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diff --git a/14696-0.txt b/14696-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5ed51ca --- /dev/null +++ b/14696-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,13414 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14696 *** + +THE WHEEL OF LIFE + +by + +ELLEN GLASGOW + +New York +Doubleday, Page & Company + +1906 + + + + + + + +By the Same Author + + THE DELIVERANCE + THE BATTLE-GROUND + THE FREEMAN, AND OTHER POEMS + THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE + PHASES OF AN INFERIOR PLANET + THE DESCENDANT + + + + +CONTENTS + + +PART I. Impulse + +CHAPTER + I. In Which the Romantic Hero is Conspicuous by His Absence + II. Treats of an Eccentric Family + III. Apologises for an Old-fashioned Atmosphere + IV. Ushers in the Modern Spirit + V. In Which a Young Man Dreams Dreams + VI. Shows That Mr. Worldly-Wise-Man May Belong to Either Sex + VII. The Irresistible Force +VIII. Proves That a Poor Lover May Make an Excellent Friend + IX. Of Masques and Mummeries + X. Shows the Hero to Be Lacking in Heroic Qualities + XI. In Which a Lie Is the Better Part of Truth + + +PART II. Illusion + + I. Of Pleasure as the Chief End of Man + II. An Advance and a Retreat + III. The Moth and the Flame + IV. Treats of the Attraction of Opposites + V. Shows the Dangers as Well as the Pleasures of the Chase + VI. The Finer Vision + VII. In Which Failure Is Crowned By Failure +VIII. "The Small Old Path" + IX. The Triumph of the Ego + X. In Which Adams Comes Into His Inheritance + XI. On the Wings of Life + + +PART III. Disenchantment + + I. A Disconsolate Lover and a Pair of Blue Eyes + II. The Deification of Clay + III. The Greatest of These + IV. Adams Watches in the Night and Sees the Dawn + V. Treats of the Poverty of Riches + VI. The Feet of the God + VII. In Which Kemper Is Puzzled +VIII. Shows That Love Without Wisdom Is Folly + IX. Of the Fear in Love + X. The End of the Path + + +PART IV. Reconciliation + + I. The Secret Chambers + II. In Which Laura Enters the Valley of Humiliation + III. Proves a Great City to Be a Great Solitude + IV. Shows That True Love Is True Service + V. Between Laura and Gerty + VI. Renewal + + + + + +PART I + + +IMPULSE + + + + +CHAPTER I + +IN WHICH THE ROMANTIC HERO IS CONSPICUOUS BY HIS ABSENCE + + +As the light fell on her face Gerty Bridewell awoke, stifled a yawn with +her pillow, and remembered that she had been very unhappy when she went +to bed. That was only six hours ago, and yet she felt now that her +unhappiness and the object of it, which was her husband, were of less +disturbing importance to her than the fact that she must get up and +stand for three minutes under the shower bath in her dressing-room. With +a sigh she pressed the pillow more firmly under her cheek, and lay +looking a little wistfully at her maid, who, having drawn back the +curtains at the window, stood now regarding her with the discreet and +confidential smile which drew from her a protesting frown of irritation. + +"Well, I can't get up until I've had my coffee," she said in a voice +which produced an effect of mournful brightness rather than of anger, "I +haven't the strength to put so much as my foot out of bed." + +Her eyes followed the woman across the room and through the door, and +then, turning instinctively to the broad mirror above her dressing +table, hung critically upon the brilliant red and white reflection in +the glass. It was her comforting assurance that every woman looked her +best in bed; and as she lay now, following the lines of her charming +figure beneath the satin coverlet, she found herself wondering, not +without resentment, why the possession of a beauty so conspicuous should +afford her only a slight and temporary satisfaction. Last week a woman +whom she knew had had her nose broken in an automobile accident, and as +she remembered this it seemed to her that the mere fact of her +undisfigured features was sufficient to be the cause of joyful +gratitude. But this, she knew, was not so, for her face was perfectly +unharmed; and yet she felt that she could hardly have been more +miserable, even with a broken nose. + +Here she paused for an instant in order to establish herself securely in +her argument, for, though she could by no stretch of the imagination +regard her mind as of a meditative cast, there are hours when even to +the most flippant experience wears the borrowed mantle of philosophy. +Abstract theories of conduct diverted her but little; what she wanted +was some practical explanation of the mental weariness she felt. What +she wanted, she repeated, as if to drive in the matter with a final +blow, was to be as happy in the actual condition as she had told herself +that she might be when as yet the actual was only the ideal. Why, for +instance, when she had been wretched with but one man on the box, should +the addition of a second livery fail to produce in her the contentment +of which she had often dreamed while she disconsolately regarded a +single pair of shoulders? That happiness did not masquerade in livery +she had learned since she had triumphantly married the richest man she +knew, and the admission of this brought her almost with a jump to the +bitter conclusion of her unanswerable logic--for the satisfaction which +was not to be found in a footman was absent as well from the imposing +figure of Perry Bridewell himself. Yet she told herself that she would +have married him had he possessed merely the historical penny, and the +restless infatuation of those first months was still sufficiently alive +to lend the colour of its pleasing torment to her existence. + +Lying there, in her French embroidered night dress, with her brilliant +red hair pushed back from her forehead, she began idly to follow the +histories of the people whom she knew, and it seemed to her that each of +them was in some particular circumstance more fortunate than she. But +she would have changed place with none, not even with her best friend, +Laura Wilde, who was perfectly content because she lived buried away in +Gramercy Park and wrote vague beautiful verse that nobody ever read. +Laura filled as little part in what she called "the world" as Gramercy +Park occupied in modern progress, yet it was not without a faint impulse +of envy that Gerty recalled now the grave old house mantled in brown +creepers and the cheerful firelit room in which Laura lived. The peace +which she had missed in the thought of her husband came back to her with +the first recollection of her friend, and her hard bright eyes softened +a little while she dwelt on the vivid face of the woman to whom she +clung because of her very unlikeness to herself. Gradually out of the +mist of her unhappiness the figure of Laura rose in the mirror before +her, and she saw clearly her large white forehead under the dark +wing-like waves of hair, the singular intentness of her eyes, and the +rapt expectancy of look in which her features were lost as in a general +vagueness of light. + +Though it was twenty years since she had first seen Laura Wilde as a +child of ten, the meeting came to her suddenly with all the bright +clearness of an incident of yesterday. She remembered herself as a weak, +bedraggled little girl, in wet slippers, who was led by a careless nurse +to a strange German school; and she felt again the agony of curiosity +with which, after the first blank wonder was over, she had stared at the +children who hung whispering together in the centre of the room. As she +looked a panic terror seized her like a wild beast, and she threw up her +hands and turned to rush away to the reassuring presence of grown up +creatures, when from the midst of the whispering group a little dark +girl, in an ugly brown frock, ran up to her and folded her in her arms. + +"I shall love you best of all because you are so beautiful," said the +little dark girl, "and I will do all your sums and even eat your sausage +for you." Then she had kissed her and brought her to the stove and knelt +down on the floor to take off her wet slippers. To this day Gerty had +always thought of her friend as the little girl who had shut her eyes +and gulped down those terrible sausages for her behind her teacher's +back. + +The maid brought the coffee, and while she sat up to drink it the door +of her husband's dressing-room opened and he came in and stood, large, +florid and impressive, beside her bed. + +"I'm afraid I shan't get back to luncheon," he remarked, as he settled +his ample, carefully groomed body in his clothes with a comfortable +shake, "there's a chap from the country Pierce has sent to me with a +letter and I'll be obliged to feed him at the club, but--to tell the +truth--there's so little one can get really fit at this season." + +To a man for whom the pleasures of the table represented the larger +share of his daily enjoyment, this was a question not without a serious +importance of its own; and while he paused to settle it he stood, +squaring his chest, with an expression of decided annoyance on his +handsome, good-humored face. Then, having made a satisfactory choice of +dishes, his features recovered their usual look of genial contentment, +and he felt carelessly in his pocket for the letter which he presently +produced and laid on Gerty's pillow. His life had corresponded so evenly +with his bodily impulses that the perfection of the adjustment had +produced in him the amiable exterior of an animal that is never crossed. +It was a case in which supreme selfishness exerted the effect of +personality. + +Leaving the letter where he had placed it, Gerty sat sipping her coffee +while she looked up at him with the candid cynicism which lent a piquant +charm to the almost doll-like regularity of her features. + +"You did not get three hours sleep and yet you're so fresh you smell of +soap," she observed as an indignant protest, "while I've had six and I'm +still too tired to move." + +"Oh, I'm all right--I never let myself get seedy," returned Perry, with +his loud though pleasant laugh. "That's the mistake all you women +make." + +Half closing her eyes Gerty leaned back and surveyed him with a curious +detachment--almost as if he were an important piece of architecture +which she had been recommended to admire and to which she was patiently +trying in vain to adjust her baffled vision. The smaller she screwed her +gaze the more remotely magnificent loomed his proportions. + +"How you manage it is more than I can understand," she said. + +Perry stared for a moment in an amiable vacancy at the coffee pot. Then +she watched the animation move feebly in his face, while he pulled at +his short fair moustache with a characteristic masculine gesture. +Physically, she admitted, he had never appeared to a better advantage in +her eyes. + +"By the way, I had a game of billiards with Kemper and we talked pretty +late," he said, as if evolving the explanation for which she had not +asked. "He got back from Europe yesterday you know." + +"He did?" Her indifferent gaiety played like harmless lightning around +his massive bulk. "Then we may presume, I suppose, on Madame Alta for +the opera season?" + +He met the question with an admiring chuckle. "Do you really mean you +think he's been abroad with her all this time?" + +"Well, what else did he get his divorce for?" she demanded, with the +utter disillusion of knowledge which she had found to be her most +effective pose. + +Perry's chuckle swelled suddenly into a roar. "Good Lord, how women +talk!" he burst out. "Why, Arnold has been divorced ten years and he +never laid eyes on Jennie Alta till she sang over here three years ago. +There was nothing in it except that he liked to be seen with a +celebrity--most men do. But, my dear girl," he concluded in a kind of +awful reverence, "what a tongue you've got. It's a jolly good thing for +me that I'm your husband or you wouldn't leave me a blessed patch of +reputation to my back." + +His humor held him convulsed for several minutes, during which interval +Gerty continued to regard him with her piquant cynicism. + +"Well, if it wasn't Madame Alta it was somebody who is voiceless," she +retorted coolly. "I merely meant that there must have been a reason." + +"Oh, your 'reasons'!" ejaculated Perry. Then he stooped and gave the +letter lying on Gerty's pillow a filip from his large pink forefinger. +"You haven't told me what you think of this?" he said. + +Picking up the letter Gerty unfolded it and read it slowly through from +start to finish, the little ripple of sceptical amusement crossing and +recrossing her parted lips, + + RAVENS NEST, + Fauquier County, Virginia, + December 26, 19--. + + _My Dear Perry_: Nobody, of course, ever accused you of being + literary, nor, thank Heaven, have I fallen under that + aspersion--but since the shortest road to success seems to be by + circumvention, it has occurred to me that you might give a social + shove or two to the chap who will hand you this letter sometime + after the New Year. + + His name is St. George Trent, he was born a little way up the + turnpike from me, has an enchanting mother, and shows symptoms of + being already inoculated with the literary plague. I never read + books, so I have no sense of comparative values in literature, and + consequently can't tell whether he is an inglorious Shakespeare or + a subject for the daily press. His mother assures me that he has + already written a play worthy to stand beside Hamlet--but, though + she is a charming lady, I'm hardly convinced by her opinion. The + fact remains, however, that he is going to New York to become a + playwright, and that he has two idols in the market place which, I + fancy, you may be predestined to see demolished. He is simply off + his head to meet Roger Adams, the editor of _The_--something or + other I never heard of--and--remember your budding days and be + charitable--a lady who writes poems and signs herself Laura Wilde. + I prepared him for the inevitable catastrophe by assuring him that + the harmless Mr. Adams eats with his knife, and that the lady, as + she writes books, isn't worth much at love-making--the purpose for + which woman was created by God and cultivated by man. Alas, though, + the young are a people of great faith! + + Commend me to Mrs. Bridewell, whom I haven't seen since I had the + honour of assisting at the wedding. + + Yours ever, + BEVERLY PIERCE. + +As she finished her reading, Gerty broke into a laugh and carelessly +threw the letter aside on the blue satin quilt. + +"I'm glad to hear that somebody has read Laura's poems," she observed. + +"But what in thunder am I to do with the chap?" enquired Perry. "God +knows I don't go in for literature, and that's all he's good for I dare +say." + +"Oh, well, he can eat, I guess," commented Gerty, with consoling irony. + +"I've asked Roger Adams to luncheon," pursued Perry, too concerned to +resent her lack of sympathy, "but there are nine chances to one that he +will stay away." + +"Experience has taught me," rejoined Gerty sweetly, "that your friend +Adams can be absolutely counted on to stay away. Do you know," she +resumed after a moment's thought, "that, though he's probably the +brainiest man of our acquaintance, I sometimes seriously wonder what you +see in him." + +A flush of anger darkened Perry's clear skin, and this sudden change +gave him an almost brutal look. "I'd like to know if I'm a blamed fool?" +he demanded. + +Her merriment struck pleasantly on his ears. + +"Do you want to destroy the illusion in which I married you?" she asked. +"It was, after all, simply the belief that size is virtue." + +The flush passed, and he took in a full breath which expanded his broad +chest. "Well, I'm big enough," he answered, "but it isn't Adam's fault +that he hasn't got my muscle." + +With a leisurely glance in the mirror, he settled his necktie in place, +twisted the short ends of his moustache, and then stooped to kiss his +wife before going out. + +"Don't you let yourself get seedy and lose your looks," he said as he +left the room. + +When he had gone she made a sudden ineffectual effort to rise from bed; +then as if oppressed by a fatigue that was moral rather than physical, +she fell back again and turned her face wearily from the mirror. So the +morning slipped away, the luncheon hour came and went, and it was not +until the afternoon that she gathered energy to dress herself and begin +anew the inevitable and agonising pursuit of pleasure. The temptation of +the morning had been to let go--to relax in despair from the +fruitlessness of her endeavor--and the result of this brief withdrawal +was apparent in the order which she gave the footman before the open +door of her carriage. + +"To Miss Wilde's first"--the words ended abruptly and she turned +eagerly, with outstretched hand, to a man who had hurried toward her +from the corner of Fifth Avenue. + +"So you haven't forgotten me in six months, Arnold," she said, with a +sweetness in which there was an almost imperceptible tone of bitterness. + +He took her hand in both of his, pressing it for an instant in a quick +muscular grasp which had in it something of the nervous vigor that lent +a peculiar vibrant quality to his voice. + +"And I couldn't have done it in six years," he replied, as a singularly +charming smile illumined his forcible rather than regular features, and +brought out the genial irony in his expressive light gray eyes. "If I'd +gone to Europe to forget you it would have been time thrown away, but I +had something better on my hands than that--I've been buying French +racing automobiles--" + +As he finished he gave an impatient jerk to the carriage door, a +movement which, like all his gestures, sprang from the nervous energy +that found its outlet in the magnetism of his personality. People +sometimes said that he resembled Perry Bridewell, who was, in fact, his +distant cousin, but the likeness consisted solely in a certain evident +possession of virile power--a quality which women are accustomed to +describe as masculine. He was not tall, and yet he gave an impression of +bigness; away from him one invariably thought of him as of unusual +proportions, but, standing by his side, he was found to be hardly above +the ordinary height. The development of his closely knit figure, the +splendid breadth of his chest and shoulders, the slight projection of +his heavy brows and the almost brutal strength of his jaw and chin, all +combined to emphasise that appearance of ardent vitality which has +appealed so strongly to the imagination of women. Seen in repose there +was a faint suggestion of cruelty in the lines of his mouth under his +short brown moustache, but this instead of detracting from the charm he +exercised only threw into greater relief the genial brightness of his +smile. + +Now Gerty, glancing up at him, remembered a little curiously, the +whispered reason for his long absence. There was always a woman in the +wind when it blew rumours of Kemper, though he was generally considered +to regard the sex with the blithe indifference of a man to whom feminine +favour has come easily. How easily Gerty had sometimes wondered, though +she had hardly ventured so much as a dim surmise. Ten years, she would +have said, was a considerable period from which to date a passion, and +she remembered now that ten years ago Kemper had secured a divorce from +his wife in some Western court. There had been no particular scandal, no +damning charges on either side; and a club wit had remarked at the time +that the only possible ground for a separation was the fact that Mrs. +Kemper had grown jealous of her husband's after-dinner cigar. Since then +other and varied rumours had reached Gerty's ears, until finally there +had blown a veritable gale concerning a certain Madame Alta, who sang +melting soprano parts in Italian opera. Then this, too, had passed, +and, with the short memory of city livers, Gerty had forgotten alike the +gossip and the heroines of the gossip, until she noted now the lines of +deeper harassment in Kemper's face. These coming so suddenly after six +months of Europe caused her to wonder if the affair with the prima donna +had been really an entanglement of the heart. + +"Well, I may not be as fast as an automobile," she presently admitted. + +"But you're twice as dangerous," he retorted gaily. + +For an instant the pleasant humour in his eyes held her speechless. + +"Ah, well, you aren't a coward," she answered coolly enough at last. +Then her tone changed, and as she settled herself under her fur rugs she +made a cordial inviting gesture. "Come in with me and I'll take you to +Laura Wilde's," she said; "she's a genius, and you ought to know her +before the world finds her out." + +With a protesting laugh Kemper held up his gloved finger. + +"God forbid!" he exclaimed with a shrug which struck her as a slightly +foreign affectation. "The lady may be a female Milton, but Perry tells +me that she isn't pretty." + +He touched her hand again, met her indignant defence of Laura with a nod +of smiling irony, and then, as her carriage started, he turned rapidly +down Sixty-ninth Street in the direction of the Park. + +In Gerty the chance meeting had awakened a slumbering interest which she +had half forgotten, and as she drove down Fifth Avenue toward Laura's +distant home she found herself wondering idly if he would let many days +go by before he came again. The thought was still in her mind when the +carriage turned into Gramercy Park and stopped before the old brown +house hidden in creepers in which Laura lived. So changed by this time, +however, was Gerty's mood that, after leaving her carriage, she stood +hesitating from indecision upon the sidewalk. The few bared trees in the +snow, the solemn, almost ghostly, quiet of the quaint old houses and the +deserted streets, in which a flock of sparrows quarrelled under the +faint sunshine, produced in her an odd and almost mysterious sense of +unreality--as if the place, herself, the waiting carriage, and Laura +buried away in the dull brown house, were all creations of some gossamer +and dream-like quality of mind. She felt suddenly that the sorrows which +had oppressed her in the morning belonged no more to any existence in +which she herself had a part. Then, looking up, she saw her husband +crossing the street between the two men with whom he had lunched, and +even the impressive solidity of Perry Bridewell appeared to her +strangely altered and out of place. + +He came up, a little breathless from his rapid walk, and it was a minute +before he could summon voice to introduce the cheerful, fresh-coloured +youth on his right hand. + +"I've already told Mrs. Bridewell about you, Mr. Trent," he said at +last, "but I'm willing to confess that I haven't told her half the +truth." + +Gerty met Trent's embarrassed glance with the protecting smile with +which she favoured the young who combined his sex with his attractions. +Then, when he was quite at ease again, she turned to speak to Roger +Adams, for whom, in spite, as she laughingly said, of the distinction +between a bookworm and a butterfly, she was accustomed to admit a more +than ordinary liking. + +He was a gaunt, scholarly looking man of forty years, with broad, +singularly bony shoulders, an expression of kindly humour, and a plain, +strong face upon which suffering had left its indelible suggestion of +defeated physical purpose. Nothing about him was impressive, nothing +even arresting to a casual glance, and not even the shooting light from +the keen gray eyes, grown a little wistful from the emotional repression +of the man's life, could account for the cordial appeal that spoke +through so unimposing a figure. As much of his personal history as Gerty +knew seemed to her peculiarly devoid of the interest or the excitement +of adventure; and the only facts of his life which she would have found +deserving the trouble of repeating were that he had married an +impossible woman somewhere in Colorado, and that for ten years he had +lived in New York where he edited _The International Review_. + +"Perry tells me that Mr. Trent has really read Laura's poems," she said +now to Adams with an almost unconscious abandonment of her cynical +manner. "Have you examined him and is it really true?" + +"I didn't test him because I hoped the report was false," was Adams' +answer. "He's welcome to the literary hash, but I want to keep the +_caviar_ for myself." + +"Read them!" exclaimed Trent eagerly, while his blue eyes ran entirely +to sparkles. "Why, I've learned them every one by heart." + +"Then she'll let you in," responded Gerty reassuringly, "there's no +doubt whatever of your welcome." + +"But there is of mine," said Perry gravely, "so I guess I'd better +quit." + +He made a movement to turn away, but Gerty placing her gloved hand on +his arm, detained him by a reproachful look. + +"That reminds me of the mischief you have done to-day," she said. "I met +Arnold Kemper as I left the house, and when I asked him to come with me +what do you suppose was the excuse he gave?" + +"The dentist or a twinge of rheumatism?" suggested Adams gravely. + +"Neither." Her voice rose indignantly, and she enforced her reprimand by +a light stroke on Perry's sleeve. "He actually said that Perry had told +him Laura wasn't pretty." + +"Well, I take back my words and eat 'em, too," cried Perry. + +He broke away in affected terror before Trent's angry eyes, while Gerty +gave a joyful little exclamation and waved her hand toward one of the +lower windows in the house before which they stood. The head of a woman, +framed in brown creepers, appeared there for an instant, and then, +almost before Trent had caught a glimpse of the small dark eager figure, +melted again into the warm firelight of the interior. A moment later the +outer door opened quickly, and Laura stood there with impulsive +outstretched hands and the cordial smile which was her priceless +inheritance from a Southern mother. + +"I knew that you were there even before I looked out of the window," she +exclaimed to Gerty, in what Adams had once called her "Creole voice." +Then she paused, laughing happily, as she looked, with her animated +glance, from Gerty to Trent and from Trent to Adams. To the younger man, +full of his enthusiasm and his ignorance, the physical details of her +appearance seemed suddenly of no larger significance than the pale +bronze gown she wore or the old coffee-coloured lace knotted upon her +bosom in some personal caprice of dress. What she gave to him as she +stood there, looking from Adams to himself with her ardent friendly +glance, was an impression of radiant energy, of abundant life. + +She turned back after the first greeting, leading the way into the +pleasant firelit room, where a white haired old gentleman with an +interesting blanched face rose to receive them. + +"I have just proved to Mr. Wilberforce that I could 'feel' you coming," +said Laura with a smile as she unfastened Gerty's furs. + +"And I have argued that she could quite as well surmise it," returned +Mr. Wilberforce, as he fell back into his chair before the wood fire. + +"Well, you may know in either way that my coming may be counted on," +said Gerty, "for I have sacrificed for you the society of the most +interesting man I know." + +"What! Is it possible that Perry has been forsaken?" enquired Adams in +his voice of quiet humor. In the midst of her flippant laughter, Gerty +turned on him the open cynicism of her smile. + +"Now is it possible that Perry has that effect on you?" she asked with +curiosity. "For I find him decidedly depressing." + +"Then if it isn't Perry I demand the name," persisted Adams gayly, +"though I'm perfectly ready to wager that it's Arnold Kemper." + +"Kemper," repeated Laura curiously, as if the name arrested her almost +against her will. "Wasn't there a little novel once by an Arnold +Kemper--a slight but striking thing with very little grammar and a great +deal of audacity?" + +"Oh, that was done in his early days," replied Adams, "as a kind of +outlet to the energy he now expends in racing motors. I asked Funsten, +who does our literary notices, if there was any chance for him again in +fiction, and he answered that the only favourable thing he could say of +him was to say nothing." + +"But he's gone in for automobiles now," said Gerty, "they're so much +bigger, after all, he thinks, than books." + +"I haven't seen him for fifteen years," remarked Adams, "but I recognise +his speech." + +"One always recognises his speeches," admitted Gerty, "there's a stamp +on them, I suppose, for somehow he himself is great even if his career +isn't--and, after all," she concluded seriously, "it is--what shall I +call it--the personal quantity that he insists on." + +"The personal quantity," repeated Laura laughing, and, as if the +description of Kemper had failed to interest her, she turned the +conversation upon the subject of Trent's play. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +TREATS OF AN ECCENTRIC FAMILY + + +When the last caller had gone Laura slid back the folding doors which +opened into the library and spoke to a little old gentleman, with a very +bald head, who sat in a big armchair holding a flute in his wrinkled and +trembling hand. He had a simple, moonlike face, to which his baldness +lent a deceptive appearance of intellect, and his expression was of such +bland and smiling goodness that it was impossible to resent the tedious +garrulity of his conversation. In the midst of his shrivelled +countenance his eyes looked like little round blue buttons which had +been set there in order to keep his features from entirely slipping +away. He was the oldest member of the Wilde family, and he had lived in +the house in Gramercy Park since it was built by his father some sixty +years or more ago. + +"Tired waiting, Uncle Percival?" asked Laura, raising her voice a little +that it might penetrate his deafened hearing. + +As he turned upon her his smile of perfect patience the old gentleman +nodded his head quickly several times in succession. "I waited to play +until after the people went," he responded in a voice that sounded like +a cracked silver bell. "Your Aunt Angela has a headache, so she couldn't +stand the noise. I went out to get her some flowers and offered to sit +with her, but this is one of her bad days, poor girl." He fell silent +for a minute and then added, wistfully, "I'm wondering if you would like +to hear 'Ye Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Doon'? It used to be your mother's +favourite air." + +Though he was an inoffensively amiable and eagerly obliging old man, by +some ironic contradiction of his intentions his life had become a series +of blunders through which he endeavoured to add his share to the general +happiness. His soul was overflowing with humanity, and he spent +sleepless nights evolving innocent pleasures for those about him, but +his excess of goodness invariably resulted in producing petty annoyances +if not serious inconveniences. So his virtues had come to be regarded +with timidity, and there was an ever present anxiety in the air as to +what Uncle Percival was "doing" in his mind. The fear of inopportune +benefits was in its way as oppressive as the dread of unmerited +misfortune. + +Laura shook her head impatiently as she threw herself into a chair on +the other side of the tall bronze lamp upon the writing table. On the +stem of an eccentric family tree she was felt to be the perfect flower +of artistic impulses, and her enclosed life in the sombre old house had +not succeeded in cultivating in her the slightest resemblance to an +artificial variety. She was obviously, inevitably, impulsively the +original product, and Uncle Percival never realised this more hopelessly +than in that unresponsive headshake of dismissal. Laura could be kind, +he knew, but she was kind, as she was a poet, when the mood prompted. + +"Presently--not now," she said, "I want to talk to you awhile. Do you +know, Aunt Rosa was here again to-day and she still tries to persuade us +to sell the house and move uptown. It is so far for her to come from +Seventieth Street, she says, but as for me I'd positively hate the +change and Aunt Angela can't even stand the mention of it." She leaned +forward and stroked his arm with one of her earnest gestures. "What +would you do uptown, dear Uncle Percival?" she inquired gently. + +The old man laid the flute on his knees, where his shrunken little hands +still caressed it. "Do? why I'd die if you dragged me away from my +roots," he answered. + +Laura smiled, still smoothing him down as if he were an amiable dog. +"Well, the Park is very pleasant, you know," she returned, "and it is +full of walks, too. You wouldn't lack space for exercise." + +"The Park? Pooh!" piped Uncle Percival, raising his voice; "I wouldn't +give these streets for the whole of Central Park together. Why, I've +seen these pavements laid and relaid for seventy years and I remember +all the men who walked over them. Did I ever tell you of the time I +strolled through Irving Place with Thackeray? As for Central Park, it +hasn't an ounce--not an ounce of atmosphere." + +"Oh, well, that settles it," laughed Laura. "We'll keep to our own +roots. We are all of one mind, you and Aunt Angela and I." + +"I'm sure Angela would never hear of it," pursued Uncle Percival, "and +in her affliction how could one expect it?" + +For a moment Laura looked at him in a compassionate pause before she +made her spring. "There's nothing in the world the matter with Aunt +Angela," she said; "she's perfectly well." + +Blank wonder crept into the old gentleman's little blue eyes and he +shook his head several times in solemn if voiceless protest. Forty years +ago Angela Wilde, as a girl of twenty, had in the accustomed family +phrase "brought lasting disgrace upon them," and she had dwelt, as it +were, in the shadow of the pillory ever since. Unmarried she had yielded +herself to a lover, and afterward when the full scandal had burst upon +her head, though she had not then reached the fulfilment of a singularly +charming beauty, she had condemned herself to the life of a solitary +prisoner within four walls. She had never since the day of her awakening +mentioned the name of her faithless or unfortunate lover, but her silent +magnanimity had become the expression of a reproach too deep for words, +and her bitter scorn of men had so grown upon her in her cloistral +existence that there were hours together when she could not endure even +the inoffensive Percival. Cold, white, and spectral as one of the long +slim candles on an altar, still beautiful with an indignant and wounded +loveliness, she had become in the end at once the shame and the romance +of her family. + +"There is no reason under the sun why Aunt Angela shouldn't come down to +dinner with us to-night," persisted Laura. "Don't you see that by +encouraging her as you did in her foolish attitude, you have given her +past power over her for life and death. It is wrong--it is ignoble to +bow down and worship anything--man, woman, child, or event, as she bows +down and worships her trouble." + +The flute shook on Uncle Percival's knees. "Ah, Laura, would you have +her face the world again?" he asked. + +"The world? Nonsense! The world doesn't know there's such a person in +it. She was forgotten forty years ago, only she has grown so selfish in +her grief that she can never believe it." + +The old man sighed and shook his head. "The women of this generation +have had the dew brushed off them," he lamented, "but your mother +understood. She felt for Angela." + +"And yet it was an old story when my mother came here." + +"Some things never grow old, my dear, and shame is one of them." + +Laura dismissed the assertion with a shrug of scornful protest, and +turned the conversation at once into another channel. "Am I anything +like my mother, Uncle Percival?" she asked abruptly. + +For a moment the old man pondered the question in silence, his little +red hands fingering the mouth of his flute. + +"You have the Creole hair and the Creole voice," he replied; "but for +the rest you are your father's child, every inch of you." + +"My mother was beautiful, I suppose?" + +"Your father thought so, but as for me she was too little and +passionate. I can see her now when she would fly into one of her spasms +because somebody had crossed her or been impolite without knowing it." + +"They got on badly then--I mean afterward." + +"What could you expect, my dear? It was just after the War, and, though +she loved your father, she never in her heart of hearts forgave him his +blue uniform. There was no reason in her--she was all one fluttering +impulse, and to live peaceably in this world one must have at least a +grain of leaven in the lump of one's emotion." He chuckled as he ended +and fixed his mild gaze upon the lamp. Being very old, he had come to +realise that of the two masks possible to the world's stage, the comic, +even if the less spectacular, is also the less commonplace. + +"So she died of an overdose of medicine," said Laura; "I have never been +told and yet I have always known that she died by her own hand. +Something in my blood has taught me." + +Uncle Percival shook his head. "No--no, she only made a change," he +corrected. "She was a little white moth who drifted to another +sphere--because she had wanted so much, my child, that this earth would +have been bankrupt had it attempted to satisfy her." + +"She wanted what?" demanded Laura, her eyes glowing. + +The old man turned upon her a glance in which she saw the wistful +curiosity which belongs to age. "At the moment you remind me of her," he +returned, "and yet you seem so strong where she was only weak." + +"What did she want? What did she want?" persisted Laura. + +"Well, first of all she wanted your father--every minute of him, every +thought, every heart-beat. He couldn't give it to her, my dear. No man +could. I tell you I have lived to a great age, and I have known great +people, and I have never seen the man yet who could give a woman all the +love she wanted. Women seem to be born with a kind of divination--a +second sight where love is concerned--they aren't content with the mere +husk, and yet that is all that the most of them ever get--" + +"But my father?" protested Laura; "he broke his heart for her." + +A smile at the fine ironic humour of existence crossed the old man's +sunken lips. "He gave to her dead what she had never had from him +living," he returned. "When she was gone everything--even the man's life +for which he had sacrificed her--turned worthless. He always had the +seeds of consumption, I suppose, and his gnawing remorse caused them to +develop." + +A short silence followed his words, while Laura stared at him with eyes +which seemed to weigh gravely the meaning of his words. Then, rising +hurriedly, she made a gesture as if throwing the subject from her and +walked rapidly to the door. + +"Aunt Rosa and Aunt Sophy are coming to dine," she said, "so I must +glance at the table. I can't remember now whether I ordered the oysters +or not." + +The old man glanced after her with timid disappointment. "So you haven't +time to hear me play?" he asked wistfully. + +"Not now--there's Aunt Angela's dinner to be seen to. If Mr. Bleeker +comes with Aunt Sophy you can play to him. He likes it." + +"But he always goes to sleep, Laura. He doesn't listen--and besides he +snores so that I can't enjoy my own music." + +"That's because he'd rather snore than do anything else. I wouldn't let +that worry me an instant. He goes to sleep at the opera." + +She went out, and after giving a few careful instructions to a servant +in the dining-room, ascended the staircase to the large square room in +the left wing where Angela remained a wilful prisoner. As she opened the +door she entered into a mist of dim candle light, by which her aunt was +pacing restlessly up and down the length of the apartment. + +To pass from the breathless energy of modern New York into this quiet +conventual atmosphere was like crossing by a single step the division +between two opposing civilisations. Even the gas light, which Angela +could not endure, was banished from her eyes, and she lived always in a +faint, softened twilight not unlike that of some meditative Old-World +cloisters. The small iron bed, the colourless religious prints, the pale +drab walls and the floor covered only by a chill white matting, all +emphasised the singular impression of an expiation that had become as +pitiless as an obsession of insanity. On a small table by a couch, which +was drawn up before a window overlooking the park, there was a row of +little devotional books, all bound neatly in black leather, but beyond +this the room was empty of any consolation for mind or body. Only the +woman herself, with her accusing face and her carelessly arranged +snow-white hair, held and quickened the imagination in spite of her +suggestion of bitter brooding and unbalanced reason. Her eyes looking +wildly out of her pallid face were still the beautiful, fawn-like eyes +of the girl of twenty, and one felt in watching her that the old tragic +shock had paralysed in them the terrible expression of that one moment +until they wore forever the indignant and wounded look with which she +had met the blow that destroyed her youth. + +"Dear," said Laura, entering softly as she might have entered a death +chamber. "You will see Aunt Rosa and Aunt Sophy, will you not?" + +Angela did not stop in her nervous walk, but when she reached the end of +the long room she made a quick, feverish gesture, raising her hands to +push back her beautiful loosened hair. "I will do anything you wish, +Laura, except see their husbands." + +"I've ceased to urge that, Aunt Angela, but your own sisters--" + +"Oh, I will see them," returned Angela, as if the words--as if any +speech, in fact--were wrung from the cold reserve which had frozen her +from head to foot. + +Laura went up to her and, with the impassioned manner which she had +inherited from her Southern mother, enclosed her in a warm and earnest +embrace. "My dear, my dear," she said, "Uncle Percival tells me that +this is one of your bad days. He says, poor man, that he went out and +got you flowers." + +Angela yielded slowly, still without melting from her icy remoteness. +"They were tuberoses," she responded, in a voice which was in itself +effectual comment. + +"Tuberoses!" exclaimed Laura aghast, "when you can't even stand the +scent of lilies. No wonder, poor dear, that your head aches." + +"Mary put them outside on the window sill," said Angela, in a kind of +resigned despair, "but their awful perfume seemed to penetrate the +glass, so she took them down into the coal cellar." + +"And a very good place for them, too," was Laura's feeling rejoinder; +"but you mustn't blame him," she charitably concluded, "for he couldn't +have chosen any other flower if he had had the whole Garden of Eden to +select from. It isn't really his fault after all--it's a part of +fatality like his flute." + +"He played for me until my head almost split," remarked Angela wearily, +"and then he apologised for stopping because his breath was short." + +A startled tremor shook through her as a step was heard on the +staircase. "Who is it, Laura?" + +Laura went quickly to the door and, after pausing a moment outside, +returned with a short, flushed, and richly gowned little woman who was +known to the world as Mrs. Robert Bleeker. + +More than twenty years ago, as the youngest of the pretty Wilde sisters, +she had, in the romantic fervour of her youth and in spite of the +opposition of her parents, made a love match with a handsome, +impecunious young dabbler in "stocks." "Sophy is a creature of +sentiment," her friends had urged in extenuation of a marriage which was +not then considered in a brilliant light, but to the surprise of +everybody, after the single venture by which she had proved the mettle +of her dreams, she had sunk back into a prosperous and comfortable +mediocrity. She had made her flight--like the queen bee she had soared +once into the farthest, bluest reaches of her heaven, and henceforth she +was quite content to relapse into the utter commonplaces of the hive. +Her yellow hair grew sparse and flat and streaked with gray, her +pink-rose face became over plump and mottled across the nose, and her +mind turned soon as flat and unelastic as her body; but she was +perfectly satisfied with the portion she had had from life, for, having +weighed all things, she had come to regard the conventions as of most +enduring worth. + +Now she rustled in with an emphatic announcement of stiff brocade, and +enveloped the spectral Angela in an embrace of comfortable arms and +bosom. Her unwieldy figure reminded Laura of a broad, low wall that has +been freshly papered in a large flowered pattern. On her hands and bosom +a number of fine emeralds flashed, for events had shown in the end that +the impecunious young lover was not fated to dabble in stocks in vain. + +"Oh Angela, my poor dear, how are you?" she enquired. + +Angela released herself with a shrinking gesture and, turning away, sat +down at the foot of the long couch. "I am the same--always the same," +she answered in her cold, reserved voice. + +"You took your fresh air to-day, I hope?" + +"I went down in the yard as usual. Laura," she looked desperately +around, "is that Rosa who has just come in?" As she paused a knock came +at the door, and Laura opened it to admit Mrs. Payne--the eldest, the +richest and the most eccentric of the sisters. + +From a long and varied association with men and manners Mrs. Payne had +gathered a certain halo of experience, as of one who had ripened from +mere acquaintance into a degree of positive intimacy with the world. She +had seen it up and down from all sides, had turned it critically about +for her half-humorous, half-sentimental inspection, and the frank +cynicism which now flavoured her candid criticism of life only added the +spice of personality to her original distinction of adventure. As the +wife of an Ambassador to France in the time of the gay Eugénie, and +again as one of the diplomatic circle in Cairo and in Constantinople, +she had stored her mind with precious anecdotes much as a squirrel +stores a hollow in his tree with nuts. Life had taught her that the one +infallible method for impressing your generation is to impress it by a +difference, and, beginning as a variation from type, she had ended by +commanding attention as a preserved specimen of an extinct species. +Long, wiry, animated, and habitually perturbed, she moved in a continual +flutter of speech--a creature to be reckoned with from the little, flat, +round curls upon her temples, which looked as if each separate hair was +held in place by a particular wire, to the sweep of her black velvet +train, which surged at an exaggerated length behind her feet. Her face +was like an old and tattered comic mask which, though it has been flung +aside as no longer provocative of pleasant mirth, still carries upon its +cheeks and eyebrows the smears of the rouge pot and the pencil. + +"My dear Angela," she now asked in her excited tones, "have you really +been walking about again? I lay awake all night fearing that you had +over-taxed your strength yesterday. Mrs. Francis Barnes--you never knew +her of course, but she was a distant cousin of Horace's--died quite +suddenly, without an instant's warning, after having walked rapidly +twice up and down the room. Since then I have always looked upon +movement as a very dangerous thing." + +"Well, I could hardly die suddenly under any circumstances," returned +Angela, indifferently. "You've been watching by my death-bed for forty +years." + +"Oh, dear sister," pleaded Mrs. Bleeker, whose heart, was as soft as her +bosom. + +"It does sound as if you thought we really wanted your things," +commented Mrs. Payne, opening and shutting her painted fan. "Of +course--if you were to die we should be too heart-broken to care what +you left--but, since we are on the subject, I've always meant to ask you +to leave me the shawl of old rose-point which belonged to mother." + +"Rosa, how can you?" remonstrated Mrs. Bleeker, "I am sure I hope Angela +will outlive me many years, but if she doesn't I want everything she has +to go to Laura." + +"Well, I'm sure I don't see how Laura could very well wear a rose-point +shawl," persisted Mrs. Payne. "I wouldn't have started the subject for +anything on earth, Angela, but, since you've spoken of it, I only +mention what is in my mind. And now don't say a word, Sophy, for we'll +go back to other matters. In poor Angela's mental state any little +excitement may bring on a relapse." + +"A relapse of what?" bluntly enquired honest Mrs. Bleeker. + +Mrs. Payne turned upon her a glance of indignant calm. + +"Why a relapse of--of her trouble," she responded. "You show a strange +lack of consideration for her condition, but for my part I am perfectly +assured that it needs only some violent shock, such as may result from +a severe fall or the unexpected sight of a man, to produce a serious +crisis." + +Mrs. Bleeker shook her head with the stubborn common sense which was the +reactionary result of her romantic escapade. + +"A fall might hurt anybody," she rejoined, "but I'm sure I don't see why +the mere sight of a man should. I've looked at one every day for thirty +years and fattened on it, too." + +"That," replied Mrs. Payne, who still delighted to prick at the old +scandal with a delicate dissecting knife, "is because you have only +encountered the sex in domestic shackles. As for me, I haven't the least +doubt in the world that the sudden shock of beholding a man after forty +years would be her death blow." + +"But she has seen Percival," insisted Mrs. Bleeker; and feeling that her +illustration did not wholly prove her point added, weakly, "at least he +wears breeches." + +"I would not see him if I could help myself," broke in Angela, with +sudden energy. "I never--never--never wish to see a man again in this +world or the next." + +Mrs. Payne glanced sternly at Mrs. Bleeker and followed it with an +emphatic head shake, which said as plainly as words, "So there's your +argument." + +"All the same, I don't believe Robert would shock her," remarked Mrs. +Bleeker. + +"Never--never--never," repeated Angela in a frozen agony, and, rising, +she walked restlessly up and down again until a servant appeared to +inform the visiting sisters that dinner and Miss Wilde awaited them +below. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +APOLOGISES FOR AN OLD-FASHIONED ATMOSPHERE + + +As soon as dinner was over Uncle Percival retired with Mr. Bleeker into +the library, from which retreat there issued immediately the shrill +piping of the flute. Mr. Bleeker, with an untouched glass of sherry at +his elbow and an unlighted cigar in his hand, sank back into the placid +after-dinner reverie which is found in the rare cases when old age has +encountered a faultless digestion. The happiest part of his life was +spent in the pleasant state between waking and sleeping, while as yet +the flavour of his favourite dishes still lingered in his mouth--just as +the most blissful moments known to Uncle Percival were those in which he +piped his cherished airs upon his antiquated instrument. The eldest +member of the Wilde family was very old indeed--had in fact successfully +rounded some years ago the critical point of his eightieth birthday, and +there was the zest of a second childhood in the animation with which he +had revived the single accomplishment of his early youth. That youth was +now more vivid to his requickened memory than the present was to his +enfeebled faculties. The past had become a veritable obsession in his +mind, and when he fingered the old flute strength came back to his +half-palsied hands and breath returned to his shrunken little body. His +own music was the one sound he heard in all its distinctness, and he +hung upon it with an enjoyment which was almost doting in its childish +delight. + +So the fluting went on merrily, while Mrs. Payne and Mrs. Bleeker, after +fidgeting a moment in the drawing-room, decided that they would return +for a word or two with Angela. "It is really the only place in the house +where one can escape Percival's music," declared Mrs. Payne, who frankly +confessed that she had reached the time of life when to bore her was the +chief offence society could commit, "so, besides the comfort I afford +dear Angela, it is much the pleasantest place for me to pass the +evening. I've always been a merciful woman my child," she pursued +shaking her little flat, false gray curls above her painted wrinkles, +"for never in my life have I cast a stone at anyone who amused me; but +as for Percival and his flute! Well, I won't say a disagreeable word on +the subject, but I honestly think that a passion at his age is +absolutely indecent." + +She was so grotesquely gorgeous with her winking diamonds and her old +point lace, which yawned over her lean neck, that the distinction she +had always aimed at seemed achieved at last by an ironic exaggeration. + +"At least it is a perfectly harmless passion," suggested her husband, a +beautiful old man of seventy gracious years. + +"Harmless!" gasped Mrs. Payne. "Why, it has wrecked the nerves of the +entire family, has given me Saint Vitus' dance, has kept Laura awake for +nights, has reduced Angela to hysterics, and you actually have the face +to tell me it is harmless! Judged by its effects, I consider it quite +as reprehensible as a taste for cards or a fancy for a chorus girl. +Those are vices at least that belong to our century and to civilisation, +but a flute is nothing less than a relic of barbarism." + +"Well, it's worse on me than on anyone else," said Laura, with the +dominant spirit which caused Mr. Payne to shiver whenever she tilted +against his wife. "My room is just above, and I get the benefit of every +note." + +The tune issuing from the library had changed suddenly into "The Land o' +the Leal," and by the lamp light Uncle Percival could be seen, warm and +red and breathless but still blissfully fluting to the sleeping Mr. +Bleeker, whose face, fallen back against the velvet cushions, wore a +broad, beatific smile. + +"He gets his happiness from it at least," persisted Laura. "I suppose +it's a part of his life just as poetry is a part of mine, and to be +happy at eighty-two one is obliged to be happy in an antedated fashion." + +Then, as the two aunts swept from the room to join Angela, Laura seated +herself at Mr. Payne's side and caught the hand which he outstretched. +Of all the family he had been her favourite since childhood, and she +sometimes told herself that he was the only one who knew her as she +really was--who had ever penetrated behind her vivid outside armour of +personality. He was a man of great unsatisfied tenderness, who indulged +a secret charity as another man might have indulged a vicious taste. All +his inclinations strained after goodness, and had he possessed the +courage to follow the natural bent of his nature toward perfection he +might have found his happiness in the peaceful paths of exalted virtue. +But the constant dropping of cynicism will extinguish an angel, and, +instead of becoming a shining light to his generation, he had dwindled +into a glow-worm beneath the billows of his wife's velvet gown. + +Now, as Laura held his hand, she bent upon him one of her long, +meditative looks. "Uncle Horace, of all this queer family is Aunt Rosa +the queerest or am I?" + +Mr. Payne shook his silvered head. "I don't think you're a match for +Rosa yet, my dear," he answered with his gentle humour. "Wait till +you've turned seventy--then we'll see." + +"But I'm not like other women. I don't think their ways. I don't even +want the things they want." + +The old man's smile shone out as he patted her hand. "That means, I +suppose, that you don't want to be married. Who is it this time? Ah, my +child, you are born to be adored or to be hated." + +Without replying to his question, Laura lifted her full, dark eyes to +his face. As he met the intellectual power of her glance, he told +himself that he understood the mysterious active principle of her +personality--how the many were repelled while the few returned to +worship. One felt her, was repulsed or possessed by her, even in her +muteness. + +"I don't see how any one who has ever dreamed dreams," she said at last, +"could fall in love and marry--it is so different--so different." + +"So you have refused Mr. Wilberforce? Well, well, he has reached the age +when a poor lover may make an excellent friend--and besides, to become +Rosa's mouthpiece for a moment, he is very rich." + +"And old enough to be my father--but it isn't that. Age has nothing to +do with it, nor has congeniality--it is nothing in real life that comes +between, for I am fond of him and I don't mind his white hairs in the +least, but I can't give up my visions--my ideal hopes." + +"Ah, Laura, Laura," sighed the old man, "the trouble is that you don't +live on the earth at all, but in a little hanging garden of the +imagination." + +"And yet I want life," she said. + +"We all want it, my child, until we've had it. At your age I wanted it, +too, for I had my dreams, though I was not a poet. But there are +precious few of us who are willing in youth to accept the world on its +own terms--we want to add our little poem to the universal prose of +things." + +"But it is life itself that I want," repeated Laura. + +"And so I wanted Rosa, my dear, every bit as much." + +"Rosa!" There was a glow of surprise in the look she turned upon him. + +"You find it hard to believe, but it is true nevertheless. I had my +golden dream like everyone else, and when Rosa loved me I told myself it +had all come true. Well, perhaps, in a measure it has, only, after all, +Rosa turned out to be more suited to real life than to poetic +moonshine." + +"I can't imagine even you idealizing Aunt Rosa," said Laura, "but that I +suppose is the way life equalises things." + +"That way or another, and the worst it can do for us is to return us our +own dreams in grotesque and mutilated forms. That will most likely be +your portion, too, my child, for life has hurt every poet since the +world began, and it will hurt you more than most because you are so big +a creature." + +Laura stirred suddenly and, after gazing a moment at the fire, turned +upon him a face which had grown brilliant with animation. "I want to +taste everything," she said. "I want to turn every page one after one." + +"And yet you live the life of a hermit thrush--you have in reality as +little part in that bustling turmoil of New York out there as has poor +Angela herself." + +"But my adventures will come to me--I feel that they will come." + +"Then you're happy, my dear, for you have the best of your adventures as +you call them in your waiting time." + +She leaned toward him, resting her cheek on his gentle old hand, and +they sat in silence until Mrs. Payne swept down upon them in her sable +wraps and demanded the attendance of her husband. + +The hall door closed upon the sisters before Laura had quite come back +from her abstraction, which she did at last with a sigh of relief at +finding herself alone. Then, leaving Uncle Percival nodding in the +library, she went upstairs to the cosy little study which opened from +her bedroom on the floor above. The wood fire on the brass andirons was +unlighted, and striking a match she held it to the little pile of +splinters underneath the logs, watching, with a sensation of pleasure, +the small yellow flames lick the crumpled paper and curl upward. Rising +after a moment, she stood breathing in the soft twilight-coloured +atmosphere she loved. The place was her own and she kept it carefully +guarded from a too garish daylight, while the beloved familiar +objects--the shining rows of books, the dull greenish hangings, the +costly cushioned easy-chairs, the few rare photographs, the spacious +writing table and the single Venetian vase of flowers--were always +steeped in a softly shadowed half-tone of light. + +As she looked about her the comfort of the room entered into her like +warmth, and, opening her arms in a happy gesture, she threw herself +among the pillows of the couch and lay watching the rapid yellow flames. +Even in the midst of her musing she laughed suddenly to find that she +was thinking of the phrase with which Funsten had dismissed the name of +Arnold Kemper: "The only favourable thing one can say of him is to say +nothing." Was it really so bad as that she wondered, with a dim memory +that somewhere, back in an obscure corner of her bookshelves, lay his +first thin, promising volume published now almost fifteen years ago. +Rising presently, she began a hasty search among a collection of little +novels which had been banished ignominiously from the light of day, and, +coming at last upon the story, she brought it to the lamp and commenced +a reading prompted solely by the moment's impetuous curiosity. Utterly +devoid as it was of literary finish or discerning craftsmanship, the +book gripped from the start by sheer audacity--by its dominant, +insistent, almost brutal and entirely misdirected power. It was less the +story that struck one than the personal equation between the lines, and +the impression she brought away from her breathless skimming was that +she had encountered the shock of a tremendous masculine force. + +Her head fell back upon the cushions, and she lost herself in the vague +wonder the book aroused. Life was there--the life of the flesh, of vivid +sensation, of experience that ran hot and swift. The active principle, +so strong in the predestined artist, stirred suddenly in her breast, and +she felt the instant of blind terror which comes with the realisation of +the fleeting possibilities of earth. Outside--beyond her--existence in +its multitudinous forms, its diversity of colour, swept on like some +vast caravan from which she had been detached and set apart. Lying there +she heard the call of it, that tremendous music which shook through her +and loosened a caged voice within herself. Her own poetry became for her +but a little part of the tumultuous, passionate instinct for life within +her--for life not as it was in its reality but as she saw it +transfigured and enkindled by the imagination that lives in dreams. + +Suddenly from the darkened silence of the house below a thin sound rose +trembling, and then, gaining strength, penetrated into the closed +chambers. Uncle Percival was at his flute again; he had arisen in the +night to resume his impassioned piping; and, rising hurriedly, Laura lit +her candle and went out into the hall, where a streak of light beneath +Angela's door ran like a white thread across the blackness. Listening a +moment, she heard inside the nervous pacing to and fro of tired yet +restless feet, and after a short hesitation she turned the knob and +entered. + +"Oh, Aunt Angela, did the flute wake you?" she asked. + +For answer the long white figure stopped its frantic movement and turned +upon her a blanched and stricken face out of which two beautiful haunted +eyes stared like living terrors--terrors of memory, of silence, of the +unseen which had taken visible forms. + +"Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!" cried Angela breathlessly, raising her +quivering hands to her ears. "I have heard it before! I have heard +it--long before!" + +She paused, gasping, and without a word Laura turned and ran down the +dark staircase, while with each step the air that Uncle Percival played +sounded louder in her ears. + +The door of the library was open, and as she entered she called out in a +voice that held a sob of anger, "Uncle Percival, how could you?" + +His attentive, deafened ears were for his music alone, and, letting the +flute fall from his hands, he turned to look at her with the pathetic, +innocent enquiry of a good but uncomprehending child. At the sight of +his smiling, wrinkled face, his gentle blue eyes and the wistful droop +of disappointment at the corners of his mouth, her indignation changed +suddenly to pity. It seemed to her that she saw all his eighty years +looking at her from that furrowed face out of those little wandering +round blue eyes--saw the human part of him as she had never seen it +before--with its patience of unfulfilment, its scant small pleasures, +its innocent senile passion at the end; saw, too, the divine part, +hidden in him as in all humanity--that communion of longing which bound +his passionate fluting, Angela's passionate remorse and her own +passionate purity into the universal congregation of unsatisfied souls. + +The sharp words died upon her lips and, kneeling at his side, she took +his shrivelled little hands into her warm, comforting clasp. "Dear Uncle +Percival, I understand, and I love you," she said. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +USHERS IN THE MODERN SPIRIT + + +"So you have seen her," Adams had remarked the same afternoon, as he +walked with Trent in the direction of Broadway. "Do you walk up, by the +way? I always manage to get in a bit of exercise at this hour." + +As Trent fell in with his companion's rapid step, he seemed to be moving +in a fine golden glow of enthusiasm. A light icy drizzle had turned the +snow upon the pavement into sloppy puddles of water, but to the young +man, fresh from his inexperience, the hour and the scene alike were of +exhilarating promise. + +"I feel as if I had been breathing different air!" he exclaimed, without +replying directly to the question. "And yet how simple she is--how +utterly unlike the resplendent Mrs. Bridewell--" + +He stopped breathlessly, overcome by his excitement, and Adams took up +the unfinished sentence almost tenderly. "So far, of course, she is +merely a beautiful promise, a flower in the bud," he said. "Her +genius--if she has genius--has not found itself, and the notes she +strikes are all mere groping attempts at a perfect self-expression. Yet, +undoubtedly, she has done a few fine things," he admitted with +professional caution. + +"But if, as you say, her emotional self does not go into her poems, what +becomes of it?" enquired Trent, with a curiosity too impersonal to be +vulgar. "For she, finely tempered as she is, suggests nothing so much as +a beautiful golden flame." + +Adams started, and flashed upon the other a glance as incisive as a +search-light. + +"Then you, too, recognise her beauty?" he asked in a tone which had a +kindly jealousy. + +"Am I a fool?" protested Trent, laughing. + +'You heard Kemper?" + +"I heard him proclaim himself an ass. Well, let him, let him. Would you +hand out one of your precious first editions to the crowd?" + +"You're right, you're right," assented Adams, and followed his remark +with a sudden change of subject. "I am interested, Mr. Trent, in what +you yourself have come to do." + +"I--Oh, I have done nothing," declared Trent. + +"In your aims, then, let us say, I understand that you intend to try the +drama?" + +"Well, I confess to having done a play that I think isn't bad," replied +Trent, blushing over all his fresh, smooth-shaven face. "Benson has +promised me a hearing." + +"Ah, I know him--he's always eager for new blood. Perhaps you wouldn't +mind my speaking a word or two to him? + +"Mind!" exclaimed the younger man, his voice shaking. "Why, I can't tell +you how happy it would make me." + +They had reached Eighteenth Street, and Trent paused a moment on the +corner before turning off to the big red-brick apartment house where he +was temporarily placed. "I'd like to walk up to Thirty-fifth with you," +he added, "but my mother is expecting me and it makes her nervous when I +stay out after dark. She's just from the country, you know, and she gets +confused by the noise." He hesitated an instant and then finished with +embarrassment. "I wish so much that she could know you.' + +"It is a pleasure I hope for very shortly," responded Adams. "How does +she like New York, by the way?" + +Under the electric light Trent's eyes seemed to run entirely to +sparkles. "Ah, well, it's rather lonely for her. She misses the callers +at home who used to come to spend the day." + +"We must try to change that," said the other as he moved off, while +Trent noted that despite his genial sympathy of manner there had been no +mention of Mrs. Adams. Where was she? and what was she? questioned the +younger man in perplexity, as he crossed to his apartment house at the +corner of Fourth Avenue. + +At Twenty-third Street Adams had turned almost unconsciously into Fifth +Avenue, for so detached was the intellectual remoteness in which he +lived that he might have been, for all his immediate perceptions of his +surroundings, strolling at dusk along a deserted Western road. He was so +used to dwelling on the cool heights of a dearly bought, a hardly wrung, +philosophy that he had become at last almost oblivious of the mere +external details of life. To live at all had been for him a matter of +fine moral courage, and his slight, delicate emaciated, yet dauntless, +figure was in itself the expression of a resolute will to endure as well +as to resist. When a man has faced death at close range for fifteen +years he is, in a measure, bound to become either indifferent satyr or +partial saint, and even in the extremity of his first revolt his +personal ideal had stood, like the angel with the flaming sword, between +Adams and the quagmire of bodily materialism. He was not, perhaps, as +yet even so much as a deficient stoic, but he had wrung from suffering a +certain high loyalty to human fellowship and a half humorous, if wholly +gallant, determination to keep fast at any cost until the very end. Why +he had made the fight he did not ask himself, nor could he have +answered. His ambition, his marriage, even the ordinary sensuous +enjoyments of life, had crumbled as the mythical Dead Sea apples upon +his lips, yet the failure of his own mere individual pursuit of +happiness had in no-wise soured the sweet and finely flavored optimism +of his nature. + +The fragrance from the violets worn by a passing woman struck him +presently, and he looked outside of himself almost with a start. Around +him many women were walking briskly under raised umbrellas, and some +showed pretty faces freshened like flowers by the icy rain. He himself +had forgotten the rain, had forgotten even the cold which pierced his +chest, and, suddenly remembering the directions of his physician, he +fastened his overcoat more closely and hastened across the street, +passing rapidly in and out among the moving vehicles until he gained, +over the sloppy crossing, the safety of the opposite sidewalk. Here he +turned in the direction of Madison Avenue and finally, drawing out his +latchkey, entered one of the dingy, flat-faced, utterly conventional +brown houses which make up so large a part of the characterless +complexion of New York life. + +The interior was brilliantly lighted, and he was shrinking noiselessly +into his study at the back when he heard his name called from the +drawing-room threshold and saw his wife standing there while she put on +a long white evening cloak over a filmy effect of cream-coloured lace. +She was a small, pretty woman, with a cloud of fluffy, artificially +blonde hair and large, innocent, absolutely blank blue eyes. A year ago +she had resembled, if one might imagine the existence of such a being, a +perfectly worldly wise and cynically minded baby, but twelve months of +late suppers and many plays had already blighted her rose-leaf skin and +sown three fine, nervous little wrinkles between her delicately arched +eyebrows. She was very vivacious, but, as Gerty Bridewell had observed, +it was a vivacity that was hardly justified, since possessing neither +the means nor the manner exacted by the more exclusive circles, she had +been compelled to compromise with a social body which made up in members +what it lacked as an organism. Her dash and her prettiness sufficed to +place her comfortably here, but beyond a speaking acquaintance with +Gerty, who confessed that she was too charitable to be exclusive she had +not as yet approached that small shining sphere whose inmates boast the +larger freedom no less than the finer discrimination. The larger +freedom, it seemed at times, was all of it that she was ever to attain, +for, venturing a little too boldly once or twice with a light head, she +had at last found herself skating gingerly over a veritable sleet of +scandal. She got herself rumoured about so persistently that from being +merely improbable, she had become, in Gerty's words again, "one of the +very last of the impossibilities." And of late Adams' friends had begun +to ask themselves quite seriously, "why in the deuce he didn't keep a +hand upon his wife." How much he knew or how much there was, in reality, +to know had become in a limited circle almost the question of the hour, +until Perry Bridewell had demanded in final exasperation "whether Adams +was ridiculously ignorant or outrageously indifferent?" + +But if the curious had been permitted to observe the object of their +uncertainty as he stood under the full glare before his festive wife +they would have found neither ignorance nor indifference in his manner. +He regarded her with a frank, fatherly tolerance, in which there was +hardly a suggestion of a more passionate concern. + +"Wrap up well," he said, as his glance shot over her, "there's a biting +wind outside." + +Connie screwed up her delicate eyebrows and the fine little wrinkles +leaped instantly into view. There was a nervous irritation in her look, +which recoiled from her husband as from a blank and shining wall. + +"I'm dining at Sherry's with the Donaldsons," she explained. "I knew you +wouldn't come, so I didn't even trouble you to decline." + +"You're right, my dear," he rejoined gayly. + +"Mr. Brady has called for me," she went on with the faintest possible +hesitation in her voice, "and as we're all going to the theatre +afterward I shall probably be late. Don't bother about sitting up for +me--I have a key." + +"Well, take care of yourself," responded Adams pleasantly, adding to a +young man who appeared in the drawing-room doorway, "How are you, Mr. +Brady? Please don't let Mrs. Adams be so foolish as to stand outside in +the wind. I can't make her take care of her cold." + +"Oh, I'll promise to look out for it," replied Brady, standing slightly +behind Connie, and arranging by a careless movement the white fur on her +cloak. His handsome wooden features possessed hardly more character than +was expressed by his immaculately starched shirt front, but he was not +without a certain wholly superficial attraction, half as of a sleek, +well-groomed animal and half as of a masculine conceit, naked and +unashamed. + +Connie tinkled out her nervous, high-pitched, vacant little laugh, which +she used to fill in gaps in conversation much as a distinguished +virtuoso might interlude his own important efforts with selections of +light vocal strains. + +"Roger is always worrying about my health," she said, "but the truth is +that it's so good I'll never begin to value it until it's gone." Her +excited, fluttering manner blew about her almost with a commotion of the +atmosphere, and reminded Adams at times of a tempestuous March breeze +shaking a fragile wind flower. It was unnatural, overdone, unbecoming, +but it seemed at last to have got quite beyond her control, and the +pretty girlish composure he remembered as one of her freshest charms, +was lost in her general violence of animation. Of late he knew that she +had fought off her natural exhaustion by the frequent use of stimulants, +and it seemed to him that he saw their immediate effects in her flushed +cheeks and too brightly shining eyes. + +"Don't stay out late," he urged again; "you've been rushing like mad +these last weeks and you need rest." + +"But I never rest," rejoined Connie, still laughing, "and I honestly +hope that I shan't come to a stop until I die." + +She fastened her cloak under the fall of lace, and, when Brady had +slipped into his overcoat, Adams turned back to open the hall door, +which let in a biting draught. + +"Ta-ta! don't sit up!" cried Connie breathlessly, as, more than ever +like a filmy wind flower in a high wind, she was blown down the steps, +across the slushy sidewalk, and into the hired carriage. + +When they had gone Adams went into the dining-room and dined alone +without dressing, as he had done almost every evening for the last few +months. The Irish maid waited upon him with a solicitude in which he +read his pose of a deserted husband, and he tried with a forcible, +though silent, bravado to dispel her very evident assumption. Connie had +certainly not deserted him against his will, and when her absence had +begun to show as so incontestable a relief it seemed the basest +ingratitude to force upon her reckless shoulders the odium of an +entirely satisfying arrangement. After a day of mental and physical +exertion the further effort of a conversation with her was something +that he felt to be utterly beyond him, and the distant Colorado days +when she had played the part of a soft, inviting kitten and he had +responded happily to the appeal for constant petting, now lay very far +behind them both--buried somewhere in that cloudless country they had +left. Neither of them wanted the petting back again, and as he rose from +his simple dinner and entered his study at the end of the hall he heaved +a sigh of conscious thankfulness that it was empty. + +While he lighted his pipe his eyes turned instinctively to his precious +first editions of which Trent had spoken, and then straight as an arrow +to a photograph of Laura which stood with several others upon his +writing table. The eyes of most men would have lingered, perhaps, on one +of Connie, which was taken, indeed, at her best period and in a +remarkably effective pose, but Adams' glance brushed it with an +indifference only unkind in its mute sincerity, while he sought the +troubled gaze of Laura, who wore in the picture a shy and startled look, +like that of a wild thing suddenly trapped in its reserve. He had never, +even in his own mind, analysed his feeling for the woman whom he was +content to call his friend--he hesitated to condemn himself almost +because he feared to question--but whenever he entered alone his empty +room he knew that he turned instinctively to draw strength and courage +from her pictured face. It was a face that had followed after the ideal +beauty, and in her spiritual isolation, as of one devoted to an inner +vision, he had always found the peculiar pathetic quality of her charm. +Into her verse, chastened and restrained by the sense for perfection +which dwelt in her art, she had put, he knew, this same cloistral vision +of an unrealised world--a vision which had expanded and blossomed in +the luxuriant if slightly formal garden of her intellect. The world she +looked upon was a world, as Adams had once said, "seen through the haze +of a golden temperament"--the dream of an imaginative mysticism, of a +conventual purity, a dream which is to the reality as the soul of a man +is to the body. And it was this inspired divination, this luminous +idealism, which had caused Adams to exclaim when he put down her first +small gray volume: "Is it possible that we can still see visions?" + +A little later, when he came to know her, he found that the vision she +looked upon had coloured not only her own soul, but even the outward +daily happenings of her life. For him she was from the first compacted +of divine mysteries, of exquisite surprises, and he loved to fancy that +he could see her genius burning like a clear flame within her and +shining at vivid moments with a still soft radiance in her face. He +always thought of her soul as of something luminous, and there were +instants when it seemed to touch her eyes and her mouth with an edge of +light. Beyond this her complexities remained for him as on the day when +he first saw her--if she was obscure it was the obscurity of a star seen +through a fog--and the desire to understand lost itself presently in the +bewilderment of his misapprehension. At last, however, he had put her, +as it were, tentatively aside, had relinquished his attempt to reduce +her to a formula with the despairing admission that she was, take her as +you would, a subtlety that compelled one to a mental effort. The effort +which he had up to this time associated with the society of women had +been of anything but a mental character. There was the effort of +putting one's best physical foot in advance, the effort of keeping one's +person conspicuously in evidence and one's intellect as unobtrusively in +abeyance--the material effort of appearing always in one's best +trousers, the moral effort of presenting always one's worst +intelligence. It had seemed to him until he met Laura--and his opinion +was the effect of a limited experience upon a large philosophic +ignorance--that the female sex played the part in Nature which is +performed by the chorus in a Greek tragedy--that it shrilly voiced the +horrors of the actual in the face of a divine indifference--and +strenuously insisted upon the importance of the eternal detail. From +Connie he had gathered that the feminine mind tended naturally toward a +material philosophy--toward a deification of the body, a faith in the +fugitive allurement of the senses, and because of his earlier initiation +he had taken Laura's intellectual radiance as the shining of a virtually +disembodied spirit. His own senses had led him, he recognised now, to +disastrous issues; his love for Connie had been the prompting of mere +physical impulse, and he had emerged from it with a feeling of escaping +into freedom. Too much Nature he had learned during those months of +mental apathy is in its way quite as destructive as too little--there +must be a soul in desire to keep it alive, he understood at last, or the +perishing body of it will decay for lack of a vital flame in the very +hour of its fulfilment. A colder man might have come to such knowledge +along impersonal paths, a coarser one would never have gone beyond it, +but in Adams the old fighting spirit--a survival of the uncompromising +Puritan conscience--had brought him up again, soul and body, to struggle +afresh for a cleaner and a sharper air. Life had meant more to him in +the beginning than a mere series of sensations--more even than any +bodily conditions, any material attainment; and it was the final triumph +of his austere vision that it should mean most of all when it seemed to +a casual glance to contain least of actual value. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +IN WHICH A YOUNG MAN DREAMS DREAMS + + +Since coming to New York Mrs. Trent had taken a small apartment in a big +apartment house, where she lived with her son a perfectly provincial as +well as a strictly secluded life. She was a large, florid, motherly old +lady who still wore mourning for a husband who had been killed while fox +hunting twenty-five years ago. Her face resembled a friendly and +auspicious full moon, and above it her shining hair rolled like a +parting of silvery clouds. Day or night she was always engaged in +knitting a purple shawl, which appeared never to have been finished +since her son's infancy, for his earliest recollection was of the plump, +soft balls of brilliant yarn and the long ivory knitting needles which +clicked briskly while she worked with a pleasant, familiar sound. To +this day the clicking of those needles brought to his mouth the taste of +large slices of bread and jam, and to his ears the soothing murmur of +Bible stories told in the twilight. + +She was always, too, serene gossip that she was, full of a monotonous, +rippling stream of words, and if her days in New York were trying to her +body and burdened with homesickness for her heart, no one--not even St. +George himself--had ever surprised so much as a passing shadow upon her +face. The young man's untiring pursuit of managers and of players had +left her continually alone, but she busied herself cheerfully about her +housekeeping, and found diversion in yielding to an inordinate curiosity +concerning her neighbours. Once or twice she had questioned him about +his absence, and this was especially so the morning after his meeting +with Laura Wilde. + +"You didn't tell me where you were yesterday, St. George," she observed +at breakfast; "did you meet any one who is likely to be of use? I +remember Beverly Pierce told me that everything had to come through +introductions in the North." + +He looked at her steadily a moment before replying, taking in all the +lovely details of her appearance behind the coffee tray--the morning +sunlight on her white hair and on the massive, hand-beaten, old silver +service, the solitary rose he had purchased in the street standing +between them in a slender Bohemian vase, brought from the rare old china +in the press just at her back, the dainty hemstitching on her collar and +cuffs of fine thread cambric, and lastly the vivid spot of color made by +the knitting she had laid aside. + +"I met Laura Wilde," he answered presently, "but as you never read +poetry you can't understand just what it means." + +As she held the cream jug poised above his coffee cup Mrs. Trent smiled +back at him with a placid wonder. + +"Who is she, my son? A lady--I mean a _real_ one?" + +"Oh, yes, sterling." + +"But she writes verse you say! Is it improper?" + +His eyes shone with amusement. "Improper! Why, what an idea!" + +"I'm sure I don't know how it is," responded his mother, carefully +measuring with her eye the correct allowance of cream, "but somehow +women always seem to get immodest when they take to verse. It's as if +they went into it for the express purpose of airing their +improprieties." + +"I say!" he exclaimed, with gentle mockery, "have you been reading +'Sappho' at your age?" + +She continued to regard him blandly, without so much as a flicker of +humour in her serene blue eyes. "Your grandfather used to be very fond +of quoting something from 'Sappho,'" she returned thoughtfully, "or was +it from Mr. Pope? I can't remember which or what it was except that it +was hardly the kind of thing you would recite to a lady." + +Trent laughed good-humouredly as he received his coffee cup. + +"Well you can't point a moral with Miss Wilde," he rejoined, "you'd be +at liberty to recite her to anybody who had the sense to understand +her." + +"Is she very deep?" + +"She's profound--she's wonderful--she's a genius." + +Mrs. Trent shook her head a little doubtfully. "I don't see that a woman +has any business to be a genius," she remarked. "And I can't help being +prejudiced against women writers, your father always was. It's as if +they really pretended to know as much as a man. When they publish books +I suppose they expect men to read them and that in itself is a kind of +conceit." + +Trent yielded the point as he helped himself to the cakes brought in by +an old negro servant. + +"Well, I shan't ask Miss Wilde to call on you," he laughed, "so you +won't be apt to run across the learned of your sex." + +"Oh, I shouldn't mind myself," responded the old lady, with amiability, +"but I do hate to have you thrown with women that you wouldn't meet at +home." + +"I certainly shouldn't meet Miss Wilde at home if that is what you +mean." + +"It's bad enough to live in a partitioned cage like this," resumed Mrs. +Trent, in her soft, expressionless voice, "and to dry your clothes on +your neighbour's roofs, but I can bear anything so long as we are not +forced to associate with common people. Of course I don't expect to find +the manners of Virginia up here," she added as a last concession, "but I +may as well confess that the people I've come across don't seem to me to +be exactly civil." + +"Just as we don't seem to them to be particularly worldly-wise, I dare +say." + +She nodded her head, almost without hearing him, while her even tones +rippled on over her quaint ideas, which shone to her son's mind like +little silver pebbles beneath the shallow stream. + +"I'm almost reconciled to the fact that old ladies wear colours and +flowers in their bonnets," she pursued, "to say nothing of low-neck +dresses, but it does seem to me that they might show a little ordinary +politeness. I met the doctor coming out of the apartment downstairs, so +in common decency I went immediately to enquire who was sick, and +carried along a glass of chicken jelly. The woman who opened the door +was rather rude," she finished with a sigh. "I don't believe such a +thing had ever happened to her before in the whole course of her life." + +Trent gave her a tender glance across the coffee service. + +"Probably not," he admitted, "but I wouldn't waste my jelly if I were +you." + +"I sha'n't" she determined sadly, "and that's the thing I miss most of +all--visiting the sick." + +"You might devote yourself to the hospitals--there are plenty of them it +seems." + +Her resignation, however, was complete, and she showed no impulse to +reach out actively again. "It wouldn't be the same, my dear--I don't +want strange paupers but real friends. Do you know," she added, with a +despair that was almost abject, "I was counting up this morning the +people I might speak to if I met them in the street, and I got them in +easily on the fingers of one hand. That included," she confessed after a +hesitation, "the doctor, the butcher's boy and the woman who comes to +scrub. It would surprise you to find what a very interesting woman she +is." + +Trent rose from his chair and, coming round to where she sat, gave her a +boyish hug of sympathy. "You're a regular angel of a mother," he said +and added playfully, while he still held her, "even then I don't see how +you make it five." + +She put up her large white hand and smoothed his hair across his +forehead. "That's only because I made an acquaintance in the elevator +yesterday," she replied. + +"In the elevator! How?" + +"The thing always makes me nervous, you know--I can't abide it, and I'd +much rather any day go up and down the seven flights--but she met me as +I started to walk and persuaded me to come inside. Then she held my hand +until I got quite to the bottom." + +"Indeed," said Trent suspiciously; "who was she?" + +"Her name is Christina Coles, and she came from Clarke County. I knew +her grandfather." + +"Thank Heaven!" breathed Trent, and his voice betrayed his happy +reassurance. + +"She's really very pretty--all the Coles were handsome--her great-aunt +was once a famous beauty. Do you remember my speaking of her--Miss Betty +Coles?" He shook his head, and she proceeded with her reminiscence. + +"Well, she was said to have received fifty proposals before her +twenty-fifth birthday, but she never married. On her last visit to me, +when she was a very old lady, I asked her why--and her answer was: 'Pure +fastidiousness.'" She had picked up her purple shawl, and the long ivory +knitting needles began to click. + +"But I'm more interested in the young lady of the elevator--What is she +like?" + +"Not the beauty that Betty was, but still very pretty, with the same +blue eyes and brown hair, which she wears parted exactly as her aunt did +fifty years ago. I fear, though," she finished in a whisper, "I really +fear--that she writes." + +"Is that so? Did she tell you?" + +"Not in words, but she carried a parcel exactly like your manuscripts, +and she spoke--oh, so seriously--of her work. She spoke of it quite as +if it were a baby." + +"By Jove!" he gasped, and after a moment, "I hope at any rate that she +will be a comfort." + +With her knitting still in her hands, she rose and went to the window, +where she stood placidly staring at the sunlight upon the blackened +chimney-pots. "At least I can talk to her about her aunt," she returned. +Then her gaze grew more intense, and she almost flattened her nose +against the pane. "I declare I wonder what that woman is doing out there +on that fire-escape," she observed. + +After he had got into his overcoat Trent came back to give her a parting +kiss. "Find out by luncheon time," he returned gaily. + +When presently he entered the elevator he found it already occupied by a +young lady whom he recognised from his mother's description as Christina +Coles. She was very pretty, but, even more than by her prettiness, he +was struck by her peculiar steadfastness of look, as of one devoted to a +single absorbing purpose. He noticed, too, that the little tan coat she +wore was rather shabby, and that there was a small round hole in one of +the fingers of her glove. When she spoke, as she did when leaving the +key with the man in charge of the elevator, her voice sounded remarkably +fresh and pleasant. They left the house together, but while she walked +rapidly toward Broadway he contented himself with strolling leisurely +along Fourth Avenue, where he bent a vacant gaze on the objects +assembled in the windows of dealers in "antiques." + +But his thoughts did not so much as brush the treasures at which he +stared, and neither the hurrying crowd--which had a restless, workaday +look at the morning hour--nor the noisily clanging cars broke into the +exquisitely reared castle of his dreams. Since the evening before his +imagination had been thrilling to the tune of some spirited music, +flowing presumably from these airy towers, and as he went on over the +wet sunlight on the sidewalk, he was still keeping step to the exalted +if unreal measures. Never in his life; not even in his wildest literary +ecstasies, had he felt so assured of the beauty, of the bountifulness, +of his coming years--so filled with a swelling thankfulness for the mere +physical fact of birth. He was twenty-five, he believed passionately in +his own powers, and he was, he told himself with emphasis, in love for +the first and only time. In the confused tangle of his fancy he saw +Laura like some great white flower, growing out of reach, yet not +entirely beyond endeavour, and the ladder that went up to her was made +by his own immediate successes. Then the footlights before his play swam +in his picture and he heard already the applause of crowded houses and +felt in his head the intoxication of his triumph. Act by act, scene by +scene, he rehearsed in fancy his great drama, seeing the players throng +before the footlights and seeing, too, Laura applauding softly from a +stage box at the side. He had had moments of despondency over his idea, +had grovelled in abject despair during trying periods of execution, but +now all uncertainty--all misgivings evaporated like an obscuring fog +before a burst of light. The light, indeed, had at the moment the full +radiance of a great red glow such as he had seen used for effective +purposes upon the stage--and just as every object of scenery had taken, +for the time, a portion of the transfiguring suffusion--so now the +external ugly details among which he moved were bathed in the high +coloured light of his imagination. + +But if the end is sometimes long in coming, it comes at last even to the +visions of youth, and when his tired limbs finally dragged his soaring +spirit to earth, he took a passing car and came home to luncheon. The +glamour had faded suddenly from his dreams, as if a bat's wing had +fluttered overhead, and in his new mood, he felt a resurgence of his old +self-consciousness. He was provoked by the suspicion that he had shown +less as a coming dramatist than as a present fool, and he contrasted his +own awkwardness with Adams' whimsical ease of manner. Did a woman ever +forget how a man appeared when she first met him? Would any amount of +fame to-morrow obliterate from Laura's memory his embarrassment of +yesterday? He had heard that the surface impression was what counted in +the feminine mind, and this made him think enviously, for a minute, of +Perry Bridewell--of his handsome florid face and his pleasant animal +magnetism. Perry was stupid and an egoist, and yet he had heard that +Mrs. Bridewell, for all her beauty and her wit, adored him, while he +openly neglected her. Was the secret of success, after all, simply an +indifference to everyone's needs except one's own? or was it rather the +courage to impress the world that one's own were the only needs that +counted? + +He was late for luncheon but his mother had waited for him, and he found +when he entered the drawing room that Christina Coles was with her. The +girl still wore her hat, but she had removed her jacket, and it lay with +a little brown package on the sofa. As she spoke to him he was struck +afresh by the singular concentration of her expression. + +"Your mother tells me that you've written a play," she began, a little +shyly; "she says, too, that it is wonderful." + +"'She says' is well put," he retorted gaily, "but I hear that you, also, +are among the prophets." + +"I am nothing else," she answered earnestly. "It is everything to me--it +is my life." + +Her frankness startled him unpleasantly, and but for her girlish +prettiness, he might have felt himself almost repelled. As it was he +merely glanced appealingly at his mother, who intervened with a gesture +of her knitting needle. "She writes stories," explained the old lady, +appearing to transfix her subject on the ivory point; "it is just as I +imagined." + +The girl herself met his eyes almost fiercely, reminding him vaguely of +the look with which a lioness might defend her threatened young. + +"I've done nothing yet," she declared, "but I mean to--I mean to if it +takes every single hour I have to live." Then her manner changed +suddenly, and she impressed him as melting from her hard reserve. "Oh, +she tells me that you've met Laura Wilde!" she said. + +The sacred name struck him, after his impassioned dreaming, like a sharp +blow between the eyes, and he met the girl's animated gesture with a +look of blank aversion. + +"I've met her--yes," he answered coldly. + +But her enthusiasm was at white heat, and he saw what he had thought +mere prettiness in her warm to positive beauty. "And you adore her work +as I do?" she exclaimed. + +After a moment's hesitation his ardour flashed out to meet her own. "Oh, +yes, I adore her work and her!" he said. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +SHOWS THAT MR. WORLDLY-WISE-MAN MAY BELONG TO EITHER SEX + + +Several afternoons later Trent was to have further light thrown on the +character of Christina Coles by a chance remark of Roger Adams, into +whose office he had dropped for a moment as he was on his way to make +his first call upon Mrs. Bridewell. + +After a few friendly enquiries about the young man's own work, and the +report of a promising word from the great Benson, Adams took up a letter +lying loose among the papers on his big littered desk. + +"Half the tragedy in New York is contained in a letter like this," he +observed. "Do you know, by the way, that the mass of outside literary +workers drawn in at last by the whirlpool constitutes almost a +population? Take this girl, now, she is so consumed by her ambition, for +heaven knows what, that she comes here and starves in an attic rather +than keep away in comfort. That reminds me," he added, with a sudden +recollection, "she's from your part of the country." + +"Indeed!" An intuition shot like a conviction into Trent's mind. "Could +her name, I wonder, by any chance be Coles?" + +"You know her then?" + +"I've met her, but do you mean to say that ability is what she hasn't +got?" + +"For some things I've no doubt she has an amazing amount, only she's +mistaken its probable natural bent. She strikes me as a woman who was +born for the domestic hearth, or failing that she'd do admirably, I dare +say, in a hospital." + +"It's the literary instinct, then, that's missing in her?" + +"Not the instinct so much as the literary stuff, and in that she's not +different from a million others. She is evidently on fire with the +impulse to create, but the power--the creative matter--isn't in her. Let +her keep up, and she'll probably go on doing 'hack' work until her +death." + +"But she's so pretty," urged Trent with a chivalric qualm--and he +remembered her smooth brown hair parted over her rosy ears, her blue +eyes, fresh as flowers, and the peculiar steadfastness that possessed +her face. + +"The more's the pity," said Adams, while the muscles about his mouth +twitched slightly, as they always did when he was deeply moved, "it's a +bigger waste. I wrote to her as a father might have done and begged her +to give it up," he went on, "and in return," he tapped the open sheet, +"she sends me this fierce, pathetic little letter and informs me grandly +that her life is dedicated. Dedicated, good Lord!" he exclaimed +compassionately, "dedicated to syndicated stories in the Sunday press +and an occasional verse in the cheaper magazines." + +"And there's absolutely nothing to be done?" asked Trent. + +Adams met the question with a frown. + +"Oh, if it would make it all come right in the end, I'd go on publishing +her empty, trite little articles until Gabriel blows his trumpet." + +"It wouldn't help, though, after all." + +"Well, hardly--the quick way is sure to be the most merciful," he +laughed softly with the quality of kindly humour which never failed him, +"we'll starve her out as soon as possible," he declared. + +As if to dismiss the subject, he refolded the letter, slipped it in its +envelope, and placed it in one of his crammed pigeon-holes. "Thank God, +your own case isn't of the hopeless kind!" he exclaimed fervently. + +"Somehow success looks like selfishness," returned Trent, showing by his +tone the momentary depression which settled so easily upon his variable +moods. + +At the speech Adams turned upon him the full sympathy of his smile, +while he enclosed in a warm grasp the hand which the young man held out. + +"It's what we're made for," he responded cheerily, "success in one way +or another." + +His words, and even more his look, remained with Trent long afterwards, +blowing, like a fresh strong wind, through the hours of despondency +which followed for him upon any temporary exaltation. The young man had +a trick of remembering faces, not as wearing their accustomed daily +look, but as he had seen them animated and transfigured by any vivid +moment of experience, and he found later that when he thought of Adams +it was to recall the instant's kindly lighting of the eyes, the flicker +of courageous humour about the mouth and the dauntless ring in the +usually quiet voice. He realised now, as he walked through the humming +streets, that success or failure is not an abstract quantity but a +relative value--that a man may be a shining success in the world's eyes +and a comparative failure in his own. To Trent, Adams had for years +represented the cultured and scholarly critic--the writer who, in his +limited individual field, had incontestably "arrived." Now, for the +first time, he saw that the editor looked upon himself as a man of small +achievements, and that, inasmuch as his idea had been vastly more than +his execution, he felt himself to belong to the unfulfilled ones of the +earth. + +When, a little later, he reached Mrs. Bridewell's house in Sixty-ninth +Street the servant invited him, after a moment's wait below, into her +sitting-room upstairs, and, following the man's lead, he was finally +ushered into a charming apartment upon the second floor. A light cloud +of cigarette smoke trailed toward him as he entered, and when he paused, +confused by broken little peals of laughter, he made out a group of +ladies gathered about a tiny Oriental table upon which stood a tray of +Turkish coffee. Gerty rose from the circle as he advanced, and moved a +single step forward, while the pale green flounces of her train rippled +prettily about her feet. Her hair was loosely arranged, and she gave him +an odd impression of wearing what in his provincial mind he called a +"wrapper"--his homely name for the exquisite garment which flowed, +straight and unconfined, from her slender shoulders. His mother, he +remembered, not without a saving humour, had always insisted that a lady +should appear before the opposite sex only in the entire armour of her +"stays" and close-fitting bodice. + +Gerty, as she mentioned the names of her callers, subsided with her +ebbing green waves into the chair from which she had risen, and held her +cigarette toward Trent with a pretty inviting gesture. Her delicate +grace gave the pose a piquant attraction, and he found himself watching +with delight the tiny rings of smoke which curled presently from her +parted lips. As she smoked she held her chin slightly lifted, and +regarded him from beneath lowered lids with an arch and careless humour. + +"If you'd been the Pope himself," she remarked, as an indifferent +apology, "I'd hardly have done more than fling the table-cover over my +head. Even you, after you'd spent a morning trying on a velvet gown, +would require a lounge and a good smoke." + +He admitted that he thought it probable, and then turned to one of the +callers who had spoken--a handsome woman with gray hair, which produced +an odd effect of being artificial. + +"I wish I'd done nothing worse than try on clothes," she observed, "but +I've been to lunch with an old lover." + +"Poor dear," murmured Gerty, compassionately, as she passed Trent a cup +of coffee, "was he so cruel as to tell you you'd retained your youth?" + +"He did worse," sighed the handsome woman, "he assured me I hadn't." + +"Well, he couldn't have done more if he'd married you," declared Gerty, +with her gleeful cynicism. + +"He was too brutally frank for a husband," remarked a second caller as +she sipped her coffee. "You showed more discretion, Susie, than I gave +you credit for." + +"Oh, you needn't compliment me," protested Susie; "in those days he +hadn't a penny." + +"Indeed! and now?" + +"Now he has a great many, but he has attached to himself a wife, and I a +husband. Well, I can't say honestly that I regret him," she laughed, +"for if he has lived down his poverty he hasn't his passion for red--he +wore a red necktie. Why is it," she lamented generally to the group, +"that the male mind leans inevitably toward violent colours?" + +"Perhaps they appeal to the barbaric part of us," suggested Trent, +becoming suddenly at ease amid the battle of inanities. + +"Have you a weakness for red, too, Mr. Trent?" enquired Gerty. + +The sparkle in his eyes leaped out at her challenge. + +"Only in the matter of hair," he retorted boldly. + +She regarded him intently for a moment, while he felt again as he had +felt at Laura Wilde's, not only her fascination--her personal +radiance--but the conviction that she carried at heart a deep disgust, a +heavy disenchantment, which her ostentatious gayety could not conceal. +Even her beauty gave back to him a suggestion of insincerity, and he +wondered if the brightness of her hair and of her mouth was as +artificial as her brilliant manner. It was magnificent, but, after all, +it was not nature. + +"Because I warn you now," she pursued, after the brief pause, "that if +you bind your first play in red I shall refuse to read it." + +"You can't escape on that ground," rejoined Trent, "I'll make it green." + +"Well, you're more civilised than Perry," declared Gerty, with one of +her relapses into defiant ridicule, which caused Trent to wonder if she +were not acting upon an intuition which taught her that a slight shock +is pleasantly stimulating to the fancy, "and I suppose it's my +association with him that convinces me if we'd leave your sex alone it +would finally revert to the savage state and to skin girdles." + +"Now don't you think Perry would look rather nice in skins?" enquired +the handsome woman. "I can quite see him with his club like the man +in--which one of Wagner's?" + +"It isn't the club of the savage I object to," coolly protested Gerty, +"it's the taste. Perry has been married to me five years," she +continued, reflectively, "a long enough period you would think to teach +even a Red Indian that my hair positively shrieks at anything remotely +resembling pink. Yet when I went to the Hot Springs last autumn he +actually had this room hung for me in terra-cotta." + +Trent cast a blank stare about the tapestried walls. + +"But where is it?" he demanded. + +"It's gone," was Gerty's brief rejoinder, and she added, after a moment +devoted to her cigarette, "now that's where it pays to have the wisdom +of the serpent. I really flatter myself," she admitted complacently, +"that I've a genius, I did it so beautifully. Your young innocent would +have mangled matters to the point of butchery and have gloried like a +martyr in her domestic squabbles, but I've learned a lesson or two from +misfortune, and one of them is that a man invariably prides himself upon +possessing the quality he hasn't got. That's a perfectly safe rule," she +annotated along the margin of her story. "I used to compliment an artist +upon his art and an Apollo upon his beauty--but it never worked. They +always looked as if I had under-valued them, so now I industriously +praise the folly of the wise and the wisdom of the fool." + +"And the decorative talent of Perry," laughed one of the callers. + +"You needn't smile," commented Gerty, while Trent watched the little +greenish flame dance in her eyes, "it isn't funny--it's philosophy. I +made it out of life." + +"But what about the terra-cotta?" enquired Susie. + +"Oh, as I've said, I did nothing reckless," resumed Gerty, relaxing +among her cushions, "I neither slapped his face nor went into +hysterics--these tactics, I've found, never work unless one happens to +be a prima donna--so I complimented him upon his consideration and sat +down and waited. That night he went to a club dinner--after the +beautiful surprise he'd given me he felt that he deserved a little +freedom--and the door had no sooner closed upon him than I paid the +butler to come in and smoke the walls. He didn't want to do it at all, +so I really had to pay him very high--I gave him a suit of Perry's +evening clothes. It's the ambition of his life, you know, to look like +Perry." + +"How under heaven did he manage it?" persisted Susie. "The smoke, I +mean, not the resemblance." + +"There are a good many lamps about the house and we brought them all +in, every one. The butler warned me it was dangerous, but I assured him +I was desperate. That settled it--that and the evening clothes--and by +the time Perry returned the room was like an extinct volcano." + +"And he never found out?" asked Susie, as the callers rose to go. + +"Found out! My dear, do you really give him credit for feminine +penetration? Well, if you will go--good-bye--and--oh--don't look at my +gown to-morrow night or you'll turn blue with envy," then, as Trent +started to follow the retreating visitors, she detained him by a +gesture. "Stay awhile, unless you're bored," she urged, "but if you're +really bored I shan't say a word. I assure you I sometimes bore myself." + +As he fell back into his chair Trent was conscious of a feeling of +intimacy, and strange as it was, it dispelled instantly his engrossing +shyness. + +"I'm not bored," he said, "I'm merely puzzled." + +"Oh, I know," Gerty nodded, "but you'll get over it. I puzzle everybody +at first, but it doesn't last because I'm really as clear as running +water. My gayety and my good spirits are but the joys of flippancy, you +see." + +"I don't see," protested Trent, his eyes warming. + +She laughed softly, as if rather pleased than otherwise by the frankness +of his admiration. "You haven't lost as yet the divine faith of youth," +she said, carelessly flicking the ashes of her cigarette upon the little +table at her elbow. Then, tossing the burned end into a silver tray, she +pushed it from her with a decisive movement. "I've had six," she +observed, "and that's my limit." + +"What I'm trying to understand," confessed Trent, leaning forward in his +earnestness, "is why you should care so greatly for Miss Wilde?" + +Gerty flashed up suddenly from her cushions. "And pray why shouldn't I?" +she demanded. + +"Because," he hesitated an instant and then advanced with the audacity +born of ignorance, "you're as much alike as a thrush and a paroquet." + +She laughed again. + +"So you consider me a paroquet?" + +"In comparison with Laura Wilde." + +"Well, I'd have said a canary," she remarked indulgently, "but we'll let +it pass. I don't see though," she serenely continued, "why a paroquet +shouldn't have a feeling for a thrush?" + +He shook his head, smiling. "It seems a bit odd, that's all." + +"Then, if it's any interest to you to know it," pursued Gerty, with a +burst of confidence, "I'd walk across Brooklyn Bridge, every step of the +way, on my knees for Laura. That's because I believe in her," she wound +up emphatically, "and because, too, I don't happen to believe much in +anybody else." + +"So you know her well?" + +"I went to school with her and I adored her then, but I adore her even +more to-day. Somehow she always seems to be knocking for the good in +one, and it has to come out at last because she stands so patiently and +waits. She makes me over every time she meets me, shapes me after some +ideal image of me she has in her brain, and then I'm filled with +desperate shame if I don't seem at least a little bit to correspond with +it." + +"I understand," said Trent slowly; "one feels her as one feels a strong +wind on a high mountain. There's a wonderful bigness about her." + +"It's because she's different," explained Gerty, "she's kept so apart +from life that she knows it only in its elemental freshness--she has a +kind of instinct for truth just as she has for poetry or for beauty, and +our little quibbles, our incessant inanities have never troubled her at +all." + +The servant entered with a card as she finished, and after reading the +name she made a quick movement of interest. + +"Ask him to come up," she said to the man, adding immediately as Trent +rose to go, "it's Arnold Kemper. Will you stay and see him?" + +Trent shook his head, while he held out his hand with a laugh. "I won't +stay," he answered; "I don't like him." + +She looked up puzzled, her brows bent in an enquiring frown. "Not like +him! Why, you've never met." + +"What has that to do with it?" he persisted lightly. "One doesn't have +to meet a man to hate him." + +"One does unless one's a person of stupid prejudices." + +"Well, maybe I am," he admitted, "but I have my side." + +As the portières were drawn back, he turned hastily away, to come face +to face with Gerty's caller the next instant upon the threshold. Keen as +his curiosity was he took in, at his brief glance, only that Kemper +presented a bright and brave appearance and walked with a peculiarly +energetic step. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE IRRESISTIBLE FORCE + + +Gerty was leaning forward among her cushions and as her visitor +approached she held out her hand, still faintly scented with cigarettes. +"Will you have coffee," she asked, "or shall I ring for tea?" + +He sat down in the chair from which Trent had risen and replied with a +gesture of happy physical exhaustion. "Let me have some coffee," he +answered, "I've been out golfing all the morning, and if you don't prove +mentally stimulating I shall fall asleep before you. How many holes do +you think I played to-day?" + +Gerty shrugged her shoulders over the little coffee pot. "I don't know +and it doesn't interest me," she retorted. "After six months of Europe +do you still make a god of physical exertion?" + +The genial irony of his smile flashed back at her, and his eyes, half +quizzical, half searching, but wholly kind, wandered leisurely down her +slender figure. Even as he lazily sipped his coffee, with his closely +clipped, rather large brown head lying against the chair-back, she was +made to feel, not unpleasantly, the compelling animal magnetism--the +"personal quantity," as she had called it--that lay behind the masculine +bluntness of manner he affected. "Aren't you rather tumbled?" he +enquired, with an animated glance, and, though he was fond of boasting +that he was the only man he knew who never flattered women, Gerty was +conscious of a sudden flush and the pleased conviction that she must be +looking her very best. It was a trick of his, she knew, to flatter, as +it were, by paradox, to deal with delicate inuendos and to compliment by +pleasant contradiction. She had not been a woman of the world without +reaping the reward of knowledge, and now, as she leaned back and smiled +brilliantly into his face, she knew that, despite the apparent +abruptness of his beginning, they would descend inevitably to the play +of personal suggestion. His measure had been taken long ago, she told +herself, and lay tucked away in the receptacle which contained the +varied neatly labelled patterns of her masculine world; but at the same +time she was perfectly aware that within five minutes he would pique +afresh both her interest and her liking. "You can't warm yourself by +fireworks," she had once said to him, and a moment later had paused to +wonder at the intrinsic meaning of a daring phrase which he had spoken. + +Still sipping his coffee, he regarded her with the blithe humour which +lent so great a charm to his expression. + +"I don't see why you object to exercise when it saves my life," he +observed as he took up a cigarette and then bent forward to hold it to +the flame of the alcohol lamp. + +"I don't object except when it bores me out of mine," responded Gerty +lightly. + +He was still smiling when he raised his head. + +"You used to like it yourself," he persisted. + +"I used to like a great many things which bore me now." + +"Yes, you used to like me," he retorted gaily. + +She had so confidently expected the remark, had left so frank an opening +for it, that while she watched him from beneath languid eyelids a little +cynical quiver disturbed her lips. The game was as old as the Garden of +Eden, she had played it well or ill from her cradle, and at last she had +begun to grow a trifle weary. She had found the wisdom which is hidden +at the core of all Dead Sea fruit, and the bitter taste of it was still +in her mouth. The world for her was a world of make-believe--of lies so +futile that their pretty embroidered shams barely covered the ugly +truths beneath, and, though she had pinned her faith upon falsehood and +had made her sacrifice to the little gods, there were moments still when +the undelivered soul within her awoke and stirred as a child stirs in +the womb. Even as she went back to the game anew, she was conscious that +it would be a battle of meaningless words, of shallow insincerities--yet +she went back, nevertheless, before the disgust the thought awoke had +passed entirely from among her sensations. + +"I believe I did," she confessed with a charming shrug. + +"But you turned against me in the end--women always do," he lamented +merrily, as he flicked away the ashes of his cigarette. Then, with a +perceptible start of recollection, he paused a moment and leaned forward +to look at her more closely. "By the way, I had a shot at your friend +to-day," he said, "the lady who looks like an old picture and does +verse. Why on earth did she take to poetry?" he demanded impatiently. +"I hate it--it's all sheer insanity." + +"Well, some few madmen have thought otherwise," remarked Gerty, adding +immediately, "and so you met Laura. Oh, you two! It was the irresistible +force meeting the immovable body. What happened?" + +He regarded her quite gravely while his cigarette burned like a little +red eye between his fingers. + +"Nothing," he responded at last. "I didn't meet her--I merely glimpsed +her. She has a pair of eyes--you didn't tell me." + +Gerty nodded. + +"And I forgot to mention as well that she has a nose and a mouth and a +chin. What an oversight." + +"Oh, I didn't bother about the rest," he said, and she wondered if he +could be half in earnest or if he were wholly jesting, "but, by Jove, I +went overboard in her eyes and never touched bottom." + +For a moment Gerty stared at him in blank amazement, in the midst of +which she promptly told herself that henceforth she would be prepared +for any eccentricities of which the male mind might be capable. A hot +flush mantled her cheek, and she spoke in a voice which had a new and +womanly ring of decision. + +"You would not like her," she said, "and she would hate you." + +With an amused exclamation he replaced his coffee cup upon the table. +"Then she'd be a very foolish woman," he observed. + +"She believes in all the things that you scoff at--she believes in the +soul, in people, and in love--" + +He made a protest of mock dismay. "My dear girl, I've been too hard hit +by love not to believe in it. On the contrary, I believe in it so firmly +that I think the only sure cure for it is marriage." + +At her swift movement of aversion his laughing glance made a jest of the +words, and she smiled back at him with the fantastic humour which had +become almost her natural manner. It was a habit of his to treat +sportively even the subjects which he reverenced, and in reality she had +sometimes felt him to be less of a sober cynic than herself. He took his +pleasures where he found them, and there was a touch of pathos in the +generous eagerness with which he was ready to provide as well for the +pleasures of others. If he lacked imagination she had learned by now +that he did not fail in its sister virtue, sympathy, and his keen gray +eyes, which expressed so perfectly a gay derision, were not slow, she +knew, to warm into a smiling tenderness. + +"Laura is the most earnest creature alive," she said after a moment. + +"Is that so? Then I presume she lacks a sense of humour." + +"She has a sense of honour at any rate." + +With a laugh he settled his figure more comfortably in his chair, and +while she watched the movement, a little fascinated by its easy freedom, +she felt a sudden impulse to reach out and touch his broad, strong +shoulders as she might have touched the shoulders of a statue. Were they +really as hard as bronze, she wondered, or was that suggestion of latent +power, of slumbering energy, as deceptive as the caressing glance he +bent upon her? The glance meant nothing she was aware--he would have +regarded her in much the same way had Perry been at her side, would have +shone quite as affectionately, perhaps, upon her mother. Yet, in spite +of her worldly knowledge, she felt herself yielding to it as to a +delicate flattery. Her eyes were still on him, and presently he caught +her gaze and held it by a look which, for all its fervour, had an edge +of biting irony. There was a meaning, a mystery in his regard, but his +words when at last they came sounded almost empty. + +"Oh, that's well enough in its way," he said, "but as a safeguard +there's no virtue alive that can stand against a sense of humour. An +instinct for the ridiculous will keep any man from going to the devil." + +She shot her defiant merriment into his face. "Has it kept you?" + +"I?