds easiest to answer. No one ever thanks you--"
+
+"I shouldn't be doing it for thanks."
+
+"And you get your own fingers burnt."
+
+"That wouldn't matter. I'd let my fingers burn to the bone if it would do
+any good."
+
+"It wouldn't. You may take my word for it. I know who you're talking
+about. It's Evie Colfax."
+
+She started, looking guilty. "Why should you suppose that?"
+
+"I've got eyes. I've watched her, and I know she's a little minx. Oh, you
+needn't protest. She's a taking little minx, and this time she's in the
+right."
+
+"I'm afraid I don't know what you mean."
+
+"What has Billy Merrow got to offer her, even if he is my nephew? Come
+now! He won't be in a position to marry for the next two or three years.
+Whereas that fellow Strange--"
+
+"Have you heard anything about him?" she asked, breathlessly.
+
+"It isn't what I've heard, it's what I see. He's a very good chap, and a
+first-rate man of business."
+
+"Do you know him well--personally?"
+
+"I meet him around--at the club and other places--and naturally I have
+something to do with him at the office. I like him. If Evie can snap him
+up she'll be doing well for herself. I'm sorry for Billy, of course; but
+he'll have time to break his heart more than once before he'll have money
+enough to do anything else with it. If I'd married at his age--"
+
+This, however, was venturing on delicate ground, so that he broke off,
+wheeling round toward the centre of the drawing-room. She folded the
+documents and brought them to him.
+
+"You know why I didn't send them?" he said, as he took them. "I thought if
+I came myself, you might have something to tell me."
+
+"I haven't; not anything special, that is."
+
+"You've told me something special already--that you're not looking for him
+back."
+
+"I'd rather not talk about it now, if you don't mind."
+
+"Then we'll talk about what goes with it--the other side of the subject."
+
+"There is no other side of the subject."
+
+"Oh, come now, Miriam! You haven't heard all I've got to tell you. You've
+never let me really present my case, as we lawyers say. If you could see
+things as I do--"
+
+"But I can't, and you mustn't ask me to-day. I'm tired--"
+
+"It would rest you."
+
+"No, no; not to-day. Don't you see I'm not--I'm not myself? I've had a
+very trying morning."
+
+"What's the matter? Tell me. I can keep a confidence even if I can't do
+some other things. Come now! I don't like to think you're worried when
+perhaps I could help you. That's what I should be good for, don't you see?
+I could assist you to bear a lot of things--"
+
+His tone, which was so often charged with a slightly mocking banter,
+became tender, and he attempted to take her hand. For a minute it seemed
+as if it might be a relief to trust him, to tell him the whole story and
+follow his counsel; but a second's thought showed her that she could not
+shift the responsibility from herself, and that in the end she should have
+to act alone.
+
+"Not to-day," she pleaded. "I'm not equal to it."
+
+"Then I'll come another day."
+
+"Yes, yes; if you like, only--"
+
+"Some day soon?"
+
+"When you like, only leave me now. Please go away. You won't think I'm
+rude, will you? But I'm not--not as I generally am--"
+
+"Good-bye." He put out his, hand frankly, and smiled so humbly, and yet
+withal so confidently, that she felt as if in spite of herself she might
+yield to his persistence through sheer weariness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To her surprise, the next few weeks passed without incident bringing no
+development in the situation. She saw little of Evie and almost nothing of
+Ford. One or two encounters with Charles Conquest had no result beyond the
+reiteration on his part of a set phrase, "You're coming to it, Miriam,"
+which, while exasperating her nerves, had a kind of hypnotic effect upon
+her will. She felt as if she might be "coming to it." Without calculating
+the probabilities she saw clearly enough that if she married Conquest the
+very act would furnish proof to Ford that her intervention in his affairs
+had been without self-interest. It would even offer some proof to herself,
+the sort of proof that strengthens the resolution and supports what is
+tottering in the pride. Notwithstanding the valor with which she
+struggled her victory over herself was not so complete that she could
+contemplate the destruction of Ford's happiness with absolute confidence
+in the purity of her motives in bringing it to ruin. It was difficult to
+take the highest road when what was left of her own fiercest instincts
+accompanied her on it. That she had fierce instincts she was quite aware.
+It was not for nothing that she had been born almost beyond the confines
+of the civilized earth, of parents for whom law and order and other men's
+rights were as the dead letter. True, she was trying to train the
+inheritance received from them to its finer purposes, as the vine draws
+strange essences from a flinty soil and sublimates them into the
+grape--but it was still their inheritance. While she was proud of it, she
+was afraid of it; and the fact that it leaped with her to separate Norrie
+Ford from Evie Colfax was a reason for distrusting the very impulse she
+knew to be right. Marriage with Conquest presented itself, therefore as a
+refuge--from Ford's suspicion and her own.
+
+For the time being, however, the necessity for doing anything was not
+pressing. Evie was caught into the social machine that had been set going
+on her account, and was not so much whirling in it as being whirled. Her
+energies were so taxed by the task of going round that she had only
+snatches of time and attention to give to her own future. In one of these
+she wrote to her uncle Jarrott, asking his consent to the immediate
+proclamation of her engagement, with his approval of her marriage at the
+end of the winter, though the reasons she gave him were not the same as
+those she advanced to Miriam. To him she dwelt on the maturity of her
+age--twenty by this time--the unchanging nature of her sentiments, and her
+desire to be settled down. To Miriam she was content to say, "There's
+something! and I sha'n't get to the bottom of it till we're married."
+
+Of the opening thus unexpectedly offered her Miriam made full use,
+pointing out the folly or verifying suspicions after marriage rather than
+before.
+
+"Well, I'm going to do it, do you see?" was Evie's only reply. "I know it
+will be all right in the end."
+
+Still a few weeks were to pass, and it was early in the new year before
+Uncle Jarrott's cablegram arrived with the three words, "_If you like_."
+Miriam received the information at the opera, where she had been suddenly
+called on to take the place of Miss Jarrott, laid low with "one of her
+headaches." It was Ford who told her, during an entr'acte, when for a few
+minutes Evie had left the box with the young man who made the fourth in
+the party. Finding themselves alone, Ford and Miriam withdrew as far as
+possible from public observation, speaking in rapid undertones.
+
+"But you'll not let her do it?" Miriam urged.
+
+"I shall, if you will. You can stop it--or posptone it. If you don't, I
+have every right to forge ahead. It's no use going over the old arguments
+again--"
+
+"You put me in an odious position. You want me either to betray you or
+betray the people who've been kind to me. It _would_ be betrayal if I were
+to let you go on."
+
+"Then stop me; it's in your power."
+
+"Very well; I will."
+
+He gave her a quick look, astonished rather than startled, but there was
+no time for further speech before Evie and her companion returned.
+
+It was Miriam's intention to put her plan into immediate execution, but
+she let most of the next day go by without doing anything. Understanding
+his driving her to extremes to be due less to deliberate defiance than to
+a desperate braving of the worst, she was giving him a chance for
+repentance. Just at the closing in of the winter twilight, at the hour
+when he generally appeared, the door was flung open and Billy Merrow
+rushed in excitedly.
+
+"What's all this about Evie?" he shouted, almost before crossing the
+threshold. "I've been there, and no one is at home. What's it about? Who
+has invented the confounded lie?"
+
+She could only guess at his meaning, but she forced him to shake hands and
+calm himself. Turning on the electric light, she saw a young man with
+decidedly tousled reddish hair, and features as haggard as a perfectly
+healthy, honest, freckled face could be.
+
+"Sit down, Billy, and tell me about it."
+
+"I can't; I'm crazy."
+
+"So I see; but tell me what you're crazy about."
+
+"Haven't you heard it? Of course you have. They wouldn't be writing it to
+Uncle Charlie if you didn't know all about it. But I'm hanged if I'll let
+it go on."
+
+Little by little she dragged the story from him. Miss Queenie Jarrott had
+written to Charles Conquest as one of the oldest friends of the family to
+inform him, "somewhat confidentially as yet," of her niece's engagement to
+Mr. Herbert Strange, of Buenos Aires and New York. Uncle Charlie, knowing
+what this would mean to him, had come to break the news and tell him to
+"buck up and take it standing."
+
+"I'll bet you I sha'n't take it lying down," he assured Miriam. "Evie is
+engaged to _me_."
+
+"Yes, Billy, but you see Miss Jarrott didn't know it. That's where the
+mistake has been. You know I've always been opposed to the secrecy of the
+affair, and I advised you and Evie to wait till you could both speak out."
+
+"It isn't so very secret. You know it and so does Uncle Charlie."
+
+"But Evie's own family have been kept in the dark, except that she told
+her aunt in South America. But that's where the mistake comes in, don't
+you see? Miss Jarrott, not having an idea about you, you see--"
+
+"Spreads it round that Evie is engaged to some one else, when she isn't.
+I'll show her who's engaged, when I can find her in. I'm going to sit on
+her door-step till--"
+
+"I wouldn't do anything rash, Billy. Suppose you were to leave it to me?"
+
+"What good would that do? If that old witch is putting it round, the only
+thing for Evie and me to do is to contradict her."
+
+"Has Evie ever given you an idea that anything was wrong?"
+
+"Evie's been the devil. I don't mind saying it to you, because you
+understand the kind of devil she'd be. But Lord! I don't care. It's just
+her way. She's told me to go to the deuce half a dozen times, but she
+knows I won't till she comes with me. Oh, no. Evie's all right--"
+
+"Yes, of course, Evie's all right. But you know, Billy dear, this thing
+requires a great deal of management and straightening out, and I do wish
+you'd let me take charge of it. I know every one concerned, you see, so
+that I could do it better than any one--any one but you, I mean--"
+
+"I understand that all right. I'm not going to be rough on them, but all
+the same--"
+
+She got him to sit down at last, made tea for him, and soothed him. At
+the end of an hour he had undertaken not to molest Miss Jarrott, or to
+fight that "confounded South-American," or to say a word of any kind to
+Evie till she was ready to say a word to him. He became impressed with the
+necessity for diplomatic action and, after some persuasion, promised to
+submit to guidance--at any rate, for a time.
+
+"And now, Billy, I'm going to write a note. The first thing to be done is
+that you should find Mr. Strange and deliver it to him before nine o'clock
+this evening. You'll do it quietly, won't you? and not let him see that
+you are anything more than my messenger. No matter where he is, even in a
+private house, you must see that he gets the note, if at all possible."
+
+When he had sworn to this she wrote a few lines hurriedly. He carried them
+away in the same tumultuous haste with which he had come. After his
+departure she felt herself unexpectedly strong and calm.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+
+The feeling of being equal to anything she might have to face continued
+with her. Now that the moment for action had arrived she had confidence in
+her ability to meet it, since it had to be done. At dinner she was able to
+talk to Wayne on indifferent topics, and later, when he had retired to his
+den to practise his Braile, she sat down in the drawing-room with a book.
+Noticing that she wore the severe black dress in which she had assisted at
+the "killing off" of Evie's family, she brightened it with a few
+unobtrusive jewels, so as to look less like the Tragic Muse. The night
+being cold, a cheerful fire burned on the hearth, beside which she sat
+down and waited.
+
+When he was shown in, about half-past eight, it seemed to her best not to
+rise to receive him. Something in her repose, or in her dignity, gave him
+the impression of arriving before a tribunal, and he began his
+explanations almost from the doorway.
+
+"I got your note. Young Merrow caught me at dinner. I was dining alone, so
+that I could come at once."
+
+"You're very kind. I'm glad you were able to do it. Won't you sit down?"
+
+Without offering her hand, she indicated a high arm-chair suitable for a
+man, on the other side of the hearth. He seated himself with an air of
+expectation, while she gazed pensively at the fire, speaking at last
+without looking up.
+
+"I hear Miss Jarrott has begun to announce your engagement to Evie."
+
+"I understood she was going to, to a few intimate friends."
+
+"And you allowed it?"
+
+"As you see."
+
+"Didn't you know that I should have to take that for a signal?"
+
+"I've never given you to understand that a signal wouldn't come--if you
+required one."
+
+"No; but I hoped--" She broke off, continuing to gaze at the fire. "Do you
+remember," she began again--"do you remember telling me--that evening on
+the shore of Lake Champlain--just before you went away--that if ever I
+needed your life, it would be at my disposal?--to do with as I chose?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"Then I'm going to claim it." She did not look up, but she heard him
+change his position in his chair. "I shouldn't do it if there was any
+other way. I'm sure you understand that. Don't you?" she insisted,
+glancing at him for an answer.
+
+"I know you wouldn't do it, unless you were convinced there was a reason."
+
+"I've tried to be just to you, and to see things from your point of view.
+I do; I assure you. If I were in your position I should feel as you do.
+But I'm not in your position. I'm in one of great responsibility, toward
+Evie and toward her friends."
+
+"I don't see what you owe to them."
+
+[Illustration: Again there was a long silence.]
+
+"I owe them the loyalty that every human being owes to every other."
+
+"To every other--except me."
+
+"I'm loyal to you, at least, whoever else may not be. But it wouldn't be
+loyalty if I let you marry Evie. I'm going to ask you--not to do it--to go
+away--to leave her alone--to go--for good."
+
+There was a long silence. When he spoke, it was hoarsely but otherwise
+without change of tone.
+
+"Is that what you meant?--just now?"
+
+"Yes. That's what I meant."
+
+"Do you intend me to get out of New York, to go back to the South--?"
+
+She lifted her hand in protestation.
+
+"I'm not giving orders or making conditions. New York is large. There's
+room in it for you and Evie, too."
+
+"I dare say. One doesn't require much space to break one's heart in."
+
+"Evie wouldn't break her heart. I know her better than you do. She'd
+suffer for a while, but she'd get over it, and in the end, very soon
+probably--marry some one else."
+
+"How cruel you can be," he said, with a twisted smile.
+
+"I can be, when it's right. In this case I'm only as cruel as--the truth.
+I'm saying it because it must make things easier for you. Your own pain
+will be the less from the knowledge that, in time, Evie will get over
+hers."
+
+"I suppose it ought to be, but--"
+
+He did not finish his sentence, and again there was a long hush, during
+which, while she continued to gaze pensively at the fire, she could hear
+him shifting with nervous frequency in his chair. When at last she
+ventured to look at him he was bowed forward, his elbow supported on his
+knee, and his forehead resting on his hand.
+
+"You'll keep your promise to me?" she persisted, softly, with a kind of
+pitiful relentlessness.
+
+"I'll tell you in a minute."
+
+He jerked out the words in the brusque way in which a man says all that,
+for the moment, he is physically able to utter. She allowed more time to
+elapse. The roar of traffic and the clanging of electric trams came up
+from the street below, but no sound seemed able to penetrate the stillness
+in which they sat. As far as Miriam was conscious of herself at all, it
+was simply to note the curious deadness of her emotions, as though she had
+become a mere machine for doing right, like a clock that strikes
+punctually. Nevertheless, it caused her some surprise when he raised
+himself and said, in a voice that would have been casual on a common
+occasion:
+
+"I suppose you think me a cad?"
+
+"No; why should I?"
+
+"Because I am one."
+
+"I don't know why you should say that, or what it has to do
+with--anything."
+
+"It's about that--that--promise."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"Do you mind if we speak quite frankly? I should like to. I've been
+bluffing that point ever since you and I met again. It's been torture to
+have to do it--damned, humiliating torture; but it's been difficult to do
+anything else. You see, I couldn't even speak of it without seeming to--to
+insult you--that is, unless you took me in just the right way."
+
+His look, his attitude, the tones of his voice, the something woe-begone
+and yet boyish in his expression, recalled irresistibly the days in the
+cabin, when he often wore just this air. She had observed before that when
+they were alone together the years seemed to fall from his manner, while
+he became the immature, inexperienced young fugitive again. She had
+scarcely expected, however, that this lapse into youth would occur
+to-night. She herself felt ages old--as though all the ends of the world
+had come upon her.
+
+"You may say anything you like. There's nothing you could possibly tell me
+that I shouldn't understand."
+
+"Well, then, when I made that promise, I meant to keep it, and to keep it
+in a special way. I thought--of course we were both very young--but I
+thought that, after what had happened--"
+
+"Wait a minute. I want to tell you something before you go on." She
+rallied her spirit's forces for a desperate step, gathering all her life's
+possible happiness into one extravagant handful, and flinging it away, in
+order to save her pride before this man, who was about to tell her that he
+had never been able to love her. "What I am going to say may strike you as
+irrelevant; but if it is, you can ignore it. I expect to be married--in a
+little while--it's practically a settled thing--to Charles Conquest, whom
+I think you know. Now, will you go on, please?"
+
+He stared at her in utter blankness.
+
+"Good God!"
+
+He got up and took a few restless turns up and down the room, his head
+bent, his hands behind his back. He reseated himself when his confused
+impressions grew clearer.
+
+"So that it doesn't matter what I thought about--that promise?"
+
+"Not in the least." She had saved herself. "The one thing important to me
+is that you should have made it."
+
+"And that you can hold me to it," he added, tersely.
+
+"I presume I can do that?"
+
+"You can, unless--unless I find myself in a position to take the promise
+back."
+
+"I can hardly see how that position could come about," she said, with an
+air of wondering.
+
+"I can. You see," he went on in an explanatory tone, "it was an unusual
+sort of promise--a promise made, so to speak, for value received--for
+unusual value received. It wasn't one that a common occasion would have
+called forth. It was offered because you had given me--life."
+
+He rested his arm now on a table that stood between them and, leaning
+toward her, looked her steadily in the eyes.
+
+"I haven't the faintest idea what you're going to say," she remarked,
+rather blankly.
+
+"No, but you'll see. You gave me life. I hold that life in a certain sense
+at your pleasure. It is at your disposal. It must remain at your
+disposal--- until I give it back."
+
+She sat upright in her chair, leaning in her turn on the table, and
+drawing nearer to him.
+
+"I can't imagine what you mean," she said, under her breath and looking a
+little frightened.
+
+"You'll see presently. But don't be alarmed. It's going to be all right.
+As long as I hold the life you gave me," he continued to explain, "I must
+do your bidding. I'm not a free man; I'm--don't be offended--I'm your
+creature. I don't say I was a free man before this came up. I haven't been
+a free man ever since I've been Herbert Strange. I've been the slave of a
+sort of make-believe. I've made believe, and I've felt I was justified.
+Perhaps I was. I'm not quite sure. But I haven't liked it; and now I begin
+to feel that I can't stand it any longer. You follow me, don't you?"
+
+She nodded, still leaning toward him across the table, and not taking her
+eyes from his. He remembered afterward though he paid no heed to it at the
+time, how those eyes grew wide with awe and flashed with strange, lambent
+brightness.
+
+"I told you a few days ago," he pursued, "that there were _times_ when it
+was hell. That was putting it mildly--too mildly. There's been no time
+when it wasn't hell--in here." He tapped his forehead. "I've struggled,
+and fought, and pushed, and swaggered, and bluffed, and had ups and downs,
+and taken heart, and swaggered and bluffed again, and lied all
+through--and I've made Herbert Strange a respectable man of business on
+the high road to success. But when I come near you it all goes to
+pieces--like one of those curiously conserved dead bodies when they're
+brought to the air. There's nothing to them. There's nothing to me--so
+long as I'm Herbert Strange."
+
+"But you _are_ Herbert Strange. You can't help yourself--now."
+
+"Herbert Strange goes back into the nothingness out of which he was born
+the minute I become Norrie Ford again."
+
+"But you can't do that!"
+
+She drew herself up hastily, with a gasp.
+
+"It's exactly what I mean to do." He spoke very slowly "I'm going to be a
+free man, and my own master, even if it leads me where--where they meant
+to put me when you snatched me away. I'm going back to my fellow-men, to
+the body corporate--"
+
+She rose in agitation, and drew back from him toward the chimney-piece.
+"So that if--if anything happens," she said, "I shall have driven you to
+it. That's how you get your revenge."
+
+"Not at all. I'm not coming to this decision suddenly, or in a spirit of
+revenge, in any way." He followed her, standing near her, on the
+hearth-rug. "I can truthfully say," he went on in his slow, explanatory
+fashion, "that there's been no time, since the minute I made my first dash
+for liberty, when I haven't known, in the bottom of my heart, what a good
+thing it would have been if I hadn't done it. I've come to see--I've _had_
+to--- that the death-chair would have been better, with self-respect, than
+freedom to go and come, with the necessity to gag every one, every minute
+of the day, and every day in the year, and all the time, with lies. If
+that seems far-fetched to you--"
+
+"No, it doesn't."
+
+"Well, if it did you'd see it wasn't, if you were in my place for a month.
+I didn't mind it so much at first. I stood it by day and just suffered by
+night--till the Jarrotts began to be so kind to me, and I came to New
+York--and--and--and Evie!"
+
+"I'm sorry I've spoken to you as I have," she said, hastily. "If I'd known
+you felt like that--"
+
+"You were quite right. I always understood that. But I can't go on with
+it. If Evie marries me now, it shall be knowing who I am."
+
+"You don't mean that you could possibly tell her?"
+
+"I'm going to tell every one."
+
+She stifled a little cry. "Then it will be my doing!"
+
+"It will be your doing--up to a point. But it will be something for you to
+be proud of, not to regret. You've only brought my mistake so clearly
+before me that even I can't stand it--when I've stood so much. You ask me
+to turn my back on Evie and sneak away. You've got the right to command,
+and there's nothing for me but to obey you. But I can't help seeing the
+sort of life that would be left to me after I'd carried out your orders.
+It wouldn't only be the loss of Evie--I may lose her in any case--it would
+be the loss of everything within myself that's enabled me hitherto merely
+to hold up my head--and bluff."
+
+"I might withdraw what I've just asked you to do. Perhaps we could find
+some other way."
+
+He laughed with grim lightness.
+
+"You're weakening. That's not like you. And it wouldn't do any good now.
+Even if we did patch up some other scheme, there would still remain what
+you talked about a minute ago--the loyalty that every human being owes to
+every other."
+
+"But I thought you didn't recognize that?"
+
+"I said I didn't. But in here"--he tapped his fingers over the heart--"I
+did, and I do. You've brought me to see it."
+
+"That's very noble, but you saw it for yourself--"
+
+"Through a glass--darkly; now I can look at the thing in clear daylight,
+and see what I have to do."
+
+She dropped into her chair again, looking up at him. He stood with his
+back to the fire, holding his head high, his bearing marked by a dogged,
+perhaps forced, serenity.
+
+"But what _can_ you do?" she asked, after considering his words. "You're
+so involved. All this business--and the people in South America--"
+
+"Oh, there are ways and means. I haven't made plans, but I've thought,
+from time to time, of what I should do if I ever came to just this pass.
+The first thing would be to tell the few people who are most concerned,
+confidentially. Then I should go back to South America, and settle things
+give me your respect again--not even the little you've given me
+hitherto--and God knows that can't have been much. I could stand anything
+in the world--anything--rather than that you should come to that."
+
+"But I shouldn't, when I myself had dissuaded you--"
+
+"No, no; don't try. You'd be doing wrong. You've been to me so high and
+holy that I don't like to think you haven't the strength to go on to the
+end. I've got it, because you've given it me. Don't detract from your own
+gift by holding me back from using it. You found me a prisoner--or an
+escaped one--and I've been a prisoner all these years, the prisoner of
+something worse than chains. Now I'm going free. Look!" he cried, with
+sudden inspiration. "I'll show you how it's done. You'll see how easy it
+will be."
+
+He moved to cross the room.
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+She sprang up as if to hold him back, but his finger was on the bell.
+
+"You don't mind, I hope?" he asked; but he had rung before she could give
+an answer. The maid appeared in the doorway.
+
+"Ask Mr. Wayne if he would be good enough to come in here a minute. Tell
+him Mr. Strange particularly wants to see him."
+
+He went back to his place by the fireside, where he stood apparently calm,
+showing no sign of excitement except in heightened color and the stillness
+of nervous tension Miriam sank into her chair again.
+
+"Don't do anything rash," she pleaded. "Wait till to-morrow There will
+always be time. For God's sake!"
+
+If he heard her he paid no attention, and presently Wayne appeared. He
+hesitated a minute on the threshold, and during that instant Ford could
+see that he looked ashy and older, as if something had aged him suddenly.
+His hands trembled, too, as he felt his way in.
+
+"Good-evening," he said, speaking into the air as blind men do. "I thought
+I heard your voice."
+
+Having groped his way across the room and reached the table that stood
+between the arm-chairs Miriam and Ford had occupied, he stopped. He stood
+there, with fingers drumming soundlessly on the polished wood, waiting for
+some one to speak.
+
+In spite of the confidence with which he had rung the bell, Ford found it
+difficult now to begin. It was only after one or two inarticulate attempts
+that he was able to say anything.
+
+"I asked you to come in, sir," he began, haltingly, "to tell you something
+very special. Miss Strange knows it already.... If I've done wrong in not
+telling you before ... you'll see I'm prepared to take my punishment....
+My name isn't Strange ... it isn't Herbert."
+
+"I know it isn't."
+
+The words slipped out in a sharp tone, not quite nervous, but thin and
+worn. Miriam's attitude grew tense. Ford took a step forward from the
+fireside. With his arm flung over the back of his chair, and his knee
+resting on the seat of it, he strained across the table, as if to
+annihilate the space between Wayne and himself.
+
+"You _knew_?"
+
+The blind man nodded. When he spoke it was again into the air.
+
+"Yes; I knew. You're Norrie Ford. I ought to say I've only known it
+latterly--about a fortnight now."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Oh, it just came to me--by degrees, I think."
+
+"Why didn't you say something about it?"
+
+"I thought I wouldn't. It has worried me, but I thought I'd keep still."
+
+"Do you mean that you were going to let everything--go on?"
+
+"I weighed all the considerations. That's the decision I came to. You must
+understand," he went on to explain, in a voice that was now tremulous as
+well as thin, "that I'd had you a good deal on my mind, during these past
+eight years. I sentenced you to death when I almost knew you were
+innocent. It was my duty. I couldn't help it. The facts told dead against
+you. Every one admitted that. True, the evidence might have been twisted
+to tell against old Gramm and his wife, but they hadn't been dissipated,
+and they hadn't been indicted, and they hadn't gone round making threats
+against Chris Ford's life like you."
+
+"I didn't mean them. It was nothing but a boy's rage--"
+
+"Yes, but you made them; and when the old man was found--But I'll not go
+into that now. I only want to say that, while I couldn't acquit you with
+my intelligence, I felt constrained to do it in my heart, especially when
+everything was over, and it was too late. The incident has been the one
+thing in my professional career that I've most regretted. I don't quite
+blame myself. I had to do my duty. And yet it was a relief to me when you
+got away. I don't know that I could have acted differently, but--but I
+liked you. I've gone on liking you. I've often thought about you, and
+wondered what had become of you. And one day--not long ago--as I was going
+over the old ground once more, I saw I'd been thinking about--_you_.
+That's how it came to me."
+
+"And you were going to remain silent, and let me marry Evie?"
+
+The blind man reflected.
+
+"I saw what was to be said against it. But I weighed all the evidence
+carefully. You were an injured man; you'd made a great fight and you'd
+won--as far as one man can win against the world. I came to the conclusion
+that I wasn't called on to strike you down a second time, after you'd
+scrambled up so pluckily. Evie is very dear to me; I don't say that I
+should see her married to you without some misgiving; but I decided that
+you deserved her. It was a great responsibility to take, but I took it and
+made up my mind to--let her go."
+
+"Oh, you're a good man! I didn't think there was such mercy in the world."
+
+Ford flung out the words in a cry that was half a groan and half a shout
+of triumph. Miriam choked back a sob. The neat little man shrugged his
+shoulders deprecatingly.
+
+"There's one thing I should like to ask," he pursued, "among the many that
+I don't know anything about, and that I don't care to inquire into. How
+did you come by the name of this lady's father, my old friend Herbert
+Strange?"
+
+Ford and Miriam exchanged swift glances. She shook her head, and he took
+his cue.
+
+"I happened to see it in a--a sort of--paper. I had no idea it was that of
+a real person. I fancied it had come out of a novel--- or something like
+that. I didn't mean to keep it, but it got fastened on me."
+
+"Very odd," was his only comment. "Isn't it, Miriam?
+
+"Now," he _added_, "I suppose you've had all you want of me, so I'll say
+good-night."
+
+He held out his hand, which Ford grasped, clinched rather, in both his
+own.
+
+"God bless you!" Wayne murmured, still tremulously. "God bless you--my
+boy, and bring everything out right. Miriam, I suppose you'll come in and
+see me before you go to bed."
+
+They watched him shuffle his way out of the room, and watched the door
+long after he had closed it. When at last Miriam turned her eyes on Ford
+they were luminous with the relief of her own defeat.
+
+"You see!" she cried, triumphantly. "You see the difference between him
+and me--between his spirit and mine! Now which of us was right?"
+
+"You were."
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+
+The one thing clear to Miriam on the following day was that she had ruined
+everything with astonishing completeness--a curious result to come from
+what she was firmly convinced was "doing right." She had calculated that,
+by a moderate measure of suffering to Evie, and a large one to Ford,
+Evie's ultimate welfare at least would be secured. Now everything was
+being brought to grief together. Out of such a wreck nothing could be
+saved.
+
+With Ford's desire to break the force which made him an impostor she had
+sympathy, but his willingness to risk his life in order to be in harmony
+with law and order again was not so easy for her to understand. While
+education, training and taste kept her, in her own person, within the
+restrictions of civilized life, yet the part of a free-lance in the world
+appealed to her strongly atavistic instincts far more directly than
+membership in a disciplined regular army. The guerilla fighter must of
+necessity be put to shifts--even moral shifts--which the common soldier,
+trained and commanded by others, can be spared; but her heart was with the
+man roving in the hills on his own account. That Ford should deliberately
+seek chains in barracks, when by her surrender on the subject of Evie she
+had made it possible for him still to keep the liberty of the field, was
+to her at once incomprehensible and awful. She had not only the sense of
+watching a man rushing upon Fate, but the knowledge that she herself had
+given him the impetus; while she was fully alive to the fact that when he
+fell everything she cared for in the world would fall with him.
+
+Her mind was too resourceful, her spirit too energetic, to permit of her
+sitting in helpless anguish over his new determination. She was already
+busy with plans for counteracting him, in one of which at least she saw
+elements of hope. Having conceived its possibilities, she was eager to go
+and test them; but she had decided not to leave the house until she knew
+that Ford was really putting his plans into execution. The minute Evie
+learned the fatal news she would have need of her, and she dared not put
+herself out of the child's reach. Her first duty must be toward the
+fragile little creature, who would be crushed like a trampled flower.
+
+Shortly before noon she was summoned to the telephone, where Evie was
+asking if she should find her in. Miriam judged from the tones of the
+transmitted voice that the worst had been made known. She was not,
+however, prepared for the briskness with which, ten minutes later, Evie
+whisked into the room, her cheeks aglow with excitement and her heavenly
+eyes dancing with a purely earthly sparkle.
+
+"Isn't this awful?" she cried, before Miriam could take her into her
+loving arms. "Isn't it appalling? But it's not a surprise to me--not in
+the least. I knew there was something. Haven't I said so? I almost knew
+that his name wasn't Strange. If I hadn't been so busy with my coming
+out--and everything--I should have been sure of it. I haven't had time to
+think of it--do you see? With a lunch somewhere every day at half-past
+one," she hurried on, breathlessly, "and a tea at half-past four, and a
+dinner at eight, and a dance at eleven, and very likely the theatre or the
+opera in between--well, you can see I haven't been able to give much
+attention to anything else; but I knew, from the very time when I was in
+Buenos Aires, that there was something queer about that name. I never saw
+a man so sensitive when any one spoke about his name, not in all my life
+before--and you know down there it's the commonest thing--why, they're so
+suspicious on that point that they'd almost doubt that mine was Evie
+Colfax."
+
+She threw her muff in one direction, her boa in another, and her gloves in
+still another.
+
+"But, Evie darling, you surely didn't think--"
+
+"Of course I never thought of anything like this. I didn't really think of
+anything at all. If I'd begun to give my mind to it, I should probably
+have hit on something a great deal worse."
+
+"What do you mean, dear? Worse--than what?"
+
+"Worse than just being accused of shooting your uncle--and it was only his
+great-uncle, too. I might have thought of forgery or something
+dishonorable, though I should know he wasn't capable of it. Being accused
+isn't much. You can accuse _any one_--you could accuse _me_. That doesn't
+prove anything when he says he didn't do it. Of course he didn't do it.
+Can't any one _see_? My goodness! I wish they'd let me make the laws. I'd
+show them. Just think! To put a man like that in prison--- and say they'd
+do such awful things to him--and make him change his name--and everything.
+It's perfectly scandalous. It's an outrage. I shouldn't think such things
+would be allowed. They wouldn't be allowed in the Argentine. Why, there
+was a man out there who killed his father-in-law--actually _killed_
+him--and they didn't do anything to him at all. I've seen him lots of
+times. Aunt Queenie has pointed him out to me. He used to have the box
+next but two to ours at the opera. And to think they should take a man
+like Herbert, and worry him like that--it makes me so indignant I'd like
+to--"
+
+Evie ground her teeth, threw her clinched fists outward, and twitched her
+skirts about the room in the prettiest possible passion of righteous
+anger.
+
+"But, darling," Miriam asked, in a puzzled voice, "what are you going to
+do about it?"
+
+Evie wheeled round haughtily.
+
+"Do about it? What would you expect me to do about it? I'm going to tell
+every one he didn't do it--that's what I'm going to do about it. But of
+course we're not to speak of it just yet--outside ourselves, you know.
+He's going to Buenos Aires to tell Uncle Jarrott he didn't do it--and when
+he comes back we're going to make it generally known. Oh, there's to be
+law about it--and everything. He means to change his name again to what it
+was before--Ford, the name was--and I must say, Miriam, I like that a good
+deal better than Strange, if you don't mind my telling you. It seems odd
+to have so many Stranges--and I must say I never could get used to the
+idea of having exactly the same name as yours. It was almost like not
+being married outside the family--and I should hate to marry a relation.
+That part of it comes as a pleasant surprise, do you see? I'd made up my
+mind to Strange, and thought there was no way of getting rid of it, unless
+I--but I wasn't looking ahead to anything of _that_ kind. I hope I shall
+never--"
+
+"So, darling, you're going to be true to him?"
+
+"True to him? Of course I'm going to be true to him. Why shouldn't I be?
+I'm going to be more true to him now than I was before. He's so noble
+about it, too. I wish you could have seen the way he broke it to me. Aunt
+Queenie said she never saw anything so affecting, not even on the stage.
+She was there, you know. Herbert felt he couldn't go over it all twice,
+and he thought I should need some one to support me through the shock. I
+didn't--not a bit. But I wish you could have been there, just to see him."
+
+"I can fancy it, dear."
+
+"Of course I know now what you've been fidgeting about ever since he came
+to New York. He says you recognized him--that you'd seen him at Greenport.
+Oh, I knew there was something. But I must say, Miriam, I think you might
+have told me confidentially, and not let it come on me as such a blow as
+this. Not that I take it as a blow, though, of course, it upsets things
+terribly. We can't announce our engagement for ever so long, and Aunt
+Queenie is rushing round in the motor now to take back what she wrote to a
+few people yesterday. I can't imagine what she'll tell them, because I
+charged her on her sacred honor not to give them the idea it was broken
+off, although I'd rather they thought it was broken off than that I hadn't
+been engaged at all."
+
+"Miss Jarrott takes it quietly, then?"
+
+"Quietly! I wish you could see her. She thinks there never was anything so
+romantic. Why, she cried over him, and kissed him, and said she'd always
+be his friend if every one else in the world were to turn against him. As
+a matter of fact, the poor old dear is head over heels in love with
+him--do you see?--in that sort of old-maid way--you know the kind of
+thing I mean. She thinks there's nobody like him, and neither there is. I
+shall miss him frightfully while he's down there telling Uncle Jarrott. I
+shall skip half my invitations and go regularly into retreat till he comes
+back. There's lots more he's going to tell me then--all about what Popsey
+Wayne had to do with it--and everything. I'm glad he doesn't want to do it
+now, because my head is reeling as it is. I've so many things to think
+of--and so much responsibility coming on me all at once--and--"
+
+"Are you going to do anything about Billy?"
+
+"Well, I can postpone that, at any rate. Thank goodness, there's _one_
+silver lining to the cloud. I was going to give him a pretty strong hint
+to-night, seeing Aunt Queenie has begun writing notes around, but now I
+can let him simmer for a while longer. He won't be able to say I haven't
+let him down easy, poor old boy. And, Miriam dear," she continued,
+gathering up her various articles of apparel, preparatory to taking leave,
+"you'll keep just as quiet about it as you can, like a dear, won't you? We
+don't mean to say a word about it outside ourselves till Herbert comes
+back from seeing Uncle Jarrott. That's my advice--and it's all our
+advice--I mean, Aunt Queenie's, too. Then they're going to law--or
+something. I know you _won't_ say anything about it, but I thought I'd
+just put you on your guard."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If Evie's way of taking it was a new revelation to Miriam, of her own
+miscalculation, it was also a new incentive to setting to work as promptly
+as possible to repair what she could of the mischief she had made. With
+Evie's limitations she might never know more of the seriousness of her
+situation than a bird of the nature of the battle raging near its nest;
+while if even Ford "went to law," as Evie put it, and he came off
+victorious, there might still be chances for their happiness. To anything
+else Miriam was indifferent, as a man in the excitement of saving his
+children from fire or storm is dead to his own sensations. It was with
+impetuous, almost frenzied, eagerness, therefore, that she went to the
+telephone to ring up Charles Conquest, asking to be allowed to see him
+privately at his office during the afternoon.
+
+In what she had made up her mind to do the fact that she was planning for
+herself an unnecessary measure of sacrifice was no deterrent. She was in a
+mood in which self-immolation seemed the natural penalty of her mistakes.
+She was not without the knowledge that money could buy the help she
+purposed to obtain by direct intervention; but her inherited instincts,
+scornful of roundabout methods, urged her to pay the price in something
+more personal than coin. It replied in some degree to her self-accusation,
+it assuaged the bitterness of her self-condemnation, to know that she was
+to be the active agent in putting right that which her errors of judgment
+had put wrong. To her essentially primitive soul atonement by proxy was as
+much out of the question as to the devotee beneath the wheels of
+Juggernaut. Somewhere in the background of her thought there were faint
+prudential protests against throwing herself away; but she disdained them,
+as a Latin or a Teuton disdains the Anglo-Saxon's preference for a court
+of law to the pistol of the duellist. It was something outside the realm
+of reason. Reckless impulses subdued by convent restraint or civilized
+requirements awoke with a start all the more violent because of their long
+sleep, driving her to do that which she knew other women would have done
+otherwise or not at all.
+
+She was aware, therefore, of limitations in the sacrifice she was making;
+she was even aware that, in the true sense, it was no sacrifice whatever.
+She was offering herself up because she chose to--in a kind of
+wilfulness--but a passionate wilfulness which claimed that for her at
+least there was no other way. Other women, wiser women, women behind whom
+there was a long, moderation-loving past, might obey the laws that prompt
+to the economy of one's self; she could only follow those blind urgings
+which drove her forefathers to fight when they might have remained at
+peace, or whipped them forth into the wild places of the earth when they
+could have stayed in quiet homes. The hard way in preference to the easy
+way was in her blood. She could no more have resisted taking it now than
+she could have held herself back eight years ago from befriending Norrie
+Ford against the law.
+
+Nevertheless, it was a support to her to remember that Conquest's manner
+on the occasions when business brought her to his office was always a
+little different from that which he assumed when they met outside. He was
+much more the professional man with his client, a little the friend, but
+not at all the lover--if he was a lover anywhere. Having welcomed her now
+with just the right shade of cordiality, he made her sit at a little
+distance from his desk, while he himself returned to the revolving-chair
+at which he had been writing when she entered. After the preliminary
+greetings, he put on, unconsciously, the questioning air a business man
+takes at the beginning of an interview which he has been invited to
+accord.
+
+"I came--about Evie."
+
+Now that she was there it was less easy to begin than she had expected.
+
+"Quite so. I knew there was a hitch. I've just had a mysterious note from
+Queenie Jarrott which I haven't been able to make out. Can't they hit it
+off?"
+
+"It's a good deal more serious than that. Mr. Strange came to see Mr.
+Wayne and me last night. I may as well tell you as simply as I can. His
+name isn't Strange at all."
+
+"Ho! ho! What's up?"
+
+"Did you ever hear the name of--Norrie Ford?"
+
+"Good Lord, yes! I can't quite remember--Let's see. Norrie Ford? I know
+the name as well as I know my own. Wasn't that the case--why, yes, it must
+have been--wasn't that the case Wayne was mixed up in six or eight years
+ago?"
+
+"Yes, it was."
+
+"The fellow gave 'em all the slip, didn't he?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Hadn't he been commuted to a life sentence--?"
+
+"Mr. Wayne hoped it would be done, but it hadn't been done yet. He was
+still under sentence of--death."
+
+"Yes, yes, yes. It comes back to me. We thought Wayne hadn't displayed
+much energy or ability of foresight--or something. I remember there was
+talk about it, and in the newspapers there was even a cock-and-bull story
+that Wayne had connived at his escape. Well, what has that got to do with
+Evie?"
+
+"It has everything to do with her."
+
+Conquest's little gray-green eyes blinked as if against the blaze of their
+own light, while his features sharpened to their utmost incisiveness.
+
+"You don't mean to say--?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"Well, upon--my--!" The exclamation trailed off into a silent effort to
+take in this extraordinary piece of intelligence "Do you mean to say the
+scamp had the cheek--? Oh no, it isn't possible. Come now!"
+
+"It was exactly as I'm going to tell you, but I don't think you should
+call him a scamp. You see, he's engaged to Evie--"
+
+"He's not engaged to her now?"
+
+"He is. She means to be true to him. So do we all."
+
+Two little scarlet spots burned in her cheeks, but it was not more in the
+way of emotion than a warm partisanship on Evie's account demanded.
+
+"Well, I'm blowed!" He swung one leg across the other, making his chair
+describe a semicircle.
+
+"Perhaps you won't be so much--blowed, when you hear all I have to tell
+you."
+
+"Go ahead; I'm more interested than if it was a dime novel."
+
+As lucidly as she could she gave him the outline of Ford's romance,
+dwelling as he had done in relating it to her, less on its incidents than
+on its mental and moral effect upon himself. She suppressed the narrative
+of the weeks spent in the cabin and based her report entirely on
+information received from Ford. For testimony as to his life and character
+in the Argentine she had the evidence of Miss Jarrott, while on the
+subject of his business abilities--no small point with a New York business
+man, as she was astute enough to see--there could be no better authority
+than Conquest himself, who, as Stephens and Jarrott's American legal
+adviser, had had ample opportunity of judging. She was gratified to note
+that as her story progressed it called forth sympathetic looks, and an
+occasional appreciative exclamation, while now and then he slapped his
+thigh as a mark of the kind of amused astonishment that verges on
+approbation.
+
+"So we couldn't desert him now, after she's been so brave, could we?" she
+pleaded, with some amount of confidence; "and especially when he's engaged
+to Evie."
+
+"I suppose we can't desert him, if he's sane."
+
+"Oh, he's sane."
+
+"Then why the deuce, when he was so well out of harm's way, didn't he stay
+there?"
+
+"Because of his love for Evie, don't you see?" She had to explain Ford's
+moral development and psychological state all over again, until he could
+see it with some measure of comprehension.
+
+"It certainly is the queerest story I ever heard," he declared, in
+enjoyment of its dramatic elements, "and we're all in it, aren't we? It's
+like seeing yourself in a play."
+
+"I thought you would look at it in that way. As soon as I began wondering
+what we could do--this morning--I saw that, after Evie, you were the
+person most concerned."
+
+"Who? I? Why am I concerned? I've got nothing to do with it!"
+
+"No, of course not, except as Stephens and Jarrott's lawyer. When their
+representative in New York--"
+
+"Oh, but my dear girl, my duties don't involve me in anything of this
+kind. I'm the legal adviser to the firm, but I've nothing to do with the
+private affairs of their employees."
+
+"Mr. Jarrott is very fond of Mr. Strange--"
+
+"Perhaps this will cool his affection."
+
+"I don't think it will as long as Evie insists on marrying him. I'm sure
+they mean to stand by him."
+
+"They won't be able to stand by him long, if the law gives him--what it
+meant to give him before."
+
+"Oh, but you don't think there's any danger of that?"
+
+"I don't know about it," he said, shaking his head, ominously. "The fact
+that he comes back and gives himself up isn't an argument in favor of his
+innocence. There's generally remorse behind that dodge."
+
+"Then isn't that all the more reason why we should help him?"
+
+"Help him? How?"
+
+"By trying to win his case for him."
+
+He looked at her with eyes twinkling while his fingers concealed the smile
+behind his colorless mustache.
+
+"And how would you propose to set about that?"
+
+"I don't know, but I suppose you do. There must be ways. He's leaving as
+soon as he can for South America. He thinks it may be months before he
+gets back. I thought that--perhaps--in the mean time--while he won't be
+able to do anything for himself--you might see--"
+
+"Yes, yes; go on," he said, as she hesitated.
+
+"You might see if there is any evidence that could be found--that wasn't
+found before--isn't that the way they do it?--and have it ready--for him
+when he came back."
+
+"For a wedding present."
+
+"It _would_ be a wedding present--to all of us. It would be for Evie's
+sake. You know how I love her. She's the dearest thing to me in the world.
+If I could only secure her happiness like that--"
+
+"You mean, if I could secure it."
+
+"You'd be doing it actively, but I should want to co-operate."
+
+"In what way?"
+
+She sat very still. She was sure he understood her by the sudden rigidity
+of his pose, while his eyes stopped twinkling, and his fingers ceased to
+travel along the line of his mustache. Her eyes fell before the scrutiny
+in his, but she lifted them again for one of her quick, wild glances.
+
+"In any way you like."
+
+She tried to make her utterance distinct, matter of fact, not too
+significant, but she failed. In spite of herself, her words conveyed all
+their meaning. The brief pause that followed was not less eloquent, nor
+did it break the spell when Conquest gave a short little laugh that might
+have been nervous and, changing his posture, leaned forward on his desk
+and scribbled on the blotting-pad. While he would never have admitted it,
+it was a relief to him, too, not to be obliged to face her.
+
+He was not shocked, neither was he quite surprised. He was accustomed to
+the thought that a woman's love was a thing to purchase. One man bought it
+from her father for a couple of oxen, another from herself for an
+establishment and a diamond tiara. It was the same principle in both
+cases. He had never considered Miriam Strange as being without a price;
+his difficulty had been in knowing what it was. The establishment and the
+diamond tiara having proved as indifferent to her as the yoke of oxen, he
+was thrown back upon the alternative of heroic deeds. He had more than
+once suspected that these might win her if they had only been in his line.
+There being few opportunities for that kind of endeavor as the head of a
+large and lucrative legal practice, the suggestion only left him cynical.
+In the bottom of his heart he had long wished to dazzle, by some act of
+prowess, the eyes that saw him only as a respectable man of middle age,
+but the desire had merely mocked him with the kind of derision which
+impotence gets from youth. It seemed now a stroke of luck which almost
+merited being termed an act of Providence that there should have come a
+call for exactly his variety of "derringdo" from the very quarter in which
+he could make it tell.
+
+"We've never gone in for any criminal business here," he said, after long
+reflection, while he continued to scribble aimlessly, "but, of course,
+we're in touch with the people who take it up."
+
+"I thought you might be."
+
+"But it's only fair to tell you that if your motive is to save time for
+our friend in question--"
+
+"That _is_ my motive--the only one."
+
+"Then you could get in touch with them, too."
+
+"But I don't want to."
+
+"Still I think you should consider it. The best legal advice in the world
+can be--bought--for money."
+
+"I know that."
+
+Lifting his eyes in a sharp look, he saw her head lilted back with her own
+special air of deliberate temerity.
+
+"Oh, very well, then," he said, quietly, resuming his scribbling again.
+After this warning he felt justified in taking her at her word.
+
+With that as a beginning she knew she had gained her first great point. In
+answer to his questions she told the story over again, displaying, as he
+remembered afterward--but long afterward--a surprising familiarity with
+its details. She made suggestions which he noted as marked by some acumen,
+and laid stress on the value of the aid they might expect privately from
+Philip Wayne. The beauty and eagerness in her face fired the almost
+atrophied enthusiasm in his own heart, while he could not but see that
+this entirely altruistic interest had brought them in half an hour nearer
+together than they had ever been before. It was what they had never had
+till now--a bond in common. In spite of the persistency of his efforts and
+his assertions, he had never hitherto got nearer her than a statue on a
+pedestal gets to its neighbor in a similar situation but now at last they
+were down on the same earth together. This was more than reason enough for
+his taking up the cause of Norrie Ford, consecrating to it all his
+resources, mental and material, and winning it.
+
+In the course of an hour or two their understanding was complete, but he
+did not refer again to the conditions of their tacit compact. It was she
+who felt that sufficient had not been said--that the sincerity with which
+she subscribed to it had not been duly emphasized. She was at the door on
+the point of going away when she braced herself to look at him and say:
+
+"You can't realize what all this means to me. If we succeed--that is, if
+you succeed--I hardly dare to tell you of the extent to which I shall be
+grateful."
+
+He felt already some of the hero's magnanimity as to claiming his reward.
+
+"You needn't think about that," he smiled. "I sha'n't. If by making Evie
+happy I can serve you, I shall not ask for gratitude."
+
+She looked down at her muff and smoothed its fur, then glanced up swiftly.
+"No; but I shall want to give it."
+
+With that she was gone--lighter of heart than a few hours ago it had
+seemed to her possible ever to be again. Her joy was the joy of the
+captain who feels that he has saved his ship, though his own wound is
+fatal.
+
+
+
+
+
+Part IV
+
+Conquest
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+
+Among the three or four qualities Conquest most approved of in himself,
+not the least was a certain capacity for the patient acquisition of the
+world's more enviable properties. He had the gift of knowing what he
+wanted, recognizing it when he saw it, and waiting for it till it came
+within his reach. From his youth upward he had been a connoisseur of
+quality rather than a lover of abundance, while he owned to a talent for
+seeing the value of things which other people overlooked, and throwing
+them into relief when the objects became his. As far back as the time when
+the modest paternal heritage had been divided between his brothers and
+sisters and himself, he had been astute enough to leave the bulk of it to
+them, contenting himself with one or two bits of ancestral furniture and a
+few old books, which were now known by all to have been the only things
+worth having. Throughout his life he had followed this principle of
+acquiring unobtrusively but getting exactly what he wanted. It was so that
+he bought his first horse, so that he bought his first motor, so that he
+purchased the land where he afterward built his house--in a distant,
+desolate stretch of Fifth Avenue which his acquaintances told him would be
+hopelessly out of reach, but where, not many years after, most of them
+were too late to join him.
+
+In building his house, too, he took his time, allowing his friends to
+make their experiments around him, while he studied the great art of "how
+not to do it." One of his neighbors erected a Flemish château, another a
+Florentine palazzo, and a third a François Premier _hôtel_; but his plot
+of ground remained an unkempt tangle of mullein and blue succory. In the
+end he put up a sober, handsome development on a style which the humbler
+passers-by often called, with approval, "good, plain American," but whose
+point of departure was Georgian. He had the instinct for that which
+springs out of the soil. For this reason he did not shrink from an Early
+Victorian note--the first note of the modern, prosperous New York--in
+decoration; and the same taste impelled him toward the American in art.
+While Neighbor Smith displayed his Gainsboroughs, and Neighbor Jones his
+Rousseaus or Daubignys, Conquest quietly picked up a thing here and
+there--always under excellent advice--which no picture-dealer had been
+able to dispose of, because it came from some studio in Twenty-third
+Street. Hung on his walls, it produced that much-sought-for effect of
+"having been always there." He was not a Chauvinist, nor had he any
+sympathy with the intolerantly patriotic. He was merely a lover of the
+indigenous.
+
+In much the same way he had sought for--and waited for--a wife. He had
+been rashly put down as "not a marrying man," when he was only taking his
+time. He had seen plainly of excellent possibilities--fine women, handsome
+women, clever women, good women--any of whom presumably he could have had
+for the asking; but none was, in his own phraseology, "just the right
+thing." He wanted something unusual, and yet not exotic--something
+obvious, which no one else had observed--something cultivated, and yet
+native--something as exquisite as any hothouse orchid, but with the keen,
+fresh scent of the American woods and waters on its bloom. It was not a
+thing to be picked up every day, and so he kept on the lookout for it, and
+waited. Even when he found it, he was not certain, on the spur of the
+moment, that it would prove exactly what he had in mind. So he waited
+longer. He watched the effect of time and experience upon it, until he was
+quite sure. He knew the risk he was running that some one else might
+snatch it up; but his principle had always been to let everything, no
+matter how coveted, go, rather than buy in haste.
+
+Lest such an attitude toward Miriam Strange should seem cold-blooded, it
+should be said in his defence that he considered the aggregate of his
+sentiments to be--love. She was to be more than "something better than his
+dog, a little dearer than his horse," more than the living, responsive
+soul among his chattels. There was that in her which appealed to his
+desire, and to something more deeply seated in him still. After satisfying
+ear, eye, and intelligence, there was in her nature a whole undiscovered
+region, undivined, undefined, wakening the imagination, and stirring the
+speculative faculties, like the subconscious elements in personality. In
+her wild, non-Aryan glances he saw the flame of eyes that flashed on him
+out of a past unknown to history; in the liquid cadences of her voice he
+heard the echo of the speech that had sounded in the land before Plymouth
+was a stockade or Manhattan was a farm; in her presence he found a claim
+that antedated everything sprung of Hudson, Cabot, or Columbus. The
+slender thread that attached her to the ages of nomadic mystery made her
+for him the indigenous spirit, reborn in a woman of the world.
+
+Knowing himself too old to be dominated by a passion, and too experienced
+to be snared by wiles, he estimated his feelings as being those of love,
+as he understood the word. He conceded the fact that love, like every
+other desire, must work to win, and proceeded to set about his task
+according to his usual methods of persistent, unobtrusive siege. It was
+long before Miriam became aware of what he was doing, and her surprise as
+she drew back was not quite so great as his to see her do it. He was so
+accustomed to success--after taking the trouble to insure it--that he was
+astonished, and a little angry, to find his usual tactics fail. He did not
+believe that she was beyond his grasp; he perceived only that he had taken
+the wrong way to get her. That there was a right way there could be no
+question; and he knew that by patient, unremitting search he should find
+it.
+
+He had, therefore, several sources of satisfaction in espousing the cause
+of Norrie Ford. The amplitude of his legal knowledge would be to him as
+gay feathers to the cock; while the contemplation of the prize added to
+his self-approval in never doubting that it could be won.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was early March when Ford sailed away, leaving his affairs in
+Conquest's charge, at the latter's own request. He in his turn placed them
+in the hands of Kilcup and Warren, who made a specialty of that branch of
+the law. The reward was immediate, in that frequent talks with Miriam
+became a matter of course.
+
+His trained mind was prompt to seize the fact that these interviews took
+place on a basis different from that of their meetings in the past. Where
+he had been seeking to gain an end he was now on probation. He had been
+told--or practically told--that what he had been asking would be granted,
+as soon as certain conditions were fulfilled. It became to him, therefore,
+a matter of honor, in some degree one of professional etiquette, to fulfil
+the conditions before referring to the reward. Instead of a suitor
+pressing his suit, he became the man of business recounting the points
+scored, or still to be scored, in a common enterprise. In keeping her
+informed of each new step that Kilcup and Warren were taking, he
+maintained an attitude of distant respect, of which she could have nothing
+to complain.
+
+Expecting an equal reserve on her part, it was with some surprise that he
+saw her assume the initiative in cordiality. He called it cordiality,
+because he dared not make it a stronger word. Her manner went back to the
+spontaneous friendliness that had marked their intercourse before she
+began to see what he was aiming at, while into it she threw an infusion of
+something that had not hitherto been there. When he came with the
+information that a fresh bit of evidence had been discovered, or a new
+light thrown on an old one, she listened with interest--just the right
+kind of interest--and made pretexts to detain him, sometimes with Wayne as
+a third, sometimes without, for the pleasure of his own company. Now and
+then, as spring came on, they would all three, at her suggestion, cross
+the street, and stroll in the park together. Leaving Wayne on some
+convenient seat, they would prolong their own walk, talking with the
+unguarded confidence of mutual trust. It was she who furnished the
+topics--books, music, politics, people, anything that chanced to be
+uppermost. When he decided to purchase an automobile a whole new world of
+consultation was opened up. They visited establishments together, and
+drove with Wayne into the country to test machines. Returning Conquest
+would dine informally, in morning dress, with them; or else, from time to
+time he would invite them to a restaurant. By-and-by he took to organizing
+little dinners at his own house, ostensibly to cheer up Wayne, but really
+to see Miriam at his table.
+
+In all this there was nothing remarkable, as between old friends, except
+the contrast with her bearing toward him during the past year. He had
+expected that when Norrie Ford went finally free she would fulfil her
+contract, and fulfil it well; but he had not expected this instalment of
+graciousness in advance. It set him to pondering, to looking in the
+mirror, to refining on that careful dressing which he had already made an
+art. After all, a man in the fifties was young as long as he looked young,
+and according as one took the point of view.
+
+Except when Ford's affairs came directly under discussion he occupied,
+seemingly, a secondary place in their thoughts. Miriam rarely spoke of him
+at all, and if Conquest brought up his name more frequently it was because
+his professional interest in the numerous "nice points" of the case was
+becoming keen. He talked them over with her, partly because of his
+pleasure in the intelligence with which she grasped them, and partly
+because their intimacy deepened in proportion as the hope strengthened
+that Ford's innocence would be proved.
+
+It was June before Miriam heard from South America. Two or three letters
+to Evie had already come, guardedly written, telling little more than the
+incidents of Ford's voyage and arrival. It was to Miriam he wrote what he
+actually had at heart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The great moment has come and gone," she read to Conquest. "I have seen
+Mr. Jarrott, and made a clean breast of everything. It was harder than I
+expected, though I expected it would be pretty hard. I think I felt
+sorrier for him than for myself, which is saying a good deal. He not only
+takes it to heart, but feels it as a cut to his pride. I can see that that
+thought is uppermost. What he feels is not so much the fact that _I_
+deceived him as that I deceived _him_. I can understand it, too. In a
+country where there is such a lot of this sort of thing, he has never been
+touched by it before. It has been a kind of boast that his men were always
+the genuine article. If one of them is called Smith, it is because he _is_
+a Smith, and not a Vere de Vere in hiding. But that isn't all. He took me
+into his family--into his very heart. He showed that, when I told him. He
+tried not to, but he couldn't help it. I tell you it hurt--_me_. I won't
+try to write about it. I'll tell you everything face to face, when I get
+up to the mark, if I ever do. Apparently my letters hadn't prepared him
+for the thing at all. He thought it was to be something to do with Evie,
+though he might have known I wouldn't have chucked up everything for that.
+The worst of it is, he's no good at seeing things all round. He can't take
+my point of view a bit. It is impossible to explain the fix I was put in,
+because he can see nothing but the one fact that I pulled the wool over
+his eyes--_his_ eyes, that had never suffered sacrilege before. I
+sympathize with him in that, and yet I think he might try to see that
+there's something to be said on my side. He doesn't, and he never
+will--which only hurts me the more.
+
+"As for Evie, he wouldn't let me mention her name. I didn't insist,
+because it was too painful--I mean, too painful to see how he took it. He
+said, in about ten words, that Evie had not been any more engaged than if
+she had given her word to a man of air, and that there was no reason why
+she should be spoken of. We left it there. I couldn't deny that, and it
+was no use saying any more. The only reply to him must be given by Evie
+herself. He is writing to her, and so am I. I wish you would help her to
+see that she must consider herself quite free, and that she isn't to
+undertake what she may not have the strength to carry out. I realize more
+and more that I was asking her to do the impossible."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was an hour or two after reading this, when Conquest had gone away,
+that Evie herself--as dainty as spring, in flowered muslin and a Leghorn
+hat crowned with a wreath of roses--came fluttering in.
+
+"I've had the queerest letter from Uncle Jarrott," she began,
+breathlessly. "The poor old dear--well, something must be the matter with
+him. I can't for the life of me imagine what Herbert can have told him,
+but he doesn't understand a bit."
+
+Miriam locked her own letter in her desk, saying as she did so:
+
+"How does he show it?--that he doesn't understand."
+
+"Why, he simply talks wild--that's how he shows it. He says I am not to
+consider myself engaged to Herbert--that I was never engaged to him at
+all. I wonder what he calls it, if it isn't engaged, when I have a
+ring--and everything."
+
+"It is rather mystifying." Miriam tried to smile. "I suppose he means that
+having given your word to Herbert Strange, you're not to consider yourself
+bound to Norrie Ford, unless you want to."
+
+"Pff! I don't care anything about that. I never liked the name of
+Herbert--or Strange, either. I told you that before. All the same, I wish
+Uncle Jarrott would have a little sense."
+
+"Suppose--I mean, just suppose, dear--he felt it his duty to forbid your
+engagement altogether. What would you do then?"
+
+"It wouldn't be very nice of him, I must say. He was as pleased as Punch
+over it when I was down there. If he's so capricious, I don't see how he
+can blame me."
+
+"Blame you, for what, dear?"
+
+"For staying engaged--if it's all right."
+
+"But if he thought it wasn't all right?"
+
+"You do, don't you?"
+
+Evie, who had been prancing about the room, turned sharply on Miriam, who
+was still at her desk.
+
+"That isn't the question--"
+
+"No, but it's _a_ question. I presume you don't mind my asking it?"
+
+"You may ask me anything, darling--of course. But this is your uncle
+Jarrott's affair, and yours. It wouldn't do for me--"
+
+"Oh, that's so like you Miriam. You'd exasperate a saint--the way you
+won't give your opinion when you've got one. I wish I could ask Billy.
+He'd know. But of course I couldn't, when he thinks I'm still engaged to
+_him_."
+
+"What do you want to ask him, Evie, dear?"
+
+"Well, he's a lawyer. He could tell me all about what it's all about. I'm
+sure _I_ don't know. I didn't think it was anything--and yet here's Uncle
+Jarrott writing as if it was something awful. He's written to Aunt
+Queenie, too. Of course I must stand by Herbert, whatever happens--if it
+isn't very bad; but you can see yourself that I don't want to be mixed up
+in a--a--in a scandal."
+
+"It would hardly be a scandal, dear; but there would be some--some
+publicity about it."
+
+"I don't mind publicity. I'm used to that, with my name in the paper every
+other day. It was in this morning. Did you see it?--the Gresley's dance.
+Only I do wish they would call me Evelyn, and not Evie. It sounds so
+familiar."
+
+"I'm afraid they'd put more in about you than just that."
+
+"Would they? What?" Her eyes danced already, in anticipation.
+
+"I can't tell you exactly what; but it would be things you wouldn't like."
+
+Evie twitched about the room, making little clicking sounds with her lips,
+as signs of meditation.
+
+"Well, I mean to be true to him--a while longer," she said, at last, as if
+coming to a conclusion. "I'm not going to let Uncle Jarrott think I'm just
+a puppet to be jerked on a string. The idea! When he was as pleased as
+Punch about it himself. And Aunt Helen said she'd give me my trousseau. I
+suppose I sha'n't get that now. But there's the money you offered me for
+the pearl necklace. Only I'd much rather have the pearl--Well, I'll be
+true to him, do you see? We're leaving for Newport the day after
+to-morrow. They say there hasn't been such a brilliant summer for a long
+time as they expect this year. Thank goodness, there's something to take
+my mind off all this care and worry and responsiblity, otherwise I think I
+should pass away. But I shall show Uncle Jarrott that he can't do just as
+he likes with me, anyhow."
+
+Evie and Miss Jarrott went to Newport, and it was the beginning of July
+before Miriam heard from Ford again. Once more she read to Conquest such
+portions of the letter as she thought he would find of interest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It is all over now," Ford wrote, "between Stephens and Jarrott and me.
+I'm out of the concern for good. It was something of a wrench, and I'm
+glad it is past. I didn't see the old man again. I wanted to thank him and
+say good-bye, but he dodged me. Perhaps it is just as well. Even if I were
+to meet him now, I shouldn't make the attempt again. I confess to feeling
+a little hurt, but I thoroughly understand him. He is one of those
+men--you meet them now and again--survivals from the old school--with a
+sense of rectitude so exact that they can only see in a straight line. It
+is all right. Don't think that I complain. It is almost as much for his
+sake as for my own that I wish he could have taken what I call a more
+comprehensive view of me. I know he suffers--and I shall never be able to
+tell him how sorry I am till we get into the kingdom of heaven. In fact, I
+can't explain anything to any one, except you, which must be an excuse for
+my long letters. I try to keep you posted in what I'm going through, so
+that you may convey as much or as little of it as you think fit to Evie. I
+can't tell her much, and I see from the little notes she writes me that
+she doesn't yet understand.
+
+"The cat seems to be quite out of the bag in the office, though I haven't
+said a word to any one, and I know Mr. Jarrott wouldn't. Pride and sore
+feeling will keep him from ever speaking of me again, except when he can't
+help it. I don't mean to say that the men know exactly what it is, but
+they know enough to set them guessing. They are jolly nice about it, too,
+even the fellows who were hardly decent to me in the old days. Little
+Green--the chap from Boston who succeeded me at Rosario; I must have told
+you about him--and his wife can't do enough for me, and I know they mean
+it."
+
+There was a silence of some weeks before he wrote again.
+
+"I shall not get away from here as soon as I expected, as my private
+affairs are not easily settled up. This city grows so fast that I have had
+a good part of my savings in real estate. I am getting rid of it by
+degrees, but it takes time to sell to advantage. I may say that I am doing
+very well, for which I am not sorry, as I shall need the money for my
+trial. I hope you don't mind my referring to it, because I look forward to
+it with something you might almost call glee. To get back where I started
+will be like waking from a bad dream. I can't believe that Justice will
+make the same mistake twice--and even if she does I would rather she had
+the chance. I am much encouraged by the last reports from Kilcup and
+Warren. I've long felt that it was Jacob Gramm who did for my poor uncle,
+though I didn't like to accuse him of it when the proofs seemed all the
+other way. He certainly had more reason to do the trick than I had, for my
+uncle had been a brute to him for thirty years, while he had only worried
+me for two. He wasn't half a bad old chap, either--old Gramm--and it was
+one of the mysteries of the place to me that he could have stood it so
+long. The only explanation I could find was that he had a kind of
+affection for the old man, such as a dog will sometimes have for a master
+who beats him, or a woman for a drunken husband. I believe the moment came
+when he simply found himself at the end of his tether of endurance--and
+he just did for him. His grief, when it was all over, was real enough.
+Nobody could doubt that. In fact, it was so evidently genuine that the
+theory I am putting forward now only came to me of late years. I think
+there is something in it, and I believe the further they go the more they
+will find to support it. Now that the old chap is dead I should have less
+scruple in following it up--especially if the old lady is gone too. She
+was a bit of a vixen, but the husband was a good old sort. I liked him."
+
+Some weeks later he wrote:
+
+"I wander about this place a good deal like a ghost in its old haunts.
+Everything here is so temporary, so changing--much more so than in New
+York--that one's footprints are very quickly washed away. Outside the
+office almost no one remembers me. It is curious to think that I was once
+so happy here--and so hopeful. There was always a kind of hell in my
+heart, but I kept it banked down, as we do the earth's internal fires,
+beneath a tolerably solid crust. Yesterday, finding myself at the
+Hipodromo, I stood for a while on the spot where I first saw Evie. It used
+to seem to me a bit of enchanted ground, but I feel now as if I ought to
+erect a gravestone there. Poor little Evie! How right you were about it
+all. It was madness on my part to think she could ever climb up my
+Calvary. My excuse is that I didn't imagine it was going to be so steep. I
+even hoped she would never see that there was a Calvary at all. Her notes
+are still pitifully ignorant of the real state of things.
+
+"And speaking of gravestones, I went out the other day to the Recoleta
+Cemetery, and looked at the grave of my poor old friend, Monsieur Durand.
+Everything neat, and in good order. It gives me a peculiar satisfaction
+to see that the decorum he loved reigns where he 'sleeps.' I never knew
+his secret--except that rumor put him down for an unfrocked priest.
+
+"I doubt if I shall get away from here till the beginning of October; but
+when I do, everything will be in trim for what I sometimes think of as my
+resurrection."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These letters, and others like them, Miriam shared conscientiously with
+Conquest. It was part of the loyalty she had vowed to him in her heart
+that she should keep nothing from him, except what was sanctified and
+sealed forever, as her own private history. In the impulse to give her
+life as a ransom for Norrie Ford's she was eager to do it without
+reserves, or repinings, or backward looks--without even a wish that it had
+been possible to make any other use of it. If she was not entirely
+successful in the last feat, she was fairly equal to the rest, so that in
+allowing himself to be misled Conquest could scarcely be charged with
+fatuity. With his combined advantages, personal and otherwise, it was not
+astonishing that a woman should be in love with him; and if that woman
+proved to be Miriam Strange, one could only say that the unexpected had
+happened, as it often does. If, in view of all the circumstances, he
+dressed better than ever, and gave his little dinners more frequently,
+while happiness toned down the sharpness of his handsome profile to a
+softer line, he had little in common with Malvolio.
+
+And what he had began to drop away from him. Insensibly he came to see
+that the display of his legal knowledge, of his carefully chosen ties, of
+his splendid equipment in house, horses, and automobiles, had something of
+the major-domo's strut in parti-colored hose. The day came when he
+understood that the effort to charm her by the parade of these things was
+like the appeal to divine grace by means of grinding on a prayer-mill. It
+was a long step to take, both in thought and emotion, leading him to see
+love, marriage, women's hearts, and all kindred subjects, from a different
+point of view. Love in particular began to appear to him as more than the
+sum total of approbation bestowed on an object to be acquired. Though he
+was not prepared to give it a new definition, it was clear that the old
+one was no longer sufficient for his needs. The mere fact that this woman,
+whom he had vainly tempted with gifts--whom he was still hoping to capture
+by prowess--could come to him of her own accord, had a transforming effect
+on himself. If he ever got her--by purchase, conquest, or any other form
+of acquisition--he had expected to be proud; he had never dreamed of this
+curious happiness, that almost made him humble.
+
+It was a new conception of life to think that there were things in it that
+might be given, but which could not be bought; as it was a new revelation
+of himself to perceive that there were treasures in his dry heart which
+had never before been drawn on. This discovery was made almost
+accidentally. He stumbled on it, as men have stumbled on Koh-i-noors and
+Cullinanes lying in the sand.
+
+"What I really came to tell you," he said to her, on one occasion, as they
+strolled side by side in the Park, "is that I am going away to-morrow--to
+the West--to Omaha."
+
+"Isn't that rather sudden?"
+
+"Rather. I've thought for the last few days I might do it. The fact is,
+they've found Amalia Gramm."
+
+She stopped with a sudden start of interrogation, moving on again at once.
+It was a hot September evening, at the hour when twilight merges into
+night. They had left Wayne on a favorite seat, and having finished their
+own walk northward, were returning to pick him up and take him home. It
+was just dark enough for the thin crescent of the harvest moon to be
+pendulous above the city, while a rim of lighted windows in high façades
+framed the tree-tops The peace of the quiet path in which they rambled
+seemed the more sylvan because of the clang and rumble of the streets, as
+a room will appear more secluded and secure when there is a storm outside.
+
+"They've found her living with some nieces out there," he went on to
+explain. "She appears to have been half over the world since old Gramm
+died--home to Germany--back to America--to Denver--to Chicago--to
+Milwaukee--to the Lord knows where--and now she has fetched up in Omaha.
+She strikes me in the light of an unquiet spirit. It seems she has nephews
+and nieces all over the lot--and as she has the ten thousand dollars old
+Chris Ford left them--"
+
+"Are they going to bring her here?"
+
+"They can't--bedridden--paralyzed, or something. They've got to take her
+testimony on the spot. I want to be there when they do it. There are
+certain questions which it is most important to have asked. In a way, it
+is not my business; but I'm going to make it mine. I've mulled over the
+thing so long that I think I see the psychology of the whole drama."
+
+"I can never thank you enough for the interest you've shown," she said,
+after a brief silence.
+
+He gave his short, nervous laugh.
+
+"Nor I you for giving me the chance to show it. That's where the kindness
+comes in. It's made a different world for me, and me a different man in
+it. If anybody had told me last winter that I should spend the whole
+summer in town working on a criminal case--"
+
+"You shouldn't have done that. I wanted you to go away as usual."
+
+"And leave you here?"
+
+"I shouldn't have minded--as long as Mr. Wayne preferred to stay. It's so
+hard for him to get about, anywhere but in the place he's accustomed to.
+New York in summer isn't as bad as people made me think."
+
+"I too have found that true. To me it has been a very happy time. But
+perhaps my reasons were different from yours."
+
+She reflected a minute before uttering her next words, but decided to say
+them.
+
+"I fancy our reasons were the same."
+
+The low voice, the simplicity of the sentence, the meanings in it and
+behind it, made him tremble. It was then, perhaps, that he began to see
+most clearly the true nature of love, both as given and received.
+
+"I don't think they can be," he ventured, hoping to draw her on to say
+something more; but she did not respond.
+
+After all, he reflected, as they continued their walk more or less in
+silence, too many words would only spoil the minute's bliss. There was,
+too, a pleasure in standing afar off to view the promised land almost
+equal to that of marching into it--especially when, as now, he was given
+to understand that its milk and honey were awaiting him.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+
+It was the middle of October when Evie wrote from Lenox to say she would
+come to town to meet Ford on his arrival, begging Miriam to give her
+shelter for a night or two. The Grants remaining abroad, Miss Jarrott had
+taken the house in Seventy-second Street for another winter, but as Evie
+would run up to New York alone she preferred for the minute to be Miriam's
+guest.
+
+"The fact is, I'm worried to death," she wrote, confidentially "and you
+must help me to see daylight through this tangled mass of everybody saying
+different things. Aunt Queenie has gone completely back on Herbert, just
+because Uncle Jarrott has. That doesn't strike me as very loyal, I must
+say. I shouldn't think it right to desert anybody, unless I wanted to. I
+wouldn't do it because some one else told me to--not if he was my brother
+ten times over. I mean to be just as true to Herbert as I can Not that he
+makes it very easy for me, because he has broken altogether with Uncle
+Jarrott--and that seems to me the maddest thing. I certainly sha'n't get
+my trousseau from Aunt Helen now. I don't see what we're all coming to.
+Everybody is so queer, and they keep hinting things they won't say out, as
+if there was some mystery. I do wish I could talk to Billy about it. Of
+course I can't--the way matters stand. And speaking of Billy, that rich
+Mr. Bird--you remember I told you about him last winter--has asked me to
+marry him. Just think! I forget how much he has a year, but it's something
+awful. Of course I told him I couldn't give him a definite answer yet--but
+that if he insisted on it I should have to make it No. He said he didn't
+insist--that he'd rather wait till I had time to make up my mind, if I
+didn't keep him dangling. I told him I wouldn't keep him doing anything
+whatever, and that if he dangled at all it would be entirely of his own
+accord. I think he liked my spirit, so he said he'd wait. We left it
+there, which was the wisest way--though I must say I didn't like his
+presuming on his money to think I would make a difference between him and
+the others. Money doesn't mean anything to me, though dear mamma hoped she
+would live to see me well established. She didn't, poor darling, but
+that's no reason why I shouldn't try to carry out her wishes. All the
+same, I mean to be true to Herbert just as long as possible; and so you
+may expect me on the twenty-ninth."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If there was much in this letter that Miriam found disturbing, it was not
+the thought that Evie might be false to Ford, or that Ford might suffer,
+which alarmed her most. There was something in her that cried out in fear
+before the possibility that Norrie Ford might be free again. Her strength
+having sprung so largely from the hope of restoring the plans she had
+marred, the destruction of the motive left her weak; but worse than that
+was the knowledge that, though she had tried to empty her heart completely
+of its cravings, only its surface had been drained. It was to get
+assurance rather than to give information that she read fragments of
+Evie's letter to Conquest, on the evening of his return from Omaha. He had
+come to give her the news of his success. That it was good news was
+evident in his face when he entered the room; and, almost afraid to hear
+it, she had broached the subject of her anxiety about Evie first.
+
+"She's going to give him the sack; that's what _she's_ going to give him,"
+Conquest said, conclusively, while Miriam folded the dashingly scribbled
+sheets. "You needn't be worried about her in the least. Miss Evie knows
+her way about as cleverly as a homing bee. She'll do well for herself
+whatever else she may not do. _Come now_!"
+
+"I'm not thinking of that so much as that she should do her duty."
+
+"Duty! Pooh! That sort of little creature has no duty--the word doesn't
+apply to it. Evie is the most skilful mixture of irresponsible impulse and
+shrewd calculation you'll find in New York. She'll use both her gifts with
+perfect heartlessness, and yet in such a way that even her guardian angel
+won't know just where to find fault with her."
+
+"But she must marry Mr. Ford--now."
+
+He was too busy with his own side of the subject to notice that her
+assertion had the intensity of a cry. He had a man's lack of interest in
+another man's love-affairs while he was blissfully absorbed in his own.
+
+"You might as well tell a swallow that it must migrate--now," he laughed.
+"Poor Ford will feel it, I've no doubt; but we shall make up to him for a
+good deal of it. We're going to pull him through."
+
+For the instant her anxiety was diverted into another channel. "Does that
+mean that Amalia Gramm has told you anything?"
+
+"She's told us everything. I thought she would. I don't feel at liberty to
+give you the details before they come out at the proper time and place;
+but there's no harm in saying that my analysis of the old woman's
+psychological state was not so very far wrong. There's no question about
+it any longer. We'll pull him through. And, by George, he's worth it!"
+
+The concluding exclamation, uttered with so much sincerity, took her by
+surprise, transmuting the pressure about her heart into a mist of sudden
+tears. Tears came to her rarely, hardly, and seldom with relief. She was
+especially unwilling that Conquest should notice them now; but the attempt
+to dash them away only caused them to fall faster. She could see him
+watching her in a kind of sympathetic curiosity, slightly surprised in his
+turn at the unexpected emotion, and trying to divine its cause. Unable to
+bear his gaze any longer, she got up brusquely from her chair, retreating
+into the bay-window, where--the curtains being undrawn--she stood looking
+down on the sea of lights, as beings above the firmament might look down
+on stars. He waited a minute, and came near her only when he judged that
+he might do so discreetly.
+
+"You're unnerved," he said, with tender kindliness. "That's why you're
+upset. You've had too much on your mind. You're too willing to take all
+the care on your own shoulders, and not let other people hustle for
+themselves."
+
+She was pressing her handkerchief against her lips, so she made no reply.
+The moment seemed to him one at which he might go forward a little more
+boldly. All the circumstances warranted an advance from his position of
+reserve.
+
+"You need me," he ventured to say, with that quiet assurance which in a
+lover means much. "I understand you as no one else does in the world."
+
+Her brimming eyes gave him a look which was only pathetic, but which he
+took to be one of assent.
+
+"I've always told you I could help you," he went on, with tranquil
+earnestness, "and I could. You've too many burdens to carry alone--burdens
+that don't belong to you, but which, I know, you'll never lay down. Well,
+I'll share them. There's Wayne, now. He's too much for you, by yourself--I
+don't mean from the material point of view, but--the whole thing. It wears
+on you. It's bound to. Wayne is my friend just as much as yours. He's my
+responsibility--so long as you take it in that light. I've been thinking
+of him a lot lately--and I see how, in my house--could put him
+up--ideally."
+
+Still pressing her handkerchief against her lips with her right hand, she
+put out her left in a gesture of deprecation. He understood it as one of
+encouragement, and went on.
+
+"You must come and look at my house. You've never really seen it, and I
+think you'd like it. I think you'd like--everything I've got everything to
+make you happy; and if you'll only let me do it, you'll make me happy,
+too."
+
+She felt able to speak at last. Her eyes were still brimming as she turned
+toward him, but brimming only as pools are when the rain is over.
+
+"I want you to be happy. You're so good ... and kind ... and you've done
+so much for me ... you deserve it."
+
+She turned away from him again. With her arm on the woodwork of the
+window, she rested her forehead rather wearily on her hand. He understood
+so little of what was passing within her that she found it a relief to
+suspend for the minute her comedy of spontaneous happiness, letting her
+heart ache unrestrainedly. Her left hand hanging limp and free, she made
+no effort to withdraw it when she felt him clasp it in his own. Since she
+had subscribed to the treaty months ago, since she had insisted on doing
+it rightly or wrongly, it made little difference when and how she carried
+the conditions out. So they stood hand in hand together, tacitly, but, as
+each knew, quite effectually, plighted. In her silence, her resignation,
+her evident consent he read the proof of that love which, to his mind, no
+longer needed words.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Late that night, after he had gone away, she wrote to Evie, beseeching her
+to be true to Ford. The letter was so passionate, so little like herself,
+that she was afraid of destroying it if she waited till morning, so she
+posted it without delay. The answer came within forty-eight hours, in the
+shape of a telegram from Evie. She was coming to town at once, though it
+wanted still three or four days to Ford's arrival.
+
+It was a white little Evie, with drawn face, who threw herself into
+Miriam's arms at the station, clutching at her with a convulsive sob.
+
+"Miriam, I can't do it," she whispered, in a kind of terror. "They say
+he's going to be put in--_jail_!"
+
+Her voice rose on the last word, so that one or two people paused in their
+rush past to glance at the pitifully tragic little face.
+
+"Hush, darling," Miriam whispered back. "You'll tell me about it as we go
+home."
+
+But in the motor Evie could only cry, clinging to Miriam as she used to do
+in troubled moments in childhood. Arrived at the apartment, Wayne had to
+be faced with some measure of self-control, and then came dinner. At table
+Evie, outwardly mistress of herself by this time, talked feverish
+nonsense about their common friends in Lenox, after which she made an
+excuse for retiring early. It was only in the bedroom, when they were
+secure from interruption that Miriam heard what Evie had to tell. She was
+tearless now, and rather indignant.
+
+"I've had the strangest letter from Herbert," she declared excitedly, as
+soon as Miriam entered the room. "I couldn't have believed he wrote it in
+his senses if Aunt Queenie hadn't heard the Same thing from Uncle Jarrott.
+He says he's got to go to--_jail_."
+
+There was the same rising inflexion on the last word, suggestive of a
+shriek of horror, that Miriam had noticed in the station. In her white
+peignoir, her golden hair streaming over her shoulders, and her hands
+flung wide apart with an appealing dramatic gesture, Evie was not unlike
+some vision of a youthful Christian martyr, in spite of the hair-brush in
+her hand. Miriam sat down sidewise on the edge of the couch, looking up at
+the child in pity. She felt that it was useless to let her remain in
+darkness any longer.
+
+"Of course he has to," she said, trying to make her tone as matter of fact
+as might be. "Didn't you know it?"
+
+"Know it! Did _you_?"
+
+Evie stepped forward, bending over Miriam as if she meant to strike her.
+
+"I knew it in a general way, darling. I suppose, when he gives himself to
+the police--"
+
+"The police!" Evie screamed. "Am I to be engaged to a man who--gives
+himself up to the police?"
+
+"It will only be for a little while, dear--"
+
+"I don't care whether it's for a little while or foreverit can't _be_.
+What is he thinking of? What are _you_ thinking of? Don't you _see_? How
+can I face the world--with all my invitations--when the man I'm engaged to
+is--in jail?"
+
+Evie's hands flew up in a still more eloquent gesture, while the blue
+eyes, usually so soft and veiled, were wide with flaming interrogation.
+
+"I knew that--in some ways--it might be hard for you--"
+
+Evie laughed, a little silvery mirthless ripple of scorn.
+
+"I must say, Miriam, you choose your words skilfully. But you're wrong, do
+you see? There's no way in which it can be hard for me, because there's no
+way in which it's possible."
+
+"Oh yes, there is, dear--if you love him."
+
+"That has nothing to do with it. Of course I love him. Haven't I said so?
+But that doesn't make any difference. Can't I love him without being
+engaged to--to--to a man who has to go to jail?"
+
+"Certainly; but you can't love him if you don't feel that you must--that
+you simply _must_--stand by his side."
+
+"There you go again, Miriam, with your queer ideas. It's exactly what any
+one would expect you to say."
+
+"I hope so."
+
+"Oh, you needn't hope so, because they would--any one who knew you. But I
+have to do what's right. I know what I feel in my conscience--and I have
+to follow it. And besides, I couldn't--I couldn't"--her voice began to
+rise again--"I couldn't face it--I couldn't bear it--not if I loved him a
+great deal better than I do."
+
+"That's something you must think about very seriously, dear--"
+
+"I don't have to!" she cried, with a stamp of her foot. "I know it
+already. It wouldn't make any difference if I thought about it a thousand
+years. I couldn't be engaged to a man who was in jail, not if I worshipped
+the ground he trod on."
+
+"But when he's innocent, darling--"
+
+"It's jail, just the same. I can't be engaged to people just because
+they're innocent. It isn't right to expect it of me. And, anyhow," she
+added, passionately, "I can't do it. It would kill me. I should never lift
+my head again. I can't--I can't. It's hateful of any one to say I ought
+to. I'm surprised at you, Miriam, when you know how dear mamma would have
+forbidden it. It's all very well for you to give advice, when you have no
+family--and no one to think about--and hardly any invitations-- Well, I
+can't, and there's an end of it. If that's your idea of love, then, I must
+say, my conception is a little different. I've always had high ideals, and
+I feel obliged to hold to them, however you may condemn me."
+
+She ended with a catch in her breath something like a sob.
+
+"But I'm not condemning you, Evie dear. If you feel what you say, there's
+nothing for it but to see Mr. Ford and tell him so."
+
+At this suggestion Evie sobered. She was a long time silent before she
+observed, in a voice that had become suddenly calm and significantly
+casual, "That's easy for you to say."
+
+"If you speak to him as decidedly as to me, I should think it would be
+easy for you to do."
+
+"And still easier for you."
+
+Evie spoke in that tone of unintentional intention which is most pointed.
+It was not lost on Miriam, who recoiled from the mere thought. It seemed
+to her better to ignore the hint, but Evie, with feverish eagerness,
+refused to let it pass.
+
+"Did you hear what I said?" she persisted, sharply.
+
+"I heard it, dear; but it didn't seem to me to mean anything."
+
+"That would depend on whether you heard it only with the ear or in the
+heart."
+
+"You know that everything that has to do with you is in my heart."
+
+"Well, then?"
+
+"But if you mean by that that I should tell Mr. Ford you're not going to
+marry him--why, it's out of the question."
+
+"Then who's to tell him? _I_ can't. It's not to be expected."
+
+"But, darling, you must. This is awful."
+
+Miriam got up and went toward her, but Evie, who was nervously brushing
+her hair, edged away.
+
+"Of course it's awful, but I don't see the use of making it worse than it
+need be. He'll feel it a great deal more if he sees me, and so shall I."
+
+"And what shall I feel?" Miriam spoke unguardedly, but Evie was too
+preoccupied to notice the bitterness of the tone.
+
+"I don't see why you should feel anything at all. It's nothing to you--or
+very little. It wouldn't be your fault; not any more than it's the
+postman's if he has to bring you a letter with bad news."
+
+Miriam went back to her place on the edge of the couch, where with her
+forehead bowed for a minute on her hand she sat reflecting. An
+overwhelming desire for confidence, for sympathy perhaps, for the
+clearing up of mysteries in any case, was impelling her to tell Evie all
+that had ever happened between Ford and herself. It had been necessary to
+maintain so many reserves that possibly this new light would enable Evie
+to see her own duty more straightforwardly.
+
+"Darling," she began, "I want to tell you something--"
+
+But before she could proceed Evie flung the hair-brush on the floor and
+uttered a great swelling sob. With her hands hanging at her sidess and her
+golden head thrown back, she wept with the abandonment of a child, while
+suggesting the seraphic suffering of a grieving angel by some old master.
+
+In an instant Miriam had her in her arms. It was the appeal she had never
+been able to resist.
+
+"There, there, my pet," she said, soothingly, drawing her to the couch.
+"Come to Miriam, who loves you. There, there."
+
+Evie clung to her piteously, with flower-like face tilted outward and
+upward for the greater convenience of weeping.
+
+"Oh, I'm so lonely!" she sobbed. "I'm so lonely ... I I wish dear mamma
+... hadn't died."
+
+Miriam pressed her the more closely.
+
+"I'm so lonely ... and everything's so strange ... and I don't know what
+to do ... and he's going to be put in jail ... and you're so unkind to
+me.... Oh, dear! ... I can't tell him ... I can't tell him ... I can't ...
+I can't ..."
+
+She pillowed her head on Miriam's shoulder, like a child that would force
+a caress from the hand that has just been striking it. The action filled
+Miriam with that kind of self-reproach which the weak creature inspires so
+easily in the strong. In spite of her knowledge to the contrary, she had
+the feeling of having acted selfishly.
+
+"No, darling," she said, at last, as Evie's sobs subdued into convulsive
+tremblings, "you needn't tell him. I'll see him. He'll understand how hard
+it's been for you. It's been hard for every one--and especially for you,
+darling. I'll do my best. You know I will. And I'm sure he'll understand.
+There, there," she comforted, as Evie's tears broke out afresh. "Have your
+cry out, dear. It will do you good. There, there."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So Evie went back next day to Lenox, while Miriam waited for Ford.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+
+A few days later she read his name, in a morning paper, in the _Asiatic's_
+list of passengers the steamer having arrived at quarantine the night
+before: Mr. John Norrie Ford. Though flung carelessly into a paragraph
+printed in small type, it seemed to blaze in fire on the page! It was as
+if all America must rise at it. As she looked from the window it was with
+something like surprise that she saw the stream of traffic roaring onward,
+heedless of the fact that this dread name was being hawked in the streets
+and sold at the news-stands. She sent out for the evening papers that
+appear at midday, being relieved and astonished to find that as yet it had
+created no sensation.
+
+She was not deceived by his ease of manner when he appeared at the
+apartment in the afternoon. Though he carried his head loftily, and smiled
+with his habitual air of confidence, she could see that the deep waters of
+the proud had gone over his soul. Their ebb had streaked his hair and
+beard with white, and deepened the wrinkles that meant concentrated will
+into the furrows that come of suffering. She was more or less prepared for
+that. It was the outward manifestation of what she had read between the
+lines of the letters he had written her. As he crossed the room, with hand
+outstretched, her one conscious thought was of the chance to be a woman
+and a helpmeet Evie had flung away. She had noticed how, on the very
+threshold, he had glanced twice about the room, expecting to find her
+there.
+
+They did not speak of her at once. They talked of commonplace introductory
+things--the voyage, the arrival, the hotel at which he was
+staying--anything that would help her, and perhaps him, to control the
+preliminary nervousness. There was no sign of it, however, on his part,
+while she felt her own spirit rising, as it always did, to meet
+emergencies. Presently she mentioned her fears regarding his use of his
+true name.
+
+"No; it isn't dangerous," he assured her, "because I'm out of danger now.
+Thank the Lord, that's all over. I don't have to live with a great hulking
+terror behind me any longer. I'm a man like any other. You can't imagine
+what it means to be yourself, and not to care who knows it. I'm afraid I
+parade my name just like a boy with a new watch, who wants to tell every
+one the time. So far no one has paid any particular attention; but I dare
+say that will come. Is Evie here?"
+
+"She's not here--to-day."
+
+"Why not?" he asked, sharply. "She said she would be. She said she'd come
+to town--"
+
+"She did come to town, but she thought she'd better not--stay."
+
+"Not stay? Why shouldn't she stay? Is anything up? You don't mean that
+Miss Jarrott--?"
+
+"No; Miss Jarrott had nothing to do with it. I know her brother has
+written to her, in the way you must be prepared for. But she couldn't have
+kept Evie from waiting for you, if Evie herself--"
+
+"Had wanted to," he finished, as she seemed to hesitate at the words.
+
+Since she said nothing to modify this assertion, she hoped he would
+comprehend its gravity. Indeed, he seemed to be trying to attenuate that
+when he spoke next.
+
+"I suppose she had engagements--or something."
+
+"She did have engagements--but she could have put them off."
+
+"Only she didn't care to. I see."
+
+She allowed him time to accept this fact before going on.
+
+"Her return to Lenox," she said then, "wasn't because of her engagements."
+
+"Then it must have been because of me. Didn't she want to see me?"
+
+"She didn't want to tell you what she felt she would have to say."
+
+"Oh! So that was it."
+
+He continued to sit looking at her with an expression of interrogation,
+though it was evident from his eyes that his questions had been answered.
+They sat in the same relative positions as on the night of their last long
+talk together, he in his big arm-chair, she in her low one. It struck her
+as strange--while he stared at her with that gaze of inquiry from which
+the inquiry was gone--that she, who meant so little to his inner life,
+should be called on again to live through with him minutes that must
+forever remain memorable in his existence.
+
+"Poor little thing! So she funked telling me."
+
+The comment was made musingly, to himself, but she took it as if addressed
+to her.
+
+"She wasn't equal to it."
+
+"But you are. You're equal to anything. Aren't you?" He smiled with that
+peculiar twisted smile which she had noticed at other times, when he was
+concealing pain.
+
+"One is generally equal to what one has to do. All the same," she added,
+with an impulse she could not repress, "I'm sorry to be always associated
+in your mind with things that must be hard for you."
+
+"You're associated in my mind with everything that's high and noble.
+That's the only memory I shall ever have of you. You've been with me
+through some of the dark spots of my life; but if it hadn't been for you I
+shouldn't have found the way."
+
+"Thank you. I'm glad you can say that. I should be even more sorry than I
+am to give you this news to-day, if it were not that perhaps I can explain
+things a little better than Evie could."
+
+"I don't imagine that they require much explanation. I've seen from Evie's
+letters that--"
+
+"That she was afraid of--the situation. She hasn't changed toward you."
+
+"Do you mean by that that she still--cares anything about me?"
+
+"She says she does."
+
+"But you don't believe her."
+
+"I'm not entitled to an opinion. It's something you and she must work out
+together. All I can do is to tell you what may give you a little hope."
+
+She watched for the brightening effect of these words upon him, but he sat
+looking absently at the floor, as if he had not heard them.
+
+"Evie is afraid," she continued, "but I think it's only fair to remember
+that the circumstances might well frighten any young girl of her sort."
+
+He showed that he followed her by nodding assent, though he neither lifted
+his head nor spoke.
+
+"She wanted me to tell you that while the--the trial--and other
+things--are going on, she couldn't be engaged to you--I'm using her own
+expression, but she didn't say that, when it was all over and you were
+free, she wouldn't marry you. I noticed that."
+
+He looked up quickly.
+
+"I'm not sure that I catch your drift."
+
+"I mean that when it's all over, and everything has ended as you hope it
+will, it may be quite possible for you to win her back."
+
+He stared at her, with an incredulous lifting of the eyebrows
+
+"Would you advise me to try?"
+
+"It isn't a matter I could give advice about. I'm showing you what might
+be possible, but--"
+
+"No, no. That sort of thing doesn't work. There was just a chance that
+Evie might have stuck to me spontaneously but since she didn't--"
+
+"Since she didn't--what?"
+
+"She was quite right not to. I admit that. It's in the order of things.
+She followed her instinct rather than her heart--I'm ready to believe
+that--but there are times in life when instinct is a pretty good guide."
+
+"Am I to understand that you're not--hurt?--or disappointed? Because in
+that case--"
+
+"I don't know whether I am or not. That's frank. I'm feeling so many
+things all at once that I can hardly distinguish one emotion from another,
+or tell which is strongest. I only know--it's become quite plain to
+me--that a little creature like Evie couldn't find a happy home in my
+life, any more than a humming-bird, as you once called her, could make its
+nest among crags."
+
+"Do you mean by that," she asked, slowly, "that
+you're--definitely--letting her go?"
+
+"I mean that, Evie being what she is, and I being what life has made
+me--Isn't it perfectly evident? Can you fancy us tied together--now?"
+
+"I never could fancy it. I haven't concealed that from you at any time.
+But since you loved her, and she loved you--"
+
+"That was true enough--in its way. In its way, it's still true. Evie still
+loves the man I was, perhaps, and the man I was loves her. The difference
+is that the man I was isn't sitting here in front of you."
+
+"One changes with years, of course. I didn't suppose one could change in a
+few months, like that."
+
+"One changes with experience--above all, with that kind of experience
+which people generally call--suffering. That's the great Alchemist; and he
+often transmutes our silver into gold. In my case, Evie was silver; but
+I've found there's something else that stands for--"
+
+"So that," she interposed, quickly, "you're not sorry that Evie--?"
+
+He got up, restlessly, and stood with his back to the empty fireplace.
+
+"It isn't a case for sorrow," he replied, after a minute's thinking, "as
+it isn't one for joy. It's one purely for acceptance. When I first knew
+Evie I was still something of a kid. It was so all the more because the
+kid element in me had never had full play. I was arrogant, and cock-sure
+and certain of my ability to manipulate the world to suit myself. That was
+all Evie saw, and she liked it. In as far as she had it in her to fall in
+love with anything, she fell in love with it."
+
+He took a turn or two across the room, coming back to his stand on the
+hearth-rug.
+
+"I've travelled far since then," he continued; "I've _had_ to travel far.
+Evie hasn't been able to come with me; and that's all there is to the
+story. It isn't her fault; because when I asked her, I had no intention of
+taking this particular way."
+
+"It was I who drove you into that," she said, with a hint of remorse.
+
+"Yes--you--and conscience--and whatever else I honor most. I give you the
+credit first of all, because, if it hadn't been for you, I shouldn't have
+had the moral energy to assert my true self against the false one. Isn't
+it curious that, after having made me Herbert Strange, it should be you
+who turned me into Norrie Ford again? It means that you exercise supreme
+power over me--a kind of creative power. You can make of me what you care
+to. It's no wonder that I've come to see----" He paused, in doubt as to
+how to express himself, while her eyes were fixed on him in troubled
+questioning. "It's no wonder," he went on again, "that I've come to see
+everything in a truer light--Evie as well as all the rest of it."
+
+With a renewed impulse to move about, he strode toward the bay-window,
+where he stood for a few seconds, looking out and trying to co-ordinate
+his thoughts. Wheeling round again, he drew up a small chair close to
+hers, seating himself sidewise, with his arm resting on the back. He
+looked like a man anxious to explain himself.
+
+"You're blaming me, I think, because I don't take Evie's defection more to
+heart. Isn't that so?"
+
+"I'm not blaming you. I may be a little surprised at it."
+
+"You wouldn't be surprised at it, if you knew all I've been through. It's
+difficult to explain to you--"
+
+"There's no reason why you should try."
+
+"But I want to try. I want you to know. You see," he pursued, speaking
+slowly, as if searching for the right words--"you see, it's largely a
+question of progress--of growth. Trouble has two stages. In the first, you
+think it hard luck that you should have to meet it. In the second, you see
+that, having met it, and gone through it, you come out into a region of
+big experience, where everything is larger and nobler than you thought it
+was before. Now, you'd probably think me blatant if I said that I feel
+myself emerging into--_that_."
+
+"No, I shouldn't. As a matter of fact, I know you're doing it."
+
+"Well, then, having got there--out into that new kind of world"--he
+sketched the vision with one of his Latin gestures--"I discover that--for
+one reason or another--poor little Evie has stayed on the far side of it.
+She couldn't pass the first gate with me, or the second, or the third, to
+say nothing of those I have still to go through. You know I'm not
+criticising, or finding fault with her, don't you?"
+
+She assured him of that.
+
+"And yet, I must go on, you see. There's no waiting or turning back for
+me, any more than for a dying man. No matter who goes or who stays, I must
+press forward. If Evie can't make the journey with me, I can only feel
+relieved that she's able to slip out of it--but I must still go on. I
+can't look back; I can't even be sorry--because I'm coming into the new,
+big land. You see what I mean?"
+
+She signified again that she followed him.
+
+"But the finding of a new land doesn't take anything from the old one. It
+only enlarges the world. Europe didn't become different because they
+discovered America. The only change was in their getting to know a country
+where the mountains were higher, and the rivers broader, and the sunshine
+brighter, and where there was a chance for the race to expand. Evie
+remains what she was. The only difference is that my eyes have been opened
+to--a new ideal."
+
+It was impossible for her not to guess at what he meant. Independently of
+words, his earnest eyes told their tale, while he bent toward her like a
+man not quite able to restrain himself. In the ensuing seconds of silence
+she had time to be aware of three distinct phases of emotion within her
+consciousness, following each other so rapidly as to seem simultaneous. A
+throb of reckless joy in the perception that he loved her was succeeded by
+the knowledge that loyalty to Conquest must make rejoicing vain, while it
+flashed on her that, having duped herself once in regard to him, she must
+not risk the humiliating experience a second time. It was this last
+reflection that prevailed, keeping her still and unresponsive. After all,
+his new ideal might be something--or some one--quite different from what
+her fond imagining was so ready to believe.
+
+"I suppose," she said, vaguely, for the sake of saying something, "that
+trial is the first essential to maturity. We need it for our ripening, as
+the flowers and fruit need wind and rain."
+
+"And there are things in life," he returned, quickly, "that no immature
+creature can see. That's the point I want you to notice. It explains me.
+In a way, it's an excuse for me."
+
+"I don't need excuses for you," she hastened to say, "any more than I
+require to have anything explained."
+
+"No; of course not. You don't care anything about it. It's only I who do.
+But I care so much that I want you to understand why it was that--that--I
+didn't care before."
+
+She felt the prompting to stop him, to silence him, but once more she held
+herself back. There was still a possibility that she was mistaking him,
+and her pride was on its guard.
+
+"It was because I didn't know any better," he burst out, in naïve
+self-reproach. "It was because I couldn't recognize the high, the fine
+thing when I saw it. I've had that experience in other ways, and with just
+the same result. It was like that when I first began to hear good music. I
+couldn't make it out--it was nothing but a crash of sounds. I preferred
+the ditties and dances of a musical comedy; and it was only by degrees
+that I began to find them flat. Then my ear caught something of the
+wonderful things in the symphonies that used to bore me. You see, I'm
+slow--I'm stupid--"
+
+"Not at all," she smiled. "It's quite a common experience."
+
+"But I'm like that all through, with everything. I've been like that--with
+women. I used to be attracted by quite an ordinary sort. It's taken me
+years--all these years, till I'm thirty-three--to see that there's a
+perfect expression of the human type, just as there's a perfect expression
+of any kind of art. And I've found it."
+
+He bent farther forward, nearer to her. There was a light in his face that
+seemed to her to denote enthusiasm quite as much as love. To her wider
+experience in emotions this discovery of himself, which was involved in
+his discovery of her, was rather youthful, provoking a faint smile.
+
+"You're to be congratulated, then," she said, with an air of distant
+friendliness. "It isn't every one who's so fortunate."
+
+"That's true. There's only one man in the world who's more fortunate than
+I. That's Conquest."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+In the brusqueness with which she started she pushed her chair slightly
+back from him. It was to conceal her agitation that she rose, steadying
+herself on the back of the chair in which she had been seated.
+
+"Conquest saw what I didn't--till it was too late."
+
+He was on his feet now, facing her, with the chair between them.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't say any more," she begged, though without
+overemphasis of pleading. She was anxious, for her own sake as well as for
+his, to keep to the tone of the colloquial.
+
+"I don't see why I shouldn't. I'm not going to say anything to shock you.
+I know you're going to marry Conquest. You told me so before I went away,
+and----"
+
+"I should like to remind you that Mr. Conquest is the best friend you
+have. When you hear what he's done for you, you will see that you owe him
+more than you do any man in the world."
+
+"I know that. I'm the last to forget it. But it can't do any harm to tell
+the woman--who's going to be his wife--that I owe her even more than I do
+him."
+
+"It can't do any harm, perhaps; but when I ask you not to----"
+
+"I can't obey you. I shouldn't be a man if I went through life without
+some expression of my--gratitude; and now's the only time to make it.
+There are things which I wasn't free to say before, because I was bound
+to Evie--and which it will soon be too late for you to listen to, because
+you'll be bound to him. You're not bound to him yet----"
+
+"I _am_ bound to him," she said, in a tone in which there were all the
+regrets he had no reason to divine. "I don't know what you think of
+saying; but whatever it is, I implore you not to say it."
+
+"It's precisely because you don't know that I feel the necessity of
+telling you. It's something I owe you. It's like a debt. It isn't as if we
+were just any man and any woman. We're a man and a woman in a very special
+relation to each other. No matter what happens, nothing can change that.
+And it isn't as if we were going to live in the same world, in the same
+way. You will be Conquest's wife--a great lady in New York. I shall
+be--well, Heaven only knows what I shall be, but nothing that's likely to
+cross your path again. All the same, it won't hurt you, it wouldn't hurt
+any woman, however good, to hear what I'm going to tell you. It wouldn't
+hurt any man--not even Conquest--that it should be said to his wife--in
+the way that I shall say it. If it could, I wouldn't----"
+
+"Wait a minute," she said, suddenly. "Let me ask you something." She took
+a step toward him, though her hand rested still on the back of the chair.
+"If I know it already," she continued, looking him in the eyes, "there
+would be no necessity for you to speak?"
+
+He took the time to consider this in all its bearings.
+
+"I'd rather tell you in my own words," he said, at last; "but if you
+assure me that you know, I shall be satisfied."
+
+She took a step nearer to him still. Only the tips of her fingers now
+rested on the back of the chair, to which she held, as to a bulwark.
+Before she spoke she glanced round the room, as though afraid lest the
+doors and walls might mistake her words for a confession.
+
+"Then I do know," she said, quietly.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+
+"The old lady was willing enough to talk," Conquest assured Ford, in his
+narrative of the taking of Amalia Gramm's testimony. "There's nothing more
+loquacious than remorse. I figured on that before going out to Omaha."
+
+"But if she had no hand in the crime, I don't see where the remorse comes
+in."
+
+"It comes in vicariously. She feels it for Jacob, since Jacob didn't live
+to feel it for himself. It involves a subtle element of wifely devotion
+which I guess you're too young, or too inexperienced, to understand. She
+was glad old Jacob was gone, so that she could make his confession with
+impunity. She was willing to make any atonement within _her_ power, since
+it was too late to call _him_ to account."
+
+"Isn't that a bit far-fetched?"
+
+"Possibly--except to a priest, or a lawyer, or a woman herself. It isn't
+often that a woman's heroism works in a straight line, like a soldier's,
+or a fireman's. It generally pops at you round some queer corner, where it
+takes you by surprise. Before leaving Omaha I'd come to see that Amalia
+Gramm was by no means the least valiant of her sex."
+
+Conquest's smoking-room, with its space and height, its deep leather
+arm-chairs, its shaded lamps, its cheerful fire, suggested a club rather
+than a private dwelling, and invited the most taciturn guest to
+confidence. Ford stretched himself before the blaze with an enjoyment
+rendered keener by the thought that it might be long before he had
+occasion to don a dinner-jacket again, or taste such a good Havana. Though
+it was only the evening of his arrival, he was eager to give himself up.
+Now that he had "squared himself," as he expressed it, with Miriam
+Strange, he felt he had put the last touch to his preparations. Kilcup and
+Warren were holding him back for a day or two, but his own promptings were
+for haste.
+
+"I admit," Conquest continued to explain, as he fidgeted about the room,
+moving a chair here, or an ash-tray there, with the fussiness of an old
+bachelor of housekeeping tastes--"I admit that I thought the old woman was
+trying it on at first. But I came to the conclusion that she had told a
+true story from the start. When she gave her evidence at your trial she
+thought you were--the man."
+
+"There's nothing surprising in that. They almost made me think so, too."
+
+"It did look fishy, my friend. You won't mind my saying that much. Clearer
+heads than your jury of village store-keepers and Adirondack farmers might
+have given the same verdict. But old lady Gramm's responsibility hadn't
+begun then. It was a matter of two or three years before she came to
+see--as women do see things about the men they live with--that the hand
+which did the job was Jacob's. By that time you had disappeared into
+space, and she didn't feel bound to give the old chap away. She says she
+would have done it if it could have saved you; but since you had saved
+yourself, she confined her attentions to shielding Jacob. You may credit
+as much or as little of that as you please; but I believe the bulk of it.
+In any case, since it does the trick for us we have no reason to complain.
+Come now!"
+
+"I'm not going to complain of anything. It's been a rum experience all
+through, but I can't say that, in certain aspects, I haven't enjoyed it. I
+_have_ enjoyed it. If it weren't for the necessity of deceiving people who
+are decent to you, I'd go through it all again."
+
+"That's game," Conquest said, approvingly, as he worked round to the
+hearth-rug, where he stood cutting the end of a cigar, with Ford's long
+figure stretched out obliquely before him.
+
+"I would," Ford assured him. "I'd go through it all again, like a shot.
+It's been a lark from--I won't say from start to finish--but certainly
+from the minute--let me see just when!--certainly from the minute when
+Miss Strange beckoned to me, over old Wayne's shoulder."
+
+An odd look came by degrees into Conquest's face--the look of pitying
+amusement with which one listens to queer things said by some one in
+delirium. He kept the cutter fixed in the end of the cigar, too much
+astonished to complete his task.
+
+"Since Miss Strange did--_what_?"
+
+Ford was too deeply absorbed in his own meditations to notice the tone.
+
+"I mean, since she pulled me through."
+
+Conquest's face broke into a broad smile.
+
+"Are you dreaming, old chap? Or have you 'got 'em again'?"
+
+"I'm going back in the story," Ford explained, with a hint of impatience.
+"I'm talking about the night when Miss Strange saved me."
+
+"Miss Strange saved you? How?"
+
+Ford raised himself slowly in his chair, his long legs stretched out
+straight before him, and his body bent stiffly forward, as he stared up at
+Conquest, in puzzled interrogation.
+
+"Do you mean to say," he asked, incredulously, "that she hasn't told
+you--_that_?"
+
+"Perhaps you'll be good enough to tell me yourself. I'll be hanged if I
+know what you're talking about."
+
+There was suppressed irritation in the way in which he tore off the end of
+the cigar and struck a match. Ford let himself sink back into the chair
+again.
+
+"So she never told you! By George, that's like her! It's just what I might
+have expected."
+
+"Look here," Conquest said, sharply, "did you know Miss Strange before you
+came up here from South America?" He stood with his cigar unlighted, for
+he had let the match burn down to his fingers before attempting to apply
+it. "Was your taking the name of Strange," he demanded with sudden
+inspiration, "merely an accident, as I've supposed it was--or had it
+anything to do with her?"
+
+"It wasn't an accident, and it did have something to do with her."
+
+"Just so! And you kept it dark!"
+
+Something in Conquest's intonation caused Ford to look up. He saw a man
+with face suddenly growing gray, as though a light had gone out of it. He
+was disturbed only to the point of feeling that he had spoken tactlessly,
+and proceeded to repair the error.
+
+"I kept it dark for obvious reasons. If Miss Strange didn't tell you about
+it, it's because she isn't the kind of person to talk of an incident in
+which her own part was so noble. I'll give you the whole story now."
+
+"I should be obliged to you," Conquest said, dryly.
+
+He sat down on the very edge of one of the big arm-chairs, leaning
+forward, and fingering his still unlighted cigar nervously, as he watched
+Ford puff out successive rings of smoke before beginning. He was less on
+his guard to screen the intenseness with which he listened, because Ford
+spoke at first in a dreamy way, without looking in his direction.
+
+With more insight into the circumstances surrounding him Ford would have
+told his tale with greater reticence. As it was he spoke with enthusiasm,
+an enthusiasm born of an honest desire that Conquest should see the woman
+he was about to marry in the full beauty of her character. In regard to
+this he himself had made the discovery so slowly and so recently that he
+was animated by something like a convert's zeal. Beginning his narrative
+quietly, in a reminiscent vein, with intervals in which he lapsed
+altogether into meditation, he was presently fired with all the animation
+in a story-teller when he perceives he is holding his hearer spellbound.
+As a matter of fact, he was moved not so much by the desire of convincing
+Conquest of Miriam Strange's nobility, as by the impulse to do her
+justice, once in his life at least, in language of his own.
+
+It was a naïve bit of eloquence, of which no detail was lost on the
+experienced man of the world, who sat twirling his cigar with nervous
+fingers, his eyes growing keener in proportion as his face became more
+gray. It was part of his professional acquirement to be able to draw his
+deductions from some snatch of human drama as he listened to its
+unfolding. His quickness and accuracy of judgment had, indeed, been a
+large element in his success; so that the habit of years enabled him to
+preserve a certain calmness of comprehension now. It lost nothing in being
+a studied calmness, since the forcing of his faculties within restraint
+concentrated their acumen.
+
+Ford concluded with what for him was an almost lyric outburst.
+
+"By George! Conquest, I didn't know there were such women in the world.
+She's been a revelation to me--as art and religion are revelations to
+other people. She came to me as the angel came to Peter in the prison;
+but, like Peter, I didn't know it was an angel. There's a sort of glory
+about her--a glory which it takes a higher sense than any I've got to see
+and understand. After all she's done for me--after all this time--I'm only
+now beginning to get glimpses of it; but it's merely as we get glimpses of
+an infinite beyond, because we see the stars. She's a mystery to me, in
+the same way that genius is a mystery, or holiness. I didn't appreciate
+her because I hadn't the soul, and yet it's in seeing that I hadn't the
+soul that I begin to get it. That's curious, isn't it? She's like some
+heavenly spirit that's passed by me, and touched me into newness of life."
+
+His ardor was so sincere, his hymn of praise so spontaneous that he
+expected some sort of echo back. It seemed to him that even if Conquest
+did not join in this chant in honor of the woman who presumably loved him,
+whom more presumably still he loved, it would be but natural for him to
+applaud it. Ford knew that if any one else had sung of Miriam Strange as
+he had just been singing, he would have leaped to his feet and wrung the
+man's hand till it ached. It surprised him, therefore, it disappointed
+him, that Conquest should sit unmoved, unless the spark-like twinkle of
+his little eyes could be taken as emotion.
+
+It was a relief to Conquest to get up, scratch another match, and light
+his cigar at last, turning his back so that it should not be seen that his
+fingers trembled. When he was sure of himself he faced about again, taking
+his seat.
+
+"It's the most amazing story I ever heard," was his only comment, in
+response to Ford's look of expectation.
+
+"I hoped it might strike you as something more than--amazing," Ford
+ventured, after a minute's waiting for a more appreciative word.
+
+"Perhaps it will when I get my breath. You must give me time for that. Do
+you actually tell me that she kept you in her studio for weeks----?"
+
+"Three weeks and four days, to be exact."
+
+"And that she furnished you with food and clothing----?"
+
+"And money--but I paid that back."
+
+"And got you away in that ingenious fashion----?"
+
+"Just as I've told you."
+
+"Amazing! Simply amazing! And," he added, with some bitterness, "you came
+back here--and you and she together--took us all in."
+
+Ford drew his cigar from his lips, and, turning in his chair, faced
+Conquest in an attitude and with a look which could not be misinterpreted.
+
+"I came back here, and took you all in--if you like. Miss Strange had
+nothing to do with it. She didn't even expect me."
+
+The last sentence gave Conquest the opening he was looking for, but now
+that he had it, he hesitated to make use of it. In his memory were the
+very words Miriam Strange had stammered out to him in the sort of
+confession no woman ever makes willingly: "Things happened ... such as
+don't generally happen ... and even if he never comes ... I'd rather go on
+waiting for him ... uselessly." It was all growing clear to him, and yet
+not so clear but that there was time even now to let the matter drop into
+the limbo of things it is best not to know too much about. It was against
+his better judgment, then--his better judgment as a barrister-at-law--that
+he found himself saying:
+
+"She didn't expect you at that day and date, perhaps: but she probably
+looked for you some time."
+
+"Possibly; but if so, I know little or nothing about it."
+
+The reply, delivered with a certain dignified force of intention, recalled
+Conquest to a sense of his own interests. He had too often counselled his
+clients to let sleeping dogs lie, not to be aware of the advantage of
+doing it himself; and so, restraining his jealous curiosity, he turned the
+conversation back to the evidence of Amalia Gramm.
+
+During the next half-hour he manifested that talent--partly native and
+partly born of practice--which he had often commended in himself, of
+talking about one thing and thinking of another. His exposition of the
+line to be adopted in Ford's defence was perfectly lucid, when all the
+while he was saying to himself that this was the man whom Miriam Strange
+had waited for through eight romantic years.
+
+The fact leaped at him, but it was part of his profession not to be afraid
+of facts. If they possessed adverse qualities one recognized them boldly,
+in the practise of law, chiefly with a view of circumventing them. The
+matter presented itself first of all, not as one involving emotional or
+moral issues, but as an annoying arrangement of circumstances which might
+cheat him out of what he had honestly acquired. He had no intention of
+being cheated by any one whatever; and as he made a rapid summary of the
+points of the case he saw that the balance of probabilities was in his
+favor. It was to make that clear to Ford that he led the conversation back
+again to the subject of his adventures, tempting him to repeat at least a
+portion of his hymn of praise. By the time he had finished it Conquest was
+able to resume the friendly, confidential tone with which they had begun
+the evening.
+
+"It's very satisfactory to me, old man," he said, between quiet puffs at
+his cigar, "to know that you think so highly of Miss Strange, because--I
+don't know whether you have heard it--she and I are to be married before
+long."
+
+He looked to see Ford disconcerted by this announcement and was surprised
+to see him take it coolly.
+
+"Yes; I knew that. I've meant to congratulate you when the time came. I
+should say it had come now."
+
+There was a candor about him that Conquest could scarcely discredit,
+though he was unwilling to trust it too far.
+
+"Thanks, old man. I scarcely expected you to be so well posted. May I ask
+how--?"
+
+"Oh, I've known it a long time. Miss Strange told me before I went to
+South America last spring."
+
+This evidence of a confidential relation between the two gave him a second
+shock, but he postponed its consideration, contenting himself for the
+moment with making it plain to Ford that "Hands off!" must be the first
+rule of the game. His next move was meant to carry the play into the
+opponent's quarters.
+
+"As a matter of fact, I've never congratulated _you_," he said, with
+apparent tranquillity. "I've known about you and Evie for some time past,
+but--"
+
+"Oh, that's all off. In the existing circumstances Evie didn't feel
+like--keeping the thing up."
+
+"That's too bad. You've been pretty hard hit--what? When a fellow is as
+game as you a girl should stand by him, come now! But I know Evie. I've
+known her from her cradle. She'll back round, you'll see. When we've
+pulled you through, as we're going to, she'll take another view of things.
+I know for a fact that she's been head over heels in love with you ever
+since her trip to Buenos Aires."
+
+As Ford made no remark, Conquest felt it well to drive the point home.
+
+"We can all help in that, old boy; and you can count on us--both on Miss
+Strange and me. No one has such influence over Evie as Miriam, and I know
+she's very keen on seeing you and her--you and Evie, I mean--hit it off. I
+don't mind telling you that, as a matter of fact, it's been Miriam's
+anxiety on Evie's account that has mixed me up in your case at all. I
+don't say that I haven't got interested in you for your own sake; but it
+was she who stirred me up in the first place. It's going to mean a lot to
+her to see you get through--and marry Evie."
+
+Ford smiled--his odd, twisted smile--but as he said nothing, Conquest
+decided to let the subject drop. He had, in fact, gone as far as his
+present judgment would carry him, and anything farther might lead to a
+false step. In a situation alive with claims and counter-claims, with
+yearnings of the heart and promptings of the higher law, he could preserve
+his rights only by a walk as wary as the treading of a tight-rope.
+
+This became clearer to him later in the night, when Ford had gone away,
+and he was left free to review the circumstances with that clarity of
+co-ordination he had so often brought to bear on other men's affairs. Out
+of the mass of data he selected two conditions as being the only ones of
+importance.
+
+If Miriam Strange was marrying him because she loved him, nothing else
+needed to be considered. This fact would subordinate everything to itself;
+and there were many arguments to support the assumption that she was doing
+so. One by one he marshalled them before him, from the first faint
+possibility up to the crowning proof that there was no earthly reason for
+her marrying him at all, unless she wanted to. He had pointed that out to
+her clearly, on the day when she came to him to make her terms. He had
+been guilty on that occasion of a foolish generosity, for that it went
+with a common-sense honesty to take advantage of another's ignorance, or
+impulsiveness, was part of his business creed. Nevertheless, having shown
+her this uncalled-for favor, he did not regret it now, since it put the
+spontaneous, voluntary nature of her act beyond dispute.
+
+To a late hour of the night he wandered about the great silent rooms of
+the house which he had made the expression of himself. Stored with costly,
+patiently selected comforts, it lacked only the last requisite which was
+to impart the living touch. Having chosen this essential with so much
+care, and begun to feel for her something far more vital than the pride of
+possession which had been his governing emotion hitherto, it was an agony
+with many aspects to think he might have to let her go.
+
+That there was this possibility was undeniable. It was the second of the
+two paramount considerations. Though Ford's enthusiasm tried to make
+itself enthusiasm and no more, there had been little difficulty in seeing
+what it was. All the same, it would be a passion to pity and ignore, if on
+Miriam's side there was nothing to respond to it. But it was here that,
+in spite of all his arguments, Conquest's doubts began. With much curious
+ignorance of women, there was a point of view from which he knew them
+well. It was out of many a poignant bit of domestic history, of which his
+profession had made him the confidant, that he had distilled the
+observation made to Ford earlier in the evening: "It isn't often that a
+woman's heroism works in a straight line, like a soldier's or a
+fireman's." Notwithstanding her directness, he could see Miriam Strange as
+just the type of woman to whom these words might be applicable. If by
+marrying a man whom she did not love she thought she could help another
+whom she did love, a culpable sacrifice was just the thing of which she
+would be capable. He called it culpable sacrifice with some emphasis for
+in his eyes all sacrifice was culpable. It was more than culpable, in that
+it verged on the absurd. There were few teachings of an illogical
+religion, few promptings of a misdirected energy, for which he had a
+greater scorn than the precept that the strong should suffer for the weak,
+or one man for another. Every man for himself and the survival of the
+fittest was the doctrine by which he lived; and his abhorrence of anything
+else was the more intense for the moment because he found himself in a
+situation where he might be expected to repudiate his faith.
+
+But there it was, that something in public opinion which, in certain
+circumstances, might challenge him--might ask him for magnanimity, might
+appeal to him for mercy, might demand that he make two other human beings
+happy while he denied himself. It was preposterous, it was grotesque, but
+it was there. He could hear its voice already, explaining that since
+Miriam Strange had given him her word in an excess of self-devotion, it
+was his duty to let her off. He could see the line of argument; he could
+hear the applause following on his noble act. He had heard it
+before--especially in the theatre--and his soul had shaken with laughter.
+He had read of it in novels, only to toss such books aside. "The beauty of
+renunciation," he had often said, "appeals to the morbid, the sickly, and
+the sentimental. It has no function among the healthy and the sane." He
+had not only said that, but he had believed it. He believed it still, and
+lived by it. By doing so he had amassed his modest fortune and won a
+respected position in the world. He had not got on into middle life
+without meeting the occasion more than once when he could have saved
+others--a brother, or a sister, or a friend--and forborne to save himself.
+He had felt the temptation and resisted it, with the result that he was up
+in the world when he might have been down in it, and envied by those who
+would have despised him without hesitation when they had got out of him
+all he could give. He could look back now and see the folly it would have
+been had he yielded to impulses that every sentimentalist would have
+praised. He was fully conscious that the moment of danger might be on the
+point of returning again, and that he must be prepared for it.
+
+He was able to strengthen himself with the greater conviction because of
+his belief in the sanctity of rights. The securing of rights, the defining
+of rights, the protection of rights, had been his trade ever since he was
+twenty-five. The invasion of rights was among the darkest crimes in his
+calendar. In the present case his own rights could not be called into
+question; they were inviolable. Miriam Strange had come to him
+deliberately, and for due consideration had signed herself away. He had
+spared nothing, in time, pains, or money, to fulfil his part of the
+compact. It would be monstrous, therefore, if he were to be cheated of his
+reward. That either Ford or Miriam would attempt this he did not believe,
+even if between them the worst, from his point of view, was at the worst;
+but that an absurd, elusive principle which called itself chivalry, but
+really was effeminacy of will, might try to disarm him by an appeal to
+scruples he contemned, was the possibility he feared. He feared it because
+he estimated at its worth the force of restraint a sentimental
+civilization and a naïve people can bring to bear, in silent pressure,
+upon the individual. While he knew himself to be strong in his power of
+resistance, he knew too that the mightiest swimmer can go down at last in
+a smiling, unrippled sea.
+
+His exasperation was as much with his doubt about himself as with the
+impalpable forces threatening him, as he strode fiercely from room to
+room, turning out the flaring lights before going to bed. After all, his
+final resolutions were pitifully insufficient, in view of the tragic
+element--for he took it tragically--that had suddenly crept into his life.
+While his gleam of happiness was in danger of going out, the sole means he
+could find of keeping it aglow was in deciding on a prudent ignoring of
+whatever did not meet the eye, on a discreet assumption that what he had
+been dreaming for the past few months was true. As a matter of fact, there
+was nothing to show him that it wasn't true; and it was only common sense
+to let the first move toward clearing his vision come from the other side
+rather than from his.
+
+And yet it was precisely this passive attitude which he found himself next
+day least able to maintain. If he needed anything further to teach him
+that love was love, it was this restless, prying jealousy, making it
+impossible to let well enough alone. After a trying day at the office,
+during which he irritated his partners and worried his clerks, he
+presented himself late in the afternoon at Miriam's apartment at the hour
+when he generally went to his club, and he knew she would not expect him.
+Thinking to surprise Ford with her--like the suspicious husband in a
+French play, he owned to himself, grimly--he experienced something akin to
+disappointment to find her drinking tea with two old ladies, whom he
+outstayed. During the ceremonies of their leave-taking he watched Miriam
+closely, seeking for some impossible proof that she either loved Ford or
+did not love him, and getting nothing but a renewed and maddening
+conviction of her grace and quiet charm.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What about Evie's happiness?"
+
+Miriam raised her eyebrows inquiringly at the question before stooping to
+put out the spirit-lamp.
+
+"Well, what about it?" she asked, without looking up.
+
+"Oh, nothing--except that we don't seem to be securing it."
+
+She gazed at him now, with an expression frankly puzzled. He had refused
+tea, but she kept her accustomed place behind the tea-table, while he
+stretched himself comfortably in the low arm-chair by the hearth, which
+she often occupied herself.
+
+"Don't you remember?" he went on. "Evie's happiness was the motive of our
+little--agreement."
+
+He endeavored to make his tone playful, but there was a something sharp
+and aggressive in his manner, at which she colored slightly, no less than
+at his words.
+
+"I suppose," she said, as if after meditation, "Evie's happiness isn't in
+our hands."
+
+"True; but there's a good deal that _is_ in our hands. There's, for
+example--our own."
+
+"Up to a point--yes."
+
+"And up to that point we should take care of it. Shouldn't we?"
+
+"I dare say. But I don't know what you mean."
+
+He gave the nervous little laugh which helped him over moments of
+embarrassment.
+
+"Ford was with me last night. He said it was all off between him and
+Evie."
+
+"I thought he might tell you that."
+
+"So that," he went on, forcing a smile, with which his voice and manner
+were not in accord, "our undertaking having failed, the bottom's out of
+everything. Don't you see?"
+
+She was so astonished that she walked into his trap, just as he expected.
+
+"I don't see in the least. I thought our undertaking--as you call it--was
+going to be particularly successful."
+
+"Successful--how?"
+
+He dropped his smile and looked interrogative, his bit of acting still
+keeping her off her guard.
+
+"Why, if Amalia Gramm's testimony is all you think it's going to be----"
+
+"Oh, I see. That's the way you look at it."
+
+"Isn't it the way you look at it, too?"
+
+He smiled again, indulgently, but with significance.
+
+"No; I confess it isn't--at least, it hasn't been. I thought--perhaps I
+was wrong--that our interest was in getting Ford off, so that he could
+marry Evie. Since he isn't going to marry her, why--naturally--we don't
+care so much--whether he gets off or not."
+
+"Oh, but----"
+
+She checked herself; she even grew a little pale. She began to see dimly
+whither he was leading her.
+
+"Of course I don't say we should chuck him over," he went on; "but it
+isn't the same thing any longer, is it? I think it only fair to point that
+out to you, because it gives you reasonable ground for reconsidering
+your--decision."
+
+"Oh, but I don't want to."
+
+While she had said exactly what he hoped to hear, she had not said it as
+he hoped to hear it. There were shades of tone even to impetuosity, and
+this one lacked the note his ear was listening for. None the less, he told
+himself, a wise man would have stopped right there; and he was conscious
+of his folly in persisting, while he still persisted.
+
+"That's for you to decide, of course. Only if we go on, it must be
+understood that we've somewhat shifted our ground."
+
+"I haven't shifted mine."
+
+"Not as you understand it yourself--as, possibly, you've understood it all
+along. But you have, as I see things. When you came to me--to my
+office----"
+
+She put up her hand as though she would have screened her face, but
+controlled herself to listen quietly.
+
+"Your object, then," Conquest continued, cruelly, "was to get Ford off, so
+that he might marry Evie. Now, I understand it to be simply--to get him
+off."
+
+She looked at him with eyes full of distress or protest. It was a minute
+or two before she spoke.
+
+"I don't see the necessity for such close definition."
+
+"I do. I want you to know exactly what you're doing. I want you to see
+that you're paying a higher price than you need pay--for the services
+rendered."
+
+He had got her now just where he had been trying to put her. He had snared
+her, or given her an opportunity, according as she chose to take it. She
+could have availed herself of the latter by a look or a simple intonation,
+for the craving of his heart was such that his perceptions were acute for
+the slightest hint. Had she known that, it would have been easy for her to
+respond to him, playing her part with the loyalty with which she had begun
+it. As it was, his cold manner and his slightly mocking tone betrayed her.
+Her answer was meant to give him the kind of assurance she thought he was
+looking for; and she couched it in the language she supposed he would most
+easily understand. In the things it said and did not say her very
+sincerity was what stabbed him.
+
+"I hope it won't be necessary to bring this subject up again. I know what
+I undertook, and I'm anxious to fulfil it. I should be very much hurt if I
+wasn't allowed to, just because you had scruples about taking me at my
+word. You've been so--so splendid--in doing your part that I should feel
+humiliated if I didn't do mine."
+
+There was earnestness in her regard and a suggestion of haughtiness in the
+tilt of her head. The Wise Man within him bade him be content, and this
+time he listened to the voice. He did her the justice to remember, too,
+that she was offering him all he had ever asked of her; and if he was
+dissatisfied, it was because he had increased his demands without telling
+her.
+
+It was by a transition of topic that he saw he could nail her to her
+purpose.
+
+"By-the-way," he said, when they had got on neutral ground again, and
+were speaking of Wayne, "I wish you would come and see what I think of
+doing for him. There are two rooms back of my library--too dark for my
+use--but that wouldn't matter to him, poor fellow--"
+
+He saw that she was nerving herself not to flinch at this confrontation
+with the practical. He saw too that her courage and her self-command would
+have deceived any one but him. The very pluck with which she nodded her
+comprehension of his idea, and her sympathy with it, enraged him to a
+point at which, so it seemed to him, he could have struck her. Had she
+cried off from her bargain he could have borne it far more easily. That
+would at least have given him a sense of superiority, and helped him to be
+magnanimous; while this readiness to pay put him in the wrong, and drove
+him to exact the uttermost farthing of his rights. On a weak woman he
+might have taken pity; but this strong creature, who refused to sue to him
+by so much as the quiver of an eyelid, and rejected his concessions before
+he had time to put them forth, exasperated every nerve that had been wont
+to tingle to his sense of power. Since she had asked no quarter, why
+should he give it?--above all, when to give quarter was against his
+principles.
+
+"And perhaps," he pursued, in an even voice, showing no sign of the
+tempest within, "that would be as good a time as any for you to look over
+the entire house. If there are any changes you would like to have
+made----"
+
+"I don't think there will be."
+
+"All the same, I should like you to see. A man's house, however well
+arranged, isn't always right for a woman's occupancy; and so----"
+
+"Very well; I'll come."
+
+"When?"
+
+"I'll come to-morrow."
+
+"About four?"
+
+"Yes; about four. That would suit me perfectly."
+
+She spoke frankly, and even smiled faintly, with just such a shadow of a
+blush as the situation called for. The Wise Man within him begged him once
+more to be content. If, the Wise Man argued, this well-poised serenity was
+not love, it was something so like it that the distinction would require a
+splitting of hairs. Conquest strove to listen and obey; but even as he did
+so he was aware again of that rage of impotence which finds its easiest
+outlet in violence. As he rose to take his leave, with all the outward
+signs of friendly ceremoniousness, he had time to be appalled at the
+perception that he, the middle-aged, spick-and-span New-Yorker, should so
+fully understand how it is that a certain type of frenzied brute can kill
+the woman whom he passionately loves, but who is hopelessly out of reach.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+
+Except when his business instincts were on the alert, Ford's slowness of
+perception was perhaps most apparent in his judgment of character and his
+analysis of other people's motives. Taking men and women as he found them,
+he had little tendency to speculate as to the impulses within their lives,
+any more than as to the furnishings behind their house-fronts. A human
+being was all exterior to him, something like a street. Even in matters
+that touched him closely, the act alone was his concern; and he dealt with
+its consequences, without, as a rule, much inquisitive probing of its
+cause.
+
+So when Miriam Strange elected to marry Conquest, he accepted the settled
+fact, for the time being, in the spirit in which he would have taken some
+disastrous manifestation of natural phenomena. Investigation of the motive
+of such a step was as little in his line as it would have been in the case
+of a destructive storm at sea. To his essentially simple way of viewing
+life it was something to be lamented, but to be borne as best one was
+able, while one said as little as one could about it.
+
+And yet, somewhere in the wide, rarely explored regions of his nature
+there were wonderings, questionings, yearnings protests, cries, that
+forced themselves to the surface now and then, as the boiling waters
+within the earth gush out in geyser springs. It required urgent pressure
+to impel them forth, but when they came it was with violence. Such an
+occasion had been his night on Lake Champlain; such another was the
+evening when he announced to Miriam his intention of becoming Norrie Ford
+again. When these moments came they took him by surprise, even though
+afterward he was able to recognize the fact that they had been long
+preparing.
+
+It was in this way, without warning, that his heart had sprung on him the
+question: Why should she marry him? At the minute when Conquest was
+leaving Miriam, he, Ford, was tramping the streets of New York, watching
+them grow alive with light, in glaring, imaginative ugliness--ugliness so
+dazzling in its audacity and so fanciful in its crude commercialism that
+it had the power to thrill. It was perhaps the electric stimulus of sheer
+light that quickened the pace of his slow mentality from the march of
+acceptance to the rush of protest, at an instant when he thought he had
+resigned himself to the facts.
+
+Why should she marry Conquest? He was shouldering his way through the
+crowds when the question made itself heard, with a curious illuminating
+force that suggested its own answer. He was walking, partly to work off
+the tension of the strain under which these few days were passing, and
+partly because he had got the idea that he was being shadowed. He had no
+profound objection to that, though he would have preferred to give himself
+up of his own free will rather than to be arrested. Perhaps, after all, it
+was only an accident that had caused him to catch sight of the same two
+men at different moments through the day, and just now it amused him to
+put them to the test by leading them a dance. He had come to the
+conclusion that he had been mistaken, or that he had outwitted them, when
+this odd question, irrelevant to anything he had directly in his thoughts,
+presented itself as though it had been asked by some voice outside him:
+Why should she marry him?
+
+Up to the present his unanalytical mind would have replied--as it would
+have replied to the same query concerning any one else--that she was
+marrying him "because she wanted to." That would have seemed to him to
+cover the whole ground of any one's affairs; but all at once it had become
+insufficient. It was as if the street had suddenly become insufficient as
+a highway, breaking into a chasm. He stopped abruptly, confronting, as it
+were, that bewildering void which a psychological situation invariably
+seemed to him. To get into a place where his few straightforward formulæ
+did not apply gave him that sense of distress which every creature feels
+out of its native element.
+
+It was a proof of the dependence with which, in matters requiring mental
+or emotional experience, he had come to lean on Miriam Strange, as well as
+of the directness with which he appealed to her for help, that he should
+face about on the instant, and turn his steps toward her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Only a few minutes earlier she had seen Conquest go, and in the interval
+since his departure she had had time to detect the windings of his
+strategy, and to be content with the skill with which she had met them.
+She understood him thoroughly, both in his fear of letting her go and his
+shame at holding her. Standing in her wide bay-window, her slight figure
+erect, her hands behind her back, she looked down, without seeing it, on
+the spangled city, as angels intent on their own high thoughts might pass
+over the Milky Way. She smiled faintly to herself, thinking how she
+should lead this kindly man, who for her sake had done so much for Norrie
+Ford, back to a sense of security and self-respect. When Norrie Ford went
+free she meant to live for nothing else but the happiness of the man who
+had cleared his name and given him back to the world. It would be a kind
+of consecration to her, like that of the nun who forsakes the dearest ties
+for a life of good works and prayer. Conquest had told her that she was
+paying a bigger price than she needed to pay for the services rendered,
+but that depended somewhat on the value one set on the services. In this
+case she would not have been content in paying less. To do so would seem
+to indicate that she was not grateful. Since perceiving his compunction as
+to claiming his reward, she was aware of an elation, an exaltation, in
+forcing it upon him.
+
+She was in the glow of this sentiment when Ford was ushered in. He was so
+vitally in her thoughts that, though she did not expect him, his presence
+gave her no surprise. It helped her, in fact, to sustain the romantic
+quality in her mood to treat his coming as a matter of course, and make it
+a natural incident to the moment.
+
+"Come and look down on the stars," she said, in the tone she might have
+used to another member of her household who had appeared accidentally.
+"The view here, in the evening, makes one feel as if one had been wafted
+above the sky."
+
+She half-turned toward him, but did not offer her hand as he took his
+place by her side. For a few seconds he said nothing, and when he spoke
+she accepted his words in the manner in which she had taken his coming.
+
+"So you're going to marry Conquest!"
+
+It was to show that the abrupt remark had not perturbed her that she
+nodded her head assentingly, still with the smile that had greeted his
+arrival.
+
+"Why?"
+
+In spite of her efforts she manifested some surprise.
+
+"What makes you ask that question--now?"
+
+"Because it never occurred to me before that there might be a special
+reason."
+
+"Well, there is one."
+
+"Has it anything to do with me?"
+
+She backed away from him slightly, to the side curve of the window, where
+it joined the straight line of the wall. In this position she had him more
+directly in view.
+
+"I said there was a reason," she answered, after some hesitation. "I
+didn't say I would tell you what it was."
+
+"No, but you will, won't you?"
+
+"I don't see why you should want to know."
+
+"Is that quite true?" he queried, with a somewhat startling fixing of his
+eyes upon her. "Don't you see? Can't you imagine?"
+
+"I don't see why--in such circumstances as these--any man should want to
+know what a woman doesn't tell him."
+
+"Then I'll explain to you. I want to know, because ... I think ... you're
+marrying Conquest ... when you don't love him ..."
+
+"He never asked me to love him. He said he could do without that."
+
+"... while ... you do love ... some one else."
+
+She reflected before speaking. Under his piercing look she took on once
+more the appealing expression of forest creatures at bay.
+
+"Even if that were true," she said, at last, "there would be no harm in
+it as long as there was what you asked me for at first--a special reason."
+
+"Is there ever a reason for a step like that? I don't believe it."
+
+"But I do believe it, you see. That makes a difference."
+
+"It would make a still greater difference if I begged you not to do it,
+wouldn't it?"
+
+She shook her head. "It wouldn't--now."
+
+"I let you see yesterday that I--I loved you."
+
+"Since you force me to acknowledge it--yes."
+
+"And you've shown me," he ventured, "within the last minute, that
+you--love me."
+
+Her figure grew more erect against the background of exterior darkness.
+Even the hand that rested on the woodwork of the window became tense.
+Lambent fire in her eyes--the light that he used to call non-Aryan--took
+the place of the fugitive glance of the woodland animal; but she kept her
+composure.
+
+"Well, what then?"
+
+"Then you'd be committing a sacrilege against yourself--if you married any
+one else but me."
+
+If her heart bounded at the words, she did nothing to betray it.
+
+"You say that, because it seems so to you. I take another view of it. Love
+to me does not necessarily mean marriage, any more than marriage
+necessarily implies love. There have been happy marriages without love,
+and there can be honorable love that doesn't ask marriage as its object.
+If I married you now, I should seem to myself to be deserting a high
+impulse for a lower one."
+
+"There's only one sort of impulse to love."
+
+"Not to my love. I know what you mean--but my love has more than one
+prompting, and the highest is--or I hope it is--to try to do what's
+right."
+
+"But this would not be right."
+
+"I'm the only judge of that."
+
+"Not if we love each other. In that case I become a judge of it, too."
+
+Once more she reflected. In speaking she lifted her head and looked at him
+frankly.
+
+"Very well; I'll admit it. Perhaps it's true. In any case, I'd rather
+things were clear to you. It will help us both. I'll tell you what I'm
+doing, and why I'm doing it."
+
+It was one of those occasions when a woman's emotion is so great that she
+seems to have none at all. As iron is said to come to a degree of heat so
+intense that it does not burn, so Miriam Strange seemed to herself to have
+reached a stage where the sheer truth, simple and without reserve, could
+bring no shame to her womanhood. Words that could not have passed her lips
+either before that evening or after it escaped her in the subsequent
+minutes as a matter of course.
+
+"I entered into your life twice, and each time I did you harm. On the
+first occasion I turned you into Herbert Strange, and sent you out on a
+career of deception; on the second, I came between you and Evie, and
+brought you to the present pass, where you're facing death again, as you
+were eight or nine years ago. It's no use to tell you that I wanted to do
+my best, because good intentions are not much excuse for the trouble they
+often cause. But I'm ready to say this: that whenever you've suffered,
+I've suffered more. That's especially true of what's happened in the last
+six months. And when I saw how much I had put wrong, it was a comfort to
+think there was something at least that I could put right again."
+
+"But you've put nothing wrong. That's what I should like to convince you
+of."
+
+"I've put you in a position of danger. When I see that, I see enough to
+act upon."
+
+"It's a very slight danger."
+
+"It is now, because I've made it slight. It wasn't--before I went to Mr.
+Conquest."
+
+"You went to him--what for?"
+
+"He wanted me to marry him. He had wanted it for a long time. I told him I
+would do so, on condition that he found the evidence that would prove you
+innocent."
+
+Ford laughed harshly, and rather loudly, stopping suddenly, as though he
+had ceased to see the joke.
+
+"So that's it! That's why Conquest has been so devilishly kind. I wondered
+at his interest--or at least I should have wondered if I'd had the time.
+As a matter of fact, I took it for granted that he should help me, as a
+drowning man takes it for granted that the chance passer-by should pull
+him out. It wasn't till this evening--about half an hour ago--By Jove! I
+ran right up against it."
+
+"You ran right up against--what?"
+
+"Against the truth. It came in a flash--just like that." He snapped his
+fingers. "You're selling yourself--to get me off."
+
+She seemed to grow straighter, taller. For the minute he saw nothing but
+the blaze of her eyes.
+
+"Well? Why shouldn't I? My mother sold herself--to get a man off. He was
+my father. I'm proud of her. She did the best she could with her life. I'm
+doing the best I can with mine."
+
+"But I shouldn't be doing the best I can with mine--if I let you
+continue."
+
+"Isn't it too late for you to stop me? If I've sold myself as you put it,
+the price has been paid in. Mr. Conquest has secured the evidence that
+will acquit you. It will be used. That's all I care about--much."
+
+She saw the hot color surge into his cheeks and brows. It seemed to her
+that his eyes grew red as the blood left his lips. She had never before
+been called on to confront a man angry with a passion beyond his control,
+but instinct told her what the signs were. Instinct told her, too, that,
+however confused his own sensations might be, his anger was not so much
+resentment against anything she might have done as it was despair at
+having lost her. She had guessed already that he would be seized with a
+blind impulse to strike, as soon as he came to a realizing sense of her
+action; though she had not expected the moment of his fury till after he
+went free. Till then, she had thought, he would be partially unconscious
+of his pain, just as a soldier fighting will run along for a while without
+feeling a bullet in his flesh. The anticipation of an awakening on his
+part some time enabled her to see beyond the madness of this instinct,
+even though the words he threw at her struck like stones. The very fact
+that she could see how he labored with himself to keep them back gave her
+strength to take them without flinching.
+
+"You ... dared...? Without ... my ... permission...?"
+
+"I'd done so many things without your permission that it seemed I could
+venture that far."
+
+"You were wrong. It was--too far."
+
+"It wasn't too far--when I loved you."
+
+She uttered the words in a matter-of-fact voice, without a tremor. She
+foresaw their effect in bringing him to himself In his next words his tone
+had already softened slightly to one of protest.
+
+"But I could have done it so much better--! so much more easily--!
+without----"
+
+"I could have done that too. Mr. Conquest pointed it out to me. He took no
+advantage of my ignorance. As a matter of fact, I wasn't ignorant at all.
+I was extremely clear-sighted and wise. My love for you made me so. I
+knew--I felt it--that money might fail to do what I wanted. But I knew too
+that there was one thing that wouldn't fail. If you were innocent--and I
+wasn't wholly sure that you were--I knew there was one energy that would
+surely prove you so--and that was Charles Conquest's desire to have me as
+his wife. I took the course in which there was least risk of failure--and
+you see----"
+
+A little gesture, triumphant in its suggestion, finished her sentence.
+
+"What I see is this," Ford answered, thickly, "that I'm to hold my life at
+the cost of your degradation."
+
+"Degradation? That's a hard word. But as applied to me--I don't know what
+it means."
+
+"Isn't it degradation?--to enter into a marriage in which you put no
+love?"
+
+There was a kind of superb indifference in her answer.
+
+[Illustration: "I'm to hold my life at the cost of your degradation"]
+
+"You may call it degradation if you choose. I shouldn't. As long as you go
+free, you can call my action anything you like. I dare say," she admitted,
+"you're quite right, from the highest moral--and modern--point of view;
+but that doesn't appeal to me. You see--you've got to make allowances for
+it--I'm not a child of your civilization. I'm not a child of any
+civilization at all. At best I'm like the wild creature that submits to
+being tamed because it doesn't know what else to do--but remains wild at
+heart. I used to think I could come into your system of law and order if
+any one would take me. But now I know I shall always be outside it. The
+very word you've just used of me shows me that. You say I'm to be
+degraded--it's your civilized point of view. I have no comprehension of
+that whatever. Because I love you I want to save you. I don't care
+anything about the means so long as I reach the end. To undo the harm I've
+done to you I'd freely give my body to be burned; so why shoudn't I--? No,
+no," she cried, as he made as though he would approach her, "keep away.
+Don't come near me! I can only talk to you like this--at a distance. I
+shall never say these things again--but I want to tell you--to explain to
+you--I should like you to understand."
+
+She repeated herself haltingly because, as Ford held back from approaching
+her, a sudden spasm passed over his face, while he hung his head, and
+compressed his lips in a way that made him seem surprisingly boyish all at
+once, and touched that maternal tenderness in her that had always formed
+such a large part of her yearning over him. It was the kind of tenderness
+that steadied her own nerve, and kept her dry-eyed and strong, as she saw
+him reel to a chair, and flinging his arms on the table beside it, bow
+himself down on them, while his form shook convulsively. She had no shame
+for him. She understood perfectly that the pressure of years had been
+brought to bear on the complex emotions of the moment--to which reaction
+from his brief anger and his bitter words added an element of remorse--to
+cause this honest, manly nature that had never made any pretence of being
+stronger than it was, to give way to the instant's weakness. She was sure
+he would never have done it in the presence of any one but her, and she
+was thrilled with a curious joy at this proof of their spiritual intimacy.
+What was difficult was not the keeping of her own self-control, but the
+holding herself back from crossing the room and laying a hand on his
+shoulder, in token of their oneness at heart; but there, she felt, the
+forbidden line would be passed. She could only wait--it was not long--till
+he was calm again. Then he pulled himself together, got up heavily, and
+obviously refrained from looking her in the face. In the act and the
+attitude there was something so boylike, so natural, so entirely lacking
+in the dignity of grief, that if she had any impulse to let her own tears
+flow it was then.
+
+But she knew it to be one of those minutes when a woman has to be strong
+for herself and for the man, too, even though she break down afterward.
+The necessity of coming to an understanding with him, once for all,
+impelled her to the economy of her forces, while the nervous snapping of
+his fortitude had given her an opportunity she could not afford to lose.
+
+"So I want you to see," she went on, quietly, as though no interruption
+had occurred, "that having gained my point in helping to--to get you off,
+it's to some extent a matter of indifference what you think of me--what
+any one thinks of me--just as it was when I hid you in my studio, nearly
+nine years ago. You must put it down to my being of wild origin and not
+wholly amenable to civilized dictates. I can only do what the inward
+urging drives me on to do--just as my mother did--and my father. If it's
+degrading--"
+
+Raising his head at last, he strode toward her. He put his hands rigidly
+behind his back, as if to show her that he pinioned them there in token
+that she had nothing to fear from him. His eyes were red, and there was
+still a painful tightening about his lips.
+
+"You'll have to let me take that back," he muttered, unsteadily. "I didn't
+know what I was saying. It's come on me so suddenly that it's broken me
+all up. I haven't realized till this evening what--what everything meant.
+It seemed to me then that I couldn't stand it."
+
+"But you can."
+
+"Yes, I can," he replied, doggedly. "One can stand anything. If I reached
+my limit for a minute, it was in seeing that you have to suffer for my
+sake----"
+
+"Wouldn't you suffer for mine?"
+
+"I couldn't. Suffering for your sake would become such a joy----"
+
+"That it wouldn't be suffering. That's just it. That's what I feel,
+exactly. It isn't hard for me to do what I'm doing because I know--I
+_know_--I'm helping to save your honor if not your life. I don't believe
+money would have done it. Mr. Conquest reminded me that the best legal
+services can be bought, but I never thought for an instant that you could
+secure zeal such as his for anything less than I offered him. And he's
+been so superb! He's given himself up to the thing absolutely. He's
+followed every trail with a scent--- with a certainty--your other men,
+your Kilcup and Warren, would never have been capable of. I've seen that;
+I'm sure of it. He has a wonderful mind, and in his way he has the kindest
+heart in the world. I'm very, very fond of him, and I'm deeply grateful.
+Next to seeing you free, I don't think I have any desire in life so
+strong as to make him happy. I dare say that isn't civilized either--but
+it's what I feel. And so we must think of this," she continued, eagerly
+explanative; "we must be loyal to him, you and I, as the first of all our
+duties. Don't you think so?"
+
+He withdrew his eyes from hers before answering. His power of resistance
+was broken. The signs of struggle were visible, and yet the quixotic
+element in his own nature helped him to respond to that in hers.
+
+"I'll try," he muttered, looking on the ground.
+
+"You'll do more than try--you'll succeed. Only very small souls could
+grudge him what he's earned when he's worked so hard and given himself so
+unstintingly. The very fact that you and I know that we love each other
+will make it easier to be true to him."
+
+"Conquest must know that we love each other, too," he declared, with some
+bitterness.
+
+"Perhaps he does; but, you see, every one has a different way of looking
+at life, and I don't think that with him it's a thing that counts greatly.
+I'm not sure that I understand him in that respect. I only know that you
+and I, who owe him so much, can repay him by giving him what he asks for.
+Will you promise me to do it?"
+
+He continued to look downward, as though finding it hard to give his word;
+but when he raised his eyes again, he flung back his head with his old air
+of resolution.
+
+"I'll promise to do anything you ask me throughout our lives. I don't
+admit that Conquest should demand this thing or that he had any right to
+let you offer it. But since you want to give it--and I can show you no
+other token of my love--and shall never again be able to tell you that I
+adore you--that I _adore_ you--I promise--to obey."
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+
+The inspection of the house was over, and they had come back to the
+drawing-room for tea. Conquest had lavished pains on the occasion, putting
+flowers in the rooms, and strewing handsome objects carelessly about, so
+as to impart to the great shell as much as possible the air of being lived
+in. To the tea-table he had given particular attention, ordering out the
+most ornamental silver and the costliest porcelain, and placing the table
+itself just where she would probably have it in days to come, so as to get
+the effect she produced in sitting there, as he liked to do with a new
+picture or piece of furniture.
+
+On her part, Miriam had made the rounds of the rooms with conscientious
+care, observing, admiring, suggesting, with just that mingling of shyness
+and interest with which a woman in her situation would view her future
+home. Having got, by intuition, the idea that he was watching for some
+flaw in her manner, she was determined that he should find none. It was
+the beginning of that lifelong schooling to his service to which she had
+vowed herself, though the effort would have been easier had he not
+rendered her self-conscious by scanning her so keenly out of his little
+gray-green eyes. Nevertheless, she was pleased with the manner in which
+she was acquitting herself, giving him his tea and taking her own with no
+sign of embarrassment. As on the preceding day, it was this perfection of
+acting, as he chose to call it, that exasperated his restless suspicion
+more than any display of weakness.
+
+The thought that she was keeping her true self locked against him had,
+during the last twenty-four hours, become an obsession, making it
+impossible for him to eat or to sleep. In her serene, impeccable bearing
+he saw nothing but the bars up and the blinds drawn down. An instant of
+faltering or self-betrayal would have admitted him to at least a glimpse
+of what was passing within; but through this well-balanced graciousness it
+was as difficult to get at her soul as to read the mind of the Venus of
+Milo in the marble nobility of her face. He had led her from room to room,
+describing one, explaining another, and apologizing for a third, but all
+the while trying to break down her guard, only to find, as they returned
+to the point at which they started, that he had failed. It was with nerves
+all unstrung, and with a lack of self-command he would have been, in his
+saner senses, the first to condemn, that he strode up at last and rapped
+sharply at the door of her barricaded citadel.
+
+"Why did you never tell me that you knew Norrie Ford--years ago?"
+
+He was putting his empty cup on the table as he spoke, so that he could
+avoid looking at her. She was glad of this respite from his gaze, for she
+found the question startling. Before the scrutiny of his eyes was turned
+on her again she had herself in hand.
+
+"I should probably have told you some time."
+
+"Very likely. The odd thing is that you didn't tell me at once."
+
+"It wasn't so odd--given all the circumstances."
+
+"It wasn't so odd, given some of the circumstances; but given them
+all--_all_--I should say, I ought to have known."
+
+She allowed a few seconds to pass.
+
+"I suppose," she said, slowly, then, "that may fairly be considered a
+matter of opinion. I don't see, however, that it makes much
+difference--since you know now."
+
+"My knowing or not knowing now isn't quite the point. The fact of
+importance is that you never told me."
+
+"I'm sorry you should take it in that way; but since I didn't--and the
+matter is beyond remedy--I suppose we shouldn't gain anything by
+discussing it."
+
+"I don't know about that. It seems to me a subject that ought to
+be--aired."
+
+She tried to smile down his aggressiveness, succeeding partially, in that
+he subdued the quarrelsomeness of his voice and manner to that affectation
+of banter behind which he concealed habitually his real self, and by which
+he most easily deceived her.
+
+"Very well," she laughed; "I'm quite ready to air it; only I don't know
+just how it's to be done."
+
+"Suppose you were to tell me what happened, in your own language?"
+
+"If Mr. Ford has told you already, as I imagine he has, I don't see that
+my language can be very different from his. All the same, I'll try, since
+you want me to."
+
+"Just so."
+
+During the few minutes she took to collect her thoughts he could see sweep
+over her features one of those swift, light changes--as delicate as the
+ripple of summer wind on water--which transformed her in an instant from
+the woman of the world to the forest maid, the spirit of the indigenous.
+The mystery of the nomadic ages was in her eyes again as she began her
+narrative, wistfully, and reminiscently.
+
+"You see, I'd been thinking a good deal of my father and mother. I hadn't
+known about them very long, and I lived with their memory. The Mother
+Superior had told me a few things--all she knew, I suppose--before I left
+the convent at Quebec; and Mr. and Mrs. Wayne--especially Mrs. Wayne--had
+added the rest. That was the chief reason why I wanted the studio--so that
+I could get away from the house, which was so oppressive to me, and--so it
+seemed to me--live with them, with nothing but the woods and the hills and
+the sky about me. I could be very happy then--painting thinge I fancied
+they might have done, and pinning them up on the wall. I dare say it was
+foolish, but----"
+
+"It was very natural. Go on."
+
+"And then came up all this excitement about Norrie Ford. For months the
+whole region talked of nothing else. Nearly every one believed he had shot
+his uncle, but, except in the villages, the sympathy with him was
+tremendous. Some people--especially the hotel-keepers and those who
+depended on the tourist travel--were for law and order; but others said
+that old Chris Ford had got no more than he deserved. That was the way
+they used to talk. Mr. Wayne was on the side of law and order,
+too--naturally--till the trial came on; and then he began----"
+
+"I know all about that. Go on."
+
+"My own sympathy was with the man in prison. I used to dream about him. I
+remembered what Mrs. Wayne had told me my mother had done for my father. I
+was proud of that. Though I knew only vaguely what it was, I was sure it
+was what I should have done, too. So when there was talk of breaking into
+the jail and helping Norrie to escape, I used to think how easily I could
+keep any one hidden in my studio. I don't mean I thought of it as a
+practical thing; it was just a dream."
+
+"But a dream that came true."
+
+"Yes; it came true. It was wonderful. It was the day Mr. Wayne sentenced
+him. I knew what he was suffering--Mr. Wayne, I mean. We were all
+suffering; even Mrs. Wayne, who in her gentle way was generally so hard.
+Some people thought Mr. Wayne needn't have done it; and I suppose it was
+just his conscientiousness--because he had such a horror of the
+thing--that drove him on to it. He thought he mustn't shirk his duty. But
+that night at the house was awful. We dressed for dinner, and tried to act
+as if nothing frightful had happened--but it was as if the hangman was
+sitting with us at the table. At last I couldn't endure it. I went out
+into the garden--you remember it was one of those gardens with clipped
+yews. Out there, in the air, I stopped thinking of Mr. Wayne and his
+distress to think of Norrie Ford. It seemed to me as if, in some strange
+way, he belonged to me--that I ought to do something--as my mother had
+done for my father. And then--all of a sudden--I saw him creep in."
+
+"How did you know it was he?"
+
+"I thought it must be, though I was only sure of it when I was on the
+terrace and saw his face. He crept along and crept along--Oh, such a
+forlorn, hopeless, outcast figure! My heart ached at the sight of him. I
+didn't know what he meant to do, and at first I had no intention of
+attempting anything. It was by degrees that my own thought about the
+studio came back to me. By that time he was on the veranda of the house,
+and I was afraid he meant to kill Mr. Wayne. I went after him. I thought I
+would entice him away and hide him. But the minute he heard my footstep he
+leaped into the house. The next I saw, he was talking to Mr. and Mrs.
+Wayne--and something told me he wouldn't hurt them. After that I watched
+my chance till he looked outward, and then I beckoned to him. That's how
+it happened."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"After that everything was easy. He must have told you. I kept him in the
+studio for three weeks, and brought him food--and clothing of my father's.
+It seemed to me that my father was doing everything--not I. That's what
+made it so simple. I know my father would have wanted me to do it. I was
+only the agent in carrying out his will."
+
+"That's one way of looking at it," Conquest said, grimly.
+
+"It's the only way I've ever looked at it; the only way I ever shall."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It was a romantic situation," he observed, when she had given him the
+outlines of the rest of the story. "I wonder you didn't fall in love with
+him."
+
+He smoothed the colorless line of his mustache, as though concealing a
+smile. He had recaptured the teasing tone he liked to employ toward her,
+though its nervous sharpness would have betrayed him had she suspected his
+real thoughts. While she said nothing in response, the tilt of her head
+was that which he associated with her moods of indignation or pride.
+
+"Perhaps you did," he persisted. Then, as she remained silent, "Did you?"
+
+She resolved on a bold step--the audacity of that perfect candor she had
+always taken as a guide.
+
+"I don't know that one could call it that," she said, quietly.
+
+He drew a quick inward breath, clinching his teeth, but keeping his fixed
+smile.
+
+"But you don't know that one couldn't."
+
+"I can't define what I felt at all."
+
+"It was just enough," he pursued, in his bantering tone, "to keep
+you--looking for him back--as you told me--that day."
+
+She lifted her eyes in a swift glance of reproach.
+
+"It was that--then."
+
+"But it's more--now. Isn't it?"
+
+She met him squarely.
+
+"I don't think you've any right to ask."
+
+He laughed aloud, somewhat shrilly.
+
+"That's good!--considering we're to be man and wife."
+
+"We're to be man and wife on a very distinct understanding to which I'm
+perfectly loyal. I mean to be loyal to it always--and to you. I shall give
+you everything you ever asked for. If there are some things--one thing in
+particular--out of my power to give you, I've said so from the first, and
+you've told me you could do without them. If what I can't give you I've
+given to some one else--because--because--I couldn't help it--that's my
+secret, and I claim the right to guard it."
+
+They faced one another across the table piled with ornate silver. He had
+not lost his smile.
+
+"You've the merit of being clear," was his only comment.
+
+"You force me to be clear," she declared, with heightened color, "and a
+little angry. When you asked me to be your wife--long ago--I told you
+there were certain conditions I could never fulfil--and you waived them.
+On that ground I'm ready to meet all your wishes, and make you a good wife
+to the utmost of my power. I'm eager to do it--because I honor and respect
+you as women don't always honor and respect the very men they love. I've
+told Norrie Ford, and I repeat it to you, that after seeing him go free
+and restored to his place among men, the most ardent desire of my life is
+to make you happy. I'm perfectly true; I'm perfectly sincere. What more
+can you ask of me?"
+
+He looked at her searchingly, while he thought hard and rapidly. He could
+not complain that the bars were up and the blinds drawn any longer. On the
+contrary, she had let him see into the recesses of her life with a clarity
+that startled him, as pure truth startles often. As he sat musing, his
+pretence at cynicism fell from him, together with something of his
+furbished air of youth. She saw him grow graver, grayer, older, under her
+very eyes, and was moved with compunction--with compassion. Her face still
+aglow and her hands clasped in her lap, she leaned to him across the
+table, speaking in the rich, low voice that always thrilled him.
+
+"What I feel for you is ... something so much like ... love ... that you
+would never have known the difference ... if you hadn't wrung it from me."
+
+Though he toyed aimlessly with some small silver object on the table and
+did not look up, her words sent a tremor through his frame. The Wise Man
+within him was very eloquent, repeating again and again the sentence she
+herself had used a minute or two ago: What more could he ask of her? What
+more _could_ he ask of her, indeed, after this assurance right out of the
+earnestness and honesty of her pure heart? It was enough to satisfy men
+with far greater claims than he had ever put forth, and far more
+pretension than he had ever dreamed of cherishing. The Wise Man supplied
+him with two or three phrases of reply--neat little phrases, that would
+have bound her forever, and yet saved his self-esteem. He turned them over
+in his mind and on his tongue, trying to add a touch of glamour while he
+kept them terse. He could feel the Wise Man fidgeting impatiently, just as
+he could feel her flaming, expectant eyes upon him; and still he toyed
+with the small silver object aimlessly, conscious of a certain bitter joy
+in his soul's suspense. He had not yet looked up, nor polished the Wise
+Man's phrases to his taste, when a footman threw the door open, and Norrie
+Ford himself walked in.
+
+The meeting was saved from awkwardness chiefly by Ford's own lack of
+embarrassment. As he crossed the room and shook hands, first with Miriam,
+then with Conquest, there was a subdued elation in his manner and glance
+that reduced small considerations to nothing.
+
+"No; I won't sit down," he explained, hurriedly, and not without
+excitement, "because I only looked in for a minute. I've got a cab waiting
+for me outside. The fact is, I ran in to say good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye?" Miriam questioned.
+
+"Not for long, I hope. I'm off--to give myself up."
+
+"But why to-night?" Conquest asked. "What's the rush?"
+
+"Only that I want to get my word in first. They've got their eye on me. I
+thought it yesterday, and I know it to-day. I want them to see that I'm
+not afraid of them, and so I'm asking their hospitality for to-night. I've
+got my bag in the cab, and everything ship-shape. I couldn't do it
+without coming round for a last word with you, old man; and I was going to
+see you afterward, Miss Strange. But since I've found you here----"
+
+"You won't have to," she finished, brightly. "I'm glad to be able to save
+your time. I'm confident we're not losing you for long; and as I know
+you're eager, I can only wish you God-speed, and be glad to see you go"
+
+She held out her hand, frankly, strongly, as one who has no fear.
+
+"Now," she added, turning to Conquest, "I'll ask you to see me to my
+motor. I shall leave you and Mr Ford together, as I know you must have
+some last detail to arrange."
+
+Ford protested, but she gathered up her gloves and furs, and both men
+accompanied her to the street.
+
+It was an autumn evening, drizzling and dark. Up and down Fifth Avenue the
+wet pavements reflected the electric lamps like blurred mirrors. There
+were few passengers on foot, but an occasional motor whizzed weirdly out
+of the dark and into it. It was because there were no other people to be
+seen that two men standing in the rain attracted the attention of the
+three who descended Conquest's steps together.
+
+"There they are," Ford said, jerkily. "By George! they've got ahead of
+me."
+
+Instinctively Miriam clutched his arm, while one of the two strangers came
+forward apologetically.
+
+"You're Mr. John Norrie Ford, ain't you?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"I'm very sorry, sir, but I've got a warrant for your arrest."
+
+"That's all right," Ford said, cheerily. "I was on my way to you, anyhow.
+You'll find my bag in the cab, and everything ready. We'll drive, if it's
+all the same to you."
+
+"Yes, sir. Sure thing, sir."
+
+The man dropped back a few paces courteously, while Ford turned to his
+friends. His air was buoyant. Miriam, too, reflected the radiance of her
+vision of his triumph. Conquest alone, looking small and white and
+shrivelled in the rain, showed care and fear.
+
+"I don't think there's anything special to say," Ford remarked, with the
+awkwardness of a simple nature at an emotional crisis. "I'm not very good
+at thanks. Miss Strange knows that already. But it's all in here"--he
+tapped his breast, with a characteristic gesture--"very sacred, very
+strong."
+
+"We know that," Conquest said, unsteadily, with an embarrassment like
+Ford's own.
+
+"Well, then--good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye."
+
+With a long pressure of the hand to each, he turned toward his cab. Of the
+two strangers, one took his place beside the driver on the box, while the
+other held the door open for Ford to enter. His foot was already on the
+step when Miriam cried, "Wait!"
+
+He turned toward her as she glided across the wet pavement.
+
+"Good-bye, good-bye," she whispered again; and drawing down his face to
+hers, she kissed him, as she had kissed him once before, beside the waters
+of Champlain.
+
+As she drew back from him, Ford's countenance wore the uplifted look of a
+knight who has received the consecration to his quest. Even the two
+strangers bowed their heads, as though they had witnessed the bestowal of
+a sacrament. To Miriam herself it was the seal set on a past that could
+never be reopened. She felt the definiteness with which it was ended, as
+she heard, on her way back to Conquest's side, the door slammed, while the
+cab lumbered away. It seemed to her that Conquest shrank from her as she
+approached him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"You'll come to-morrow? I shall be home about five."
+
+Conquest had put her into her motor, drawn the rugs about her, and closed
+the door. As he did so, she noticed something slow and broken in his
+movements. Leaning from the open window, she held out her hand, but he
+barely touched it.
+
+"No," he said, hoarsely, "I shall not come to-morrow."
+
+"Then, the next day."
+
+"No, nor the next day."
+
+"Well, when you can. If you let me know, I shall stay in, whenever it may
+be."
+
+"You needn't stay in. I'm not coming any more."
+
+"Oh, don't say that. Don't say that," she pleaded. "You hurt me."
+
+"I can't come, Miriam. Don't you see? Isn't it plain enough? I can't come.
+I thought I could. I tried to think I could hold you--in spite of
+everything. But I can't. I _can't_."
+
+"You can hold me--if I stay. I want to stay. You mustn't let me go. I want
+you to be happy. You deserve it. You've done so much for me--and _him_."
+
+It was the stress she laid on the last word--a suggestion of something
+triumphant and enraptured beyond restraint--that made him bound back to
+the centre of the pavement.
+
+"Go on, Laporte," he said to the chauffeur, in a sharp voice. "Miss
+Strange is ready."
+
+"No, no," Miriam cried, stretching both hands toward him. "I'm not ready.
+Keep me. I want to stay."
+
+"Go on!" he cried, sternly, as the chauffeur hesitated. "Miss Strange is
+quite ready. She must go."
+
+Standing by the curb, he watched the motor glide off into the misty,
+lamplit darkness. He was watching it still, as it overtook the carriage in
+which Norrie Ford had just driven away. As the two vehicles passed abreast
+out of his range of vision, he knew they were bearing Ford and Miriam side
+by side into Life.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wild Olive, by Basil King
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wild Olive, by Basil King
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Wild Olive
+
+Author: Basil King
+
+Release Date: August 18, 2004 [EBook #13212]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WILD OLIVE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "There are a hundred men beating the mountain to find you"]
+
+
+
+
+The Wild Olive
+
+A Novel
+
+By the author of
+The Inner Shrine
+
+
+Illustrated by
+Lucius Hitchcock
+
+New York
+Grosset & Dunlap
+Publishers
+
+
+
+Published by Arrangement with Harper & Brothers
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1910, by Harper & Brothers
+All Rights Reserved
+
+
+Published May, 1910
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+
+
+
+Part I
+
+Ford
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+
+Finding himself in the level wood-road, whose open aisle drew a long,
+straight streak across the sky, still luminous with the late-lingering
+Adirondack twilight, the tall young fugitive, hatless, coatless, and
+barefooted, paused a minute for reflection. As he paused, he listened; but
+all distinctiveness of sound was lost in the play of the wind, up hill and
+down dale, through chasm and over crag, in those uncounted leagues of
+forest. It was only a summer wind, soft and from the south; but its murmur
+had the sweep of the eternal breath, while, when it waxed in power, it
+rose like the swell of some great cosmic organ. Through the pines and in
+the underbrush it whispered and crackled and crashed, with a variety of
+effect strangely bewildering to the young man's city-nurtured senses.
+There were minutes when he felt that not only the four country constables
+whom he had escaped were about to burst upon him, but that weird armies of
+gnomes were ready to trample him down.
+
+Out of the confusion of wood-noises, in which his unpractised ear could
+distinguish nothing, he waited for a repetition of the shots which a few
+hours ago had been the protest of his guards; but, none coming, he sped on
+again. He weighed the danger of running in the open against the
+opportunities for speed, and decided in favor of the latter. Hitherto, in
+accordance with a woodcraft invented to meet the emergency, and entirely
+his own, he had avoided anything in the nature of a road or a pathway, in
+order to take advantage of the tracklessness which formed his obvious
+protection; but now he judged the moment come for putting actual space
+between his pursuers and himself. How near, or how far behind him, they
+might be he could not guess. If he had covered ground, they would have
+covered it too, since they were men born to the mountains, while he had
+been bred in towns. His hope lay in the possibility that in this
+wilderness he might be lost to their ken, as a mote is lost in the
+air--though he built something on the chance that, in sympathy with the
+feeling in his favor pervading the simpler population of the region, they
+had given negative connivance to his escape. These thoughts, far from
+stimulating a false confidence, urged him to greater speed.
+
+And yet, even as he fled, he had a consciousness of abandoning
+something--perhaps of deserting something--which brought a strain of
+regret into this minute of desperate excitement. Without having had time
+to count the cost or reckon the result, he felt he was giving up the
+fight. He, or his counsel for him, had contested the ground with all the
+resourceful ingenuity known to the American legal practitioner. He was
+told that, in spite of the seeming finality of what had happened that
+morning, there were still loopholes through which the defence might be
+carried on. In the space of a few hours Fate had offered him the choice
+between two courses, neither of them fertile in promises of success. The
+one was long and tedious, with a possibility of ultimate justification;
+the other short and speedy, with the accepted imputation of guilt. He had
+chosen the latter--instinctively and on the spur of the moment; and while
+he might have repeated at leisure the decision he had made in haste, he
+knew even now that he was leaving the ways and means of proving his
+innocence behind him. The perception came, not as the result of a process
+of thought, but as a regretful, scarcely detected sensation.
+
+He had dashed at first into the broken country, hilly rather than
+mountainous, which from the shores of Lake Champlain gradually gathers
+strength, as it rolls inland, to toss up the crests of the Adirondacks.
+Here, burying himself in the woods, he skirted the unkempt farms, whose
+cottage lights, just beginning to burn, served him as signals to keep
+farther off. When forced to cross one of the sterile fields, he crawled
+low, blotting himself out among the bowlders. At times a patch of tall,
+tasselled Indian corn, interlaced with wandering pumpkin vines, gave him
+cover, till he regained the shelter of the vast Appalachian mother-forest
+which, after climbing Cumberlands, Alleghanies, Catskills, and
+Adirondacks, here clambers down, in long reaches of ash and maple, juniper
+and pine, toward the lowlands of the north.
+
+As far as he had yet been able to formulate a plan of flight, it was to
+seek his safety among the hills. The necessity of the instant was driving
+him toward the open country and the lake, but he hoped to double soon upon
+his tracks, finding his way back to the lumber camps, whose friendly
+spiriting from bunk-house to bunk-house would baffle pursuit. Once he had
+gained even a few hours' security, he would be able to some extent to pick
+and choose his way.
+
+He steered himself by the peak of Graytop, black against the last
+coral-tinted glow of the sunset, as a sailor steers by a star. There was
+further assurance that he was not losing himself or wandering in a circle,
+when from some chance outlook he ventured to glance backward and saw the
+pinnacle of Windy Mountain or the dome of the Pilot straight behind him.
+There lay the natural retreats of the lynx, the bear, and the outlaw like
+himself; and, as he fled farther from them, it was with the same frenzied
+instinct to return that the driven stag must feel toward the bed of fern
+from which he has been roused. But, for the minute, there was one
+imperative necessity--to go on--to go on anywhere, anyhow, so long as it
+took him far enough from the spot where masked men had loosed the
+handcuffs from his wrists and stray shots had come ringing after him. In
+his path there were lakelets, which he swam, and streams, which he forded.
+Over the low hills he scrambled through an undergrowth so dense that even
+the snake or the squirrel might have avoided it, to find some easier way.
+Now and then, as he dragged himself up the more barren ascents, the loose
+soil gave way beneath his steps in miniature avalanches of stone and sand,
+over which he crept, clinging to tufts of grass or lightly rooted
+saplings, to rise at last with hands scratched and feet bleeding. Then, on
+again!--frantically, as the hare runs and as the crow flies, without
+swerving--on, with the sole aim of gaining time and covering distance!
+
+He was not a native of the mountains. Though in the two years spent among
+them he had come to acknowledge their charm, it was only as a man learns
+to love an alien mistress, whose alternating moods of savagery and
+softness hold him with a spell of which he is half afraid. More than any
+one suspected or he could have explained, his reckless life had been the
+rebellion of his man-trained, urban instinct against the domination of
+this supreme earth-force, to which he was of no more value than a falling
+leaf or a dissolving cloud. Even now, as he flung himself on the forest's
+protection, it was not with the solace of the son returning to the mother;
+it was rather as a man might take refuge from a lion in a mammoth cavern,
+where the darkness only conceals dangers.
+
+After the struggle with crude nature the smooth, grass-carpeted
+wagon-track brought him more than a physical sense of comfort. It not only
+made his flight swift and easy, but it had been marked out by man, for
+man's purposes and to meet man's need. It was the result of a human
+intelligence; it led to a human goal. It was possible that it might lead
+even him into touch with human sympathies With the thought, he became
+conscious all at once that he was famished and fatigued. Up to the present
+he had been as little aware of a body as a spirit on its way between two
+worlds. It had ached and sweated and bled; but he had not noticed it. The
+electric fluid could not have seemed more tireless or iron more insensate.
+But now, when the hardship was somewhat relaxed, he was forced back on the
+perception that he was faint and hungry His speed slackened; his shoulders
+sagged; the long second wind, which had lasted so well, began to shorten.
+For the first time it occurred to him to wonder how long his strength
+would hold out.
+
+It was then that he noticed a deflection of the wood-road toward the
+north, and down over the brow of the plateau on which for a mile or two
+its evenness had been sustained. It was a new sign that it was tending
+toward some habitation. Half an hour ago he would have taken this to mean
+that he must dash into the forest again; but half an hour ago he had not
+been hungry. He did not say to himself that he would venture to any man's
+door and ask for bread. So far as he knew, he would never venture to any
+man's door again; nevertheless, he kept on, down-hill, and down-hill
+nearer and nearer the lake, and farther and farther from the mountain and
+the lairs of safety.
+
+Suddenly, at a turning, when he was not expecting it, the wood-road
+emerged into a rough clearing. Once more he stopped to reflect and take
+his bearings. It had grown so dark that there was little danger in doing
+so; though, as he peered into the gloom, his nerves were still taut with
+the expectation of shot or capture from behind. Straining his eyes, he
+made out a few acres that had been cleared for their timber, after which
+Nature had been allowed to take her own way again, in unruly growths of
+saplings, tangles of wild vines, and clumps of magenta fireweed.
+
+Without quite knowing why he did so, he crept down the slope, feeling his
+way among the stumps, and stooping low, lest his white shirt, wet and
+clinging limply to his body, might betray him to some keen-eyed marksman.
+Presently one of the old root-hedges, common to the countryside, barred
+his path--a queer, twisted line of long, gray tentacles that had once
+sucked sustenance from the soil, but now reached up idly into a barren
+element, where the wild grape was covering their grotesque nakedness with
+masses of kindly beauty. Below him he saw lights shining clearly like the
+planets, or faintly like the mere star-dust of the sky, while between the
+two degrees of brightness he knew there must lie the bosom of the lake. He
+had come to the little fringe of towns that clings to the borders of
+Champlain, here with the Adirondacks behind him, and there with the
+mountains of Vermont, but keeping close to the great, safe waterway, as
+though distrusting the ruggedness of both.
+
+It was a moment at which to renew his alarm in this proximity to human
+dwellings. Like the tiger that has ventured beyond the edge of the jungle,
+he must slink back at the sight of fire. He turned himself slowly, looking
+up the heights from which he had come down, as they rolled behind him,
+mysterious and hostile, in the growing darkness. Even the sky, from which
+it seemed impossible for the daylight ever to depart, now had an angry red
+glare in it.
+
+He took a step or two toward the forest, and paused again, still staring
+upward. Where was he going? Where _could_ he go? The question presented
+itself with an odd pertinence that drew his set, beardless lips into a
+kind of smile. When he had first made his rush outward the one thing that
+seemed to him essential was to be free; but now he was forced to ask
+himself: For what purpose? Of what use was it to be as free as wind if he
+was to be as homeless? It was not merely that he was homeless for the
+moment; that was nothing; the overwhelming reflection was that he, Norrie
+Ford, could never have a home at all--that there was scarcely a spot
+within the borders of civilized mankind where the law would not hunt him
+out.
+
+This view of his situation was so apparent and yet so new that it held him
+stock-still, gazing into space. He was free--but free only to crawl back
+into the jungle and lie down in it, like a wild beast.
+
+"But I'm not a wild beast," he protested, inwardly. "I'm a man--with
+human rights. By God, I'll never let them go!"
+
+He wheeled round again, toward the lower lands and the lake. The lights
+glowed more brightly as the darkness deepened, each lamp shining from some
+little nest, where men and women were busied with the small tasks and
+interests that made life. This was liberty! This was what he had a claim
+upon! All his instincts were civilized, domestic. He would not go back to
+the forest, to herd with wild nature, when he had a right to lie down
+among his kind. He had slept in the open hundreds of times; but it had
+been from choice. There had been pleasure then, in waking to the smell of
+balsam and opening his eyes upon the stars. But to do the same thing from
+compulsion, because men had closed up their ranks and ejected him from
+their midst, was an outrage he would not accept. In the darkness his head
+went up, while his eyes burned with a fire more intense than that of any
+of the mild beacons from the towns below, as he strode back to the old
+root-hedge and leaped it.
+
+He felt the imprudence, not to say the uselessness, of the movement, as he
+made it; and yet he kept on, finding himself in a field in which cows and
+horses were startled from their munching by his footstep. It was another
+degree nearer to the organized life in which he was entitled to a place.
+Shielded by a shrubbery of sleeping goldenrod, he stole down the slope,
+making his way to the lane along which the beasts went out to pasture and
+came home. Following the trail, he passed a meadow, a potato-field, and a
+patch of Indian corn, till the scent of flowers told him he was coming on
+a garden. A minute later, low, velvety domes of clipped yew rose in the
+foreground, and he knew himself to be in touch with the civilization that
+clung, like a hardy vine, to the coves and promontories of the lake, while
+its tendrils withered as soon as they were flung up toward the mountains.
+Only a few steps more, and, between the yews, he saw the light streaming
+from the open doors and windows of a house.
+
+It was such a house as, during the two years he had spent up in the high
+timber-lands, he had caught sight of only on the rare occasions when he
+came within the precincts of a town--a house whose outward aspect, even at
+night, suggested something of taste, means, and social position for its
+occupants. Slipping nearer still, he saw curtains fluttering in the breeze
+of the August evening, and Virginia creeper dropping in heavily massed
+garlands from the roof of a columned veranda. A French window was open to
+the floor, and within, he could see vaguely, people were seated.
+
+The scene was simple enough, but to the fugitive it had a kind of
+sacredness. It was like a glimpse into the heaven he has lost caught by a
+fallen angel. For the moment he forgot his hunger and weakness, in this
+feast for the heart and eyes. It was with something of the pleasure of
+recognizing long-absent faces that he traced the line of a sofa against
+the wall, and stated to himself that there was a row of prints hanging
+above it. There had been no such details as these to note in his cell, nor
+yet in the courtroom which for months had constituted his only change of
+outlook Insensibly to himself, he crept nearer, drawn by the sheer spell
+of gazing.
+
+Finding a gate leading into the garden, he opened it softly, leaving it
+so, in order to secure his retreat. From the shelter of one of the
+rounded yew-trees he could make his observations more at ease. He
+perceived now that the house stood on a terrace, and turned the garden
+front, its more secluded aspect, in his direction. The high hedges, common
+in these lakeside villages, screened it from the road; while the open
+French window threw a shaft of brightness down the yew-tree walk, casting
+the rest of the garden into gloom.
+
+To Norrie Ford, peeping furtively from behind one of the domes of clipped
+foliage, there was exasperation in the fact that his new position gave him
+no glimpse of the people in the room. His hunger to see them became for
+the minute more insistent than that for food. They represented that human
+society from which he had waked one morning to find himself cut off, as a
+rock is cut off by seismic convulsion from the mainland of which it has
+formed a part. It was in a sort of effort to span the gulf separating him
+from his own past that he peered now into this room, whose inmates were
+only passing the hours between the evening meal and bedtime. That people
+could sit tranquilly reading books or playing games filled him with a kind
+of wonder.
+
+When he considered it safe he slipped along to what he hoped would prove a
+better point of view, but, finding it no more advantageous, he darted to
+still another. The light lured him as it might lure an insect of the
+night, till presently he stood on the very steps of the terrace. He knew
+the danger of his situation, but he could not bring himself to turn and
+steal away till he had fixed the picture of that cheerful interior firmly
+on his memory. The risk was great, but the glimpse of life was worth it.
+
+With powers of observation quickened by his plight, he noted that the
+home was just such a one as that from which he had sprung--one where old
+engravings hung on the walls, while books filled the shelves, and papers
+and periodicals strewed the tables. The furnishings spoke of comfort and a
+modest dignity. Obliquely in his line of vision he could see two children,
+seated at a table and poring over a picture-book The boy, a manly urchin,
+might have been fourteen, the girl a year or two younger. Her curls fell
+over the hand and arm supporting her cheek, so that Ford could only guess
+at the blue eyes concealed behind them. Now and then the boy turned a page
+before she was ready, whereupon followed pretty cries of protestation. It
+was perhaps this mimic quarrel that called forth a remark from some one
+sitting within the shadow.
+
+"Evie dear, it's time to go to bed. Billy, I don't believe they let you
+stay up as late as this at home."
+
+"Oh yes, they do," came Billy's answer, given with sturdy assurance. "I
+often stay up till nine."
+
+"Well, it's half past now; so you'd both better come and say good-night."
+
+With one foot resting on the turf and the other raised to the first step
+of the terrace, as he stood with folded arms, Ford watched the little
+scene, in which the children closed their book, pushed back their chairs,
+and crossed the room to say good-night to the two who were seated in the
+shadow. The boy came first, with hands thrust into his trousers pockets in
+a kind of grave nonchalance. The little girl fluttered along behind, but
+broke her journey across the room by stepping into the opening of the long
+window and looking out into the night. Ford stood breathless and
+motionless, expecting her to see him and cry out. But she turned away and
+danced again into the shadow, after which he saw her no more. The silence
+that fell within the room told him that the elders were left alone.
+
+Stealthily, like a thief, Ford crept up the steps and over the turf of the
+terrace. The rising of the wind at that minute drowned all sound of his
+movements, so that he was tempted right on to the veranda, where a coarse
+matting deadened his tread. He dared not hold himself upright on this
+dangerous ground, but, crouching low, he was blotted from sight, while he
+himself could see what passed within. He would only, he said, look once
+more into kindly human faces and steal away as he came.
+
+He could perceive now that the lady who had spoken was an invalid
+reclining in a long chair, lightly covered with a rug. A fragile, dainty
+little creature, her laces, trinkets, and rings revealed her as one
+clinging to the elegancies of another phase of life, though Fate had sent
+her to live, and perhaps to die, here on the edge of the wilderness. He
+made the same observation with regard to the man who sat with his back to
+the window. He was in informal evening dress--a circumstance that, in this
+land of more or less primitive simplicity, spoke of a sense of exile. He
+was slight and middle-aged, and though his face was hidden, Ford received
+the impression of having seen him already, but from another point of view.
+His habit of using a magnifying-glass as, with some difficulty, he read a
+newspaper in the light of a green-shaded lamp, seemed to Ford especially
+familiar, though more pressing thoughts kept him from trying to remember
+where and when he had seen some one do the same thing within the recent
+past.
+
+As he crouched by the window watching them, it came into his mind that
+they were just the sort of people of whom he had least need to be afraid.
+The sordid tragedy up in the mountains had probably interested them
+little, and in any case they could not as yet have heard of his escape. If
+he broke in on them and demanded food, they would give it to him as to
+some common desperado, and be glad to let him go. If there was any one to
+inspire terror, it was he, with his height, and youth, and wildness of
+aspect. He was thinking out the most natural method of playing some small
+comedy of violence, when suddenly the man threw down the paper with a
+sigh. On the instant the lady spoke, as though she had been awaiting her
+cue.
+
+"I don't see why you should feel so about it," she said, making an effort
+to control a cough. "You must have foreseen something of this sort when
+you took up the law."
+
+The answer reached Ford's ears only as a murmur, but he guessed its import
+from the response.
+
+"True," she returned, when he had spoken, "to foresee possibilities is one
+thing, and to meet them is another; but the anticipation does something to
+nerve one for the necessity when it comes."
+
+Again there was a murmur in which Ford could distinguish nothing, but
+again her reply told him what it meant.
+
+"The right and the wrong, as I understand it," she went on, "is something
+with which you have nothing to do. Your part is to administer the law, not
+to judge of how it works."
+
+Once more Ford was unable to catch what was said in reply, but once more
+the lady's speech enlightened him.
+
+"That's the worst of it? Possibly; but it's also the best of it; for since
+it relieves you of responsibility it's foolish for you to feel remorse."
+
+What was the motive of these remarks? Ford found himself possessed of a
+strange curiosity to know. He pressed as closely as he dared to the open
+door, but for the moment nothing more was said. In the silence that
+followed he began again to wonder how he could best make his demand for
+food, when a sound from behind startled him. It was the sound which, among
+all others, caused him the wildest alarm--that of a human footstep. His
+next movement came from the same blind impulse that sends a hunted fox to
+take refuge in a church--eager only for the instant's safety. He had
+sprung to his feet, cleared the threshold, and leaped into the room,
+before the reflection came to him that, if he was caught, he must at least
+be caught game. Wheeling round toward the window-door through which he had
+entered, he stood defiantly, awaiting his pursuers, and heedless of the
+astonished eyes fixed upon him. It was not till some seconds had gone by,
+and he realized that he was not followed, that he glanced about the room.
+When he did so it was to ignore the woman, in order to concentrate all his
+gaze on the little, iron-gray man who, still seated, stared at him, with
+lips parted. In his own turn, Norrie Ford was dumb and wide-eyed in
+amazement It was a long minute before either spoke.
+
+"You?"
+
+"You?"
+
+The monosyllable came simultaneously from each. The little woman got to
+her feet in alarm. There was inquiry as well as terror in her
+face--inquiry to which her husband felt prompted to respond.
+
+"This is the man," he said, in a voice of forced calmness,
+"whom--whom--we've been talking about."
+
+"Not the man--you--?"
+
+"Yes," he nodded, "the man I--I--sentenced to death--this morning."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+
+"Evie!"
+
+Mrs. Wayne went to the door, but on Ford's assurance that her child had
+nothing to fear from him, she paused with her hand on the knob to look in
+curiosity at this wild young man, whose doom lent him a kind of
+fascination. Again, for a minute, all three were silent in the excess of
+their surprise. Wayne himself sat rigid, gazing up at the new-comer with
+strained eyes blurred with partial blindness. Though slightly built and
+delicate, he was not physically timid; and as the seconds went by he was
+able to form an idea as to what had happened. He himself, in view of the
+tumultuous sympathy displayed by hunters and lumber-jacks with the man who
+passed for their boon companion, had advised Ford's removal from the
+pretty toy prison of the county-town to the stronger one at Plattsville.
+It was clear that the prisoner had been helped to escape, either before
+the change had been effected or while it was taking place. There was
+nothing surprising in that; the astonishing thing was that the fugitive
+should have found his way to this house above all others. Mrs. Wayne
+seemed to think so too, for it was she who spoke first, in a tone which
+she tried to make peremptory, in spite of its tremor of fear.
+
+"What did you come here for?"
+
+Ford looked at her for the first time--in a blankness not without a dull
+element of pleasure. It was at least two or three years since he had seen
+anything so dainty--not, in fact, since his own mother died. At all times
+his mind worked slowly, so that he found nothing to reply till she
+repeated her question with a show of increased severity.
+
+"I came here for protection," he said then.
+
+His hesitation and bewildered air imparted assurance to his still
+astonished hosts.
+
+"Isn't it an odd place in which to look for that?" Wayne asked, in an
+excitement, he strove to subdue.
+
+The question was the stimulus Ford needed in order to get his wits into
+play.
+
+"No," he replied, slowly; "I've a right to protection from the man who
+sentenced me to death for a crime of which he knows me innocent."
+
+Wayne concealed a start by smoothing the newspaper over his crossed knees,
+but he was unable to keep a shade of thickness out of his voice as he
+answered:
+
+"You had a fair trial. You were found guilty. You have had the benefit of
+all the resources allowed by the law. You have no right to say I know you
+to be innocent."
+
+Wholly spent, Ford dropped into a chair from which one of the children had
+risen. With his arm hanging limply over the back he sat staring haggardly
+at the judge, as though finding nothing to say.
+
+"I have a right to read any man's mind," he muttered, after a long pause,
+"when it's as transparent as yours. No one had any doubt as to your
+convictions--after your charge."
+
+"That has nothing to do with it. If I charged in your favor, it was
+because I wanted you to have the benefit of every possible plea. When
+those pleas were found insufficient by a jury of your peers--"
+
+Ford emitted a sound that might have been a laugh, had there been mirth in
+it.
+
+"A jury of my peers! A lot of thick-headed country tradesmen, prejudiced
+against me from the start because I'd sometimes kicked up a row in their
+town! They weren't my peers any more than they were yours!"
+
+"The law assumes all men to be equal--"
+
+"Just as it assumes all men to be intelligent--only they're not. The law
+is a very fine theory. The chief thing to be, said against it is that five
+times out of ten it leaves human nature out of account. I'm condemned to
+death, not because I killed a man, but because you lawyers won't admit
+that your theory doesn't work."
+
+He began to speak more easily, with the energy born of his desperate
+situation and his sense of wrong. He sat up straighter; the air of
+dejection with which he had sunk to the chair slipped from him; his gray
+eyes, of the kind called "honest," shot out glances of protest. The elder
+man found himself once more struggling against the wave of sympathy which
+at times in the court-room had been almost too strong for him. He was
+forced to intrench himself mentally within the system he served before
+bracing himself to reply.
+
+"I can't keep you from having your opinion--"
+
+"Nor can I save you from having yours. Look at me, judge!" He was bolt
+upright now, throwing his arms wide with a gesture in which there was more
+appeal than indignation "Look at me! I'm a strong, healthy-bodied,
+healthy-minded fellow of twenty-four; but I'm drenched to the skin, I'm
+half naked, I'm nearly dead with hunger, I'm an outlaw for life--and
+you're responsible for it all."
+
+It was Wayne's turn for protest, and though he winced, he spoke sharply.
+
+"I had my duty to perform--"
+
+"Good God, man, don't sit there and call that thing your duty! You're
+something more than a wheel in a machine. You were a human being before
+you were a judge. With your convictions you should have come down from the
+bench and washed your hands of the whole affair. The very action would
+have given me a chance--"
+
+"You mustn't speak like that to my husband," Mrs. Wayne broke in,
+indignantly, from the doorway. "If you only knew what he has suffered on
+your account--"
+
+"Is it anything like what I've suffered on his?"
+
+"I dare say it's worse. He has scarcely slept or eaten since he knew he
+would have to pass that dreadful sen--"
+
+"Come! come!" Wayne exclaimed, in the impatient tone of a man who puts an
+end to a useless discussion. "We can't spend time on this subject any
+longer. I'm not on my defence--"
+
+"You _are_ on your defence," Ford declared, instantly. "Even your wife
+puts you there. We're not in a courtroom as we were this morning.
+Circumstantial evidence means nothing to us in this isolated house, where
+you're no longer the judge, as I'm no longer the prisoner. We're just two
+naked human beings, stripped of everything but their inborn rights--and I
+claim mine."
+
+"Well--what are they?"
+
+"They're simple enough. I claim the right to have something to eat, and to
+go my way without being molested--or betrayed. You'll admit I'm not
+asking much."
+
+"You may have the food," Mrs. Wayne said, in a tone not without
+compassion. "I'll go and get it."
+
+For a minute or two there was no sound but that of her cough, as she sped
+down a passage. Before speaking, Wayne passed his hand across his brow as
+though in an effort to clear his mental vision.
+
+"No; you don't seem to be asking much. But, as a matter of fact, you're
+demanding my pledge to my country. I undertook to administer its laws--"
+
+Ford sprang up.
+
+"You've done it," he cried, "and I'm the result! You've administered the
+law right up to its hilt, and your duty as a judge is performed. Surely
+you're free now to think of yourself as a man and to treat me as one."
+
+"I might do that, and still think you a man dangerous to leave at large."
+
+"But do you?"
+
+"That's my affair. Whatever your opinion of the courts that have judged
+your case, I must accept their verdict."
+
+"In your official capacity--yes; but not here, as host to the poor dog who
+comes under your roof for shelter. My rights are sacred. Even the wild
+Arab--"
+
+He paused abruptly. Over Wayne's shoulder, through the window still open
+to the terrace, he saw a figure cross the darkness. Could his pursuers be
+waiting outside for their chance to spring on him? A perceptible fraction
+of a second went by before he told himself he must have been mistaken.
+
+"Even the wild Arab would think them so," he concluded, his glance
+shifting rapidly between the judge and the window open behind him.
+
+"But I'm not a wild Arab," Wayne replied. "My first duty is toward my
+country and its organized society."
+
+"I don't think so. Your first duty is toward the man you know you've
+sentenced wrongly. Fate has shown you an unusual mercy in giving you a
+chance to help him."
+
+"I can be sorry for the sentence and yet feel that I could not have acted
+otherwise."
+
+"Then what are you going to do now?"
+
+"What would you expect me to do but hand you back to justice?"
+
+"How?"
+
+There was a suggestion of physical disdain in the tone of the laconic
+question, as well as in the look he fixed on the neat, middle-aged man
+doing his best to be cool and collected Wayne glanced over his shoulder
+toward the telephone on the wall. Norrie Ford understood and spoke
+quickly:
+
+"Yes; you could ring up the police at Greenport, but I could strangle you
+before you crossed the floor."
+
+"So you could; but would you? If you did, should you be any better off?
+Should you be as well off as you are now? As it is, there is a possibility
+of a miscarriage of justice, of which one day you may get the benefit.
+There would be no such possibility then. You would be tracked down within
+forty-eight hours."
+
+"Oh, you needn't argue; I've no intention--" Once more he paused. The same
+shadow had flitted across the dark space outside, this time with a
+distinct flutter of a white dress. He could only think it was some one
+getting help together; and while he went on to finish his sentence in
+words, all his subconscious faculties were at work, seeking an escape from
+the trap in which he was taken.
+
+"I've no intention of doing violence unless I'm driven to it--"
+
+"But if you are driven to it--?"
+
+"I've a right to defend myself. Organized society, as you call it, has put
+me where it has no further claim upon me. I must fight against it
+single-handed--and I'll do it. I shall spare neither man nor woman--nor
+_woman_"--he raised his voice so as to be heard outside--"who stands in my
+way."
+
+He threw back his head and looked defiantly out into the night. As if in
+response to this challenge a tall, white figure suddenly emerged from the
+darkness and stood plainly before him.
+
+It was a girl, whose movements were curiously quick and silent, as she
+beckoned to him, over the head of the judge, who sat with his back toward
+her.
+
+"Then all the more reason why society should protect itself against you,"
+Wayne began again; but Ford was no longer listening. His attention was
+wholly fixed on the girl, who continued to beckon noiselessly, fluttering
+for an instant close to the threshold of the room, then withdrawing
+suddenly to the very edge of the terrace, waving a white scarf in token
+that he should follow her. She had repeated her action again and again,
+beckoning with renewed insistence, before he understood and made up his
+mind.
+
+"I don't say that I refuse to help you," Wayne was saying. "My sympathy
+with you is very sincere. If I can get your sentence commuted--In fact, a
+reprieve is almost certain--"
+
+With a dash as lithe and sudden as that which had brought him in, Ford was
+out on the terrace, following the white dress and the waving scarf which
+were already disappearing down the yew-tree walk. The girl's flight over
+grass and gravel was like nothing so much as that of a bird skimming
+through the air. Ford's own steps crunched loudly on the stillness of the
+night, so that if any one lay in ambush he knew he could not escape. He
+was prepared to hear shots come ringing from any quarter, but he ran on
+with the indifference of a soldier grown used to battle, intent on keeping
+up with the shadow fleeing before him.
+
+He followed her through the garden gate he himself had left open, and down
+the lane leading to the pasture. At the point where he had entered it from
+the right, she turned to the left, keeping away from the mountains and
+parallel with the lake. There was no moon, but the night was clear; and no
+sound but that of the shrill, sustained chorus of insect life.
+
+Beyond the pasture the lane became nothing but a path, zigzagging up a
+hillside between patches of Indian corn. The girl sped over it so lightly
+that Ford would have found it hard to keep her in sight if from time to
+time she had not paused and waited. When he came near enough to see the
+outlines of her form she flew on again, less like a living woman than a
+mountain wraith.
+
+From the top of the hill he could see the dull gleam of the lake with its
+girdle of lamp-lit towns. Here the woodland began again; not the main body
+of the forest, but one of its long arms, thrust down over hill and valley,
+twisting its way in among villages and farm lands. That which had been a
+path now become a trail, along which the girl flitted with the ease of
+habit and familiarity.
+
+In the concentration of his effort to keep the moving white spot in view
+Ford lost count of time. Similarly he had little notion of the distance
+they were covering. He guessed that they had been ten or fifteen minutes
+on the way, and that they might have gone a mile, when, after waiting for
+him to come almost near enough to speak to her, she began moving in a
+direction at an acute angle to that by which they had come. At the same
+time he perceived that they were on the side of a low wooded mountain and
+that they were beating their way round it.
+
+All at once they emerged on a tiny clearing--a grassy ledge on the slope.
+Through the starlight he could see the hillside break away steeply into a
+vaporous gorge, while above him the mountain raised a black dome amid the
+serried points of the sky-line. The dryad-like creature beckoned him
+forward with her scarf, until suddenly she stopped with the decisive pause
+of one who has reached her goal. Coming up with her, he saw her unlock the
+door of a small cabin, which had hitherto not detached itself from the
+surrounding darkness.
+
+"Go in," she whispered. "Don't strike a light. There are biscuits
+somewhere, in a box. Grope for them. There's a couch in a corner."
+
+Without allowing him to speak, she forced him gently over the threshold
+and closed the door upon him. Standing inside in the darkness, he heard
+the grating of her key in the lock, and the rustle of her skirts as she
+sped away.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+
+From the heavy sleep of fatigue Ford woke with the twittering of birds
+that announces the dawn. His first thought before opening his eyes, that
+he was still in his cell, was dispelled by the silky touch of the Sorrento
+rugs on which he lay. He fingered them again and again in a kind of
+wonder, while his still half-slumbering senses struggled for the memory of
+what had happened, and the realization of where he was. When at last he
+was able to reconstruct the events of the preceding night, he raised
+himself on his elbow and peered about him in the dim morning twilight.
+
+The object he discerned most readily was an easel, giving him the secret
+of his refuge. On the wooden walls of the cabin, which was fairly
+spacious, water-color sketches were pinned at intervals, while on the
+mantelpiece above a bricked fireplace one or two stood framed. Over the
+mantelpiece a pair of snow-shoes were crossed as decorations, between
+which hung a view of the city of Quebec. On a lay-figure in a corner was
+thrown carelessly the sort of blanket coat worn by Canadians during winter
+sports. Paints and palettes were arranged on a table by the wall, and on a
+desk in the middle of the room were writing materials and books. More
+books stood in a small suspended bookcase. Beside a comfortable
+reading-chair one or two magazines lay on the floor. His gaze travelled
+last to the large apron, or pinafore, on a peg fastened in a door
+immediately beside his couch. The door suggested an inner room, and he got
+up promptly to explore it. It proved to be cramped and dark, lighted only
+from the larger apartment, which in its turn had but the one high north
+window of the ordinary studio. The small room was little more than a shed
+or "lean-to", serving the purposes of kitchen and storeroom combined. The
+arrangements of the whole cabin showed that some one had built it with a
+view to passing in seclusion a few days at a time without forsaking the
+simpler amenities of civilized life; and it was clear that that "some one"
+was a woman. What interested Ford chiefly for the moment was the discovery
+of a sealed glass jar of water, from which he was able to slake his twenty
+hours' thirst.
+
+Returning to the room in which he had slept, he drew back the green silk
+curtain covering the north light in order to take his bearings. As he had
+guessed on the previous night, the slope on which the cabin was perched
+broke steeply down into a wooded gorge, beyond which the lower hills
+rolled in decreasing magnitude to the shore of Champlain, visible from
+this point of view in glimpses, less as an inland sea than like a chain of
+lakelets. Sunrise over Vermont flooded the waters with tints of rose and
+saffron, but made of the Green Mountains a long, gigantic mass of
+purple-black twisting its jagged outline toward the north into the Hog's
+Back and the Camel's Hump with a kind of monstrous grace. To the east, in
+New York, the Adirondacks, with the sunlight full upon them, shot up
+jade-colored peaks into the electric blue--the scarred pyramid of Graytop
+standing forth dark, detached, and alone, like a battered veteran
+sentinel.
+
+In an access of conscious hatred of this vast panoramic beauty which had
+become the background of his tragedy, Ford pulled the curtain into place
+again and turned once more to the interior of the room. It began to seem
+more strange to him the more it grew familiar. Why was he here? How long
+was he to stay? How was he to get away again? Had this girl caught him
+like a rat in a trap, or did she mean well by him? If, as he supposed, she
+was Wayne's daughter, she would probably not be slow in carrying out her
+father's plan of handing him back to justice--and yet his mind refused to
+connect the wraith of the night before with either police work or
+betrayal. Her appearance had been so dim and fleeting that he could have
+fancied her the dryad of a dream, had it not been for his surroundings.
+
+He began to examine them once more, inspecting the water-colors on the
+wall one by one, in search of some clew to her personality. The first
+sketch was of a nun in a convent garden--the background vaguely French,
+and yet with a difference. The next was of a trapper, or voyageur, pushing
+a canoe into the waters of a wild northern lake. The next was a group of
+wigwams with squaws and children in the foreground. Then came more nuns;
+then more voyageurs with their canoes; then more Indians and wigwams It
+occurred to Ford that the nuns might have been painted from life, the
+voyageurs and Indians from imagination He turned to the two framed
+drawings on the chimney-piece Both represented winter scenes. In the one a
+sturdy voyageur was conveying his wife and small personal belongings
+across the frozen snow on a sled drawn by a team of dogs. In the other a
+woman, apparently the same woman as in the preceding sketch, had fallen in
+the midst of a blinding storm, while a tall man of European
+aspect--decidedly not the voyageur--was standing beside her with a baby in
+his arms. These were clearly fancy pictures, and, so it seemed to Ford,
+the work of one who was trying to recapture some almost forgotten memory.
+In any case he was too deeply engrossed by his own situation to dwell on
+them further.
+
+He wheeled round again toward the centre of the room, impatiently casting
+about him for something to eat. The tin box, from which he had devoured
+all the biscuits, lay empty on the floor, but he picked it up and ate
+hungrily the few crumbs sticking in its corners. He ransacked the small
+dark room in the hope of finding more, but vainly. As far as he could see,
+the cabin had never been used for the purpose it was meant to serve, nor
+ever occupied for more than a few hours at a time. It had probably been
+built in a caprice that had passed with its completion. He guessed
+something from the fact that there was no visible attempt to sketch the
+scene before the door, though the site had evidently been chosen for its
+beauty.
+
+He had nothing by which to measure time, but he knew that precious hours
+which he might have utilized for escape were passing. He began to chafe at
+the delay. With the impulse of youth to be active, he longed to be out,
+where he could at least use his feet. His clothes had dried upon him; in
+spite of his hunger he was refreshed by his night's sleep; he was
+convinced that, once in the open, he could elude capture. He pulled back
+the curtain again in order to reconnoitre. It was well to be as familiar
+as possible with the immediate lay of the land, so as to avail himself of
+any advantages it might offer.
+
+The colors of sunrise had disappeared, and he judged that it must be
+seven or eight o'clock. Between the rifts of the lower hills the lake was
+flashing silver, while where Vermont had been nothing but a mass of
+shadow, blue-green mountains were emerging in a triple row, from which the
+last veils of vapor were being dragged up into the firmament On the left,
+the Adirondacks were receding into translucent dimness, in a lilac haze of
+heat.
+
+With an effort to get back the woodcraft suddenly inspired by his first
+dash for freedom, he ran his eye over the landscape, noting the points
+with which he was familiar. To the west, in a niche between Graytop and
+the double peak of Windy Mountain, he could place the county-town; to the
+north, beyond the pretty headlands and the shining coves, the prison of
+Plattsville was waiting to receive him. Farther to the north was Canada;
+and to the south the great waterway led toward the populous mazes of New
+York.
+
+With an impatience bordering on nervousness he realized that these general
+facts did not help him. He must avoid the prison and the county-town, of
+course; while both New York and Canada offered him ultimate chances. But
+his most pressing dangers lurked in the immediate foreground; and there he
+could see nothing but an unsuggestive slope of ash and pine. The rapidity
+of instinct by which last night he had known exactly what to do gave place
+this morning to his slower and more characteristic mental processes.
+
+He was still gazing outward in perplexity, when, through the trees beyond
+the grassy ledge, he caught the flicker of something white. He pressed
+closer to the pane for a better view, and a few seconds later a girl, whom
+he recognized as the nymph of last night, came out of the forest,
+followed by a fawn-colored collie. She walked smoothly and swiftly,
+carrying a large basket with her right hand, while with her left she
+motioned him away from the window. He stepped back, leaping to the door as
+she unlocked it, in order to relieve her of her burden.
+
+"You mustn't do that," she said, speaking quickly. "You mustn't look out
+of the window or come to the door. There are a hundred men beating the
+mountain to find you."
+
+She closed the door and locked it on the inside. While Ford lifted her
+basket to the desk in the centre of the room she drew the green curtain
+hastily, covering the window. Her movements were so rapid that he could
+catch no glimpse of her face, though he had time to note again the curious
+silence that marked her acts. The dog emitted a low growl.
+
+"You must go in here," she said, decisively, throwing open the door of the
+inner room. "You mustn't speak or look out unless I tell you. I'll bring
+you your breakfast presently. Lie down, Micmac."
+
+The gesture by which she forced him across the threshold was compelling
+rather than commanding. Before he realized that he had obeyed her, he was
+standing alone in the darkness, with the sound of a low voice of liquid
+quality echoing in his ears. Of her face he had got only the hint of dark
+eyes flashing with an eager, non-Caucasian brightness--eyes that drew
+their fire from a source alien to that of any Aryan race.
+
+But he brushed that impression away as foolish. Her words had the
+unmistakable note of cultivation, while a glance at her person showed her
+to be a lady. He could see, too, that her dress, though simple, was
+according to the standard of means and fashion. She was no Pocahontas;
+and yet the thought of Pocahontas came to him. Certainly there was in her
+tones, as well as in her movements, something akin to this vast aboriginal
+nature around him, out of which she seemed to spring as the human element
+in its beauty.
+
+He was still thinking of this when the door opened and she came in again,
+carrying a plate piled high with cold meat and bread-and-butter.
+
+"I'm sorry it's only this," she smiled, as she placed it before him; "but
+I had to take what I could get--and what wouldn't be missed. I'll try to
+do better in future."
+
+He noted the matter-of-fact tone in which she uttered the concluding
+words, as though they were to have plenty of time together; but for the
+moment he was too fiercely hungry to speak. For a few seconds she stood
+off, watching him eat, after which she withdrew, with the light swiftness
+that characterized all her motions.
+
+He had nearly finished his meal when she returned again.
+
+"I've brought you these," she said, not without a touch of shyness,
+against which she struggled by making her tone as commonplace as possible.
+"I shall bring you more things by degrees."
+
+On a chair beside that on which he was sitting she laid a pair of
+slippers, a pair of socks, a shirt, a collar, and a tie.
+
+He jumped up hastily, less in surprise than in confusion.
+
+"I can't take anything of Judge Wayne's--" he began to stammer; but she
+interrupted him.
+
+"I understand your feelings about that," she said, simply. "They're not
+Judge Wayne's; they were my father's. I have plenty more."
+
+In his relief at finding she was not Wayne's daughter he spoke awkwardly.
+
+"Your father? Is he--dead?"
+
+"Yes; he's dead. You needn't be afraid to take the things. He would have
+liked to help a man--in your position."
+
+"In my position? Then you know--who I am?"
+
+"Yes; you're Norrie Ford. I saw that as soon as I chanced on the terrace
+last night."
+
+"And you're not afraid of me?"
+
+"I am--a little," she admitted; "but that doesn't matter."
+
+"You needn't be--" he began to explain, but she checked him again.
+
+"We mustn't talk now. I must shut the door and leave you in the dark all
+day. Men will be passing by, and they mustn't hear you. I shall be
+painting in the studio, so that they won't suspect anything, if you keep
+still."
+
+Allowing him no opportunity to speak again, she closed the door, leaving
+him once more in darkness. Sitting in the constraint she imposed upon him,
+he could hear her moving in the outer room, where, owing to the lightness
+of the wooden partition, it was not difficult to guess what she was doing
+at any given moment. He knew when she opened the outer door and moved the
+easel toward the entrance. He knew when she took down the apron from its
+peg and pinned it on. He knew when she drew up a chair and pretended to
+set to work. In the hour or two of silence that ensued he was sure that,
+whatever she might be doing with her brush, she was keeping eye and ear
+alert in his defence.
+
+Who was she? What interest had she in his fate? What power had raised her
+up to help him? Even yet he had scarcely seen her face; but he had
+received an impression of intelligence. He was sure she was no more than a
+girl--certainly not twenty--and yet she acted with the decision of
+maturity. At the same time there was about her that suggestion of a wild
+origin--that something not wholly tamed to the dictates of civilized
+life--which persisted in his imagination, even if he could not verify it
+in fact.
+
+Twice in the course of the morning he heard voices. Men spoke to her
+through the open doorway, and she replied. Once he distinguished her
+words.
+
+"Oh no," she called out to some one at a distance. "I'm not afraid. He
+won't do me any harm. I've got Micmac with me. I often stay here all day,
+but I shall go home early. Thanks," she added, in response to some further
+hint. "I'd rather not have any one here. I never can paint unless I'm
+quite alone."
+
+Her tone was light, and Ford fancied that as she spoke she smiled at the
+passers-by who had thought it right to warn her against himself; but when,
+a few minutes later, she pushed open the door softly, the gravity that
+seemed more natural to her had returned.
+
+"Several parties of men have gone by," she whispered. "They have no
+suspicion. They won't have, if you keep still. They think you have slipped
+away from here, and have gone back toward the lumber camps. This is your
+lunch," she continued, hastily, placing more food before him. "It will
+have to be your dinner, too. It will be safer for me not to come into this
+room again to-day. You must not go out into the studio till you're sure
+it's dark. No noise. No light. I've put an extra rug on the couch in case
+you're chilly in the night."
+
+She spoke breathlessly, in whispers, and, having finished, slipped away.
+
+"You're awfully good," he whispered back. "Won't you tell me your name?"
+
+"Hush!" she warned him, as she closed the door.
+
+He stood still in the darkness, leaving his food untasted, listening to
+the soft rustle of her movements beyond the wall. Except that he heard no
+more voices, the afternoon passed like the morning. At the end of what
+seemed to him interminable hours he knew by acute attention that she hung
+her apron on its peg, put on her hat, and took up her basket, while Micmac
+rose and shook himself. Presently she closed the door of the cabin and
+locked it on the outside. He fancied he could almost hear her step as she
+sped over the grass and into the forest. Only then did the tension of his
+nerves relax, as, dropping to his chair in the darkness, he began to eat.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+
+The two or three days that followed were much like the first. Each morning
+she came early, bringing him food, and such articles of clothing as she
+thought he could wear. By degrees she provided him with a complete change
+of raiment, and though the fit was tolerable, they laughed together at the
+transformation produced in him. It was the first time he had seen her
+smile, and even in the obscurity of the inner room where she still kept
+him secluded he noted the vividness with which her habitually grave
+features lighted up. Micmac, too, became friendly, inferring with the
+instinct of his race that Ford was an object to be guarded.
+
+"No one would know you now," the girl declared, surveying him with
+satisfaction.
+
+"Were these things all your father's?" he asked, with a new attempt to
+penetrate the mystery of her personality.
+
+"Yes," she returned, absently, continuing her inspection of him. "They
+were sent to me, and I kept them. I never knew why I did; but I suppose it
+was--for this."
+
+"He must have been a tall man?" Ford hazarded, again.
+
+"Yes, he must have been," she returned, unwarily. Then, feeling that the
+admission required some explanation, she added, with a touch of
+embarrassment, "I never saw him--not that I can remember."
+
+"Then he died a long time ago?"
+
+Her reply came reluctantly, after some delay:
+
+"Not so very long--about four years ago now."
+
+"And yet you hadn't seen him since you were a child?"
+
+"There were reasons. We mustn't talk. Some one may pass and hear us."
+
+He could see that her hurry in finishing the small tasks she had come in
+to perform for him arose not so much from precaution as from a desire to
+escape from this particular subject.
+
+"I suppose you could tell me his name?" he persisted.
+
+Her hands moved deftly, producing order among the things he had left in
+confusion, but she remained silent. It was a silence in which he
+recognized an element of protest though he ignored it.
+
+"You could tell me his name?" he asked, again.
+
+"His name," she said, at last, "wouldn't convey anything to you. It
+wouldn't do you any good to know it."
+
+"It would gratify my curiosity. I should think you might do as much as
+that for me."
+
+"I'm doing a great deal for you as it is. I don't think you should ask for
+more."
+
+Her tone was one of reproach rather than of annoyance, and he was left
+with a sense of having committed an indiscretion. The consciousness
+brought with it the perception that in a measure he was growing used to
+his position. He was beginning to take it for granted that this girl
+should come and minister to his wants. She herself did it so simply, so
+much as a matter of course, that the circumstance lost much of its
+strangeness. Now and then he could detect some confusion in her manner as
+she served him, but he could see too that she surmounted it, in view of
+the fact that for him the situation was one of life and death. She was
+clearly not indifferent to elementary social usages; she only saw that the
+case was one in which they did not obtain. In his long, unoccupied hours
+of darkness it distracted his thoughts from his own peril to speculate
+about her; and when she appeared his questions were the more blunt because
+of the small opportunity she allowed for asking them.
+
+"Won't they miss you at home?" he inquired, on the next occasion when she
+entered his cell.
+
+She paused with a look of surprise.
+
+"At home? Where do you mean?"
+
+"Why--where you live; where your mother lives."
+
+"My mother died a few months after I was born."
+
+"Oh! But even so, you live somewhere, don't you?"
+
+"I do; but they don't miss me there, if that's what you want to know."
+
+"I was only afraid," he said, apologetically, "that you were giving me too
+much of your time."
+
+"I've nothing else to do with it. I shall be only too glad if I can help
+you to escape."
+
+"Why? Why should you care about me?"
+
+"I don't," she said, simply; "at least, I don't know that I do."
+
+"Oh, then you're helping me just--on general principles?"
+
+"Quite so."
+
+"Well," he smiled, "mayn't I ask why, again?"
+
+"Because I don't like the law."
+
+"You mean that you don't like the law as a whole?--or--or this law in
+particular?"
+
+"I don't like any law. I don't like anything about it. But," she added,
+resorting to her usual method of escape, "we mustn't talk any more now.
+Some men passed here this morning, and they may be coming back. They've
+given up looking for you; they are convinced you're up in the lumber
+camps, but all the same we must be careful still."
+
+He had no further speech with her that day, and the next she remained at
+the cabin little more than an hour.
+
+"It's just as well for me not to excite curiosity," she explained to him
+before leaving; "and you needn't be uneasy now. They've stopped the hunt
+altogether. They say there's not a spot within a radius of ten miles of
+Greenport that they haven't searched. It would never occur to any one that
+you could be here. Every one knows me; and so the thought that I could be
+helping you would be the last in their minds."
+
+"And have you no remorse at betraying their confidence?"
+
+She shook her head. "Most of them," she declared, "are very well pleased
+to think you've got away; and even if they weren't I should never feel
+remorse for helping any one to evade the law."
+
+"You seem to have a great objection to the law."
+
+"Well, haven't you?"
+
+"Yes; but in my case it's comprehensible."
+
+"So it is in mine--if you only knew."
+
+"Perhaps," he said, looking at her steadily, "this is as good a time as
+any to assure you that the law has done me wrong."
+
+He waited for her to say something; but as she stroked Micmac's head in
+silence, he continued.
+
+"I never committed the crime of which they found me guilty."
+
+He waited again for some intimation of her confidence.
+
+"Their string of circumstantial evidence was plausible enough, I admit.
+The only weak point about it was that it wasn't true."
+
+Even through the obscurity of his refuge he could feel the suspension of
+expression in her bearing, and could imagine it bringing a kind of eclipse
+over her eyes.
+
+"He was very cruel to you--your uncle?--wasn't he?" she asked, at last.
+
+"He was very cantankerous; but that wouldn't be a reason for shooting him
+in his sleep--whatever I may have said when in a rage."
+
+"I should think it might be."
+
+He started. If it were not for the necessity of making no noise he would
+have laughed.
+
+"Are you so bloodthirsty--?" he began.
+
+"Oh no, I'm not; but I should think it is what a man would do. My father
+wouldn't have submitted to it. I know he killed one man; and he may have
+killed two or three."
+
+Ford whistled under his breath.
+
+"So that," he said, after a pause, "your objection to the law
+is--hereditary."
+
+"My objection to the law is because it is unjust. The world is full of
+injustice," she added, indignantly, "and the laws men live by create it."
+
+"And your aim is to defeat them?"
+
+"I can't talk any more now," she said, reverting to an explanatory tone of
+voice. "I must go. I've arranged everything for you for the day. If you
+are very quiet you can sit in the studio and read; but you mustn't look
+out at the window, or even draw back the curtain. If you hear a step
+outside, you must creep in here and shut the door. And you needn't be
+impatient; because I'm going to spend the day working out a plan for your
+escape."
+
+But when she appeared next morning she declined to give details of the
+plan she had in mind. She preferred to work it out alone, she said, and
+give him the outlines only when she had settled them. It chanced to be a
+day of drenching summer rain, and Ford, with a renewed effort to get some
+clew to her identity, expressed his surprise that she should have been
+allowed to venture out.
+
+"Oh, no one worries about what I do," she said, indifferently "I go about
+as I choose."
+
+"So much the better for me," he laughed. "That's how you came to be
+wandering on old Wayne's terrace, just in the nick of time. What stumps me
+is the promptness with which you thought of stowing me away."
+
+"It wasn't promptness, exactly. As a matter of fact, I had worked the
+whole thing out beforehand."
+
+His eyebrows went up incredulously. "For me?"
+
+"No, not for you; for anybody. Ever since my guardian allowed me to build
+the studio--last year--I've imagined how easy it would be for some--some
+hunted person to stay hidden here, almost indefinitely. I've tried to
+fancy it, when I've had nothing better to do."
+
+"You don't seem to have had anything better to do very often," he
+observed, glancing about the cabin.
+
+"If you mean that I haven't painted much, that's quite true. I thought I
+couldn't do without a studio--till I got one. But when I've come here, I'm
+afraid it's generally been to--to indulge in day-dreams."
+
+"Day-dreams of helping prisoners to escape. It wouldn't be every girl's
+fancy, but it's not for me to complain of that."
+
+"My father would have wanted me to do it," she declared, as if in
+self-justification. "A woman once helped him to get out of prison."
+
+"Good for her! Who was she?"
+
+Having asked the question lightly, in a boyish impulse to talk, he was
+surprised to see her show signs of embarrassment.
+
+"She was my mother," she said, after an interval in which she seemed to be
+making up her mind to give the information.
+
+In the manifest difficulty she had in speaking, Ford sprang to her aid.
+
+"That's like the old story of Gilbert à Becket--Thomas à Becket's father,
+you know."
+
+The historical reference was received in silence, as she bent over the
+small task she had in hand.
+
+"He married the woman who helped him out of prison," Ford went on, for her
+enlightenment.
+
+She raised her head and faced him.
+
+"It wasn't like the story of Gilbert à Becket," she said, quietly.
+
+It took some seconds of Ford's slow thinking to puzzle out the meaning of
+this. Even then he might have pondered in vain had it not been for the
+flush that gradually over-spread her features, and brought what he called
+the wild glint into her eyes. When he understood, he reddened in his own
+turn, making matters worse.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he stammered. "I never thought--"
+
+"You needn't beg my pardon," she interrupted, speaking with a catch in her
+breath. "I wanted you to know.... You've asked me so many questions that
+it seemed as if I was ashamed of my father and mother when I didn't
+answer.... I'm not ashamed of them.... I'd rather you knew.... Every one
+does--who knows me."
+
+Half unconsciously he glanced up at the framed sketches on the
+chimney-piece. Her eyes followed him, and she spoke instantly:
+
+"You're quite right. I meant that--for them."
+
+They were standing in the studio, into which she had allowed him to come
+from the stifling darkness of the inner room, on the ground that the rain
+protected them against intrusion from outside. During their conversation
+she had been placing the easel and arranging the work which formed her
+pretext for being there, while Micmac, stretched on the floor, with his
+head between his paws, kept a half-sleepy eye on both of them.
+
+"Your father was a Canadian, then?" he ventured to ask, as she seated
+herself with a palette in her hand.
+
+"He was a Virginian. My mother was the wife of a French-Canadian voyageur.
+I believe she had a strain of Indian blood. The voyageurs and their
+families generally have."
+
+Having recovered her self-possession, she made her statements in the
+matter-of-fact tone she used to hide embarrassment flicking a little color
+into the sketch before her as she spoke. Ford seated himself at a
+distance, gazing at her with a kind of fascination. Here, then, was the
+clew to that something untamed which persisted through all the effects of
+training and education, as a wild flavor will last in a carefully
+cultivated fruit. His curiosity about her was so intense that,
+notwithstanding the difficulty with which she stated her facts, it
+overcame his prompting to spare her.
+
+"And yet," he said, after a long pause, in which he seemed to be
+assimilating the information she had given him--"and yet I don't see how
+that explains _you_."
+
+"I suppose it doesn't--not any more than your situation explains you."
+
+"My situation explains me perfectly, because I'm the victim of a wrong."
+
+"Well, so am I--in another way. I'm made to suffer because I'm the
+daughter of my parents."
+
+"That's a rotten shame," he exclaimed, in boyish sympathy "It isn't your
+fault."
+
+"Of course it isn't," she smiled, wistfully. "And yet I'd rather suffer
+with the parents I have than be happy with any others."
+
+"I suppose that's natural," he admitted, doubtfully.
+
+"I wish I knew more about them," she went on, continuing to give light
+touches to the work before her, and now and then leaning back to get the
+effect. "I never understood why my father was in prison in Canada."
+
+"Perhaps it was when he killed the man," Ford suggested.
+
+"No; that was in Virginia--at least, the first one. His people didn't like
+it. That was the reason for his leaving home. He hated a settled life; and
+so he wandered away into the northwest of Canada. It was in the days when
+they first began to build the railways there--when there were almost no
+people except the trappers and the voyageurs. I was born on the very
+shores of Hudson Bay."
+
+"But you didn't stay there?"
+
+"No. I was only a very little child--not old enough to remember--when my
+father sent me down to Quebec, to the Ursuline nuns. He never saw me
+again. I lived with them till four years ago. I'm eighteen now."
+
+"Why didn't he send you to his people? Hadn't he sisters?--or anything
+like that."
+
+"He tried to, but they wouldn't have anything to do with me."
+
+It was clearly a relief to her to talk about herself. He guessed that she
+rarely had an opportunity of opening her heart to any one. Not till this
+morning had he seen her in the full light of day; and, though but an
+immature judge, he fancied her features had settled themselves into lines
+of reserve and pride from which in happier circumstances they might have
+been free. Her way of twisting her dark hair--which waved over the brows
+from a central parting--into the simplest kind of knot gave her an air of
+sedateness beyond her years. But what he noticed in her particularly was
+her eyes--not so much because they were wild, dark eyes, with the peculiar
+fleeing expression of startled forest things, as because of the pleading,
+apologetic look that comes into the eyes of forest things when they stand
+at bay. It was when--for seconds only--the pupils shone with a jet-like
+blaze that he caught what he called the non-Aryan effect; but that glow
+died out quickly, leaving something of the fugitive appeal which Hawthorne
+saw in the eyes of Beatrice Cenci.
+
+"He offered his sisters a great deal of money," she sighed, "but they
+wouldn't take me."
+
+"Oh? So he had money?"
+
+"He was one of the first Americans to make money in the Canadian
+northwest; but that was after my mother died. She died in the snow, on a
+journey--like that sketch above the fireplace. I've been told that it
+changed my father's life. He had been what they call wild before that--but
+he wasn't so any more. He grew very hard-working and serious. He was one
+of the pioneers of that country--one of the very first to see its
+possibilities. That was how he made his money; and when he died he left it
+to me. I believe it's a good deal."
+
+"Didn't you hate being in the convent?" he asked, suddenly "I should."
+
+"N-no; not exactly. I wasn't unhappy. The Sisters were kind to me. Some of
+them spoiled me. It wasn't until after my father died, and I began to
+realize--who I was, that I grew restless. I felt I should never be happy
+until I was among people of my own kind."
+
+"And how did you get there?"
+
+She smiled faintly to herself before answering.
+
+"I never did. There are no people of my kind."
+
+Embarrassed by the stress she seemed inclined to lay on this circumstance,
+he grasped at the first thought that might divert her from it.
+
+"So you live with a guardian! How do you like that?"
+
+"I should like it well enough if he did--that is, if his wife did. You
+see," she tried to explain, "she's very sweet and gentle, and all that,
+but she's devoted to the proprieties of life, and I seem to represent to
+her--its improprieties. I know it's a trial to her to keep me, and so, in
+a way, it's a trial to me to stay."
+
+"Why do you stay, then?"
+
+"For one reason, because I can't help myself. I have to do what the law
+tells me."
+
+"I see. The law again!"
+
+"Yes; the law again. But I've other reasons besides that."
+
+"Such as--?"
+
+"Well, I'm very fond of their little girl, for one thing. She's the
+greatest darling in the world, and the only creature, except my dog, that
+loves me."
+
+"What's her name?"
+
+The question drove her to painting with closer attention to her work. Ford
+followed something of the progress of her thought by watching the just
+perceptible contraction of her brows into a little frown, and the setting
+of her lips into a curve of determination. They were handsome lips, mobile
+and sensitive--lips that might easily have been disdainful had not the
+inner spirit softened them with a tremor--or it might have been a
+light--of gentleness.
+
+"It isn't worth while to tell you that," she said, after long reflection.
+"It will be safer for you in the end not to know any of our names at all."
+
+"Still--if I escape--I should like to know them."
+
+"If you escape, you may be able to find out."
+
+"Oh, well," he said, with assumed indifference, "since you don't want to
+tell me--"
+
+Going on with her painting, she allowed the subject to drop; but to him
+the opportunity for conversation was too rare a thing to neglect. Not only
+was his youthful impulse toward social self-expression normally strong,
+but his pleasure in talking to a lady--a girl--was undeniable. Sometimes
+in his moments of solitary meditation he said to himself that she was "not
+his type of girl"; but the fact that he had been deprived of feminine
+society for nearly three years made him ready to fall in love with any
+one. If he did not precisely fall in love with this girl, it was only
+because the situation precluded sentiment; and yet it was pleasant to sit
+and watch her paint, and even torment her with his questions.
+
+"So the little girl is one reason for your staying here. What's another?"
+
+She betrayed her own taste for social communion by the readiness with
+which she answered him--
+
+"I don't know that I ought to tell you that; and yet I might as well. It's
+just this: they're not very well off--so I can help. Naturally I like
+that."
+
+"You can help by footing the bills. That's all very fine if you enjoy it,
+but everybody wouldn't."
+
+"They would if they were in my position," she insisted. "When you can help
+in any way it gives you a sense of being of use to some one. I'd rather
+that people needed me, even if they didn't want me, than that they
+shouldn't need me at all."
+
+"They need your money," he declared, with a young man's outspokenness.
+"That's what."
+
+"But that's something, isn't it? When you've no place in the world you're
+glad enough to get one, even if you have to buy it. My guardian and his
+wife mayn't care much to have me, but it's some satisfaction to know that
+they'd get along much worse if I weren't here."
+
+"So should I," he laughed. "What I'm to do when I'm turned adrift without
+you, Heaven only knows. It's curious--the effect imprisonment has on you.
+It takes away your self-reliance. It gives you a helpless feeling, like a
+baby. You want to be free--and yet you're almost afraid of the open air."
+
+He was so much at home with her now that, sitting carelessly astride of
+his chair, with his arms folded on the back, he felt a fraternal element
+in their mutual relation. She bent more closely over her work, and spoke
+without looking up.
+
+"Oh, you'll get along all right. You're that sort."
+
+"That's easy to say."
+
+"You may find it easy to do." Her next words, uttered while she continued
+to flick color into her sketch, caused him to jump with astonishment. "I'd
+go to the Argentine."
+
+"Why not say the moon?"
+
+"For one reason, because the moon is inaccessible."
+
+"So is the Argentine--for me."
+
+"Oh no, it isn't. Other people have reached it."
+
+"Yes: but they weren't in my fix."
+
+"Some of them were probably in worse."
+
+There was a pause, during which she seemed absorbed in her work, while
+Ford sat meditatively whistling under his breath.
+
+"What put the Argentine into your head?" he asked, at last.
+
+"Because I happen to know a good deal about it. Everybody says it's the
+country of new opportunities. I know people who've lived there. The little
+girl I was speaking of just now--whom I'm so fond of--was born there. Her
+father is dead since then, and her mother is married again."
+
+He continued to meditate, emitting the same tuneless, abstracted sound,
+just above his breath.
+
+"I know the name of an American firm out there," she went on. "It's
+Stephens and Jarrott. It's a very good firm to work for. I've often heard
+that. And Mr. Jarrott has helped ever so many--stranded people."
+
+"I should be just his sort, then."
+
+His laugh, as he sprang to his feet, seemed to dismiss an impossible
+subject; and yet as he lay on his couch that evening in the lampless
+darkness the name of Stephens and Jarrott obtruded itself into his visions
+of this girl, who stood between him and peril because she "disliked the
+law," He wondered how far it was dislike, and how far jealous pain. In
+her eagerness to buy the domestic place she had not inherited she reminded
+him of something he had read--or heard--of the wild olive being grafted
+into the olive of the orchard. Well, that would come in the natural course
+of events. Some fine fellow, worthy to be her mate, would see to it. He
+was not without a pleasant belief that in happier circumstances he himself
+might have had the qualifications for the task. He wondered again what her
+name was. He ran through the catalogue of the names he himself would have
+chosen for a heroine--Gladys, Ethel, Mildred Millicent!--none of them
+seemed to suit her. He tried again. Margaret, Beatrice, Lucy, Joan! Joan
+possibly--or he said to himself, in the last inconsequential thoughts as
+he fell asleep, it might be--the Wild Olive.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+
+As the days passed, one much like another, and the retreat seemed more and
+more secure, it was natural that Ford's thoughts should dwell less on his
+own danger and more on the girl who filled his immediate horizon. The care
+with which she foresaw his wants, the ingenuity with which she met them,
+the dignity and simplicity with which she carried herself through
+incidents that to a less delicate tact must have been difficult, would
+have excited his admiration in any case, even if the namelessness which
+helped to make her an impersonal element in the episode had not stirred
+his imagination. He was obliged to remind himself often that she was "not
+his type of girl," in order to confine his heart within the limits which
+the situation imposed.
+
+It worried him, therefore, it even hurt him, that in spite of all the
+openings he had given her, she had never offered him a sign of her belief
+in his innocence. For this reason he took the first occasion when she was
+seated at her easel, with the dog lying at her feet, to lay his case
+before her.
+
+He told her of his overindulged boyhood, as the only child of a wealthy
+New York merchant. He outlined his profitless years at the university,
+where a too free use of money had hindered work. He narrated the disasters
+that had left him at the age of two-and-twenty to begin life for
+himself--his father's bankruptcy, followed by the death of both his
+parents within the year. He had been eager to start in at the foot of the
+ladder and work his way upward, when the proposal was made which proved
+fatal.
+
+Old Chris Ford, his great-uncle, known throughout the Adirondack region as
+"the lumber king," had offered to take him, train him to the lumber
+business, and make him his heir. An eccentric, childless widower, commonly
+believed to have broken his wife's heart by sheer bitterness of tongue,
+old Chris Ford was hated, feared, and flattered by the relatives and
+time-servers who hoped ultimately to profit by his favor. Norrie Ford
+neither flattered nor feared his powerful kinsman, but he hated him with
+the best. His own instincts were city born and bred. He was conscious,
+too, of that aptitude with which the typical New-Yorker is supposed to
+come into being--the capacity to make money. He would have preferred to
+make it on his own ground and in his own way; and had it not been for the
+counsels of those who wished him well, he would have replied to his
+great-uncle's offer with a courteous "No." Wiser heads than his pointed
+out the folly of such a course as that; and so, reluctantly, he entered on
+his apprenticeship.
+
+In the two years that followed he could not see what purpose he served
+other than that of a mark for the old man's poisoned wit. He was taught
+nothing, and paid nothing, and given nothing to do. He slept under his
+great-uncle's roof and ate at his table, but the sharp tongue made the bed
+hard to lie on and the bread difficult to swallow down. Idleness
+reawakened the propensity to vicious habits which he thought he had
+outlived, while the rough society of the lumber camps, in which he sought
+to relieve the tedium of time, extended him the welcome which Falstaff
+and his comrades gave Prince Hal.
+
+The revolt of his self-respect was on the eve of bringing this phase of
+his existence to an end when the low farce turned into tragedy. Old Chris
+Ford was found dead in his bed--shot in his sleep. On the premises there
+had been but three persons, one of whom must have committed the
+crime--Norrie Ford, and Jacob and Amalia Gramm. Jacob and Amalia Gramm had
+been the old man's servants for thirty years. Their faithfulness put them
+beyond suspicion. The possibility of their guilt, having been considered,
+was dismissed with few formalities. The conviction of Norrie Ford became
+easy after that--the more respectable people of the neighborhood being
+agreed that from the evidence presented no other deduction could be drawn.
+The very fact that the old man, by his provocation of the lad, so
+thoroughly deserved his fate made the manner in which he met with it the
+clearer. Even Norrie Ford's friends, the hunters and the lumbermen,
+admitted as much as that, though they were determined that he should never
+suffer for so meritorious an act as long as they could give him a fighting
+chance for freedom.
+
+The girl listened to Ford's narrative with some degree of interest, though
+it contained nothing new to her. She could not have lived at Greenport
+during the period of his trial without being familiar with it all. But
+when he came to explanations in his own defence she followed listlessly.
+Though she leaned back in her chair, and courteously stopped painting,
+while he talked so earnestly, the light in her eyes faded to a lustreless
+gleam, like that of the black pearl. His perception that her thoughts were
+wandering gave him a queer sensation of speaking into a medium in which
+his voice could not carry, cutting short his arguments, and bringing him
+to his conclusion more hurriedly than he had intended.
+
+"I wanted you to know I didn't do it," he finished, in a tone which begged
+for some expression of her belief, "because you've done so much to help
+me."
+
+"Oh, but I should have helped you just the same, whether you had done it
+or not."
+
+"But I suppose it makes some difference to you," he cried, impatiently,
+"to know that I didn't."
+
+"I suppose it would," she admitted, slowly, "if I thought much about it."
+
+"Well, won't you think?" he pleaded---"just to oblige me."
+
+"Perhaps I will, when you're gone; but at present I have to give my mind
+to getting you away. It was to talk about that that I came this morning."
+
+Had she wanted to slip out of giving an opinion on the subject of his
+guilt, she could not have found a better exit. The means of his ultimate
+escape engrossed him even more than the theme of his innocence. When she
+spoke again all his faculties were concentrated into one keen point of
+attention.
+
+"I think the time has come for you to--go."
+
+If her voice trembled on the last word, he did not notice it. The pose of
+his body, the lines of his face, the glint of his gray eyes, were alive
+with interrogation.
+
+"Go?" he asked, just audibly. "When?"
+
+"To-morrow."
+
+"How?"
+
+"I'll tell you that then."
+
+"Why can't you tell me now?"
+
+"I could if I was sure you wouldn't raise objections, but I know you
+will."
+
+"Then there are objections to be raised?"
+
+"There are objections to everything. There's no plan of escape that won't
+expose you to a good many risks. I'd rather you didn't see them in
+advance."
+
+"But isn't it well to be prepared beforehand?"
+
+"You'll have plenty of time for preparation--after you've started. If that
+seems mysterious to you now, you'll know what I mean by it when I come
+to-morrow. I shall be here in the afternoon at six."
+
+With this information Ford was obliged to be content, spending a sleepless
+night and an impatient day, waiting for the time appointed.
+
+She came punctually. For the first time she was not followed by her dog.
+The only change in her appearance he could see was a short skirt of rough
+material instead of her usual linen or muslin.
+
+"Are we going through the woods?" he asked.
+
+"Not far. I shall take you by the trail that led to this spot before I
+built the cabin and made the path." As she spoke she surveyed him. "You'll
+do," she smiled at last. "In those flannels, and with your beard, no one
+would know you for the Norrie Ford of three weeks ago."
+
+It was easy for him to ascribe the glow in her eyes and the quiver in her
+voice to the excitement of the moment; for he could see that she had the
+spirit of adventure. Perhaps it was to conceal some embarrassment under
+his regard that she spoke again, hurriedly.
+
+"We've no time to lose. You needn't take anything from here. We'd better
+start."
+
+He followed her over the threshold, and as she turned to lock the cabin
+he had time to throw a glance of farewell over the familiar hills, now
+transmuted into a haze of amethyst under the westering sun. A second later
+he heard her quick "Come on!" as she struck into the barely perceptible
+path that led upward, around the shoulder of the mountain.
+
+It was a stiff bit of climbing, but she sped along with the dryad-like
+ease she had displayed on the night when she led him to the cabin. Beneath
+the primeval growth of ash and pine there was an underbrush so dense that
+no one but a creature gifted with the inherited instinct of the woods
+could have found the invisible, sinuous line alone possible to the feet.
+But it was there, and she traced it--never pausing never speaking, and
+only looking back from time to time to assure herself that he was in
+sight, until they reached the top of the dome-shaped hill.
+
+They came out suddenly on a rocky terrace, beneath which, a mile below,
+Champlain was spread out in great part of its length, from the dim bluff
+of Crown Point to the far-away, cloud-like mountains of Canada.
+
+"You can sit down a minute here," she said, as he came up.
+
+They found seats among the low scattered bowlders, but neither spoke. It
+was a moment at which to understand the jewelled imagery of the Seer of
+the Apocalypse. Jasper, jacinth, chalcedony, emerald, chrysoprasus, were
+suggested by the still bosom of the lake, towered round by
+light-reflecting mountains. The triple tier of the Vermont shore was
+bottle-green at its base, indigo in the middle height, while its summit
+was a pale undulation of evanescent blue against the jade and topaz of the
+twilight.
+
+"The steamer _Empress of Erin_," the girl said, with what seemed like
+abruptness, "will sail from Montreal on the twenty-eighth, and from Quebec
+on the twenty-ninth. From Rimouski, at the mouth of the river St.
+Lawrence, she will sail on the thirtieth, to touch nowhere else till she
+reaches Ireland. You will take her at Rimouski."
+
+There was a silence, during which he tried to absorb this startling
+information.
+
+"And from here to Rimouski?" he asked, at last.
+
+"From here to Rimouski," she replied, with a gesture toward the lake,
+"your way is there."
+
+There was another silence, while his eyes travelled the long,
+rainbow-colored lake, up to the faint line of mountains where it faded
+into a mist of bluish-green and gold.
+
+"I see the way," he said then, "but I don't see the means of taking it."
+
+"You'll find that in good time. In the mean while you'd better take this."
+From her jacket she drew a paper, which she passed to him. "That's your
+ticket. You'll see," she laughed, apologetically, "that I've taken for you
+what they call a suite, and I've done it for this reason. They're keeping
+a lookout for you on every tramp ship from New York, on every cattle-ship
+from Boston, and on every grain-ship from Montreal; but they're not
+looking for you in the most expensive cabins of the most expensive liners.
+They know you've no money; and if you get out of the country at all, they
+expect it will be as a stoker or a stow-away They'll never think you're
+driving in cabs and staying at the best hotels."
+
+"But I shan't be," he said, simply.
+
+"Oh yes, you will. You'll need money, of course; and I've brought it.
+You'll need a good deal; so I've brought plenty."
+
+She drew out a pocketbook and held it toward him. He looked at it,
+reddening, but made no attempt to take it.
+
+"I can't--I can't--go as far as that," he stammered, hoarsely.
+
+"You mean," she returned, quickly, "that you hesitate to take money from a
+woman. I thought you might. But it isn't from a woman; it's from a man.
+It's from my father. He would have liked to do it. He would have wanted me
+to do it. They keep putting it in the bank for me--just to spend--but I
+never need it. What can I do with money in a place like Greenport? Here,
+take it," she urged, thrusting it into his hands. "You know very well it
+isn't a matter of choice, but of life or death."
+
+With her own fingers she clasped his upon it, drawing back and coloring at
+her boldness. For the first time in their weeks of intercourse she saw in
+him a touch of emotion The phlegmatism by which he had hitherto concealed
+his inward suffering seemed suddenly to desert him. He looked at her with
+lips quivering, while his eyes filled. His weakness only nerved her to be
+stronger, sending her for refuge back into the commonplace.
+
+"They'll expect you at Rimouski, because your luggage will already have
+gone on board at Montreal. Yes," she continued, in reply to his
+astonishment, "I've forwarded all the trunks and boxes that came to me
+from my father. I told my guardian I was sending them to be stored--and I
+am, for you'll store them for me in London when you've done with them.
+Here are the keys."
+
+He made no attempt to refuse them, and she hurried on.
+
+"I sent the trunks for two reasons; first, because there might be things
+in them you could use till you get something better; and then I wanted to
+prevent suspicion arising from your sailing without luggage. Every little
+thing of that sort counts. The trunks have 'H.S.' painted in white letters
+on them; so that you'll have no difficulty in knowing them at sight. I've
+put a name with the same initials on the ticket. You'd better use it till
+you feel it safe to take your own again."
+
+"What name?" he asked, with eager curiosity, beginning to take the ticket
+out of its envelope.
+
+"Never mind now," she said, quickly. "It's just a name--any name. You can
+look at it afterward. We'd better go on."
+
+She made as though she would move, but he detained her.
+
+"Wait a minute. So your name begins with S!"
+
+"Like a good many others," she smiled.
+
+"Then tell me what it is. Don't let me go away without knowing it. You
+can't think what it means to me."
+
+"I should think you'd see what it means to me."
+
+"I don't. What harm can it do you?"
+
+"If you don't see, I'm afraid I can't explain. To be nameless is--- how
+shall I say it?--a sort of protection to me. In helping you, and taking
+care of you, I've done what almost any really nice girl would have shrunk
+from. There are plenty of people who would say is was wrong. And in a
+way--a way I could never make you understand, unless you understand
+already--it's a relief to me that you don't know who I am. And even that
+isn't everything."
+
+"Well--what else?"
+
+"When this little episode is over"--her voice trembled, and it was not
+without some blinking of the eyes that she was able to begin again--"when
+this little episode is over, it will be better for us both--for you as
+well as for me--to know as little about it as possible. The danger isn't
+past by any means; but it's a kind of danger in which ignorance can be
+made to look a good deal like innocence. I shan't know anything about you
+after you've gone, and you know nothing whatever about me."
+
+"That's what I complain of. Suppose I pull the thing off, and make a
+success of myself somewhere else, how should I communicate with you
+again?"
+
+"Why should you communicate with me at all?"
+
+"To pay you back your money, for one thing--"
+
+"Oh, that doesn't matter."
+
+"Perhaps it doesn't from your point of view; but it does from mine. But it
+wouldn't be my only reason in any case."
+
+Something in his voice and in his eyes warned her to rise and interrupt
+him.
+
+"I'm afraid we haven't time to talk about it now," she said, hurriedly.
+"We really must be going on."
+
+"I'm not going to talk about it now," he declared, rising in his turn. "I
+said it would be a reason for my wanting to communicate with you again. I
+shall want to tell you something then; though perhaps by that time you
+won't want to hear it."
+
+"Hadn't we better wait and see?"
+
+"That's what I shall have to do; but how can I come back to you at all if
+I don't know who you are?"
+
+"I shall have to leave that to your ingenuity," she laughed, with an
+attempt to treat the matter lightly. "In the mean time we must hurry on.
+It's absolutely necessary that you should set out by sunset."
+
+She glided into the invisible trail running down the lakeside slope of the
+mountain, so that he was obliged to follow her. As they had climbed up,
+so they descended--the girl steadily and silently in advance. The region
+was dotted with farms; but she kept to the shelter of the woodland, and
+before he expected it they found themselves at the water's edge. A canoe
+drawn up in a cove gave him the first clear hint of her intentions.
+
+It was a pretty little cove, enclosed by two tiny headlands, forming a
+miniature landlocked bay, hidden from view of the lake beyond. Trees
+leaned over it and into it, while the canoe rested on a yard-long beach of
+sand.
+
+"I see," he remarked, after she had allowed him to take his own
+observations. "You want me to go over to Burlington and catch a train to
+Montreal."
+
+She shook her head, smiling, as he thought, rather tremulously.
+
+"I'm afraid I've planned a much longer journey for you. Come and see the
+preparations I've made." They stepped to the side of the canoe, so as to
+look down into it. "That," she pursued, pointing to a small suit-case
+forward of the middle thwart, "will enable you to look like an ordinary
+traveller after you've landed. And that," she added, indicating a package
+in the stern, "contains nothing more nor less than sandwiches. Those are
+bottles of mineral water. The small objects are a corkscrew, a glass, a
+railway timetable a cheap compass, and a cheaper watch. In addition you'll
+find a map of the lake, which you can consult tomorrow morning, after
+you've paddled all night through the part with which you're most
+familiar."
+
+"Where am I going?" he asked, huskily, avoiding her eyes. The nonchalance
+of her tone had not deceived him, and he thought it well not to let their
+glances meet.
+
+"You'll keep to the middle of the lake and go on steadily. You'll have
+all Champlain to yourself to-night, and in daylight there's no reason why
+you shouldn't pass for an ordinary sportsman. All the same, you had better
+rest by day, and go on again in the evening. You'll find lots of little
+secluded coves where you can pull up the canoe and be quite undisturbed.
+I'd do that, if I were you."
+
+He nodded to show that he understood her.
+
+"When you look at the map," she went on, "you'll find that I've traced a
+route for you, after you get above Plattsville. You'll see that it will
+take you past the little French-Canadian village of Deux Etoiles. You
+can't mistake it, because there's a lighthouse, with a revolving light, on
+a rock, just off the shore. You'll be in Canada then. You'd better time
+yourself to go by about nightfall."
+
+He nodded his agreement with her again, and she continued.
+
+"About a mile above the lighthouse, and close in by the eastern shore,
+just where the lake becomes very narrow, there are two little islands
+lying close together. You'll take them as a landmark, because immediately
+opposite them, on the mainland, there's a stretch of forest running for a
+good many miles. There you can land finally. You must drag the canoe right
+up into the wood, and hide it as well as you can. It's my own canoe, so
+that it can lie there till it drops to pieces. Is all that quite clear to
+you?"
+
+Once more he nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Again the sight of his
+emotion braced her to make her tone more matter-of-fact than ever.
+
+"Now, then," she went on, "if you consult the map you'll see that an old
+wood-road runs through the forest, and comes out at the station of Saint
+Jean du Clou Noir. There you can get a train to Quebec.... The road begins
+nearly opposite the two little islands I spoke of.... I don't think
+you'll have any difficulty in finding it.... It's about seven miles to the
+station.... You could walk that easily enough through the night.... I've
+marked a very good train on the time-table--a train that stops at Saint
+Jean du Clou Noir at seven thirty-five ..."
+
+A choking sensation warned her to stop, but she retained the power to
+smile. The sun had set, and the slow northern night was beginning to close
+in. Across the lake the mountains of Vermont were receding into deep
+purple uniformity, while over the crimson of the west a veil of filmy
+black was falling, as though dropped in mid-flight by the angel of the
+dark. Here and there through the dead-turquoise green of the sky one could
+detect the pale glimmer of a star.
+
+"You must go now," she whispered. He began to move the canoe into the
+water.
+
+"I haven't thanked you," he began, unsteadily, holding the canoe by the
+bow, "because you wouldn't let me. As a matter of fact, I don't know how
+to do it--adequately. But if I live at all, my life will belong to you.
+That's all I can say. My life will be a thing for you to dispose of. If
+you ever have need of it--"
+
+"I shan't have," she said, hastily, "but I'll remember what you say."
+
+"Thanks; that's all I ask. For the present I can only hope for the chance
+of making my promise good."
+
+She said nothing in reply, and after a minute's silence he entered the
+canoe. She steadied it herself to allow him to step in. It was not till he
+had done so and had knelt down with the paddle in his hand that, moved by
+a sudden impulse she leaned to him and kissed him. Then, releasing the
+light craft, she allowed it to glide out like a swan on the tiny bay. In
+three strokes of the paddle it had passed between the low, enclosing
+headlands and was out of sight. When she summoned up strength to creep to
+an eminence commanding the lake, it was already little more than a speck,
+moving rapidly northward, over the opal-tinted waters.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+
+On finding himself alone, and relatively free, Ford's first sensation was
+one of insecurity. Having lived for more than a year under orders and
+observation, he had lost for the moment some of his natural confidence in
+his own initiative. Though he struck resolutely up the lake he was aware
+of an inner bewilderment, bordering on physical discomfort, at being his
+own master. For the first half-hour he paddled mechanically, his
+consciousness benumbed by the overwhelming strangeness. As far as he was
+able to formulate his thought at all he felt himself to be in process of a
+new birth, into a new phase of existence. In the darkening of the sky
+above him and of the lake around there came upon him something of the
+mental obscurity that might mark the passage of a transmigrating soul.
+After the subdued excitement of the past weeks, and especially of the past
+hour, the very regularity of his movements now lulled him into a passivity
+only quickened by vague fears. The noiseless leaping forward of the canoe
+beneath him heightened his sense of breaking with the past and hastening
+onward into another life. In that life he would be a new creature, free to
+be a law unto himself.
+
+A new creature! A law unto himself! The ideas were subconscious, and yet
+he found the words framing themselves on his lips. He repeated them
+mentally with some satisfaction as a cluster of lights on his left told
+him he was passing Greenport. Other lights, on a hill, above the town and
+away from it, were probably those of Judge Wayne's villa. He looked at
+them curiously, with an odd sense of detachment, of remoteness, as from
+things belonging to a time with which he had nothing more to do. That was
+over and done with.
+
+It was not until a steamer crossed his bows, not more than a hundred yards
+in front of him, that he began to appreciate his safety. Under the
+protection of the dark, and in the wide loneliness of the waters, he was
+as lost to human sight as a bird in the upper air. The steamer--zigzagging
+down the lake, touching at little ports now on the west bank and now on
+the east--had shot out unexpectedly from behind a point, her double row of
+lights casting a halo in which his canoe must have been visible on the
+waves; and yet she had passed by and taken no note of him. For a second
+such good-fortune had seemed to his nervous imagination beyond the range
+of hope. He stopped paddling he almost stopped breathing, allowing the
+canoe to rock gently on the tide. The steamer puffed and pulsated, beating
+her way directly athwart his course. The throbbing of her engines seemed
+scarcely louder than that of his own heart. He could see people moving on
+the deck, who in their turn must have been able to see him. And yet the
+boat went on, ignoring him, in tacit acknowledgment of his right to the
+lake, of his right to the world.
+
+His sigh of relief became almost a laugh as he began again to paddle
+forward. The incident was like a first victory, an assurance of victories
+to come. The sense of insecurity with whith he had started out gave place,
+minute by minute, to the confidence in himself which was part of his
+normal state of mind. Other small happenings confirmed his self-reliance.
+Once a pleasure party in a rowboat passed so near him that he could hear
+the splash of their oars and the sound of their voices. There was
+something almost miraculous to him in being so close to the commonplace of
+human fellowship. He had the feeling of pleasant inward recognition that
+comes from hearing one's mother-tongue in a foreign land. He stopped
+paddling again, just to catch meaningless fragments of their talk, until
+they floated away into silence and darkness. He would have been sorry to
+have them pass out of ear-shot, were it not for his satisfaction in being
+able to go his way unheeded.
+
+On another occasion he found himself within speaking distance of one of
+the numerous small lakeside hotels. Lights flared from open doors and
+windows, while from the veranda, the garden, and the little pier came
+peals of laughter, or screams and shouts of young people at rough play.
+Now and then he could catch the tones of some youth's teasing, and the
+shrill, pretended irritation of a girl's retort. The noisy cheerfulness of
+it all reached his ears with the reminiscent tenderness of music heard in
+childhood. It represented the kind of life he himself had loved. Before
+the waking nightmare of his troubles began he had been of the unexacting
+type of American lad who counts it a "good time" to sit in summer evenings
+on "porches" or "stoops" or "piazzas," joking with "the boys," flirting
+with "the girls," and chattering on all subjects from the silly to the
+serious, from the local to the sublime. He was of the friendly,
+neighborly, noisy, demonstrative spirit characteristic of his age and
+class. He could have entered into this circle of strangers--strangers for
+the most part, in all probability, to one another--and in ten minutes'
+time been one of them. Their screams, their twang, their slang, their
+gossip, their jolly banter, and their gay ineptitude would have been to
+him like a welcome home. But he was Norrie Ford, known by name and
+misfortune to every one of them. The boys and girls on the pier, the
+elderly women in the rocking-chairs, even the waitresses who, in
+high-heeled shoes and elaborate coiffures, ministered disdainfully to the
+guests in the bare-floored dining-room, had discussed his life, his trial,
+his sentence, his escape, and formed their opinions upon him. Were it
+possible for them to know now that he was lurking out there in the dark,
+watching their silhouettes and listening to their voices, there would be
+such a hue and cry as the lake had not heard since the Indians sighted
+Champlain on its banks.
+
+It was this reflection that first of all stirred the current of his deep,
+slow resentment. During the fifteen months since his arrest he had been
+either too busy, or too anxious, or too sorely puzzled at finding himself
+in so odd a position, to have leisure for positive anger. At the worst of
+times he had never lost the belief that the world, or that portion of the
+world which concerned itself with him, would come to recognize the fact
+that it was making a mistake. He had taken his imprisonment and his trial
+more or less as exciting adventures. Even the words of his sentence lost
+most of their awfulness in his inner conviction that they were empty
+sounds. Of the confused happenings on the night of his escape his clearest
+memory was that he had been hungry, while he thought of the weeks spent in
+the cabin as a "picnic." Just as good spirits had seldom failed him, so
+patience had rarely deserted him. Such ups and downs of emotion as he had
+experienced resulted in the long run in an increase of optimism. In the
+back of his slow mind he kept the expectation, almost the intention, of
+giving his anger play--some time; but only when his rights should have
+been restored to him.
+
+But he felt it coming on him now, before he was prepared for it. It was
+taking him unawares, and without due cause, roused by the chance
+perception that he was cut off from rightful, natural companionship.
+Nothing as yet had brought home to him the meaning of his situation like
+the talk and laughter of these lads and girls, who suddenly became to him
+what Lazarus in Abraham's bosom was to Dives in his torment.
+
+A few dips of the paddle took him out of sight and sound of the hotel; but
+the dull, indignant passion remained in his heart, finding outward vent in
+the violence with which he sent the canoe bounding northward beneath the
+starlight. For the moment it was a blind, objectless passion, directed
+against nothing and no one in particular. He was not skilled in the
+analysis of feeling, or in tracing effect to cause. For an hour or two his
+wrath was the rage of the infuriated animal roaring out its pain,
+regardless of the hand that has inflicted it. Other rowing-parties came
+within hearing distance, but he paid them no attention; lake steamers hove
+in sight, but he had learned how to avoid them; little towns, dotted at
+intervals of a few miles apart, lit up the banks with the lights of homes,
+but their shining domesticity seemed to mock him. The birth of a new
+creature was a painful process; and yet, through all his confused
+sensations and obscure elemental suffering, he kept the conviction that a
+new creature was somehow claiming its right to live.
+
+Peace of mind came to him gradually, as the little towns put out their
+lights, and the lake steamers laid up in tiny ports, and the
+rowing-parties went home to bed. In the smooth, dark level of the lake and
+in the stars there was a soothing quality to which he responded before he
+was aware of doing so. The spacious solitude of the summer night brought
+with it a large calmness of outlook, in which his spirit took a measure of
+comfort. There was a certain bodily pleasure, too, in the regular monotony
+of paddling, while his mental faculties were kept alert by the necessity
+of finding points by which to steer, and fixing his attention upon them.
+So, by degrees, his limited reasoning powers found themselves at work,
+fumbling, with the helplessness of a man whose strong points are physical
+activity and concentration of purpose, for some light on the wild course
+on which he was embarked.
+
+Perhaps his first reflection that had the nature of a conclusion or a
+deduction was on the subject of "old Wayne." Up to the present he had
+regarded him with special ill will, owing to the fact that Wayne, while
+inclining to a belief of his innocence, had nevertheless lent himself to
+the full working of the law. It came to Ford now in the light of a
+discovery that, after all, it was not Wayne's fault. Wayne was in the grip
+of forces that deprived him to a large extent of the power of voluntary
+action. He could scarcely be blamed if he fulfilled the duties he was
+appointed to perform The real responsibility was elsewhere. With whom did
+it lie? For a primitive mind like Ford's the question was not an easy one
+to answer.
+
+For a time he was inclined to call to account the lawyers who had pleaded
+for the State. Had it not been for their arguments he would have been
+acquitted. With an ingenuity he had never supposed to exist they had
+analyzed his career--especially the two years of it spent with Uncle
+Chris--and showed how it led up to the crime as to an inevitable
+consequence. They seemed familiar with everything he had ever done, while
+they were able to prove beyond cavil that certain of his acts were
+inspired by sinister motives which he himself knew to have sprung from
+dissipation at the worst. It was astonishing how plausible their story
+was; and he admitted that if anybody else had been accused, he himself
+would probably have been convinced by it. Certainly, then, the lawyers
+must have been to blame--that is, unless they were only carrying out what
+others had hired them to do.
+
+That qualifying phrase started a new train of thought. Mechanically, dip
+by dip, swaying gently with each stroke as to a kind of rhythm, he drove
+the canoe onward, while he pondered it. It was easy to meditate out here,
+on the wide, empty lake, for no sound broke the midnight stillness but the
+soft swish of the paddle and the skimming of the broad keel along the
+water. It was not by any orderly system of analysis, or synthesis, or
+syllogism, that Ford, as the hours went by, came at last to his final
+conclusion; and yet he reached it with conviction. By a process of
+elimination he absolved judge, jury, legal profession, and local public
+from the greater condemnation. Each had contributed to the error that made
+him an outlaw, but no one contributor was the whole of the great force
+responsible. That force, which had set its component parts to work, and
+plied them till the worst they could do was done, was the body which they
+called Organized Society. To Ford, Organized Society was a new expression.
+He could not remember ever to have heard it till it was used in court.
+There it had been on everybody's lips. Far more than old Chris Ford
+himself it was made to figure as the injured party. Though there was
+little sympathy for the victim in his own person, Organized Society seemed
+to have received in his death a blow that called for the utmost avenging.
+Organized Society was plaintiff in the case, as well as police, jury,
+judge, and public. The single human creature who could not apparently gain
+footing within its fold was Norrie Ford himself. Organized Society had
+cast him out.
+
+He had been told that before, and yet the actual fact had never come home
+to him till now. In prison, in court, in the cabin in the woods, there had
+always been some human hand within reach of his own, some human tie, even
+though it was a chain. However ignoble, there had been a place for him.
+But out here on the great vacant lake there was an isolation that gave
+reality to his expulsion. The last man left on earth would not feel more
+utterly alone.
+
+For the first time since the night of his escape there came back to him
+that vague feeling of deserting something he might have defended, that
+almost physical sensation of regret at not having stood his ground and
+fought till he fell. He began to understand now what it meant. Dip,
+splash, dip, splash, his paddle stirred the dimly shining water, breaking
+into tiny whirlpools the tremulous reflection of the stars. Not for an
+instant did he relax his stroke, though the regret took more definitive
+shape behind him. Convicted and sentenced, he was still part of the life
+of men, just as a man whom others are trying to hurl from a tower is _on_
+the tower till he has fallen. He himself had not fallen; he had jumped
+off, while there was still a chance of keeping his foothold.
+
+It required an hour or two of outward rhythmic movement and confused
+inward feeling to get him ready for his next mental step. He had jumped
+off the tower; true; but he was alive and well, with no bones broken. What
+should he do now? Should he try to tear the tower down? The attempt would
+not be so very ludicrous, seeing he should only have to join
+those--socialists, anarchists, faddists--already at the work. But he
+admired the tower, and preferred to see is stand. If he did anything at
+all, it would be to try to creep back into it.
+
+The reflection gave still another turn to his thoughts. He was passing
+Burlington by this time--the electric lamps throwing broad bands of light
+along the deserted, up-hill streets, between the sleeping houses. It was
+the first city he had seen since leaving New York to begin his useless
+career in the mountains. The sight moved him with an odd curiosity, not
+free from a homesick longing for normal, simple ways of life. He kept the
+canoe at a standstill, looking hungrily up the empty thoroughfares, as a
+poor ghost may gaze at familiar scenes while those it has loved are
+dreaming. By-and-by the city seemed to stir in its sleep. Along the
+waterside he could hear the clatter of some belated or too early wayfarer;
+a weird, intermittent creaking told him that the milk-cart of provincial
+towns was on its beat; from a distant freight-train came the long,
+melancholy wail that locomotives give at night; and then drowsily, but
+with the promptness of one conscientious in his duty, a cock crew. Ford
+knew that somewhere, unseen as yet by him, the dawn was coming, and--again
+like a wandering ghost--sped on.
+
+But he had been looking on the tower which the children of men had
+builded, and had recognized his desire to clamber up into it again. He was
+not without the perception that a more fiery temperament than his
+own--perhaps a nobler one--would have cursed the race that had done him
+wrong, and sought to injure it or shun it. Misty recollections of
+proud-hearted men who had taken this stand came back to him.
+
+"I suppose I ought to do the same," he muttered to himself humbly; "but
+what would be the use when I couldn't keep it up?"
+
+Understanding himself thus well, his purpose became clearer. Like the ant
+or the beaver that has seen its fabric destroyed, he must set patiently to
+work to reconstruct it. He suspected a poor-spirited element in this sort
+of courage; but his instinct forced him within his limitations. By dint of
+keeping there and toiling there he felt sure of his ability to get back to
+the top of the tower in such a way that no one would think he lacked the
+right to be on it.
+
+But he himself would know it. He shrank from that fact with the repugnance
+of an honest nature for what is not straightforward; but the matter was
+past helping. He should be obliged to play the impostor everywhere and
+with every one. He would mingle with men, shake their hands, share their
+friendships, eat their bread, and accept their favors--and deceive them
+under their very noses. Life would become one long trick, one daily feat
+of skill. Any possible success he could win would lack stability, would
+lack reality, because there would be neither truth nor fact behind it.
+
+From the argument that he was innocent he got little comfort. He had
+forfeited his right to make use of that fact any longer. Had he stayed
+where he was he could have shouted it out till they gagged him in the
+death-chair. Now he must be dumb on the subject forevermore. In his
+disappearance there was an acceptation of guilt which he must remain
+powerless to explain away.
+
+Many minutes of dull pain passed in dwelling on that point. He could work
+neither back from it nor forward. His mind could only dwell on it with an
+aching admission of its justice, while he searched the sky for the dawn.
+
+In spite of the crowing of the cock he saw no sign of it--unless it was
+that the mountains on the New York shore detached themselves more
+distinctly from the sky of which they had seemed to form a part. On the
+Vermont side there was nothing but a heaped-up darkness, night piled on
+night, till the eye reached the upper heavens and the stars.
+
+He paddled on, steadily, rhythmically, having no sense of hunger or
+fatigue, while he groped for the clew that was to guide him when he
+stepped on land. He felt the need of a moral programme, of some pillar of
+cloud and fire that would show him a way he should be justified in taking.
+He expressed it to himself by a kind of aspiration which he kept
+repeating, sometimes half aloud:
+
+"O Lord, O Holy One! I want to be a man!"
+
+Suddenly he struck the water with so violent a dash that the canoe swerved
+and headed landward.
+
+"By God!" he muttered, under his breath, "I've got it.... It isn't my
+fault.... It's theirs.... They've put me in this fix.... They've brought
+this dodging, and shifting, and squirming upon me.... The subterfuge isn't
+mine; it's theirs.... They've taken the responsibility from me.... When
+they strip me of rights they strip me of duties.... They've forced me
+where right and wrong don't exist for me any more.... They've pitched me
+out of their Organized Society, and I've had to go.... Now I'm free ...
+and I shall profit by my freedom."
+
+In the excitement of these discoveries he smote the waters again. He
+remembered having said something of the sort on the night of his interview
+with Wayne; but he had not till now grasped its significance. It was the
+emancipation of his conscience. Whatever difficulties he might encounter
+from outside, he should be hampered by no scruples from within. He had
+been relieved of them; they had been taken from him. Since none had a duty
+toward him, he had no duty toward any. If it suited his purposes to juggle
+with men, the blame must rest upon themselves. He could but do his best
+with the maimed existence they had left to him. Self-respect would entail
+observance of the common laws of truth and honesty, but beyond this he
+need never allow consideration for another to come before consideration
+for himself. He was absolved from the necessity in advance. In the region
+in which he should pass his inner life there would be no occupant but
+himself. From the world where men and women had ties of love and pity and
+mutual regard they had cast him out, forcing him into a spiritual limbo
+where none of these things obtained. It was only lawful that he should
+make use of such advantages as his lot allowed him.