--Oh, I wasn't bound that way, you know--but why do you ask?" + +For a breath she hesitated, then, remembering her mystification of an +instant ago, she felt a swift desire to punish him for something which +even to herself she could not express--for too sharp a prick of +unsatisfied curiosity, or was it for too intense a moment of +uncertainty? + +"Oh, one hears, you know," she replied indifferently. + +"One hears! And what is it that one hears?" + +His voice was hard, almost angry, and she despised herself because the +fierce sound of it made her suddenly afraid. + +"Do you know what a man said to me the other day," she went on with a +cool insolence before which he became suddenly quiet. "Whom the gods +destroy they first infatuate--with an opera singer." + +She delivered the words straight from the shoulder, and as she finished +he rose from his chair and stood looking angrily down upon her. + +"Did you let me come here for _this?_" he demanded. + +"O Arnold, Arnold!" the gayety rang back to her voice, and she made a +charming little face of affected terror. "If you're going to be a bear +I'll run away." + +She stretched out her hand, and he held it for an instant in his own, +while he fell back impatiently into his chair. + +"The truth is that I was clean mad about her," he said, "about Madame +Alta--but it's over now, and I abominate everything that has ever set +foot on the stage." + +"Was she really beautiful?" she enquired curiously. + +He laughed sharply. "Beautiful! She was flesh--if you mean that." + +An angry sigh escaped him, and Gerty lighted a fresh cigarette and gave +it to him with a soothing gesture. The nervous movements which were +characteristic of him became more frequent, and she found herself +wondering that they should increase rather than diminish the impression +of virile force. For a while he smoked in silence; then, with his eyes +still turned away from her, he asked in a changed voice. + +"Tell me about your friend--she interests me." + +"She interests you! Laura?" + +"There's something in her that I like," he pursued, smiling at her +exclamation. "She looks human, natural, real. By Jove, she looks as if +she were capable of big emotions--as if, too, you could like her without +making love. She's something new." + +Gerty's amazement was so sincere that she only stared at him, while her +red lips parted slightly in a breathless and perfectly unaffected +surprise. Something new! Her wonder faded slowly, and she told herself +that now at last she understood. So he was still what he had always +been--an impatient seeker after fresh sensations. + +"I thought you were too much like Perry to care about her," she said. + +His amused glance made the remark appear suddenly ridiculous. "I'm +different from Perry in one thing at least," he retorted. "You didn't +marry me." + +"Well, I dare say it's a good thing you never gave me the chance," she +tossed back lightly. "I don't let Perry rave, you know, even over Laura. +Not that I'm unduly jealous, but that I'm easily bored." + +"I can't imagine you jealous," he commented, keeping as usual close to +the intimate intention. + +"And of Perry! I should hope not!" Her gesture was one of amused +indifference. "Jealousy is the darling virtue of the savage, and I may +not be a saint, but at least I'm civilized. Give me food and a warm fire +and clothes to my back, and I'm quite content to let the passions go." + +"Even love?" he asked, still smiling. + +She shrugged her shoulders--gracefully as few women can. "Love among the +rest--I don't care--why should I? Make me comfortable." + +An impulse which was hardly more than a consuming interest in +humanity--in the varied phenomena of life--caused him to draw quickly +nearer. + +"You say that because you've 'arrived,'" he declared. "You've 'arrived' +in love as your friend has in literature. The probationary stage after +all is the only one worth while, and you've gone too far beyond it." + +"I've gone too far beyond everything," she protested, laughing. "I'm a +graduate of the world. Now Laura--" + +The name recalled his thoughts and he repeated it while she paused. +"Laura--it has a jolly sound--and upon my word I haven't seen a woman in +years who has had so much to say to me before I've met her. Do you know, +I already like her--I like her smooth black hair, without any of your +fussy undulations; I like her strong earnest look and the strength in +her brow and chin; I even like the way she dresses--" + +Gerty's laugh pealed out, and he broke off with a movement of +irritation. "Is it possible that Laura is an enchantress," she demanded, +"and have I followed the wrong principle all my life? Has my honest +intention to please men led me astray?" + +"Oh, you may be funny at my expense if you choose," he retorted, "but +I've had enough of fluff and feathers, and I like the natural way she +wears her clothes--" Again he smoked in an abstracted silence, and then +asked abruptly: "Will you take me some day to see her?" + +She shook her head. + +"Take you? No, you've missed your opportunity." + +"But I'll make another. Why not?" + +"Because I tell you frankly she would hate you." + +"My dear girl, she wouldn't have a shadow of an excuse. No woman has +ever hated me in my life." + +"Then there's no use seeking the experience. You'd just as well accept +the fact at once that Laura couldn't bear you--" + +A laugh followed from the door while the words were still in the air, +and turning quickly they saw Laura pausing upon the threshold. + +"And pray what is it about Laura?" she asked in her cordial contralto +voice. "A person who has borne living in the house with a flute may be +said to have unlimited powers of endurance." + +She moved forward and Kemper, while he sprang to his feet and stood +waiting for the introduction, became swiftly aware that with her +entrance the whole atmosphere had taken a fresher and a finer quality. +The sophistication of the world, the flippant irony of Gerty's voice +gave place immediately before her earnest dignity and before the look of +large humanity which distinguished her so vitally from the women whom he +knew. He felt her sincerity of purpose at the same instant that he felt +Gerty's shallowness and the artificial glamour of the hot-house air in +which he had hardly drawn breath. There was an appeal in Laura's face +which he had never seen before--an expression which seemed to him to +draw directly from the elemental pulse; and he felt suddenly that there +were depths of consciousness which he had never sounded, vivid +experiences which he had never even glimpsed. "She is different--but how +is she different?" he asked himself, perplexed. "Is she simply a bigger +personality, or is she really more of a woman than any woman I have ever +known? What is it in her that speaks to me and what is it in myself that +responds?" And it seemed to him both strange and wonderful that he +should be drawn by an impulse which was not the impulse of love--that a +woman should attract him through qualities which were independent of the +allurement of sex. A clean and perfectly sane satisfaction was the +immediate result; he felt that he had grown larger in his own eyes--that +the old Adam who had ruled over him so long had become suddenly dwarfed +and insignificant. "To like a woman and yet not to make love to her," he +repeated in his thoughts. "By Jove, it will be something decent, +something really worth while." Then he remembered that he had never +known intimately a woman of commanding intellect, and the novelty +inspired him with the spirit of fresh adventure. + +She had bowed to him over the large muff she carried, and he spoke +lightly though his awakened interest showed in his face and voice. "I +was the unfortunate subject of Gerty's decision," he said. "Is there no +appeal from it?" + +Her answering smile was one of indifferent kindliness; and he liked, +even while he resented her sincerity of manner. "Appeal! and to whom?" +she enquired. + +"To you--to your mercy," he laughed. + +She glanced at Gerty with a look which hardly simulated a curiosity she +apparently did not feel. + +"But why should you need my mercy?" she demanded, as she sat down on a +little sofa heaped with cushions. + +His gaze, after resting a moment on the smooth black hair beneath her +velvet hat, turned to the exquisite shining waves which encircled +Gerty's head. + +"Ask my cousin," he advised with merriment. + +Whatever Gerty's reason for not caring to bring them together may have +been, she concealed it now beneath a ready acceptance of the situation. + +"Oh, he tried to make me promise to take him to see you," she explained, +"but I've told him you'd show him no quarter because he hasn't read your +poems." + +Laura raised her eyes to his face, and he had again the sensation of +looking into an unutterable personality. + +"I'm glad you haven't read them," she rejoined, "for now you won't be +able to talk to me about them." + +"So you don't like to have one talk about them?" + +She met his question with direct simplicity. "About my verse? I +shouldn't like to have you do it." + +"And why not I?" he demanded, laughing. + +"Oh, I don't know," she returned, her eyes lighting with the humour of +her frankness, "can one explain? But I'm perfectly sure that it's not +the kind of thing you'd like. There's no action in it." + +"So Gerty has told you that I'm a strenuous creature?" + +"Perhaps. I don't remember." She turned to Gerty, looking down upon her +with a tenderness that suffused her face with colour. "What was it that +you told me, dearest?" + +"What did I tell you?" repeated Gerty, still clasping Laura's hand. "Oh, +it must have been that he agrees with some dreadful person who said that +poetry was the insanity of prose." + +Laura laughed as she glanced back at him, and he contrasted her deep +contralto notes with Gerty's flute-like soprano. + +"Well, he may not be right, but he is with the majority," she said. + +Her indifference piqued him into the spirit of opposition, and he felt +an immediate impulse to compel her reluctant interest--to arouse her +admiration of the very qualities she now disdained. + +"Well, I take my poetry where I find it," he rejoined, "and that's +mostly in life and not in books." + +From the quick turn of her head, the instant's lifting of her emotional +reserve, he saw that the words had arrested her imagination--that for +the first time since her entrance she had really taken in the fact of +his existence as an individual. + +"Then you are not with the majority, but you are right!" she exclaimed. + +"Is it not possible to be both?" he asked, pleased almost more than he +would admit by the quickening of her attention. + +"I think not," she answered seriously, "don't you?" + +"I never think," he laughed with his eyes upon hers, "I live." + +The animation, which was like the glow from an inner illumination, shone +in her face, and he thought, as Trent had thought before him, that her +soul must burn like a golden flame within her--a flame that reached +toward life, knowledge and the veiled wonders of experience. + +"And so would I if I were a man," she said. + +She rose, clasping the furs at her throat, then folding Gerty in her +arms she kissed her cheek. + +"I stopped for a moment to look at you, nothing more," she confessed. +"It was a choice between looking at you and at the Rembrandt in the +Metropolitan, and I chose you." As she held Gerty from her for an +instant and then drew her into her embrace again, Kemper saw that her +delight in her friend's beauty was almost a rapture, that her friendship +possessed something of a religious fervour. + +"Do stay with me," pleaded Gerty; "I want you--I need you." + +"But you dine out." + +"Oh, I forgot. Wait, I'll break it. I'll be ill." + +Laura smiled her refusal and, stooping, picked up her large, fluffy +muff. + +"I'll come to-morrow," she returned, "and it won't cost us a lie. Good +bye, my bonnie, what do you wear?" + +Gerty waved her hands in a gesture of unconcern. + +"It rests with the fates and with Annette," she replied. "Green, blue, +white; I don't care." + +"But I do," persisted Laura; "let it be white." She looked at Kemper and +bowed silently as she turned toward the door; then, hesitating an +instant, she came back and held out her hand with a cordial smile. "It +has been very pleasant to meet you," she said. + +"Mayn't I at least see you down?" he asked. "How do you go?" + +"There's really no need to trouble you," she answered, "I shall go a +part of the way in the stage." + +She went out, and as he followed her down the staircase he asked himself +again the puzzling question: "She is different from other women--but how +is she different?" And still he assured himself with confidence that +what he liked in her was her serene separateness from the appeal of +passion. "This is the thing that lasts--that really lasts for a +lifetime," he said in his thoughts. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +PROVES THAT A POOR LOVER MAY MAKE AN EXCELLENT FRIEND + + +That night in her sitting-room, while she corrected the proof-sheets of +her new book of verse, Laura remembered Kemper's face as he sat across +from her on the long seat of the almost empty stage. Beyond him was the +humming city, where the lights bloomed like white flowers out of the +enveloping dusk, and when he turned his profile, as he did once, against +a jeweller's window, she saw every line of his large, strongly marked +features silhouetted with distinctness on a brilliant background. Twice +during the ride down she had been conscious, as when they left Gerty's +house together, that he was more masculine than any man she had known +closely in her life, and at first she had told herself that his nervous +activity--the ardent vitality in his appearance--was too aggressive to +be wholly pleasing. She had been used to a considerate gentleness from +men, and his manner, though frankly sympathetic, had seemed to her +almost brusque. + +Even now, while she laid her work aside to think of him, she was hardly +sure that his genial egoism had not repelled her. Her instinct told her +that he could be both kind and generous, that he was capable of +unselfish impulses, and full, too, of a broad and tolerant humanity, +yet there was something within her--some finer spiritual +discernment--which rose to battle against the attraction he appeared to +possess. He was not mental, he was not even superficially bookish, and +yet because of a certain magnetic quality--a mere dominant virility--she +found herself occupied, to the exclusion of her work, with the words he +had uttered, with the tantalising humour in his eyes. + +"I am glad that I did not ask him to call," she thought as she took up +her pencil. "He does not interest me and very likely I shall never see +him again. He was pleasant certainly, but one can't make acquaintances +of every stranger one happens to meet." Then it seemed to her that she +had been distant, almost rude, when he had bidden her good-night, and as +she remembered the engaging frankness of his smile, the eager yet humble +look with which he had waited at her door for the invitation she did not +give, she regretted in spite of herself that she had been so openly +inhospitable. After all there was no reason that one should turn a man +from one's door simply because his personality didn't please one's +fancy. For a moment she dragged her mind for some word, some look in +which she might have found a shadow of excuse for the dislike she felt. +"No, he said nothing foolish," she confessed at last, "he was only kind +and friendly and it is I who have offended--I who have allowed myself to +feel an unreasonable aversion." All at once an irritation against +herself pervaded her thoughts, and she determined that if she met him +again she would be more cordial--that she would force herself to show a +particular friendliness. The recollection of his love for Madame Alta +came to her, and she felt at the same time a sharp curiosity and a deep +disgust--"A man like that must love with madness," she thought, and +next, "but how do I know if it were love between them and why should I +judge?" Her clasped hands went to her eyes and she prayed silently: +"Keep me apart, O Lord, keep me pure and apart!" + +For a while she sat with bowed head, then, as her hands fell into her +lap, she broke into a little tender laugh at herself. "What a fool I am, +after all," she lamented; "here I have seen a man whom I do not +like--once, for an hour--and he has so troubled my quiet that I cannot +put my mind upon my work. What does it matter, and why should a stranger +who displeases me have power to compel my thoughts? It was but a +trifle--the distraction of an hour, nothing more--and, whether I like +him or not, by to-morrow I shall have forgotten his existence." + +But she remembered his face as he sat across from her in the dimly +lighted stage, and she felt again, with a start, that he was the first +man she had ever known. "Yet he does not attract me, and I shall never +see him again," she thought after a moment. She took up a little +religious book from her desk and tried in vain to fix her wandering +attention. Life appeared all at once very full and very beautiful, and +as she thought of the thronging city around her it seemed to her that +she herself and the people in the street and the revolving stars were +held securely in the hand of God. The belief awoke in her that she was +shielded and set apart for a predestined good, an exalted purpose, and +she wondered if the purpose were already moving toward her out of the +city and if its end would be only the fulfilling of the law of her own +nature. Then she thought of Angela in her closed chamber. Had she been +shielded? Was she also set apart? But the thought did not disturb her, +for she herself seemed of a larger growth, of a braver spirit, than +Angela or than her aunts or than Uncle Percival, who had missed life +also. They had been defeated, but was it not because they had lacked in +themselves the courage to attain? + +The next morning, after she had had her tea and toast in her room, she +went, as was her custom, into Angela's chamber. Early as it was, Mrs. +Payne had already apparelled herself in her paint and powder and driven +down. Seen by the morning sunlight, her smeared face with its brilliant +artificial smile revealed a pathos which was rendered more acute by its +effect of playful grotesqueness. She was like a faded and decrepit +actress who, fired by the unconquerable spirit of her art, forces her +wrinkled visage to ape the romantic ecstasies of passion. Age which is +beautiful only when it has become expressive of repose--of serene +renouncement--showed to Laura's eyes only as a ghastly and comic +travesty of youth. + +Angela was having her breakfast at a little table by the window, and at +Laura's entrance she turned to her with a sigh of evident relief. + +"Rosa has come down to speak to you particularly," she explained. "There +is something she has very heavily on her mind." + +Mrs. Payne had wheeled herself about at the same instant; and Laura, +after regarding her uncertainly for a moment, impressed a light caress +upon her outstretched jewelled fingers. + +"I didn't sleep a wink, my dear," began the old lady in her most +conciliatory tones, "not a blessed wink after Horace told me." + +The questioning stare in Laura's face had the effect of jerking her up +so hurriedly that the words seemed to trip and stumble upon her lips. + +"I might have had it from yourself, of course," she added with an +aggrieved contortion of her features, "but as I was just telling Angela, +I would not for worlds intrude upon your confidence." + +"But what has he told you?" asked Laura, curiously, "and what, after +all, did I tell Uncle Horace?" + +Mrs. Payne settled herself comfortably back in her chair, and, picking +up a bit of Angela's toast from the tray, nibbled abstractedly at the +crust. + +"What under heaven would he have told me but the one thing?" she +demanded. "Mr. Wilberforce has at last proposed." + +"At last!" echoed Laura, breaking into a laugh of unaffected merriment. +"Well, he _was_ long about it!" + +At the words Angela leaned toward her, stretching out her frail hands in +a pleading gesture. + +"Don't marry, Laura," she entreated; "don't--don't marry. There is only +misery from men--misery and regret." + +"I believe he has millions," remarked Mrs. Payne, in the tone in which +she might have recited her creed in church, "and as far as a husband +goes I have never observed that there was any disadvantage to be found +in age. My experience of the world has taught me that decrepitude is the +only thing which permanently domesticates a man." + +Laura sat down across from her, and then clasping her hands together +made her final determined stand. + +"You needn't try to persuade me, Aunt Rosa," she answered, "for I +wouldn't marry him--no, not if he had billions." + +For a brief interlude Mrs. Payne returned her gaze with silent yet +expressive dignity. + +"There's really no occasion to become violent," she observed at last, +"particularly in the presence of poor Angela." + +"But I like it! I like it," declared Angela, "it is her marriage that I +couldn't bear." + +Mrs. Payne turned her reproachful look for a moment upon the weaker +sister. + +"I am very sure, my dear, that we can bear anything the Lord chooses to +send," she remarked, "especially when we feel that our cross is for +another's good. Is there any reason," she wound up to Laura again, "for +the obstinate position you appear to take?" + +Laura shook her head. + +"I don't take any position," she replied, "I simply decline to be made +to marry him, that's all." + +"But you like him--I've heard you say so much with my own ears." + +"You never heard me say I liked him for a husband." + +"It would have been highly indelicate if I had," observed Mrs Payne, +"but since he has proposed I may as well impress upon you that any kind +of liking is quite sufficient argument for a marriage which would be so +suitable in every way. And as to the romantic nonsense--well it all +comes very much to the same thing in the long run, and whether you begin +by loving a man or by hating him, after six months of marriage you can +ask nothing better than to be able to regard him with Christian +forbearance." + +Laura turned away impatiently as Uncle Percival put his bland, +child-like face in at the open door. + +"I hope you had a quiet night, Angela," he said in his high, piping +voice; "the morning is a fine one and I've already had my turn." Then, +holding his coat closely over a small bundle which he carried, he +greeted Mrs. Payne with a deprecating smile. "You're down early, Rosa; +it's a good habit." + +Mrs. Payne surveyed him with an intolerant humour. + +"I'm not undertaking to cultivate a habit at my time of life," she +responded, raising her voice until it sounded harsh and cracked; then +she became a prey to a devouring suspicion. "What is that under your +coat?" she demanded sternly. + +Uncle Percival's flaccid mouth fell open with a frightened droop, and he +took instantly the demeanour of a small offending schoolboy. + +"It--it's only a little present for Angela," he replied. "I thought it +might interest her, but I hardly think you would care for it, Rosa." + +"What is it?" persisted Mrs. Payne in her unyielding calmness. + +The object moved beneath his coat, and, pulling it out with a timid yet +triumphant gesture, he displayed before their astonished eyes a +squirming white rabbit. + +"I hoped it might interest Angela," he repeated, seeking in vain for +sympathy in the three amazed faces. + +The rabbit struggled in his grasp, and after holding it suspended a +moment by the nape of its neck, he cuddled it again beneath his coat. "A +woman was selling them in the street," he explained in a suppressed +voice. "She had a box filled with them. I bought only one." + +"That was fortunate," returned Mrs. Payne, severely, "for you will have +to carry the creature back at once--or drown it if you prefer." + +"But I thought Angela would like it," he said with a disappointed look. + +Angela closed her eyes as if shutting out an irritating sight. + +"What in the world would I do with a white rabbit?" she enquired. + +"But I could take care of it," insisted Untie Percival. "I should like +to take care of it very much." + +Laura drew the rabbit from his coat and held it a moment against her +bosom. + +"It's a pretty little thing," she remarked carelessly, and added, "why +not keep it for yourself, Uncle Percival?" + +As he glanced up at her the light of animation broke in his face. + +"Why shouldn't I, indeed, why shouldn't I?" he demanded eagerly, and +hurried out before Mrs. Payne, with her Solomonic power of judgment, +could bring herself to the point of interference. + +"I hope that will be a lesson to you with regard to men," she observed +as a parting shot while she tied her bonnet strings. + +An uncontrollable distaste for her family swept over Laura, and she felt +that she could suffer no longer the authority of Mrs. Payne, the +senility of Uncle Percival or the sorrows of Angela. As she looked at +Mrs. Payne she was struck as if for the first time by her ridiculous +grotesqueness, and she experienced a sensation of disgust for the old +lady's stony eyes and carefully painted out wrinkles. + +Without replying to the moral pointed by Uncle Percival and the white +rabbit, she left the room and hastily dressed herself for her morning +walk. The house had grown close and oppressive to her and she wanted the +January cold in her face and limbs. At the moment she was impatient of +anything that recalled a restraint of mind or body. + +When she came in two hours later, after a brisk walk in the park, she +found Mr. Wilberforce awaiting her in the drawing-room downstairs. He +looked older she thought at the first glance in the last few days, but +there was a cheerfulness, a serenity, in his face which seemed to lend +itself like a softening light to his beautiful pallid features. He was a +man who having fought bitterly against resignation for many years comes +to it peacefully at last only to find that he has reaped from it a +portion of the "enchantment of the disenchanted." Her intuition told her +instantly that he had given up hope of love, but she recognized also, +through some strange communion of sympathy, that he had attained the +peace of soul which follows inevitably upon any sincere renouncement of +self. + +"I am so glad, dear friend," she said, holding his hand for a moment as +she sat beside him. + +He looked at her silently with his brilliant eyes which burned in the +midst of his blanched and withered face like two watch-fires that are +kept alive in a scorched desert. + +"For a while I thought it might be," he replied after a long pause. "I +asked you to give me what I have never had--my youth. You could not do +it," he added with a smile, "and at first it seemed to me that there +remained only emptiness and disappointment for the future, but presently +I learned wisdom in the night." He hesitated an instant and then added +gravely, "I saw that if you couldn't give me youth, you could at least +make my old age very pleasant." + +"I can--I will," she answered in a broken voice, and it seemed to her +that all the bitterness had turned to sweetness in his look. Was the +divine wisdom, after all, she wondered, not so much the courage which +turned the events that came to happiness as the greater power which +created light where there was nothing. Only age had learned to do this, +she knew, and she was conscious of a quick resentment against fate that +only age could put into passion the immortal spirit which youth craved +in vain. + +"I asked a great deal," he said, "but I shall be content with a very +little." + +"With my whole faith--with all my friendship," she replied; and as she +spoke the words, her heart contracted with a spasm which was almost that +of terror of the unknown purpose to which she felt, with a kind of +superstitious blindness, that she was pledged. Fate had offered her +this one good thing, and she must put it from her because she waited in +absolute ignorance--for what? For love it might be, and yet her woman's +instinct taught her that the only love which endures is the love of age +that has never been young for youth so elastic that it can never grow +old. Then swift as the flash of self-revelation she saw in imagination +the eager yet humble look with which Arnold Kemper had waited before her +door, and, though she insisted still that the picture displeased her +fancy, she knew that passion to meet response in her must come to her +clothed in a virile strength like his. + +"I wish from my soul that it might have been," she murmured, but even +with the words she knew that she had all her life wished for a different +thing--for a love that was wholly unlike the love he offered. + +"It has been," he answered, while his grave gentleness fell like dew on +the smouldering fire in his eyes. "It has been, my dear, and it will be +always until I die." + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +OF MASQUES AND MUMMERIES + + +In the afternoon of the next day Laura received by a special messenger +an urgent appeal from Gerty Bridewell. + +"Come to me at once," said the note, which appeared to have been written +in frantic haste. "I am in desperate trouble and I need you." + +The distress of the writer was quite as apparent as the exaggeration, +and while Laura rolled rapidly toward her in a cab, she prepared herself +with a kind of nervous courage to bear the brunt of the inevitable +scene. Perry was at the bottom of it she knew--she had answered such +summonses often enough before to pre-figure with unerring insight the +nature of the event. He had shown his periodical inclination to a fresh +affair, his errant fancy had wandered in a particular direction, and +Gerty's epicurean philosophy had failed as usual to account for the +concrete fact. To Laura the amazing part was not so much Perry's +fickleness, which she had brought herself to accept with tolerant +aversion, as the extraordinary value Gerty placed upon an emotion which +was kept alive by an artifice at once so evident and so ineffectual. +There was but one thing shorter lived than his repentance she knew, and +that was the sentiment of which he was charitably supposed to have +repented. By nature he was designed a lover, and it seemed, broadly +viewed, the merest accident of circumstances that he should tend toward +variety rather than toward specialisation. + +A man passing in the street bowed to her as the cab turned a corner, +and, as she recognised Arnold Kemper, she wondered vaguely if he had +aught in common with his cousin. A slight resemblance to Perry Bridewell +offended her as she recalled it, and, while her resentful sympathy flew +to Gerty, she felt almost vindictive against the masculine type he +appeared physically to represent. + +"O Lord, keep me apart!" she prayed fervently, as she had prayed in the +night, for it appeared to her that the shield of faith was the one +shield for the spirit against the besieging vanities of life. Gerty's +faith had fallen from her long ago, and, as she remembered this, Laura +felt a jealous impulse to snatch her friend away from the restless +worldliness and the inordinate desires. The pitiable soul of Gerty +showed to her suddenly as a stunted and famished city child struggling +for life in an atmosphere which carried the taint of death, and in her +imagination the picture was so vivid that she saw the face of the child +turned toward her with a wistful, imploring look. + +The cab stopped with a jerk, and in a little while she was knocking +softly at the closed door of Gerty's chamber. Almost immediately it +opened and the French maid came out. + +"Madame is ill with a headache," she explained, pointing to the closed +shutters, "she refuses to eat." + +Putting her impatiently aside, Laura closed the door upon her, and then +crossing to the windows threw back the shutters to let in the late +sunshine. + +"A little light won't hurt you, dearest," she said, with a smile. + +Gerty, still in her nightgown with a Japanese kimono flung carelessly +about her and her hair falling in a brilliant shower upon her shoulders, +was sitting before her bureau making a pretence of sorting a pile of +bills. In spite of this pathetic subterfuge, her beautiful green eyes +held a startled and angry look, and her face was flushed with an +excitement like that of fever. + +"I was sorry I sent for you the moment afterward," she said, hardly +yielding to Laura's embrace, while she nervously tore open a bill she +held and then tossed it aside without glancing over it. "It's the same +thing over again--there's no use talking about it. I shall die." + +"You cannot--you cannot," protested Laura, still holding her in her +arms. "You are too beautiful. You were never in your life lovelier than +you are to-day." + +"And yet it does not hold him," broke out Gerty, in sudden passion, "and +it will never be any better, I see that. If it's not one it's another, +but it's always somebody. A year ago he promised me that I should never +have cause for jealousy again--he swore that and I believed him--and now +this--this--" + +Her anger choked her like a sob, and she tore with trembling fingers at +the papers in her lap. Then suddenly her brow contracted with +resolution, and she went through a long list of items as if the most +important fact in life were the amount of money she must pay to her +dressmaker. + +"Of course you know what I think," murmured Laura with her lips at +Gerty's ear. + +"That he isn't worth it," Gerty nodded, while her indignant and +humiliated expression grew almost violent. "Well, I think so, too. Of +course he isn't, but that doesn't make it any better--any easier." + +"You mean you couldn't give him up?" + +"When I'm dead I may, not before." She closed her eyes and a long +shudder ran through her body. "It has been nothing but a fight since I +married--a fight to keep him. I used to think that marriage meant rest, +contentment, but I know now that it means a battle--all the time--every +instant. I've never had one natural moment, I've never since the +beginning been without a horrible suspicion--and I see now that I never +shall be. He likes me best I know--in his heart he really puts me +first--but there are others and I won't have it. I'll be alone, I'll be +the only one or nothing. I said I wouldn't be beaten the first time, and +I won't--I won't be beaten." She paused an instant to draw breath. "And +I haven't been," she wound up in bitter triumph. + +"You'll never be, darling," declared Laura; "who is there on earth to +shine against you?" + +The violence faded from Gerty's face, yielding to an expression of +disgust, of spiritual loathing--the loathing of a creature that hates +the thing it loves. + +"But it isn't worth it, it isn't worth it," she moaned, pushing the +papers away from her with an indignant gesture, and rising from her +chair to walk hurriedly up and down the floor. "It isn't worth it, but +I'm bound to it--I can't get away. I'm bound to the wheel. Do you think +if I could help myself--if I could be different--that I would turn into +a mere bond-slave to my body? Why, a day labourer has rest, but I +haven't. There's not a moment when I'm not doing something for my +beauty, or planning effects, or undergoing a treatment. I never sleep as +I want to, nor bathe as I want to, nor even eat what I like. It's all +somebody's system for preserving something about me. I've lived on +celery and apples to keep from growing fat and taken daily massage to +keep from getting thin--and yet I never wake up in the morning that I +don't turn sick for fear I'll discover my first wrinkle in the glass. +Now imagine," she finished with a cynical laugh, "Perry going upon a +diet for any sentimental reasons, or sacrificing terrapin in order to +retain my affection!" + +"I can't," confessed Laura bluntly, "it's beyond me, but I wish you +wouldn't. I wish you'd try to hold him by something different--something +higher." + +"You can't hold a person by what he hasn't got," returned Gerty with the +flippant ridicule she so desperately clung to--a ridicule which she used +as unsparingly upon herself as upon her husband. Then, after a pause, +she resumed her bitter musing in the same high-strung, reckless manner. +"A wrinkle would kill me," she pursued; "I'd rather endure any +agony--I'd be skinned alive first like some woman Perry laughed about. +Yet they must come--they're obliged to come in fifteen--ten--perhaps in +five years. Perhaps even to-morrow. Do you suppose," she questioned +abruptly, with a tragic intensity worthy of a less ignoble cause, "that +when one gets old one really ceases to mind--that one dies out all +inside--the sensations I mean, and the emotions--before the husk begins +to wither?" She paused a moment, but as Laura continued to regard her +with a soft, compassionate look she turned away again and, touching an +electric button in the wall, flooded the room with light. The change was +so startling that every object seemed to leap at once from twilight +vagueness into a conspicuous prominence. On a chair in the corner was +carelessly flung a white chiffon dinner gown, and a pair of little satin +slippers had been thrown upon the floor beside it, where they lay +slightly sideways, with turned-out toes, as they had fallen from the +wearer's feet. The pathos which seems so often to dwell in trifling +inanimate objects spoke to Laura from the little discarded shoes, and +again society appeared to her as a hideous battle in which the passions +preyed upon the ideals, the body upon the soul. She thought of Perry +Bridewell, of his healthy animalism, his complacent self-esteem, while +her heart hardened within her. Was love, when all was said, merely a +subjection to the flesh instead of an enlargement of the spirit? Did it +depend for its very existence upon the dress-maker's art and the +primitive instinct of the chase? Had it no soul within it to keep it +clean? Could it see or hear only through the eye or the ear of sense? + +"O Gerty, Gerty," she said, "if I could only make you see!" + +But Gerty, with one of those swift changes of humour which made her +moods at once so unexpected and so irresistible, had burst into a peal +of mocking laughter. + +"I'm prepared to conquer or to die," she said merrily; and going to a +large white box on the bed, she opened it and dangled in the air a +gorgeous evening gown of silver gauze shot with green. "This cost me a +thousand dollars," she commented in the hard, business-like tones Laura +had begun to dread. "I was keeping it for the ball next week, but +there's no call like the call of an emergency. The horrid creature he +fancies will be there," she added, surveying her exquisite armful with +an admiring, unhappy glance, "and it will be war to the death between +us, if it costs him every cent he has." She fell thoughtfully silent, to +break out at the end of a minute or two with a remark which had the +value of an imparted confidence: "She--I mean the creature--wore one +something like it, only not nearly so handsome--last night--and it made +her look frightfully gone off--even Perry noticed it." + +Spreading the gown carefully upon the bed, she went to the mirror and +regarded herself with passionate scrutiny. + +"Will you wait and see me dress?" she asked; "Annette has my cold bath +ready. I must have a colour, but I shan't be a minute in the tub." + +"Do you mean that you are really going out to-night?" asked Laura, +remembering the despairing note of a few hours ago. + +Gerty nodded. "To a dinner and a dance. Do you think that I will play +the neglected wife?" + +A glow had sprung to her eyes that was like the animation with which an +intrepid hunter might depart upon a desperate chase--and through all her +elaborate toilette--the massaging of her face, the arranging of her +hair, the perfuming of her beautiful neck and arms--she chatted gayly in +the same flippant yet nervous voice. When at last the maid had withdrawn +again, Gerty, pausing before Laura in a shimmer of silver gauze that +reminded one of a faintly scented moonlight, bent over and touched her +cheek with feverish lips. + +"It is war to the knife," she laughed; and the peculiar radiance of +colour, which gave her beauty a character that was almost violent, made +her at the moment appear triumphant, exultant, barbaric. To Laura she +had never seemed more beautiful nor more unhappy. Then suddenly her +manner underwent a curious change, and her accustomed mask--the smiling +surface of a woman of the world--settled as if by magic upon her face. +Perry Bridewell was at the door, and she opened it for him with an +unconcern at which Laura wondered. + +"Come in if you want to," she said coolly, "Laura doesn't mind." + +She drew back into the middle of the room, fastening her glove with +insolent indifference, while his startled gaze hung upon her in an +amazement he lacked the mental readiness to hide. + +"By Jove, are you going out?" he asked. "I thought you were downright +ill and I was about to call up the doctor. I'm jolly glad--I declare I +am," he added humbly. + +From the sincere anxiety in his voice, Laura surmised at once that +Gerty's exasperation had preceded by some hours her cooler judgment. He +looked as uncomfortable as it was possible for a man of his optimistic +habit of mind to feel, and an evident humiliation was traced upon his +countenance as if by several hasty touches of a crayon pencil. + +But his features were intended so manifestly to wear a look of cheerful +self-esteem that his dejection, honest as it was, produced an effect of +insincerity, and it seemed to Laura that his other and more natural +expression was still lying somewhere beneath this superficial remorse. +Considered as physical bulk he was impressive, she admitted, in a large, +ruddy, highly obvious fashion; then he appeared suddenly so stupid and +child-like in his discomfiture that she felt her heart softening in +spite of her convictions. At the instant he resembled nothing so much as +a handsome, good-humoured, but disobedient, dog patiently awaiting a +reprimand. + +"On my word I'm jolly glad," he repeated, and stopped because he could +think of nothing further to say that did not sound foolish in his own +perturbed mind. + +"Oh, I'm not utterly lacking in humanity," retorted Gerty, "and one has +to be not to admit a moral obligation to one's hostess. Besides," she +confessed, with smiling pleasantry, "I shall rather enjoy Ada Lawley's +face when she sees my gown. She told me last night that she would never +be caught wearing silver gauze again until she wanted to look every day +as old as she really is. It was rather hard on her, poor thing, for +Arnold says she'd rather lose her character any day than her +complexion--not that she has very much of either left by now," she +corrected with her cutting laugh. + +Before the studied insolence of her attack Perry drew back quickly in +surprise, and his eyelids winked rapidly as if a lighted candle had +flashed before them. Then, with that child-like need of having his eyes +opened, of being made to _see_, his attention was fastened upon the +brilliant figure of his wife, and her beauty seemed at the moment to +burn itself into his slow-witted brain. + +"By Jove!" he exclaimed, and again, "By Jove!" + +"I'm glad you like it," replied Gerty, with a careless shrug. "I may not +be a model woman from a domestic point of view, but at least I've +managed to keep both my colour and my reputation." She crossed to the +bureau, and opening a drawer took out a green and silver fan. "I really +needn't trouble you to come, you know," she remarked indifferently. +"Arnold will be there and I dare say he'll be willing to come back in my +carriage." + +"I dare say he will," observed Perry, not without a jealous indignation, +"and I dare say you'd be pleased enough if I'd let him." + +Gerty laughed as she closed the drawer with a bang. "Well, I shouldn't +exactly mind," she rejoined. + +Reconciliation, such as it was, the brief reunion of suspicion and +broken faith was apparently in rapid progress, and, filled with a pity +not unmixed with disgust, Laura put on her fur coat and went slowly down +the staircase. The last sound that followed her was the flute-like music +of Gerty's laugh--a little tired, heart-sick, utterly disillusioned +laugh. + +A man was going by on the sidewalk as she went out, and when the closing +of the house door caused him instinctively to look up, she saw that it +was Roger Adams. He stopped immediately and waited for her until she +descended the steps. + +"Are you bound now," he asked, "for Gramercy Park?" + +She nodded "But I'd like to walk a block or two. I've been shut up all +the afternoon with Gerty." + +"She's not ill, I hope," he remarked, as he fell into step at her side. +"I've always had a considerable liking for Mrs. Bridewell, and for +Perry, too. He's a first-rate chap." + +For a moment Laura walked on rapidly, without replying. It seemed to her +abominable that Adams should confess to an admiration for Perry +Bridewell, and the generous humanity which she had formerly respected in +him now offended her. + +"He is not a favourite of mine," she commented indifferently; then moved +by a flitting impulse, she added after a pause, "By the way, do you +know, I've met his cousin." + +Adams looked a little mystified as he echoed her remark. + +"His cousin?" But in an instant further light broke upon him. "Oh, you +mean Arnold Kemper!" + +"I met him at Gerty's," explained Laura, "but I can't say honestly that +he particularly appealed to me. There's something about him--I don't +know what--that runs up against my prejudices." + +Adams laughed. + +"I rather fancy the prejudices are more than half gossip," he observed. + +"I'd forgotten what I'd heard about him," rejoined Laura, shaking her +head. + +They had reached a crossing, and he dropped a little behind her while +she walked on with the flowing yet energetic step she had inherited from +her Southern mother. On the opposite corner he came up with her again +and resumed the conversation where they had let it fall. + +"I never see Kemper now," he said, "but I still feel that we are friends +in a way, and I believe if I were to run across him to-morrow he'd be +quite as glad to see me as if we hadn't parted fifteen years ago. The +last time I saw much of him, by the way, we roughed it together one +autumn on the coast of Nova Scotia, and I remember he volunteered there +to go out in the first heavy gale to bring in some fishermen who had +been caught out in the ice. They tied a rope around his waist and he +went and brought the men in, too, though we feared for a time that his +hands would be frozen off." + +"Oh, I dare say he has pluck," observed Laura, and though her voice was +constrained, she was conscious of a sudden moral exhilaration, such as +she sometimes experienced after reading a great poem or seeing a +Shakespearian tragedy upon the stage. The lights and the noises and the +people in the street became singularly vivid, while she moved on in an +excitement which she could not explain though she felt that it was +wholly pleasurable. Kemper was present to her now in a nobler, almost a +glorified, aspect, and she began, though she herself was hardly aware of +it, to idealise him with the fatal ardour of a poet and a dreamer. There +was a splendour to her in his old heroic deed--a glow that transfigured, +like some clear northern light, the storm and the danger and even the +ice bound fishermen--and she told herself that it would be impossible +ever to atone to him for her past rudeness. + +"Perhaps I was unjust," she remarked presently, "but one is never proof +against intuitive impressions, and after all it does not greatly +matter." + +Then she looked at Roger Adams as he walked in the electric light beside +her. She saw how haggard were the lines in his face, that he was bent in +the shoulders as if from some mental burden, and the delicacy of his +long, slender figure appeared to her almost as a physical infirmity. It +occurred to her at the instant that his bodily defects had never before +showed so plainly to her eyes, and it was with a flash of acute +self-consciousness--a flash as from a lantern that has been turned +inward--that she realised that she was comparing him with Arnold Kemper. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +SHOWS THE HERO TO BE LACKING IN HEROIC QUALITIES + + +When he had parted from Laura Adams walked down Fifth Avenue to +Thirty-fifth Street and then turned east in the direction of his own +house. He found upon entering that Connie, as usual, was dining out, and +after he had eaten his poorly served dinner alone in the dining-room, he +went upstairs with the intention of slipping into his smoking jacket and +returning to his study for a peaceful smoke. The electric lights were +blazing in Connie's bedroom, and when he went in to extinguish them, +moved by some instinct of economy, he found that the room was in even +greater disorder than that to which he had grown, after years of +uncomplaining discomfort, outwardly if not inwardly resigned. Of a +naturally systematic habit of thought, Connie's carelessness had been +for him one of those petty annoyances of daily life to meet which he had +always felt that philosophy had been especially designed; but to-night +the chaos struck him so forcibly that he found himself vaguely +questioning if it were possible for a human creature to sleep in such a +spot? Picking up several gowns from the middle of the floor, he returned +them to the wardrobe, and set himself to clearing the bed of an array of +satin shoes. Her silver hair brushes had fallen on the hearth rug, and +in replacing them upon the bureau his eye fell on a small, half-empty +phial lying beneath a pile of lace-edged handkerchiefs. Looking at it a +little closer he found that it contained a solution of cocaine. + +For a moment surprise held him motionless; then as if to refute and +explain away any ordinary reason for her possession of the drug, he +remembered, in a comprehensive flash the recent violent changes in her +character--her uncontrollable attacks of nervousness, her spasmodic +movements and her sudden flowing, almost hysterical, volubility of +speech. His heart contracted with a sensation like that of terror, and +he was turning away again when his glance was arrested by a heap of +crumpled bills lying loosely in one corner of the open drawer. +Recollecting that she had complained the day before of the smallness of +her allowance, he drew out the papers for a casual examination--but it +needed much less, in fact, than this to assure him that her expenses had +not only gone immeasurably beyond her own limited allowance, but that +they had considerably exceeded his slightly larger income. Her debts had +evidently run up to a sum which she had lost the courage to confess even +to herself, and, while the gravity of the situation entered into him, he +smoothed out the torn and crumpled sheets and went with them to his +study. Until to-night he had looked upon Connie's extravagance merely as +an innocent childish failing, resulting from an inherent incapacity, as +she laughingly said, "to do sums," but now as he sat under the green +lamp shade, anxiously multiplying item after item, it seemed to him that +this recent recklessness involved not only her private happiness but +his own personal honour. He was a hot-tempered man by nature, and at +first the very absurdity of her expenditures, the useless, costly +trifles which made up the amount, produced in him an unreasoning passion +of anger. Had she been in the house he would have gone to her in the +first shock of his temper, but her ceaseless pursuit of pleasure had put +her beyond his reach, so he sat silently staring at the neatly arranged +heap of papers while his exasperation cooled within him. + +Presently, still sitting motionless in his chair, he felt the absolute +quiet of the room take effect upon his mood, and with the peculiar +tolerance confirmed as much by balked ambition as by years of enforced +and bitter patience he began with a philosophic and impersonal leniency +to soften in his judgment of Connie's case. At the moment there was no +tenderness, he told himself, in the view he took, and he gave to her +merely the distant, habitual charity that he would have extended to the +stranger in the street. To give to her in the very least seemed to him +suddenly almost impossible when he remembered that from a forlornly +foolish caprice she had plunged him into a debt of several years. He had +worked hard, with broken health, in a profession of small financial +returns, but to his own simple tastes his income might have brought not +only perfect material ease, but the enjoyment of comparative luxury. +Still there was Connie--he had always in every situation remembered that +there was Connie--and in order to insure her present comfort as well as +to provide for her future livelihood, he had contrived to limit his +expenses to the merest necessities. One only gratification he had +allowed himself--his eyes travelled gloomily round his precious +book-lined walls and he found himself wondering if those particular +treasures would bring their full value in the open market? He regarded +them meditatively, almost religiously, with the impassioned eye of the +collector who is born not cultivated. Yet there were among them no +high-priced, particular rarities, for he had always counted the cost +with the deliberation which he felt to be the better part of impulse. +Financially they did not represent a great deal, he admitted; then, as +if flinching before a threatened sacrilege, he looked away again, while +he remembered with a quick recognition of the ludicrous, that among the +articles for which Connie had not paid was a pair of pearl ear-rings. +The item had taken a prominence oddly out of keeping with its +significance, and he found that it irritated him more than the thought +of objects of a decidedly greater cost. That any woman, that his wife in +particular, should want a pair of ear-rings appeared to him little short +of the barbaric. + +But the incident was trifling, and a minute later it had faded entirely +from his reflections. As he sat there in his easy-chair in the lamp +light his thoughts turned slowly backward, travelling over the tragic +yet uneventful history of his life. He remembered his childhood on a +little Western farm, the commonplace poverty of his people, and his own +burning, agonised ambition, which had sent him through college on a +pittance, swept the highest honours from his graduation year, and +wrecked at last what had been at his starting out a fairly promising +physical constitution. He recalled, too, the sleepless enthusiasm of +his last term at Harvard, the terrible exhaustion which had made his +final triumph barren, and the long illness which had brought him in the +end, with shattered health, to the door of the great specialist in lung +diseases. At this day he could shut his eyes and summon back with +distinctness the smallest detail of the interview. He went over again +his tedious wait in the outer office--the scattered magazines upon the +table, the utterly inartistic prints upon the wall, the ticking of the +tall bronze clock on the mantel, and even the number of the page he had +been reading in a periodical, for--following a methodical habit--he had +unconsciously made a mental note of the figures when he laid the +magazine aside to face the examination behind the folding doors. With +the patient attention to minutia which was a part of his literary +instinct, his memory followed the great man across the ugly yellow +squares in the carpet and fixed itself upon a row of small green bottles +standing in a wooden rack upon the table. Through the half hour of his +visit, which brief as it was casually dismissed him to his death, those +slender green phials seemed to his fancy to hold an absurd and grotesque +prominence. "In a climate like this I'd give you three years--maybe a +little longer--yes, I think I may grant a little longer," the great man +had remarked, with what seemed to Adams a ridiculous assumption of +yielding a concession. "In a dryer air you might even be good, we may +say, until thirty-five or forty." He shrugged his shoulders with a +gesture intended to convey his sympathy but which succeeded only in +expressing his personal importance, and Adams had walked out from the +stuffy little ether-smelling office with a feeling curiously like that +he had known as a boy when during a school game of football, he found +himself suddenly thumped upon the heart. On the doorstep he had stopped +and laughed aloud, struck by the persistency with which the green +bottles dominated his impressions. + +After this there had come a blank of a few weeks--a blank of which he +remembered nothing except that he had struggled like an entrapped beast +against his fate--against his fruitless labour, his sacrificed ambition, +the unavailing bitterness of his self-denial--against the world, +destiny, life, death, God! But the very intensity of his rebellion had +brought reaction, and it was in the succeeding apathy of spirit that he +had packed his few belongings and started for the Colorado country. +Behind him he was leaving all that made life endurable in his eyes, and +yet he was leaving it from some half animal instinct which caused him to +preserve the mere naked strip of existence that he no longer valued. He +hated himself for going, yet he went that he might hate himself the more +bitterly with each step of the journey. + +The lamp on his desk flared up fitfully and as he turned to lower the +wick his eyes fell on Connie's picture. The uplifted babyish face came +back to him as he had first seen it under floating cherry-colored +ribbons, and his anger of the last half-hour melted and vanished utterly +away. For the sake of those few months, when the waning fire within him +had leaped despairingly toward the flame of life, he knew that he could +never quite put Connie from his heart--for the sake of his short +romance and for the sake, too, of his child that had lived three hours. +The thin, heavily veined hand on the arm of his chair quivered for an +instant, and he felt his pulses throb quickly as if from acute physical +pain. From the pitiable failure of his marriage, from his loneliness and +disillusionment there came back to him the three hours when he had +looked upon the face of his living child--the hours of his profoundest +emotion, his completest reconciliation. He had never regarded himself as +an emotionally religious man, yet ten years ago, on the night that