+
+There was exaltation in the way in which he grasped this creed as his rule
+of life; and looking up suddenly, he saw the dawn. It had taken him
+unawares, stealing like a gray mist of light over the tops of the Vermont
+hills, lifting their ridges faintly out of night, like the ghosts of so
+many Titans. Among the Adirondacks one high peak caught the first glimmer
+of advancing day, while all the lower range remained a gigantic silhouette
+beneath the perceptibly paling stars. Over Canada the veil was still down,
+but he fancied he could detect a thinner texture to the darkness.
+
+Then, as he passed a wooded headland, came a sleepy twitter, from some
+little pink and yellow bill barely withdrawn from its enfolding wing--to
+be followed by another, and another, and another, till both shores were
+aquiver with that plaintive chirrup, half threnody for the flying
+darkness, half welcome to the sun, like the praise of a choir of children
+roused to sing midnight matins, but still dreaming. Ford's dip was softer
+now, as though he feared to disturb that vibrant drowsiness; but when,
+later, capes and coves began to define themselves through the gray
+gloaming, and, later still, a shimmer of saffron appeared above the
+eastern summits, he knew it was time to think of a refuge from the
+daylight.
+
+The saffron became fire; the fire lit up a heaven of chrysoprase and rose.
+Where the lake had been as a metal mirror for the stars, it rippled and
+dimpled and gleamed with the tints of mother-of-pearl. He knew the sun
+must be on the farther slope of the Green Mountains, because the face they
+turned toward him was dense in shadow, like the unilluminated portion of
+the moon. On the western shore the Adirondacks were rising out of the bath
+of night as dewy fresh as if they had been just created.
+
+But the sun was actually in the sky when he perceived that he no longer
+had the lake to himself. From a village nestling in some hidden cove a
+rowboat pulled out into the open--a fisherman after the morning's catch.
+It was easy enough for Ford to keep at a prudent distance; but the
+companionship caused him an uneasiness that was not dispelled before the
+first morning steamer came pounding from the northward. He fixed his
+attention then on a tiny islet some two or three miles ahead. There were
+trees on it, and probably ferns and grass. Reaching it, he found himself
+in a portion of the lake forest-banked and little frequented. Pastures and
+fields of ripening grain on the most distant slopes of Vermont gave the
+nearest token of life. All about him there was solitude and
+stillness--with the glorious, bracing beauty of the newly risen day.
+
+Landing with stiffened limbs, he drew up the canoe on a bit of sandy
+beach, over which sturdy old bushes, elder and birch, battered by the
+north winds, leaned in friendly, concealing protection. He himself would
+be able to lie down here, among the tall ferns and the stunted
+blueberry-scrub, as secluded and secure as ever he had been in prison.
+
+Being hungry and thirsty, he ate and drank, consulting his map the while
+and fixing approximately his whereabouts. He looked at his little watch
+and wound it up, and fingered the pages of the railway guide he found
+beside it.
+
+The acts brought up the image of the girl who had furnished him with these
+useful accessories to flight. For lack of another name he called her the
+Wild Olive--remembering her yearning, not wholly unlike his own, to be
+grafted back into the good olive-tree of Organized Society. With some
+shame he perceived that he had scarcely thought of her through the night.
+It was astounding to recollect that not twelve hours ago she had kissed
+him and sent him on his journey. To him the gulf between then and now was
+so wide and blank that it might have been twelve weeks, or twelve months,
+or twelve years. It had been the night of the birth of a new creature, of
+the transmigration of a soul; it had no measurement in time, and threw all
+that preceded it into the mists of prenatal ages.
+
+These thoughts passed through his mind as he made a pillow for himself
+with his white flannel jacket, and twisted the ferns above it into a
+shelter from the flies. Having done this, he stood still and pondered.
+
+"Have I really become a new creature?" he asked himself.
+
+There was much in the outward conditions to encourage the fancy, while his
+inner consciousness found it easy to be credulous. Nothing was left of
+Norrie Ford but the mere flesh and bones--the least stable part of
+personality. Norrie Ford was gone--not dead, but gone--blasted,
+annihilated stamped out of existence, by the act of Organized Society. In
+its place the night of transition had called up some one else.
+
+"But who? ... Who am I? ... What am I?"
+
+Above all, a name seemed required to give him entity. It was a repetition
+of his feeling about the Wild Olive--the girl in the cabin in the woods.
+Suddenly he remembered that, if he had found a name for her, she had also
+found one for him--and that it was written on the steamer ticket in his
+pocket. He drew it out, and read:
+
+"Herbert Strange."
+
+He repeated it at first in dull surprise, and then with disapproval. It
+was not the kind of name he would have chosen. It was odd, noticeable--a
+name people would remember He would have preferred something commonplace
+such as might be found for a column or two in any city directory. She had
+probably got it from a novel--or made it up. Girls did such things. It was
+a pity, but there was no help for it now. As Herbert Strange he must go on
+board the steamer, and so he should be called until--
+
+But he was too tired to fix a date for the resumption of his own name or
+the taking of another. Flinging himself on his couch of moss and trailing
+ground-spruce, with the ferns closing over him, and the pines over them,
+he was soon asleep.
+
+
+
+
+
+Part II
+
+Strange
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+
+Dressed in overalls that had once been white, he was superintending the
+stacking of wool in a long, brick-walled, iron-roofed shed in Buenos Aires
+when the thought came to him how easy it had all been. He paused for a
+minute in his work of inspection--standing by an open window, where a
+whiff of fresh air from off the mud-brown Rio de la Plata relieved the
+heavy, greasy smell of the piles of unwashed wool--just to review again
+the past eighteen months. Below him stretched the noisy docks, with their
+row of electric cranes, as regular as a line of street lamps, loading or
+unloading a mile of steamers lying broadside on, and flying all flags but
+the Stars and Stripes. Wines, silk, machinery, textiles were coming out;
+wheat, cattle, hides, and beef were pouring in. In the confusion of
+tongues that reached him he could, on occasions, catch the tones of
+Spaniard, Frenchman, Swede, and Italian, together with all the varieties
+of English speech from Highland Scotch to Cockney; but none of the
+intonations of his native land. The comparative rarity of anything
+American in his city of refuge, while it added to his sense of exile,
+heightened his feeling of security. It was still another of the happy
+circumstances that had helped him.
+
+The strain under which he had lived during this year and a half had
+undoubtedly been great; but he could see now that it had been inward
+strain--the mental strain of unceasing apprehension, the spiritual strain
+of the new creature in casting off the old husk, and adapting itself not
+merely to new surroundings, but to a new life. This had been severe. He
+was not a rover, and still less an adventurer, in any of the senses
+attached to that word. His instincts were for the settled, the
+well-ordered, and the practical. He would have been content with any
+humdrum existence that permitted his peaceable, commercially gifted soul
+to develop in its natural environment. The process, therefore, by which
+Norrie Ford became Herbert Strange, even in his own thoughts, had been one
+of inner travail, though the outward conditions could not have been more
+favorable. Now that he had reached a point where his more obvious
+anxieties were passing away, and the hope of safety was becoming a
+reality, he could look back and see how relatively easy everything had
+been.
+
+He had leisure for reflection because it was the hour for the men's midday
+meal and siesta. He could see them grouped together--some thirty-odd--at
+the far end of the shed--sturdy little Italians, black-eyed, smiling,
+thrifty, dirty, and contented to a degree that made them incomprehensible
+to the ambitious, upward-toiling American set over them. They sat, or
+lounged, on piles of wood, or on the floor, some chattering, most of them
+asleep. He had begun like them. He had stacked wool under orders till he
+had made himself capable of being in command. He had been beneath the
+ladder; and though his foot was only on the lowest rung of it even now, he
+was satisfied to have made this first step upward.
+
+He could not be said to have taken it to his own surprise, since he had
+prepared himself for it, and for other such steps to follow it, knowing
+that they must become feasible in time. He had been given to understand
+that what the Argentine, in common with some other countries, needed most
+was neither men nor capital, but intelligence. Men were pouring in from
+every corner of the globe; capital was keen in looking for its
+opportunity; but for intelligence the demand was always greater than the
+supply.
+
+The first intimation of such a need had come to him on the _Empress of
+Erin_, in mid-Atlantic, by a chance opportunity of the voyage. It was on
+one of the first days of liberty when he had ventured to mix freely with
+his fellow-passengers. Up to the present he had followed the rule of
+conduct adopted at the little Canadian station of Saint Jean du Clou Noir.
+He went into public when necessary, but no oftener. He did then what other
+people did, in the way to attract the least attention. The season favored
+him, for amid the throngs of early autumn travellers, moving from country
+back to town, or from seaside resorts to the mountains he passed
+unnoticed. At Quebec he was one of the crowd of tourists come to see the
+picturesque old town. At Rimouski he was lost among the trainful of people
+from the Canadian maritime provinces taking the Atlantic steamer at a
+convenient port. He lived through each minute in expectation of the law's
+tap on his shoulder; but he acquired the habit of nonchalance. On
+shipboard it was a relief to be able to shut himself up in his cabin--his
+suite!--feigning sickness, but really allowing his taut nerves to relax,
+as he watched first the outlines of the Laurentides, and then the shores
+of Anticosti, and lastly the iron-black coast of Labrador, follow each
+other below the horizon. Two or three appearances at table gave him
+confidence that he had nothing to fear. By degrees he allowed himself to
+walk up and down the deck, where it was a queer sensation to feel that the
+long row of eyes must of necessity be fixed upon him. The mere fact that
+he was wearing another man's clothes--clothes he had found in the cabin
+trunk that had come on board for him--produced a shyness scarcely
+mitigated by the knowledge that he was far from looking grotesque.
+
+Little by little he plucked up courage to enter the smoking-room where the
+tacit, matter-of-course welcome of his own sex seemed to him like
+extraordinary affability. An occasional word from a neighbor, or an
+invitation to "take a hand at poker," or to "have a cocktail," was like an
+assurance to a man who fancies himself dead that he really is alive. He
+joined in no conversations and met no advances, but from the possibilities
+of doing so he would go back to his cabin smiling.
+
+The nearest approach to pleasure he allowed himself was to sit in a corner
+and listen to the talk of his fellow-men. It was sometimes amusing, but
+oftener stupid; it turned largely on food, with irrelevant interludes on
+business. It never went beyond the range of topics possible to the
+American or Canadian merchants, professional men, politicians, and
+saloon-keepers, who form the rank and file of smoking-room society on any
+Atlantic liner; but the Delphic worshipper never listened to Apollo's
+oracle with a more rapt devotion than Ford to this intercommunion of
+souls.
+
+It was in this way that he chanced one day to hear a man speaking of the
+Argentine. The remarks were casual, choppy, and without importance, but
+the speaker evidently knew the ground. Ford had already noticed him,
+because they occupied adjoining steamer-chairs--a tall, sallow Englishman
+of the ineffectual type, with sagging shoulders, a drooping mustache, and
+furtive eyes. Ford had scarcely thought of the Argentine since the girl in
+the cabin had mentioned it--- now ten or twelve days ago; but the
+necessity of having an objective point, and one sufficiently distant
+turned his mind again in that direction.
+
+"Did I hear you speaking yesterday of Buenos Aires?" he ventured to ask,
+on the next occasion when he found himself seated beside his neighbor on
+deck.
+
+The Englishman drew his brier-root pipe from his mouth, glanced sidewise
+from the magazine he was reading, and jerked his head in assent.
+
+"What kind of place did it seem to you?"
+
+"Jolly rotten."
+
+Pondering this reply, Ford might have lost courage to speak again had he
+not caught the eye of the Englishman's wife as she leaned forward and
+peeped at him across her husband's brier-root. There was something in her
+starry glance--an invitation, or an incitement--that impelled him to
+continue.
+
+"I've been told it's the land of new opportunities."
+
+The Englishman grunted without looking up. "I didn't see many."
+
+"May I ask if you saw any?"
+
+"None fit for a white man."
+
+"My husband means none fit for a--gentleman. I liked the place."
+
+From the woman's steely smile and bitter-sweet tones Ford got hints of
+masculine inefficiency and feminine contempt which he had no wish to
+follow up. He knew from fragments of talk overheard in the smoking-room
+that they had tried Mexico, California, and Saskatchewan in addition to
+South America. From the impatience with which she shook the foot just
+visible beneath the steamer-rug, while all the rest of her bearing feigned
+repose, he guessed her humiliation at returning empty to the land she had
+left with an Anglo-Saxon's pioneering hope, beside a husband who could do
+nothing but curse luck. To get over the awkward minute he spoke hurriedly.
+
+"I've heard of a very good house out there--Stephens and Jarrott. Do you
+happen to know anything about them?"
+
+"Wool," the Englishman grunted again. "Wool and wheat. Beastly brutes."
+
+"They were horribly impertinent to my husband," the woman spoke up, with a
+kind of feverish eagerness to have her say. "They actually asked him if
+there was anything he could do. Fancy!"
+
+"Oh, I know people of that sort put a lot of superfluous questions to
+you," Ford said. But the lady hurried on.
+
+"As to questions, there are probably fewer asked you in Argentine than
+anywhere else in the world. It's one of the standing jokes of the place,
+both in Buenos Aires and out in the Camp. Of course, the old Spanish
+families are all right; but when it comes to foreigners a social catechism
+wouldn't do. That's one of the reasons the place didn't agree with us. We
+wanted people to know who we'd been before we got there; but that branch
+of knowledge isn't cultivated."
+
+"More beastly Johnnies in the Argentine passin' under names not their
+own," said the man, moved to speak, at last, "than in all the rest of the
+world put together. Heard a story at the Jockey Club--lot of beastly
+native bounders in the Jockey Club--heard a story at the Jockey Club of a
+little Irish Johnny who'd been cheatin' at cards. Three other asses
+kicked him out. Beggar turned at the door and got in his lick of revenge.
+'Say boys, d'yez know why they call me Mickey Flanagan out here? Because
+it's me na-ame.' Beggar 'd got 'em all there."
+
+Ford nerved himself to laugh, but made an excuse for rising.
+
+"Oh, there's lots of cleverness among them," the lady observed, before he
+had time to get away. "In fact, it's one of the troubles with the
+country--for people like us. There's too much competition in brains. My
+husband hit the right nail on the head when he said there was no chance
+for any beastly Johnny out there, unless he could use his bloomin'
+mind--and for us that was out of the question."
+
+Ford never spoke to them again, but he meditated on their words, finding
+himself at the end of twenty-four hours in possession of a new light.
+"I've got to use my bloomin' mind." The words seemed to offer him the clew
+to life. It was the answer to the question, "What should I do _there_?"
+which positively asked itself, whenever he thought of seeking a refuge in
+this country or in that. It came as a discovery that within himself was
+the power that would enable him to make the best of any country, and the
+country to make the best of him.
+
+He could hardly have explained how his decision to try Argentina had
+become fixed. Until he saw whether or not he should get successfully
+ashore at Liverpool there was a paralysis of all mental effort; but once
+on the train for London his plans appeared before him already formed. The
+country where few questions were asked and the past had no importance was
+clearly the place for him. Within a fortnight he was a second-class
+passenger on board the Royal Mail Steam Packet _Parana_, bound for Buenos
+Aires--thus fulfilling, almost unexpectedly to himself, the suggestion
+made by the girl in the Adirondack cabin, whose star, as he began to
+believe, must rule his fate.
+
+He thought of her now and then, but always with the same curious sense of
+remoteness--or unreality, as of a figure seen in a dream. Were it not for
+the substantial tokens of her actuality he possessed she would have seemed
+to him like the heroine of a play. He would have reproached himself for
+disloyalty if the intensity of each minute as he had to meet it had not
+been an excuse for him. The time would come when the pressure of the
+instant would be less great, and he should be able to get back the emotion
+with which he left her. Perhaps if she had been "his type of girl," her
+image would not have faded so quickly.
+
+There was but one thing for which he was not grateful to her. She had
+fixed the name of Herbert Strange upon him in such a way that he was
+unable to shake it off. His own first name was the unobjectionable
+monosyllable John--though he had always been known by his less familiar
+middle name, Norrie--and as John Ford he could have faced the world with a
+certain amount of bluff. He meant to begin the attempt immediately on
+reaching London, but the difficulty of appearing in a hotel under one name
+while everything he brought with him bore another was patent to him at
+once. Similarly, he could not receive the correspondence incidental to his
+outfit and his passage under the name of Ford in a house where he was
+known as Strange. Having applied for his passage as Strange, he knew it
+would create comment if he asked to be put down in the books as Ford. Do
+what he would he was obliged to appear on the printed list of second-cabin
+passengers as Herbert Strange, and he had made at least one acquaintance
+who would expect to call him so after they reached land.
+
+This was a little, clean-shaven man, in the neighborhood of sixty, always
+dressed at sea as he probably dressed on shore. He wore nothing but black,
+with a white shirt and a ready-made black bow-tie. He might have been a
+butler, an elderly valet, or a member of some discreet religious order in
+street costume. Ford had heard a flippant young Frenchman speak of him as
+an "ancien curé, qui a fait quelque bêtise"; and indeed there was about
+him that stamp of the ecclesiastic which is sometimes ineffaceable.
+
+"I call myself Durand," he said to Ford, using the conveniently ambiguous
+French idiom, "je m'appelle Durand."
+
+"Et je m'appelle Strange, I call myself Strange," Ford had replied,
+claiming the name for the first time without hesitation, but feeling the
+irrevocable nature of the words as soon as he had uttered them.
+
+Out of the crowd of second-rate Europeans of all races who made up the
+second cabin, the man who called himself Strange had selected the man who
+called himself Durand by some obscure instinct of affinity. "He looks like
+an old chap who could give one information," was Strange's own way of
+putting it, not caring to confess that he was feeling after a bit of
+sympathy. But the give and take of information became the basis of their
+friendship, and imparted the first real stimulus to the young man's
+awkward efforts to use his mind.
+
+Monsieur Durand had been thirty years in the Argentine, observing the
+place and the people, native and foreign, with the impartial shrewdness
+only possible to one who sought little for himself. It was a pleasure to
+share the fruits of his experience with one so eager to learn, for young
+men were not in the habit of showing him deference. He could tell Mr.
+Strange many things that would be to his advantage--what to do--what to
+avoid--what sort of place to live in--what he ought to pay--and what sort
+of company to keep.
+
+Yes, he knew the firm of Stephens and Jarrott--an excellent house. There
+was no Mr. Stephens now, only a Mr. Jarrott. Mr. Stephens had belonged to
+the great days of American enterprise in the southern hemisphere, to the
+time of Wheelwright, and Halsey, and Hale. The Civil War had put an end to
+that. Mr. Jarrott had come later--a good man, not generally understood. He
+had suffered a great loss a few years ago in the death of his
+brother-in-law and partner, Mr. Colfax. Mrs. Colfax, a pretty little
+woman, who hadn't old age in her blood either--one could see that--had
+gone back to the United States with her child--but a child!--blond as an
+angel--altogether darling--_tout à fait mignonne_. Monsieur Durand thought
+he remembered hearing that Mrs. Colfax had married again, but he couldn't
+say for certain. What would you? One heard so many things. He knew less of
+the family since the last boy died--the boy to whom he gave lessons in
+Spanish and French. Death hadn't spared the household--taking the three
+sons one after another and leaving father and mother alone. It was a
+thousand pities Mrs. Colfax had taken the little girl away. They loved her
+as if she had been their own--especially after the boys died. An excellent
+house! Mr. Strange couldn't do better than seek an entry there--it is I
+who tell you so--_c'est moi qui vous le dis_.
+
+All this was said in very good English, with occasional lapses into
+French, in a soft, benevolent voice, with slow benedictory movements of
+the hands, more and more suggestive of an ecclesiastic _en civile_--or
+under a cloud. Strange stole an occasional glance into the delicate,
+clear-cut face, where the thin lips were compressed into permanent lines
+of pain, and the sunken brown eyes looked out from under scholarly brows
+with the kind of hopeful anguish a penitent soul might feel in the midst
+of purifying flames. He remembered again that the flippant young Frenchman
+had said, "Un ancien curé, qui a fait quelque bêtise." Was it possible
+that some tragic sin lay under this gentle life? And was the
+four-funnelled, twin-screwed _Parana_ but a ghostly ship bearing a cargo
+of haunted souls into their earthly purgatory?
+
+"But listen, monsieur," the old man began next day. But listen! There
+would be difficulties. Stephens and Jarrott employed only picked men, men
+with some experience--except for the mere manual labor such as the
+Italians could perform. Wouldn't it be well for Mr. Strange to qualify
+himself a little before risking a refusal? Ah, but how? Monsieur Durand
+would explain. There was first the question of Spanish. No one could get
+along in the Argentine without a working knowledge of that tongue.
+Monsieur Durand himself gave lessons in it--and in French--but in the
+English and American colonies of Buenos Aires exclusively. There were
+reasons why he did not care to teach among Catholics, though he himself
+was a fervent one, and he hoped--repentant. He pronounced the last word
+with some emphasis, as though to call Strange's attention to it. If his
+young friend would give him the pleasure of taking a few lessons, they
+could begin even now. It would while away the time on the voyage. He had
+his own method of teaching, a method based on the Berlitz system, but not
+borrowed from it, and, he ventured to say, possessing its own good
+points. For example: _el tabaco--la pipa--los cigarillos. Que es esto?
+Esto es la pipa_. Very simple. In a few weeks' time the pupil is carrying
+on conversations.
+
+It would be an incalculable advantage to Mr. Strange if he could enter on
+his Argentine life with some command of the vernacular. It might even be
+well to defer his search for permanent employment until he could have that
+accomplishment to his credit. If he possessed a little money--even a very
+little--Oh, he did? Then so much the better. He need not live on it
+entirely, but it would be something to fall back on while getting the
+rudiments of his education. In the mean time he could learn a little about
+wool if he picked up jobs--Oh, very humble ones!--they were always to be
+had by the young and able-bodied--at the Mercado Central, one of the great
+wool-markets of the world. He could earn a few pesetas, acquire practical
+experience, and fit himself out in Spanish, all at the same time.
+
+And he could live with relative economy. Monsieur Durand could explain
+that too. In fact, he might get board and lodging in the same house as
+himself, with Mrs. Wilson who conducted a modest home for "gentlemen
+only." Mrs. Wilson was a Protestant--what they called a Methodist, he
+believed--but her house was clean, with a few flowers in the patio, very
+different from the frightful conventillos in which the poor were obliged
+to herd. If Mr. Strange thought it odd that he, Monsieur Durand, should be
+living beneath a Protestant roof--well, there were reasons which were
+difficult to explain.
+
+Later on, perhaps, Mr. Strange might take a season on some great sheep
+estancia out in the Camp, where there were thousands of herds that were
+thousands strong. Monsieur Durand could help him in that too. He could
+introduce him to wealthy proprietors whose sons he had taught. It would be
+a hard life, but it need not be for long. He would live in a mud hut,
+dirty, isolated, with no companionship but that of the Italian laborers
+and their womenkind. But the outdoor existence would do him good; the air
+over the pampas was like wine; and the food would not be as bad as he
+might expect. There would be an abundance of excellent meat, chiefly
+mutton, it was true, which when cooked _à_ la guacho--_carne concuero_,
+they called it in the Camp--roasted in the skin so as to keep all the
+juices in the meat--! A gesture of the hands, accompanied by a succulent
+inspiration between the teeth, gave Strange to understand that there was
+one mitigation at least to life on an Argentine estancia.
+
+To come into actual contact with the sheep, to know Oxfords, Cheviots,
+Leicesters, and Black-faced Downs, to assist at the feedings and washings
+and doctorings and shearings, to follow the crossings and recrossings and
+crossings again, that bred new varieties as if they were roses, to trace
+the processes by which the Argentine pampas supply novel resources to the
+European manufacturer, and the European manufacturer turns out the smart
+young man of London or New York, with his air of wearing "the very
+latest"--all this would not only give Strange a pleasing sense of being at
+the root of things, but form a sort of apprenticeship to his trade.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The men had not yet finished their hour of siesta, but Strange himself was
+at work. Ten minutes were sufficient for his own snack, and he never
+needed rest. Moreover, he was still too new to his position to do other
+than glory in the fact that he was a free being, doing a man's work, and
+earning a man's wage. Out in the Camp he had been too desolate to feel
+that, but here in Buenos Aires, at the very moment when the great city was
+waking to the knowledge of her queenship in the southern world--when the
+commercial hordes of the north were sweeping down in thousands of ships
+across the equator to outdo each other in her markets, it was an inspiring
+thing merely to be alive and busy. He was as proud of Stephens and
+Jarrott's long brick shed, where the sun beat pitilessly on the corrugated
+iron roof, and the smell of wool nearly sickened him, as if it had been a
+Rothschild's counting-house. His position there was just above the lowest;
+but his enthusiasm was independent of trivial things like that. How could
+he lounge about, taking siestas, when work was such a pleasure in itself?
+The shed of which he had the oversight was a model of its kind, not so
+much because his ambition designed to make it so, as because his ardor
+could make it nothing else.
+
+The roar of dock traffic through the open windows drowned everything but
+the loudest sounds, so that busily working, he heard nothing, and paid no
+attention, when some one stopped behind him. He had turned accidentally,
+humming to himself in the sheer joy of his task, when the presence of the
+stranger caused him to blush furiously beneath his tan. He drew himself
+up, like a soldier to attention. He had never seen the head of the firm
+that employed him, but he had heard a young Englishman describe him as
+"looking like a wooden man just coming into life," so that he was enabled
+to recognize him now. He did look something like a wooden man, in that the
+long, lean face, of the tone of parchment, was marked by the few, deep,
+almost perpendicular folds that give all the expression there is to a
+Swiss or German medieval statue of a saint or warrior in painted oak. One
+could see it was a face that rarely smiled, though there was plenty of
+life in the deep-set, gray-blue eyes, together with a force of cautious,
+reserved, and possibly timid, sympathy. Of the middle height and slender,
+with hair just turning from iron-gray to gray, immaculate in white duck,
+and wearing a dignified Panama, he stood looking at Strange--who, tall and
+stalwart in his greasy overalls, held his head high in conscious pride in
+his position in the shed--as Capital might look at Labor. It seemed a long
+time before Mr Jarrott spoke--the natural harshness of his voice softened
+by his quiet manner.
+
+"You're in charge of this gang?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+There was an embarrassed pause. As though not knowing what to say next,
+Mr. Jarrott's gaze travelled down the length of the shed to where the
+Italians, rubbing their sleepy eyes, were preparing for work again.
+
+"You're an American, I believe?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"How old are you?"
+
+"Not quite twenty-six."
+
+"What's your name?"
+
+"Herbert Strange!"
+
+"Ah? One of the Stranges of Virginia?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+There was another long pause, during which the older man's eyes wandered
+once more over the shed and the piles of wool, coming back again to
+Strange.
+
+"You should pick up a little Spanish."
+
+"I've been studying it. Hablo Español, pero no muy bien."
+
+Mr. Jarrott looked at him for a minute in surprise.
+
+"So much the better--tanto mejor," he said, after a brief pause, and
+passed on.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+
+He was again thinking how easy it had been, as he stood, more than three
+years later, on the bluffs of Rosario, watching the sacks of wheat glide
+down the long chute--full seventy feet--into the hold of the _Walmer
+Castle_. The sturdy little Italians who carried the bags from the
+warehouse in long single file might have been those he had superintended
+in the wool-shed in Buenos Aires in the early stages of his rise. But he
+was not superintending these. He superintended the superintendents of
+those who superintended them. Tired with his long day in the office, he
+had come out toward the end of the afternoon not only to get a breath of
+the fresh air off the Parana, but to muse, as he often did, over the odd
+spectacle of the neglected, half-forgotten Spanish settlement, that had
+slumbered for two hundred years, waking to the sense of its destiny as a
+factor of importance in the modern world. Wheat had created Chicago and
+Winnipeg Adam-like from the ground; but it was rejuvenating Rosario de
+Santa Fé Faust-like, with its golden elixir. It interested the man who
+called himself Herbert Strange--resident manager of Stephens and Jarrott's
+great wheat business in this outlet of the great wheat provinces--to watch
+the impulse by which Decrepitude rose and shook itself into Youth. As yet
+the process had scarcely advanced beyond the early stages of surprise.
+The dome of the seventeenth-century Renaissance cathedral accustomed for
+five or six generations to look down on low, one-storied Spanish dwellings
+surrounding patios almost Moorish in their privacy, seemed to lift itself
+in some astonishment over warehouses and flour-mills; while the mingling
+of its sweet old bells with the creaking of cranes and the shrieks of
+steam was like that chorus of the centuries in which there can be no
+blending of the tones.
+
+Strange felt himself so much a part of the rejuvenescence that the
+incongruity gave him no mental nor æsthetic shock. If in his present
+position he took a less naïve pride than in that of three years ago, he
+was conscious none the less of a deep satisfaction in having his part,
+however humble, in the exercise of the world's energies. It gave him a
+sense of oneness with the great primal forces--with the river flowing
+beneath him, two hundred miles to the Atlantic, with the wheat fields
+stretching behind him to the confines of Brazil and the foothills of the
+Andes--to be a moving element in this galvanizing of new life into the
+dormant town, in this finding of new riches in the waiting earth. There
+was, too, a kind of companionship in the steamers moored to the red buoys
+in the river, waiting their turns to come up to the insufficient quays and
+be loaded. They bore such names as _Devonshire_, _Ben Nevis_, and
+_Princess of Wales_. They would go back to the countries where the speech
+was English, and the ideals something like his own. They would go back,
+above all, to the north, to the north that he yearned for with a yearning
+to which time brought no mitigation, to the north which was coming to mean
+for him what heaven means to a soul outside the scope of redemption.
+
+It was only on occasions that this sentiment got possession of him
+strongly. He was generally able to keep it down. Hard work, assisted by
+his natural faculty for singleness of purpose and concentration of
+attention, kept him from lifting the eyes of his heart toward the
+unattainable. Moreover, he had developed an enthusiasm, genuine in its
+way, for the land of his adoption. The elemental hugeness of its
+characteristics--its rivers fifty to a hundred miles in width, its farms a
+hundred thousand acres in extent, its sheep herds and cattle herds
+thousands to the count--were of the kind to appeal to an ardent, strenuous
+nature. There was an exhilarating sense of discovery in coming thus early
+to one of the world's richest sources of supply at a minute when it was
+only beginning to be tapped. Out in the Camp there was an impression of
+fecundity, of earth and animal alike, that seem to relegate poverty and
+its kindred ills to a past that would never return; while down in the Port
+the growth of the city went on like the bursting of some magic, monstrous
+flower. It was impossible not to share in some degree the pride of the
+braggart Argentine.
+
+It was difficult, too, not to love a country in which the way had been
+made so smooth for him. While he knew that he brought to his work those
+qualities most highly prized by men of business, he was astonished
+nevertheless at the rapidity with which he climbed. Men of long experience
+in the country had been more than once passed over, while he got the
+promotion for which they had waited ten and fifteen years. He admired the
+way in which for the most part they concealed their chagrin, but now and
+then some one would give it utterance.
+
+"Hello, grafter!" a little man had said to him, on the day when his
+present appointment had become known among his colleagues.
+
+The speaker was coming down the stairs of the head office in the Avenida
+de Mayo as Strange was going up. His name was Green, and though he had
+been twenty years in Argentine, he haled from Boston. Short and stout,
+with gray hair, a gray complexion, a gray mustache, and wearing gray
+flannels, with a gray felt hat, he produced a general impression of
+neutrality. Strange would have gone on his way unheeding had not the
+snarling tone arrested him. He had ignored this sort of insult more than
+once; but he thought the time had come for ending it. He turned on an
+upper step, looking down on the ashy-faced little man, to whom he had once
+been subordinate and who was now subordinate to him.
+
+"Hello--what?" he asked, with an air of quiet curiosity.
+
+"I said, Hello, grafter," Green repeated, with bravado.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I guess you know that as well as I do."
+
+"I don't. What is it? Out with it. Fire away."
+
+His tranquil air of strength had its effect in overawing the little man,
+though the latter stood firm and began to explain.
+
+"A grafter is a fellow with an underground pull for getting hold of what
+belongs to some one else. At least that's what I understand by it--"
+
+"It's very much what I understand by it, too. But have I ever got hold of
+anything of yours?"
+
+"Yes, confound you! You've taken my job--the job I've waited for ever
+since 1885."
+
+"Did waiting for it make it yours? If so, you would have come by it more
+easily than I did. I worked for it."
+
+"Worked for it? Haven't I worked for it, too? Haven't I been in this
+office for going on seventeen years? Haven't I done what they've paid me
+for--?"
+
+"I dare say. But I've done twice what they've paid me for. That's the
+secret of my pull, and I don't mind giving it away. You mayn't like
+it--some fellows don't; but you'll admit it it's a pull you could have
+had, as well as I. Look here, Green," he continued, in the same quiet
+tone, "I'm sorry for you. If I were in your place, I dare say I should
+feel as you do. But if I _were_ in your place, I'll be hanged if I
+shouldn't make myself fit to get out of it. You're not fit--and that's the
+only reason why you aren't going as resident manager to Rosario. You're
+labelled with the year '1885,' as if you were a bottle of champagne--and
+you've forgotten that champagne is a wine that gets out of date. You're a
+good chap--quite as good as your position--but you're not better than your
+position--and when you are you won't be left in it any longer."
+
+In speaking in this way the man who had been Norrie Ford was consciously
+doing violence to himself. His natural tendency was to be on friendly
+terms with those around him, and he had no prompting stronger than the
+liking to be liked. In normal conditions he was always glad to do a
+kindness; and when he hurt any one's feelings he hurt his own still more.
+Even now, though he felt justified in giving little Green to understand
+his intoleration of impertinence, he was obliged to fortify himself by
+appealing to his creed that he owed no consideration to any one. Little
+Green was protected by a whole world organized in his defence; Norrie Ford
+had been ruined by that world, while Herbert Strange had been born outside
+it. With a temperament like that of a quiet mastiff, he was forced to turn
+himself into something like a wolf.
+
+In spite of the fact that little Green's account of the brief meeting on
+the stairs presented it in the light of the castigation he had
+administered to "that confounded upstart from nobody knows where," Strange
+noticed that it made the clerks in the office, most of whom had been his
+superiors as Green had been, less inclined to bark at his heels. He got
+respect from them, even if he could not win popularity--and from
+popularity, in any case, he had been shut out from the first. No man can
+be popular who works harder than anybody else, shuns companionship, and
+takes his rare amusements alone. He had been obliged to do all three,
+knowing in advance that it would create for him a reputation of an "ugly
+brute" in quarters whence he would have been glad to get good-will.
+
+Finding the lack of popularity a safeguard not only against prying
+curiosity, but against inadvertent self-betrayal, it was with some
+misgiving that he saw his hermit-like seclusion threatened, as he rose
+higher in the business and consequently in the social--scale. In the
+English-speaking colony of Buenos Aires the one advance is likely to bring
+about the other--especially in the case of a good-looking young man,
+evidently bound to make his mark, and apparently of respectable
+antecedents. The first menace of danger had come from Mr. Jarrott himself,
+who had unexpectedly invited his intelligent employee to lunch with him at
+a club, in order to talk over a commission with which Strange was to be
+intrusted. On this occasion he was able to stammer his way out of the
+invitation; but when later, Mr. Skinner, the second partner, made a like
+proposal, he was caught without an excuse, being obliged, with some
+confusion, to eat his meal in a fashionable restaurant in the Calle
+Florida. Oddly enough, both his refusal on the one occasion and his
+acceptance on the other obtained him credit with his elders and superiors,
+as a modest young fellow, too shy to seize an honor, and embarrassed when
+it was thrust upon him.
+
+To Strange both occurrences were so alarming that he put himself into a
+daily attitude of defence, fearing similar attack from Mr. Martin, the
+third member of the firm. He, however, made no sign; and the bomb was
+thrown by his wife. It came in the shape of a card informing Mr. Strange
+that on a certain evening, a few weeks hence, Mrs. Martin would be at
+home, at her residence in Hurlingham. It was briefly indicated that there
+would be dancing, and he was requested to answer if he pleased. The
+general information being engraved, his particular name was written in a
+free bold hand, which he took to be that of one of the daughters of the
+family.
+
+Though he did his best to keep his head, there was everything in that bit
+of pasteboard to throw him into a state of something like excitement. Not
+only were the doors of the world Norrie Ford had known being thrown open
+to Herbert Strange, but the one was being moved by the same thrill--the
+thrill of the feminine--that had been so powerful with the other. He was
+growing more susceptible to it in proportion as it seemed forbidden--just
+as a man in a desert island may dream of the delights of wine.
+
+He had looked at the Misses Martin, but had never supposed they could
+fling a glance at him. He had seen them at the public gathering-places--in
+their box at the opera, in the grand stand at the Jockey Club, in their
+carriage at Palermo or in the Florida. They were handsome girls--blonde
+and dashing--whose New York air was in pleasant contrast to the graceful
+indolence or stolid repose of the dark-eyed ladies of the Argentine, too
+heavily bejewelled and too consciously dressed according to the Paris
+mode. Strange said of the Misses Martin, as he had said of Wild Olive,
+that they were "not his type of girl"--but they were girls--they were
+American girls--they were bright, lively girls, representing the very
+poetry and romance of the world that had turned him out.
+
+It was a foregone conclusion that he should decline their invitation, and
+he did so; but the mere occasion for doing it gave his mind an impetus in
+the direction in which he had been able hitherto to check it. He began
+again to think of the feminine, to dream of it, to long for it. For the
+time being it was the feminine in the abstract--without features or
+personality. As far as it took form at all it was with the dainty,
+nestling seductiveness that belonged to what he called his "type"--a charm
+that had nothing in common with the forest grace of the Wild Olive or the
+dash of the Misses Martin.
+
+Now and then he caught glimpses of it, but it was generally out of reach.
+Soft eyes, of the velvety kind that smote him most deliciously, would lift
+their light upon him through the casement of some old Spanish residence,
+or from the daily procession of carriages moving slowly along the palm
+avenue at Palermo or in the Florida. When this happened he would have a
+day or two of acting foolishly, in the manner of the Bonarense bucks. He
+would stand for hours of his leisure time--if he could get away from the
+office at the minute of the fashionable promenade--on the pavement of the
+Florida, or under a palm-tree in the park, waiting for a particular
+carriage to drive round again and again and again, while he returned the
+sweet gaze which the manners of the country allow an unknown lady to
+bestow, as a rose is allowed to shed its beauty. This being done, he
+would go away, and realize that he had been making himself ridiculous.
+
+Once the incarnation of his dreams came so near him that it was actually
+within his grasp. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil dangled its
+fruit right before his eyes in the person of Mademoiselle Hortense, who
+sang at the Café Florian, while the clients, of whom he was sometimes one,
+smoked and partook of refreshments. She was just the little round, soft,
+dimpling, downy bundle of youth and love he so often saw in his mind's
+eye, and so rarely in reality, and he was ready to fall in love with any
+one. The mutual acquaintance was formed, as a matter of course, over the
+piece of gold he threw into the tambourine, from which, as she passed from
+table to table, she was able to measure her hearer's appreciation of art.
+Those were the days in which he first began to be able to dress well, and
+to have a little money to throw away. For ten days or a fortnight he threw
+it away in considerable sums, being either in love or in a condition like
+it. He respected Mademoiselle Hortense, and had sympathy with her in her
+trials. She was desperately sick of her roving life as he was of Mrs.
+Wilson's boarding-house. She was as eager to marry and settle down as he
+to have a home. The subject was not exactly broached between them, but
+they certainly talked round it. The decisive moment came on the night when
+her troupe was to sail for Montevideo. In the most delicate way in the
+world she gave him to understand that she would remain even at the
+eleventh hour if he were to say the word. She might be on the deck, she
+might be in her berth, and it still would not be too late. He left her at
+nine, and she was to sail at eleven. During the two intervening hours he
+paced the town, a prey to hopes, fears, temptations, distresses. To do him
+justice, it was her broken heart he thought of, not his own. To him she
+was only one of many possibilities; to her, he was the chance of a
+lifetime. She might never, he said to himself, "fall into the clutches of
+so decent a chap again." It was a wild wrestle between common sense and
+folly--so wild that he was relieved to hear a clock strike eleven, and to
+know she must have sailed.
+
+The incident sobered him by showing him how near and how easily he could
+come to a certain form of madness. After that he worked harder than ever,
+and in the course of time got his appointment at Rosario. It was a great
+"rise," not only in position and salary, but also in expectations. Mr.
+Martin had been resident manager at Rosario before he was taken into
+partnership--so who could tell what might happen next?
+
+The first intimation of the change was conveyed by Mr. Jarrott in a manner
+characteristically casual. Strange, being about to leave the private
+office one day, after a consultation on some matter of secondary import,
+was already half-way to the door, while Mr. Jarrott himself was stooping
+to replace a book in the revolving bookcase that stood beside his chair.
+
+"By-the-way," he said, without looking up, "Jenkins is going to represent
+the house in New York. We think you had better take his place at Rosario."
+
+Strange drew himself up to attention. He knew the old man liked his
+subordinates to receive momentous orders as if they came in the routine of
+the day.
+
+"Very well, sir," he said, quietly, betraying no sign of his excitement
+within. Raising himself, Mr. Jarrott looked about uneasily, as if trying
+to find something else to say, while Strange began again to move toward
+the door.
+
+"And Mrs. Jarrott--"
+
+Strange stopped so still that the senior partner paused with that air of
+gentlemanly awkwardness--something like an Englishman's--which he took on
+when he had firmly made up his mind.
+
+"Mrs. Jarrott," he continued, "begs me to say she hopes you will--a--come
+and lunch with us on Sunday next."
+
+There was a long pause, during which the young man searched wildly for
+some formula that would soften his point-blank refusal.
+
+"Mrs. Jarrott is awfully kind," he began at last to stammer, "but if she
+would excuse me--"
+
+"She will expect you on Sunday at half-past twelve."
+
+The words were uttered with that barely perceptible emphasis which, as the
+whole house knew, implied that all had been said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the end the luncheon was no formidable affair. Except for his fear,
+lest it should be the thin edge of the wedge of that American social life
+which it would be perilous for him to enter, he would have enjoyed this
+peep into a comfortable home, after his long exile from anything of the
+sort. In building his house at Palermo, Mr. Jarrott had kept, in the
+outlines at least, to the old Spanish style of architecture, as being most
+suited to the history and climate of the country, though the wealthy
+Argentines themselves preferred to have their residences look--like their
+dresses, jewels, and carriages--as if they had come from Paris. The
+interior patio was spacious, shaded with vines, and gay with flowers,
+while birds, caged or free, were singing everywhere. The rooms
+surrounding it were airy and cool, and adapted to American standards of
+comfort. In the dining-room mahogany, damask, crystal, and silver gave
+Strange an odd feeling of having been wafted back to the days and usages
+of the boyhood of Norrie Ford.
+
+As the only guest he found himself seated on Mrs. Jarrott's right, and
+opposite Miss Queenie Jarrott, the sister of the head of the house. The
+host, as his manner was, spoke little. Miss Jarrott, too, only looked at
+Strange across the table, smiling at him with her large, thin,
+upward-curving smile, comic in spite of itself, and with a certain pathos,
+since she meant it to be charged with sentiment. Over the party at table,
+over the elderly men-servants who waited on them, over the room, over the
+patio, there was--except for the singing of the birds--the hush that
+belongs to a household that never hears the noise or the laughter of
+youth.
+
+Mrs. Jarrott took the brunt of the conversation on herself She was a
+beautiful woman, faded now with the pallor that comes to northern people
+after a long residence in the sub-tropical south, and languid from the
+same cause. Her handsome hazel eyes looked as if they had been used to
+weeping, though they conserved a brightness that imparted animation to her
+face. A white frill round her throat gave the only relief to her plain
+black dress, but she wore many handsome rings, after the Argentine fashion
+as well as a brooch and earrings of black pearls.
+
+She began by asking her guest if it was true, as Mr. Jarrott had informed
+her, that he was not one of the Stranges of Virginia. She thought he must
+be. It would be so odd if he wasn't. There _were_ Stranges in Virginia,
+and had been for a great many generations. In fact, her own family, the
+Colfaxes, had almost intermarried with them. When she said almost, she
+meant that they had intermarried with the same families--the Yorkes, the
+Endsleighs and the Poles. If Mr. Strange did belong to the Virginia
+Stranges, she was sure they could find relatives in common. Oh, he didn't?
+Well, it seemed really as if he must. If Mr. Strange came from New York,
+he probably knew the Wrenns. Her own mother was a Wrenn. She had been Miss
+Wrenn before she was Mrs. Colfax. He thought he had heard of them? Oh,
+probably. They were well-known people--at least they had been in the old
+days--though New York was so very much changed. She rarely went back there
+now, the voyage was so long, but when she did she was quite bewildered.
+Her own family used to be so conservative, keeping to a little circle of
+relatives and friends that rarely went north of Boston or south of
+Philadelphia; but now when she made them a visit she found them surrounded
+by a lot of people who had never been heard of before. She thought it a
+pity that in a country where there were so few distinctions, those which
+existed shouldn't be observed.
+
+It was a relief to Strange when the sweet, languorous monologue,
+punctuated from time to time by a response from himself, or an
+interjectory remark from one of the others, came to an end, and they
+proceeded to the patio for coffee.
+
+It was served in a corner shaded by flowering vines, and presided over by
+a huge green and gray parrot in a cage. The host and hostess being denied
+this form of refreshment took advantage of the moment to stroll arm in arm
+around the court, leaving Miss Jarrott in tête-à-tête with Strange. He
+noticed that as this lady led the way her figure was as lithe as a young
+girl's and her walk singularly graceful. "No one is ever old with a
+carriage like yours," Miss Jarrott had been told, and she believed it. She
+dressed and talked according to her figure, and, had it not been for
+features too heavily accentuated in nose and chin, she might have produced
+an impression of eternal spring-tide. As it was, the comic papers would
+have found her cruelly easy to caricature, had she been a statesman. The
+parrot screamed at her approach, croaking out an air, slightly off the
+key:
+
+/P
+    "Up and down the ba-by goes,
+    Turning out its lit-tle ..."
+P/
+
+Tempted to lapse into prose, it proceeded to cry:
+
+"Wa-al, Polly, how are you to-day? Wa-al, pretty well for an old gal,"
+after which there was a minute of inarticulate grumbling. When coffee was
+poured, and the young man's cigarette alight, Miss Jarrott seized the
+opportunity which her sister-in-law's soft murmur at the table had not
+allowed her.
+
+"It's really funny you should be Mr. Strange, because I've known a young
+lady of the same name. That is, I haven't known her exactly, but I've
+known about her."
+
+Not to show his irritation at the renewal of the subject, Strange presumed
+she was one of the Stranges of Virginia, with right and title to be so
+called.
+
+"She is and she isn't," Miss Jarrot replied. "I know you'll think it funny
+to hear me speak so; but I can't explain I'm like that. I can't always
+explain. I say lots and lots of things that people just have to interpret
+for themselves It's funny I should be like that, isn't it? I wonder why?
+Can you tell me why? And this Miss Strange--I never knew her really--not
+really--but I feel as if I had. I always feel that way about friends of
+friends of mine. I feel as if they were my friends, too. I'd go through
+fire and water for them. Of course that's just an expression but you know
+what I mean, now don't you?"
+
+Having been assured on that point, she continued:
+
+"I'm afraid you'll find us a very quiet household, Mr. Strange, but we're
+in mourning. That is, Mrs. Jarrott is in mourning; and when those dear to
+me are in mourning I always feel that I'm in mourning, too. I'm like that.
+I never can tell why it is, but--I'm like that. My sister-in-law has just
+lost her sister-in-law. Of course that's no relation to me, is it? And yet
+I feel as if it was. I've always called Mrs. Colfax my sister-in-law, and
+I've taught her little girl to call me Aunt Queenie. They lived here once.
+Mr. Colfax was Mrs. Jarrott's brother and Mr. Jarrott's partner. The
+little girl was born here. It was a great loss to my brother when Mr.
+Colfax died. Mrs. Colfax went back to New York and married again. That was
+a blow, too; so we haven't been on the same friendly terms of late years.
+But now I hope it will be different. I'm like that. I always hope. It's
+funny, isn't it? No matter what happens, I always think there's a silver
+lining to the cloud. Now, why should I be like that? Why shouldn't I
+despair, like other people?"
+
+Strange ventured the suggestion that she had been born with a joyous
+temperament.
+
+"Wa-al, pretty well for an old gal!" screamed the parrot ending in a
+croaking laugh.
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," Miss Jarrott mused. "Everybody is different,
+don't you think? And yet it sometimes seems to me that no one can be so
+different as I am. I always hope and hope; and you see, in this case I've
+been justified. We're going to have our little girl again. She's coming to
+make us a long, long visit. Her name is Evelyn; and once we get her here
+we hope she'll stay. Who knows? There may be something to keep her here.
+You never can tell about that. She's an orphan, with no one in the world
+but a stepfather, and he's blind. So who has a better right to her? I
+always think that people who have a right to other people should have
+them, don't you? Besides, he's going to Wiesbaden, to a great oculist
+there, so that Evelyn will come to us as her natural protectors. She's
+nearly eighteen now, and she wasn't eight when she left us. Oh yes, of
+course we've seen her since then--when we've gone to New York--but that
+hasn't been often. She will have changed; she'll have her hair up, and be
+wearing her dresses long; but I shall know her. Oh, you couldn't deceive
+me. I never forget a face. I'm like that. No, nor names either. I should
+remember you, Mr. Strange, if I met you fifty years from now. I noticed
+you when you first began to work for Stephens and Jarrott. So did my
+sister-in-law, but I noticed you first. We've often spoken of you,
+especially after we knew your name was Strange. It seemed to us so
+strange. That's a pun, isn't it? I often make them. We both thought you
+were like what Henry--that's Mr. Jarrott's oldest son--might have grown
+to, if he had been spared to us. We've had a great deal of sorrow--Oh, a
+great deal! It's weaned my sister-in-law away from the world altogether.
+She's like that. My brother, too--he isn't the same man. So when Evelyn
+comes we hope we shall see you often, Mr. Strange. You must begin to look
+on this house as your second home. Indeed, you must. It'll please my
+brother. I've never heard him speak of any young man as he's spoken of
+you. I think he sees the likeness to Henry. That'll be next year when
+Evelyn comes. No, I'm sorry to say it isn't to be this year. She can't
+leave her stepfather till he goes to Wiesbaden. Then she'll be free. Some
+one else is going to Wiesbaden with him. And isn't it funny, it's the same
+Miss Strange--the lady we were speaking of just now."
+
+It was already some months since those words had been spoken, so that he
+had ceased to dwell on them; but at first they haunted him like a snatch
+of an air that passes through the mental hearing, and yet eludes the
+attempt to bring it to the lips. Even if he had had the synthetic
+imagination that easily puts two and two together, he had not the leisure,
+in the excitement of his removal to Rosario and the undertaking of his
+duties there, to follow up a set of clews that were scarcely more palpable
+than odors. Nevertheless the words came back to him from time to time, and
+always with the same odd suggestion of a meaning special--perhaps
+fatal--to himself. They came back to him at this minute, as he stood
+watching the loading of the _Walmer Castle_ and breathing the fresh air
+off the Parana. But if they threatened danger, it was a danger that
+disappeared the instant he turned and faced it--leaving nothing behind but
+the evanescent memory of a memory, such as will sometimes remain from a
+dream about a dream.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+
+Another year had passed before he learned what Miss Jarrott's words were
+to mean to him. Knowledge came then as a flash of revelation in which he
+saw himself and his limitations clearly defined. His success at Rosario
+had been such that he had begun to think himself master of Fate; but Fate
+in half an hour laughingly showed herself mistress of him.
+
+He had been called to Buenos Aires on an errand of piety and affection--to
+bury Monsieur Durand. The poor old unfrocked priest had been gathered to
+his rest, taking his secret with him--penitent, reconciled to the Church,
+and fortified with the Last Sacraments. Strange slipped a crucifix between
+the wax-like fingers, and followed--the only mourner--to the Recoleta
+Cemetery.
+
+Having ordered a cross to mark the grave, he remained in town a day or two
+longer to attend to a small matter which for some time past he had at
+heart and on his conscience. It was now three or four years since he had
+set aside the sum lent him by the girl for whom he had still no other name
+than that of the Wild Olive. He had invested it, and reinvested it, till
+it had become a fund of some importance. Putting it now into the safest
+American securities, he placed them in the hands of a firm of English
+solicitors in Buenos Aires, with directions not only to invest the
+interest from time to time, but--in the event of his death--to follow
+certain sealed instructions with which also he intrusted them. From the
+few hints he was able to give them in this way he had little doubt but
+that her identity could be discovered, and the loan returned.
+
+In taking these steps he could not but see that what would be feasible in
+case of his death must be equally feasible now; but he had two reasons for
+not attempting it. The first was definite and prudential. He was unwilling
+to risk anything that could connect him ever so indirectly with the life
+of Norrie Ford. Secondly, he was conscious of a vague shrinking from the
+payment of this debt otherwise than face to face. Apart from
+considerations of safety, he was unwilling to resort to the commonplace
+channels of business as long as there was a possibility of taking another
+way.
+
+Not that he was eager to see her again. He had questioned himself on that
+point, and knew she had faded from his memory. Except for a vision of
+fugitive dark eyes--eyes of Beatrice Cenci--he could scarcely recall her
+features. Events during the last six years had pressed so fast on each
+other, life had been so full, so ardent, each minute had been so insistent
+that he should give it his whole soul's attention, that the antecedent
+past was gone like the passion no effort can recapture. As far as he could
+see her face at all, it looked at him out of an abyss of oblivion to which
+his mind found it as hard to travel back as a man's imagination to his
+infancy.
+
+It was with some shame that he admitted this. She had saved him--in a
+sense, she had created him. By her sorcery she had raised up Herbert
+Strange out of the ruin of Norrie Ford, and endowed him with young vigor.
+He owed her everything. He had told her so. He had vowed his life to her.
+It was to be hers to dispose of, even at her caprice. It was what he had
+meant in uttering his parting words to her. But, now, that he had the
+power in some degree, he was doing nothing to fulfil his promise. He had
+even lost the desire to make the promise good.
+
+It was not difficult to find excuses for himself. They were ready-made to
+his hand. There was nothing practical that he could do except what he had
+done about the money. Life was not over yet; and some day the chance might
+come to prove himself as high-souled as he should like to be. If he could
+only have been surer that he was inwardly sincere he would not have been
+uneasy over his inactivity.
+
+Then, within a few minutes, the thing happened that placed him in a new
+attitude, not only toward the Wild Olive, but toward all life.
+
+Business with the head office detained him in Buenos Aires longer than he
+had expected. It was business of a few hours at a time, leaving him
+leisure for the theatres and the opera, for strollings at Palermo, and for
+standing stock-still watching the procession of carriages in the Florida
+or the Avenida Sarmiento, in the good Bonarense fashion. He was always
+alone, for he had acquired the art--none too easy--of taking pleasure
+without sharing it.
+
+So he found himself, one bright afternoon, watching the races from the
+lawn of the Hipodromo of the Jockey Club. He was fond of horses, and he
+liked a good race. When he went to the Hipodromo it was for the sporting,
+not the social, aspect of the affair. Nevertheless, as he strolled about,
+he watched for that occasional velvety glance that gave him pleasure, and
+amused himself with the types seated around him, or crossing his
+path--heavy, swarthy Argentines, looking like Italian laborers grown
+rich--their heavy, swarthy wives, come out to display all the jewels that
+could be conveniently worn at once--pretty, dark-eyed girls, already with
+a fatal tendency to embonpoint, wearing diamonds in their ears and round
+their necks as an added glory to costumes fresh from the rue de la
+Paix--grave little boys, in gloves and patent-leather boots, seated
+without budging by their mammas, sucking the tops of their canes in
+imitation of their elder brothers, who wandered about in pairs or groups,
+all of the latest cut, eying the ladies but rarely addressing them--tall
+Englishmen, who looked taller than they were in contrast to the pudgy race
+around them, as the Germans looked lighter and the French more
+blond--Italian opera singers, Parisian actresses Spanish dancers,
+music-hall soubrettes--diplomats of all nations--clerks out for a
+holiday--sailors on shore--tourists come to profit by a spectacle that has
+no equal in the southern world, and little of the kind that is more
+amusing in the north.
+
+As Strange's glance roamed about in search of a response he not
+infrequently received it, for he was a handsome fellow by this time--tall,
+well dressed, and well set up, his trim, fair beard emphasizing the
+clear-cut regularity of his profile, without concealing the kindliness
+that played about the mouth. A little gray on the temples, as well as a
+few tiny wrinkles of concentration about the eyes, gave him an air of
+maturity beyond his age of thirty-two. The Anglo-Saxon influence in the
+Argentine is English--from which cause he had insensibly taken on an
+English air, as his speech had acquired something of the English
+intonation. He was often told that he might pass for an Englishman
+anywhere, and he was glad to think so. It was a reason the less for being
+identified as Norrie Ford. It sometimes seemed to him that he could, in
+case of necessity, go back to North America, to New York, to Greenport, or
+even to the little county town where he had been tried and sentenced to
+death, and run no risk of detection.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The staring of other men first directed his attention toward her. She was
+sitting slightly detached from the party of Americans to whom she clearly
+belonged, and in which the Misses Martin formed the merrily noisy centre.
+Though dressed in white, that fell softly about her feet, and trained on
+the grass sidewise from her chair, her black cuffs, collar and hat
+suggested the last days of mourning. Whether or not she was aware of the
+gaze of the passers-by it was difficult to guess, for her air of demure
+simplicity was proof against penetration. She was one of those dainty
+little creatures who seem to see best with the eyes downcast; but when she
+lifted her dark lashes, the darker from contrast with the golden hair, to
+sweep heaven and earth in a blue glance that belonged less to scrutiny
+than to prayer, the effort seemed to create a shyness causing the lids,
+dusky as some flowers are, to drop heavily into place again, like curtains
+over a masterpiece. It was so that they rose and fell before Strange, her
+eyes meeting his in a look that no Argentine beauty could ever have
+bestowed, in that it was free from coquetry or intention, and wholly
+accidental.
+
+It was in fact this accidental element, with its lack of preparation, that
+gave the electric thrill to both. That is to say, in Strange the thrill
+was electric; as for her, she gave no sign further than that she opened
+her parasol and raised it to shade her face. Having done this she
+continued to sit in undisturbed composure, though she probably saw
+through her fringing lashes that the tall, good-looking young man still
+stood spellbound, not twenty yards away.
+
+Strange, on his part, was aware of the unconventionality of his behavior,
+though he was incapable of moving on. He felt the occasion to be one which
+justified him in transcending the established rules of courtesy. He was
+face to face with the being who met not only all the longings of his
+earthly love, but the higher, purer aspirations that accompanied it. It
+was not, so he said to himself, a chance meeting; it was one which the
+ages had prepared, and led him up to. She was "his type of girl" only in
+so far as she distilled the essence of his gross imaginings and gave them
+in their exquisite reality. So, too, she was the incarnation of his dreams
+only because he had yearned for something mundane of which she was the
+celestial, and the true, embodiment. He had that sense of the
+insufficiency of his own powers of preconception which comes to a blind
+man when he gets his sight and sees a rose.
+
+He was so lost in the wonder of the vision that he had to be awakened as
+from a trance when Miss Jarrott, very young and graceful, crossed the lawn
+and held out her hand.
+
+"Mr. Strange! I didn't know you were in town. My brother never mentioned
+it. He's like that. He never tells. If I didn't guess his thoughts, I
+shouldn't know anything. But I always guess people's thoughts. Why do you
+suppose it is? I don't know. Do you? When I see people, I can tell what
+they're thinking of as well as anything. I'm like that; but I can't tell
+how I do it. I saw you from over there, and I knew you were thinking about
+Evelyn. Now weren't you? Oh, you can't deceive me. You were thinking of
+her just as plain--! Well, now you must come and be introduced."
+
+He felt that he stumbled blindly as he crossed the bit of greensward in
+Miss Jarrott's wake; and yet he kept his head sufficiently to know that he
+was breaking his rules, contradicting his past, and putting himself in
+peril. In being presented to the Misses Martin and their group, he was
+actually entering that Organized Society to which Herbert Strange had no
+attachments, and in which he could thrust down no roots. By sheer force of
+will he might keep a footing there, as a plant that cannot strike into the
+soil may cling to a bare rock. All the same the attempt would be
+dangerous, and might easily lead to his being swept away.
+
+It was in full consciousness, therefore, of the revolution in his life
+that he bowed before the Misses Martin, who received him coldly. He had
+not come to their dance, nor "called," nor shown them any of the
+civilities they were accustomed to look for from young men. Turning their
+attention at once to the other gentlemen about them, they made no effort
+to detain him as Miss Jarrott led him to Miss Colfax.
+
+Here the introduction would have been disappointing if the greatness of
+the event had not been independent of the details with which it happened.
+Strange was not in a condition to notice them, any more than a soul can
+heed the formalities with which it is admitted into heaven. Nearly all his
+impressions were subconscious--to be brought to the surface and dwelt on
+after he went away. It was thus he recorded the facts relating to the gold
+tint--the _teint doré_--of her complexion, the curl of her lashes that
+seemed to him deep chestnut rather than quite black, as well as the little
+tremor about her mouth, which was pensive in repose, and yet smiled with
+the unreserved sweetness of an infant. He could not be said to have taken
+in any of these points at a glance; but they came to him later, vividly,
+enchantingly, in the solitude of his room at the Phoenix Hotel.
+
+What actually passed would have been commonplace in itself had it not been
+for what lay behind. Miss Colfax acknowledged the introduction with a
+fleeting smile and a quick lifting of the curtains of her eyes. He did not
+need that glimpse to know that they were blue, but he got a throb of bliss
+from it, as does one from the gleam of a sunlit sea. To her answers to the
+questions he asked as to when she had arrived, how she liked the
+Argentine, and what she thought of the Hipodromo, he listened less than to
+the silvery timbre of her voice. Mere words were as unimportant to those
+first minutes of subtle ecstasy as to an old Italian opera. The music was
+the thing, and for that he had become one enraptured auditory nerve.
+
+There was no chair for him, so that he was obliged to carry on the
+conversation standing. He did not object to this, as it would give him an
+excuse for passing on. That he was eager to go, to be alone, to think, to
+feel, to suffer, to realize, to trace step by step the minutes of the day
+till they had led him to the supreme instant when his eyes had fallen on
+her, to take the succeeding seconds one by one and extract the
+significance from each, was proof of the power of the spell that had been
+cast upon him.
+
+"And isn't it funny, Evie, dear," Miss Jarrott began, just as he was about
+to take his leave, "that Mr. Strange's name should be--"
+
+"Yes, I've been thinking about that," Miss Colfax fluted, with that pretty
+way she had of speaking with little movement of the lips.
+
+But he was gone. He was gone with those broken sentences ringing in his
+ears--casual and yet haunting--meaningless and yet more than
+pregnant--creeping through the magic music of the afternoon, as a
+death-motive breathes in a love-chant.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+
+After a night of little sleep and much thinking he determined to listen to
+nothing but the love-chant. He came to this decision, not in the
+recklessness of self-will, but after due consideration of his rights. It
+was true that, in biblical phrase, necessity was laid upon him. He could
+no more shut his ears against that entrancing song than he could shut his
+eyes against the daylight. This was not, however, the argument that he
+found most cogent, as it was not the impulse from which he meant to act.
+If he could make this girl his wife it would be something more than a case
+of getting his own way; it would be an instance--probably the highest
+instance--of the assertion of himself against a world organized to destroy
+him. He could not enter that world and form a part of it; but at least he
+could carry off a wife from it, as a lion may leap into a sheepfold and
+snatch a lamb.
+
+It was in this light that he viewed the matter when he accepted Miss
+Jarrott's invitations--now to lunch, now to dinner, now to a seat in their
+box at the opera or in their carriage in the park--during the rest of the
+time he remained in town. It became clear to him that the family viewed
+with approval the attachment that had sprung up between Miss Colfax and
+himself, and were helping it to a happy ending. He even became aware that
+they were growing fond of him--making the discovery with a queer
+sensation of surprise. It was a thing so new in his experience that he
+would have treated the notion as ridiculous had it not been forced upon
+him. Women had shown him favors; one lonely old man, now lying in the
+Recoleta Cemetery, had yearned over him; but a household had never opened
+its heart to him before. And yet there could be no other reading of the
+present situation. He began to think that Mr. Jarrott was delaying his
+departure for Rosario purposely, to keep him near. It was certain that
+into the old man's bearing toward him there had crept something that might
+almost be called paternal, so that their business discussions were much
+like those between father and son. Mrs. Jarrott advanced as far out of the
+circle of her griefs to welcome him as it was possible for her languorous
+spirit to emerge. Miss Jarrott, friendly from the first, attached him to
+the wheels of her social chariot with an air of affectionate possession.
+
+It required no great amount of perspicuity to see that the three elders
+would be glad if Miss Colfax and he were to "make a match of it," and why.
+It would be a means--and a means they could approve--of keeping their
+little girl among them. As matters stood, she was only a visitor, who
+spoke of her flight back to New York as a matter of course.
+
+"I only came," she lisped to Strange, as they sat one day, under the
+parrot's chaperonage, in the shady corner of the patio--"I only came
+because when dear mamma died there was nothing else for me to do.
+Everything happened so unfortunately, do you see? Mamma died, and my
+stepfather went blind, and really I had no home. Of course that doesn't
+matter so much while I'm in mourning--I mean, not having a home--but I
+simply _must_ go back to New York next autumn, in order to 'come out.'"
+
+[Illustration: "Who is Miriam?" was on his lips]
+
+"Aren't you 'out' enough already?"
+
+"Do you see?" she began to explain, with the quaint air of practical
+wisdom he adored in her, "I'm not out at all--and I'm nearly nineteen.
+Dear mamma fretted over it as it was--and if she knew it hadn't been done
+yet--Well something must be managed, but I don't know what. It isn't as if
+Miriam could do anything about it, though she's a great deal older than I
+am, and has seen a lot of social life at Washington and in England. But
+she's out of the question. Dear mamma would never have allowed it. And
+she's no relation to me, besides."
+
+The question, "Who is Miriam?" was on his lips, but he checked it in time.
+He checked all questions as to her relatives and friends whom he did not
+know already. He was purposely making ignorance his bliss as long as
+possible, in the hope that before enlightenment could be forced upon him
+it would be too late for any one to recede.
+
+"Couldn't they do it for you here?" he asked, when he was sure of what he
+meant to say. "I know the Miss Martins--"
+
+"Carrie and Ethel! Oh, well! That isn't quite the same thing. _I_ couldn't
+come out in a place like Buenos Aires--or anywhere, except New York."
+
+"But when you've been through it all, you'll come back here, won't you?"
+
+His eyes sought hers, but he saw only the curtains of the lids--those lids
+with the curious dusk on them, which reminded him of the petals of certain
+pansies.
+
+"That'll--depend," she said, after a minute's hesitation.
+
+"It'll depend--on what?" he persisted, softly.
+
+Before she could answer the parrot interrupted, screaming out a bit of
+doggerel in its hoarse staccato.
+
+"Oh, that bird!" the girl cried, springing up. "I do wish some one would
+wring its neck."
+
+He got no nearer to his point that day, and perhaps he was not eager to.
+The present situation, with its excitements and uncertainties, was too
+blissful to bring to a sudden end. Besides, he was obliged to go through
+some further rehearsing of the creed adopted in the dawn on Lake Champlain
+before his self-justification could be complete. It was not that he was
+questioning his right to act; it was only that he needed to strengthen the
+chain of arguments by which his action must be supported--against himself.
+Within his own heart there was something that pleaded against the breaking
+off of this tender sprig of the true olive to graft it on the wild, in
+addition to which the attitude of the Jarrott family disconcerted him. It
+was one thing to push his rights against a world ready to deny them, but
+it was quite another to take advantage of a trusting affection that came
+more than half-way to meet him. His mind refused to imagine what they
+would do if they could know that behind the origin of Herbert Strange
+there lay the history of Norrie Ford. After all, he was not concerned with
+them, he asserted inwardly, but with himself. They were intrenched within
+a world able to take care of itself; while there was no power whatever to
+protect him, once he made a mistake.
+
+So every night, as he sat in his cheerless hotel room, he reviewed his
+arguments, testing them one by one, strengthening the weak spots according
+to his lights, and weighing the for and against with all the nicety he
+could command. On the one side were love, happiness, position, a home,
+children probably, and whatever else the normal, healthy nature craves;
+on the other, loneliness, abnegation, crucifixion, slow torture, and
+slower death. Was it just to himself to choose the latter, simply because
+human law had made a mistake and put him outside the human race? The
+answer was obvious enough; but while his intelligence made it promptly,
+something else within him--some illogical emotion--seemed to lag behind
+with its corroboration.
+
+This hesitation of his entire being to respond to the bugle-call of his
+need gave to his wooing a certain irregularity--an advance and recession
+like that of the tide. At the very instant when the words of declaration
+were trembling on his lips this doubt about himself would check him. There
+were minutes--moonlit minutes, in the patio, when the birds were hushed,
+and the scent of flowers heavy, and the voices of the older ones stole
+from some lighted room like a soft, human obligato to the melody of the
+night--minutes when he felt that to his "I love you!" hers would come as
+surely as the echo to the sound; and yet he shrank from saying it. Their
+talk would drift near to it, dally with it, flash about it, play attack
+and defence across it, and drift away again, leaving the essential thing
+unspoken. The skill with which she fenced with this most fragile of all
+topics, never losing her guard, never missing her thrust or parry, and yet
+never inflicting anything like a wound, filled him with a sort of rapture.
+It united the innocence of a child to the cleverness of a woman of the
+world, giving an exquisite piquancy to both. In this young creature, who
+could have had no experience of anything of the kind, it was the very
+essence of the feminine.
+
+By dint of vigil and meditation he drew the conclusion that his inner
+hesitancy sprang from the fact that he was not being honest with himself.
+He was shirking knowledge that he ought to face. Up to the present he had
+done his duty in that respect, and done it pluckily. He had not balked at
+the statement that his rôle in the world was that of an impostor--though
+an impostor of the world's own creation. It had been part of the task
+forced upon him "to deceive men under their very noses," as he had
+expressed it to himself that night on Lake Champlain. Whatever vengeance,
+therefore, discovery might call upon him, he could suffer nothing in the
+loss of self-respect. He would be always supported by his inner approval.
+Remorse would be as alien to him as to Prometheus on the rock.
+
+In the present situation he was less sure of that, and there he put his
+finger on his weakness. Seeing shadows flitting in the background he
+dodged them, instead of calling them out into daylight. He was counting on
+happy chances in dealing with the unforeseen, when all his moves should be
+based on the precise information of a general.
+
+Therefore, when, in the corner of the patio, the next opportunity arose
+for asking the question, "Who is Miriam?" he brought it out boldly.
+
+"She's a darling." The unexpected reply was accompanied by a sudden
+lifting of the lashes for a rapturous look and one of the flashing smiles.
+
+"That's high praise--from you."
+
+"She deserves it--from any one!"
+
+"Why? What for? What has she done to win your enthusiasm when other people
+find it so hard?"
+
+"It isn't so hard--only some people go the wrong way to work about it, do
+you see?"
+
+She leaned back in her wicker chair, fanning herself slowly, and smiling
+at him with that air of mingled innocence and provocation which he found
+the most captivating of her charms.
+
+"Do I?" he was tempted to ask.
+
+"Do you? Now, let me think. Really, I never noticed. You'd have to begin
+all over again--if you ever did begin--before I could venture an opinion."
+
+This was pretty, but it was not keeping to the point.
+
+"Evidently Miriam knows how to do it, and when I see her I shall ask her."
+
+"I wish you _could_ see her. You'd adore her. She'd be just your style."
+
+"What makes you think that? Is she so beautiful? What is she like?"
+
+"Oh, I couldn't tell you what she's like. You'd have to see her for
+yourself. No, I don't think I should call her beautiful, though some
+people do. She's awfully attractive anyhow."
+
+"Attractive? In what way?"
+
+"Oh, in a lot of ways. She isn't like anybody else. She's in a class by
+herself. In fact, she has to be, poor thing."
+
+"Why should she be poor thing, with so much to her credit in the way of
+assets?"
+
+"Do you see?--that's something I can't tell you. There's a sort of mystery
+about her. I'm not sure that I understand it very well myself. I only know
+that dear mamma didn't feel that she could take her out, in New York,
+except among our very most intimate friends, where it didn't matter. And
+yet when Lady Bonchurch took her to Washington she got a lot of offers--I
+know that for a fact--and in England, too."
+
+"I seem to be getting deeper in," Strange smiled, with the necessary air
+of speaking carelessly. "Who is Lady Bonchurch?"
+
+"Don't you know? Why, I thought you knew everything. She was the wife of
+the British Ambassador. They took a house at Greenport that year because
+they were afraid about Lord Bonchurch's lungs. It didn't do any good,
+though. He had to give up his post the next winter, and not long after
+that he died. I don't think air is much good for people's lungs, do you? I
+know it wasn't any help to dear mamma. We had all those tedious years at
+Greenport, and in the end--but that's how we came to know Lady Bonchurch,
+and she took a great fancy to Miriam. She said it was a shame a girl like
+that shouldn't have a chance, and so it was. Mamma thought she interfered
+and I suppose she did. Still, you can't blame her much, when she had no
+children of her own, can you?"
+
+"I shouldn't want to blame her if she gave Miriam her chance."
+
+"That's what I've always said. And if Miriam had only wanted to, she could
+have been--well, almost anybody. She had offers and offers in Washington,
+and in England there was a Sir Somebody-or-other who asked her two or
+three times over. He married an actress in the end--and dear mamma thought
+Miriam must be crazy not to have taken him while he was to be had. Dear
+mamma said it would have been such a good thing for me to have some one
+like Miriam--who was under obligations to us, do you see?--in a good
+social position abroad."
+
+"But Miriam didn't see it in that way?"
+
+"She didn't see it in any way. She's terribly exasperating in some
+respects, although she's such a dear. Poor mamma used to be very tried
+about her--and she so ill--and my stepfather going blind--and everything.
+If Miriam had only been in a good social position abroad it would have
+been a place for me to go--instead of having no home--like this."
+
+There was something so touching in her manner that he found it difficult
+not to offer her a home there and then; but the shadows were marching out
+into daylight, and he must watch the procession to the end.
+
+"It seems to have been very inconsiderate of Miriam," he said. "But why do
+you suppose she acted so?"
+
+"Dear mamma thought she was in love with some one--some one we didn't know
+anything about--but I never believed that. In the first place, she didn't
+know any one we didn't know anything about--not before she went to
+Washington with Lady Bonchurch. And besides, she couldn't be in love with
+any one without my knowing it, now could she?"
+
+"I suppose not; unless she made up her mind she wouldn't tell you."
+
+"Oh, I shouldn't want her to tell me. I should see it for myself. She
+wouldn't tell me, in any case--not till things had gone so far that--but I
+never noticed the least sign of it, do you see? and I've a pretty sharp
+eye for that sort of thing at all times. There was just one thing. Dear
+mamma used to say that for a while she used to do a good deal of moping in
+a little studio she had, up in the hills near our house--but you couldn't
+tell anything from that. I've gone and moped there myself when I've felt I
+wanted a good cry--and I wasn't in love with any one."
+
+There was a long silence, during which he sat grave, motionless,
+reflecting. Now and then he placed his extinguished cigarette to his
+lips, with the mechanical motion of a man forgetful of time and place and
+circumstance.
+
+"Well, what are you thinking about?" she inquired, when the pause had
+lasted long enough. He seemed to wake with a start.
+
+"Oh--I--I don't know. I rather fancy I was thinking about--about this
+Miss--after all, you haven't given me any name but Miriam."
+
+"Strange, her name is. The same as yours."
+
+"Oh? You've never told me that."
+
+"Aunt Queenie has, though. But you always seem to shuffle so when it's
+mentioned that I've let it alone. I don't blame you, either; for if
+there's one thing more tedious than another, it's having people for ever
+fussing about your name. There was a girl at our school whose name was
+Fidgett--Jessie Fidgett--a nice, quiet girl, as placid as a church--but I
+do assure you, it got to be so tiresome--well, you know how it would
+be--and so I decided I wouldn't say anything about Miriam's name to you,
+nor about yours to her. Goodness knows, there must be lots of Stranges in
+the world--just as much as Jarrotts."
+
+"So that--after all--her name was Miriam Strange."
+
+"It was, and is, and always will be--if she goes on like this," Miss
+Colfax rejoined, not noticing that he had spoken half-musingly to himself.
+"She was a ward of my step-father's till she came of age," she added, in
+an explanatory tone. "She's a sort of Canadian--or half a Canadian--or
+something--I never could quite make out what. Anyhow, she's a dear. She's
+gone now with my stepfather to Wiesbaden, about his eyes--and you can't
+think what a relief to me it is. If she hadn't, I might have had to go
+myself--and at my age--with all I've got to think about--and my coming
+out--Well, you can see how it would be."
+
+She lifted such sweet blue eyes upon him that he would have seen anything
+she wanted him to see, if he had not been determined to push his inquiries
+until there was nothing left for him to learn.
+
+"Were you fond of him?--your stepfather?"
+
+"Of course--in a way. But everything was so unfortunate I know dear mamma
+thought she was acting for the best when she married him; and if he hadn't
+begun to go blind almost immediately--But he was very kind to mamma, when
+she had to go to the Adirondacks for her health. That was very soon after
+she returned to New York from here--when papa died. But she was so lonely
+in the Adirondacks--and he was a judge--a Mr. Wayne--with a good
+position--and naturally she never dreamed he had anything the matter with
+his eyes--it isn't the sort of thing you'd ever think of asking about
+beforehand--and so it all happened that way, do you see?"
+
+He did see. He could have wished not to see so clearly. He saw with a
+light that dazzled him. Any step would be hazardous now, except one in
+retreat; though he was careful to explain to himself that night that it
+was retreat for reconnoitre, and not for running away. The mere fact that
+the Wild Olive had taken on personality, with a place of some sort in the
+world, brought her near to him again; while the knowledge that he bore her
+name--possibly her father's name--seemed to make him the creation of her
+magic to an even greater degree than he had felt hitherto. He could
+perceive, too, that by living out the suggestions she had made to him in
+the cabin--the Argentine--Stephens and Jarrott--"the very good firm to
+work for"--he had never got beyond her influence, no more than the
+oak-tree gets beyond the acorn that has been its seed. The perception of
+these things would have been enough to puzzle a mind not easily at home in
+the complex, even if the reintroduction of Judge Wayne had not confused
+him further.
+
+It was not astonishing, therefore, that he was seized with a sudden
+longing to get away--a longing for space and solitude, for the pampas and
+the rivers, and, above all, for work. In the free air his spirit would
+throw off its oppression of discomfort, while in a daily routine of
+occupation he often found that difficulties solved themselves.
+
+"If you think that this business of Kent's can get along without me now,"
+he said to Mr. Jarrott, in the private office, next morning, "perhaps I
+had better be getting back to Rosario."
+
+Not a muscle moved in the old man's long, wooden face, but the gray-blue
+eyes threw Strange a curious look.
+
+"Do you want to go?" he asked, after a slight pause.
+
+Strange smiled, with an embarrassment that did not escape observation.
+
+"I've been away longer than I expected--a good deal longer. Things must
+want looking after, I suppose. Green can take my place for a while, but--"
+
+"Green is doing very well--better than I thought he could. He seems to
+have taken a new start, that man."
+
+"I'm not used to loafing, sir. If there's no particular reason for my
+staying on here--"
+
+Mr. Jarrott fitted the tips of his fingers together, and answered slowly.
+
+"There's no particular reason--just now. We've been speaking
+of--of--a--certain changes--But it's too soon--"
+
+"Of course, sir, I don't want to urge my private wishes against--"
+
+"Quite so; quite so; I understand that. A--a--private wishes, you say?"
+
+"Yes, sir; entirely private."
+
+The gray-blue eyes rested on him in a gaze meant to be uninquisitive and
+non-committal, but which, as a matter of fact, expressed something from
+which Strange turned his own glance away.
+
+"Very well; I'd go," the old man said, quietly.
+
+Strange left his cards that afternoon at the house just when he knew Mrs.
+Jarrott would be resting and Miss Jarrott driving with Miss Colfax. At
+seven he took the night boat up the Plata to the Parana.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+
+"Evie, what do you think made Mr. Strange rush away like that? Your uncle
+says he didn't have to--that he might just as well have stayed in town."
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," was Evie's truthful response, as she flitted
+about the dining-room table arranging the flowers before luncheon.
+
+"Your uncle thinks you do," Mrs. Jarrott said, leaning languidly back in
+an arm-chair. Her tone and manner implied that the matter had nothing to
+do with her, though she was willing to speak of it. This was as far as she
+could come to showing an interest in anything outside herself since the
+boys died. She would not have brought up the subject now if the girl's
+pallor during the last few days had not made them uneasy.
+
+"I haven't the least idea," Miss Colfax declared. "I was just as much
+surprised as you were, Aunt Helen."
+
+"Your uncle thinks you must have said something to him--"
+
+"I didn't. I didn't say anything to him whatever. Why should I? He's
+nothing to me."
+
+"Of course he's nothing to you, if you're engaged to Billy Merrow."
+
+Miss Colfax leaned across the table, taking a longer time than necessary
+to give its value to a certain rose.
+
+"I'm not engaged to him now," she said, as if after reflection--"not in
+my own mind, that is."
+
+"But you are in his, I suppose."
+
+"Well, I can't help that, can I?"
+
+"Not unless you write and tell him it's all over."
+
+Miss Colfax stood still, a large red flower raised in protestation.
+
+"That would be the cruellest thing I ever heard of," she exclaimed, with
+conviction. "I don't see how you can bear to make the suggestion."
+
+"Then what are you going to do about it?"
+
+"I needn't do anything just yet. There's no hurry--till I get back to New
+York."
+
+"Do you mean to let him go on thinking--?"
+
+"He'd much rather. Whenever I tell him, it will be too soon for him.
+There's no reason why he should know earlier than he wants to."
+
+"But is that honor, dear?"
+
+"How can I tell?" At so unreasonable a question the blue eyes clouded with
+threatening tears. "I can't go into all those fine points, Aunt Helen, do
+you see? I've just got to do what's right."
+
+Mrs. Jarrot rose with an air of helplessness. She loved her brother's
+daughter tenderly enough, but she admitted to herself that she did not
+understand young girls. Having borne only sons, she had never been called
+upon to struggle with the baffling.
+
+"I hope you're not going to tell any one, Aunt Helen," Evie begged, as
+Mrs. Jarrott seemed about to leave the room. "I shouldn't want Uncle
+Jarrott to know, or Aunt Queenie, either."
+
+"I shall certainly spare them," Mrs. Jarrott said, with what for her was
+asperity. "They would be surprised, to say the least, after the
+encouragement you gave Mr. Strange."
+
+"I didn't give it--he took it. I couldn't stop him."
+
+"Did you want to?"
+
+"I thought of it--sometimes--till I gave up being engaged to Billy."
+
+"And having passed that mental crisis, I suppose it didn't matter."
+
+"Well, the mental crisis, as you call it, left me free. I sha'n't have to
+reproach myself--"
+
+"No; Mr. Merrow will do that for you."
+
+"Of course he will. I expect him to. It would be very queer if he didn't.
+I shall have a dreadful time making him see things my way. And with all
+that hanging over me, I should think I might look for a little sympathy
+from you, Aunt Helen. Lots of girls wouldn't have said anything about it.
+But I told you because I want you to see I'm perfectly straight and
+above-board."
+
+Mrs. Jarrott said no more for the moment, but later in the day she
+confided to her husband that the girl puzzled her. "She mixes me up so
+that I don't know which of us is talking sense." She was not at all sure
+that Evie was fretting about Mr. Strange--though she might be. If she
+wasn't, then she couldn't be well. That was the only explanation of her
+depression and loss of appetite.
+
+"You can bet your life he's thinking of her," Mr. Jarrott said, with the
+lapse from colloquial dignity he permitted himself when he got into his
+house-jacket. "He's praying to her image as if it was a wooden saint."
+
+With the omission of the word wooden this was much what Strange was doing
+at Rosario. Not venturing--in view of all the circumstances--to write to
+her, he could only erect a shrine in his heart, and serve it with a
+devotion very few saints enjoy. He found, however, that absence from her
+did not enable him to form detached and impartial opinions on his
+situation, just as work brought no subconsciously reached solution to the
+problems he had to face. In these respects he was disappointed in the
+results of his unnecessary flight from town.
+
+At the end of two months he was still mentally where he was when he left
+Buenos Aires. His intelligence assured him that he had the right of a man
+who has no rights to seize and carry off what he can; while that nameless
+something else within him refused to ratify the statement. What precise
+part of him raised this obstacle he was at a loss to guess. It could not
+be his conscience, since he had been free of conscience ever since the
+night on Lake Champlain. Still less could it be his heart, seeing that his
+heart was crying out for Evie Colfax more fiercely than a lion roars for
+food. The paralysis of his judgment had become such that he was fast
+approaching the determination to make Love the only arbiter, and let all
+the rest go hang!
+
+He was encouraged in this impulse by the thought that between her and
+himself there was the mysterious bond of something "meant." He believed
+vaguely in a Power, which, with designs as to human destinies, manifests
+its intentions by fitful gleams, vouchsafed somewhat erratically. In this
+way Evie Colfax, as a beautiful, fairy-like child, had been revealed to
+him at the most critical instant of his life. His mind had never hitherto
+gone back willingly to recollections of that night; but now he made the
+excursion into the past with a certain amount of pleasure. He could see
+her still, looking at a picture-book, her face resting on the back of her
+hand, and golden ringlets falling over her bare arm. He could see the
+boy, too. He remembered that his name was Billy. Billy who? he wondered.
+He could hear the sweet, rather fretful voice calling from the shadows:
+
+"Evie dear, it's time to go to bed. Billy, I don't believe they let you
+stay up as late as this at home."
+
+How ridiculous it would have been to remember such trivial details all
+these years if something hadn't been "meant" by it. There was a hint in
+the back of his mind that by the same token something might have been
+"meant" about the Wild Olive, too, but he had not an equal temptation to
+dwell on it. The Wild Olive, he repeated, had never been "his type of
+girl"--not from the very first. It was obviously impossible for a
+superintending Power to "mean" things that were out of the question.
+
+He had got no further than this when the news was conveyed to him by Mrs.
+Green, whom he met accidentally in the street, that Mr. Skinner, the
+second partner, had had a "stroke," and had been ordered to Carlsbad. Mrs.
+Skinner, so Mrs. Green's letters from the Port informed her, was to
+accompany her husband. Furthermore, Miss Colfax was seizing the
+opportunity to travel with them to Southampton, where she would be able to
+join friends who would take her to New York. There was even a rumor that
+Miss Jarrott was to accompany her niece, but Mrs. Green was unable to
+vouch for the truth of it. In any case, she said, there were signs of "a
+regular shaking up," such as comes periodically in any great mercantile
+establishment; and this time, she ventured to hope, Mr. Green would get
+his rights.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+
+The knowledge that it was a juncture at which to execute a daring movement
+acted as an opiate on what would otherwise have been, for Strange, a day
+of frenzy. While to the outward eye he was going quietly about his work,
+he was inwardly calling all his resources to his aid to devise some plan
+for outwitting circumstance. After forty-eight hours of tearing at his
+heart and hacking at his brain, he could think of nothing more original
+than to take the first train down to the Port, ask the girl to be his
+wife, and let life work out the consequence. At the end of two days,
+however, he was saved from a too deliberate defiance of the
+unaccounted-for inner voice, by an official communication from Mr.
+Jarrott.
+
+It was in the brief, dry form of his business conversation, giving no hint
+that there were emotions behind the stilted phraseology, and an old man's
+yearnings. Mr. Skinner was far from well, and would "proceed immediately"
+to Carlsbad. Strange would hand over the business at Rosario to Mr.
+Green--who would become resident manager, _pro tem_ at any rate--and
+present himself in Buenos Aires at the earliest convenient moment. Mr.
+Jarrott would be glad to see him as soon as possible after his arrival.
+
+That was all; but as far as the young man was concerned, it saved the
+situation. On consulting the steamer-list he saw that the Royal Mail
+Steam Packet _Corrientes_ would sail for Southampton in exactly six days'
+time. By dint of working all night with Mr. Green, who was happy to lend
+himself to anything that would show him the last of his rival, he was able
+to take a train to the Port next day. It was half-past six when he arrived
+in Buenos Aires. By half-past eight he had washed, changed to an evening
+suit, and dined. At nine his cab stopped at the door of the house at
+Palermo.
+
+As he followed the elderly man-servant who admitted him, the patio was so
+dim that he made his way but slowly. He made his way but slowly, not only
+because the patio was dim, but because he was trying to get his crowding
+emotions under control before meeting his employer in an interview that
+might be fraught with serious results. For once in his life he was
+unnerved, tremulous, almost afraid. As he passed the open doors and
+windows of unlighted, or dimly lighted, rooms he knew she might be in any
+one of the shadowy recesses. It would have been a relief to hear her at
+the piano, or in conversation, and to know her attention was diverted.
+None the less, he peered about for a glimpse of her, and strained his
+hearing for a sound of her voice. But all was still and silent, except for
+the muffled footfall of the servant leading him to the library at the far
+end of the court.
+
+If she had not moved out unexpectedly from behind a pillar, a little
+fluttering figure in a white frock, he could have kept his self-control.
+If he had not come upon her in this sudden way, when she believed him in
+Rosario, she, too, would not have been caught at a disadvantage. As it
+was, he stood still, as if awe-struck. She gave a little cry, as if
+frightened. It is certain that his movement of the arms was an automatic
+process, not dictated by any order of the brain; and the same may be said
+for the impulse which threw her on his breast. If, after that, the rest
+was not silence, it was little more. What he uttered and she replied was
+scarcely audible to either, though it was understood by both. It was all
+over so quickly that the man-servant had barely thrown open the library
+door, and announced "Mr. Strange," when Strange himself was on the
+threshold.
+
+It was a moment at which to summon all his wits together to attend to
+business; but he was astonished at the coolness and lightness of heart
+with which he did it. After those brief, sudden vows exchanged, it was as
+easy to dismiss Evie Colfax momentarily from his mind as it is to forget
+money troubles on inheriting a fortune. Nevertheless as he got himself
+ready to deal with practical, and probably quite commercial, topics, he
+was fully conscious of the rapture of her love, while he was scarcely less
+aware of a comfort closely akin to joy in feeling that the burden of
+decision had been lifted from him. Since Fate had taken the matter into
+her own hands, she could be charged with the full responsibility.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Jarrott, who was smoking a cigar and sipping his after-dinner coffee,
+was in evening dress, but wore his house-jacket--a circumstance of which
+Strange did not know the significance, though he felt its effect. The old
+man's welcome was not unlike that of a shy father trying to break the
+shackles of reserve with a home-coming son. He pushed Strange gently into
+the most comfortable arm-chair beside which he drew up a small table for
+the cigar-box, the ash-tray, and the matches. He rang for another cup,
+and brought the coffee with his own hands. Strange remembered how often,
+after a hard day's work, he had been made uncomfortable by just such
+awkward, affectionate attentions from poor old Monsieur Durand.
+
+"I didn't expect you so soon," Mr. Jarrott began, when they were both
+seated, "but you've done well to come. I'm afraid we're in for a regular
+upset all round."
+
+"I hope it isn't going to make things harder for you, sir," Strange
+ventured, in the tone of personal concern which his kindly treatment
+seemed to warrant him in taking.
+
+"It won't if I can get the right men into the right places. That'll be the
+tough part of the business. The wool department will suffer by Mr.
+Skinner's absence--he's very ill, in my opinion--and there's only one man
+who can take his place." Strange felt his heart throbbing and the color
+rising to his face. He did not covet the position, for he disliked the
+wool department; but it was undeniably a "rise," and right along the line
+of highest promotion. "That's Jenkins," Mr. Jarrott finished, quietly.
+
+Strange said nothing. After all, he was relieved. Mr. Jarrott did not go
+on at once, but when he did speak Strange fell back into the depths of his
+arm-chair, in an attitude suggestive of physical collapse.
+
+"And if Jenkins came back here," the old man pursued, "you'd have to take
+his place in New York."
+
+Strange concealed his agitation by puffing out successive rings of smoke.
+If he had not long ago considered what he would say should this proposal
+ever be made to him, he would have been even more overcome than he
+actually was. He had meant to oppose the offer with a point-blank refusal,
+but what had happened within the last quarter of an hour had so modified
+this judgment that he could only sit, turning things rapidly over in his
+mind, till more was said.
+
+"There's no harm in--a--telling you," Mr. Jarrott went on again, with that
+hesitancy Strange had begun to associate with important announcements,
+"that--a--Jenkins will be--a--taken into partnership. You won't--a--be
+taken into partnership--a--yet. But you will have a good salary in New
+York. I can--a--promise you that much."
+
+It was because he was unnerved that tears smarted in the young man's eyes
+at the implications in these sentences. He took his time before
+responding, the courtesies of the occasion being served as well by silence
+as by speech.
+
+"I won't try to thank you for all your kindness, sir," he said, with a
+visible effort, "until I've told you something--something that, very
+likely, you won't approve of. I've asked Miss Colfax to marry me, and
+she's consented."
+
+The old man's brows shot up incredulously.
+
+"That's odd," he said, "because not half an hour ago she told my wife
+there was nothing whatever between you--that you hadn't even written to
+her since you went away. Mrs. Jarrott only left this room as you rang the
+door-bell."
+
+"But it was after I rang the door-bell," Strange stammered "that
+I--I--asked her."
+
+"Quick work," was the old man's only comment, but the muscles of his lips
+relaxed slowly, as if rusty from disuse, into one of his rare smiles.
+
+With the assurance of this reception, Strange could afford to sit silent
+till Mr. Jarrott made some further sign.
+
+"By the terms of her father's will," he explained some minutes later, "I'm
+her guardian and trustee. She can't marry without my consent till she
+comes of age. I don't say that in this instance I should--a--withhold my
+consent; but I should feel constrained to--a--give it with conditions."
+
+"If it's anything I can fulfil, sir--"
+
+"No; it wouldn't concern you so much as her. She's very young--and in
+heart she's younger than her age. She knows nothing about men--she can't
+know--and I dare say you're the first young fellow who ever said anything
+to her about--well, you understand what I mean. Mind you, we've no
+objections to you whatever. You are your own credentials; and we take them
+at their face value. You tell me you're an orphan, with no near relations,
+so that there couldn't be any complications on that score. Besides that,
+you're--a likely chap; and I don't mind saying that--a--my ladies--Mrs.
+Jarrott and my sister--have taken rather a fancy to you. It can't do you
+any--a--harm to know as much as that."
+
+Strange murmurred his appreciation, and the old man went on.
+
+"No; you're all right. But, as I said before, she's very young, and if we
+married her to you out of hand we feel that we shouldn't be giving her a
+fair show. We think she ought to have a little more chance to look round
+her, so to speak. In fact, she isn't what ladies call 'out.' She's
+scarcely ever seen a man, except through a window. Consequently, we think
+we must send her back to New York, for a winter at any rate, and trot the
+procession before her. My sister is to undertake it, and they're to sail
+next week. That won't make so much difference to you now, as it would if
+you weren't soon going to follow them."
+
+Strange nodded. He felt himself being wafted to New York, whether he would
+or no.
+
+"Now all I have to say is this: if, when she's regularly started, she
+sees some other young fellow she likes better than you, you're to give her
+up without making a fuss."
+
+"Of course. Naturally, she would have to be free to do as she chose in the
+long run. I'm not afraid of losing her--"
+
+"That'll be your own lookout. You'll be on the spot, and will have as good
+a chance as anybody else. You'll have a better chance; for you'll only
+have to keep what you've won, while any one else would have to start in at
+the beginning. But it's understood that there--a--can be no talk of a
+wedding just yet. She must have next winter to reconsider her promise to
+you, if she wants to."
+
+Strange having admitted the justice of this, the old man rose, and held
+out his hand.
+
+"We'll keep the matter between ourselves--in the family, I mean--for the
+time being," he said, with another slowly breaking smile; "but the ladies
+will want to wish you luck. You must come into the drawing-room and see
+them."
+
+They were half-way to the door when Mr. Jarrott paused.
+
+"And, of course, you'll go to New York? I didn't think it necessary to ask
+you if you cared to make the change."
+
+With the question straight before him, Strange knew that an answer must be
+given. He understood now how it is that there are men and women who find
+it worth their while to thrust their heads into lions' mouths.
+
+"Yes, sir, of course," he answered, quietly; and they went on to join the
+ladies.
+
+
+
+
+
+Part III
+
+Miriam
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+
+On a day when Evie Colfax was nearing Southampton, and Herbert Strange
+sailing northward from the Rio de la Plata, up the coast of Brazil, Miriam
+Strange, in New York, was standing in the embrasure of a large bay-window
+of a fifth-floor apartment, in that section of Fifty-ninth Street that
+skirts the southern limit of Central Park. Her conversation with the man
+beside her turned on subjects which both knew to be only preliminary to
+the business that had brought him in. He inquired about her voyage home
+from Germany, and expressed his sympathy with "poor Wayne" on the
+hopelessness and finality of the Wiesbaden oculist's report. Taking a
+lighter tone, he said, with a gesture toward the vast expanse of autumn
+color on which they were looking down:
+
+"You didn't see anything finer than that in Europe. Come now!"
+
+"No, I didn't--not in its own way. As long as I can look at this I'm
+almost reconciled to living in a town."
+
+As her eyes roamed over the sea of splendor that stretched from their very
+feet, a vision of October gorgeousness against the sky, he was able to
+steal a glance at her. His immediate observation was to the effect that
+the suggestion of wildness--or, more correctly, of a wild origin--was as
+noticeable in her now, a woman of twenty-seven, as it was when he first
+knew her, a girl of nineteen. That she should have brought it with her
+from a childhood passed amid lakes and rivers and hills was natural
+enough--just as it was natural that her voice should have that liquid
+cadence which belongs to people of the forest, though it is rarely caught
+by human speech elsewhere; but that she should have conserved these
+qualities through the training of a woman of the world was more
+remarkable. But there it was, that something woodland-born which London
+and New York had neither submerged nor swept away. It was difficult to say
+in what it consisted, since it eluded the effort to say, "It is this or
+that." It resisted analysis, as it defied description. Though it might
+have been in the look, or in the manner, it conveyed itself to the
+observer's apprehension, otherwise than by the eye or ear, as if it
+appealed to some extra sense. People who had not Charles Conquest's
+closeness of perception spoke of her as "odd," while those who had heard
+the little there was to learn about her, said to each other, "Well, what
+could you expect?" Young men, as a rule, fought shy of her, not so much
+from indifference as from a sense of an indefinable barrier between her
+and themselves so that it was the older men who sought her out. There was
+always some fear on Conquest's part lest the world should so assimilate
+her that her distinctiveness--which was more like an influence that
+radiated than a characteristic that could be seen--would desert her; and
+it was with conscious satisfaction that he noted now, after an absence of
+some months, that it was still there.
+
+He noted, too, the sure lines of her profile--a profile becoming clearer
+cut as she grew older--features wrought with delicacy and yet imbued with
+strength, suggestive of carved ivory. Delicacy imbued with strength was
+betokened, too, by the tall slenderness of her figure, whose silence and
+suppleness of movement came--in Conquest's imagination at least--from her
+far-off forest ancestry.
+
+"I couldn't live anywhere else but here--if it must be in New York," she
+said, turning from the window. "I couldn't do without the sense of woods,
+and space, and sky. I can stand at this window and imagine all sorts of
+things--that the park really does run into the Catskills, as it seems to
+do--that the Catskills run into the Adirondacks--and that the Adirondacks
+take me up to the Laurentides with which my earliest recollections begin."
+
+"I think you're something like Shelley's Venice," he smiled, "a sort of
+'daughter of the earth and ocean.' You never seem to me to belong in just
+the ordinary category--"
+
+She had been afraid of something like this from the minute he was
+announced, and so hastened to cling to the impersonal.
+
+"Then, the apartment is so convenient. Being all on one floor, it is so
+much easier for Mr. Wayne to get about it than if he had stairs to climb.
+I didn't tell you that I've had Mrs. Wayne's room done over for Evie. It's
+so much larger and lighter than her old one--"
+
+He cleared his throat uneasily.
+
+"I remember your saying something of the kind before you went away in the
+spring. It's one of the things I came in to talk about to-day?"
+
+"Indeed?" His change of tone alarmed her. He had taken on the air of a man
+about to break unpleasant news. "Won't you sit down? I'll ring for tea.
+We're not in very good order yet, but the servants can give us that much."
+
+She spoke for the purpose of hiding her uneasiness, just as she felt that
+she should be more sure of herself while handling the teacups than if she
+were sitting idle.
+
+"I've had a letter from Mr. Jarrott," he said, making himself comfortable,
+while she moved the tea-table in front of her. "He wrote to me, partly as
+Stephens and Jarrott's legal adviser, and partly as a friend."
+
+He allowed that information time to sink in before continuing.
+
+"He tells me Miss Jarrott is on her way home, with Evie."
+
+"Yes; Evie herself wrote me that. I got the letter at Cherbourg."
+
+"Then she probably told you about the house."
+
+"The house? What house?"
+
+"The house they've asked me to take for the winter--for Miss Jarrott and
+her."
+
+The tea-things came, giving her the relief of occupation. She said nothing
+for the moment, and her attention seemed concentrated on the rapid, silent
+movements of her own hands among the silver and porcelain. Once she looked
+up, but her glance fell as she saw his small, keen, gray-green eyes
+scanning her obliquely.
+
+"So I'm not to have her?" she said, at last.
+
+"It's only for this winter--"
+
+"Oh, I know. But what's for this winter will be for every winter!"
+
+"And she won't be far away. I've taken the Grant's house in Seventy-second
+Street. They asked for a house in which they could do some entertaining.
+You see, they want to give her a good time--"
+
+"I quite understand all that. Evie has to 'come out.' I've not the least
+doubt that they're managing it in the best way possible. Yes, I see that.
+If I feel a little--well, I won't say hurt--but a little--sorry--it's
+because I've almost brought Evie up. And I suppose I'm the person she's
+most fond of--as far as she's fond of any one."
+
+"I presume she's fond of my nephew, Billy Merrow."
+
+"I hope so. Billy rather teased her into that engagement, you know. She's
+too young to be deeply in love--unless it was with one romantic. And Billy
+isn't that. I'm not sure that there isn't trouble ahead for him."
+
+"Then I shall let him worry through it himself. I've got other things to
+think about."
+
+When she had given him his tea and begun to sip her own, she looked up
+with that particular bright smile which in women means the bracing of the
+courage.
+
+"It'll be all right," she said, with forced conviction. "I know it will.
+It's foolish in me to think I shall miss her, when she will be so near.
+It's only because she and Mr. Wayne are all I've got--"
+
+"They needn't be," he interposed, draining his cup, and setting it down,
+like a man preparing for action.
+
+She knew her own words had exposed her to this, and was vexed with herself
+for speaking in a dangerous situation without due foresight. For a minute
+she could think of nothing to say that would ward off his thrust. She sat
+looking at him rather helplessly, unconsciously appealing to him with her
+eyes to let the subject drop.
+
+If he meant to go on with it, he took his time--flecking a few crumbs from
+his white waistcoat and from his fingertips. In the action he showed
+himself for what he was--a man so neat as just to escape being dapper.
+There was nothing large about him, in either mind or body; while, on the
+contrary, there was much that was keen and able. The incisiveness of the
+face would have been too sharp had it not been saved by the high-bred
+effect of a Roman nose and a handsome mouth and chin. The fair mustache,
+faded now rather than gray, softened the cynicism of the lips without
+concealing it. It was the face of a man accustomed to "see through" other
+men--to "see through" life--compelling its favors from the world rather
+than asking them. The detailed exactness and unobtrusive costliness of
+everything about him, from the pearl in his tie to the polish on his
+boots, were indicative of a will rigorously demanding "the best," and
+taking it. The refusal of it now in the person of the only woman whom he
+had ever wanted as a wife left him puzzled, slightly exasperated, as
+before a phenomenon not to be explained. It was this unusual resistance
+that caused the somewhat impatient tone he took with her.
+
+"It's all nonsense--your living as you do--like a professional trained
+nurse."
+
+"The life of a professional trained nurse isn't nonsense."
+
+"It is for you."
+
+"On the contrary; it's for me, more than for almost any one, to justify my
+right to being in the world."
+
+"Oh, come now! Don't let us begin on that."
+
+"I don't want to begin on it. I'd much rather not. But if you don't, you
+throw away the key that explains everything about me."
+
+"All right," he rejoined, in an argumentative tone. "Let's talk about it,
+then. Let's have it out. You feel your position; granted. Mind you, I've
+always said you wouldn't have done so if it hadn't been for Gertrude
+Wayne. The world to-day has too much common sense to lay stress on a
+circumstance of that kind. Believe me, nobody thinks about it but
+yourself. Did Lady Bonchurch? Did any of her friends? You've got it a
+little bit--just a little bit--on the brain; and the fault isn't yours; it
+belongs to the woman whose soul is gone, I hope, where it's freed from the
+rules of a book of etiquette."
+
+"She meant well--"
+
+"Oh, every failure, and bungler, and mischief-maker means well. That's
+their charter. I'm not concerned with that. I'm speaking of what she did.
+She fixed it in your mind that you were like a sapling sprung from a seed
+blown outside the orchard. You think you can minimize that accident by
+bringing forth as good as any to be found within the pale. Consequently
+you've taken a poor, helpless, blind man off the hands of the people whose
+duty it is to look after him--and who are well able to do it--"
+
+"That isn't the reason," she declared, flushing. "If Mr. Wayne and I live
+together it's because we're used to each other--and in a way he has taken
+the place of my father."
+
+"Oh, come now! That's all very fine. But haven't you got in the back of
+your mind the thought that the wild tree that's known by its good fruit is
+the one that's best worth grafting?"
+
+"If I had--" she began, with color deepening.
+
+"If you had, you'd simply be taking a long way round, when there's a short
+cut home. I'm the orchard, Miriam. All you've got to do is to walk into
+it--with me."
+
+A warmer tone came into his voice as he uttered the concluding words,
+adding to her discomfort. She moved the tea-things about, putting them
+into an unnecessary state of order, before she could reply.
+
+"There's a reason why I couldn't do that," she said, meeting his sharp
+eyes with one of her fugitive glances. "I would have given it to you
+when--when you brought up this subject last spring, only you didn't ask
+me."
+
+"Well, what is it?"
+
+"I couldn't love you."
+
+She forced herself to bring out the words distinctly. He leaned back in
+his chair, threw one leg across the other, and stroked the thin, colorless
+line of his mustache.
+
+"No, I suppose you couldn't," he said, quietly, after considering her
+words.
+
+"So that my answer has to be final."
+
+"I don't see that. Love is only one of the many motives for marriage--and
+not, as I understand it, the highest one. The divorce courts are strewn
+with the wrecks of marriages made for love. Those that stand the test of
+life and time are generally those that have been contracted from some of
+the more solid--and worthier--motives."
+
+"Then I don't know what they are."
+
+"I could explain them to you if you'd let me. As for love--if it's needed
+at all--I could bring enough into hotch-potch as the phrase goes, to do
+for two. I'm over fifty years of age. It never occurred to me that you
+could--care about me--as you might have cared for some one else. But as
+far as I can see, there's no one else. If there was, perhaps I shouldn't
+persist."
+
+She looked up with sudden determination.
+
+"If there was any one else, you--would consider that as settling the
+question?"
+
+"I might. I shouldn't bind myself. It would depend."
+
+"Then I'll tell you; there _is_ some one else." The words caused her to
+flush so painfully that she hastened to qualify them. "That is, there
+might have been."
+
+"What do you mean by--might have been?"
+
+"I mean that, though I don't say I've ever--loved--any man, there was a
+man I might have loved, if it had been possible."
+
+"And why wasn't it possible?"
+
+"I'd rather not tell you. It was a long time ago. He went away. He never
+came back again."
+
+"Did he say he'd come back again?"
+
+She shook her head. She tried to meet his gaze steadily, but it was like
+facing a search-light.
+
+"Were you what you would call--engaged?"
+
+"Oh no." Her confusion deepened. "There was never anything. It was a long
+time ago. I only want you to understand that if I could care for any one
+it would be for him. And if I married you--and he came back--"
+
+"Are you expecting him back?"
+
+She was a long time answering the question. She would not have answered it
+at all had it not been in the hope of getting rid of him.
+
+"Yes."
+
+He took the declaration coolly, and went on.
+
+"Why? What makes you think he'll come?"
+
+"I have no reason. I think he will--that's all."
+
+"Where is he now?"
+
+"I haven't the faintest idea."
+
+"Hasn't he ever written to you?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"And you don't know what's become of him?"
+
+"Not in the least."
+
+"And yet you expect him back?"
+
+She nodded assent.
+
+"You're waiting for him?"
+
+Once more she braced herself to look him in the eyes and answer boldly.
+
+"I am."
+
+He leaned back in his chair and laughed, not loudly, but in good-humored
+derision.
+
+"If that's all that stands between us--"
+
+To her relief he said no more; though she was disappointed that the
+subject should be dropped in a way that made it possible to bring it up
+again. As he was taking his leave she renewed the attempt to end the
+matter once for all.
+
+"I know you think me foolish--" she began.
+
+"No, not foolish; only romantic."
+
+"Then, romantic. Romance is as bad as folly when one is twenty-seven. I
+confess it," she went on, trying to smile, "only that you may understand
+that it's a permanent condition which I sha'n't get over."
+
+"Oh yes, you will."
+
+"Things happened--long ago--such as don't generally happen; and so--I'm
+waiting for him. If he never comes--then I'd rather go
+on--waiting--uselessly."
+
+It was hard to say, but it was said. He laughed again--not quite so
+derisively as before--and went away.
+
+When he had gone, she resumed her seat behind the tea-table. She sat
+looking absently at the floor and musing on the words she had just spoken.
+Not in all the seven or eight years since Norrie Ford went away had she
+acknowledged to her own heart what, within the last few minutes, she had
+declared aloud. The utmost she had ever owned to herself was that she
+"could have loved him." When she refused other men, she did not confess to
+waiting for him; she evaded the question with herself, and found pretexts.
+She would have continued doing so with Conquest, had not his persistency
+driven her to her last stand. But now that she had uttered the words for
+his benefit, she had to repeat them for her own. Notwithstanding her
+passionate love of woods, winds, and waters, she had always been so sane,
+so practical, in the things that pertained to daily life that she
+experienced something like surprise at detecting herself in this condition
+of avowed romance. She had actually been waiting for Norrie Ford to
+return, and say what he had told her he _would_ say, should it ever become
+possible! She was waiting for him still! If he never came she would rather
+go on waiting for him--uselessly! The language almost shocked her; but now
+that the thing was spoken she admitted it was true. It was a light thrown
+on herself--if not precisely a new light, at least one from which all
+shades and colored wrappings that delude the eye and obscure the judgment
+had been struck away.
+
+She smiled to herself to think how little Conquest understood her when he
+ascribed to her the ambition to graft her ungarnered branch on the stock
+of a duly cultivated civilization. She might have had that desire once,
+but it was long past. It was a kind of glory to her now to be outside the
+law--with Norrie Ford. There they were exiles together, in a wild paradise
+with joys of its own, not less sweet than those of any Eden. She had faced
+more than once the question of being "taken into the orchard," as Conquest
+put it. The men who had asked her at various times to marry them had been
+like himself, men of middle age, or approaching it--men of assured
+position either by birth or by attainment. As the wife of any one of them
+her place would have been unquestioned. She had not rejected their offers
+lightly, or from any foregone conclusion. She had taken it as a duty to
+weigh each one seriously as it came; and, leaving the detail of love
+apart, she had asked herself whether it was not right for her to seize the
+occasion of becoming "some one" in the world. Once or twice the position
+offered her was so much in accordance with her tastes that her refusal
+brought with it a certain vague regret. "But I couldn't do it," were the
+words with which she woke from every dream of seeing herself mistress in a
+quiet English park, or a big house in New York. Her habits might be those
+of civilized mankind; but her heart was listening for a call from beyond
+the limits in which men have the recognized right to live. She could put
+no shackles on her freedom to respond to it--if it ever came.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+
+She discovered that Norrie Ford had come back, and that some of her
+expectations were fulfilled by finding him actually seated beside her one
+evening at dinner.
+
+Miss Jarrott's taste in table light was in the direction of candles
+tempered by deep-red shades. As no garish electricity was allowed to
+intrude itself into this soft glow, the result was that only old
+acquaintances among her guests got a satisfactory notion of each other's
+features. It was with a certain sense of discovery that, by peering
+through the rose-colored twilight, Miriam discerned now a Jarrott or a
+Colfax, now an Endsleigh or a Pole--faces more or less well known to her
+which she had not had time to recognize during the few hurried minutes in
+the drawing-room.
+
+It was the dinner of which Evie had said, in explaining her plan of
+campaign to Miriam, "We must kill off the family first of all." It was
+plain that she regarded the duty as a bore; but she was too worldly wise
+not to see that her bread cast upon the waters would return to her. Most
+of the Jarrotts were important; some were wealthy; and one--Mrs. Endsleigh
+Jarrott--was a power in such matters as assemblies and cotillons. The
+ladies Colfax were little less influential; and while the sphere of the
+Poles and Endsleighs was in the world of art, letters, and scholarship,
+rather than in that of fashion and finance, they had the uncontested
+status of good birth. To Evie they represented just so much in the way of
+her social assets, and she was quick in appraising them at their correct
+relative values. Some would be good for a dinner given in her honor,
+others for a dance. The humblest could be counted on for a theatre-party
+or a "tea." She was skilful, too, in presenting her orphan state with a
+touching vividness that enlisted their sympathies on behalf of "poor
+Jack's," or "poor Gertrude's," pretty little girl, according to the side
+of the house on which they recognized the relationship.
+
+With the confusion incidental to the arrival from South America, the
+settling into a new house, and the ordering of new clothes, Miriam had had
+little of the old intimate intercourse with Evie during the six weeks
+since the latter's return. There was no change in their mutual relation;
+it was only that Evie was caught up into the glory of the coming winter,
+and had no time for the apartment in Fifty-ninth Street. It was with
+double pleasure, therefore, that Miriam responded one day to Evie's
+invitation to "come and look at my things," which meant an inspection of
+the frocks and hats that had just come home. They lay about now, in clouds
+like a soft summer sunset, or in gay spots of feathers and flowers, on the
+bed and the sofa in Evie's room, and filled all the chairs except the one
+on which Miriam had retreated into the farthest corner of the bay-window.
+Seated there, not quite in profile, against the light, her head turned and
+slightly inclined, in order to get a better view of Evie's finery, her
+slender figure possessed a sort of Vandyke grace, heightened rather than
+diminished by the long plumes and rich draperies of the month's fashion.
+Evie flitted between closets, wardrobes, and drawers, prattling while she
+worked off that first event of her season, in which the family were to be
+"killed off." She recited the names of those who would "simply _have_ to
+be asked" and of those who could conveniently be omitted.
+
+"And, of course, Popsey Wayne must come," she observed in her practical
+little way. "I dare say he won't want to, poor dear, but it wouldn't do if
+he didn't. Only you, you dear thing, will have to go in with him--to pilot
+him and look after him when the dishes are passed. But I'm going to have
+some one nice on your other side, do you see?--some one awfully nice. We
+shall have to ask a few people outside the family, just to give it relief,
+and save it from looking like Christmas."
+
+"You'll have Billy, I suppose."
+
+Evie took the time to deposit a lace blouse in a drawer, as softly as a
+mother lays a sleeping babe to rest.
+
+"No, I sha'n't ask Billy," she said, while she was still stooping.
+
+"Won't he think that queer?"
+
+"I hope so." She turned from the drawer, and lifted a blue gossamer
+creation from the bed. Miriam smiled indulgently.
+
+"Why? What's the matter? Have you anything to punish him for?"
+
+"I've nothing to punish him for; I've only got something I want to--bring
+home to him." She paused in the middle of the room, with her blue burden
+held in her outstretched arms, somewhat like a baby at a christening. "I
+might as well tell you, Miriam, first as last. You've got to know it some
+time, though I don't want it talked about just yet. I've broken my
+engagement to Billy."
+
+"Broken your engagement! Why, I saw Billy myself this morning. I met him
+as I was coming over. He said he was here last night, and seemed
+particularly cheerful."
+
+"He doesn't know it yet. I'm doing it--by degrees."
+
+"You're doing it by--what?" Miriam rose and came toward her, stopping
+midway to lean on the foot-rail of the bed. "Evie darling, what do you
+mean?"
+
+Evie's eyes brimmed suddenly, and her lip trembled.
+
+"If you're going to be cross about it--"
+
+"I'm not going to be cross about it, but I want you to tell me exactly
+what you're doing."
+
+"Well, I'm telling you. I've broken my engagement, and I want to let Billy
+know it in the kindest way. I don't want to hurt his feelings. You
+wouldn't like me to do that yourself. I'm trying to bring him where he'll
+see things just as I do."
+
+"And may I ask if you're--getting him there?"
+
+"I shall get him there in time. I'm doing lots of things to show him."
+
+"Such as what?"
+
+"Such as not asking him to the dinner, for one thing. He'll know from that
+there's something wrong. He'll make a fuss, and I shall be disagreeable.
+Little by little he'll get to dislike me--and then--"
+
+"And how long do you think it will take for that good work to be
+accomplished?"
+
+"I don't see that that matters. I suppose I may take all the time I need.
+We're both young--"
+
+"And have all your lives to give to it. Is that what you mean?"
+
+"I don't want to give all my life to it, because--I may as well tell you
+that, too, while I'm about it--because I'm engaged to some one else."
+
+"Oh, Evie!"
+
+Miriam went back, like a person defeated, to the chair from which she had
+just risen, while Evie buried herself in the depths of a closet, where she
+remained long enough, as she hoped, to let Miriam's first astonishment
+subside. On coming out she assumed a virtuous tone.
+
+"You see now why I simply _had_ to break with Billy. I couldn't possibly
+keep the two things going together--as some girls would. I'm one of those
+who do right, whatever happens. It's very hard for me--but if people would
+only be a little more sympathetic--"
+
+It was some minutes before Miriam knew just what to say. Even when she
+began to speak she doubted her capacity for making herself understood.
+
+"Evie darling," she said, trying to speak as for a child's comprehension,
+"this is a very serious matter. I don't think you realize how serious it
+is. If you find you don't love Billy well enough, of course you must ask
+him to release you. I should be sorry for that, but I shouldn't blame you.
+But until you've done it you can't give your word to any one."
+
+"Well, I must say I never heard anything like that," Evie declared,
+indignantly. "You do have the strangest ideas, Miriam. Dear mamma used to
+say so, too. I try to defend you, but you make it difficult for me, I must
+say. I never knew any one like you for making things more complicated than
+they need be. You talk of my asking Billy to release me when I released
+myself long ago--in my own mind. That's where I have to look. I must do
+things according to my conscience--and when that's clear--"
+
+"It isn't only a case of conscience, dear; it's one of common sense.
+Conscience has a way of sometimes mistaking the issue, whereas common
+sense can generally be trusted to be right."
+
+"Of course, if you're going to talk that way, Miriam, I don't see what's
+left for me to answer; but it doesn't sound very reverent, I must say. I'm
+trying to look at things in the highest light, and it doesn't strike me as
+the highest light to be unkind to Billy when I needn't be. If you think I
+ought to treat him cruelly you must keep your opinion, but I know you'll
+excuse me if I keep mine."
+
+She carried her head loftily as she bore another gown into the adjoining
+darkness, and Miriam waited patiently till she emerged again.
+
+"Does your other--I hardly know what to call him--does your other fiancé
+know about Billy?"
+
+"Why on earth should he? What good would that do? It will be all over--I
+mean about Billy--before I announce my second engagement, and as the one
+to Billy will never be announced at all there's no use in saying anything
+about it."
+
+"But suppose Billy himself finds out?"
+
+"Billy won't find out anything whatever until I get ready to let him."
+
+The finality of this retort reduced Miriam to silence. She allowed some
+minutes to pass before saying, with some hesitation:
+
+"I suppose you don't mind my knowing--who it is?"
+
+Evie was prepared for this question and answered it promptly.
+
+"I shan't mind your knowing--by-and-by. I want you to meet him first.
+When you've once seen him, I know you'll be more just to me. Till then I'm
+willing to go on being--misunderstood."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+During the three more weeks that intervened before the family dinner
+Miriam got no further light on Evie's love-affairs. She purposely asked no
+questions through fear of seeming to force the girl's confidence, but she
+obtained some relief from thinking that the rival suitor could be no other
+than a certain young Graham, of whom she had heard much from Evie during
+the previous year. His chances then had stood higher than Billy Merrow's;
+and nothing was more possible than a discovery on Evie's part that she
+liked him the better of the two. It was a situation that called for
+sympathy for Billy, but not otherwise for grave anxiety, so that Miriam
+could wait quietly for further out-pourings of Evie's heart, and give her
+mind to the mysteries incidental to the girl's social presentation to the
+world.
+
+Of the ceremonies attendant on this event the "killing off" of the family
+was the one Miriam dreaded most. It was when she came within the periphery
+of this powerful, meritorious, well-to-do circle, representing whatever
+was most honorable in New York, that she chiefly felt herself an alien.
+She could scarcely have explained herself in this respect, since many of
+the clan had been kind to her, and none had ever shown her incivility. It
+was when she confronted them in the mass, when she saw their solidarity,
+their mutual esteem, their sum total of wealth, talents, and good works,
+that she grew conscious of the difference of essence between herself and
+them. Not one of them but had the right to the place he sat in!--a right
+maintained by himself, but acquired by his fathers before him--not one of
+them but was living in the strength of some respectable tradition of which
+he could be proud! Endsleigh Jarrott's father, for example, had been a
+banker, Reginald Pole's the president of a university, Rupert Colfax's a
+judge; and it was something like that with them all. In the midst of so
+much that was classified, certified, and regular she was as obviously a
+foreign element as a fly in amber. She came in as the ward of Philip
+Wayne, who himself was a new-comer and an intruder, since he entered
+merely as "poor Gertrude's second husband," by a marriage which they all
+considered a mistake.
+
+With the desire to be as unobtrusive as possible, she dressed herself in
+black, without ornament of any kind, unaware of the fact that with her
+height of figure, her grace of movement, her ivory tint, and that
+expression of hers which disconcerted people because it was first
+appealing and then proud, she would be more than ever conspicuous against
+the background of brilliant toilets, fine jewels, and assured manners
+which the family would produce for the occasion. As a matter of fact,
+there was a perceptible hush in the hum of talk as she made her entry into
+the drawing-room, ostensibly led by Philip Wayne, but really leading him.
+As she paused near the door, half timid, half bewildered, looking for her
+hostess, it did not help her to feel at ease to see Mrs. Endsleigh
+Jarrott--a Rubens _Maria de Medici_ in white satin and pearls--raise her
+lorgnette and call on a tall young man who stood beside her to take a
+look. There was no time to distinguish anything further before Miss
+Jarrott glided up, with mincing graciousness, to shake hands.
+
+"How do you do! How do you do! So glad you've come. I think you must know
+nearly every one here, so I needn't introduce any one. I hardly ever
+introduce. It's funny, isn't it? They say it's an English custom not to
+introduce, but I don't do it just by nature. I wonder why I
+shouldn't?--but I never do--or almost never. So if you don't happen to
+know your neighbors at table just speak. It was Evie who arranged where
+every one was to sit. _I_ don't know. They say that's English, too--just
+to speak. I believe it's quite a recognized thing in London to say, 'Is
+this your bread or mine?' and then you know each other. Isn't it funny?
+Now I think we're all here. Will you take in Miriam, Mr. Wayne?"
+
+A hasty embrace from Evie--an angelic vision in white--was followed by a
+few words of greeting from Charles Conquest after which Miriam saw Miss
+Jarrott take the arm of Bishop Endsleigh, and the procession began to
+move.
+
+At table Miriam was glad of the dim, rose-colored light. It offered her a
+seclusion into which she could withdraw, tending her services to Wayne.
+She was glad, too, that the family, having so much to say to itself, paid
+her no special attention. She was sufficiently occupied in aiding the
+helpless blind man beside her, and repeating for his benefit the names of
+their fellow-guests. As the large party talked at the top of its lungs,
+Miriam's quiet voice, with its liquid, almost contralto, quality, reached
+her companion's ears unheard by others. She began with Bishop Endsleigh
+who was on Miss Jarrott's right. Then came Mrs. Stephen Colfax; after her
+Mr. Endsleigh Jarrott, who had on his right Mrs. Reginald Pole. Mrs.
+Pole's neighbor was Charles Conquest, whom she shared with Mrs. Rodney
+Wrenn. Now and then Wayne himself would give proof of that increased
+acuteness in his hearing of which he had spoken more than once since his
+blindness had become total. "Colfax Yorke is here," he observed at one
+time. "I hear his voice. He's sitting on our side of the table." "Mrs.
+Endsleigh Jarrott is next but one to you," he said at another time. "She's
+airing her plans for the reconstruction of New York society."
+
+So for a while they kept one another in small talk, affecting the same
+sort of vivacity that obtained around them. It was not till dinner was
+half over that he asked in an undertone:
+
+"Who is your neighbor?"
+
+"I don't know," she managed to whisper back. "He's so taken up with Mrs.
+Endsleigh Jarrott that he hasn't looked this way. I don't think he's any
+member of the family."
+
+"He must be," Wayne replied. "I know his voice. I have some association
+with it, but just what I can't remember."
+
+Miriam herself listened to hear him speak, catching only an irrelevant
+word or two.
+
+"He sounds English," she said then.
+
+"No, he isn't English. That's not my association. It's curious how the
+mind acts. Since I became--since my sight failed--my memory instinctively
+brings me voices instead of faces, when I want to recall anything. Aren't
+you going to speak to him? You've got the formula: Is this your bread or
+mine?"
+
+"It's very convenient, but I don't think I shall use it."
+
+"He'd like you to, I know. I heard him say to Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott as we
+came in--while Queenie Jarrott was talking--that you were he most
+strikingly beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life. How's that for a
+compliment from a perfect stranger?"
+
+"I certainly sha'n't speak to him now. A man who could say that to Mrs.
+Endsleigh, after having seen _her,_ must be wofully wanting in tact."
+
+Mary Pole on Wayne's right claimed his attention and Miriam was left her
+own mistress. Almost at once her attention was arrested by hearing Mrs.
+Endsleigh Jarrott saying in that appealing voice which she counted as the
+secret of her success with men:
+
+"Now do give me your frank opinion, Mr. Strange. You don't know how much I
+should like it. It's far from my idea that we should slavishly copy
+London. You know that, don't you? We've an entirely different stock of
+materials to work with. But I'm firmly convinced that by working on the
+London model we should make society far more general, far more
+representative, and far--oh, _far_--more interesting! Now, what do _you_
+think? Do give me your frank opinion."
+
+Mr. Strange! Her own name was sufficiently uncommon to cause Miriam to
+glance sidewise, in her rapid, fugitive way, at the person who bore it.
+His face was turned from her as he bent toward Mrs. Jarrott, but again she
+heard his voice, and this time more distinctly.
+
+"I'm afraid my opinion wouldn't be of much value. Nevertheless, I know you
+must be right."
+
+"Now I'm disappointed in you," Mrs. Jarrott said, with pretty
+reproachfulness. "You're not taking me seriously. Oh, I see, I see. You're
+just an ordinary man, after all; when I thought for a minute you might
+be--well, a little different. Do take some of that asparagus," she added
+in another tone. "It's simply delicious."
+
+It was while he was helping himself to this delicacy that Miriam got the
+first clear view of his face, half turned as it was toward her. He seemed
+aware that she was observing him, for during the space of some seconds he
+held the silver implements idle in his hands, while he lifted his eyes to
+meet hers. The look they exchanged was significant and long, and yet she
+was never quite sure that she recognized him then. For the minute she was
+only conscious of a sudden, inward shock, to which she was unable to
+ascribe a cause. Something had happened, though she knew not what. Having
+in the course of a few minutes regained her self-control, she could only
+suppose that it was a repetition of that unreasoning panic which had now
+and then brought her to the verge of fainting, when by chance, in London,
+Paris, or New York, she caught a glimpse of some tall figure that carried
+her imagination back to the cabin in the Adirondacks. She had always
+thought that he might appear in some crowd and take her by surprise. She
+had never expected to find him in a gathering that could be called social.
+Still less had she looked to meet him like this, with Philip Wayne who had
+sentenced him to death not three feet away. The mere idea was
+preposterous. And yet--
+
+She glanced at him again. He was listening attentively while Mrs.
+Endsleigh Jarrott's voice ran on:
+
+"People say our society has no traditions. It _has_ traditions. It has the
+traditions of the country village, and it has never outgrown them. We're
+nothing but the country village writ large. New York, Philadelphia,
+Boston, Baltimore--we're the country village over again, with its
+narrowness its sets, its timidity, all writ _so_ large that they hide
+anything like a real society from us. Now isn't it so, Mr. Strange? Don't
+be afraid to give me your frank opinion because that's what I'm asking
+for."
+
+Miriam herself made an effort to seem to be doing something that would
+enable her to sit unnoticed. She was glad that Wayne was engaged by Mary
+Pole so that he could no longer listen to the voice that wakened his
+recollections. She looked again at the tall, carefully dressed man beside
+her, so different in all his externals from anything she imagined Norrie
+Ford could ever become. Norrie Ford was an outlaw and this was a man of
+the world. She felt herself being reassured--and yet disappointed. Her
+first feeling of faintness passed away, enabling her to face the situation
+with greater calm. Under cover of the energetic animation characteristic
+of every American dinner-party at which the guests are intimate, she had
+leisure to think over the one or two hints that were significant. Now and
+then a remark was addressed to her across the table to which she managed
+to return a reply sufficiently apt to give her the appearance of being in
+touch with what was going on around her; but in reality she was taking in
+the fact, with the spirit rather than the mind, that Norrie Ford had
+returned.
+
+She never understood just how and when that assurance came to her. It was
+certainly not by actual recognition of his features, as it was not by
+putting together the few data that came under her observation. Thinking it
+over in after years, she could only say that she "just found herself
+_knowing it_." He was there--beside her. Of that she had no longer a
+doubt.
+
+Her amazement did not develop all at once. Indeed, the position had an odd
+naturalness, like something in a dream. The element of impossibility in
+what had happened was so great that for the time being her mind refused to
+meet it. She was only aware of that vague sense of satisfaction, of inward
+peace, that comes when long-desired ends have been fulfilled.
+
+The main fact being accepted, her outer faculties could respond to the
+call that a dinner-party makes on its least important member. When the
+conversation at her end of the table became general she took her part, and
+later engaged in a three-cornered discussion with Wayne and Mary Pole on
+the subject of an endowed theatre; but all the while her subconscious mind
+was struggling for a theory to account for Norrie Ford's presence in that
+particular room and in that unexpected company. The need of some
+immediate, plausible reason for so astounding an occurrence deadened her
+attention to the comparative quietness with which she accepted his
+coming--now that she had regained her self-control, although she was
+conscious of stirrings of wild joy in this evidence that he had been true
+to her. Had she recalled what she had said to him eight years ago as to
+the Argentine, and the "very good firm to work for," she would have had an
+easy clew, but that had passed from her mind almost with the
+utterance--certainly with his departure He had gone out into the world,
+leaving no more trace behind him than the bird that has flown southward.
+Not once during the intervening years did the thought cross her mind that
+words which she had spoken nearly at haphazard could have acted as a guide
+to him, while still less did she dream that they could have led him into
+the very seat beside her which he was occupying now.
+
+Nevertheless, he was there, and for the present she could dispense with
+the knowledge of the adventures that had brought him. He was there, and
+that was the reason of his coming in itself. He had hewn his way through
+all difficulties to reach her--as Siegfried came to Brunhild, over the
+mountains and through the fire. He had found the means--both the means
+and the daring--to enter and make himself accepted in her own world, her
+own circle, her own family--in so far as she had a family--and to sit
+right down at her side.
+
+She was not surprised at it. She assured herself of that. At the very
+instant when she was saying to Mary Pole, across Philip Wayne's white
+waistcoat, that she had always thought of endowed institutions of creative
+art as belonging to the races of weaker individual initiative--at the very
+instant when she was saying that, she was repeating to herself that the
+directness, the high-handedness, and the success of this kind of exploit
+was exactly what she would have expected of Norrie Ford. It was what she
+_had_ expected of him--in one form or another. It was with a sense of
+inward pride that she remembered that her faith in him had never wavered,
+even though it was not until Conquest forced her that she had confessed
+the fact. She glanced at Conquest across the table now and caught his eye.
+He smiled at her and raised his glass, as though to drink to her health.
+She smiled in return, daringly, triumphantly, as she would not have
+ventured to do an hour ago. She could see him flush with pleasure--a rare
+occurrence--at her unusual graciousness, while she was only rejoicing in
+her escape from him. Under the shadow of the tall man beside her, who had
+achieved the impossible in order to be loyal to her, she felt for the
+first time in her life that she had found a shelter. It mattered nothing
+that he was engrossed with Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott, and that, after the one
+glance, he had not turned toward her again; she was sure he knew that she
+understood him, and that he recognized her power to wait in patience to
+have the mystery explained.
+
+In the drawing-room he was introduced to her. Miss Jarrott led him up and
+made the presentation.
+
+"Miss Strange, I want you to know Mr. Strange. Now isn't that funny? You
+can't think how many times I've thought how interesting it would be to see
+you two meet. It's so unusual to have the same name, especially when it's
+such a strange name as yours. There's a pun. I simply can't help making
+them. My brother says I inherited all the sense of humor in the family. I
+don't know why I do it, but I always see a joke. Can you tell me why I do
+it?"
+
+Neither Strange nor Miriam knew what replies they made, but a conversation
+of some sort went on for a minute or two, after which Miss Jarrott whisked
+him away to present him to some one else. When he had gone Miriam was left
+with a feeling of spiritual chill. While it was impossible to betray a
+previous acquaintance before Miss Jarrott, there had been nothing whatever
+in his bearing to respond to the recognition in hers. There was something
+that might have been conveyed from mind to mind without risk, and he had
+not used the opportunity. In as far as he addressed her at all it had been
+through Miss Jarrott, and he had looked around her and over her rather
+than directly into her eyes.
+
+During the rest of the evening she caught glimpses of him only in the
+distance, talking now to one member of the family, now to another. It was
+clear that Miss Jarrott was, in a way, showing him off, and that he was
+received as some one of importance. She admired the coolness with which he
+carried himself, while her inherited instincts gave her a curious thrill
+of content that these law-making, law-keeping people should be duped.
+
+She hoped he would find an occasion for passing again in her direction.
+If she could have only a word with him it might help to make the situation
+intelligible. But he did not return, and presently she noticed, in looking
+about the room, that he had disappeared. She, too, was eager to be gone.
+Only in solitude could she get control of the surging thoughts, the
+bewildering suggestions, the contradictory suppositions that crowded it on
+her. She saw how useless it was to try to build a theory without at least
+one positive fact to go on.
+
+It was just as they were departing that her opportunity to ask a question
+came. They had said their good-nights to Miss Jarrott and were in the
+hall, waiting for the footman to call their carriage, when Evie, whom they
+had not wanted to disturb, came fluttering after them. She was flushed but
+radiant, and flung herself into Miriam's arms.
+
+"You dear thing! I haven't had time to say a word to you or Popsey Wayne
+the entire evening. But you'll excuse me, won't you? I've had to be civil
+to them all--do you see?--and do them up well. I knew you wouldn't mind. I
+wanted you to have a good time, but I'm afraid you haven't."
+
+"Oh yes," Miriam said, disengaging herself from the girl's embrace. "It's
+been wonderful--it really has. But, Evie dear," she whispered, drawing her
+away from the group of ladies who stood cloaked and hooded, also waiting
+for their carriages, "tell me--who is that Mr. Strange who sat next to
+me?"
+
+Evie's eyes went heavenward, and she took on a look of rapture.
+
+"I hope you liked him."
+
+"I didn't have much chance to see. But why do you hope it?"
+
+"Because--don't you see? Oh, surely you _must_ see--because--he's the
+one."
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+
+Enlightenment came to her in the carriage while she was driving homeward.
+During the five or ten minutes since Evie had spoken she, Miriam, had been
+sitting still and upright in the darkness, making no further attempt to
+see reason through this succession of bewilderments from sheer inability
+to contend against them. For the time being, at any rate, the struggle was
+too much for her. The issues raised by Evie's overwhelming announcement
+were so confusing that she must postpone their consideration. She must
+postpone everything but her own tumultuous passion, which had to be faced
+and mastered instantly. She was fighting with herself, with her own wild
+inward cries of protest, anger, jealousy, and self-pity, trying to
+distinguish each from the others and to silence it by appeal to her years
+of romantic folly, when suddenly Wayne spoke, in the cheery tone of a man
+who has unexpectedly passed a pleasant evening.
+
+"I had a nice long chat with the Great Unknown, who was sitting beside
+you, when the ladies left the dining-room. Who do you think he is?"
+
+After the shocks of the last two hours, she was prepared to hear Wayne
+tell her, in an offhand way, that it was Norrie Ford. Nevertheless, she
+summoned what was left of her stunned faculties and did her best to speak
+carefully.
+
+"I heard them call him Mr. Strange--"
+
+"Odd that was, wasn't it? But it isn't such a very uncommon name. I've met
+other Stranges--"
+
+"Oh yes. So have I."
+
+"Well, who do you think he is? Why, he's Stephens and Jarrott's new man in
+New York. He's taken Jenkins's place. You remember Jenkins, don't you?
+That little man with a lisp. I had a nice long chat with him--Strange, I
+mean. He tells me he's a New-Yorker by birth, but that he went out to the
+Argentine after his father failed in business. Well, _he_ won't fail in
+business, _I_ bet a penny. He's tremendously enthusiastic over the
+Argentine, too. Showed he had his head put on the right way when he went
+there. Wonderful country--the United States of South America some people
+call it. We're missing our opportunities out there. Great volume of trade
+flowing to Europe of which we had almost the monopoly at one time. I had a
+nice long chat with him."
+
+Her tired emotions received a new surprise as Wayne's words directed her
+thoughts to the morning when she had made to Ford the first suggestion of
+the Argentine. She had not precisely forgotten it; she had only thought it
+of too little importance to dwell on. She remembered that she had
+considered the idea practical till she had expressed it, but that his
+opposition had seemed to turn it into the impossible. She had never
+supposed that he might have acted on it--not any more than she had
+expected him to retain her father's name once he had reached a place of
+safety. In spite of the suddenness with which her dreams regarding him had
+been dispelled, it gave her a thrill of satisfaction to think that the
+word which, in a sense, had created him had been hers. To her fierce
+jealousy, with which her pride was wrestling even now, there was a
+measure of comfort in the knowledge that he could never be quite free from
+her, that his existence was rooted in her own.
+
+"Queenie Jarrott tells me," Wayne meandered on, "that her brother thinks
+very highly of this young man. It seems that his business abilities are
+quite remarkable, and they fancy he looks like Henry--the eldest of the
+boys who died. It's extraordinary how his voice reminds me of some
+one--don't know who. It might be--But then again--"
+
+"His voice is like a thousand other voices," she thought it well to say,
+"just as he looks like a thousand other men. He's one of those rather
+tall, rather good-looking, rather well-dressed youngish men--not really
+young--of whom you'll pass twenty within a mile any day in Fifth Avenue,
+and who are as thick as soldiers on a battle-field at the lower end of
+Broadway."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With the data Wayne had given her she worked out the main lines of the
+story during the night; but it was not until she had done so that its full
+significance appeared to her. Having grasped that, she could scarcely wait
+for daylight in order to go to Evie, and yet when morning came she
+abandoned that course as impolitic. Reflection showed her that her
+struggle must be less with Evie than with Ford, while she judged that he
+himself would lose no time in putting the battle in array. He must see as
+plainly as she did that she stood like an army across his path, and that
+he must either retreat before her or show fight. She believed he would do
+the latter and do it soon. She thought it probable that he would appear
+that very day, and that her wisest plan was to await his opening attack.
+The necessity, so unexpectedly laid upon her, of defending the right
+deflected her mind from dwelling too bitterly on her own disillusioning.
+
+The morning having passed without a sign from him, she made her
+arrangements for having the afternoon undisturbed sending Wayne to drive,
+and ordering the servants to admit no one but Mr. Strange, should he
+chance to call. Having intrenched herself behind the fortification of the
+tea-table, she waited. In spite of her preoccupation, or rather because of
+it, she purposely read a book, forcing herself to fix her attention on its
+pages in order to have her mind free from preconceived notions as to how
+she must act and what she must say. Her single concession to herself was
+to put on a new and becoming house dress, whose rich tones of brown and
+amber harmonized with her ivory coloring and emphasized the clear-cut
+distinction of her features. Before taking up her position she surveyed
+herself with the mournful approval which the warrior about to fall may
+give to the perfection of his equipment.
+
+It was half-past four when the servant showed him in. His formal attire
+seemed to her, as he crossed the room, oddly civilized and correct after
+her recollections of him. Notwithstanding her dread of the opening
+minutes, the meeting passed off according to the fixed procedure of the
+drawing-room. It was a relief to both to find that the acts of shaking
+hands and sitting down had been accomplished with matter-of-course
+formality. With the familiar support of afternoon-call conventions
+difficult topics could be treated at greater ease.
+
+"I'm very glad to find you at home," he began, feeling it to be a safe
+opening. "I was almost afraid--"
+
+"I stayed in on purpose," she said, frankly. "I thought you might come."
+
+"I wasn't sure whether or not you knew me last night--"
+
+"I didn't at first. I really hadn't noticed you, though I remembered
+afterward that you were standing with Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott when Mr.
+Wayne and I came into the room. I wonder now if you recognized me?"
+
+"Oh, rather! I knew you were going to be there. I've been in New York a
+month."
+
+"Then you might have come to see me sooner."
+
+"Well, you see--"
+
+He paused and colored, trying to cover up his embarrassment with a smile.
+She allowed her eyes to express interrogation not knowing that her frank
+gaze disconcerted him. She herself went back so eagerly to the days when
+he was the fugitive, Norrie Ford, and she the nameless girl who was
+helping him, that she could not divine his humiliation at being obliged to
+drop his mask. Since becoming engaged to Evie Colfax and returning to New
+York, he perceived more clearly than ever before that his true part in the
+world was that of the respectable, successful man of business which he
+played so skilfully. It cost him an effort she could have no reason to
+suspect to be face to face with the one person in the world who knew him
+as something else.
+
+"You see," he began again, "I had to consider a good many
+things--naturally. It wouldn't have done to give any one an idea that we
+had met before."
+
+"No, of course not. But last night you might have--"
+
+"Last night I had to follow the same tactics. I can't afford to run risks.
+It's rather painful, it's even a bit humiliating--"
+
+"I can imagine that, especially here in New York. In out-of-the-way places
+it must be different. There it doesn't matter. But to be among the very
+people who--"
+
+"You think that there it does matter. I had to consider that. I had to
+make it plain to myself that there was nothing dishonorable in imposing on
+people who had forced me into a false position. I don't say it's
+pleasant--"
+
+"Oh, I know it can't be pleasant. I only wondered a little, as I saw you
+last night, why you let yourself be placed in a position that made it
+necessary."
+
+"I should have wondered at that myself a year ago. I certainly never had
+any intention of doing it. It's almost as much a surprise to me to be here
+as it is to you to see me. I suppose you thought I would never turn up
+again."
+
+"No, I didn't think that. On the contrary, I thought you _would_ turn
+up--only not just here."
+
+It struck him that she was emphasizing that point for a purpose--to bring
+him to another point still. He took a few seconds to reflect before
+deciding that he would follow her lead without further hanging back.
+
+"I shouldn't have returned to New York if I hadn't become engaged to Miss
+Colfax. You know about that, don't you? I think she meant to tell you."
+
+She inclined her head assentingly, without words. He noticed her dark eyes
+resting on him with a kind of pity. He had cherished a faint hope--the
+very faintest--that she might welcome what he had just said
+sympathetically. In the few minutes during which she remained silent that
+hope died.
+
+"I suppose," she said, gently, "that you became engaged to Evie before
+knowing who she was?"
+
+"I fell in love with her before knowing who she was. I'm afraid that when
+I actually asked her to marry me I had heard all there was to learn."
+
+"Then why did you do it?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders with a movement acquired by long residence
+among Latins. His smile conveyed the impossibility of explaining himself
+in a sentence.
+
+"I'll tell you all about it, if you'd like to hear."
+
+"I should like it very much. Remember, I know nothing of what happened
+after--after--"
+
+He noticed a shade of confusion in her manner, and hastened to begin his
+narrative.
+
+Somewhat to her surprise, he sketched his facts in lightly, but dwelt
+strongly on the mental and moral necessities his situation forced on him.
+He related with some detail the formation of his creed of conduct in the
+dawn on Lake Champlain, and showed her that according to its tenets he was
+permitted a kind of action that in other men might be reprehensible. He
+came to the story of Evie last of all, and allowed her to see how
+dominating a part Fate, or Predestination had played in evolving it.
+
+"So you see," he ended, "it was too late then to do anything--but to
+yield."
+
+"Or withdraw," she added, softly.
+
+He stared at her a moment, his body bent slightly forward his elbows
+resting on the arms of his chair. As a matter of fact, he was thinking
+less of her words than of her beauty--so much nobler in type than he
+remembered it.
+
+"Yes," he returned, quietly, "I can see that it would strike you in that
+way. So it did me--at first. But I had to look at the subject all round--"
+
+"I don't need to do that."
+
+He stared at her again. There was a decision in her words which he found
+hard to reconcile with the pity in her eyes and the gentle softness of her
+smile.
+
+"You mean that you don't want to take my--necessities--into
+consideration."
+
+"I mean that when I see the one thing right to do, I don't have to look
+any further."
+
+"The one thing right to do--for you?--or for me?"
+
+"There's no reason why I should intervene at all. I look to you to save me
+from the necessity."
+
+He hesitated a minute before deciding whether to hedge or to meet her
+squarely.
+
+"By giving up Evie and--clearing out," he said, with a perceptible hint of
+defiance.
+
+"I shouldn't lay stress on your--clearing out."
+
+"But you would on my giving up Evie?"
+
+"Don't you see," she began, in an explanatory tone, "I, in my own person,
+have nothing to do with it? It isn't for me to say this should be done or
+that. You can't imagine how hard it is for me to say anything at all; and
+if I speak, it isn't as myself--it's as the voice of a situation. You must
+understand as well as I do what that situation imposes."
+
+"But I don't intend that a situation shall impose anything--on me. I mean
+to act as master--"
+
+"But I'm neither so independent nor so strong--nor is Evie. You don't
+consider her."
+
+"I don't have to consider any one. When I make Evie happy I do all that
+can be asked of me."
+
+"No, you would be called on to _keep_ her happy. And she couldn't remain
+happy if she were married to you. It isn't possible. She couldn't live
+with you any more than--than a humming-bird could live with a hawk."
+
+They both smiled, rather nervously.
+
+"But I'm not a hawk," he insisted. "I'm much more a humming-bird than you
+imagine. You think me some sort of creature of prey because you
+believe--that I did--what I was accused of--"
+
+The circumstances seemed so far off from him now, so incongruous with what
+he had become, that he reverted to them with difficulty.
+
+"I don't attach any importance to that," she said, with a tranquillity
+that startled him. "I suppose I ought to, but I never have. If you killed
+your uncle, it seems to me--very natural. He provoked you. He deserved it.
+My father would have done it certainly."
+
+"But I didn't, you see. That puts another color on the case."
+
+"It doesn't for me. And it doesn't, as it affects Evie. Whether you're
+innocent or guilty--and I don't say I think you to be guilty--I've never
+thought much about it--but whether you're guilty or not, your life is the
+kind of tragedy Evie couldn't share. It would kill her."
+
+"It wouldn't kill her, if she didn't know anything about it."
+
+"But she would know. You can't keep that sort of thing from a wife. She
+wouldn't be married to you a year before she had discovered that you
+were--a--"
+
+"An escaped convict. Why not say it?"
+
+"I wasn't going to say it. But at least she would know that you were a man
+who was pretending to be--something that he wasn't."
+
+"You mean an impostor. Well, I've already explained to you that I'm an
+impostor only because Society itself has made me one, I'm not to blame--"
+
+"I quite see the force of that. But Evie wouldn't. Don't you understand?
+That's my point. She would only see the horror of it, and she would be
+overwhelmed. It wouldn't matter to her that you could bring forward
+arguments in your own defence. She wouldn't be capable of understanding
+them. You must see for yourself that mentally--and spiritually--just as
+bodily--she's as fragile as a butterfly. She couldn't withstand a storm.
+She'd be crushed by it."
+
+"I don't think you do her justice. If she were to discover--I mean, if the
+worst were to come to the worst--well, you can see how it's been with
+yourself. You've known from the beginning all there is to know--and yet--"
+
+"I'm different."
+
+She meant the brief statement to divert his attention from himself, but
+she perceived that it aroused a flash of self-consciousness in both. While
+she could hear herself saying inwardly, "I'd rather go on waiting for
+him--uselessly," he was listening to a silvery voice, as it lisped the
+words, "Dear mamma used to think she was in love with some one; we didn't
+know anything about it." Each reverted to the memory of the lakeside scene
+in which he had said, "My life will belong to you ... a thing for you to
+dispose of ..." and each was afraid that the other was doing so.
+
+All at once she saw herself as she fancied he must see her--a woman
+claiming the fulfilment of an old promise, the payment of a long-standing
+debt. He must think she was making Evie a pretext in her fight for her own
+hand. His vow--if it was a vow--had been the germ of so much romance in
+her mind that she ascribed it to a place in the foreground of his. In all
+she was saying he would understand a demand on her part that he should
+make it good. Very well, then; if he could do her such injustice, he must
+do it. She could not permit the fear of it to inspire her with moral
+cowardice or deter her from doing what was right.
+
+Nevertheless, it helped her to control her agitation to rise and ring for
+tea. She felt the need of some commonplace action to assure herself and
+him that now, at last, she was outside the realm of the romantic. He rose
+as she did, to forestall her at the bell; and as the servant entered with
+the tray, they moved together into the embrasure of the wide bay-window.
+Down below the autumn colors were fading, while leaves, golden-yellow or
+blood-red, were being swirled along the ground.
+
+"I had to do things out there"--his nod was meant to indicate the
+direction of South America--"in a somewhat high-handed manner, and I've
+acquired the habit of it. If I'd stuck at difficulties I shouldn't have
+got anywhere."
+
+She looked at him inquiringly, as though to ask the purport of the
+observation.
+
+"You must see that I'm obliged to put this thing through--on Evie's
+account as much as mine. After getting her to care for me, I can't desert
+her now, whatever happens."
+
+"She wouldn't suffer--after a while. She'd get over it. You might not, but
+she--"
+
+"She shall not get over it, if I can help it. How can you ask me to let
+her?"
+
+"Only on the ground that you love her well enough."
+
+"Would you call that love?"
+
+"In view of all the circumstances, it would be my idea of it."
+
+"Then it wouldn't be mine. The only love I understand is the love that
+fights for its object, in the face of all opposition."
+
+She looked at him a minute with what she tried to make a smile, but which
+became no more than a quivering of the lip and lashes.
+
+"I hope you won't fight," she said, in a tone of appeal, "because it would
+have to be with me. If anything could break my heart, that would."
+
+She knew how near to self-betrayal she had gone, but in her eagerness she
+was reckless of the danger.
+
+"How do you know it wouldn't break mine too?" he asked, with a scrutiny
+that searched her eyes. "But there are times in life when men have just to
+fight--and let their hearts be broken. In becoming responsible for Evie's
+happiness I've given a pledge from which I can't withdraw--"
+
+"But that's where you don't understand her--"
+
+"Possibly; but it's where I understand myself."
+
+"Tea is served, miss," the maid said, coming forward to where they talked
+in undertones. At the same minute there was a shuffling at the door and
+Wayne entered from his drive. Ford would have gone forward to help him,
+but she put out her hand and stopped him.
+
+"He likes to find his way himself," she whispered.
+
+"They tell me there's tea in here," Wayne said, cheerily, from the
+doorway.
+
+"There's more than tea," Miriam replied in as bright a tone as she could
+assume. "There's Mr. Strange, whom you met last night."
+
+"Ah, that's good." Wayne groped his way toward the voices. "How do you do!
+Glad to see you. It's windy out-of-doors. One feels the winter beginning
+to nip."
+
+Ford took the extended hand, and, without seeming to do so, adroitly
+piloted the blind man to a seat as they moved, all three, to the
+tea-table.
+
+For the next ten minutes their talk turned on the common topics of the
+day. As during her conversation with Conquest a few weeks before, Miriam
+found again that the routine of duties of acting as hostess steadied her
+nerves. With Ford aiding her in the little ways to which he had become
+accustomed since his engagement to Evie, hostility was absent from their
+mutual relation, even though opposition remained. That at least was a
+comfort to her; and now and then, as she handed him the bread and butter
+or a plate of cakes to pass to Wayne, their eyes could meet in a glance of
+comprehension.
+
+Wayne was still enjoying his tea when Ford turned to him with an abrupt
+change of tone.
+
+"I'm glad you came in, sir, while I was still here, because there's
+something I particularly want to tell you."
+
+He did not look at Miriam, but he could feel the way in which she sat
+upright and aghast. Wayne turned his sightless eyes, hidden by large
+colored glasses, toward the speaker, and nodded.
+
+"Yes?" he said, interrogatively.
+
+"I would have told you before, only that Miss Jarrott and Miss Colfax
+thought I had better wait till every one got settled. In any case, Mr.
+Jarrott made it a condition before I left Buenos Aires that it shouldn't
+go outside the family till Miss Colfax had had her social winter in New
+York."
+
+Wayne's face grew grave, but not unsympathetic.
+
+"I suppose I know what's coming," he said, quietly.
+
+"It's the sort of thing that was bound to come sooner or later with Miss
+Colfax," Ford smiled, speaking with an air of assurance. "What makes me
+uneasy is that I should be the man to come and tell the news. If it was
+any one you knew better--"
+
+"You've probably heard that I'm not Evie's guardian," Wayne interposed.
+"I've no control at all over what she does."
+
+"I understand that; but to me there's an authority above the legal one--or
+at least on a level with it--and I should be unhappy--we should both be
+unhappy--if we didn't have your consent."
+
+Wayne looked pleased. He was so rarely consulted in the affairs of the
+family, especially since his affliction had forced him aside, that this
+deference was a clew to the young man's character. Nevertheless, he
+allowed some seconds to pass in silence, while Ford threw at Miriam a
+glance of defiance, in which there was also an expression of audacious
+friendliness. She sat rigid and pale, her hands clinching the arms of her
+chair.
+
+"It's a serious matter--of course," Wayne said, after becoming hesitation;
+"but I've great confidence in Henry Jarrott. Next to Evie herself, he's
+the person most concerned--in a certain way. I'm told he thinks well of
+you--"
+
+"He ought to know," Ford broke in, confidently. "I've nothing to show in
+the way of passports, except myself and my work. I've been with him ever
+since I went to South America, and he's been extremely kind to me. The
+only certificate of character I can offer is one from him."
+
+"That's sufficient. We should be sorry to let Evie go, shouldn't we,
+Miriam? She's a sweet child, and very much like her dear mother. But, as
+you say, it was bound to happen one day or another; and we can only be
+glad that--I'm happy to congratulate you, Mr. Strange. Your name, at any
+rate, is a familiar one. It's that of an old boyhood's friend of mine, who
+showed me the honor of placing this young lady in my charge. We called
+him Harry. His full name was Herbert Harrington, but he dropped the first.
+You seem to have taken it up--it's odd, isn't it, Miriam?--and I take it
+as a happy omen."
+
+"Thank you." Ford rose, and made the blind man understand that he was
+holding out his hand, "I shall be more satisfied now for having told you."
+
+Miriam accompanied him into the hall, on pretext of ringing for the lift.
+
+"Oh, why did you do that?" she protested. "Don't you see that it only
+makes things more complicated than they were already?"
+
+"It's my first move," he laughed, with friendly bravado. "Now you can make
+yours."
+
+She gazed at him in puzzled distress as the lift rose.
+
+"I'm coming again," he said, with renewed confidence. "I've a lot more
+things to say."
+
+"And I have only one," she answered, turning back toward the drawing-room.
+
+"He's a nice young fellow," Wayne said, as he heard her enter. He had
+risen and felt his way into the bay-window, where he stood looking outward
+as if he could see. "I suppose it must be all right, since the Jarrotts
+are so enthusiastic Poor little Evie! I hope she'll be happy. It's
+extraordinary how his voice reminds me of--"
+
+She stood still in the middle of the room, waiting for him to continue.
+Nothing he could add would have surprised her now. But he said no more.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+
+Thinking that Ford might come again next afternoon, Miriam went out. On
+her return she found his card--_Mr. Herbert Strange._ The same thing
+occurred the next day, and the next, and so on through the week. She was
+not afraid of seeing him. Now that the worst was known to her, she was
+sure of her mastery of herself, and of her capacity to meet anything. What
+she feared most was her sympathy for him, and the possibility that in some
+unguarded moment of pity he might wring concessions from her which she had
+no right to make. She hoped, too, that time, even a few days' time, would
+help him to work out the honorable course for himself.
+
+Her meetings with Evie were more inevitable, and required greater
+self-repression. She was so used to the part of elder sister, with whom
+all confidences are discussed, that she found it difficult not to speak
+her heart out frankly.
+
+"I heard he had been to see you and Popsey Wayne, and told you," Evie
+said, with her pretty nose just peeping above the bedclothes, at midday,
+on a morning later in the week. It was the day after Evie's first large
+dance, and she had been sleeping late. Miriam sat on the edge of the bed,
+smoothing stray golden tendrils off the flushed, happy little face.
+
+"He did come," Miriam admitted. "Mr. Wayne made no objections. I can't
+say he was glad. You wouldn't expect us to be that, dear, would you?"
+
+"I expect you to like him. It isn't committing you to much to say that.
+But you seem so--so every which way about him."
+
+"I'm not every which way about him. I can't say that I'm any way at all.
+Yes, I do like him--after a fashion. If I make reserves, it's because I'm
+not sure that I think him good enough for my little Evie."
+
+"He's a great deal too good!" Evie exclaimed, rapturously. "Oh, Miriam, if
+you only knew how fond I am of him! I'd die for him--I truly believe I
+would--almost! Oh, it was so stupid last night without him! All these boys
+seem such pigeons beside him. I'm sorry now we're not going to announce
+the engagement at once. I certainly sha'n't change my mind--and it would
+be such fun to be able to say I was engaged before coming out."
+
+"Twice before coming out."
+
+"Oh, well, I only count it once, do you see? Billy's such a goose. You
+should have seen him last night when I forgot two of my dances with
+him--on purpose. He's really getting to dislike me; so that I shall soon
+be able to--to show him."
+
+"I wouldn't be in a hurry about that, dear. There's lots of time. As you
+said the other day, it's no use hurting his feelings--"
+
+Evie sat up suddenly in bed, and looked suspicious.
+
+"So you're taking that stand. Now I know you don't like him. You've got
+something against him, though I can't for the life of me imagine what it
+can be, when you never laid eyes on him till a few days ago. Well, I'm not
+going to change, do you see? You may as well make up your mind to that at
+once. And it will be Billy or no Billy."
+
+Nearer than that Miriam could not approach the subject through fear of
+doing more harm than good. At the end of a week Ford found her at home,
+chiefly because she felt it time he should. She secured again the
+afternoon-call atmosphere; but she noticed that he carried a small
+packet--a large, brownish-yellow envelope, strapped with rubber
+bands--which he kept in his hand. She was struck by the greater ease of
+his entry, and by the renewal of that sense of comradeship which had
+marked his bearing toward her in the old days in the cabin. The small
+comedy of introductory commonplace went off smoothly.
+
+"Well?" he said then, with a little challenging laugh.
+
+"Well--what?"
+
+"I've been waiting for your move. You haven't made it."
+
+She shook her head. "I've no move to make."
+
+"Oh yes, you have--a great big move. You can easily say, Check. I doubt if
+you can make it, Checkmate."
+
+"I'm afraid that's a game I don't know how to play."
+
+He stared at her inquiringly--noting the disdain with which her chin
+tilted and her lip curled, though he could see it was a disdain suffused
+with sweetness.
+
+"Do you mean that you wouldn't--wouldn't give me away?"
+
+"I mean that you're either broaching a topic I don't understand or
+speaking a language I've never learned. If you don't mind, we won't
+discuss the subject, and we'll speak our mother-tongue--the mother-tongue
+of people like you and me."
+
+He stared again. It took him some few seconds to understand her
+phraseology. In proportion as her meaning broke upon him, his face glowed.
+When he spoke it was with enthusiasm for her generosity in taking this
+stand rather than in gratitude for anything he was to gain by it.
+
+"By Jove, you're a brick! You always were. I might have expected that this
+is exactly what you'd say."
+
+"I hope so. I didn't expect that you'd talk of my giving you away, as you
+call it--to any one."
+
+"But you're wrong," he said, with a return to the laughing bravado which
+concealed his inward repugnance to his position. "You're wrong. I'll give
+you that tip now. I'll fight fair. I sha'n't be grateful. I'll profit by
+your magnanimity. Remember it's my part in the world to be unscrupulous.
+It has to be. I've told you so. With me the end justifies the
+means--always; and when the end is to keep my word to Evie, it will make
+no difference to me that you were too high-minded to put the big obstacle
+in my way."
+
+"You'll not expect me to be otherwise than sorry for that--for your sake."
+
+"No, I dare say. But I can't stop to think of what any one feels for my
+sake when I know what I feel for my own."
+
+"Which is only an additional reason for my being--sorry. You don't find
+fault with me for that?"
+
+"I do. I don't want you to be sorry. I want to convince you. I want you to
+see things from my point of view--how I've been placed. Good Lord! it's
+hard enough, without the sense that you're sitting in judgment on me."
+
+"I'm not sitting in judgment on you--except in so far as concerns Evie
+Colfax. If it was anybody else--"
+
+"But it couldn't be anybody else It's Evie or no one. She's everything on
+earth to me. She's to me what electricity is to the wire--that which makes
+it a thing alive."
+
+"To be a thing alive isn't necessarily the highest thing."
+
+"Ah, but that doesn't apply to me. It's all very well for other men to
+say, 'All is lost to save honor.' They have compensations. I haven't. You
+might as well ask a man to think of the highest thing when he's drowning."
+
+"But I should. There have been men who haven't--and they've saved their
+lives by it. But you know what we've called them."
+
+"In my case there'd be only you to call me that--if you wanted to."
+
+"Oh no; there'd be--you."
+
+"I can stand that. I've stood it for eight years already. If you think I
+haven't had times when it's been hell, you're quite mistaken. I wonder if
+you can guess what it means to me--in here"--he tapped his breast--"to go
+round among all these good, kind, honorable people, passing myself off as
+Herbert Strange when all the time I'm Norrie Ford--and a convict? But I'm
+forced to. There's no way out of it."
+
+"Because there's no way out of it isn't a reason for going further in."
+
+"What does that matter? When you're in up to the eyes, what does it matter
+if you go over your head?"
+
+"In this case it would matter to Evie. That's my point. I have to protect
+her--to save her. There's no one but me to do it--and you."
+
+"Don't count on me," he said, savagely. "I've the right, in this wild
+beast's life, to seize anything I can snatch."
+
+He renewed his arguments, going over all the ground again. She listened
+to him as she had once listened to his plea in his defence--her pose
+pensive, her chin resting on her hand, her eyes pitiful. As far as she was
+aware of her own feelings it was merely to take note that a kind of
+yearning over him, an immense sorrow for him and with him, had
+extinguished the fires that a few days ago were burning for herself. It
+was hard to sit there heedless of his exposition and deaf to his
+persuasion. Seeing her inflexible, he became halting in his speech, till
+finally he stopped, still looking at her with an unresenting, dog-like
+gaze of entreaty.
+
+She made no comment when he ceased, and for a time they sat in silence.
+
+"Do you know what this is?" he asked, holding the packet toward her.
+
+She shook her head wonderingly.
+
+"It's what I owe you." She made a gesture of deprecation. "It's the money
+you lent me," he went on. "It's a tremendous satisfaction--that at
+least--to be able to bring it back to you."
+
+"But I don't want it," she stammered, in some agitation.
+
+"Perhaps not. But I want you to have it." He explained to her briefly what
+he had done in the matter.
+
+"Couldn't you give it to something?" she begged, "to some church or
+institution?"
+
+"You can, if you like. I mean to give it to you. You see, I'm not
+returning it with expressions of gratitude, because anything I could say
+would be so inadequate as to be absurd."
+
+He left his chair and came to her, with the packet in his outstretched
+hand. She shrank from it, rising, and retreating into the space of the
+bay-window.
+
+"But I don't want it," she insisted. "I never thought of your returning
+it. I scarcely thought of the incident at all. It had almost passed from
+my memory."
+
+"That's natural enough; but it's equally natural that it shouldn't have
+passed from mine." He came close to her and offered it again. "Do take
+it."
+
+"Put it on the table. Please."
+
+"That isn't the same thing. I want you to take it. I want to put it into
+your own hand, as you put it into mine."
+
+She remembered that she had put it into his hand by closing his fingers
+forcibly upon it, and hastened to prevent anything of that kind now. She
+took it unwillingly, holding it in both hands as if it were a casket.
+
+"That's done," he said, with satisfaction. "You can't imagine what a
+relief it is to have it off my mind."
+
+"I'm sorry you should have felt about it like that."
+
+"You would have felt like that yourself, if you were a man owing money to
+a woman--and especially a woman who was your--enemy."
+
+"Oh!" She cowered, as if he had threatened her.
+
+"I repeat the word," he laughed, uneasily. "Any one is my enemy who comes
+between me and Evie. You'll forgive me if I seem brutal--"
+
+"Yes, I'll forgive you. I'll even accept the word." She was pale and
+nervous, with the kind of nervousness that kept her smiling and still, but
+sent the queer, lambent flashes into her eyes. "Let us say it. I'm your
+enemy, and you pay me the money so as to feel free to strike me as hard as
+you can."
+
+He kept to his laugh, but there was a forced ring in it.
+
+"I don't call that a fair way of putting it, but--"
+
+"I don't see that the way of putting it matters, so long as it's the
+fact."
+
+"It's the fact twisted in a very ingenious fashion. I should say
+that--since I'm going to marry Evie--I want--naturally enough--to feel
+that--that"--he stammered and reddened, seeking a word that would not
+convey an insult--"to feel--that I--met other claims--as well as I could."
+
+He looked her in the eyes with significant directness. His steady gaze, in
+which she saw--or thought she saw--glints of challenge toned down by
+gleams of regret, seemed to say, "Whatever I owe you other than money is
+out of my power to pay." She fully understood that he did not repudiate
+the debt; he was only telling her that since he had given all to Evie, his
+heart was bankrupt. What angered her and kept her silent, fearing she
+would say something she would afterward repent, was the implication that
+she was putting forth her claim for fulfilment.
+
+He still confronted her, with an air of flying humiliation as a flag of
+defiance, while she stood holding the packet in both hands, when the door
+was pushed open, and Evie, radiant from her walk in the cold air and fine
+in autumn furs and plumage, fluttered in. Her blue eyes opened wide on the
+two in the bay-window, but she did not advance from the threshold.
+
+"Dear me, dear me!" she twittered, in her dry little fashion, before they
+had time to realize the fact that she was there. "I hope I'm not
+interrupting you."
+
+"Evie dear, come in." Miriam threw the packet on a table, and went
+forward. Ford followed, trying to regain the appearance of "just making a
+call."
+
+"No, no," Evie cried, waving Miriam back. "I only came--for nothing. That
+is--But I'll go away and come back again. Do you think you'll be long? But
+I suppose if you have secrets--"
+
+Her hand was on the knob again, but Miriam caught her.
+
+"No, darling, you must stay. You're absurd. Mr. Strange and I were
+just--talking."
+
+"Yes, so I saw. That's why I thought I might be _de trap_. How do you do!"
+She put out her left hand carelessly to Ford, her right hand still holding
+the knob, and twisted her little person impatiently. Ford held her hand,
+but she snatched it away. "There's not the least reason why I should stay,
+do you see?" she hurried on. "I only came with a message from Aunt
+Queenie."
+
+"I'm sure it's confidential," Ford laughed, "so I'll make myself scarce."
+
+"You can do just as you like," Evie returned, indifferently. "Cousin
+Colfax Yorke," she added, looking at Miriam, "has telephoned that he can't
+come to dine; and, as it's too late to get anybody else, Aunt Queenie
+thought you might come and make a fourth. It's only ourselves and--- him,"
+she nodded toward Strange.
+
+"Certainly, I'll come, dear--with pleasure."
+
+"And I'll go," Ford said; "but I won't add with pleasure, because that
+would be rude."
+
+When he had gone Evie sniffed about the room, looking at the pictures and
+curios as if she had never seen them before. It was evident that she had
+spied the packet, and was making her way, by a seemingly accidental route,
+toward it. Miriam drifted back to her place in the bay-window, where,
+while apparently watching the traffic in the street below, she kept an eye
+on Evie's manœuvres.
+
+"What on earth can you two have to talk about?" Evie demanded, while she
+seemed intent on examining a cabinet of old porcelain.
+
+"If you're very good, dear," Miriam replied, trying to take an amused,
+offhand tone, "I'll tell you. It was business."
+
+"Business? Why, I thought you hardly knew him."
+
+"You don't have to know people very well to transact business with them.
+He came on a question of--money."
+
+"No, but you don't start up doing business with a person that's just
+dropped down from the clouds--like that." She snapped her fingers to
+indicate precipitous haste.
+
+"Sometimes you do."
+
+"Well, _you_ don't. I know that for a fact." She was inspecting a vase on
+a pedestal in a corner now. It was nearer to the packet. She wheeled round
+suddenly, so that it should take her by surprise. "What's that?"
+
+"You see. It's an envelope with papers in it."
+
+"What sort of papers?"
+
+"I haven't looked at them yet. They have to do with money, or investments,
+or something. I'm never very clear about those things."
+
+"I thought you did all that through Cousin Endsleigh Jarrott and Mr.
+Conquest?"
+
+"This was a little thing I couldn't trouble them with."
+
+"And you went straight off to _him_, when you'd only known him--let me
+see!--how many days?--one, two, three, four--"
+
+"I've gone to people I didn't know at all--sometimes. You have to. If you
+only knew more about investing money--"
+
+"I don't know anything about investing money; but I know this is very
+queer. And you didn't like him--or you said you didn't."
+
+"I said I did, dear--after a fashion--and so I do."
+
+"In that case I should think a good deal would depend upon the fashion.
+Look here. It's addressed--_Miss Strange._ That's his writing. That's how
+he scribbles his name. And there's something written in tiny, tiny letters
+in the corner. What is it?" Without touching the envelope she bent down to
+see. "It's _The Wild Olive_. Now, what in this world can that mean? That's
+not business, anyhow. That means something."
+
+"No, that's not business, but I haven't an idea what it means." Miriam was
+glad to be able to disclaim something. "It was probably on the envelope by
+accident. Some clerk wrote it, and Mr. Strange didn't notice it."
+
+Evie let the explanation pass, while continuing to stare at the object of
+her suspicions.
+
+"That's not papers," she said, at last, pointing as she spoke to something
+protruding between the rubber bands. "There's something in there. It looks
+like a"--she hesitated to find the right article--"it looks like a
+card-case."
+
+"Perhaps it is," Miriam agreed. "But I'm sure I don't know why he should
+bring me a card-case."
+
+"Why don't you look?"
+
+"I wasn't in a hurry; but you can look yourself if you want to."
+
+Evie took offence. "I'm sure I don't want to. That's the last thing."
+
+"I wish you would. Then you'd see."
+
+"I only do it under protest," she declared--"because you force me to." She
+took up the envelope, and began to unloose the rubber bands. "_The Wild
+Olive_" she quoted, half to herself. "Ridiculous! I should think clerks
+might have something better to do than write such things as that--on
+envelopes--on people's business." But her indignation turned to surprise
+when a small flat thing, not unlike a card-case, certainly, tumbled out.
+"What in the name of goodness--?"
+
+Only strong self-control kept Miriam from darting forward to snatch it
+from the floor. She remembered it at once. It was a worn red leather
+pocket-book, which she had last seen when it was fresh and new--sitting in
+the sunset, on the heights above Champlain, and looking at the jewelled
+sea. A card fell from it, on which there was something written. Evie
+dropped on one knee to pick it up. Miriam was sorry to risk anything, but
+she felt constrained to say, as quietly as possible:
+
+"You'd better not read that, dear. It might be private."
+
+Evie slipped the card back into the pocket-book, which she threw on the
+table, where Miriam let it lie. "I won't look at anything else," Evie
+said, with dignity, turning away.
+
+"I want you to," Miriam said, authoritatively. "I beg you to."
+
+Thus commanded, Evie drew forth a flat document, on which she read, in
+ornamental letters, the inscription, _New York, Toronto, and Great Lakes
+Railroad Company_. She unfolded it slowly, looking puzzled.
+
+"It's nothing but a lot of little square things," she said, with some
+disdain.
+
+"The little square things are called coupons, if you know what they are."
+
+"I know they're things people cut--when they have a lot of money. I don't
+know why they cut them; and still less do I know why he should be bringing
+them to you."
+
+Miriam had a sudden inspiration that made her face beam with relief.
+
+"I'll tell you why he brought them to me, dear--though I do it under
+protest, as you say yourself. Your curiosity forces my hand, and makes me
+show it ahead of time. He brought them to me because it's a
+wedding-present for you. When you get married--or begin to get
+married--you can have all that money for your trousseau."
+
+"Aunt Helen is going to give me my trousseau. She said so."
+
+"Then you can have it for anything you like--for house-furnishings or a
+pearl necklace. You know you wanted a pearl necklace--and there's plenty
+for a nice one. Each of those papers is worth a thousand dollars, or
+nearly. And there are--how many?"
+
+"Three. You seem very keen on getting rid of them."
+
+"So I am--to you, darling."
+
+Evie prepared to depart, looking unconvinced.
+
+"It's awfully nice of you--of course. But still--if that's what you had
+meant at first--from the beginning--you would have--Well, I'll tell Aunt
+Queenie you'll come."
+
+Left alone, Miriam made haste to read the card in the pocket-book.
+
+/#
+   _As deep calls to deep, so Spirit speaks to Spirit. It is the only true
+   communion between mutually comprehending souls. But it is
+   unerring--pardoning all, because understanding all, and making the
+   crooked straight._
+#/
+
+She read it more than once. She was not sure that it was meant for her.
+She was not sure that it was in Ford's own handwriting. But in their
+situation it had a meaning; she took it as a message to herself; and as
+she read, and read again, she felt on her face the trickling of one or two
+slow, hard tears.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+
+The result of the dinner that evening was that Evie grew more fretful.
+After the departure of her guests, she evolved a brief formula which she
+used frequently during the next few weeks: "There's something!" With her
+quick eyes and quicker intuitions, it was impossible for her not to see
+that Ford and Miriam possessed common memories of the kind that
+distinguish old acquaintances from new ones. When it did not transpire in
+chance words she caught it in their glances or divined it in the mental
+atmosphere. As autumn passed into early winter she became nervous,
+peevish, and exacting; she lost much from her pretty ways and something
+from her looks. In the family the change was ascribed to the fatigue
+incidental to the sudden round of lunches, dinners, dances, suppers,
+theatre-parties, opera-goings, and "teas" with which American boys and
+girls of a certain age are surfeited pitilessly with pleasure, as
+Strasburg geese are stuffed for paté de foie gras. Ford, however,
+suspected the true reason, and Miriam knew it. They met as seldom as might
+be; and yet, with the many things requiring explanation between them,
+frank conversation became imperative.
+
+"You see how it is already," Miriam said to him. "It's making her unhappy
+from the start. You can't conceal the truth from her very long."
+
+"She isn't fretting about the truth; she's fretting about what she
+imagines."
+
+"She's fretting because she doesn't understand, and she'll go on fretting
+till she does. I'm not sorry. It must show you--"
+
+"It shows me the necessity of our being married as soon as possible, so
+that I may take care of her, and put a stop to it."
+
+"I agree with you that you'd put a stop to it. You'd put a stop to
+everything. She wouldn't live a year--or you wouldn't. Either she'd
+die--or she'd abhor you. And if she didn't die, you'd want to."
+
+"I wish to the Lord I had died--eight years ago. The great mistake I made
+was when the lumber-jacks loosed my hand-cuffs and started me through the
+woods. They called it giving me a chance, and for a few minutes I thought
+it was one. A chance! Good God! I remember feeling, as I ran, that I was
+deserting something. I didn't know what it was just then, but I've
+understood it since. It would have been a pluckier thing to have been in
+my coffin as Norrie Ford--or even doing time--than to be here as Herbert
+Strange."
+
+She said nothing for the moment, but as they walked along side by side he
+shot a glance at her, and saw her coloring. They had met in the park. He
+was going toward the house in Seventy-second Street when she was coming
+away from it. Seizing the opportunity of a few words in private, he had
+turned to stroll back with her.
+
+"I didn't expect you to be here as Herbert Strange," she said, as though
+in self-excuse. "I had to give you a name that was like my own, when I was
+writing letters about your ticket, and sending checks. I had to do
+everything to avoid suspicion at a time when Greenport was watched. I
+thought you might be able to take your own name or something like it--"
+
+He explained to her how that had never been possible.
+
+"Evie fidgets about it," he continued. "She puts together the two facts
+that you and I seem to have known each other, and that my name is
+identical with your father's. She doesn't know what to make of it; she
+only thinks 'there's something.' She hasn't said more than that in words,
+but I see her little mind at work."
+
+"Evie isn't the only one," she informed him. "There's Mr. Wayne. He has to
+be reckoned with. He recognized your voice from the first minute of
+hearing it, though he hasn't said yet that he knows whose it is. He may do
+so at any time. He's very surprising at that sort of thing. I can see him
+listening when you're there, not only to your words, but to your very
+movements, trying to recapture--"
+
+"The upshot of everything," he said, abruptly, "is that I must marry her,
+take her back to the Argentine, where I found her, and where we shall both
+be out of harm's way."
+
+"You wouldn't be out of harm's way. You can't turn your back on it like
+that. You alone might be able to slip through, but not if you have Evie."
+
+"That will be my affair; I'll see to it. I take the full responsibility on
+myself."
+
+"I couldn't let you. Remember that. You can't marry her. Let me say it
+plainly--"
+
+"Oh, you've said it plainly enough."
+
+"If I've said it too plainly, it's because you force me. You're so
+wilful."
+
+"You mean, I'm so determined. What it amounts to is the clash of your
+will against mine; and you refuse to see that I can't give way."
+
+"I see that you must give way. It's in the nature of things. It's
+inevitable. If I didn't know that, do you think I should interfere? Do you
+think I should dare to run the risk of wrecking your happiness if I could
+do anything else? If you knew how I hate doing anything at all--"
+
+"But you needn't. You can just let things be."
+
+"I can't let things be--with all I know; and yet it's impossible for me to
+appeal to any one, except yourself. You put me in a position in which I
+must either betray you or betray those who trust me. Because I can't do
+either--"
+
+"I profit by your noble-mindedness. I told you I would. I'm sorry to have
+to do it--I'll even admit that I'm ashamed of it--and yet there's no other
+course for me. I'm not taking you at an unfair advantage, because I've
+concealed nothing from you from the first. You talk about the difficulty
+of your position, but you don't begin to imagine mine. As if everything
+else wasn't gall to me, I've got your disapproval to add wormwood."
+
+"It isn't my disapproval; it's simply--the situation. My opinion counts
+for nothing--"
+
+"It counts for everything with me--and yet I have to ignore it. But, after
+all," he flung out, bitterly, "it's the old story. I claim the right to
+squeeze out of life such drops of happiness--if you can call it
+happiness--as men have left to me, and you deny it. There it is in a
+nutshell. Because other people have inflicted a great wrong on me, you
+insist that I shall inflict a greater one on myself. And this time it
+wouldn't be only on myself; it would be on poor little Evie. There's
+where it cuts. No, no; I shall go on. I've the right to do it. You must
+stop me if you can. If you don't, or won't--why, then--"
+
+"I can stop you ... if you drive me to extremes ... but it wouldn't be by
+doing ... any of the things you expect."
+
+It was because of the catch in her voice that he stopped in his walk, and
+confronted her. In spite of the little tremor he could see in her no sign
+of yielding, and behind her veil he caught a gleam like that of anger. It
+was at that minute, perhaps, that he became distinctly conscious for the
+first time of a doubt as to the superiority of "his type of girl."
+Notwithstanding the awakening of certain faint perceptions, he had
+hitherto denied within himself that there was anything higher or more
+lovely. But in this girl's unflinching loyalty, and in her tenacious
+clinging to what she considered right, he was getting a new glimpse of
+womanhood, which, however, in no way weakened his determination to resist
+her.
+
+"As far as I see," he said, after long hesitation, "you and I have two
+irreconcilable duties. My duty is to marry Evie; yours is to prevent me.
+In that case there's nothing for either of us but to forge ahead, and see
+who wins. If you win, I shall bear no malice; and I hope you'll be equally
+generous if I do."
+
+"But I don't want to win independently of you. If I did, nothing could be
+easier."
+
+"Then why not do it?"
+
+He tossed up his hand with one of his fatalistic Latin gestures, drawing
+the attention of the passers-by to the man and woman talking so earnestly.
+For this reason, and because she was losing her self-command, she hastened
+to take leave of him.
+
+Arrived at home, it gave her no comfort to find Charles Conquest--the
+most spick and span of middle-aged New-Yorkers--waiting in the
+drawing-room.
+
+"I thought you might come in," he explained, "so I stayed. I have to get
+your signature to the papers about that property in Montreal. I've fixed
+the thing up and we'll sell."
+
+"You said you'd send the papers--"
+
+"That sounds as if you weren't glad to see me," he laughed, "but I'll
+ignore the discourtesy. Here," he added, unfolding the documents, "you put
+your name there--and there--near the L.S."
+
+She carried the papers to her desk, and sat down to write. Conquest took
+the liberty of old friendship to stroll about the room, with his hands
+behind him, humming a little tune.
+
+"Well," he said suddenly, "has he come back?"
+
+He had not approached the subject, beyond alluding to it covertly, since
+the day she had confided to him the confused story of her hopes. She
+blotted her signature carefully thinking out her reply.
+
+"I've given up expecting him," she said at last.
+
+"Ho! ho! So that's out of the way."
+
+She pretended to be scanning the documents before her so as to be able to
+sit with her back to him.
+
+"It isn't, for the reason that there's--no _way_," she said, after some
+hesitation.
+
+"Oh yes, there is," he laughed, "where there's a will."
+
+"But I've no will."
+
+"I have; I've enough for two."
+
+"I'll tell you what you have got," she said, half turning and speaking to
+him over the back of her chair. He drew near her. "You've got a great
+deal of common sense, and I want to ask your advice."
+
+"I can give that, as radium emits light--without ever diminishing the
+original store."
+
+"Then tell me. Has one ever the right to interfere where a man and a
+woman--"
+
+"No, never. You needn't give me any more details, because it's one of the
+questions an oracle finds easiest to answer. No one ever thanks you--"
+
+"I shouldn't be doing it for thanks."
+
+"And you get your own fingers burnt."
+
+"That wouldn't matter. I'd let my fingers burn to the bone if it would do
+any good."
+
+"It wouldn't. You may take my word for it. I know who you're talking
+about. It's Evie Colfax."
+
+She started, looking guilty. "Why should you suppose that?"
+
+"I've got eyes. I've watched her, and I know she's a little minx. Oh, you
+needn't protest. She's a taking little minx, and this time she's in the
+right."
+
+"I'm afraid I don't know what you mean."
+
+"What has Billy Merrow got to offer her, even if he is my nephew? Come
+now! He won't be in a position to marry for the next two or three years.
+Whereas that fellow Strange--"
+
+"Have you heard anything about him?" she asked, breathlessly.
+
+"It isn't what I've heard, it's what I see. He's a very good chap, and a
+first-rate man of business."
+
+"Do you know him well--personally?"
+
+"I meet him around--at the club and other places--and naturally I have
+something to do with him at the office. I like him. If Evie can snap him
+up she'll be doing well for herself. I'm sorry for Billy, of course; but
+he'll have time to break his heart more than once before he'll have money
+enough to do anything else with it. If I'd married at his age--"
+
+This, however, was venturing on delicate ground, so that he broke off,
+wheeling round toward the centre of the drawing-room. She folded the
+documents and brought them to him.
+
+"You know why I didn't send them?" he said, as he took them. "I thought if
+I came myself, you might have something to tell me."
+
+"I haven't; not anything special, that is."
+
+"You've told me something special already--that you're not looking for him
+back."
+
+"I'd rather not talk about it now, if you don't mind."
+
+"Then we'll talk about what goes with it--the other side of the subject."
+
+"There is no other side of the subject."
+
+"Oh, come now, Miriam! You haven't heard all I've got to tell you. You've
+never let me really present my case, as we lawyers say. If you could see
+things as I do--"
+
+"But I can't, and you mustn't ask me to-day. I'm tired--"
+
+"It would rest you."
+
+"No, no; not to-day. Don't you see I'm not--I'm not myself? I've had a
+very trying morning."
+
+"What's the matter? Tell me. I can keep a confidence even if I can't do
+some other things. Come now! I don't like to think you're worried when
+perhaps I could help you. That's what I should be good for, don't you see?
+I could assist you to bear a lot of things--"
+
+His tone, which was so often charged with a slightly mocking banter,
+became tender, and he attempted to take her hand. For a minute it seemed
+as if it might be a relief to trust him, to tell him the whole story and
+follow his counsel; but a second's thought showed her that she could not
+shift the responsibility from herself, and that in the end she should have
+to act alone.
+
+"Not to-day," she pleaded. "I'm not equal to it."
+
+"Then I'll come another day."
+
+"Yes, yes; if you like, only--"
+
+"Some day soon?"
+
+"When you like, only leave me now. Please go away. You won't think I'm
+rude, will you? But I'm not--not as I generally am--"
+
+"Good-bye." He put out his, hand frankly, and smiled so humbly, and yet
+withal so confidently, that she felt as if in spite of herself she might
+yield to his persistence through sheer weariness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To her surprise, the next few weeks passed without incident bringing no
+development in the situation. She saw little of Evie and almost nothing of
+Ford. One or two encounters with Charles Conquest had no result beyond the
+reiteration on his part of a set phrase, "You're coming to it, Miriam,"
+which, while exasperating her nerves, had a kind of hypnotic effect upon
+her will. She felt as if she might be "coming to it." Without calculating
+the probabilities she saw clearly enough that if she married Conquest the
+very act would furnish proof to Ford that her intervention in his affairs
+had been without self-interest. It would even offer some proof to herself,
+the sort of proof that strengthens the resolution and supports what is
+tottering in the pride. Notwithstanding the valor with which she
+struggled her victory over herself was not so complete that she could
+contemplate the destruction of Ford's happiness with absolute confidence
+in the purity of her motives in bringing it to ruin. It was difficult to
+take the highest road when what was left of her own fiercest instincts
+accompanied her on it. That she had fierce instincts she was quite aware.
+It was not for nothing that she had been born almost beyond the confines
+of the civilized earth, of parents for whom law and order and other men's
+rights were as the dead letter. True, she was trying to train the
+inheritance received from them to its finer purposes, as the vine draws
+strange essences from a flinty soil and sublimates them into the
+grape--but it was still their inheritance. While she was proud of it, she
+was afraid of it; and the fact that it leaped with her to separate Norrie
+Ford from Evie Colfax was a reason for distrusting the very impulse she
+knew to be right. Marriage with Conquest presented itself, therefore as a
+refuge--from Ford's suspicion and her own.
+
+For the time being, however, the necessity for doing anything was not
+pressing. Evie was caught into the social machine that had been set going
+on her account, and was not so much whirling in it as being whirled. Her
+energies were so taxed by the task of going round that she had only
+snatches of time and attention to give to her own future. In one of these
+she wrote to her uncle Jarrott, asking his consent to the immediate
+proclamation of her engagement, with his approval of her marriage at the
+end of the winter, though the reasons she gave him were not the same as
+those she advanced to Miriam. To him she dwelt on the maturity of her
+age--twenty by this time--the unchanging nature of her sentiments, and her
+desire to be settled down. To Miriam she was content to say, "There's
+something! and I sha'n't get to the bottom of it till we're married."
+
+Of the opening thus unexpectedly offered her Miriam made full use,
+pointing out the folly or verifying suspicions after marriage rather than
+before.
+
+"Well, I'm going to do it, do you see?" was Evie's only reply. "I know it
+will be all right in the end."
+
+Still a few weeks were to pass, and it was early in the new year before
+Uncle Jarrott's cablegram arrived with the three words, "_If you like_."
+Miriam received the information at the opera, where she had been suddenly
+called on to take the place of Miss Jarrott, laid low with "one of her
+headaches." It was Ford who told her, during an entr'acte, when for a few
+minutes Evie had left the box with the young man who made the fourth in
+the party. Finding themselves alone, Ford and Miriam withdrew as far as
+possible from public observation, speaking in rapid undertones.
+
+"But you'll not let her do it?" Miriam urged.
+
+"I shall, if you will. You can stop it--or posptone it. If you don't, I
+have every right to forge ahead. It's no use going over the old arguments
+again--"
+
+"You put me in an odious position. You want me either to betray you or
+betray the people who've been kind to me. It _would_ be betrayal if I were
+to let you go on."
+
+"Then stop me; it's in your power."
+
+"Very well; I will."
+
+He gave her a quick look, astonished rather than startled, but there was
+no time for further speech before Evie and her companion returned.
+
+It was Miriam's intention to put her plan into immediate execution, but
+she let most of the next day go by without doing anything. Understanding
+his driving her to extremes to be due less to deliberate defiance than to
+a desperate braving of the worst, she was giving him a chance for
+repentance. Just at the closing in of the winter twilight, at the hour
+when he generally appeared, the door was flung open and Billy Merrow
+rushed in excitedly.
+
+"What's all this about Evie?" he shouted, almost before crossing the
+threshold. "I've been there, and no one is at home. What's it about? Who
+has invented the confounded lie?"
+
+She could only guess at his meaning, but she forced him to shake hands and
+calm himself. Turning on the electric light, she saw a young man with
+decidedly tousled reddish hair, and features as haggard as a perfectly
+healthy, honest, freckled face could be.
+
+"Sit down, Billy, and tell me about it."
+
+"I can't; I'm crazy."
+
+"So I see; but tell me what you're crazy about."
+
+"Haven't you heard it? Of course you have. They wouldn't be writing it to
+Uncle Charlie if you didn't know all about it. But I'm hanged if I'll let
+it go on."
+
+Little by little she dragged the story from him. Miss Queenie Jarrott had
+written to Charles Conquest as one of the oldest friends of the family to
+inform him, "somewhat confidentially as yet," of her niece's engagement to
+Mr. Herbert Strange, of Buenos Aires and New York. Uncle Charlie, knowing
+what this would mean to him, had come to break the news and tell him to
+"buck up and take it standing."
+
+"I'll bet you I sha'n't take it lying down," he assured Miriam. "Evie is
+engaged to _me_."
+
+"Yes, Billy, but you see Miss Jarrott didn't know it. That's where the
+mistake has been. You know I've always been opposed to the secrecy of the
+affair, and I advised you and Evie to wait till you could both speak out."
+
+"It isn't so very secret. You know it and so does Uncle Charlie."
+
+"But Evie's own family have been kept in the dark, except that she told
+her aunt in South America. But that's where the mistake comes in, don't
+you see? Miss Jarrott, not having an idea about you, you see--"
+
+"Spreads it round that Evie is engaged to some one else, when she isn't.
+I'll show her who's engaged, when I can find her in. I'm going to sit on
+her door-step till--"
+
+"I wouldn't do anything rash, Billy. Suppose you were to leave it to me?"
+
+"What good would that do? If that old witch is putting it round, the only
+thing for Evie and me to do is to contradict her."
+
+"Has Evie ever given you an idea that anything was wrong?"
+
+"Evie's been the devil. I don't mind saying it to you, because you
+understand the kind of devil she'd be. But Lord! I don't care. It's just
+her way. She's told me to go to the deuce half a dozen times, but she
+knows I won't till she comes with me. Oh, no. Evie's all right--"
+
+"Yes, of course, Evie's all right. But you know, Billy dear, this thing
+requires a great deal of management and straightening out, and I do wish
+you'd let me take charge of it. I know every one concerned, you see, so
+that I could do it better than any one--any one but you, I mean--"
+
+"I understand that all right. I'm not going to be rough on them, but all
+the same--"
+
+She got him to sit down at last, made tea for him, and soothed him. At
+the end of an hour he had undertaken not to molest Miss Jarrott, or to
+fight that "confounded South-American," or to say a word of any kind to
+Evie till she was ready to say a word to him. He became impressed with the
+necessity for diplomatic action and, after some persuasion, promised to
+submit to guidance--at any rate, for a time.
+
+"And now, Billy, I'm going to write a note. The first thing to be done is
+that you should find Mr. Strange and deliver it to him before nine o'clock
+this evening. You'll do it quietly, won't you? and not let him see that
+you are anything more than my messenger. No matter where he is, even in a
+private house, you must see that he gets the note, if at all possible."
+
+When he had sworn to this she wrote a few lines hurriedly. He carried them
+away in the same tumultuous haste with which he had come. After his
+departure she felt herself unexpectedly strong and calm.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+
+The feeling of being equal to anything she might have to face continued
+with her. Now that the moment for action had arrived she had confidence in
+her ability to meet it, since it had to be done. At dinner she was able to
+talk to Wayne on indifferent topics, and later, when he had retired to his
+den to practise his Braile, she sat down in the drawing-room with a book.
+Noticing that she wore the severe black dress in which she had assisted at
+the "killing off" of Evie's family, she brightened it with a few
+unobtrusive jewels, so as to look less like the Tragic Muse. The night
+being cold, a cheerful fire burned on the hearth, beside which she sat
+down and waited.
+
+When he was shown in, about half-past eight, it seemed to her best not to
+rise to receive him. Something in her repose, or in her dignity, gave him
+the impression of arriving before a tribunal, and he began his
+explanations almost from the doorway.
+
+"I got your note. Young Merrow caught me at dinner. I was dining alone, so
+that I could come at once."
+
+"You're very kind. I'm glad you were able to do it. Won't you sit down?"
+
+Without offering her hand, she indicated a high arm-chair suitable for a
+man, on the other side of the hearth. He seated himself with an air of
+expectation, while she gazed pensively at the fire, speaking at last
+without looking up.
+
+"I hear Miss Jarrott has begun to announce your engagement to Evie."
+
+"I understood she was going to, to a few intimate friends."
+
+"And you allowed it?"
+
+"As you see."
+
+"Didn't you know that I should have to take that for a signal?"
+
+"I've never given you to understand that a signal wouldn't come--if you
+required one."
+
+"No; but I hoped--" She broke off, continuing to gaze at the fire. "Do you
+remember," she began again--"do you remember telling me--that evening on
+the shore of Lake Champlain--just before you went away--that if ever I
+needed your life, it would be at my disposal?--to do with as I chose?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"Then I'm going to claim it." She did not look up, but she heard him
+change his position in his chair. "I shouldn't do it if there was any
+other way. I'm sure you understand that. Don't you?" she insisted,
+glancing at him for an answer.
+
+"I know you wouldn't do it, unless you were convinced there was a reason."
+
+"I've tried to be just to you, and to see things from your point of view.
+I do; I assure you. If I were in your position I should feel as you do.
+But I'm not in your position. I'm in one of great responsibility, toward
+Evie and toward her friends."
+
+"I don't see what you owe to them."
+
+[Illustration: Again there was a long silence.]
+
+"I owe them the loyalty that every human being owes to every other."
+
+"To every other--except me."
+
+"I'm loyal to you, at least, whoever else may not be. But it wouldn't be
+loyalty if I let you marry Evie. I'm going to ask you--not to do it--to go
+away--to leave her alone--to go--for good."
+
+There was a long silence. When he spoke, it was hoarsely but otherwise
+without change of tone.
+
+"Is that what you meant?--just now?"
+
+"Yes. That's what I meant."
+
+"Do you intend me to get out of New York, to go back to the South--?"
+
+She lifted her hand in protestation.
+
+"I'm not giving orders or making conditions. New York is large. There's
+room in it for you and Evie, too."
+
+"I dare say. One doesn't require much space to break one's heart in."
+
+"Evie wouldn't break her heart. I know her better than you do. She'd
+suffer for a while, but she'd get over it, and in the end, very soon
+probably--marry some one else."
+
+"How cruel you can be," he said, with a twisted smile.
+
+"I can be, when it's right. In this case I'm only as cruel as--the truth.
+I'm saying it because it must make things easier for you. Your own pain
+will be the less from the knowledge that, in time, Evie will get over
+hers."
+
+"I suppose it ought to be, but--"
+
+He did not finish his sentence, and again there was a long hush, during
+which, while she continued to gaze pensively at the fire, she could hear
+him shifting with nervous frequency in his chair. When at last she
+ventured to look at him he was bowed forward, his elbow supported on his
+knee, and his forehead resting on his hand.
+
+"You'll keep your promise to me?" she persisted, softly, with a kind of
+pitiful relentlessness.
+
+"I'll tell you in a minute."
+
+He jerked out the words in the brusque way in which a man says all that,
+for the moment, he is physically able to utter. She allowed more time to
+elapse. The roar of traffic and the clanging of electric trams came up
+from the street below, but no sound seemed able to penetrate the stillness
+in which they sat. As far as Miriam was conscious of herself at all, it
+was simply to note the curious deadness of her emotions, as though she had
+become a mere machine for doing right, like a clock that strikes
+punctually. Nevertheless, it caused her some surprise when he raised
+himself and said, in a voice that would have been casual on a common
+occasion:
+
+"I suppose you think me a cad?"
+
+"No; why should I?"
+
+"Because I am one."
+
+"I don't know why you should say that, or what it has to do
+with--anything."
+
+"It's about that--that--promise."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"Do you mind if we speak quite frankly? I should like to. I've been
+bluffing that point ever since you and I met again. It's been torture to
+have to do it--damned, humiliating torture; but it's been difficult to do
+anything else. You see, I couldn't even speak of it without seeming to--to
+insult you--that is, unless you took me in just the right way."
+
+His look, his attitude, the tones of his voice, the something woe-begone
+and yet boyish in his expression, recalled irresistibly the days in the
+cabin, when he often wore just this air. She had observed before that when
+they were alone together the years seemed to fall from his manner, while
+he became the immature, inexperienced young fugitive again. She had
+scarcely expected, however, that this lapse into youth would occur
+to-night. She herself felt ages old--as though all the ends of the world
+had come upon her.
+
+"You may say anything you like. There's nothing you could possibly tell me
+that I shouldn't understand."
+
+"Well, then, when I made that promise, I meant to keep it, and to keep it
+in a special way. I thought--of course we were both very young--but I
+thought that, after what had happened--"
+
+"Wait a minute. I want to tell you something before you go on." She
+rallied her spirit's forces for a desperate step, gathering all her life's
+possible happiness into one extravagant handful, and flinging it away, in
+order to save her pride before this man, who was about to tell her that he
+had never been able to love her. "What I am going to say may strike you as
+irrelevant; but if it is, you can ignore it. I expect to be married--in a
+little while--it's practically a settled thing--to Charles Conquest, whom
+I think you know. Now, will you go on, please?"
+
+He stared at her in utter blankness.
+
+"Good God!"
+
+He got up and took a few restless turns up and down the room, his head
+bent, his hands behind his back. He reseated himself when his confused
+impressions grew clearer.
+
+"So that it doesn't matter what I thought about--that promise?"
+
+"Not in the least." She had saved herself. "The one thing important to me
+is that you should have made it."
+
+"And that you can hold me to it," he added, tersely.
+
+"I presume I can do that?"
+
+"You can, unless--unless I find myself in a position to take the promise
+back."
+
+"I can hardly see how that position could come about," she said, with an
+air of wondering.
+
+"I can. You see," he went on in an explanatory tone, "it was an unusual
+sort of promise--a promise made, so to speak, for value received--for
+unusual value received. It wasn't one that a common occasion would have
+called forth. It was offered because you had given me--life."
+
+He rested his arm now on a table that stood between them and, leaning
+toward her, looked her steadily in the eyes.
+
+"I haven't the faintest idea what you're going to say," she remarked,
+rather blankly.
+
+"No, but you'll see. You gave me life. I hold that life in a certain sense
+at your pleasure. It is at your disposal. It must remain at your
+disposal--- until I give it back."
+
+She sat upright in her chair, leaning in her turn on the table, and
+drawing nearer to him.
+
+"I can't imagine what you mean," she said, under her breath and looking a
+little frightened.
+
+"You'll see presently. But don't be alarmed. It's going to be all right.
+As long as I hold the life you gave me," he continued to explain, "I must
+do your bidding. I'm not a free man; I'm--don't be offended--I'm your
+creature. I don't say I was a free man before this came up. I haven't been
+a free man ever since I've been Herbert Strange. I've been the slave of a
+sort of make-believe. I've made believe, and I've felt I was justified.
+Perhaps I was. I'm not quite sure. But I haven't liked it; and now I begin
+to feel that I can't stand it any longer. You follow me, don't you?"
+
+She nodded, still leaning toward him across the table, and not taking her
+eyes from his. He remembered afterward though he paid no heed to it at the
+time, how those eyes grew wide with awe and flashed with strange, lambent
+brightness.
+
+"I told you a few days ago," he pursued, "that there were _times_ when it
+was hell. That was putting it mildly--too mildly. There's been no time
+when it wasn't hell--in here." He tapped his forehead. "I've struggled,
+and fought, and pushed, and swaggered, and bluffed, and had ups and downs,
+and taken heart, and swaggered and bluffed again, and lied all
+through--and I've made Herbert Strange a respectable man of business on
+the high road to success. But when I come near you it all goes to
+pieces--like one of those curiously conserved dead bodies when they're
+brought to the air. There's nothing to them. There's nothing to me--so
+long as I'm Herbert Strange."
+
+"But you _are_ Herbert Strange. You can't help yourself--now."
+
+"Herbert Strange goes back into the nothingness out of which he was born
+the minute I become Norrie Ford again."
+
+"But you can't do that!"
+
+She drew herself up hastily, with a gasp.
+
+"It's exactly what I mean to do." He spoke very slowly "I'm going to be a
+free man, and my own master, even if it leads me where--where they meant
+to put me when you snatched me away. I'm going back to my fellow-men, to
+the body corporate--"
+
+She rose in agitation, and drew back from him toward the chimney-piece.
+"So that if--if anything happens," she said, "I shall have driven you to
+it. That's how you get your revenge."
+
+"Not at all. I'm not coming to this decision suddenly, or in a spirit of
+revenge, in any way." He followed her, standing near her, on the
+hearth-rug. "I can truthfully say," he went on in his slow, explanatory
+fashion, "that there's been no time, since the minute I made my first dash
+for liberty, when I haven't known, in the bottom of my heart, what a good
+thing it would have been if I hadn't done it. I've come to see--I've _had_
+to--- that the death-chair would have been better, with self-respect, than
+freedom to go and come, with the necessity to gag every one, every minute
+of the day, and every day in the year, and all the time, with lies. If
+that seems far-fetched to you--"
+
+"No, it doesn't."
+
+"Well, if it did you'd see it wasn't, if you were in my place for a month.
+I didn't mind it so much at first. I stood it by day and just suffered by
+night--till the Jarrotts began to be so kind to me, and I came to New
+York--and--and--and Evie!"
+
+"I'm sorry I've spoken to you as I have," she said, hastily. "If I'd known
+you felt like that--"
+
+"You were quite right. I always understood that. But I can't go on with
+it. If Evie marries me now, it shall be knowing who I am."
+
+"You don't mean that you could possibly tell her?"
+
+"I'm going to tell every one."
+
+She stifled a little cry. "Then it will be my doing!"
+
+"It will be your doing--up to a point. But it will be something for you to
+be proud of, not to regret. You've only brought my mistake so clearly
+before me that even I can't stand it--when I've stood so much. You ask me
+to turn my back on Evie and sneak away. You've got the right to command,
+and there's nothing for me but to obey you. But I can't help seeing the
+sort of life that would be left to me after I'd carried out your orders.
+It wouldn't only be the loss of Evie--I may lose her in any case--it would
+be the loss of everything within myself that's enabled me hitherto merely
+to hold up my head--and bluff."
+
+"I might withdraw what I've just asked you to do. Perhaps we could find
+some other way."
+
+He laughed with grim lightness.
+
+"You're weakening. That's not like you. And it wouldn't do any good now.
+Even if we did patch up some other scheme, there would still remain what
+you talked about a minute ago--the loyalty that every human being owes to
+every other."
+
+"But I thought you didn't recognize that?"
+
+"I said I didn't. But in here"--he tapped his fingers over the heart--"I
+did, and I do. You've brought me to see it."
+
+"That's very noble, but you saw it for yourself--"
+
+"Through a glass--darkly; now I can look at the thing in clear daylight,
+and see what I have to do."
+
+She dropped into her chair again, looking up at him. He stood with his
+back to the fire, holding his head high, his bearing marked by a dogged,
+perhaps forced, serenity.
+
+"But what _can_ you do?" she asked, after considering his words. "You're
+so involved. All this business--and the people in South America--"
+
+"Oh, there are ways and means. I haven't made plans, but I've thought,
+from time to time, of what I should do if I ever came to just this pass.
+The first thing would be to tell the few people who are most concerned,
+confidentially. Then I should go back to South America, and settle things
+give me your respect again--not even the little you've given me
+hitherto--and God knows that can't have been much. I could stand anything
+in the world--anything--rather than that you should come to that."
+
+"But I shouldn't, when I myself had dissuaded you--"
+
+"No, no; don't try. You'd be doing wrong. You've been to me so high and
+holy that I don't like to think you haven't the strength to go on to the
+end. I've got it, because you've given it me. Don't detract from your own
+gift by holding me back from using it. You found me a prisoner--or an
+escaped one--and I've been a prisoner all these years, the prisoner of
+something worse than chains. Now I'm going free. Look!" he cried, with
+sudden inspiration. "I'll show you how it's done. You'll see how easy it
+will be."
+
+He moved to cross the room.
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+She sprang up as if to hold him back, but his finger was on the bell.
+
+"You don't mind, I hope?" he asked; but he had rung before she could give
+an answer. The maid appeared in the doorway.
+
+"Ask Mr. Wayne if he would be good enough to come in here a minute. Tell
+him Mr. Strange particularly wants to see him."
+
+He went back to his place by the fireside, where he stood apparently calm,
+showing no sign of excitement except in heightened color and the stillness
+of nervous tension Miriam sank into her chair again.
+
+"Don't do anything rash," she pleaded. "Wait till to-morrow There will
+always be time. For God's sake!"
+
+If he heard her he paid no attention, and presently Wayne appeared. He
+hesitated a minute on the threshold, and during that instant Ford could
+see that he looked ashy and older, as if something had aged him suddenly.
+His hands trembled, too, as he felt his way in.
+
+"Good-evening," he said, speaking into the air as blind men do. "I thought
+I heard your voice."
+
+Having groped his way across the room and reached the table that stood
+between the arm-chairs Miriam and Ford had occupied, he stopped. He stood
+there, with fingers drumming soundlessly on the polished wood, waiting for
+some one to speak.
+
+In spite of the confidence with which he had rung the bell, Ford found it
+difficult now to begin. It was only after one or two inarticulate attempts
+that he was able to say anything.
+
+"I asked you to come in, sir," he began, haltingly, "to tell you something
+very special. Miss Strange knows it already.... If I've done wrong in not
+telling you before ... you'll see I'm prepared to take my punishment....
+My name isn't Strange ... it isn't Herbert."
+
+"I know it isn't."
+
+The words slipped out in a sharp tone, not quite nervous, but thin and
+worn. Miriam's attitude grew tense. Ford took a step forward from the
+fireside. With his arm flung over the back of his chair, and his knee
+resting on the seat of it, he strained across the table, as if to
+annihilate the space between Wayne and himself.
+
+"You _knew_?"
+
+The blind man nodded. When he spoke it was again into the air.
+
+"Yes; I knew. You're Norrie Ford. I ought to say I've only known it
+latterly--about a fortnight now."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Oh, it just came to me--by degrees, I think."
+
+"Why didn't you say something about it?"
+
+"I thought I wouldn't. It has worried me, but I thought I'd keep still."
+
+"Do you mean that you were going to let everything--go on?"
+
+"I weighed all the considerations. That's the decision I came to. You must
+understand," he went on to explain, in a voice that was now tremulous as
+well as thin, "that I'd had you a good deal on my mind, during these past
+eight years. I sentenced you to death when I almost knew you were
+innocent. It was my duty. I couldn't help it. The facts told dead against
+you. Every one admitted that. True, the evidence might have been twisted
+to tell against old Gramm and his wife, but they hadn't been dissipated,
+and they hadn't been indicted, and they hadn't gone round making threats
+against Chris Ford's life like you."
+
+"I didn't mean them. It was nothing but a boy's rage--"
+
+"Yes, but you made them; and when the old man was found--But I'll not go
+into that now. I only want to say that, while I couldn't acquit you with
+my intelligence, I felt constrained to do it in my heart, especially when
+everything was over, and it was too late. The incident has been the one
+thing in my professional career that I've most regretted. I don't quite
+blame myself. I had to do my duty. And yet it was a relief to me when you
+got away. I don't know that I could have acted differently, but--but I
+liked you. I've gone on liking you. I've often thought about you, and
+wondered what had become of you. And one day--not long ago--as I was going
+over the old ground once more, I saw I'd been thinking about--_you_.
+That's how it came to me."
+
+"And you were going to remain silent, and let me marry Evie?"
+
+The blind man reflected.
+
+"I saw what was to be said against it. But I weighed all the evidence
+carefully. You were an injured man; you'd made a great fight and you'd
+won--as far as one man can win against the world. I came to the conclusion
+that I wasn't called on to strike you down a second time, after you'd
+scrambled up so pluckily. Evie is very dear to me; I don't say that I
+should see her married to you without some misgiving; but I decided that
+you deserved her. It was a great responsibility to take, but I took it and
+made up my mind to--let her go."
+
+"Oh, you're a good man! I didn't think there was such mercy in the world."
+
+Ford flung out the words in a cry that was half a groan and half a shout
+of triumph. Miriam choked back a sob. The neat little man shrugged his
+shoulders deprecatingly.
+
+"There's one thing I should like to ask," he pursued, "among the many that
+I don't know anything about, and that I don't care to inquire into. How
+did you come by the name of this lady's father, my old friend Herbert
+Strange?"
+
+Ford and Miriam exchanged swift glances. She shook her head, and he took
+his cue.
+
+"I happened to see it in a--a sort of--paper. I had no idea it was that of
+a real person. I fancied it had come out of a novel--- or something like
+that. I didn't mean to keep it, but it got fastened on me."
+
+"Very odd," was his only comment. "Isn't it, Miriam?
+
+"Now," he _added_, "I suppose you've had all you want of me, so I'll say
+good-night."
+
+He held out his hand, which Ford grasped, clinched rather, in both his
+own.
+
+"God bless you!" Wayne murmured, still tremulously. "God bless you--my
+boy, and bring everything out right. Miriam, I suppose you'll come in and
+see me before you go to bed."
+
+They watched him shuffle his way out of the room, and watched the door
+long after he had closed it. When at last Miriam turned her eyes on Ford
+they were luminous with the relief of her own defeat.
+
+"You see!" she cried, triumphantly. "You see the difference between him
+and me--between his spirit and mine! Now which of us was right?"
+
+"You were."
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+
+The one thing clear to Miriam on the following day was that she had ruined
+everything with astonishing completeness--a curious result to come from
+what she was firmly convinced was "doing right." She had calculated that,
+by a moderate measure of suffering to Evie, and a large one to Ford,
+Evie's ultimate welfare at least would be secured. Now everything was
+being brought to grief together. Out of such a wreck nothing could be
+saved.
+
+With Ford's desire to break the force which made him an impostor she had
+sympathy, but his willingness to risk his life in order to be in harmony
+with law and order again was not so easy for her to understand. While
+education, training and taste kept her, in her own person, within the
+restrictions of civilized life, yet the part of a free-lance in the world
+appealed to her strongly atavistic instincts far more directly than
+membership in a disciplined regular army. The guerilla fighter must of
+necessity be put to shifts--even moral shifts--which the common soldier,
+trained and commanded by others, can be spared; but her heart was with the
+man roving in the hills on his own account. That Ford should deliberately
+seek chains in barracks, when by her surrender on the subject of Evie she
+had made it possible for him still to keep the liberty of the field, was
+to her at once incomprehensible and awful. She had not only the sense of
+watching a man rushing upon Fate, but the knowledge that she herself had
+given him the impetus; while she was fully alive to the fact that when he
+fell everything she cared for in the world would fall with him.
+
+Her mind was too resourceful, her spirit too energetic, to permit of her
+sitting in helpless anguish over his new determination. She was already
+busy with plans for counteracting him, in one of which at least she saw
+elements of hope. Having conceived its possibilities, she was eager to go
+and test them; but she had decided not to leave the house until she knew
+that Ford was really putting his plans into execution. The minute Evie
+learned the fatal news she would have need of her, and she dared not put
+herself out of the child's reach. Her first duty must be toward the
+fragile little creature, who would be crushed like a trampled flower.
+
+Shortly before noon she was summoned to the telephone, where Evie was
+asking if she should find her in. Miriam judged from the tones of the
+transmitted voice that the worst had been made known. She was not,
+however, prepared for the briskness with which, ten minutes later, Evie
+whisked into the room, her cheeks aglow with excitement and her heavenly
+eyes dancing with a purely earthly sparkle.
+
+"Isn't this awful?" she cried, before Miriam could take her into her
+loving arms. "Isn't it appalling? But it's not a surprise to me--not in
+the least. I knew there was something. Haven't I said so? I almost knew
+that his name wasn't Strange. If I hadn't been so busy with my coming
+out--and everything--I should have been sure of it. I haven't had time to
+think of it--do you see? With a lunch somewhere every day at half-past
+one," she hurried on, breathlessly, "and a tea at half-past four, and a
+dinner at eight, and a dance at eleven, and very likely the theatre or the
+opera in between--well, you can see I haven't been able to give much
+attention to anything else; but I knew, from the very time when I was in
+Buenos Aires, that there was something queer about that name. I never saw
+a man so sensitive when any one spoke about his name, not in all my life
+before--and you know down there it's the commonest thing--why, they're so
+suspicious on that point that they'd almost doubt that mine was Evie
+Colfax."
+
+She threw her muff in one direction, her boa in another, and her gloves in
+still another.
+
+"But, Evie darling, you surely didn't think--"
+
+"Of course I never thought of anything like this. I didn't really think of
+anything at all. If I'd begun to give my mind to it, I should probably
+have hit on something a great deal worse."
+
+"What do you mean, dear? Worse--than what?"
+
+"Worse than just being accused of shooting your uncle--and it was only his
+great-uncle, too. I might have thought of forgery or something
+dishonorable, though I should know he wasn't capable of it. Being accused
+isn't much. You can accuse _any one_--you could accuse _me_. That doesn't
+prove anything when he says he didn't do it. Of course he didn't do it.
+Can't any one _see_? My goodness! I wish they'd let me make the laws. I'd
+show them. Just think! To put a man like that in prison--- and say they'd
+do such awful things to him--and make him change his name--and everything.
+It's perfectly scandalous. It's an outrage. I shouldn't think such things
+would be allowed. They wouldn't be allowed in the Argentine. Why, there
+was a man out there who killed his father-in-law--actually _killed_
+him--and they didn't do anything to him at all. I've seen him lots of
+times. Aunt Queenie has pointed him out to me. He used to have the box
+next but two to ours at the opera. And to think they should take a man
+like Herbert, and worry him like that--it makes me so indignant I'd like
+to--"
+
+Evie ground her teeth, threw her clinched fists outward, and twitched her
+skirts about the room in the prettiest possible passion of righteous
+anger.
+
+"But, darling," Miriam asked, in a puzzled voice, "what are you going to
+do about it?"
+
+Evie wheeled round haughtily.
+
+"Do about it? What would you expect me to do about it? I'm going to tell
+every one he didn't do it--that's what I'm going to do about it. But of
+course we're not to speak of it just yet--outside ourselves, you know.
+He's going to Buenos Aires to tell Uncle Jarrott he didn't do it--and when
+he comes back we're going to make it generally known. Oh, there's to be
+law about it--and everything. He means to change his name again to what it
+was before--Ford, the name was--and I must say, Miriam, I like that a good
+deal better than Strange, if you don't mind my telling you. It seems odd
+to have so many Stranges--and I must say I never could get used to the
+idea of having exactly the same name as yours. It was almost like not
+being married outside the family--and I should hate to marry a relation.
+That part of it comes as a pleasant surprise, do you see? I'd made up my
+mind to Strange, and thought there was no way of getting rid of it, unless
+I--but I wasn't looking ahead to anything of _that_ kind. I hope I shall
+never--"
+
+"So, darling, you're going to be true to him?"
+
+"True to him? Of course I'm going to be true to him. Why shouldn't I be?
+I'm going to be more true to him now than I was before. He's so noble
+about it, too. I wish you could have seen the way he broke it to me. Aunt
+Queenie said she never saw anything so affecting, not even on the stage.
+She was there, you know. Herbert felt he couldn't go over it all twice,
+and he thought I should need some one to support me through the shock. I
+didn't--not a bit. But I wish you could have been there, just to see him."
+
+"I can fancy it, dear."
+
+"Of course I know now what you've been fidgeting about ever since he came
+to New York. He says you recognized him--that you'd seen him at Greenport.
+Oh, I knew there was something. But I must say, Miriam, I think you might
+have told me confidentially, and not let it come on me as such a blow as
+this. Not that I take it as a blow, though, of course, it upsets things
+terribly. We can't announce our engagement for ever so long, and Aunt
+Queenie is rushing round in the motor now to take back what she wrote to a
+few people yesterday. I can't imagine what she'll tell them, because I
+charged her on her sacred honor not to give them the idea it was broken
+off, although I'd rather they thought it was broken off than that I hadn't
+been engaged at all."
+
+"Miss Jarrott takes it quietly, then?"
+
+"Quietly! I wish you could see her. She thinks there never was anything so
+romantic. Why, she cried over him, and kissed him, and said she'd always
+be his friend if every one else in the world were to turn against him. As
+a matter of fact, the poor old dear is head over heels in love with
+him--do you see?--in that sort of old-maid way--you know the kind of
+thing I mean. She thinks there's nobody like him, and neither there is. I
+shall miss him frightfully while he's down there telling Uncle Jarrott. I
+shall skip half my invitations and go regularly into retreat till he comes
+back. There's lots more he's going to tell me then--all about what Popsey
+Wayne had to do with it--and everything. I'm glad he doesn't want to do it
+now, because my head is reeling as it is. I've so many things to think
+of--and so much responsibility coming on me all at once--and--"
+
+"Are you going to do anything about Billy?"
+
+"Well, I can postpone that, at any rate. Thank goodness, there's _one_
+silver lining to the cloud. I was going to give him a pretty strong hint
+to-night, seeing Aunt Queenie has begun writing notes around, but now I
+can let him simmer for a while longer. He won't be able to say I haven't
+let him down easy, poor old boy. And, Miriam dear," she continued,
+gathering up her various articles of apparel, preparatory to taking leave,
+"you'll keep just as quiet about it as you can, like a dear, won't you? We
+don't mean to say a word about it outside ourselves till Herbert comes
+back from seeing Uncle Jarrott. That's my advice--and it's all our
+advice--I mean, Aunt Queenie's, too. Then they're going to law--or
+something. I know you _won't_ say anything about it, but I thought I'd
+just put you on your guard."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If Evie's way of taking it was a new revelation to Miriam, of her own
+miscalculation, it was also a new incentive to setting to work as promptly
+as possible to repair what she could of the mischief she had made. With
+Evie's limitations she might never know more of the seriousness of her
+situation than a bird of the nature of the battle raging near its nest;
+while if even Ford "went to law," as Evie put it, and he came off
+victorious, there might still be chances for their happiness. To anything
+else Miriam was indifferent, as a man in the excitement of saving his
+children from fire or storm is dead to his own sensations. It was with
+impetuous, almost frenzied, eagerness, therefore, that she went to the
+telephone to ring up Charles Conquest, asking to be allowed to see him
+privately at his office during the afternoon.
+
+In what she had made up her mind to do the fact that she was planning for
+herself an unnecessary measure of sacrifice was no deterrent. She was in a
+mood in which self-immolation seemed the natural penalty of her mistakes.
+She was not without the knowledge that money could buy the help she
+purposed to obtain by direct intervention; but her inherited instincts,
+scornful of roundabout methods, urged her to pay the price in something
+more personal than coin. It replied in some degree to her self-accusation,
+it assuaged the bitterness of her self-condemnation, to know that she was
+to be the active agent in putting right that which her errors of judgment
+had put wrong. To her essentially primitive soul atonement by proxy was as
+much out of the question as to the devotee beneath the wheels of
+Juggernaut. Somewhere in the background of her thought there were faint
+prudential protests against throwing herself away; but she disdained them,
+as a Latin or a Teuton disdains the Anglo-Saxon's preference for a court
+of law to the pistol of the duellist. It was something outside the realm
+of reason. Reckless impulses subdued by convent restraint or civilized
+requirements awoke with a start all the more violent because of their long
+sleep, driving her to do that which she knew other women would have done
+otherwise or not at all.
+
+She was aware, therefore, of limitations in the sacrifice she was making;
+she was even aware that, in the true sense, it was no sacrifice whatever.
+She was offering herself up because she chose to--in a kind of
+wilfulness--but a passionate wilfulness which claimed that for her at
+least there was no other way. Other women, wiser women, women behind whom
+there was a long, moderation-loving past, might obey the laws that prompt
+to the economy of one's self; she could only follow those blind urgings
+which drove her forefathers to fight when they might have remained at
+peace, or whipped them forth into the wild places of the earth when they
+could have stayed in quiet homes. The hard way in preference to the easy
+way was in her blood. She could no more have resisted taking it now than
+she could have held herself back eight years ago from befriending Norrie
+Ford against the law.
+
+Nevertheless, it was a support to her to remember that Conquest's manner
+on the occasions when business brought her to his office was always a
+little different from that which he assumed when they met outside. He was
+much more the professional man with his client, a little the friend, but
+not at all the lover--if he was a lover anywhere. Having welcomed her now
+with just the right shade of cordiality, he made her sit at a little
+distance from his desk, while he himself returned to the revolving-chair
+at which he had been writing when she entered. After the preliminary
+greetings, he put on, unconsciously, the questioning air a business man
+takes at the beginning of an interview which he has been invited to
+accord.
+
+"I came--about Evie."
+
+Now that she was there it was less easy to begin than she had expected.
+
+"Quite so. I knew there was a hitch. I've just had a mysterious note from
+Queenie Jarrott which I haven't been able to make out. Can't they hit it
+off?"
+
+"It's a good deal more serious than that. Mr. Strange came to see Mr.
+Wayne and me last night. I may as well tell you as simply as I can. His
+name isn't Strange at all."
+
+"Ho! ho! What's up?"
+
+"Did you ever hear the name of--Norrie Ford?"
+
+"Good Lord, yes! I can't quite remember--Let's see. Norrie Ford? I know
+the name as well as I know my own. Wasn't that the case--why, yes, it must
+have been--wasn't that the case Wayne was mixed up in six or eight years
+ago?"
+
+"Yes, it was."
+
+"The fellow gave 'em all the slip, didn't he?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Hadn't he been commuted to a life sentence--?"
+
+"Mr. Wayne hoped it would be done, but it hadn't been done yet. He was
+still under sentence of--death."
+
+"Yes, yes, yes. It comes back to me. We thought Wayne hadn't displayed
+much energy or ability of foresight--or something. I remember there was
+talk about it, and in the newspapers there was even a cock-and-bull story
+that Wayne had connived at his escape. Well, what has that got to do with
+Evie?"
+
+"It has everything to do with her."
+
+Conquest's little gray-green eyes blinked as if against the blaze of their
+own light, while his features sharpened to their utmost incisiveness.
+
+"You don't mean to say--?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"Well, upon--my--!" The exclamation trailed off into a silent effort to
+take in this extraordinary piece of intelligence "Do you mean to say the
+scamp had the cheek--? Oh no, it isn't possible. Come now!"
+
+"It was exactly as I'm going to tell you, but I don't think you should
+call him a scamp. You see, he's engaged to Evie--"
+
+"He's not engaged to her now?"
+
+"He is. She means to be true to him. So do we all."
+
+Two little scarlet spots burned in her cheeks, but it was not more in the
+way of emotion than a warm partisanship on Evie's account demanded.
+
+"Well, I'm blowed!" He swung one leg across the other, making his chair
+describe a semicircle.
+
+"Perhaps you won't be so much--blowed, when you hear all I have to tell
+you."
+
+"Go ahead; I'm more interested than if it was a dime novel."
+
+As lucidly as she could she gave him the outline of Ford's romance,
+dwelling as he had done in relating it to her, less on its incidents than
+on its mental and moral effect upon himself. She suppressed the narrative
+of the weeks spent in the cabin and based her report entirely on
+information received from Ford. For testimony as to his life and character
+in the Argentine she had the evidence of Miss Jarrott, while on the
+subject of his business abilities--no small point with a New York business
+man, as she was astute enough to see--there could be no better authority
+than Conquest himself, who, as Stephens and Jarrott's American legal
+adviser, had had ample opportunity of judging. She was gratified to note
+that as her story progressed it called forth sympathetic looks, and an
+occasional appreciative exclamation, while now and then he slapped his
+thigh as a mark of the kind of amused astonishment that verges on
+approbation.
+
+"So we couldn't desert him now, after she's been so brave, could we?" she
+pleaded, with some amount of confidence; "and especially when he's engaged
+to Evie."
+
+"I suppose we can't desert him, if he's sane."
+
+"Oh, he's sane."
+
+"Then why the deuce, when he was so well out of harm's way, didn't he stay
+there?"
+
+"Because of his love for Evie, don't you see?" She had to explain Ford's
+moral development and psychological state all over again, until he could
+see it with some measure of comprehension.
+
+"It certainly is the queerest story I ever heard," he declared, in
+enjoyment of its dramatic elements, "and we're all in it, aren't we? It's
+like seeing yourself in a play."
+
+"I thought you would look at it in that way. As soon as I began wondering
+what we could do--this morning--I saw that, after Evie, you were the
+person most concerned."
+
+"Who? I? Why am I concerned? I've got nothing to do with it!"
+
+"No, of course not, except as Stephens and Jarrott's lawyer. When their
+representative in New York--"
+
+"Oh, but my dear girl, my duties don't involve me in anything of this
+kind. I'm the legal adviser to the firm, but I've nothing to do with the
+private affairs of their employees."
+
+"Mr. Jarrott is very fond of Mr. Strange--"
+
+"Perhaps this will cool his affection."
+
+"I don't think it will as long as Evie insists on marrying him. I'm sure
+they mean to stand by him."
+
+"They won't be able to stand by him long, if the law gives him--what it
+meant to give him before."
+
+"Oh, but you don't think there's any danger of that?"
+
+"I don't know about it," he said, shaking his head, ominously. "The fact
+that he comes back and gives himself up isn't an argument in favor of his
+innocence. There's generally remorse behind that dodge."
+
+"Then isn't that all the more reason why we should help him?"
+
+"Help him? How?"
+
+"By trying to win his case for him."
+
+He looked at her with eyes twinkling while his fingers concealed the smile
+behind his colorless mustache.
+
+"And how would you propose to set about that?"
+
+"I don't know, but I suppose you do. There must be ways. He's leaving as
+soon as he can for South America. He thinks it may be months before he
+gets back. I thought that--perhaps--in the mean time--while he won't be
+able to do anything for himself--you might see--"
+
+"Yes, yes; go on," he said, as she hesitated.
+
+"You might see if there is any evidence that could be found--that wasn't
+found before--isn't that the way they do it?--and have it ready--for him
+when he came back."
+
+"For a wedding present."
+
+"It _would_ be a wedding present--to all of us. It would be for Evie's
+sake. You know how I love her. She's the dearest thing to me in the world.
+If I could only secure her happiness like that--"
+
+"You mean, if I could secure it."
+
+"You'd be doing it actively, but I should want to co-operate."
+
+"In what way?"
+
+She sat very still. She was sure he understood her by the sudden rigidity
+of his pose, while his eyes stopped twinkling, and his fingers ceased to
+travel along the line of his mustache. Her eyes fell before the scrutiny
+in his, but she lifted them again for one of her quick, wild glances.
+
+"In any way you like."
+
+She tried to make her utterance distinct, matter of fact, not too
+significant, but she failed. In spite of herself, her words conveyed all
+their meaning. The brief pause that followed was not less eloquent, nor
+did it break the spell when Conquest gave a short little laugh that might
+have been nervous and, changing his posture, leaned forward on his desk
+and scribbled on the blotting-pad. While he would never have admitted it,
+it was a relief to him, too, not to be obliged to face her.
+
+He was not shocked, neither was he quite surprised. He was accustomed to
+the thought that a woman's love was a thing to purchase. One man bought it
+from her father for a couple of oxen, another from herself for an
+establishment and a diamond tiara. It was the same principle in both
+cases. He had never considered Miriam Strange as being without a price;
+his difficulty had been in knowing what it was. The establishment and the
+diamond tiara having proved as indifferent to her as the yoke of oxen, he
+was thrown back upon the alternative of heroic deeds. He had more than
+once suspected that these might win her if they had only been in his line.
+There being few opportunities for that kind of endeavor as the head of a
+large and lucrative legal practice, the suggestion only left him cynical.
+In the bottom of his heart he had long wished to dazzle, by some act of
+prowess, the eyes that saw him only as a respectable man of middle age,
+but the desire had merely mocked him with the kind of derision which
+impotence gets from youth. It seemed now a stroke of luck which almost
+merited being termed an act of Providence that there should have come a
+call for exactly his variety of "derringdo" from the very quarter in which
+he could make it tell.
+
+"We've never gone in for any criminal business here," he said, after long
+reflection, while he continued to scribble aimlessly, "but, of course,
+we're in touch with the people who take it up."
+
+"I thought you might be."
+
+"But it's only fair to tell you that if your motive is to save time for
+our friend in question--"
+
+"That _is_ my motive--the only one."
+
+"Then you could get in touch with them, too."
+
+"But I don't want to."
+
+"Still I think you should consider it. The best legal advice in the world
+can be--bought--for money."
+
+"I know that."
+
+Lifting his eyes in a sharp look, he saw her head lilted back with her own
+special air of deliberate temerity.
+
+"Oh, very well, then," he said, quietly, resuming his scribbling again.
+After this warning he felt justified in taking her at her word.
+
+With that as a beginning she knew she had gained her first great point. In
+answer to his questions she told the story over again, displaying, as he
+remembered afterward--but long afterward--a surprising familiarity with
+its details. She made suggestions which he noted as marked by some acumen,
+and laid stress on the value of the aid they might expect privately from
+Philip Wayne. The beauty and eagerness in her face fired the almost
+atrophied enthusiasm in his own heart, while he could not but see that
+this entirely altruistic interest had brought them in half an hour nearer
+together than they had ever been before. It was what they had never had
+till now--a bond in common. In spite of the persistency of his efforts and
+his assertions, he had never hitherto got nearer her than a statue on a
+pedestal gets to its neighbor in a similar situation but now at last they
+were down on the same earth together. This was more than reason enough for
+his taking up the cause of Norrie Ford, consecrating to it all his
+resources, mental and material, and winning it.
+
+In the course of an hour or two their understanding was complete, but he
+did not refer again to the conditions of their tacit compact. It was she
+who felt that sufficient had not been said--that the sincerity with which
+she subscribed to it had not been duly emphasized. She was at the door on
+the point of going away when she braced herself to look at him and say:
+
+"You can't realize what all this means to me. If we succeed--that is, if
+you succeed--I hardly dare to tell you of the extent to which I shall be
+grateful."
+
+He felt already some of the hero's magnanimity as to claiming his reward.
+
+"You needn't think about that," he smiled. "I sha'n't. If by making Evie
+happy I can serve you, I shall not ask for gratitude."
+
+She looked down at her muff and smoothed its fur, then glanced up swiftly.
+"No; but I shall want to give it."
+
+With that she was gone--lighter of heart than a few hours ago it had
+seemed to her possible ever to be again. Her joy was the joy of the
+captain who feels that he has saved his ship, though his own wound is
+fatal.
+
+
+
+
+
+Part IV
+
+Conquest
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+
+Among the three or four qualities Conquest most approved of in himself,
+not the least was a certain capacity for the patient acquisition of the
+world's more enviable properties. He had the gift of knowing what he
+wanted, recognizing it when he saw it, and waiting for it till it came
+within his reach. From his youth upward he had been a connoisseur of
+quality rather than a lover of abundance, while he owned to a talent for
+seeing the value of things which other people overlooked, and throwing
+them into relief when the objects became his. As far back as the time when
+the modest paternal heritage had been divided between his brothers and
+sisters and himself, he had been astute enough to leave the bulk of it to
+them, contenting himself with one or two bits of ancestral furniture and a
+few old books, which were now known by all to have been the only things
+worth having. Throughout his life he had followed this principle of
+acquiring unobtrusively but getting exactly what he wanted. It was so that
+he bought his first horse, so that he bought his first motor, so that he
+purchased the land where he afterward built his house--in a distant,
+desolate stretch of Fifth Avenue which his acquaintances told him would be
+hopelessly out of reach, but where, not many years after, most of them
+were too late to join him.
+
+In building his house, too, he took his time, allowing his friends to
+make their experiments around him, while he studied the great art of "how
+not to do it." One of his neighbors erected a Flemish château, another a
+Florentine palazzo, and a third a François Premier _hôtel_; but his plot
+of ground remained an unkempt tangle of mullein and blue succory. In the
+end he put up a sober, handsome development on a style which the humbler
+passers-by often called, with approval, "good, plain American," but whose
+point of departure was Georgian. He had the instinct for that which
+springs out of the soil. For this reason he did not shrink from an Early
+Victorian note--the first note of the modern, prosperous New York--in
+decoration; and the same taste impelled him toward the American in art.
+While Neighbor Smith displayed his Gainsboroughs, and Neighbor Jones his
+Rousseaus or Daubignys, Conquest quietly picked up a thing here and
+there--always under excellent advice--which no picture-dealer had been
+able to dispose of, because it came from some studio in Twenty-third
+Street. Hung on his walls, it produced that much-sought-for effect of
+"having been always there." He was not a Chauvinist, nor had he any
+sympathy with the intolerantly patriotic. He was merely a lover of the
+indigenous.
+
+In much the same way he had sought for--and waited for--a wife. He had
+been rashly put down as "not a marrying man," when he was only taking his
+time. He had seen plainly of excellent possibilities--fine women, handsome
+women, clever women, good women--any of whom presumably he could have had
+for the asking; but none was, in his own phraseology, "just the right
+thing." He wanted something unusual, and yet not exotic--something
+obvious, which no one else had observed--something cultivated, and yet
+native--something as exquisite as any hothouse orchid, but with the keen,
+fresh scent of the American woods and waters on its bloom. It was not a
+thing to be picked up every day, and so he kept on the lookout for it, and
+waited. Even when he found it, he was not certain, on the spur of the
+moment, that it would prove exactly what he had in mind. So he waited
+longer. He watched the effect of time and experience upon it, until he was
+quite sure. He knew the risk he was running that some one else might
+snatch it up; but his principle had always been to let everything, no
+matter how coveted, go, rather than buy in haste.
+
+Lest such an attitude toward Miriam Strange should seem cold-blooded, it
+should be said in his defence that he considered the aggregate of his
+sentiments to be--love. She was to be more than "something better than his
+dog, a little dearer than his horse," more than the living, responsive
+soul among his chattels. There was that in her which appealed to his
+desire, and to something more deeply seated in him still. After satisfying
+ear, eye, and intelligence, there was in her nature a whole undiscovered
+region, undivined, undefined, wakening the imagination, and stirring the
+speculative faculties, like the subconscious elements in personality. In
+her wild, non-Aryan glances he saw the flame of eyes that flashed on him
+out of a past unknown to history; in the liquid cadences of her voice he
+heard the echo of the speech that had sounded in the land before Plymouth
+was a stockade or Manhattan was a farm; in her presence he found a claim
+that antedated everything sprung of Hudson, Cabot, or Columbus. The
+slender thread that attached her to the ages of nomadic mystery made her
+for him the indigenous spirit, reborn in a woman of the world.
+
+Knowing himself too old to be dominated by a passion, and too experienced
+to be snared by wiles, he estimated his feelings as being those of love,
+as he understood the word. He conceded the fact that love, like every
+other desire, must work to win, and proceeded to set about his task
+according to his usual methods of persistent, unobtrusive siege. It was
+long before Miriam became aware of what he was doing, and her surprise as
+she drew back was not quite so great as his to see her do it. He was so
+accustomed to success--after taking the trouble to insure it--that he was
+astonished, and a little angry, to find his usual tactics fail. He did not
+believe that she was beyond his grasp; he perceived only that he had taken
+the wrong way to get her. That there was a right way there could be no
+question; and he knew that by patient, unremitting search he should find
+it.
+
+He had, therefore, several sources of satisfaction in espousing the cause
+of Norrie Ford. The amplitude of his legal knowledge would be to him as
+gay feathers to the cock; while the contemplation of the prize added to
+his self-approval in never doubting that it could be won.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was early March when Ford sailed away, leaving his affairs in
+Conquest's charge, at the latter's own request. He in his turn placed them
+in the hands of Kilcup and Warren, who made a specialty of that branch of
+the law. The reward was immediate, in that frequent talks with Miriam
+became a matter of course.
+
+His trained mind was prompt to seize the fact that these interviews took
+place on a basis different from that of their meetings in the past. Where
+he had been seeking to gain an end he was now on probation. He had been
+told--or practically told--that what he had been asking would be granted,
+as soon as certain conditions were fulfilled. It became to him, therefore,
+a matter of honor, in some degree one of professional etiquette, to fulfil
+the conditions before referring to the reward. Instead of a suitor
+pressing his suit, he became the man of business recounting the points
+scored, or still to be scored, in a common enterprise. In keeping her
+informed of each new step that Kilcup and Warren were taking, he
+maintained an attitude of distant respect, of which she could have nothing
+to complain.
+
+Expecting an equal reserve on her part, it was with some surprise that he
+saw her assume the initiative in cordiality. He called it cordiality,
+because he dared not make it a stronger word. Her manner went back to the
+spontaneous friendliness that had marked their intercourse before she
+began to see what he was aiming at, while into it she threw an infusion of
+something that had not hitherto been there. When he came with the
+information that a fresh bit of evidence had been discovered, or a new
+light thrown on an old one, she listened with interest--just the right
+kind of interest--and made pretexts to detain him, sometimes with Wayne as
+a third, sometimes without, for the pleasure of his own company. Now and
+then, as spring came on, they would all three, at her suggestion, cross
+the street, and stroll in the park together. Leaving Wayne on some
+convenient seat, they would prolong their own walk, talking with the
+unguarded confidence of mutual trust. It was she who furnished the
+topics--books, music, politics, people, anything that chanced to be
+uppermost. When he decided to purchase an automobile a whole new world of
+consultation was opened up. They visited establishments together, and
+drove with Wayne into the country to test machines. Returning Conquest
+would dine informally, in morning dress, with them; or else, from time to
+time he would invite them to a restaurant. By-and-by he took to organizing
+little dinners at his own house, ostensibly to cheer up Wayne, but really
+to see Miriam at his table.
+
+In all this there was nothing remarkable, as between old friends, except
+the contrast with her bearing toward him during the past year. He had
+expected that when Norrie Ford went finally free she would fulfil her
+contract, and fulfil it well; but he had not expected this instalment of
+graciousness in advance. It set him to pondering, to looking in the
+mirror, to refining on that careful dressing which he had already made an
+art. After all, a man in the fifties was young as long as he looked young,
+and according as one took the point of view.
+
+Except when Ford's affairs came directly under discussion he occupied,
+seemingly, a secondary place in their thoughts. Miriam rarely spoke of him
+at all, and if Conquest brought up his name more frequently it was because
+his professional interest in the numerous "nice points" of the case was
+becoming keen. He talked them over with her, partly because of his
+pleasure in the intelligence with which she grasped them, and partly
+because their intimacy deepened in proportion as the hope strengthened
+that Ford's innocence would be proved.
+
+It was June before Miriam heard from South America. Two or three letters
+to Evie had already come, guardedly written, telling little more than the
+incidents of Ford's voyage and arrival. It was to Miriam he wrote what he
+actually had at heart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The great moment has come and gone," she read to Conquest. "I have seen
+Mr. Jarrott, and made a clean breast of everything. It was harder than I
+expected, though I expected it would be pretty hard. I think I felt
+sorrier for him than for myself, which is saying a good deal. He not only
+takes it to heart, but feels it as a cut to his pride. I can see that that
+thought is uppermost. What he feels is not so much the fact that _I_
+deceived him as that I deceived _him_. I can understand it, too. In a
+country where there is such a lot of this sort of thing, he has never been
+touched by it before. It has been a kind of boast that his men were always
+the genuine article. If one of them is called Smith, it is because he _is_
+a Smith, and not a Vere de Vere in hiding. But that isn't all. He took me
+into his family--into his very heart. He showed that, when I told him. He
+tried not to, but he couldn't help it. I tell you it hurt--_me_. I won't
+try to write about it. I'll tell you everything face to face, when I get
+up to the mark, if I ever do. Apparently my letters hadn't prepared him
+for the thing at all. He thought it was to be something to do with Evie,
+though he might have known I wouldn't have chucked up everything for that.
+The worst of it is, he's no good at seeing things all round. He can't take
+my point of view a bit. It is impossible to explain the fix I was put in,
+because he can see nothing but the one fact that I pulled the wool over
+his eyes--_his_ eyes, that had never suffered sacrilege before. I
+sympathize with him in that, and yet I think he might try to see that
+there's something to be said on my side. He doesn't, and he never
+will--which only hurts me the more.
+
+"As for Evie, he wouldn't let me mention her name. I didn't insist,
+because it was too painful--I mean, too painful to see how he took it. He
+said, in about ten words, that Evie had not been any more engaged than if
+she had given her word to a man of air, and that there was no reason why
+she should be spoken of. We left it there. I couldn't deny that, and it
+was no use saying any more. The only reply to him must be given by Evie
+herself. He is writing to her, and so am I. I wish you would help her to
+see that she must consider herself quite free, and that she isn't to
+undertake what she may not have the strength to carry out. I realize more
+and more that I was asking her to do the impossible."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was an hour or two after reading this, when Conquest had gone away,
+that Evie herself--as dainty as spring, in flowered muslin and a Leghorn
+hat crowned with a wreath of roses--came fluttering in.
+
+"I've had the queerest letter from Uncle Jarrott," she began,
+breathlessly. "The poor old dear--well, something must be the matter with
+him. I can't for the life of me imagine what Herbert can have told him,
+but he doesn't understand a bit."
+
+Miriam locked her own letter in her desk, saying as she did so:
+
+"How does he show it?--that he doesn't understand."
+
+"Why, he simply talks wild--that's how he shows it. He says I am not to
+consider myself engaged to Herbert--that I was never engaged to him at
+all. I wonder what he calls it, if it isn't engaged, when I have a
+ring--and everything."
+
+"It is rather mystifying." Miriam tried to smile. "I suppose he means that
+having given your word to Herbert Strange, you're not to consider yourself
+bound to Norrie Ford, unless you want to."
+
+"Pff! I don't care anything about that. I never liked the name of
+Herbert--or Strange, either. I told you that before. All the same, I wish
+Uncle Jarrott would have a little sense."
+
+"Suppose--I mean, just suppose, dear--he felt it his duty to forbid your
+engagement altogether. What would you do then?"
+
+"It wouldn't be very nice of him, I must say. He was as pleased as Punch
+over it when I was down there. If he's so capricious, I don't see how he
+can blame me."
+
+"Blame you, for what, dear?"
+
+"For staying engaged--if it's all right."
+
+"But if he thought it wasn't all right?"
+
+"You do, don't you?"
+
+Evie, who had been prancing about the room, turned sharply on Miriam, who
+was still at her desk.
+
+"That isn't the question--"
+
+"No, but it's _a_ question. I presume you don't mind my asking it?"
+
+"You may ask me anything, darling--of course. But this is your uncle
+Jarrott's affair, and yours. It wouldn't do for me--"
+
+"Oh, that's so like you Miriam. You'd exasperate a saint--the way you
+won't give your opinion when you've got one. I wish I could ask Billy.
+He'd know. But of course I couldn't, when he thinks I'm still engaged to
+_him_."
+
+"What do you want to ask him, Evie, dear?"
+
+"Well, he's a lawyer. He could tell me all about what it's all about. I'm
+sure _I_ don't know. I didn't think it was anything--and yet here's Uncle
+Jarrott writing as if it was something awful. He's written to Aunt
+Queenie, too. Of course I must stand by Herbert, whatever happens--if it
+isn't very bad; but you can see yourself that I don't want to be mixed up
+in a--a--in a scandal."
+
+"It would hardly be a scandal, dear; but there would be some--some
+publicity about it."
+
+"I don't mind publicity. I'm used to that, with my name in the paper every
+other day. It was in this morning. Did you see it?--the Gresley's dance.
+Only I do wish they would call me Evelyn, and not Evie. It sounds so
+familiar."
+
+"I'm afraid they'd put more in about you than just that."
+
+"Would they? What?" Her eyes danced already, in anticipation.
+
+"I can't tell you exactly what; but it would be things you wouldn't like."
+
+Evie twitched about the room, making little clicking sounds with her lips,
+as signs of meditation.
+
+"Well, I mean to be true to him--a while longer," she said, at last, as if
+coming to a conclusion. "I'm not going to let Uncle Jarrott think I'm just
+a puppet to be jerked on a string. The idea! When he was as pleased as
+Punch about it himself. And Aunt Helen said she'd give me my trousseau. I
+suppose I sha'n't get that now. But there's the money you offered me for
+the pearl necklace. Only I'd much rather have the pearl--Well, I'll be
+true to him, do you see? We're leaving for Newport the day after
+to-morrow. They say there hasn't been such a brilliant summer for a long
+time as they expect this year. Thank goodness, there's something to take
+my mind off all this care and worry and responsiblity, otherwise I think I
+should pass away. But I shall show Uncle Jarrott that he can't do just as
+he likes with me, anyhow."
+
+Evie and Miss Jarrott went to Newport, and it was the beginning of July
+before Miriam heard from Ford again. Once more she read to Conquest such
+portions of the letter as she thought he would find of interest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It is all over now," Ford wrote, "between Stephens and Jarrott and me.
+I'm out of the concern for good. It was something of a wrench, and I'm
+glad it is past. I didn't see the old man again. I wanted to thank him and
+say good-bye, but he dodged me. Perhaps it is just as well. Even if I were
+to meet him now, I shouldn't make the attempt again. I confess to feeling
+a little hurt, but I thoroughly understand him. He is one of those
+men--you meet them now and again--survivals from the old school--with a
+sense of rectitude so exact that they can only see in a straight line. It
+is all right. Don't think that I complain. It is almost as much for his
+sake as for my own that I wish he could have taken what I call a more
+comprehensive view of me. I know he suffers--and I shall never be able to
+tell him how sorry I am till we get into the kingdom of heaven. In fact, I
+can't explain anything to any one, except you, which must be an excuse for
+my long letters. I try to keep you posted in what I'm going through, so
+that you may convey as much or as little of it as you think fit to Evie. I
+can't tell her much, and I see from the little notes she writes me that
+she doesn't yet understand.
+
+"The cat seems to be quite out of the bag in the office, though I haven't
+said a word to any one, and I know Mr. Jarrott wouldn't. Pride and sore
+feeling will keep him from ever speaking of me again, except when he can't
+help it. I don't mean to say that the men know exactly what it is, but
+they know enough to set them guessing. They are jolly nice about it, too,
+even the fellows who were hardly decent to me in the old days. Little
+Green--the chap from Boston who succeeded me at Rosario; I must have told
+you about him--and his wife can't do enough for me, and I know they mean
+it."
+
+There was a silence of some weeks before he wrote again.
+
+"I shall not get away from here as soon as I expected, as my private
+affairs are not easily settled up. This city grows so fast that I have had
+a good part of my savings in real estate. I am getting rid of it by
+degrees, but it takes time to sell to advantage. I may say that I am doing
+very well, for which I am not sorry, as I shall need the money for my
+trial. I hope you don't mind my referring to it, because I look forward to
+it with something you might almost call glee. To get back where I started
+will be like waking from a bad dream. I can't believe that Justice will
+make the same mistake twice--and even if she does I would rather she had
+the chance. I am much encouraged by the last reports from Kilcup and
+Warren. I've long felt that it was Jacob Gramm who did for my poor uncle,
+though I didn't like to accuse him of it when the proofs seemed all the
+other way. He certainly had more reason to do the trick than I had, for my
+uncle had been a brute to him for thirty years, while he had only worried
+me for two. He wasn't half a bad old chap, either--old Gramm--and it was
+one of the mysteries of the place to me that he could have stood it so
+long. The only explanation I could find was that he had a kind of
+affection for the old man, such as a dog will sometimes have for a master
+who beats him, or a woman for a drunken husband. I believe the moment came
+when he simply found himself at the end of his tether of endurance--and
+he just did for him. His grief, when it was all over, was real enough.
+Nobody could doubt that. In fact, it was so evidently genuine that the
+theory I am putting forward now only came to me of late years. I think
+there is something in it, and I believe the further they go the more they
+will find to support it. Now that the old chap is dead I should have less
+scruple in following it up--especially if the old lady is gone too. She
+was a bit of a vixen, but the husband was a good old sort. I liked him."
+
+Some weeks later he wrote:
+
+"I wander about this place a good deal like a ghost in its old haunts.
+Everything here is so temporary, so changing--much more so than in New
+York--that one's footprints are very quickly washed away. Outside the
+office almost no one remembers me. It is curious to think that I was once
+so happy here--and so hopeful. There was always a kind of hell in my
+heart, but I kept it banked down, as we do the earth's internal fires,
+beneath a tolerably solid crust. Yesterday, finding myself at the
+Hipodromo, I stood for a while on the spot where I first saw Evie. It used
+to seem to me a bit of enchanted ground, but I feel now as if I ought to
+erect a gravestone there. Poor little Evie! How right you were about it
+all. It was madness on my part to think she could ever climb up my
+Calvary. My excuse is that I didn't imagine it was going to be so steep. I
+even hoped she would never see that there was a Calvary at all. Her notes
+are still pitifully ignorant of the real state of things.
+
+"And speaking of gravestones, I went out the other day to the Recoleta
+Cemetery, and looked at the grave of my poor old friend, Monsieur Durand.
+Everything neat, and in good order. It gives me a peculiar satisfaction
+to see that the decorum he loved reigns where he 'sleeps.' I never knew
+his secret--except that rumor put him down for an unfrocked priest.
+
+"I doubt if I shall get away from here till the beginning of October; but
+when I do, everything will be in trim for what I sometimes think of as my
+resurrection."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These letters, and others like them, Miriam shared conscientiously with
+Conquest. It was part of the loyalty she had vowed to him in her heart
+that she should keep nothing from him, except what was sanctified and
+sealed forever, as her own private history. In the impulse to give her
+life as a ransom for Norrie Ford's she was eager to do it without
+reserves, or repinings, or backward looks--without even a wish that it had
+been possible to make any other use of it. If she was not entirely
+successful in the last feat, she was fairly equal to the rest, so that in
+allowing himself to be misled Conquest could scarcely be charged with
+fatuity. With his combined advantages, personal and otherwise, it was not
+astonishing that a woman should be in love with him; and if that woman
+proved to be Miriam Strange, one could only say that the unexpected had
+happened, as it often does. If, in view of all the circumstances, he
+dressed better than ever, and gave his little dinners more frequently,
+while happiness toned down the sharpness of his handsome profile to a
+softer line, he had little in common with Malvolio.
+
+And what he had began to drop away from him. Insensibly he came to see
+that the display of his legal knowledge, of his carefully chosen ties, of
+his splendid equipment in house, horses, and automobiles, had something of
+the major-domo's strut in parti-colored hose. The day came when he
+understood that the effort to charm her by the parade of these things was
+like the appeal to divine grace by means of grinding on a prayer-mill. It
+was a long step to take, both in thought and emotion, leading him to see
+love, marriage, women's hearts, and all kindred subjects, from a different
+point of view. Love in particular began to appear to him as more than the
+sum total of approbation bestowed on an object to be acquired. Though he
+was not prepared to give it a new definition, it was clear that the old
+one was no longer sufficient for his needs. The mere fact that this woman,
+whom he had vainly tempted with gifts--whom he was still hoping to capture
+by prowess--could come to him of her own accord, had a transforming effect
+on himself. If he ever got her--by purchase, conquest, or any other form
+of acquisition--he had expected to be proud; he had never dreamed of this
+curious happiness, that almost made him humble.
+
+It was a new conception of life to think that there were things in it that
+might be given, but which could not be bought; as it was a new revelation
+of himself to perceive that there were treasures in his dry heart which
+had never before been drawn on. This discovery was made almost
+accidentally. He stumbled on it, as men have stumbled on Koh-i-noors and
+Cullinanes lying in the sand.
+
+"What I really came to tell you," he said to her, on one occasion, as they
+strolled side by side in the Park, "is that I am going away to-morrow--to
+the West--to Omaha."
+
+"Isn't that rather sudden?"
+
+"Rather. I've thought for the last few days I might do it. The fact is,
+they've found Amalia Gramm."
+
+She stopped with a sudden start of interrogation, moving on again at once.
+It was a hot September evening, at the hour when twilight merges into
+night. They had left Wayne on a favorite seat, and having finished their
+own walk northward, were returning to pick him up and take him home. It
+was just dark enough for the thin crescent of the harvest moon to be
+pendulous above the city, while a rim of lighted windows in high façades
+framed the tree-tops The peace of the quiet path in which they rambled
+seemed the more sylvan because of the clang and rumble of the streets, as
+a room will appear more secluded and secure when there is a storm outside.
+
+"They've found her living with some nieces out there," he went on to
+explain. "She appears to have been half over the world since old Gramm
+died--home to Germany--back to America--to Denver--to Chicago--to
+Milwaukee--to the Lord knows where--and now she has fetched up in Omaha.
+She strikes me in the light of an unquiet spirit. It seems she has nephews
+and nieces all over the lot--and as she has the ten thousand dollars old
+Chris Ford left them--"
+
+"Are they going to bring her here?"
+
+"They can't--bedridden--paralyzed, or something. They've got to take her
+testimony on the spot. I want to be there when they do it. There are
+certain questions which it is most important to have asked. In a way, it
+is not my business; but I'm going to make it mine. I've mulled over the
+thing so long that I think I see the psychology of the whole drama."
+
+"I can never thank you enough for the interest you've shown," she said,
+after a brief silence.
+
+He gave his short, nervous laugh.
+
+"Nor I you for giving me the chance to show it. That's where the kindness
+comes in. It's made a different world for me, and me a different man in
+it. If anybody had told me last winter that I should spend the whole
+summer in town working on a criminal case--"
+
+"You shouldn't have done that. I wanted you to go away as usual."
+
+"And leave you here?"
+
+"I shouldn't have minded--as long as Mr. Wayne preferred to stay. It's so
+hard for him to get about, anywhere but in the place he's accustomed to.
+New York in summer isn't as bad as people made me think."
+
+"I too have found that true. To me it has been a very happy time. But
+perhaps my reasons were different from yours."
+
+She reflected a minute before uttering her next words, but decided to say
+them.
+
+"I fancy our reasons were the same."
+
+The low voice, the simplicity of the sentence, the meanings in it and
+behind it, made him tremble. It was then, perhaps, that he began to see
+most clearly the true nature of love, both as given and received.
+
+"I don't think they can be," he ventured, hoping to draw her on to say
+something more; but she did not respond.
+
+After all, he reflected, as they continued their walk more or less in
+silence, too many words would only spoil the minute's bliss. There was,
+too, a pleasure in standing afar off to view the promised land almost
+equal to that of marching into it--especially when, as now, he was given
+to understand that its milk and honey were awaiting him.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+
+It was the middle of October when Evie wrote from Lenox to say she would
+come to town to meet Ford on his arrival, begging Miriam to give her
+shelter for a night or two. The Grants remaining abroad, Miss Jarrott had
+taken the house in Seventy-second Street for another winter, but as Evie
+would run up to New York alone she preferred for the minute to be Miriam's
+guest.
+
+"The fact is, I'm worried to death," she wrote, confidentially "and you
+must help me to see daylight through this tangled mass of everybody saying
+different things. Aunt Queenie has gone completely back on Herbert, just
+because Uncle Jarrott has. That doesn't strike me as very loyal, I must
+say. I shouldn't think it right to desert anybody, unless I wanted to. I
+wouldn't do it because some one else told me to--not if he was my brother
+ten times over. I mean to be just as true to Herbert as I can Not that he
+makes it very easy for me, because he has broken altogether with Uncle
+Jarrott--and that seems to me the maddest thing. I certainly sha'n't get
+my trousseau from Aunt Helen now. I don't see what we're all coming to.
+Everybody is so queer, and they keep hinting things they won't say out, as
+if there was some mystery. I do wish I could talk to Billy about it. Of
+course I can't--the way matters stand. And speaking of Billy, that rich
+Mr. Bird--you remember I told you about him last winter--has asked me to
+marry him. Just think! I forget how much he has a year, but it's something
+awful. Of course I told him I couldn't give him a definite answer yet--but
+that if he insisted on it I should have to make it No. He said he didn't
+insist--that he'd rather wait till I had time to make up my mind, if I
+didn't keep him dangling. I told him I wouldn't keep him doing anything
+whatever, and that if he dangled at all it would be entirely of his own
+accord. I think he liked my spirit, so he said he'd wait. We left it
+there, which was the wisest way--though I must say I didn't like his
+presuming on his money to think I would make a difference between him and
+the others. Money doesn't mean anything to me, though dear mamma hoped she
+would live to see me well established. She didn't, poor darling, but
+that's no reason why I shouldn't try to carry out her wishes. All the
+same, I mean to be true to Herbert just as long as possible; and so you
+may expect me on the twenty-ninth."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If there was much in this letter that Miriam found disturbing, it was not
+the thought that Evie might be false to Ford, or that Ford might suffer,
+which alarmed her most. There was something in her that cried out in fear
+before the possibility that Norrie Ford might be free again. Her strength
+having sprung so largely from the hope of restoring the plans she had
+marred, the destruction of the motive left her weak; but worse than that
+was the knowledge that, though she had tried to empty her heart completely
+of its cravings, only its surface had been drained. It was to get
+assurance rather than to give information that she read fragments of
+Evie's letter to Conquest, on the evening of his return from Omaha. He had
+come to give her the news of his success. That it was good news was
+evident in his face when he entered the room; and, almost afraid to hear
+it, she had broached the subject of her anxiety about Evie first.
+
+"She's going to give him the sack; that's what _she's_ going to give him,"
+Conquest said, conclusively, while Miriam folded the dashingly scribbled
+sheets. "You needn't be worried about her in the least. Miss Evie knows
+her way about as cleverly as a homing bee. She'll do well for herself
+whatever else she may not do. _Come now_!"
+
+"I'm not thinking of that so much as that she should do her duty."
+
+"Duty! Pooh! That sort of little creature has no duty--the word doesn't
+apply to it. Evie is the most skilful mixture of irresponsible impulse and
+shrewd calculation you'll find in New York. She'll use both her gifts with
+perfect heartlessness, and yet in such a way that even her guardian angel
+won't know just where to find fault with her."
+
+"But she must marry Mr. Ford--now."
+
+He was too busy with his own side of the subject to notice that her
+assertion had the intensity of a cry. He had a man's lack of interest in
+another man's love-affairs while he was blissfully absorbed in his own.
+
+"You might as well tell a swallow that it must migrate--now," he laughed.
+"Poor Ford will feel it, I've no doubt; but we shall make up to him for a
+good deal of it. We're going to pull him through."
+
+For the instant her anxiety was diverted into another channel. "Does that
+mean that Amalia Gramm has told you anything?"
+
+"She's told us everything. I thought she would. I don't feel at liberty to
+give you the details before they come out at the proper time and place;
+but there's no harm in saying that my analysis of the old woman's
+psychological state was not so very far wrong. There's no question about
+it any longer. We'll pull him through. And, by George, he's worth it!"
+
+The concluding exclamation, uttered with so much sincerity, took her by
+surprise, transmuting the pressure about her heart into a mist of sudden
+tears. Tears came to her rarely, hardly, and seldom with relief. She was
+especially unwilling that Conquest should notice them now; but the attempt
+to dash them away only caused them to fall faster. She could see him
+watching her in a kind of sympathetic curiosity, slightly surprised in his
+turn at the unexpected emotion, and trying to divine its cause. Unable to
+bear his gaze any longer, she got up brusquely from her chair, retreating
+into the bay-window, where--the curtains being undrawn--she stood looking
+down on the sea of lights, as beings above the firmament might look down
+on stars. He waited a minute, and came near her only when he judged that
+he might do so discreetly.
+
+"You're unnerved," he said, with tender kindliness. "That's why you're
+upset. You've had too much on your mind. You're too willing to take all
+the care on your own shoulders, and not let other people hustle for
+themselves."
+
+She was pressing her handkerchief against her lips, so she made no reply.
+The moment seemed to him one at which he might go forward a little more
+boldly. All the circumstances warranted an advance from his position of
+reserve.
+
+"You need me," he ventured to say, with that quiet assurance which in a
+lover means much. "I understand you as no one else does in the world."
+
+Her brimming eyes gave him a look which was only pathetic, but which he
+took to be one of assent.
+
+"I've always told you I could help you," he went on, with tranquil
+earnestness, "and I could. You've too many burdens to carry alone--burdens
+that don't belong to you, but which, I know, you'll never lay down. Well,
+I'll share them. There's Wayne, now. He's too much for you, by yourself--I
+don't mean from the material point of view, but--the whole thing. It wears
+on you. It's bound to. Wayne is my friend just as much as yours. He's my
+responsibility--so long as you take it in that light. I've been thinking
+of him a lot lately--and I see how, in my house--could put him
+up--ideally."
+
+Still pressing her handkerchief against her lips with her right hand, she
+put out her left in a gesture of deprecation. He understood it as one of
+encouragement, and went on.
+
+"You must come and look at my house. You've never really seen it, and I
+think you'd like it. I think you'd like--everything I've got everything to
+make you happy; and if you'll only let me do it, you'll make me happy,
+too."
+
+She felt able to speak at last. Her eyes were still brimming as she turned
+toward him, but brimming only as pools are when the rain is over.
+
+"I want you to be happy. You're so good ... and kind ... and you've done
+so much for me ... you deserve it."
+
+She turned away from him again. With her arm on the woodwork of the
+window, she rested her forehead rather wearily on her hand. He understood
+so little of what was passing within her that she found it a relief to
+suspend for the minute her comedy of spontaneous happiness, letting her
+heart ache unrestrainedly. Her left hand hanging limp and free, she made
+no effort to withdraw it when she felt him clasp it in his own. Since she
+had subscribed to the treaty months ago, since she had insisted on doing
+it rightly or wrongly, it made little difference when and how she carried
+the conditions out. So they stood hand in hand together, tacitly, but, as
+each knew, quite effectually, plighted. In her silence, her resignation,
+her evident consent he read the proof of that love which, to his mind, no
+longer needed words.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Late that night, after he had gone away, she wrote to Evie, beseeching her
+to be true to Ford. The letter was so passionate, so little like herself,
+that she was afraid of destroying it if she waited till morning, so she
+posted it without delay. The answer came within forty-eight hours, in the
+shape of a telegram from Evie. She was coming to town at once, though it
+wanted still three or four days to Ford's arrival.
+
+It was a white little Evie, with drawn face, who threw herself into
+Miriam's arms at the station, clutching at her with a convulsive sob.
+
+"Miriam, I can't do it," she whispered, in a kind of terror. "They say
+he's going to be put in--_jail_!"
+
+Her voice rose on the last word, so that one or two people paused in their
+rush past to glance at the pitifully tragic little face.
+
+"Hush, darling," Miriam whispered back. "You'll tell me about it as we go
+home."
+
+But in the motor Evie could only cry, clinging to Miriam as she used to do
+in troubled moments in childhood. Arrived at the apartment, Wayne had to
+be faced with some measure of self-control, and then came dinner. At table
+Evie, outwardly mistress of herself by this time, talked feverish
+nonsense about their common friends in Lenox, after which she made an
+excuse for retiring early. It was only in the bedroom, when they were
+secure from interruption that Miriam heard what Evie had to tell. She was
+tearless now, and rather indignant.
+
+"I've had the strangest letter from Herbert," she declared excitedly, as
+soon as Miriam entered the room. "I couldn't have believed he wrote it in
+his senses if Aunt Queenie hadn't heard the Same thing from Uncle Jarrott.
+He says he's got to go to--_jail_."
+
+There was the same rising inflexion on the last word, suggestive of a
+shriek of horror, that Miriam had noticed in the station. In her white
+peignoir, her golden hair streaming over her shoulders, and her hands
+flung wide apart with an appealing dramatic gesture, Evie was not unlike
+some vision of a youthful Christian martyr, in spite of the hair-brush in
+her hand. Miriam sat down sidewise on the edge of the couch, looking up at
+the child in pity. She felt that it was useless to let her remain in
+darkness any longer.
+
+"Of course he has to," she said, trying to make her tone as matter of fact
+as might be. "Didn't you know it?"
+
+"Know it! Did _you_?"
+
+Evie stepped forward, bending over Miriam as if she meant to strike her.
+
+"I knew it in a general way, darling. I suppose, when he gives himself to
+the police--"
+
+"The police!" Evie screamed. "Am I to be engaged to a man who--gives
+himself up to the police?"
+
+"It will only be for a little while, dear--"
+
+"I don't care whether it's for a little while or foreverit can't _be_.
+What is he thinking of? What are _you_ thinking of? Don't you _see_? How
+can I face the world--with all my invitations--when the man I'm engaged to
+is--in jail?"
+
+Evie's hands flew up in a still more eloquent gesture, while the blue
+eyes, usually so soft and veiled, were wide with flaming interrogation.
+
+"I knew that--in some ways--it might be hard for you--"
+
+Evie laughed, a little silvery mirthless ripple of scorn.
+
+"I must say, Miriam, you choose your words skilfully. But you're wrong, do
+you see? There's no way in which it can be hard for me, because there's no
+way in which it's possible."
+
+"Oh yes, there is, dear--if you love him."
+
+"That has nothing to do with it. Of course I love him. Haven't I said so?
+But that doesn't make any difference. Can't I love him without being
+engaged to--to--to a man who has to go to jail?"
+
+"Certainly; but you can't love him if you don't feel that you must--that
+you simply _must_--stand by his side."
+
+"There you go again, Miriam, with your queer ideas. It's exactly what any
+one would expect you to say."
+
+"I hope so."
+
+"Oh, you needn't hope so, because they would--any one who knew you. But I
+have to do what's right. I know what I feel in my conscience--and I have
+to follow it. And besides, I couldn't--I couldn't"--her voice began to
+rise again--"I couldn't face it--I couldn't bear it--not if I loved him a
+great deal better than I do."