his +boy died, he had felt that an immortal and indissoluble part of himself +had gone out into the void. For the first time he had come to the deeper +reality of life--through the flowing of the agonised longing within +himself toward that permanent universal consciousness of which all human +longings are but detached and wandering forms. From that time death had +held for him a more personal promise; and the obligation to live, to +fulfil one's present opportunities, had become charged with another +meaning than he had been used to read into what he called his mere +animal responsibility. The boy who had died was for him in a close, an +intimate relation, still vitally alive; and with one of those quaint yet +pathetic blendings of memory with imagination the little undeveloped +soul had blossomed, not invisibly, incommunicably, but into actual daily +companionship with his thoughts. + +Sitting there under the green lamp, he himself showed as an +insignificant figure to possess an ear for the divine silences, an eye +for the invisible beauty. His long, gaunt body lay relaxed and inert +upon the leather cushions, and his knotted, bony hands--the hands of a +scholar and a thinker--were stretched, palms downward, on the rolled +arms of his chair. There was nothing in his appearance--nothing in his +worn, humorous face under the thin brown hair, to suggest the valiant +lover, the impressionable dreamer. Yet in the innermost truth of his own +nature he was both, and his grief, of which in his strange, almost +savage, reserve he had never spoken even to his wife, had softened +gradually into the gentlest of his dreams as well as the profoundest of +his regrets. "The little chap," as he always called the child, in his +thoughts, had grown for him into an individuality which for all its +nearness was yet clearly distinct from his own. Adams had lived day by +day with him, had sat face to face with him in his lamp-lighted room, +had carried him successfully through the first childish books that he +might have studied, had even launched him into the Latin he might have +learned. A boy to train, to educate, a mental companionship such as he +loved to fancy he would have found in a young, eager mind, had since his +marriage become the one burning desire of his heart, and even to-night +sitting, as he so often did, alone in his house, his thoughts dwelt with +a playful tenderness upon the boy who might have brought his _Cæsar_ to +his footstool. He was a man of instinctive moral cleanness, and even in +his imagination he had always kept the riotous senses severely in the +check of reason. In the domain of the affections he had wanted nothing +desperately, he told himself, except his child; and so intense had this +yearning of fatherhood become in him that there were moments of bitter +loneliness when he seemed almost to feel the touch of the boy's hand +upon his knee. He had strange hours, even when his dream became more +vivid to him than the pressing reality of events. + +The clicking of the latchkey as it was put into the lock aroused him +presently, and immediately afterward he heard the closing of the outer +door, a brief "Good-night!" in Connie's high-pitched voice, and her +rapid steps as they crossed the carpet in the hall. While he waited, +hesitating to follow her upstairs, his door opened and shut quickly, and +she came in and threw herself into a chair beside the lamp. Her blonde +head fell heavily back upon the cushions and the light, streaming +directly upon her face, revealed to his startled eyes all the intenser +angularities produced by the last twelve months--angularities which +seemed, somehow, to belong less to the features themselves than to the +restless intelligence which lay behind them. Connie's features had +always appeared too small for expression; too correctly formed for any +deviating individuality, but the impression made upon Adams now was that +they had grown so thin--so transparent in their fineness--that he looked +through them to the nervous animation confined and struggling in her +fragile body. The same animation throbbed like a pulse in her emaciated +bosom, which only the extreme smallness of her bones kept still lovely +in its low-cut evening gown. She was devoured, consumed by the agony of +restlessness which shook through her, directing and controlling her +slender judgment like a perpetual and imperfectly subdued convulsion of +passion. + +For an instant he looked at her in attentive silence, then, as her +fingers wrestled uncertainly with the cords of her evening wrap, he rose +from his chair and bent forward to assist her. + +"It's in a hard knot," she said irritably. "I can't undo it." + +While he released the fastening and drew back his glance fell upon the +little bluish hollows in her temples, over which the light curls were +skilfully arranged, and as he realised fully her wasted physical +resources, it seemed to him that an allusion to anything so sordid as a +mere financial difficulty would sound not only trivial but positively +indecorous as well. With a whimsical trick of memory he recalled +abruptly a man under sentence of death in a Western gaol who had +received the night before his execution a bill for a dozen bottles of +champagne. Connie's extravagance appeared to him suddenly but a kind of +moral champagne--the particular _hasheesh_ that she had chosen from +unhappy consciousness. To live at all one must live with a dream, he +knew, and to his present flashing vision it seemed that Connie's ecstasy +of possession and his own ecstasy of desire served a like end when they +transfigured for a little while the brutal actuality from which there +was no escape except by the way of a man's own soul. + +"You're ill," he said at last in a compassionate voice, "and there's +nothing for you but to get out of New York as soon as possible." + +She looked disconcerted, almost incensed, by the suggestion. + +"You can't send me to Florida," she returned, "and that's where +everybody goes at this season." + +A trembling like that of faintness which is fought off by an effort of +will ran over her, and he watched the pale, unsteady quiver of her +eyelids. + +"I will send you there--I'll send you anywhere," he said, "if you will +promise me--" + +The words were hard to come, and while he stumbled over them she looked +up with a startled exclamation. Her glance travelling to his face, swept +over the desk beside which he stood and was arrested by the pile of +unpaid bills, which he had pushed, as he spoke, further away from the +lamp light. A hot, angry flush overspread her face, and she made a +nervous movement that brought her to her feet with a spring. + +"You had no right to look at them," she burst out sharply, "they are all +wrong. Half of them were not meant for me." + +The lie was so foolish, so ineffectual and without excuse, that he +flinched and turned his eyes away--for the shame of it seemed to belong +less to her than to himself. At the instant he was conscious of a +stinging sensation in his veins as of a man who realises for the first +time that he has fallen into dishonour. + +"I did not mean to mention that--at least not now," he said quickly. +"We'll call it off and try to keep clean out of debt in the future. I +fear your allowance does seem rather shabby to you, but it can't be +helped. It takes every cent of the balance to run the house and pay my +life insurance." + +He waited an instant, hoping that his matter-of-fact statement of the +situation--his freedom from implied reproach--might call forth some +expression, however slight, of her appreciation. But her glance flashed +over him, critical, disapproving, and he became aware, through a wonder +of intuition, that even at the moment she was possessed by her passion +for externals, was weighing his personal details as he stood in the lamp +light, and deciding impartially that he made but a poor physical +showing. Her unfavourable verdict was impressed upon him so strongly +that it produced a revulsion of anger. He felt, somehow, that their +positions were reversed, that she had him now at her mercy, and failing +to reduce him by flattery, had chosen to wither him by contempt. + +"There's not a woman I know who could dress decently on what I have," +she rejoined, skilfully adjusting him into the necessity of defence. + +He gathered up the papers, and placing them in a drawer of his desk, +closed it sharply. There was a sordid indecency about the discussion +which stung him like the stroke of a whip. + +"I am sorry," he returned coolly, "but I have done my best. There is +nothing more to be said." His eyes lingered for a moment on her thin +bosom where the bones were beginning to be faintly visible through the +ivory flesh. Then he looked at her sharpened face and saw that the three +little wrinkles were stamped indelibly between her eyebrows. As he +watched her she lifted her head with the babyish tilt he had first seen +under cherry-coloured ribbons. "I will find the money to send you to +Florida," he said slowly, "if you will promise me--to give up drugs." + +She gathered her wraps about her and made a movement as if to leave the +room. "Drugs! Why, how ridiculous!" she exclaimed with a laugh, though +he felt the cold edge of hatred in her voice. + +Still laughing, she went out and up the staircase, and a few minutes +afterwards he heard her nervous step in the room above. He took out the +bills again and spent half the night in the effort to realise the exact +amount of his indebtedness. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +IN WHICH A LIE IS THE BETTER PART OF TRUTH + + +At breakfast Connie did not appear--she had seemed to be asleep when he +went into his dressing-room--and it was not until one o'clock that he +had a chance to speak to her again. Luncheon was already on the table +when he entered the dining-room, and Connie, in a green velvet gown and +a little green velvet hat ornamented by a twinkling aigrette, was +standing by the window looking out restlessly at the falling snow. As he +came in she went over to the table and began making tea with nervous +hands. She was apparently in the highest spirits, and while she fumbled +noisily with the cups and saucers she rambled on in her expressionless +voice with tinkling interludes of her shrill, falsetto laughter. As he +watched her in shamed silence he remembered with astonishment that it +had taken him almost ten years to find out that Connie was vulgar. Now +at last his eyes were opened--he had achieved a standard of comparison +and he felt her commonness with an awakening of his literary instinct, +quite as acutely, he told himself, as he should have felt it had she +been presented to him in the form of a printed page. The sense of +remoteness, of strangeness, grew upon him at each instant; he realised +the uselessness of his good intentions toward her--the utter +impossibility of snatching her or any human creature from the clutch of +temperament. + +Her day was filled with engagements, she told him at the end of luncheon +when she rose to hurry off while he still lingered over his coffee; "and +I shan't be here to dine, either," she added, as an after thought. "Gus +Brady will come for me--there's the opera and a supper afterwards, so +you needn't trouble to sit up." + +"But whom are you going with?" he enquired, filled for the first time +with a painful curiosity concerning the social body in which Connie +moved. + +She shook her head with a gesture of irritation, while the aigrette in +her hat sent out little iridescent flashes of blue and green. "Oh, you +wouldn't know if I told you," she answered impatiently, and left the +room so hastily that he felt she had meant to wriggle away from the +repeated question. What did it mean? he wondered for a minute as he +slowly sipped his coffee. Even if she should go with Brady alone, where +was the harm of it? and why should she avoid so innocent an admission. +He was of a candidly unsuspicious nature, and since in his own mind he +had seen no particular reason for infringing upon the conventions of +society they had never given him so much as an unquiet thought. +Certainly to dine at a restaurant or attend so public a function as +grand opera with a person of the opposite sex, seemed to him a +singularly harmless choice of indiscretions, and had she made a careless +avowal of her intention the matter would probably have dropped at the +moment from his thoughts. But the very secretiveness of her manner--the +suggestion of a hidden motive which dwelt in her nervous movements and +even quivered in the little scintillating aigrette on her blonde +head--aroused in him if not a positive distrust, still a bewildering and +decidedly unpleasant confusion of ideas. He felt, somehow, vaguely +impelled to action, yet for the life of him, he admitted after a moment, +he could see no single direction in which action with regard to his wife +would not savor of the indiscreet, if not of the ridiculous. The +attitude of an aggrieved husband had always showed to him as something +laughable, and an explosion of jealousy had never appeared more vulgar +than it did while he sat patiently conjecturing if such a domestic +cyclone might be counted upon to shake Connie to her senses. In the end +he gave it up as a farce which he felt it would be beyond the power of +his gravity to sustain. "I'll do anything in reason, heaven knows," he +found himself confessing, after the instant's reflection, "but I'll be +hanged before I'll set out in cold blood to play the fool." + +The front door, closing with a bang, brought him instantly to his feet +and, glancing through the window, he saw Connie about to step into a cab +which she had signalled from the sidewalk. Her velvet gown trailed +behind her, and she appeared perfectly unconcerned by the fact that she +had sunk above her ankles in the heavy snowdrifts. A moment later, when +she lifted her train to enter the cab, he discovered to his amazement +that she was wearing low kid shoes with the thinnest of silk stockings. +Then, before he could raise the window for a protest, the cab rolled off +in the direction of Fifth Avenue, and, wet feet and twinkling feather, +she was out of sight. + +By the time he had got into his overcoat and followed her into the +street, the snow had begun to fall more rapidly in large powdery +flakes, which soon covered him in a thick, frosty coating from head to +foot. As he walked briskly toward his office, he noticed with a +quickened attention the women who like Connie, with nervous faces +showing above elaborate gowns, were borne swiftly past him in hired +cabs. Something, he hardly knew what, had opened his eyes to that +glittering life of the world of which he had always been profoundly +ignorant, and it seemed to him suddenly that the distance between +himself and his wife had broadened to an impassable space in a single +night. Connie was no longer the girl whom he remembered under +cherry-coloured ribbons. She came in reality no closer to him than did +the tired, restless women, with artificially brightened faces, who +appeared to his exhausted eyes to whirl past him perpetually in cabs. A +passionate regret seized him for the thing which Connie was not and +could never be again--for the love he had never known and for the +fatherhood that had been denied him. + +He had turned, still plunged in his thoughts, into a quiet cross street +where a crowd of ragged urchins were snowballing one another in a noisy +battle; and as he paused for an instant to watch the fight he noticed +that a man, coming from the opposite direction, had stopped also and +stood now motionless with interest upon the sidewalk. The peculiar +concentration of attention was the first thing which Adams remarked in +the stranger--from his absorbed level gaze it was evident that mentally +at least he had thrown himself for the moment into the thickest of the +battle, and there was a flush of eager enjoyment in the face which was +partially obscured by the falling snow flakes. Then, quick as a flash of +light, something pleasantly familiar in the watching figure, gripped +Adams with the memory of a college battle more than fifteen years ago, +and he burst out in an exclamation of pleased surprise. + +"You're Arnold Kemper and I'm Roger Adams," he said, laying his hand +upon the other's arm. + +Kemper wheeled about immediately, while the smile of placid amusement in +his face broadened into a laugh of delighted recognition. + +"Well, by Jove, it's great!" he responded, and the heartiness of his +handshake sent a tingling sensation through Adams' arm. "I don't know +when I've been so pleased for years. Been to luncheon?" + +"I've just had it," laughed Adams, remembering that fifteen years ago, +when he last saw him, Kemper had extended a similar invitation with the +same grasp of hearty good fellowship. Was it possible that the man had +really kept his college memories alive? he wondered in a daze of +admiration, or had he himself merely awakened by his reappearance a +train of associations which had lain undisturbed since their last +parting. Let it be as it might, Adams felt that the encounter was of the +pleasantest. + +"I'm driven like a slave back to office drudgery," he added, "and I'm +half inclined to envy you your freedom and your automobiles." + +Kemper's eyes shot back an intimate curiosity. "So you're editor of _The +International Review_, I hear," he said. "Do you know I've had it in my +mind for years to look you up, but there's such a confounded temptation +to let things drift, you know." + +"I know," rejoined Adams, smiling. "I've drifted with them." + +"Well, I'm jolly glad that you've drifted my way at last. So you've been +to luncheon, have you?" Kemper enquired again, as he unfastened a button +of his overcoat and drew out his watch. "I wish you hadn't--I've +promised to meet a man at the club and it's past the hour. I say, look +here," he added hastily as he was about to hurry off, "I've some rather +decent rooms of my own now where I sometimes manage to get a quiet +morsel. Will you come to dine to-morrow at half-past seven, sharp?" + +It took Adams hardly an instant to consider and accept the invitation. +Though he rarely dined out he felt a positive pleasure at the thought, +and when, a minute later, he walked on again, repeating the number of +the address which the other had pressed upon him, he found that Kemper's +greeting had left a trail of cheerfulness which lingered for at least a +half hour after the man himself had gone on his genial way. If, as Gerty +Bridewell had once declared in a fit of exasperation, "Arnold Kemper +consisted of a surface," he managed at least to present those mystifying +ripples of personality which suggest to the imagination depths of +pleasantness as yet undiscovered. Adams had lived to his present age by +the help of few illusions--and he realised even now that the thing he +liked in Kemper was an effect of manner which implied an impossible +subtlety--that the power one saw in the man was produced simply by some +trick of pose, by a frankness so big that one felt intuitively there +must be still bigger qualities behind it. Whether it was all a bluster +of affectation Adams had never as yet decided in his own mind, but +there were moments when, in listening to stories of the masculine +freedom in which Kemper lived, he felt inclined to acknowledge that the +force, whatever it was, had spent itself in wind. In a profession the +man would inevitably have become a figure, he thought now with a touch +of friendly humor--in law or medicine he would have gone in for the +invincible "grand style," and the picturesqueness of his person would +have served to swell the number of his clients. It was a shabby turn of +fortune, Adams admitted, which in supplying Kemper with a too liberal +bank account, had made of him at the same time a driver of racing motor +cars instead of the ornament of a more distinguished field. There were +compensations doubtless, and he wondered if in this instance they had +centred in the fascinations of an operatic Juliet? + +Upon reaching his office he found that he was late for an interview he +had appointed with a famous Russian revolutionist, who had promised him +an article for the _Review_. It was the time of the month when they were +making up the forthcoming number, and he was kept late over a discussion +of the leading paper, which, owing to the sudden death of a literary +personage of distinction, he had been compelled to replace at the last +moment. + +His office was a small, dingy room on the eighth floor of a building in +Union Square, and his privacy was guarded by the desks of his +secretaries placed directly beyond the threshold. These assistants were +young men of considerable promise, he liked to think--college graduates +and temperamental hero-worshippers, who adored him with an ardour which +he found at once disconcerting and ridiculous. He had been used, +however, to so little personal appreciation in his life that he had +grown of late to look forward, with pathetic eagerness, to the hearty +morning greeting of his fellow-workers--for one of whom, a +fresh-coloured youth named Baldwin, he had come to cherish a positive +affection. It was stimulating to feel that somewhere he counted for +something in his bodily presence--even though the scene of his +importance was confined to the little smoke-stained office among the +chimney pots. + +When, at the end of the day, he came out into the street again and +crossed to Fifth Avenue for his accustomed walk, he found that the snow +had ceased to fall, though a bitter wind was scattering the heavy drifts +in a succession of miniature blizzards. After the heated office the +tempestuous gale struck agreeably upon his face, and his mind, which he +had kept closely upon his work until the hour of release, began almost +with difficulty to detach itself from the fortunes of the _Review_. In +the effort to compel rather than seek distraction, he put his +imagination idly on the scent of the people in the street--ran down in +fancy the history of a woman in a purple velvet gown and a bedraggled +petticoat, catalogued an athletic young Englishman who tugged at his +heels a reluctant bulldog, and wove a tragic romance around a pretty +girl in a shabby coat who stood in a staring ecstasy before a window +filled with imitation jewels. Then two men, smoking cigars, came up +suddenly behind him and he amused himself with guessing at the brand of +the tobacco, which had a remarkably fragrant aroma. + +"The only thing I know against her," said one of the men with a laugh as +he went by, "is that she dines alone with Brady. If you see nothing in +that beyond the simple act of dining--" + +Reaching a corner they turned off abruptly down a cross street and the +rest of the sentence passed with the speaker into an obscurity of fog. +For an instant it did not occur to Adams to connect the phrase with an +allusion to his wife; then as he repeated it mechanically in his +thoughts, there sprang upon him, like some sinister outward visitation, +an indefinable horror--a presentiment which he dared not whisper even to +himself. Pshaw! there were perhaps, a dozen women who dined with Brady, +he insisted reassuringly, and for the matter of that, there were +probably a dozen Bradys. The name was common enough, and the only decent +thing to do was to get rid of the suspicion and to apologise to Connie +in his thoughts. To impute a low motive to a simple action had always +seemed to him the vulgarity of littleness, and littleness in a man he +had come to look upon as a kind of passive vice. So until the event +proved the necessity of action, he was determined that there should be +no "black bats" among his thoughts. Had he loved Connie there might have +been perhaps more passion and less conscience in his treatment of the +situation, but the humour of the philosopher had for many years replaced +in his nature the ardour of the lover. What he gave to her was the +inflexible code of honour which he observed in his association with his +own sex. + +At Fortieth Street he was about to turn back again when he was arrested +by the sound of his own name called by a passing voice, and looking up +he saw Perry Bridewell spring from a cab which had hastily driven up to +the sidewalk. + +"Wait a bit, will you, Adams?" said Perry, waving one heavily gloved +hand while he reached up with the other to pay the driver. "You're the +very man I'm after," he added an instant later as he turned from the +curbing, "so if you don't mind I'll walk a couple of blocks in your +direction. I'd just got into my dinner clothes," he explained, fastening +his fur-lined overcoat more snugly across his chest, "when I found that +Miss Wilde was going down alone to Gramercy Park. That's where I've come +from, and now I'm rushing back to keep an engagement Gerty has made for +dinner. I'll be hanged if I know where she's taking me--it's all one to +me, half the time I forget to ask whose house we're going to until I +bolt into the drawing-room. Beastly life, this everlasting eating in +other people's houses." + +His tone was one of amiable discontentment, but there was a look of +positive annoyance upon his handsome face, and he turned presently to +regard his companion with an enquiry which might have been darkly +furtive had not the luminous publicity in which he moved rendered the +smallest of his mental processes so brilliantly overt. It was +immediately plain to Adams that the jerky sentences were shot out at +random in order that Perry's slow mind might gain a larger space in +which to grope for the word he really wanted. There was something +evidently behind it all, and until the situation should disclose itself +they walked on in an embarrassed and waiting silence. In his top hat and +his mink-lined overcoat Perry presented an ample dignity which his +companion found almost overpowering in its male magnificence. That +hesitation should manifest itself amid such a pageantry of personality +reminded Adams of the beggars in the old nursery rhyme who had come to +town sporting velvet gowns. Everything about Perry Bridewell was built +on so opulent a scale that in thinking of him one found oneself using +almost unconsciously a Romanesque and florid diction. + +"There is something you'd like to say to me," suggested Adams presently. +"I'm in no hurry, of course, but isn't this as good a time as any +other?" + +"By Jove, that's just what I was thinking," returned Perry, with a burst +of confidence, "but it isn't really anything, you know--that is, I mean, +it isn't anything that--that's real business." + +A pretty woman passed suddenly under the electric light, and even in his +embarrassment, which was great, he followed her with the animated glance +which he instinctively devoted to vanishing feminine beauty. + +"Thank God, there's no real business between us," retorted Adams, "and +that's why it's a rest to spend a half-hour with you--because you don't +know a piece of literature from a publisher's advertisement." + +"We're such old friends, you know," pursued Perry, forgetting the moment +which he had wasted upon the pretty woman, "that when there's a thing on +my mind I feel--well, I feel a--a deuced queer fish not to tell you." + +Adams laughed good naturedly. + +"For heaven's sake don't remain long in a fishy sensation," he +rejoined. "Let's have it out and over. By the way, may I ask if it +concerns you or me?" + +Perry shook his head as he tugged nervously at his fair moustache. "Look +here, old man," he said at last, "I know, of course, that Mrs. Adams is +as innocent as a baby--Gerty's just like her and there are plenty of +women made that way. It's the men who are such confounded brutes," he +commented with pensive morality. + +"Oh, is that it?" responded Adams, and he turned upon the other a look +that was coolly interrogative. "Come, now, we'll take it quietly. You're +one of the best friends I have, and I want to know what they're saying +about my wife." + +"It's that damned Brady!" exclaimed Perry, while he felt for his +handkerchief, and blew his nose with violence. + +"All right--it's that damned Brady?" repeated Adams. + +"If I didn't think more of you than of any man on earth I'd be shot +before I'd tell you," protested Perry, and added with a desperate rush +under fire. + +"He had too much champagne last night--though, as for that matter, I've +seen him upset by a cocktail--and afterward at billiards he told Skinker +that--that Mrs. Adams--you understand, old chap, it's all his rot--was +going to supper alone with him to-night--in his rooms after the opera. +Of course he was drunk and I wouldn't bet a cent on his word even when +he's sober. He's the kind of fool that tells of his conquests at the +club," he wound up with scathing contempt. + +For a moment Adams, looking away from him, stared silently into a shop +window before which he stood--intent apparently upon the varied display +of antique silver. Then he turned squarely to Perry Bridewell and broke +into a short, hard laugh. + +"Well, Brady lied," he said. "I promised Mrs. Adams that I would bring +her home from the opera." It was no hesitation in his own voice, but the +joyful relief which shone at him from Perry's face that brought him +suddenly to a stop. "You were a first-rate fellow to come to me," he +went on more quietly. "Of course, you know, our Western conventions are +much more elastic than your New York ones. All the same--" + +"I merely wanted to let her know the kind of man he is," explained +Perry. "What do women understand about the men they meet--why, we all +look pretty much alike upon the surface." Then his righteous anger got +the better of his philosophy and he broke out in a heartfelt oath. "Damn +him! I'd like to thrash him clean out of his skin!" + +"I am glad you told me," was all Adams said, but there was a reserved +strength in his voice which made the explosive violence of the other +sound the merest bravado. As he spoke the light flashed in his face, and +Perry saw that it was the face of an old and a tired man. There was a +shrinking in his eyes as of one who has stumbled unexpectedly upon a +revolting sight. + +Of the many and varied emotions which had entered Perry's life, the +cleanest, perhaps, was his loyal regard for Roger Adams. It had begun +with his college days, had strengthened with his manhood, and had +lasted, in spite of the amiable contempt in which he held all +literature, with a constancy which had certainly not belonged to his +affairs with representatives of the opposite sex. Now as he looked at +Adams' haggard face under the electric light, he felt the tugging of a +sympathy so strong that it seemed to hurt him somewhere in his expansive +chest. + +"Look here, old chap, come and dine with me at Sherry's," he burst out, +"and I'll telephone Gerty that I've thrown over that beastly dinner." + +To offer something to eat to the afflicted was the solitary form in +which consolation appeared to him invested with solidity; and so earnest +was the generous impulse by which he now felt himself to be prompted, +that before Adams could reply to the invitation he had begun already to +run over mentally the courses he was prepared to order. For a colossal, +a consolatory, an unforgettable dinner he was determined that it should +be--such a dinner as he permitted himself only upon the rare occasions +when one of his intimate friends had lost heavily in stocks or been +abandoned by his wife. "Come to Sherry's," he urged again, halting in +the ecstatic working of his mind, "and I promise you that we will make +an evening." + +But the sly incarnate devil which lurked in Adams in the form of an +ironic spirit asserted itself with an explosion which shook the +plethoric gravity with which Perry contemplated an orgy of indigestion. +The universal scheme appeared planned to fulfil the law of a Titanic +humour, and his own credulity and Connie's indiscretions showed suddenly +to Adams as mere mote-like jests which circled in a general convulsion +of Nature's irony. + +"Well, you are a capital fellow," he stammered, after a moment, while +the spasm of his unholy laughter rocked him from head to foot. "I--I'd +like it of all things--but I can't. The fact is it is all so funny--the +whole business of life." + +Even as he uttered the words he realised that to Perry they would convey +an infamous lightness, but at the thought his hysterical humour +redoubled in its energy. It was as if he stood outside--afar off--and +watched as a god the little tangled eccentricities of earth. And they +_were_ little, even though Perry should continue to regard the situation +with such large magnificence. + +By the time, however, that he had parted from Perry Bridewell and turned +in at his own door, the gravity of the occasion had grown almost +oppressive in his reflections. Connie had gone an hour before--he was +too late to have detained her upon a pretext--and while sitting +speechless before the dinner he could not eat--his heated imagination +wove visions of horror in which his wife was entangled as a fly in a +spider's web. What if Connie were really possessed by the influence of +some drug which rendered her incapable of willing rationally? What if he +missed her at the entrance to the opera? Or what if--most desperate +supposition--she should, in the event of his finding her, refuse to +accept his manufactured excuse to recall her home? She was capable, he +knew, of any recklessness, but he had never for an instant conceived her +as walking open eyed into dishonour, and he felt again the awful, if +partly comforting conviction that she was not herself--that an infernal +drug was working in her and bending her to some particular uses of the +devil. Why had she wasted her beauty and even her life? he wondered +bitterly--and did the moment's mad exhilaration compensate for the slow +deliberate eating away of her moral consciousness? He recalled again the +violent flutter of her manner, the excitement as of intoxication in her +voice, the yellow tinge which had crept gradually over the ivory of her +skin; her spasmodic movements and the ineffectual lies which deluded +neither of them for an instant. The tragedy of life rose before him as +vividly as the humour of it had done an hour ago--a tragedy which was +hideous because it was ignoble, in which there was neither the beauty of +resignation nor the sublimity of defiance. Had there been the +least--even the smallest redeeming honesty in the situation he felt that +he might have faced it, if not with positive sympathy yet with a +tolerant, a merciful comprehension. Love he might have understood--for +women needed it, he knew, and he was burdened by no delusion concerning +the place he occupied in Connie's horizon. But before the breathless +chase of excitement in which she lived, the frenzied invocation of +pleasure that filled her thoughts, he found himself groping blindly for +some meaning which would explain the thing it could not justify. + +The hours dragged so heavily that by ten o'clock he put on his overcoat +and snow-shoes and went out again into the street. He was possessed at +the moment by a growing fear of missing Connie, and as he walked toward +the opera house he had sense of a premonition almost occult in power +that the terrible destiny which had her in its clutch was gathering +energy for some pitiless catastrophe. With characteristic patience he +searched his own conscience, the incidents of his daily life, and held +himself rather than his wife to account. After all, he was the stronger +of the two, and yet when had he put forth his strength or his pity on +her behalf? In the closer human relations mere indifference showed +suddenly as sin, and the sluggish spirit which had controlled his +married life appeared in his memory as a form of moral apathy. Was a +human soul so small a thing that it could perish at his side and he be +none the Wiser? What was his boasted intellect worth if it could +paralyse the human part of him and exhaust the fount of his compassion? +In his widening vision he saw that in the spirit of things humanity is +one and indivisible, a single organism held together by a common pulse +of life. To live or to die apart he realised, is beyond the scope of an +individual destiny, for in the eye of God each man that lives is the +keeper not of his own but of his brother's soul. + +The self reproach which moved in his heart impelled him so rapidly upon +his way that when he reached the doors he had still an hour to wait +before the opera ended. Remembering that if he were so fortunate to find +Connie he must take her home, he went to a livery stable for a carriage, +and then coming back, walked nervously up and down upon the frozen +pavement. His mind was divided between the fear that she might leave by +another entrance--that he might miss her altogether--and the more +horrible dread that in seeing her he should be unable to prevail upon +her to come away. She might, he felt, demand a reason, exact from him +the meaning of his unexpected appearance; there was even a hideous +possibility that she might fly into a temper. + +The wind was bitter and he went into the lobby, where a few men were +hurrying out to secure their carriages. Then at last came the crowd in +evening dress, and it seemed to him that the acuteness of his perception +was reinforced by an almost unnatural power of vision. Out of the moving +throng the face of each woman stood forth distinctly as if relieved by a +spectral illumination; and he saw them clearly one after one, fair or +dark, plain or beautiful, until from among them there shone toward him +the elaborately arranged blonde head of Connie, under a winking diamond +which shed over her an unbecoming light. He had hoped to the last that +she would be with several others, but he perceived when she came out at +Brady's side, with her babyish chin tilted upward and her thin features +working in a forced and unhealthy animation, that they were alone and +would probably be alone for the remainder of the evening. + +Standing beyond the entrance, and watching her unseen, while she paused +for an instant in the crowded lobby, Adams felt again the strange stir +of emotion he had experienced when he looked at her the evening before +under the lamplight in his study. In a single vivid instant he saw her +winking diamonds, her rouged cheeks, the nervous flutter that shook her +fragile figure, and the consuming fire which was destroying the +appealing prettiness of her face. Then he looked deeper still to the +naked terrified soul of her, caught in a web from which, because of her +weakness, there could be no escape. + +There was no room in his heart now for any other feeling than one of +agonised compassion, and as she came through the doorway he touched her +arm and spoke in a voice which had the sound of a caress. "I've just had +bad news, Connie, so I came to find you." + +She started violently, her hand dropped from her companion's arm, and +she stood trembling from head to foot like a blade of grass that is +shaken by a high wind. "What do you mean? What is it?" she demanded. + +After lifting his hat to Brady he had not noticed him again, and now he +bent upon his wife a look of gentle, if unyielding, authority. "I'll +tell you presently--in the carriage," he said, drawing her wrap more +closely about her throat. "I have one waiting at the corner." + +He saw her look at him in a frightened hesitation; saw, too, that even +in the quiver of her alarm she had taken in the unflattering details of +his appearance--his ordinary business overcoat, the blue silk muffler +about his neck, and even the bespattered condition of his rubber shoes. +For an instant she glanced uncertainly at Brady's immaculate evening +dress showing beneath his open fur-lined overcoat, and knowing her as he +did, Adams read her appreciation of the contrast as plainly as if it had +been written in her face. + +But he was not moved by the knowledge of her criticism, nor did it shake +him in the least from that penetrating vision he had attained. The +instinct for battle was alive and quick within him--if Connie was to be +saved he knew that he must fight single-handed with the powers of evil +for her soul. And fight he would--it was the end for which a man was +born--that he might overcome and so justify the spirit about the brute. + +Her hand hung at her side, and taking it in his, he slipped it under his +arm with a possessive air, while she made to Brady some hurried excuses +in a trembling voice. For a moment still she hung back, but Adams drew +her gently with him, and after the first few steps, she recovered +herself and walked rapidly to the waiting carriage. Inside she shrank +back immediately into a corner from which, when they had rolled off, she +sent forth a nervous question. "What is it? Tell me what it is?" she +asked. + +The tremor that shook her limbs, her utter helplessness before him, +touched his heart with a compassion beside which his old emotion for her +showed as a small and trivial thing. All that was divine in him awoke +and responded to the horror that looked from her face, and he felt +suddenly that until this instant he had never loved her. Now she was +really his because now she needed him; but for him she would stand +alone, deserted and afraid, in that future to which she had turned with +such pitiable and childlike ignorance. She and the fight were both in +his hands, and he was bracing himself to resist until the end. + +"I'll tell you if you wish," he said, "but you mustn't let it give you a +sleepless night." + +As they turned a corner an electric light flashed into the darkness of +the carriage lighting up her blonde hair and the sparkling diamonds +which made her blue eyes look dull and lifeless. "It is--is it anything +about money?" she asked with a movement toward him. + +"It's about nothing more important than that consummate ass you were +with," he answered, laughing as he reached out and took her hand in his +with a friendly pressure. "I've just found out that he's a blackguard, +and I thought you were too precious to be left an instant longer in his +company. We must be careful, dear," he added. "God knows I'll do my best +to help you--but we must be careful" + +"Oh!" she cried out sharply, in a high voice. "Oh!" and she shrank from +him as if he had hurt her by his touch. It was all she said, but the +word quivered in his ears with a suppressed emotion. Was it thankfulness +for her escape? he wondered, or was it anger at the part that he had +played? + + + + +PART II + +ILLUSION + + + + +CHAPTER I + +OF PLEASURE AS THE CHIEF END OF MAN + + +On the morning after his meeting with Adams, Arnold Kemper awoke at +three minutes of nine o'clock, and lay for exactly the three minutes +that were needed to make up the hour watching the hand as it moved on +the face of the bronze clock upon his mantel. The clock, like everything +in his rooms, was costly, a little ornate, and suggestive of an owner +whose intention aimed frankly at the original. + +Lying in his large mahogany bedstead, with his body outstretched between +soft yet crisply ironed linen sheets, and his head placed exactly in the +centre of the pillows, he waited, yawning, until the expected hour +should strike. If by an effort of will he could have put back the minute +hand for another quarter of an hour he felt that it would have been +pleasant to doze off again, shutting his eyes to the sunlight which +streamed through the window on the Turkish rug, and inhaling agreeably +the aroma of boiling coffee which reached him through the open door of +his sitting-room. With the thought he closed his eyes, stretched himself +again and clasped his hands sleepily above his head; then, without +warning, the clock struck in a deep, bronze-like tone, and with a +vigorous movement, he sprang out of bed, flung his dressing-gown across +his shoulders, and passed quickly to the cold plunge in his +dressing-room. When he reappeared there was a fresh, healthy glow in his +face, and the smile with which he knotted his green figured necktie +before the mirror, stuck his black pearl scarf pin carefully in place, +and twisted the short ends of his brown moustache, was that of a man who +begins his day in a blithe and friendly humour. + +In the dining-room, which opened from his sitting-room next door, his +breakfast was already awaiting him, and beside his plate he found +several letters and the morning papers. He read the letters first, but +with a single exception they proved to be bills, and after glancing at +these with a suspicious frown he tossed them aside and turned to the +little square white envelope, which contained an invitation to dine from +a woman whom he detested because she bored him with domestic complaints. +His heavy brows gathered darkly over his impatient gray eyes, and he +pushed the mail carelessly away to make room for his coffee, to which +his man was adding a precise amount of cream and sugar. + +"Don't let me forget to answer that, Wilkins," he said, in an annoyed +tone; "the response must be sent this afternoon, too, without fail." + +"I don't think you wrote the notes you spoke of yesterday, sir," +observed Wilkins, with an English accent and a manner of respectful +intimacy. + +"Hang it all! I don't believe I did," returned Kemper, as he drew his +chair up to the table and tapped his egg shell. "That comes of letting a +thing you hate to do go over. I say, Wilkins, if I attempt to leave this +room before I've answered those letters, you're to restrain me by +force, do you hear?" + +"Yes, sir; certainly, sir," replied Wilkins, as he went out to bring in +the toast. + +Kemper laid his napkin across his knees, leaned comfortably back in his +chair, and unfolded one of the morning papers beside his plate. As he +did so he expanded his lungs with a deep breath, while his glance +travelled rapidly to the column which contained the day's reports of the +stock market. He knew already that the Chericoke Valley Central in which +he had invested had jumped thirty points and was still advancing, but he +read the printed statements with the exhaustless interest with which a +lover might return to a love letter he had already learned by heart. His +faith in the Chericoke Valley Central stock was strong, and he meant to +keep a close grip on it for some time to come. + +Turning a fresh page presently, his eyes wandered leisurely over the +staring headlines, and came suddenly to a halt before a trivial item +inserted among the Western news. It was a brief notice of his divorced +wife's marriage, and to his amazement the announcement caused him an +annoyance that was almost like the ghost of a retrospective jealousy. It +was quite evident to him that he did not want her for himself, yet he +suffered a positive displeasure at the thought that she should now +belong to another man. After the ten years since they had separated was +she still so "awfully splendid?" he wondered, had she kept her figure, +which was long, athletic, with a military carriage, and did she still +wear her hair in the fashion of a German omelette? "Thank heaven I'm +well out of it at any rate," he commented with feeling. "That comes of a +man's marrying before he's twenty-five. He's turned cynic before he gets +to forty"; and marriage appeared to him in his thoughts as a detestable +and utterly boring institution, which interfered continually with a +man's freedom and exacted from him a perpetual sociability. The most +blissful sensation he had ever known, he told himself, was that of his +recovered liberty; then his sincerity of nature compelled him to an +honest contradiction--he had known one emotion more blissful still and +that was the madness which had prompted him to his unfortunate marriage. + +Oh, he had been very much in love without a doubt! and while he sat +peacefully drinking his two cups of coffee, eating his two eggs and his +four pieces of toast with orange marmalade, he remembered, with a +melancholy which in no wise affected his appetite, the first occasion +upon which he had kissed the woman who had been his wife. The memory of +her tall, erect figure, with its dashing military carriage, aroused in +him an agreeable and purely physical regret--the kind of regret which is +strong enough only to sweeten the knowledge of past pleasures; and he +admitted with his accustomed frankness that if he had never kissed her +again he should probably have continued to regard her with a charming, +if impractical, sentiment. But marriage had brushed off the bloom of +that early romance; and as he recognised this, he felt a keen resentment +against nature which had cheated him into believing that the illusion of +love would not vanish at the first touch of reality. + +He had lived upon the surface of things and the surface had contented if +it had not satisfied him. It had never entered his thoughts to question +if he had had from life the best that it could offer, but he had +sometimes wondered, in moments of nervous exasperation against small +events, why it was that there could be no end under the sun to a man's +pursuit of the fugitive sensation. When he looked back now over the +breathless years of his life, he saw, almost with indignation, that +whatever punishment fate had held in reserve for him, the avenger had +inevitably appeared in the form his own gratified desire. He had +withheld his hand from nothing; the thing that he had wanted he had +taken without question--impulse and possession had flowed for him with a +rhythmic regularity of movement--and yet in glancing back he could place +his finger upon no past events and say of them "this brought me +happiness--and this--and this." In retrospect his pleasures showed cheap +and threadbare--woven of perishable colours, of lost illusions--and he +felt suddenly that he had been cheated into a false valuation of life, +that he had been deluded into a childish yet irretrievable error. + +As he sat there over his paper, he remembered his impatient early love, +his ecstatic marriage, and then the long years during which he had +lived, as he put it to himself, in a "mortal funk" of the divorce court. +Not moral obligation, but social cowardice, he admitted, had held him in +a bondage from which his wife had at last liberated him by a single +blow. Well, it was all over! he heaved a sigh of relief, emptied his +coffee cup, and dismissed the subject, with its oppressive train of +associations, from his mind. + +But his temperamental blitheness had suffered in the chill of +recollection, and he frowned down upon the staring headlines which +ornamented the open page before him. His face, which recorded unerringly +the slightest emotional change through which he passed, grew suddenly +heavy and was over clouded by a momentary fit of gloom. He had not seen, +had hardly thought of his former wife, once in the ten years since their +separation, yet he found almost to his annoyance that the mere printed +letters of her name reinvoked her image from the darkness in which his +sentimental skeletons were laid. Two brief lines in a newspaper sufficed +to produce her as an important factor in his present life. + +And despite this she was nothing to him, had no proper business in his +mind. He tried to think of the other women whom he had loved and +remembered, or of the more numerous ones still whom he had loved only to +forget. Well, he had lived a man's life, and the deuce of it was that +women should have come into it at all. He had never wanted sentiment in +the abstract, he told himself half angrily; he was bored to death by the +deadly routine of what in his own mind he alluded to as "the business of +love." It had always come to him without his sanction--even against his +will, and he had never failed to combat the feeling with shallow +cynicism, to exhaust it speedily in racing motors. There was no +satisfaction in sentiment, of this he was quite convinced; and he +remembered the voice of Madame Alta, with her peculiar high note of +piercing sweetness, which entered like wine and honey into his blood. +The hold she still kept upon his senses through his memory was +strengthened by the knowledge which fretted him to the admission that +she had wearied first--that while her fascination was still potent to +work its spell upon him, she had fled in a half lyric, half devilish +pursuit of the flesh she worshipped. To live life thoroughly, to get out +of it all that it contained of pleasure or of experience, this was the +germ of his applied philosophy; and it was only by some fortunate mental +power of selection, some instinctive sense for comeliness, for a +well-ordered, healthful physical existence, which had left him at the +end of his forty years of pleasure with a perfectly sound and active +mind and body. He himself was accustomed to declare that though he had +lived gayly, he had lived decently, too, and he was even inclined at +times to flatter his vanity rather upon the things which he had left +undone than upon those more evident achievements which had stamped him +to his social world. A religious instinct, which was hardly definite +enough for a conviction, still survived in him, and it was entirely +characteristic of the man that he should find cause for shame, not +congratulation, in his old relations with Madame Alta. + +The last remaining bit of toast and marmalade had vanished from his +plate, and as he never allowed himself more than his usual number of +slices, he carefully brushed the crumbs from his coat, and pushing back +his chair, rose from the table. The movement, slight as it was, served +to dispel his passing dejection, and as he gathered up his papers and +passed into the adjoining sitting-room, he smiled at Wilkins with such +genial brightness that the man was almost deluded into attributing the +changed atmosphere to his own personal attentions instead of to the +agreeable sensation following upon digestion. When he left the +dining-room Kemper was already humming a little Italian air, and it was +not until he was seated, with his cigar, in an easy chair upon his +hearthrug, that he suddenly recognised the music as a favourite aria of +Madame Alta's. He had heard her sing it a hundred times, and he recalled +now that she had a trick of throwing her head back as the notes issued +from her round, white throat, until her beautiful, though coarsened +face, was seen in an admirable foreshortening, while her eyes were +shadowed by her drooping lids, which were faintly tinted to look like +rose-leaves. With the memory his expression was again overcast. Then a +pleased smile chased the heaviness from his eyes, for he remembered +suddenly that he held a firm grip on the promising Chericoke Valley +Central stock. He lighted his cigar, tossed the match into the empty +fireplace, and pushing the papers from his knees, relapsed for twenty +minutes into an agreeable vacancy of mind. + +The room in which he sat was essentially a man's room, furnished for +comfort rather than for beauty, and one saw in it an unconscious +striving after large effects, a disdain of useless bric-a-brac as of +small decorations. On the mantel the solitary ornament was an exquisite +bronze figure of a wrestler at the triumphant instant when he subdues +his opponent, a spirited and virile study of the nude male figure, and +just above it hung a portrait in oils of Madame Alta, painted in a large +black hat with a falling feather which shadowed the golden aureole of +her hair. Kemper seldom looked at the picture, and when he did so it was +with the casual glance he bestowed upon a piece of household furniture; +his emotion had been so bound up with the concrete fact of a fleshly +presence that in the continued absence of the prima donna he had found +it difficult even to realise the condition of her unchanged existence. +In his whole life the past had never engrossed him to the immediate +exclusion of the present. + +When he had finished his cigar, he rose slowly to his feet, shook +himself with an energetic movement as if to settle his body more +comfortably in his clothes, and went into the hall to put on his +overcoat before going out. Here he was overtaken by a remonstrance from +Wilkins. + +"You aren't going to the office, I hope, sir, until you've written those +notes?" + +Kemper stared at him silently an instant, one arm still in the sleeve of +the overcoat he was putting on. + +"Oh, I say, Wilkins, I'll do them at the club," he replied at last. + +Wilkins shook his head with decision written in every line of his +smooth-shaven English profile. He was faithful, he was even +affectionate, but he had been in Kemper's service for fifteen years and +he knew his man. + +"You'd better get them off now, sir," he urged in a persuasive voice, +"it won't take you a minute, and unless I post them myself, they are +like to lie over." + +"Well, I suppose you'll have your way with me, Wilkins," remarked +Kemper, as he withdrew his arm from his overcoat, which his servant +promptly took from him. "Most people do, you know." Then he turned back +into his sitting-room and placing himself at his desk, took up his pen +and accepted three invitations out of the round dozen he had to answer. +This accomplished, the discreet Wilkins gave him his hat and coat and +permitted him to depart rapidly upon his way. + +By eleven o'clock he was due at the office of the Confidential Life +Insurance Company, of which he was one of the directors, and as he +walked toward Broadway with his brisk and energetic step, he kept his +mind closely upon the business affairs which were immediately before +him. This peculiar ability to concentrate his whole being upon a single +instant, to apply himself with enthusiasm to the thing beneath his eyes, +was the quality of all others which had worked most not only for his +present worldly success, but for his personal happiness as well. When he +came out of his rooms the brief despondency of the morning had vanished +as utterly as if it had never been, and until his wife's name stared at +him anew from a printed page, it was hardly probable that she would +occur again to his thoughts. A feeling of peace, of perfect charity +pervaded his breast, and had he been asked on the spot for an expression +of his religious creed, he would, perhaps, have answered without +hesitation, "to live in pleasure and let live with pleasantness." +Naturally of a quick and humane heart there were moments when he felt an +urgent desire to give out happiness, to add his proper share to the +general sum of earthly contentment. He was a man, in fact, who might be +infallibly counted on for the "generous thing," provided always that +the "generous thing" was also the thing which he found it agreeable to +perform. In ancient Rome he would have been, without doubt, a popular +politician, in Greece a Cyrenaic philosopher, in the Middle Ages a +churchman conspicuous for his purple, and during the American Revolution +a believer in the cause that wore the most gold lace. It was not that he +was lacking in patriotism, but that his patriotism responded best to a +spectacular appeal. + +At the luncheon hour, when he came out of his office to go to his club, +he remembered that he had neglected to send roses to a woman with whom +he had dined the week before she went to a hospital for a serious +operation, and though the stop delayed his luncheon for half an hour, he +left his car at the corner of Twenty-third Street to leave an order with +his florist. Then, after a simple meal, he put in a pleasant hour at the +club, during which he managed to interest a great occulist in a chap he +knew who was threatened with blindness but too poor to pay for the +operation necessary to his recovery. It was this conversation that +recalled to him a friend who was ill with pneumonia in chambers just +around the block, and he rushed off to enquire after him, before he +attended to the unpacking of a new French motor car, and hurried to keep +an engagement he had made with Gerty Bridewell to call on Laura Wilde. A +week ago, when the engagement was made, he had been urgent with Gerty +about going, but now that the hour drew near he began to feel the +necessity of the visit to be a bore. Like all of his sensations, the +impression Laura had made upon him had been vivid but easily effaced, +and he was almost surprised at the disappointment he felt when, upon +reaching the house, he found that she was not at home. + +"It's too hard," commented Gerty, standing upon the front steps and +glancing wistfully up at him from under the white feathers in her hat, +"but there's no help for it unless you care to call on Uncle Percival." + +"Uncle Percival?" he repeated, impatiently