+
+"That's something you must think about very seriously, dear--"
+
+"I don't have to!" she cried, with a stamp of her foot. "I know it
+already. It wouldn't make any difference if I thought about it a thousand
+years. I couldn't be engaged to a man who was in jail, not if I worshipped
+the ground he trod on."
+
+"But when he's innocent, darling--"
+
+"It's jail, just the same. I can't be engaged to people just because
+they're innocent. It isn't right to expect it of me. And, anyhow," she
+added, passionately, "I can't do it. It would kill me. I should never lift
+my head again. I can't--I can't. It's hateful of any one to say I ought
+to. I'm surprised at you, Miriam, when you know how dear mamma would have
+forbidden it. It's all very well for you to give advice, when you have no
+family--and no one to think about--and hardly any invitations-- Well, I
+can't, and there's an end of it. If that's your idea of love, then, I must
+say, my conception is a little different. I've always had high ideals, and
+I feel obliged to hold to them, however you may condemn me."
+
+She ended with a catch in her breath something like a sob.
+
+"But I'm not condemning you, Evie dear. If you feel what you say, there's
+nothing for it but to see Mr. Ford and tell him so."
+
+At this suggestion Evie sobered. She was a long time silent before she
+observed, in a voice that had become suddenly calm and significantly
+casual, "That's easy for you to say."
+
+"If you speak to him as decidedly as to me, I should think it would be
+easy for you to do."
+
+"And still easier for you."
+
+Evie spoke in that tone of unintentional intention which is most pointed.
+It was not lost on Miriam, who recoiled from the mere thought. It seemed
+to her better to ignore the hint, but Evie, with feverish eagerness,
+refused to let it pass.
+
+"Did you hear what I said?" she persisted, sharply.
+
+"I heard it, dear; but it didn't seem to me to mean anything."
+
+"That would depend on whether you heard it only with the ear or in the
+heart."
+
+"You know that everything that has to do with you is in my heart."
+
+"Well, then?"
+
+"But if you mean by that that I should tell Mr. Ford you're not going to
+marry him--why, it's out of the question."
+
+"Then who's to tell him? _I_ can't. It's not to be expected."
+
+"But, darling, you must. This is awful."
+
+Miriam got up and went toward her, but Evie, who was nervously brushing
+her hair, edged away.
+
+"Of course it's awful, but I don't see the use of making it worse than it
+need be. He'll feel it a great deal more if he sees me, and so shall I."
+
+"And what shall I feel?" Miriam spoke unguardedly, but Evie was too
+preoccupied to notice the bitterness of the tone.
+
+"I don't see why you should feel anything at all. It's nothing to you--or
+very little. It wouldn't be your fault; not any more than it's the
+postman's if he has to bring you a letter with bad news."
+
+Miriam went back to her place on the edge of the couch, where with her
+forehead bowed for a minute on her hand she sat reflecting. An
+overwhelming desire for confidence, for sympathy perhaps, for the
+clearing up of mysteries in any case, was impelling her to tell Evie all
+that had ever happened between Ford and herself. It had been necessary to
+maintain so many reserves that possibly this new light would enable Evie
+to see her own duty more straightforwardly.
+
+"Darling," she began, "I want to tell you something--"
+
+But before she could proceed Evie flung the hair-brush on the floor and
+uttered a great swelling sob. With her hands hanging at her sidess and her
+golden head thrown back, she wept with the abandonment of a child, while
+suggesting the seraphic suffering of a grieving angel by some old master.
+
+In an instant Miriam had her in her arms. It was the appeal she had never
+been able to resist.
+
+"There, there, my pet," she said, soothingly, drawing her to the couch.
+"Come to Miriam, who loves you. There, there."
+
+Evie clung to her piteously, with flower-like face tilted outward and
+upward for the greater convenience of weeping.
+
+"Oh, I'm so lonely!" she sobbed. "I'm so lonely ... I I wish dear mamma
+... hadn't died."
+
+Miriam pressed her the more closely.
+
+"I'm so lonely ... and everything's so strange ... and I don't know what
+to do ... and he's going to be put in jail ... and you're so unkind to
+me.... Oh, dear! ... I can't tell him ... I can't tell him ... I can't ...
+I can't ..."
+
+She pillowed her head on Miriam's shoulder, like a child that would force
+a caress from the hand that has just been striking it. The action filled
+Miriam with that kind of self-reproach which the weak creature inspires so
+easily in the strong. In spite of her knowledge to the contrary, she had
+the feeling of having acted selfishly.
+
+"No, darling," she said, at last, as Evie's sobs subdued into convulsive
+tremblings, "you needn't tell him. I'll see him. He'll understand how hard
+it's been for you. It's been hard for every one--and especially for you,
+darling. I'll do my best. You know I will. And I'm sure he'll understand.
+There, there," she comforted, as Evie's tears broke out afresh. "Have your
+cry out, dear. It will do you good. There, there."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So Evie went back next day to Lenox, while Miriam waited for Ford.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+
+A few days later she read his name, in a morning paper, in the _Asiatic's_
+list of passengers the steamer having arrived at quarantine the night
+before: Mr. John Norrie Ford. Though flung carelessly into a paragraph
+printed in small type, it seemed to blaze in fire on the page! It was as
+if all America must rise at it. As she looked from the window it was with
+something like surprise that she saw the stream of traffic roaring onward,
+heedless of the fact that this dread name was being hawked in the streets
+and sold at the news-stands. She sent out for the evening papers that
+appear at midday, being relieved and astonished to find that as yet it had
+created no sensation.
+
+She was not deceived by his ease of manner when he appeared at the
+apartment in the afternoon. Though he carried his head loftily, and smiled
+with his habitual air of confidence, she could see that the deep waters of
+the proud had gone over his soul. Their ebb had streaked his hair and
+beard with white, and deepened the wrinkles that meant concentrated will
+into the furrows that come of suffering. She was more or less prepared for
+that. It was the outward manifestation of what she had read between the
+lines of the letters he had written her. As he crossed the room, with hand
+outstretched, her one conscious thought was of the chance to be a woman
+and a helpmeet Evie had flung away. She had noticed how, on the very
+threshold, he had glanced twice about the room, expecting to find her
+there.
+
+They did not speak of her at once. They talked of commonplace introductory
+things--the voyage, the arrival, the hotel at which he was
+staying--anything that would help her, and perhaps him, to control the
+preliminary nervousness. There was no sign of it, however, on his part,
+while she felt her own spirit rising, as it always did, to meet
+emergencies. Presently she mentioned her fears regarding his use of his
+true name.
+
+"No; it isn't dangerous," he assured her, "because I'm out of danger now.
+Thank the Lord, that's all over. I don't have to live with a great hulking
+terror behind me any longer. I'm a man like any other. You can't imagine
+what it means to be yourself, and not to care who knows it. I'm afraid I
+parade my name just like a boy with a new watch, who wants to tell every
+one the time. So far no one has paid any particular attention; but I dare
+say that will come. Is Evie here?"
+
+"She's not here--to-day."
+
+"Why not?" he asked, sharply. "She said she would be. She said she'd come
+to town--"
+
+"She did come to town, but she thought she'd better not--stay."
+
+"Not stay? Why shouldn't she stay? Is anything up? You don't mean that
+Miss Jarrott--?"
+
+"No; Miss Jarrott had nothing to do with it. I know her brother has
+written to her, in the way you must be prepared for. But she couldn't have
+kept Evie from waiting for you, if Evie herself--"
+
+"Had wanted to," he finished, as she seemed to hesitate at the words.
+
+Since she said nothing to modify this assertion, she hoped he would
+comprehend its gravity. Indeed, he seemed to be trying to attenuate that
+when he spoke next.
+
+"I suppose she had engagements--or something."
+
+"She did have engagements--but she could have put them off."
+
+"Only she didn't care to. I see."
+
+She allowed him time to accept this fact before going on.
+
+"Her return to Lenox," she said then, "wasn't because of her engagements."
+
+"Then it must have been because of me. Didn't she want to see me?"
+
+"She didn't want to tell you what she felt she would have to say."
+
+"Oh! So that was it."
+
+He continued to sit looking at her with an expression of interrogation,
+though it was evident from his eyes that his questions had been answered.
+They sat in the same relative positions as on the night of their last long
+talk together, he in his big arm-chair, she in her low one. It struck her
+as strange--while he stared at her with that gaze of inquiry from which
+the inquiry was gone--that she, who meant so little to his inner life,
+should be called on again to live through with him minutes that must
+forever remain memorable in his existence.
+
+"Poor little thing! So she funked telling me."
+
+The comment was made musingly, to himself, but she took it as if addressed
+to her.
+
+"She wasn't equal to it."
+
+"But you are. You're equal to anything. Aren't you?" He smiled with that
+peculiar twisted smile which she had noticed at other times, when he was
+concealing pain.
+
+"One is generally equal to what one has to do. All the same," she added,
+with an impulse she could not repress, "I'm sorry to be always associated
+in your mind with things that must be hard for you."
+
+"You're associated in my mind with everything that's high and noble.
+That's the only memory I shall ever have of you. You've been with me
+through some of the dark spots of my life; but if it hadn't been for you I
+shouldn't have found the way."
+
+"Thank you. I'm glad you can say that. I should be even more sorry than I
+am to give you this news to-day, if it were not that perhaps I can explain
+things a little better than Evie could."
+
+"I don't imagine that they require much explanation. I've seen from Evie's
+letters that--"
+
+"That she was afraid of--the situation. She hasn't changed toward you."
+
+"Do you mean by that that she still--cares anything about me?"
+
+"She says she does."
+
+"But you don't believe her."
+
+"I'm not entitled to an opinion. It's something you and she must work out
+together. All I can do is to tell you what may give you a little hope."
+
+She watched for the brightening effect of these words upon him, but he sat
+looking absently at the floor, as if he had not heard them.
+
+"Evie is afraid," she continued, "but I think it's only fair to remember
+that the circumstances might well frighten any young girl of her sort."
+
+He showed that he followed her by nodding assent, though he neither lifted
+his head nor spoke.
+
+"She wanted me to tell you that while the--the trial--and other
+things--are going on, she couldn't be engaged to you--I'm using her own
+expression, but she didn't say that, when it was all over and you were
+free, she wouldn't marry you. I noticed that."
+
+He looked up quickly.
+
+"I'm not sure that I catch your drift."
+
+"I mean that when it's all over, and everything has ended as you hope it
+will, it may be quite possible for you to win her back."
+
+He stared at her, with an incredulous lifting of the eyebrows
+
+"Would you advise me to try?"
+
+"It isn't a matter I could give advice about. I'm showing you what might
+be possible, but--"
+
+"No, no. That sort of thing doesn't work. There was just a chance that
+Evie might have stuck to me spontaneously but since she didn't--"
+
+"Since she didn't--what?"
+
+"She was quite right not to. I admit that. It's in the order of things.
+She followed her instinct rather than her heart--I'm ready to believe
+that--but there are times in life when instinct is a pretty good guide."
+
+"Am I to understand that you're not--hurt?--or disappointed? Because in
+that case--"
+
+"I don't know whether I am or not. That's frank. I'm feeling so many
+things all at once that I can hardly distinguish one emotion from another,
+or tell which is strongest. I only know--it's become quite plain to
+me--that a little creature like Evie couldn't find a happy home in my
+life, any more than a humming-bird, as you once called her, could make its
+nest among crags."
+
+"Do you mean by that," she asked, slowly, "that
+you're--definitely--letting her go?"
+
+"I mean that, Evie being what she is, and I being what life has made
+me--Isn't it perfectly evident? Can you fancy us tied together--now?"
+
+"I never could fancy it. I haven't concealed that from you at any time.
+But since you loved her, and she loved you--"
+
+"That was true enough--in its way. In its way, it's still true. Evie still
+loves the man I was, perhaps, and the man I was loves her. The difference
+is that the man I was isn't sitting here in front of you."
+
+"One changes with years, of course. I didn't suppose one could change in a
+few months, like that."
+
+"One changes with experience--above all, with that kind of experience
+which people generally call--suffering. That's the great Alchemist; and he
+often transmutes our silver into gold. In my case, Evie was silver; but
+I've found there's something else that stands for--"
+
+"So that," she interposed, quickly, "you're not sorry that Evie--?"
+
+He got up, restlessly, and stood with his back to the empty fireplace.
+
+"It isn't a case for sorrow," he replied, after a minute's thinking, "as
+it isn't one for joy. It's one purely for acceptance. When I first knew
+Evie I was still something of a kid. It was so all the more because the
+kid element in me had never had full play. I was arrogant, and cock-sure
+and certain of my ability to manipulate the world to suit myself. That was
+all Evie saw, and she liked it. In as far as she had it in her to fall in
+love with anything, she fell in love with it."
+
+He took a turn or two across the room, coming back to his stand on the
+hearth-rug.
+
+"I've travelled far since then," he continued; "I've _had_ to travel far.
+Evie hasn't been able to come with me; and that's all there is to the
+story. It isn't her fault; because when I asked her, I had no intention of
+taking this particular way."
+
+"It was I who drove you into that," she said, with a hint of remorse.
+
+"Yes--you--and conscience--and whatever else I honor most. I give you the
+credit first of all, because, if it hadn't been for you, I shouldn't have
+had the moral energy to assert my true self against the false one. Isn't
+it curious that, after having made me Herbert Strange, it should be you
+who turned me into Norrie Ford again? It means that you exercise supreme
+power over me--a kind of creative power. You can make of me what you care
+to. It's no wonder that I've come to see----" He paused, in doubt as to
+how to express himself, while her eyes were fixed on him in troubled
+questioning. "It's no wonder," he went on again, "that I've come to see
+everything in a truer light--Evie as well as all the rest of it."
+
+With a renewed impulse to move about, he strode toward the bay-window,
+where he stood for a few seconds, looking out and trying to co-ordinate
+his thoughts. Wheeling round again, he drew up a small chair close to
+hers, seating himself sidewise, with his arm resting on the back. He
+looked like a man anxious to explain himself.
+
+"You're blaming me, I think, because I don't take Evie's defection more to
+heart. Isn't that so?"
+
+"I'm not blaming you. I may be a little surprised at it."
+
+"You wouldn't be surprised at it, if you knew all I've been through. It's
+difficult to explain to you--"
+
+"There's no reason why you should try."
+
+"But I want to try. I want you to know. You see," he pursued, speaking
+slowly, as if searching for the right words--"you see, it's largely a
+question of progress--of growth. Trouble has two stages. In the first, you
+think it hard luck that you should have to meet it. In the second, you see
+that, having met it, and gone through it, you come out into a region of
+big experience, where everything is larger and nobler than you thought it
+was before. Now, you'd probably think me blatant if I said that I feel
+myself emerging into--_that_."
+
+"No, I shouldn't. As a matter of fact, I know you're doing it."
+
+"Well, then, having got there--out into that new kind of world"--he
+sketched the vision with one of his Latin gestures--"I discover that--for
+one reason or another--poor little Evie has stayed on the far side of it.
+She couldn't pass the first gate with me, or the second, or the third, to
+say nothing of those I have still to go through. You know I'm not
+criticising, or finding fault with her, don't you?"
+
+She assured him of that.
+
+"And yet, I must go on, you see. There's no waiting or turning back for
+me, any more than for a dying man. No matter who goes or who stays, I must
+press forward. If Evie can't make the journey with me, I can only feel
+relieved that she's able to slip out of it--but I must still go on. I
+can't look back; I can't even be sorry--because I'm coming into the new,
+big land. You see what I mean?"
+
+She signified again that she followed him.
+
+"But the finding of a new land doesn't take anything from the old one. It
+only enlarges the world. Europe didn't become different because they
+discovered America. The only change was in their getting to know a country
+where the mountains were higher, and the rivers broader, and the sunshine
+brighter, and where there was a chance for the race to expand. Evie
+remains what she was. The only difference is that my eyes have been opened
+to--a new ideal."
+
+It was impossible for her not to guess at what he meant. Independently of
+words, his earnest eyes told their tale, while he bent toward her like a
+man not quite able to restrain himself. In the ensuing seconds of silence
+she had time to be aware of three distinct phases of emotion within her
+consciousness, following each other so rapidly as to seem simultaneous. A
+throb of reckless joy in the perception that he loved her was succeeded by
+the knowledge that loyalty to Conquest must make rejoicing vain, while it
+flashed on her that, having duped herself once in regard to him, she must
+not risk the humiliating experience a second time. It was this last
+reflection that prevailed, keeping her still and unresponsive. After all,
+his new ideal might be something--or some one--quite different from what
+her fond imagining was so ready to believe.
+
+"I suppose," she said, vaguely, for the sake of saying something, "that
+trial is the first essential to maturity. We need it for our ripening, as
+the flowers and fruit need wind and rain."
+
+"And there are things in life," he returned, quickly, "that no immature
+creature can see. That's the point I want you to notice. It explains me.
+In a way, it's an excuse for me."
+
+"I don't need excuses for you," she hastened to say, "any more than I
+require to have anything explained."
+
+"No; of course not. You don't care anything about it. It's only I who do.
+But I care so much that I want you to understand why it was that--that--I
+didn't care before."
+
+She felt the prompting to stop him, to silence him, but once more she held
+herself back. There was still a possibility that she was mistaking him,
+and her pride was on its guard.
+
+"It was because I didn't know any better," he burst out, in naïve
+self-reproach. "It was because I couldn't recognize the high, the fine
+thing when I saw it. I've had that experience in other ways, and with just
+the same result. It was like that when I first began to hear good music. I
+couldn't make it out--it was nothing but a crash of sounds. I preferred
+the ditties and dances of a musical comedy; and it was only by degrees
+that I began to find them flat. Then my ear caught something of the
+wonderful things in the symphonies that used to bore me. You see, I'm
+slow--I'm stupid--"
+
+"Not at all," she smiled. "It's quite a common experience."
+
+"But I'm like that all through, with everything. I've been like that--with
+women. I used to be attracted by quite an ordinary sort. It's taken me
+years--all these years, till I'm thirty-three--to see that there's a
+perfect expression of the human type, just as there's a perfect expression
+of any kind of art. And I've found it."
+
+He bent farther forward, nearer to her. There was a light in his face that
+seemed to her to denote enthusiasm quite as much as love. To her wider
+experience in emotions this discovery of himself, which was involved in
+his discovery of her, was rather youthful, provoking a faint smile.
+
+"You're to be congratulated, then," she said, with an air of distant
+friendliness. "It isn't every one who's so fortunate."
+
+"That's true. There's only one man in the world who's more fortunate than
+I. That's Conquest."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+In the brusqueness with which she started she pushed her chair slightly
+back from him. It was to conceal her agitation that she rose, steadying
+herself on the back of the chair in which she had been seated.
+
+"Conquest saw what I didn't--till it was too late."
+
+He was on his feet now, facing her, with the chair between them.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't say any more," she begged, though without
+overemphasis of pleading. She was anxious, for her own sake as well as for
+his, to keep to the tone of the colloquial.
+
+"I don't see why I shouldn't. I'm not going to say anything to shock you.
+I know you're going to marry Conquest. You told me so before I went away,
+and----"
+
+"I should like to remind you that Mr. Conquest is the best friend you
+have. When you hear what he's done for you, you will see that you owe him
+more than you do any man in the world."
+
+"I know that. I'm the last to forget it. But it can't do any harm to tell
+the woman--who's going to be his wife--that I owe her even more than I do
+him."
+
+"It can't do any harm, perhaps; but when I ask you not to----"
+
+"I can't obey you. I shouldn't be a man if I went through life without
+some expression of my--gratitude; and now's the only time to make it.
+There are things which I wasn't free to say before, because I was bound
+to Evie--and which it will soon be too late for you to listen to, because
+you'll be bound to him. You're not bound to him yet----"
+
+"I _am_ bound to him," she said, in a tone in which there were all the
+regrets he had no reason to divine. "I don't know what you think of
+saying; but whatever it is, I implore you not to say it."
+
+"It's precisely because you don't know that I feel the necessity of
+telling you. It's something I owe you. It's like a debt. It isn't as if we
+were just any man and any woman. We're a man and a woman in a very special
+relation to each other. No matter what happens, nothing can change that.
+And it isn't as if we were going to live in the same world, in the same
+way. You will be Conquest's wife--a great lady in New York. I shall
+be--well, Heaven only knows what I shall be, but nothing that's likely to
+cross your path again. All the same, it won't hurt you, it wouldn't hurt
+any woman, however good, to hear what I'm going to tell you. It wouldn't
+hurt any man--not even Conquest--that it should be said to his wife--in
+the way that I shall say it. If it could, I wouldn't----"
+
+"Wait a minute," she said, suddenly. "Let me ask you something." She took
+a step toward him, though her hand rested still on the back of the chair.
+"If I know it already," she continued, looking him in the eyes, "there
+would be no necessity for you to speak?"
+
+He took the time to consider this in all its bearings.
+
+"I'd rather tell you in my own words," he said, at last; "but if you
+assure me that you know, I shall be satisfied."
+
+She took a step nearer to him still. Only the tips of her fingers now
+rested on the back of the chair, to which she held, as to a bulwark.
+Before she spoke she glanced round the room, as though afraid lest the
+doors and walls might mistake her words for a confession.
+
+"Then I do know," she said, quietly.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+
+"The old lady was willing enough to talk," Conquest assured Ford, in his
+narrative of the taking of Amalia Gramm's testimony. "There's nothing more
+loquacious than remorse. I figured on that before going out to Omaha."
+
+"But if she had no hand in the crime, I don't see where the remorse comes
+in."
+
+"It comes in vicariously. She feels it for Jacob, since Jacob didn't live
+to feel it for himself. It involves a subtle element of wifely devotion
+which I guess you're too young, or too inexperienced, to understand. She
+was glad old Jacob was gone, so that she could make his confession with
+impunity. She was willing to make any atonement within _her_ power, since
+it was too late to call _him_ to account."
+
+"Isn't that a bit far-fetched?"
+
+"Possibly--except to a priest, or a lawyer, or a woman herself. It isn't
+often that a woman's heroism works in a straight line, like a soldier's,
+or a fireman's. It generally pops at you round some queer corner, where it
+takes you by surprise. Before leaving Omaha I'd come to see that Amalia
+Gramm was by no means the least valiant of her sex."
+
+Conquest's smoking-room, with its space and height, its deep leather
+arm-chairs, its shaded lamps, its cheerful fire, suggested a club rather
+than a private dwelling, and invited the most taciturn guest to
+confidence. Ford stretched himself before the blaze with an enjoyment
+rendered keener by the thought that it might be long before he had
+occasion to don a dinner-jacket again, or taste such a good Havana. Though
+it was only the evening of his arrival, he was eager to give himself up.
+Now that he had "squared himself," as he expressed it, with Miriam
+Strange, he felt he had put the last touch to his preparations. Kilcup and
+Warren were holding him back for a day or two, but his own promptings were
+for haste.
+
+"I admit," Conquest continued to explain, as he fidgeted about the room,
+moving a chair here, or an ash-tray there, with the fussiness of an old
+bachelor of housekeeping tastes--"I admit that I thought the old woman was
+trying it on at first. But I came to the conclusion that she had told a
+true story from the start. When she gave her evidence at your trial she
+thought you were--the man."
+
+"There's nothing surprising in that. They almost made me think so, too."
+
+"It did look fishy, my friend. You won't mind my saying that much. Clearer
+heads than your jury of village store-keepers and Adirondack farmers might
+have given the same verdict. But old lady Gramm's responsibility hadn't
+begun then. It was a matter of two or three years before she came to
+see--as women do see things about the men they live with--that the hand
+which did the job was Jacob's. By that time you had disappeared into
+space, and she didn't feel bound to give the old chap away. She says she
+would have done it if it could have saved you; but since you had saved
+yourself, she confined her attentions to shielding Jacob. You may credit
+as much or as little of that as you please; but I believe the bulk of it.
+In any case, since it does the trick for us we have no reason to complain.
+Come now!"
+
+"I'm not going to complain of anything. It's been a rum experience all
+through, but I can't say that, in certain aspects, I haven't enjoyed it. I
+_have_ enjoyed it. If it weren't for the necessity of deceiving people who
+are decent to you, I'd go through it all again."
+
+"That's game," Conquest said, approvingly, as he worked round to the
+hearth-rug, where he stood cutting the end of a cigar, with Ford's long
+figure stretched out obliquely before him.
+
+"I would," Ford assured him. "I'd go through it all again, like a shot.
+It's been a lark from--I won't say from start to finish--but certainly
+from the minute--let me see just when!--certainly from the minute when
+Miss Strange beckoned to me, over old Wayne's shoulder."
+
+An odd look came by degrees into Conquest's face--the look of pitying
+amusement with which one listens to queer things said by some one in
+delirium. He kept the cutter fixed in the end of the cigar, too much
+astonished to complete his task.
+
+"Since Miss Strange did--_what_?"
+
+Ford was too deeply absorbed in his own meditations to notice the tone.
+
+"I mean, since she pulled me through."
+
+Conquest's face broke into a broad smile.
+
+"Are you dreaming, old chap? Or have you 'got 'em again'?"
+
+"I'm going back in the story," Ford explained, with a hint of impatience.
+"I'm talking about the night when Miss Strange saved me."
+
+"Miss Strange saved you? How?"
+
+Ford raised himself slowly in his chair, his long legs stretched out
+straight before him, and his body bent stiffly forward, as he stared up at
+Conquest, in puzzled interrogation.
+
+"Do you mean to say," he asked, incredulously, "that she hasn't told
+you--_that_?"
+
+"Perhaps you'll be good enough to tell me yourself. I'll be hanged if I
+know what you're talking about."
+
+There was suppressed irritation in the way in which he tore off the end of
+the cigar and struck a match. Ford let himself sink back into the chair
+again.
+
+"So she never told you! By George, that's like her! It's just what I might
+have expected."
+
+"Look here," Conquest said, sharply, "did you know Miss Strange before you
+came up here from South America?" He stood with his cigar unlighted, for
+he had let the match burn down to his fingers before attempting to apply
+it. "Was your taking the name of Strange," he demanded with sudden
+inspiration, "merely an accident, as I've supposed it was--or had it
+anything to do with her?"
+
+"It wasn't an accident, and it did have something to do with her."
+
+"Just so! And you kept it dark!"
+
+Something in Conquest's intonation caused Ford to look up. He saw a man
+with face suddenly growing gray, as though a light had gone out of it. He
+was disturbed only to the point of feeling that he had spoken tactlessly,
+and proceeded to repair the error.
+
+"I kept it dark for obvious reasons. If Miss Strange didn't tell you about
+it, it's because she isn't the kind of person to talk of an incident in
+which her own part was so noble. I'll give you the whole story now."
+
+"I should be obliged to you," Conquest said, dryly.
+
+He sat down on the very edge of one of the big arm-chairs, leaning
+forward, and fingering his still unlighted cigar nervously, as he watched
+Ford puff out successive rings of smoke before beginning. He was less on
+his guard to screen the intenseness with which he listened, because Ford
+spoke at first in a dreamy way, without looking in his direction.
+
+With more insight into the circumstances surrounding him Ford would have
+told his tale with greater reticence. As it was he spoke with enthusiasm,
+an enthusiasm born of an honest desire that Conquest should see the woman
+he was about to marry in the full beauty of her character. In regard to
+this he himself had made the discovery so slowly and so recently that he
+was animated by something like a convert's zeal. Beginning his narrative
+quietly, in a reminiscent vein, with intervals in which he lapsed
+altogether into meditation, he was presently fired with all the animation
+in a story-teller when he perceives he is holding his hearer spellbound.
+As a matter of fact, he was moved not so much by the desire of convincing
+Conquest of Miriam Strange's nobility, as by the impulse to do her
+justice, once in his life at least, in language of his own.
+
+It was a naïve bit of eloquence, of which no detail was lost on the
+experienced man of the world, who sat twirling his cigar with nervous
+fingers, his eyes growing keener in proportion as his face became more
+gray. It was part of his professional acquirement to be able to draw his
+deductions from some snatch of human drama as he listened to its
+unfolding. His quickness and accuracy of judgment had, indeed, been a
+large element in his success; so that the habit of years enabled him to
+preserve a certain calmness of comprehension now. It lost nothing in being
+a studied calmness, since the forcing of his faculties within restraint
+concentrated their acumen.
+
+Ford concluded with what for him was an almost lyric outburst.
+
+"By George! Conquest, I didn't know there were such women in the world.
+She's been a revelation to me--as art and religion are revelations to
+other people. She came to me as the angel came to Peter in the prison;
+but, like Peter, I didn't know it was an angel. There's a sort of glory
+about her--a glory which it takes a higher sense than any I've got to see
+and understand. After all she's done for me--after all this time--I'm only
+now beginning to get glimpses of it; but it's merely as we get glimpses of
+an infinite beyond, because we see the stars. She's a mystery to me, in
+the same way that genius is a mystery, or holiness. I didn't appreciate
+her because I hadn't the soul, and yet it's in seeing that I hadn't the
+soul that I begin to get it. That's curious, isn't it? She's like some
+heavenly spirit that's passed by me, and touched me into newness of life."
+
+His ardor was so sincere, his hymn of praise so spontaneous that he
+expected some sort of echo back. It seemed to him that even if Conquest
+did not join in this chant in honor of the woman who presumably loved him,
+whom more presumably still he loved, it would be but natural for him to
+applaud it. Ford knew that if any one else had sung of Miriam Strange as
+he had just been singing, he would have leaped to his feet and wrung the
+man's hand till it ached. It surprised him, therefore, it disappointed
+him, that Conquest should sit unmoved, unless the spark-like twinkle of
+his little eyes could be taken as emotion.
+
+It was a relief to Conquest to get up, scratch another match, and light
+his cigar at last, turning his back so that it should not be seen that his
+fingers trembled. When he was sure of himself he faced about again, taking
+his seat.
+
+"It's the most amazing story I ever heard," was his only comment, in
+response to Ford's look of expectation.
+
+"I hoped it might strike you as something more than--amazing," Ford
+ventured, after a minute's waiting for a more appreciative word.
+
+"Perhaps it will when I get my breath. You must give me time for that. Do
+you actually tell me that she kept you in her studio for weeks----?"
+
+"Three weeks and four days, to be exact."
+
+"And that she furnished you with food and clothing----?"
+
+"And money--but I paid that back."
+
+"And got you away in that ingenious fashion----?"
+
+"Just as I've told you."
+
+"Amazing! Simply amazing! And," he added, with some bitterness, "you came
+back here--and you and she together--took us all in."
+
+Ford drew his cigar from his lips, and, turning in his chair, faced
+Conquest in an attitude and with a look which could not be misinterpreted.
+
+"I came back here, and took you all in--if you like. Miss Strange had
+nothing to do with it. She didn't even expect me."
+
+The last sentence gave Conquest the opening he was looking for, but now
+that he had it, he hesitated to make use of it. In his memory were the
+very words Miriam Strange had stammered out to him in the sort of
+confession no woman ever makes willingly: "Things happened ... such as
+don't generally happen ... and even if he never comes ... I'd rather go on
+waiting for him ... uselessly." It was all growing clear to him, and yet
+not so clear but that there was time even now to let the matter drop into
+the limbo of things it is best not to know too much about. It was against
+his better judgment, then--his better judgment as a barrister-at-law--that
+he found himself saying:
+
+"She didn't expect you at that day and date, perhaps: but she probably
+looked for you some time."
+
+"Possibly; but if so, I know little or nothing about it."
+
+The reply, delivered with a certain dignified force of intention, recalled
+Conquest to a sense of his own interests. He had too often counselled his
+clients to let sleeping dogs lie, not to be aware of the advantage of
+doing it himself; and so, restraining his jealous curiosity, he turned the
+conversation back to the evidence of Amalia Gramm.
+
+During the next half-hour he manifested that talent--partly native and
+partly born of practice--which he had often commended in himself, of
+talking about one thing and thinking of another. His exposition of the
+line to be adopted in Ford's defence was perfectly lucid, when all the
+while he was saying to himself that this was the man whom Miriam Strange
+had waited for through eight romantic years.
+
+The fact leaped at him, but it was part of his profession not to be afraid
+of facts. If they possessed adverse qualities one recognized them boldly,
+in the practise of law, chiefly with a view of circumventing them. The
+matter presented itself first of all, not as one involving emotional or
+moral issues, but as an annoying arrangement of circumstances which might
+cheat him out of what he had honestly acquired. He had no intention of
+being cheated by any one whatever; and as he made a rapid summary of the
+points of the case he saw that the balance of probabilities was in his
+favor. It was to make that clear to Ford that he led the conversation back
+again to the subject of his adventures, tempting him to repeat at least a
+portion of his hymn of praise. By the time he had finished it Conquest was
+able to resume the friendly, confidential tone with which they had begun
+the evening.
+
+"It's very satisfactory to me, old man," he said, between quiet puffs at
+his cigar, "to know that you think so highly of Miss Strange, because--I
+don't know whether you have heard it--she and I are to be married before
+long."
+
+He looked to see Ford disconcerted by this announcement and was surprised
+to see him take it coolly.
+
+"Yes; I knew that. I've meant to congratulate you when the time came. I
+should say it had come now."
+
+There was a candor about him that Conquest could scarcely discredit,
+though he was unwilling to trust it too far.
+
+"Thanks, old man. I scarcely expected you to be so well posted. May I ask
+how--?"
+
+"Oh, I've known it a long time. Miss Strange told me before I went to
+South America last spring."
+
+This evidence of a confidential relation between the two gave him a second
+shock, but he postponed its consideration, contenting himself for the
+moment with making it plain to Ford that "Hands off!" must be the first
+rule of the game. His next move was meant to carry the play into the
+opponent's quarters.
+
+"As a matter of fact, I've never congratulated _you_," he said, with
+apparent tranquillity. "I've known about you and Evie for some time past,
+but--"
+
+"Oh, that's all off. In the existing circumstances Evie didn't feel
+like--keeping the thing up."
+
+"That's too bad. You've been pretty hard hit--what? When a fellow is as
+game as you a girl should stand by him, come now! But I know Evie. I've
+known her from her cradle. She'll back round, you'll see. When we've
+pulled you through, as we're going to, she'll take another view of things.
+I know for a fact that she's been head over heels in love with you ever
+since her trip to Buenos Aires."
+
+As Ford made no remark, Conquest felt it well to drive the point home.
+
+"We can all help in that, old boy; and you can count on us--both on Miss
+Strange and me. No one has such influence over Evie as Miriam, and I know
+she's very keen on seeing you and her--you and Evie, I mean--hit it off. I
+don't mind telling you that, as a matter of fact, it's been Miriam's
+anxiety on Evie's account that has mixed me up in your case at all. I
+don't say that I haven't got interested in you for your own sake; but it
+was she who stirred me up in the first place. It's going to mean a lot to
+her to see you get through--and marry Evie."
+
+Ford smiled--his odd, twisted smile--but as he said nothing, Conquest
+decided to let the subject drop. He had, in fact, gone as far as his
+present judgment would carry him, and anything farther might lead to a
+false step. In a situation alive with claims and counter-claims, with
+yearnings of the heart and promptings of the higher law, he could preserve
+his rights only by a walk as wary as the treading of a tight-rope.
+
+This became clearer to him later in the night, when Ford had gone away,
+and he was left free to review the circumstances with that clarity of
+co-ordination he had so often brought to bear on other men's affairs. Out
+of the mass of data he selected two conditions as being the only ones of
+importance.
+
+If Miriam Strange was marrying him because she loved him, nothing else
+needed to be considered. This fact would subordinate everything to itself;
+and there were many arguments to support the assumption that she was doing
+so. One by one he marshalled them before him, from the first faint
+possibility up to the crowning proof that there was no earthly reason for
+her marrying him at all, unless she wanted to. He had pointed that out to
+her clearly, on the day when she came to him to make her terms. He had
+been guilty on that occasion of a foolish generosity, for that it went
+with a common-sense honesty to take advantage of another's ignorance, or
+impulsiveness, was part of his business creed. Nevertheless, having shown
+her this uncalled-for favor, he did not regret it now, since it put the
+spontaneous, voluntary nature of her act beyond dispute.
+
+To a late hour of the night he wandered about the great silent rooms of
+the house which he had made the expression of himself. Stored with costly,
+patiently selected comforts, it lacked only the last requisite which was
+to impart the living touch. Having chosen this essential with so much
+care, and begun to feel for her something far more vital than the pride of
+possession which had been his governing emotion hitherto, it was an agony
+with many aspects to think he might have to let her go.
+
+That there was this possibility was undeniable. It was the second of the
+two paramount considerations. Though Ford's enthusiasm tried to make
+itself enthusiasm and no more, there had been little difficulty in seeing
+what it was. All the same, it would be a passion to pity and ignore, if on
+Miriam's side there was nothing to respond to it. But it was here that,
+in spite of all his arguments, Conquest's doubts began. With much curious
+ignorance of women, there was a point of view from which he knew them
+well. It was out of many a poignant bit of domestic history, of which his
+profession had made him the confidant, that he had distilled the
+observation made to Ford earlier in the evening: "It isn't often that a
+woman's heroism works in a straight line, like a soldier's or a
+fireman's." Notwithstanding her directness, he could see Miriam Strange as
+just the type of woman to whom these words might be applicable. If by
+marrying a man whom she did not love she thought she could help another
+whom she did love, a culpable sacrifice was just the thing of which she
+would be capable. He called it culpable sacrifice with some emphasis for
+in his eyes all sacrifice was culpable. It was more than culpable, in that
+it verged on the absurd. There were few teachings of an illogical
+religion, few promptings of a misdirected energy, for which he had a
+greater scorn than the precept that the strong should suffer for the weak,
+or one man for another. Every man for himself and the survival of the
+fittest was the doctrine by which he lived; and his abhorrence of anything
+else was the more intense for the moment because he found himself in a
+situation where he might be expected to repudiate his faith.
+
+But there it was, that something in public opinion which, in certain
+circumstances, might challenge him--might ask him for magnanimity, might
+appeal to him for mercy, might demand that he make two other human beings
+happy while he denied himself. It was preposterous, it was grotesque, but
+it was there. He could hear its voice already, explaining that since
+Miriam Strange had given him her word in an excess of self-devotion, it
+was his duty to let her off. He could see the line of argument; he could
+hear the applause following on his noble act. He had heard it
+before--especially in the theatre--and his soul had shaken with laughter.
+He had read of it in novels, only to toss such books aside. "The beauty of
+renunciation," he had often said, "appeals to the morbid, the sickly, and
+the sentimental. It has no function among the healthy and the sane." He
+had not only said that, but he had believed it. He believed it still, and
+lived by it. By doing so he had amassed his modest fortune and won a
+respected position in the world. He had not got on into middle life
+without meeting the occasion more than once when he could have saved
+others--a brother, or a sister, or a friend--and forborne to save himself.
+He had felt the temptation and resisted it, with the result that he was up
+in the world when he might have been down in it, and envied by those who
+would have despised him without hesitation when they had got out of him
+all he could give. He could look back now and see the folly it would have
+been had he yielded to impulses that every sentimentalist would have
+praised. He was fully conscious that the moment of danger might be on the
+point of returning again, and that he must be prepared for it.
+
+He was able to strengthen himself with the greater conviction because of
+his belief in the sanctity of rights. The securing of rights, the defining
+of rights, the protection of rights, had been his trade ever since he was
+twenty-five. The invasion of rights was among the darkest crimes in his
+calendar. In the present case his own rights could not be called into
+question; they were inviolable. Miriam Strange had come to him
+deliberately, and for due consideration had signed herself away. He had
+spared nothing, in time, pains, or money, to fulfil his part of the
+compact. It would be monstrous, therefore, if he were to be cheated of his
+reward. That either Ford or Miriam would attempt this he did not believe,
+even if between them the worst, from his point of view, was at the worst;
+but that an absurd, elusive principle which called itself chivalry, but
+really was effeminacy of will, might try to disarm him by an appeal to
+scruples he contemned, was the possibility he feared. He feared it because
+he estimated at its worth the force of restraint a sentimental
+civilization and a naïve people can bring to bear, in silent pressure,
+upon the individual. While he knew himself to be strong in his power of
+resistance, he knew too that the mightiest swimmer can go down at last in
+a smiling, unrippled sea.
+
+His exasperation was as much with his doubt about himself as with the
+impalpable forces threatening him, as he strode fiercely from room to
+room, turning out the flaring lights before going to bed. After all, his
+final resolutions were pitifully insufficient, in view of the tragic
+element--for he took it tragically--that had suddenly crept into his life.
+While his gleam of happiness was in danger of going out, the sole means he
+could find of keeping it aglow was in deciding on a prudent ignoring of
+whatever did not meet the eye, on a discreet assumption that what he had
+been dreaming for the past few months was true. As a matter of fact, there
+was nothing to show him that it wasn't true; and it was only common sense
+to let the first move toward clearing his vision come from the other side
+rather than from his.
+
+And yet it was precisely this passive attitude which he found himself next
+day least able to maintain. If he needed anything further to teach him
+that love was love, it was this restless, prying jealousy, making it
+impossible to let well enough alone. After a trying day at the office,
+during which he irritated his partners and worried his clerks, he
+presented himself late in the afternoon at Miriam's apartment at the hour
+when he generally went to his club, and he knew she would not expect him.
+Thinking to surprise Ford with her--like the suspicious husband in a
+French play, he owned to himself, grimly--he experienced something akin to
+disappointment to find her drinking tea with two old ladies, whom he
+outstayed. During the ceremonies of their leave-taking he watched Miriam
+closely, seeking for some impossible proof that she either loved Ford or
+did not love him, and getting nothing but a renewed and maddening
+conviction of her grace and quiet charm.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What about Evie's happiness?"
+
+Miriam raised her eyebrows inquiringly at the question before stooping to
+put out the spirit-lamp.
+
+"Well, what about it?" she asked, without looking up.
+
+"Oh, nothing--except that we don't seem to be securing it."
+
+She gazed at him now, with an expression frankly puzzled. He had refused
+tea, but she kept her accustomed place behind the tea-table, while he
+stretched himself comfortably in the low arm-chair by the hearth, which
+she often occupied herself.
+
+"Don't you remember?" he went on. "Evie's happiness was the motive of our
+little--agreement."
+
+He endeavored to make his tone playful, but there was a something sharp
+and aggressive in his manner, at which she colored slightly, no less than
+at his words.
+
+"I suppose," she said, as if after meditation, "Evie's happiness isn't in
+our hands."
+
+"True; but there's a good deal that _is_ in our hands. There's, for
+example--our own."
+
+"Up to a point--yes."
+
+"And up to that point we should take care of it. Shouldn't we?"
+
+"I dare say. But I don't know what you mean."
+
+He gave the nervous little laugh which helped him over moments of
+embarrassment.
+
+"Ford was with me last night. He said it was all off between him and
+Evie."
+
+"I thought he might tell you that."
+
+"So that," he went on, forcing a smile, with which his voice and manner
+were not in accord, "our undertaking having failed, the bottom's out of
+everything. Don't you see?"
+
+She was so astonished that she walked into his trap, just as he expected.
+
+"I don't see in the least. I thought our undertaking--as you call it--was
+going to be particularly successful."
+
+"Successful--how?"
+
+He dropped his smile and looked interrogative, his bit of acting still
+keeping her off her guard.
+
+"Why, if Amalia Gramm's testimony is all you think it's going to be----"
+
+"Oh, I see. That's the way you look at it."
+
+"Isn't it the way you look at it, too?"
+
+He smiled again, indulgently, but with significance.
+
+"No; I confess it isn't--at least, it hasn't been. I thought--perhaps I
+was wrong--that our interest was in getting Ford off, so that he could
+marry Evie. Since he isn't going to marry her, why--naturally--we don't
+care so much--whether he gets off or not."
+
+"Oh, but----"
+
+She checked herself; she even grew a little pale. She began to see dimly
+whither he was leading her.
+
+"Of course I don't say we should chuck him over," he went on; "but it
+isn't the same thing any longer, is it? I think it only fair to point that
+out to you, because it gives you reasonable ground for reconsidering
+your--decision."
+
+"Oh, but I don't want to."
+
+While she had said exactly what he hoped to hear, she had not said it as
+he hoped to hear it. There were shades of tone even to impetuosity, and
+this one lacked the note his ear was listening for. None the less, he told
+himself, a wise man would have stopped right there; and he was conscious
+of his folly in persisting, while he still persisted.
+
+"That's for you to decide, of course. Only if we go on, it must be
+understood that we've somewhat shifted our ground."
+
+"I haven't shifted mine."
+
+"Not as you understand it yourself--as, possibly, you've understood it all
+along. But you have, as I see things. When you came to me--to my
+office----"
+
+She put up her hand as though she would have screened her face, but
+controlled herself to listen quietly.
+
+"Your object, then," Conquest continued, cruelly, "was to get Ford off, so
+that he might marry Evie. Now, I understand it to be simply--to get him
+off."
+
+She looked at him with eyes full of distress or protest. It was a minute
+or two before she spoke.
+
+"I don't see the necessity for such close definition."
+
+"I do. I want you to know exactly what you're doing. I want you to see
+that you're paying a higher price than you need pay--for the services
+rendered."
+
+He had got her now just where he had been trying to put her. He had snared
+her, or given her an opportunity, according as she chose to take it. She
+could have availed herself of the latter by a look or a simple intonation,
+for the craving of his heart was such that his perceptions were acute for
+the slightest hint. Had she known that, it would have been easy for her to
+respond to him, playing her part with the loyalty with which she had begun
+it. As it was, his cold manner and his slightly mocking tone betrayed her.
+Her answer was meant to give him the kind of assurance she thought he was
+looking for; and she couched it in the language she supposed he would most
+easily understand. In the things it said and did not say her very
+sincerity was what stabbed him.
+
+"I hope it won't be necessary to bring this subject up again. I know what
+I undertook, and I'm anxious to fulfil it. I should be very much hurt if I
+wasn't allowed to, just because you had scruples about taking me at my
+word. You've been so--so splendid--in doing your part that I should feel
+humiliated if I didn't do mine."
+
+There was earnestness in her regard and a suggestion of haughtiness in the
+tilt of her head. The Wise Man within him bade him be content, and this
+time he listened to the voice. He did her the justice to remember, too,
+that she was offering him all he had ever asked of her; and if he was
+dissatisfied, it was because he had increased his demands without telling
+her.
+
+It was by a transition of topic that he saw he could nail her to her
+purpose.
+
+"By-the-way," he said, when they had got on neutral ground again, and
+were speaking of Wayne, "I wish you would come and see what I think of
+doing for him. There are two rooms back of my library--too dark for my
+use--but that wouldn't matter to him, poor fellow--"
+
+He saw that she was nerving herself not to flinch at this confrontation
+with the practical. He saw too that her courage and her self-command would
+have deceived any one but him. The very pluck with which she nodded her
+comprehension of his idea, and her sympathy with it, enraged him to a
+point at which, so it seemed to him, he could have struck her. Had she
+cried off from her bargain he could have borne it far more easily. That
+would at least have given him a sense of superiority, and helped him to be
+magnanimous; while this readiness to pay put him in the wrong, and drove
+him to exact the uttermost farthing of his rights. On a weak woman he
+might have taken pity; but this strong creature, who refused to sue to him
+by so much as the quiver of an eyelid, and rejected his concessions before
+he had time to put them forth, exasperated every nerve that had been wont
+to tingle to his sense of power. Since she had asked no quarter, why
+should he give it?--above all, when to give quarter was against his
+principles.
+
+"And perhaps," he pursued, in an even voice, showing no sign of the
+tempest within, "that would be as good a time as any for you to look over
+the entire house. If there are any changes you would like to have
+made----"
+
+"I don't think there will be."
+
+"All the same, I should like you to see. A man's house, however well
+arranged, isn't always right for a woman's occupancy; and so----"
+
+"Very well; I'll come."
+
+"When?"
+
+"I'll come to-morrow."
+
+"About four?"
+
+"Yes; about four. That would suit me perfectly."
+
+She spoke frankly, and even smiled faintly, with just such a shadow of a
+blush as the situation called for. The Wise Man within him begged him once
+more to be content. If, the Wise Man argued, this well-poised serenity was
+not love, it was something so like it that the distinction would require a
+splitting of hairs. Conquest strove to listen and obey; but even as he did
+so he was aware again of that rage of impotence which finds its easiest
+outlet in violence. As he rose to take his leave, with all the outward
+signs of friendly ceremoniousness, he had time to be appalled at the
+perception that he, the middle-aged, spick-and-span New-Yorker, should so
+fully understand how it is that a certain type of frenzied brute can kill
+the woman whom he passionately loves, but who is hopelessly out of reach.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+
+Except when his business instincts were on the alert, Ford's slowness of
+perception was perhaps most apparent in his judgment of character and his
+analysis of other people's motives. Taking men and women as he found them,
+he had little tendency to speculate as to the impulses within their lives,
+any more than as to the furnishings behind their house-fronts. A human
+being was all exterior to him, something like a street. Even in matters
+that touched him closely, the act alone was his concern; and he dealt with
+its consequences, without, as a rule, much inquisitive probing of its
+cause.
+
+So when Miriam Strange elected to marry Conquest, he accepted the settled
+fact, for the time being, in the spirit in which he would have taken some
+disastrous manifestation of natural phenomena. Investigation of the motive
+of such a step was as little in his line as it would have been in the case
+of a destructive storm at sea. To his essentially simple way of viewing
+life it was something to be lamented, but to be borne as best one was
+able, while one said as little as one could about it.
+
+And yet, somewhere in the wide, rarely explored regions of his nature
+there were wonderings, questionings, yearnings protests, cries, that
+forced themselves to the surface now and then, as the boiling waters
+within the earth gush out in geyser springs. It required urgent pressure
+to impel them forth, but when they came it was with violence. Such an
+occasion had been his night on Lake Champlain; such another was the
+evening when he announced to Miriam his intention of becoming Norrie Ford
+again. When these moments came they took him by surprise, even though
+afterward he was able to recognize the fact that they had been long
+preparing.
+
+It was in this way, without warning, that his heart had sprung on him the
+question: Why should she marry him? At the minute when Conquest was
+leaving Miriam, he, Ford, was tramping the streets of New York, watching
+them grow alive with light, in glaring, imaginative ugliness--ugliness so
+dazzling in its audacity and so fanciful in its crude commercialism that
+it had the power to thrill. It was perhaps the electric stimulus of sheer
+light that quickened the pace of his slow mentality from the march of
+acceptance to the rush of protest, at an instant when he thought he had
+resigned himself to the facts.
+
+Why should she marry Conquest? He was shouldering his way through the
+crowds when the question made itself heard, with a curious illuminating
+force that suggested its own answer. He was walking, partly to work off
+the tension of the strain under which these few days were passing, and
+partly because he had got the idea that he was being shadowed. He had no
+profound objection to that, though he would have preferred to give himself
+up of his own free will rather than to be arrested. Perhaps, after all, it
+was only an accident that had caused him to catch sight of the same two
+men at different moments through the day, and just now it amused him to
+put them to the test by leading them a dance. He had come to the
+conclusion that he had been mistaken, or that he had outwitted them, when
+this odd question, irrelevant to anything he had directly in his thoughts,
+presented itself as though it had been asked by some voice outside him:
+Why should she marry him?
+
+Up to the present his unanalytical mind would have replied--as it would
+have replied to the same query concerning any one else--that she was
+marrying him "because she wanted to." That would have seemed to him to
+cover the whole ground of any one's affairs; but all at once it had become
+insufficient. It was as if the street had suddenly become insufficient as
+a highway, breaking into a chasm. He stopped abruptly, confronting, as it
+were, that bewildering void which a psychological situation invariably
+seemed to him. To get into a place where his few straightforward formulæ
+did not apply gave him that sense of distress which every creature feels
+out of its native element.
+
+It was a proof of the dependence with which, in matters requiring mental
+or emotional experience, he had come to lean on Miriam Strange, as well as
+of the directness with which he appealed to her for help, that he should
+face about on the instant, and turn his steps toward her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Only a few minutes earlier she had seen Conquest go, and in the interval
+since his departure she had had time to detect the windings of his
+strategy, and to be content with the skill with which she had met them.
+She understood him thoroughly, both in his fear of letting her go and his
+shame at holding her. Standing in her wide bay-window, her slight figure
+erect, her hands behind her back, she looked down, without seeing it, on
+the spangled city, as angels intent on their own high thoughts might pass
+over the Milky Way. She smiled faintly to herself, thinking how she
+should lead this kindly man, who for her sake had done so much for Norrie
+Ford, back to a sense of security and self-respect. When Norrie Ford went
+free she meant to live for nothing else but the happiness of the man who
+had cleared his name and given him back to the world. It would be a kind
+of consecration to her, like that of the nun who forsakes the dearest ties
+for a life of good works and prayer. Conquest had told her that she was
+paying a bigger price than she needed to pay for the services rendered,
+but that depended somewhat on the value one set on the services. In this
+case she would not have been content in paying less. To do so would seem
+to indicate that she was not grateful. Since perceiving his compunction as
+to claiming his reward, she was aware of an elation, an exaltation, in
+forcing it upon him.
+
+She was in the glow of this sentiment when Ford was ushered in. He was so
+vitally in her thoughts that, though she did not expect him, his presence
+gave her no surprise. It helped her, in fact, to sustain the romantic
+quality in her mood to treat his coming as a matter of course, and make it
+a natural incident to the moment.
+
+"Come and look down on the stars," she said, in the tone she might have
+used to another member of her household who had appeared accidentally.
+"The view here, in the evening, makes one feel as if one had been wafted
+above the sky."
+
+She half-turned toward him, but did not offer her hand as he took his
+place by her side. For a few seconds he said nothing, and when he spoke
+she accepted his words in the manner in which she had taken his coming.
+
+"So you're going to marry Conquest!"
+
+It was to show that the abrupt remark had not perturbed her that she
+nodded her head assentingly, still with the smile that had greeted his
+arrival.
+
+"Why?"
+
+In spite of her efforts she manifested some surprise.
+
+"What makes you ask that question--now?"
+
+"Because it never occurred to me before that there might be a special
+reason."
+
+"Well, there is one."
+
+"Has it anything to do with me?"
+
+She backed away from him slightly, to the side curve of the window, where
+it joined the straight line of the wall. In this position she had him more
+directly in view.
+
+"I said there was a reason," she answered, after some hesitation. "I
+didn't say I would tell you what it was."
+
+"No, but you will, won't you?"
+
+"I don't see why you should want to know."
+
+"Is that quite true?" he queried, with a somewhat startling fixing of his
+eyes upon her. "Don't you see? Can't you imagine?"
+
+"I don't see why--in such circumstances as these--any man should want to
+know what a woman doesn't tell him."
+
+"Then I'll explain to you. I want to know, because ... I think ... you're
+marrying Conquest ... when you don't love him ..."
+
+"He never asked me to love him. He said he could do without that."
+
+"... while ... you do love ... some one else."
+
+She reflected before speaking. Under his piercing look she took on once
+more the appealing expression of forest creatures at bay.
+
+"Even if that were true," she said, at last, "there would be no harm in
+it as long as there was what you asked me for at first--a special reason."
+
+"Is there ever a reason for a step like that? I don't believe it."
+
+"But I do believe it, you see. That makes a difference."
+
+"It would make a still greater difference if I begged you not to do it,
+wouldn't it?"
+
+She shook her head. "It wouldn't--now."
+
+"I let you see yesterday that I--I loved you."
+
+"Since you force me to acknowledge it--yes."
+
+"And you've shown me," he ventured, "within the last minute, that
+you--love me."
+
+Her figure grew more erect against the background of exterior darkness.
+Even the hand that rested on the woodwork of the window became tense.
+Lambent fire in her eyes--the light that he used to call non-Aryan--took
+the place of the fugitive glance of the woodland animal; but she kept her
+composure.
+
+"Well, what then?"
+
+"Then you'd be committing a sacrilege against yourself--if you married any
+one else but me."
+
+If her heart bounded at the words, she did nothing to betray it.
+
+"You say that, because it seems so to you. I take another view of it. Love
+to me does not necessarily mean marriage, any more than marriage
+necessarily implies love. There have been happy marriages without love,
+and there can be honorable love that doesn't ask marriage as its object.
+If I married you now, I should seem to myself to be deserting a high
+impulse for a lower one."
+
+"There's only one sort of impulse to love."
+
+"Not to my love. I know what you mean--but my love has more than one
+prompting, and the highest is--or I hope it is--to try to do what's
+right."
+
+"But this would not be right."
+
+"I'm the only judge of that."
+
+"Not if we love each other. In that case I become a judge of it, too."
+
+Once more she reflected. In speaking she lifted her head and looked at him
+frankly.
+
+"Very well; I'll admit it. Perhaps it's true. In any case, I'd rather
+things were clear to you. It will help us both. I'll tell you what I'm
+doing, and why I'm doing it."
+
+It was one of those occasions when a woman's emotion is so great that she
+seems to have none at all. As iron is said to come to a degree of heat so
+intense that it does not burn, so Miriam Strange seemed to herself to have
+reached a stage where the sheer truth, simple and without reserve, could
+bring no shame to her womanhood. Words that could not have passed her lips
+either before that evening or after it escaped her in the subsequent
+minutes as a matter of course.
+
+"I entered into your life twice, and each time I did you harm. On the
+first occasion I turned you into Herbert Strange, and sent you out on a
+career of deception; on the second, I came between you and Evie, and
+brought you to the present pass, where you're facing death again, as you
+were eight or nine years ago. It's no use to tell you that I wanted to do
+my best, because good intentions are not much excuse for the trouble they
+often cause. But I'm ready to say this: that whenever you've suffered,
+I've suffered more. That's especially true of what's happened in the last
+six months. And when I saw how much I had put wrong, it was a comfort to
+think there was something at least that I could put right again."
+
+"But you've put nothing wrong. That's what I should like to convince you
+of."
+
+"I've put you in a position of danger. When I see that, I see enough to
+act upon."
+
+"It's a very slight danger."
+
+"It is now, because I've made it slight. It wasn't--before I went to Mr.
+Conquest."
+
+"You went to him--what for?"
+
+"He wanted me to marry him. He had wanted it for a long time. I told him I
+would do so, on condition that he found the evidence that would prove you
+innocent."
+
+Ford laughed harshly, and rather loudly, stopping suddenly, as though he
+had ceased to see the joke.
+
+"So that's it! That's why Conquest has been so devilishly kind. I wondered
+at his interest--or at least I should have wondered if I'd had the time.
+As a matter of fact, I took it for granted that he should help me, as a
+drowning man takes it for granted that the chance passer-by should pull
+him out. It wasn't till this evening--about half an hour ago--By Jove! I
+ran right up against it."
+
+"You ran right up against--what?"
+
+"Against the truth. It came in a flash--just like that." He snapped his
+fingers. "You're selling yourself--to get me off."
+
+She seemed to grow straighter, taller. For the minute he saw nothing but
+the blaze of her eyes.
+
+"Well? Why shouldn't I? My mother sold herself--to get a man off. He was
+my father. I'm proud of her. She did the best she could with her life. I'm
+doing the best I can with mine."
+
+"But I shouldn't be doing the best I can with mine--if I let you
+continue."
+
+"Isn't it too late for you to stop me? If I've sold myself as you put it,
+the price has been paid in. Mr. Conquest has secured the evidence that
+will acquit you. It will be used. That's all I care about--much."
+
+She saw the hot color surge into his cheeks and brows. It seemed to her
+that his eyes grew red as the blood left his lips. She had never before
+been called on to confront a man angry with a passion beyond his control,
+but instinct told her what the signs were. Instinct told her, too, that,
+however confused his own sensations might be, his anger was not so much
+resentment against anything she might have done as it was despair at
+having lost her. She had guessed already that he would be seized with a
+blind impulse to strike, as soon as he came to a realizing sense of her
+action; though she had not expected the moment of his fury till after he
+went free. Till then, she had thought, he would be partially unconscious
+of his pain, just as a soldier fighting will run along for a while without
+feeling a bullet in his flesh. The anticipation of an awakening on his
+part some time enabled her to see beyond the madness of this instinct,
+even though the words he threw at her struck like stones. The very fact
+that she could see how he labored with himself to keep them back gave her
+strength to take them without flinching.
+
+"You ... dared...? Without ... my ... permission...?"
+
+"I'd done so many things without your permission that it seemed I could
+venture that far."
+
+"You were wrong. It was--too far."
+
+"It wasn't too far--when I loved you."
+
+She uttered the words in a matter-of-fact voice, without a tremor. She
+foresaw their effect in bringing him to himself In his next words his tone
+had already softened slightly to one of protest.
+
+"But I could have done it so much better--! so much more easily--!
+without----"
+
+"I could have done that too. Mr. Conquest pointed it out to me. He took no
+advantage of my ignorance. As a matter of fact, I wasn't ignorant at all.
+I was extremely clear-sighted and wise. My love for you made me so. I
+knew--I felt it--that money might fail to do what I wanted. But I knew too
+that there was one thing that wouldn't fail. If you were innocent--and I
+wasn't wholly sure that you were--I knew there was one energy that would
+surely prove you so--and that was Charles Conquest's desire to have me as
+his wife. I took the course in which there was least risk of failure--and
+you see----"
+
+A little gesture, triumphant in its suggestion, finished her sentence.
+
+"What I see is this," Ford answered, thickly, "that I'm to hold my life at
+the cost of your degradation."
+
+"Degradation? That's a hard word. But as applied to me--I don't know what
+it means."
+
+"Isn't it degradation?--to enter into a marriage in which you put no
+love?"
+
+There was a kind of superb indifference in her answer.
+
+[Illustration: "I'm to hold my life at the cost of your degradation"]
+
+"You may call it degradation if you choose. I shouldn't. As long as you go
+free, you can call my action anything you like. I dare say," she admitted,
+"you're quite right, from the highest moral--and modern--point of view;
+but that doesn't appeal to me. You see--you've got to make allowances for
+it--I'm not a child of your civilization. I'm not a child of any
+civilization at all. At best I'm like the wild creature that submits to
+being tamed because it doesn't know what else to do--but remains wild at
+heart. I used to think I could come into your system of law and order if
+any one would take me. But now I know I shall always be outside it. The
+very word you've just used of me shows me that. You say I'm to be
+degraded--it's your civilized point of view. I have no comprehension of
+that whatever. Because I love you I want to save you. I don't care
+anything about the means so long as I reach the end. To undo the harm I've
+done to you I'd freely give my body to be burned; so why shoudn't I--? No,
+no," she cried, as he made as though he would approach her, "keep away.
+Don't come near me! I can only talk to you like this--at a distance. I
+shall never say these things again--but I want to tell you--to explain to
+you--I should like you to understand."
+
+She repeated herself haltingly because, as Ford held back from approaching
+her, a sudden spasm passed over his face, while he hung his head, and
+compressed his lips in a way that made him seem surprisingly boyish all at
+once, and touched that maternal tenderness in her that had always formed
+such a large part of her yearning over him. It was the kind of tenderness
+that steadied her own nerve, and kept her dry-eyed and strong, as she saw
+him reel to a chair, and flinging his arms on the table beside it, bow
+himself down on them, while his form shook convulsively. She had no shame
+for him. She understood perfectly that the pressure of years had been
+brought to bear on the complex emotions of the moment--to which reaction
+from his brief anger and his bitter words added an element of remorse--to
+cause this honest, manly nature that had never made any pretence of being
+stronger than it was, to give way to the instant's weakness. She was sure
+he would never have done it in the presence of any one but her, and she
+was thrilled with a curious joy at this proof of their spiritual intimacy.
+What was difficult was not the keeping of her own self-control, but the
+holding herself back from crossing the room and laying a hand on his
+shoulder, in token of their oneness at heart; but there, she felt, the
+forbidden line would be passed. She could only wait--it was not long--till
+he was calm again. Then he pulled himself together, got up heavily, and
+obviously refrained from looking her in the face. In the act and the
+attitude there was something so boylike, so natural, so entirely lacking
+in the dignity of grief, that if she had any impulse to let her own tears
+flow it was then.
+
+But she knew it to be one of those minutes when a woman has to be strong
+for herself and for the man, too, even though she break down afterward.
+The necessity of coming to an understanding with him, once for all,
+impelled her to the economy of her forces, while the nervous snapping of
+his fortitude had given her an opportunity she could not afford to lose.
+
+"So I want you to see," she went on, quietly, as though no interruption
+had occurred, "that having gained my point in helping to--to get you off,
+it's to some extent a matter of indifference what you think of me--what
+any one thinks of me--just as it was when I hid you in my studio, nearly
+nine years ago. You must put it down to my being of wild origin and not
+wholly amenable to civilized dictates. I can only do what the inward
+urging drives me on to do--just as my mother did--and my father. If it's
+degrading--"
+
+Raising his head at last, he strode toward her. He put his hands rigidly
+behind his back, as if to show her that he pinioned them there in token
+that she had nothing to fear from him. His eyes were red, and there was
+still a painful tightening about his lips.
+
+"You'll have to let me take that back," he muttered, unsteadily. "I didn't
+know what I was saying. It's come on me so suddenly that it's broken me
+all up. I haven't realized till this evening what--what everything meant.
+It seemed to me then that I couldn't stand it."
+
+"But you can."
+
+"Yes, I can," he replied, doggedly. "One can stand anything. If I reached
+my limit for a minute, it was in seeing that you have to suffer for my
+sake----"
+
+"Wouldn't you suffer for mine?"
+
+"I couldn't. Suffering for your sake would become such a joy----"
+
+"That it wouldn't be suffering. That's just it. That's what I feel,
+exactly. It isn't hard for me to do what I'm doing because I know--I
+_know_--I'm helping to save your honor if not your life. I don't believe
+money would have done it. Mr. Conquest reminded me that the best legal
+services can be bought, but I never thought for an instant that you could
+secure zeal such as his for anything less than I offered him. And he's
+been so superb! He's given himself up to the thing absolutely. He's
+followed every trail with a scent--- with a certainty--your other men,
+your Kilcup and Warren, would never have been capable of. I've seen that;
+I'm sure of it. He has a wonderful mind, and in his way he has the kindest
+heart in the world. I'm very, very fond of him, and I'm deeply grateful.
+Next to seeing you free, I don't think I have any desire in life so
+strong as to make him happy. I dare say that isn't civilized either--but
+it's what I feel. And so we must think of this," she continued, eagerly
+explanative; "we must be loyal to him, you and I, as the first of all our
+duties. Don't you think so?"
+
+He withdrew his eyes from hers before answering. His power of resistance
+was broken. The signs of struggle were visible, and yet the quixotic
+element in his own nature helped him to respond to that in hers.
+
+"I'll try," he muttered, looking on the ground.
+
+"You'll do more than try--you'll succeed. Only very small souls could
+grudge him what he's earned when he's worked so hard and given himself so
+unstintingly. The very fact that you and I know that we love each other
+will make it easier to be true to him."
+
+"Conquest must know that we love each other, too," he declared, with some
+bitterness.
+
+"Perhaps he does; but, you see, every one has a different way of looking
+at life, and I don't think that with him it's a thing that counts greatly.
+I'm not sure that I understand him in that respect. I only know that you
+and I, who owe him so much, can repay him by giving him what he asks for.
+Will you promise me to do it?"
+
+He continued to look downward, as though finding it hard to give his word;
+but when he raised his eyes again, he flung back his head with his old air
+of resolution.
+
+"I'll promise to do anything you ask me throughout our lives. I don't
+admit that Conquest should demand this thing or that he had any right to
+let you offer it. But since you want to give it--and I can show you no
+other token of my love--and shall never again be able to tell you that I
+adore you--that I _adore_ you--I promise--to obey."
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+
+The inspection of the house was over, and they had come back to the
+drawing-room for tea. Conquest had lavished pains on the occasion, putting
+flowers in the rooms, and strewing handsome objects carelessly about, so
+as to impart to the great shell as much as possible the air of being lived
+in. To the tea-table he had given particular attention, ordering out the
+most ornamental silver and the costliest porcelain, and placing the table
+itself just where she would probably have it in days to come, so as to get
+the effect she produced in sitting there, as he liked to do with a new
+picture or piece of furniture.
+
+On her part, Miriam had made the rounds of the rooms with conscientious
+care, observing, admiring, suggesting, with just that mingling of shyness
+and interest with which a woman in her situation would view her future
+home. Having got, by intuition, the idea that he was watching for some
+flaw in her manner, she was determined that he should find none. It was
+the beginning of that lifelong schooling to his service to which she had
+vowed herself, though the effort would have been easier had he not
+rendered her self-conscious by scanning her so keenly out of his little
+gray-green eyes. Nevertheless, she was pleased with the manner in which
+she was acquitting herself, giving him his tea and taking her own with no
+sign of embarrassment. As on the preceding day, it was this perfection of
+acting, as he chose to call it, that exasperated his restless suspicion
+more than any display of weakness.
+
+The thought that she was keeping her true self locked against him had,
+during the last twenty-four hours, become an obsession, making it
+impossible for him to eat or to sleep. In her serene, impeccable bearing
+he saw nothing but the bars up and the blinds drawn down. An instant of
+faltering or self-betrayal would have admitted him to at least a glimpse
+of what was passing within; but through this well-balanced graciousness it
+was as difficult to get at her soul as to read the mind of the Venus of
+Milo in the marble nobility of her face. He had led her from room to room,
+describing one, explaining another, and apologizing for a third, but all
+the while trying to break down her guard, only to find, as they returned
+to the point at which they started, that he had failed. It was with nerves
+all unstrung, and with a lack of self-command he would have been, in his
+saner senses, the first to condemn, that he strode up at last and rapped
+sharply at the door of her barricaded citadel.
+
+"Why did you never tell me that you knew Norrie Ford--years ago?"
+
+He was putting his empty cup on the table as he spoke, so that he could
+avoid looking at her. She was glad of this respite from his gaze, for she
+found the question startling. Before the scrutiny of his eyes was turned
+on her again she had herself in hand.
+
+"I should probably have told you some time."
+
+"Very likely. The odd thing is that you didn't tell me at once."
+
+"It wasn't so odd--given all the circumstances."
+
+"It wasn't so odd, given some of the circumstances; but given them
+all--_all_--I should say, I ought to have known."
+
+She allowed a few seconds to pass.
+
+"I suppose," she said, slowly, then, "that may fairly be considered a
+matter of opinion. I don't see, however, that it makes much
+difference--since you know now."
+
+"My knowing or not knowing now isn't quite the point. The fact of
+importance is that you never told me."
+
+"I'm sorry you should take it in that way; but since I didn't--and the
+matter is beyond remedy--I suppose we shouldn't gain anything by
+discussing it."
+
+"I don't know about that. It seems to me a subject that ought to
+be--aired."
+
+She tried to smile down his aggressiveness, succeeding partially, in that
+he subdued the quarrelsomeness of his voice and manner to that affectation
+of banter behind which he concealed habitually his real self, and by which
+he most easily deceived her.
+
+"Very well," she laughed; "I'm quite ready to air it; only I don't know
+just how it's to be done."
+
+"Suppose you were to tell me what happened, in your own language?"
+
+"If Mr. Ford has told you already, as I imagine he has, I don't see that
+my language can be very different from his. All the same, I'll try, since
+you want me to."
+
+"Just so."
+
+During the few minutes she took to collect her thoughts he could see sweep
+over her features one of those swift, light changes--as delicate as the
+ripple of summer wind on water--which transformed her in an instant from
+the woman of the world to the forest maid, the spirit of the indigenous.
+The mystery of the nomadic ages was in her eyes again as she began her
+narrative, wistfully, and reminiscently.
+
+"You see, I'd been thinking a good deal of my father and mother. I hadn't
+known about them very long, and I lived with their memory. The Mother
+Superior had told me a few things--all she knew, I suppose--before I left
+the convent at Quebec; and Mr. and Mrs. Wayne--especially Mrs. Wayne--had
+added the rest. That was the chief reason why I wanted the studio--so that
+I could get away from the house, which was so oppressive to me, and--so it
+seemed to me--live with them, with nothing but the woods and the hills and
+the sky about me. I could be very happy then--painting thinge I fancied
+they might have done, and pinning them up on the wall. I dare say it was
+foolish, but----"
+
+"It was very natural. Go on."
+
+"And then came up all this excitement about Norrie Ford. For months the
+whole region talked of nothing else. Nearly every one believed he had shot
+his uncle, but, except in the villages, the sympathy with him was
+tremendous. Some people--especially the hotel-keepers and those who
+depended on the tourist travel--were for law and order; but others said
+that old Chris Ford had got no more than he deserved. That was the way
+they used to talk. Mr. Wayne was on the side of law and order,
+too--naturally--till the trial came on; and then he began----"
+
+"I know all about that. Go on."
+
+"My own sympathy was with the man in prison. I used to dream about him. I
+remembered what Mrs. Wayne had told me my mother had done for my father. I
+was proud of that. Though I knew only vaguely what it was, I was sure it
+was what I should have done, too. So when there was talk of breaking into
+the jail and helping Norrie to escape, I used to think how easily I could
+keep any one hidden in my studio. I don't mean I thought of it as a
+practical thing; it was just a dream."
+
+"But a dream that came true."
+
+"Yes; it came true. It was wonderful. It was the day Mr. Wayne sentenced
+him. I knew what he was suffering--Mr. Wayne, I mean. We were all
+suffering; even Mrs. Wayne, who in her gentle way was generally so hard.
+Some people thought Mr. Wayne needn't have done it; and I suppose it was
+just his conscientiousness--because he had such a horror of the
+thing--that drove him on to it. He thought he mustn't shirk his duty. But
+that night at the house was awful. We dressed for dinner, and tried to act
+as if nothing frightful had happened--but it was as if the hangman was
+sitting with us at the table. At last I couldn't endure it. I went out
+into the garden--you remember it was one of those gardens with clipped
+yews. Out there, in the air, I stopped thinking of Mr. Wayne and his
+distress to think of Norrie Ford. It seemed to me as if, in some strange
+way, he belonged to me--that I ought to do something--as my mother had
+done for my father. And then--all of a sudden--I saw him creep in."
+
+"How did you know it was he?"
+
+"I thought it must be, though I was only sure of it when I was on the
+terrace and saw his face. He crept along and crept along--Oh, such a
+forlorn, hopeless, outcast figure! My heart ached at the sight of him. I
+didn't know what he meant to do, and at first I had no intention of
+attempting anything. It was by degrees that my own thought about the
+studio came back to me. By that time he was on the veranda of the house,
+and I was afraid he meant to kill Mr. Wayne. I went after him. I thought I
+would entice him away and hide him. But the minute he heard my footstep he
+leaped into the house. The next I saw, he was talking to Mr. and Mrs.
+Wayne--and something told me he wouldn't hurt them. After that I watched
+my chance till he looked outward, and then I beckoned to him. That's how
+it happened."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"After that everything was easy. He must have told you. I kept him in the
+studio for three weeks, and brought him food--and clothing of my father's.
+It seemed to me that my father was doing everything--not I. That's what
+made it so simple. I know my father would have wanted me to do it. I was
+only the agent in carrying out his will."
+
+"That's one way of looking at it," Conquest said, grimly.
+
+"It's the only way I've ever looked at it; the only way I ever shall."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It was a romantic situation," he observed, when she had given him the
+outlines of the rest of the story. "I wonder you didn't fall in love with
+him."
+
+He smoothed the colorless line of his mustache, as though concealing a
+smile. He had recaptured the teasing tone he liked to employ toward her,
+though its nervous sharpness would have betrayed him had she suspected his
+real thoughts. While she said nothing in response, the tilt of her head
+was that which he associated with her moods of indignation or pride.
+
+"Perhaps you did," he persisted. Then, as she remained silent, "Did you?"
+
+She resolved on a bold step--the audacity of that perfect candor she had
+always taken as a guide.
+
+"I don't know that one could call it that," she said, quietly.
+
+He drew a quick inward breath, clinching his teeth, but keeping his fixed
+smile.
+
+"But you don't know that one couldn't."
+
+"I can't define what I felt at all."
+
+"It was just enough," he pursued, in his bantering tone, "to keep
+you--looking for him back--as you told me--that day."
+
+She lifted her eyes in a swift glance of reproach.
+
+"It was that--then."
+
+"But it's more--now. Isn't it?"
+
+She met him squarely.
+
+"I don't think you've any right to ask."
+
+He laughed aloud, somewhat shrilly.
+
+"That's good!--considering we're to be man and wife."
+
+"We're to be man and wife on a very distinct understanding to which I'm
+perfectly loyal. I mean to be loyal to it always--and to you. I shall give
+you everything you ever asked for. If there are some things--one thing in
+particular--out of my power to give you, I've said so from the first, and
+you've told me you could do without them. If what I can't give you I've
+given to some one else--because--because--I couldn't help it--that's my
+secret, and I claim the right to guard it."
+
+They faced one another across the table piled with ornate silver. He had
+not lost his smile.
+
+"You've the merit of being clear," was his only comment.
+
+"You force me to be clear," she declared, with heightened color, "and a
+little angry. When you asked me to be your wife--long ago--I told you
+there were certain conditions I could never fulfil--and you waived them.
+On that ground I'm ready to meet all your wishes, and make you a good wife
+to the utmost of my power. I'm eager to do it--because I honor and respect
+you as women don't always honor and respect the very men they love. I've
+told Norrie Ford, and I repeat it to you, that after seeing him go free
+and restored to his place among men, the most ardent desire of my life is
+to make you happy. I'm perfectly true; I'm perfectly sincere. What more
+can you ask of me?"
+
+He looked at her searchingly, while he thought hard and rapidly. He could
+not complain that the bars were up and the blinds drawn any longer. On the
+contrary, she had let him see into the recesses of her life with a clarity
+that startled him, as pure truth startles often. As he sat musing, his
+pretence at cynicism fell from him, together with something of his
+furbished air of youth. She saw him grow graver, grayer, older, under her
+very eyes, and was moved with compunction--with compassion. Her face still
+aglow and her hands clasped in her lap, she leaned to him across the
+table, speaking in the rich, low voice that always thrilled him.
+
+"What I feel for you is ... something so much like ... love ... that you
+would never have known the difference ... if you hadn't wrung it from me."
+
+Though he toyed aimlessly with some small silver object on the table and
+did not look up, her words sent a tremor through his frame. The Wise Man
+within him was very eloquent, repeating again and again the sentence she
+herself had used a minute or two ago: What more could he ask of her? What
+more _could_ he ask of her, indeed, after this assurance right out of the
+earnestness and honesty of her pure heart? It was enough to satisfy men
+with far greater claims than he had ever put forth, and far more
+pretension than he had ever dreamed of cherishing. The Wise Man supplied
+him with two or three phrases of reply--neat little phrases, that would
+have bound her forever, and yet saved his self-esteem. He turned them over
+in his mind and on his tongue, trying to add a touch of glamour while he
+kept them terse. He could feel the Wise Man fidgeting impatiently, just as
+he could feel her flaming, expectant eyes upon him; and still he toyed
+with the small silver object aimlessly, conscious of a certain bitter joy
+in his soul's suspense. He had not yet looked up, nor polished the Wise
+Man's phrases to his taste, when a footman threw the door open, and Norrie
+Ford himself walked in.
+
+The meeting was saved from awkwardness chiefly by Ford's own lack of
+embarrassment. As he crossed the room and shook hands, first with Miriam,
+then with Conquest, there was a subdued elation in his manner and glance
+that reduced small considerations to nothing.
+
+"No; I won't sit down," he explained, hurriedly, and not without
+excitement, "because I only looked in for a minute. I've got a cab waiting
+for me outside. The fact is, I ran in to say good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye?" Miriam questioned.
+
+"Not for long, I hope. I'm off--to give myself up."
+
+"But why to-night?" Conquest asked. "What's the rush?"
+
+"Only that I want to get my word in first. They've got their eye on me. I
+thought it yesterday, and I know it to-day. I want them to see that I'm
+not afraid of them, and so I'm asking their hospitality for to-night. I've
+got my bag in the cab, and everything ship-shape. I couldn't do it
+without coming round for a last word with you, old man; and I was going to
+see you afterward, Miss Strange. But since I've found you here----"
+
+"You won't have to," she finished, brightly. "I'm glad to be able to save
+your time. I'm confident we're not losing you for long; and as I know
+you're eager, I can only wish you God-speed, and be glad to see you go"
+
+She held out her hand, frankly, strongly, as one who has no fear.
+
+"Now," she added, turning to Conquest, "I'll ask you to see me to my
+motor. I shall leave you and Mr Ford together, as I know you must have
+some last detail to arrange."
+
+Ford protested, but she gathered up her gloves and furs, and both men
+accompanied her to the street.
+
+It was an autumn evening, drizzling and dark. Up and down Fifth Avenue the
+wet pavements reflected the electric lamps like blurred mirrors. There
+were few passengers on foot, but an occasional motor whizzed weirdly out
+of the dark and into it. It was because there were no other people to be
+seen that two men standing in the rain attracted the attention of the
+three who descended Conquest's steps together.
+
+"There they are," Ford said, jerkily. "By George! they've got ahead of
+me."
+
+Instinctively Miriam clutched his arm, while one of the two strangers came
+forward apologetically.
+
+"You're Mr. John Norrie Ford, ain't you?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"I'm very sorry, sir, but I've got a warrant for your arrest."
+
+"That's all right," Ford said, cheerily. "I was on my way to you, anyhow.
+You'll find my bag in the cab, and everything ready. We'll drive, if it's
+all the same to you."
+
+"Yes, sir. Sure thing, sir."
+
+The man dropped back a few paces courteously, while Ford turned to his
+friends. His air was buoyant. Miriam, too, reflected the radiance of her
+vision of his triumph. Conquest alone, looking small and white and
+shrivelled in the rain, showed care and fear.
+
+"I don't think there's anything special to say," Ford remarked, with the
+awkwardness of a simple nature at an emotional crisis. "I'm not very good
+at thanks. Miss Strange knows that already. But it's all in here"--he
+tapped his breast, with a characteristic gesture--"very sacred, very
+strong."
+
+"We know that," Conquest said, unsteadily, with an embarrassment like
+Ford's own.
+
+"Well, then--good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye."
+
+With a long pressure of the hand to each, he turned toward his cab. Of the
+two strangers, one took his place beside the driver on the box, while the
+other held the door open for Ford to enter. His foot was already on the
+step when Miriam cried, "Wait!"
+
+He turned toward her as she glided across the wet pavement.
+
+"Good-bye, good-bye," she whispered again; and drawing down his face to
+hers, she kissed him, as she had kissed him once before, beside the waters
+of Champlain.
+
+As she drew back from him, Ford's countenance wore the uplifted look of a
+knight who has received the consecration to his quest. Even the two
+strangers bowed their heads, as though they had witnessed the bestowal of
+a sacrament. To Miriam herself it was the seal set on a past that could
+never be reopened. She felt the definiteness with which it was ended, as
+she heard, on her way back to Conquest's side, the door slammed, while the
+cab lumbered away. It seemed to her that Conquest shrank from her as she
+approached him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"You'll come to-morrow? I shall be home about five."
+
+Conquest had put her into her motor, drawn the rugs about her, and closed
+the door. As he did so, she noticed something slow and broken in his
+movements. Leaning from the open window, she held out her hand, but he
+barely touched it.
+
+"No," he said, hoarsely, "I shall not come to-morrow."
+
+"Then, the next day."
+
+"No, nor the next day."
+
+"Well, when you can. If you let me know, I shall stay in, whenever it may
+be."
+
+"You needn't stay in. I'm not coming any more."
+
+"Oh, don't say that. Don't say that," she pleaded. "You hurt me."
+
+"I can't come, Miriam. Don't you see? Isn't it plain enough? I can't come.
+I thought I could. I tried to think I could hold you--in spite of
+everything. But I can't. I _can't_."
+
+"You can hold me--if I stay. I want to stay. You mustn't let me go. I want
+you to be happy. You deserve it. You've done so much for me--and _him_."
+
+It was the stress she laid on the last word--a suggestion of something
+triumphant and enraptured beyond restraint--that made him bound back to
+the centre of the pavement.
+
+"Go on, Laporte," he said to the chauffeur, in a sharp voice. "Miss
+Strange is ready."
+
+"No, no," Miriam cried, stretching both hands toward him. "I'm not ready.
+Keep me. I want to stay."
+
+"Go on!" he cried, sternly, as the chauffeur hesitated. "Miss Strange is
+quite ready. She must go."
+
+Standing by the curb, he watched the motor glide off into the misty,
+lamplit darkness. He was watching it still, as it overtook the carriage in
+which Norrie Ford had just driven away. As the two vehicles passed abreast
+out of his range of vision, he knew they were bearing Ford and Miriam side
+by side into Life.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wild Olive, by Basil King
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wild Olive, by Basil King
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Wild Olive
+
+Author: Basil King
+
+Release Date: August 18, 2004 [EBook #13212]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WILD OLIVE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "There are a hundred men beating the mountain to find you"]
+
+
+
+
+The Wild Olive
+
+A Novel
+
+By the author of
+The Inner Shrine
+
+
+Illustrated by
+Lucius Hitchcock
+
+New York
+Grosset & Dunlap
+Publishers
+
+
+
+Published by Arrangement with Harper & Brothers
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1910, by Harper & Brothers
+All Rights Reserved
+
+
+Published May, 1910
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+
+
+
+Part I
+
+Ford
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+
+Finding himself in the level wood-road, whose open aisle drew a long,
+straight streak across the sky, still luminous with the late-lingering
+Adirondack twilight, the tall young fugitive, hatless, coatless, and
+barefooted, paused a minute for reflection. As he paused, he listened; but
+all distinctiveness of sound was lost in the play of the wind, up hill and
+down dale, through chasm and over crag, in those uncounted leagues of
+forest. It was only a summer wind, soft and from the south; but its murmur
+had the sweep of the eternal breath, while, when it waxed in power, it
+rose like the swell of some great cosmic organ. Through the pines and in
+the underbrush it whispered and crackled and crashed, with a variety of
+effect strangely bewildering to the young man's city-nurtured senses.
+There were minutes when he felt that not only the four country constables
+whom he had escaped were about to burst upon him, but that weird armies of
+gnomes were ready to trample him down.
+
+Out of the confusion of wood-noises, in which his unpractised ear could
+distinguish nothing, he waited for a repetition of the shots which a few
+hours ago had been the protest of his guards; but, none coming, he sped on
+again. He weighed the danger of running in the open against the
+opportunities for speed, and decided in favor of the latter. Hitherto, in
+accordance with a woodcraft invented to meet the emergency, and entirely
+his own, he had avoided anything in the nature of a road or a pathway, in
+order to take advantage of the tracklessness which formed his obvious
+protection; but now he judged the moment come for putting actual space
+between his pursuers and himself. How near, or how far behind him, they
+might be he could not guess. If he had covered ground, they would have
+covered it too, since they were men born to the mountains, while he had
+been bred in towns. His hope lay in the possibility that in this
+wilderness he might be lost to their ken, as a mote is lost in the
+air--though he built something on the chance that, in sympathy with the
+feeling in his favor pervading the simpler population of the region, they
+had given negative connivance to his escape. These thoughts, far from
+stimulating a false confidence, urged him to greater speed.
+
+And yet, even as he fled, he had a consciousness of abandoning
+something--perhaps of deserting something--which brought a strain of
+regret into this minute of desperate excitement. Without having had time
+to count the cost or reckon the result, he felt he was giving up the
+fight. He, or his counsel for him, had contested the ground with all the
+resourceful ingenuity known to the American legal practitioner. He was
+told that, in spite of the seeming finality of what had happened that
+morning, there were still loopholes through which the defence might be
+carried on. In the space of a few hours Fate had offered him the choice
+between two courses, neither of them fertile in promises of success. The
+one was long and tedious, with a possibility of ultimate justification;
+the other short and speedy, with the accepted imputation of guilt. He had
+chosen the latter--instinctively and on the spur of the moment; and while
+he might have repeated at leisure the decision he had made in haste, he
+knew even now that he was leaving the ways and means of proving his
+innocence behind him. The perception came, not as the result of a process
+of thought, but as a regretful, scarcely detected sensation.
+
+He had dashed at first into the broken country, hilly rather than
+mountainous, which from the shores of Lake Champlain gradually gathers
+strength, as it rolls inland, to toss up the crests of the Adirondacks.
+Here, burying himself in the woods, he skirted the unkempt farms, whose
+cottage lights, just beginning to burn, served him as signals to keep
+farther off. When forced to cross one of the sterile fields, he crawled
+low, blotting himself out among the bowlders. At times a patch of tall,
+tasselled Indian corn, interlaced with wandering pumpkin vines, gave him
+cover, till he regained the shelter of the vast Appalachian mother-forest
+which, after climbing Cumberlands, Alleghanies, Catskills, and
+Adirondacks, here clambers down, in long reaches of ash and maple, juniper
+and pine, toward the lowlands of the north.
+
+As far as he had yet been able to formulate a plan of flight, it was to
+seek his safety among the hills. The necessity of the instant was driving
+him toward the open country and the lake, but he hoped to double soon upon
+his tracks, finding his way back to the lumber camps, whose friendly
+spiriting from bunk-house to bunk-house would baffle pursuit. Once he had
+gained even a few hours' security, he would be able to some extent to pick
+and choose his way.
+
+He steered himself by the peak of Graytop, black against the last
+coral-tinted glow of the sunset, as a sailor steers by a star. There was
+further assurance that he was not losing himself or wandering in a circle,
+when from some chance outlook he ventured to glance backward and saw the
+pinnacle of Windy Mountain or the dome of the Pilot straight behind him.
+There lay the natural retreats of the lynx, the bear, and the outlaw like
+himself; and, as he fled farther from them, it was with the same frenzied
+instinct to return that the driven stag must feel toward the bed of fern
+from which he has been roused. But, for the minute, there was one
+imperative necessity--to go on--to go on anywhere, anyhow, so long as it
+took him far enough from the spot where masked men had loosed the
+handcuffs from his wrists and stray shots had come ringing after him. In
+his path there were lakelets, which he swam, and streams, which he forded.
+Over the low hills he scrambled through an undergrowth so dense that even
+the snake or the squirrel might have avoided it, to find some easier way.
+Now and then, as he dragged himself up the more barren ascents, the loose
+soil gave way beneath his steps in miniature avalanches of stone and sand,
+over which he crept, clinging to tufts of grass or lightly rooted
+saplings, to rise at last with hands scratched and feet bleeding. Then, on
+again!--frantically, as the hare runs and as the crow flies, without
+swerving--on, with the sole aim of gaining time and covering distance!
+
+He was not a native of the mountains. Though in the two years spent among
+them he had come to acknowledge their charm, it was only as a man learns
+to love an alien mistress, whose alternating moods of savagery and
+softness hold him with a spell of which he is half afraid. More than any
+one suspected or he could have explained, his reckless life had been the
+rebellion of his man-trained, urban instinct against the domination of
+this supreme earth-force, to which he was of no more value than a falling
+leaf or a dissolving cloud. Even now, as he flung himself on the forest's
+protection, it was not with the solace of the son returning to the mother;
+it was rather as a man might take refuge from a lion in a mammoth cavern,
+where the darkness only conceals dangers.
+
+After the struggle with crude nature the smooth, grass-carpeted
+wagon-track brought him more than a physical sense of comfort. It not only
+made his flight swift and easy, but it had been marked out by man, for
+man's purposes and to meet man's need. It was the result of a human
+intelligence; it led to a human goal. It was possible that it might lead
+even him into touch with human sympathies With the thought, he became
+conscious all at once that he was famished and fatigued. Up to the present
+he had been as little aware of a body as a spirit on its way between two
+worlds. It had ached and sweated and bled; but he had not noticed it. The
+electric fluid could not have seemed more tireless or iron more insensate.
+But now, when the hardship was somewhat relaxed, he was forced back on the
+perception that he was faint and hungry His speed slackened; his shoulders
+sagged; the long second wind, which had lasted so well, began to shorten.
+For the first time it occurred to him to wonder how long his strength
+would hold out.
+
+It was then that he noticed a deflection of the wood-road toward the
+north, and down over the brow of the plateau on which for a mile or two
+its evenness had been sustained. It was a new sign that it was tending
+toward some habitation. Half an hour ago he would have taken this to mean
+that he must dash into the forest again; but half an hour ago he had not
+been hungry. He did not say to himself that he would venture to any man's
+door and ask for bread. So far as he knew, he would never venture to any
+man's door again; nevertheless, he kept on, down-hill, and down-hill
+nearer and nearer the lake, and farther and farther from the mountain and
+the lairs of safety.
+
+Suddenly, at a turning, when he was not expecting it, the wood-road
+emerged into a rough clearing. Once more he stopped to reflect and take
+his bearings. It had grown so dark that there was little danger in doing
+so; though, as he peered into the gloom, his nerves were still taut with
+the expectation of shot or capture from behind. Straining his eyes, he
+made out a few acres that had been cleared for their timber, after which
+Nature had been allowed to take her own way again, in unruly growths of
+saplings, tangles of wild vines, and clumps of magenta fireweed.
+
+Without quite knowing why he did so, he crept down the slope, feeling his
+way among the stumps, and stooping low, lest his white shirt, wet and
+clinging limply to his body, might betray him to some keen-eyed marksman.
+Presently one of the old root-hedges, common to the countryside, barred
+his path--a queer, twisted line of long, gray tentacles that had once
+sucked sustenance from the soil, but now reached up idly into a barren
+element, where the wild grape was covering their grotesque nakedness with
+masses of kindly beauty. Below him he saw lights shining clearly like the
+planets, or faintly like the mere star-dust of the sky, while between the
+two degrees of brightness he knew there must lie the bosom of the lake. He
+had come to the little fringe of towns that clings to the borders of
+Champlain, here with the Adirondacks behind him, and there with the
+mountains of Vermont, but keeping close to the great, safe waterway, as
+though distrusting the ruggedness of both.
+
+It was a moment at which to renew his alarm in this proximity to human
+dwellings. Like the tiger that has ventured beyond the edge of the jungle,
+he must slink back at the sight of fire. He turned himself slowly, looking
+up the heights from which he had come down, as they rolled behind him,
+mysterious and hostile, in the growing darkness. Even the sky, from which
+it seemed impossible for the daylight ever to depart, now had an angry red
+glare in it.
+
+He took a step or two toward the forest, and paused again, still staring
+upward. Where was he going? Where _could_ he go? The question presented
+itself with an odd pertinence that drew his set, beardless lips into a
+kind of smile. When he had first made his rush outward the one thing that
+seemed to him essential was to be free; but now he was forced to ask
+himself: For what purpose? Of what use was it to be as free as wind if he
+was to be as homeless? It was not merely that he was homeless for the
+moment; that was nothing; the overwhelming reflection was that he, Norrie
+Ford, could never have a home at all--that there was scarcely a spot
+within the borders of civilized mankind where the law would not hunt him
+out.
+
+This view of his situation was so apparent and yet so new that it held him
+stock-still, gazing into space. He was free--but free only to crawl back
+into the jungle and lie down in it, like a wild beast.
+
+"But I'm not a wild beast," he protested, inwardly. "I'm a man--with
+human rights. By God, I'll never let them go!"
+
+He wheeled round again, toward the lower lands and the lake. The lights
+glowed more brightly as the darkness deepened, each lamp shining from some
+little nest, where men and women were busied with the small tasks and
+interests that made life. This was liberty! This was what he had a claim
+upon! All his instincts were civilized, domestic. He would not go back to
+the forest, to herd with wild nature, when he had a right to lie down
+among his kind. He had slept in the open hundreds of times; but it had
+been from choice. There had been pleasure then, in waking to the smell of
+balsam and opening his eyes upon the stars. But to do the same thing from
+compulsion, because men had closed up their ranks and ejected him from
+their midst, was an outrage he would not accept. In the darkness his head
+went up, while his eyes burned with a fire more intense than that of any
+of the mild beacons from the towns below, as he strode back to the old
+root-hedge and leaped it.
+
+He felt the imprudence, not to say the uselessness, of the movement, as he
+made it; and yet he kept on, finding himself in a field in which cows and
+horses were startled from their munching by his footstep. It was another
+degree nearer to the organized life in which he was entitled to a place.
+Shielded by a shrubbery of sleeping goldenrod, he stole down the slope,
+making his way to the lane along which the beasts went out to pasture and
+came home. Following the trail, he passed a meadow, a potato-field, and a
+patch of Indian corn, till the scent of flowers told him he was coming on
+a garden. A minute later, low, velvety domes of clipped yew rose in the
+foreground, and he knew himself to be in touch with the civilization that
+clung, like a hardy vine, to the coves and promontories of the lake, while
+its tendrils withered as soon as they were flung up toward the mountains.
+Only a few steps more, and, between the yews, he saw the light streaming
+from the open doors and windows of a house.
+
+It was such a house as, during the two years he had spent up in the high
+timber-lands, he had caught sight of only on the rare occasions when he
+came within the precincts of a town--a house whose outward aspect, even at
+night, suggested something of taste, means, and social position for its
+occupants. Slipping nearer still, he saw curtains fluttering in the breeze
+of the August evening, and Virginia creeper dropping in heavily massed
+garlands from the roof of a columned veranda. A French window was open to
+the floor, and within, he could see vaguely, people were seated.
+
+The scene was simple enough, but to the fugitive it had a kind of
+sacredness. It was like a glimpse into the heaven he has lost caught by a
+fallen angel. For the moment he forgot his hunger and weakness, in this
+feast for the heart and eyes. It was with something of the pleasure of
+recognizing long-absent faces that he traced the line of a sofa against
+the wall, and stated to himself that there was a row of prints hanging
+above it. There had been no such details as these to note in his cell, nor
+yet in the courtroom which for months had constituted his only change of
+outlook Insensibly to himself, he crept nearer, drawn by the sheer spell
+of gazing.
+
+Finding a gate leading into the garden, he opened it softly, leaving it
+so, in order to secure his retreat. From the shelter of one of the
+rounded yew-trees he could make his observations more at ease. He
+perceived now that the house stood on a terrace, and turned the garden
+front, its more secluded aspect, in his direction. The high hedges, common
+in these lakeside villages, screened it from the road; while the open
+French window threw a shaft of brightness down the yew-tree walk, casting
+the rest of the garden into gloom.
+
+To Norrie Ford, peeping furtively from behind one of the domes of clipped
+foliage, there was exasperation in the fact that his new position gave him
+no glimpse of the people in the room. His hunger to see them became for
+the minute more insistent than that for food. They represented that human
+society from which he had waked one morning to find himself cut off, as a
+rock is cut off by seismic convulsion from the mainland of which it has
+formed a part. It was in a sort of effort to span the gulf separating him
+from his own past that he peered now into this room, whose inmates were
+only passing the hours between the evening meal and bedtime. That people
+could sit tranquilly reading books or playing games filled him with a kind
+of wonder.
+
+When he considered it safe he slipped along to what he hoped would prove a
+better point of view, but, finding it no more advantageous, he darted to
+still another. The light lured him as it might lure an insect of the
+night, till presently he stood on the very steps of the terrace. He knew
+the danger of his situation, but he could not bring himself to turn and
+steal away till he had fixed the picture of that cheerful interior firmly
+on his memory. The risk was great, but the glimpse of life was worth it.
+
+With powers of observation quickened by his plight, he noted that the
+home was just such a one as that from which he had sprung--one where old
+engravings hung on the walls, while books filled the shelves, and papers
+and periodicals strewed the tables. The furnishings spoke of comfort and a
+modest dignity. Obliquely in his line of vision he could see two children,
+seated at a table and poring over a picture-book The boy, a manly urchin,
+might have been fourteen, the girl a year or two younger. Her curls fell
+over the hand and arm supporting her cheek, so that Ford could only guess
+at the blue eyes concealed behind them. Now and then the boy turned a page
+before she was ready, whereupon followed pretty cries of protestation. It
+was perhaps this mimic quarrel that called forth a remark from some one
+sitting within the shadow.
+
+"Evie dear, it's time to go to bed. Billy, I don't believe they let you
+stay up as late as this at home."
+
+"Oh yes, they do," came Billy's answer, given with sturdy assurance. "I
+often stay up till nine."
+
+"Well, it's half past now; so you'd both better come and say good-night."
+
+With one foot resting on the turf and the other raised to the first step
+of the terrace, as he stood with folded arms, Ford watched the little
+scene, in which the children closed their book, pushed back their chairs,
+and crossed the room to say good-night to the two who were seated in the
+shadow. The boy came first, with hands thrust into his trousers pockets in
+a kind of grave nonchalance. The little girl fluttered along behind, but
+broke her journey across the room by stepping into the opening of the long
+window and looking out into the night. Ford stood breathless and
+motionless, expecting her to see him and cry out. But she turned away and
+danced again into the shadow, after which he saw her no more. The silence
+that fell within the room told him that the elders were left alone.
+
+Stealthily, like a thief, Ford crept up the steps and over the turf of the
+terrace. The rising of the wind at that minute drowned all sound of his
+movements, so that he was tempted right on to the veranda, where a coarse
+matting deadened his tread. He dared not hold himself upright on this
+dangerous ground, but, crouching low, he was blotted from sight, while he
+himself could see what passed within. He would only, he said, look once
+more into kindly human faces and steal away as he came.
+
+He could perceive now that the lady who had spoken was an invalid
+reclining in a long chair, lightly covered with a rug. A fragile, dainty
+little creature, her laces, trinkets, and rings revealed her as one
+clinging to the elegancies of another phase of life, though Fate had sent
+her to live, and perhaps to die, here on the edge of the wilderness. He
+made the same observation with regard to the man who sat with his back to
+the window. He was in informal evening dress--a circumstance that, in this
+land of more or less primitive simplicity, spoke of a sense of exile. He
+was slight and middle-aged, and though his face was hidden, Ford received
+the impression of having seen him already, but from another point of view.
+His habit of using a magnifying-glass as, with some difficulty, he read a
+newspaper in the light of a green-shaded lamp, seemed to Ford especially
+familiar, though more pressing thoughts kept him from trying to remember
+where and when he had seen some one do the same thing within the recent
+past.
+
+As he crouched by the window watching them, it came into his mind that
+they were just the sort of people of whom he had least need to be afraid.
+The sordid tragedy up in the mountains had probably interested them
+little, and in any case they could not as yet have heard of his escape. If
+he broke in on them and demanded food, they would give it to him as to
+some common desperado, and be glad to let him go. If there was any one to
+inspire terror, it was he, with his height, and youth, and wildness of
+aspect. He was thinking out the most natural method of playing some small
+comedy of violence, when suddenly the man threw down the paper with a
+sigh. On the instant the lady spoke, as though she had been awaiting her
+cue.
+
+"I don't see why you should feel so about it," she said, making an effort
+to control a cough. "You must have foreseen something of this sort when
+you took up the law."
+
+The answer reached Ford's ears only as a murmur, but he guessed its import
+from the response.
+
+"True," she returned, when he had spoken, "to foresee possibilities is one
+thing, and to meet them is another; but the anticipation does something to
+nerve one for the necessity when it comes."
+
+Again there was a murmur in which Ford could distinguish nothing, but
+again her reply told him what it meant.
+
+"The right and the wrong, as I understand it," she went on, "is something
+with which you have nothing to do. Your part is to administer the law, not
+to judge of how it works."
+
+Once more Ford was unable to catch what was said in reply, but once more
+the lady's speech enlightened him.
+
+"That's the worst of it? Possibly; but it's also the best of it; for since
+it relieves you of responsibility it's foolish for you to feel remorse."
+
+What was the motive of these remarks? Ford found himself possessed of a
+strange curiosity to know. He pressed as closely as he dared to the open
+door, but for the moment nothing more was said. In the silence that
+followed he began again to wonder how he could best make his demand for
+food, when a sound from behind startled him. It was the sound which, among
+all others, caused him the wildest alarm--that of a human footstep. His
+next movement came from the same blind impulse that sends a hunted fox to
+take refuge in a church--eager only for the instant's safety. He had
+sprung to his feet, cleared the threshold, and leaped into the room,
+before the reflection came to him that, if he was caught, he must at least
+be caught game. Wheeling round toward the window-door through which he had
+entered, he stood defiantly, awaiting his pursuers, and heedless of the
+astonished eyes fixed upon him. It was not till some seconds had gone by,
+and he realized that he was not followed, that he glanced about the room.
+When he did so it was to ignore the woman, in order to concentrate all his
+gaze on the little, iron-gray man who, still seated, stared at him, with
+lips parted. In his own turn, Norrie Ford was dumb and wide-eyed in
+amazement It was a long minute before either spoke.
+
+"You?"
+
+"You?"
+
+The monosyllable came simultaneously from each. The little woman got to
+her feet in alarm. There was inquiry as well as terror in her
+face--inquiry to which her husband felt prompted to respond.
+
+"This is the man," he said, in a voice of forced calmness,
+"whom--whom--we've been talking about."
+
+"Not the man--you--?"
+
+"Yes," he nodded, "the man I--I--sentenced to death--this morning."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+
+"Evie!"
+
+Mrs. Wayne went to the door, but on Ford's assurance that her child had
+nothing to fear from him, she paused with her hand on the knob to look in
+curiosity at this wild young man, whose doom lent him a kind of
+fascination. Again, for a minute, all three were silent in the excess of
+their surprise. Wayne himself sat rigid, gazing up at the new-comer with
+strained eyes blurred with partial blindness. Though slightly built and
+delicate, he was not physically timid; and as the seconds went by he was
+able to form an idea as to what had happened. He himself, in view of the
+tumultuous sympathy displayed by hunters and lumber-jacks with the man who
+passed for their boon companion, had advised Ford's removal from the
+pretty toy prison of the county-town to the stronger one at Plattsville.
+It was clear that the prisoner had been helped to escape, either before
+the change had been effected or while it was taking place. There was
+nothing surprising in that; the astonishing thing was that the fugitive
+should have found his way to this house above all others. Mrs. Wayne
+seemed to think so too, for it was she who spoke first, in a tone which
+she tried to make peremptory, in spite of its tremor of fear.
+
+"What did you come here for?"
+
+Ford looked at her for the first time--in a blankness not without a dull
+element of pleasure. It was at least two or three years since he had seen
+anything so dainty--not, in fact, since his own mother died. At all times
+his mind worked slowly, so that he found nothing to reply till she
+repeated her question with a show of increased severity.
+
+"I came here for protection," he said then.
+
+His hesitation and bewildered air imparted assurance to his still
+astonished hosts.
+
+"Isn't it an odd place in which to look for that?" Wayne asked, in an
+excitement, he strove to subdue.
+
+The question was the stimulus Ford needed in order to get his wits into
+play.
+
+"No," he replied, slowly; "I've a right to protection from the man who
+sentenced me to death for a crime of which he knows me innocent."
+
+Wayne concealed a start by smoothing the newspaper over his crossed knees,
+but he was unable to keep a shade of thickness out of his voice as he
+answered:
+
+"You had a fair trial. You were found guilty. You have had the benefit of
+all the resources allowed by the law. You have no right to say I know you
+to be innocent."
+
+Wholly spent, Ford dropped into a chair from which one of the children had
+risen. With his arm hanging limply over the back he sat staring haggardly
+at the judge, as though finding nothing to say.
+
+"I have a right to read any man's mind," he muttered, after a long pause,
+"when it's as transparent as yours. No one had any doubt as to your
+convictions--after your charge."
+
+"That has nothing to do with it. If I charged in your favor, it was
+because I wanted you to have the benefit of every possible plea. When
+those pleas were found insufficient by a jury of your peers--"
+
+Ford emitted a sound that might have been a laugh, had there been mirth in
+it.
+
+"A jury of my peers! A lot of thick-headed country tradesmen, prejudiced
+against me from the start because I'd sometimes kicked up a row in their
+town! They weren't my peers any more than they were yours!"
+
+"The law assumes all men to be equal--"
+
+"Just as it assumes all men to be intelligent--only they're not. The law
+is a very fine theory. The chief thing to be, said against it is that five
+times out of ten it leaves human nature out of account. I'm condemned to
+death, not because I killed a man, but because you lawyers won't admit
+that your theory doesn't work."
+
+He began to speak more easily, with the energy born of his desperate
+situation and his sense of wrong. He sat up straighter; the air of
+dejection with which he had sunk to the chair slipped from him; his gray
+eyes, of the kind called "honest," shot out glances of protest. The elder
+man found himself once more struggling against the wave of sympathy which
+at times in the court-room had been almost too strong for him. He was
+forced to intrench himself mentally within the system he served before
+bracing himself to reply.
+
+"I can't keep you from having your opinion--"
+
+"Nor can I save you from having yours. Look at me, judge!" He was bolt
+upright now, throwing his arms wide with a gesture in which there was more
+appeal than indignation "Look at me! I'm a strong, healthy-bodied,
+healthy-minded fellow of twenty-four; but I'm drenched to the skin, I'm
+half naked, I'm nearly dead with hunger, I'm an outlaw for life--and
+you're responsible for it all."
+
+It was Wayne's turn for protest, and though he winced, he spoke sharply.
+
+"I had my duty to perform--"
+
+"Good God, man, don't sit there and call that thing your duty! You're
+something more than a wheel in a machine. You were a human being before
+you were a judge. With your convictions you should have come down from the
+bench and washed your hands of the whole affair. The very action would
+have given me a chance--"
+
+"You mustn't speak like that to my husband," Mrs. Wayne broke in,
+indignantly, from the doorway. "If you only knew what he has suffered on
+your account--"
+
+"Is it anything like what I've suffered on his?"
+
+"I dare say it's worse. He has scarcely slept or eaten since he knew he
+would have to pass that dreadful sen--"
+
+"Come! come!" Wayne exclaimed, in the impatient tone of a man who puts an
+end to a useless discussion. "We can't spend time on this subject any
+longer. I'm not on my defence--"
+
+"You _are_ on your defence," Ford declared, instantly. "Even your wife
+puts you there. We're not in a courtroom as we were this morning.
+Circumstantial evidence means nothing to us in this isolated house, where
+you're no longer the judge, as I'm no longer the prisoner. We're just two
+naked human beings, stripped of everything but their inborn rights--and I
+claim mine."
+
+"Well--what are they?"
+
+"They're simple enough. I claim the right to have something to eat, and to
+go my way without being molested--or betrayed. You'll admit I'm not
+asking much."
+
+"You may have the food," Mrs. Wayne said, in a tone not without
+compassion. "I'll go and get it."
+
+For a minute or two there was no sound but that of her cough, as she sped
+down a passage. Before speaking, Wayne passed his hand across his brow as
+though in an effort to clear his mental vision.
+
+"No; you don't seem to be asking much. But, as a matter of fact, you're
+demanding my pledge to my country. I undertook to administer its laws--"
+
+Ford sprang up.
+
+"You've done it," he cried, "and I'm the result! You've administered the
+law right up to its hilt, and your duty as a judge is performed. Surely
+you're free now to think of yourself as a man and to treat me as one."
+
+"I might do that, and still think you a man dangerous to leave at large."
+
+"But do you?"
+
+"That's my affair. Whatever your opinion of the courts that have judged
+your case, I must accept their verdict."
+
+"In your official capacity--yes; but not here, as host to the poor dog who
+comes under your roof for shelter. My rights are sacred. Even the wild
+Arab--"
+
+He paused abruptly. Over Wayne's shoulder, through the window still open
+to the terrace, he saw a figure cross the darkness. Could his pursuers be
+waiting outside for their chance to spring on him? A perceptible fraction
+of a second went by before he told himself he must have been mistaken.
+
+"Even the wild Arab would think them so," he concluded, his glance
+shifting rapidly between the judge and the window open behind him.
+
+"But I'm not a wild Arab," Wayne replied. "My first duty is toward my
+country and its organized society."
+
+"I don't think so. Your first duty is toward the man you know you've
+sentenced wrongly. Fate has shown you an unusual mercy in giving you a
+chance to help him."
+
+"I can be sorry for the sentence and yet feel that I could not have acted
+otherwise."
+
+"Then what are you going to do now?"
+
+"What would you expect me to do but hand you back to justice?"
+
+"How?"
+
+There was a suggestion of physical disdain in the tone of the laconic
+question, as well as in the look he fixed on the neat, middle-aged man
+doing his best to be cool and collected Wayne glanced over his shoulder
+toward the telephone on the wall. Norrie Ford understood and spoke
+quickly:
+
+"Yes; you could ring up the police at Greenport, but I could strangle you
+before you crossed the floor."
+
+"So you could; but would you? If you did, should you be any better off?
+Should you be as well off as you are now? As it is, there is a possibility
+of a miscarriage of justice, of which one day you may get the benefit.
+There would be no such possibility then. You would be tracked down within
+forty-eight hours."
+
+"Oh, you needn't argue; I've no intention--" Once more he paused. The same
+shadow had flitted across the dark space outside, this time with a
+distinct flutter of a white dress. He could only think it was some one
+getting help together; and while he went on to finish his sentence in
+words, all his subconscious faculties were at work, seeking an escape from
+the trap in which he was taken.
+
+"I've no intention of doing violence unless I'm driven to it--"
+
+"But if you are driven to it--?"
+
+"I've a right to defend myself. Organized society, as you call it, has put
+me where it has no further claim upon me. I must fight against it
+single-handed--and I'll do it. I shall spare neither man nor woman--nor
+_woman_"--he raised his voice so as to be heard outside--"who stands in my
+way."
+
+He threw back his head and looked defiantly out into the night. As if in
+response to this challenge a tall, white figure suddenly emerged from the
+darkness and stood plainly before him.
+
+It was a girl, whose movements were curiously quick and silent, as she
+beckoned to him, over the head of the judge, who sat with his back toward
+her.
+
+"Then all the more reason why society should protect itself against you,"
+Wayne began again; but Ford was no longer listening. His attention was
+wholly fixed on the girl, who continued to beckon noiselessly, fluttering
+for an instant close to the threshold of the room, then withdrawing
+suddenly to the very edge of the terrace, waving a white scarf in token
+that he should follow her. She had repeated her action again and again,
+beckoning with renewed insistence, before he understood and made up his
+mind.
+
+"I don't say that I refuse to help you," Wayne was saying. "My sympathy
+with you is very sincere. If I can get your sentence commuted--In fact, a
+reprieve is almost certain--"
+
+With a dash as lithe and sudden as that which had brought him in, Ford was
+out on the terrace, following the white dress and the waving scarf which
+were already disappearing down the yew-tree walk. The girl's flight over
+grass and gravel was like nothing so much as that of a bird skimming
+through the air. Ford's own steps crunched loudly on the stillness of the
+night, so that if any one lay in ambush he knew he could not escape. He
+was prepared to hear shots come ringing from any quarter, but he ran on
+with the indifference of a soldier grown used to battle, intent on keeping
+up with the shadow fleeing before him.
+
+He followed her through the garden gate he himself had left open, and down
+the lane leading to the pasture. At the point where he had entered it from
+the right, she turned to the left, keeping away from the mountains and
+parallel with the lake. There was no moon, but the night was clear; and no
+sound but that of the shrill, sustained chorus of insect life.
+
+Beyond the pasture the lane became nothing but a path, zigzagging up a
+hillside between patches of Indian corn. The girl sped over it so lightly
+that Ford would have found it hard to keep her in sight if from time to
+time she had not paused and waited. When he came near enough to see the
+outlines of her form she flew on again, less like a living woman than a
+mountain wraith.
+
+From the top of the hill he could see the dull gleam of the lake with its
+girdle of lamp-lit towns. Here the woodland began again; not the main body
+of the forest, but one of its long arms, thrust down over hill and valley,
+twisting its way in among villages and farm lands. That which had been a
+path now become a trail, along which the girl flitted with the ease of
+habit and familiarity.
+
+In the concentration of his effort to keep the moving white spot in view
+Ford lost count of time. Similarly he had little notion of the distance
+they were covering. He guessed that they had been ten or fifteen minutes
+on the way, and that they might have gone a mile, when, after waiting for
+him to come almost near enough to speak to her, she began moving in a
+direction at an acute angle to that by which they had come. At the same
+time he perceived that they were on the side of a low wooded mountain and
+that they were beating their way round it.
+
+All at once they emerged on a tiny clearing--a grassy ledge on the slope.
+Through the starlight he could see the hillside break away steeply into a
+vaporous gorge, while above him the mountain raised a black dome amid the
+serried points of the sky-line. The dryad-like creature beckoned him
+forward with her scarf, until suddenly she stopped with the decisive pause
+of one who has reached her goal. Coming up with her, he saw her unlock the
+door of a small cabin, which had hitherto not detached itself from the
+surrounding darkness.
+
+"Go in," she whispered. "Don't strike a light. There are biscuits
+somewhere, in a box. Grope for them. There's a couch in a corner."
+
+Without allowing him to speak, she forced him gently over the threshold
+and closed the door upon him. Standing inside in the darkness, he heard
+the grating of her key in the lock, and the rustle of her skirts as she
+sped away.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+
+From the heavy sleep of fatigue Ford woke with the twittering of birds
+that announces the dawn. His first thought before opening his eyes, that
+he was still in his cell, was dispelled by the silky touch of the Sorrento
+rugs on which he lay. He fingered them again and again in a kind of
+wonder, while his still half-slumbering senses struggled for the memory of
+what had happened, and the realization of where he was. When at last he
+was able to reconstruct the events of the preceding night, he raised
+himself on his elbow and peered about him in the dim morning twilight.
+
+The object he discerned most readily was an easel, giving him the secret
+of his refuge. On the wooden walls of the cabin, which was fairly
+spacious, water-color sketches were pinned at intervals, while on the
+mantelpiece above a bricked fireplace one or two stood framed. Over the
+mantelpiece a pair of snow-shoes were crossed as decorations, between
+which hung a view of the city of Quebec. On a lay-figure in a corner was
+thrown carelessly the sort of blanket coat worn by Canadians during winter
+sports. Paints and palettes were arranged on a table by the wall, and on a
+desk in the middle of the room were writing materials and books. More
+books stood in a small suspended bookcase. Beside a comfortable
+reading-chair one or two magazines lay on the floor. His gaze travelled
+last to the large apron, or pinafore, on a peg fastened in a door
+immediately beside his couch. The door suggested an inner room, and he got
+up promptly to explore it. It proved to be cramped and dark, lighted only
+from the larger apartment, which in its turn had but the one high north
+window of the ordinary studio. The small room was little more than a shed
+or "lean-to", serving the purposes of kitchen and storeroom combined. The
+arrangements of the whole cabin showed that some one had built it with a
+view to passing in seclusion a few days at a time without forsaking the
+simpler amenities of civilized life; and it was clear that that "some one"
+was a woman. What interested Ford chiefly for the moment was the discovery
+of a sealed glass jar of water, from which he was able to slake his twenty
+hours' thirst.
+
+Returning to the room in which he had slept, he drew back the green silk
+curtain covering the north light in order to take his bearings. As he had
+guessed on the previous night, the slope on which the cabin was perched
+broke steeply down into a wooded gorge, beyond which the lower hills
+rolled in decreasing magnitude to the shore of Champlain, visible from
+this point of view in glimpses, less as an inland sea than like a chain of
+lakelets. Sunrise over Vermont flooded the waters with tints of rose and
+saffron, but made of the Green Mountains a long, gigantic mass of
+purple-black twisting its jagged outline toward the north into the Hog's
+Back and the Camel's Hump with a kind of monstrous grace. To the east, in
+New York, the Adirondacks, with the sunlight full upon them, shot up
+jade-colored peaks into the electric blue--the scarred pyramid of Graytop
+standing forth dark, detached, and alone, like a battered veteran
+sentinel.
+
+In an access of conscious hatred of this vast panoramic beauty which had
+become the background of his tragedy, Ford pulled the curtain into place
+again and turned once more to the interior of the room. It began to seem
+more strange to him the more it grew familiar. Why was he here? How long
+was he to stay? How was he to get away again? Had this girl caught him
+like a rat in a trap, or did she mean well by him? If, as he supposed, she
+was Wayne's daughter, she would probably not be slow in carrying out her
+father's plan of handing him back to justice--and yet his mind refused to
+connect the wraith of the night before with either police work or
+betrayal. Her appearance had been so dim and fleeting that he could have
+fancied her the dryad of a dream, had it not been for his surroundings.
+
+He began to examine them once more, inspecting the water-colors on the
+wall one by one, in search of some clew to her personality. The first
+sketch was of a nun in a convent garden--the background vaguely French,
+and yet with a difference. The next was of a trapper, or voyageur, pushing
+a canoe into the waters of a wild northern lake. The next was a group of
+wigwams with squaws and children in the foreground. Then came more nuns;
+then more voyageurs with their canoes; then more Indians and wigwams It
+occurred to Ford that the nuns might have been painted from life, the
+voyageurs and Indians from imagination He turned to the two framed
+drawings on the chimney-piece Both represented winter scenes. In the one a
+sturdy voyageur was conveying his wife and small personal belongings
+across the frozen snow on a sled drawn by a team of dogs. In the other a
+woman, apparently the same woman as in the preceding sketch, had fallen in
+the midst of a blinding storm, while a tall man of European
+aspect--decidedly not the voyageur--was standing beside her with a baby in
+his arms. These were clearly fancy pictures, and, so it seemed to Ford,
+the work of one who was trying to recapture some almost forgotten memory.
+In any case he was too deeply engrossed by his own situation to dwell on
+them further.
+
+He wheeled round again toward the centre of the room, impatiently casting
+about him for something to eat. The tin box, from which he had devoured
+all the biscuits, lay empty on the floor, but he picked it up and ate
+hungrily the few crumbs sticking in its corners. He ransacked the small
+dark room in the hope of finding more, but vainly. As far as he could see,
+the cabin had never been used for the purpose it was meant to serve, nor
+ever occupied for more than a few hours at a time. It had probably been
+built in a caprice that had passed with its completion. He guessed
+something from the fact that there was no visible attempt to sketch the
+scene before the door, though the site had evidently been chosen for its
+beauty.
+
+He had nothing by which to measure time, but he knew that precious hours
+which he might have utilized for escape were passing. He began to chafe at
+the delay. With the impulse of youth to be active, he longed to be out,
+where he could at least use his feet. His clothes had dried upon him; in
+spite of his hunger he was refreshed by his night's sleep; he was
+convinced that, once in the open, he could elude capture. He pulled back
+the curtain again in order to reconnoitre. It was well to be as familiar
+as possible with the immediate lay of the land, so as to avail himself of
+any advantages it might offer.
+
+The colors of sunrise had disappeared, and he judged that it must be
+seven or eight o'clock. Between the rifts of the lower hills the lake was
+flashing silver, while where Vermont had been nothing but a mass of
+shadow, blue-green mountains were emerging in a triple row, from which the
+last veils of vapor were being dragged up into the firmament On the left,
+the Adirondacks were receding into translucent dimness, in a lilac haze of
+heat.
+
+With an effort to get back the woodcraft suddenly inspired by his first
+dash for freedom, he ran his eye over the landscape, noting the points
+with which he was familiar. To the west, in a niche between Graytop and
+the double peak of Windy Mountain, he could place the county-town; to the
+north, beyond the pretty headlands and the shining coves, the prison of
+Plattsville was waiting to receive him. Farther to the north was Canada;
+and to the south the great waterway led toward the populous mazes of New
+York.
+
+With an impatience bordering on nervousness he realized that these general
+facts did not help him. He must avoid the prison and the county-town, of
+course; while both New York and Canada offered him ultimate chances. But
+his most pressing dangers lurked in the immediate foreground; and there he
+could see nothing but an unsuggestive slope of ash and pine. The rapidity
+of instinct by which last night he had known exactly what to do gave place
+this morning to his slower and more characteristic mental processes.
+
+He was still gazing outward in perplexity, when, through the trees beyond
+the grassy ledge, he caught the flicker of something white. He pressed
+closer to the pane for a better view, and a few seconds later a girl, whom
+he recognized as the nymph of last night, came out of the forest,
+followed by a fawn-colored collie. She walked smoothly and swiftly,
+carrying a large basket with her right hand, while with her left she
+motioned him away from the window. He stepped back, leaping to the door as
+she unlocked it, in order to relieve her of her burden.
+
+"You mustn't do that," she said, speaking quickly. "You mustn't look out
+of the window or come to the door. There are a hundred men beating the
+mountain to find you."
+
+She closed the door and locked it on the inside. While Ford lifted her
+basket to the desk in the centre of the room she drew the green curtain
+hastily, covering the window. Her movements were so rapid that he could
+catch no glimpse of her face, though he had time to note again the curious
+silence that marked her acts. The dog emitted a low growl.
+
+"You must go in here," she said, decisively, throwing open the door of the
+inner room. "You mustn't speak or look out unless I tell you. I'll bring
+you your breakfast presently. Lie down, Micmac."
+
+The gesture by which she forced him across the threshold was compelling
+rather than commanding. Before he realized that he had obeyed her, he was
+standing alone in the darkness, with the sound of a low voice of liquid
+quality echoing in his ears. Of her face he had got only the hint of dark
+eyes flashing with an eager, non-Caucasian brightness--eyes that drew
+their fire from a source alien to that of any Aryan race.
+
+But he brushed that impression away as foolish. Her words had the
+unmistakable note of cultivation, while a glance at her person showed her
+to be a lady. He could see, too, that her dress, though simple, was
+according to the standard of means and fashion. She was no Pocahontas;
+and yet the thought of Pocahontas came to him. Certainly there was in her
+tones, as well as in her movements, something akin to this vast aboriginal
+nature around him, out of which she seemed to spring as the human element
+in its beauty.
+
+He was still thinking of this when the door opened and she came in again,
+carrying a plate piled high with cold meat and bread-and-butter.
+
+"I'm sorry it's only this," she smiled, as she placed it before him; "but
+I had to take what I could get--and what wouldn't be missed. I'll try to
+do better in future."
+
+He noted the matter-of-fact tone in which she uttered the concluding
+words, as though they were to have plenty of time together; but for the
+moment he was too fiercely hungry to speak. For a few seconds she stood
+off, watching him eat, after which she withdrew, with the light swiftness
+that characterized all her motions.
+
+He had nearly finished his meal when she returned again.
+
+"I've brought you these," she said, not without a touch of shyness,
+against which she struggled by making her tone as commonplace as possible.
+"I shall bring you more things by degrees."
+
+On a chair beside that on which he was sitting she laid a pair of
+slippers, a pair of socks, a shirt, a collar, and a tie.
+
+He jumped up hastily, less in surprise than in confusion.
+
+"I can't take anything of Judge Wayne's--" he began to stammer; but she
+interrupted him.
+
+"I understand your feelings about that," she said, simply. "They're not
+Judge Wayne's; they were my father's. I have plenty more."
+
+In his relief at finding she was not Wayne's daughter he spoke awkwardly.
+
+"Your father? Is he--dead?"
+
+"Yes; he's dead. You needn't be afraid to take the things. He would have
+liked to help a man--in your position."
+
+"In my position? Then you know--who I am?"
+
+"Yes; you're Norrie Ford. I saw that as soon as I chanced on the terrace
+last night."
+
+"And you're not afraid of me?"
+
+"I am--a little," she admitted; "but that doesn't matter."
+
+"You needn't be--" he began to explain, but she checked him again.
+
+"We mustn't talk now. I must shut the door and leave you in the dark all
+day. Men will be passing by, and they mustn't hear you. I shall be
+painting in the studio, so that they won't suspect anything, if you keep
+still."
+
+Allowing him no opportunity to speak again, she closed the door, leaving
+him once more in darkness. Sitting in the constraint she imposed upon him,
+he could hear her moving in the outer room, where, owing to the lightness
+of the wooden partition, it was not difficult to guess what she was doing
+at any given moment. He knew when she opened the outer door and moved the
+easel toward the entrance. He knew when she took down the apron from its
+peg and pinned it on. He knew when she drew up a chair and pretended to
+set to work. In the hour or two of silence that ensued he was sure that,
+whatever she might be doing with her brush, she was keeping eye and ear
+alert in his defence.
+
+Who was she? What interest had she in his fate? What power had raised her
+up to help him? Even yet he had scarcely seen her face; but he had
+received an impression of intelligence. He was sure she was no more than a
+girl--certainly not twenty--and yet she acted with the decision of
+maturity. At the same time there was about her that suggestion of a wild
+origin--that something not wholly tamed to the dictates of civilized
+life--which persisted in his imagination, even if he could not verify it
+in fact.
+
+Twice in the course of the morning he heard voices. Men spoke to her
+through the open doorway, and she replied. Once he distinguished her
+words.
+
+"Oh no," she called out to some one at a distance. "I'm not afraid. He
+won't do me any harm. I've got Micmac with me. I often stay here all day,
+but I shall go home early. Thanks," she added, in response to some further
+hint. "I'd rather not have any one here. I never can paint unless I'm
+quite alone."
+
+Her tone was light, and Ford fancied that as she spoke she smiled at the
+passers-by who had thought it right to warn her against himself; but when,
+a few minutes later, she pushed open the door softly, the gravity that
+seemed more natural to her had returned.
+
+"Several parties of men have gone by," she whispered. "They have no
+suspicion. They won't have, if you keep still. They think you have slipped
+away from here, and have gone back toward the lumber camps. This is your
+lunch," she continued, hastily, placing more food before him. "It will
+have to be your dinner, too. It will be safer for me not to come into this
+room again to-day. You must not go out into the studio till you're sure
+it's dark. No noise. No light. I've put an extra rug on the couch in case
+you're chilly in the night."
+
+She spoke breathlessly, in whispers, and, having finished, slipped away.
+
+"You're awfully good," he whispered back. "Won't you tell me your name?"
+
+"Hush!" she warned him, as she closed the door.
+
+He stood still in the darkness, leaving his food untasted, listening to
+the soft rustle of her movements beyond the wall. Except that he heard no
+more voices, the afternoon passed like the morning. At the end of what
+seemed to him interminable hours he knew by acute attention that she hung
+her apron on its peg, put on her hat, and took up her basket, while Micmac
+rose and shook himself. Presently she closed the door of the cabin and
+locked it on the outside. He fancied he could almost hear her step as she
+sped over the grass and into the forest. Only then did the tension of his
+nerves relax, as, dropping to his chair in the darkness, he began to eat.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+
+The two or three days that followed were much like the first. Each morning
+she came early, bringing him food, and such articles of clothing as she
+thought he could wear. By degrees she provided him with a complete change
+of raiment, and though the fit was tolerable, they laughed together at the
+transformation produced in him. It was the first time he had seen her
+smile, and even in the obscurity of the inner room where she still kept
+him secluded he noted the vividness with which her habitually grave
+features lighted up. Micmac, too, became friendly, inferring with the
+instinct of his race that Ford was an object to be guarded.
+
+"No one would know you now," the girl declared, surveying him with
+satisfaction.
+
+"Were these things all your father's?" he asked, with a new attempt to
+penetrate the mystery of her personality.
+
+"Yes," she returned, absently, continuing her inspection of him. "They
+were sent to me, and I kept them. I never knew why I did; but I suppose it
+was--for this."
+
+"He must have been a tall man?" Ford hazarded, again.
+
+"Yes, he must have been," she returned, unwarily. Then, feeling that the
+admission required some explanation, she added, with a touch of
+embarrassment, "I never saw him--not that I can remember."
+
+"Then he died a long time ago?"
+
+Her reply came reluctantly, after some delay:
+
+"Not so very long--about four years ago now."
+
+"And yet you hadn't seen him since you were a child?"
+
+"There were reasons. We mustn't talk. Some one may pass and hear us."
+
+He could see that her hurry in finishing the small tasks she had come in
+to perform for him arose not so much from precaution as from a desire to
+escape from this particular subject.
+
+"I suppose you could tell me his name?" he persisted.
+
+Her hands moved deftly, producing order among the things he had left in
+confusion, but she remained silent. It was a silence in which he
+recognized an element of protest though he ignored it.
+
+"You could tell me his name?" he asked, again.
+
+"His name," she said, at last, "wouldn't convey anything to you. It
+wouldn't do you any good to know it."
+
+"It would gratify my curiosity. I should think you might do as much as
+that for me."
+
+"I'm doing a great deal for you as it is. I don't think you should ask for
+more."
+
+Her tone was one of reproach rather than of annoyance, and he was left
+with a sense of having committed an indiscretion. The consciousness
+brought with it the perception that in a measure he was growing used to
+his position. He was beginning to take it for granted that this girl
+should come and minister to his wants. She herself did it so simply, so
+much as a matter of course, that the circumstance lost much of its
+strangeness. Now and then he could detect some confusion in her manner as
+she served him, but he could see too that she surmounted it, in view of
+the fact that for him the situation was one of life and death. She was
+clearly not indifferent to elementary social usages; she only saw that the
+case was one in which they did not obtain. In his long, unoccupied hours
+of darkness it distracted his thoughts from his own peril to speculate
+about her; and when she appeared his questions were the more blunt because
+of the small opportunity she allowed for asking them.
+
+"Won't they miss you at home?" he inquired, on the next occasion when she
+entered his cell.
+
+She paused with a look of surprise.
+
+"At home? Where do you mean?"
+
+"Why--where you live; where your mother lives."
+
+"My mother died a few months after I was born."
+
+"Oh! But even so, you live somewhere, don't you?"
+
+"I do; but they don't miss me there, if that's what you want to know."
+
+"I was only afraid," he said, apologetically, "that you were giving me too
+much of your time."
+
+"I've nothing else to do with it. I shall be only too glad if I can help
+you to escape."
+
+"Why? Why should you care about me?"
+
+"I don't," she said, simply; "at least, I don't know that I do."
+
+"Oh, then you're helping me just--on general principles?"
+
+"Quite so."
+
+"Well," he smiled, "mayn't I ask why, again?"
+
+"Because I don't like the law."
+
+"You mean that you don't like the law as a whole?--or--or this law in
+particular?"
+
+"I don't like any law. I don't like anything about it. But," she added,
+resorting to her usual method of escape, "we mustn't talk any more now.
+Some men passed here this morning, and they may be coming back. They've
+given up looking for you; they are convinced you're up in the lumber
+camps, but all the same we must be careful still."
+
+He had no further speech with her that day, and the next she remained at
+the cabin little more than an hour.
+
+"It's just as well for me not to excite curiosity," she explained to him
+before leaving; "and you needn't be uneasy now. They've stopped the hunt
+altogether. They say there's not a spot within a radius of ten miles of
+Greenport that they haven't searched. It would never occur to any one that
+you could be here. Every one knows me; and so the thought that I could be
+helping you would be the last in their minds."
+
+"And have you no remorse at betraying their confidence?"
+
+She shook her head. "Most of them," she declared, "are very well pleased
+to think you've got away; and even if they weren't I should never feel
+remorse for helping any one to evade the law."
+
+"You seem to have a great objection to the law."
+
+"Well, haven't you?"
+
+"Yes; but in my case it's comprehensible."
+
+"So it is in mine--if you only knew."
+
+"Perhaps," he said, looking at her steadily, "this is as good a time as
+any to assure you that the law has done me wrong."
+
+He waited for her to say something; but as she stroked Micmac's head in
+silence, he continued.
+
+"I never committed the crime of which they found me guilty."
+
+He waited again for some intimation of her confidence.
+
+"Their string of circumstantial evidence was plausible enough, I admit.
+The only weak point about it was that it wasn't true."
+
+Even through the obscurity of his refuge he could feel the suspension of
+expression in her bearing, and could imagine it bringing a kind of eclipse
+over her eyes.
+
+"He was very cruel to you--your uncle?--wasn't he?" she asked, at last.
+
+"He was very cantankerous; but that wouldn't be a reason for shooting him
+in his sleep--whatever I may have said when in a rage."
+
+"I should think it might be."
+
+He started. If it were not for the necessity of making no noise he would
+have laughed.
+
+"Are you so bloodthirsty--?" he began.
+
+"Oh no, I'm not; but I should think it is what a man would do. My father
+wouldn't have submitted to it. I know he killed one man; and he may have
+killed two or three."
+
+Ford whistled under his breath.
+
+"So that," he said, after a pause, "your objection to the law
+is--hereditary."
+
+"My objection to the law is because it is unjust. The world is full of
+injustice," she added, indignantly, "and the laws men live by create it."
+
+"And your aim is to defeat them?"
+
+"I can't talk any more now," she said, reverting to an explanatory tone of
+voice. "I must go. I've arranged everything for you for the day. If you
+are very quiet you can sit in the studio and read; but you mustn't look
+out at the window, or even draw back the curtain. If you hear a step
+outside, you must creep in here and shut the door. And you needn't be
+impatient; because I'm going to spend the day working out a plan for your
+escape."
+
+But when she appeared next morning she declined to give details of the
+plan she had in mind. She preferred to work it out alone, she said, and
+give him the outlines only when she had settled them. It chanced to be a
+day of drenching summer rain, and Ford, with a renewed effort to get some
+clew to her identity, expressed his surprise that she should have been
+allowed to venture out.
+
+"Oh, no one worries about what I do," she said, indifferently "I go about
+as I choose."
+
+"So much the better for me," he laughed. "That's how you came to be
+wandering on old Wayne's terrace, just in the nick of time. What stumps me
+is the promptness with which you thought of stowing me away."
+
+"It wasn't promptness, exactly. As a matter of fact, I had worked the
+whole thing out beforehand."
+
+His eyebrows went up incredulously. "For me?"
+
+"No, not for you; for anybody. Ever since my guardian allowed me to build
+the studio--last year--I've imagined how easy it would be for some--some
+hunted person to stay hidden here, almost indefinitely. I've tried to
+fancy it, when I've had nothing better to do."
+
+"You don't seem to have had anything better to do very often," he
+observed, glancing about the cabin.
+
+"If you mean that I haven't painted much, that's quite true. I thought I
+couldn't do without a studio--till I got one. But when I've come here, I'm
+afraid it's generally been to--to indulge in day-dreams."
+
+"Day-dreams of helping prisoners to escape. It wouldn't be every girl's
+fancy, but it's not for me to complain of that."
+
+"My father would have wanted me to do it," she declared, as if in
+self-justification. "A woman once helped him to get out of prison."
+
+"Good for her! Who was she?"
+
+Having asked the question lightly, in a boyish impulse to talk, he was
+surprised to see her show signs of embarrassment.
+
+"She was my mother," she said, after an interval in which she seemed to be
+making up her mind to give the information.
+
+In the manifest difficulty she had in speaking, Ford sprang to her aid.
+
+"That's like the old story of Gilbert A  Becket--Thomas A  Becket's father,
+you know."
+
+The historical reference was received in silence, as she bent over the
+small task she had in hand.
+
+"He married the woman who helped him out of prison," Ford went on, for her
+enlightenment.
+
+She raised her head and faced him.
+
+"It wasn't like the story of Gilbert A  Becket," she said, quietly.
+
+It took some seconds of Ford's slow thinking to puzzle out the meaning of
+this. Even then he might have pondered in vain had it not been for the
+flush that gradually over-spread her features, and brought what he called
+the wild glint into her eyes. When he understood, he reddened in his own
+turn, making matters worse.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he stammered. "I never thought--"
+
+"You needn't beg my pardon," she interrupted, speaking with a catch in her
+breath. "I wanted you to know.... You've asked me so many questions that
+it seemed as if I was ashamed of my father and mother when I didn't
+answer.... I'm not ashamed of them.... I'd rather you knew.... Every one
+does--who knows me."
+
+Half unconsciously he glanced up at the framed sketches on the
+chimney-piece. Her eyes followed him, and she spoke instantly:
+
+"You're quite right. I meant that--for them."
+
+They were standing in the studio, into which she had allowed him to come
+from the stifling darkness of the inner room, on the ground that the rain
+protected them against intrusion from outside. During their conversation
+she had been placing the easel and arranging the work which formed her
+pretext for being there, while Micmac, stretched on the floor, with his
+head between his paws, kept a half-sleepy eye on both of them.
+
+"Your father was a Canadian, then?" he ventured to ask, as she seated
+herself with a palette in her hand.
+
+"He was a Virginian. My mother was the wife of a French-Canadian voyageur.
+I believe she had a strain of Indian blood. The voyageurs and their
+families generally have."
+
+Having recovered her self-possession, she made her statements in the
+matter-of-fact tone she used to hide embarrassment flicking a little color
+into the sketch before her as she spoke. Ford seated himself at a
+distance, gazing at her with a kind of fascination. Here, then, was the
+clew to that something untamed which persisted through all the effects of
+training and education, as a wild flavor will last in a carefully
+cultivated fruit. His curiosity about her was so intense that,
+notwithstanding the difficulty with which she stated her facts, it
+overcame his prompting to spare her.
+
+"And yet," he said, after a long pause, in which he seemed to be
+assimilating the information she had given him--"and yet I don't see how
+that explains _you_."
+
+"I suppose it doesn't--not any more than your situation explains you."
+
+"My situation explains me perfectly, because I'm the victim of a wrong."
+
+"Well, so am I--in another way. I'm made to suffer because I'm the
+daughter of my parents."
+
+"That's a rotten shame," he exclaimed, in boyish sympathy "It isn't your
+fault."
+
+"Of course it isn't," she smiled, wistfully. "And yet I'd rather suffer
+with the parents I have than be happy with any others."
+
+"I suppose that's natural," he admitted, doubtfully.
+
+"I wish I knew more about them," she went on, continuing to give light
+touches to the work before her, and now and then leaning back to get the
+effect. "I never understood why my father was in prison in Canada."
+
+"Perhaps it was when he killed the man," Ford suggested.
+
+"No; that was in Virginia--at least, the first one. His people didn't like
+it. That was the reason for his leaving home. He hated a settled life; and
+so he wandered away into the northwest of Canada. It was in the days when
+they first began to build the railways there--when there were almost no
+people except the trappers and the voyageurs. I was born on the very
+shores of Hudson Bay."
+
+"But you didn't stay there?"
+
+"No. I was only a very little child--not old enough to remember--when my
+father sent me down to Quebec, to the Ursuline nuns. He never saw me
+again. I lived with them till four years ago. I'm eighteen now."
+
+"Why didn't he send you to his people? Hadn't he sisters?--or anything
+like that."
+
+"He tried to, but they wouldn't have anything to do with me."
+
+It was clearly a relief to her to talk about herself. He guessed that she
+rarely had an opportunity of opening her heart to any one. Not till this
+morning had he seen her in the full light of day; and, though but an
+immature judge, he fancied her features had settled themselves into lines
+of reserve and pride from which in happier circumstances they might have
+been free. Her way of twisting her dark hair--which waved over the brows
+from a central parting--into the simplest kind of knot gave her an air of
+sedateness beyond her years. But what he noticed in her particularly was
+her eyes--not so much because they were wild, dark eyes, with the peculiar
+fleeing expression of startled forest things, as because of the pleading,
+apologetic look that comes into the eyes of forest things when they stand
+at bay. It was when--for seconds only--the pupils shone with a jet-like
+blaze that he caught what he called the non-Aryan effect; but that glow
+died out quickly, leaving something of the fugitive appeal which Hawthorne
+saw in the eyes of Beatrice Cenci.
+
+"He offered his sisters a great deal of money," she sighed, "but they
+wouldn't take me."
+
+"Oh? So he had money?"
+
+"He was one of the first Americans to make money in the Canadian
+northwest; but that was after my mother died. She died in the snow, on a
+journey--like that sketch above the fireplace. I've been told that it
+changed my father's life. He had been what they call wild before that--but
+he wasn't so any more. He grew very hard-working and serious. He was one
+of the pioneers of that country--one of the very first to see its
+possibilities. That was how he made his money; and when he died he left it
+to me. I believe it's a good deal."
+
+"Didn't you hate being in the convent?" he asked, suddenly "I should."
+
+"N-no; not exactly. I wasn't unhappy. The Sisters were kind to me. Some of
+them spoiled me. It wasn't until after my father died, and I began to
+realize--who I was, that I grew restless. I felt I should never be happy
+until I was among people of my own kind."
+
+"And how did you get there?"
+
+She smiled faintly to herself before answering.
+
+"I never did. There are no people of my kind."
+
+Embarrassed by the stress she seemed inclined to lay on this circumstance,
+he grasped at the first thought that might divert her from it.
+
+"So you live with a guardian! How do you like that?"
+
+"I should like it well enough if he did--that is, if his wife did. You
+see," she tried to explain, "she's very sweet and gentle, and all that,
+but she's devoted to the proprieties of life, and I seem to represent to
+her--its improprieties. I know it's a trial to her to keep me, and so, in
+a way, it's a trial to me to stay."
+
+"Why do you stay, then?"
+
+"For one reason, because I can't help myself. I have to do what the law
+tells me."
+
+"I see. The law again!"
+
+"Yes; the law again. But I've other reasons besides that."
+
+"Such as--?"
+
+"Well, I'm very fond of their little girl, for one thing. She's the
+greatest darling in the world, and the only creature, except my dog, that
+loves me."
+
+"What's her name?"
+
+The question drove her to painting with closer attention to her work. Ford
+followed something of the progress of her thought by watching the just
+perceptible contraction of her brows into a little frown, and the setting
+of her lips into a curve of determination. They were handsome lips, mobile
+and sensitive--lips that might easily have been disdainful had not the
+inner spirit softened them with a tremor--or it might have been a
+light--of gentleness.
+
+"It isn't worth while to tell you that," she said, after long reflection.
+"It will be safer for you in the end not to know any of our names at all."
+
+"Still--if I escape--I should like to know them."
+
+"If you escape, you may be able to find out."
+
+"Oh, well," he said, with assumed indifference, "since you don't want to
+tell me--"
+
+Going on with her painting, she allowed the subject to drop; but to him
+the opportunity for conversation was too rare a thing to neglect. Not only
+was his youthful impulse toward social self-expression normally strong,
+but his pleasure in talking to a lady--a girl--was undeniable. Sometimes
+in his moments of solitary meditation he said to himself that she was "not
+his type of girl"; but the fact that he had been deprived of feminine
+society for nearly three years made him ready to fall in love with any
+one. If he did not precisely fall in love with this girl, it was only
+because the situation precluded sentiment; and yet it was pleasant to sit
+and watch her paint, and even torment her with his questions.
+
+"So the little girl is one reason for your staying here. What's another?"
+
+She betrayed her own taste for social communion by the readiness with
+which she answered him--
+
+"I don't know that I ought to tell you that; and yet I might as well. It's
+just this: they're not very well off--so I can help. Naturally I like
+that."
+
+"You can help by footing the bills. That's all very fine if you enjoy it,
+but everybody wouldn't."
+
+"They would if they were in my position," she insisted. "When you can help
+in any way it gives you a sense of being of use to some one. I'd rather
+that people needed me, even if they didn't want me, than that they
+shouldn't need me at all."
+
+"They need your money," he declared, with a young man's outspokenness.
+"That's what."
+
+"But that's something, isn't it? When you've no place in the world you're
+glad enough to get one, even if you have to buy it. My guardian and his
+wife mayn't care much to have me, but it's some satisfaction to know that
+they'd get along much worse if I weren't here."
+
+"So should I," he laughed. "What I'm to do when I'm turned adrift without
+you, Heaven only knows. It's curious--the effect imprisonment has on you.
+It takes away your self-reliance. It gives you a helpless feeling, like a
+baby. You want to be free--and yet you're almost afraid of the open air."
+
+He was so much at home with her now that, sitting carelessly astride of
+his chair, with his arms folded on the back, he felt a fraternal element
+in their mutual relation. She bent more closely over her work, and spoke
+without looking up.
+
+"Oh, you'll get along all right. You're that sort."
+
+"That's easy to say."
+
+"You may find it easy to do." Her next words, uttered while she continued
+to flick color into her sketch, caused him to jump with astonishment. "I'd
+go to the Argentine."
+
+"Why not say the moon?"
+
+"For one reason, because the moon is inaccessible."
+
+"So is the Argentine--for me."
+
+"Oh no, it isn't. Other people have reached it."
+
+"Yes: but they weren't in my fix."
+
+"Some of them were probably in worse."
+
+There was a pause, during which she seemed absorbed in her work, while
+Ford sat meditatively whistling under his breath.
+
+"What put the Argentine into your head?" he asked, at last.
+
+"Because I happen to know a good deal about it. Everybody says it's the
+country of new opportunities. I know people who've lived there. The little
+girl I was speaking of just now--whom I'm so fond of--was born there. Her
+father is dead since then, and her mother is married again."
+
+He continued to meditate, emitting the same tuneless, abstracted sound,
+just above his breath.
+
+"I know the name of an American firm out there," she went on. "It's
+Stephens and Jarrott. It's a very good firm to work for. I've often heard
+that. And Mr. Jarrott has helped ever so many--stranded people."
+
+"I should be just his sort, then."
+
+His laugh, as he sprang to his feet, seemed to dismiss an impossible
+subject; and yet as he lay on his couch that evening in the lampless
+darkness the name of Stephens and Jarrott obtruded itself into his visions
+of this girl, who stood between him and peril because she "disliked the
+law," He wondered how far it was dislike, and how far jealous pain. In
+her eagerness to buy the domestic place she had not inherited she reminded
+him of something he had read--or heard--of the wild olive being grafted
+into the olive of the orchard. Well, that would come in the natural course
+of events. Some fine fellow, worthy to be her mate, would see to it. He
+was not without a pleasant belief that in happier circumstances he himself
+might have had the qualifications for the task. He wondered again what her
+name was. He ran through the catalogue of the names he himself would have
+chosen for a heroine--Gladys, Ethel, Mildred Millicent!--none of them
+seemed to suit her. He tried again. Margaret, Beatrice, Lucy, Joan! Joan
+possibly--or he said to himself, in the last inconsequential thoughts as
+he fell asleep, it might be--the Wild Olive.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+
+As the days passed, one much like another, and the retreat seemed more and
+more secure, it was natural that Ford's thoughts should dwell less on his
+own danger and more on the girl who filled his immediate horizon. The care
+with which she foresaw his wants, the ingenuity with which she met them,
+the dignity and simplicity with which she carried herself through
+incidents that to a less delicate tact must have been difficult, would
+have excited his admiration in any case, even if the namelessness which
+helped to make her an impersonal element in the episode had not stirred
+his imagination. He was obliged to remind himself often that she was "not
+his type of girl," in order to confine his heart within the limits which
+the situation imposed.
+
+It worried him, therefore, it even hurt him, that in spite of all the
+openings he had given her, she had never offered him a sign of her belief
+in his innocence. For this reason he took the first occasion when she was
+seated at her easel, with the dog lying at her feet, to lay his case
+before her.
+
+He told her of his overindulged boyhood, as the only child of a wealthy
+New York merchant. He outlined his profitless years at the university,
+where a too free use of money had hindered work. He narrated the disasters
+that had left him at the age of two-and-twenty to begin life for
+himself--his father's bankruptcy, followed by the death of both his
+parents within the year. He had been eager to start in at the foot of the
+ladder and work his way upward, when the proposal was made which proved
+fatal.
+
+Old Chris Ford, his great-uncle, known throughout the Adirondack region as
+"the lumber king," had offered to take him, train him to the lumber
+business, and make him his heir. An eccentric, childless widower, commonly
+believed to have broken his wife's heart by sheer bitterness of tongue,
+old Chris Ford was hated, feared, and flattered by the relatives and
+time-servers who hoped ultimately to profit by his favor. Norrie Ford
+neither flattered nor feared his powerful kinsman, but he hated him with
+the best. His own instincts were city born and bred. He was conscious,
+too, of that aptitude with which the typical New-Yorker is supposed to
+come into being--the capacity to make money. He would have preferred to
+make it on his own ground and in his own way; and had it not been for the
+counsels of those who wished him well, he would have replied to his
+great-uncle's offer with a courteous "No." Wiser heads than his pointed
+out the folly of such a course as that; and so, reluctantly, he entered on
+his apprenticeship.
+
+In the two years that followed he could not see what purpose he served
+other than that of a mark for the old man's poisoned wit. He was taught
+nothing, and paid nothing, and given nothing to do. He slept under his
+great-uncle's roof and ate at his table, but the sharp tongue made the bed
+hard to lie on and the bread difficult to swallow down. Idleness
+reawakened the propensity to vicious habits which he thought he had
+outlived, while the rough society of the lumber camps, in which he sought
+to relieve the tedium of time, extended him the welcome which Falstaff
+and his comrades gave Prince Hal.
+
+The revolt of his self-respect was on the eve of bringing this phase of
+his existence to an end when the low farce turned into tragedy. Old Chris
+Ford was found dead in his bed--shot in his sleep. On the premises there
+had been but three persons, one of whom must have committed the
+crime--Norrie Ford, and Jacob and Amalia Gramm. Jacob and Amalia Gramm had
+been the old man's servants for thirty years. Their faithfulness put them
+beyond suspicion. The possibility of their guilt, having been considered,
+was dismissed with few formalities. The conviction of Norrie Ford became
+easy after that--the more respectable people of the neighborhood being
+agreed that from the evidence presented no other deduction could be drawn.
+The very fact that the old man, by his provocation of the lad, so
+thoroughly deserved his fate made the manner in which he met with it the
+clearer. Even Norrie Ford's friends, the hunters and the lumbermen,
+admitted as much as that, though they were determined that he should never
+suffer for so meritorious an act as long as they could give him a fighting
+chance for freedom.
+
+The girl listened to Ford's narrative with some degree of interest, though
+it contained nothing new to her. She could not have lived at Greenport
+during the period of his trial without being familiar with it all. But
+when he came to explanations in his own defence she followed listlessly.
+Though she leaned back in her chair, and courteously stopped painting,
+while he talked so earnestly, the light in her eyes faded to a lustreless
+gleam, like that of the black pearl. His perception that her thoughts were
+wandering gave him a queer sensation of speaking into a medium in which
+his voice could not carry, cutting short his arguments, and bringing him
+to his conclusion more hurriedly than he had intended.
+
+"I wanted you to know I didn't do it," he finished, in a tone which begged
+for some expression of her belief, "because you've done so much to help
+me."
+
+"Oh, but I should have helped you just the same, whether you had done it
+or not."
+
+"But I suppose it makes some difference to you," he cried, impatiently,
+"to know that I didn't."
+
+"I suppose it would," she admitted, slowly, "if I thought much about it."
+
+"Well, won't you think?" he pleaded---"just to oblige me."
+
+"Perhaps I will, when you're gone; but at present I have to give my mind
+to getting you away. It was to talk about that that I came this morning."
+
+Had she wanted to slip out of giving an opinion on the subject of his
+guilt, she could not have found a better exit. The means of his ultimate
+escape engrossed him even more than the theme of his innocence. When she
+spoke again all his faculties were concentrated into one keen point of
+attention.
+
+"I think the time has come for you to--go."
+
+If her voice trembled on the last word, he did not notice it. The pose of
+his body, the lines of his face, the glint of his gray eyes, were alive
+with interrogation.
+
+"Go?" he asked, just audibly. "When?"
+
+"To-morrow."
+
+"How?"
+
+"I'll tell you that then."
+
+"Why can't you tell me now?"
+
+"I could if I was sure you wouldn't raise objections, but I know you
+will."
+
+"Then there are objections to be raised?"
+
+"There are objections to everything. There's no plan of escape that won't
+expose you to a good many risks. I'd rather you didn't see them in
+advance."
+
+"But isn't it well to be prepared beforehand?"
+
+"You'll have plenty of time for preparation--after you've started. If that
+seems mysterious to you now, you'll know what I mean by it when I come
+to-morrow. I shall be here in the afternoon at six."
+
+With this information Ford was obliged to be content, spending a sleepless
+night and an impatient day, waiting for the time appointed.
+
+She came punctually. For the first time she was not followed by her dog.
+The only change in her appearance he could see was a short skirt of rough
+material instead of her usual linen or muslin.
+
+"Are we going through the woods?" he asked.
+
+"Not far. I shall take you by the trail that led to this spot before I
+built the cabin and made the path." As she spoke she surveyed him. "You'll
+do," she smiled at last. "In those flannels, and with your beard, no one
+would know you for the Norrie Ford of three weeks ago."
+
+It was easy for him to ascribe the glow in her eyes and the quiver in her
+voice to the excitement of the moment; for he could see that she had the
+spirit of adventure. Perhaps it was to conceal some embarrassment under
+his regard that she spoke again, hurriedly.
+
+"We've no time to lose. You needn't take anything from here. We'd better
+start."
+
+He followed her over the threshold, and as she turned to lock the cabin
+he had time to throw a glance of farewell over the familiar hills, now
+transmuted into a haze of amethyst under the westering sun. A second later
+he heard her quick "Come on!" as she struck into the barely perceptible
+path that led upward, around the shoulder of the mountain.
+
+It was a stiff bit of climbing, but she sped along with the dryad-like
+ease she had displayed on the night when she led him to the cabin. Beneath
+the primeval growth of ash and pine there was an underbrush so dense that
+no one but a creature gifted with the inherited instinct of the woods
+could have found the invisible, sinuous line alone possible to the feet.
+But it was there, and she traced it--never pausing never speaking, and
+only looking back from time to time to assure herself that he was in
+sight, until they reached the top of the dome-shaped hill.
+
+They came out suddenly on a rocky terrace, beneath which, a mile below,
+Champlain was spread out in great part of its length, from the dim bluff
+of Crown Point to the far-away, cloud-like mountains of Canada.
+
+"You can sit down a minute here," she said, as he came up.
+
+They found seats among the low scattered bowlders, but neither spoke. It
+was a moment at which to understand the jewelled imagery of the Seer of
+the Apocalypse. Jasper, jacinth, chalcedony, emerald, chrysoprasus, were
+suggested by the still bosom of the lake, towered round by
+light-reflecting mountains. The triple tier of the Vermont shore was
+bottle-green at its base, indigo in the middle height, while its summit
+was a pale undulation of evanescent blue against the jade and topaz of the
+twilight.
+
+"The steamer _Empress of Erin_," the girl said, with what seemed like
+abruptness, "will sail from Montreal on the twenty-eighth, and from Quebec
+on the twenty-ninth. From Rimouski, at the mouth of the river St.
+Lawrence, she will sail on the thirtieth, to touch nowhere else till she
+reaches Ireland. You will take her at Rimouski."
+
+There was a silence, during which he tried to absorb this startling
+information.
+
+"And from here to Rimouski?" he asked, at last.
+
+"From here to Rimouski," she replied, with a gesture toward the lake,
+"your way is there."
+
+There was another silence, while his eyes travelled the long,
+rainbow-colored lake, up to the faint line of mountains where it faded
+into a mist of bluish-green and gold.
+
+"I see the way," he said then, "but I don't see the means of taking it."
+
+"You'll find that in good time. In the mean while you'd better take this."
+From her jacket she drew a paper, which she passed to him. "That's your
+ticket. You'll see," she laughed, apologetically, "that I've taken for you
+what they call a suite, and I've done it for this reason. They're keeping
+a lookout for you on every tramp ship from New York, on every cattle-ship
+from Boston, and on every grain-ship from Montreal; but they're not
+looking for you in the most expensive cabins of the most expensive liners.
+They know you've no money; and if you get out of the country at all, they
+expect it will be as a stoker or a stow-away They'll never think you're
+driving in cabs and staying at the best hotels."
+
+"But I shan't be," he said, simply.
+
+"Oh yes, you will. You'll need money, of course; and I've brought it.
+You'll need a good deal; so I've brought plenty."
+
+She drew out a pocketbook and held it toward him. He looked at it,
+reddening, but made no attempt to take it.
+
+"I can't--I can't--go as far as that," he stammered, hoarsely.
+
+"You mean," she returned, quickly, "that you hesitate to take money from a
+woman. I thought you might. But it isn't from a woman; it's from a man.
+It's from my father. He would have liked to do it. He would have wanted me
+to do it. They keep putting it in the bank for me--just to spend--but I
+never need it. What can I do with money in a place like Greenport? Here,
+take it," she urged, thrusting it into his hands. "You know very well it
+isn't a matter of choice, but of life or death."
+
+With her own fingers she clasped his upon it, drawing back and coloring at
+her boldness. For the first time in their weeks of intercourse she saw in
+him a touch of emotion The phlegmatism by which he had hitherto concealed
+his inward suffering seemed suddenly to desert him. He looked at her with
+lips quivering, while his eyes filled. His weakness only nerved her to be
+stronger, sending her for refuge back into the commonplace.
+
+"They'll expect you at Rimouski, because your luggage will already have
+gone on board at Montreal. Yes," she continued, in reply to his
+astonishment, "I've forwarded all the trunks and boxes that came to me
+from my father. I told my guardian I was sending them to be stored--and I
+am, for you'll store them for me in London when you've done with them.
+Here are the keys."
+
+He made no attempt to refuse them, and she hurried on.
+
+"I sent the trunks for two reasons; first, because there might be things
+in them you could use till you get something better; and then I wanted to
+prevent suspicion arising from your sailing without luggage. Every little
+thing of that sort counts. The trunks have 'H.S.' painted in white letters
+on them; so that you'll have no difficulty in knowing them at sight. I've
+put a name with the same initials on the ticket. You'd better use it till
+you feel it safe to take your own again."
+
+"What name?" he asked, with eager curiosity, beginning to take the ticket
+out of its envelope.
+
+"Never mind now," she said, quickly. "It's just a name--any name. You can
+look at it afterward. We'd better go on."
+
+She made as though she would move, but he detained her.
+
+"Wait a minute. So your name begins with S!"
+
+"Like a good many others," she smiled.
+
+"Then tell me what it is. Don't let me go away without knowing it. You
+can't think what it means to me."
+
+"I should think you'd see what it means to me."
+
+"I don't. What harm can it do you?"
+
+"If you don't see, I'm afraid I can't explain. To be nameless is--- how
+shall I say it?--a sort of protection to me. In helping you, and taking
+care of you, I've done what almost any really nice girl would have shrunk
+from. There are plenty of people who would say is was wrong. And in a
+way--a way I could never make you understand, unless you understand
+already--it's a relief to me that you don't know who I am. And even that
+isn't everything."
+
+"Well--what else?"
+
+"When this little episode is over"--her voice trembled, and it was not
+without some blinking of the eyes that she was able to begin again--"when
+this little episode is over, it will be better for us both--for you as
+well as for me--to know as little about it as possible. The danger isn't
+past by any means; but it's a kind of danger in which ignorance can be
+made to look a good deal like innocence. I shan't know anything about you
+after you've gone, and you know nothing whatever about me."
+
+"That's what I complain of. Suppose I pull the thing off, and make a
+success of myself somewhere else, how should I communicate with you
+again?"
+
+"Why should you communicate with me at all?"
+
+"To pay you back your money, for one thing--"
+
+"Oh, that doesn't matter."
+
+"Perhaps it doesn't from your point of view; but it does from mine. But it
+wouldn't be my only reason in any case."
+
+Something in his voice and in his eyes warned her to rise and interrupt
+him.
+
+"I'm afraid we haven't time to talk about it now," she said, hurriedly.
+"We really must be going on."
+
+"I'm not going to talk about it now," he declared, rising in his turn. "I
+said it would be a reason for my wanting to communicate with you again. I
+shall want to tell you something then; though perhaps by that time you
+won't want to hear it."
+
+"Hadn't we better wait and see?"
+
+"That's what I shall have to do; but how can I come back to you at all if
+I don't know who you are?"
+
+"I shall have to leave that to your ingenuity," she laughed, with an
+attempt to treat the matter lightly. "In the mean time we must hurry on.
+It's absolutely necessary that you should set out by sunset."
+
+She glided into the invisible trail running down the lakeside slope of the
+mountain, so that he was obliged to follow her. As they had climbed up,
+so they descended--the girl steadily and silently in advance. The region
+was dotted with farms; but she kept to the shelter of the woodland, and
+before he expected it they found themselves at the water's edge. A canoe
+drawn up in a cove gave him the first clear hint of her intentions.
+
+It was a pretty little cove, enclosed by two tiny headlands, forming a
+miniature landlocked bay, hidden from view of the lake beyond. Trees
+leaned over it and into it, while the canoe rested on a yard-long beach of
+sand.
+
+"I see," he remarked, after she had allowed him to take his own
+observations. "You want me to go over to Burlington and catch a train to
+Montreal."
+
+She shook her head, smiling, as he thought, rather tremulously.
+
+"I'm afraid I've planned a much longer journey for you. Come and see the
+preparations I've made." They stepped to the side of the canoe, so as to
+look down into it. "That," she pursued, pointing to a small suit-case
+forward of the middle thwart, "will enable you to look like an ordinary
+traveller after you've landed. And that," she added, indicating a package
+in the stern, "contains nothing more nor less than sandwiches. Those are
+bottles of mineral water. The small objects are a corkscrew, a glass, a
+railway timetable a cheap compass, and a cheaper watch. In addition you'll
+find a map of the lake, which you can consult tomorrow morning, after
+you've paddled all night through the part with which you're most
+familiar."
+
+"Where am I going?" he asked, huskily, avoiding her eyes. The nonchalance
+of her tone had not deceived him, and he thought it well not to let their
+glances meet.
+
+"You'll keep to the middle of the lake and go on steadily. You'll have
+all Champlain to yourself to-night, and in daylight there's no reason why
+you shouldn't pass for an ordinary sportsman. All the same, you had better
+rest by day, and go on again in the evening. You'll find lots of little
+secluded coves where you can pull up the canoe and be quite undisturbed.
+I'd do that, if I were you."
+
+He nodded to show that he understood her.
+
+"When you look at the map," she went on, "you'll find that I've traced a
+route for you, after you get above Plattsville. You'll see that it will
+take you past the little French-Canadian village of Deux Etoiles. You
+can't mistake it, because there's a lighthouse, with a revolving light, on
+a rock, just off the shore. You'll be in Canada then. You'd better time
+yourself to go by about nightfall."
+
+He nodded his agreement with her again, and she continued.
+
+"About a mile above the lighthouse, and close in by the eastern shore,
+just where the lake becomes very narrow, there are two little islands
+lying close together. You'll take them as a landmark, because immediately
+opposite them, on the mainland, there's a stretch of forest running for a
+good many miles. There you can land finally. You must drag the canoe right
+up into the wood, and hide it as well as you can. It's my own canoe, so
+that it can lie there till it drops to pieces. Is all that quite clear to
+you?"
+
+Once more he nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Again the sight of his
+emotion braced her to make her tone more matter-of-fact than ever.
+
+"Now, then," she went on, "if you consult the map you'll see that an old
+wood-road runs through the forest, and comes out at the station of Saint
+Jean du Clou Noir. There you can get a train to Quebec.... The road begins
+nearly opposite the two little islands I spoke of.... I don't think
+you'll have any difficulty in finding it.... It's about seven miles to the
+station.... You could walk that easily enough through the night.... I've
+marked a very good train on the time-table--a train that stops at Saint
+Jean du Clou Noir at seven thirty-five ..."
+
+A choking sensation warned her to stop, but she retained the power to
+smile. The sun had set, and the slow northern night was beginning to close
+in. Across the lake the mountains of Vermont were receding into deep
+purple uniformity, while over the crimson of the west a veil of filmy
+black was falling, as though dropped in mid-flight by the angel of the
+dark. Here and there through the dead-turquoise green of the sky one could
+detect the pale glimmer of a star.
+
+"You must go now," she whispered. He began to move the canoe into the
+water.
+
+"I haven't thanked you," he began, unsteadily, holding the canoe by the
+bow, "because you wouldn't let me. As a matter of fact, I don't know how
+to do it--adequately. But if I live at all, my life will belong to you.
+That's all I can say. My life will be a thing for you to dispose of. If
+you ever have need of it--"
+
+"I shan't have," she said, hastily, "but I'll remember what you say."
+
+"Thanks; that's all I ask. For the present I can only hope for the chance
+of making my promise good."
+
+She said nothing in reply, and after a minute's silence he entered the
+canoe. She steadied it herself to allow him to step in. It was not till he
+had done so and had knelt down with the paddle in his hand that, moved by
+a sudden impulse she leaned to him and kissed him. Then, releasing the
+light craft, she allowed it to glide out like a swan on the tiny bay. In
+three strokes of the paddle it had passed between the low, enclosing
+headlands and was out of sight. When she summoned up strength to creep to
+an eminence commanding the lake, it was already little more than a speck,
+moving rapidly northward, over the opal-tinted waters.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+
+On finding himself alone, and relatively free, Ford's first sensation was
+one of insecurity. Having lived for more than a year under orders and
+observation, he had lost for the moment some of his natural confidence in
+his own initiative. Though he struck resolutely up the lake he was aware
+of an inner bewilderment, bordering on physical discomfort, at being his
+own master. For the first half-hour he paddled mechanically, his
+consciousness benumbed by the overwhelming strangeness. As far as he was
+able to formulate his thought at all he felt himself to be in process of a
+new birth, into a new phase of existence. In the darkening of the sky
+above him and of the lake around there came upon him something of the
+mental obscurity that might mark the passage of a transmigrating soul.
+After the subdued excitement of the past weeks, and especially of the past
+hour, the very regularity of his movements now lulled him into a passivity
+only quickened by vague fears. The noiseless leaping forward of the canoe
+beneath him heightened his sense of breaking with the past and hastening
+onward into another life. In that life he would be a new creature, free to
+be a law unto himself.
+
+A new creature! A law unto himself! The ideas were subconscious, and yet
+he found the words framing themselves on his lips. He repeated them
+mentally with some satisfaction as a cluster of lights on his left told
+him he was passing Greenport. Other lights, on a hill, above the town and
+away from it, were probably those of Judge Wayne's villa. He looked at
+them curiously, with an odd sense of detachment, of remoteness, as from
+things belonging to a time with which he had nothing more to do. That was
+over and done with.
+
+It was not until a steamer crossed his bows, not more than a hundred yards
+in front of him, that he began to appreciate his safety. Under the
+protection of the dark, and in the wide loneliness of the waters, he was
+as lost to human sight as a bird in the upper air. The steamer--zigzagging
+down the lake, touching at little ports now on the west bank and now on
+the east--had shot out unexpectedly from behind a point, her double row of
+lights casting a halo in which his canoe must have been visible on the
+waves; and yet she had passed by and taken no note of him. For a second
+such good-fortune had seemed to his nervous imagination beyond the range
+of hope. He stopped paddling he almost stopped breathing, allowing the
+canoe to rock gently on the tide. The steamer puffed and pulsated, beating
+her way directly athwart his course. The throbbing of her engines seemed
+scarcely louder than that of his own heart. He could see people moving on
+the deck, who in their turn must have been able to see him. And yet the
+boat went on, ignoring him, in tacit acknowledgment of his right to the
+lake, of his right to the world.
+
+His sigh of relief became almost a laugh as he began again to paddle
+forward. The incident was like a first victory, an assurance of victories
+to come. The sense of insecurity with whith he had started out gave place,
+minute by minute, to the confidence in himself which was part of his
+normal state of mind. Other small happenings confirmed his self-reliance.
+Once a pleasure party in a rowboat passed so near him that he could hear
+the splash of their oars and the sound of their voices. There was
+something almost miraculous to him in being so close to the commonplace of
+human fellowship. He had the feeling of pleasant inward recognition that
+comes from hearing one's mother-tongue in a foreign land. He stopped
+paddling again, just to catch meaningless fragments of their talk, until
+they floated away into silence and darkness. He would have been sorry to
+have them pass out of ear-shot, were it not for his satisfaction in being
+able to go his way unheeded.
+
+On another occasion he found himself within speaking distance of one of
+the numerous small lakeside hotels. Lights flared from open doors and
+windows, while from the veranda, the garden, and the little pier came
+peals of laughter, or screams and shouts of young people at rough play.
+Now and then he could catch the tones of some youth's teasing, and the
+shrill, pretended irritation of a girl's retort. The noisy cheerfulness of
+it all reached his ears with the reminiscent tenderness of music heard in
+childhood. It represented the kind of life he himself had loved. Before
+the waking nightmare of his troubles began he had been of the unexacting
+type of American lad who counts it a "good time" to sit in summer evenings
+on "porches" or "stoops" or "piazzas," joking with "the boys," flirting
+with "the girls," and chattering on all subjects from the silly to the
+serious, from the local to the sublime. He was of the friendly,
+neighborly, noisy, demonstrative spirit characteristic of his age and
+class. He could have entered into this circle of strangers--strangers for
+the most part, in all probability, to one another--and in ten minutes'
+time been one of them. Their screams, their twang, their slang, their
+gossip, their jolly banter, and their gay ineptitude would have been to
+him like a welcome home. But he was Norrie Ford, known by name and
+misfortune to every one of them. The boys and girls on the pier, the
+elderly women in the rocking-chairs, even the waitresses who, in
+high-heeled shoes and elaborate coiffures, ministered disdainfully to the
+guests in the bare-floored dining-room, had discussed his life, his trial,
+his sentence, his escape, and formed their opinions upon him. Were it
+possible for them to know now that he was lurking out there in the dark,
+watching their silhouettes and listening to their voices, there would be
+such a hue and cry as the lake had not heard since the Indians sighted
+Champlain on its banks.
+
+It was this reflection that first of all stirred the current of his deep,
+slow resentment. During the fifteen months since his arrest he had been
+either too busy, or too anxious, or too sorely puzzled at finding himself
+in so odd a position, to have leisure for positive anger. At the worst of
+times he had never lost the belief that the world, or that portion of the
+world which concerned itself with him, would come to recognize the fact
+that it was making a mistake. He had taken his imprisonment and his trial
+more or less as exciting adventures. Even the words of his sentence lost
+most of their awfulness in his inner conviction that they were empty
+sounds. Of the confused happenings on the night of his escape his clearest
+memory was that he had been hungry, while he thought of the weeks spent in
+the cabin as a "picnic." Just as good spirits had seldom failed him, so
+patience had rarely deserted him. Such ups and downs of emotion as he had
+experienced resulted in the long run in an increase of optimism. In the
+back of his slow mind he kept the expectation, almost the intention, of
+giving his anger play--some time; but only when his rights should have
+been restored to him.
+
+But he felt it coming on him now, before he was prepared for it. It was
+taking him unawares, and without due cause, roused by the chance
+perception that he was cut off from rightful, natural companionship.
+Nothing as yet had brought home to him the meaning of his situation like
+the talk and laughter of these lads and girls, who suddenly became to him
+what Lazarus in Abraham's bosom was to Dives in his torment.
+
+A few dips of the paddle took him out of sight and sound of the hotel; but
+the dull, indignant passion remained in his heart, finding outward vent in
+the violence with which he sent the canoe bounding northward beneath the
+starlight. For the moment it was a blind, objectless passion, directed
+against nothing and no one in particular. He was not skilled in the
+analysis of feeling, or in tracing effect to cause. For an hour or two his
+wrath was the rage of the infuriated animal roaring out its pain,
+regardless of the hand that has inflicted it. Other rowing-parties came
+within hearing distance, but he paid them no attention; lake steamers hove
+in sight, but he had learned how to avoid them; little towns, dotted at
+intervals of a few miles apart, lit up the banks with the lights of homes,
+but their shining domesticity seemed to mock him. The birth of a new
+creature was a painful process; and yet, through all his confused
+sensations and obscure elemental suffering, he kept the conviction that a
+new creature was somehow claiming its right to live.
+
+Peace of mind came to him gradually, as the little towns put out their
+lights, and the lake steamers laid up in tiny ports, and the
+rowing-parties went home to bed. In the smooth, dark level of the lake and
+in the stars there was a soothing quality to which he responded before he
+was aware of doing so. The spacious solitude of the summer night brought
+with it a large calmness of outlook, in which his spirit took a measure of
+comfort. There was a certain bodily pleasure, too, in the regular monotony
+of paddling, while his mental faculties were kept alert by the necessity
+of finding points by which to steer, and fixing his attention upon them.
+So, by degrees, his limited reasoning powers found themselves at work,
+fumbling, with the helplessness of a man whose strong points are physical
+activity and concentration of purpose, for some light on the wild course
+on which he was embarked.
+
+Perhaps his first reflection that had the nature of a conclusion or a
+deduction was on the subject of "old Wayne." Up to the present he had
+regarded him with special ill will, owing to the fact that Wayne, while
+inclining to a belief of his innocence, had nevertheless lent himself to
+the full working of the law. It came to Ford now in the light of a
+discovery that, after all, it was not Wayne's fault. Wayne was in the grip
+of forces that deprived him to a large extent of the power of voluntary
+action. He could scarcely be blamed if he fulfilled the duties he was
+appointed to perform The real responsibility was elsewhere. With whom did
+it lie? For a primitive mind like Ford's the question was not an easy one
+to answer.
+
+For a time he was inclined to call to account the lawyers who had pleaded
+for the State. Had it not been for their arguments he would have been
+acquitted. With an ingenuity he had never supposed to exist they had
+analyzed his career--especially the two years of it spent with Uncle
+Chris--and showed how it led up to the crime as to an inevitable
+consequence. They seemed familiar with everything he had ever done, while
+they were able to prove beyond cavil that certain of his acts were
+inspired by sinister motives which he himself knew to have sprung from
+dissipation at the worst. It was astonishing how plausible their story
+was; and he admitted that if anybody else had been accused, he himself
+would probably have been convinced by it. Certainly, then, the lawyers
+must have been to blame--that is, unless they were only carrying out what
+others had hired them to do.
+
+That qualifying phrase started a new train of thought. Mechanically, dip
+by dip, swaying gently with each stroke as to a kind of rhythm, he drove
+the canoe onward, while he pondered it. It was easy to meditate out here,
+on the wide, empty lake, for no sound broke the midnight stillness but the
+soft swish of the paddle and the skimming of the broad keel along the
+water. It was not by any orderly system of analysis, or synthesis, or
+syllogism, that Ford, as the hours went by, came at last to his final
+conclusion; and yet he reached it with conviction. By a process of
+elimination he absolved judge, jury, legal profession, and local public
+from the greater condemnation. Each had contributed to the error that made
+him an outlaw, but no one contributor was the whole of the great force
+responsible. That force, which had set its component parts to work, and
+plied them till the worst they could do was done, was the body which they
+called Organized Society. To Ford, Organized Society was a new expression.
+He could not remember ever to have heard it till it was used in court.
+There it had been on everybody's lips. Far more than old Chris Ford
+himself it was made to figure as the injured party. Though there was
+little sympathy for the victim in his own person, Organized Society seemed
+to have received in his death a blow that called for the utmost avenging.
+Organized Society was plaintiff in the case, as well as police, jury,
+judge, and public. The single human creature who could not apparently gain
+footing within its fold was Norrie Ford himself. Organized Society had
+cast him out.
+
+He had been told that before, and yet the actual fact had never come home
+to him till now. In prison, in court, in the cabin in the woods, there had
+always been some human hand within reach of his own, some human tie, even
+though it was a chain. However ignoble, there had been a place for him.
+But out here on the great vacant lake there was an isolation that gave
+reality to his expulsion. The last man left on earth would not feel more
+utterly alone.
+
+For the first time since the night of his escape there came back to him
+that vague feeling of deserting something he might have defended, that
+almost physical sensation of regret at not having stood his ground and
+fought till he fell. He began to understand now what it meant. Dip,
+splash, dip, splash, his paddle stirred the dimly shining water, breaking
+into tiny whirlpools the tremulous reflection of the stars. Not for an
+instant did he relax his stroke, though the regret took more definitive
+shape behind him. Convicted and sentenced, he was still part of the life
+of men, just as a man whom others are trying to hurl from a tower is _on_
+the tower till he has fallen. He himself had not fallen; he had jumped
+off, while there was still a chance of keeping his foothold.
+
+It required an hour or two of outward rhythmic movement and confused
+inward feeling to get him ready for his next mental step. He had jumped
+off the tower; true; but he was alive and well, with no bones broken. What
+should he do now? Should he try to tear the tower down? The attempt would
+not be so very ludicrous, seeing he should only have to join
+those--socialists, anarchists, faddists--already at the work. But he
+admired the tower, and preferred to see is stand. If he did anything at
+all, it would be to try to creep back into it.
+
+The reflection gave still another turn to his thoughts. He was passing
+Burlington by this time--the electric lamps throwing broad bands of light
+along the deserted, up-hill streets, between the sleeping houses. It was
+the first city he had seen since leaving New York to begin his useless
+career in the mountains. The sight moved him with an odd curiosity, not
+free from a homesick longing for normal, simple ways of life. He kept the
+canoe at a standstill, looking hungrily up the empty thoroughfares, as a
+poor ghost may gaze at familiar scenes while those it has loved are
+dreaming. By-and-by the city seemed to stir in its sleep. Along the
+waterside he could hear the clatter of some belated or too early wayfarer;
+a weird, intermittent creaking told him that the milk-cart of provincial
+towns was on its beat; from a distant freight-train came the long,
+melancholy wail that locomotives give at night; and then drowsily, but
+with the promptness of one conscientious in his duty, a cock crew. Ford
+knew that somewhere, unseen as yet by him, the dawn was coming, and--again
+like a wandering ghost--sped on.
+
+But he had been looking on the tower which the children of men had
+builded, and had recognized his desire to clamber up into it again. He was
+not without the perception that a more fiery temperament than his
+own--perhaps a nobler one--would have cursed the race that had done him
+wrong, and sought to injure it or shun it. Misty recollections of
+proud-hearted men who had taken this stand came back to him.
+
+"I suppose I ought to do the same," he muttered to himself humbly; "but
+what would be the use when I couldn't keep it up?"
+
+Understanding himself thus well, his purpose became clearer. Like the ant
+or the beaver that has seen its fabric destroyed, he must set patiently to
+work to reconstruct it. He suspected a poor-spirited element in this sort
+of courage; but his instinct forced him within his limitations. By dint of
+keeping there and toiling there he felt sure of his ability to get back to
+the top of the tower in such a way that no one would think he lacked the
+right to be on it.
+
+But he himself would know it. He shrank from that fact with the repugnance
+of an honest nature for what is not straightforward; but the matter was
+past helping. He should be obliged to play the impostor everywhere and
+with every one. He would mingle with men, shake their hands, share their
+friendships, eat their bread, and accept their favors--and deceive them
+under their very noses. Life would become one long trick, one daily feat
+of skill. Any possible success he could win would lack stability, would
+lack reality, because there would be neither truth nor fact behind it.
+
+From the argument that he was innocent he got little comfort. He had
+forfeited his right to make use of that fact any longer. Had he stayed
+where he was he could have shouted it out till they gagged him in the
+death-chair. Now he must be dumb on the subject forevermore. In his
+disappearance there was an acceptation of guilt which he must remain
+powerless to explain away.
+
+Many minutes of dull pain passed in dwelling on that point. He could work
+neither back from it nor forward. His mind could only dwell on it with an
+aching admission of its justice, while he searched the sky for the dawn.
+
+In spite of the crowing of the cock he saw no sign of it--unless it was
+that the mountains on the New York shore detached themselves more
+distinctly from the sky of which they had seemed to form a part. On the
+Vermont side there was nothing but a heaped-up darkness, night piled on
+night, till the eye reached the upper heavens and the stars.
+
+He paddled on, steadily, rhythmically, having no sense of hunger or
+fatigue, while he groped for the clew that was to guide him when he
+stepped on land. He felt the need of a moral programme, of some pillar of
+cloud and fire that would show him a way he should be justified in taking.
+He expressed it to himself by a kind of aspiration which he kept
+repeating, sometimes half aloud:
+
+"O Lord, O Holy One! I want to be a man!"
+
+Suddenly he struck the water with so violent a dash that the canoe swerved
+and headed landward.
+
+"By God!" he muttered, under his breath, "I've got it.... It isn't my
+fault.... It's theirs.... They've put me in this fix.... They've brought
+this dodging, and shifting, and squirming upon me.... The subterfuge isn't
+mine; it's theirs.... They've taken the responsibility from me.... When
+they strip me of rights they strip me of duties.... They've forced me
+where right and wrong don't exist for me any more.... They've pitched me
+out of their Organized Society, and I've had to go.... Now I'm free ...
+and I shall profit by my freedom."
+
+In the excitement of these discoveries he smote the waters again. He
+remembered having said something of the sort on the night of his interview
+with Wayne; but he had not till now grasped its significance. It was the
+emancipation of his conscience. Whatever difficulties he might encounter
+from outside, he should be hampered by no scruples from within. He had
+been relieved of them; they had been taken from him. Since none had a duty
+toward him, he had no duty toward any. If it suited his purposes to juggle
+with men, the blame must rest upon themselves. He could but do his best
+with the maimed existence they had left to him. Self-respect would entail
+observance of the common laws of truth and honesty, but beyond this he
+need never allow consideration for another to come before consideration
+for himself. He was absolved from the necessity in advance. In the region
+in which he should pass his inner life there would be no occupant but
+himself. From the world where men and women had ties of love and pity and
+mutual regard they had cast him out, forcing him into a spiritual limbo
+where none of these things obtained. It was only lawful that he should
+make use of such advantages as his lot allowed him.
+
+There was exaltation in the way in which he grasped this creed as his rule
+of life; and looking up suddenly, he saw the dawn. It had taken him
+unawares, stealing like a gray mist of light over the tops of the Vermont
+hills, lifting their ridges faintly out of night, like the ghosts of so
+many Titans. Among the Adirondacks one high peak caught the first glimmer
+of advancing day, while all the lower range remained a gigantic silhouette
+beneath the perceptibly paling stars. Over Canada the veil was still down,
+but he fancied he could detect a thinner texture to the darkness.
+
+Then, as he passed a wooded headland, came a sleepy twitter, from some
+little pink and yellow bill barely withdrawn from its enfolding wing--to
+be followed by another, and another, and another, till both shores were
+aquiver with that plaintive chirrup, half threnody for the flying
+darkness, half welcome to the sun, like the praise of a choir of children
+roused to sing midnight matins, but still dreaming. Ford's dip was softer
+now, as though he feared to disturb that vibrant drowsiness; but when,
+later, capes and coves began to define themselves through the gray
+gloaming, and, later still, a shimmer of saffron appeared above the
+eastern summits, he knew it was time to think of a refuge from the
+daylight.
+
+The saffron became fire; the fire lit up a heaven of chrysoprase and rose.
+Where the lake had been as a metal mirror for the stars, it rippled and
+dimpled and gleamed with the tints of mother-of-pearl. He knew the sun
+must be on the farther slope of the Green Mountains, because the face they
+turned toward him was dense in shadow, like the unilluminated portion of
+the moon. On the western shore the Adirondacks were rising out of the bath
+of night as dewy fresh as if they had been just created.
+
+But the sun was actually in the sky when he perceived that he no longer
+had the lake to himself. From a village nestling in some hidden cove a
+rowboat pulled out into the open--a fisherman after the morning's catch.
+It was easy enough for Ford to keep at a prudent distance; but the
+companionship caused him an uneasiness that was not dispelled before the
+first morning steamer came pounding from the northward. He fixed his
+attention then on a tiny islet some two or three miles ahead. There were
+trees on it, and probably ferns and grass. Reaching it, he found himself
+in a portion of the lake forest-banked and little frequented. Pastures and
+fields of ripening grain on the most distant slopes of Vermont gave the
+nearest token of life. All about him there was solitude and
+stillness--with the glorious, bracing beauty of the newly risen day.
+
+Landing with stiffened limbs, he drew up the canoe on a bit of sandy
+beach, over which sturdy old bushes, elder and birch, battered by the
+north winds, leaned in friendly, concealing protection. He himself would
+be able to lie down here, among the tall ferns and the stunted
+blueberry-scrub, as secluded and secure as ever he had been in prison.
+
+Being hungry and thirsty, he ate and drank, consulting his map the while
+and fixing approximately his whereabouts. He looked at his little watch
+and wound it up, and fingered the pages of the railway guide he found
+beside it.
+
+The acts brought up the image of the girl who had furnished him with these
+useful accessories to flight. For lack of another name he called her the
+Wild Olive--remembering her yearning, not wholly unlike his own, to be
+grafted back into the good olive-tree of Organized Society. With some
+shame he perceived that he had scarcely thought of her through the night.
+It was astounding to recollect that not twelve hours ago she had kissed
+him and sent him on his journey. To him the gulf between then and now was
+so wide and blank that it might have been twelve weeks, or twelve months,
+or twelve years. It had been the night of the birth of a new creature, of
+the transmigration of a soul; it had no measurement in time, and threw all
+that preceded it into the mists of prenatal ages.
+
+These thoughts passed through his mind as he made a pillow for himself
+with his white flannel jacket, and twisted the ferns above it into a
+shelter from the flies. Having done this, he stood still and pondered.
+
+"Have I really become a new creature?" he asked himself.
+
+There was much in the outward conditions to encourage the fancy, while his
+inner consciousness found it easy to be credulous. Nothing was left of
+Norrie Ford but the mere flesh and bones--the least stable part of
+personality. Norrie Ford was gone--not dead, but gone--blasted,
+annihilated stamped out of existence, by the act of Organized Society. In
+its place the night of transition had called up some one else.
+
+"But who? ... Who am I? ... What am I?"
+
+Above all, a name seemed required to give him entity. It was a repetition
+of his feeling about the Wild Olive--the girl in the cabin in the woods.
+Suddenly he remembered that, if he had found a name for her, she had also
+found one for him--and that it was written on the steamer ticket in his
+pocket. He drew it out, and read:
+
+"Herbert Strange."
+
+He repeated it at first in dull surprise, and then with disapproval. It
+was not the kind of name he would have chosen. It was odd, noticeable--a
+name people would remember He would have preferred something commonplace
+such as might be found for a column or two in any city directory. She had
+probably got it from a novel--or made it up. Girls did such things. It was
+a pity, but there was no help for it now. As Herbert Strange he must go on
+board the steamer, and so he should be called until--
+
+But he was too tired to fix a date for the resumption of his own name or
+the taking of another. Flinging himself on his couch of moss and trailing
+ground-spruce, with the ferns closing over him, and the pines over them,
+he was soon asleep.
+
+
+
+
+
+Part II
+
+Strange
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+
+Dressed in overalls that had once been white, he was superintending the
+stacking of wool in a long, brick-walled, iron-roofed shed in Buenos Aires
+when the thought came to him how easy it had all been. He paused for a
+minute in his work of inspection--standing by an open window, where a
+whiff of fresh air from off the mud-brown Rio de la Plata relieved the
+heavy, greasy smell of the piles of unwashed wool--just to review again
+the past eighteen months. Below him stretched the noisy docks, with their
+row of electric cranes, as regular as a line of street lamps, loading or
+unloading a mile of steamers lying broadside on, and flying all flags but
+the Stars and Stripes. Wines, silk, machinery, textiles were coming out;
+wheat, cattle, hides, and beef were pouring in. In the confusion of
+tongues that reached him he could, on occasions, catch the tones of
+Spaniard, Frenchman, Swede, and Italian, together with all the varieties
+of English speech from Highland Scotch to Cockney; but none of the
+intonations of his native land. The comparative rarity of anything
+American in his city of refuge, while it added to his sense of exile,
+heightened his feeling of security. It was still another of the happy
+circumstances that had helped him.
+
+The strain under which he had lived during this year and a half had
+undoubtedly been great; but he could see now that it had been inward
+strain--the mental strain of unceasing apprehension, the spiritual strain
+of the new creature in casting off the old husk, and adapting itself not
+merely to new surroundings, but to a new life. This had been severe. He
+was not a rover, and still less an adventurer, in any of the senses
+attached to that word. His instincts were for the settled, the
+well-ordered, and the practical. He would have been content with any
+humdrum existence that permitted his peaceable, commercially gifted soul
+to develop in its natural environment. The process, therefore, by which
+Norrie Ford became Herbert Strange, even in his own thoughts, had been one
+of inner travail, though the outward conditions could not have been more
+favorable. Now that he had reached a point where his more obvious
+anxieties were passing away, and the hope of safety was becoming a
+reality, he could look back and see how relatively easy everything had
+been.
+
+He had leisure for reflection because it was the hour for the men's midday
+meal and siesta. He could see them grouped together--some thirty-odd--at
+the far end of the shed--sturdy little Italians, black-eyed, smiling,
+thrifty, dirty, and contented to a degree that made them incomprehensible
+to the ambitious, upward-toiling American set over them. They sat, or
+lounged, on piles of wood, or on the floor, some chattering, most of them
+asleep. He had begun like them. He had stacked wool under orders till he
+had made himself capable of being in command. He had been beneath the
+ladder; and though his foot was only on the lowest rung of it even now, he
+was satisfied to have made this first step upward.
+
+He could not be said to have taken it to his own surprise, since he had
+prepared himself for it, and for other such steps to follow it, knowing
+that they must become feasible in time. He had been given to understand
+that what the Argentine, in common with some other countries, needed most
+was neither men nor capital, but intelligence. Men were pouring in from
+every corner of the globe; capital was keen in looking for its
+opportunity; but for intelligence the demand was always greater than the
+supply.
+
+The first intimation of such a need had come to him on the _Empress of
+Erin_, in mid-Atlantic, by a chance opportunity of the voyage. It was on
+one of the first days of liberty when he had ventured to mix freely with
+his fellow-passengers. Up to the present he had followed the rule of
+conduct adopted at the little Canadian station of Saint Jean du Clou Noir.
+He went into public when necessary, but no oftener. He did then what other
+people did, in the way to attract the least attention. The season favored
+him, for amid the throngs of early autumn travellers, moving from country
+back to town, or from seaside resorts to the mountains he passed
+unnoticed. At Quebec he was one of the crowd of tourists come to see the
+picturesque old town. At Rimouski he was lost among the trainful of people
+from the Canadian maritime provinces taking the Atlantic steamer at a
+convenient port. He lived through each minute in expectation of the law's
+tap on his shoulder; but he acquired the habit of nonchalance. On
+shipboard it was a relief to be able to shut himself up in his cabin--his
+suite!--feigning sickness, but really allowing his taut nerves to relax,
+as he watched first the outlines of the Laurentides, and then the shores
+of Anticosti, and lastly the iron-black coast of Labrador, follow each
+other below the horizon. Two or three appearances at table gave him
+confidence that he had nothing to fear. By degrees he allowed himself to
+walk up and down the deck, where it was a queer sensation to feel that the
+long row of eyes must of necessity be fixed upon him. The mere fact that
+he was wearing another man's clothes--clothes he had found in the cabin
+trunk that had come on board for him--produced a shyness scarcely
+mitigated by the knowledge that he was far from looking grotesque.
+
+Little by little he plucked up courage to enter the smoking-room where the
+tacit, matter-of-course welcome of his own sex seemed to him like
+extraordinary affability. An occasional word from a neighbor, or an
+invitation to "take a hand at poker," or to "have a cocktail," was like an
+assurance to a man who fancies himself dead that he really is alive. He
+joined in no conversations and met no advances, but from the possibilities
+of doing so he would go back to his cabin smiling.
+
+The nearest approach to pleasure he allowed himself was to sit in a corner
+and listen to the talk of his fellow-men. It was sometimes amusing, but
+oftener stupid; it turned largely on food, with irrelevant interludes on
+business. It never went beyond the range of topics possible to the
+American or Canadian merchants, professional men, politicians, and
+saloon-keepers, who form the rank and file of smoking-room society on any
+Atlantic liner; but the Delphic worshipper never listened to Apollo's
+oracle with a more rapt devotion than Ford to this intercommunion of
+souls.
+
+It was in this way that he chanced one day to hear a man speaking of the
+Argentine. The remarks were casual, choppy, and without importance, but
+the speaker evidently knew the ground. Ford had already noticed him,
+because they occupied adjoining steamer-chairs--a tall, sallow Englishman
+of the ineffectual type, with sagging shoulders, a drooping mustache, and
+furtive eyes. Ford had scarcely thought of the Argentine since the girl in
+the cabin had mentioned it--- now ten or twelve days ago; but the
+necessity of having an objective point, and one sufficiently distant
+turned his mind again in that direction.
+
+"Did I hear you speaking yesterday of Buenos Aires?" he ventured to ask,
+on the next occasion when he found himself seated beside his neighbor on
+deck.
+
+The Englishman drew his brier-root pipe from his mouth, glanced sidewise
+from the magazine he was reading, and jerked his head in assent.
+
+"What kind of place did it seem to you?"
+
+"Jolly rotten."
+
+Pondering this reply, Ford might have lost courage to speak again had he
+not caught the eye of the Englishman's wife as she leaned forward and
+peeped at him across her husband's brier-root. There was something in her
+starry glance--an invitation, or an incitement--that impelled him to
+continue.
+
+"I've been told it's the land of new opportunities."
+
+The Englishman grunted without looking up. "I didn't see many."
+
+"May I ask if you saw any?"
+
+"None fit for a white man."
+
+"My husband means none fit for a--gentleman. I liked the place."
+
+From the woman's steely smile and bitter-sweet tones Ford got hints of
+masculine inefficiency and feminine contempt which he had no wish to
+follow up. He knew from fragments of talk overheard in the smoking-room
+that they had tried Mexico, California, and Saskatchewan in addition to
+South America. From the impatience with which she shook the foot just
+visible beneath the steamer-rug, while all the rest of her bearing feigned
+repose, he guessed her humiliation at returning empty to the land she had
+left with an Anglo-Saxon's pioneering hope, beside a husband who could do
+nothing but curse luck. To get over the awkward minute he spoke hurriedly.
+
+"I've heard of a very good house out there--Stephens and Jarrott. Do you
+happen to know anything about them?"
+
+"Wool," the Englishman grunted again. "Wool and wheat. Beastly brutes."
+
+"They were horribly impertinent to my husband," the woman spoke up, with a
+kind of feverish eagerness to have her say. "They actually asked him if
+there was anything he could do. Fancy!"
+
+"Oh, I know people of that sort put a lot of superfluous questions to
+you," Ford said. But the lady hurried on.
+
+"As to questions, there are probably fewer asked you in Argentine than
+anywhere else in the world. It's one of the standing jokes of the place,
+both in Buenos Aires and out in the Camp. Of course, the old Spanish
+families are all right; but when it comes to foreigners a social catechism
+wouldn't do. That's one of the reasons the place didn't agree with us. We
+wanted people to know who we'd been before we got there; but that branch
+of knowledge isn't cultivated."
+
+"More beastly Johnnies in the Argentine passin' under names not their
+own," said the man, moved to speak, at last, "than in all the rest of the
+world put together. Heard a story at the Jockey Club--lot of beastly
+native bounders in the Jockey Club--heard a story at the Jockey Club of a
+little Irish Johnny who'd been cheatin' at cards. Three other asses
+kicked him out. Beggar turned at the door and got in his lick of revenge.
+'Say boys, d'yez know why they call me Mickey Flanagan out here? Because
+it's me na-ame.' Beggar 'd got 'em all there."
+
+Ford nerved himself to laugh, but made an excuse for rising.
+
+"Oh, there's lots of cleverness among them," the lady observed, before he
+had time to get away. "In fact, it's one of the troubles with the
+country--for people like us. There's too much competition in brains. My
+husband hit the right nail on the head when he said there was no chance
+for any beastly Johnny out there, unless he could use his bloomin'
+mind--and for us that was out of the question."
+
+Ford never spoke to them again, but he meditated on their words, finding
+himself at the end of twenty-four hours in possession of a new light.
+"I've got to use my bloomin' mind." The words seemed to offer him the clew
+to life. It was the answer to the question, "What should I do _there_?"
+which positively asked itself, whenever he thought of seeking a refuge in
+this country or in that. It came as a discovery that within himself was
+the power that would enable him to make the best of any country, and the
+country to make the best of him.
+
+He could hardly have explained how his decision to try Argentina had
+become fixed. Until he saw whether or not he should get successfully
+ashore at Liverpool there was a paralysis of all mental effort; but once
+on the train for London his plans appeared before him already formed. The
+country where few questions were asked and the past had no importance was
+clearly the place for him. Within a fortnight he was a second-class
+passenger on board the Royal Mail Steam Packet _Parana_, bound for Buenos
+Aires--thus fulfilling, almost unexpectedly to himself, the suggestion
+made by the girl in the Adirondack cabin, whose star, as he began to
+believe, must rule his fate.
+
+He thought of her now and then, but always with the same curious sense of
+remoteness--or unreality, as of a figure seen in a dream. Were it not for
+the substantial tokens of her actuality he possessed she would have seemed
+to him like the heroine of a play. He would have reproached himself for
+disloyalty if the intensity of each minute as he had to meet it had not
+been an excuse for him. The time would come when the pressure of the
+instant would be less great, and he should be able to get back the emotion
+with which he left her. Perhaps if she had been "his type of girl," her
+image would not have faded so quickly.
+
+There was but one thing for which he was not grateful to her. She had
+fixed the name of Herbert Strange upon him in such a way that he was
+unable to shake it off. His own first name was the unobjectionable
+monosyllable John--though he had always been known by his less familiar
+middle name, Norrie--and as John Ford he could have faced the world with a
+certain amount of bluff. He meant to begin the attempt immediately on
+reaching London, but the difficulty of appearing in a hotel under one name
+while everything he brought with him bore another was patent to him at
+once. Similarly, he could not receive the correspondence incidental to his
+outfit and his passage under the name of Ford in a house where he was
+known as Strange. Having applied for his passage as Strange, he knew it
+would create comment if he asked to be put down in the books as Ford. Do
+what he would he was obliged to appear on the printed list of second-cabin
+passengers as Herbert Strange, and he had made at least one acquaintance
+who would expect to call him so after they reached land.
+
+This was a little, clean-shaven man, in the neighborhood of sixty, always
+dressed at sea as he probably dressed on shore. He wore nothing but black,
+with a white shirt and a ready-made black bow-tie. He might have been a
+butler, an elderly valet, or a member of some discreet religious order in
+street costume. Ford had heard a flippant young Frenchman speak of him as
+an "ancien curA(C), qui a fait quelque bAªtise"; and indeed there was about
+him that stamp of the ecclesiastic which is sometimes ineffaceable.
+
+"I call myself Durand," he said to Ford, using the conveniently ambiguous
+French idiom, "je m'appelle Durand."
+
+"Et je m'appelle Strange, I call myself Strange," Ford had replied,
+claiming the name for the first time without hesitation, but feeling the
+irrevocable nature of the words as soon as he had uttered them.
+
+Out of the crowd of second-rate Europeans of all races who made up the
+second cabin, the man who called himself Strange had selected the man who
+called himself Durand by some obscure instinct of affinity. "He looks like
+an old chap who could give one information," was Strange's own way of
+putting it, not caring to confess that he was feeling after a bit of
+sympathy. But the give and take of information became the basis of their
+friendship, and imparted the first real stimulus to the young man's
+awkward efforts to use his mind.
+
+Monsieur Durand had been thirty years in the Argentine, observing the
+place and the people, native and foreign, with the impartial shrewdness
+only possible to one who sought little for himself. It was a pleasure to
+share the fruits of his experience with one so eager to learn, for young
+men were not in the habit of showing him deference. He could tell Mr.
+Strange many things that would be to his advantage--what to do--what to
+avoid--what sort of place to live in--what he ought to pay--and what sort
+of company to keep.
+
+Yes, he knew the firm of Stephens and Jarrott--an excellent house. There
+was no Mr. Stephens now, only a Mr. Jarrott. Mr. Stephens had belonged to
+the great days of American enterprise in the southern hemisphere, to the
+time of Wheelwright, and Halsey, and Hale. The Civil War had put an end to
+that. Mr. Jarrott had come later--a good man, not generally understood. He
+had suffered a great loss a few years ago in the death of his
+brother-in-law and partner, Mr. Colfax. Mrs. Colfax, a pretty little
+woman, who hadn't old age in her blood either--one could see that--had
+gone back to the United States with her child--but a child!--blond as an
+angel--altogether darling--_tout A  fait mignonne_. Monsieur Durand thought
+he remembered hearing that Mrs. Colfax had married again, but he couldn't
+say for certain. What would you? One heard so many things. He knew less of
+the family since the last boy died--the boy to whom he gave lessons in
+Spanish and French. Death hadn't spared the household--taking the three
+sons one after another and leaving father and mother alone. It was a
+thousand pities Mrs. Colfax had taken the little girl away. They loved her
+as if she had been their own--especially after the boys died. An excellent
+house! Mr. Strange couldn't do better than seek an entry there--it is I
+who tell you so--_c'est moi qui vous le dis_.
+
+All this was said in very good English, with occasional lapses into
+French, in a soft, benevolent voice, with slow benedictory movements of
+the hands, more and more suggestive of an ecclesiastic _en civile_--or
+under a cloud. Strange stole an occasional glance into the delicate,
+clear-cut face, where the thin lips were compressed into permanent lines
+of pain, and the sunken brown eyes looked out from under scholarly brows
+with the kind of hopeful anguish a penitent soul might feel in the midst
+of purifying flames. He remembered again that the flippant young Frenchman
+had said, "Un ancien curA(C), qui a fait quelque bAªtise." Was it possible
+that some tragic sin lay under this gentle life? And was the
+four-funnelled, twin-screwed _Parana_ but a ghostly ship bearing a cargo
+of haunted souls into their earthly purgatory?
+
+"But listen, monsieur," the old man began next day. But listen! There
+would be difficulties. Stephens and Jarrott employed only picked men, men
+with some experience--except for the mere manual labor such as the
+Italians could perform. Wouldn't it be well for Mr. Strange to qualify
+himself a little before risking a refusal? Ah, but how? Monsieur Durand
+would explain. There was first the question of Spanish. No one could get
+along in the Argentine without a working knowledge of that tongue.
+Monsieur Durand himself gave lessons in it--and in French--but in the
+English and American colonies of Buenos Aires exclusively. There were
+reasons why he did not care to teach among Catholics, though he himself
+was a fervent one, and he hoped--repentant. He pronounced the last word
+with some emphasis, as though to call Strange's attention to it. If his
+young friend would give him the pleasure of taking a few lessons, they
+could begin even now. It would while away the time on the voyage. He had
+his own method of teaching, a method based on the Berlitz system, but not
+borrowed from it, and, he ventured to say, possessing its own good
+points. For example: _el tabaco--la pipa--los cigarillos. Que es esto?
+Esto es la pipa_. Very simple. In a few weeks' time the pupil is carrying
+on conversations.
+
+It would be an incalculable advantage to Mr. Strange if he could enter on
+his Argentine life with some command of the vernacular. It might even be
+well to defer his search for permanent employment until he could have that
+accomplishment to his credit. If he possessed a little money--even a very
+little--Oh, he did? Then so much the better. He need not live on it
+entirely, but it would be something to fall back on while getting the
+rudiments of his education. In the mean time he could learn a little about
+wool if he picked up jobs--Oh, very humble ones!--they were always to be
+had by the young and able-bodied--at the Mercado Central, one of the great
+wool-markets of the world. He could earn a few pesetas, acquire practical
+experience, and fit himself out in Spanish, all at the same time.
+
+And he could live with relative economy. Monsieur Durand could explain
+that too. In fact, he might get board and lodging in the same house as
+himself, with Mrs. Wilson who conducted a modest home for "gentlemen
+only." Mrs. Wilson was a Protestant--what they called a Methodist, he
+believed--but her house was clean, with a few flowers in the patio, very
+different from the frightful conventillos in which the poor were obliged
+to herd. If Mr. Strange thought it odd that he, Monsieur Durand, should be
+living beneath a Protestant roof--well, there were reasons which were
+difficult to explain.
+
+Later on, perhaps, Mr. Strange might take a season on some great sheep
+estancia out in the Camp, where there were thousands of herds that were
+thousands strong. Monsieur Durand could help him in that too. He could
+introduce him to wealthy proprietors whose sons he had taught. It would be
+a hard life, but it need not be for long. He would live in a mud hut,
+dirty, isolated, with no companionship but that of the Italian laborers
+and their womenkind. But the outdoor existence would do him good; the air
+over the pampas was like wine; and the food would not be as bad as he
+might expect. There would be an abundance of excellent meat, chiefly
+mutton, it was true, which when cooked _A _ la guacho--_carne concuero_,
+they called it in the Camp--roasted in the skin so as to keep all the
+juices in the meat--! A gesture of the hands, accompanied by a succulent
+inspiration between the teeth, gave Strange to understand that there was
+one mitigation at least to life on an Argentine estancia.
+
+To come into actual contact with the sheep, to know Oxfords, Cheviots,
+Leicesters, and Black-faced Downs, to assist at the feedings and washings
+and doctorings and shearings, to follow the crossings and recrossings and
+crossings again, that bred new varieties as if they were roses, to trace
+the processes by which the Argentine pampas supply novel resources to the
+European manufacturer, and the European manufacturer turns out the smart
+young man of London or New York, with his air of wearing "the very
+latest"--all this would not only give Strange a pleasing sense of being at
+the root of things, but form a sort of apprenticeship to his trade.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The men had not yet finished their hour of siesta, but Strange himself was
+at work. Ten minutes were sufficient for his own snack, and he never
+needed rest. Moreover, he was still too new to his position to do other
+than glory in the fact that he was a free being, doing a man's work, and
+earning a man's wage. Out in the Camp he had been too desolate to feel
+that, but here in Buenos Aires, at the very moment when the great city was
+waking to the knowledge of her queenship in the southern world--when the
+commercial hordes of the north were sweeping down in thousands of ships
+across the equator to outdo each other in her markets, it was an inspiring
+thing merely to be alive and busy. He was as proud of Stephens and
+Jarrott's long brick shed, where the sun beat pitilessly on the corrugated
+iron roof, and the smell of wool nearly sickened him, as if it had been a
+Rothschild's counting-house. His position there was just above the lowest;
+but his enthusiasm was independent of trivial things like that. How could
+he lounge about, taking siestas, when work was such a pleasure in itself?
+The shed of which he had the oversight was a model of its kind, not so
+much because his ambition designed to make it so, as because his ardor
+could make it nothing else.
+
+The roar of dock traffic through the open windows drowned everything but
+the loudest sounds, so that busily working, he heard nothing, and paid no
+attention, when some one stopped behind him. He had turned accidentally,
+humming to himself in the sheer joy of his task, when the presence of the
+stranger caused him to blush furiously beneath his tan. He drew himself
+up, like a soldier to attention. He had never seen the head of the firm
+that employed him, but he had heard a young Englishman describe him as
+"looking like a wooden man just coming into life," so that he was enabled
+to recognize him now. He did look something like a wooden man, in that the
+long, lean face, of the tone of parchment, was marked by the few, deep,
+almost perpendicular folds that give all the expression there is to a
+Swiss or German medieval statue of a saint or warrior in painted oak. One
+could see it was a face that rarely smiled, though there was plenty of
+life in the deep-set, gray-blue eyes, together with a force of cautious,
+reserved, and possibly timid, sympathy. Of the middle height and slender,
+with hair just turning from iron-gray to gray, immaculate in white duck,
+and wearing a dignified Panama, he stood looking at Strange--who, tall and
+stalwart in his greasy overalls, held his head high in conscious pride in
+his position in the shed--as Capital might look at Labor. It seemed a long
+time before Mr Jarrott spoke--the natural harshness of his voice softened
+by his quiet manner.
+
+"You're in charge of this gang?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+There was an embarrassed pause. As though not knowing what to say next,
+Mr. Jarrott's gaze travelled down the length of the shed to where the
+Italians, rubbing their sleepy eyes, were preparing for work again.
+
+"You're an American, I believe?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"How old are you?"
+
+"Not quite twenty-six."
+
+"What's your name?"
+
+"Herbert Strange!"
+
+"Ah? One of the Stranges of Virginia?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+There was another long pause, during which the older man's eyes wandered
+once more over the shed and the piles of wool, coming back again to
+Strange.
+
+"You should pick up a little Spanish."
+
+"I've been studying it. Hablo EspaA+-ol, pero no muy bien."
+
+Mr. Jarrott looked at him for a minute in surprise.
+
+"So much the better--tanto mejor," he said, after a brief pause, and
+passed on.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+
+He was again thinking how easy it had been, as he stood, more than three
+years later, on the bluffs of Rosario, watching the sacks of wheat glide
+down the long chute--full seventy feet--into the hold of the _Walmer
+Castle_. The sturdy little Italians who carried the bags from the
+warehouse in long single file might have been those he had superintended
+in the wool-shed in Buenos Aires in the early stages of his rise. But he
+was not superintending these. He superintended the superintendents of
+those who superintended them. Tired with his long day in the office, he
+had come out toward the end of the afternoon not only to get a breath of
+the fresh air off the Parana, but to muse, as he often did, over the odd
+spectacle of the neglected, half-forgotten Spanish settlement, that had
+slumbered for two hundred years, waking to the sense of its destiny as a
+factor of importance in the modern world. Wheat had created Chicago and
+Winnipeg Adam-like from the ground; but it was rejuvenating Rosario de
+Santa FA(C) Faust-like, with its golden elixir. It interested the man who
+called himself Herbert Strange--resident manager of Stephens and Jarrott's
+great wheat business in this outlet of the great wheat provinces--to watch
+the impulse by which Decrepitude rose and shook itself into Youth. As yet
+the process had scarcely advanced beyond the early stages of surprise.
+The dome of the seventeenth-century Renaissance cathedral accustomed for
+five or six generations to look down on low, one-storied Spanish dwellings
+surrounding patios almost Moorish in their privacy, seemed to lift itself
+in some astonishment over warehouses and flour-mills; while the mingling
+of its sweet old bells with the creaking of cranes and the shrieks of
+steam was like that chorus of the centuries in which there can be no
+blending of the tones.
+
+Strange felt himself so much a part of the rejuvenescence that the
+incongruity gave him no mental nor A|sthetic shock. If in his present
+position he took a less naA-ve pride than in that of three years ago, he
+was conscious none the less of a deep satisfaction in having his part,
+however humble, in the exercise of the world's energies. It gave him a
+sense of oneness with the great primal forces--with the river flowing
+beneath him, two hundred miles to the Atlantic, with the wheat fields
+stretching behind him to the confines of Brazil and the foothills of the
+Andes--to be a moving element in this galvanizing of new life into the
+dormant town, in this finding of new riches in the waiting earth. There
+was, too, a kind of companionship in the steamers moored to the red buoys
+in the river, waiting their turns to come up to the insufficient quays and
+be loaded. They bore such names as _Devonshire_, _Ben Nevis_, and
+_Princess of Wales_. They would go back to the countries where the speech
+was English, and the ideals something like his own. They would go back,
+above all, to the north, to the north that he yearned for with a yearning
+to which time brought no mitigation, to the north which was coming to mean
+for him what heaven means to a soul outside the scope of redemption.
+
+It was only on occasions that this sentiment got possession of him
+strongly. He was generally able to keep it down. Hard work, assisted by
+his natural faculty for singleness of purpose and concentration of
+attention, kept him from lifting the eyes of his heart toward the
+unattainable. Moreover, he had developed an enthusiasm, genuine in its
+way, for the land of his adoption. The elemental hugeness of its
+characteristics--its rivers fifty to a hundred miles in width, its farms a
+hundred thousand acres in extent, its sheep herds and cattle herds
+thousands to the count--were of the kind to appeal to an ardent, strenuous
+nature. There was an exhilarating sense of discovery in coming thus early
+to one of the world's richest sources of supply at a minute when it was
+only beginning to be tapped. Out in the Camp there was an impression of
+fecundity, of earth and animal alike, that seem to relegate poverty and
+its kindred ills to a past that would never return; while down in the Port
+the growth of the city went on like the bursting of some magic, monstrous
+flower. It was impossible not to share in some degree the pride of the
+braggart Argentine.
+
+It was difficult, too, not to love a country in which the way had been
+made so smooth for him. While he knew that he brought to his work those
+qualities most highly prized by men of business, he was astonished
+nevertheless at the rapidity with which he climbed. Men of long experience
+in the country had been more than once passed over, while he got the
+promotion for which they had waited ten and fifteen years. He admired the
+way in which for the most part they concealed their chagrin, but now and
+then some one would give it utterance.
+
+"Hello, grafter!" a little man had said to him, on the day when his
+present appointment had become known among his colleagues.
+
+The speaker was coming down the stairs of the head office in the Avenida
+de Mayo as Strange was going up. His name was Green, and though he had
+been twenty years in Argentine, he haled from Boston. Short and stout,
+with gray hair, a gray complexion, a gray mustache, and wearing gray
+flannels, with a gray felt hat, he produced a general impression of
+neutrality. Strange would have gone on his way unheeding had not the
+snarling tone arrested him. He had ignored this sort of insult more than
+once; but he thought the time had come for ending it. He turned on an
+upper step, looking down on the ashy-faced little man, to whom he had once
+been subordinate and who was now subordinate to him.
+
+"Hello--what?" he asked, with an air of quiet curiosity.
+
+"I said, Hello, grafter," Green repeated, with bravado.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I guess you know that as well as I do."
+
+"I don't. What is it? Out with it. Fire away."
+
+His tranquil air of strength had its effect in overawing the little man,
+though the latter stood firm and began to explain.
+
+"A grafter is a fellow with an underground pull for getting hold of what
+belongs to some one else. At least that's what I understand by it--"
+
+"It's very much what I understand by it, too. But have I ever got hold of
+anything of yours?"
+
+"Yes, confound you! You've taken my job--the job I've waited for ever
+since 1885."
+
+"Did waiting for it make it yours? If so, you would have come by it more
+easily than I did. I worked for it."
+
+"Worked for it? Haven't I worked for it, too? Haven't I been in this
+office for going on seventeen years? Haven't I done what they've paid me
+for--?"
+
+"I dare say. But I've done twice what they've paid me for. That's the
+secret of my pull, and I don't mind giving it away. You mayn't like
+it--some fellows don't; but you'll admit it it's a pull you could have
+had, as well as I. Look here, Green," he continued, in the same quiet
+tone, "I'm sorry for you. If I were in your place, I dare say I should
+feel as you do. But if I _were_ in your place, I'll be hanged if I
+shouldn't make myself fit to get out of it. You're not fit--and that's the
+only reason why you aren't going as resident manager to Rosario. You're
+labelled with the year '1885,' as if you were a bottle of champagne--and
+you've forgotten that champagne is a wine that gets out of date. You're a
+good chap--quite as good as your position--but you're not better than your
+position--and when you are you won't be left in it any longer."
+
+In speaking in this way the man who had been Norrie Ford was consciously
+doing violence to himself. His natural tendency was to be on friendly
+terms with those around him, and he had no prompting stronger than the
+liking to be liked. In normal conditions he was always glad to do a
+kindness; and when he hurt any one's feelings he hurt his own still more.
+Even now, though he felt justified in giving little Green to understand
+his intoleration of impertinence, he was obliged to fortify himself by
+appealing to his creed that he owed no consideration to any one. Little
+Green was protected by a whole world organized in his defence; Norrie Ford
+had been ruined by that world, while Herbert Strange had been born outside
+it. With a temperament like that of a quiet mastiff, he was forced to turn
+himself into something like a wolf.
+
+In spite of the fact that little Green's account of the brief meeting on
+the stairs presented it in the light of the castigation he had
+administered to "that confounded upstart from nobody knows where," Strange
+noticed that it made the clerks in the office, most of whom had been his
+superiors as Green had been, less inclined to bark at his heels. He got
+respect from them, even if he could not win popularity--and from
+popularity, in any case, he had been shut out from the first. No man can
+be popular who works harder than anybody else, shuns companionship, and
+takes his rare amusements alone. He had been obliged to do all three,
+knowing in advance that it would create for him a reputation of an "ugly
+brute" in quarters whence he would have been glad to get good-will.
+
+Finding the lack of popularity a safeguard not only against prying
+curiosity, but against inadvertent self-betrayal, it was with some
+misgiving that he saw his hermit-like seclusion threatened, as he rose
+higher in the business and consequently in the social--scale. In the
+English-speaking colony of Buenos Aires the one advance is likely to bring
+about the other--especially in the case of a good-looking young man,
+evidently bound to make his mark, and apparently of respectable
+antecedents. The first menace of danger had come from Mr. Jarrott himself,
+who had unexpectedly invited his intelligent employee to lunch with him at
+a club, in order to talk over a commission with which Strange was to be
+intrusted. On this occasion he was able to stammer his way out of the
+invitation; but when later, Mr. Skinner, the second partner, made a like
+proposal, he was caught without an excuse, being obliged, with some
+confusion, to eat his meal in a fashionable restaurant in the Calle
+Florida. Oddly enough, both his refusal on the one occasion and his
+acceptance on the other obtained him credit with his elders and superiors,
+as a modest young fellow, too shy to seize an honor, and embarrassed when
+it was thrust upon him.
+
+To Strange both occurrences were so alarming that he put himself into a
+daily attitude of defence, fearing similar attack from Mr. Martin, the
+third member of the firm. He, however, made no sign; and the bomb was
+thrown by his wife. It came in the shape of a card informing Mr. Strange
+that on a certain evening, a few weeks hence, Mrs. Martin would be at
+home, at her residence in Hurlingham. It was briefly indicated that there
+would be dancing, and he was requested to answer if he pleased. The
+general information being engraved, his particular name was written in a
+free bold hand, which he took to be that of one of the daughters of the
+family.
+
+Though he did his best to keep his head, there was everything in that bit
+of pasteboard to throw him into a state of something like excitement. Not
+only were the doors of the world Norrie Ford had known being thrown open
+to Herbert Strange, but the one was being moved by the same thrill--the
+thrill of the feminine--that had been so powerful with the other. He was
+growing more susceptible to it in proportion as it seemed forbidden--just
+as a man in a desert island may dream of the delights of wine.
+
+He had looked at the Misses Martin, but had never supposed they could
+fling a glance at him. He had seen them at the public gathering-places--in
+their box at the opera, in the grand stand at the Jockey Club, in their
+carriage at Palermo or in the Florida. They were handsome girls--blonde
+and dashing--whose New York air was in pleasant contrast to the graceful
+indolence or stolid repose of the dark-eyed ladies of the Argentine, too
+heavily bejewelled and too consciously dressed according to the Paris
+mode. Strange said of the Misses Martin, as he had said of Wild Olive,
+that they were "not his type of girl"--but they were girls--they were
+American girls--they were bright, lively girls, representing the very
+poetry and romance of the world that had turned him out.
+
+It was a foregone conclusion that he should decline their invitation, and
+he did so; but the mere occasion for doing it gave his mind an impetus in
+the direction in which he had been able hitherto to check it. He began
+again to think of the feminine, to dream of it, to long for it. For the
+time being it was the feminine in the abstract--without features or
+personality. As far as it took form at all it was with the dainty,
+nestling seductiveness that belonged to what he called his "type"--a charm
+that had nothing in common with the forest grace of the Wild Olive or the
+dash of the Misses Martin.
+
+Now and then he caught glimpses of it, but it was generally out of reach.
+Soft eyes, of the velvety kind that smote him most deliciously, would lift
+their light upon him through the casement of some old Spanish residence,
+or from the daily procession of carriages moving slowly along the palm
+avenue at Palermo or in the Florida. When this happened he would have a
+day or two of acting foolishly, in the manner of the Bonarense bucks. He
+would stand for hours of his leisure time--if he could get away from the
+office at the minute of the fashionable promenade--on the pavement of the
+Florida, or under a palm-tree in the park, waiting for a particular
+carriage to drive round again and again and again, while he returned the
+sweet gaze which the manners of the country allow an unknown lady to
+bestow, as a rose is allowed to shed its beauty. This being done, he
+would go away, and realize that he had been making himself ridiculous.
+
+Once the incarnation of his dreams came so near him that it was actually
+within his grasp. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil dangled its
+fruit right before his eyes in the person of Mademoiselle Hortense, who
+sang at the CafA(C) Florian, while the clients, of whom he was sometimes one,
+smoked and partook of refreshments. She was just the little round, soft,
+dimpling, downy bundle of youth and love he so often saw in his mind's
+eye, and so rarely in reality, and he was ready to fall in love with any
+one. The mutual acquaintance was formed, as a matter of course, over the
+piece of gold he threw into the tambourine, from which, as she passed from
+table to table, she was able to measure her hearer's appreciation of art.
+Those were the days in which he first began to be able to dress well, and
+to have a little money to throw away. For ten days or a fortnight he threw
+it away in considerable sums, being either in love or in a condition like
+it. He respected Mademoiselle Hortense, and had sympathy with her in her
+trials. She was desperately sick of her roving life as he was of Mrs.
+Wilson's boarding-house. She was as eager to marry and settle down as he
+to have a home. The subject was not exactly broached between them, but
+they certainly talked round it. The decisive moment came on the night when
+her troupe was to sail for Montevideo. In the most delicate way in the
+world she gave him to understand that she would remain even at the
+eleventh hour if he were to say the word. She might be on the deck, she
+might be in her berth, and it still would not be too late. He left her at
+nine, and she was to sail at eleven. During the two intervening hours he
+paced the town, a prey to hopes, fears, temptations, distresses. To do him
+justice, it was her broken heart he thought of, not his own. To him she
+was only one of many possibilities; to her, he was the chance of a
+lifetime. She might never, he said to himself, "fall into the clutches of
+so decent a chap again." It was a wild wrestle between common sense and
+folly--so wild that he was relieved to hear a clock strike eleven, and to
+know she must have sailed.
+
+The incident sobered him by showing him how near and how easily he could
+come to a certain form of madness. After that he worked harder than ever,
+and in the course of time got his appointment at Rosario. It was a great
+"rise," not only in position and salary, but also in expectations. Mr.
+Martin had been resident manager at Rosario before he was taken into
+partnership--so who could tell what might happen next?
+
+The first intimation of the change was conveyed by Mr. Jarrott in a manner
+characteristically casual. Strange, being about to leave the private
+office one day, after a consultation on some matter of secondary import,
+was already half-way to the door, while Mr. Jarrott himself was stooping
+to replace a book in the revolving bookcase that stood beside his chair.
+
+"By-the-way," he said, without looking up, "Jenkins is going to represent
+the house in New York. We think you had better take his place at Rosario."
+
+Strange drew himself up to attention. He knew the old man liked his
+subordinates to receive momentous orders as if they came in the routine of
+the day.
+
+"Very well, sir," he said, quietly, betraying no sign of his excitement
+within. Raising himself, Mr. Jarrott looked about uneasily, as if trying
+to find something else to say, while Strange began again to move toward
+the door.
+
+"And Mrs. Jarrott--"
+
+Strange stopped so still that the senior partner paused with that air of
+gentlemanly awkwardness--something like an Englishman's--which he took on
+when he had firmly made up his mind.
+
+"Mrs. Jarrott," he continued, "begs me to say she hopes you will--a--come
+and lunch with us on Sunday next."
+
+There was a long pause, during which the young man searched wildly for
+some formula that would soften his point-blank refusal.
+
+"Mrs. Jarrott is awfully kind," he began at last to stammer, "but if she
+would excuse me--"
+
+"She will expect you on Sunday at half-past twelve."
+
+The words were uttered with that barely perceptible emphasis which, as the
+whole house knew, implied that all had been said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the end the luncheon was no formidable affair. Except for his fear,
+lest it should be the thin edge of the wedge of that American social life
+which it would be perilous for him to enter, he would have enjoyed this
+peep into a comfortable home, after his long exile from anything of the
+sort. In building his house at Palermo, Mr. Jarrott had kept, in the
+outlines at least, to the old Spanish style of architecture, as being most
+suited to the history and climate of the country, though the wealthy
+Argentines themselves preferred to have their residences look--like their
+dresses, jewels, and carriages--as if they had come from Paris. The
+interior patio was spacious, shaded with vines, and gay with flowers,
+while birds, caged or free, were singing everywhere. The rooms
+surrounding it were airy and cool, and adapted to American standards of
+comfort. In the dining-room mahogany, damask, crystal, and silver gave
+Strange an odd feeling of having been wafted back to the days and usages
+of the boyhood of Norrie Ford.
+
+As the only guest he found himself seated on Mrs. Jarrott's right, and
+opposite Miss Queenie Jarrott, the sister of the head of the house. The
+host, as his manner was, spoke little. Miss Jarrott, too, only looked at
+Strange across the table, smiling at him with her large, thin,
+upward-curving smile, comic in spite of itself, and with a certain pathos,
+since she meant it to be charged with sentiment. Over the party at table,
+over the elderly men-servants who waited on them, over the room, over the
+patio, there was--except for the singing of the birds--the hush that
+belongs to a household that never hears the noise or the laughter of
+youth.
+
+Mrs. Jarrott took the brunt of the conversation on herself She was a
+beautiful woman, faded now with the pallor that comes to northern people
+after a long residence in the sub-tropical south, and languid from the
+same cause. Her handsome hazel eyes looked as if they had been used to
+weeping, though they conserved a brightness that imparted animation to her
+face. A white frill round her throat gave the only relief to her plain
+black dress, but she wore many handsome rings, after the Argentine fashion
+as well as a brooch and earrings of black pearls.
+
+She began by asking her guest if it was true, as Mr. Jarrott had informed
+her, that he was not one of the Stranges of Virginia. She thought he must
+be. It would be so odd if he wasn't. There _were_ Stranges in Virginia,
+and had been for a great many generations. In fact, her own family, the
+Colfaxes, had almost intermarried with them. When she said almost, she
+meant that they had intermarried with the same families--the Yorkes, the
+Endsleighs and the Poles. If Mr. Strange did belong to the Virginia
+Stranges, she was sure they could find relatives in common. Oh, he didn't?
+Well, it seemed really as if he must. If Mr. Strange came from New York,
+he probably knew the Wrenns. Her own mother was a Wrenn. She had been Miss
+Wrenn before she was Mrs. Colfax. He thought he had heard of them? Oh,
+probably. They were well-known people--at least they had been in the old
+days--though New York was so very much changed. She rarely went back there
+now, the voyage was so long, but when she did she was quite bewildered.
+Her own family used to be so conservative, keeping to a little circle of
+relatives and friends that rarely went north of Boston or south of
+Philadelphia; but now when she made them a visit she found them surrounded
+by a lot of people who had never been heard of before. She thought it a
+pity that in a country where there were so few distinctions, those which
+existed shouldn't be observed.
+
+It was a relief to Strange when the sweet, languorous monologue,
+punctuated from time to time by a response from himself, or an
+interjectory remark from one of the others, came to an end, and they
+proceeded to the patio for coffee.
+
+It was served in a corner shaded by flowering vines, and presided over by
+a huge green and gray parrot in a cage. The host and hostess being denied
+this form of refreshment took advantage of the moment to stroll arm in arm
+around the court, leaving Miss Jarrott in tAªte-A -tAªte with Strange. He
+noticed that as this lady led the way her figure was as lithe as a young
+girl's and her walk singularly graceful. "No one is ever old with a
+carriage like yours," Miss Jarrott had been told, and she believed it. She
+dressed and talked according to her figure, and, had it not been for
+features too heavily accentuated in nose and chin, she might have produced
+an impression of eternal spring-tide. As it was, the comic papers would
+have found her cruelly easy to caricature, had she been a statesman. The
+parrot screamed at her approach, croaking out an air, slightly off the
+key:
+
+/P
+    "Up and down the ba-by goes,
+    Turning out its lit-tle ..."
+P/
+
+Tempted to lapse into prose, it proceeded to cry:
+
+"Wa-al, Polly, how are you to-day? Wa-al, pretty well for an old gal,"
+after which there was a minute of inarticulate grumbling. When coffee was
+poured, and the young man's cigarette alight, Miss Jarrott seized the
+opportunity which her sister-in-law's soft murmur at the table had not
+allowed her.
+
+"It's really funny you should be Mr. Strange, because I've known a young
+lady of the same name. That is, I haven't known her exactly, but I've
+known about her."
+
+Not to show his irritation at the renewal of the subject, Strange presumed
+she was one of the Stranges of Virginia, with right and title to be so
+called.
+
+"She is and she isn't," Miss Jarrot replied. "I know you'll think it funny
+to hear me speak so; but I can't explain I'm like that. I can't always
+explain. I say lots and lots of things that people just have to interpret
+for themselves It's funny I should be like that, isn't it? I wonder why?
+Can you tell me why? And this Miss Strange--I never knew her really--not
+really--but I feel as if I had. I always feel that way about friends of
+friends of mine. I feel as if they were my friends, too. I'd go through
+fire and water for them. Of course that's just an expression but you know
+what I mean, now don't you?"
+
+Having been assured on that point, she continued:
+
+"I'm afraid you'll find us a very quiet household, Mr. Strange, but we're
+in mourning. That is, Mrs. Jarrott is in mourning; and when those dear to
+me are in mourning I always feel that I'm in mourning, too. I'm like that.
+I never can tell why it is, but--I'm like that. My sister-in-law has just
+lost her sister-in-law. Of course that's no relation to me, is it? And yet
+I feel as if it was. I've always called Mrs. Colfax my sister-in-law, and
+I've taught her little girl to call me Aunt Queenie. They lived here once.
+Mr. Colfax was Mrs. Jarrott's brother and Mr. Jarrott's partner. The
+little girl was born here. It was a great loss to my brother when Mr.
+Colfax died. Mrs. Colfax went back to New York and married again. That was
+a blow, too; so we haven't been on the same friendly terms of late years.
+But now I hope it will be different. I'm like that. I always hope. It's
+funny, isn't it? No matter what happens, I always think there's a silver
+lining to the cloud. Now, why should I be like that? Why shouldn't I
+despair, like other people?"
+
+Strange ventured the suggestion that she had been born with a joyous
+temperament.
+
+"Wa-al, pretty well for an old gal!" screamed the parrot ending in a
+croaking laugh.
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," Miss Jarrott mused. "Everybody is different,
+don't you think? And yet it sometimes seems to me that no one can be so
+different as I am. I always hope and hope; and you see, in this case I've
+been justified. We're going to have our little girl again. She's coming to
+make us a long, long visit. Her name is Evelyn; and once we get her here
+we hope she'll stay. Who knows? There may be something to keep her here.
+You never can tell about that. She's an orphan, with no one in the world
+but a stepfather, and he's blind. So who has a better right to her? I
+always think that people who have a right to other people should have
+them, don't you? Besides, he's going to Wiesbaden, to a great oculist
+there, so that Evelyn will come to us as her natural protectors. She's
+nearly eighteen now, and she wasn't eight when she left us. Oh yes, of
+course we've seen her since then--when we've gone to New York--but that
+hasn't been often. She will have changed; she'll have her hair up, and be
+wearing her dresses long; but I shall know her. Oh, you couldn't deceive
+me. I never forget a face. I'm like that. No, nor names either. I should
+remember you, Mr. Strange, if I met you fifty years from now. I noticed
+you when you first began to work for Stephens and Jarrott. So did my
+sister-in-law, but I noticed you first. We've often spoken of you,
+especially after we knew your name was Strange. It seemed to us so
+strange. That's a pun, isn't it? I often make them. We both thought you
+were like what Henry--that's Mr. Jarrott's oldest son--might have grown
+to, if he had been spared to us. We've had a great deal of sorrow--Oh, a
+great deal! It's weaned my sister-in-law away from the world altogether.
+She's like that. My brother, too--he isn't the same man. So when Evelyn
+comes we hope we shall see you often, Mr. Strange. You must begin to look
+on this house as your second home. Indeed, you must. It'll please my
+brother. I've never heard him speak of any young man as he's spoken of
+you. I think he sees the likeness to Henry. That'll be next year when
+Evelyn comes. No, I'm sorry to say it isn't to be this year. She can't
+leave her stepfather till he goes to Wiesbaden. Then she'll be free. Some
+one else is going to Wiesbaden with him. And isn't it funny, it's the same
+Miss Strange--the lady we were speaking of just now."
+
+It was already some months since those words had been spoken, so that he
+had ceased to dwell on them; but at first they haunted him like a snatch
+of an air that passes through the mental hearing, and yet eludes the
+attempt to bring it to the lips. Even if he had had the synthetic
+imagination that easily puts two and two together, he had not the leisure,
+in the excitement of his removal to Rosario and the undertaking of his
+duties there, to follow up a set of clews that were scarcely more palpable
+than odors. Nevertheless the words came back to him from time to time, and
+always with the same odd suggestion of a meaning special--perhaps
+fatal--to himself. They came back to him at this minute, as he stood
+watching the loading of the _Walmer Castle_ and breathing the fresh air
+off the Parana. But if they threatened danger, it was a danger that
+disappeared the instant he turned and faced it--leaving nothing behind but
+the evanescent memory of a memory, such as will sometimes remain from a
+dream about a dream.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+
+Another year had passed before he learned what Miss Jarrott's words were
+to mean to him. Knowledge came then as a flash of revelation in which he
+saw himself and his limitations clearly defined. His success at Rosario
+had been such that he had begun to think himself master of Fate; but Fate
+in half an hour laughingly showed herself mistress of him.
+
+He had been called to Buenos Aires on an errand of piety and affection--to
+bury Monsieur Durand. The poor old unfrocked priest had been gathered to
+his rest, taking his secret with him--penitent, reconciled to the Church,
+and fortified with the Last Sacraments. Strange slipped a crucifix between
+the wax-like fingers, and followed--the only mourner--to the Recoleta
+Cemetery.
+
+Having ordered a cross to mark the grave, he remained in town a day or two
+longer to attend to a small matter which for some time past he had at
+heart and on his conscience. It was now three or four years since he had
+set aside the sum lent him by the girl for whom he had still no other name
+than that of the Wild Olive. He had invested it, and reinvested it, till
+it had become a fund of some importance. Putting it now into the safest
+American securities, he placed them in the hands of a firm of English
+solicitors in Buenos Aires, with directions not only to invest the
+interest from time to time, but--in the event of his death--to follow
+certain sealed instructions with which also he intrusted them. From the
+few hints he was able to give them in this way he had little doubt but
+that her identity could be discovered, and the loan returned.
+
+In taking these steps he could not but see that what would be feasible in
+case of his death must be equally feasible now; but he had two reasons for
+not attempting it. The first was definite and prudential. He was unwilling
+to risk anything that could connect him ever so indirectly with the life
+of Norrie Ford. Secondly, he was conscious of a vague shrinking from the
+payment of this debt otherwise than face to face. Apart from
+considerations of safety, he was unwilling to resort to the commonplace
+channels of business as long as there was a possibility of taking another
+way.
+
+Not that he was eager to see her again. He had questioned himself on that
+point, and knew she had faded from his memory. Except for a vision of
+fugitive dark eyes--eyes of Beatrice Cenci--he could scarcely recall her
+features. Events during the last six years had pressed so fast on each
+other, life had been so full, so ardent, each minute had been so insistent
+that he should give it his whole soul's attention, that the antecedent
+past was gone like the passion no effort can recapture. As far as he could
+see her face at all, it looked at him out of an abyss of oblivion to which
+his mind found it as hard to travel back as a man's imagination to his
+infancy.
+
+It was with some shame that he admitted this. She had saved him--in a
+sense, she had created him. By her sorcery she had raised up Herbert
+Strange out of the ruin of Norrie Ford, and endowed him with young vigor.
+He owed her everything. He had told her so. He had vowed his life to her.
+It was to be hers to dispose of, even at her caprice. It was what he had
+meant in uttering his parting words to her. But, now, that he had the
+power in some degree, he was doing nothing to fulfil his promise. He had
+even lost the desire to make the promise good.
+
+It was not difficult to find excuses for himself. They were ready-made to
+his hand. There was nothing practical that he could do except what he had
+done about the money. Life was not over yet; and some day the chance might
+come to prove himself as high-souled as he should like to be. If he could
+only have been surer that he was inwardly sincere he would not have been
+uneasy over his inactivity.
+
+Then, within a few minutes, the thing happened that placed him in a new
+attitude, not only toward the Wild Olive, but toward all life.
+
+Business with the head office detained him in Buenos Aires longer than he
+had expected. It was business of a few hours at a time, leaving him
+leisure for the theatres and the opera, for strollings at Palermo, and for
+standing stock-still watching the procession of carriages in the Florida
+or the Avenida Sarmiento, in the good Bonarense fashion. He was always
+alone, for he had acquired the art--none too easy--of taking pleasure
+without sharing it.
+
+So he found himself, one bright afternoon, watching the races from the
+lawn of the Hipodromo of the Jockey Club. He was fond of horses, and he
+liked a good race. When he went to the Hipodromo it was for the sporting,
+not the social, aspect of the affair. Nevertheless, as he strolled about,
+he watched for that occasional velvety glance that gave him pleasure, and
+amused himself with the types seated around him, or crossing his
+path--heavy, swarthy Argentines, looking like Italian laborers grown
+rich--their heavy, swarthy wives, come out to display all the jewels that
+could be conveniently worn at once--pretty, dark-eyed girls, already with
+a fatal tendency to embonpoint, wearing diamonds in their ears and round
+their necks as an added glory to costumes fresh from the rue de la
+Paix--grave little boys, in gloves and patent-leather boots, seated
+without budging by their mammas, sucking the tops of their canes in
+imitation of their elder brothers, who wandered about in pairs or groups,
+all of the latest cut, eying the ladies but rarely addressing them--tall
+Englishmen, who looked taller than they were in contrast to the pudgy race
+around them, as the Germans looked lighter and the French more
+blond--Italian opera singers, Parisian actresses Spanish dancers,
+music-hall soubrettes--diplomats of all nations--clerks out for a
+holiday--sailors on shore--tourists come to profit by a spectacle that has
+no equal in the southern world, and little of the kind that is more
+amusing in the north.
+
+As Strange's glance roamed about in search of a response he not
+infrequently received it, for he was a handsome fellow by this time--tall,
+well dressed, and well set up, his trim, fair beard emphasizing the
+clear-cut regularity of his profile, without concealing the kindliness
+that played about the mouth. A little gray on the temples, as well as a
+few tiny wrinkles of concentration about the eyes, gave him an air of
+maturity beyond his age of thirty-two. The Anglo-Saxon influence in the
+Argentine is English--from which cause he had insensibly taken on an
+English air, as his speech had acquired something of the English
+intonation. He was often told that he might pass for an Englishman
+anywhere, and he was glad to think so. It was a reason the less for being
+identified as Norrie Ford. It sometimes seemed to him that he could, in
+case of necessity, go back to North America, to New York, to Greenport, or
+even to the little county town where he had been tried and sentenced to
+death, and run no risk of detection.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The staring of other men first directed his attention toward her. She was
+sitting slightly detached from the party of Americans to whom she clearly
+belonged, and in which the Misses Martin formed the merrily noisy centre.
+Though dressed in white, that fell softly about her feet, and trained on
+the grass sidewise from her chair, her black cuffs, collar and hat
+suggested the last days of mourning. Whether or not she was aware of the
+gaze of the passers-by it was difficult to guess, for her air of demure
+simplicity was proof against penetration. She was one of those dainty
+little creatures who seem to see best with the eyes downcast; but when she
+lifted her dark lashes, the darker from contrast with the golden hair, to
+sweep heaven and earth in a blue glance that belonged less to scrutiny
+than to prayer, the effort seemed to create a shyness causing the lids,
+dusky as some flowers are, to drop heavily into place again, like curtains
+over a masterpiece. It was so that they rose and fell before Strange, her
+eyes meeting his in a look that no Argentine beauty could ever have
+bestowed, in that it was free from coquetry or intention, and wholly
+accidental.
+
+It was in fact this accidental element, with its lack of preparation, that
+gave the electric thrill to both. That is to say, in Strange the thrill
+was electric; as for her, she gave no sign further than that she opened
+her parasol and raised it to shade her face. Having done this she
+continued to sit in undisturbed composure, though she probably saw
+through her fringing lashes that the tall, good-looking young man still
+stood spellbound, not twenty yards away.
+
+Strange, on his part, was aware of the unconventionality of his behavior,
+though he was incapable of moving on. He felt the occasion to be one which
+justified him in transcending the established rules of courtesy. He was
+face to face with the being who met not only all the longings of his
+earthly love, but the higher, purer aspirations that accompanied it. It
+was not, so he said to himself, a chance meeting; it was one which the
+ages had prepared, and led him up to. She was "his type of girl" only in
+so far as she distilled the essence of his gross imaginings and gave them
+in their exquisite reality. So, too, she was the incarnation of his dreams
+only because he had yearned for something mundane of which she was the
+celestial, and the true, embodiment. He had that sense of the
+insufficiency of his own powers of preconception which comes to a blind
+man when he gets his sight and sees a rose.
+
+He was so lost in the wonder of the vision that he had to be awakened as
+from a trance when Miss Jarrott, very young and graceful, crossed the lawn
+and held out her hand.
+
+"Mr. Strange! I didn't know you were in town. My brother never mentioned
+it. He's like that. He never tells. If I didn't guess his thoughts, I
+shouldn't know anything. But I always guess people's thoughts. Why do you
+suppose it is? I don't know. Do you? When I see people, I can tell what
+they're thinking of as well as anything. I'm like that; but I can't tell
+how I do it. I saw you from over there, and I knew you were thinking about
+Evelyn. Now weren't you? Oh, you can't deceive me. You were thinking of
+her just as plain--! Well, now you must come and be introduced."
+
+He felt that he stumbled blindly as he crossed the bit of greensward in
+Miss Jarrott's wake; and yet he kept his head sufficiently to know that he
+was breaking his rules, contradicting his past, and putting himself in
+peril. In being presented to the Misses Martin and their group, he was
+actually entering that Organized Society to which Herbert Strange had no
+attachments, and in which he could thrust down no roots. By sheer force of
+will he might keep a footing there, as a plant that cannot strike into the
+soil may cling to a bare rock. All the same the attempt would be
+dangerous, and might easily lead to his being swept away.
+
+It was in full consciousness, therefore, of the revolution in his life
+that he bowed before the Misses Martin, who received him coldly. He had
+not come to their dance, nor "called," nor shown them any of the
+civilities they were accustomed to look for from young men. Turning their
+attention at once to the other gentlemen about them, they made no effort
+to detain him as Miss Jarrott led him to Miss Colfax.
+
+Here the introduction would have been disappointing if the greatness of
+the event had not been independent of the details with which it happened.
+Strange was not in a condition to notice them, any more than a soul can
+heed the formalities with which it is admitted into heaven. Nearly all his
+impressions were subconscious--to be brought to the surface and dwelt on
+after he went away. It was thus he recorded the facts relating to the gold
+tint--the _teint dorA(C)_--of her complexion, the curl of her lashes that
+seemed to him deep chestnut rather than quite black, as well as the little
+tremor about her mouth, which was pensive in repose, and yet smiled with
+the unreserved sweetness of an infant. He could not be said to have taken
+in any of these points at a glance; but they came to him later, vividly,
+enchantingly, in the solitude of his room at the Phoenix Hotel.
+
+What actually passed would have been commonplace in itself had it not been
+for what lay behind. Miss Colfax acknowledged the introduction with a
+fleeting smile and a quick lifting of the curtains of her eyes. He did not
+need that glimpse to know that they were blue, but he got a throb of bliss
+from it, as does one from the gleam of a sunlit sea. To her answers to the
+questions he asked as to when she had arrived, how she liked the
+Argentine, and what she thought of the Hipodromo, he listened less than to
+the silvery timbre of her voice. Mere words were as unimportant to those
+first minutes of subtle ecstasy as to an old Italian opera. The music was
+the thing, and for that he had become one enraptured auditory nerve.
+
+There was no chair for him, so that he was obliged to carry on the
+conversation standing. He did not object to this, as it would give him an
+excuse for passing on. That he was eager to go, to be alone, to think, to
+feel, to suffer, to realize, to trace step by step the minutes of the day
+till they had led him to the supreme instant when his eyes had fallen on
+her, to take the succeeding seconds one by one and extract the
+significance from each, was proof of the power of the spell that had been
+cast upon him.
+
+"And isn't it funny, Evie, dear," Miss Jarrott began, just as he was about
+to take his leave, "that Mr. Strange's name should be--"
+
+"Yes, I've been thinking about that," Miss Colfax fluted, with that pretty
+way she had of speaking with little movement of the lips.
+
+But he was gone. He was gone with those broken sentences ringing in his
+ears--casual and yet haunting--meaningless and yet more than
+pregnant--creeping through the magic music of the afternoon, as a
+death-motive breathes in a love-chant.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+
+After a night of little sleep and much thinking he determined to listen to
+nothing but the love-chant. He came to this decision, not in the
+recklessness of self-will, but after due consideration of his rights. It
+was true that, in biblical phrase, necessity was laid upon him. He could
+no more shut his ears against that entrancing song than he could shut his
+eyes against the daylight. This was not, however, the argument that he
+found most cogent, as it was not the impulse from which he meant to act.
+If he could make this girl his wife it would be something more than a case
+of getting his own way; it would be an instance--probably the highest
+instance--of the assertion of himself against a world organized to destroy
+him. He could not enter that world and form a part of it; but at least he
+could carry off a wife from it, as a lion may leap into a sheepfold and
+snatch a lamb.
+
+It was in this light that he viewed the matter when he accepted Miss
+Jarrott's invitations--now to lunch, now to dinner, now to a seat in their
+box at the opera or in their carriage in the park--during the rest of the
+time he remained in town. It became clear to him that the family viewed
+with approval the attachment that had sprung up between Miss Colfax and
+himself, and were helping it to a happy ending. He even became aware that
+they were growing fond of him--making the discovery with a queer
+sensation of surprise. It was a thing so new in his experience that he
+would have treated the notion as ridiculous had it not been forced upon
+him. Women had shown him favors; one lonely old man, now lying in the
+Recoleta Cemetery, had yearned over him; but a household had never opened
+its heart to him before. And yet there could be no other reading of the
+present situation. He began to think that Mr. Jarrott was delaying his
+departure for Rosario purposely, to keep him near. It was certain that
+into the old man's bearing toward him there had crept something that might
+almost be called paternal, so that their business discussions were much
+like those between father and son. Mrs. Jarrott advanced as far out of the
+circle of her griefs to welcome him as it was possible for her languorous
+spirit to emerge. Miss Jarrott, friendly from the first, attached him to
+the wheels of her social chariot with an air of affectionate possession.
+
+It required no great amount of perspicuity to see that the three elders
+would be glad if Miss Colfax and he were to "make a match of it," and why.
+It would be a means--and a means they could approve--of keeping their
+little girl among them. As matters stood, she was only a visitor, who
+spoke of her flight back to New York as a matter of course.
+
+"I only came," she lisped to Strange, as they sat one day, under the
+parrot's chaperonage, in the shady corner of the patio--"I only came
+because when dear mamma died there was nothing else for me to do.
+Everything happened so unfortunately, do you see? Mamma died, and my
+stepfather went blind, and really I had no home. Of course that doesn't
+matter so much while I'm in mourning--I mean, not having a home--but I
+simply _must_ go back to New York next autumn, in order to 'come out.'"
+
+[Illustration: "Who is Miriam?" was on his lips]
+
+"Aren't you 'out' enough already?"
+
+"Do you see?" she began to explain, with the quaint air of practical
+wisdom he adored in her, "I'm not out at all--and I'm nearly nineteen.
+Dear mamma fretted over it as it was--and if she knew it hadn't been done
+yet--Well something must be managed, but I don't know what. It isn't as if
+Miriam could do anything about it, though she's a great deal older than I
+am, and has seen a lot of social life at Washington and in England. But
+she's out of the question. Dear mamma would never have allowed it. And
+she's no relation to me, besides."
+
+The question, "Who is Miriam?" was on his lips, but he checked it in time.
+He checked all questions as to her relatives and friends whom he did not
+know already. He was purposely making ignorance his bliss as long as
+possible, in the hope that before enlightenment could be forced upon him
+it would be too late for any one to recede.
+
+"Couldn't they do it for you here?" he asked, when he was sure of what he
+meant to say. "I know the Miss Martins--"
+
+"Carrie and Ethel! Oh, well! That isn't quite the same thing. _I_ couldn't
+come out in a place like Buenos Aires--or anywhere, except New York."
+
+"But when you've been through it all, you'll come back here, won't you?"
+
+His eyes sought hers, but he saw only the curtains of the lids--those lids
+with the curious dusk on them, which reminded him of the petals of certain
+pansies.
+
+"That'll--depend," she said, after a minute's hesitation.
+
+"It'll depend--on what?" he persisted, softly.
+
+Before she could answer the parrot interrupted, screaming out a bit of
+doggerel in its hoarse staccato.
+
+"Oh, that bird!" the girl cried, springing up. "I do wish some one would
+wring its neck."
+
+He got no nearer to his point that day, and perhaps he was not eager to.
+The present situation, with its excitements and uncertainties, was too
+blissful to bring to a sudden end. Besides, he was obliged to go through
+some further rehearsing of the creed adopted in the dawn on Lake Champlain
+before his self-justification could be complete. It was not that he was
+questioning his right to act; it was only that he needed to strengthen the
+chain of arguments by which his action must be supported--against himself.
+Within his own heart there was something that pleaded against the breaking
+off of this tender sprig of the true olive to graft it on the wild, in
+addition to which the attitude of the Jarrott family disconcerted him. It
+was one thing to push his rights against a world ready to deny them, but
+it was quite another to take advantage of a trusting affection that came
+more than half-way to meet him. His mind refused to imagine what they
+would do if they could know that behind the origin of Herbert Strange
+there lay the history of Norrie Ford. After all, he was not concerned with
+them, he asserted inwardly, but with himself. They were intrenched within
+a world able to take care of itself; while there was no power whatever to
+protect him, once he made a mistake.
+
+So every night, as he sat in his cheerless hotel room, he reviewed his
+arguments, testing them one by one, strengthening the weak spots according
+to his lights, and weighing the for and against with all the nicety he
+could command. On the one side were love, happiness, position, a home,
+children probably, and whatever else the normal, healthy nature craves;
+on the other, loneliness, abnegation, crucifixion, slow torture, and
+slower death. Was it just to himself to choose the latter, simply because
+human law had made a mistake and put him outside the human race? The
+answer was obvious enough; but while his intelligence made it promptly,
+something else within him--some illogical emotion--seemed to lag behind
+with its corroboration.
+
+This hesitation of his entire being to respond to the bugle-call of his
+need gave to his wooing a certain irregularity--an advance and recession
+like that of the tide. At the very instant when the words of declaration
+were trembling on his lips this doubt about himself would check him. There
+were minutes--moonlit minutes, in the patio, when the birds were hushed,
+and the scent of flowers heavy, and the voices of the older ones stole
+from some lighted room like a soft, human obligato to the melody of the
+night--minutes when he felt that to his "I love you!" hers would come as
+surely as the echo to the sound; and yet he shrank from saying it. Their
+talk would drift near to it, dally with it, flash about it, play attack
+and defence across it, and drift away again, leaving the essential thing
+unspoken. The skill with which she fenced with this most fragile of all
+topics, never losing her guard, never missing her thrust or parry, and yet
+never inflicting anything like a wound, filled him with a sort of rapture.
+It united the innocence of a child to the cleverness of a woman of the
+world, giving an exquisite piquancy to both. In this young creature, who
+could have had no experience of anything of the kind, it was the very
+essence of the feminine.
+
+By dint of vigil and meditation he drew the conclusion that his inner
+hesitancy sprang from the fact that he was not being honest with himself.
+He was shirking knowledge that he ought to face. Up to the present he had
+done his duty in that respect, and done it pluckily. He had not balked at
+the statement that his rA'le in the world was that of an impostor--though
+an impostor of the world's own creation. It had been part of the task
+forced upon him "to deceive men under their very noses," as he had
+expressed it to himself that night on Lake Champlain. Whatever vengeance,
+therefore, discovery might call upon him, he could suffer nothing in the
+loss of self-respect. He would be always supported by his inner approval.
+Remorse would be as alien to him as to Prometheus on the rock.
+
+In the present situation he was less sure of that, and there he put his
+finger on his weakness. Seeing shadows flitting in the background he
+dodged them, instead of calling them out into daylight. He was counting on
+happy chances in dealing with the unforeseen, when all his moves should be
+based on the precise information of a general.
+
+Therefore, when, in the corner of the patio, the next opportunity arose
+for asking the question, "Who is Miriam?" he brought it out boldly.
+
+"She's a darling." The unexpected reply was accompanied by a sudden
+lifting of the lashes for a rapturous look and one of the flashing smiles.
+
+"That's high praise--from you."
+
+"She deserves it--from any one!"
+
+"Why? What for? What has she done to win your enthusiasm when other people
+find it so hard?"
+
+"It isn't so hard--only some people go the wrong way to work about it, do
+you see?"
+
+She leaned back in her wicker chair, fanning herself slowly, and smiling
+at him with that air of mingled innocence and provocation which he found
+the most captivating of her charms.
+
+"Do I?" he was tempted to ask.
+
+"Do you? Now, let me think. Really, I never noticed. You'd have to begin
+all over again--if you ever did begin--before I could venture an opinion."
+
+This was pretty, but it was not keeping to the point.
+
+"Evidently Miriam knows how to do it, and when I see her I shall ask her."
+
+"I wish you _could_ see her. You'd adore her. She'd be just your style."
+
+"What makes you think that? Is she so beautiful? What is she like?"
+
+"Oh, I couldn't tell you what she's like. You'd have to see her for
+yourself. No, I don't think I should call her beautiful, though some
+people do. She's awfully attractive anyhow."
+
+"Attractive? In what way?"
+
+"Oh, in a lot of ways. She isn't like anybody else. She's in a class by
+herself. In fact, she has to be, poor thing."
+
+"Why should she be poor thing, with so much to her credit in the way of
+assets?"
+
+"Do you see?--that's something I can't tell you. There's a sort of mystery
+about her. I'm not sure that I understand it very well myself. I only know
+that dear mamma didn't feel that she could take her out, in New York,
+except among our very most intimate friends, where it didn't matter. And
+yet when Lady Bonchurch took her to Washington she got a lot of offers--I
+know that for a fact--and in England, too."
+
+"I seem to be getting deeper in," Strange smiled, with the necessary air
+of speaking carelessly. "Who is Lady Bonchurch?"
+
+"Don't you know? Why, I thought you knew everything. She was the wife of
+the British Ambassador. They took a house at Greenport that year because
+they were afraid about Lord Bonchurch's lungs. It didn't do any good,
+though. He had to give up his post the next winter, and not long after
+that he died. I don't think air is much good for people's lungs, do you? I
+know it wasn't any help to dear mamma. We had all those tedious years at
+Greenport, and in the end--but that's how we came to know Lady Bonchurch,
+and she took a great fancy to Miriam. She said it was a shame a girl like
+that shouldn't have a chance, and so it was. Mamma thought she interfered
+and I suppose she did. Still, you can't blame her much, when she had no
+children of her own, can you?"
+
+"I shouldn't want to blame her if she gave Miriam her chance."
+
+"That's what I've always said. And if Miriam had only wanted to, she could
+have been--well, almost anybody. She had offers and offers in Washington,
+and in England there was a Sir Somebody-or-other who asked her two or
+three times over. He married an actress in the end--and dear mamma thought
+Miriam must be crazy not to have taken him while he was to be had. Dear
+mamma said it would have been such a good thing for me to have some one
+like Miriam--who was under obligations to us, do you see?--in a good
+social position abroad."
+
+"But Miriam didn't see it in that way?"
+
+"She didn't see it in any way. She's terribly exasperating in some
+respects, although she's such a dear. Poor mamma used to be very tried
+about her--and she so ill--and my stepfather going blind--and everything.
+If Miriam had only been in a good social position abroad it would have
+been a place for me to go--instead of having no home--like this."
+
+There was something so touching in her manner that he found it difficult
+not to offer her a home there and then; but the shadows were marching out
+into daylight, and he must watch the procession to the end.
+
+"It seems to have been very inconsiderate of Miriam," he said. "But why do
+you suppose she acted so?"
+
+"Dear mamma thought she was in love with some one--some one we didn't know
+anything about--but I never believed that. In the first place, she didn't
+know any one we didn't know anything about--not before she went to
+Washington with Lady Bonchurch. And besides, she couldn't be in love with
+any one without my knowing it, now could she?"
+
+"I suppose not; unless she made up her mind she wouldn't tell you."
+
+"Oh, I shouldn't want her to tell me. I should see it for myself. She
+wouldn't tell me, in any case--not till things had gone so far that--but I
+never noticed the least sign of it, do you see? and I've a pretty sharp
+eye for that sort of thing at all times. There was just one thing. Dear
+mamma used to say that for a while she used to do a good deal of moping in
+a little studio she had, up in the hills near our house--but you couldn't
+tell anything from that. I've gone and moped there myself when I've felt I
+wanted a good cry--and I wasn't in love with any one."
+
+There was a long silence, during which he sat grave, motionless,
+reflecting. Now and then he placed his extinguished cigarette to his
+lips, with the mechanical motion of a man forgetful of time and place and
+circumstance.
+
+"Well, what are you thinking about?" she inquired, when the pause had
+lasted long enough. He seemed to wake with a start.
+
+"Oh--I--I don't know. I rather fancy I was thinking about--about this
+Miss--after all, you haven't given me any name but Miriam."
+
+"Strange, her name is. The same as yours."
+
+"Oh? You've never told me that."
+
+"Aunt Queenie has, though. But you always seem to shuffle so when it's
+mentioned that I've let it alone. I don't blame you, either; for if
+there's one thing more tedious than another, it's having people for ever
+fussing about your name. There was a girl at our school whose name was
+Fidgett--Jessie Fidgett--a nice, quiet girl, as placid as a church--but I
+do assure you, it got to be so tiresome--well, you know how it would
+be--and so I decided I wouldn't say anything about Miriam's name to you,
+nor about yours to her. Goodness knows, there must be lots of Stranges in
+the world--just as much as Jarrotts."
+
+"So that--after all--her name was Miriam Strange."
+
+"It was, and is, and always will be--if she goes on like this," Miss
+Colfax rejoined, not noticing that he had spoken half-musingly to himself.
+"She was a ward of my step-father's till she came of age," she added, in
+an explanatory tone. "She's a sort of Canadian--or half a Canadian--or
+something--I never could quite make out what. Anyhow, she's a dear. She's
+gone now with my stepfather to Wiesbaden, about his eyes--and you can't
+think what a relief to me it is. If she hadn't, I might have had to go
+myself--and at my age--with all I've got to think about--and my coming
+out--Well, you can see how it would be."
+
+She lifted such sweet blue eyes upon him that he would have seen anything
+she wanted him to see, if he had not been determined to push his inquiries
+until there was nothing left for him to learn.
+
+"Were you fond of him?--your stepfather?"
+
+"Of course--in a way. But everything was so unfortunate I know dear mamma
+thought she was acting for the best when she married him; and if he hadn't
+begun to go blind almost immediately--But he was very kind to mamma, when
+she had to go to the Adirondacks for her health. That was very soon after
+she returned to New York from here--when papa died. But she was so lonely
+in the Adirondacks--and he was a judge--a Mr. Wayne--with a good
+position--and naturally she never dreamed he had anything the matter with
+his eyes--it isn't the sort of thing you'd ever think of asking about
+beforehand--and so it all happened that way, do you see?"
+
+He did see. He could have wished not to see so clearly. He saw with a
+light that dazzled him. Any step would be hazardous now, except one in
+retreat; though he was careful to explain to himself that night that it
+was retreat for reconnoitre, and not for running away. The mere fact that
+the Wild Olive had taken on personality, with a place of some sort in the
+world, brought her near to him again; while the knowledge that he bore her
+name--possibly her father's name--seemed to make him the creation of her
+magic to an even greater degree than he had felt hitherto. He could
+perceive, too, that by living out the suggestions she had made to him in
+the cabin--the Argentine--Stephens and Jarrott--"the very good firm to
+work for"--he had never got beyond her influence, no more than the
+oak-tree gets beyond the acorn that has been its seed. The perception of
+these things would have been enough to puzzle a mind not easily at home in
+the complex, even if the reintroduction of Judge Wayne had not confused
+him further.
+
+It was not astonishing, therefore, that he was seized with a sudden
+longing to get away--a longing for space and solitude, for the pampas and
+the rivers, and, above all, for work. In the free air his spirit would
+throw off its oppression of discomfort, while in a daily routine of
+occupation he often found that difficulties solved themselves.
+
+"If you think that this business of Kent's can get along without me now,"
+he said to Mr. Jarrott, in the private office, next morning, "perhaps I
+had better be getting back to Rosario."
+
+Not a muscle moved in the old man's long, wooden face, but the gray-blue
+eyes threw Strange a curious look.
+
+"Do you want to go?" he asked, after a slight pause.
+
+Strange smiled, with an embarrassment that did not escape observation.
+
+"I've been away longer than I expected--a good deal longer. Things must
+want looking after, I suppose. Green can take my place for a while, but--"
+
+"Green is doing very well--better than I thought he could. He seems to
+have taken a new start, that man."
+
+"I'm not used to loafing, sir. If there's no particular reason for my
+staying on here--"
+
+Mr. Jarrott fitted the tips of his fingers together, and answered slowly.
+
+"There's no particular reason--just now. We've been speaking
+of--of--a--certain changes--But it's too soon--"
+
+"Of course, sir, I don't want to urge my private wishes against--"
+
+"Quite so; quite so; I understand that. A--a--private wishes, you say?"
+
+"Yes, sir; entirely private."
+
+The gray-blue eyes rested on him in a gaze meant to be uninquisitive and
+non-committal, but which, as a matter of fact, expressed something from
+which Strange turned his own glance away.
+
+"Very well; I'd go," the old man said, quietly.
+
+Strange left his cards that afternoon at the house just when he knew Mrs.
+Jarrott would be resting and Miss Jarrott driving with Miss Colfax. At
+seven he took the night boat up the Plata to the Parana.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+
+"Evie, what do you think made Mr. Strange rush away like that? Your uncle
+says he didn't have to--that he might just as well have stayed in town."
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," was Evie's truthful response, as she flitted
+about the dining-room table arranging the flowers before luncheon.
+
+"Your uncle thinks you do," Mrs. Jarrott said, leaning languidly back in
+an arm-chair. Her tone and manner implied that the matter had nothing to
+do with her, though she was willing to speak of it. This was as far as she
+could come to showing an interest in anything outside herself since the
+boys died. She would not have brought up the subject now if the girl's
+pallor during the last few days had not made them uneasy.
+
+"I haven't the least idea," Miss Colfax declared. "I was just as much
+surprised as you were, Aunt Helen."
+
+"Your uncle thinks you must have said something to him--"
+
+"I didn't. I didn't say anything to him whatever. Why should I? He's
+nothing to me."
+
+"Of course he's nothing to you, if you're engaged to Billy Merrow."
+
+Miss Colfax leaned across the table, taking a longer time than necessary
+to give its value to a certain rose.
+
+"I'm not engaged to him now," she said, as if after reflection--"not in
+my own mind, that is."
+
+"But you are in his, I suppose."
+
+"Well, I can't help that, can I?"
+
+"Not unless you write and tell him it's all over."
+
+Miss Colfax stood still, a large red flower raised in protestation.
+
+"That would be the cruellest thing I ever heard of," she exclaimed, with
+conviction. "I don't see how you can bear to make the suggestion."
+
+"Then what are you going to do about it?"
+
+"I needn't do anything just yet. There's no hurry--till I get back to New
+York."
+
+"Do you mean to let him go on thinking--?"
+
+"He'd much rather. Whenever I tell him, it will be too soon for him.
+There's no reason why he should know earlier than he wants to."
+
+"But is that honor, dear?"
+
+"How can I tell?" At so unreasonable a question the blue eyes clouded with
+threatening tears. "I can't go into all those fine points, Aunt Helen, do
+you see? I've just got to do what's right."
+
+Mrs. Jarrot rose with an air of helplessness. She loved her brother's
+daughter tenderly enough, but she admitted to herself that she did not
+understand young girls. Having borne only sons, she had never been called
+upon to struggle with the baffling.
+
+"I hope you're not going to tell any one, Aunt Helen," Evie begged, as
+Mrs. Jarrott seemed about to leave the room. "I shouldn't want Uncle
+Jarrott to know, or Aunt Queenie, either."
+
+"I shall certainly spare them," Mrs. Jarrott said, with what for her was
+asperity. "They would be surprised, to say the least, after the
+encouragement you gave Mr. Strange."
+
+"I didn't give it--he took it. I couldn't stop him."
+
+"Did you want to?"
+
+"I thought of it--sometimes--till I gave up being engaged to Billy."
+
+"And having passed that mental crisis, I suppose it didn't matter."
+
+"Well, the mental crisis, as you call it, left me free. I sha'n't have to
+reproach myself--"
+
+"No; Mr. Merrow will do that for you."
+
+"Of course he will. I expect him to. It would be very queer if he didn't.
+I shall have a dreadful time making him see things my way. And with all
+that hanging over me, I should think I might look for a little sympathy
+from you, Aunt Helen. Lots of girls wouldn't have said anything about it.
+But I told you because I want you to see I'm perfectly straight and
+above-board."
+
+Mrs. Jarrott said no more for the moment, but later in the day she
+confided to her husband that the girl puzzled her. "She mixes me up so
+that I don't know which of us is talking sense." She was not at all sure
+that Evie was fretting about Mr. Strange--though she might be. If she
+wasn't, then she couldn't be well. That was the only explanation of her
+depression and loss of appetite.
+
+"You can bet your life he's thinking of her," Mr. Jarrott said, with the
+lapse from colloquial dignity he permitted himself when he got into his
+house-jacket. "He's praying to her image as if it was a wooden saint."
+
+With the omission of the word wooden this was much what Strange was doing
+at Rosario. Not venturing--in view of all the circumstances--to write to
+her, he could only erect a shrine in his heart, and serve it with a
+devotion very few saints enjoy. He found, however, that absence from her
+did not enable him to form detached and impartial opinions on his
+situation, just as work brought no subconsciously reached solution to the
+problems he had to face. In these respects he was disappointed in the
+results of his unnecessary flight from town.
+
+At the end of two months he was still mentally where he was when he left
+Buenos Aires. His intelligence assured him that he had the right of a man
+who has no rights to seize and carry off what he can; while that nameless
+something else within him refused to ratify the statement. What precise
+part of him raised this obstacle he was at a loss to guess. It could not
+be his conscience, since he had been free of conscience ever since the
+night on Lake Champlain. Still less could it be his heart, seeing that his
+heart was crying out for Evie Colfax more fiercely than a lion roars for
+food. The paralysis of his judgment had become such that he was fast
+approaching the determination to make Love the only arbiter, and let all
+the rest go hang!
+
+He was encouraged in this impulse by the thought that between her and
+himself there was the mysterious bond of something "meant." He believed
+vaguely in a Power, which, with designs as to human destinies, manifests
+its intentions by fitful gleams, vouchsafed somewhat erratically. In this
+way Evie Colfax, as a beautiful, fairy-like child, had been revealed to
+him at the most critical instant of his life. His mind had never hitherto
+gone back willingly to recollections of that night; but now he made the
+excursion into the past with a certain amount of pleasure. He could see
+her still, looking at a picture-book, her face resting on the back of her
+hand, and golden ringlets falling over her bare arm. He could see the
+boy, too. He remembered that his name was Billy. Billy who? he wondered.
+He could hear the sweet, rather fretful voice calling from the shadows:
+
+"Evie dear, it's time to go to bed. Billy, I don't believe they let you
+stay up as late as this at home."
+
+How ridiculous it would have been to remember such trivial details all
+these years if something hadn't been "meant" by it. There was a hint in
+the back of his mind that by the same token something might have been
+"meant" about the Wild Olive, too, but he had not an equal temptation to
+dwell on it. The Wild Olive, he repeated, had never been "his type of
+girl"--not from the very first. It was obviously impossible for a
+superintending Power to "mean" things that were out of the question.
+
+He had got no further than this when the news was conveyed to him by Mrs.
+Green, whom he met accidentally in the street, that Mr. Skinner, the
+second partner, had had a "stroke," and had been ordered to Carlsbad. Mrs.
+Skinner, so Mrs. Green's letters from the Port informed her, was to
+accompany her husband. Furthermore, Miss Colfax was seizing the
+opportunity to travel with them to Southampton, where she would be able to
+join friends who would take her to New York. There was even a rumor that
+Miss Jarrott was to accompany her niece, but Mrs. Green was unable to
+vouch for the truth of it. In any case, she said, there were signs of "a
+regular shaking up," such as comes periodically in any great mercantile
+establishment; and this time, she ventured to hope, Mr. Green would get
+his rights.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+
+The knowledge that it was a juncture at which to execute a daring movement
+acted as an opiate on what would otherwise have been, for Strange, a day
+of frenzy. While to the outward eye he was going quietly about his work,
+he was inwardly calling all his resources to his aid to devise some plan
+for outwitting circumstance. After forty-eight hours of tearing at his
+heart and hacking at his brain, he could think of nothing more original
+than to take the first train down to the Port, ask the girl to be his
+wife, and let life work out the consequence. At the end of two days,
+however, he was saved from a too deliberate defiance of the
+unaccounted-for inner voice, by an official communication from Mr.
+Jarrott.
+
+It was in the brief, dry form of his business conversation, giving no hint
+that there were emotions behind the stilted phraseology, and an old man's
+yearnings. Mr. Skinner was far from well, and would "proceed immediately"
+to Carlsbad. Strange would hand over the business at Rosario to Mr.
+Green--who would become resident manager, _pro tem_ at any rate--and
+present himself in Buenos Aires at the earliest convenient moment. Mr.
+Jarrott would be glad to see him as soon as possible after his arrival.
+
+That was all; but as far as the young man was concerned, it saved the
+situation. On consulting the steamer-list he saw that the Royal Mail
+Steam Packet _Corrientes_ would sail for Southampton in exactly six days'
+time. By dint of working all night with Mr. Green, who was happy to lend
+himself to anything that would show him the last of his rival, he was able
+to take a train to the Port next day. It was half-past six when he arrived
+in Buenos Aires. By half-past eight he had washed, changed to an evening
+suit, and dined. At nine his cab stopped at the door of the house at
+Palermo.
+
+As he followed the elderly man-servant who admitted him, the patio was so
+dim that he made his way but slowly. He made his way but slowly, not only
+because the patio was dim, but because he was trying to get his crowding
+emotions under control before meeting his employer in an interview that
+might be fraught with serious results. For once in his life he was
+unnerved, tremulous, almost afraid. As he passed the open doors and
+windows of unlighted, or dimly lighted, rooms he knew she might be in any
+one of the shadowy recesses. It would have been a relief to hear her at
+the piano, or in conversation, and to know her attention was diverted.
+None the less, he peered about for a glimpse of her, and strained his
+hearing for a sound of her voice. But all was still and silent, except for
+the muffled footfall of the servant leading him to the library at the far
+end of the court.
+
+If she had not moved out unexpectedly from behind a pillar, a little
+fluttering figure in a white frock, he could have kept his self-control.
+If he had not come upon her in this sudden way, when she believed him in
+Rosario, she, too, would not have been caught at a disadvantage. As it
+was, he stood still, as if awe-struck. She gave a little cry, as if
+frightened. It is certain that his movement of the arms was an automatic
+process, not dictated by any order of the brain; and the same may be said
+for the impulse which threw her on his breast. If, after that, the rest
+was not silence, it was little more. What he uttered and she replied was
+scarcely audible to either, though it was understood by both. It was all
+over so quickly that the man-servant had barely thrown open the library
+door, and announced "Mr. Strange," when Strange himself was on the
+threshold.
+
+It was a moment at which to summon all his wits together to attend to
+business; but he was astonished at the coolness and lightness of heart
+with which he did it. After those brief, sudden vows exchanged, it was as
+easy to dismiss Evie Colfax momentarily from his mind as it is to forget
+money troubles on inheriting a fortune. Nevertheless as he got himself
+ready to deal with practical, and probably quite commercial, topics, he
+was fully conscious of the rapture of her love, while he was scarcely less
+aware of a comfort closely akin to joy in feeling that the burden of
+decision had been lifted from him. Since Fate had taken the matter into
+her own hands, she could be charged with the full responsibility.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Jarrott, who was smoking a cigar and sipping his after-dinner coffee,
+was in evening dress, but wore his house-jacket--a circumstance of which
+Strange did not know the significance, though he felt its effect. The old
+man's welcome was not unlike that of a shy father trying to break the
+shackles of reserve with a home-coming son. He pushed Strange gently into
+the most comfortable arm-chair beside which he drew up a small table for
+the cigar-box, the ash-tray, and the matches. He rang for another cup,
+and brought the coffee with his own hands. Strange remembered how often,
+after a hard day's work, he had been made uncomfortable by just such
+awkward, affectionate attentions from poor old Monsieur Durand.
+
+"I didn't expect you so soon," Mr. Jarrott began, when they were both
+seated, "but you've done well to come. I'm afraid we're in for a regular
+upset all round."
+
+"I hope it isn't going to make things harder for you, sir," Strange
+ventured, in the tone of personal concern which his kindly treatment
+seemed to warrant him in taking.
+
+"It won't if I can get the right men into the right places. That'll be the
+tough part of the business. The wool department will suffer by Mr.
+Skinner's absence--he's very ill, in my opinion--and there's only one man
+who can take his place." Strange felt his heart throbbing and the color
+rising to his face. He did not covet the position, for he disliked the
+wool department; but it was undeniably a "rise," and right along the line
+of highest promotion. "That's Jenkins," Mr. Jarrott finished, quietly.
+
+Strange said nothing. After all, he was relieved. Mr. Jarrott did not go
+on at once, but when he did speak Strange fell back into the depths of his
+arm-chair, in an attitude suggestive of physical collapse.
+
+"And if Jenkins came back here," the old man pursued, "you'd have to take
+his place in New York."
+
+Strange concealed his agitation by puffing out successive rings of smoke.
+If he had not long ago considered what he would say should this proposal
+ever be made to him, he would have been even more overcome than he
+actually was. He had meant to oppose the offer with a point-blank refusal,
+but what had happened within the last quarter of an hour had so modified
+this judgment that he could only sit, turning things rapidly over in his
+mind, till more was said.
+
+"There's no harm in--a--telling you," Mr. Jarrott went on again, with that
+hesitancy Strange had begun to associate with important announcements,
+"that--a--Jenkins will be--a--taken into partnership. You won't--a--be
+taken into partnership--a--yet. But you will have a good salary in New
+York. I can--a--promise you that much."
+
+It was because he was unnerved that tears smarted in the young man's eyes
+at the implications in these sentences. He took his time before
+responding, the courtesies of the occasion being served as well by silence
+as by speech.
+
+"I won't try to thank you for all your kindness, sir," he said, with a
+visible effort, "until I've told you something--something that, very
+likely, you won't approve of. I've asked Miss Colfax to marry me, and
+she's consented."
+
+The old man's brows shot up incredulously.
+
+"That's odd," he said, "because not half an hour ago she told my wife
+there was nothing whatever between you--that you hadn't even written to
+her since you went away. Mrs. Jarrott only left this room as you rang the
+door-bell."
+
+"But it was after I rang the door-bell," Strange stammered "that
+I--I--asked her."
+
+"Quick work," was the old man's only comment, but the muscles of his lips
+relaxed slowly, as if rusty from disuse, into one of his rare smiles.
+
+With the assurance of this reception, Strange could afford to sit silent
+till Mr. Jarrott made some further sign.
+
+"By the terms of her father's will," he explained some minutes later, "I'm
+her guardian and trustee. She can't marry without my consent till she
+comes of age. I don't say that in this instance I should--a--withhold my
+consent; but I should feel constrained to--a--give it with conditions."
+
+"If it's anything I can fulfil, sir--"
+
+"No; it wouldn't concern you so much as her. She's very young--and in
+heart she's younger than her age. She knows nothing about men--she can't
+know--and I dare say you're the first young fellow who ever said anything
+to her about--well, you understand what I mean. Mind you, we've no
+objections to you whatever. You are your own credentials; and we take them
+at their face value. You tell me you're an orphan, with no near relations,
+so that there couldn't be any complications on that score. Besides that,
+you're--a likely chap; and I don't mind saying that--a--my ladies--Mrs.
+Jarrott and my sister--have taken rather a fancy to you. It can't do you
+any--a--harm to know as much as that."
+
+Strange murmurred his appreciation, and the old man went on.
+
+"No; you're all right. But, as I said before, she's very young, and if we
+married her to you out of hand we feel that we shouldn't be giving her a
+fair show. We think she ought to have a little more chance to look round
+her, so to speak. In fact, she isn't what ladies call 'out.' She's
+scarcely ever seen a man, except through a window. Consequently, we think
+we must send her back to New York, for a winter at any rate, and trot the
+procession before her. My sister is to undertake it, and they're to sail
+next week. That won't make so much difference to you now, as it would if
+you weren't soon going to follow them."
+
+Strange nodded. He felt himself being wafted to New York, whether he would
+or no.
+
+"Now all I have to say is this: if, when she's regularly started, she
+sees some other young fellow she likes better than you, you're to give her
+up without making a fuss."
+
+"Of course. Naturally, she would have to be free to do as she chose in the
+long run. I'm not afraid of losing her--"
+
+"That'll be your own lookout. You'll be on the spot, and will have as good
+a chance as anybody else. You'll have a better chance; for you'll only
+have to keep what you've won, while any one else would have to start in at
+the beginning. But it's understood that there--a--can be no talk of a
+wedding just yet. She must have next winter to reconsider her promise to
+you, if she wants to."
+
+Strange having admitted the justice of this, the old man rose, and held
+out his hand.
+
+"We'll keep the matter between ourselves--in the family, I mean--for the
+time being," he said, with another slowly breaking smile; "but the ladies
+will want to wish you luck. You must come into the drawing-room and see
+them."
+
+They were half-way to the door when Mr. Jarrott paused.
+
+"And, of course, you'll go to New York? I didn't think it necessary to ask
+you if you cared to make the change."
+
+With the question straight before him, Strange knew that an answer must be
+given. He understood now how it is that there are men and women who find
+it worth their while to thrust their heads into lions' mouths.
+
+"Yes, sir, of course," he answered, quietly; and they went on to join the
+ladies.
+
+
+
+
+
+Part III
+
+Miriam
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+
+On a day when Evie Colfax was nearing Southampton, and Herbert Strange
+sailing northward from the Rio de la Plata, up the coast of Brazil, Miriam
+Strange, in New York, was standing in the embrasure of a large bay-window
+of a fifth-floor apartment, in that section of Fifty-ninth Street that
+skirts the southern limit of Central Park. Her conversation with the man
+beside her turned on subjects which both knew to be only preliminary to
+the business that had brought him in. He inquired about her voyage home
+from Germany, and expressed his sympathy with "poor Wayne" on the
+hopelessness and finality of the Wiesbaden oculist's report. Taking a
+lighter tone, he said, with a gesture toward the vast expanse of autumn
+color on which they were looking down:
+
+"You didn't see anything finer than that in Europe. Come now!"
+
+"No, I didn't--not in its own way. As long as I can look at this I'm
+almost reconciled to living in a town."
+
+As her eyes roamed over the sea of splendor that stretched from their very
+feet, a vision of October gorgeousness against the sky, he was able to
+steal a glance at her. His immediate observation was to the effect that
+the suggestion of wildness--or, more correctly, of a wild origin--was as
+noticeable in her now, a woman of twenty-seven, as it was when he first
+knew her, a girl of nineteen. That she should have brought it with her
+from a childhood passed amid lakes and rivers and hills was natural
+enough--just as it was natural that her voice should have that liquid
+cadence which belongs to people of the forest, though it is rarely caught
+by human speech elsewhere; but that she should have conserved these
+qualities through the training of a woman of the world was more
+remarkable. But there it was, that something woodland-born which London
+and New York had neither submerged nor swept away. It was difficult to say
+in what it consisted, since it eluded the effort to say, "It is this or
+that." It resisted analysis, as it defied description. Though it might
+have been in the look, or in the manner, it conveyed itself to the
+observer's apprehension, otherwise than by the eye or ear, as if it
+appealed to some extra sense. People who had not Charles Conquest's
+closeness of perception spoke of her as "odd," while those who had heard
+the little there was to learn about her, said to each other, "Well, what
+could you expect?" Young men, as a rule, fought shy of her, not so much
+from indifference as from a sense of an indefinable barrier between her
+and themselves so that it was the older men who sought her out. There was
+always some fear on Conquest's part lest the world should so assimilate
+her that her distinctiveness--which was more like an influence that
+radiated than a characteristic that could be seen--would desert her; and
+it was with conscious satisfaction that he noted now, after an absence of
+some months, that it was still there.
+
+He noted, too, the sure lines of her profile--a profile becoming clearer
+cut as she grew older--features wrought with delicacy and yet imbued with
+strength, suggestive of carved ivory. Delicacy imbued with strength was
+betokened, too, by the tall slenderness of her figure, whose silence and
+suppleness of movement came--in Conquest's imagination at least--from her
+far-off forest ancestry.
+
+"I couldn't live anywhere else but here--if it must be in New York," she
+said, turning from the window. "I couldn't do without the sense of woods,
+and space, and sky. I can stand at this window and imagine all sorts of
+things--that the park really does run into the Catskills, as it seems to
+do--that the Catskills run into the Adirondacks--and that the Adirondacks
+take me up to the Laurentides with which my earliest recollections begin."
+
+"I think you're something like Shelley's Venice," he smiled, "a sort of
+'daughter of the earth and ocean.' You never seem to me to belong in just
+the ordinary category--"
+
+She had been afraid of something like this from the minute he was
+announced, and so hastened to cling to the impersonal.
+
+"Then, the apartment is so convenient. Being all on one floor, it is so
+much easier for Mr. Wayne to get about it than if he had stairs to climb.
+I didn't tell you that I've had Mrs. Wayne's room done over for Evie. It's
+so much larger and lighter than her old one--"
+
+He cleared his throat uneasily.
+
+"I remember your saying something of the kind before you went away in the
+spring. It's one of the things I came in to talk about to-day?"
+
+"Indeed?" His change of tone alarmed her. He had taken on the air of a man
+about to break unpleasant news. "Won't you sit down? I'll ring for tea.
+We're not in very good order yet, but the servants can give us that much."
+
+She spoke for the purpose of hiding her uneasiness, just as she felt that
+she should be more sure of herself while handling the teacups than if she
+were sitting idle.
+
+"I've had a letter from Mr. Jarrott," he said, making himself comfortable,
+while she moved the tea-table in front of her. "He wrote to me, partly as
+Stephens and Jarrott's legal adviser, and partly as a friend."
+
+He allowed that information time to sink in before continuing.
+
+"He tells me Miss Jarrott is on her way home, with Evie."
+
+"Yes; Evie herself wrote me that. I got the letter at Cherbourg."
+
+"Then she probably told you about the house."
+
+"The house? What house?"
+
+"The house they've asked me to take for the winter--for Miss Jarrott and
+her."
+
+The tea-things came, giving her the relief of occupation. She said nothing
+for the moment, and her attention seemed concentrated on the rapid, silent
+movements of her own hands among the silver and porcelain. Once she looked
+up, but her glance fell as she saw his small, keen, gray-green eyes
+scanning her obliquely.
+
+"So I'm not to have her?" she said, at last.
+
+"It's only for this winter--"
+
+"Oh, I know. But what's for this winter will be for every winter!"
+
+"And she won't be far away. I've taken the Grant's house in Seventy-second
+Street. They asked for a house in which they could do some entertaining.
+You see, they want to give her a good time--"
+
+"I quite understand all that. Evie has to 'come out.' I've not the least
+doubt that they're managing it in the best way possible. Yes, I see that.
+If I feel a little--well, I won't say hurt--but a little--sorry--it's
+because I've almost brought Evie up. And I suppose I'm the person she's
+most fond of--as far as she's fond of any one."
+
+"I presume she's fond of my nephew, Billy Merrow."
+
+"I hope so. Billy rather teased her into that engagement, you know. She's
+too young to be deeply in love--unless it was with one romantic. And Billy
+isn't that. I'm not sure that there isn't trouble ahead for him."
+
+"Then I shall let him worry through it himself. I've got other things to
+think about."
+
+When she had given him his tea and begun to sip her own, she looked up
+with that particular bright smile which in women means the bracing of the
+courage.
+
+"It'll be all right," she said, with forced conviction. "I know it will.
+It's foolish in me to think I shall miss her, when she will be so near.
+It's only because she and Mr. Wayne are all I've got--"
+
+"They needn't be," he interposed, draining his cup, and setting it down,
+like a man preparing for action.
+
+She knew her own words had exposed her to this, and was vexed with herself
+for speaking in a dangerous situation without due foresight. For a minute
+she could think of nothing to say that would ward off his thrust. She sat
+looking at him rather helplessly, unconsciously appealing to him with her
+eyes to let the subject drop.
+
+If he meant to go on with it, he took his time--flecking a few crumbs from
+his white waistcoat and from his fingertips. In the action he showed
+himself for what he was--a man so neat as just to escape being dapper.
+There was nothing large about him, in either mind or body; while, on the
+contrary, there was much that was keen and able. The incisiveness of the
+face would have been too sharp had it not been saved by the high-bred
+effect of a Roman nose and a handsome mouth and chin. The fair mustache,
+faded now rather than gray, softened the cynicism of the lips without
+concealing it. It was the face of a man accustomed to "see through" other
+men--to "see through" life--compelling its favors from the world rather
+than asking them. The detailed exactness and unobtrusive costliness of
+everything about him, from the pearl in his tie to the polish on his
+boots, were indicative of a will rigorously demanding "the best," and
+taking it. The refusal of it now in the person of the only woman whom he
+had ever wanted as a wife left him puzzled, slightly exasperated, as
+before a phenomenon not to be explained. It was this unusual resistance
+that caused the somewhat impatient tone he took with her.
+
+"It's all nonsense--your living as you do--like a professional trained
+nurse."
+
+"The life of a professional trained nurse isn't nonsense."
+
+"It is for you."
+
+"On the contrary; it's for me, more than for almost any one, to justify my
+right to being in the world."
+
+"Oh, come now! Don't let us begin on that."
+
+"I don't want to begin on it. I'd much rather not. But if you don't, you
+throw away the key that explains everything about me."
+
+"All right," he rejoined, in an argumentative tone. "Let's talk about it,
+then. Let's have it out. You feel your position; granted. Mind you, I've
+always said you wouldn't have done so if it hadn't been for Gertrude
+Wayne. The world to-day has too much common sense to lay stress on a
+circumstance of that kind. Believe me, nobody thinks about it but
+yourself. Did Lady Bonchurch? Did any of her friends? You've got it a
+little bit--just a little bit--on the brain; and the fault isn't yours; it
+belongs to the woman whose soul is gone, I hope, where it's freed from the
+rules of a book of etiquette."
+
+"She meant well--"
+
+"Oh, every failure, and bungler, and mischief-maker means well. That's
+their charter. I'm not concerned with that. I'm speaking of what she did.
+She fixed it in your mind that you were like a sapling sprung from a seed
+blown outside the orchard. You think you can minimize that accident by
+bringing forth as good as any to be found within the pale. Consequently
+you've taken a poor, helpless, blind man off the hands of the people whose
+duty it is to look after him--and who are well able to do it--"
+
+"That isn't the reason," she declared, flushing. "If Mr. Wayne and I live
+together it's because we're used to each other--and in a way he has taken
+the place of my father."
+
+"Oh, come now! That's all very fine. But haven't you got in the back of
+your mind the thought that the wild tree that's known by its good fruit is
+the one that's best worth grafting?"
+
+"If I had--" she began, with color deepening.
+
+"If you had, you'd simply be taking a long way round, when there's a short
+cut home. I'm the orchard, Miriam. All you've got to do is to walk into
+it--with me."
+
+A warmer tone came into his voice as he uttered the concluding words,
+adding to her discomfort. She moved the tea-things about, putting them
+into an unnecessary state of order, before she could reply.
+
+"There's a reason why I couldn't do that," she said, meeting his sharp
+eyes with one of her fugitive glances. "I would have given it to you
+when--when you brought up this subject last spring, only you didn't ask
+me."
+
+"Well, what is it?"
+
+"I couldn't love you."
+
+She forced herself to bring out the words distinctly. He leaned back in
+his chair, threw one leg across the other, and stroked the thin, colorless
+line of his mustache.
+
+"No, I suppose you couldn't," he said, quietly, after considering her
+words.
+
+"So that my answer has to be final."
+
+"I don't see that. Love is only one of the many motives for marriage--and
+not, as I understand it, the highest one. The divorce courts are strewn
+with the wrecks of marriages made for love. Those that stand the test of
+life and time are generally those that have been contracted from some of
+the more solid--and worthier--motives."
+
+"Then I don't know what they are."
+
+"I could explain them to you if you'd let me. As for love--if it's needed
+at all--I could bring enough into hotch-potch as the phrase goes, to do
+for two. I'm over fifty years of age. It never occurred to me that you
+could--care about me--as you might have cared for some one else. But as
+far as I can see, there's no one else. If there was, perhaps I shouldn't
+persist."
+
+She looked up with sudden determination.
+
+"If there was any one else, you--would consider that as settling the
+question?"
+
+"I might. I shouldn't bind myself. It would depend."
+
+"Then I'll tell you; there _is_ some one else." The words caused her to
+flush so painfully that she hastened to qualify them. "That is, there
+might have been."
+
+"What do you mean by--might have been?"
+
+"I mean that, though I don't say I've ever--loved--any man, there was a
+man I might have loved, if it had been possible."
+
+"And why wasn't it possible?"
+
+"I'd rather not tell you. It was a long time ago. He went away. He never
+came back again."
+
+"Did he say he'd come back again?"
+
+She shook her head. She tried to meet his gaze steadily, but it was like
+facing a search-light.
+
+"Were you what you would call--engaged?"
+
+"Oh no." Her confusion deepened. "There was never anything. It was a long
+time ago. I only want you to understand that if I could care for any one
+it would be for him. And if I married you--and he came back--"
+
+"Are you expecting him back?"
+
+She was a long time answering the question. She would not have answered it
+at all had it not been in the hope of getting rid of him.
+
+"Yes."
+
+He took the declaration coolly, and went on.
+
+"Why? What makes you think he'll come?"
+
+"I have no reason. I think he will--that's all."
+
+"Where is he now?"
+
+"I haven't the faintest idea."
+
+"Hasn't he ever written to you?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"And you don't know what's become of him?"
+
+"Not in the least."
+
+"And yet you expect him back?"
+
+She nodded assent.
+
+"You're waiting for him?"
+
+Once more she braced herself to look him in the eyes and answer boldly.
+
+"I am."
+
+He leaned back in his chair and laughed, not loudly, but in good-humored
+derision.
+
+"If that's all that stands between us--"
+
+To her relief he said no more; though she was disappointed that the
+subject should be dropped in a way that made it possible to bring it up
+again. As he was taking his leave she renewed the attempt to end the
+matter once for all.
+
+"I know you think me foolish--" she began.
+
+"No, not foolish; only romantic."
+
+"Then, romantic. Romance is as bad as folly when one is twenty-seven. I
+confess it," she went on, trying to smile, "only that you may understand
+that it's a permanent condition which I sha'n't get over."
+
+"Oh yes, you will."
+
+"Things happened--long ago--such as don't generally happen; and so--I'm
+waiting for him. If he never comes--then I'd rather go
+on--waiting--uselessly."
+
+It was hard to say, but it was said. He laughed again--not quite so
+derisively as before--and went away.
+
+When he had gone, she resumed her seat behind the tea-table. She sat
+looking absently at the floor and musing on the words she had just spoken.
+Not in all the seven or eight years since Norrie Ford went away had she
+acknowledged to her own heart what, within the last few minutes, she had
+declared aloud. The utmost she had ever owned to herself was that she
+"could have loved him." When she refused other men, she did not confess to
+waiting for him; she evaded the question with herself, and found pretexts.
+She would have continued doing so with Conquest, had not his persistency
+driven her to her last stand. But now that she had uttered the words for
+his benefit, she had to repeat them for her own. Notwithstanding her
+passionate love of woods, winds, and waters, she had always been so sane,
+so practical, in the things that pertained to daily life that she
+experienced something like surprise at detecting herself in this condition
+of avowed romance. She had actually been waiting for Norrie Ford to
+return, and say what he had told her he _would_ say, should it ever become
+possible! She was waiting for him still! If he never came she would rather
+go on waiting for him--uselessly! The language almost shocked her; but now
+that the thing was spoken she admitted it was true. It was a light thrown
+on herself--if not precisely a new light, at least one from which all
+shades and colored wrappings that delude the eye and obscure the judgment
+had been struck away.
+
+She smiled to herself to think how little Conquest understood her when he
+ascribed to her the ambition to graft her ungarnered branch on the stock
+of a duly cultivated civilization. She might have had that desire once,
+but it was long past. It was a kind of glory to her now to be outside the
+law--with Norrie Ford. There they were exiles together, in a wild paradise
+with joys of its own, not less sweet than those of any Eden. She had faced
+more than once the question of being "taken into the orchard," as Conquest
+put it. The men who had asked her at various times to marry them had been
+like himself, men of middle age, or approaching it--men of assured
+position either by birth or by attainment. As the wife of any one of them
+her place would have been unquestioned. She had not rejected their offers
+lightly, or from any foregone conclusion. She had taken it as a duty to
+weigh each one seriously as it came; and, leaving the detail of love
+apart, she had asked herself whether it was not right for her to seize the
+occasion of becoming "some one" in the world. Once or twice the position
+offered her was so much in accordance with her tastes that her refusal
+brought with it a certain vague regret. "But I couldn't do it," were the
+words with which she woke from every dream of seeing herself mistress in a
+quiet English park, or a big house in New York. Her habits might be those
+of civilized mankind; but her heart was listening for a call from beyond
+the limits in which men have the recognized right to live. She could put
+no shackles on her freedom to respond to it--if it ever came.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+
+She discovered that Norrie Ford had come back, and that some of her
+expectations were fulfilled by finding him actually seated beside her one
+evening at dinner.
+
+Miss Jarrott's taste in table light was in the direction of candles
+tempered by deep-red shades. As no garish electricity was allowed to
+intrude itself into this soft glow, the result was that only old
+acquaintances among her guests got a satisfactory notion of each other's
+features. It was with a certain sense of discovery that, by peering
+through the rose-colored twilight, Miriam discerned now a Jarrott or a
+Colfax, now an Endsleigh or a Pole--faces more or less well known to her
+which she had not had time to recognize during the few hurried minutes in
+the drawing-room.
+
+It was the dinner of which Evie had said, in explaining her plan of
+campaign to Miriam, "We must kill off the family first of all." It was
+plain that she regarded the duty as a bore; but she was too worldly wise
+not to see that her bread cast upon the waters would return to her. Most
+of the Jarrotts were important; some were wealthy; and one--Mrs. Endsleigh
+Jarrott--was a power in such matters as assemblies and cotillons. The
+ladies Colfax were little less influential; and while the sphere of the
+Poles and Endsleighs was in the world of art, letters, and scholarship,
+rather than in that of fashion and finance, they had the uncontested
+status of good birth. To Evie they represented just so much in the way of
+her social assets, and she was quick in appraising them at their correct
+relative values. Some would be good for a dinner given in her honor,
+others for a dance. The humblest could be counted on for a theatre-party
+or a "tea." She was skilful, too, in presenting her orphan state with a
+touching vividness that enlisted their sympathies on behalf of "poor
+Jack's," or "poor Gertrude's," pretty little girl, according to the side
+of the house on which they recognized the relationship.
+
+With the confusion incidental to the arrival from South America, the
+settling into a new house, and the ordering of new clothes, Miriam had had
+little of the old intimate intercourse with Evie during the six weeks
+since the latter's return. There was no change in their mutual relation;
+it was only that Evie was caught up into the glory of the coming winter,
+and had no time for the apartment in Fifty-ninth Street. It was with
+double pleasure, therefore, that Miriam responded one day to Evie's
+invitation to "come and look at my things," which meant an inspection of
+the frocks and hats that had just come home. They lay about now, in clouds
+like a soft summer sunset, or in gay spots of feathers and flowers, on the
+bed and the sofa in Evie's room, and filled all the chairs except the one
+on which Miriam had retreated into the farthest corner of the bay-window.
+Seated there, not quite in profile, against the light, her head turned and
+slightly inclined, in order to get a better view of Evie's finery, her
+slender figure possessed a sort of Vandyke grace, heightened rather than
+diminished by the long plumes and rich draperies of the month's fashion.
+Evie flitted between closets, wardrobes, and drawers, prattling while she
+worked off that first event of her season, in which the family were to be
+"killed off." She recited the names of those who would "simply _have_ to
+be asked" and of those who could conveniently be omitted.
+
+"And, of course, Popsey Wayne must come," she observed in her practical
+little way. "I dare say he won't want to, poor dear, but it wouldn't do if
+he didn't. Only you, you dear thing, will have to go in with him--to pilot
+him and look after him when the dishes are passed. But I'm going to have
+some one nice on your other side, do you see?--some one awfully nice. We
+shall have to ask a few people outside the family, just to give it relief,
+and save it from looking like Christmas."
+
+"You'll have Billy, I suppose."
+
+Evie took the time to deposit a lace blouse in a drawer, as softly as a
+mother lays a sleeping babe to rest.
+
+"No, I sha'n't ask Billy," she said, while she was still stooping.
+
+"Won't he think that queer?"
+
+"I hope so." She turned from the drawer, and lifted a blue gossamer
+creation from the bed. Miriam smiled indulgently.
+
+"Why? What's the matter? Have you anything to punish him for?"
+
+"I've nothing to punish him for; I've only got something I want to--bring
+home to him." She paused in the middle of the room, with her blue burden
+held in her outstretched arms, somewhat like a baby at a christening. "I
+might as well tell you, Miriam, first as last. You've got to know it some
+time, though I don't want it talked about just yet. I've broken my
+engagement to Billy."
+
+"Broken your engagement! Why, I saw Billy myself this morning. I met him
+as I was coming over. He said he was here last night, and seemed
+particularly cheerful."
+
+"He doesn't know it yet. I'm doing it--by degrees."
+
+"You're doing it by--what?" Miriam rose and came toward her, stopping
+midway to lean on the foot-rail of the bed. "Evie darling, what do you
+mean?"
+
+Evie's eyes brimmed suddenly, and her lip trembled.
+
+"If you're going to be cross about it--"
+
+"I'm not going to be cross about it, but I want you to tell me exactly
+what you're doing."
+
+"Well, I'm telling you. I've broken my engagement, and I want to let Billy
+know it in the kindest way. I don't want to hurt his feelings. You
+wouldn't like me to do that yourself. I'm trying to bring him where he'll
+see things just as I do."
+
+"And may I ask if you're--getting him there?"
+
+"I shall get him there in time. I'm doing lots of things to show him."
+
+"Such as what?"
+
+"Such as not asking him to the dinner, for one thing. He'll know from that
+there's something wrong. He'll make a fuss, and I shall be disagreeable.
+Little by little he'll get to dislike me--and then--"
+
+"And how long do you think it will take for that good work to be
+accomplished?"
+
+"I don't see that that matters. I suppose I may take all the time I need.
+We're both young--"
+
+"And have all your lives to give to it. Is that what you mean?"
+
+"I don't want to give all my life to it, because--I may as well tell you
+that, too, while I'm about it--because I'm engaged to some one else."
+
+"Oh, Evie!"
+
+Miriam went back, like a person defeated, to the chair from which she had
+just risen, while Evie buried herself in the depths of a closet, where she
+remained long enough, as she hoped, to let Miriam's first astonishment
+subside. On coming out she assumed a virtuous tone.
+
+"You see now why I simply _had_ to break with Billy. I couldn't possibly
+keep the two things going together--as some girls would. I'm one of those
+who do right, whatever happens. It's very hard for me--but if people would
+only be a little more sympathetic--"
+
+It was some minutes before Miriam knew just what to say. Even when she
+began to speak she doubted her capacity for making herself understood.
+
+"Evie darling," she said, trying to speak as for a child's comprehension,
+"this is a very serious matter. I don't think you realize how serious it
+is. If you find you don't love Billy well enough, of course you must ask
+him to release you. I should be sorry for that, but I shouldn't blame you.
+But until you've done it you can't give your word to any one."
+
+"Well, I must say I never heard anything like that," Evie declared,
+indignantly. "You do have the strangest ideas, Miriam. Dear mamma used to
+say so, too. I try to defend you, but you make it difficult for me, I must
+say. I never knew any one like you for making things more complicated than
+they need be. You talk of my asking Billy to release me when I released
+myself long ago--in my own mind. That's where I have to look. I must do
+things according to my conscience--and when that's clear--"
+
+"It isn't only a case of conscience, dear; it's one of common sense.
+Conscience has a way of sometimes mistaking the issue, whereas common
+sense can generally be trusted to be right."
+
+"Of course, if you're going to talk that way, Miriam, I don't see what's
+left for me to answer; but it doesn't sound very reverent, I must say. I'm
+trying to look at things in the highest light, and it doesn't strike me as
+the highest light to be unkind to Billy when I needn't be. If you think I
+ought to treat him cruelly you must keep your opinion, but I know you'll
+excuse me if I keep mine."
+
+She carried her head loftily as she bore another gown into the adjoining
+darkness, and Miriam waited patiently till she emerged again.
+
+"Does your other--I hardly know what to call him--does your other fiancA(C)
+know about Billy?"
+
+"Why on earth should he? What good would that do? It will be all over--I
+mean about Billy--before I announce my second engagement, and as the one
+to Billy will never be announced at all there's no use in saying anything
+about it."
+
+"But suppose Billy himself finds out?"
+
+"Billy won't find out anything whatever until I get ready to let him."
+
+The finality of this retort reduced Miriam to silence. She allowed some
+minutes to pass before saying, with some hesitation:
+
+"I suppose you don't mind my knowing--who it is?"
+
+Evie was prepared for this question and answered it promptly.
+
+"I shan't mind your knowing--by-and-by. I want you to meet him first.
+When you've once seen him, I know you'll be more just to me. Till then I'm
+willing to go on being--misunderstood."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+During the three more weeks that intervened before the family dinner
+Miriam got no further light on Evie's love-affairs. She purposely asked no
+questions through fear of seeming to force the girl's confidence, but she
+obtained some relief from thinking that the rival suitor could be no other
+than a certain young Graham, of whom she had heard much from Evie during
+the previous year. His chances then had stood higher than Billy Merrow's;
+and nothing was more possible than a discovery on Evie's part that she
+liked him the better of the two. It was a situation that called for
+sympathy for Billy, but not otherwise for grave anxiety, so that Miriam
+could wait quietly for further out-pourings of Evie's heart, and give her
+mind to the mysteries incidental to the girl's social presentation to the
+world.
+
+Of the ceremonies attendant on this event the "killing off" of the family
+was the one Miriam dreaded most. It was when she came within the periphery
+of this powerful, meritorious, well-to-do circle, representing whatever
+was most honorable in New York, that she chiefly felt herself an alien.
+She could scarcely have explained herself in this respect, since many of
+the clan had been kind to her, and none had ever shown her incivility. It
+was when she confronted them in the mass, when she saw their solidarity,
+their mutual esteem, their sum total of wealth, talents, and good works,
+that she grew conscious of the difference of essence between herself and
+them. Not one of them but had the right to the place he sat in!--a right
+maintained by himself, but acquired by his fathers before him--not one of
+them but was living in the strength of some respectable tradition of which
+he could be proud! Endsleigh Jarrott's father, for example, had been a
+banker, Reginald Pole's the president of a university, Rupert Colfax's a
+judge; and it was something like that with them all. In the midst of so
+much that was classified, certified, and regular she was as obviously a
+foreign element as a fly in amber. She came in as the ward of Philip
+Wayne, who himself was a new-comer and an intruder, since he entered
+merely as "poor Gertrude's second husband," by a marriage which they all
+considered a mistake.
+
+With the desire to be as unobtrusive as possible, she dressed herself in
+black, without ornament of any kind, unaware of the fact that with her
+height of figure, her grace of movement, her ivory tint, and that
+expression of hers which disconcerted people because it was first
+appealing and then proud, she would be more than ever conspicuous against
+the background of brilliant toilets, fine jewels, and assured manners
+which the family would produce for the occasion. As a matter of fact,
+there was a perceptible hush in the hum of talk as she made her entry into
+the drawing-room, ostensibly led by Philip Wayne, but really leading him.
+As she paused near the door, half timid, half bewildered, looking for her
+hostess, it did not help her to feel at ease to see Mrs. Endsleigh
+Jarrott--a Rubens _Maria de Medici_ in white satin and pearls--raise her
+lorgnette and call on a tall young man who stood beside her to take a
+look. There was no time to distinguish anything further before Miss
+Jarrott glided up, with mincing graciousness, to shake hands.
+
+"How do you do! How do you do! So glad you've come. I think you must know
+nearly every one here, so I needn't introduce any one. I hardly ever
+introduce. It's funny, isn't it? They say it's an English custom not to
+introduce, but I don't do it just by nature. I wonder why I
+shouldn't?--but I never do--or almost never. So if you don't happen to
+know your neighbors at table just speak. It was Evie who arranged where
+every one was to sit. _I_ don't know. They say that's English, too--just
+to speak. I believe it's quite a recognized thing in London to say, 'Is
+this your bread or mine?' and then you know each other. Isn't it funny?
+Now I think we're all here. Will you take in Miriam, Mr. Wayne?"
+
+A hasty embrace from Evie--an angelic vision in white--was followed by a
+few words of greeting from Charles Conquest after which Miriam saw Miss
+Jarrott take the arm of Bishop Endsleigh, and the procession began to
+move.
+
+At table Miriam was glad of the dim, rose-colored light. It offered her a
+seclusion into which she could withdraw, tending her services to Wayne.
+She was glad, too, that the family, having so much to say to itself, paid
+her no special attention. She was sufficiently occupied in aiding the
+helpless blind man beside her, and repeating for his benefit the names of
+their fellow-guests. As the large party talked at the top of its lungs,
+Miriam's quiet voice, with its liquid, almost contralto, quality, reached
+her companion's ears unheard by others. She began with Bishop Endsleigh
+who was on Miss Jarrott's right. Then came Mrs. Stephen Colfax; after her
+Mr. Endsleigh Jarrott, who had on his right Mrs. Reginald Pole. Mrs.
+Pole's neighbor was Charles Conquest, whom she shared with Mrs. Rodney
+Wrenn. Now and then Wayne himself would give proof of that increased
+acuteness in his hearing of which he had spoken more than once since his
+blindness had become total. "Colfax Yorke is here," he observed at one
+time. "I hear his voice. He's sitting on our side of the table." "Mrs.
+Endsleigh Jarrott is next but one to you," he said at another time. "She's
+airing her plans for the reconstruction of New York society."
+
+So for a while they kept one another in small talk, affecting the same
+sort of vivacity that obtained around them. It was not till dinner was
+half over that he asked in an undertone:
+
+"Who is your neighbor?"
+
+"I don't know," she managed to whisper back. "He's so taken up with Mrs.
+Endsleigh Jarrott that he hasn't looked this way. I don't think he's any
+member of the family."
+
+"He must be," Wayne replied. "I know his voice. I have some association
+with it, but just what I can't remember."
+
+Miriam herself listened to hear him speak, catching only an irrelevant
+word or two.
+
+"He sounds English," she said then.
+
+"No, he isn't English. That's not my association. It's curious how the
+mind acts. Since I became--since my sight failed--my memory instinctively
+brings me voices instead of faces, when I want to recall anything. Aren't
+you going to speak to him? You've got the formula: Is this your bread or
+mine?"
+
+"It's very convenient, but I don't think I shall use it."
+
+"He'd like you to, I know. I heard him say to Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott as we
+came in--while Queenie Jarrott was talking--that you were he most
+strikingly beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life. How's that for a
+compliment from a perfect stranger?"
+
+"I certainly sha'n't speak to him now. A man who could say that to Mrs.
+Endsleigh, after having seen _her,_ must be wofully wanting in tact."
+
+Mary Pole on Wayne's right claimed his attention and Miriam was left her
+own mistress. Almost at once her attention was arrested by hearing Mrs.
+Endsleigh Jarrott saying in that appealing voice which she counted as the
+secret of her success with men:
+
+"Now do give me your frank opinion, Mr. Strange. You don't know how much I
+should like it. It's far from my idea that we should slavishly copy
+London. You know that, don't you? We've an entirely different stock of
+materials to work with. But I'm firmly convinced that by working on the
+London model we should make society far more general, far more
+representative, and far--oh, _far_--more interesting! Now, what do _you_
+think? Do give me your frank opinion."
+
+Mr. Strange! Her own name was sufficiently uncommon to cause Miriam to
+glance sidewise, in her rapid, fugitive way, at the person who bore it.
+His face was turned from her as he bent toward Mrs. Jarrott, but again she
+heard his voice, and this time more distinctly.
+
+"I'm afraid my opinion wouldn't be of much value. Nevertheless, I know you
+must be right."
+
+"Now I'm disappointed in you," Mrs. Jarrott said, with pretty
+reproachfulness. "You're not taking me seriously. Oh, I see, I see. You're
+just an ordinary man, after all; when I thought for a minute you might
+be--well, a little different. Do take some of that asparagus," she added
+in another tone. "It's simply delicious."
+
+It was while he was helping himself to this delicacy that Miriam got the
+first clear view of his face, half turned as it was toward her. He seemed
+aware that she was observing him, for during the space of some seconds he
+held the silver implements idle in his hands, while he lifted his eyes to
+meet hers. The look they exchanged was significant and long, and yet she
+was never quite sure that she recognized him then. For the minute she was
+only conscious of a sudden, inward shock, to which she was unable to
+ascribe a cause. Something had happened, though she knew not what. Having
+in the course of a few minutes regained her self-control, she could only
+suppose that it was a repetition of that unreasoning panic which had now
+and then brought her to the verge of fainting, when by chance, in London,
+Paris, or New York, she caught a glimpse of some tall figure that carried
+her imagination back to the cabin in the Adirondacks. She had always
+thought that he might appear in some crowd and take her by surprise. She
+had never expected to find him in a gathering that could be called social.
+Still less had she looked to meet him like this, with Philip Wayne who had
+sentenced him to death not three feet away. The mere idea was
+preposterous. And yet--
+
+She glanced at him again. He was listening attentively while Mrs.
+Endsleigh Jarrott's voice ran on:
+
+"People say our society has no traditions. It _has_ traditions. It has the
+traditions of the country village, and it has never outgrown them. We're
+nothing but the country village writ large. New York, Philadelphia,
+Boston, Baltimore--we're the country village over again, with its
+narrowness its sets, its timidity, all writ _so_ large that they hide
+anything like a real society from us. Now isn't it so, Mr. Strange? Don't
+be afraid to give me your frank opinion because that's what I'm asking
+for."
+
+Miriam herself made an effort to seem to be doing something that would
+enable her to sit unnoticed. She was glad that Wayne was engaged by Mary
+Pole so that he could no longer listen to the voice that wakened his
+recollections. She looked again at the tall, carefully dressed man beside
+her, so different in all his externals from anything she imagined Norrie
+Ford could ever become. Norrie Ford was an outlaw and this was a man of
+the world. She felt herself being reassured--and yet disappointed. Her
+first feeling of faintness passed away, enabling her to face the situation
+with greater calm. Under cover of the energetic animation characteristic
+of every American dinner-party at which the guests are intimate, she had
+leisure to think over the one or two hints that were significant. Now and
+then a remark was addressed to her across the table to which she managed
+to return a reply sufficiently apt to give her the appearance of being in
+touch with what was going on around her; but in reality she was taking in
+the fact, with the spirit rather than the mind, that Norrie Ford had
+returned.
+
+She never understood just how and when that assurance came to her. It was
+certainly not by actual recognition of his features, as it was not by
+putting together the few data that came under her observation. Thinking it
+over in after years, she could only say that she "just found herself
+_knowing it_." He was there--beside her. Of that she had no longer a
+doubt.
+
+Her amazement did not develop all at once. Indeed, the position had an odd
+naturalness, like something in a dream. The element of impossibility in
+what had happened was so great that for the time being her mind refused to
+meet it. She was only aware of that vague sense of satisfaction, of inward
+peace, that comes when long-desired ends have been fulfilled.
+
+The main fact being accepted, her outer faculties could respond to the
+call that a dinner-party makes on its least important member. When the
+conversation at her end of the table became general she took her part, and
+later engaged in a three-cornered discussion with Wayne and Mary Pole on
+the subject of an endowed theatre; but all the while her subconscious mind
+was struggling for a theory to account for Norrie Ford's presence in that
+particular room and in that unexpected company. The need of some
+immediate, plausible reason for so astounding an occurrence deadened her
+attention to the comparative quietness with which she accepted his
+coming--now that she had regained her self-control, although she was
+conscious of stirrings of wild joy in this evidence that he had been true
+to her. Had she recalled what she had said to him eight years ago as to
+the Argentine, and the "very good firm to work for," she would have had an
+easy clew, but that had passed from her mind almost with the
+utterance--certainly with his departure He had gone out into the world,
+leaving no more trace behind him than the bird that has flown southward.
+Not once during the intervening years did the thought cross her mind that
+words which she had spoken nearly at haphazard could have acted as a guide
+to him, while still less did she dream that they could have led him into
+the very seat beside her which he was occupying now.
+
+Nevertheless, he was there, and for the present she could dispense with
+the knowledge of the adventures that had brought him. He was there, and
+that was the reason of his coming in itself. He had hewn his way through
+all difficulties to reach her--as Siegfried came to Brunhild, over the
+mountains and through the fire. He had found the means--both the means
+and the daring--to enter and make himself accepted in her own world, her
+own circle, her own family--in so far as she had a family--and to sit
+right down at her side.
+
+She was not surprised at it. She assured herself of that. At the very
+instant when she was saying to Mary Pole, across Philip Wayne's white
+waistcoat, that she had always thought of endowed institutions of creative
+art as belonging to the races of weaker individual initiative--at the very
+instant when she was saying that, she was repeating to herself that the
+directness, the high-handedness, and the success of this kind of exploit
+was exactly what she would have expected of Norrie Ford. It was what she
+_had_ expected of him--in one form or another. It was with a sense of
+inward pride that she remembered that her faith in him had never wavered,
+even though it was not until Conquest forced her that she had confessed
+the fact. She glanced at Conquest across the table now and caught his eye.
+He smiled at her and raised his glass, as though to drink to her health.
+She smiled in return, daringly, triumphantly, as she would not have
+ventured to do an hour ago. She could see him flush with pleasure--a rare
+occurrence--at her unusual graciousness, while she was only rejoicing in
+her escape from him. Under the shadow of the tall man beside her, who had
+achieved the impossible in order to be loyal to her, she felt for the
+first time in her life that she had found a shelter. It mattered nothing
+that he was engrossed with Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott, and that, after the one
+glance, he had not turned toward her again; she was sure he knew that she
+understood him, and that he recognized her power to wait in patience to
+have the mystery explained.
+
+In the drawing-room he was introduced to her. Miss Jarrott led him up and
+made the presentation.
+
+"Miss Strange, I want you to know Mr. Strange. Now isn't that funny? You
+can't think how many times I've thought how interesting it would be to see
+you two meet. It's so unusual to have the same name, especially when it's
+such a strange name as yours. There's a pun. I simply can't help making
+them. My brother says I inherited all the sense of humor in the family. I
+don't know why I do it, but I always see a joke. Can you tell me why I do
+it?"
+
+Neither Strange nor Miriam knew what replies they made, but a conversation
+of some sort went on for a minute or two, after which Miss Jarrott whisked
+him away to present him to some one else. When he had gone Miriam was left
+with a feeling of spiritual chill. While it was impossible to betray a
+previous acquaintance before Miss Jarrott, there had been nothing whatever
+in his bearing to respond to the recognition in hers. There was something
+that might have been conveyed from mind to mind without risk, and he had
+not used the opportunity. In as far as he addressed her at all it had been
+through Miss Jarrott, and he had looked around her and over her rather
+than directly into her eyes.
+
+During the rest of the evening she caught glimpses of him only in the
+distance, talking now to one member of the family, now to another. It was
+clear that Miss Jarrott was, in a way, showing him off, and that he was
+received as some one of importance. She admired the coolness with which he
+carried himself, while her inherited instincts gave her a curious thrill
+of content that these law-making, law-keeping people should be duped.
+
+She hoped he would find an occasion for passing again in her direction.
+If she could have only a word with him it might help to make the situation
+intelligible. But he did not return, and presently she noticed, in looking
+about the room, that he had disappeared. She, too, was eager to be gone.
+Only in solitude could she get control of the surging thoughts, the
+bewildering suggestions, the contradictory suppositions that crowded it on
+her. She saw how useless it was to try to build a theory without at least
+one positive fact to go on.
+
+It was just as they were departing that her opportunity to ask a question
+came. They had said their good-nights to Miss Jarrott and were in the
+hall, waiting for the footman to call their carriage, when Evie, whom they
+had not wanted to disturb, came fluttering after them. She was flushed but
+radiant, and flung herself into Miriam's arms.
+
+"You dear thing! I haven't had time to say a word to you or Popsey Wayne
+the entire evening. But you'll excuse me, won't you? I've had to be civil
+to them all--do you see?--and do them up well. I knew you wouldn't mind. I
+wanted you to have a good time, but I'm afraid you haven't."
+
+"Oh yes," Miriam said, disengaging herself from the girl's embrace. "It's
+been wonderful--it really has. But, Evie dear," she whispered, drawing her
+away from the group of ladies who stood cloaked and hooded, also waiting
+for their carriages, "tell me--who is that Mr. Strange who sat next to
+me?"
+
+Evie's eyes went heavenward, and she took on a look of rapture.
+
+"I hope you liked him."
+
+"I didn't have much chance to see. But why do you hope it?"
+
+"Because--don't you see? Oh, surely you _must_ see--because--he's the
+one."
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+
+Enlightenment came to her in the carriage while she was driving homeward.
+During the five or ten minutes since Evie had spoken she, Miriam, had been
+sitting still and upright in the darkness, making no further attempt to
+see reason through this succession of bewilderments from sheer inability
+to contend against them. For the time being, at any rate, the struggle was
+too much for her. The issues raised by Evie's overwhelming announcement
+were so confusing that she must postpone their consideration. She must
+postpone everything but her own tumultuous passion, which had to be faced
+and mastered instantly. She was fighting with herself, with her own wild
+inward cries of protest, anger, jealousy, and self-pity, trying to
+distinguish each from the others and to silence it by appeal to her years
+of romantic folly, when suddenly Wayne spoke, in the cheery tone of a man
+who has unexpectedly passed a pleasant evening.
+
+"I had a nice long chat with the Great Unknown, who was sitting beside
+you, when the ladies left the dining-room. Who do you think he is?"
+
+After the shocks of the last two hours, she was prepared to hear Wayne
+tell her, in an offhand way, that it was Norrie Ford. Nevertheless, she
+summoned what was left of her stunned faculties and did her best to speak
+carefully.
+
+"I heard them call him Mr. Strange--"
+
+"Odd that was, wasn't it? But it isn't such a very uncommon name. I've met
+other Stranges--"
+
+"Oh yes. So have I."
+
+"Well, who do you think he is? Why, he's Stephens and Jarrott's new man in
+New York. He's taken Jenkins's place. You remember Jenkins, don't you?
+That little man with a lisp. I had a nice long chat with him--Strange, I
+mean. He tells me he's a New-Yorker by birth, but that he went out to the
+Argentine after his father failed in business. Well, _he_ won't fail in
+business, _I_ bet a penny. He's tremendously enthusiastic over the
+Argentine, too. Showed he had his head put on the right way when he went
+there. Wonderful country--the United States of South America some people
+call it. We're missing our opportunities out there. Great volume of trade
+flowing to Europe of which we had almost the monopoly at one time. I had a
+nice long chat with him."
+
+Her tired emotions received a new surprise as Wayne's words directed her
+thoughts to the morning when she had made to Ford the first suggestion of
+the Argentine. She had not precisely forgotten it; she had only thought it
+of too little importance to dwell on. She remembered that she had
+considered the idea practical till she had expressed it, but that his
+opposition had seemed to turn it into the impossible. She had never
+supposed that he might have acted on it--not any more than she had
+expected him to retain her father's name once he had reached a place of
+safety. In spite of the suddenness with which her dreams regarding him had
+been dispelled, it gave her a thrill of satisfaction to think that the
+word which, in a sense, had created him had been hers. To her fierce
+jealousy, with which her pride was wrestling even now, there was a
+measure of comfort in the knowledge that he could never be quite free from
+her, that his existence was rooted in her own.
+
+"Queenie Jarrott tells me," Wayne meandered on, "that her brother thinks
+very highly of this young man. It seems that his business abilities are
+quite remarkable, and they fancy he looks like Henry--the eldest of the
+boys who died. It's extraordinary how his voice reminds me of some
+one--don't know who. It might be--But then again--"
+
+"His voice is like a thousand other voices," she thought it well to say,
+"just as he looks like a thousand other men. He's one of those rather
+tall, rather good-looking, rather well-dressed youngish men--not really
+young--of whom you'll pass twenty within a mile any day in Fifth Avenue,
+and who are as thick as soldiers on a battle-field at the lower end of
+Broadway."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With the data Wayne had given her she worked out the main lines of the
+story during the night; but it was not until she had done so that its full
+significance appeared to her. Having grasped that, she could scarcely wait
+for daylight in order to go to Evie, and yet when morning came she
+abandoned that course as impolitic. Reflection showed her that her
+struggle must be less with Evie than with Ford, while she judged that he
+himself would lose no time in putting the battle in array. He must see as
+plainly as she did that she stood like an army across his path, and that
+he must either retreat before her or show fight. She believed he would do
+the latter and do it soon. She thought it probable that he would appear
+that very day, and that her wisest plan was to await his opening attack.
+The necessity, so unexpectedly laid upon her, of defending the right
+deflected her mind from dwelling too bitterly on her own disillusioning.
+
+The morning having passed without a sign from him, she made her
+arrangements for having the afternoon undisturbed sending Wayne to drive,
+and ordering the servants to admit no one but Mr. Strange, should he
+chance to call. Having intrenched herself behind the fortification of the
+tea-table, she waited. In spite of her preoccupation, or rather because of
+it, she purposely read a book, forcing herself to fix her attention on its
+pages in order to have her mind free from preconceived notions as to how
+she must act and what she must say. Her single concession to herself was
+to put on a new and becoming house dress, whose rich tones of brown and
+amber harmonized with her ivory coloring and emphasized the clear-cut
+distinction of her features. Before taking up her position she surveyed
+herself with the mournful approval which the warrior about to fall may
+give to the perfection of his equipment.
+
+It was half-past four when the servant showed him in. His formal attire
+seemed to her, as he crossed the room, oddly civilized and correct after
+her recollections of him. Notwithstanding her dread of the opening
+minutes, the meeting passed off according to the fixed procedure of the
+drawing-room. It was a relief to both to find that the acts of shaking
+hands and sitting down had been accomplished with matter-of-course
+formality. With the familiar support of afternoon-call conventions
+difficult topics could be treated at greater ease.
+
+"I'm very glad to find you at home," he began, feeling it to be a safe
+opening. "I was almost afraid--"
+
+"I stayed in on purpose," she said, frankly. "I thought you might come."
+
+"I wasn't sure whether or not you knew me last night--"
+
+"I didn't at first. I really hadn't noticed you, though I remembered
+afterward that you were standing with Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott when Mr.
+Wayne and I came into the room. I wonder now if you recognized me?"
+
+"Oh, rather! I knew you were going to be there. I've been in New York a
+month."
+
+"Then you might have come to see me sooner."
+
+"Well, you see--"
+
+He paused and colored, trying to cover up his embarrassment with a smile.
+She allowed her eyes to express interrogation not knowing that her frank
+gaze disconcerted him. She herself went back so eagerly to the days when
+he was the fugitive, Norrie Ford, and she the nameless girl who was
+helping him, that she could not divine his humiliation at being obliged to
+drop his mask. Since becoming engaged to Evie Colfax and returning to New
+York, he perceived more clearly than ever before that his true part in the
+world was that of the respectable, successful man of business which he
+played so skilfully. It cost him an effort she could have no reason to
+suspect to be face to face with the one person in the world who knew him
+as something else.
+
+"You see," he began again, "I had to consider a good many
+things--naturally. It wouldn't have done to give any one an idea that we
+had met before."
+
+"No, of course not. But last night you might have--"
+
+"Last night I had to follow the same tactics. I can't afford to run risks.
+It's rather painful, it's even a bit humiliating--"
+
+"I can imagine that, especially here in New York. In out-of-the-way places
+it must be different. There it doesn't matter. But to be among the very
+people who--"
+
+"You think that there it does matter. I had to consider that. I had to
+make it plain to myself that there was nothing dishonorable in imposing on
+people who had forced me into a false position. I don't say it's
+pleasant--"
+
+"Oh, I know it can't be pleasant. I only wondered a little, as I saw you
+last night, why you let yourself be placed in a position that made it
+necessary."
+
+"I should have wondered at that myself a year ago. I certainly never had
+any intention of doing it. It's almost as much a surprise to me to be here
+as it is to you to see me. I suppose you thought I would never turn up
+again."
+
+"No, I didn't think that. On the contrary, I thought you _would_ turn
+up--only not just here."
+
+It struck him that she was emphasizing that point for a purpose--to bring
+him to another point still. He took a few seconds to reflect before
+deciding that he would follow her lead without further hanging back.
+
+"I shouldn't have returned to New York if I hadn't become engaged to Miss
+Colfax. You know about that, don't you? I think she meant to tell you."
+
+She inclined her head assentingly, without words. He noticed her dark eyes
+resting on him with a kind of pity. He had cherished a faint hope--the
+very faintest--that she might welcome what he had just said
+sympathetically. In the few minutes during which she remained silent that
+hope died.
+
+"I suppose," she said, gently, "that you became engaged to Evie before
+knowing who she was?"
+
+"I fell in love with her before knowing who she was. I'm afraid that when
+I actually asked her to marry me I had heard all there was to learn."
+
+"Then why did you do it?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders with a movement acquired by long residence
+among Latins. His smile conveyed the impossibility of explaining himself
+in a sentence.
+
+"I'll tell you all about it, if you'd like to hear."
+
+"I should like it very much. Remember, I know nothing of what happened
+after--after--"
+
+He noticed a shade of confusion in her manner, and hastened to begin his
+narrative.
+
+Somewhat to her surprise, he sketched his facts in lightly, but dwelt
+strongly on the mental and moral necessities his situation forced on him.
+He related with some detail the formation of his creed of conduct in the
+dawn on Lake Champlain, and showed her that according to its tenets he was
+permitted a kind of action that in other men might be reprehensible. He
+came to the story of Evie last of all, and allowed her to see how
+dominating a part Fate, or Predestination had played in evolving it.
+
+"So you see," he ended, "it was too late then to do anything--but to
+yield."
+
+"Or withdraw," she added, softly.
+
+He stared at her a moment, his body bent slightly forward his elbows
+resting on the arms of his chair. As a matter of fact, he was thinking
+less of her words than of her beauty--so much nobler in type than he
+remembered it.
+
+"Yes," he returned, quietly, "I can see that it would strike you in that
+way. So it did me--at first. But I had to look at the subject all round--"
+
+"I don't need to do that."
+
+He stared at her again. There was a decision in her words which he found
+hard to reconcile with the pity in her eyes and the gentle softness of her
+smile.
+
+"You mean that you don't want to take my--necessities--into
+consideration."
+
+"I mean that when I see the one thing right to do, I don't have to look
+any further."
+
+"The one thing right to do--for you?--or for me?"
+
+"There's no reason why I should intervene at all. I look to you to save me
+from the necessity."
+
+He hesitated a minute before deciding whether to hedge or to meet her
+squarely.
+
+"By giving up Evie and--clearing out," he said, with a perceptible hint of
+defiance.
+
+"I shouldn't lay stress on your--clearing out."
+
+"But you would on my giving up Evie?"
+
+"Don't you see," she began, in an explanatory tone, "I, in my own person,
+have nothing to do with it? It isn't for me to say this should be done or
+that. You can't imagine how hard it is for me to say anything at all; and
+if I speak, it isn't as myself--it's as the voice of a situation. You must
+understand as well as I do what that situation imposes."
+
+"But I don't intend that a situation shall impose anything--on me. I mean
+to act as master--"
+
+"But I'm neither so independent nor so strong--nor is Evie. You don't
+consider her."
+
+"I don't have to consider any one. When I make Evie happy I do all that
+can be asked of me."
+
+"No, you would be called on to _keep_ her happy. And she couldn't remain
+happy if she were married to you. It isn't possible. She couldn't live
+with you any more than--than a humming-bird could live with a hawk."
+
+They both smiled, rather nervously.
+
+"But I'm not a hawk," he insisted. "I'm much more a humming-bird than you
+imagine. You think me some sort of creature of prey because you
+believe--that I did--what I was accused of--"
+
+The circumstances seemed so far off from him now, so incongruous with what
+he had become, that he reverted to them with difficulty.
+
+"I don't attach any importance to that," she said, with a tranquillity
+that startled him. "I suppose I ought to, but I never have. If you killed
+your uncle, it seems to me--very natural. He provoked you. He deserved it.
+My father would have done it certainly."
+
+"But I didn't, you see. That puts another color on the case."
+
+"It doesn't for me. And it doesn't, as it affects Evie. Whether you're
+innocent or guilty--and I don't say I think you to be guilty--I've never
+thought much about it--but whether you're guilty or not, your life is the
+kind of tragedy Evie couldn't share. It would kill her."
+
+"It wouldn't kill her, if she didn't know anything about it."
+
+"But she would know. You can't keep that sort of thing from a wife. She
+wouldn't be married to you a year before she had discovered that you
+were--a--"
+
+"An escaped convict. Why not say it?"
+
+"I wasn't going to say it. But at least she would know that you were a man
+who was pretending to be--something that he wasn't."
+
+"You mean an impostor. Well, I've already explained to you that I'm an
+impostor only because Society itself has made me one, I'm not to blame--"
+
+"I quite see the force of that. But Evie wouldn't. Don't you understand?
+That's my point. She would only see the horror of it, and she would be
+overwhelmed. It wouldn't matter to her that you could bring forward
+arguments in your own defence. She wouldn't be capable of understanding
+them. You must see for yourself that mentally--and spiritually--just as
+bodily--she's as fragile as a butterfly. She couldn't withstand a storm.
+She'd be crushed by it."
+
+"I don't think you do her justice. If she were to discover--I mean, if the
+worst were to come to the worst--well, you can see how it's been with
+yourself. You've known from the beginning all there is to know--and yet--"
+
+"I'm different."
+
+She meant the brief statement to divert his attention from himself, but
+she perceived that it aroused a flash of self-consciousness in both. While
+she could hear herself saying inwardly, "I'd rather go on waiting for
+him--uselessly," he was listening to a silvery voice, as it lisped the
+words, "Dear mamma used to think she was in love with some one; we didn't
+know anything about it." Each reverted to the memory of the lakeside scene
+in which he had said, "My life will belong to you ... a thing for you to
+dispose of ..." and each was afraid that the other was doing so.
+
+All at once she saw herself as she fancied he must see her--a woman
+claiming the fulfilment of an old promise, the payment of a long-standing
+debt. He must think she was making Evie a pretext in her fight for her own
+hand. His vow--if it was a vow--had been the germ of so much romance in
+her mind that she ascribed it to a place in the foreground of his. In all
+she was saying he would understand a demand on her part that he should
+make it good. Very well, then; if he could do her such injustice, he must
+do it. She could not permit the fear of it to inspire her with moral
+cowardice or deter her from doing what was right.
+
+Nevertheless, it helped her to control her agitation to rise and ring for
+tea. She felt the need of some commonplace action to assure herself and
+him that now, at last, she was outside the realm of the romantic. He rose
+as she did, to forestall her at the bell; and as the servant entered with
+the tray, they moved together into the embrasure of the wide bay-window.
+Down below the autumn colors were fading, while leaves, golden-yellow or
+blood-red, were being swirled along the ground.
+
+"I had to do things out there"--his nod was meant to indicate the
+direction of South America--"in a somewhat high-handed manner, and I've
+acquired the habit of it. If I'd stuck at difficulties I shouldn't have
+got anywhere."
+
+She looked at him inquiringly, as though to ask the purport of the
+observation.
+
+"You must see that I'm obliged to put this thing through--on Evie's
+account as much as mine. After getting her to care for me, I can't desert
+her now, whatever happens."
+
+"She wouldn't suffer--after a while. She'd get over it. You might not, but
+she--"
+
+"She shall not get over it, if I can help it. How can you ask me to let
+her?"
+
+"Only on the ground that you love her well enough."
+
+"Would you call that love?"
+
+"In view of all the circumstances, it would be my idea of it."
+
+"Then it wouldn't be mine. The only love I understand is the love that
+fights for its object, in the face of all opposition."
+
+She looked at him a minute with what she tried to make a smile, but which
+became no more than a quivering of the lip and lashes.
+
+"I hope you won't fight," she said, in a tone of appeal, "because it would
+have to be with me. If anything could break my heart, that would."
+
+She knew how near to self-betrayal she had gone, but in her eagerness she
+was reckless of the danger.
+
+"How do you know it wouldn't break mine too?" he asked, with a scrutiny
+that searched her eyes. "But there are times in life when men have just to
+fight--and let their hearts be broken. In becoming responsible for Evie's
+happiness I've given a pledge from which I can't withdraw--"
+
+"But that's where you don't understand her--"
+
+"Possibly; but it's where I understand myself."
+
+"Tea is served, miss," the maid said, coming forward to where they talked
+in undertones. At the same minute there was a shuffling at the door and
+Wayne entered from his drive. Ford would have gone forward to help him,
+but she put out her hand and stopped him.
+
+"He likes to find his way himself," she whispered.
+
+"They tell me there's tea in here," Wayne said, cheerily, from the
+doorway.
+
+"There's more than tea," Miriam replied in as bright a tone as she could
+assume. "There's Mr. Strange, whom you met last night."
+
+"Ah, that's good." Wayne groped his way toward the voices. "How do you do!
+Glad to see you. It's windy out-of-doors. One feels the winter beginning
+to nip."
+
+Ford took the extended hand, and, without seeming to do so, adroitly
+piloted the blind man to a seat as they moved, all three, to the
+tea-table.
+
+For the next ten minutes their talk turned on the common topics of the
+day. As during her conversation with Conquest a few weeks before, Miriam
+found again that the routine of duties of acting as hostess steadied her
+nerves. With Ford aiding her in the little ways to which he had become
+accustomed since his engagement to Evie, hostility was absent from their
+mutual relation, even though opposition remained. That at least was a
+comfort to her; and now and then, as she handed him the bread and butter
+or a plate of cakes to pass to Wayne, their eyes could meet in a glance of
+comprehension.
+
+Wayne was still enjoying his tea when Ford turned to him with an abrupt
+change of tone.
+
+"I'm glad you came in, sir, while I was still here, because there's
+something I particularly want to tell you."
+
+He did not look at Miriam, but he could feel the way in which she sat
+upright and aghast. Wayne turned his sightless eyes, hidden by large
+colored glasses, toward the speaker, and nodded.
+
+"Yes?" he said, interrogatively.
+
+"I would have told you before, only that Miss Jarrott and Miss Colfax
+thought I had better wait till every one got settled. In any case, Mr.
+Jarrott made it a condition before I left Buenos Aires that it shouldn't
+go outside the family till Miss Colfax had had her social winter in New
+York."
+
+Wayne's face grew grave, but not unsympathetic.
+
+"I suppose I know what's coming," he said, quietly.
+
+"It's the sort of thing that was bound to come sooner or later with Miss
+Colfax," Ford smiled, speaking with an air of assurance. "What makes me
+uneasy is that I should be the man to come and tell the news. If it was
+any one you knew better--"
+
+"You've probably heard that I'm not Evie's guardian," Wayne interposed.
+"I've no control at all over what she does."
+
+"I understand that; but to me there's an authority above the legal one--or
+at least on a level with it--and I should be unhappy--we should both be
+unhappy--if we didn't have your consent."
+
+Wayne looked pleased. He was so rarely consulted in the affairs of the
+family, especially since his affliction had forced him aside, that this
+deference was a clew to the young man's character. Nevertheless, he
+allowed some seconds to pass in silence, while Ford threw at Miriam a
+glance of defiance, in which there was also an expression of audacious
+friendliness. She sat rigid and pale, her hands clinching the arms of her
+chair.
+
+"It's a serious matter--of course," Wayne said, after becoming hesitation;
+"but I've great confidence in Henry Jarrott. Next to Evie herself, he's
+the person most concerned--in a certain way. I'm told he thinks well of
+you--"
+
+"He ought to know," Ford broke in, confidently. "I've nothing to show in
+the way of passports, except myself and my work. I've been with him ever
+since I went to South America, and he's been extremely kind to me. The
+only certificate of character I can offer is one from him."
+
+"That's sufficient. We should be sorry to let Evie go, shouldn't we,
+Miriam? She's a sweet child, and very much like her dear mother. But, as
+you say, it was bound to happen one day or another; and we can only be
+glad that--I'm happy to congratulate you, Mr. Strange. Your name, at any
+rate, is a familiar one. It's that of an old boyhood's friend of mine, who
+showed me the honor of placing this young lady in my charge. We called
+him Harry. His full name was Herbert Harrington, but he dropped the first.
+You seem to have taken it up--it's odd, isn't it, Miriam?--and I take it
+as a happy omen."
+
+"Thank you." Ford rose, and made the blind man understand that he was
+holding out his hand, "I shall be more satisfied now for having told you."
+
+Miriam accompanied him into the hall, on pretext of ringing for the lift.
+
+"Oh, why did you do that?" she protested. "Don't you see that it only
+makes things more complicated than they were already?"
+
+"It's my first move," he laughed, with friendly bravado. "Now you can make
+yours."
+
+She gazed at him in puzzled distress as the lift rose.
+
+"I'm coming again," he said, with renewed confidence. "I've a lot more
+things to say."
+
+"And I have only one," she answered, turning back toward the drawing-room.
+
+"He's a nice young fellow," Wayne said, as he heard her enter. He had
+risen and felt his way into the bay-window, where he stood looking outward
+as if he could see. "I suppose it must be all right, since the Jarrotts
+are so enthusiastic Poor little Evie! I hope she'll be happy. It's
+extraordinary how his voice reminds me of--"
+
+She stood still in the middle of the room, waiting for him to continue.
+Nothing he could add would have surprised her now. But he said no more.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+
+Thinking that Ford might come again next afternoon, Miriam went out. On
+her return she found his card--_Mr. Herbert Strange._ The same thing
+occurred the next day, and the next, and so on through the week. She was
+not afraid of seeing him. Now that the worst was known to her, she was
+sure of her mastery of herself, and of her capacity to meet anything. What
+she feared most was her sympathy for him, and the possibility that in some
+unguarded moment of pity he might wring concessions from her which she had
+no right to make. She hoped, too, that time, even a few days' time, would
+help him to work out the honorable course for himself.
+
+Her meetings with Evie were more inevitable, and required greater
+self-repression. She was so used to the part of elder sister, with whom
+all confidences are discussed, that she found it difficult not to speak
+her heart out frankly.
+
+"I heard he had been to see you and Popsey Wayne, and told you," Evie
+said, with her pretty nose just peeping above the bedclothes, at midday,
+on a morning later in the week. It was the day after Evie's first large
+dance, and she had been sleeping late. Miriam sat on the edge of the bed,
+smoothing stray golden tendrils off the flushed, happy little face.
+
+"He did come," Miriam admitted. "Mr. Wayne made no objections. I can't
+say he was glad. You wouldn't expect us to be that, dear, would you?"
+
+"I expect you to like him. It isn't committing you to much to say that.
+But you seem so--so every which way about him."
+
+"I'm not every which way about him. I can't say that I'm any way at all.
+Yes, I do like him--after a fashion. If I make reserves, it's because I'm
+not sure that I think him good enough for my little Evie."
+
+"He's a great deal too good!" Evie exclaimed, rapturously. "Oh, Miriam, if
+you only knew how fond I am of him! I'd die for him--I truly believe I
+would--almost! Oh, it was so stupid last night without him! All these boys
+seem such pigeons beside him. I'm sorry now we're not going to announce
+the engagement at once. I certainly sha'n't change my mind--and it would
+be such fun to be able to say I was engaged before coming out."
+
+"Twice before coming out."
+
+"Oh, well, I only count it once, do you see? Billy's such a goose. You
+should have seen him last night when I forgot two of my dances with
+him--on purpose. He's really getting to dislike me; so that I shall soon
+be able to--to show him."
+
+"I wouldn't be in a hurry about that, dear. There's lots of time. As you
+said the other day, it's no use hurting his feelings--"
+
+Evie sat up suddenly in bed, and looked suspicious.
+
+"So you're taking that stand. Now I know you don't like him. You've got
+something against him, though I can't for the life of me imagine what it
+can be, when you never laid eyes on him till a few days ago. Well, I'm not
+going to change, do you see? You may as well make up your mind to that at
+once. And it will be Billy or no Billy."
+
+Nearer than that Miriam could not approach the subject through fear of
+doing more harm than good. At the end of a week Ford found her at home,
+chiefly because she felt it time he should. She secured again the
+afternoon-call atmosphere; but she noticed that he carried a small
+packet--a large, brownish-yellow envelope, strapped with rubber
+bands--which he kept in his hand. She was struck by the greater ease of
+his entry, and by the renewal of that sense of comradeship which had
+marked his bearing toward her in the old days in the cabin. The small
+comedy of introductory commonplace went off smoothly.
+
+"Well?" he said then, with a little challenging laugh.
+
+"Well--what?"
+
+"I've been waiting for your move. You haven't made it."
+
+She shook her head. "I've no move to make."
+
+"Oh yes, you have--a great big move. You can easily say, Check. I doubt if
+you can make it, Checkmate."
+
+"I'm afraid that's a game I don't know how to play."
+
+He stared at her inquiringly--noting the disdain with which her chin
+tilted and her lip curled, though he could see it was a disdain suffused
+with sweetness.
+
+"Do you mean that you wouldn't--wouldn't give me away?"
+
+"I mean that you're either broaching a topic I don't understand or
+speaking a language I've never learned. If you don't mind, we won't
+discuss the subject, and we'll speak our mother-tongue--the mother-tongue
+of people like you and me."
+
+He stared again. It took him some few seconds to understand her
+phraseology. In proportion as her meaning broke upon him, his face glowed.
+When he spoke it was with enthusiasm for her generosity in taking this
+stand rather than in gratitude for anything he was to gain by it.
+
+"By Jove, you're a brick! You always were. I might have expected that this
+is exactly what you'd say."
+
+"I hope so. I didn't expect that you'd talk of my giving you away, as you
+call it--to any one."
+
+"But you're wrong," he said, with a return to the laughing bravado which
+concealed his inward repugnance to his position. "You're wrong. I'll give
+you that tip now. I'll fight fair. I sha'n't be grateful. I'll profit by
+your magnanimity. Remember it's my part in the world to be unscrupulous.
+It has to be. I've told you so. With me the end justifies the
+means--always; and when the end is to keep my word to Evie, it will make
+no difference to me that you were too high-minded to put the big obstacle
+in my way."
+
+"You'll not expect me to be otherwise than sorry for that--for your sake."
+
+"No, I dare say. But I can't stop to think of what any one feels for my
+sake when I know what I feel for my own."
+
+"Which is only an additional reason for my being--sorry. You don't find
+fault with me for that?"
+
+"I do. I don't want you to be sorry. I want to convince you. I want you to
+see things from my point of view--how I've been placed. Good Lord! it's
+hard enough, without the sense that you're sitting in judgment on me."
+
+"I'm not sitting in judgment on you--except in so far as concerns Evie
+Colfax. If it was anybody else--"
+
+"But it couldn't be anybody else It's Evie or no one. She's everything on
+earth to me. She's to me what electricity is to the wire--that which makes
+it a thing alive."
+
+"To be a thing alive isn't necessarily the highest thing."
+
+"Ah, but that doesn't apply to me. It's all very well for other men to
+say, 'All is lost to save honor.' They have compensations. I haven't. You
+might as well ask a man to think of the highest thing when he's drowning."
+
+"But I should. There have been men who haven't--and they've saved their
+lives by it. But you know what we've called them."
+
+"In my case there'd be only you to call me that--if you wanted to."
+
+"Oh no; there'd be--you."
+
+"I can stand that. I've stood it for eight years already. If you think I
+haven't had times when it's been hell, you're quite mistaken. I wonder if
+you can guess what it means to me--in here"--he tapped his breast--"to go
+round among all these good, kind, honorable people, passing myself off as
+Herbert Strange when all the time I'm Norrie Ford--and a convict? But I'm
+forced to. There's no way out of it."
+
+"Because there's no way out of it isn't a reason for going further in."
+
+"What does that matter? When you're in up to the eyes, what does it matter
+if you go over your head?"
+
+"In this case it would matter to Evie. That's my point. I have to protect
+her--to save her. There's no one but me to do it--and you."
+
+"Don't count on me," he said, savagely. "I've the right, in this wild
+beast's life, to seize anything I can snatch."
+
+He renewed his arguments, going over all the ground again. She listened
+to him as she had once listened to his plea in his defence--her pose
+pensive, her chin resting on her hand, her eyes pitiful. As far as she was
+aware of her own feelings it was merely to take note that a kind of
+yearning over him, an immense sorrow for him and with him, had
+extinguished the fires that a few days ago were burning for herself. It
+was hard to sit there heedless of his exposition and deaf to his
+persuasion. Seeing her inflexible, he became halting in his speech, till
+finally he stopped, still looking at her with an unresenting, dog-like
+gaze of entreaty.
+
+She made no comment when he ceased, and for a time they sat in silence.
+
+"Do you know what this is?" he asked, holding the packet toward her.
+
+She shook her head wonderingly.
+
+"It's what I owe you." She made a gesture of deprecation. "It's the money
+you lent me," he went on. "It's a tremendous satisfaction--that at
+least--to be able to bring it back to you."
+
+"But I don't want it," she stammered, in some agitation.
+
+"Perhaps not. But I want you to have it." He explained to her briefly what
+he had done in the matter.
+
+"Couldn't you give it to something?" she begged, "to some church or
+institution?"
+
+"You can, if you like. I mean to give it to you. You see, I'm not
+returning it with expressions of gratitude, because anything I could say
+would be so inadequate as to be absurd."
+
+He left his chair and came to her, with the packet in his outstretched
+hand. She shrank from it, rising, and retreating into the space of the
+bay-window.
+
+"But I don't want it," she insisted. "I never thought of your returning
+it. I scarcely thought of the incident at all. It had almost passed from
+my memory."
+
+"That's natural enough; but it's equally natural that it shouldn't have
+passed from mine." He came close to her and offered it again. "Do take
+it."
+
+"Put it on the table. Please."
+
+"That isn't the same thing. I want you to take it. I want to put it into
+your own hand, as you put it into mine."
+
+She remembered that she had put it into his hand by closing his fingers
+forcibly upon it, and hastened to prevent anything of that kind now. She
+took it unwillingly, holding it in both hands as if it were a casket.
+
+"That's done," he said, with satisfaction. "You can't imagine what a
+relief it is to have it off my mind."
+
+"I'm sorry you should have felt about it like that."
+
+"You would have felt like that yourself, if you were a man owing money to
+a woman--and especially a woman who was your--enemy."
+
+"Oh!" She cowered, as if he had threatened her.
+
+"I repeat the word," he laughed, uneasily. "Any one is my enemy who comes
+between me and Evie. You'll forgive me if I seem brutal--"
+
+"Yes, I'll forgive you. I'll even accept the word." She was pale and
+nervous, with the kind of nervousness that kept her smiling and still, but
+sent the queer, lambent flashes into her eyes. "Let us say it. I'm your
+enemy, and you pay me the money so as to feel free to strike me as hard as
+you can."
+
+He kept to his laugh, but there was a forced ring in it.
+
+"I don't call that a fair way of putting it, but--"
+
+"I don't see that the way of putting it matters, so long as it's the
+fact."
+
+"It's the fact twisted in a very ingenious fashion. I should say
+that--since I'm going to marry Evie--I want--naturally enough--to feel
+that--that"--he stammered and reddened, seeking a word that would not
+convey an insult--"to feel--that I--met other claims--as well as I could."
+
+He looked her in the eyes with significant directness. His steady gaze, in
+which she saw--or thought she saw--glints of challenge toned down by
+gleams of regret, seemed to say, "Whatever I owe you other than money is
+out of my power to pay." She fully understood that he did not repudiate
+the debt; he was only telling her that since he had given all to Evie, his
+heart was bankrupt. What angered her and kept her silent, fearing she
+would say something she would afterward repent, was the implication that
+she was putting forth her claim for fulfilment.
+
+He still confronted her, with an air of flying humiliation as a flag of
+defiance, while she stood holding the packet in both hands, when the door
+was pushed open, and Evie, radiant from her walk in the cold air and fine
+in autumn furs and plumage, fluttered in. Her blue eyes opened wide on the
+two in the bay-window, but she did not advance from the threshold.
+
+"Dear me, dear me!" she twittered, in her dry little fashion, before they
+had time to realize the fact that she was there. "I hope I'm not
+interrupting you."
+
+"Evie dear, come in." Miriam threw the packet on a table, and went
+forward. Ford followed, trying to regain the appearance of "just making a
+call."
+
+"No, no," Evie cried, waving Miriam back. "I only came--for nothing. That
+is--But I'll go away and come back again. Do you think you'll be long? But
+I suppose if you have secrets--"
+
+Her hand was on the knob again, but Miriam caught her.
+
+"No, darling, you must stay. You're absurd. Mr. Strange and I were
+just--talking."
+
+"Yes, so I saw. That's why I thought I might be _de trap_. How do you do!"
+She put out her left hand carelessly to Ford, her right hand still holding
+the knob, and twisted her little person impatiently. Ford held her hand,
+but she snatched it away. "There's not the least reason why I should stay,
+do you see?" she hurried on. "I only came with a message from Aunt
+Queenie."
+
+"I'm sure it's confidential," Ford laughed, "so I'll make myself scarce."
+
+"You can do just as you like," Evie returned, indifferently. "Cousin
+Colfax Yorke," she added, looking at Miriam, "has telephoned that he can't
+come to dine; and, as it's too late to get anybody else, Aunt Queenie
+thought you might come and make a fourth. It's only ourselves and--- him,"
+she nodded toward Strange.
+
+"Certainly, I'll come, dear--with pleasure."
+
+"And I'll go," Ford said; "but I won't add with pleasure, because that
+would be rude."
+
+When he had gone Evie sniffed about the room, looking at the pictures and
+curios as if she had never seen them before. It was evident that she had
+spied the packet, and was making her way, by a seemingly accidental route,
+toward it. Miriam drifted back to her place in the bay-window, where,
+while apparently watching the traffic in the street below, she kept an eye
+on Evie's manA"uvres.
+
+"What on earth can you two have to talk about?" Evie demanded, while she
+seemed intent on examining a cabinet of old porcelain.
+
+"If you're very good, dear," Miriam replied, trying to take an amused,
+offhand tone, "I'll tell you. It was business."
+
+"Business? Why, I thought you hardly knew him."
+
+"You don't have to know people very well to transact business with them.
+He came on a question of--money."
+
+"No, but you don't start up doing business with a person that's just
+dropped down from the clouds--like that." She snapped her fingers to
+indicate precipitous haste.
+
+"Sometimes you do."
+
+"Well, _you_ don't. I know that for a fact." She was inspecting a vase on
+a pedestal in a corner now. It was nearer to the packet. She wheeled round
+suddenly, so that it should take her by surprise. "What's that?"
+
+"You see. It's an envelope with papers in it."
+
+"What sort of papers?"
+
+"I haven't looked at them yet. They have to do with money, or investments,
+or something. I'm never very clear about those things."
+
+"I thought you did all that through Cousin Endsleigh Jarrott and Mr.
+Conquest?"
+
+"This was a little thing I couldn't trouble them with."
+
+"And you went straight off to _him_, when you'd only known him--let me
+see!--how many days?--one, two, three, four--"
+
+"I've gone to people I didn't know at all--sometimes. You have to. If you
+only knew more about investing money--"
+
+"I don't know anything about investing money; but I know this is very
+queer. And you didn't like him--or you said you didn't."
+
+"I said I did, dear--after a fashion--and so I do."
+
+"In that case I should think a good deal would depend upon the fashion.
+Look here. It's addressed--_Miss Strange._ That's his writing. That's how
+he scribbles his name. And there's something written in tiny, tiny letters
+in the corner. What is it?" Without touching the envelope she bent down to
+see. "It's _The Wild Olive_. Now, what in this world can that mean? That's
+not business, anyhow. That means something."
+
+"No, that's not business, but I haven't an idea what it means." Miriam was
+glad to be able to disclaim something. "It was probably on the envelope by
+accident. Some clerk wrote it, and Mr. Strange didn't notice it."
+
+Evie let the explanation pass, while continuing to stare at the object of
+her suspicions.
+
+"That's not papers," she said, at last, pointing as she spoke to something
+protruding between the rubber bands. "There's something in there. It looks
+like a"--she hesitated to find the right article--"it looks like a
+card-case."
+
+"Perhaps it is," Miriam agreed. "But I'm sure I don't know why he should
+bring me a card-case."
+
+"Why don't you look?"
+
+"I wasn't in a hurry; but you can look yourself if you want to."
+
+Evie took offence. "I'm sure I don't want to. That's the last thing."
+
+"I wish you would. Then you'd see."
+
+"I only do it under protest," she declared--"because you force me to." She
+took up the envelope, and began to unloose the rubber bands. "_The Wild
+Olive_" she quoted, half to herself. "Ridiculous! I should think clerks
+might have something better to do than write such things as that--on
+envelopes--on people's business." But her indignation turned to surprise
+when a small flat thing, not unlike a card-case, certainly, tumbled out.
+"What in the name of goodness--?"
+
+Only strong self-control kept Miriam from darting forward to snatch it
+from the floor. She remembered it at once. It was a worn red leather
+pocket-book, which she had last seen when it was fresh and new--sitting in
+the sunset, on the heights above Champlain, and looking at the jewelled
+sea. A card fell from it, on which there was something written. Evie
+dropped on one knee to pick it up. Miriam was sorry to risk anything, but
+she felt constrained to say, as quietly as possible:
+
+"You'd better not read that, dear. It might be private."
+
+Evie slipped the card back into the pocket-book, which she threw on the
+table, where Miriam let it lie. "I won't look at anything else," Evie
+said, with dignity, turning away.
+
+"I want you to," Miriam said, authoritatively. "I beg you to."
+
+Thus commanded, Evie drew forth a flat document, on which she read, in
+ornamental letters, the inscription, _New York, Toronto, and Great Lakes
+Railroad Company_. She unfolded it slowly, looking puzzled.
+
+"It's nothing but a lot of little square things," she said, with some
+disdain.
+
+"The little square things are called coupons, if you know what they are."
+
+"I know they're things people cut--when they have a lot of money. I don't
+know why they cut them; and still less do I know why he should be bringing
+them to you."
+
+Miriam had a sudden inspiration that made her face beam with relief.
+
+"I'll tell you why he brought them to me, dear--though I do it under
+protest, as you say yourself. Your curiosity forces my hand, and makes me
+show it ahead of time. He brought them to me because it's a
+wedding-present for you. When you get married--or begin to get
+married--you can have all that money for your trousseau."
+
+"Aunt Helen is going to give me my trousseau. She said so."
+
+"Then you can have it for anything you like--for house-furnishings or a
+pearl necklace. You know you wanted a pearl necklace--and there's plenty
+for a nice one. Each of those papers is worth a thousand dollars, or
+nearly. And there are--how many?"
+
+"Three. You seem very keen on getting rid of them."
+
+"So I am--to you, darling."
+
+Evie prepared to depart, looking unconvinced.
+
+"It's awfully nice of you--of course. But still--if that's what you had
+meant at first--from the beginning--you would have--Well, I'll tell Aunt
+Queenie you'll come."
+
+Left alone, Miriam made haste to read the card in the pocket-book.
+
+/#
+   _As deep calls to deep, so Spirit speaks to Spirit. It is the only true
+   communion between mutually comprehending souls. But it is
+   unerring--pardoning all, because understanding all, and making the
+   crooked straight._
+#/
+
+She read it more than once. She was not sure that it was meant for her.
+She was not sure that it was in Ford's own handwriting. But in their
+situation it had a meaning; she took it as a message to herself; and as
+she read, and read again, she felt on her face the trickling of one or two
+slow, hard tears.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+
+The result of the dinner that evening was that Evie grew more fretful.
+After the departure of her guests, she evolved a brief formula which she
+used frequently during the next few weeks: "There's something!" With her
+quick eyes and quicker intuitions, it was impossible for her not to see
+that Ford and Miriam possessed common memories of the kind that
+distinguish old acquaintances from new ones. When it did not transpire in
+chance words she caught it in their glances or divined it in the mental
+atmosphere. As autumn passed into early winter she became nervous,
+peevish, and exacting; she lost much from her pretty ways and something
+from her looks. In the family the change was ascribed to the fatigue
+incidental to the sudden round of lunches, dinners, dances, suppers,
+theatre-parties, opera-goings, and "teas" with which American boys and
+girls of a certain age are surfeited pitilessly with pleasure, as
+Strasburg geese are stuffed for patA(C) de foie gras. Ford, however,
+suspected the true reason, and Miriam knew it. They met as seldom as might
+be; and yet, with the many things requiring explanation between them,
+frank conversation became imperative.
+
+"You see how it is already," Miriam said to him. "It's making her unhappy
+from the start. You can't conceal the truth from her very long."
+
+"She isn't fretting about the truth; she's fretting about what she
+imagines."
+
+"She's fretting because she doesn't understand, and she'll go on fretting
+till she does. I'm not sorry. It must show you--"
+
+"It shows me the necessity of our being married as soon as possible, so
+that I may take care of her, and put a stop to it."
+
+"I agree with you that you'd put a stop to it. You'd put a stop to
+everything. She wouldn't live a year--or you wouldn't. Either she'd
+die--or she'd abhor you. And if she didn't die, you'd want to."
+
+"I wish to the Lord I had died--eight years ago. The great mistake I made
+was when the lumber-jacks loosed my hand-cuffs and started me through the
+woods. They called it giving me a chance, and for a few minutes I thought
+it was one. A chance! Good God! I remember feeling, as I ran, that I was
+deserting something. I didn't know what it was just then, but I've
+understood it since. It would have been a pluckier thing to have been in
+my coffin as Norrie Ford--or even doing time--than to be here as Herbert
+Strange."
+
+She said nothing for the moment, but as they walked along side by side he
+shot a glance at her, and saw her coloring. They had met in the park. He
+was going toward the house in Seventy-second Street when she was coming
+away from it. Seizing the opportunity of a few words in private, he had
+turned to stroll back with her.
+
+"I didn't expect you to be here as Herbert Strange," she said, as though
+in self-excuse. "I had to give you a name that was like my own, when I was
+writing letters about your ticket, and sending checks. I had to do
+everything to avoid suspicion at a time when Greenport was watched. I
+thought you might be able to take your own name or something like it--"
+
+He explained to her how that had never been possible.
+
+"Evie fidgets about it," he continued. "She puts together the two facts
+that you and I seem to have known each other, and that my name is
+identical with your father's. She doesn't know what to make of it; she
+only thinks 'there's something.' She hasn't said more than that in words,
+but I see her little mind at work."
+
+"Evie isn't the only one," she informed him. "There's Mr. Wayne. He has to
+be reckoned with. He recognized your voice from the first minute of
+hearing it, though he hasn't said yet that he knows whose it is. He may do
+so at any time. He's very surprising at that sort of thing. I can see him
+listening when you're there, not only to your words, but to your very
+movements, trying to recapture--"
+
+"The upshot of everything," he said, abruptly, "is that I must marry her,
+take her back to the Argentine, where I found her, and where we shall both
+be out of harm's way."
+
+"You wouldn't be out of harm's way. You can't turn your back on it like
+that. You alone might be able to slip through, but not if you have Evie."
+
+"That will be my affair; I'll see to it. I take the full responsibility on
+myself."
+
+"I couldn't let you. Remember that. You can't marry her. Let me say it
+plainly--"
+
+"Oh, you've said it plainly enough."
+
+"If I've said it too plainly, it's because you force me. You're so
+wilful."
+
+"You mean, I'm so determined. What it amounts to is the clash of your
+will against mine; and you refuse to see that I can't give way."
+
+"I see that you must give way. It's in the nature of things. It's
+inevitable. If I didn't know that, do you think I should interfere? Do you
+think I should dare to run the risk of wrecking your happiness if I could
+do anything else? If you knew how I hate doing anything at all--"
+
+"But you needn't. You can just let things be."
+
+"I can't let things be--with all I know; and yet it's impossible for me to
+appeal to any one, except yourself. You put me in a position in which I
+must either betray you or betray those who trust me. Because I can't do
+either--"
+
+"I profit by your noble-mindedness. I told you I would. I'm sorry to have
+to do it--I'll even admit that I'm ashamed of it--and yet there's no other
+course for me. I'm not taking you at an unfair advantage, because I've
+concealed nothing from you from the first. You talk about the difficulty
+of your position, but you don't begin to imagine mine. As if everything
+else wasn't gall to me, I've got your disapproval to add wormwood."
+
+"It isn't my disapproval; it's simply--the situation. My opinion counts
+for nothing--"
+
+"It counts for everything with me--and yet I have to ignore it. But, after
+all," he flung out, bitterly, "it's the old story. I claim the right to
+squeeze out of life such drops of happiness--if you can call it
+happiness--as men have left to me, and you deny it. There it is in a
+nutshell. Because other people have inflicted a great wrong on me, you
+insist that I shall inflict a greater one on myself. And this time it
+wouldn't be only on myself; it would be on poor little Evie. There's
+where it cuts. No, no; I shall go on. I've the right to do it. You must
+stop me if you can. If you don't, or won't--why, then--"
+
+"I can stop you ... if you drive me to extremes ... but it wouldn't be by
+doing ... any of the things you expect."
+
+It was because of the catch in her voice that he stopped in his walk, and
+confronted her. In spite of the little tremor he could see in her no sign
+of yielding, and behind her veil he caught a gleam like that of anger. It
+was at that minute, perhaps, that he became distinctly conscious for the
+first time of a doubt as to the superiority of "his type of girl."
+Notwithstanding the awakening of certain faint perceptions, he had
+hitherto denied within himself that there was anything higher or more
+lovely. But in this girl's unflinching loyalty, and in her tenacious
+clinging to what she considered right, he was getting a new glimpse of
+womanhood, which, however, in no way weakened his determination to resist
+her.
+
+"As far as I see," he said, after long hesitation, "you and I have two
+irreconcilable duties. My duty is to marry Evie; yours is to prevent me.
+In that case there's nothing for either of us but to forge ahead, and see
+who wins. If you win, I shall bear no malice; and I hope you'll be equally
+generous if I do."
+
+"But I don't want to win independently of you. If I did, nothing could be
+easier."
+
+"Then why not do it?"
+
+He tossed up his hand with one of his fatalistic Latin gestures, drawing
+the attention of the passers-by to the man and woman talking so earnestly.
+For this reason, and because she was losing her self-command, she hastened
+to take leave of him.
+
+Arrived at home, it gave her no comfort to find Charles Conquest--the
+most spick and span of middle-aged New-Yorkers--waiting in the
+drawing-room.
+
+"I thought you might come in," he explained, "so I stayed. I have to get
+your signature to the papers about that property in Montreal. I've fixed
+the thing up and we'll sell."
+
+"You said you'd send the papers--"
+
+"That sounds as if you weren't glad to see me," he laughed, "but I'll
+ignore the discourtesy. Here," he added, unfolding the documents, "you put
+your name there--and there--near the L.S."
+
+She carried the papers to her desk, and sat down to write. Conquest took
+the liberty of old friendship to stroll about the room, with his hands
+behind him, humming a little tune.
+
+"Well," he said suddenly, "has he come back?"
+
+He had not approached the subject, beyond alluding to it covertly, since
+the day she had confided to him the confused story of her hopes. She
+blotted her signature carefully thinking out her reply.
+
+"I've given up expecting him," she said at last.
+
+"Ho! ho! So that's out of the way."
+
+She pretended to be scanning the documents before her so as to be able to
+sit with her back to him.
+
+"It isn't, for the reason that there's--no _way_," she said, after some
+hesitation.
+
+"Oh yes, there is," he laughed, "where there's a will."
+
+"But I've no will."
+
+"I have; I've enough for two."
+
+"I'll tell you what you have got," she said, half turning and speaking to
+him over the back of her chair. He drew near her. "You've got a great
+deal of common sense, and I want to ask your advice."
+
+"I can give that, as radium emits light--without ever diminishing the
+original store."
+
+"Then tell me. Has one ever the right to interfere where a man and a
+woman--"
+
+"No, never. You needn't give me any more details, because it's one of the
+questions an oracle finds easiest to answer. No one ever thanks you--"
+
+"I shouldn't be doing it for thanks."
+
+"And you get your own fingers burnt."
+
+"That wouldn't matter. I'd let my fingers burn to the bone if it would do
+any good."
+
+"It wouldn't. You may take my word for it. I know who you're talking
+about. It's Evie Colfax."
+
+She started, looking guilty. "Why should you suppose that?"
+
+"I've got eyes. I've watched her, and I know she's a little minx. Oh, you
+needn't protest. She's a taking little minx, and this time she's in the
+right."
+
+"I'm afraid I don't know what you mean."
+
+"What has Billy Merrow got to offer her, even if he is my nephew? Come
+now! He won't be in a position to marry for the next two or three years.
+Whereas that fellow Strange--"
+
+"Have you heard anything about him?" she asked, breathlessly.
+
+"It isn't what I've heard, it's what I see. He's a very good chap, and a
+first-rate man of business."
+
+"Do you know him well--personally?"
+
+"I meet him around--at the club and other places--and naturally I have
+something to do with him at the office. I like him. If Evie can snap him
+up she'll be doing well for herself. I'm sorry for Billy, of course; but
+he'll have time to break his heart more than once before he'll have money
+enough to do anything else with it. If I'd married at his age--"
+
+This, however, was venturing on delicate ground, so that he broke off,
+wheeling round toward the centre of the drawing-room. She folded the
+documents and brought them to him.
+
+"You know why I didn't send them?" he said, as he took them. "I thought if
+I came myself, you might have something to tell me."
+
+"I haven't; not anything special, that is."
+
+"You've told me something special already--that you're not looking for him
+back."
+
+"I'd rather not talk about it now, if you don't mind."
+
+"Then we'll talk about what goes with it--the other side of the subject."
+
+"There is no other side of the subject."
+
+"Oh, come now, Miriam! You haven't heard all I've got to tell you. You've
+never let me really present my case, as we lawyers say. If you could see
+things as I do--"
+
+"But I can't, and you mustn't ask me to-day. I'm tired--"
+
+"It would rest you."
+
+"No, no; not to-day. Don't you see I'm not--I'm not myself? I've had a
+very trying morning."
+
+"What's the matter? Tell me. I can keep a confidence even if I can't do
+some other things. Come now! I don't like to think you're worried when
+perhaps I could help you. That's what I should be good for, don't you see?
+I could assist you to bear a lot of things--"
+
+His tone, which was so often charged with a slightly mocking banter,
+became tender, and he attempted to take her hand. For a minute it seemed
+as if it might be a relief to trust him, to tell him the whole story and
+follow his counsel; but a second's thought showed her that she could not
+shift the responsibility from herself, and that in the end she should have
+to act alone.
+
+"Not to-day," she pleaded. "I'm not equal to it."
+
+"Then I'll come another day."
+
+"Yes, yes; if you like, only--"
+
+"Some day soon?"
+
+"When you like, only leave me now. Please go away. You won't think I'm
+rude, will you? But I'm not--not as I generally am--"
+
+"Good-bye." He put out his, hand frankly, and smiled so humbly, and yet
+withal so confidently, that she felt as if in spite of herself she might
+yield to his persistence through sheer weariness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To her surprise, the next few weeks passed without incident bringing no
+development in the situation. She saw little of Evie and almost nothing of
+Ford. One or two encounters with Charles Conquest had no result beyond the
+reiteration on his part of a set phrase, "You're coming to it, Miriam,"
+which, while exasperating her nerves, had a kind of hypnotic effect upon
+her will. She felt as if she might be "coming to it." Without calculating
+the probabilities she saw clearly enough that if she married Conquest the
+very act would furnish proof to Ford that her intervention in his affairs
+had been without self-interest. It would even offer some proof to herself,
+the sort of proof that strengthens the resolution and supports what is
+tottering in the pride. Notwithstanding the valor with which she
+struggled her victory over herself was not so complete that she could
+contemplate the destruction of Ford's happiness with absolute confidence
+in the purity of her motives in bringing it to ruin. It was difficult to
+take the highest road when what was left of her own fiercest instincts
+accompanied her on it. That she had fierce instincts she was quite aware.
+It was not for nothing that she had been born almost beyond the confines
+of the civilized earth, of parents for whom law and order and other men's
+rights were as the dead letter. True, she was trying to train the
+inheritance received from them to its finer purposes, as the vine draws
+strange essences from a flinty soil and sublimates them into the
+grape--but it was still their inheritance. While she was proud of it, she
+was afraid of it; and the fact that it leaped with her to separate Norrie
+Ford from Evie Colfax was a reason for distrusting the very impulse she
+knew to be right. Marriage with Conquest presented itself, therefore as a
+refuge--from Ford's suspicion and her own.
+
+For the time being, however, the necessity for doing anything was not
+pressing. Evie was caught into the social machine that had been set going
+on her account, and was not so much whirling in it as being whirled. Her
+energies were so taxed by the task of going round that she had only
+snatches of time and attention to give to her own future. In one of these
+she wrote to her uncle Jarrott, asking his consent to the immediate
+proclamation of her engagement, with his approval of her marriage at the
+end of the winter, though the reasons she gave him were not the same as
+those she advanced to Miriam. To him she dwelt on the maturity of her
+age--twenty by this time--the unchanging nature of her sentiments, and her
+desire to be settled down. To Miriam she was content to say, "There's
+something! and I sha'n't get to the bottom of it till we're married."
+
+Of the opening thus unexpectedly offered her Miriam made full use,
+pointing out the folly or verifying suspicions after marriage rather than
+before.
+
+"Well, I'm going to do it, do you see?" was Evie's only reply. "I know it
+will be all right in the end."
+
+Still a few weeks were to pass, and it was early in the new year before
+Uncle Jarrott's cablegram arrived with the three words, "_If you like_."
+Miriam received the information at the opera, where she had been suddenly
+called on to take the place of Miss Jarrott, laid low with "one of her
+headaches." It was Ford who told her, during an entr'acte, when for a few
+minutes Evie had left the box with the young man who made the fourth in
+the party. Finding themselves alone, Ford and Miriam withdrew as far as
+possible from public observation, speaking in rapid undertones.
+
+"But you'll not let her do it?" Miriam urged.
+
+"I shall, if you will. You can stop it--or posptone it. If you don't, I
+have every right to forge ahead. It's no use going over the old arguments
+again--"
+
+"You put me in an odious position. You want me either to betray you or
+betray the people who've been kind to me. It _would_ be betrayal if I were
+to let you go on."
+
+"Then stop me; it's in your power."
+
+"Very well; I will."
+
+He gave her a quick look, astonished rather than startled, but there was
+no time for further speech before Evie and her companion returned.
+
+It was Miriam's intention to put her plan into immediate execution, but
+she let most of the next day go by without doing anything. Understanding
+his driving her to extremes to be due less to deliberate defiance than to
+a desperate braving of the worst, she was giving him a chance for
+repentance. Just at the closing in of the winter twilight, at the hour
+when he generally appeared, the door was flung open and Billy Merrow
+rushed in excitedly.
+
+"What's all this about Evie?" he shouted, almost before crossing the
+threshold. "I've been there, and no one is at home. What's it about? Who
+has invented the confounded lie?"
+
+She could only guess at his meaning, but she forced him to shake hands and
+calm himself. Turning on the electric light, she saw a young man with
+decidedly tousled reddish hair, and features as haggard as a perfectly
+healthy, honest, freckled face could be.
+
+"Sit down, Billy, and tell me about it."
+
+"I can't; I'm crazy."
+
+"So I see; but tell me what you're crazy about."
+
+"Haven't you heard it? Of course you have. They wouldn't be writing it to
+Uncle Charlie if you didn't know all about it. But I'm hanged if I'll let
+it go on."
+
+Little by little she dragged the story from him. Miss Queenie Jarrott had
+written to Charles Conquest as one of the oldest friends of the family to
+inform him, "somewhat confidentially as yet," of her niece's engagement to
+Mr. Herbert Strange, of Buenos Aires and New York. Uncle Charlie, knowing
+what this would mean to him, had come to break the news and tell him to
+"buck up and take it standing."
+
+"I'll bet you I sha'n't take it lying down," he assured Miriam. "Evie is
+engaged to _me_."
+
+"Yes, Billy, but you see Miss Jarrott didn't know it. That's where the
+mistake has been. You know I've always been opposed to the secrecy of the
+affair, and I advised you and Evie to wait till you could both speak out."
+
+"It isn't so very secret. You know it and so does Uncle Charlie."
+
+"But Evie's own family have been kept in the dark, except that she told
+her aunt in South America. But that's where the mistake comes in, don't
+you see? Miss Jarrott, not having an idea about you, you see--"
+
+"Spreads it round that Evie is engaged to some one else, when she isn't.
+I'll show her who's engaged, when I can find her in. I'm going to sit on
+her door-step till--"
+
+"I wouldn't do anything rash, Billy. Suppose you were to leave it to me?"
+
+"What good would that do? If that old witch is putting it round, the only
+thing for Evie and me to do is to contradict her."
+
+"Has Evie ever given you an idea that anything was wrong?"
+
+"Evie's been the devil. I don't mind saying it to you, because you
+understand the kind of devil she'd be. But Lord! I don't care. It's just
+her way. She's told me to go to the deuce half a dozen times, but she
+knows I won't till she comes with me. Oh, no. Evie's all right--"
+
+"Yes, of course, Evie's all right. But you know, Billy dear, this thing
+requires a great deal of management and straightening out, and I do wish
+you'd let me take charge of it. I know every one concerned, you see, so
+that I could do it better than any one--any one but you, I mean--"
+
+"I understand that all right. I'm not going to be rough on them, but all
+the same--"
+
+She got him to sit down at last, made tea for him, and soothed him. At
+the end of an hour he had undertaken not to molest Miss Jarrott, or to
+fight that "confounded South-American," or to say a word of any kind to
+Evie till she was ready to say a word to him. He became impressed with the
+necessity for diplomatic action and, after some persuasion, promised to
+submit to guidance--at any rate, for a time.
+
+"And now, Billy, I'm going to write a note. The first thing to be done is
+that you should find Mr. Strange and deliver it to him before nine o'clock
+this evening. You'll do it quietly, won't you? and not let him see that
+you are anything more than my messenger. No matter where he is, even in a
+private house, you must see that he gets the note, if at all possible."
+
+When he had sworn to this she wrote a few lines hurriedly. He carried them
+away in the same tumultuous haste with which he had come. After his
+departure she felt herself unexpectedly strong and calm.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+
+The feeling of being equal to anything she might have to face continued
+with her. Now that the moment for action had arrived she had confidence in
+her ability to meet it, since it had to be done. At dinner she was able to
+talk to Wayne on indifferent topics, and later, when he had retired to his
+den to practise his Braile, she sat down in the drawing-room with a book.
+Noticing that she wore the severe black dress in which she had assisted at
+the "killing off" of Evie's family, she brightened it with a few
+unobtrusive jewels, so as to look less like the Tragic Muse. The night
+being cold, a cheerful fire burned on the hearth, beside which she sat
+down and waited.
+
+When he was shown in, about half-past eight, it seemed to her best not to
+rise to receive him. Something in her repose, or in her dignity, gave him
+the impression of arriving before a tribunal, and he began his
+explanations almost from the doorway.
+
+"I got your note. Young Merrow caught me at dinner. I was dining alone, so
+that I could come at once."
+
+"You're very kind. I'm glad you were able to do it. Won't you sit down?"
+
+Without offering her hand, she indicated a high arm-chair suitable for a
+man, on the other side of the hearth. He seated himself with an air of
+expectation, while she gazed pensively at the fire, speaking at last
+without looking up.
+
+"I hear Miss Jarrott has begun to announce your engagement to Evie."
+
+"I understood she was going to, to a few intimate friends."
+
+"And you allowed it?"
+
+"As you see."
+
+"Didn't you know that I should have to take that for a signal?"
+
+"I've never given you to understand that a signal wouldn't come--if you
+required one."
+
+"No; but I hoped--" She broke off, continuing to gaze at the fire. "Do you
+remember," she began again--"do you remember telling me--that evening on
+the shore of Lake Champlain--just before you went away--that if ever I
+needed your life, it would be at my disposal?--to do with as I chose?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"Then I'm going to claim it." She did not look up, but she heard him
+change his position in his chair. "I shouldn't do it if there was any
+other way. I'm sure you understand that. Don't you?" she insisted,
+glancing at him for an answer.
+
+"I know you wouldn't do it, unless you were convinced there was a reason."
+
+"I've tried to be just to you, and to see things from your point of view.
+I do; I assure you. If I were in your position I should feel as you do.
+But I'm not in your position. I'm in one of great responsibility, toward
+Evie and toward her friends."
+
+"I don't see what you owe to them."
+
+[Illustration: Again there was a long silence.]
+
+"I owe them the loyalty that every human being owes to every other."
+
+"To every other--except me."
+
+"I'm loyal to you, at least, whoever else may not be. But it wouldn't be
+loyalty if I let you marry Evie. I'm going to ask you--not to do it--to go
+away--to leave her alone--to go--for good."
+
+There was a long silence. When he spoke, it was hoarsely but otherwise
+without change of tone.
+
+"Is that what you meant?--just now?"
+
+"Yes. That's what I meant."
+
+"Do you intend me to get out of New York, to go back to the South--?"
+
+She lifted her hand in protestation.
+
+"I'm not giving orders or making conditions. New York is large. There's
+room in it for you and Evie, too."
+
+"I dare say. One doesn't require much space to break one's heart in."
+
+"Evie wouldn't break her heart. I know her better than you do. She'd
+suffer for a while, but she'd get over it, and in the end, very soon
+probably--marry some one else."
+
+"How cruel you can be," he said, with a twisted smile.
+
+"I can be, when it's right. In this case I'm only as cruel as--the truth.
+I'm saying it because it must make things easier for you. Your own pain
+will be the less from the knowledge that, in time, Evie will get over
+hers."
+
+"I suppose it ought to be, but--"
+
+He did not finish his sentence, and again there was a long hush, during
+which, while she continued to gaze pensively at the fire, she could hear
+him shifting with nervous frequency in his chair. When at last she
+ventured to look at him he was bowed forward, his elbow supported on his
+knee, and his forehead resting on his hand.
+
+"You'll keep your promise to me?" she persisted, softly, with a kind of
+pitiful relentlessness.
+
+"I'll tell you in a minute."
+
+He jerked out the words in the brusque way in which a man says all that,
+for the moment, he is physically able to utter. She allowed more time to
+elapse. The roar of traffic and the clanging of electric trams came up
+from the street below, but no sound seemed able to penetrate the stillness
+in which they sat. As far as Miriam was conscious of herself at all, it
+was simply to note the curious deadness of her emotions, as though she had
+become a mere machine for doing right, like a clock that strikes
+punctually. Nevertheless, it caused her some surprise when he raised
+himself and said, in a voice that would have been casual on a common
+occasion:
+
+"I suppose you think me a cad?"
+
+"No; why should I?"
+
+"Because I am one."
+
+"I don't know why you should say that, or what it has to do
+with--anything."
+
+"It's about that--that--promise."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"Do you mind if we speak quite frankly? I should like to. I've been
+bluffing that point ever since you and I met again. It's been torture to
+have to do it--damned, humiliating torture; but it's been difficult to do
+anything else. You see, I couldn't even speak of it without seeming to--to
+insult you--that is, unless you took me in just the right way."
+
+His look, his attitude, the tones of his voice, the something woe-begone
+and yet boyish in his expression, recalled irresistibly the days in the
+cabin, when he often wore just this air. She had observed before that when
+they were alone together the years seemed to fall from his manner, while
+he became the immature, inexperienced young fugitive again. She had
+scarcely expected, however, that this lapse into youth would occur
+to-night. She herself felt ages old--as though all the ends of the world
+had come upon her.
+
+"You may say anything you like. There's nothing you could possibly tell me
+that I shouldn't understand."
+
+"Well, then, when I made that promise, I meant to keep it, and to keep it
+in a special way. I thought--of course we were both very young--but I
+thought that, after what had happened--"
+
+"Wait a minute. I want to tell you something before you go on." She
+rallied her spirit's forces for a desperate step, gathering all her life's
+possible happiness into one extravagant handful, and flinging it away, in
+order to save her pride before this man, who was about to tell her that he
+had never been able to love her. "What I am going to say may strike you as
+irrelevant; but if it is, you can ignore it. I expect to be married--in a
+little while--it's practically a settled thing--to Charles Conquest, whom
+I think you know. Now, will you go on, please?"
+
+He stared at her in utter blankness.
+
+"Good God!"
+
+He got up and took a few restless turns up and down the room, his head
+bent, his hands behind his back. He reseated himself when his confused
+impressions grew clearer.
+
+"So that it doesn't matter what I thought about--that promise?"
+
+"Not in the least." She had saved herself. "The one thing important to me
+is that you should have made it."
+
+"And that you can hold me to it," he added, tersely.
+
+"I presume I can do that?"
+
+"You can, unless--unless I find myself in a position to take the promise
+back."
+
+"I can hardly see how that position could come about," she said, with an
+air of wondering.
+
+"I can. You see," he went on in an explanatory tone, "it was an unusual
+sort of promise--a promise made, so to speak, for value received--for
+unusual value received. It wasn't one that a common occasion would have
+called forth. It was offered because you had given me--life."
+
+He rested his arm now on a table that stood between them and, leaning
+toward her, looked her steadily in the eyes.
+
+"I haven't the faintest idea what you're going to say," she remarked,
+rather blankly.
+
+"No, but you'll see. You gave me life. I hold that life in a certain sense
+at your pleasure. It is at your disposal. It must remain at your
+disposal--- until I give it back."
+
+She sat upright in her chair, leaning in her turn on the table, and
+drawing nearer to him.
+
+"I can't imagine what you mean," she said, under her breath and looking a
+little frightened.
+
+"You'll see presently. But don't be alarmed. It's going to be all right.
+As long as I hold the life you gave me," he continued to explain, "I must
+do your bidding. I'm not a free man; I'm--don't be offended--I'm your
+creature. I don't say I was a free man before this came up. I haven't been
+a free man ever since I've been Herbert Strange. I've been the slave of a
+sort of make-believe. I've made believe, and I've felt I was justified.
+Perhaps I was. I'm not quite sure. But I haven't liked it; and now I begin
+to feel that I can't stand it any longer. You follow me, don't you?"
+
+She nodded, still leaning toward him across the table, and not taking her
+eyes from his. He remembered afterward though he paid no heed to it at the
+time, how those eyes grew wide with awe and flashed with strange, lambent
+brightness.
+
+"I told you a few days ago," he pursued, "that there were _times_ when it
+was hell. That was putting it mildly--too mildly. There's been no time
+when it wasn't hell--in here." He tapped his forehead. "I've struggled,
+and fought, and pushed, and swaggered, and bluffed, and had ups and downs,
+and taken heart, and swaggered and bluffed again, and lied all
+through--and I've made Herbert Strange a respectable man of business on
+the high road to success. But when I come near you it all goes to
+pieces--like one of those curiously conserved dead bodies when they're
+brought to the air. There's nothing to them. There's nothing to me--so
+long as I'm Herbert Strange."
+
+"But you _are_ Herbert Strange. You can't help yourself--now."
+
+"Herbert Strange goes back into the nothingness out of which he was born
+the minute I become Norrie Ford again."
+
+"But you can't do that!"
+
+She drew herself up hastily, with a gasp.
+
+"It's exactly what I mean to do." He spoke very slowly "I'm going to be a
+free man, and my own master, even if it leads me where--where they meant
+to put me when you snatched me away. I'm going back to my fellow-men, to
+the body corporate--"
+
+She rose in agitation, and drew back from him toward the chimney-piece.
+"So that if--if anything happens," she said, "I shall have driven you to
+it. That's how you get your revenge."
+
+"Not at all. I'm not coming to this decision suddenly, or in a spirit of
+revenge, in any way." He followed her, standing near her, on the
+hearth-rug. "I can truthfully say," he went on in his slow, explanatory
+fashion, "that there's been no time, since the minute I made my first dash
+for liberty, when I haven't known, in the bottom of my heart, what a good
+thing it would have been if I hadn't done it. I've come to see--I've _had_
+to--- that the death-chair would have been better, with self-respect, than
+freedom to go and come, with the necessity to gag every one, every minute
+of the day, and every day in the year, and all the time, with lies. If
+that seems far-fetched to you--"
+
+"No, it doesn't."
+
+"Well, if it did you'd see it wasn't, if you were in my place for a month.
+I didn't mind it so much at first. I stood it by day and just suffered by
+night--till the Jarrotts began to be so kind to me, and I came to New
+York--and--and--and Evie!"
+
+"I'm sorry I've spoken to you as I have," she said, hastily. "If I'd known
+you felt like that--"
+
+"You were quite right. I always understood that. But I can't go on with
+it. If Evie marries me now, it shall be knowing who I am."
+
+"You don't mean that you could possibly tell her?"
+
+"I'm going to tell every one."
+
+She stifled a little cry. "Then it will be my doing!"
+
+"It will be your doing--up to a point. But it will be something for you to
+be proud of, not to regret. You've only brought my mistake so clearly
+before me that even I can't stand it--when I've stood so much. You ask me
+to turn my back on Evie and sneak away. You've got the right to command,
+and there's nothing for me but to obey you. But I can't help seeing the
+sort of life that would be left to me after I'd carried out your orders.
+It wouldn't only be the loss of Evie--I may lose her in any case--it would
+be the loss of everything within myself that's enabled me hitherto merely
+to hold up my head--and bluff."
+
+"I might withdraw what I've just asked you to do. Perhaps we could find
+some other way."
+
+He laughed with grim lightness.
+
+"You're weakening. That's not like you. And it wouldn't do any good now.
+Even if we did patch up some other scheme, there would still remain what
+you talked about a minute ago--the loyalty that every human being owes to
+every other."
+
+"But I thought you didn't recognize that?"
+
+"I said I didn't. But in here"--he tapped his fingers over the heart--"I
+did, and I do. You've brought me to see it."
+
+"That's very noble, but you saw it for yourself--"
+
+"Through a glass--darkly; now I can look at the thing in clear daylight,
+and see what I have to do."
+
+She dropped into her chair again, looking up at him. He stood with his
+back to the fire, holding his head high, his bearing marked by a dogged,
+perhaps forced, serenity.
+
+"But what _can_ you do?" she asked, after considering his words. "You're
+so involved. All this business--and the people in South America--"
+
+"Oh, there are ways and means. I haven't made plans, but I've thought,
+from time to time, of what I should do if I ever came to just this pass.
+The first thing would be to tell the few people who are most concerned,
+confidentially. Then I should go back to South America, and settle things
+give me your respect again--not even the little you've given me
+hitherto--and God knows that can't have been much. I could stand anything
+in the world--anything--rather than that you should come to that."
+
+"But I shouldn't, when I myself had dissuaded you--"
+
+"No, no; don't try. You'd be doing wrong. You've been to me so high and
+holy that I don't like to think you haven't the strength to go on to the
+end. I've got it, because you've given it me. Don't detract from your own
+gift by holding me back from using it. You found me a prisoner--or an
+escaped one--and I've been a prisoner all these years, the prisoner of
+something worse than chains. Now I'm going free. Look!" he cried, with
+sudden inspiration. "I'll show you how it's done. You'll see how easy it
+will be."
+
+He moved to cross the room.
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+She sprang up as if to hold him back, but his finger was on the bell.
+
+"You don't mind, I hope?" he asked; but he had rung before she could give
+an answer. The maid appeared in the doorway.
+
+"Ask Mr. Wayne if he would be good enough to come in here a minute. Tell
+him Mr. Strange particularly wants to see him."
+
+He went back to his place by the fireside, where he stood apparently calm,
+showing no sign of excitement except in heightened color and the stillness
+of nervous tension Miriam sank into her chair again.
+
+"Don't do anything rash," she pleaded. "Wait till to-morrow There will
+always be time. For God's sake!"
+
+If he heard her he paid no attention, and presently Wayne appeared. He
+hesitated a minute on the threshold, and during that instant Ford could
+see that he looked ashy and older, as if something had aged him suddenly.
+His hands trembled, too, as he felt his way in.
+
+"Good-evening," he said, speaking into the air as blind men do. "I thought
+I heard your voice."
+
+Having groped his way across the room and reached the table that stood
+between the arm-chairs Miriam and Ford had occupied, he stopped. He stood
+there, with fingers drumming soundlessly on the polished wood, waiting for
+some one to speak.
+
+In spite of the confidence with which he had rung the bell, Ford found it
+difficult now to begin. It was only after one or two inarticulate attempts
+that he was able to say anything.
+
+"I asked you to come in, sir," he began, haltingly, "to tell you something
+very special. Miss Strange knows it already.... If I've done wrong in not
+telling you before ... you'll see I'm prepared to take my punishment....
+My name isn't Strange ... it isn't Herbert."
+
+"I know it isn't."
+
+The words slipped out in a sharp tone, not quite nervous, but thin and
+worn. Miriam's attitude grew tense. Ford took a step forward from the
+fireside. With his arm flung over the back of his chair, and his knee
+resting on the seat of it, he strained across the table, as if to
+annihilate the space between Wayne and himself.
+
+"You _knew_?"
+
+The blind man nodded. When he spoke it was again into the air.
+
+"Yes; I knew. You're Norrie Ford. I ought to say I've only known it
+latterly--about a fortnight now."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Oh, it just came to me--by degrees, I think."
+
+"Why didn't you say something about it?"
+
+"I thought I wouldn't. It has worried me, but I thought I'd keep still."
+
+"Do you mean that you were going to let everything--go on?"
+
+"I weighed all the considerations. That's the decision I came to. You must
+understand," he went on to explain, in a voice that was now tremulous as
+well as thin, "that I'd had you a good deal on my mind, during these past
+eight years. I sentenced you to death when I almost knew you were
+innocent. It was my duty. I couldn't help it. The facts told dead against
+you. Every one admitted that. True, the evidence might have been twisted
+to tell against old Gramm and his wife, but they hadn't been dissipated,
+and they hadn't been indicted, and they hadn't gone round making threats
+against Chris Ford's life like you."
+
+"I didn't mean them. It was nothing but a boy's rage--"
+
+"Yes, but you made them; and when the old man was found--But I'll not go
+into that now. I only want to say that, while I couldn't acquit you with
+my intelligence, I felt constrained to do it in my heart, especially when
+everything was over, and it was too late. The incident has been the one
+thing in my professional career that I've most regretted. I don't quite
+blame myself. I had to do my duty. And yet it was a relief to me when you
+got away. I don't know that I could have acted differently, but--but I
+liked you. I've gone on liking you. I've often thought about you, and
+wondered what had become of you. And one day--not long ago--as I was going
+over the old ground once more, I saw I'd been thinking about--_you_.
+That's how it came to me."
+
+"And you were going to remain silent, and let me marry Evie?"
+
+The blind man reflected.
+
+"I saw what was to be said against it. But I weighed all the evidence
+carefully. You were an injured man; you'd made a great fight and you'd
+won--as far as one man can win against the world. I came to the conclusion
+that I wasn't called on to strike you down a second time, after you'd
+scrambled up so pluckily. Evie is very dear to me; I don't say that I
+should see her married to you without some misgiving; but I decided that
+you deserved her. It was a great responsibility to take, but I took it and
+made up my mind to--let her go."
+
+"Oh, you're a good man! I didn't think there was such mercy in the world."
+
+Ford flung out the words in a cry that was half a groan and half a shout
+of triumph. Miriam choked back a sob. The neat little man shrugged his
+shoulders deprecatingly.
+
+"There's one thing I should like to ask," he pursued, "among the many that
+I don't know anything about, and that I don't care to inquire into. How
+did you come by the name of this lady's father, my old friend Herbert
+Strange?"
+
+Ford and Miriam exchanged swift glances. She shook her head, and he took
+his cue.
+
+"I happened to see it in a--a sort of--paper. I had no idea it was that of
+a real person. I fancied it had come out of a novel--- or something like
+that. I didn't mean to keep it, but it got fastened on me."
+
+"Very odd," was his only comment. "Isn't it, Miriam?
+
+"Now," he _added_, "I suppose you've had all you want of me, so I'll say
+good-night."
+
+He held out his hand, which Ford grasped, clinched rather, in both his
+own.
+
+"God bless you!" Wayne murmured, still tremulously. "God bless you--my
+boy, and bring everything out right. Miriam, I suppose you'll come in and
+see me before you go to bed."
+
+They watched him shuffle his way out of the room, and watched the door
+long after he had closed it. When at last Miriam turned her eyes on Ford
+they were luminous with the relief of her own defeat.
+
+"You see!" she cried, triumphantly. "You see the difference between him
+and me--between his spirit and mine! Now which of us was right?"
+
+"You were."
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+
+The one thing clear to Miriam on the following day was that she had ruined
+everything with astonishing completeness--a curious result to come from
+what she was firmly convinced was "doing right." She had calculated that,
+by a moderate measure of suffering to Evie, and a large one to Ford,
+Evie's ultimate welfare at least would be secured. Now everything was
+being brought to grief together. Out of such a wreck nothing could be
+saved.
+
+With Ford's desire to break the force which made him an impostor she had
+sympathy, but his willingness to risk his life in order to be in harmony
+with law and order again was not so easy for her to understand. While
+education, training and taste kept her, in her own person, within the
+restrictions of civilized life, yet the part of a free-lance in the world
+appealed to her strongly atavistic instincts far more directly than
+membership in a disciplined regular army. The guerilla fighter must of
+necessity be put to shifts--even moral shifts--which the common soldier,
+trained and commanded by others, can be spared; but her heart was with the
+man roving in the hills on his own account. That Ford should deliberately
+seek chains in barracks, when by her surrender on the subject of Evie she
+had made it possible for him still to keep the liberty of the field, was
+to her at once incomprehensible and awful. She had not only the sense of
+watching a man rushing upon Fate, but the knowledge that she herself had
+given him the impetus; while she was fully alive to the fact that when he
+fell everything she cared for in the world would fall with him.
+
+Her mind was too resourceful, her spirit too energetic, to permit of her
+sitting in helpless anguish over his new determination. She was already
+busy with plans for counteracting him, in one of which at least she saw
+elements of hope. Having conceived its possibilities, she was eager to go
+and test them; but she had decided not to leave the house until she knew
+that Ford was really putting his plans into execution. The minute Evie
+learned the fatal news she would have need of her, and she dared not put
+herself out of the child's reach. Her first duty must be toward the
+fragile little creature, who would be crushed like a trampled flower.
+
+Shortly before noon she was summoned to the telephone, where Evie was
+asking if she should find her in. Miriam judged from the tones of the
+transmitted voice that the worst had been made known. She was not,
+however, prepared for the briskness with which, ten minutes later, Evie
+whisked into the room, her cheeks aglow with excitement and her heavenly
+eyes dancing with a purely earthly sparkle.
+
+"Isn't this awful?" she cried, before Miriam could take her into her
+loving arms. "Isn't it appalling? But it's not a surprise to me--not in
+the least. I knew there was something. Haven't I said so? I almost knew
+that his name wasn't Strange. If I hadn't been so busy with my coming
+out--and everything--I should have been sure of it. I haven't had time to
+think of it--do you see? With a lunch somewhere every day at half-past
+one," she hurried on, breathlessly, "and a tea at half-past four, and a
+dinner at eight, and a dance at eleven, and very likely the theatre or the
+opera in between--well, you can see I haven't been able to give much
+attention to anything else; but I knew, from the very time when I was in
+Buenos Aires, that there was something queer about that name. I never saw
+a man so sensitive when any one spoke about his name, not in all my life
+before--and you know down there it's the commonest thing--why, they're so
+suspicious on that point that they'd almost doubt that mine was Evie
+Colfax."
+
+She threw her muff in one direction, her boa in another, and her gloves in
+still another.
+
+"But, Evie darling, you surely didn't think--"
+
+"Of course I never thought of anything like this. I didn't really think of
+anything at all. If I'd begun to give my mind to it, I should probably
+have hit on something a great deal worse."
+
+"What do you mean, dear? Worse--than what?"
+
+"Worse than just being accused of shooting your uncle--and it was only his
+great-uncle, too. I might have thought of forgery or something
+dishonorable, though I should know he wasn't capable of it. Being accused
+isn't much. You can accuse _any one_--you could accuse _me_. That doesn't
+prove anything when he says he didn't do it. Of course he didn't do it.
+Can't any one _see_? My goodness! I wish they'd let me make the laws. I'd
+show them. Just think! To put a man like that in prison--- and say they'd
+do such awful things to him--and make him change his name--and everything.
+It's perfectly scandalous. It's an outrage. I shouldn't think such things
+would be allowed. They wouldn't be allowed in the Argentine. Why, there
+was a man out there who killed his father-in-law--actually _killed_
+him--and they didn't do anything to him at all. I've seen him lots of
+times. Aunt Queenie has pointed him out to me. He used to have the box
+next but two to ours at the opera. And to think they should take a man
+like Herbert, and worry him like that--it makes me so indignant I'd like
+to--"
+
+Evie ground her teeth, threw her clinched fists outward, and twitched her
+skirts about the room in the prettiest possible passion of righteous
+anger.
+
+"But, darling," Miriam asked, in a puzzled voice, "what are you going to
+do about it?"
+
+Evie wheeled round haughtily.
+
+"Do about it? What would you expect me to do about it? I'm going to tell
+every one he didn't do it--that's what I'm going to do about it. But of
+course we're not to speak of it just yet--outside ourselves, you know.
+He's going to Buenos Aires to tell Uncle Jarrott he didn't do it--and when
+he comes back we're going to make it generally known. Oh, there's to be
+law about it--and everything. He means to change his name again to what it
+was before--Ford, the name was--and I must say, Miriam, I like that a good
+deal better than Strange, if you don't mind my telling you. It seems odd
+to have so many Stranges--and I must say I never could get used to the
+idea of having exactly the same name as yours. It was almost like not
+being married outside the family--and I should hate to marry a relation.
+That part of it comes as a pleasant surprise, do you see? I'd made up my
+mind to Strange, and thought there was no way of getting rid of it, unless
+I--but I wasn't looking ahead to anything of _that_ kind. I hope I shall
+never--"
+
+"So, darling, you're going to be true to him?"
+
+"True to him? Of course I'm going to be true to him. Why shouldn't I be?
+I'm going to be more true to him now than I was before. He's so noble
+about it, too. I wish you could have seen the way he broke it to me. Aunt
+Queenie said she never saw anything so affecting, not even on the stage.
+She was there, you know. Herbert felt he couldn't go over it all twice,
+and he thought I should need some one to support me through the shock. I
+didn't--not a bit. But I wish you could have been there, just to see him."
+
+"I can fancy it, dear."
+
+"Of course I know now what you've been fidgeting about ever since he came
+to New York. He says you recognized him--that you'd seen him at Greenport.
+Oh, I knew there was something. But I must say, Miriam, I think you might
+have told me confidentially, and not let it come on me as such a blow as
+this. Not that I take it as a blow, though, of course, it upsets things
+terribly. We can't announce our engagement for ever so long, and Aunt
+Queenie is rushing round in the motor now to take back what she wrote to a
+few people yesterday. I can't imagine what she'll tell them, because I
+charged her on her sacred honor not to give them the idea it was broken
+off, although I'd rather they thought it was broken off than that I hadn't
+been engaged at all."
+
+"Miss Jarrott takes it quietly, then?"
+
+"Quietly! I wish you could see her. She thinks there never was anything so
+romantic. Why, she cried over him, and kissed him, and said she'd always
+be his friend if every one else in the world were to turn against him. As
+a matter of fact, the poor old dear is head over heels in love with
+him--do you see?--in that sort of old-maid way--you know the kind of
+thing I mean. She thinks there's nobody like him, and neither there is. I
+shall miss him frightfully while he's down there telling Uncle Jarrott. I
+shall skip half my invitations and go regularly into retreat till he comes
+back. There's lots more he's going to tell me then--all about what Popsey
+Wayne had to do with it--and everything. I'm glad he doesn't want to do it
+now, because my head is reeling as it is. I've so many things to think
+of--and so much responsibility coming on me all at once--and--"
+
+"Are you going to do anything about Billy?"
+
+"Well, I can postpone that, at any rate. Thank goodness, there's _one_
+silver lining to the cloud. I was going to give him a pretty strong hint
+to-night, seeing Aunt Queenie has begun writing notes around, but now I
+can let him simmer for a while longer. He won't be able to say I haven't
+let him down easy, poor old boy. And, Miriam dear," she continued,
+gathering up her various articles of apparel, preparatory to taking leave,
+"you'll keep just as quiet about it as you can, like a dear, won't you? We
+don't mean to say a word about it outside ourselves till Herbert comes
+back from seeing Uncle Jarrott. That's my advice--and it's all our
+advice--I mean, Aunt Queenie's, too. Then they're going to law--or
+something. I know you _won't_ say anything about it, but I thought I'd
+just put you on your guard."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If Evie's way of taking it was a new revelation to Miriam, of her own
+miscalculation, it was also a new incentive to setting to work as promptly
+as possible to repair what she could of the mischief she had made. With
+Evie's limitations she might never know more of the seriousness of her
+situation than a bird of the nature of the battle raging near its nest;
+while if even Ford "went to law," as Evie put it, and he came off
+victorious, there might still be chances for their happiness. To anything
+else Miriam was indifferent, as a man in the excitement of saving his
+children from fire or storm is dead to his own sensations. It was with
+impetuous, almost frenzied, eagerness, therefore, that she went to the
+telephone to ring up Charles Conquest, asking to be allowed to see him
+privately at his office during the afternoon.
+
+In what she had made up her mind to do the fact that she was planning for
+herself an unnecessary measure of sacrifice was no deterrent. She was in a
+mood in which self-immolation seemed the natural penalty of her mistakes.
+She was not without the knowledge that money could buy the help she
+purposed to obtain by direct intervention; but her inherited instincts,
+scornful of roundabout methods, urged her to pay the price in something
+more personal than coin. It replied in some degree to her self-accusation,
+it assuaged the bitterness of her self-condemnation, to know that she was
+to be the active agent in putting right that which her errors of judgment
+had put wrong. To her essentially primitive soul atonement by proxy was as
+much out of the question as to the devotee beneath the wheels of
+Juggernaut. Somewhere in the background of her thought there were faint
+prudential protests against throwing herself away; but she disdained them,
+as a Latin or a Teuton disdains the Anglo-Saxon's preference for a court
+of law to the pistol of the duellist. It was something outside the realm
+of reason. Reckless impulses subdued by convent restraint or civilized
+requirements awoke with a start all the more violent because of their long
+sleep, driving her to do that which she knew other women would have done
+otherwise or not at all.
+
+She was aware, therefore, of limitations in the sacrifice she was making;
+she was even aware that, in the true sense, it was no sacrifice whatever.
+She was offering herself up because she chose to--in a kind of
+wilfulness--but a passionate wilfulness which claimed that for her at
+least there was no other way. Other women, wiser women, women behind whom
+there was a long, moderation-loving past, might obey the laws that prompt
+to the economy of one's self; she could only follow those blind urgings
+which drove her forefathers to fight when they might have remained at
+peace, or whipped them forth into the wild places of the earth when they
+could have stayed in quiet homes. The hard way in preference to the easy
+way was in her blood. She could no more have resisted taking it now than
+she could have held herself back eight years ago from befriending Norrie
+Ford against the law.
+
+Nevertheless, it was a support to her to remember that Conquest's manner
+on the occasions when business brought her to his office was always a
+little different from that which he assumed when they met outside. He was
+much more the professional man with his client, a little the friend, but
+not at all the lover--if he was a lover anywhere. Having welcomed her now
+with just the right shade of cordiality, he made her sit at a little
+distance from his desk, while he himself returned to the revolving-chair
+at which he had been writing when she entered. After the preliminary
+greetings, he put on, unconsciously, the questioning air a business man
+takes at the beginning of an interview which he has been invited to
+accord.
+
+"I came--about Evie."
+
+Now that she was there it was less easy to begin than she had expected.
+
+"Quite so. I knew there was a hitch. I've just had a mysterious note from
+Queenie Jarrott which I haven't been able to make out. Can't they hit it
+off?"
+
+"It's a good deal more serious than that. Mr. Strange came to see Mr.
+Wayne and me last night. I may as well tell you as simply as I can. His
+name isn't Strange at all."
+
+"Ho! ho! What's up?"
+
+"Did you ever hear the name of--Norrie Ford?"
+
+"Good Lord, yes! I can't quite remember--Let's see. Norrie Ford? I know
+the name as well as I know my own. Wasn't that the case--why, yes, it must
+have been--wasn't that the case Wayne was mixed up in six or eight years
+ago?"
+
+"Yes, it was."
+
+"The fellow gave 'em all the slip, didn't he?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Hadn't he been commuted to a life sentence--?"
+
+"Mr. Wayne hoped it would be done, but it hadn't been done yet. He was
+still under sentence of--death."
+
+"Yes, yes, yes. It comes back to me. We thought Wayne hadn't displayed
+much energy or ability of foresight--or something. I remember there was
+talk about it, and in the newspapers there was even a cock-and-bull story
+that Wayne had connived at his escape. Well, what has that got to do with
+Evie?"
+
+"It has everything to do with her."
+
+Conquest's little gray-green eyes blinked as if against the blaze of their
+own light, while his features sharpened to their utmost incisiveness.
+
+"You don't mean to say--?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"Well, upon--my--!" The exclamation trailed off into a silent effort to
+take in this extraordinary piece of intelligence "Do you mean to say the
+scamp had the cheek--? Oh no, it isn't possible. Come now!"
+
+"It was exactly as I'm going to tell you, but I don't think you should
+call him a scamp. You see, he's engaged to Evie--"
+
+"He's not engaged to her now?"
+
+"He is. She means to be true to him. So do we all."
+
+Two little scarlet spots burned in her cheeks, but it was not more in the
+way of emotion than a warm partisanship on Evie's account demanded.
+
+"Well, I'm blowed!" He swung one leg across the other, making his chair
+describe a semicircle.
+
+"Perhaps you won't be so much--blowed, when you hear all I have to tell
+you."
+
+"Go ahead; I'm more interested than if it was a dime novel."
+
+As lucidly as she could she gave him the outline of Ford's romance,
+dwelling as he had done in relating it to her, less on its incidents than
+on its mental and moral effect upon himself. She suppressed the narrative
+of the weeks spent in the cabin and based her report entirely on
+information received from Ford. For testimony as to his life and character
+in the Argentine she had the evidence of Miss Jarrott, while on the
+subject of his business abilities--no small point with a New York business
+man, as she was astute enough to see--there could be no better authority
+than Conquest himself, who, as Stephens and Jarrott's American legal
+adviser, had had ample opportunity of judging. She was gratified to note
+that as her story progressed it called forth sympathetic looks, and an
+occasional appreciative exclamation, while now and then he slapped his
+thigh as a mark of the kind of amused astonishment that verges on
+approbation.
+
+"So we couldn't desert him now, after she's been so brave, could we?" she
+pleaded, with some amount of confidence; "and especially when he's engaged
+to Evie."
+
+"I suppose we can't desert him, if he's sane."
+
+"Oh, he's sane."
+
+"Then why the deuce, when he was so well out of harm's way, didn't he stay
+there?"
+
+"Because of his love for Evie, don't you see?" She had to explain Ford's
+moral development and psychological state all over again, until he could
+see it with some measure of comprehension.
+
+"It certainly is the queerest story I ever heard," he declared, in
+enjoyment of its dramatic elements, "and we're all in it, aren't we? It's
+like seeing yourself in a play."
+
+"I thought you would look at it in that way. As soon as I began wondering
+what we could do--this morning--I saw that, after Evie, you were the
+person most concerned."
+
+"Who? I? Why am I concerned? I've got nothing to do with it!"
+
+"No, of course not, except as Stephens and Jarrott's lawyer. When their
+representative in New York--"
+
+"Oh, but my dear girl, my duties don't involve me in anything of this
+kind. I'm the legal adviser to the firm, but I've nothing to do with the
+private affairs of their employees."
+
+"Mr. Jarrott is very fond of Mr. Strange--"
+
+"Perhaps this will cool his affection."
+
+"I don't think it will as long as Evie insists on marrying him. I'm sure
+they mean to stand by him."
+
+"They won't be able to stand by him long, if the law gives him--what it
+meant to give him before."
+
+"Oh, but you don't think there's any danger of that?"
+
+"I don't know about it," he said, shaking his head, ominously. "The fact
+that he comes back and gives himself up isn't an argument in favor of his
+innocence. There's generally remorse behind that dodge."
+
+"Then isn't that all the more reason why we should help him?"
+
+"Help him? How?"
+
+"By trying to win his case for him."
+
+He looked at her with eyes twinkling while his fingers concealed the smile
+behind his colorless mustache.
+
+"And how would you propose to set about that?"
+
+"I don't know, but I suppose you do. There must be ways. He's leaving as
+soon as he can for South America. He thinks it may be months before he
+gets back. I thought that--perhaps--in the mean time--while he won't be
+able to do anything for himself--you might see--"
+
+"Yes, yes; go on," he said, as she hesitated.
+
+"You might see if there is any evidence that could be found--that wasn't
+found before--isn't that the way they do it?--and have it ready--for him
+when he came back."
+
+"For a wedding present."
+
+"It _would_ be a wedding present--to all of us. It would be for Evie's
+sake. You know how I love her. She's the dearest thing to me in the world.
+If I could only secure her happiness like that--"
+
+"You mean, if I could secure it."
+
+"You'd be doing it actively, but I should want to co-operate."
+
+"In what way?"
+
+She sat very still. She was sure he understood her by the sudden rigidity
+of his pose, while his eyes stopped twinkling, and his fingers ceased to
+travel along the line of his mustache. Her eyes fell before the scrutiny
+in his, but she lifted them again for one of her quick, wild glances.
+
+"In any way you like."
+
+She tried to make her utterance distinct, matter of fact, not too
+significant, but she failed. In spite of herself, her words conveyed all
+their meaning. The brief pause that followed was not less eloquent, nor
+did it break the spell when Conquest gave a short little laugh that might
+have been nervous and, changing his posture, leaned forward on his desk
+and scribbled on the blotting-pad. While he would never have admitted it,
+it was a relief to him, too, not to be obliged to face her.
+
+He was not shocked, neither was he quite surprised. He was accustomed to
+the thought that a woman's love was a thing to purchase. One man bought it
+from her father for a couple of oxen, another from herself for an
+establishment and a diamond tiara. It was the same principle in both
+cases. He had never considered Miriam Strange as being without a price;
+his difficulty had been in knowing what it was. The establishment and the
+diamond tiara having proved as indifferent to her as the yoke of oxen, he
+was thrown back upon the alternative of heroic deeds. He had more than
+once suspected that these might win her if they had only been in his line.
+There being few opportunities for that kind of endeavor as the head of a
+large and lucrative legal practice, the suggestion only left him cynical.
+In the bottom of his heart he had long wished to dazzle, by some act of
+prowess, the eyes that saw him only as a respectable man of middle age,
+but the desire had merely mocked him with the kind of derision which
+impotence gets from youth. It seemed now a stroke of luck which almost
+merited being termed an act of Providence that there should have come a
+call for exactly his variety of "derringdo" from the very quarter in which
+he could make it tell.
+
+"We've never gone in for any criminal business here," he said, after long
+reflection, while he continued to scribble aimlessly, "but, of course,
+we're in touch with the people who take it up."
+
+"I thought you might be."
+
+"But it's only fair to tell you that if your motive is to save time for
+our friend in question--"
+
+"That _is_ my motive--the only one."
+
+"Then you could get in touch with them, too."
+
+"But I don't want to."
+
+"Still I think you should consider it. The best legal advice in the world
+can be--bought--for money."
+
+"I know that."
+
+Lifting his eyes in a sharp look, he saw her head lilted back with her own
+special air of deliberate temerity.
+
+"Oh, very well, then," he said, quietly, resuming his scribbling again.
+After this warning he felt justified in taking her at her word.
+
+With that as a beginning she knew she had gained her first great point. In
+answer to his questions she told the story over again, displaying, as he
+remembered afterward--but long afterward--a surprising familiarity with
+its details. She made suggestions which he noted as marked by some acumen,
+and laid stress on the value of the aid they might expect privately from
+Philip Wayne. The beauty and eagerness in her face fired the almost
+atrophied enthusiasm in his own heart, while he could not but see that
+this entirely altruistic interest had brought them in half an hour nearer
+together than they had ever been before. It was what they had never had
+till now--a bond in common. In spite of the persistency of his efforts and
+his assertions, he had never hitherto got nearer her than a statue on a
+pedestal gets to its neighbor in a similar situation but now at last they
+were down on the same earth together. This was more than reason enough for
+his taking up the cause of Norrie Ford, consecrating to it all his
+resources, mental and material, and winning it.
+
+In the course of an hour or two their understanding was complete, but he
+did not refer again to the conditions of their tacit compact. It was she
+who felt that sufficient had not been said--that the sincerity with which
+she subscribed to it had not been duly emphasized. She was at the door on
+the point of going away when she braced herself to look at him and say:
+
+"You can't realize what all this means to me. If we succeed--that is, if
+you succeed--I hardly dare to tell you of the extent to which I shall be
+grateful."
+
+He felt already some of the hero's magnanimity as to claiming his reward.
+
+"You needn't think about that," he smiled. "I sha'n't. If by making Evie
+happy I can serve you, I shall not ask for gratitude."
+
+She looked down at her muff and smoothed its fur, then glanced up swiftly.
+"No; but I shall want to give it."
+
+With that she was gone--lighter of heart than a few hours ago it had
+seemed to her possible ever to be again. Her joy was the joy of the
+captain who feels that he has saved his ship, though his own wound is
+fatal.
+
+
+
+
+
+Part IV
+
+Conquest
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+
+Among the three or four qualities Conquest most approved of in himself,
+not the least was a certain capacity for the patient acquisition of the
+world's more enviable properties. He had the gift of knowing what he
+wanted, recognizing it when he saw it, and waiting for it till it came
+within his reach. From his youth upward he had been a connoisseur of
+quality rather than a lover of abundance, while he owned to a talent for
+seeing the value of things which other people overlooked, and throwing
+them into relief when the objects became his. As far back as the time when
+the modest paternal heritage had been divided between his brothers and
+sisters and himself, he had been astute enough to leave the bulk of it to
+them, contenting himself with one or two bits of ancestral furniture and a
+few old books, which were now known by all to have been the only things
+worth having. Throughout his life he had followed this principle of
+acquiring unobtrusively but getting exactly what he wanted. It was so that
+he bought his first horse, so that he bought his first motor, so that he
+purchased the land where he afterward built his house--in a distant,
+desolate stretch of Fifth Avenue which his acquaintances told him would be
+hopelessly out of reach, but where, not many years after, most of them
+were too late to join him.
+
+In building his house, too, he took his time, allowing his friends to
+make their experiments around him, while he studied the great art of "how
+not to do it." One of his neighbors erected a Flemish chActeau, another a
+Florentine palazzo, and a third a FranASec.ois Premier _hA'tel_; but his plot
+of ground remained an unkempt tangle of mullein and blue succory. In the
+end he put up a sober, handsome development on a style which the humbler
+passers-by often called, with approval, "good, plain American," but whose
+point of departure was Georgian. He had the instinct for that which
+springs out of the soil. For this reason he did not shrink from an Early
+Victorian note--the first note of the modern, prosperous New York--in
+decoration; and the same taste impelled him toward the American in art.
+While Neighbor Smith displayed his Gainsboroughs, and Neighbor Jones his
+Rousseaus or Daubignys, Conquest quietly picked up a thing here and
+there--always under excellent advice--which no picture-dealer had been
+able to dispose of, because it came from some studio in Twenty-third
+Street. Hung on his walls, it produced that much-sought-for effect of
+"having been always there." He was not a Chauvinist, nor had he any
+sympathy with the intolerantly patriotic. He was merely a lover of the
+indigenous.
+
+In much the same way he had sought for--and waited for--a wife. He had
+been rashly put down as "not a marrying man," when he was only taking his
+time. He had seen plainly of excellent possibilities--fine women, handsome
+women, clever women, good women--any of whom presumably he could have had
+for the asking; but none was, in his own phraseology, "just the right
+thing." He wanted something unusual, and yet not exotic--something
+obvious, which no one else had observed--something cultivated, and yet
+native--something as exquisite as any hothouse orchid, but with the keen,
+fresh scent of the American woods and waters on its bloom. It was not a
+thing to be picked up every day, and so he kept on the lookout for it, and
+waited. Even when he found it, he was not certain, on the spur of the
+moment, that it would prove exactly what he had in mind. So he waited
+longer. He watched the effect of time and experience upon it, until he was
+quite sure. He knew the risk he was running that some one else might
+snatch it up; but his principle had always been to let everything, no
+matter how coveted, go, rather than buy in haste.
+
+Lest such an attitude toward Miriam Strange should seem cold-blooded, it
+should be said in his defence that he considered the aggregate of his
+sentiments to be--love. She was to be more than "something better than his
+dog, a little dearer than his horse," more than the living, responsive
+soul among his chattels. There was that in her which appealed to his
+desire, and to something more deeply seated in him still. After satisfying
+ear, eye, and intelligence, there was in her nature a whole undiscovered
+region, undivined, undefined, wakening the imagination, and stirring the
+speculative faculties, like the subconscious elements in personality. In
+her wild, non-Aryan glances he saw the flame of eyes that flashed on him
+out of a past unknown to history; in the liquid cadences of her voice he
+heard the echo of the speech that had sounded in the land before Plymouth
+was a stockade or Manhattan was a farm; in her presence he found a claim
+that antedated everything sprung of Hudson, Cabot, or Columbus. The
+slender thread that attached her to the ages of nomadic mystery made her
+for him the indigenous spirit, reborn in a woman of the world.
+
+Knowing himself too old to be dominated by a passion, and too experienced
+to be snared by wiles, he estimated his feelings as being those of love,
+as he understood the word. He conceded the fact that love, like every
+other desire, must work to win, and proceeded to set about his task
+according to his usual methods of persistent, unobtrusive siege. It was
+long before Miriam became aware of what he was doing, and her surprise as
+she drew back was not quite so great as his to see her do it. He was so
+accustomed to success--after taking the trouble to insure it--that he was
+astonished, and a little angry, to find his usual tactics fail. He did not
+believe that she was beyond his grasp; he perceived only that he had taken
+the wrong way to get her. That there was a right way there could be no
+question; and he knew that by patient, unremitting search he should find
+it.
+
+He had, therefore, several sources of satisfaction in espousing the cause
+of Norrie Ford. The amplitude of his legal knowledge would be to him as
+gay feathers to the cock; while the contemplation of the prize added to
+his self-approval in never doubting that it could be won.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was early March when Ford sailed away, leaving his affairs in
+Conquest's charge, at the latter's own request. He in his turn placed them
+in the hands of Kilcup and Warren, who made a specialty of that branch of
+the law. The reward was immediate, in that frequent talks with Miriam
+became a matter of course.
+
+His trained mind was prompt to seize the fact that these interviews took
+place on a basis different from that of their meetings in the past. Where
+he had been seeking to gain an end he was now on probation. He had been
+told--or practically told--that what he had been asking would be granted,
+as soon as certain conditions were fulfilled. It became to him, therefore,
+a matter of honor, in some degree one of professional etiquette, to fulfil
+the conditions before referring to the reward. Instead of a suitor
+pressing his suit, he became the man of business recounting the points
+scored, or still to be scored, in a common enterprise. In keeping her
+informed of each new step that Kilcup and Warren were taking, he
+maintained an attitude of distant respect, of which she could have nothing
+to complain.
+
+Expecting an equal reserve on her part, it was with some surprise that he
+saw her assume the initiative in cordiality. He called it cordiality,
+because he dared not make it a stronger word. Her manner went back to the
+spontaneous friendliness that had marked their intercourse before she
+began to see what he was aiming at, while into it she threw an infusion of
+something that had not hitherto been there. When he came with the
+information that a fresh bit of evidence had been discovered, or a new
+light thrown on an old one, she listened with interest--just the right
+kind of interest--and made pretexts to detain him, sometimes with Wayne as
+a third, sometimes without, for the pleasure of his own company. Now and
+then, as spring came on, they would all three, at her suggestion, cross
+the street, and stroll in the park together. Leaving Wayne on some
+convenient seat, they would prolong their own walk, talking with the
+unguarded confidence of mutual trust. It was she who furnished the
+topics--books, music, politics, people, anything that chanced to be
+uppermost. When he decided to purchase an automobile a whole new world of
+consultation was opened up. They visited establishments together, and
+drove with Wayne into the country to test machines. Returning Conquest
+would dine informally, in morning dress, with them; or else, from time to
+time he would invite them to a restaurant. By-and-by he took to organizing
+little dinners at his own house, ostensibly to cheer up Wayne, but really
+to see Miriam at his table.
+
+In all this there was nothing remarkable, as between old friends, except
+the contrast with her bearing toward him during the past year. He had
+expected that when Norrie Ford went finally free she would fulfil her
+contract, and fulfil it well; but he had not expected this instalment of
+graciousness in advance. It set him to pondering, to looking in the
+mirror, to refining on that careful dressing which he had already made an
+art. After all, a man in the fifties was young as long as he looked young,
+and according as one took the point of view.
+
+Except when Ford's affairs came directly under discussion he occupied,
+seemingly, a secondary place in their thoughts. Miriam rarely spoke of him
+at all, and if Conquest brought up his name more frequently it was because
+his professional interest in the numerous "nice points" of the case was
+becoming keen. He talked them over with her, partly because of his
+pleasure in the intelligence with which she grasped them, and partly
+because their intimacy deepened in proportion as the hope strengthened
+that Ford's innocence would be proved.
+
+It was June before Miriam heard from South America. Two or three letters
+to Evie had already come, guardedly written, telling little more than the
+incidents of Ford's voyage and arrival. It was to Miriam he wrote what he
+actually had at heart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The great moment has come and gone," she read to Conquest. "I have seen
+Mr. Jarrott, and made a clean breast of everything. It was harder than I
+expected, though I expected it would be pretty hard. I think I felt
+sorrier for him than for myself, which is saying a good deal. He not only
+takes it to heart, but feels it as a cut to his pride. I can see that that
+thought is uppermost. What he feels is not so much the fact that _I_
+deceived him as that I deceived _him_. I can understand it, too. In a
+country where there is such a lot of this sort of thing, he has never been
+touched by it before. It has been a kind of boast that his men were always
+the genuine article. If one of them is called Smith, it is because he _is_
+a Smith, and not a Vere de Vere in hiding. But that isn't all. He took me
+into his family--into his very heart. He showed that, when I told him. He
+tried not to, but he couldn't help it. I tell you it hurt--_me_. I won't
+try to write about it. I'll tell you everything face to face, when I get
+up to the mark, if I ever do. Apparently my letters hadn't prepared him
+for the thing at all. He thought it was to be something to do with Evie,
+though he might have known I wouldn't have chucked up everything for that.
+The worst of it is, he's no good at seeing things all round. He can't take
+my point of view a bit. It is impossible to explain the fix I was put in,
+because he can see nothing but the one fact that I pulled the wool over
+his eyes--_his_ eyes, that had never suffered sacrilege before. I
+sympathize with him in that, and yet I think he might try to see that
+there's something to be said on my side. He doesn't, and he never
+will--which only hurts me the more.
+
+"As for Evie, he wouldn't let me mention her name. I didn't insist,
+because it was too painful--I mean, too painful to see how he took it. He
+said, in about ten words, that Evie had not been any more engaged than if
+she had given her word to a man of air, and that there was no reason why
+she should be spoken of. We left it there. I couldn't deny that, and it
+was no use saying any more. The only reply to him must be given by Evie
+herself. He is writing to her, and so am I. I wish you would help her to
+see that she must consider herself quite free, and that she isn't to
+undertake what she may not have the strength to carry out. I realize more
+and more that I was asking her to do the impossible."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was an hour or two after reading this, when Conquest had gone away,
+that Evie herself--as dainty as spring, in flowered muslin and a Leghorn
+hat crowned with a wreath of roses--came fluttering in.
+
+"I've had the queerest letter from Uncle Jarrott," she began,
+breathlessly. "The poor old dear--well, something must be the matter with
+him. I can't for the life of me imagine what Herbert can have told him,
+but he doesn't understand a bit."
+
+Miriam locked her own letter in her desk, saying as she did so:
+
+"How does he show it?--that he doesn't understand."
+
+"Why, he simply talks wild--that's how he shows it. He says I am not to
+consider myself engaged to Herbert--that I was never engaged to him at
+all. I wonder what he calls it, if it isn't engaged, when I have a
+ring--and everything."
+
+"It is rather mystifying." Miriam tried to smile. "I suppose he means that
+having given your word to Herbert Strange, you're not to consider yourself
+bound to Norrie Ford, unless you want to."
+
+"Pff! I don't care anything about that. I never liked the name of
+Herbert--or Strange, either. I told you that before. All the same, I wish
+Uncle Jarrott would have a little sense."
+
+"Suppose--I mean, just suppose, dear--he felt it his duty to forbid your
+engagement altogether. What would you do then?"
+
+"It wouldn't be very nice of him, I must say. He was as pleased as Punch
+over it when I was down there. If he's so capricious, I don't see how he
+can blame me."
+
+"Blame you, for what, dear?"
+
+"For staying engaged--if it's all right."
+
+"But if he thought it wasn't all right?"
+
+"You do, don't you?"
+
+Evie, who had been prancing about the room, turned sharply on Miriam, who
+was still at her desk.
+
+"That isn't the question--"
+
+"No, but it's _a_ question. I presume you don't mind my asking it?"
+
+"You may ask me anything, darling--of course. But this is your uncle
+Jarrott's affair, and yours. It wouldn't do for me--"
+
+"Oh, that's so like you Miriam. You'd exasperate a saint--the way you
+won't give your opinion when you've got one. I wish I could ask Billy.
+He'd know. But of course I couldn't, when he thinks I'm still engaged to
+_him_."
+
+"What do you want to ask him, Evie, dear?"
+
+"Well, he's a lawyer. He could tell me all about what it's all about. I'm
+sure _I_ don't know. I didn't think it was anything--and yet here's Uncle
+Jarrott writing as if it was something awful. He's written to Aunt
+Queenie, too. Of course I must stand by Herbert, whatever happens--if it
+isn't very bad; but you can see yourself that I don't want to be mixed up
+in a--a--in a scandal."
+
+"It would hardly be a scandal, dear; but there would be some--some
+publicity about it."
+
+"I don't mind publicity. I'm used to that, with my name in the paper every
+other day. It was in this morning. Did you see it?--the Gresley's dance.
+Only I do wish they would call me Evelyn, and not Evie. It sounds so
+familiar."
+
+"I'm afraid they'd put more in about you than just that."
+
+"Would they? What?" Her eyes danced already, in anticipation.
+
+"I can't tell you exactly what; but it would be things you wouldn't like."
+
+Evie twitched about the room, making little clicking sounds with her lips,
+as signs of meditation.
+
+"Well, I mean to be true to him--a while longer," she said, at last, as if
+coming to a conclusion. "I'm not going to let Uncle Jarrott think I'm just
+a puppet to be jerked on a string. The idea! When he was as pleased as
+Punch about it himself. And Aunt Helen said she'd give me my trousseau. I
+suppose I sha'n't get that now. But there's the money you offered me for
+the pearl necklace. Only I'd much rather have the pearl--Well, I'll be
+true to him, do you see? We're leaving for Newport the day after
+to-morrow. They say there hasn't been such a brilliant summer for a long
+time as they expect this year. Thank goodness, there's something to take
+my mind off all this care and worry and responsiblity, otherwise I think I
+should pass away. But I shall show Uncle Jarrott that he can't do just as
+he likes with me, anyhow."
+
+Evie and Miss Jarrott went to Newport, and it was the beginning of July
+before Miriam heard from Ford again. Once more she read to Conquest such
+portions of the letter as she thought he would find of interest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It is all over now," Ford wrote, "between Stephens and Jarrott and me.
+I'm out of the concern for good. It was something of a wrench, and I'm
+glad it is past. I didn't see the old man again. I wanted to thank him and
+say good-bye, but he dodged me. Perhaps it is just as well. Even if I were
+to meet him now, I shouldn't make the attempt again. I confess to feeling
+a little hurt, but I thoroughly understand him. He is one of those
+men--you meet them now and again--survivals from the old school--with a
+sense of rectitude so exact that they can only see in a straight line. It
+is all right. Don't think that I complain. It is almost as much for his
+sake as for my own that I wish he could have taken what I call a more
+comprehensive view of me. I know he suffers--and I shall never be able to
+tell him how sorry I am till we get into the kingdom of heaven. In fact, I
+can't explain anything to any one, except you, which must be an excuse for
+my long letters. I try to keep you posted in what I'm going through, so
+that you may convey as much or as little of it as you think fit to Evie. I
+can't tell her much, and I see from the little notes she writes me that
+she doesn't yet understand.
+
+"The cat seems to be quite out of the bag in the office, though I haven't
+said a word to any one, and I know Mr. Jarrott wouldn't. Pride and sore
+feeling will keep him from ever speaking of me again, except when he can't
+help it. I don't mean to say that the men know exactly what it is, but
+they know enough to set them guessing. They are jolly nice about it, too,
+even the fellows who were hardly decent to me in the old days. Little
+Green--the chap from Boston who succeeded me at Rosario; I must have told
+you about him--and his wife can't do enough for me, and I know they mean
+it."
+
+There was a silence of some weeks before he wrote again.
+
+"I shall not get away from here as soon as I expected, as my private
+affairs are not easily settled up. This city grows so fast that I have had
+a good part of my savings in real estate. I am getting rid of it by
+degrees, but it takes time to sell to advantage. I may say that I am doing
+very well, for which I am not sorry, as I shall need the money for my
+trial. I hope you don't mind my referring to it, because I look forward to
+it with something you might almost call glee. To get back where I started
+will be like waking from a bad dream. I can't believe that Justice will
+make the same mistake twice--and even if she does I would rather she had
+the chance. I am much encouraged by the last reports from Kilcup and
+Warren. I've long felt that it was Jacob Gramm who did for my poor uncle,
+though I didn't like to accuse him of it when the proofs seemed all the
+other way. He certainly had more reason to do the trick than I had, for my
+uncle had been a brute to him for thirty years, while he had only worried
+me for two. He wasn't half a bad old chap, either--old Gramm--and it was
+one of the mysteries of the place to me that he could have stood it so
+long. The only explanation I could find was that he had a kind of
+affection for the old man, such as a dog will sometimes have for a master
+who beats him, or a woman for a drunken husband. I believe the moment came
+when he simply found himself at the end of his tether of endurance--and
+he just did for him. His grief, when it was all over, was real enough.
+Nobody could doubt that. In fact, it was so evidently genuine that the
+theory I am putting forward now only came to me of late years. I think
+there is something in it, and I believe the further they go the more they
+will find to support it. Now that the old chap is dead I should have less
+scruple in following it up--especially if the old lady is gone too. She
+was a bit of a vixen, but the husband was a good old sort. I liked him."
+
+Some weeks later he wrote:
+
+"I wander about this place a good deal like a ghost in its old haunts.
+Everything here is so temporary, so changing--much more so than in New
+York--that one's footprints are very quickly washed away. Outside the
+office almost no one remembers me. It is curious to think that I was once
+so happy here--and so hopeful. There was always a kind of hell in my
+heart, but I kept it banked down, as we do the earth's internal fires,
+beneath a tolerably solid crust. Yesterday, finding myself at the
+Hipodromo, I stood for a while on the spot where I first saw Evie. It used
+to seem to me a bit of enchanted ground, but I feel now as if I ought to
+erect a gravestone there. Poor little Evie! How right you were about it
+all. It was madness on my part to think she could ever climb up my
+Calvary. My excuse is that I didn't imagine it was going to be so steep. I
+even hoped she would never see that there was a Calvary at all. Her notes
+are still pitifully ignorant of the real state of things.
+
+"And speaking of gravestones, I went out the other day to the Recoleta
+Cemetery, and looked at the grave of my poor old friend, Monsieur Durand.
+Everything neat, and in good order. It gives me a peculiar satisfaction
+to see that the decorum he loved reigns where he 'sleeps.' I never knew
+his secret--except that rumor put him down for an unfrocked priest.
+
+"I doubt if I shall get away from here till the beginning of October; but
+when I do, everything will be in trim for what I sometimes think of as my
+resurrection."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These letters, and others like them, Miriam shared conscientiously with
+Conquest. It was part of the loyalty she had vowed to him in her heart
+that she should keep nothing from him, except what was sanctified and
+sealed forever, as her own private history. In the impulse to give her
+life as a ransom for Norrie Ford's she was eager to do it without
+reserves, or repinings, or backward looks--without even a wish that it had
+been possible to make any other use of it. If she was not entirely
+successful in the last feat, she was fairly equal to the rest, so that in
+allowing himself to be misled Conquest could scarcely be charged with
+fatuity. With his combined advantages, personal and otherwise, it was not
+astonishing that a woman should be in love with him; and if that woman
+proved to be Miriam Strange, one could only say that the unexpected had
+happened, as it often does. If, in view of all the circumstances, he
+dressed better than ever, and gave his little dinners more frequently,
+while happiness toned down the sharpness of his handsome profile to a
+softer line, he had little in common with Malvolio.
+
+And what he had began to drop away from him. Insensibly he came to see
+that the display of his legal knowledge, of his carefully chosen ties, of
+his splendid equipment in house, horses, and automobiles, had something of
+the major-domo's strut in parti-colored hose. The day came when he
+understood that the effort to charm her by the parade of these things was
+like the appeal to divine grace by means of grinding on a prayer-mill. It
+was a long step to take, both in thought and emotion, leading him to see
+love, marriage, women's hearts, and all kindred subjects, from a different
+point of view. Love in particular began to appear to him as more than the
+sum total of approbation bestowed on an object to be acquired. Though he
+was not prepared to give it a new definition, it was clear that the old
+one was no longer sufficient for his needs. The mere fact that this woman,
+whom he had vainly tempted with gifts--whom he was still hoping to capture
+by prowess--could come to him of her own accord, had a transforming effect
+on himself. If he ever got her--by purchase, conquest, or any other form
+of acquisition--he had expected to be proud; he had never dreamed of this
+curious happiness, that almost made him humble.
+
+It was a new conception of life to think that there were things in it that
+might be given, but which could not be bought; as it was a new revelation
+of himself to perceive that there were treasures in his dry heart which
+had never before been drawn on. This discovery was made almost
+accidentally. He stumbled on it, as men have stumbled on Koh-i-noors and
+Cullinanes lying in the sand.
+
+"What I really came to tell you," he said to her, on one occasion, as they
+strolled side by side in the Park, "is that I am going away to-morrow--to
+the West--to Omaha."
+
+"Isn't that rather sudden?"
+
+"Rather. I've thought for the last few days I might do it. The fact is,
+they've found Amalia Gramm."
+
+She stopped with a sudden start of interrogation, moving on again at once.
+It was a hot September evening, at the hour when twilight merges into
+night. They had left Wayne on a favorite seat, and having finished their
+own walk northward, were returning to pick him up and take him home. It
+was just dark enough for the thin crescent of the harvest moon to be
+pendulous above the city, while a rim of lighted windows in high faASec.ades
+framed the tree-tops The peace of the quiet path in which they rambled
+seemed the more sylvan because of the clang and rumble of the streets, as
+a room will appear more secluded and secure when there is a storm outside.
+
+"They've found her living with some nieces out there," he went on to
+explain. "She appears to have been half over the world since old Gramm
+died--home to Germany--back to America--to Denver--to Chicago--to
+Milwaukee--to the Lord knows where--and now she has fetched up in Omaha.
+She strikes me in the light of an unquiet spirit. It seems she has nephews
+and nieces all over the lot--and as she has the ten thousand dollars old
+Chris Ford left them--"
+
+"Are they going to bring her here?"
+
+"They can't--bedridden--paralyzed, or something. They've got to take her
+testimony on the spot. I want to be there when they do it. There are
+certain questions which it is most important to have asked. In a way, it
+is not my business; but I'm going to make it mine. I've mulled over the
+thing so long that I think I see the psychology of the whole drama."
+
+"I can never thank you enough for the interest you've shown," she said,
+after a brief silence.
+
+He gave his short, nervous laugh.
+
+"Nor I you for giving me the chance to show it. That's where the kindness
+comes in. It's made a different world for me, and me a different man in
+it. If anybody had told me last winter that I should spend the whole
+summer in town working on a criminal case--"
+
+"You shouldn't have done that. I wanted you to go away as usual."
+
+"And leave you here?"
+
+"I shouldn't have minded--as long as Mr. Wayne preferred to stay. It's so
+hard for him to get about, anywhere but in the place he's accustomed to.
+New York in summer isn't as bad as people made me think."
+
+"I too have found that true. To me it has been a very happy time. But
+perhaps my reasons were different from yours."
+
+She reflected a minute before uttering her next words, but decided to say
+them.
+
+"I fancy our reasons were the same."
+
+The low voice, the simplicity of the sentence, the meanings in it and
+behind it, made him tremble. It was then, perhaps, that he began to see
+most clearly the true nature of love, both as given and received.
+
+"I don't think they can be," he ventured, hoping to draw her on to say
+something more; but she did not respond.
+
+After all, he reflected, as they continued their walk more or less in
+silence, too many words would only spoil the minute's bliss. There was,
+too, a pleasure in standing afar off to view the promised land almost
+equal to that of marching into it--especially when, as now, he was given
+to understand that its milk and honey were awaiting him.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+
+It was the middle of October when Evie wrote from Lenox to say she would
+come to town to meet Ford on his arrival, begging Miriam to give her
+shelter for a night or two. The Grants remaining abroad, Miss Jarrott had
+taken the house in Seventy-second Street for another winter, but as Evie
+would run up to New York alone she preferred for the minute to be Miriam's
+guest.
+
+"The fact is, I'm worried to death," she wrote, confidentially "and you
+must help me to see daylight through this tangled mass of everybody saying
+different things. Aunt Queenie has gone completely back on Herbert, just
+because Uncle Jarrott has. That doesn't strike me as very loyal, I must
+say. I shouldn't think it right to desert anybody, unless I wanted to. I
+wouldn't do it because some one else told me to--not if he was my brother
+ten times over. I mean to be just as true to Herbert as I can Not that he
+makes it very easy for me, because he has broken altogether with Uncle
+Jarrott--and that seems to me the maddest thing. I certainly sha'n't get
+my trousseau from Aunt Helen now. I don't see what we're all coming to.
+Everybody is so queer, and they keep hinting things they won't say out, as
+if there was some mystery. I do wish I could talk to Billy about it. Of
+course I can't--the way matters stand. And speaking of Billy, that rich
+Mr. Bird--you remember I told you about him last winter--has asked me to
+marry him. Just think! I forget how much he has a year, but it's something
+awful. Of course I told him I couldn't give him a definite answer yet--but
+that if he insisted on it I should have to make it No. He said he didn't
+insist--that he'd rather wait till I had time to make up my mind, if I
+didn't keep him dangling. I told him I wouldn't keep him doing anything
+whatever, and that if he dangled at all it would be entirely of his own
+accord. I think he liked my spirit, so he said he'd wait. We left it
+there, which was the wisest way--though I must say I didn't like his
+presuming on his money to think I would make a difference between him and
+the others. Money doesn't mean anything to me, though dear mamma hoped she
+would live to see me well established. She didn't, poor darling, but
+that's no reason why I shouldn't try to carry out her wishes. All the
+same, I mean to be true to Herbert just as long as possible; and so you
+may expect me on the twenty-ninth."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If there was much in this letter that Miriam found disturbing, it was not
+the thought that Evie might be false to Ford, or that Ford might suffer,
+which alarmed her most. There was something in her that cried out in fear
+before the possibility that Norrie Ford might be free again. Her strength
+having sprung so largely from the hope of restoring the plans she had
+marred, the destruction of the motive left her weak; but worse than that
+was the knowledge that, though she had tried to empty her heart completely
+of its cravings, only its surface had been drained. It was to get
+assurance rather than to give information that she read fragments of
+Evie's letter to Conquest, on the evening of his return from Omaha. He had
+come to give her the news of his success. That it was good news was
+evident in his face when he entered the room; and, almost afraid to hear
+it, she had broached the subject of her anxiety about Evie first.
+
+"She's going to give him the sack; that's what _she's_ going to give him,"
+Conquest said, conclusively, while Miriam folded the dashingly scribbled
+sheets. "You needn't be worried about her in the least. Miss Evie knows
+her way about as cleverly as a homing bee. She'll do well for herself
+whatever else she may not do. _Come now_!"
+
+"I'm not thinking of that so much as that she should do her duty."
+
+"Duty! Pooh! That sort of little creature has no duty--the word doesn't
+apply to it. Evie is the most skilful mixture of irresponsible impulse and
+shrewd calculation you'll find in New York. She'll use both her gifts with
+perfect heartlessness, and yet in such a way that even her guardian angel
+won't know just where to find fault with her."
+
+"But she must marry Mr. Ford--now."
+
+He was too busy with his own side of the subject to notice that her
+assertion had the intensity of a cry. He had a man's lack of interest in
+another man's love-affairs while he was blissfully absorbed in his own.
+
+"You might as well tell a swallow that it must migrate--now," he laughed.
+"Poor Ford will feel it, I've no doubt; but we shall make up to him for a
+good deal of it. We're going to pull him through."
+
+For the instant her anxiety was diverted into another channel. "Does that
+mean that Amalia Gramm has told you anything?"
+
+"She's told us everything. I thought she would. I don't feel at liberty to
+give you the details before they come out at the proper time and place;
+but there's no harm in saying that my analysis of the old woman's
+psychological state was not so very far wrong. There's no question about
+it any longer. We'll pull him through. And, by George, he's worth it!"
+
+The concluding exclamation, uttered with so much sincerity, took her by
+surprise, transmuting the pressure about her heart into a mist of sudden
+tears. Tears came to her rarely, hardly, and seldom with relief. She was
+especially unwilling that Conquest should notice them now; but the attempt
+to dash them away only caused them to fall faster. She could see him
+watching her in a kind of sympathetic curiosity, slightly surprised in his
+turn at the unexpected emotion, and trying to divine its cause. Unable to
+bear his gaze any longer, she got up brusquely from her chair, retreating
+into the bay-window, where--the curtains being undrawn--she stood looking
+down on the sea of lights, as beings above the firmament might look down
+on stars. He waited a minute, and came near her only when he judged that
+he might do so discreetly.
+
+"You're unnerved," he said, with tender kindliness. "That's why you're
+upset. You've had too much on your mind. You're too willing to take all
+the care on your own shoulders, and not let other people hustle for
+themselves."
+
+She was pressing her handkerchief against her lips, so she made no reply.
+The moment seemed to him one at which he might go forward a little more
+boldly. All the circumstances warranted an advance from his position of
+reserve.
+
+"You need me," he ventured to say, with that quiet assurance which in a
+lover means much. "I understand you as no one else does in the world."
+
+Her brimming eyes gave him a look which was only pathetic, but which he
+took to be one of assent.
+
+"I've always told you I could help you," he went on, with tranquil
+earnestness, "and I could. You've too many burdens to carry alone--burdens
+that don't belong to you, but which, I know, you'll never lay down. Well,
+I'll share them. There's Wayne, now. He's too much for you, by yourself--I
+don't mean from the material point of view, but--the whole thing. It wears
+on you. It's bound to. Wayne is my friend just as much as yours. He's my
+responsibility--so long as you take it in that light. I've been thinking
+of him a lot lately--and I see how, in my house--could put him
+up--ideally."
+
+Still pressing her handkerchief against her lips with her right hand, she
+put out her left in a gesture of deprecation. He understood it as one of
+encouragement, and went on.
+
+"You must come and look at my house. You've never really seen it, and I
+think you'd like it. I think you'd like--everything I've got everything to
+make you happy; and if you'll only let me do it, you'll make me happy,
+too."
+
+She felt able to speak at last. Her eyes were still brimming as she turned
+toward him, but brimming only as pools are when the rain is over.
+
+"I want you to be happy. You're so good ... and kind ... and you've done
+so much for me ... you deserve it."
+
+She turned away from him again. With her arm on the woodwork of the
+window, she rested her forehead rather wearily on her hand. He understood
+so little of what was passing within her that she found it a relief to
+suspend for the minute her comedy of spontaneous happiness, letting her
+heart ache unrestrainedly. Her left hand hanging limp and free, she made
+no effort to withdraw it when she felt him clasp it in his own. Since she
+had subscribed to the treaty months ago, since she had insisted on doing
+it rightly or wrongly, it made little difference when and how she carried
+the conditions out. So they stood hand in hand together, tacitly, but, as
+each knew, quite effectually, plighted. In her silence, her resignation,
+her evident consent he read the proof of that love which, to his mind, no
+longer needed words.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Late that night, after he had gone away, she wrote to Evie, beseeching her
+to be true to Ford. The letter was so passionate, so little like herself,
+that she was afraid of destroying it if she waited till morning, so she
+posted it without delay. The answer came within forty-eight hours, in the
+shape of a telegram from Evie. She was coming to town at once, though it
+wanted still three or four days to Ford's arrival.
+
+It was a white little Evie, with drawn face, who threw herself into
+Miriam's arms at the station, clutching at her with a convulsive sob.
+
+"Miriam, I can't do it," she whispered, in a kind of terror. "They say
+he's going to be put in--_jail_!"
+
+Her voice rose on the last word, so that one or two people paused in their
+rush past to glance at the pitifully tragic little face.
+
+"Hush, darling," Miriam whispered back. "You'll tell me about it as we go
+home."
+
+But in the motor Evie could only cry, clinging to Miriam as she used to do
+in troubled moments in childhood. Arrived at the apartment, Wayne had to
+be faced with some measure of self-control, and then came dinner. At table
+Evie, outwardly mistress of herself by this time, talked feverish
+nonsense about their common friends in Lenox, after which she made an
+excuse for retiring early. It was only in the bedroom, when they were
+secure from interruption that Miriam heard what Evie had to tell. She was
+tearless now, and rather indignant.
+
+"I've had the strangest letter from Herbert," she declared excitedly, as
+soon as Miriam entered the room. "I couldn't have believed he wrote it in
+his senses if Aunt Queenie hadn't heard the Same thing from Uncle Jarrott.
+He says he's got to go to--_jail_."
+
+There was the same rising inflexion on the last word, suggestive of a
+shriek of horror, that Miriam had noticed in the station. In her white
+peignoir, her golden hair streaming over her shoulders, and her hands
+flung wide apart with an appealing dramatic gesture, Evie was not unlike
+some vision of a youthful Christian martyr, in spite of the hair-brush in
+her hand. Miriam sat down sidewise on the edge of the couch, looking up at
+the child in pity. She felt that it was useless to let her remain in
+darkness any longer.
+
+"Of course he has to," she said, trying to make her tone as matter of fact
+as might be. "Didn't you know it?"
+
+"Know it! Did _you_?"
+
+Evie stepped forward, bending over Miriam as if she meant to strike her.
+
+"I knew it in a general way, darling. I suppose, when he gives himself to
+the police--"
+
+"The police!" Evie screamed. "Am I to be engaged to a man who--gives
+himself up to the police?"
+
+"It will only be for a little while, dear--"
+
+"I don't care whether it's for a little while or foreverit can't _be_.
+What is he thinking of? What are _you_ thinking of? Don't you _see_? How
+can I face the world--with all my invitations--when the man I'm engaged to
+is--in jail?"
+
+Evie's hands flew up in a still more eloquent gesture, while the blue
+eyes, usually so soft and veiled, were wide with flaming interrogation.
+
+"I knew that--in some ways--it might be hard for you--"
+
+Evie laughed, a little silvery mirthless ripple of scorn.
+
+"I must say, Miriam, you choose your words skilfully. But you're wrong, do
+you see? There's no way in which it can be hard for me, because there's no
+way in which it's possible."
+
+"Oh yes, there is, dear--if you love him."
+
+"That has nothing to do with it. Of course I love him. Haven't I said so?
+But that doesn't make any difference. Can't I love him without being
+engaged to--to--to a man who has to go to jail?"
+
+"Certainly; but you can't love him if you don't feel that you must--that
+you simply _must_--stand by his side."
+
+"There you go again, Miriam, with your queer ideas. It's exactly what any
+one would expect you to say."
+
+"I hope so."
+
+"Oh, you needn't hope so, because they would--any one who knew you. But I
+have to do what's right. I know what I feel in my conscience--and I have
+to follow it. And besides, I couldn't--I couldn't"--her voice began to
+rise again--"I couldn't face it--I couldn't bear it--not if I loved him a
+great deal better than I do."
+
+"That's something you must think about very seriously, dear--"
+
+"I don't have to!" she cried, with a stamp of her foot. "I know it
+already. It wouldn't make any difference if I thought about it a thousand
+years. I couldn't be engaged to a man who was in jail, not if I worshipped
+the ground he trod on."
+
+"But when he's innocent, darling--"
+
+"It's jail, just the same. I can't be engaged to people just because
+they're innocent. It isn't right to expect it of me. And, anyhow," she
+added, passionately, "I can't do it. It would kill me. I should never lift
+my head again. I can't--I can't. It's hateful of any one to say I ought
+to. I'm surprised at you, Miriam, when you know how dear mamma would have
+forbidden it. It's all very well for you to give advice, when you have no
+family--and no one to think about--and hardly any invitations-- Well, I
+can't, and there's an end of it. If that's your idea of love, then, I must
+say, my conception is a little different. I've always had high ideals, and
+I feel obliged to hold to them, however you may condemn me."
+
+She ended with a catch in her breath something like a sob.
+
+"But I'm not condemning you, Evie dear. If you feel what you say, there's
+nothing for it but to see Mr. Ford and tell him so."
+
+At this suggestion Evie sobered. She was a long time silent before she
+observed, in a voice that had become suddenly calm and significantly
+casual, "That's easy for you to say."
+
+"If you speak to him as decidedly as to me, I should think it would be
+easy for you to do."
+
+"And still easier for you."
+
+Evie spoke in that tone of unintentional intention which is most pointed.
+It was not lost on Miriam, who recoiled from the mere thought. It seemed
+to her better to ignore the hint, but Evie, with feverish eagerness,
+refused to let it pass.
+
+"Did you hear what I said?" she persisted, sharply.
+
+"I heard it, dear; but it didn't seem to me to mean anything."
+
+"That would depend on whether you heard it only with the ear or in the
+heart."
+
+"You know that everything that has to do with you is in my heart."
+
+"Well, then?"
+
+"But if you mean by that that I should tell Mr. Ford you're not going to
+marry him--why, it's out of the question."
+
+"Then who's to tell him? _I_ can't. It's not to be expected."
+
+"But, darling, you must. This is awful."
+
+Miriam got up and went toward her, but Evie, who was nervously brushing
+her hair, edged away.
+
+"Of course it's awful, but I don't see the use of making it worse than it
+need be. He'll feel it a great deal more if he sees me, and so shall I."
+
+"And what shall I feel?" Miriam spoke unguardedly, but Evie was too
+preoccupied to notice the bitterness of the tone.
+
+"I don't see why you should feel anything at all. It's nothing to you--or
+very little. It wouldn't be your fault; not any more than it's the
+postman's if he has to bring you a letter with bad news."
+
+Miriam went back to her place on the edge of the couch, where with her
+forehead bowed for a minute on her hand she sat reflecting. An
+overwhelming desire for confidence, for sympathy perhaps, for the
+clearing up of mysteries in any case, was impelling her to tell Evie all
+that had ever happened between Ford and herself. It had been necessary to
+maintain so many reserves that possibly this new light would enable Evie
+to see her own duty more straightforwardly.
+
+"Darling," she began, "I want to tell you something--"
+
+But before she could proceed Evie flung the hair-brush on the floor and
+uttered a great swelling sob. With her hands hanging at her sidess and her
+golden head thrown back, she wept with the abandonment of a child, while
+suggesting the seraphic suffering of a grieving angel by some old master.
+
+In an instant Miriam had her in her arms. It was the appeal she had never
+been able to resist.
+
+"There, there, my pet," she said, soothingly, drawing her to the couch.
+"Come to Miriam, who loves you. There, there."
+
+Evie clung to her piteously, with flower-like face tilted outward and
+upward for the greater convenience of weeping.
+
+"Oh, I'm so lonely!" she sobbed. "I'm so lonely ... I I wish dear mamma
+... hadn't died."
+
+Miriam pressed her the more closely.
+
+"I'm so lonely ... and everything's so strange ... and I don't know what
+to do ... and he's going to be put in jail ... and you're so unkind to
+me.... Oh, dear! ... I can't tell him ... I can't tell him ... I can't ...
+I can't ..."
+
+She pillowed her head on Miriam's shoulder, like a child that would force
+a caress from the hand that has just been striking it. The action filled
+Miriam with that kind of self-reproach which the weak creature inspires so
+easily in the strong. In spite of her knowledge to the contrary, she had
+the feeling of having acted selfishly.
+
+"No, darling," she said, at last, as Evie's sobs subdued into convulsive
+tremblings, "you needn't tell him. I'll see him. He'll understand how hard
+it's been for you. It's been hard for every one--and especially for you,
+darling. I'll do my best. You know I will. And I'm sure he'll understand.
+There, there," she comforted, as Evie's tears broke out afresh. "Have your
+cry out, dear. It will do you good. There, there."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So Evie went back next day to Lenox, while Miriam waited for Ford.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+
+A few days later she read his name, in a morning paper, in the _Asiatic's_
+list of passengers the steamer having arrived at quarantine the night
+before: Mr. John Norrie Ford. Though flung carelessly into a paragraph
+printed in small type, it seemed to blaze in fire on the page! It was as
+if all America must rise at it. As she looked from the window it was with
+something like surprise that she saw the stream of traffic roaring onward,
+heedless of the fact that this dread name was being hawked in the streets
+and sold at the news-stands. She sent out for the evening papers that
+appear at midday, being relieved and astonished to find that as yet it had
+created no sensation.
+
+She was not deceived by his ease of manner when he appeared at the
+apartment in the afternoon. Though he carried his head loftily, and smiled
+with his habitual air of confidence, she could see that the deep waters of
+the proud had gone over his soul. Their ebb had streaked his hair and
+beard with white, and deepened the wrinkles that meant concentrated will
+into the furrows that come of suffering. She was more or less prepared for
+that. It was the outward manifestation of what she had read between the
+lines of the letters he had written her. As he crossed the room, with hand
+outstretched, her one conscious thought was of the chance to be a woman
+and a helpmeet Evie had flung away. She had noticed how, on the very
+threshold, he had glanced twice about the room, expecting to find her
+there.
+
+They did not speak of her at once. They talked of commonplace introductory
+things--the voyage, the arrival, the hotel at which he was
+staying--anything that would help her, and perhaps him, to control the
+preliminary nervousness. There was no sign of it, however, on his part,
+while she felt her own spirit rising, as it always did, to meet
+emergencies. Presently she mentioned her fears regarding his use of his
+true name.
+
+"No; it isn't dangerous," he assured her, "because I'm out of danger now.
+Thank the Lord, that's all over. I don't have to live with a great hulking
+terror behind me any longer. I'm a man like any other. You can't imagine
+what it means to be yourself, and not to care who knows it. I'm afraid I
+parade my name just like a boy with a new watch, who wants to tell every
+one the time. So far no one has paid any particular attention; but I dare
+say that will come. Is Evie here?"
+
+"She's not here--to-day."
+
+"Why not?" he asked, sharply. "She said she would be. She said she'd come
+to town--"
+
+"She did come to town, but she thought she'd better not--stay."
+
+"Not stay? Why shouldn't she stay? Is anything up? You don't mean that
+Miss Jarrott--?"
+
+"No; Miss Jarrott had nothing to do with it. I know her brother has
+written to her, in the way you must be prepared for. But she couldn't have
+kept Evie from waiting for you, if Evie herself--"
+
+"Had wanted to," he finished, as she seemed to hesitate at the words.
+
+Since she said nothing to modify this assertion, she hoped he would
+comprehend its gravity. Indeed, he seemed to be trying to attenuate that
+when he spoke next.
+
+"I suppose she had engagements--or something."
+
+"She did have engagements--but she could have put them off."
+
+"Only she didn't care to. I see."
+
+She allowed him time to accept this fact before going on.
+
+"Her return to Lenox," she said then, "wasn't because of her engagements."
+
+"Then it must have been because of me. Didn't she want to see me?"
+
+"She didn't want to tell you what she felt she would have to say."
+
+"Oh! So that was it."
+
+He continued to sit looking at her with an expression of interrogation,
+though it was evident from his eyes that his questions had been answered.
+They sat in the same relative positions as on the night of their last long
+talk together, he in his big arm-chair, she in her low one. It struck her
+as strange--while he stared at her with that gaze of inquiry from which
+the inquiry was gone--that she, who meant so little to his inner life,
+should be called on again to live through with him minutes that must
+forever remain memorable in his existence.
+
+"Poor little thing! So she funked telling me."
+
+The comment was made musingly, to himself, but she took it as if addressed
+to her.
+
+"She wasn't equal to it."
+
+"But you are. You're equal to anything. Aren't you?" He smiled with that
+peculiar twisted smile which she had noticed at other times, when he was
+concealing pain.
+
+"One is generally equal to what one has to do. All the same," she added,
+with an impulse she could not repress, "I'm sorry to be always associated
+in your mind with things that must be hard for you."
+
+"You're associated in my mind with everything that's high and noble.
+That's the only memory I shall ever have of you. You've been with me
+through some of the dark spots of my life; but if it hadn't been for you I
+shouldn't have found the way."
+
+"Thank you. I'm glad you can say that. I should be even more sorry than I
+am to give you this news to-day, if it were not that perhaps I can explain
+things a little better than Evie could."
+
+"I don't imagine that they require much explanation. I've seen from Evie's
+letters that--"
+
+"That she was afraid of--the situation. She hasn't changed toward you."
+
+"Do you mean by that that she still--cares anything about me?"
+
+"She says she does."
+
+"But you don't believe her."
+
+"I'm not entitled to an opinion. It's something you and she must work out
+together. All I can do is to tell you what may give you a little hope."
+
+She watched for the brightening effect of these words upon him, but he sat
+looking absently at the floor, as if he had not heard them.
+
+"Evie is afraid," she continued, "but I think it's only fair to remember
+that the circumstances might well frighten any young girl of her sort."
+
+He showed that he followed her by nodding assent, though he neither lifted
+his head nor spoke.
+
+"She wanted me to tell you that while the--the trial--and other
+things--are going on, she couldn't be engaged to you--I'm using her own
+expression, but she didn't say that, when it was all over and you were
+free, she wouldn't marry you. I noticed that."
+
+He looked up quickly.
+
+"I'm not sure that I catch your drift."
+
+"I mean that when it's all over, and everything has ended as you hope it
+will, it may be quite possible for you to win her back."
+
+He stared at her, with an incredulous lifting of the eyebrows
+
+"Would you advise me to try?"
+
+"It isn't a matter I could give advice about. I'm showing you what might
+be possible, but--"
+
+"No, no. That sort of thing doesn't work. There was just a chance that
+Evie might have stuck to me spontaneously but since she didn't--"
+
+"Since she didn't--what?"
+
+"She was quite right not to. I admit that. It's in the order of things.
+She followed her instinct rather than her heart--I'm ready to believe
+that--but there are times in life when instinct is a pretty good guide."
+
+"Am I to understand that you're not--hurt?--or disappointed? Because in
+that case--"
+
+"I don't know whether I am or not. That's frank. I'm feeling so many
+things all at once that I can hardly distinguish one emotion from another,
+or tell which is strongest. I only know--it's become quite plain to
+me--that a little creature like Evie couldn't find a happy home in my
+life, any more than a humming-bird, as you once called her, could make its
+nest among crags."
+
+"Do you mean by that," she asked, slowly, "that
+you're--definitely--letting her go?"
+
+"I mean that, Evie being what she is, and I being what life has made
+me--Isn't it perfectly evident? Can you fancy us tied together--now?"
+
+"I never could fancy it. I haven't concealed that from you at any time.
+But since you loved her, and she loved you--"
+
+"That was true enough--in its way. In its way, it's still true. Evie still
+loves the man I was, perhaps, and the man I was loves her. The difference
+is that the man I was isn't sitting here in front of you."
+
+"One changes with years, of course. I didn't suppose one could change in a
+few months, like that."
+
+"One changes with experience--above all, with that kind of experience
+which people generally call--suffering. That's the great Alchemist; and he
+often transmutes our silver into gold. In my case, Evie was silver; but
+I've found there's something else that stands for--"
+
+"So that," she interposed, quickly, "you're not sorry that Evie--?"
+
+He got up, restlessly, and stood with his back to the empty fireplace.
+
+"It isn't a case for sorrow," he replied, after a minute's thinking, "as
+it isn't one for joy. It's one purely for acceptance. When I first knew
+Evie I was still something of a kid. It was so all the more because the
+kid element in me had never had full play. I was arrogant, and cock-sure
+and certain of my ability to manipulate the world to suit myself. That was
+all Evie saw, and she liked it. In as far as she had it in her to fall in
+love with anything, she fell in love with it."
+
+He took a turn or two across the room, coming back to his stand on the
+hearth-rug.
+
+"I've travelled far since then," he continued; "I've _had_ to travel far.
+Evie hasn't been able to come with me; and that's all there is to the
+story. It isn't her fault; because when I asked her, I had no intention of
+taking this particular way."
+
+"It was I who drove you into that," she said, with a hint of remorse.
+
+"Yes--you--and conscience--and whatever else I honor most. I give you the
+credit first of all, because, if it hadn't been for you, I shouldn't have
+had the moral energy to assert my true self against the false one. Isn't
+it curious that, after having made me Herbert Strange, it should be you
+who turned me into Norrie Ford again? It means that you exercise supreme
+power over me--a kind of creative power. You can make of me what you care
+to. It's no wonder that I've come to see----" He paused, in doubt as to
+how to express himself, while her eyes were fixed on him in troubled
+questioning. "It's no wonder," he went on again, "that I've come to see
+everything in a truer light--Evie as well as all the rest of it."
+
+With a renewed impulse to move about, he strode toward the bay-window,
+where he stood for a few seconds, looking out and trying to co-ordinate
+his thoughts. Wheeling round again, he drew up a small chair close to
+hers, seating himself sidewise, with his arm resting on the back. He
+looked like a man anxious to explain himself.
+
+"You're blaming me, I think, because I don't take Evie's defection more to
+heart. Isn't that so?"
+
+"I'm not blaming you. I may be a little surprised at it."
+
+"You wouldn't be surprised at it, if you knew all I've been through. It's
+difficult to explain to you--"
+
+"There's no reason why you should try."
+
+"But I want to try. I want you to know. You see," he pursued, speaking
+slowly, as if searching for the right words--"you see, it's largely a
+question of progress--of growth. Trouble has two stages. In the first, you
+think it hard luck that you should have to meet it. In the second, you see
+that, having met it, and gone through it, you come out into a region of
+big experience, where everything is larger and nobler than you thought it
+was before. Now, you'd probably think me blatant if I said that I feel
+myself emerging into--_that_."
+
+"No, I shouldn't. As a matter of fact, I know you're doing it."
+
+"Well, then, having got there--out into that new kind of world"--he
+sketched the vision with one of his Latin gestures--"I discover that--for
+one reason or another--poor little Evie has stayed on the far side of it.
+She couldn't pass the first gate with me, or the second, or the third, to
+say nothing of those I have still to go through. You know I'm not
+criticising, or finding fault with her, don't you?"
+
+She assured him of that.
+
+"And yet, I must go on, you see. There's no waiting or turning back for
+me, any more than for a dying man. No matter who goes or who stays, I must
+press forward. If Evie can't make the journey with me, I can only feel
+relieved that she's able to slip out of it--but I must still go on. I
+can't look back; I can't even be sorry--because I'm coming into the new,
+big land. You see what I mean?"
+
+She signified again that she followed him.
+
+"But the finding of a new land doesn't take anything from the old one. It
+only enlarges the world. Europe didn't become different because they
+discovered America. The only change was in their getting to know a country
+where the mountains were higher, and the rivers broader, and the sunshine
+brighter, and where there was a chance for the race to expand. Evie
+remains what she was. The only difference is that my eyes have been opened
+to--a new ideal."
+
+It was impossible for her not to guess at what he meant. Independently of
+words, his earnest eyes told their tale, while he bent toward her like a
+man not quite able to restrain himself. In the ensuing seconds of silence
+she had time to be aware of three distinct phases of emotion within her
+consciousness, following each other so rapidly as to seem simultaneous. A
+throb of reckless joy in the perception that he loved her was succeeded by
+the knowledge that loyalty to Conquest must make rejoicing vain, while it
+flashed on her that, having duped herself once in regard to him, she must
+not risk the humiliating experience a second time. It was this last
+reflection that prevailed, keeping her still and unresponsive. After all,
+his new ideal might be something--or some one--quite different from what
+her fond imagining was so ready to believe.
+
+"I suppose," she said, vaguely, for the sake of saying something, "that
+trial is the first essential to maturity. We need it for our ripening, as
+the flowers and fruit need wind and rain."
+
+"And there are things in life," he returned, quickly, "that no immature
+creature can see. That's the point I want you to notice. It explains me.
+In a way, it's an excuse for me."
+
+"I don't need excuses for you," she hastened to say, "any more than I
+require to have anything explained."
+
+"No; of course not. You don't care anything about it. It's only I who do.
+But I care so much that I want you to understand why it was that--that--I
+didn't care before."
+
+She felt the prompting to stop him, to silence him, but once more she held
+herself back. There was still a possibility that she was mistaking him,
+and her pride was on its guard.
+
+"It was because I didn't know any better," he burst out, in naA-ve
+self-reproach. "It was because I couldn't recognize the high, the fine
+thing when I saw it. I've had that experience in other ways, and with just
+the same result. It was like that when I first began to hear good music. I
+couldn't make it out--it was nothing but a crash of sounds. I preferred
+the ditties and dances of a musical comedy; and it was only by degrees
+that I began to find them flat. Then my ear caught something of the
+wonderful things in the symphonies that used to bore me. You see, I'm
+slow--I'm stupid--"
+
+"Not at all," she smiled. "It's quite a common experience."
+
+"But I'm like that all through, with everything. I've been like that--with
+women. I used to be attracted by quite an ordinary sort. It's taken me
+years--all these years, till I'm thirty-three--to see that there's a
+perfect expression of the human type, just as there's a perfect expression
+of any kind of art. And I've found it."
+
+He bent farther forward, nearer to her. There was a light in his face that
+seemed to her to denote enthusiasm quite as much as love. To her wider
+experience in emotions this discovery of himself, which was involved in
+his discovery of her, was rather youthful, provoking a faint smile.
+
+"You're to be congratulated, then," she said, with an air of distant
+friendliness. "It isn't every one who's so fortunate."
+
+"That's true. There's only one man in the world who's more fortunate than
+I. That's Conquest."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+In the brusqueness with which she started she pushed her chair slightly
+back from him. It was to conceal her agitation that she rose, steadying
+herself on the back of the chair in which she had been seated.
+
+"Conquest saw what I didn't--till it was too late."
+
+He was on his feet now, facing her, with the chair between them.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't say any more," she begged, though without
+overemphasis of pleading. She was anxious, for her own sake as well as for
+his, to keep to the tone of the colloquial.
+
+"I don't see why I shouldn't. I'm not going to say anything to shock you.
+I know you're going to marry Conquest. You told me so before I went away,
+and----"
+
+"I should like to remind you that Mr. Conquest is the best friend you
+have. When you hear what he's done for you, you will see that you owe him
+more than you do any man in the world."
+
+"I know that. I'm the last to forget it. But it can't do any harm to tell
+the woman--who's going to be his wife--that I owe her even more than I do
+him."
+
+"It can't do any harm, perhaps; but when I ask you not to----"
+
+"I can't obey you. I shouldn't be a man if I went through life without
+some expression of my--gratitude; and now's the only time to make it.
+There are things which I wasn't free to say before, because I was bound
+to Evie--and which it will soon be too late for you to listen to, because
+you'll be bound to him. You're not bound to him yet----"
+
+"I _am_ bound to him," she said, in a tone in which there were all the
+regrets he had no reason to divine. "I don't know what you think of
+saying; but whatever it is, I implore you not to say it."
+
+"It's precisely because you don't know that I feel the necessity of
+telling you. It's something I owe you. It's like a debt. It isn't as if we
+were just any man and any woman. We're a man and a woman in a very special
+relation to each other. No matter what happens, nothing can change that.
+And it isn't as if we were going to live in the same world, in the same
+way. You will be Conquest's wife--a great lady in New York. I shall
+be--well, Heaven only knows what I shall be, but nothing that's likely to
+cross your path again. All the same, it won't hurt you, it wouldn't hurt
+any woman, however good, to hear what I'm going to tell you. It wouldn't
+hurt any man--not even Conquest--that it should be said to his wife--in
+the way that I shall say it. If it could, I wouldn't----"
+
+"Wait a minute," she said, suddenly. "Let me ask you something." She took
+a step toward him, though her hand rested still on the back of the chair.
+"If I know it already," she continued, looking him in the eyes, "there
+would be no necessity for you to speak?"
+
+He took the time to consider this in all its bearings.
+
+"I'd rather tell you in my own words," he said, at last; "but if you
+assure me that you know, I shall be satisfied."
+
+She took a step nearer to him still. Only the tips of her fingers now
+rested on the back of the chair, to which she held, as to a bulwark.
+Before she spoke she glanced round the room, as though afraid lest the
+doors and walls might mistake her words for a confession.
+
+"Then I do know," she said, quietly.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+
+"The old lady was willing enough to talk," Conquest assured Ford, in his
+narrative of the taking of Amalia Gramm's testimony. "There's nothing more
+loquacious than remorse. I figured on that before going out to Omaha."
+
+"But if she had no hand in the crime, I don't see where the remorse comes
+in."
+
+"It comes in vicariously. She feels it for Jacob, since Jacob didn't live
+to feel it for himself. It involves a subtle element of wifely devotion
+which I guess you're too young, or too inexperienced, to understand. She
+was glad old Jacob was gone, so that she could make his confession with
+impunity. She was willing to make any atonement within _her_ power, since
+it was too late to call _him_ to account."
+
+"Isn't that a bit far-fetched?"
+
+"Possibly--except to a priest, or a lawyer, or a woman herself. It isn't
+often that a woman's heroism works in a straight line, like a soldier's,
+or a fireman's. It generally pops at you round some queer corner, where it
+takes you by surprise. Before leaving Omaha I'd come to see that Amalia
+Gramm was by no means the least valiant of her sex."
+
+Conquest's smoking-room, with its space and height, its deep leather
+arm-chairs, its shaded lamps, its cheerful fire, suggested a club rather
+than a private dwelling, and invited the most taciturn guest to
+confidence. Ford stretched himself before the blaze with an enjoyment
+rendered keener by the thought that it might be long before he had
+occasion to don a dinner-jacket again, or taste such a good Havana. Though
+it was only the evening of his arrival, he was eager to give himself up.
+Now that he had "squared himself," as he expressed it, with Miriam
+Strange, he felt he had put the last touch to his preparations. Kilcup and
+Warren were holding him back for a day or two, but his own promptings were
+for haste.
+
+"I admit," Conquest continued to explain, as he fidgeted about the room,
+moving a chair here, or an ash-tray there, with the fussiness of an old
+bachelor of housekeeping tastes--"I admit that I thought the old woman was
+trying it on at first. But I came to the conclusion that she had told a
+true story from the start. When she gave her evidence at your trial she
+thought you were--the man."
+
+"There's nothing surprising in that. They almost made me think so, too."
+
+"It did look fishy, my friend. You won't mind my saying that much. Clearer
+heads than your jury of village store-keepers and Adirondack farmers might
+have given the same verdict. But old lady Gramm's responsibility hadn't
+begun then. It was a matter of two or three years before she came to
+see--as women do see things about the men they live with--that the hand
+which did the job was Jacob's. By that time you had disappeared into
+space, and she didn't feel bound to give the old chap away. She says she
+would have done it if it could have saved you; but since you had saved
+yourself, she confined her attentions to shielding Jacob. You may credit
+as much or as little of that as you please; but I believe the bulk of it.
+In any case, since it does the trick for us we have no reason to complain.
+Come now!"
+
+"I'm not going to complain of anything. It's been a rum experience all
+through, but I can't say that, in certain aspects, I haven't enjoyed it. I
+_have_ enjoyed it. If it weren't for the necessity of deceiving people who
+are decent to you, I'd go through it all again."
+
+"That's game," Conquest said, approvingly, as he worked round to the
+hearth-rug, where he stood cutting the end of a cigar, with Ford's long
+figure stretched out obliquely before him.
+
+"I would," Ford assured him. "I'd go through it all again, like a shot.
+It's been a lark from--I won't say from start to finish--but certainly
+from the minute--let me see just when!--certainly from the minute when
+Miss Strange beckoned to me, over old Wayne's shoulder."
+
+An odd look came by degrees into Conquest's face--the look of pitying
+amusement with which one listens to queer things said by some one in
+delirium. He kept the cutter fixed in the end of the cigar, too much
+astonished to complete his task.
+
+"Since Miss Strange did--_what_?"
+
+Ford was too deeply absorbed in his own meditations to notice the tone.
+
+"I mean, since she pulled me through."
+
+Conquest's face broke into a broad smile.
+
+"Are you dreaming, old chap? Or have you 'got 'em again'?"
+
+"I'm going back in the story," Ford explained, with a hint of impatience.
+"I'm talking about the night when Miss Strange saved me."
+
+"Miss Strange saved you? How?"
+
+Ford raised himself slowly in his chair, his long legs stretched out
+straight before him, and his body bent stiffly forward, as he stared up at
+Conquest, in puzzled interrogation.
+
+"Do you mean to say," he asked, incredulously, "that she hasn't told
+you--_that_?"
+
+"Perhaps you'll be good enough to tell me yourself. I'll be hanged if I
+know what you're talking about."
+
+There was suppressed irritation in the way in which he tore off the end of
+the cigar and struck a match. Ford let himself sink back into the chair
+again.
+
+"So she never told you! By George, that's like her! It's just what I might
+have expected."
+
+"Look here," Conquest said, sharply, "did you know Miss Strange before you
+came up here from South America?" He stood with his cigar unlighted, for
+he had let the match burn down to his fingers before attempting to apply
+it. "Was your taking the name of Strange," he demanded with sudden
+inspiration, "merely an accident, as I've supposed it was--or had it
+anything to do with her?"
+
+"It wasn't an accident, and it did have something to do with her."
+
+"Just so! And you kept it dark!"
+
+Something in Conquest's intonation caused Ford to look up. He saw a man
+with face suddenly growing gray, as though a light had gone out of it. He
+was disturbed only to the point of feeling that he had spoken tactlessly,
+and proceeded to repair the error.
+
+"I kept it dark for obvious reasons. If Miss Strange didn't tell you about
+it, it's because she isn't the kind of person to talk of an incident in
+which her own part was so noble. I'll give you the whole story now."
+
+"I should be obliged to you," Conquest said, dryly.
+
+He sat down on the very edge of one of the big arm-chairs, leaning
+forward, and fingering his still unlighted cigar nervously, as he watched
+Ford puff out successive rings of smoke before beginning. He was less on
+his guard to screen the intenseness with which he listened, because Ford
+spoke at first in a dreamy way, without looking in his direction.
+
+With more insight into the circumstances surrounding him Ford would have
+told his tale with greater reticence. As it was he spoke with enthusiasm,
+an enthusiasm born of an honest desire that Conquest should see the woman
+he was about to marry in the full beauty of her character. In regard to
+this he himself had made the discovery so slowly and so recently that he
+was animated by something like a convert's zeal. Beginning his narrative
+quietly, in a reminiscent vein, with intervals in which he lapsed
+altogether into meditation, he was presently fired with all the animation
+in a story-teller when he perceives he is holding his hearer spellbound.
+As a matter of fact, he was moved not so much by the desire of convincing
+Conquest of Miriam Strange's nobility, as by the impulse to do her
+justice, once in his life at least, in language of his own.
+
+It was a naA-ve bit of eloquence, of which no detail was lost on the
+experienced man of the world, who sat twirling his cigar with nervous
+fingers, his eyes growing keener in proportion as his face became more
+gray. It was part of his professional acquirement to be able to draw his
+deductions from some snatch of human drama as he listened to its
+unfolding. His quickness and accuracy of judgment had, indeed, been a
+large element in his success; so that the habit of years enabled him to
+preserve a certain calmness of comprehension now. It lost nothing in being
+a studied calmness, since the forcing of his faculties within restraint
+concentrated their acumen.
+
+Ford concluded with what for him was an almost lyric outburst.
+
+"By George! Conquest, I didn't know there were such women in the world.
+She's been a revelation to me--as art and religion are revelations to
+other people. She came to me as the angel came to Peter in the prison;
+but, like Peter, I didn't know it was an angel. There's a sort of glory
+about her--a glory which it takes a higher sense than any I've got to see
+and understand. After all she's done for me--after all this time--I'm only
+now beginning to get glimpses of it; but it's merely as we get glimpses of
+an infinite beyond, because we see the stars. She's a mystery to me, in
+the same way that genius is a mystery, or holiness. I didn't appreciate
+her because I hadn't the soul, and yet it's in seeing that I hadn't the
+soul that I begin to get it. That's curious, isn't it? She's like some
+heavenly spirit that's passed by me, and touched me into newness of life."
+
+His ardor was so sincere, his hymn of praise so spontaneous that he
+expected some sort of echo back. It seemed to him that even if Conquest
+did not join in this chant in honor of the woman who presumably loved him,
+whom more presumably still he loved, it would be but natural for him to
+applaud it. Ford knew that if any one else had sung of Miriam Strange as
+he had just been singing, he would have leaped to his feet and wrung the
+man's hand till it ached. It surprised him, therefore, it disappointed
+him, that Conquest should sit unmoved, unless the spark-like twinkle of
+his little eyes could be taken as emotion.
+
+It was a relief to Conquest to get up, scratch another match, and light
+his cigar at last, turning his back so that it should not be seen that his
+fingers trembled. When he was sure of himself he faced about again, taking
+his seat.
+
+"It's the most amazing story I ever heard," was his only comment, in
+response to Ford's look of expectation.
+
+"I hoped it might strike you as something more than--amazing," Ford
+ventured, after a minute's waiting for a more appreciative word.
+
+"Perhaps it will when I get my breath. You must give me time for that. Do
+you actually tell me that she kept you in her studio for weeks----?"
+
+"Three weeks and four days, to be exact."
+
+"And that she furnished you with food and clothing----?"
+
+"And money--but I paid that back."
+
+"And got you away in that ingenious fashion----?"
+
+"Just as I've told you."
+
+"Amazing! Simply amazing! And," he added, with some bitterness, "you came
+back here--and you and she together--took us all in."
+
+Ford drew his cigar from his lips, and, turning in his chair, faced
+Conquest in an attitude and with a look which could not be misinterpreted.
+
+"I came back here, and took you all in--if you like. Miss Strange had
+nothing to do with it. She didn't even expect me."
+
+The last sentence gave Conquest the opening he was looking for, but now
+that he had it, he hesitated to make use of it. In his memory were the
+very words Miriam Strange had stammered out to him in the sort of
+confession no woman ever makes willingly: "Things happened ... such as
+don't generally happen ... and even if he never comes ... I'd rather go on
+waiting for him ... uselessly." It was all growing clear to him, and yet
+not so clear but that there was time even now to let the matter drop into
+the limbo of things it is best not to know too much about. It was against
+his better judgment, then--his better judgment as a barrister-at-law--that
+he found himself saying:
+
+"She didn't expect you at that day and date, perhaps: but she probably
+looked for you some time."
+
+"Possibly; but if so, I know little or nothing about it."
+
+The reply, delivered with a certain dignified force of intention, recalled
+Conquest to a sense of his own interests. He had too often counselled his
+clients to let sleeping dogs lie, not to be aware of the advantage of
+doing it himself; and so, restraining his jealous curiosity, he turned the
+conversation back to the evidence of Amalia Gramm.
+
+During the next half-hour he manifested that talent--partly native and
+partly born of practice--which he had often commended in himself, of
+talking about one thing and thinking of another. His exposition of the
+line to be adopted in Ford's defence was perfectly lucid, when all the
+while he was saying to himself that this was the man whom Miriam Strange
+had waited for through eight romantic years.
+
+The fact leaped at him, but it was part of his profession not to be afraid
+of facts. If they possessed adverse qualities one recognized them boldly,
+in the practise of law, chiefly with a view of circumventing them. The
+matter presented itself first of all, not as one involving emotional or
+moral issues, but as an annoying arrangement of circumstances which might
+cheat him out of what he had honestly acquired. He had no intention of
+being cheated by any one whatever; and as he made a rapid summary of the
+points of the case he saw that the balance of probabilities was in his
+favor. It was to make that clear to Ford that he led the conversation back
+again to the subject of his adventures, tempting him to repeat at least a
+portion of his hymn of praise. By the time he had finished it Conquest was
+able to resume the friendly, confidential tone with which they had begun
+the evening.
+
+"It's very satisfactory to me, old man," he said, between quiet puffs at
+his cigar, "to know that you think so highly of Miss Strange, because--I
+don't know whether you have heard it--she and I are to be married before
+long."
+
+He looked to see Ford disconcerted by this announcement and was surprised
+to see him take it coolly.
+
+"Yes; I knew that. I've meant to congratulate you when the time came. I
+should say it had come now."
+
+There was a candor about him that Conquest could scarcely discredit,
+though he was unwilling to trust it too far.
+
+"Thanks, old man. I scarcely expected you to be so well posted. May I ask
+how--?"
+
+"Oh, I've known it a long time. Miss Strange told me before I went to
+South America last spring."
+
+This evidence of a confidential relation between the two gave him a second
+shock, but he postponed its consideration, contenting himself for the
+moment with making it plain to Ford that "Hands off!" must be the first
+rule of the game. His next move was meant to carry the play into the
+opponent's quarters.
+
+"As a matter of fact, I've never congratulated _you_," he said, with
+apparent tranquillity. "I've known about you and Evie for some time past,
+but--"
+
+"Oh, that's all off. In the existing circumstances Evie didn't feel
+like--keeping the thing up."
+
+"That's too bad. You've been pretty hard hit--what? When a fellow is as
+game as you a girl should stand by him, come now! But I know Evie. I've
+known her from her cradle. She'll back round, you'll see. When we've
+pulled you through, as we're going to, she'll take another view of things.
+I know for a fact that she's been head over heels in love with you ever
+since her trip to Buenos Aires."
+
+As Ford made no remark, Conquest felt it well to drive the point home.
+
+"We can all help in that, old boy; and you can count on us--both on Miss
+Strange and me. No one has such influence over Evie as Miriam, and I know
+she's very keen on seeing you and her--you and Evie, I mean--hit it off. I
+don't mind telling you that, as a matter of fact, it's been Miriam's
+anxiety on Evie's account that has mixed me up in your case at all. I
+don't say that I haven't got interested in you for your own sake; but it
+was she who stirred me up in the first place. It's going to mean a lot to
+her to see you get through--and marry Evie."
+
+Ford smiled--his odd, twisted smile--but as he said nothing, Conquest
+decided to let the subject drop. He had, in fact, gone as far as his
+present judgment would carry him, and anything farther might lead to a
+false step. In a situation alive with claims and counter-claims, with
+yearnings of the heart and promptings of the higher law, he could preserve
+his rights only by a walk as wary as the treading of a tight-rope.
+
+This became clearer to him later in the night, when Ford had gone away,
+and he was left free to review the circumstances with that clarity of
+co-ordination he had so often brought to bear on other men's affairs. Out
+of the mass of data he selected two conditions as being the only ones of
+importance.
+
+If Miriam Strange was marrying him because she loved him, nothing else
+needed to be considered. This fact would subordinate everything to itself;
+and there were many arguments to support the assumption that she was doing
+so. One by one he marshalled them before him, from the first faint
+possibility up to the crowning proof that there was no earthly reason for
+her marrying him at all, unless she wanted to. He had pointed that out to
+her clearly, on the day when she came to him to make her terms. He had
+been guilty on that occasion of a foolish generosity, for that it went
+with a common-sense honesty to take advantage of another's ignorance, or
+impulsiveness, was part of his business creed. Nevertheless, having shown
+her this uncalled-for favor, he did not regret it now, since it put the
+spontaneous, voluntary nature of her act beyond dispute.
+
+To a late hour of the night he wandered about the great silent rooms of
+the house which he had made the expression of himself. Stored with costly,
+patiently selected comforts, it lacked only the last requisite which was
+to impart the living touch. Having chosen this essential with so much
+care, and begun to feel for her something far more vital than the pride of
+possession which had been his governing emotion hitherto, it was an agony
+with many aspects to think he might have to let her go.
+
+That there was this possibility was undeniable. It was the second of the
+two paramount considerations. Though Ford's enthusiasm tried to make
+itself enthusiasm and no more, there had been little difficulty in seeing
+what it was. All the same, it would be a passion to pity and ignore, if on
+Miriam's side there was nothing to respond to it. But it was here that,
+in spite of all his arguments, Conquest's doubts began. With much curious
+ignorance of women, there was a point of view from which he knew them
+well. It was out of many a poignant bit of domestic history, of which his
+profession had made him the confidant, that he had distilled the
+observation made to Ford earlier in the evening: "It isn't often that a
+woman's heroism works in a straight line, like a soldier's or a
+fireman's." Notwithstanding her directness, he could see Miriam Strange as
+just the type of woman to whom these words might be applicable. If by
+marrying a man whom she did not love she thought she could help another
+whom she did love, a culpable sacrifice was just the thing of which she
+would be capable. He called it culpable sacrifice with some emphasis for
+in his eyes all sacrifice was culpable. It was more than culpable, in that
+it verged on the absurd. There were few teachings of an illogical
+religion, few promptings of a misdirected energy, for which he had a
+greater scorn than the precept that the strong should suffer for the weak,
+or one man for another. Every man for himself and the survival of the
+fittest was the doctrine by which he lived; and his abhorrence of anything
+else was the more intense for the moment because he found himself in a
+situation where he might be expected to repudiate his faith.
+
+But there it was, that something in public opinion which, in certain
+circumstances, might challenge him--might ask him for magnanimity, might
+appeal to him for mercy, might demand that he make two other human beings
+happy while he denied himself. It was preposterous, it was grotesque, but
+it was there. He could hear its voice already, explaining that since
+Miriam Strange had given him her word in an excess of self-devotion, it
+was his duty to let her off. He could see the line of argument; he could
+hear the applause following on his noble act. He had heard it
+before--especially in the theatre--and his soul had shaken with laughter.
+He had read of it in novels, only to toss such books aside. "The beauty of
+renunciation," he had often said, "appeals to the morbid, the sickly, and
+the sentimental. It has no function among the healthy and the sane." He
+had not only said that, but he had believed it. He believed it still, and
+lived by it. By doing so he had amassed his modest fortune and won a
+respected position in the world. He had not got on into middle life
+without meeting the occasion more than once when he could have saved
+others--a brother, or a sister, or a friend--and forborne to save himself.
+He had felt the temptation and resisted it, with the result that he was up
+in the world when he might have been down in it, and envied by those who
+would have despised him without hesitation when they had got out of him
+all he could give. He could look back now and see the folly it would have
+been had he yielded to impulses that every sentimentalist would have
+praised. He was fully conscious that the moment of danger might be on the
+point of returning again, and that he must be prepared for it.
+
+He was able to strengthen himself with the greater conviction because of
+his belief in the sanctity of rights. The securing of rights, the defining
+of rights, the protection of rights, had been his trade ever since he was
+twenty-five. The invasion of rights was among the darkest crimes in his
+calendar. In the present case his own rights could not be called into
+question; they were inviolable. Miriam Strange had come to him
+deliberately, and for due consideration had signed herself away. He had
+spared nothing, in time, pains, or money, to fulfil his part of the
+compact. It would be monstrous, therefore, if he were to be cheated of his
+reward. That either Ford or Miriam would attempt this he did not believe,
+even if between them the worst, from his point of view, was at the worst;
+but that an absurd, elusive principle which called itself chivalry, but
+really was effeminacy of will, might try to disarm him by an appeal to
+scruples he contemned, was the possibility he feared. He feared it because
+he estimated at its worth the force of restraint a sentimental
+civilization and a naA-ve people can bring to bear, in silent pressure,
+upon the individual. While he knew himself to be strong in his power of
+resistance, he knew too that the mightiest swimmer can go down at last in
+a smiling, unrippled sea.
+
+His exasperation was as much with his doubt about himself as with the
+impalpable forces threatening him, as he strode fiercely from room to
+room, turning out the flaring lights before going to bed. After all, his
+final resolutions were pitifully insufficient, in view of the tragic
+element--for he took it tragically--that had suddenly crept into his life.
+While his gleam of happiness was in danger of going out, the sole means he
+could find of keeping it aglow was in deciding on a prudent ignoring of
+whatever did not meet the eye, on a discreet assumption that what he had
+been dreaming for the past few months was true. As a matter of fact, there
+was nothing to show him that it wasn't true; and it was only common sense
+to let the first move toward clearing his vision come from the other side
+rather than from his.
+
+And yet it was precisely this passive attitude which he found himself next
+day least able to maintain. If he needed anything further to teach him
+that love was love, it was this restless, prying jealousy, making it
+impossible to let well enough alone. After a trying day at the office,
+during which he irritated his partners and worried his clerks, he
+presented himself late in the afternoon at Miriam's apartment at the hour
+when he generally went to his club, and he knew she would not expect him.
+Thinking to surprise Ford with her--like the suspicious husband in a
+French play, he owned to himself, grimly--he experienced something akin to
+disappointment to find her drinking tea with two old ladies, whom he
+outstayed. During the ceremonies of their leave-taking he watched Miriam
+closely, seeking for some impossible proof that she either loved Ford or
+did not love him, and getting nothing but a renewed and maddening
+conviction of her grace and quiet charm.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What about Evie's happiness?"
+
+Miriam raised her eyebrows inquiringly at the question before stooping to
+put out the spirit-lamp.
+
+"Well, what about it?" she asked, without looking up.
+
+"Oh, nothing--except that we don't seem to be securing it."
+
+She gazed at him now, with an expression frankly puzzled. He had refused
+tea, but she kept her accustomed place behind the tea-table, while he
+stretched himself comfortably in the low arm-chair by the hearth, which
+she often occupied herself.
+
+"Don't you remember?" he went on. "Evie's happiness was the motive of our
+little--agreement."
+
+He endeavored to make his tone playful, but there was a something sharp
+and aggressive in his manner, at which she colored slightly, no less than
+at his words.
+
+"I suppose," she said, as if after meditation, "Evie's happiness isn't in
+our hands."
+
+"True; but there's a good deal that _is_ in our hands. There's, for
+example--our own."
+
+"Up to a point--yes."
+
+"And up to that point we should take care of it. Shouldn't we?"
+
+"I dare say. But I don't know what you mean."
+
+He gave the nervous little laugh which helped him over moments of
+embarrassment.
+
+"Ford was with me last night. He said it was all off between him and
+Evie."
+
+"I thought he might tell you that."
+
+"So that," he went on, forcing a smile, with which his voice and manner
+were not in accord, "our undertaking having failed, the bottom's out of
+everything. Don't you see?"
+
+She was so astonished that she walked into his trap, just as he expected.
+
+"I don't see in the least. I thought our undertaking--as you call it--was
+going to be particularly successful."
+
+"Successful--how?"
+
+He dropped his smile and looked interrogative, his bit of acting still
+keeping her off her guard.
+
+"Why, if Amalia Gramm's testimony is all you think it's going to be----"
+
+"Oh, I see. That's the way you look at it."
+
+"Isn't it the way you look at it, too?"
+
+He smiled again, indulgently, but with significance.
+
+"No; I confess it isn't--at least, it hasn't been. I thought--perhaps I
+was wrong--that our interest was in getting Ford off, so that he could
+marry Evie. Since he isn't going to marry her, why--naturally--we don't
+care so much--whether he gets off or not."
+
+"Oh, but----"
+
+She checked herself; she even grew a little pale. She began to see dimly
+whither he was leading her.
+
+"Of course I don't say we should chuck him over," he went on; "but it
+isn't the same thing any longer, is it? I think it only fair to point that
+out to you, because it gives you reasonable ground for reconsidering
+your--decision."
+
+"Oh, but I don't want to."
+
+While she had said exactly what he hoped to hear, she had not said it as
+he hoped to hear it. There were shades of tone even to impetuosity, and
+this one lacked the note his ear was listening for. None the less, he told
+himself, a wise man would have stopped right there; and he was conscious
+of his folly in persisting, while he still persisted.
+
+"That's for you to decide, of course. Only if we go on, it must be
+understood that we've somewhat shifted our ground."
+
+"I haven't shifted mine."
+
+"Not as you understand it yourself--as, possibly, you've understood it all
+along. But you have, as I see things. When you came to me--to my
+office----"
+
+She put up her hand as though she would have screened her face, but
+controlled herself to listen quietly.
+
+"Your object, then," Conquest continued, cruelly, "was to get Ford off, so
+that he might marry Evie. Now, I understand it to be simply--to get him
+off."
+
+She looked at him with eyes full of distress or protest. It was a minute
+or two before she spoke.
+
+"I don't see the necessity for such close definition."
+
+"I do. I want you to know exactly what you're doing. I want you to see
+that you're paying a higher price than you need pay--for the services
+rendered."
+
+He had got her now just where he had been trying to put her. He had snared
+her, or given her an opportunity, according as she chose to take it. She
+could have availed herself of the latter by a look or a simple intonation,
+for the craving of his heart was such that his perceptions were acute for
+the slightest hint. Had she known that, it would have been easy for her to
+respond to him, playing her part with the loyalty with which she had begun
+it. As it was, his cold manner and his slightly mocking tone betrayed her.
+Her answer was meant to give him the kind of assurance she thought he was
+looking for; and she couched it in the language she supposed he would most
+easily understand. In the things it said and did not say her very
+sincerity was what stabbed him.
+
+"I hope it won't be necessary to bring this subject up again. I know what
+I undertook, and I'm anxious to fulfil it. I should be very much hurt if I
+wasn't allowed to, just because you had scruples about taking me at my
+word. You've been so--so splendid--in doing your part that I should feel
+humiliated if I didn't do mine."
+
+There was earnestness in her regard and a suggestion of haughtiness in the
+tilt of her head. The Wise Man within him bade him be content, and this
+time he listened to the voice. He did her the justice to remember, too,
+that she was offering him all he had ever asked of her; and if he was
+dissatisfied, it was because he had increased his demands without telling
+her.
+
+It was by a transition of topic that he saw he could nail her to her
+purpose.
+
+"By-the-way," he said, when they had got on neutral ground again, and
+were speaking of Wayne, "I wish you would come and see what I think of
+doing for him. There are two rooms back of my library--too dark for my
+use--but that wouldn't matter to him, poor fellow--"
+
+He saw that she was nerving herself not to flinch at this confrontation
+with the practical. He saw too that her courage and her self-command would
+have deceived any one but him. The very pluck with which she nodded her
+comprehension of his idea, and her sympathy with it, enraged him to a
+point at which, so it seemed to him, he could have struck her. Had she
+cried off from her bargain he could have borne it far more easily. That
+would at least have given him a sense of superiority, and helped him to be
+magnanimous; while this readiness to pay put him in the wrong, and drove
+him to exact the uttermost farthing of his rights. On a weak woman he
+might have taken pity; but this strong creature, who refused to sue to him
+by so much as the quiver of an eyelid, and rejected his concessions before
+he had time to put them forth, exasperated every nerve that had been wont
+to tingle to his sense of power. Since she had asked no quarter, why
+should he give it?--above all, when to give quarter was against his
+principles.
+
+"And perhaps," he pursued, in an even voice, showing no sign of the
+tempest within, "that would be as good a time as any for you to look over
+the entire house. If there are any changes you would like to have
+made----"
+
+"I don't think there will be."
+
+"All the same, I should like you to see. A man's house, however well
+arranged, isn't always right for a woman's occupancy; and so----"
+
+"Very well; I'll come."
+
+"When?"
+
+"I'll come to-morrow."
+
+"About four?"
+
+"Yes; about four. That would suit me perfectly."
+
+She spoke frankly, and even smiled faintly, with just such a shadow of a
+blush as the situation called for. The Wise Man within him begged him once
+more to be content. If, the Wise Man argued, this well-poised serenity was
+not love, it was something so like it that the distinction would require a
+splitting of hairs. Conquest strove to listen and obey; but even as he did
+so he was aware again of that rage of impotence which finds its easiest
+outlet in violence. As he rose to take his leave, with all the outward
+signs of friendly ceremoniousness, he had time to be appalled at the
+perception that he, the middle-aged, spick-and-span New-Yorker, should so
+fully understand how it is that a certain type of frenzied brute can kill
+the woman whom he passionately loves, but who is hopelessly out of reach.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+
+Except when his business instincts were on the alert, Ford's slowness of
+perception was perhaps most apparent in his judgment of character and his
+analysis of other people's motives. Taking men and women as he found them,
+he had little tendency to speculate as to the impulses within their lives,
+any more than as to the furnishings behind their house-fronts. A human
+being was all exterior to him, something like a street. Even in matters
+that touched him closely, the act alone was his concern; and he dealt with
+its consequences, without, as a rule, much inquisitive probing of its
+cause.
+
+So when Miriam Strange elected to marry Conquest, he accepted the settled
+fact, for the time being, in the spirit in which he would have taken some
+disastrous manifestation of natural phenomena. Investigation of the motive
+of such a step was as little in his line as it would have been in the case
+of a destructive storm at sea. To his essentially simple way of viewing
+life it was something to be lamented, but to be borne as best one was
+able, while one said as little as one could about it.
+
+And yet, somewhere in the wide, rarely explored regions of his nature
+there were wonderings, questionings, yearnings protests, cries, that
+forced themselves to the surface now and then, as the boiling waters
+within the earth gush out in geyser springs. It required urgent pressure
+to impel them forth, but when they came it was with violence. Such an
+occasion had been his night on Lake Champlain; such another was the
+evening when he announced to Miriam his intention of becoming Norrie Ford
+again. When these moments came they took him by surprise, even though
+afterward he was able to recognize the fact that they had been long
+preparing.
+
+It was in this way, without warning, that his heart had sprung on him the
+question: Why should she marry him? At the minute when Conquest was
+leaving Miriam, he, Ford, was tramping the streets of New York, watching
+them grow alive with light, in glaring, imaginative ugliness--ugliness so
+dazzling in its audacity and so fanciful in its crude commercialism that
+it had the power to thrill. It was perhaps the electric stimulus of sheer
+light that quickened the pace of his slow mentality from the march of
+acceptance to the rush of protest, at an instant when he thought he had
+resigned himself to the facts.
+
+Why should she marry Conquest? He was shouldering his way through the
+crowds when the question made itself heard, with a curious illuminating
+force that suggested its own answer. He was walking, partly to work off
+the tension of the strain under which these few days were passing, and
+partly because he had got the idea that he was being shadowed. He had no
+profound objection to that, though he would have preferred to give himself
+up of his own free will rather than to be arrested. Perhaps, after all, it
+was only an accident that had caused him to catch sight of the same two
+men at different moments through the day, and just now it amused him to
+put them to the test by leading them a dance. He had come to the
+conclusion that he had been mistaken, or that he had outwitted them, when
+this odd question, irrelevant to anything he had directly in his thoughts,
+presented itself as though it had been asked by some voice outside him:
+Why should she marry him?
+
+Up to the present his unanalytical mind would have replied--as it would
+have replied to the same query concerning any one else--that she was
+marrying him "because she wanted to." That would have seemed to him to
+cover the whole ground of any one's affairs; but all at once it had become
+insufficient. It was as if the street had suddenly become insufficient as
+a highway, breaking into a chasm. He stopped abruptly, confronting, as it
+were, that bewildering void which a psychological situation invariably
+seemed to him. To get into a place where his few straightforward formulA|
+did not apply gave him that sense of distress which every creature feels
+out of its native element.
+
+It was a proof of the dependence with which, in matters requiring mental
+or emotional experience, he had come to lean on Miriam Strange, as well as
+of the directness with which he appealed to her for help, that he should
+face about on the instant, and turn his steps toward her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Only a few minutes earlier she had seen Conquest go, and in the interval
+since his departure she had had time to detect the windings of his
+strategy, and to be content with the skill with which she had met them.
+She understood him thoroughly, both in his fear of letting her go and his
+shame at holding her. Standing in her wide bay-window, her slight figure
+erect, her hands behind her back, she looked down, without seeing it, on
+the spangled city, as angels intent on their own high thoughts might pass
+over the Milky Way. She smiled faintly to herself, thinking how she
+should lead this kindly man, who for her sake had done so much for Norrie
+Ford, back to a sense of security and self-respect. When Norrie Ford went
+free she meant to live for nothing else but the happiness of the man who
+had cleared his name and given him back to the world. It would be a kind
+of consecration to her, like that of the nun who forsakes the dearest ties
+for a life of good works and prayer. Conquest had told her that she was
+paying a bigger price than she needed to pay for the services rendered,
+but that depended somewhat on the value one set on the services. In this
+case she would not have been content in paying less. To do so would seem
+to indicate that she was not grateful. Since perceiving his compunction as
+to claiming his reward, she was aware of an elation, an exaltation, in
+forcing it upon him.
+
+She was in the glow of this sentiment when Ford was ushered in. He was so
+vitally in her thoughts that, though she did not expect him, his presence
+gave her no surprise. It helped her, in fact, to sustain the romantic
+quality in her mood to treat his coming as a matter of course, and make it
+a natural incident to the moment.
+
+"Come and look down on the stars," she said, in the tone she might have
+used to another member of her household who had appeared accidentally.
+"The view here, in the evening, makes one feel as if one had been wafted
+above the sky."
+
+She half-turned toward him, but did not offer her hand as he took his
+place by her side. For a few seconds he said nothing, and when he spoke
+she accepted his words in the manner in which she had taken his coming.
+
+"So you're going to marry Conquest!"
+
+It was to show that the abrupt remark had not perturbed her that she
+nodded her head assentingly, still with the smile that had greeted his
+arrival.
+
+"Why?"
+
+In spite of her efforts she manifested some surprise.
+
+"What makes you ask that question--now?"
+
+"Because it never occurred to me before that there might be a special
+reason."
+
+"Well, there is one."
+
+"Has it anything to do with me?"
+
+She backed away from him slightly, to the side curve of the window, where
+it joined the straight line of the wall. In this position she had him more
+directly in view.
+
+"I said there was a reason," she answered, after some hesitation. "I
+didn't say I would tell you what it was."
+
+"No, but you will, won't you?"
+
+"I don't see why you should want to know."
+
+"Is that quite true?" he queried, with a somewhat startling fixing of his
+eyes upon her. "Don't you see? Can't you imagine?"
+
+"I don't see why--in such circumstances as these--any man should want to
+know what a woman doesn't tell him."
+
+"Then I'll explain to you. I want to know, because ... I think ... you're
+marrying Conquest ... when you don't love him ..."
+
+"He never asked me to love him. He said he could do without that."
+
+"... while ... you do love ... some one else."
+
+She reflected before speaking. Under his piercing look she took on once
+more the appealing expression of forest creatures at bay.
+
+"Even if that were true," she said, at last, "there would be no harm in
+it as long as there was what you asked me for at first--a special reason."
+
+"Is there ever a reason for a step like that? I don't believe it."
+
+"But I do believe it, you see. That makes a difference."
+
+"It would make a still greater difference if I begged you not to do it,
+wouldn't it?"
+
+She shook her head. "It wouldn't--now."
+
+"I let you see yesterday that I--I loved you."
+
+"Since you force me to acknowledge it--yes."
+
+"And you've shown me," he ventured, "within the last minute, that
+you--love me."
+
+Her figure grew more erect against the background of exterior darkness.
+Even the hand that rested on the woodwork of the window became tense.
+Lambent fire in her eyes--the light that he used to call non-Aryan--took
+the place of the fugitive glance of the woodland animal; but she kept her
+composure.
+
+"Well, what then?"
+
+"Then you'd be committing a sacrilege against yourself--if you married any
+one else but me."
+
+If her heart bounded at the words, she did nothing to betray it.
+
+"You say that, because it seems so to you. I take another view of it. Love
+to me does not necessarily mean marriage, any more than marriage
+necessarily implies love. There have been happy marriages without love,
+and there can be honorable love that doesn't ask marriage as its object.
+If I married you now, I should seem to myself to be deserting a high
+impulse for a lower one."
+
+"There's only one sort of impulse to love."
+
+"Not to my love. I know what you mean--but my love has more than one
+prompting, and the highest is--or I hope it is--to try to do what's
+right."
+
+"But this would not be right."
+
+"I'm the only judge of that."
+
+"Not if we love each other. In that case I become a judge of it, too."
+
+Once more she reflected. In speaking she lifted her head and looked at him
+frankly.
+
+"Very well; I'll admit it. Perhaps it's true. In any case, I'd rather
+things were clear to you. It will help us both. I'll tell you what I'm
+doing, and why I'm doing it."
+
+It was one of those occasions when a woman's emotion is so great that she
+seems to have none at all. As iron is said to come to a degree of heat so
+intense that it does not burn, so Miriam Strange seemed to herself to have
+reached a stage where the sheer truth, simple and without reserve, could
+bring no shame to her womanhood. Words that could not have passed her lips
+either before that evening or after it escaped her in the subsequent
+minutes as a matter of course.
+
+"I entered into your life twice, and each time I did you harm. On the
+first occasion I turned you into Herbert Strange, and sent you out on a
+career of deception; on the second, I came between you and Evie, and
+brought you to the present pass, where you're facing death again, as you
+were eight or nine years ago. It's no use to tell you that I wanted to do
+my best, because good intentions are not much excuse for the trouble they
+often cause. But I'm ready to say this: that whenever you've suffered,
+I've suffered more. That's especially true of what's happened in the last
+six months. And when I saw how much I had put wrong, it was a comfort to
+think there was something at least that I could put right again."
+
+"But you've put nothing wrong. That's what I should like to convince you
+of."
+
+"I've put you in a position of danger. When I see that, I see enough to
+act upon."
+
+"It's a very slight danger."
+
+"It is now, because I've made it slight. It wasn't--before I went to Mr.
+Conquest."
+
+"You went to him--what for?"
+
+"He wanted me to marry him. He had wanted it for a long time. I told him I
+would do so, on condition that he found the evidence that would prove you
+innocent."
+
+Ford laughed harshly, and rather loudly, stopping suddenly, as though he
+had ceased to see the joke.
+
+"So that's it! That's why Conquest has been so devilishly kind. I wondered
+at his interest--or at least I should have wondered if I'd had the time.
+As a matter of fact, I took it for granted that he should help me, as a
+drowning man takes it for granted that the chance passer-by should pull
+him out. It wasn't till this evening--about half an hour ago--By Jove! I
+ran right up against it."
+
+"You ran right up against--what?"
+
+"Against the truth. It came in a flash--just like that." He snapped his
+fingers. "You're selling yourself--to get me off."
+
+She seemed to grow straighter, taller. For the minute he saw nothing but
+the blaze of her eyes.
+
+"Well? Why shouldn't I? My mother sold herself--to get a man off. He was
+my father. I'm proud of her. She did the best she could with her life. I'm
+doing the best I can with mine."
+
+"But I shouldn't be doing the best I can with mine--if I let you
+continue."
+
+"Isn't it too late for you to stop me? If I've sold myself as you put it,
+the price has been paid in. Mr. Conquest has secured the evidence that
+will acquit you. It will be used. That's all I care about--much."
+
+She saw the hot color surge into his cheeks and brows. It seemed to her
+that his eyes grew red as the blood left his lips. She had never before
+been called on to confront a man angry with a passion beyond his control,
+but instinct told her what the signs were. Instinct told her, too, that,
+however confused his own sensations might be, his anger was not so much
+resentment against anything she might have done as it was despair at
+having lost her. She had guessed already that he would be seized with a
+blind impulse to strike, as soon as he came to a realizing sense of her
+action; though she had not expected the moment of his fury till after he
+went free. Till then, she had thought, he would be partially unconscious
+of his pain, just as a soldier fighting will run along for a while without
+feeling a bullet in his flesh. The anticipation of an awakening on his
+part some time enabled her to see beyond the madness of this instinct,
+even though the words he threw at her struck like stones. The very fact
+that she could see how he labored with himself to keep them back gave her
+strength to take them without flinching.
+
+"You ... dared...? Without ... my ... permission...?"
+
+"I'd done so many things without your permission that it seemed I could
+venture that far."
+
+"You were wrong. It was--too far."
+
+"It wasn't too far--when I loved you."
+
+She uttered the words in a matter-of-fact voice, without a tremor. She
+foresaw their effect in bringing him to himself In his next words his tone
+had already softened slightly to one of protest.
+
+"But I could have done it so much better--! so much more easily--!
+without----"
+
+"I could have done that too. Mr. Conquest pointed it out to me. He took no
+advantage of my ignorance. As a matter of fact, I wasn't ignorant at all.
+I was extremely clear-sighted and wise. My love for you made me so. I
+knew--I felt it--that money might fail to do what I wanted. But I knew too
+that there was one thing that wouldn't fail. If you were innocent--and I
+wasn't wholly sure that you were--I knew there was one energy that would
+surely prove you so--and that was Charles Conquest's desire to have me as
+his wife. I took the course in which there was least risk of failure--and
+you see----"
+
+A little gesture, triumphant in its suggestion, finished her sentence.
+
+"What I see is this," Ford answered, thickly, "that I'm to hold my life at
+the cost of your degradation."
+
+"Degradation? That's a hard word. But as applied to me--I don't know what
+it means."
+
+"Isn't it degradation?--to enter into a marriage in which you put no
+love?"
+
+There was a kind of superb indifference in her answer.
+
+[Illustration: "I'm to hold my life at the cost of your degradation"]
+
+"You may call it degradation if you choose. I shouldn't. As long as you go
+free, you can call my action anything you like. I dare say," she admitted,
+"you're quite right, from the highest moral--and modern--point of view;
+but that doesn't appeal to me. You see--you've got to make allowances for
+it--I'm not a child of your civilization. I'm not a child of any
+civilization at all. At best I'm like the wild creature that submits to
+being tamed because it doesn't know what else to do--but remains wild at
+heart. I used to think I could come into your system of law and order if
+any one would take me. But now I know I shall always be outside it. The
+very word you've just used of me shows me that. You say I'm to be
+degraded--it's your civilized point of view. I have no comprehension of
+that whatever. Because I love you I want to save you. I don't care
+anything about the means so long as I reach the end. To undo the harm I've
+done to you I'd freely give my body to be burned; so why shoudn't I--? No,
+no," she cried, as he made as though he would approach her, "keep away.
+Don't come near me! I can only talk to you like this--at a distance. I
+shall never say these things again--but I want to tell you--to explain to
+you--I should like you to understand."
+
+She repeated herself haltingly because, as Ford held back from approaching
+her, a sudden spasm passed over his face, while he hung his head, and
+compressed his lips in a way that made him seem surprisingly boyish all at
+once, and touched that maternal tenderness in her that had always formed
+such a large part of her yearning over him. It was the kind of tenderness
+that steadied her own nerve, and kept her dry-eyed and strong, as she saw
+him reel to a chair, and flinging his arms on the table beside it, bow
+himself down on them, while his form shook convulsively. She had no shame
+for him. She understood perfectly that the pressure of years had been
+brought to bear on the complex emotions of the moment--to which reaction
+from his brief anger and his bitter words added an element of remorse--to
+cause this honest, manly nature that had never made any pretence of being
+stronger than it was, to give way to the instant's weakness. She was sure
+he would never have done it in the presence of any one but her, and she
+was thrilled with a curious joy at this proof of their spiritual intimacy.
+What was difficult was not the keeping of her own self-control, but the
+holding herself back from crossing the room and laying a hand on his
+shoulder, in token of their oneness at heart; but there, she felt, the
+forbidden line would be passed. She could only wait--it was not long--till
+he was calm again. Then he pulled himself together, got up heavily, and
+obviously refrained from looking her in the face. In the act and the
+attitude there was something so boylike, so natural, so entirely lacking
+in the dignity of grief, that if she had any impulse to let her own tears
+flow it was then.
+
+But she knew it to be one of those minutes when a woman has to be strong
+for herself and for the man, too, even though she break down afterward.
+The necessity of coming to an understanding with him, once for all,
+impelled her to the economy of her forces, while the nervous snapping of
+his fortitude had given her an opportunity she could not afford to lose.
+
+"So I want you to see," she went on, quietly, as though no interruption
+had occurred, "that having gained my point in helping to--to get you off,
+it's to some extent a matter of indifference what you think of me--what
+any one thinks of me--just as it was when I hid you in my studio, nearly
+nine years ago. You must put it down to my being of wild origin and not
+wholly amenable to civilized dictates. I can only do what the inward
+urging drives me on to do--just as my mother did--and my father. If it's
+degrading--"
+
+Raising his head at last, he strode toward her. He put his hands rigidly
+behind his back, as if to show her that he pinioned them there in token
+that she had nothing to fear from him. His eyes were red, and there was
+still a painful tightening about his lips.
+
+"You'll have to let me take that back," he muttered, unsteadily. "I didn't
+know what I was saying. It's come on me so suddenly that it's broken me
+all up. I haven't realized till this evening what--what everything meant.
+It seemed to me then that I couldn't stand it."
+
+"But you can."
+
+"Yes, I can," he replied, doggedly. "One can stand anything. If I reached
+my limit for a minute, it was in seeing that you have to suffer for my
+sake----"
+
+"Wouldn't you suffer for mine?"
+
+"I couldn't. Suffering for your sake would become such a joy----"
+
+"That it wouldn't be suffering. That's just it. That's what I feel,
+exactly. It isn't hard for me to do what I'm doing because I know--I
+_know_--I'm helping to save your honor if not your life. I don't believe
+money would have done it. Mr. Conquest reminded me that the best legal
+services can be bought, but I never thought for an instant that you could
+secure zeal such as his for anything less than I offered him. And he's
+been so superb! He's given himself up to the thing absolutely. He's
+followed every trail with a scent--- with a certainty--your other men,
+your Kilcup and Warren, would never have been capable of. I've seen that;
+I'm sure of it. He has a wonderful mind, and in his way he has the kindest
+heart in the world. I'm very, very fond of him, and I'm deeply grateful.
+Next to seeing you free, I don't think I have any desire in life so
+strong as to make him happy. I dare say that isn't civilized either--but
+it's what I feel. And so we must think of this," she continued, eagerly
+explanative; "we must be loyal to him, you and I, as the first of all our
+duties. Don't you think so?"
+
+He withdrew his eyes from hers before answering. His power of resistance
+was broken. The signs of struggle were visible, and yet the quixotic
+element in his own nature helped him to respond to that in hers.
+
+"I'll try," he muttered, looking on the ground.
+
+"You'll do more than try--you'll succeed. Only very small souls could
+grudge him what he's earned when he's worked so hard and given himself so
+unstintingly. The very fact that you and I know that we love each other
+will make it easier to be true to him."
+
+"Conquest must know that we love each other, too," he declared, with some
+bitterness.
+
+"Perhaps he does; but, you see, every one has a different way of looking
+at life, and I don't think that with him it's a thing that counts greatly.
+I'm not sure that I understand him in that respect. I only know that you
+and I, who owe him so much, can repay him by giving him what he asks for.
+Will you promise me to do it?"
+
+He continued to look downward, as though finding it hard to give his word;
+but when he raised his eyes again, he flung back his head with his old air
+of resolution.
+
+"I'll promise to do anything you ask me throughout our lives. I don't
+admit that Conquest should demand this thing or that he had any right to
+let you offer it. But since you want to give it--and I can show you no
+other token of my love--and shall never again be able to tell you that I
+adore you--that I _adore_ you--I promise--to obey."
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+
+The inspection of the house was over, and they had come back to the
+drawing-room for tea. Conquest had lavished pains on the occasion, putting
+flowers in the rooms, and strewing handsome objects carelessly about, so
+as to impart to the great shell as much as possible the air of being lived
+in. To the tea-table he had given particular attention, ordering out the
+most ornamental silver and the costliest porcelain, and placing the table
+itself just where she would probably have it in days to come, so as to get
+the effect she produced in sitting there, as he liked to do with a new
+picture or piece of furniture.
+
+On her part, Miriam had made the rounds of the rooms with conscientious
+care, observing, admiring, suggesting, with just that mingling of shyness
+and interest with which a woman in her situation would view her future
+home. Having got, by intuition, the idea that he was watching for some
+flaw in her manner, she was determined that he should find none. It was
+the beginning of that lifelong schooling to his service to which she had
+vowed herself, though the effort would have been easier had he not
+rendered her self-conscious by scanning her so keenly out of his little
+gray-green eyes. Nevertheless, she was pleased with the manner in which
+she was acquitting herself, giving him his tea and taking her own with no
+sign of embarrassment. As on the preceding day, it was this perfection of
+acting, as he chose to call it, that exasperated his restless suspicion
+more than any display of weakness.
+
+The thought that she was keeping her true self locked against him had,
+during the last twenty-four hours, become an obsession, making it
+impossible for him to eat or to sleep. In her serene, impeccable bearing
+he saw nothing but the bars up and the blinds drawn down. An instant of
+faltering or self-betrayal would have admitted him to at least a glimpse
+of what was passing within; but through this well-balanced graciousness it
+was as difficult to get at her soul as to read the mind of the Venus of
+Milo in the marble nobility of her face. He had led her from room to room,
+describing one, explaining another, and apologizing for a third, but all
+the while trying to break down her guard, only to find, as they returned
+to the point at which they started, that he had failed. It was with nerves
+all unstrung, and with a lack of self-command he would have been, in his
+saner senses, the first to condemn, that he strode up at last and rapped
+sharply at the door of her barricaded citadel.
+
+"Why did you never tell me that you knew Norrie Ford--years ago?"
+
+He was putting his empty cup on the table as he spoke, so that he could
+avoid looking at her. She was glad of this respite from his gaze, for she
+found the question startling. Before the scrutiny of his eyes was turned
+on her again she had herself in hand.
+
+"I should probably have told you some time."
+
+"Very likely. The odd thing is that you didn't tell me at once."
+
+"It wasn't so odd--given all the circumstances."
+
+"It wasn't so odd, given some of the circumstances; but given them
+all--_all_--I should say, I ought to have known."
+
+She allowed a few seconds to pass.
+
+"I suppose," she said, slowly, then, "that may fairly be considered a
+matter of opinion. I don't see, however, that it makes much
+difference--since you know now."
+
+"My knowing or not knowing now isn't quite the point. The fact of
+importance is that you never told me."
+
+"I'm sorry you should take it in that way; but since I didn't--and the
+matter is beyond remedy--I suppose we shouldn't gain anything by
+discussing it."
+
+"I don't know about that. It seems to me a subject that ought to
+be--aired."
+
+She tried to smile down his aggressiveness, succeeding partially, in that
+he subdued the quarrelsomeness of his voice and manner to that affectation
+of banter behind which he concealed habitually his real self, and by which
+he most easily deceived her.
+
+"Very well," she laughed; "I'm quite ready to air it; only I don't know
+just how it's to be done."
+
+"Suppose you were to tell me what happened, in your own language?"
+
+"If Mr. Ford has told you already, as I imagine he has, I don't see that
+my language can be very different from his. All the same, I'll try, since
+you want me to."
+
+"Just so."
+
+During the few minutes she took to collect her thoughts he could see sweep
+over her features one of those swift, light changes--as delicate as the
+ripple of summer wind on water--which transformed her in an instant from
+the woman of the world to the forest maid, the spirit of the indigenous.
+The mystery of the nomadic ages was in her eyes again as she began her
+narrative, wistfully, and reminiscently.
+
+"You see, I'd been thinking a good deal of my father and mother. I hadn't
+known about them very long, and I lived with their memory. The Mother
+Superior had told me a few things--all she knew, I suppose--before I left
+the convent at Quebec; and Mr. and Mrs. Wayne--especially Mrs. Wayne--had
+added the rest. That was the chief reason why I wanted the studio--so that
+I could get away from the house, which was so oppressive to me, and--so it
+seemed to me--live with them, with nothing but the woods and the hills and
+the sky about me. I could be very happy then--painting thinge I fancied
+they might have done, and pinning them up on the wall. I dare say it was
+foolish, but----"
+
+"It was very natural. Go on."
+
+"And then came up all this excitement about Norrie Ford. For months the
+whole region talked of nothing else. Nearly every one believed he had shot
+his uncle, but, except in the villages, the sympathy with him was
+tremendous. Some people--especially the hotel-keepers and those who
+depended on the tourist travel--were for law and order; but others said
+that old Chris Ford had got no more than he deserved. That was the way
+they used to talk. Mr. Wayne was on the side of law and order,
+too--naturally--till the trial came on; and then he began----"
+
+"I know all about that. Go on."
+
+"My own sympathy was with the man in prison. I used to dream about him. I
+remembered what Mrs. Wayne had told me my mother had done for my father. I
+was proud of that. Though I knew only vaguely what it was, I was sure it
+was what I should have done, too. So when there was talk of breaking into
+the jail and helping Norrie to escape, I used to think how easily I could
+keep any one hidden in my studio. I don't mean I thought of it as a
+practical thing; it was just a dream."
+
+"But a dream that came true."
+
+"Yes; it came true. It was wonderful. It was the day Mr. Wayne sentenced
+him. I knew what he was suffering--Mr. Wayne, I mean. We were all
+suffering; even Mrs. Wayne, who in her gentle way was generally so hard.
+Some people thought Mr. Wayne needn't have done it; and I suppose it was
+just his conscientiousness--because he had such a horror of the
+thing--that drove him on to it. He thought he mustn't shirk his duty. But
+that night at the house was awful. We dressed for dinner, and tried to act
+as if nothing frightful had happened--but it was as if the hangman was
+sitting with us at the table. At last I couldn't endure it. I went out
+into the garden--you remember it was one of those gardens with clipped
+yews. Out there, in the air, I stopped thinking of Mr. Wayne and his
+distress to think of Norrie Ford. It seemed to me as if, in some strange
+way, he belonged to me--that I ought to do something--as my mother had
+done for my father. And then--all of a sudden--I saw him creep in."
+
+"How did you know it was he?"
+
+"I thought it must be, though I was only sure of it when I was on the
+terrace and saw his face. He crept along and crept along--Oh, such a
+forlorn, hopeless, outcast figure! My heart ached at the sight of him. I
+didn't know what he meant to do, and at first I had no intention of
+attempting anything. It was by degrees that my own thought about the
+studio came back to me. By that time he was on the veranda of the house,
+and I was afraid he meant to kill Mr. Wayne. I went after him. I thought I
+would entice him away and hide him. But the minute he heard my footstep he
+leaped into the house. The next I saw, he was talking to Mr. and Mrs.
+Wayne--and something told me he wouldn't hurt them. After that I watched
+my chance till he looked outward, and then I beckoned to him. That's how
+it happened."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"After that everything was easy. He must have told you. I kept him in the
+studio for three weeks, and brought him food--and clothing of my father's.
+It seemed to me that my father was doing everything--not I. That's what
+made it so simple. I know my father would have wanted me to do it. I was
+only the agent in carrying out his will."
+
+"That's one way of looking at it," Conquest said, grimly.
+
+"It's the only way I've ever looked at it; the only way I ever shall."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It was a romantic situation," he observed, when she had given him the
+outlines of the rest of the story. "I wonder you didn't fall in love with
+him."
+
+He smoothed the colorless line of his mustache, as though concealing a
+smile. He had recaptured the teasing tone he liked to employ toward her,
+though its nervous sharpness would have betrayed him had she suspected his
+real thoughts. While she said nothing in response, the tilt of her head
+was that which he associated with her moods of indignation or pride.
+
+"Perhaps you did," he persisted. Then, as she remained silent, "Did you?"
+
+She resolved on a bold step--the audacity of that perfect candor she had
+always taken as a guide.
+
+"I don't know that one could call it that," she said, quietly.
+
+He drew a quick inward breath, clinching his teeth, but keeping his fixed
+smile.
+
+"But you don't know that one couldn't."
+
+"I can't define what I felt at all."
+
+"It was just enough," he pursued, in his bantering tone, "to keep
+you--looking for him back--as you told me--that day."
+
+She lifted her eyes in a swift glance of reproach.
+
+"It was that--then."
+
+"But it's more--now. Isn't it?"
+
+She met him squarely.
+
+"I don't think you've any right to ask."
+
+He laughed aloud, somewhat shrilly.
+
+"That's good!--considering we're to be man and wife."
+
+"We're to be man and wife on a very distinct understanding to which I'm
+perfectly loyal. I mean to be loyal to it always--and to you. I shall give
+you everything you ever asked for. If there are some things--one thing in
+particular--out of my power to give you, I've said so from the first, and
+you've told me you could do without them. If what I can't give you I've
+given to some one else--because--because--I couldn't help it--that's my
+secret, and I claim the right to guard it."
+
+They faced one another across the table piled with ornate silver. He had
+not lost his smile.
+
+"You've the merit of being clear," was his only comment.
+
+"You force me to be clear," she declared, with heightened color, "and a
+little angry. When you asked me to be your wife--long ago--I told you
+there were certain conditions I could never fulfil--and you waived them.
+On that ground I'm ready to meet all your wishes, and make you a good wife
+to the utmost of my power. I'm eager to do it--because I honor and respect
+you as women don't always honor and respect the very men they love. I've
+told Norrie Ford, and I repeat it to you, that after seeing him go free
+and restored to his place among men, the most ardent desire of my life is
+to make you happy. I'm perfectly true; I'm perfectly sincere. What more
+can you ask of me?"
+
+He looked at her searchingly, while he thought hard and rapidly. He could
+not complain that the bars were up and the blinds drawn any longer. On the
+contrary, she had let him see into the recesses of her life with a clarity
+that startled him, as pure truth startles often. As he sat musing, his
+pretence at cynicism fell from him, together with something of his
+furbished air of youth. She saw him grow graver, grayer, older, under her
+very eyes, and was moved with compunction--with compassion. Her face still
+aglow and her hands clasped in her lap, she leaned to him across the
+table, speaking in the rich, low voice that always thrilled him.
+
+"What I feel for you is ... something so much like ... love ... that you
+would never have known the difference ... if you hadn't wrung it from me."
+
+Though he toyed aimlessly with some small silver object on the table and
+did not look up, her words sent a tremor through his frame. The Wise Man
+within him was very eloquent, repeating again and again the sentence she
+herself had used a minute or two ago: What more could he ask of her? What
+more _could_ he ask of her, indeed, after this assurance right out of the
+earnestness and honesty of her pure heart? It was enough to satisfy men
+with far greater claims than he had ever put forth, and far more
+pretension than he had ever dreamed of cherishing. The Wise Man supplied
+him with two or three phrases of reply--neat little phrases, that would
+have bound her forever, and yet saved his self-esteem. He turned them over
+in his mind and on his tongue, trying to add a touch of glamour while he
+kept them terse. He could feel the Wise Man fidgeting impatiently, just as
+he could feel her flaming, expectant eyes upon him; and still he toyed
+with the small silver object aimlessly, conscious of a certain bitter joy
+in his soul's suspense. He had not yet looked up, nor polished the Wise
+Man's phrases to his taste, when a footman threw the door open, and Norrie
+Ford himself walked in.
+
+The meeting was saved from awkwardness chiefly by Ford's own lack of
+embarrassment. As he crossed the room and shook hands, first with Miriam,
+then with Conquest, there was a subdued elation in his manner and glance
+that reduced small considerations to nothing.
+
+"No; I won't sit down," he explained, hurriedly, and not without
+excitement, "because I only looked in for a minute. I've got a cab waiting
+for me outside. The fact is, I ran in to say good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye?" Miriam questioned.
+
+"Not for long, I hope. I'm off--to give myself up."
+
+"But why to-night?" Conquest asked. "What's the rush?"
+
+"Only that I want to get my word in first. They've got their eye on me. I
+thought it yesterday, and I know it to-day. I want them to see that I'm
+not afraid of them, and so I'm asking their hospitality for to-night. I've
+got my bag in the cab, and everything ship-shape. I couldn't do it
+without coming round for a last word with you, old man; and I was going to
+see you afterward, Miss Strange. But since I've found you here----"
+
+"You won't have to," she finished, brightly. "I'm glad to be able to save
+your time. I'm confident we're not losing you for long; and as I know
+you're eager, I can only wish you God-speed, and be glad to see you go"
+
+She held out her hand, frankly, strongly, as one who has no fear.
+
+"Now," she added, turning to Conquest, "I'll ask you to see me to my
+motor. I shall leave you and Mr Ford together, as I know you must have
+some last detail to arrange."
+
+Ford protested, but she gathered up her gloves and furs, and both men
+accompanied her to the street.
+
+It was an autumn evening, drizzling and dark. Up and down Fifth Avenue the
+wet pavements reflected the electric lamps like blurred mirrors. There
+were few passengers on foot, but an occasional motor whizzed weirdly out
+of the dark and into it. It was because there were no other people to be
+seen that two men standing in the rain attracted the attention of the
+three who descended Conquest's steps together.
+
+"There they are," Ford said, jerkily. "By George! they've got ahead of
+me."
+
+Instinctively Miriam clutched his arm, while one of the two strangers came
+forward apologetically.
+
+"You're Mr. John Norrie Ford, ain't you?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"I'm very sorry, sir, but I've got a warrant for your arrest."
+
+"That's all right," Ford said, cheerily. "I was on my way to you, anyhow.
+You'll find my bag in the cab, and everything ready. We'll drive, if it's
+all the same to you."
+
+"Yes, sir. Sure thing, sir."
+
+The man dropped back a few paces courteously, while Ford turned to his
+friends. His air was buoyant. Miriam, too, reflected the radiance of her
+vision of his triumph. Conquest alone, looking small and white and
+shrivelled in the rain, showed care and fear.
+
+"I don't think there's anything special to say," Ford remarked, with the
+awkwardness of a simple nature at an emotional crisis. "I'm not very good
+at thanks. Miss Strange knows that already. But it's all in here"--he
+tapped his breast, with a characteristic gesture--"very sacred, very
+strong."
+
+"We know that," Conquest said, unsteadily, with an embarrassment like
+Ford's own.
+
+"Well, then--good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye."
+
+With a long pressure of the hand to each, he turned toward his cab. Of the
+two strangers, one took his place beside the driver on the box, while the
+other held the door open for Ford to enter. His foot was already on the
+step when Miriam cried, "Wait!"
+
+He turned toward her as she glided across the wet pavement.
+
+"Good-bye, good-bye," she whispered again; and drawing down his face to
+hers, she kissed him, as she had kissed him once before, beside the waters
+of Champlain.
+
+As she drew back from him, Ford's countenance wore the uplifted look of a
+knight who has received the consecration to his quest. Even the two
+strangers bowed their heads, as though they had witnessed the bestowal of
+a sacrament. To Miriam herself it was the seal set on a past that could
+never be reopened. She felt the definiteness with which it was ended, as
+she heard, on her way back to Conquest's side, the door slammed, while the
+cab lumbered away. It seemed to her that Conquest shrank from her as she
+approached him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"You'll come to-morrow? I shall be home about five."
+
+Conquest had put her into her motor, drawn the rugs about her, and closed
+the door. As he did so, she noticed something slow and broken in his
+movements. Leaning from the open window, she held out her hand, but he
+barely touched it.
+
+"No," he said, hoarsely, "I shall not come to-morrow."
+
+"Then, the next day."
+
+"No, nor the next day."
+
+"Well, when you can. If you let me know, I shall stay in, whenever it may
+be."
+
+"You needn't stay in. I'm not coming any more."
+
+"Oh, don't say that. Don't say that," she pleaded. "You hurt me."
+
+"I can't come, Miriam. Don't you see? Isn't it plain enough? I can't come.
+I thought I could. I tried to think I could hold you--in spite of
+everything. But I can't. I _can't_."
+
+"You can hold me--if I stay. I want to stay. You mustn't let me go. I want
+you to be happy. You deserve it. You've done so much for me--and _him_."
+
+It was the stress she laid on the last word--a suggestion of something
+triumphant and enraptured beyond restraint--that made him bound back to
+the centre of the pavement.
+
+"Go on, Laporte," he said to the chauffeur, in a sharp voice. "Miss
+Strange is ready."
+
+"No, no," Miriam cried, stretching both hands toward him. "I'm not ready.
+Keep me. I want to stay."
+
+"Go on!" he cried, sternly, as the chauffeur hesitated. "Miss Strange is
+quite ready. She must go."
+
+Standing by the curb, he watched the motor glide off into the misty,
+lamplit darkness. He was watching it still, as it overtook the carriage in
+which Norrie Ford had just driven away. As the two vehicles passed abreast
+out of his range of vision, he knew they were bearing Ford and Miriam side
+by side into Life.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wild Olive, by Basil King
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WILD OLIVE ***
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