twirling his walking stick; +"who's he?" + +"He's a curiosity." + +"What kind of curiosity? A live one?" + +She nodded. "The kind of curiosity that plays a flute." + +He began his descent of the steps, not replying until he stood with her +upon the sidewalk before her carriage. "I might have put up with a +poet," he remarked with his foreign shrug, "but I'm compelled to draw +the line before a piper." + +"Well, I thought you would," confessed Gerty, "or I shouldn't have +suggested it." + +"It seems, by the way, to be a family that runs to talent," he laughed, +while she paused a moment before entering her carriage. + +"I don't know that Uncle Percival is exactly a person of talent," she +observed, "he plays very badly, I believe. Can't I drop you somewhere? +Do let me." + +He shook his head with a quizzical humour. "To tell the truth horses +make me nervous," he returned. "I'm afraid of them--You never know what +intentions they have in mind. No, I'll walk, thank you." His gaze was +on her and she saw his eyes flash with admiration of her beauty. + +"Oh, your dreadful, soulless automobiles!" she exclaimed, with disgust. +"By the way, Laura hates them--she says they have the devil's energy +without his intellect." + +He laughed indifferently. "Does she? I'll teach her better." + +Gerty looked back to protest as she stepped into her carriage. "But +you'll never have a chance," she said. + +"I'll make one," he persisted, gayly. + +From the midst of her fur rugs she leaned out with a provoking little +laugh, while he watched her green eyes narrow in an arch and fascinating +merriment. "What would you say if I told you she was at home all the +time?" she asked. Then before he could remonstrate or reply, she rolled +off leaving him transfixed and questioning upon the sidewalk. + +Was Laura Wilde really at home? The suspicion piqued him into a +curiosity he could not satisfy, and because he could not satisfy it he +found himself dwelling with a reawakened interest upon the woman who had +avoided him. If she had in truth refused to receive his visit it could +mean only that she entertained a dislike for his presence, and for a +dislike so evident there must be surely some foundation either in fact +or in intuition. No woman, so far as he could remember--and so unusual +an occurence would not easily have slipped his memory--had ever begun +his acquaintance with a distinctly expressed aversion, and the very +strangeness of the experience was not without attraction for his eager +and dominant temperament. What a queer little oddity she was, he +thought as he glanced up at the grave old house before turning rapidly +away--as light and sensitive as thistle-down, as vivid as flame. He +tried to recall her delicately distinguished figure and profound dark +eyes, but her charming smile seemed to come between him and her +features, and her face was obscured for him in a mysterious radiance. +Her features taken in themselves were plain, he supposed, certainly they +were not beautiful, yet of her whole appearance his memory held only the +fervent charm of her expression. It was a face with a soul in it, he +though--all the mystery of flame and of shadow was in her smile, so what +mattered the mere surface modelling or the tinting of the skin which was +less ivory than pale amber. An hour ago he had been absolutely +indifferent, almost forgetful of her existence, but his vanity if not +his heart was stung now into an emotion which had in it something of the +primitive barbarian ardour of pursuit. He cared nothing--less than +nothing--for Laura Wilde herself, yet it was not in his nature that he +should suffer in silence before a sudden and unreasonable affront. + +Some hours later, when he sat with Adams at dinner, the subject occurred +to him again, and he broke in upon a discussion of the varied fortunes +of their fellow classmen to allude directly to the cause of his +inquietude. + +"By the way, I had the pleasure of meeting a protegée of yours the other +afternoon," he said. + +Adams met the remark with his whimsical laugh. "Of mine? Thank heaven I +haven't any," he retorted, "but I suppose you mean young Trent, who has +just come up from Virginia." + +"I've heard something of him from Mrs. Bridewell, I believe," answered +Kemper across the centrepiece of red carnations, "but I haven't met him +as yet--I was thinking of Miss Wilde when I spoke. I wish you'd try this +sherry--it's really first rate--I brought it over myself." + +When Wilkins had filled his glass, Adams lifted it against the light and +looked at the colour of the wine a moment before drinking. "First +rate--I should say so. It's exquisite," he observed as he touched it to +his lips in answer to Kemper's glance of enquiry. "Yes, she's done some +rather fine things," he resumed presently, returning to the subject of +Laura, "but she'll hardly make a popular appeal, I fancy, unless she +turns her talent to patriotic airs. The only poetry we tolerate to-day +is the poetry that serves some definite material purpose--it must either +send us into battle or set us to building churches. The simple spirit of +contemplation we've come to regard as a pauperising habit and it puts us +out of patience. Great poetry grows out of quiet and nobody is quiet any +longer--a thought no sooner creeps into our head than we begin to talk +about it at the top of our voice." + +The branched candlestick at the end of the table shed a glimmering, +pearly light upon his face, and Kemper, as he watched him critically, +was struck suddenly by the fact that Adams was no longer young. He could +not be over forty, yet his features had the drawn and pallid look of a +man who has known, not only ill health, but the shock of emotional +catastrophes. Physically he appeared worn to the point of exhaustion, +but if there was pathos in the slight, elastic figure, there was also an +impression of power for which the other found it impossible to account. +By mere bodily force Kemper could have thrown Adams from the window with +one hand, he realised with a perfectly amiable self-congratulation--yet +in Adams' presence he invariably felt himself to be the weaker +man, and the attitude he unconsciously adopted showed an almost +boyish recognition of a superior intelligence. Something in Roger +Adams--a quality which was neither brute strength nor imperious +personality--exerted a power which Kemper generously admitted to be +greater even than these. Nothing in the man was conspicuous--he +exercised no dominant magnetism--but the invisible spirit which +controlled his life, controlled also, in a measure, the thoughts of +those who came directly beneath his influence. Was it true, Kemper now +wondered, as Perry Bridewell had once declared with unspeakable mirth, +that the thing he liked in Adams was, after all, merely simple goodness +in a manifest form? Goodness in a masculine personality had always +appeared to Kemper to be ridiculously out of place--a masquerading +feminised virtue--but at this instant as he drank to Adams' health +across the carnations, he felt again the power of an attraction which +possessed a sweetness that made his past "wine and honey" sicken in his +memory. "Is it possible that what I admire in this man is the quality I +have laughed at all my life?" he found himself asking suddenly; and the +power of self-restraint, the grace of denial, the strength which could +do without, though it could not take the thing it wanted, the quietness +of sacrifice, the sweetened humour that is learned only in sorrow--these +showed to him at the moment in a singularly new and vivid light. "I know +nothing of his life except that he has had courage," he thought again, +"yet because of this one thing--and because, too, of a quality which I +recognise, though I cannot name it, I would trust him sooner than any +man or woman whom I know--sooner, by Jove, than I would trust myself." +Among his many generous traits was the ability to appreciate keenly +where he could not follow, to apprehend almost instinctively the finer +attributes of the spirit, and though he himself preferred the pleasures +of the senses to the vaguer comforts of philosophy, he was not without a +profound admiration for the man who, as he believed, had deliberately +chosen to forfeit the joy of life. Roger Adams impressed him to-night as +a peculiarly happy man--not with the hectic happiness he himself had +sought--but with a secure, a reposeful, an indestructible +possession--the happiness which comes not through the illusion of +desire, but which is bound up in the peace of an eternal reconciliation. +The man beyond the carnations, he knew by an intuition surer than +knowledge, had never even for an hour dallied in the primrose path where +his own pursuit of delight had begun and ended--he could not imagine +Adams' control yielding to a fleeting impulse of passion--yet had not +the very power he recognised come to his friend in the stony places +through which he had been constrained to walk with God? Sitting there +Kemper was brought suddenly for the first time in his life face to face +with the profoundest truth that lies hidden in the deeps of +knowledge--that renunciation may become the richest experience in the +consciousness of man; that to renounce for the sake of goodness is not +merely to refrain from sin but to achieve virtue; and that he who gives +up his happiness and is still happy has gained not only the beauty of +his forfeited joys, but has added to his own a strength that is equal to +the strength of his unfulfilled desire. Kemper had always believed +himself strong because he had attained, yet he knew now that Adams was +stronger than he inasmuch as he had gone without for the sake of his own +soul. + +From his reflections, which were dimly like these, Kemper came back +abruptly to his memory of Laura. "Do you know," he said, speaking to +himself rather than to his companion, "that she really interests me very +much indeed." + +"Well, she is interesting," laughed Adams, "in spite of the fact that +Perry finds her rather dull. He complains that she doesn't talk like a +book, which is a trifle odd when you consider that he has never read +one." + +"What I like about her is that she's different," said Kemper. "She is, +isn't she?" + +"Different from other people? Yes, I dare say she is, but all the Wildes +are that, you know. She comes of an eccentric stock. Did you ever happen +to meet her aunt, Mrs. Payne?" + +Kemper nodded as he leaned forward to make a division in the centre of +the intervening carnations, "The old lady who looks like a chorus girl +in her dotage? Yes, I've had the pleasure and I found her decidedly +better than she looked. Her husband, by the way, is a great old chap, +isn't he? He held the biggest share in iron last spring and I guess he +has made a pretty figure." + +"He's a philosopher who got into the stock market by mistake," observed +Adams. "I believe he would have been perfectly happy if he could have +owned a single farm, a cow or two and a pair of horses to his plough, +but he's condemned to bear the uncongenial weight of millions, and I +hear that he has even to give his charities in secret. I never look at +him that I don't think of Marcus Aurelius oppressed by the burden of the +whole Roman Empire." + +Kemper was peeling a pear, which he had taken from a dish upon the +table, and he laid down his knife for a moment to push aside his cup of +coffee. + +"Has he any children?" he asked abruptly. + +"Two--both sons and gay young birds, I'm told." + +"Then Miss Wilde will hardly come in for a share of the burden?" + +"Hardly. The sons will probably dissipate a good half of it before it +reaches them." + +"It's a pity," said Kemper thoughtfully; and having finished his pear, +he dipped his fingers in his finger bowl, moistened his short moustache, +and turned to take a cigar from the little silver tray which Wilkins +held before him. "Do you know I can't imagine a greater happiness than +the quick accumulation of wealth," he observed in his hearty voice. + +Adams laughed aloud with a merriment that was almost boyish. "Well, I +dare say you come in for your part of it," he returned, while he +flicked the ashes from his cigar. + +"I?" Kemper shook his head without a smile. "Oh, I accumulate nothing +except habits. I make and I spend--I win and I lose--and on my word I'm +no richer to-day than I was ten years ago. I've made a fortune in a +day," he added regretfully, "to lose it in an hour." + +A glow had sprung to his face, and as he spoke he leaned his elbow on +the table, and closing his eyes inhaled the delicious aroma of his +cigar. Finance interested him always--wealth in its material mass had a +tremendous attraction for him, and he loved not only the sound of +figures but the clink of coin. Though he was a lavish liver when it +suited his impulses, the modern regard for money as a concrete +possession--a personal distinction--was strong in his blood; but here, +as in other ways, he was redeemed from positive vulgarity by the very +candour with which he confessed his weakness. He drifted presently into +stocks, and they sat talking until eleven o'clock, when Adams, after +glancing in surprise at the hour, remarked, with a laugh, that he had +forgotten he no longer boasted the constitution of his college days. It +had been a pleasant evening to both, and as Kemper threw off his coat a +little later, he found himself reflecting, not without wonder, that the +quiet--the absolute inaction of the last few hours had refreshed rather +than bored him. On the whole he was inclined to admit that he liked +Adams better than any man he knew--liked his assured self-possession, +his indifference to small creature comforts; liked, too, the quiet +tolerance which characterised his human relations--and he impulsively +determined that he would arrange to see him often during the next few +years. It was time now, he concluded with an admirable midnight +resolution, while he struggled in exasperation to unfasten his collar, +that he himself should begin to pay a due regard to his health--to +restrict his indulgences; and he drew an agreeable picture of the +consolation that Adams' friendship might afford to an abstemious man of +middle age. "By Jove--confound this button--there, I've twisted it like +the deuce--by Jove, it is refreshing to be thrown with a chap who is +interested in something besides women and horses--who finds other +objects--or subjects if you choose--suffice for his entertainment." For +the first time in his life he found himself wishing regretfully that at +least a share of his own enjoyments had assumed a character which +belonged less exclusively to the external world. The joy in knowledge, +the delight in contemplation were unknown to him, though he was dimly +aware that for another man they might prove to be an unfailing, a +permanent solace. But his virtues were the magnificent virtues of the +animal, and amid the many warring impulses of the body there was but +little room for a more gracious development of the soul. He had lived +for the world and the world had repaid him as she repays all her lovers +with the fruit which is rarely bitter before the fortieth year. + +Adams, meanwhile, had walked rapidly home, thinking with enthusiasm that +Kemper was a thoroughly good fellow. His social pleasures were few, and +he had enjoyed the fine wine and the choice cigars as a man enjoys a +taste for luxury which he seldom gratifies. He had expected to find +Connie still out, but to his surprise there was a sound on the staircase +as he entered the front door, and she came rapidly to meet him, her +blonde hair hanging upon her shoulders and the soiled white silk +dressing-gown she wore trailing on the carpeted steps behind her. + +"I was all alone and I've been so frightened," she said with a sob. + +He took her hand, which felt dead and cold, and grasped it warmly while +he turned to fasten the outer door. + +"Why, I thought you were at the theatre," he responded. "I've been to +dine with Kemper, but heaven knows I'd have stayed at home if you'd told +me you meant to keep me company." + +A shudder ran through her, and he saw when he turned to look at her, +that her face was pinched and blue as if from cold. In her white gown, +under her tangled fair hair, she had a ghastly look like one just +awakened from a fearful dream. But she was very little--so little in her +terror and her blighted prettiness that his heart contracted as it would +have done at the sight of a suffering child. + +"I say, little girl, what is it all about?" he asked gently, and as she +swayed unsteadily, he put his arm around her and drew her against his +side. "Wait a minute while I turn out the light," he added cheerfully, +pressing the electric button with his free hand. Then holding her closer +in a steadying support, they ascended together the darkened staircase. + +"I went to the theatre, but I was so ill I couldn't stay," she said, and +he felt the heavy breaths that laboured through the thin figure within +his arm. "Oh, I am in agony--in agony and I am so afraid." + +She began crying in loud, uncontrollable sobs as a child cries when it +is hurt, protesting that she was afraid--that she was fearfully afraid. +He felt her terror struggling like a live thing within her--like an +imprisoned animal that could not find an escape into the light. Her +hysteria was almost akin to madness, and the form it took was one of a +blind presentiment of evil--as if she felt always in the air about her +the presence of an invisible, unspeakable horror. Half dragging, half +carrying her, he crossed the hall to her room, and laid her upon the +bed, which was tumbled as if she had lain tossing wildly there for +hours. Every electric jet was blazing high, and Connie's evening clothes +were lying in a huddled heap upon the floor. There was a sickening smell +of perfume in the room, and he saw that she had broken a bottle of +extract and spilled its contents upon the carpet. + +"Tell me what it is--tell me, Connie," he commanded, rather than +pleaded, sitting beside the bed and laying his hand upon her shuddering +body. + +"It is nothing--but it is everything," she gasped, clutching his hand +with fingers which were cold and moist. "I am not in pain--at least not +physically, but I feel--I believe--I know that I am going mad. I see +horrible things and I can't keep them away--I can't--I can't. They come +in flashes--in coloured flashes, all red and green, and there is +something dreadful about to happen to me. Oh, don't let it, don't let +it!" + +She clung to him, shuddering, sobbing, imploring, moaning again that she +was afraid, beseeching him to keep off the horror--not to let it come +any nearer--not to let it look her in the eyes. The spasm ended at last +in a wild burst of tears, while she shrieked out frantically in a terror +that was pitiable and abject. Her hallucinations seemed to have got +entirely beyond the control of reason, and as she crouched, with drawn +up knees and quivering arms, among the pillows she looked like some +small helpless, distracted mortal in the grasp of the avenging furies. +At the moment she seemed to him less his wife than his child. + +"Listen to me, Connie," he said presently in a voice whose quiet +authority silenced for an instant her despairing moans. "You haven't a +trouble on earth that I am not willing to share and I am sharing this--I +have made it mine this very minute. Whatever there is to face, I'll face +it for you, so get this into your head and go to sleep. Nothing can get +to you--neither man nor devil--until it has first passed by me. There, +now--don't sob so; don't, you'll hurt yourself. There's nothing to cry +about--it's all a false alarm." + +"I'm so afraid," she repeated over and over again, as she clung to him. +"Promise not to leave me an instant--not to take your hands off of me. +If I am left alone again I shall die of fear." + +"You shall not be alone, I swear it," he answered with cheerful +assurance. "Lie quiet and I'll sit here the whole blessed night if it's +any comfort." + +"It is a comfort," she answered; and her words entered his ears with a +piercing sweetness, which was not unlike the sweetness of love. Love it +was indeed, he knew now, but a love so sexless, so dispassionate that +its joys were like the joys of religion. The tenderness that flooded his +breast was less the emotion of man for woman than of the soul for the +soul, and the wife whom he had ceased to love in the world's way was +nearer to him, more closely, more divinely his, than she had been in the +hour of his greatest ecstasy. The appeal she made to him now, lying +there helpless, distraught and unlovely, was an appeal which is woven of +the strongest fibres in the heart of man--the appeal to the immortal +soul to arise and discover its immortality. Connie cried out to him to +save her--to save her from the world, from herself, from the hovering +powers of evil, and he knew now that his joy in the hour of her +salvation would be as the joy of the angels in heaven. He would fight +for her as he had never fought for his own life, and he felt suddenly +that there was nothing upon the earth nor in the sky that was strong +enough to contend against the power of his compassion. All lesser +desires or emotions shrank before it and vanished utterly away--his +ambition, his longing for health wherewith to work, the increasing +ardour of his love for Laura--these were as naught before the bond which +united him to the terrified, small soul that trembled beneath his hands. +And immediately that goodness at which Kemper or Perry Bridewell would +have laughed--the goodness which is spirit, which both builds and +destroys, which knows no law except the divine law of its own being; in +which there is neither the whitened surface nor the loud +self-glorification of the Pharisee--the goodness which is a pure flame, +a consuming passion--this appeared to his eyes in all its alluring +beauty. The way of it was hard, he knew, a way of service, of +self-sacrifice, and yet the one way of happiness as well. This lesson he +had learned from himself--for it is the thing that no man can teach +another--and because it had come to him from himself he knew that it had +come to him from God. + +"I made a plan on the way home to-night," he said, keeping his firm +touch upon her throbbing temples. "To-morrow I shall arrange for a +fortnight's absence at the office and the next day I'll take you South. +There you'll stay out of doors and get well again. The flesh will come +back to your body and the colour to your cheeks. + +"I shall never be pretty again--never," she moaned, as he held her. + +"Nonsense. You're a trifle pale and fagged that's all--but we'll have +you a beauty again before two weeks are up." + +And so through the long night he sat with his touch, which compelled +quiet, upon her body, for when, after she had fallen at last into a +fitful slumber, he arose and lowered the lights, she started up with a +scream and called out that she was "alone--fearfully alone!" Then, as he +returned to his chair, she reached for him in the darkness and clung +desperately to his outstretched arm, drawing it presently across her +shoulders until she lay as if shielded by the soothing familiar +presence. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +AN ADVANCE AND A RETREAT + + +It was the day after this, while Laura was still in Kemper's thoughts, +that he ran across her as she came out of a church in Twenty-ninth +Street. At the first glance she appeared a little startled, but the +disturbance was so slight that it passed swift as a shadow across her +face, and the next instant the illumining smile which he had thought of +as her one memorable beauty shone from her eyes and lips. + +"At first I hardly recognised you," she explained, "you don't look quite +as I remembered you." + +His amused glance lingered upon her face. "So you did remember me?" he +said and the retort was so characteristic of the man that Gerty +Bridewell would have paused waiting for it after she had spoken. If +there was the smallest loophole apparent in the conversation through +which the personal intention might be made to enter, he took to it as +instinctively as the fox takes to the covert. The mere uttered words +were what he might have responded to any woman who unconsciously gave +him the opportunity, yet as he looked down upon Laura, in her velvet hat +and black furs, at his side, he was filled with amazement at the +interest aroused in him by her slender, though delicately suggestive +figure. He felt the magnetic touch of her through the very flutter of +her skirts--felt the fervour of her soul, the warmth of her personality, +and he found himself attracted by her as by the mystery of a bright and +distant flame. The intensity of life--the radiant energy of +intellect--was in her look, in her voice, in her smile--and he knew +instinctively that she was capable of larger issues--of higher heights +and deeper depths--than any woman he had ever known. She puzzled him +into a sympathy which quickened with each fresh instant of uncertainty, +and it seemed to him, while she moved by his side, that the illusion of +mystery was the one perennial charm a woman could possess--a mystery +which lay not only in the flame and shadow of her expression, but in the +intenser irregularities of her profile, in the curved darkness of her +eyebrows, in the fulness of her mouth, in the profound eloquence of her +eyes, in the pale amber of her skin, which was like porcelain touched by +a flame, in her gestures, in her walk, in her delicate bosom and slender +swaying hips, in her voice, her hands, her words, and in the blackness +of her abundant hair braided low upon the nape of her slender neck. And +this illusion--stronger than the illusion of beauty because more subtle, +more tantalisingly inexplicable, caught and held his attention with a +vivid and irresistible appeal. + +At his words she had turned toward him with an animated gesture, while +her hand in its white glove slipped from the large muff she held. + +"It would be a poor memory that could not hold three days," she laughed. + +"Three days?" He raised his eyebrows with a blithe interrogation which +lent a peculiar charm to his expression. "Why, I thought that I had +known you forever!" + +She shook her head in a merry protest, though she felt herself flush +slowly under the gay deference in his eyes. + +"Forever is a long day. There are few people that it pays to know +forever." + +"And how do you know that you are not one of them--for me?" he asked. + +"How do I know?" she took up the question in a voice which even in her +lightest moments was not without a quality of impassioned earnestness. +"The one infallible way of knowing anything is to know it without really +knowing how or why one knows. My intuitions, you see, are my deeper +wisdom." + +"And what do your intuitions have to say in regard to me?" + +"Only," she responded, smiling, "that it would be dangerous for us to +attempt an acquaintance that should last forever." + +"Dangerous!" the word excited his imagination and he felt the sting of +it in his blood. "What harm do you think would come of it?" + +"The harm that always comes of the association between opposites," she +answered quickly, and the laughter, he was prompt to notice, had died +from her voice, "the harm of endless disagreements, of lost illusions." + +"Why should our illusions, if we were so fortunate as to have them, +inevitably be lost?" he asked, provoked into an assurance of his +interest by the serene disinclination she displayed. + +"Because they invariably are if they are illusions?" she responded, +"and you and I could never be absolute realities to each other, since to +reach the reality in a person one must not only apprehend but comprehend +as well. I doubt if there can be any permanent friendship between people +who are totally unlike." + +Half angrily he swung the stick he carried at his side. "Then what +becomes of the attraction of opposites?" he insisted. + +"A catastrophe usually," she returned. + +Her composed indifference irritated him more than he was willing to +admit even to himself. Never in his recollection had he encountered a +woman who showed so marked a disinclination for his society; and the +wonder of her avoidance challenged him into the exercise of the personal +magnetism he had always found so invincible in its attraction. Had she +met his advances with unaffected feminine eagerness, he would have +parted, probably, from her at the next corner, but her polite +indifference kept him, though indignant, still at her side. Of adulation +he was weary, but a positive aversion promised a new and exhilarating +experience of life. + +"But why are you so sure that we are opposites?" he enquired presently. + +"How am I sure that you prefer fair women--and adore an ample beauty?" +she retorted lightly. "My intuitions again!" + +"Your intuitions are so numerous that they must be sometimes wrong," he +remarked. + +"Oh, my intuitions are helped out by Gerty's observation," she laughed +in response. + +"Ah, I see," he said: and it seemed to him that he understood now her +open avoidance, her barely concealed dislike, and the distant reticence +which made her appear to him as remote as a star. Gerty had whispered of +his affairs--perhaps of Madame Alta, and in Laura's unworldly vision his +delinquencies had showed strangely distorted and out of drawing. His +anger blazed up within him, yet he knew that the attraction of the woman +beside him was increased rather than diminished by his resentment. + +"So my pretty cousin has given me a bad character," he observed, and his +annoyance roughened his usually genial voice. + +"On the other hand she admires you very much," Laura hastened to assure +him; "she sings your praises with unflagging energy." + +"Then, this, I suppose, you have counted a curse to me," he quoted a +little bitterly. + +As she walked beside him she felt the contact of the nervous irritation +she had provoked, and she found suddenly that almost in spite of herself +she was rejoicing in the masculine quality of his presence--in his +muscular strength, in the vibrant tones of his voice and in the ardent +vitality with which he moved. But the force of his personality was a +force against which she felt that she would struggle until the end. + +"I'm not sure about the curse," she answered, "but Gerty's heroes and +mine are rarely the same, you know." + +"Then, I suppose, it's virtue that you are after," he remarked. + +She looked gravely up at him before she bowed her head in assent. "I +like virtue," she responded quietly. "Don't you?" + +"God knows, I do," he replied without hesitation in the grandiloquent +tone he loved to assume upon occasions. "But do you think," he added +presently, "that a man can acquire virtue unless it has been born in +him?" + +"I think it is another name for wisdom," she replied, "and that is often +found late and in hard places." + +He looked at her with an attention which had become absorbed, exclusive. +"Do you know, I thought virtue was what women didn't care about in men?" +he said, and his voice was tense with curiosity. + +"Perhaps you mistake the conventions for virtue," she rejoined; "men +usually do." Then after a moment she added frankly, "But I know very +little of what women like or don't like. I've never really known but two +besides my aunts--and one of these is Gerty." + +"And you are very fond of Gerty?" he enquired. + +As she looked up at him it seemed to him that her smile was a miracle of +light. "I love her more than anyone in the whole world," she said. + +Again she perplexed him, and with each fresh perplexity he was conscious +of an increasing desire to understand. "But I thought all women hated +one another," he observed. + +"That's because men have ruled the world in two ways," she returned, and +her protest was not without a smothered indignation; "they have made the +laws and they have made the jokes." + +Her championship of her sex amused even while it attracted him--he saw +in it a kind of abstract honour which he had always believed to be +lacking in the feminine mind--and at the same instant he remembered the +rancorous jealousy which had controlled Madame Alta's relations with +other women, the petty stings he had seen dealt at Gerty by her less +lovely acquaintances, and the thousand small insincerities he heard +around him every day. The very enthusiasm with which she spoke, the +intensity in her face, the decision in her voice, impressed him in a +manner for which he was utterly unprepared. In the world in which he +moved an enthusiasm which was not at the same time an affectation would +have appeared awkwardly out of place. Women whom he knew were +vivaciously excited over their winnings or losses at bridge whist, but +he could not recall that he had ever seen a single one of them stirred +to utterance by any impersonal question of injustice. To be sure there +were charitable ones among them, he supposed, but he had always tended +by a kind of natural selection toward the conspicuously fair, and the +conspicuously fair had proved invariably to be the secretly selfish as +well. His social life appeared to him now, as he walked by Laura's side, +to have been devoid of sincerity as of intelligence, and he recalled +with disgust the exquisite empty voice of Madame Alta, her lyric +sensuality, and the grossness of her affairs with her many lovers. Was +it the after taste of bitterness in his "wine and honey" which caused it +to turn suddenly nauseous in his remembrance? + +"And so women can really like one another without jealousy?" he +questioned, laughing. + +"What is there to be jealous of?" she retorted quickly. "For after all +one is one's self, you know, and not another. Gerty is beautiful and I +am not, but her loveliness is as keen a delight to me as it is to +her--keener, I think, for she is sometimes bored with it and I never am. +And she is more than this, too, for she is as devoted--as loyal as she +is lovely." + +"To you--yes," he answered slowly, for he was thinking of the Gerty whom +he had known--of her audacious cynicism, her startling frankness, her +suggestive coquetry. Was it possible that this creature of red and white +flesh, of sweetness and irony, was really a multiple personality--the +possessor of divers souls? Had he seen only the surface of her because +it was to the surface alone that he had appealed? Or was it that Laura's +creative instinct had builded an image out of her own ideals which she +had called by Gerty's name? He did not know--he could not even attempt +to answer--but the very confusion of his thoughts strengthened the +emotional interest which Laura had aroused. And as each new and vivid +sensation effaces from the mind every impression that has gone before +it, so at this moment, in the ardent awakening of his temperament, there +existed no memory of the past occasions upon which other women had +allured as irresistibly his inflamed imagination. So far as his +immediate reflections were concerned Laura might have been the solitary +woman upon a solitary planet. If he had paused to remember he might have +recalled that he had fallen in love with the girl whom he afterward +married between the sunset and the moonrise of a single day--that his +passion for Madame Alta leaped, full armed, into being during her +singing of the balcony scene in "Romeo and Juliet"--but he did not pause +to remember, for with that singular forgetfulness which characterises +the man of pleasure, the present sensation, however small, was still +sufficient to lessen the influence of former loves. + +They strolled slowly down to Gramercy Park, and this time, as they stood +together before her door, she asked him, flushing a little, if he would +not come inside. + +"I only wish I could," he answered, taking out his watch, "but I've +promised to meet a man at the club on the stroke of five. If you'll +extend the privilege, however, I'll take advantage of it before many +days." + +His words ended in a laugh, but she felt a moment afterward, as she +entered the house and he turned away, that he had looked at her as no +man had ever done in her life before. She grew hot all over as she +thought of it, yet there had been nothing to resent in his easy freedom +and she was not angry. The gay deference was still in his eyes, but +beneath it she had been conscious for an instant that the whole magnetic +current of his personality flowed to her through his look. That the +glance he had bent upon her was one of his most effective methods of +impressing his individuality she did not know. Gerty could have told her +that he resorted to it invariably at the psychological instant--and so, +perhaps, could Madame Alta had she chosen to be confidential. As a +conscious or unconscious trick of manner it had served its purpose in +many a place when words appeared a difficult or dangerous medium of +expression--but to Laura in her almost cloistral ignorance it was at +once a revelation and an enlightenment. When it passed from her she +found that the face of the whole world was changed. + +Indoors Mr. Wilberforce and Gerty Bridewell were awaiting her, but it +seemed to her that her attitude toward them had grown less +intimate--that she herself, her friends, and even the ordinary +surroundings of her life were different from what they had been only +several hours before. She wanted to be alone--to retreat into herself in +search of a clearer knowledge, and even her voice sounded strangely +altered in her own ears. + +"You look as if you had been frightened, Laura; what is it?" asked +Gerty, pressing her hand. + +"It is nothing," returned Laura, with a glance; "it is only that my head +aches." She pressed her hands upon her temples, and the throbbing of her +pulses against her finger tips confirmed her words. When, after a few +sympathetic questions, they rose to go, she was aware all at once of a +great relief--a relief which seemed to her an affront to friendship so +devoted as theirs. + +"Roger tells me that we are to have the new book on Wednesday," said Mr. +Wilberforce, as he stood looking down upon her with the peculiar insight +which belongs to the affection of age. Then it seemed to her suddenly +that he understood the cause of her disturbance and that there were both +pity and disappointment in his eyes. + +"I hope so," she answered, smiling the first insincere smile of her +life, for even as she uttered the words she knew that she no longer felt +the old eager, consuming interest in her work, and that the making of +books appeared to her an employment which was tedious and without end. +Why, she wondered vaguely, had she devoted her whole life to a pursuit +in which there was so little of the pulsation of the intenser realities? +She felt at the instant as if a bandage had dropped from before her +eyes, and the fact that Kemper as an individual did not enter into her +thoughts in no wise lessened his tremendous moral effect upon her +awakening nature. Not one man, but life itself was making its appeal to +her, and for the first time she realised something of the intoxication +that might dwell in pleasure--in pleasure accepted solely as a pursuit, +as an end in and for itself alone. Then, a moment later, standing by her +desk in her room upstairs, she remembered, in an illuminating flash, the +look with which Kemper had parted from her at her door. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE MOTH AND THE FLAME + + +Several weeks after this, on the day that Trent's first play was +accepted, he dropped in to Adams' office, where the editor was busily +giving directions about the coming _Review_. + +"I know you aren't in a mood for interruptions," began the younger man, +in a voice which, in spite of his effort at control, still quivered with +a boyish excitement, "but I couldn't resist coming to tell you that +Benson has at last held out his hand. I'm to be put on in the autumn." + +Adams laid down the manuscript upon which he was engaged, and turned +with the winning smile which Trent had grown to look for and to love. + +"Well, that is jolly news," he said heartily, "you know without my +saying so that there is no one in New York who is more interested in +your success than I am. We'll make a fine first night of it." + +"That's why I dropped in to tell you," responded Trent, while his +youthful enthusiasm made Adams feel suddenly as old as failure. "I came +about a week ago, by the way, but that shock-headed chap at the door +told me you were out of town." + +Adams nodded as he picked up the manuscript again. + +"I took Mrs. Adams south," he replied. "Her health had given way." + +"So I heard, but I hope she's well again by now?" + +"Oh, she's very much better, but one never knows, of course, how long +one can manage to keep one's health in this climate. I hate to make you +hurry off," he added, as the other rose from his chair. + +"I want to carry my good news to Miss Wilde," rejoined Treat. "Do you +know, she was asking about you only the other day." + +"Is that so? I've hardly had time for a word with her for three weeks. +Mrs. Adams has not been well and I've kept very closely at home ever +since I got back. Will you tell her this from me? It's a nuisance, isn't +it, that life is so short one never has time, somehow, for one's real +pleasures? Now, Laura Wilde is one of my real pleasures," he pursued, +with his quiet humour, "so when there's a sacrifice to be made, its +always the pleasure instead of the business that goes overboard. Oh, +it's a tremendous pity, of course, but then so many things are that, you +know, and its confoundedly difficult, after all, to edit a magazine and +still keep human." + +The winning smile shone out again, and Treat noticed how it transfigured +the worn, sallow face under the thin brown hair. + +"Well, you may comfort yourself with the reflection that it's easy to be +human but hard to edit a magazine," laughed the younger man, adding, as +he went toward the door and paused near the threshold, "I haven't seen +you, by the way, since Miss Wilde's last poems are out. Don't you agree +with me that her 'Prelude' is the biggest thing she's done as yet?" + +"The biggest--yes, but there's no end to my belief in her, you know," +said Adams. "She'll live to go far beyond this, and I'm glad to see that +her work is winning slowly. Every now and then one runs across a rare +admirer." + +"And she is as kind as she is gifted," remarked Trent fervently. Then he +made his way through the assistant editors in the outer office, and +hastened with his prodigious news to Gramercy Park. + +Laura was alone, and after sending up his name he followed the servant +to her study on the floor above, where he found her working with a +pencil, as she sat before a brightly burning wood fire, over a +manuscript which he saw to his surprise was not in verse. At his glance +of enquiry she smiled and laid the typewritten pages carelessly aside. + +"No, it's not mine," she said. "They're several short stories which Mr. +Kemper did many years ago, and he's asked me to look over them. I find, +by the way, that they need a great deal of recasting." + +"Is it possible," he exclaimed in amazement, "that you allow people to +bore you with stuff like that?" + +The smile which flickered almost imperceptibly across her lips mystified +him completely, and he drew his chair a little nearer that he might +bring himself directly beneath her eyes. + +"Oh, well, I don't mind it once in a while," she returned, "though he +hasn't in the very least the literary sense." + +"But I wasn't aware that you even knew him," he persisted, puzzled. + +"It doesn't take long to know some people," she retorted gayly; then as +her eyes rested upon his face, she spoke with one of her sympathetic +flashes of insight: "You've come to bring me good news about the play," +she said. "Benson has accepted it--am I not right?" + +"I'm jolly glad to say you are!" he assented with enthusiasm. "It will +be put on in the autumn and Benson has suggested Katie Hanska for the +leading rôle." + +His voice died out in a joyous tremor, and he sat looking at her with +all the sparkles in his young blue eyes. + +"I am glad," said Laura, and she stretched out her hand, which closed +warmly upon his. "I can't tell you--it's useless to try--how overjoyed I +am." + +"I knew you'd be," he answered softly, while his grateful glance +caressed her. The triumph of the day--which seemed to him prophetic of +the triumph of the future--went suddenly to his head, and in some +strange presentiment he felt that his emotion for Laura was bound up and +made a part of his success in literature. He could not, try as he +would--disassociate her from her books, nor her books from his, and as +he sat there in ecstatic silence, with his eyes on her slender figure in +its soft black gown, he told himself that the morning's happy promise +united them in a close, an indissoluble bond of fellowship. He saw her +always under the literary glamour--he felt the full charm of the poetic +genius--the impassioned idealism which she expressed, and it became +almost impossible for him to detach the personality of the woman herself +from the personality of the writer whom he felt, after all, to be the +more intimately vivid of the two. + +"I knew you'd be," he repeated, and this time he spoke with a passionate +assurance. "If you hadn't been I'd have found the whole thing +worthless." + +She looked up still smiling, and he watched her large, beautiful +forehead, on which the firelight played as on a mirror. "Well, one's +friends do add zest to the pleasure," she returned. + +For a moment he hesitated; then leaning forward he spoke with a +desperate resolve. "One's friends--yes--but you have been more than a +friend to me since the beginning--since the first day. You have been +everything. I could not have lived without you." + +He saw her curved brows draw quickly together, and she bent upon him a +look in which he read pity, surprise and a slight tinge of amusement. +"Oh, you poor boy, is it possible that you imagine all this?" she asked. + +"I imagine nothing," he answered with a wounded and despairing +indignation, "but I have loved you--I have dreamed of you--I have lived +for you since the first moment that I saw you." + +"Then you have been behaving very foolishly," she commented, "for what +you are in love with is a shadow--a poem, a fancy that isn't myself at +all. The real truth is," she pursued, with a decision which cut him to +the heart, "that you are in love with a literary reputation and you +imagine that it's a woman. Why, I'm not only older than you in years, +I'm older in soul, older in a thousand lives. There is nothing foolish +about me, nothing pink and white and fleshly perfect--nothing that a +boy like you could hold to for a day--" + +She broke off and sat staring into the fire with a troubled and brooding +look--a look which seemed to lose the fact of his presence in some more +absorbing vision at which she gazed. He noticed even in his misery that +she had suffered during the last few weeks an obscure, a mysterious +change--it was as if the flame-like suggestion, which had always +belonged to her personality, had of late gathered warmth, light, +effectiveness, consuming, as it strengthened, whatever had been passive +or without definite purpose in her nature. Her face seemed to him more +than ever to be without significance judged by a purely physical +standard--more than ever he felt it to be but a delicate and sympathetic +medium for the expression of some radiant quality of soul. + +"I did not know--I would not have believed that you could be so cruel," +he protested with bitterness. + +"I can be anything," she answered slowly, drawing her gaze with an +effort from the fire. "Most women can." + +The glory of the morning passed from him as suddenly as it had come, and +he told himself with the uncompromising desperation of youth that for +all he cared now his great play might remain forever in oblivion. Life +itself appeared as empty--as futile as his ambition--so empty, indeed, +that he began immediately in the elastic melancholy which comes easily +at twenty-five--to plan the consoling details of an early death. When he +remembered his buoyant happiness of a few hours ago it seemed to him +almost ridiculous, and he experienced a curious sensation of +detachment, of having drifted out of his proper and peculiar place in +life. "I shall never be happy again and I am no longer the same person +that I was yesterday--or even a half hour ago," he thought with a +determination to be completely miserable. Yet even while the words were +in his mind he found himself weighing almost instinctively the literary +value of his new emotion, and to his horror the situation in which he +now stood began slowly to take a dramatic form in his mental vision. The +very attitude into which he had unconsciously fallen--as he paused with +his face averted and his hand tightening with violence upon a book he +had picked up--showed to his imagination as a bit of restrained +emotional acting beyond the footlights. + +"Then there's nothing I can do but go straight to the devil," he +declared with resolution, and at the same instant he found to his +supreme self-contempt that he was wondering how the speech would sound +in the mouth of an actor in his drama. + +"Or write another play," suggested Laura, while he started quickly and +turned toward the door. + +"I'll never write another," he said in a voice of gloom, which he tried +with all his soul to make an honest expression of his state of mind. "I +wish now I hadn't written this one. I wouldn't if I'd known." + +"Then it's just as well that you didn't," she returned with a positive +motherly assurance. "My poor dear boy," she added soothingly, "you are +not the first man of twenty-five who has mistaken the literary mania for +the passion of love, and I fear that you will not be the last. There +seems, curiously enough, to be a strange resemblance between the two +emotions. If you'd only look at me plainly without any of your lovely +glamour you'll see in a minute what nonsense it all is. Why, you are all +the time in your heart of hearts in love with some little blonde thing +with pink cheeks who is still at school." + +He turned away in a passion of wounded pride; then coming back again he +stood looking moodily down upon her. + +"I'll prove to you if it kills me that I've spoken the truth," he +declared, and it seemed to him that the words were not really what he +meant to say--that they came from him against his will because he had +fitted them into the mouth of an imaginary character. + +"Oh, please don't," she begged. + +"I suppose I may still see you sometimes?" he enquired. + +"Oh, dear, yes; whenever you like." + +Then while he stood there, hesitating and indignant, the servant brought +her a card, and as she took it from the tray, he saw a flush that was +like a pale flame overspread her face. + +"It's Mr. Kemper now," she said. "Why will you not stay and be good and +forget?" + +"I'd rather meet the devil himself at this minute," he cried in a boyish +rage that brought tears to his eyes. "It seems to me that I spend half +my life getting out of his way." + +"But don't you like him?" she enquired curiously. "Every one likes him, +I think." + +"Well, I'm not every one," he blurted out angrily, "for I think him a +consummate, thickheaded ass." + +"Good heavens!" she gayly ejaculated, "what a character you give him." +Then, as he was leaving the room, she reached out, and taking his hand, +drew him against his will, back to his chair. "You shall not go like +this--I'll not have it," she said. "Do you think I am a stone that I can +bear to spoil all your beautiful triumph. Here, sit down and I promise +to make you like both him and me." + +As she finished, Kemper came in with his energetic step and his genial +greeting, and she introduced the two men with a little flattering smile +in Trent's direction. "You have the honour to meet our coming +playwright," she added with a gracious gesture, skilfully turning the +conversation upon the younger man's affairs, while she talked on with a +sweetness which at once distracted and enraged him. He listened to her +at first moodily and then with an attention which, in spite of his +resolution, was fixed upon the fine points of his play as she made now +and then friendly suggestions as to the interpretations of particular +lines or scenes. The charming deference in her voice soothed his ruffled +vanity and it seemed to him presently that the flattering intoxication +of her praise sent his imagination spinning among the stars. + +Kemper listened to it all with an intelligent and animated interest, and +when he spoke, as he did from time to time, it was to put a sympathetic +question which dismissed Trent's darling prejudice into the region of +departed errors. To have held out against the singular attraction of the +man, would have been, Trent thought a little later, the part of a +perverse and stiffnecked fool. It was not only that he succumbed to +Kemper's magnetism, but that he recognised his sincerity--his utter lack +of the dissimulation he had once believed him to possess. Then, as +Kemper sat in the square of sunlight which fell through the bow window, +Trent noticed each plain, yet impressive detail of his appearance. He +saw the peculiar roughness of finish which lent weight, if not beauty, +to his remarkably expressive face, and he saw, too, with an eye trained +to attentive observation, that the dark brown hair, so thick upon the +forehead and at the back of the neck, had already worn thin upon the +crown of the large, well-turned head. "In a few years he will begin to +be bald," thought the younger man, "then he will put on glasses, and yet +these things will not keep him from appealing to the imaginary ideal of +romance which every woman must possess. Even when he is old he will +still have the power to attract, if he cannot keep the fancy." But the +bitterness had gone out of his thoughts, and a little later, when he +left the house and walked slowly homeward, he discovered that a hopeless +love might lend a considerable sweetness to a literary life. After all, +he concluded, one might warm oneself at the flame, and yet neither +possess it utterly nor be destroyed. + +His mother sat knitting by the window when he entered the apartment, and +he saw that the table was already laid for dinner in the adjoining room. + +"I ordered dinner a little earlier for you," she explained as she laid +aside the purple shawl while the ball of yarn slipped from her short, +plump knees and rolled under the chair in which she sat. Never in his +recollection had he seen her put aside her knitting that the ball did +not roll from her lap upon the floor, and now as he stooped to follow +the loosened skein, he wondered vaguely how she had been able to fill +her life with so trivial and monotonous an employment. + +"I wish you could get out," he said, as he sat down on a footstool at +her feet and leaned his head affectionately against her knees. "I don't +believe you've had a breath of air for a month." + +"Why, I never went out of doors in the snow in my life," she responded, +"at least not since I was a child--and it always snows here except when +it rains. Do you know," she pursued, with one of her mild glances of +curiosity through the window, "I can't imagine how the people in that +big apartment over there ever manage to get through the day. Why, the +woman stays in bed every morning until eleven o'clock and then the maid +brings her something like chocolate on a tray. She wears such beautiful +wrappers, too, I really don't see how she can be entirely proper, and +then she seems to fly in such rages with her husband. There are some +children, I believe," she went on with increasing animation, "but they +are never allowed to set foot in her room, and this afternoon when she +dressed to go out I saw her try on at least four different hats and +every single one of them green." + +"Poor creature!" observed Trent, with a laugh, "it must be worse than +living under the omnipresent eye of Providence. By the way, I told the +man to come up and have a look at the radiator. Did he do it?" + +She laid her large, plump hand upon his head with a touch that was as +soft as her ball of yarn. + +"The manager came himself," she replied, "but we got to talking and +after I found out how much trouble he had had in life--he lost his wife +and two little boys all in one year--I didn't like to say anything about +the heating. I was afraid it would hurt his feelings to find I had a +complaint to make--he seemed so very nice and obliging. And, after all," +she concluded amiably, "the rooms do get quite warm, you know, just +about the time we are ready to go to bed, so all I need to do is to wear +my cloak a little while when I first get up in the morning. It will be a +very good way to make some use of it, for I never expect to go out of +doors again in this climate." + +"You'll have to go once," he said gayly, "to the first rehearsal of my +play. You can't afford to miss it." + +"Oh, I'll muffle up well on that occasion," she answered. "Did you see +Mr. Benson this morning? and what did he say to you?" + +"A great deal--he was quite enthusiastic--for _him_, you know." + +"I wonder what he is like," she murmured with her large, sweet +seriousness. "Is he married, and has he any children?" + +"I didn't investigate. You see I was more interested in my own affairs. +He wants Katie Hanska to take the leading part. You may have seen her +picture--it was in one of the magazines I brought you." + +"Did you enquire anything about her?" she asked earnestly, "I mean about +her character and her bringing up. I couldn't bear to have the part +played by any but a pure woman, and they tell me that so many actresses +aren't--aren't quite that. Before you consent I hope you'll find out +very particularly about the life she has led." + +"Oh, I dare say she's all right," he remarked, with the affectionate +patience which was one of his more amiable characteristics. "At any rate +she has the mettle for the rôle." + +"I hope she's good," said his mother softly, and she added after a +moment, "do you remember that poor Christina Coles I was telling you +about not long ago?" + +"Why, yes," replied Trent; "the pretty girl with the blue eyes and the +uncompromising manner? What's become of her, I wonder?" + +"I fear," began his mother, while she lowered her voice and glanced +timidly around as if she were on the point of a shameful disclosure, "I +honestly fear that she is starving." + +"Starving!" exclaimed St. George, in horror, and he sprang to his feet +as if he meant to plunge at once into a work of rescue. "Why, how long +has she been about it?" + +"I know she has stopped coming to see me because her clothes are so +shabby," returned Mrs. Trent, with what seemed to him a calmness that +was almost cruel, "and the charwoman tells me that she lives on next to +nothing--a loaf of baker's bread and a bit of cheese for dinner. It +takes all the little money she can rake and scrape together to pay her +room rent--for it seems that the papers have stopped publishing her +stories." + +"For God's sake, let's do something--let's do it quickly," exclaimed +Trent, in an agony of sympathy. + +"I was just thinking that you might run up and see if she would come +down to dine with us," said the old lady; "it really makes me miserable +to feel that she doesn't get even enough to eat." + +"Why, I'll go before I dress--I'll go this very minute," declared the +young man. "Shall I tell her that we dine in half an hour or do you +think, if she's so very hungry, you might hurry it up a bit?" + +"In half an hour--she'll want a little time," replied his mother, and +she added presently, "but she's so proud, poor thing, that I don't +believe she'll come." + +The words were said softly, but had they been spoken in a louder tone, +Trent would not have heard them for he had already hastened from the +room. + +In response to his knock, Christina opened her door almost immediately, +and when she recognised him a look of surprise appeared upon her face. + +"Won't you come in?" she asked, drawing slightly aside with a politeness +which he felt to be an effort to her, "my room is not very orderly, but +perhaps you will not mind?" + +She wore a simple cotton blouse, the sleeves of which were a little +rumpled as if they had been rolled up above her elbows, and her skirt of +some ugly brown stuff was shabby and partly frayed about the edges--but +when she looked at him with her sincere blue eyes, he forgot the +disorder of her dress in the touching pathos of her gallant little +figure. She was very pretty, he saw, in a fragile yet resolute way--like +a child that is possessed of a will of iron--and because of her +prettiness he found himself resenting her literary failures with an +acute personal resentment. The tenderness of his sympathy seemed to +increase rather than diminish his hopeless love for Laura, and while he +gazed at Christina's flower-like eyes and smooth brown hair, which shone +like satin, there stole over him a poetic melancholy that was altogether +pleasant. It was as if he had suddenly discovered a companion in his +unhappiness, and he thought all at once that it would be charming to +pour the sorrows of his love into the pretty ears hidden so quaintly +under the smooth brown hair. Love, at the moment, appeared to him +chiefly as something to be talked about--an emotion which one might turn +effectively into the spoken phrase. + +She drew back into the room and he followed her while his sympathetic +glance dwelt upon the sleeping couch under its daytime covering of +cretonne, upon the small gas stove on which a kettle boiled, upon the +cupboard, the dressing table, the desk at which she wrote, and the torn +and mended curtains before the single window. Though she neither +apologised nor showed in her manner the faintest embarrassment, he felt +instinctively that her fierce maidenly pride was putting her to torture. + +"I came with a message from my mother," he hastened to explain as he +stood beside her on the little strip of carpet before the gas stove, +"she sends me to beg that you will dine with us this evening as a +particular favour to her. She is so much alone, you know, that a young +visitor is just what she needs." + +Christina continued to regard him, as she had done from the first, with +her sincere, unsmiling eyes, but he saw a flush rise slowly to her face +in a wave of colour, turning the faint pink in her cheeks to crimson. + +"I am very much obliged to her," she said, in her fresh attractive +voice, "but I am just in the middle of a story and I cannot break off +just now. I write," she added positively, "every evening." + +As she finished she picked up some closely written sheets from the desk +and held them loosely in her hand, enforcing by a gesture the +unalterableness of her decision. "I hope you will give her my love--my +dear love," she said presently, with girlish sweetness, "and tell her +how sorry I am that it is impossible." + +"You are writing stories, then--still?" he asked, lingering in the face +of her evident desire to be rid of him. + +"Oh, yes, I write all the time--every day." + +"But do you find a market for so many?" + +She shook her head: "The beginning is always hard--have you never read +the lives of the poets? But when one gives up everything else--when one +has devoted one's whole life--" + +Knowing what he did of her mistaken ambition, her fruitless sacrifices, +the thing appeared to him as a terrible and useless tragedy. He saw the +thinness of her figure, the faint lines which her tireless purpose had +written upon her face--and he felt that it was on the tip of his tongue +to beg her to give it up--to reason with her in the tone of a +philosopher and with the experience of the author of an accepted play. +But presently when he spoke, he found that his uttered words were not of +the high and ethical character he had planned. + +"She will be very much disappointed, I know," he said at last; and +though he told himself that a great deal of good might be done by a +little perfectly plain speaking, still he did not know how to speak it +nor exactly what it would be. + +"Thank her for me--I--I should love to see her oftener if I had the +time--if it were possible," said Christina. And then he went to the door +because he could think of no excuse sufficient to keep him standing +another minute upon the hearthrug. + +"I hope you will remember," he said from the threshold, "that we are +always down stairs--at least my mother is--and ready to serve you at any +moment in any way we can." + +The assurance appeared to make little impression upon her, but she +smiled politely, and then closing the door after him, sat down to eat +her dinner of cold bread and corned meat. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +TREATS OF THE ATTRACTION OF OPPOSITES + + +As soon as Trent had left the room Laura felt that the silence became +oppressive and constrained. For the first time in her life she found +herself overwhelmed with timidity--with a fear of the too obvious +word--and this timidity annoyed her because she was aware that she no +longer possessed the strength with which to struggle against it. That it +was imperative for her to lighten the situation by a trivial remark, she +saw clearly, yet she could think of nothing to say which did not sound +foolish and even insincere when she repeated it in her thoughts. Had she +dared to follow her usual impulse and be uncompromisingly honest, she +would have said, perhaps: "I am silent because I am afraid to speak and +yet I do not know why I am afraid, nor what it is that I fear." In her +own mind she was hardly more lucid than this, and the mystery of her +heart was as inscrutable to herself as it was to Kemper. + +Then, presently, a rush of anger--of hot resentment--put courage into +her determination, and raising her head, with an impatient gesture, she +looked indifferently into his face. He was still sitting in the square +of sunlight, which had almost faded away, and as she turned toward him, +he met her gaze with his intimate and charming smile. Though his words +were casual usually and uttered in a tone of genial raillery, this +smile, whenever she met it, seemed to give the lie to every trifling +phrase that he had spoken. "What is the use of all this ridiculous +fencing when you fill my thoughts and each minute of the day I think +only of you," said his look. So vivid was the impression she received +now, that she felt instantly that he had caressed her in his +imagination. Her heart beat quickly, while she rose to her feet with an +indignant impulse. + +"What is it?" he asked and she knew from his voice that he was still +smiling. "What is the matter?" + +Picking up his typewritten manuscript, she returned with it to her +chair, drawing, as she sat down, a little farther away. + +"I merely wanted to look over this," she returned, "Mr. Trent +interrupted me in my reading." + +"Then you've something to thank him for," he remarked gayly, and added +in the same tone, "I noticed that he is in love with you--and I am +beginning to be jealous." + +For an instant she looked at him in surprise; then she remembered his +affected scorn of what he called "social cowardice"--his natural or +assumed frankness--and she shook her head with a laugh of protest. + +"He in love! Well, yes, he's in love with his imagination. He's too +young for anything more definite than that." + +"A man is never too young to fall in love," he retorted, "I had it at +least six times before I was twenty-one." + +The laughter was still on her lips. "You speak as if it were the +measles." + +"It is--or worse, for when you've pulled through a bad attack of the +measles you may safely count yourself immune. With love--" he shrugged +his shoulders. + +"Do you mean," she asked lightly, "that one can keep it up like +that--forever." + +He shook his head. + +"Oh, I think a case is rare," he replied, "after seventy-five. One +usually dies by then." + +"And is there never--with a man, I mean--really one?" + +"Oh, Lord, yes, there's always one--at a time." + +His laughing eyes were probing her, and as she met them, questioningly, +she found it impossible to tell whether he was merely jesting or in +deadly earnest. With the doubt she felt a sharp prick of curiosity, and +with it she realised that in this uncertainty--this flashing suggestion +of all possibilities or of nothing--dwelt the singular attraction that +he had for her--and for others. Was he only superficial, after all? Or +did these tantalising contradictions serve to conceal the hidden depths +beneath? Had she for an instant taken him entirely at his word value, +she knew that her interest in him would have quickly passed--but the +force which dominated him, the lurking seriousness which seemed always +behind his laughter, the very largeness of the candour he +displayed--these things kept her forever expectant and forever +interested. + +"I hate you when you are like this," she exclaimed, almost indignantly. + +"A woman always hates a man when he tells her the truth," he retorted. +"She has a taste for sweets and prefers falsehood." + +"It may be the truth as you have seen it," she answered, "but that after +all is a very small part of the whole." + +"It's big enough at least to be unpleasant." + +"Well, it's your personal idea of the truth, all the same," she +insisted, "and you can't make it universal. It isn't Gerty's for +instance." + +"You think not?" he made a face of playful astonishment. "Well, how +about its hitting off our friend Perry?" + +"Perry!" she replied disdainfully. "Do you know if he weren't so simple, +I'd detest him." + +"But why?" His eyebrows were still elevated. + +"Because he thinks of nothing under the sun but the sensations of his +great big body." + +"Well, that may not be magnificent," he paraphrased gayly, "but it is +man." + +"Then, thank heaven, it isn't woman!" she exclaimed. + +"Do you mean to tell me," he leaned forward in his chair and she was +conscious suddenly that he was very close to her--closer, in spite of +the intervening space, than any man had ever been in her life before, +"do you honestly mean to tell me that women are different?" + +The expression of his face altered as it always did before an +approaching change in his mood, and she saw in it something of the +satiety--the moral weariness--which is the Nemesis of the soul that is +led by pleasure. It was at this moment that she felt an exquisite +confidence in the man himself--in the man hidden behind the cynicism, +the affectation, the utter vanity of words. + +"Oh, they can't devote themselves to their own sensations when they have +to think so much of other people's," she responded merrily; and she felt +again the strange impulse of retreat, the prompting to fly before the +earnestness that appeared in his voice. While he was flippant, her +intuitions told her that she might be serious, but when the banter +passed from his tone, she turned to it instinctively as to a defence. + +"But those that I have known"--he stopped and looked at her as if he +weighed with an experienced eye the exact effect of his words. + +She laughed, but it was a laugh of irritation rather than humour. +"Perhaps you did not select your examples very wisely," she remarked. + +Her look arrested him as he was about to reply, and he spoke evidently +upon the impulse of the moment. "Did Gerty tell you about Madame Alta?" +he enquired. + +She shook her head with an evasion of the question, "I don't remember +that it was Gerty." + +"But you have heard of her?" + +"I've _heard_ her," she answered. "It is a very beautiful voice." + +He frowned with a nervous irritation, and she saw from his impatient +movements that he was under the influence of a disagreeable excitement. + +"Well, I was once in love with her," he said bluntly. + +She made an indifferent gesture. + +"And now I hate her," he added with a sharp intonation. + +"Is that the ordinary end of your romances?" she questioned without +interest. + +"It wasn't romance," he replied bitterly; "it was hell." + +Again she caught the note of satiety in his voice, and it stirred her to +a feeling of sympathy which she despised in herself. + +"At least you worked out your own damnation," she returned coolly. + +"One usually does," he admitted. "That's the infernal part of it. But +I'm out of it now," he pursued with an egoism which rejoiced in its own +strength. "I'm out of it now with a whole skin and I hope to keep decent +even if I don't get to heaven. You might not think it," he concluded +gravely, "but I'm at bottom as religious a chap as old John Knox." + +"You may be," she observed without enthusiasm, "but it's the kind of +religion which impresses me not at all." + +"Well, it might have been better," he said, "but I never had a chance. +I've known such devilish women all my life." + +Humour shone in her eyes, making her whole face darkly brilliant with +expression. "Do you know that you show a decided family resemblance to +Adam," she observed. + +"It does sound that way," he laughed, "but there's some hard sense in +it, after all. A woman has a tremendous effect on a man's life--I mean +the woman he really likes." + +"Wouldn't it be safer to say the 'women'?" she suggested. + +"Nonsense. I was only joking. There is always one who is more than the +others--any man will tell you that." + +"I suppose any man will--even Perry Bridewell." + +"Why not Perry?" he demanded. "You can't imagine how he used to bore the +life out of me about Gerty--but Gerty, you know," he added in a burst of +confidence which impressed her as almost childlike, "isn't exactly the +kind of woman to a--a lift a fellow." + +Before his growing earnestness she resorted quickly to the defence of +flippancy. "Nor is Perry, I suppose, exactly the kind of man that is +lifted," she observed, with a laugh. + +He looked at her a moment with a smile which had even then an edge of +his characteristic genial irony. "You are the sort of woman who could do +that," he said abruptly. + +"Could lift Perry? Now, God forbid!" she retorted gayly. + +"Oh, Perry be hanged!" he exclaimed, with the candid ill-humour which, +strangely enough, had a peculiar attraction for her. "If I had known you +fifteen years ago I might be a good deal nearer heaven than I am +to-day." + +The charm of his earnestness was very great, and she felt that the +sudden sensation of faintness which came over her must be visible in her +fluttering eyelids and in her trembling hands. + +"I haven't faith in a salvation that must be worked out by somebody +else," she said, in a voice she made cold by an effort to render it +merely careless. + +An instant before he had told himself with emphasis that he would go no +further, but the chill remoteness from which she looked at him stirred +him to an emotion that was not unlike a jealous anger. She seemed to him +then more brightly distant, more sweetly inaccessible than she had done +at their first meeting. + +"Not even when it is a salvation through love?" he asked impulsively, +and at the thought that she was possibly less indifferent than she +appeared to be, he felt his desire of her mount swiftly to his head. + +Her hand went to her bosom to keep down the wild beating of her heart, +but the face with which she regarded him was like the face of a statue. +"No--because I doubt the possibility of such a thing," she said. + +"The possibility of my loving you or of your saving me?" + +"The possibility of both." + +"How little you know of me," he exclaimed, and his voice sounded hurt as +if he were wounded by her disbelief. + +She raised her eyes and looked at him, and for several seconds they sat +in silence with only the little space between them. + +"It is very well," she said presently, "that I believe nothing that you +say to me--or it might be hard to divide the truth from the untruth." + +"I never told you an untruth in my life," he protested angrily. + +"Doesn't a man always tell them to a woman?" she enquired. + +For an instant he hesitated; then he spoke daringly, spurred on by her +indifferent aspect. "He doesn't when--he loves her." + +"When he loves her more than ever," she returned quietly, as if his +remark held for her merely an historic interest, "Perry Bridewell loves +Gerty, I suppose, and yet he lies to her every day he lives." + +"That's because she likes it," he commented, with a return of raillery. + +"She doesn't like it--no woman does. As for me I want the truth even if +it kills me." + +"It wouldn't kill you," he answered, and the tenderness in his voice +made her feel suddenly that she had never known what love could be, "it +would give you life." Then his tone changed quickly and the old pleasant +humour leaped to his eyes, "and whatever comes I promise never to lie to +you," he added. + +She shook her head. "I didn't ask it," she rejoined, with a sharp +breath. + +"If you had," he laughed, "I wouldn't have promised. That's a part of +the general contrariness of men--they like to give what they are not +asked for." + +"Well, I'll never ask anything of you," she said, smiling. + +"Is that because you want to get everything?" he enquired gayly. + +A pale flush rose to her forehead, and the glow heightened the singular +illumination which dwelt in her face. "Would the best that you could +give be more than a little?" + +"It would be more than a woman ever got on earth." + +"Well, I'm not sure that I would accept your valuation," she remarked, +with an effort to keep up the light tone of banter. + +"Then make your own," he answered, as he rose from his chair, but his +eyes and the strong pressure of his hand on hers said more than this. + +"When I've read through the manuscript I'll talk to you about it," she +observed, as he was leaving "If you really want them published, though, +they must be considerably altered." + +"Oh, do it yourself," he returned, with an embarrassed eagerness. "Do +anything you please--put in the literary stuff and all that." + +He spoke with an entire unconsciousness of the amount of work he asked +of her, and she liked him the better for the readiness with which he +took for granted that she possessed the patience as well as the will to +serve him. + +"Well, we'll talk about it later," she said, and then for the first time +during the conversation she raised upon him, in all its mystery of +suggestion, that subtle fascination of look which he felt at the instant +to be her transcendent if solitary beauty. Through the afternoon he had +waited patiently for this remembered smile--had laid traps for it, had +sought in vain to capture it unawares, and had she been a worldly +coquette bent upon conquest, she could not have used her weapons with a +finer or more decisive effect. After more than two hours in which her +remoteness had both disappointed and irritated him, he went away at last +with her face at its most radiant moment stamped upon his memory. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +SHOWS THE DANGERS AS WELL AS THE PLEASURES OF THE CHASE + + +When Kemper looked at his watch on Laura's steps, he found that he had +time only to pay a promised call on Gerty Bridewell before he must hurry +home to get into his dinner clothes. In his pocket, carelessly thrust +there as he left his rooms, was a note from Gerty begging him to drop in +upon her for a bit of twilight gossip; and though the request was made +with her accustomed lightness, he knew instinctively that she had sought +him less for diversion than for advice, and that her reckless pen had +been guided by some hidden agitation. When he thought of her it was with +a sympathy hardly justified by the outward brilliance of her +life--wealth, beauty, power, all the things which he would have called +desirable were hers, and the vague compassion she awoke in him appeared +to him the result of a simple trick of pathos which she knew how to +assume at times. To be sorry for Gerty was absurd, he had always looked +upon a hunger for married romance as a morbid and unhealthy passion, and +that a woman who possessed a generous husband should demand a faithful +one as well seemed to him the freak of an unreasonable and exacting +temper. "Men were not born monogamous"--it was a favourite cynicism of +his, for he was inclined to throw upon nature the full burden of her +responsibility. + +Then, as he signalled a cab at the corner of Fifth Avenue, and after +seating himself, clasped his gloved hands over the crook of his walking +stick, his thoughts returned, impatient of distraction, to the +disturbing memory of Laura. + +He had gone too far, this he admitted promptly and without +consideration--another minute of her bewildering charm and he felt, with +a shiver, that he might have blundered irretrievably into a declaration +of love. What a fool he had been, after all, and where was the result of +his painfully acquired caution--of his varied experiences with many +women? Before entering her doors he had told himself emphatically that +the thing should go no further than a pleasant friendship, and yet an +hour later he had found his thoughts fairly wallowing in sentiment. To +like a woman and not make love to her--was that dream of his purer +desires still beyond him--still in the distant region of the happier +impossibilities? Marriage had few allurements for him--the respect he +felt for it as an institution was equalled only by the disgust with +which he regarded it as a personal condition; and a shudder ran through +him now as he imagined himself tied to any woman upon earth for the +remainder of his days. Without being unduly proud in his own conceit, he +was clearly aware that he might be looked upon through worldly eyes as a +desirable match--as fair game for a number of wary marriageable maidens; +and it did not occur to him that even Laura herself might by any choice +of her own, still stand hopelessly beyond his reach. The thing that +troubled him was the knowledge of his own impetuous emotions--with the +shield of Madame Alta withdrawn was it not possible that a sudden +passion might plunge him headlong even into the abyss of marriage? + +"What a consummate, what an unteachable ass I am," he thought as he +stared moodily at the passing cabs, "and the odd part of it is that the +newest attraction always brings with it a fatal belief in its own +permanence. I have been madly in love a dozen times since I left college +and yet it seems impossible to me that what I now feel has ever had a +beginning or can ever have an end. By Jove, I could almost swear that +I've never gone through this before." Then he remembered suddenly one of +Laura's most characteristic movements--the swift turn of her profile as +she averted her face--and he tried to imagine the quickened sensation +with which he might have stooped and kissed the little violet shadow on +her neck. "Pshaw!" he exclaimed with angry determination, "does a man +never get too old for such rubbish? Am I no better than one of the +dotards who hold on to passion after they have lost their teeth?" But in +spite of his contemptuous cynicism it seemed to him that he was more in +earnest than he had ever been in his life before. There had been nothing +so grave--nothing so destructive as this in the impulse which had driven +him to Madame Alta. + +Gerty was awaiting him alone in her sitting-room upstairs, and as he +entered, she stretched out her hands with a gesture of reproachful +eagerness. + +"You're so late that I've barely a half hour before dressing," she said. + +"Why, in heaven's name, didn't you write me sooner?" he enquired, as he +threw himself into a chair beside the couch on which she lay half buried +amid cushions of pale green satin, "it was a mere accident that I had +this spare time on my hands. Where's Perry?" + +She shook her head with the piquant disdain he knew so well. "Amusing +himself doubtless," she replied, adding with one of her uncontrollable +flashes of impulse, "Do you, by the way, I wonder, ever happen to see +Ada Lawley now?" + +The question startled him, and he sat for a minute staring under bent +brows at her indignant loveliness; though she had shrieked out her +secret in the tongues of men and of angels, she could have added nothing +further to his knowledge. The wonderful child quality which still +survived in her beneath all her shallow worldliness dawned suddenly in +her wide-open, angry eyes, and he saw clearly at last the hidden canker +which was eating at her impatient heart. So this was what it meant, and +this was why she had reminded him at times of a pierced butterfly that +hides a mortal anguish beneath the beauty of its quivering wings? + +"Oh, she isn't exactly the kind to blush unseen, you know," he responded +lightly. + +"But what is her attraction? I can't fathom it," persisted Gerty, with a +burning curiosity. "Is it possible that men think her handsome?" + +He laughed softly at her impatience, and then leaning back in his chair, +took up her question in a quizzical tone. "Is she handsome? Well, that +depends, I suppose, upon one's natural or acquired taste. Some people +like caviar--some don't." + +Though she choked down her eagerness, he saw it still fluttering in her +beautiful white throat. "Then I may presume that she is caviar to the +respectable?" she said with a relapse into her biting sarcasm. + +He made a gesture of alarmed protest: "You are to presume nothing--it is +never wise to presume against a woman." + +"Then I won't if you'll tell me," she returned, "if you'll tell me quite +honestly and sincerely all that you think." + +Before the mockery in his eyes she fell back with a sigh of +disappointment, but he answered the challenge presently in what she had +once described as his "paradoxical humour." + +"Oh, well, my views have all been distant ones," he said, "but I should +judge her to be--since you ask me--a lady who insists upon a remarkable +natural beauty with a decidedly artificial emphasis." + +He paused for a moment in order to enjoy the flavour of his epigram; but +Gerty was too much in earnest to waste her animated attention upon +words. + +"Oh, of course she makes up," she retorted, "they all do that--men like +it." + +His puzzling smile dwelt on her for an instant. "Well, I'd rather a +woman would be downright bad any day," he said, "it shows less." + +"But is she bad?" asked Gerty, almost panting in her pursuit of +information. "That's what I want to know--of course she's artificial on +the face of it." + +"On the face of _her_, you mean," he corrected, and concluded promptly, +"but I've never said anything against a woman in my life and it's too +late to begin just as I'm getting bald. Doesn't it suffice that the Lady +has kept her pipe tuned to the general melody?" + +"You mean she's careful?" + +"I mean nothing--do you?" + +With a determined movement she sprang into a sitting position, and +drawing the cushions beneath her arm, rested her elbow, bare under the +flowing sleeve, upon the luxurious pile of down. He saw the dent made by +her figure in the green satin covers, and it gave him a sensation of +pleasure while he watched it fade out slowly. + +"I--oh, I mean a great deal," she responded in her reckless voice, "I'm +as clear, I've always said, as running water, and what you mistake for +flippancy is merely my philosophy." + +"A philosophy!" he laughed, "then you've gone too deep for me." + +"Oh, it isn't deep--it's only this," she rejoined gayly, "he laughs best +who laughs most." + +"And not who laughs last?" + +She shook her head as she played nervously with the lace upon her +sleeve. "No, because the last laugh is apt to be a death rattle." + +"You give me the shivers," he protested, with a mock shudder, "do you +know you are always clever when you are jealous?" + +"But I am not jealous," she retorted indignantly; "there's nobody on +earth that's worth it--and besides I'm too happy. I'm as happy as the +very happiest human being you know. Who's that?" + +He thought attentively for a moment: "By Jove, I believe it's Roger +Adams," he replied, amazed at his discovery. + +For a while Gerty leaned back upon her pillows and considered the +question with closed eyes. "I think you're right," she admitted at last, +"but why? Why? What on earth has he ever got from life?" + +"He has got a wife," he retorted, with his genial irony. + +"Well, I suppose he congratulates himself that he hasn't two," was her +flippant rejoinder. + +Kemper laughed shortly. "I'm not sure that she doesn't equal a good half +dozen." + +"And yet he _is_ happy," said Gerty thoughtfully. "I don't know why and +I doubt if he knows either--but I truly and honestly believe he's the +happiest man I've ever met. Perhaps," she concluded with a quick return +to her shallow wit, "it's because he doesn't divide his waking hours +between dressmakers and bridge whist." + +"But why do you if it bores you so," protested Kemper, "I'd be hanged +before I'd do it in your place." + +The little half angry, half weary frown drew her eyebrows together, and +she sat for a minute restlessly tapping her slippered foot upon the +floor. "Oh, why do women lie and cheat and back-bite and strangle the +little souls within them--to please men. Your amusements are built on +our long boredom." + +Was it merely the trick of pathos again, he wondered, or did the +weariness in her voice sound as true as sorrow? Was she, indeed, as +Laura so ardently believed, capable of larger means, of finer issues, +and was her very audacity of speech but a kind of wild mourning for the +soul that she had killed? A month ago he would not have asked himself +the question, but his feeling for Laura had brought with it, though +unconsciously, a deeper feeling for life. + +"All the same I wouldn't bore myself if I were you," he returned, "and I +don't think frankly men are worth it." + +She laughed with an impatient jerk of her head. "Oh, it's easy to +moralise," she remarked, "but I have enough of that, you know, from +Laura." + +"From Laura? Then she is with me?" + +"She thinks so, but what does she know of life--she has never lived. +Why, she isn't even in the world with us, you see." A tender little +laugh escaped her. "I've even seen her," she added gayly, "read Plotinus +at her dressmaker's. She says he helps her to stand the trying on." + +The picture amused him, and he allowed his fancy to play about it for a +moment. "I can't conceive of her surrendering to the vanities," he said +at last. + +"You can't?" Gerty's tone had softened, though she still spoke merrily. +"Well, I call no woman safe until she's dead." + +His imagination, always eager in pursuit of the elusive possibility, +sprang suddenly in the train of her suggestion, and he felt the sting of +a dangerous pleasure in his blood. + +"Do you mean that it is only her outward circumstances, her worldly +ignorance, that has kept her so wonderfully indifferent?" he asked. + +"So she is indifferent?" enquired Gerty with a smile. + +"To me--yes." + +"Oh, I didn't know that--I suspected--" her pause was tantalising, and +she drew it out with an enjoyment that was almost wicked. + +"You suspected--" he repeated the words with the nervous irritation +which always seized him in moments of excitement. + +"I honestly believed," she gave it to him with barely suppressed +amusement, "that she really disliked you." + +His curiosity changed suddenly to anger, and he remembered, while he +choked back an impulsive exclamation, the rage for mastery he had once +felt when he found a horse whose temper had more than matched his own. +"Did she tell you so?" he demanded hotly. + +"Oh, dear, no--she wouldn't for the world." + +"Then you're wrong," he said with dogged resolution; "I can make her +like me or not just as I choose." + +"You can?" she looked lovely but incredulous. + +"Why do you doubt it?" + +"Because--oh, because you are too different. Do you know--and this is as +secret as the grave--if I thought Laura really cared for you it would +drive me to despair. But she won't--she couldn't--you aren't half--you +aren't one hundredth part good enough, you know." + +In spite of his smile she saw that there was a tinge of annoyance in the +look he fixed upon her. "By Jove, I thought you rather liked me!" he +exclaimed. + +"I do--I love you--I always have." She stretched out her hand until the +tips of her fingers rested upon his arm. "You are quite and entirely +good enough for me, my dear, but I'm not Laura, and strange as it may +seem I honestly care a little more for her than for myself. So if you +are really obliged to fall in love again, suppose you let it be with +me?" + +"With you?" He met her charming eyes with his ironic smile. "Oh, I +couldn't--I was brought up on your kind, and perfect as you are, you +would only give me the tiresome, familiar society affair. There isn't +any mystery about you. I know your secret." + +"Well, at least you didn't learn it from Madame Alta," she retorted. + +"From Madame Alta! Pshaw! she was never anything but a vocal +instrument." + +"Do you remember the way she sang this?" asked Gerty; and springing to +her feet she fell into an exaggerated mimicry of the prima donna's pose, +while she trilled out a languishing passage from "Faust." "I always +laughed when she got to that scene," she added, coming back to the +couch, "because when she grew sentimental she reminded me of a love-sick +sheep." + +"Then why do you resurrect her ghost?" he demanded. "So far as I am +concerned she might have lived in the last century." + +"And yet how mad you used to be about her." + +"'Mad'--that's just the word. I was." He drew out his watch, glanced at +it, and rose to his feet with an ejaculation of dismay, "Why, you've +actually made me forget that we aren't living in eternity," he said. +"I'll be awfully late for dinner and it's every bit your fault." + +"But think of me," gasped Gerty, already moving in the direction of her +bedroom, "I dine at Ninety-first Street, and I must get into a gown that +laces in the back." She darted out with a bird-like flutter; and running +quickly down the staircase, he hurried from the house and into a passing +cab. During the short drive to his rooms his thoughts were exclusively +engrossed with the necessity of making a rapid change and framing a +suitable apology for his hostess. The annoyance of the rush served more +effectually to banish Laura than any amount of determined opposition +would have done. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE FINER VISION + + +So far as Connie was concerned the trip South had been, to all outward +appearance at least, entirely successful. Adams had watched her bloom +back into something of her girlish prettiness, and day by day, in the +quiet little Florida village to which they had gone, the lines of +nervous exhaustion had faded slowly from her face. For the first two +weeks she had been content to lie motionless in the balmy air beneath +the pines, while she had yielded herself to the silence with a +resignation almost pathetic in its childish helplessness. But with her +returning vigour the old ache for excitement awoke within her, and to +stifle her craving for the drug which Adams had denied her, she had +turned at last to the immoderate use of wine. So, hopelessly but with +unfailing courage, he had brought her again to New York where he had +placed her in the charge of a specialist in obscure diseases of the +nerves. + +Except for the hours which he spent in his office, he hardly left her +side for a minute day or night, and the strain of the close watching, +the sleepless responsibility, had produced in him that quivering +sensitiveness which made his self-control a bodily as well as a mental +effort. Yet through it all he had never relaxed in the fervour of his +compassion--had never paused even to question if the battle were not +useless--if Connie herself were worth the sacrifice--until, almost to +his surprise, there had come at last a result which, in the beginning, +he had neither expected nor desired. A closer reconciliation with life, +a stronger indifference to the mere outward show of possession, a deeper +consciousness of the reality that lay beyond, above and beneath the +manifold illusions--these things had become a part of his mental +attitude; and with this widening vision he had felt the flow in himself +of that vast, universal pity which has in it more than the sweetness, +and something of the anguish of mortal love. In looking at Connie he saw +not her alone, but all humanity--saw the little griefs and the little +joys of living creatures as they were reflected in the mirror of her +small bared soul. Though he had schooled himself for sacrifice he found +presently that he had entertained unawares the angel of peace--for it +was during these terrible weeks that the happiness at which Gerty +Bridewell had wondered possessed his heart. + +On the afternoon of Trent's visit, Adams left his office a little +earlier than usual, for he had promised Connie that he would take her to +see a new ballet at her favourite music hall. When he reached his house +she was already dressed, and while he changed his clothes in his +dressing-room, she fluttered restlessly about the upper floor, looking +remarkably fresh and pretty in a gown of delicate blossom pink. From a +little distance the faint discolour of her skin, the withered lines +about her mouth and temples were lost in a general impression of rosy +fairness; and as he watched her hurried movements, through the door of +her bedroom, Adams found it almost impossible to associate this +sparkling beauty with the half-frenzied creature he had nursed two weeks +ago. One of her "spells of joy," as she called them was evidently upon +her; and even as he accepted thankfully the startling change in her +appearance, there shot into his mind an acute suspicion as to the +immediate cause. + +"Connie," he said, standing in front of her with his hair brush in his +hand, "will you give me your word of honour that you have taken nothing +to-day except your proper medicine?" + +A quick resentment showed in her eyes, but she veiled it a moment +afterward by a cunning expression of injured innocence. "Why, how could +I?" she asked, in a hurt voice, "the nurse was with me." + +It was true, he knew--the nurse had been with her all day, and yet as he +looked more closely at her animated face and brilliant eyes the +suspicion hardened to absolute conviction in his mind. The change from +the fragile weakness of the morning to this palpitating eagerness could +mean only the one thing, he knew--Connie had found some secret way to +gratify her craving and the inevitable reaction would set in before many +hours. + +Turning away again he finished his dressing to the accompaniment of her +high-pitched ceaseless prattle. Her conversation was empty and almost +inconsequent, filled with rambling descriptions of the newest gowns, +with broken bits of intimate personal gossip, but the very rush of words +which came from her served to create an atmosphere of merriment at +dinner. A little later at the music hall she insisted upon talking to +Adams in exaggerated whispers, until the pointless jokes she made about +the arms or the legs of the dancers, sent her into convulsions of +noiseless hysterical laughter. Through it all Adams sat patiently +wondering whether he suffered more from the boredom of the ballet or +from the neuralgia caused by a draught which blew directly on the back +of his neck. That the show amused Connie was sufficient reason for +sticking it out until the end, but there were moments during the long +evening, when he felt, as he sat with his blank gaze fixed upon the +glancing red legs on the stage, that every stifled yawn was but an +unuttered exclamation of profanity. + +"Now really and truly was it worth it?" he asked, with a laugh, when +they stood again at their own door. + +"But didn't you think it lovely?" enquired Connie, irritably, as she +entered the hall and paused a moment under the electric light. The +excitement had faded from her face, leaving it parched and wan as from a +burned out fire, and the sinister blue shadows had leaped out in the +hollows beneath her eyes. + +"I think you were," he answered merrily, following her as she turned +away and went slowly up the staircase. + +A smile at the compliment flickered for an instant upon her lips; then +as she reached her bedroom, her strength failed her utterly, and with a +little moaning cry she swayed forward and fell in a huddled pink heap +upon the floor. As he lifted her she begged piteously for +wine--brandy--for anything which would drive away the terrible +faintness. + +"It is like falling into a gulf," she cried, "I am slipping away and I +can't hold myself--" + +He measured a dose of cognac and gave it to her with a little water, but +when, after swallowing it eagerly, she begged for more, he shook his +head and began undressing her as he would have undressed a child. A +touch at the bell, he knew, would bring her maid, but a powerful +delicacy constrained him as he was about to ring; these were scenes +whose very hideousness made them sacred, and with Connie's distracted +raving in his ears, he became suddenly thankful for the absolute +loneliness, for the empty house around him. As she lay upon the bed +where he had placed her, looking, he thought even then, like a crushed +blossom in her gown of pale pink chiffon, he bent over her in an anguish +of pity which oppressed him like a physical weight. The very hatred in +her eyes as she looked up at him made the burden of his sympathy the +heavier to bear. Had she loved him it might have been easier for her, +but he knew now that in her sanest days she felt no stronger sentiment +for him than tolerant gratitude. And during her frantic nights the +violence of her detestation was but an added torture. There were times +even, and this was so now, when she sought by bodily force to gain +possession of the drug which she had hidden under the carpet or beneath +the pillows of the couch, and in order to control her struggles, he was +obliged to resort to his greater physical strength. After this she +looked up and cursed him with a wonderful florid, almost oriental +splendour of language, while throwing off his coat, he brushed from him +the hanging shreds of the torn pink chiffon gown. + +At seven o'clock in the morning when the nurse came to relieve him, he +was still sitting, as he had sat all night, in a chair beside Connie's +bed. + +"So she has had one of her bad attacks, I feared it," said the nurse, +with a sympathetic glance directed less at Connie than at her husband. + +"Yes, it was bad," repeated Adams quietly; and then rising to his feet +he staggered like a drunken man into his bedroom across the hall. Still +wearing his evening clothes he flung himself heavily upon the sofa and +fell at once into the profound sleep of acute bodily exhaustion. Two +hours later when he awoke to take the coffee which the kindly nurse +brought to him, he found that his slumber, instead of refreshing him, +had left him sunk in a sluggish melancholy with a clogged and inactive +brain. + +"She is very quiet now," said the woman, a tall, strong person of middle +age, "and strangely enough the spell has hardly weakened her at all--she +has had her breakfast and speaks of going out for a little shopping +after luncheon." + +"Well, that's good news!" exclaimed Adams heartily, as he hastily +swallowed his black coffee. Then, holding out his cup to be refilled, he +shook his head with the winning humorous smile which was his solitary +beauty. "This coffee will have to write two pages in my magazine," he +said, "so pour abundantly, if you please." + +Sitting there in his dishevelled evening clothes, with his thin, sallow +face under his rumpled hair, he made hardly an impressive figure even +when viewed in the effulgent light of romance as a devoted husband. +There was nothing of the heroic in his appearance; and yet as the nurse +looked down upon him she felt something of the curious attraction he had +for men like Arnold Kemper or Perry Bridewell--men whose innate +principles of life differed so widely from his own. It was impossible to +build a sentimental fiction about him, she thought--he had no place +among the broad shouldered, athletic gentlemen who bewitched her in the +pages of the modern novel--but she recognised, for the first time, as +she stood gravely regarding him, that there could be a love founded upon +other attributes than these. To be loved as he loved Connie seemed to +her at the instant a very beautiful and perfect thing. + +"I think you have suffered more from it than your wife has," she +observed, as she replaced the cup upon the tray. + +Adams broke into his whimsical laugh. "You don't judge fair," he +retorted, "wait until I'm washed and in my right clothes again. If +there's anything on earth that turns a man into a corpse, it is an +evening suit by daylight." + +Then, as she went out with the tray, he endeavoured, while he changed +his clothes, to pull himself, by an effort of will, into proper shape to +meet the day's work before him. + +An hour afterward, as he walked through the morning sunlight to his +office, he found that his unusual melancholy had vanished before the +first breath of fresh air. A sense of detachment--of world-loneliness +came over him as he looked at the passing crowd of strangers, but there +was no sadness in the feeling, for he felt within himself the source as +well as the renewal of his peace. He had never regarded himself as what +is called a religious man--it was more than ten years since he had +entered a church or heard a sermon--yet in this very relinquishment of +self, was there not something of the vital principle, of the quickening +germ of all great religions? Though he had never said in his thoughts "I +believe this" or "I hold by this creed or that commandment," his nature +was essentially one in which the intellect must be supreme either for +good or for evil; and in his soul, which had been for so long the +battlefield of a spiritual warfare, there had dawned at last that +cloudless sunrise of faith in which all lesser creeds are swallowed up +and lost. If he had ever attempted to put his religious belief into +words, he would probably have said with his unfailing humour that it +"sufficed to love his neighbour and to let his God alone." + +Now, as he passed rapidly through the humming streets, his thoughts were +so anxiously engrossed by Connie's condition that, when his name was +uttered presently at his elbow, he started and looked up like one +awakening uneasily from a dream. The next moment the air swam before him +and he felt his blood rush in a torrent from his heart, for the voice +was Laura's, and he discovered when he turned that she was looking up +eagerly into his face. + +"Nothing short of a meditation on the seven heavens can excuse such +absorption of mind," she said. + +"You came like a spirit without my suspecting that you were near," he +answered, smiling. + +She laughed softly, giving him her full face as she looked up with her +unfathomable eyes and tremulous red mouth. At the first glance he +noticed a change in her--an awakening he would have called it--and for a +minute he lost himself in a vague surmise as to the cause. Then all +other consciousness was swept away by pure delight in the mere physical +fact of her presence. For the instant, while they walked together +through the same sunshine over the same pavement, she was as much his +own as if they stood with each other upon a deserted star. + +"It has been so long since I really saw you," she said, after a moment's +pause, "I wondered, at first, if you were ill, but had that been so I +was sure you would have written me." + +Even her voice, he thought, had altered; it was fuller, deeper, more +exquisitely vibrant, as if some wonderful experience had enriched it. + +"Connie was ill, not I," he answered quietly. "I took her South for a +fortnight, and since getting back I've hardly been able to go anywhere +except to the office." + +She glanced at him with a sympathy in which he detected a slight +surprise--for so long as Connie had been well and happy he had rarely +mentioned her name even to his closest friends. + +"I hope, at least, that she is better by now," responded Laura with +conventional courtesy. + +"Oh, yes, very much better," he replied; "but tell me of yourself--I +want to hear of you. Is there other verse?" + +For a minute she looked away to the rapidly moving vehicles in the +street; then turning quickly toward him, she spoke with one of the +impulsive gestures he had always found so charming and so +characteristic. + +"There is no verse--there will never be any more," she said. "Shall I +tell you a secret?" + +He bent his head. "A dozen if you like." + +"Well, there's only one--it's this: I wasn't born to be a poet. It was +all a big mistake, and I've found it out in plenty of time to stop. I'd +rather do other things, you know; I'd rather live." + +"Live," he repeated curiously; and the incidents of his own life flashed +quickly, one by one, across his mind. Marriage, birth, death, the +illusion of desire, the disenchantment of possession; to place one's +faith in the external object and to stake one's happiness on the +accident of events--did these things constitute living for such as she? + +"When you say 'life' do you not mean action?" he asked slowly. + +"Oh, I want to be, to know, to feel," she replied almost impatiently. "I +want to go through everything, to turn every page, to experience all +that can be experienced upon the earth." + +A smile was in his eyes as he shook his head. "And when you have +accomplished all these interesting things," he said, "you will have +gained from them--what? The lesson, learned perhaps in great sorrow, +that the outward events in life are of no greater significance than the +falling of the rain on the growing corn. Nothing that can happen or that +cannot happen to one matters very much in the history of one's +experience, and the biggest incident that ever came since the beginning +of the world never brought happiness in itself alone. It may be," he +added, with a tenderness which he made no effort to keep from his voice, +"that you will arrive finally at the knowledge that all life is +forfeiture in one way or another, and that the biggest thing in it is +sometimes to go without." + +His tone was not sad--the cheerful sound of it was what impressed her +most, and when she looked up at him she was almost surprised by the +smiling earnestness in his face. + +"Do you mean that this is what you have learned?" she asked. + +Her seriousness sent him off into his pleasant laugh. "Whatever I have +learned it has not been ingratitude for a meeting like this," he +responded gayly. "It is one of my unexpected joys." + +"And yet it's a joy that you take small advantage of," she remarked. +"I'm almost always at home and I'm very often wishing that you would +come. As a last test, will you dine with me to-morrow night?" + +While she spoke, for the briefest flicker of her eyelashes, she saw him +hesitate; then he shook his head. + +"I fear I can't," he replied regretfully, "the nurse goes home, you see, +and there's no one left with Connie. When she's well again I'll come +gladly if you'll let me." + +Her face flushed a little. "I'm sorry I asked you," she said; "I ought +to have thought--to have known." + +He felt the wrench within him as if he had torn out a living nerve, for +it was the end between them and he had meant that it should be so. Life +would have no compromises with illusions, he knew--not even with the +last and the most beautiful of desires. + +"On the other hand your wish made me very happy," he returned. + +She had stopped when they reached a corner, and he realised, with a +pang, that the chance meeting was at an end. As she stood there in the +pale sunshine, his eyes hung upon her face with an intensity which +seemed to hold in it something of the tragedy of a last parting. At the +moment he told himself that so far as it lay in his power he would +henceforth separate his life from hers; and as he made the resolution he +knew that he would carry her memory like a white flame in his heart +forever. + +An instant afterward he went from her with a smile; and as she turned to +look after him, moved by a sudden impulse, she felt a vague stir of pity +for the gaunt figure passing so rapidly along the crowded street. While +she watched him she remembered that there were worn places on the coat +he wore, and with one of the curious eccentricities of sentiment, this +trivial detail served to surround him with a peculiar pathos. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +IN WHICH FAILURE IS CROWNED BY FAILURE + + +At one o'clock, when Adams left his office to go home to luncheon--a +custom which he had not allowed himself to neglect since Connie's +illness--he found Mr. Wilberforce just about to enter the building from +the front on Union Square. + +"Ah, I've caught you as I meant to," exclaimed the older man, with the +cordial enthusiasm which Adams had always found so delightful. "It's +been so long a time since I had a talk with you that I hope you'll come +out somewhere to lunch?" + +"I only wish I could manage it," replied Adams, "but I must look in for +a minute on Mrs. Adams--she's been ill, you know." + +He saw the surprise reflected in his companion's face as he had seen it +a little earlier in Laura's; and at the same instant he felt a sensation +of annoyance because of his inability to act upon his impulse of +hospitality. He would have liked to take Mr. Wilberforce home with him; +but remembering the probable quality of the luncheon which awaited him, +he repressed the inclination. + +"Is that so? I'm sorry to hear it," remarked the other in the +conventional tone in which Adams' friends always spoke of Connie. "Well, +I'll walk a block or two with you in your direction," he added as they +turned toward Broadway. "Laura told me, by the way, that she was so +fortunate as to have a glimpse of you this morning." + +Adams nodded and then looked quickly away from the other's searching +eyes. "Yes, we met rather early in the street," he responded; "she seems +to me to be looking very well, and yet she's altered, somehow--I can't +say exactly how or where." + +"Then you've noticed it," returned Mr. Wilberforce, with a sigh, and he +asked almost immediately: "Does she appear to you to be happier than she +was?" + +"Happier? Well, perhaps, but I hardly analysed the impression she +produced. There was a change in her, that was all I saw." + +"Did she speak to you, I wonder, of her book?" + +Adams laughed softly. "She spoke of it to say that she was tired of it," +he answered, "but that is only the inevitable reaction of youth--it's a +part of the universal rhythm of thought, nothing more." + +Mr. Wilberforce shook his head a little doubtfully. "I wish I could feel +so confident," he returned, while a quick impatience--almost a contempt +awoke in Adams' mind. Was it possible that this man beside him, with his +white hairs, his blanched skin, his benign old-world sentiments, was, +like Trent, a mere worshipper of the literary impulse in its outward +accomplishment? Did he love the poet in the woman rather than the woman +in the poet? As Adams turned to look at him, he thought, not without a +certain grim humour, that he beheld another victim to the vice of +sentimentality; and in his mental grouping he placed his companion among +those who, like Connie, were in bondage to the images of their +imaginations. + +"And yet even if she should cease to write poems she will always live +one," he added lightly. + +"Yes, she will still be herself," agreed Mr. Wilberforce, but his words +carried no conviction of comfort; and when he turned at the corner to +take his car, it was with the air of a man oppressed by the weight of +years. + +When Adams reached home he found Connie, dressed in her blue velvet with +the little twinkling aigrette, on the point of starting for an afternoon +drive with her nurse in the Park. The events of the night had been +entirely effaced from her mind by the newer interests of the day; and as +he looked at her in amazement, it seemed to him that she bore a greater +resemblance to the rosy girl he had first loved than she had done for +many weary and heart-sick months. When he left her, presently, to go +back to his office, it was with a feeling of hopefulness which entered +like an infusion of new blood into his veins. The relapse might have +been, after all, less serious than he had at first believed, and +Connie's cure might become soon not only a beautiful dream, but an +accomplished good. He thought of the sacrifices he had made for it--not +begrudgingly, but with a generous thankfulness that he had been +permitted to pay the cost--thought of the sleepless nights, the +neglected work, the nervous exhaustion which had followed on the broken +laws of health. At the moment he regretted none of these things, because +the end, which he already saw foreshadowed in his mental vision, seemed +to him to be only the crowning of his last few weeks. Even the bodily +and moral redemption of Connie appeared no longer difficult in the +illumination of his mood; for his compassion, in absorbing all that was +vital in his nature, seemed possessed suddenly of the effectiveness of a +dynamic force. + +"Already she is better," he thought, hopefully; "I see it in her +face--in her hands even, and when she is entirely cured the craving for +excitement will leave her and we shall be at peace again. Peace will be +very like happiness," he said to himself, and then, with the framing of +the sentence, he stopped in his walk and smiled. "Peace is happiness," +he added after a moment, "for certainly pleasure is not." With the words +he remembered the bitter misery of Connie who had lived for joy +alone--the utter disenchantment of Arnold Kemper, who had made gratified +impulse the fulfilling of his law of life. Back and forth swung the +oscillation between fugitive desire and outward possession--between the +craving of emptiness and the satiety of fulfilment--and yet where was +the happiness of those who lived for happiness alone? Where was even the +mere animal contentment? "Is it only when one says to Fate 'take +this--and this as well--take everything and leave me nothing. I can do +without'--that one really comes into the fulness of one's inheritance of +joy? Was this what Christ meant when he said to His disciples 'Seek ye +first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things +shall be added unto you?' In renunciation was there, after all, not the +loss of one's individual self, but the gain of an abundance of life." + +The afternoon passed almost before he was aware of it, and when he +finished his work and drew on his overcoat, he saw, as he glanced +through his office window, that it was already dusk. As he reached the +entrance to the elevator, he found Perry Bridewell awaiting him inside, +and he kept, with an effort, his too evident surprise from showing in +his face. + +"Why, this is a treat that doesn't happen often!" he exclaimed with +heartiness. + +"I was passing and found you were still here, so I dropped in to walk up +with you," explained Perry, but there was a note in his voice which +caused the other to glance at him quickly with a start. + +"Are you ill, old man?" asked Adams, for Perry appeared at his first +look to have gone deadly white. "Is there anything that I can do? Would +you like to come up and talk things over?" + +Perry shook his head with a smile which cast a sickly light over his +large, handsome face. "Oh, I'm perfectly well," he responded, "I need to +stretch my legs a bit, that's all." + +"You do look as if you wanted exercise," commented Adams, as they left +the building; "too much terrapin has put your liver wrong, I guess." + +At the corner, they passed a news-stand, and as Adams stopped for his +evening paper, he noticed again the nervous agony which afflicted Perry +during the brief delay. + +"Look here, what's up, now?" he enquired, holding his paper in his hand +when they started on again, "are you in any trouble and can I help to +get you out? I'll do anything you like except play the gallant, and I +only draw the line at that because of my temperamental disability. So, +something _is_ wrong?" he added gayly, "for you haven't even observed +the pretty woman ahead there in the pea-green bonnet." + +"Oh, I'm not in any mess just now," replied Perry, with a big, +affectionate shake like that of a wet Newfoundland dog. + +Adams threw a keener glance at him. "No scrape about a woman, then?" he +asked, with the tolerant sympathy which had made him so beloved by his +own sex. + +"Oh, Lord, no," ejaculated Perry, with a fervour too convincing to be +assumed. + +"And you haven't lost in Wall Street?" + +"On the other hand I made a jolly deal." + +"Well, I give it up," remarked Adams cheerfully; then as he spoke, the +glare from an electric light fell full upon the headlines of the folded +paper in his hand, and he came to a halt so sudden that Perry, falling +back to keep step with him, felt himself spinning like a wound up top. + +"My God!" said Adams, in a voice so low that it barely reached Perry's +ears. An instant later a quick animal passion--the passion of the +enraged male--entered into his tone and he walked quickly across the +pavement to the sheltering dusk of a cross street. "May God damn him for +this!" he cried in a hoarse whisper. + +Following rapidly in his footsteps, Perry caught up behind him, and made +an impulsive, nerveless clutch at the unfolded paper. "I knew you'd see +it; so I wanted to be along with you," he said in a voice like that of a +tragic schoolboy. + +Adams turned to him immediately, with a restraint which had succeeded +his first quivering exclamation. "So you knew that Brady's wife meant +to sue for a divorce?" he asked. + +Perry bowed his head--in the supreme crisis of experience he had always +found the simple truth to be invested with the dignity of an elaborate +lie. "I had heard it rumoured," was what he said. + +"And that my wife--" + +"I'll swear I never believed it," broke in Perry, with a violent +assurance. + +From the emotion in his voice one would have supposed him, rather than +Adams, to be the injured husband; and the fact was that he probably +suffered more at the instant than he had ever done in the whole course +of his comfortable life. + +"Well, I suppose I ought to be very much obliged to you," replied Adams, +with an agonised irony to the injustice of which Perry was perfectly +indifferent, "but I can't see that it matters much so long as the thing +is true." + +"But it's a lie," protested Perry with energy. "I mean the whole damned +business." + +"What isn't?" demanded Adams bitterly, as he stuffed the crumpled paper +into the pocket of his coat. Then, stopping again as they reached a +crossing, he held out his hand and enclosed Perry's in a cordial grip. + +"I'm very grateful to you," he said; "but if you don't mind, I think +I'll walk about a bit alone. I've got to think things over." He +hesitated a moment and then added quietly, "I know you'll stand by me +whatever comes?" + +"Stand by you!" gasped Perry, and the sincere response of his whole +impressionable nature brought two large, round tear drops to his eyes; +"by Jove! I'd stand it for you!" + +For an instant Adams looked at him in silence, while his familiar smile +flickered about his mouth. Then he reached out his hand for another +grip, before he turned away and walked rapidly into the dim light of the +cross street. + +"I must walk about and think things out a bit," he found himself saying +presently in his thoughts; "there's a tangle somewhere--I can't pull it +out." + +Stopping under a light he drew the newspaper from his pocket, but as he +unfolded it, one of Connie's wild letters to Brady flashed before his +eyes; and crushing the open sheet in his hand, he flung it from him out +into the gutter. The darkness afforded what seemed to him a physical +shelter for his rage, and as he turned toward it, he felt his first +blind instinct for violent action give place to a kind of emotional +chaos, in which he could barely hear the thunder of his own thoughts. He +knew neither what he believed nor what he suffered; his power to will +and his power to think were alike suspended, and he was conscious only +of a curious deadness of sensation, amid which his ironic devil, +standing apart, asked with surprise why he did not suffer more--why his +anger was not the greater, his restraint the less? His philosophy, at +the moment, had turned to quicksand beneath his feet; and it was this +utter failure of himself which forced upon him the anguish of +readjustment, the frenzied striving after a clearer mental vision. As he +hurried breathlessly along the narrow, dimly lighted street into which +he had turned, he felt instinctively that he was groping blindly for +some way back into his former illumination, for some finer knowledge of +spirit, which at present he did not appear to possess. Not to act upon +brute impulse, but to listen in agony until he heard the voice of reason +above the storm of his passion--until he heard the soul speaking beyond +the senses--this was the one urgent need he felt himself to be aware +of--the one intelligent purpose that remained with him through his +flight. + +"No--I have failed and it is all over," was the first distinct thought +that he framed. "By her own act she has put the last barrier between us. +She is my wife no longer, for, through herself, she has brought disgrace +upon us both." Again he remembered the sacrifices he had made for her, +not with the generous rejoicing of the morning, but with a fierce +bitterness which was like a bodily hurt. "She is no longer my wife," he +repeated; "nor am I her husband--for by her own sin she has made me +free." Yet the word carried no conviction to his conscience, and he +knew, in spite of his assurance, that nothing had happened since +yesterday to change the relations between Connie and himself--that if he +had pitied her then there was only the double reason why he should pity +her now. Had this added wrong made her less helpless? had it put moral +fibre into her heart? "All this had happened yesterday--had happened +even six months ago, yet last night I sat by her bed--I was filled with +sympathy--and was it only because I was in ignorance then of something +which I know now? Yesterday I sacrificed for her both my rest and my +work, but was she worthier of pity at that hour than she is at this. She +has not changed since, nor has the thing which I have just discovered; +it is only I who am different because it is I alone who have come into +knowledge of the evil." + +He thought of the hideousness of it all--of the punishment that awaited +her, of her convulsed face, of her violent gestures, and even of the +pale pink chiffon gown, which made her resemble a crushed blossom as she +lay upon the bed. That was only last night, and yet in the reality of +experience a thousand years had intervened in his soul since then. + +The next instant he remembered again, with a throb of exhilaration that +he was free. By her own act she had given him back his freedom--she had +returned him to his life and to his work. As for her if she chose to +fall back into her old bondage, who was there in heaven or on earth that +could hold him to account? Every law that had been made by man since the +beginning of law was upon his side; and every law declared to him that +he was free. Free! The word went like the intoxication of joy to his +head; then, even while the exhilaration lasted, he shivered and came +abruptly to a halt. + +From the light of the crossing a woman had come close to him and touched +him upon the arm, making her immemorial appeal with a sickening coquetry +in her terrible eyes. She was, doubtless, but the ordinary creature of +her class, yet coming as she did upon the brief rapture of his recovered +liberty, she appeared as a visible answer to the question he had asked +his soul. He shook his head and walked on a few steps; then coming back +again he gave her the money that was in his pocket. + +"Is this the message?" he put to himself as he turned away. "Is this +the message, or is it only the ugly hallucination of my nerves?" With an +effort he sought to shake the image from him, but in spite of his closed +mind it still seemed to him that he saw Connie's future looking back at +him from the woman's terrible eyes. "And yet what have I to do with that +woman or she with Connie?" he demanded. "I have so far as I am aware +never injured either in my life, nor by any act of mine have I helped to +make my wife what she is to-day--one with that creature in the street +and with her kind. The law acquits me. Religion acquits me. My own +conscience acquits me more than all." But the argument was vain and +empty so long as he saw Connie's future revealed to him through the eyes +of the harlot he had left at the crossing. The helplessness of +ignorance, of the will that desired to will the good, came over him at +the moment and he could have cried aloud in his terror because his soul +had reached the boundaries between its angel and its devil. In his +decision he appeared to himself to stand absolutely solitary and +detached--put away from all help from humanity or from human creeds. The +law courts told him nothing, nor did religion--then, at the instant of +his sharpest despair of knowledge, there came back to him, as in a +vision of light, the scene two thousand years ago in Bethany at the +house of Simon the leper. The people passing about him in the street +became suddenly but shadows, even the noise of the cars no longer broke +in confusion upon his ears; and in the midst of the silence in which he +stood, he heard the Voice as Simon had heard it then: "I have somewhat +to say unto thee." + +A moment afterward the vision was gone, and he looked round him dazed by +the flashing of the lights. "What does it matter about my life which is +almost over?" he asked. "I will help Connie, so far as I have strength, +to bear her sin against me--and as for the rest it is nothing to me any +more." Then, as the resolution took shape in his mind, he was conscious +of a feeling of restfulness, of a relief so profound that it pervaded +him to the smallest fibre of his being. The whole situation had changed +at the instant; his offended honour was no longer offended, nor was his +righteous anger still righteous. Though the naked truth must face him in +all its brutishness, he knew, from the feeling within him, that by an +act of thought, which was not an act, he had drawn the sting of the +poisoned arrow from his wound. Not only had the bitterness passed from +his shame, but there had come, with the relinquishment of the idea of +personal wrong, a swift rush of exaltation, like a strong wind, through +his soul. Almost unconsciously he had yielded his will into the hands of +God, and immediately, as in the prophecy "all these things had been +added" unto the rest. + +Turning at once he walked rapidly in the direction of his house, while a +clock in a tower across the way pointed to the stroke of nine o'clock. +The bodily exertion had begun to wear upon him during the last few +minutes. His feet ached and there was a bruised feeling in all his +muscles. When he came at last to his own door the sensation of fatigue +had blotted out the acuteness of his perceptions. + +The lights were blazing in the hall; there was evidently an unusual +commotion among the servants; and as he entered, Connie's nurse came to +meet him with a white and startled face. + +"Have you seen Mrs. Adams?" she asked hastily. "She separated from me in +a shop and though I searched for her for hours, I could not find her." + +For a breathless pause he stared at her in bewildered horror; then his +eyes fell upon a note lying conspicuously on the hall table, and he took +it up and tore it open before he answered. The words on the paper were +few, and after reading them, he folded the sheet again and replaced it +in the envelope. For an instant longer he still hesitated, swallowing +down the sensation of dryness in his throat. + +"She will not come back to-night," he said quietly at last; "she has +gone away for a few days." + +Then turning from the vacant curiosity in the assembled faces, he went +into his study and shut himself alone in the room in which the memory of +his dead child still lived. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +"THE SMALL OLD PATH" + + +"Her letters of course gave her away," observed Gerty thoughtfully, as +she smoothed her long glove over her arm and looked at Laura with the +brilliant cynicism which belonged to her conspicuous loveliness, "Arnold +says it is always the woman's letters, and I'm sure he ought to know." + +"Why ought he to know?" asked Laura, turning with an impatient movement +from the desk at which she sat. Her gaze hung on the soft white creases +of kid that encircled Gerty's arm, but there was an abstraction in her +look which put her friend at a chilling distance. + +Gerty laughed. "Oh, I mean he's a man of the world and they always know +things." + +For an instant Laura did not respond, and during the brief silence her +eyes were lifted from Gerty's arm to Gerty's face. "I sometimes think +his worldliness is only a big bluff," she said at last. + +"Well, I wouldn't trust his bluff too much, that's all," retorted Gerty. + +A smothered indignation showed for a moment in Laura's glance. "But how +do you know so much about him?" she demanded. + +"I?--oh, I've had my fancy for him, who hasn't? He's like one of those +éclair vanille one gets at Sherry's--they look substantial enough on +the surface, but when one sticks in the fork there's nothing there but +froth. He's really quite all right, you know, so long as you don't stick +in the fork." + +"But I thought you liked him!" protested Laura, pushing back her chair +and rising angrily to her feet. + +"I do--I love him--but that's for myself, darling, not for you." + +"Do you mean me to think," persisted Laura in a voice that was tense +with horrified amazement, "that you are jealous of _me_?" + +A long pause followed her words, for Gerty, instead of replying to the +question had turned to the window and was staring out upon the bared +trees in Gramercy Park. The quiet of it for the moment was almost like +the quiet of the country, and the two women who loved each other seemed +suddenly divided by miles of silent misunderstanding. Then, with a +resolute movement, Gerty looked full into Laura's face, while the light +flashed upon a mist of tears that hung over her reproachful eyes. + +"Oh, Laura, Laura!" she said softly. + +With a cry of remorse Laura threw herself upon her knees beside the +window, kissing the gloved hands in Gerty's lap. + +But Gerty had wiped her tears away and sat smiling her little worldly +smile of knowledge. "I am jealous of you, but not in the way you meant," +she answered. "I am jealous for myself, for the one little bit of me +that is really alive--the part of myself that is in you. I am afraid to +go over again with you the old road that I went over with myself--the +old wanting, wanting, wanting that ends in nothing." + +"But why should I go over it?" asked Laura, from her knees, and the +flush in her face coloured all her manner with a fine deception. + +Gerty's mocking gayety rang back into her voice. "You might as well ask +me why I am still fool enough to be in love with Perry," she returned +with her flippant laugh, "it's a part of what Arnold calls 'the damnable +contradiction of life.' You might as well ask Connie Adams why she was +born bad?" + +"Was she--and how do you know it?" demanded Laura. + +"I don't know." Gerty's shrug was exquisitely indifferent. "But it's +more charitable, I fancy, to suppose so. Have you seen Roger, by the +bye?" + +Laura shook her head. "I would rather not. There is nothing one could +say." + +"Oh, I don't know--one might congratulate him on his liberation, and +that's something. I dare say he'll have to get a divorce now, though +Perry says he hates them." + +"Then I don't believe he'll do it, he doesn't live by the ordinary +ethics of the rest of us, you know. Will she marry Brady, do you think?" + +"Marry Brady? My blessed innocent, Brady wouldn't marry her. He has +about as much moral responsibility as a fig tree that puts forth +thistles--and besides who could blame him? She's half crazy already from +cocaine, and no man on earth could stand her for a month." + +No man on earth! Laura leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes, for +she remembered the figure of Roger Adams as he moved away from her +through the sunlight in the crowded street. She saw his worn clothes, +his resolute walk, and the patience which belonged to the infinite +stillness in his face; and, for one breathless moment, she seemed to +feel the approach of the spirit which worked silently amid the humming +material things that made up life. + +Gerty had risen and was fastening her white furs at her throat. "I must +go to Camille's," she said, "for she has just got in some new French +gowns and she has promised to give me the first look. Of course, one +can't really trust her," she added suspiciously, "and I shouldn't be in +the least surprised to find that she'd let Ada Lawley get ahead of me. +It is simply marvellous how that woman always manages to produce a +striking effect. She was at the opera last night in peacock blue when +every other woman was wearing that dead, lustreless white. Do you know I +sometimes wonder if I follow the fashion almost too closely." + +"You could never look like any one else so it doesn't matter." + +"And yet I spend two-thirds of my time trying to extinguish the little +individuality I possess," laughed Gerty, as she turned upon the +threshold. "I wear the same wave in my hair, the same colour in my gown, +the same length to my gloves. Oh, you fortunate dear, thank heaven you +have never kept a fashion!" + +She went out with her softened merriment, while Laura, throwing herself +into the chair beside the window, looked down upon the carriage which +was waiting before the door. After a moment she saw Gerty come out and +cross the sidewalk, lifting her velvet skirt until she showed a +beautifully shod foot and a glimpse of black embroidered stocking. She +gave a few careless directions to the footman who arranged her rugs, and +then as the carriage door closed, she leaned out with her brilliant +smile and waved her hand to Laura at the window above. The winter +sunlight seemed to pass away with her when at last she turned the +corner. + +With a sigh Laura's thoughts followed the carriage, envying the beauty +and the fashion of her friend for the first time in her life. A strange +fascination enveloped the world in which Gerty lived, and the old +familiar atmosphere through which she herself had moved so tranquilly +was troubled suddenly as if by an approaching storm. The things which +she had once loved now showed stale and profitless to her eyes, while +those external objects of fortune, to which she had always believed +herself to be indifferent, were endowed at the moment with an +extraordinary and unreal value. It was as if her whole nature had +undergone some powerful physical convulsion, which had altered not only +her outward sensibilities but the obscure temperamental forces which +controlled in her the laws of attraction and repulsion. What she had +liked yesterday she was frankly wearied of to-day. What she had formerly +hated she now found to be full of a mysterious charm. Books bored her, +and her mind, in spite of her effort at restraint, dwelt longingly upon +the trivial details which made up Gerty's life--upon those bodily +adornments on which her friend had staked her chance of married +happiness. The endless round of dressmakers, shops, and feverish +emulation appeared strangely full of interest; and her own quiet life +showed to her as utterly destitute of that illusory colour of romance +which she found in her vision of Gerty's and of every other existence +except her own. She beheld her friend moving in a whirl of colour, +through perpetual laughter, and the picture fascinated her, though she +knew that in the naked reality of things Gerty was far more unhappy than +she herself. Yet Gerty's unhappiness appeared to her to be distinguished +by the element of poetry in which her own was lacking. + +A terrible _ennui_ possessed her, the restless desire for a change that +would obliterate not only the circumstances in which she was placed, but +even the personal fact of her own identity. She wanted an experience so +fresh that it would be like a new birth--a resurrection--and yet she +could tell neither what this experience would be nor why she wanted it. +All that she was clearly aware of was that her surroundings, her family, +her friends, the small daily events of her life and her own +dissatisfaction, had become stale and repugnant to her mood, and she +thought of the day before her as of a gray waste of utterly intolerable +hours. + +"Nothing will happen in it that has not happened every twenty-four hours +since I was born," she said; "it is always the same--everything is the +same, and it is this monotony that seems to me insupportable. As I sit +here at this window I feel it to be impossible that I should ever drag +myself through the remainder of this afternoon, and through the evening +which will be like every other evening that I have spent. Aunt Rosa +will repeat her exhaustless jokes, Aunt Angela will make her old +complaints, Uncle Percival will begin to play upon his flute." And these +things when she thought of them--the stories of Mrs. Payne, the despair +of Angela, the piping of Uncle Percival's flute--appeared to her to +exact a power of moral endurance which she felt herself no longer to +possess. A disgust more terrible than grief seized upon her--a revolt +from the commonplace which she knew to be worse than tragedy. + +Then in the midst of her depression she remembered that on the following +afternoon she would see Arnold Kemper, and the hours appeared instantly +to open into the light. The end of everything was there just twenty-four +hours ahead, and she felt, like a physical agony, the necessity to +stifle the consciousness of time, to kill the minutes, one by one, as +they crept slowly into sight. She thought of the meeting in this very +room, of the gown that she would wear, of the words that she would +speak, of the curious exquisite mixture of attraction and repulsion, of +the ardent tenderness she would find in his look. This tenderness, she +felt, was the solitary expression of the real man--of the man whom Gerty +had never known, whom Madame Alta had not so much as glimpsed; and the +assurance produced in her a secret rapture which was all the sweeter for +being exclusively her own. She wondered where he was at the instant--how +he would pass the hours which dragged so heavily for her--and the +interest which had vanished so strangely from her own existence attached +itself immediately to his. The people he knew, the club he went to, +even the motor cars he drove, were surrounded in her thoughts with a +fresh and vivid charm. Apart from this there was no longer any +charm--hardly any animation about the life she led. A single idea had +enlarged itself at the cost of all the others, and she had a sense of +standing amid a desert waste, in the drab miles of which a solitary +palm-tree flourished. + +"And yet why should I hunger for his presence and what is there in it +when it comes that is worth this wanting?" she asked in dismay of her +own longing. "When I am away from him I think of nothing except of the +hour when I shall see him again, and yet when the meeting comes I am not +happy and he is always a little different from what I hoped that he +would be. I have no particular satisfaction when I see him, but when he +goes the longing and the dream begin again and I build up other ideals +of him which he will destroy the first time that we come together. Is it +because I have never really got to the thing that he is eternally--to +the soul of him--that he creates in me this agony of expectancy and of +disappointment? When I meet him to-morrow may it not happen that for the +first time he will fulfill all the ideals of him that I have made?" + +And it seemed to her almost impossible that she should wait the +twenty-four intervening hours before making her final discovery--that +she should exist a day and a night in utter vacancy while the ultimate +moment still beckoned her from to-morrow. Would time never pass? Was +there no way of strangling it before it came to birth? She picked up her +favourite books from her desk--Spinoza, Shelley, "The Imitation of +Christ"--but the throbbing vitality in her own breast caused the printed +pages to turn chill and lifeless. + +A mirror was placed over the mantel and she looked closely into it, +meeting her profound gaze and the poetic charm which hung like an +atmosphere about her delicate figure. She felt at the instant that she +would have given her life--her soul even and its infinite +possibilities--for an exterior of Gerty's brilliant beauty. The +blackness of her hair, the prominence of her brow, the faint amber +pallor of her skin, provoked her into a sensation of anger; and she +turned away with an emotion that was almost one of bitterness. A minute +later it seemed to her that the afternoon would pass more quickly if she +spent it out of doors, and as she slipped into her walking clothes she +thought with relief of the crowded streets and of the noises that would +drown the consciousness of her own thoughts. When Angela called to her +as she passed along the hall it was with a movement of irritation that +she turned the handle of the door and entered the invalid's room, where +the pale winter sunshine fell over the tall white candles and uncarpeted +floor. + +Mrs. Payne, in her black velvet and old rose point, sat by the window +reading aloud in her shrill voice extracts from a society paper which +she had brought for the purpose of entertaining her sister. In the +conventual atmosphere in which Angela lived the biting scandals and +malicious gossip of the worldly old woman always produced upon Laura an +impression of mere vulgar insincerity. To have lived over seventy years +and still to find one's chief interest in the social indiscretions of +one's neighbours was a fact which would have been pathetic had it been +less ridiculous. Tottering reluctantly to her grave, in the centre of a +universe filled with a million mysteries of dead and living suns, she +was absorbed to the exclusion of all larger matters in the question as +to whether or not "Tom Marbury had compromised Mrs. Billy Pearce?" + +"As if it mattered," sighed Angela from her couch. "As if it really +mattered to me in the least." + +Mrs. Payne fixed upon her a painted pair of eyes set in lustreless +vacancy between two flashing diamond earrings. "That's because you live +so out of the world, my dear," she observed, "that you have ceased to +feel any longer a rational interest in life." + +"But is life all somebody's impropriety?" enquired Angela, with the +meekness of a child. + +"It is that--or charities," returned Mrs. Payne. "You may take your +choice between the two. It was only after I failed to interest you in +our day nursery that I turned to the social news." + +"But you haven't tried the sports," suggested Laura, with a laugh, while +she felt the presence of her aunts to have become an intolerable burden. + +Mrs. Payne raised her blackened eyebrows, and sat smoothing out the +crumpled paper with her claw-like jewelled fingers. It seemed to Laura +that she wore her body to-day as if it were a tattered, yet +industriously mended garment for which her indomitable spirit would soon +have no further use. Everything about her was youthful except the flesh +which wrapped her, and that was hideously, was grotesquely ancient. Yet +she had once been both a beauty and a belle, famed for her quick +affairs and her careful indiscretions; and as Laura watched her she saw +in this living decay but the inevitable end and weariness of pleasure. +Of her many lovers, which remained to her to-day? With the multiplied +sensations of her youth what had her loveless age to do? She had hardly +laid up even a sweetness of memories, or why did she feast upon +uncovered scandals as a vulture upon carrion? + +"What poor dear Angela needs is an object in life--a passion," remarked +Mrs. Payne, picking up her gold-rimmed eye glasses which hung on a +little jewelled chain from her bosom. "I used to say that when I got too +old for an emotion I wanted to be chloroformed, but I found, thank +heaven, that with care one's emotions may last one pretty well to one's +eightieth year. When men fail one cards are left, and after cards, I +daresay, there would come gossip. It is for this reason," she pursued +with conviction, "that I am trying to persuade Angela to take up a +little bridge." + +"A little bridge!" gasped Laura, and from sheer amazement she sat down +on the foot of Angela's couch. + +"I was considering the moral support of it, of course," resumed Mrs. +Payne. "First of all I would advise some inspiring religious conviction, +but as religion does not appeal to her, I suggested bridge." + +"It might as well be white rabbits, I don't see the difference," +protested Angela, rolling over upon her side with a despairing movement +of fatigue. + +"The difference, my dear, is that white rabbits are dirty little +beasts," observed the elder woman. + +Angela lay back upon her sofa and regarded her sister with a smile sharp +and cold as the edge of a knife. "I wonder why you were more fortunate +than I, Rosa," she said, after a pause, "for in my heart I was always a +better woman." + +Mrs. Payne laughed her hard little mirthless laugh, and stretched out +her withered hand with a melodramatic gesture. "But I was never a fool, +my dear," was her retort, "and there are few women of whom it can be +said with truth that they were never at any time, from the beginning to +the end of their career, a fool. Nobody is a fool always, but there are +very few people who escape it throughout their lives." + +"Oh, I was," sighed Angela submissively, "I know it, but I was +punished." + +"It is the one thing for which we can count quite certainly upon being +punished in this life," remarked Mrs. Payne, with a kind of moral +satisfaction, as of one who was ranged upon the side of worldliness if +not of righteousness. "Other sins are for eternity, I suppose, but I +have never yet seen a fool escape the deserts of his folly. It is the +one reason which has always made me believe so firmly in an overruling +Providence. Are you going out, my child?" she asked, as Laura rose. + +"I am stifling for want of air," replied the girl, shrinking away from +the unnatural flash of her aunt's eyes. "I'll read to aunt Angela when I +come in, but just now I must get out." Then as Mrs. Payne still sought +to detain her, she broke away and ran rapidly down into the street. + +But she was no sooner out of doors than it seemed to her that she ought +to have stayed in her room--that the minutes would have passed more +swiftly in unbroken quiet. Her senses were absorbed in the single desire +to have the day over--to begin to-morrow; and it seemed to her that when +once the night was gone, she would be able to collect her thoughts with +clearness, that the morning would bring some lucid explanation of the +disturbance that she felt to-day. Then it occurred to her that she would +follow Gerty's example and seek a distraction in the shops, and she took +a cab and drove to her milliner's, where she tried on a number of +absurdly impossible hats. She bought one at last, to realise immediately +as she left the shop that she would never persuade herself to wear it +because she felt that it gave her an air of Gerty's "smartness" which +sat like an impertinence upon her own individual charm. Glancing at her +watch she found that only two hours had gone since she left the house, +and turning up the street she walked on with a step which seemed +striving to match in energy her rapid thoughts. + +"You have effaced every other impression of my life," he had said to her +yesterday; and as she repeated the words she remembered the quiver of +his mouth under his short brown moustache, the playful irony of the +smile that had met her own. Had he meant more or less than the spoken +phrase? Was the strength of his handclasp sincere? Or was the caressing +sound of his voice a lie, as Gerty believed? Was he, in truth, fighting +under all the shams of life for the liberation of his soul? or was there +only the emptiness of sense within him, after all? She felt his burning +look again, and flinched at the memory. "Every glance, every gesture, +every word speaks to me of things which he cannot utter, which are +unutterable," and yet even with the assurance she felt as if she were +living in an obscure and painful dream--as if the element of unreality +were a part of his smile, of his voice, of the feverish longing from +which she told herself that she would presently awake. It was as if she +moved an illusion among illusions, and yet felt the unreal quality of +herself and of the things outside. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE TRIUMPH OF THE EGO + + +He came punctually at three o'clock on the following afternoon, and even +as he entered the room, she was conscious of a slight disappointment +because, in some perfectly indefinable way, he was different from what +she had hoped that he would be. + +"This is the first peaceful moment I have had for twenty-four hours," he +remarked, as he flung himself into a chair before the small wood fire; +"a man I knew was inconsiderate enough to die and make me the guardian +of his son, and I've had to overhaul the chap's property almost before +the funeral was over." + +A frown of nervous irritation wrinkled his forehead, but as he turned to +her it faded quickly before the kindling animation in his look. "By +Jove, I've thought of you every single minute since I was here," he +pursued. "What a persistent way you have of interfering with a fellow's +peace of mind. I've known nothing like it in my life." + +"I hope at least I didn't damage the property," she observed, and almost +with the words she wondered why she had longed so passionately yesterday +for his presence. Now that he had come she felt neither the delight of +realised expectation nor the final peace of renouncement. + +"Well, it wasn't your fault if you didn't," he replied, leaning his head +against the chair-back and looking at her with his intimate and charming +smile. "I had to fight hard enough to keep you out even of the stocks. +Was I as much in your way, I wonder?" + +She shook her head. "In my way? I wouldn't allow it. Why should I?" + +"Why, indeed?" his genial irony was in his glance and he held her gaze +until she felt the warm blood mount swiftly to her forehead. "Why, +indeed unless you wanted to?" he laughed. + +His eyes moved to the window, and she followed the large, slightly +coarsened features of his profile and the fullness of his jaw which lent +a suggestion of brutality to his averted face. Was it possible that she +found an attraction in mere animal vitality? She wondered; then his +caressing glance was turned upon her, and she forgot to ask herself the +useless question. + +"So I must presume, then, that I haven't disturbed you?" he enquired +gayly. + +Her eyes lingered upon him for a moment before she answered. "Oh, no, it +wasn't you, it was Gerty," she replied. + +He drew nearer until the arm of his chair touched her own. "I thought at +least that my character was safe with Gerty," he exclaimed, not without +the annoyance of an easily aroused vanity. + +"I don't know what you'd think about the danger," she returned with +seriousness, "but I simply hate the kind of things she told me." + +His frown returned with gathered energy. "Is that so? What were they?" + +"Oh, I don't know--nothing definite--but about women generally." + +"Women! Pshaw! You're the only woman. There isn't any other on the +earth." + +Her hand lay on the arm of her chair, and he reached out and grasped her +wrist, not gently, but with a violent pressure. "I'll swear there isn't +another woman in existence," he exclaimed. + +An electric current started from his fingers through the length of her +arm; she felt it burning into her flesh as it travelled quickly from her +wrist to her heart. For one breathless moment she was conscious of his +presence as of a powerful physical force, and the sensation came to her +that she was being lifted from her feet and swept blindly out into +space. Then, drawing slightly away, she released herself from his grasp. + +"I give you fair warning that if you repeat that for the third time, I +shall believe it," she retorted coolly. + +"I'm trying to make you," he returned in a strained voice. "Why are you +such a sceptic, I wonder," he added as he fell back into his chair. +"Can't you tell the real thing when you come across it?" + +"The real thing?" Her words were almost a whisper. + +"Are you so used to shams that you don't recognise a man's love when you +see it?" + +She leaned toward him, her black brows drawn together with the sombre +questioning look which had always fascinated him by its strangeness. +Beyond the look, what was there? he asked with an intense and eager +curiosity. What passionate surprises existed in her? What secret +suggestions of a still undiscovered charm? The wonder of her temperament +rose before him, exquisite, remote, alluring, and he felt the appeal she +made thrill like the spirit of adventure through his blood. Again he +stretched out his hand, but with a frown he drew it back before it +touched her. + +"Can't you see that I love you?" he said with an angry hoarseness. + +His face, his voice, the gesture of his outstretched hand startled her +into a quick feeling of terror, and she shrank back with a childlike +movement of alarm. Where was her dream, she demanded with an instinctive +repulsion, if this was the only living reality of love? Then his face +changed abruptly beneath her look, and as the strong tenderness of his +smile enveloped her, she was conscious of a sudden ecstasy of peace. + +"Did I frighten you?" he asked, smiling. + +She shook her head, resting her fingers for an instant upon his hand. "I +don't believe you could frighten me if you tried," she answered. + +He raised his eyebrows with his characteristic blithe interrogation, +"Well, I shouldn't like to try, that's all." + +"I give you leave--my courage is my shield." + +"But I don't want to frighten you." His voice was softer than she had +ever heard it. "We aren't afraid of those we love, you know." + +"Why should I love you?" she enquired gayly. + +His pleasant irony was in his laugh. "Because you can't help +yourself--you're obliged to--it's your fate." + +She frowned slightly. "I have no fate except the one I make for myself." + +He bent toward her and this time his hand closed with determination upon +hers. "Well, you may make me what you please," he said. + +Her hand fluttered like an imprisoned bird in his grasp, but he held it +with a pressure which sent the blood tingling sharply to the ends of her +fingers. His strength hurt her and yet she found a curious pleasure in +the very acuteness of her sensations. + +"There's no use fighting," he said with a short laugh, "we can't help +ourselves. You'll have to marry me, so you may as well give in." + +His tone was mocking, but she felt his tenderness as she had felt it a +moment before, resistless and enveloping. As she smiled up at him, he +bent quickly forward and kissed her brow and eyes and mouth, then +lifting her chin he kissed, also, the soft fulness of her throat. When +she put up her hands in protest, he crushed them back upon her bosom by +the strength of his lips. + +She closed her eyes, yielding for one breathless instant to the passion +of his embrace. Her dream and her longing melted swiftly into +realisation, and she told herself that the agony of joy was sharper than +that of grief. This was like nothing that she had imagined, and she felt +an impulse to fly back into the uncertainty that she had left--to gain +time in which to prepare for the happiness which she told herself was +hers. Yet was it happiness? Her soul trembled as if from some almost +imperceptible shock of disillusionment, and she knew again the sense of +unreality which had come to her in the street on the day before. Again +she felt that she was in the midst of a singularly vivid dream from +which she would presently awake to life--and this dream seemed the +result of her dual nature, as if even her emotions belonged less to her +real existence than to an unconscious projection of thought. + +The impulse to escape re-awoke in her, and yet she was clearly aware +that she would no sooner fly from him than her insatiable longing would +drive her back anew. His attraction appeared strangely the greater as +she withdrew the further from his actual presence, and she knew that if +he were absent from her for a day the uncertainty that he aroused would +become intolerable. "Does the soul that I see in him--the soul of which +mine is but the reflection--really exist, or have I created an image out +of mere emptiness?" she asked; and even with the thought it seemed to +her that she saw a new seriousness--a profounder meaning in his face. +Gerty had never touched the hidden springs, nor had any other woman +except herself, and the knowledge of this gave her an ecstatic +consciousness of power. + +When she raised her eyes she saw that he had fallen back into his chair +and was watching her intently with a puzzled and ardent look. + +"You won't keep me hanging on for an eternity," he said, with the +nervous contraction of his forehead she knew so well. "If we must go to +the scaffold, let's go at once." + +"To the scaffold?" She smiled at him for the purpose of prolonging the +thrill of the uncertainty. + +"Oh, I hate marriage, you know," he returned impatiently, "there's not +another woman on earth who could get me into it." + +She nodded. "Well, that is to be hoped if not believed." + +He made an impulsive movement toward her. "Believe it or not, so long as +you marry me," he exclaimed. + +His flippancy grated upon her, and she turned from his words to the +elusive earnestness which mocked at her from his face. If she might only +arrest and hold this earnestness, then surely she might reach the depths +of his nature and be at peace. + +"It never seemed possible to me that I should marry a man who has had +another wife," she said, with an emotion which was almost a regret for +the old ideal of conduct from which she had slipped away. + +"A wife! Nonsense!" She saw the indignant flash of his eyes and the +nervous quiver of the hand with which he pulled at his short moustache. +Though he did not touch her she felt instinctively that his personality +had been put forth to overmaster her. "She was nothing but a schoolboy's +folly, and I've forgotten that I ever knew her. She's safely married +again now, so for heaven's sake, don't be foolish!" + +"And how do you know that in ten years you will not have forgotten me?" +she asked. + +For a brief pause he did not reply; then he bent toward her and she hung +for a rapturous instant upon the passionate denial in his face. The look +that she loved and dreaded was in his eyes, and she struggled blindly in +her own helplessness before it. He was so close to her that it seemed as +if the breath were leaving her body in the intensity of the atmosphere +she breathed. + +"Forget you, my own sweetheart!" he exclaimed, and the trivial words +were almost an offence against the emotional dignity of the moment. + +She rose to her feet, stretching out her hand until she stood as if +keeping him at a distance by the mere fragile tips of her fingers. + +"If I love you, I shall love you very, very much," she said. + +With a laugh he bent his lips against her hand. "You'll never love me +half so much as I love you, you bit of thistledown," he answered. + +"It will be either a great happiness or a greater misery," she went on, +hesitating, retreating, as she withdrew her hands and pressed them upon +her bosom. + +"There's no misery any more--it is the beginning of life," he rejoined. + +She laughed softly, a little tender, yielding laugh; then at the very +instant when he would have caught her in his arms, she slipped quickly +back until her desk came between them. + +"You must give me time--I must think before I let myself care too much," +she said. + +In the end she gave him her promise and he went from her with a rare and +vivid feeling of exhilaration. For the time he told himself that he +wanted her more than he remembered ever to have wanted anything in his +whole life; and his sated emotion of a man of pleasure, responded with +all the lost intensity of youth. Was it credible that he was already +middle-aged--was already growing a little bald? he demanded, with a +genuine delight in the discovery that his senses were still alive. + +On his way up to his rooms, he dropped, by habit, into his club, and +after a word or two with several men whom he seldom met, he crossed over +to join Perry Bridewell, who sat in an exhausted attitude in a leather +chair beside the window. Outside a stream of carriages, containing +richly dressed women moved up Fifth Avenue, dividing as it approached +the mounted police at the corner, and Perry, as Kemper went up to him, +was following with a dulled fish-like glance the pronounced figure of a +lady who held the reins over a handsome pair of bays. + +"That's a fine figure of a woman--look at her hips," he observed, with +relish, as Kemper stopped beside him. + +"I saw her yesterday. Gerty says she's terrific form," commented Kemper, +gazing to where the object of their admiration vanished in a crush of +vehicles. + +"Oh, they always say that of a woman with any figure to speak of," +remarked Perry. "Unless she's as flat as an ironing board, somebody is +sure to say she's vulgar. For my part I like shape," he concluded with +emphasis. + +A vision of Gerty's slender, almost boyish figure, with its daring +carriage, rose before Kemper, and he bit back the cynical laugh upon his +lips. Did one require, after all, a certain restraint in life, a +cultured abstinence before one could really appreciate the finer flavour +of the aesthetic taste? His old aversion to marriage returned to him as +he looked at Perry, sunk in his domestic satiety, and his exhilaration +of a moment ago gave place to a corresponding degree of depression. He +had done the irrevocable thing, and, as usual, it was no sooner +irrevocable than the joyous seduction of it fled from his fancy. +Marriage was utterly repugnant to him, and yet he knew not only that +there was no withdrawing from his position, but that he would not wish +to withdraw himself if he had the power. The instant that the +possibility of losing Laura occurred to him, he felt again the full, +resurgent wave of his desire. He wanted her, and if to marry her was the +one way to possess her, then--the devil take it--marry her he would! + +A tinted note was brought to Perry Bridewell, who, after reading it, sat +twirling it between his fingers with a bored and discontented look on +his handsome florid face. + +"Take my advice, and when you get clear of an affair, keep out," he +remarked, in a disgusted voice. "By Jove, I'm sometimes tempted to wish +that I were as cold blooded as old Adams." + +"Old Adams?" Kemper repeated the name, with a quickened interest. "Well, +I'd hardly envy him his experience with the sex," he exclaimed. + +"You would if you saw him--he simply never thinks about a woman so far +as I know, and at least he's well enough rid of his wife, at last. She's +on Brady's hands, thank heaven!" + +Kemper shrugged his shoulders. "It serves her right, I suppose, but I +shouldn't care to be on Brady's hands, that's all." + +"Oh, he'll chuck her presently, you'll see." + +"And afterward--" Kemper was leaning over Perry while he critically +examined a pretty woman who was passing under the window. + +"There's no afterward," laughed Perry; "you know how such women end." + +As he glanced at the note again, the bored and discontented look came +back upon his face, and he tore the envelope carelessly across and flung +it with a jerk into the waste basket. + +"Pshaw! it's all a confounded nuisance--the whole business of sex," he +remarked as he rose to his feet. Then while the disgust still lingered +in his expression, a servant entered and handed him a second note +written upon the same faintly tinted paper. Immediately as if by magic +his face was transfigured by the animated satisfaction of the conqueror, +and instinctively his hand wandered to the ends of his fair moustache, +to which he added an eloquent upward twirl. From the condition of a mere +sullen and dejected animal--he sprang instantly into the victorious +swagger of the complacent male. + +"Sorry, but I'm in an awful hurry," he remarked in his usual hearty +voice. "Look me up later in the evening and we'll have a game of +billiards." + +He went out, still twirling the fine ends of his moustache, and Kemper +followed, after a short delay, to where his newest French motor car was +waiting before the door. + +A little later as he moved slowly amid the crush of vehicles in Fifth +Avenue, it occurred to him that since Perry was so agreeably engaged, he +might himself come in for a share of Gerty's society, and stopping +before her door, he sent up a request that she would come with him for a +short quick run up Riverside. Next to Laura herself he felt that he +preferred Gerty because he knew that she would enter into a lively +banter upon the subject that filled his thoughts, and his emotion was so +fresh that there was a piquant charm in her sprightly allusion to the +mere fact of its existence. When she came down at the end of a few +minutes, wearing her long tan motoring coat and a fluttering white +chiffon veil, he felt a quick impatience of the first casual phrases +with which she leaned back in the car and settled her hanging draperies +about her. + +"Go as fast as you like," he said to the chauffeur, and then reaching +into his pocket, he drew out his glasses and offered her a pair. + +She shook her head, with an indignant gesture of refusal. "If I perish I +perish, but I won't perish hideously!" she exclaimed. + +With a laugh he slipped the elastic over his cap. "What a bore it must +be always to keep beautiful," he remarked. "You can't imagine the +positive delight there is in the freedom of ugliness." + +"I dare say." She had turned her head to look at a passing carriage, and +he saw the lovely delicacy of her profile through the blown transparent +folds of her veil. "I shall know it some day," she added presently, "for +after I've safely passed my fiftieth birthday, I mean never to look into +a glass again. Then I'll break my mirrors and be really happy." + +"No, you won't, my dear cousin," he rejoined, "for you'll continue to +see yourself in Perry's eyes." + +He watched with a sensation of pleasure the graceful shrug of her +shoulders under her shapeless coat. + +"Oh, there's no chance of that," she assured him; "he is always in them +himself?" + +The vague curiosity in his thoughts took form suddenly in words. +"Where's he now, by the way, do you know?" + +Her musical, empty laugh was as perfect as the indifferent glance she +gave him. "Enjoying himself, I hope," she answered. "He hung around me +until I sent him out in the sheer desperation of weariness." + +Though her lashes did not quiver, he knew not only that she lied, but +that she was perfectly aware of the assurance and extent of his +knowledge. The hopeless gallantry of her deception appealed to the +fighting spirit in his blood, and he found himself wondering foolishly +if Laura could have played with so high an air the part of a neglected +wife. To a man of his peculiarly eager temperament there existed a +curious fascination in the idea of pushing to its limit of endurance an +unalterable constancy. Would Laura have uttered her futile lies with so +exquisite an insolence? or would she have acted in tears the patient +Griselda in her closet? The virtue of truthfulness was the one he had +most nearly associated with her, and it seemed to him impossible that +she should stoop to shield herself behind a falsehood. Yet he could not +dispel his curiosity as to how she would act in circumstances which he +felt to be impossible and purely imaginary. + +He wanted to speak of her to Gerty, but a restraint that was almost +embarrassment kept him silent, and Gerty herself could not be induced to +abandon her flippant satirical tone. So Laura was not mentioned between +them; and he felt when at last he brought Gerty to her door again that, +on the whole, the drive had been a disappointment. He had meant to seek +her sympathy with his love for her friend, and instead he had been met +by a fine, exquisite edge of cutting humour. For once he had felt the +need to be wholly in earnest, and Gerty had taken nothing seriously, +least of all the hint which he had dropped concerning the ultimate +stability of his emotion. If she had got her heartache from his sex, he +saw clearly that she meant to have her laugh on it as well; and the only +remark from which she had let fall even momentarily her gay derision was +in answer to some phrase of his in which had occurred the name of Roger +Adams. + +"Roger Adams!" she had echoed with a fleeting earnestness, "do you know +I've always had a fancy that he is meant for Laura in another life." + +"In another life?" he questioned merrily. + +"Oh, things went crosswise here, you see," she answered, "but somewhere +else, who knows? They may all be straightened out." + +The question of Laura's possible fate in "another life" failed somehow +to disturb him seriously; but as he drove presently down the darkening +street, under the high electric lights, he found himself wondering +vaguely why Gerty had so persistently associated her friend with Roger +Adams. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +IN WHICH ADAMS COMES INTO HIS INHERITANCE + + +Five minutes had hardly passed after Laura was alone before the servant +brought up the name of Roger Adams, and an instant later he was holding +her hand in his cordial grasp. At his appearance she had for a moment a +sense of the returning reality of things--the vigour of his hand clasp, +the strong, kindly look of his face, the winning, protective tenderness +of his smile, these gave her an impression of belonging to the permanent +instead of to the merely evanescent part of life. When he sat down in +the big leather chair from which Kemper had risen, and removing his +glasses, fixed upon her the attentive gaze of his narrow, short-sighted +eyes, she felt immediately the first sensation of peace that she had +known for many weeks. His hand, long, heavily veined, muscular, and yet +finely sensitive, lay outstretched upon the mahogany lid of her desk, +and she found herself presently contrasting it with the square, brown, +roughly shaped hand of Kemper. Her senses, her brain, her heart were +still full of her lover, yet she was able to feel through some strange +enfranchisement of her dual nature, that there was a mental directness, +an impassioned morality about the man she did not love in which the man +she loved was entirely lacking. But the knowledge of this curiously +enough, served to increase rather than to diminish the persistent +quantity of her emotion, and the few minutes during which Kemper had +been absent from her had sufficed to exaggerate his image to a statue +that was heroic in its proportions. It was as if her heart--she was +still lucid enough to think in a figure of speech--were an altar +dedicated to the perpetual flame before a deity who had already showed +himself to be both terrible and obscure. + +Now as she sat looking, with her rapt gaze, at the man before her, she +was thinking how absolutely and without reservation was her surrender to +those particular qualities which Roger Adams did not represent. Here, at +this approaching crisis in her experience, it might have been supposed +that her sense of humour would have lent something of its brilliance as +a safeguard, but the weakness of her temperament lay in the very fact +that her humour entered only into those situations where it could +ornament without modifying the actual conditions of thought--that she +devoted to her passion for Kemper, as to the other merely temporary +phenomena of the senses, a large intensity of outlook which only the +eternal could support with dignity. + +Her gaze dropped back from the heights, and he felt that she became less +elusive and more human. + +"I've thought of you so often and so much," she remarked with her smile +of cordial sweetness. + +"Not so often as I've thought of you." He laid, as he spoke, a folded +paper upon the desk, "There's an English review of the poems. It's +rather good so I thought you might care to see it." + +She unfolded the paper; then pushed it from her with an indifferent +gesture. "It seems so long ago I can hardly believe I wrote them," she +returned, conscious as she uttered the mere ordinary words of a subdued +yet singularly vivid excitement, which seemed the softer mental radiance +left by an illumination which was past. + +"I wonder why it should seem long to you," said Adams slowly. "I +remember you used to complain that one was obliged to fly through phases +of thought in order to test them all." + +"I'm not sure that I want to test them all now," she replied. "When one +gets to a good place one would better stop and rest." + +"Then you are in a good place?" he asked, looking at her intently from +his short-sighted eyes, which appeared to contract and narrow since he +had taken off his glasses. + +"I don't know," she evaded the question with a smile, "but if I am, I +warn you, I shall stand still and rest." + +He laughed softly. "I dare say you're right, if there's such a state as +rest on the earth," he answered. + +The cheerful sound of his voice brought the tears suddenly to her eyes, +and she remembered a man whom she had once seen in a hospital, smiling +after a frightful accident through which he had passed. + +"Are you yourself so tired?" she asked. + +"I?" he shook his head. "Oh, I was using the glittering generalities +again." + +"And yet you seldom take even the smallest of vacations," she insisted. + +"One doesn't need it when one is broken in as I am. There's a joy in +getting one's work behind one that the luxury of idleness does not +know." + +"All the same I wish you'd stop awhile." Then she gave him one of her +long, thoughtful looks and spoke with the beautiful, vibrant note in her +voice which he had called its "Creole quality." "We have been such old, +such close, such dear friends," she went on, "that I wonder if I may +tell you how profoundly--how sincerely--" + +She faltered and he took up her unfinished sentence with the instinct to +put her embarrassment at ease. "I knew it all along, God bless you," he +said. "One feels such things, I think." + +"One ought to," she responded. + +"It's been hard," he pursued frankly; and she was struck by the utter +absence of picturesqueness, of the whining tone of the victim in his +treatment of the situation. There was no appeal to her sympathy in his +manner, and he impressed her suddenly as a man who had come into +possession of a power over the results of events if not over the passage +of events themselves. "It's been harder, perhaps, than I can say--poor +girl," he added quickly. + +With a start she sat erect in her chair. "And you can stop to think of +her?" she demanded. + +The hand lying on the arm of his chair closed and unclosed itself +slowly, without effort. "Can't you?" he asked abruptly. + +"Not sincerely, not naturally," she answered. "I think of you." + +She saw a spasm of pain pass suddenly into his face, a too ardent +leaping, as it were, of the blood. + +"You would understand things better," he said presently, after a pause +in which she felt that she had witnessed a quick, sharp struggle, "if +you had ever watched the slow moral poisoning of cocaine--or had ever +been," he added with a harsh, grating sound in his usually quiet voice, +"at the mercy of such a damned brute as Brady." + +His sudden rage shook her like a strong wind, and she liked him the +better for his relapse into an elemental passion in the cause of +righteousness. + +"I'm glad you cursed him," she remarked simply. "I like it!" + +He smiled a little grimly. "So do I." + +"And yet how terrible it is," she said, with an effort to work herself +into a sentiment of pity for Connie which she did not feel. "It makes +the whole world look full of horror." + +"Well, it's a comfort to think I never argued that it wasn't a hard +road," he returned, with the whimsical humour which seemed only to +deepen her sense of tragedy. "I've merely maintained that the only +excuse for living is to make it a little easier." + +He rose as he spoke and held out his hand with a smile. "So long as +you're happy, don't bother to think of me," he said; "but if there ever +comes a time when you need a sword-arm, let me know." + +Would she ever find that she had need of him? he asked himself presently +as he walked rapidly homeward through the streets. Was it in the +remotest probability of events that he should ever know the delight of +putting forth his full strength in her service? Like a beautiful dream +the thought stayed by him for many minutes, and his mind dwelt upon it +as upon some rare, cherished vision that lies always behind the actual +energies of life. He thought of her dark, eloquent eyes, of the +imaginative spirit in her look, and of that peculiar blending of +strength with sweetness which he had found in no woman except herself. +It was a part of the power she exercised that in thinking of her the +physical images appeared always to express a quality that was not in +themselves alone. + +Then, because he must let her go forever, he set himself patiently to +detach her presence from his memory. To think of her had become, he +knew, the luxury of weakness, and in order to test his strength for +renouncement, he brought his mind deliberately to bear upon the +immediate necessity before him. It was useless to say to himself that he +could as soon give up his dream as his desire. The endurance of his +will, he realised, was equal to whatever sacrifice he was called upon to +make and live. + +"I can do without--take this--take all and leave me nothing," he had +said in the hour of his deepest misery; and with the knowledge of his +strength to renounce all that which lay outside himself had come also +the knowledge of his power to possess whatever was within his soul. Life +was forfeiture and he had given up the world that he might gain himself. +Since the night when he had distractedly sought God through the city, he +had become gradually aware that he moved in the midst of a large +unspeakable peace, for in willing as God willed he had entered, he +found, into a happiness which was independent and almost oblivious of +the external tragedy in which he lived. Neither sickness nor poverty, +nor the shame of Connie's sin, nor the weakness of his own flesh, had +power to separate him from the wisdom which had come to him under the +eyes of the harlot at the crossing. In seeking the essential thing he +had wandered for years in a circle which had led him back at last to his +own soul. Beyond this, he saw there was little further to be lost and +nothing to be learned. "Give me more light, my God!" he had prayed in +agony of spirit; and the answer had come in a mental illumination which +had made the crooked places plain and the obscure meanings clear. At +last he was happy, for at last he had learned that the man who loses all +else and has God possesses everything. + +His loneliness--surely there was never a man more alone since the +beginning of time--had failed suddenly to disquiet him; and as he looked +from his remote vision upon the people about him, there flowed through +his mind that ultimate essence of knowledge which enables a man to +recognise himself when he encounters the stranger in the street. + +Several weeks later he heard from Gerty Bridewell of Laura's engagement +to Arnold Kemper. He had dropped in to see Perry one afternoon upon an +insignificant piece of business, and Gerty in her husband's absence, had +insisted upon receiving his call. + +"I'll reward you with a bit of news," she said, with a nervous and +troubled gesture. "Laura will be married in the autumn." + +"Married?" He looked at her a little blankly, for after having armoured +himself to meet an expected blow, he was almost surprised to find that +he was not insensible to the shock. "Married! and to whom?" + +"To Arnold, of course. Didn't you suspect that it would happen?" + +He shook his head. "Of all men he's the last I'd ever have thought of." +With the words a vision of Kemper rose before him, robust, virile, +sensual, with his dominant egoism and his pleasant affectations, half +hero and half libertine. + +"Well, of all men he's probably the only one that could have done it," +replied Gerty; "he's positively wild about her, there's some comfort to +be got from that--and Laura--" + +"And Laura?" he repeated the name for she had broken off quickly after +having uttered it. + +"Oh, Laura is very much in love, it seems. I don't believe she herself +knows exactly why--but then one never does." + +"Well, let's wish them happiness with all our hearts," he said, and +added a little wistfully, "If it could only come by wishing." + +"Ah, if it could!" was Gerty's plaintive echo; then her voice dropped +into a sigh of perplexity, and she leaned toward him in a flattering +confidential manner. "Do you know there are some men who are cads only +in their relations to women," she observed; "leave out that element from +their make-up and they're all round first-rate fellows." + +"I dare say you're right," he answered, and thought of Perry Bridewell, +"but why do you select this instant," he added humorously, "to formulate +your philosophy of sex?" + +Her earnestness fled and she leaned back in her chair laughing. "Oh, I +don't know--perhaps--because one doesn't like to lose an aphorism even +if it pops into one's head at the wrong time." + +Then as he rose to go she pressed his hand with a grip that was almost +boyish. "How I wish you liked me half as much as I like you," she said. + +"I do--I shall always," he responded in his whimsical manner. "There's +absolutely no limit to my liking--only I know it would be the surest way +to bore you to death." + +She laughed a little wearily. "It would be so nice to be really liked," +she pursued. "Nobody likes me. A good many have loved me in one way or +another, but I want to be just liked." + +He saw the pathetic little frown gather between her brows, and in spite +of the pain in his own heart, he felt a profound and pitiful sympathy. +"Well, we'll make a compact upon it," he declared, holding her hand for +an instant in his hearty grasp. "I promise to like you until you tell me +frankly that you're bored." + +The eager child quality he seldom saw was in her look and she was about +to make some impulsive answer to his words, when there was the sound of +a heavy step outside the door and they heard the next instant Perry's +hilarious voice. + +"Well, I'm jolly glad you kept him, Gerty, but, by Jove, I wonder how +you hit it off. He's not your sort, you know." + +The child quality vanished instantly from her face, and Adams watched +the mocking insolence creep back upon her lips. + +"On the other hand we're perfectly agreed," she said. "I don't confine +my admiration to your type, you know." + +"You don't, eh? Well, that's a good joke!" exclaimed Perry, with a break +into his not unpleasant, though sensual laugh. As he stood, squaring his +handsome chest, in the centre of the room, Adams felt that the mere +animal splendour of the man had never been more impressive. + +"I find to my great pleasure that Mrs. Bridewell and I are very good +friends," remarked Adams, after a moment in which he had taken in +Perry's full magnificence with his humorous short-sighted gaze, "and she +has promised on the strength of it to extend to me the favour of her +protection. No, I can't stay now," he added, in answer to Perry's +protestations. "I'll see you again to-morrow--there's really not the +faintest need to hurry." + +And with a feeling that he was stifling in the over-heated +flower-scented rooms, he went quickly from the house into the street. + +There was no reason why the news of Laura should disquiet him--by no +possible twist of his imagination could he bring the event of her +marriage into any direct bearing on his own life, yet as he walked at +his rapid, nervous pace toward his home in Thirty-fifth Street, he felt +a burning sore like a great jagged wound in his breast. That merely +human part of him, which was mixed so vitally into the intellectual +fervour of his love, suffered from the loss almost as if it had been +some fresh physical hurt. Was it possible that his avowal of +renunciation had sought to keep back some particular treasure? some +darling frailty? Or was his suffering at the moment but the first +involuntary quiver of the nerves which would pass presently leaving him +at one with his fate again? "Was I content to give her up only so long +as she belonged to no other man?" he asked. "Could I have relinquished +her friendship so easily had I known that her love was not for me, but +for Kemper?" Again the image of Kemper appeared to him, genial, +impulsive, sensual--and he felt that if it had been another and a +different man, he could have borne the loss of Laura with a finer +courage. + +Then the unworthiness of his mental attitude forced itself upon his +reflections, and he realised that with his first return to his old state +of selfish blindness, the illumination that had shone in his soul was +gradually obscured. Could it happen to him that he should again lose the +light? Again walk in darkness? His thoughts were no longer clear with +that crystalline clearness of the day before, and it seemed to him +suddenly that the key to all wisdom, which he had found so lately, had +failed at the critical moment to unlock the fortified doors. That +temporary and purely human reaction, which is the inevitable fleeting +shadow cast on the mind by any spiritual irradiation, appeared in his +present mood to contain within itself the ultimate abyss of failure. The +single instant when he lost hold on God stretched itself into an +eternity of nothingness through his soul. + +He had walked rapidly and far, and looking up at his first almost +automatic stop, he found that he had not only passed by his own house, +but that he had come as far down as the corner of Twentieth Street and +Broadway. The afternoon had waned before he knew it, and the streets +were now filled with people returning from their day's work in offices +or in shops. On one side a newsboy was offering him the evening papers, +and on the other a man had thrust a bunch of half-faded violets into his +face. + +As he stood now, hesitating for a moment beside the crossing, he became +dimly aware that he had passed quickly from one state of consciousness +into another, from the brief period of dream into the briefer transition +which precedes the awakening--and that there was a distinct gap between +his former and his present frame of mind. He _was_ awakening--this he +realised as he watched the crowd which surged rapidly by on either +side--and there came to him almost with the conviction a vivid +presentiment that the full return of his senses would bring at the same +time a clearer and a deeper conception of life. His short unhappiness +showed suddenly as a nightmare, and while he looked at the men and women +among whom he stood, he felt that the egoism of his love for Laura had +broadened into a generous stream of humanity which filled the world. The +personal had passed suddenly into the universal; the spirit of desire +had showed itself to be one with the spirit of pity; and the very agony +of the rebellion through which he had come appeared as he looked back +upon it to have enriched his consciousness of the tragedy in other +lives. To live close to mankind, to make a little easier the old worn +road, to stand shoulder to shoulder with the labourer at his toil, these +were the impulses which sprang like a new growth from his past selfish +longing. "Let me feel both the joy and the sorrow among which I move," +was the prayer he now found strength to utter. + +With renewed energy he turned to go onward, when, as he stepped upon the +crossing by which he stood, he saw that a woman at his side was weeping +softly, without noise, as she walked. Something of his old restraint, +his old embarrassment, checked him for a moment; then he saw that she +was poor and middle-aged and plainly clad, and he turned to speak to +her, though still with a slight hesitation. + +"I wish you would do me the kindness to tell me your trouble," he said. + +She stopped short in her walk and looked up with a nervous squint of her +eyes, while the undried tears were still visible on her large mottled +cheeks. As she stood there, timid and silent, before him, he saw that +the basket contained a squirming mass of gray fur, and stooping to look +at it more attentively, he found that the fur belonged to a number of +small animals, huddled asleep on the fragment of a red and white plaid +shawl. He liked the woman's face and he liked, too, the little creatures +in the basket; and more than this he felt the great need of helping as +the one means to bridge the extreme spiritual isolation in which he +stood. To give one's self! Was not this final surrender of the soul the +beginning of all faith as of all love? + +"I believe that you need help," he said, in the winning voice which had +always had a strange power to open out the hearts of others, "and I know +that I need to give it." + +In the midst of the crude noises of the street, surrounded by the +screaming newsboys and the clanging cars, he saw that she paused for an +instant to cast a quick, frightened glance about her. + +"If you'll believe what I say," she replied, in a voice which had gained +the assurance of a heartfelt conviction, "I was just praying for help to +come, but somehow it always seems to take one's breath clean away when +there's an answer. I've been trying to sell some of the little +creatures," she went on, "but they don't go well to-day and I guess Jim +won't be able to hold out till I get the money for his funeral." + +"And Jim is your husband?" he asked quietly. + +"I married him more than thirty years ago," she answered, stooping to +wipe her eyes with a hard rub on the sleeve of her jacket, "and he was +always a good worker until this sickness came. I've never known him to +miss a day's work so long as he had his health," she added proudly, "and +that, too, when so many other husbands were soaking themselves in +drink." + +"And he's ill now?" asked Adams, as she paused. + +"He's been dying steadily for a week, sir," she answered with the simple +directness of the grief which takes account only of the concrete fact, +"and I've been working day and night to make up his burial money by the +time he needs it. If he'd only manage to last a day or two longer I +might lay up enough to keep him out of the paupers' lot," she finished +with a kind of awful cheerfulness. + +It was this cheerfulness, he found, glimmering like some weird +death-fire over the actual horror, which made his realisation of the +tragedy the more poignant, and lent even a certain distinction to the +poverty which she described. Here, indeed, was the supreme vulgarity of +suffering--and before it his own personal afflictions appeared as +unsubstantial as shades. At least he had had the empty dignity of +receiving his sorrow with a full sense of its importance, but with this +woman the very presence of grief was crowded out by the brutal +obligation to meet the material demands of death. Death, indeed, had +become but an incident--a side issue of the event--and the funeral had +usurped the place and the importance of a law of nature. + +"Let me go home with you--I should like it," he said when they had +started to walk on again; and then with an instinctive courtesy, he took +the basket from her and slipped it over his own arm. A little later, +when following her directions, they entered a surface car for the West +Side, he placed the basket on his knees and sat looking down at the +small gray kittens that awaking suddenly began to play beneath his eyes. +The jostling crowd about him, the substantial panting figure of the +woman beside him, and more than all the joyous animal movements of the +kittens in his lap, seemed somehow to return to him that intimate +relation to life which he had lost. He no longer felt the sensation of +detachment, of insecurity in his surroundings; for his own individual +existence had become in his eyes but a part of the enlarged universal +existence of the race. + +As the car stopped the woman motioned to him with an imperative gesture, +and then as they reached the sidewalk, she pointed to a fruiterer's +stand on the outside of a tenement near the corner. + +"It is just above there--on the third floor," she said, threading her +way with a large determined ease through the children playing upon the +sidewalk. + +When he mounted presently the dimly lighted staircase inside, it seemed +to Adams that the whole house, close, poorly-lighted, dust laden as it +was, was filled to the echo with the ceaseless voices of +children--laughing voices, crying voices, scolding voices, voices lifted +as high in joy as in grief. So strong was his impression of the number +of the little inmates that he was almost surprised when the woman pushed +open a door on the third landing and led the way into a room which +appeared deserted except for the occupant of the clean white bed by the +window. + +The whole place was scrupulously neat, he saw this at the first +glance--saw the well swept floor, the orderly arrangement of the chairs, +the spotless white cambric curtains parted above the window sill, on +which a red geranium bore a single blossom out of season. Several large +gray cats arose at the woman's entrance and came crying to the kittens +in the basket; and she motioned to Adams to put the little creatures on +the floor. Then going to the bed she stooped over the man who lay +there--outstretched and perfectly motionless as if wrapped in a profound +and quiet slumber. One iron-stained misshapened hand lay on the outside +of the coverlet and as Adams looked at it, he saw in it a symbol of the +whole tragedy upon which he gazed. The face of the sleeper was hidden +from him, but so expressive was the distorted, toil-hardened hand, with +the fingers fallen a little open as if in relief from a recently dropped +tool, that the voice of the woman sounding in his ears merely put into +words his own unspoken knowledge. + +"Ah, he's gone," she said. "He promised me he'd hold out if he could, +but I guess he couldn't manage it." + +Then standing there in the bare, cleanly swept room, bright with the +voices of children which floated in from the staircase, Adams was +conscious, with a consciousness more vital and penetrating than he had +ever felt before, that the place, the universe and his own soul were +filled to overflowing with the infinite presence of God. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +ON THE WINGS OF LIFE + + +It was on the morning after Gerty's conversation with Adams that Laura +carried the news of her engagement to Uncle Percival. + +"I've something really interesting for you this morning," she began, +taking his withered little hand in hers as she sat down on the high +footstool before his chair. + +His wandering blue eyes fixed her for a moment, then, turning +restlessly, travelled to his flute which lay silent on the table on his +elbow. + +"Ah, but I'm ahead of you for once," he remarked with his amiable +toothless smile, "there's a new batch of rabbits in the yard and I've +already seen 'em. Don't tell Rosa, my dear," he cautioned in a whisper, +"or she'll be sure to drown 'em everyone." + +Releasing his hand from her clasp, he reached for his flute, and, with a +pathetic delight in the presence of his enforced listener, raised the +mouth of the instrument to his lips. The tune he played was "The Last +Rose of Summer," and Laura sat patiently at his side until the end. With +the final note, even as he laid the flute lovingly across his knees, she +saw that the music had strengthened and controlled his enfeebled mind. + +"I want to tell you that I shall be married in the autumn, dear Uncle +Percival," she said with a renewed effort to penetrate the senile +abstraction in which he lived. + +"Married!" repeated the old man, with an indignant surprise for which +she was entirely unprepared. "Married! Why, what on earth makes you do a +ridiculous thing like that? It's out of the question," he continued with +an angry vehemence, "it is utterly and absurdly out of the question." + +For an instant it seemed to Laura that she had absolutely no response to +offer. + +"But almost everyone marries in the end, you know," she said at last. + +"I have lived very comfortably to be eighty-five," retorted Uncle +Percival, "and I never married." + +"Oh, but you never fell in love," persisted Laura. + +"In love? Tush!" protested the old man with scorn, "and why should you? +I have never felt the need of it." + +"Well, I don't think one can help it sometimes," remonstrated Laura, a +little helplessly. "One doesn't always want it, but it comes anyway." + +"Then if I didn't want it I wouldn't let it bother me," said Uncle +Percival, adding immediately. "What does Rosa think of this state of +things, I wonder--Rosa is a very sensible woman." + +"Oh, she's heartily pleased--everybody is pleased but you." + +Uncle Percival shook his head in stubborn disapproval. "People are +always pleased at the mistakes of others," he observed, "it's human +nature, I suppose, and they can't help it, but I tell you I've seen a +great deal too much of love all my life--and it's better left alone, +it's better left alone." + +Rising dejectedly, he wandered off to his rabbits, while Laura, as soon +as the curtains at the door had fallen together again behind his +shrunken little figure, forgot him with that complete forgetfulness of +trivial details which is possible only to the mind that is in the +possession of an absorbing emotion. All hesitation, all uncertainty, all +disappointment, had been swept from her consciousness as if by a +destroying and purifying flame; and for the past few weeks she had lived +with that passionate swiftness of sensation which gives one an ecstatic +sense of rushing, like a winged creature, through crawling time. Life, +indeed, was winged for her at the moment; her soul flew; and she felt +her happiness beating like a caged bird within her breast. The agony of +the imprisoned creature was there also, for she loved blindly without +understanding why she loved--and yet it was this hidden mystery of her +passion, this divine miracle which attended its conception, that filled +the world about her with the invisible, announcing hosts of angels. She +could explain nothing--life, death, birth, the ordinary incidents of +every day were but so many signs and portents of 'the unseen wonders; +and every breath she drew seemed as great a miracle to her as the +raising of Lazarus from the tomb. + +Closing her eyes she thought of the afternoon before when she had gone +out with her lover in his automobile. Life at the instant had condensed +itself into a flash of experience, and his face as he looked at her had +been clear and strong as the wind which rushed by them. "Faster! faster! +let us go faster!" she had begged, "let me live this one hour flying," +and even with the words she had wondered if the same rapture would ever +enter into her love again? Was it possible to touch the highest point of +one's being twice in a single lifetime? Was it given to any human +creature to repeat perfection? And he? Would he ever know it again? she +questioned, with an uncertainty sharp as a sword that pierced her +through. Would she ever find in his eyes a look that would be anything +but a shadow of the look she had seen on the day before? Was happiness, +after all, as fluid a quantity as the emotion which gave it birth? + +Standing beside the table, she leaned her cheek for a moment upon the +roses in the Venetian vase; and it seemed to her, as the petals brushed +her face, that she felt again his eager kisses fall on her eyes and +throat. The memory sent her blood beating to her pulses; and she saw his +face in her thoughts as she had seen it on that afternoon, transfigured +and intensified by the peculiar vividness of her perceptions. + +"There has been nothing like this in my life before," he had said in a +passion of sincerity, "there has been nothing in my life but you from +the beginning." The irony was gone then from his voice; she had found no +hint of even the satirical humour in his eyes; and as she remembered +this now it seemed to her that she had there for the first time--for the +one and only moment since she had known him--succeeded in holding by her +touch that deeper chord of his nature for which she had always felt +herself to be instinctively groping. + +She was still brooding over the rapture of yesterday, when the door +opened quickly and Kemper came in with the eager haste in which he +appeared to live every instant of his life. At the first glance she saw +that the ardour of the last afternoon was still in his eyes, and the +next moment she found herself yielding to his impatient kisses. + +"I was trying to decide whether I love you more when you are with me or +when you are away," she said with a joyful laugh. + +"Well, as for me, I love you exactly a hundred times more when I see +you," he retorted gayly. + +His words seemed, as she repeated them, an affront to her insatiable +desire for the perfection of love. + +"Then if you never saw me again you would be able to forget me?" she +asked a little wounded. + +He laughed easily with a quick return to his pleasant banter, "I hope +so. What's the use of loving when nothing comes of it?" + +When nothing comes of it! A cloud dimmed the radiant clearness of her +morning; then she met the strong tenderness in his eyes, and with an +effort, she thrust her disappointment aside, as she had thrust it aside +at every meeting since the beginning of her love. + +"I have always wondered if happiness were as happy as people thought," +she said gravely, "and now I know, I know." + +"And is it really?" he asked, with the confident smile which piqued her +even while it fascinated. + +For answer she lifted to him "the seraphic look" which he had never seen +in any face but hers; and as he met her eyes it appeared to him that all +other women whom he had loved were but tinted shadows--that they were +one and all utterly devoid of the mystery by which passion lives. Here +in her face he saw at last the charm and the wonder of sex made +luminous; and while he watched her emotion quiver on her lips, he began +to ask himself if this were not the assurance in his own heart of a +feeling that might endure for life? Would this, too, change and perish +as his impulses had changed and perished until to-day? + +"Shall I tell you what I have been thinking since last night?" she +questioned in a voice that was like a song to his ears, "it is that I +have been all my life a plant in a dark cellar, groping toward the light +and never finding it--always groping, groping." + +She leaned toward him, placing her hands, the lovely, delicate hands he +loved, upon his shoulders, "I've grown to the light! I've grown to the +light!" she whispered joyously. + +He raised her hand to his lips, and his teeth closed softly over each +slender finger one by one. + +"So I am the light?" he enquired with tender humour. + +She shook her head. "Not you, but love." + +A short laugh broke from him. "But where, my dear sweetheart," he +retorted? "would love be without me?" + +"I don't dare to think," she was too earnest to take his jest with +lightness, "it is strange, isn't it?--that but for you I should never +have known--this." + +"Who can tell? There might have come along another fellow and you'd +probably have made love quite as prettily to a substitute." + +"Never!" she shook her head with an indignant protest, "and you?" she +added softly after a moment. + +"And I? What?" + +"Without me could you have felt it quite like this?" + +She waited breathlessly, but the ironic spirit had got the better of his +tenderness. + +"My dear girl," he rejoined, "what a question?" + +"But could you?--tell me," she implored in sudden passion. + +"Well, I devoutly hope so," he answered lightly, "it's a thing I +should'nt like to have missed, you know." + +He leaned back closing his eyes; and immediately, without warning and +against his will, there rose before him the seductive face of Madame +Alta, and he recalled her exquisite voice, with its peculiar high note +of piercing sweetness. Then he remembered his wife, and, one by one, the +other women whom he had loved and forgotten or merely forgotten without +loving. They meant so little in his existence now, and yet once, each in +her own bad time had engrossed utterly his senses. In what rare quality +of sentiment could this love differ from those lesser loves that had +gone before? + +But he was not given to introspection, and so the disturbing question +left him almost as readily as it had come. When one attempted to think +things out, there was no hope of escaping the endless circle with a +clear head. No, he wasn't analytical, thank Heaven! + +While he was still rejoicing in what he called his "practical turn of +mind," he remembered suddenly an appointment at his club which he had +made a week ago and then overlooked in the absorbing interest of his +engagement. + +"By Jove, you'll get me into an awful scrape some day," he remarked +cheerfully as he hurried into his overcoat. "I might have lost fifty +thousand dollars by letting this thing slip." + +His manner had changed completely with the awakened recollection; and +finance in all its forms--the look of figures, the clink of coin--had +assumed instantly the position of romance in his thoughts. For the +moment Laura was crowded from his mind, and she recognised this with a +pang sharp and cold as the thrust of a dagger. + +"If you only knew how much you'd nearly cost me," were his last words as +he ran down the steps. + +At the corner he met Gerty's carriage and in response to her inviting +gesture, he gave an order to the coachman as he sprang inside. + +"Well, this is a godsend," he observed with a grateful sigh while he +wrapped the fur rug carelessly about him. "A drive with a pretty woman +leaves a surface car a good many miles behind. And you are unusually +pretty this morning," he commented with a touch of daring gallantry. + +"I ought to be," returned Gerty defiantly, "for heaven knows I take +trouble enough about it. Oh, I _am_ glad to see you!" she finished +gayly, "how is Laura?" + +He met her question with his genial smile. "She makes a pretty good +pretence at happiness," he answered. + +"And so she's really over head and ears in love?" + +"Does it surprise you that she should find me charming?" he asked, +laughing. + +She nodded with unshaken candour. + +"I was never so much surprised in all my life." + +If his smile was ready it did not fail to betray a touch of vanity that +was almost childlike. + +"And yet there was a time when you yourself rather liked me," he +retorted with his intimate and penetrating glance. + +"Was there?" She avoided his look though her tone was almost insolent, +"my dear fellow, I never in my life liked you better than I like you at +this minute--but we are speaking now of Laura's liking not of mine. Oh, +Arnold, Arnold, I am in a quake of fear." + +"About Laura? Then get over it and don't be silly." + +"And you are honestly and truly and terribly in earnest?" + +"My dear girl, I'm going to marry her--isn't that enough? Does a man +commit suicide except when he's sincere?" + +Her shallow cynicism had dropped from her now, and she turned toward him +with an unaffected anxiety in her face. + +"Then it will last--it must." + +"Last!" An expression of irritation showed in his eyes, and he shrugged +his shoulders with an impatient movement. "Of course it won't +last--nothing does. If you want the eternal you must seek it in +eternity." + +"So in the end it will be like--all the others?" + +Because the question annoyed him he responded to it with a frankness +that was almost brutal. "Everything is like everything else," he +returned, "there's nothing new, least of all in the emotions." + +For a minute she looked at him in silence while the steady green flame +appeared to him to grow brighter in her eyes. Was it contempt or +curiosity that he saw in her face? + +"Poor Laura!" she said at last very softly. "Poor happy Laura!" + +At her words his dissenting laugh broke out, but he showed by his +animated glance a moment later that it was of herself rather than of +Laura that he was thinking. + +"Is it such a terrible fate, after all, to become my wife?" he enquired. + +His look challenged hers, and lifting her insolent bright eyes, she +returned steadily the smiling gaze he bent upon her. + +"Oh, dear me, yes," she answered merrily, "it is almost if not quite as +bad as being Perry's." The carriage had stopped at the door of his club, +and his mind was already at work over the approaching interview. + +"Well, you escaped the lesser for the greater ill," he responded +pleasantly, as he gave her hand a careless parting pressure. + + + + +PART III + +DISENCHANTMENT + + + + +CHAPTER I + +A DISCONSOLATE LOVER AND A PAIR OF BLUE EYES + + +With that strange hunger of youth for the agony of experience, Trent +allowed the news of Laura's engagement to plunge him into an imaginary +despondency which was quite as vivid as any reality of suffering. For a +week he persistently refused his meals, and he was even seized with a +kind of moral indignation when his perfectly healthy appetite asserted +itself at irregular hours. To eat with a broken heart appeared to him an +act of positive brutality; and yet he was aware that, in spite of the +sting of his wounded pride, the tragic ending of his first romance +produced not the slightest effect upon his physical enjoyment. It was an +instance where a purely ideal sentiment struggled against a perfectly +normal constitution. + +"You could never have cared for me, of course I always knew that," he +remarked one day to Laura, "but I can't help wishing that you hadn't +fallen in love with anybody else." + +From the bright remoteness of her happiness she smiled down upon him. +"But doesn't such a wish as that strike you as rather selfish?" + +"I don't care--I want you back again just as you used to be--and now," +he added bitterly, "you've even given up your writing." + +"I shall never write again," she answered, quietly, without regret. It +was a truth which she felt only intuitively at the time, for her reason +as yet had hardly taken account of a fact that was perfectly evident to +the subtler perceptions of her feeling. She would never write again--her +art had been only the exotic flowering of a luxuriant imagination and +she had lost value as a creative energy while she had gained in +experience as a human soul. + +"I was too young, that was the trouble," pursued Trent, "there were five +years between us." + +"My dear boy," she laughed merrily, "there was all eternity." + +His bitterness, he felt, grew heavily upon him while he watched her. A +new beauty had passed into her face; the mystery of a thousand lives was +in her look, in her gestures, in her voice; and she appeared to him not +as herself alone, but as the embodied essence of all former loves of +which he had dreamed--of all the enchanting dead women of whom the poets +wrote. Then he thought of Arnold Kemper, with his exhausted emotions, +his superficial cleverness, his engrossing middle-age, and especially of +his approaching baldness. Was love, after all, he questioned, only a +re-quickened memory in particular brain cells as modern scientists +believed? Was physical heredity, in truth, the fulfilling of the law of +life? and was the soul merely a series of vibrations by which matter +lived and moved? + +All the way home his angry scepticism boiled over in his thoughts, and +at the luncheon table, a little later, he met his mother's placid +enquiries with an explosion of boyish despair. + +"There's no use trying to persuade me--I can't eat," he said. + +"But, my dear son, I fear you'll work yourself into an illness," +returned Mrs. Trent, with her unshaken calm. + +"I don't care," replied the young man desperately, "whether I die now or +later, it is all the same." + +"I suppose really it is," admitted his mother; but she added after a +pause in which she had dipped mildly into a philosophic curiosity, "The +way being in love effects one has always seemed to me the very strangest +thing in life. I remember your uncle Channing lived exclusively on +onions for a whole month after Mattie Godwin refused his offer. Why he +selected onions I could never explain," she concluded, "unless it was +that he had never been able to endure the taste of them, and he seemed +bent upon making himself as miserable as it was possible to be." + +While she went on placidly eating her hashed chicken, Trent tossed off a +glass or two of claret, which he was perfectly aware, taken on his empty +stomach, would immediately produce a racking headache. Since his passion +was not sincere, it occurred to him that it might at least become +dramatic; but he saw presently, with aggrieved surprise, that the +impression made upon his mother by his violent behavior was far slighter +than he had brought himself to expect. When next she spoke her thoughts +appeared to have strayed utterly from the subject of his appetite. + +"I couldn't sleep last night for thinking of that poor Christina Coles," +she said, "the char-woman told me yesterday that the child had been +obliged to go out and pawn some of her things in order to get the money +to pay her room rent." + +With a start his mind swung back from the dream life to the actual. He +had not seen Christina for more than a week, and the thought of her +pierced his heart with a keen reproach. + +"Good God, has it come to that?" he exclaimed. + +"What hurts me most is not being able to do anything to help her," +resumed Mrs. Trent, "she's so proud that I don't dare even ask her to a +meal for fear she'll take offence." + +"But if it's so bad as that why doesn't she go home--she must have a +home." + +"Oh, she has--but to go back, she feels, would mean that she's given up, +and the char-woman declares that she'll never give up so long as she's +alive." + +"Well, she's a precious little fool," observed Trent, as he drank an +extra glass of claret. + +But the thought of Christina was not to be so lightly put from him, and +before the afternoon was over he went up to the eighth landing and +knocked in vain at her door. She was still out, as the little pile of +rejected manuscript lying on her threshold bore witness; and he turned +away and came down again with a disappointment of which he felt himself +to be half ashamed. An hour later he ran against her when he was going +out into the street, and as she turned with her constrained little bow +and looked at him for an instant with her sincere blue eyes, he was +almost overcome by the rush of pity which the sight of her evoked. How +pale and thin she had grown! how shabby her little tan coat looked in +the daylight; and yet what a charming curve there was to her brown +head! He realised then for the first time that brown--warm, living brown +with glints of amber--was the one colour for a woman's hair. + +The next morning he rushed off indignantly to upbraid Adams. + +"The girl's starving, I tell you--we can't let her starve," he exclaimed +in an agony of remorse. + +"Oh, yes we can," returned Adams with a cheerful brutality which enraged +the younger man. "Starving isn't half so bad as writing trash. But you +needn't look at me like that," he added, "she doesn't come here any +longer now. She told me fiction was the field she meant to dig in." + +"Well, you'll kill her among you," was Trent's threatening rejoinder; +and filled with a righteous fury against literature he went back again +to knock at the door of Christina's empty room. Once his mother came up +also, but the girl, it appeared, was always out now, while the rejected +manuscript thickened each morning upon the threshold. Several times Mrs. +Trent arranged a little tray of luncheon and sent it up stairs by the +old negro servant, but the message brought back was always that +Christina was not at home. And then gradually, as the weeks went by, the +dignity and the pathos of her struggle were surrounded in Trent's mind +by a romantic halo. Her beauty borrowed from his poetic fancy the +peculiar touch of atmosphere it lacked, and his thoughts dwelt more and +more upon her slender, girlish figure, her smooth brown hair, and the +flower-like sweetness of her face. + +Then just as he had grown almost hopeless of ever seeing her again, he +found her one evening in the elevator as he went up to his mother's +rooms. The touch of her cold little hand on his sent a sudden shock to +his heart, and while he looked anxiously into her face, he saw her go +deadly pale and bite her lip sharply as if to bring back her +consciousness by the sting of pain. + +"You are ill," he said eagerly; "don't deny it, for haven't I eyes? Yes, +you must, you shall come with me in to mother." + +Even then she would have turned proudly away, but with his impulsive, +lover's sympathy he led her from the elevator upon the landing on which +he lived. "She is waiting for you--she wants you," he urged with +passion; "and can't you see--oh, Christina, I want you, too!" + +But his fervour only left her the more cold and shrinking, and she shook +her head with a refusal that was almost angry. + +"How dare you? Why did you make me come out?" she asked. "I must go +back--I am not well--oh, I must go back!" + +Over the angry tones of her voice he saw her entreating eyes shining +like wet flowers, and as he looked into them it came to him in a +revelation of knowledge that the meaning of everything that had been was +made clear at last. He knew now why he had succeeded where Christina had +failed--he knew why Laura had refused his love, and why, even in his +misery, her refusal had left his heart untouched. And beyond all these +things, he realised that now his boyhood was over and that from the +experience of this one moment he had become a man. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE DEIFICATION OF CLAY + + +Not until a month after the announcement of Laura's engagement did she +come face to face for the first time with the ugly skeleton which lies +hidden beneath the most beautiful of dreams. The spring had passed in a +troubled rapture; and it was on one of the bright, warm days in early +June that she found awaiting her on the hall table when she came in from +her walk a letter addressed in a strange handwriting and bearing a +strange foreign postmark. Beside this was a note from Kemper explaining +a broken engagement of the day before; and she read first her lover's +letter, which ended, as every letter of his had ended since the +beginning of their love, "Yours with my whole heart and soul, Arnold." + +With an emotion which repetition could never deaden, she stooped to kiss +the last sentence he had written, before she turned carelessly to take +up the strange foreign envelope, which she had thrown, with her veil and +gloves, on the chair at her side. For a moment she pondered +indifferently the address; then, almost as she broke the seal, the first +words she read were those which lay hidden away in the love letter +within her hand, "Yours with my whole heart and soul, Arnold." + +In her first shock, even while the blow still blinded her eyes, she +turned to seek wildly for some possible solution; and it was then that +she discovered that the letter, in Kemper's handwriting, was addressed +evidently to some other woman, since it bore the date of a day in June +just three years before she had first met him. Three years ago he had +declared himself to belong, heart and soul, to this other woman; and +to-day, with no remembrance in his mind, it seemed, of that former +passion, he could repeat quite as ardently the old threadbare avowal. +How many times, she asked herself, had he used that characteristic +ending to his love letters?--and the thing appeared to her suddenly to +be the veriest travesty of the perfect self-surrender of love. + +She was a woman capable of keen retrospective jealousy, and as she sat +there, beaten down from her winged ecstasy by the blow that had struck +at her from the silence, she told herself passionately that her life was +wrecked utterly and her brief happiness at an end. Then, with that +relentless power of intellect, from which her emotions were never +entirely separated, she began deliberately to disentangle the true facts +from the temporary impulses of her jealous anger. + +"I am wounded and yet why am I wounded and by what right?" she demanded, +with a pathetic groping after the self-condemnation which would acquit +her lover, "he has lived his life, I know--I have always known it--and +his letter has only brought forcibly before me a fact which I have +accepted though I have not faced it." And it occurred to her, with the +bitter sweetness of a consoling lie, that he could not have been false +to her three years ago, since he was not then even aware of her +existence. To dwell on this thought was like yielding to the power of +an insidious drug, and yet she found herself forcing it almost +deliriously against her saner judgment. "How could he wrong me so long +as I was a stranger to him?" she repeated over and over. "On the day +that he first loved me, his old life, with its sins and its selfish +pleasures, was blotted out." But her conscience, even while she +reasoned, told her that love could possess no power like this--that the +man who loved her to-day, was the inevitable result of the man who had +loved other women yesterday, and that there was as little permanence in +the prompting of mere impulse as there was stability in change itself. +So the voice within her spoke through the intolerable clearness of her +intellect; and in her frantic desire to drown the thing it uttered, she +repeated again and again the empty words which her heart prompted. Yet +she knew even though she urged the falsehood upon her thoughts, that it +was less her argument that pleaded for Kemper than the memory of a look +in his face at animated instants, which rose now before her and appealed +disturbingly to her emotions. + +Three ways of conduct were open to her, she saw plainly enough. Wisdom +suggested that she should not only put the letter aside, but that she +should banish the recollection of its existence from her life. But, +while she admitted that this would be the most courageous treatment of +the situation, she recognised perfectly that to act upon such a decision +was utterly beyond her strength. Though she were to destroy the object, +was the memory of it not seared indelibly into her brain? and would not +this memory return to embitter long afterward her happiest moments? +"When he kisses me I shall remember that he has kissed other women and I +feel that I shall grow to hate him if he should ever write to me again +in those lying words." But she knew intuitively that he would use the +same ending in his next letter, and that she would still be powerless to +hate him, if only because of his disturbing look, which came back to her +whenever she attempted to judge him harshly. "I might really hate him so +long as he was absent from me, and yet if he came again and looked at me +in that way for a single instant, I know that, in spite of my +resolution, I would throw myself into his arms." And she felt that she +despised herself for a bondage against which she struggled as hopelessly +as a bird caught in a fowler's net. + +Of the two ways which remained to her, she chose, in the end, the course +which appeared to her to be the least ungenerous. She would not read the +letter--the opening and the closing sentences she had seen by +accident--for, when all was said, it had not been written for her eyes; +and it struck her, as she brooded over it, that there would be positive +disloyalty in thus stealing in upon the secrets of Kemper's past. No, +she would place it in his hands, she determined finally, still unread; +and in so doing she would not only defeat the purpose of the sender, but +would prove to him as well as to herself that her faith in him was as +unalterable as her love. After all to trust was easier than to distrust, +for the brief agony of her indecision had brought to her the knowledge +that the way of suspicion is the way of death. + +And so when he came a little later she gave the letter, at which she +had not again looked, into his hands. "Here is something that reached me +only this morning," she said. "It is not worth thinking of, and I have +read only the first and the last sentence." + +At her words he unfolded the paper, throwing a mere casual glance, as he +did so, upon the thin foreign envelope, which appeared to convey to him +no hint of its significant contents. + +Then, after a hurried skimming of the first page, he turned back again +and carefully studied the address in a mystification which was pierced +presently by a flash of light. + +"By Jove, so she's heard it!" he exclaimed; and the instant afterward he +added in a kind of grudging admiration, "Well, she's a devil!" + +The incident appeared suddenly to engross him in a manner that Laura had +not expected, and he stooped to examine the postmark with an attention +which gave her, while she watched him, a queer sense of being left out +quite in the cold. + +"But why, in thunder, should she care?" he demanded. + +"She?" there was no trouble in her voice, only an indifferent question. + +"Oh, it's Jennie Alta, of course--she's perfectly capable of such a +thing." Then, reaching out, he drew Laura into his arms with a +confidence which had the air, she thought, of taking the situation +almost too entirely for granted--of accepting too readily her attitude +as well as his possession of her. "My darling girl, what a regular brick +you are!" he said. + +Though she realised, as he spoke, that this was the reward of her +silence and her struggle, she told herself, in the next breath that, in +some way, it was all inadequate. She had expected more than a phrase, +and the very fact that the note of earnestness was absent from his voice +but made her desire the sound of it the more passionately. Again she +felt the baffled sensation which came to her in moments of their closest +intimacy. Had his soul, in truth, eluded her for the last time? And was +there in the profoundest emotion always a distance which it was forever +impossible to bridge? Yet the uncertainty, the very lack of a fuller +understanding only added fervour to the passion that burned in her +heart. + +"It's all over now, so we may as well warm ourselves by the failure of +her deviltry," he observed presently, as he flung the crumpled paper +into the fire. "I'm downright sorry she'll never know how little harm +she's done." + +"It might, I suppose, have been worse," suggested Laura. + +"Well, I suppose so--and you mean me to believe that you didn't even +read it?" he enquired with tender gayety. + +She gave him her eyes frankly as an answer to his appeal for faith. "Why +should I? I love you," she replied. + +For an instant--a single sufficing instant--he met her look with an +earnestness that was equal to her own. The man in him, she almost cried +out in her exultation, was touched at last. + +"May God grant that your confidence will never fail me," he rejoined a +little sadly. + +"When that comes it will be time to die," was her answer. + +Taking her hand in his he held it in a close pressure for several +minutes. Then the earnestness she had arrested fled from her touch, and +when he spoke again she could not tell whether his words were uttered +sincerely or simply as the outcome of his sarcastic humour. + +"If you were a flesh-and-blood woman instead of an eccentric sprite," he +remarked, "I suppose you'd want me to make a clean breast of the whole +affair, but I can't because, to tell the truth, I've forgotten +everything about it." + +"Then you didn't honestly love her, so it doesn't matter." + +"Love her! Pshaw!" Though he laughed out the words there was an angry +flush in his face. "Do you think I'm the kind of man to love a mere +singing animal? And besides," he concluded with a brutal cynicism which +repelled her sharply, "I'm of an economical turn, you know, and the love +of such women comes too high. I've seen them eat up a fellow's income as +if it were a box of Huyler's." The words were no sooner uttered than his +mood changed quickly and he was on his feet. "But I didn't mean to give +you the whole morning, sweetheart, I merely looked in to say that I +wanted you to come out with me in the car this afternoon. There's a fine +breeze blowing." + +For a thoughtful moment she hesitated before she answered. "I told Roger +Adams that I should be at home," she returned, "but I dare say he won't +mind not seeing me." + +"Oh, I dare say," he retorted gayly. "Well, I'll pick you up, then, on +the stroke of five." + +As he left the room she went over to the window, and when he came out a +little later, he turned upon the sidewalk to glance up at her and wave +his hand. She was happy, perfectly happy, she told herself, as she +looked eagerly after the last glimpse of his figure; but even while she +framed the thought into words, she was conscious that her heart throbbed +high in disappointment and that her eyes were already blind with tears. + +When Adams sent up his card, at twenty minutes before five o'clock, she +lingered a few moments before going downstairs in her motoring coat and +veil. In response to her embarrassed excuses, he made only a casual +expression of regret for the visit he had missed. + +"It's a fine afternoon--just right for a run," he remarked, adding after +a brief hesitation. "It's the proper thing, I suppose, to offer you +congratulations, but I'm a poor hand, as you know, at making pretty +speeches. I wish you happiness with all my heart--that's about all there +is to say--isn't it?" + +"That's about all," she echoed, "and at least if I'm not happy I shall +have only myself to blame." + +The silence that followed seemed to them both unnatural and constrained; +and he broke it at last with a remark which sounded to him, while he +uttered it, almost irrelevant. + +"I've never seen much of Kemper, but I always liked him." + +"I know," she nodded, "you were chums at College." + +"Oh, hardly that, but we knew each other pretty well. He's a lucky chap +and I hope he has the sense to see it." + +"There's no doubt whatever of his sense!" she laughed. Then, growing +suddenly serious, she leaned toward him with her old earnest look. "No +one has ever known him, I think, just as I do," she went on, "because no +one understands how wonderfully good he really is. He's so good," she +finished almost triumphantly, as if she had overcome by her assertion a +point which he disputed, "that there are times when he makes me feel +positively wicked." + +Having no answer ready but a smile, he gave her this pleasantly enough, +so that she might take it, if she chose, for a complete agreement. +Though his heart was filled with repressed tenderness, there was nothing +further now that he could say to her, for he realised as he looked into +her face, that there was little room in her happiness either for his +tenderness or for himself. An aversion, too, to meeting Kemper awoke in +him, and so, after a few minutes of trivial conversation, he rose and +held out his hand. + +"I'm very busy just now, so I may not see you again for quite awhile," +he said at parting, "but remember if ever you should want me that I am +always waiting." + +A little later, as he walked up the street in the June sunshine, he saw +Kemper's new automobile spinning rapidly from the direction of Fifth +Avenue. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE GREATEST OF THESE + + +For a minute after Kemper had passed in his car, Adams turned back and +stood looking down the long street filled with pleasant June sunshine. +In the distance a hand-organ was grinding out a jerky sentimental air, +and beside him, at the corner by which he stood, a crippled vender of +fruit had halted his little cart of oranges and apples. + +A year ago Adams might have told himself, in the despair of ignorance, +that since Laura had given her love to Kemper she was lost to him +forever. But he had learned now that this could not be true--that she +was too closely knit into his destiny to separate herself entirely from +it; and there came to him, while he stood there, a strange mystic +assurance that she would some day feel that she had need of him again. +His love had passed triumphantly through its first earthly stages, and +in the large impassioned yearning with which he thought of her there +was, so far as he himself was conscious, but little left of a sharper +personal desire. All desire, indeed, which has its root in the physical +craving for possession seemed to have gone out of him in the last few +months; and since the earliest dawn of that deeper consciousness within +his soul, he had almost ceased to think of himself as an isolated +individual life. + +To let go the personal was to fall back again on the Eternal; between +the soul and God, he had learned in his deepest agony, there is room for +nothing more impregnable than the illusion of self. As Roger Adams--as a +mere separate existence, he was a failure. The things which he had +desired in life he had not possessed; the things which he had possessed +he had ceased very soon, in any vital sense, to desire. Of his life's +work, so big at the beginning, he saw now that he had made but a small +achievement--a volume of essays on the writings of other men and a few +years editing of a magazine which had absorbed his strength without +yielding him the smallest return of fame. On every side, from all +avenues of hope or of mere impulse, there had crowded upon him, he +admitted smiling, but disappointment and disillusion. He had played for +happiness as every man plays for it from the cradle, he had staked his +throw as boldly, he had made his resolves as desperately, as any of his +fellows, and yet at the end of his forty years he had not a single +object to put forward as his reward. Nothing remained to him! As the +world counts success he could show only failure. + +But the larger vision was still before him, and he knew that all these +thoughts were the cheapest falsehood. In spite of appearances, in spite +of the outward emptiness of his existence, he had not failed; and in the +hour that he had put life aside he had for the first time in his whole +experience begun really to live. In surrendering his own small +individual being he knew that he had entered into the possession of a +being immeasurably larger than his own. + +He looked at the fruit vender smiling, and the man's answering smile +came to him like the clasp of fellowship. "Did he, too, understand?" was +Adams' unspoken question, "had he, also, found the key that unlocked his +prison?" and there flowed into his heart something of the rapture with +which Laura had cried: "I've grown to the light!" In each exclamation +there was ecstasy, but in hers it was the short, troubled ecstasy of the +senses, which hears its doom even in the hour of its own fulfilment; +while from his finer joy there shone forth that radiant energy, in which +is both warmth and light, both rest and action, which illumines not only +the soul within, but transfigures and refines the mere dull ordinary +facts of life. + +As he stood there the car passed him again, and Laura and Kemper both +turned, smiling, to look back at him. When Laura's long white veil was +lost, with a last flutter, in the sunshine, he nodded to the fruit +vender, and crossing to Broadway started in the direction of his home. + +He had asked Trent to dine with him--the boy looked fagged he thought, +and it might do him good to talk freely about his play. Then he recalled +several letters that he had put aside for the sake of seeing Laura; and +retracing his steps, he went back to his office and sat down before his +desk. It surprised him sometimes to find how little irksome such +uninteresting details had become. + +They talked late over their cigars and coffee, and when at last Trent +rose, with a laughing reminder of his mother, and went out into the hall +to put on his overcoat, Adams passed by him, after a final handshake, +and entered his darkened study at the end of the hall. He heard the +door close quickly as Trent left the house, and his mind was still full +of the boy's dramatic ambitions, as he paused beside his desk and bent +down to raise the wick of the green lamp. He had fallen into the habit +of sitting up rather late now, and there was a paper on his blotting-pad +which he was preparing for the coming issue of his magazine. After +glancing hastily over, he found that the last few sentences were +rearranging themselves in his thoughts, and he had set himself patiently +to the redraughting of the paragraph, when a slight sound at the door +caused him to look up suddenly with the suspended blue pencil still, in +his hand. It was too late for the maids, he knew--they had already gone +to bed before Trent left--and he knew also that the person who entered +at this hour must have opened the outer door by means of a latch-key. +The soft, slow movement outside sent a nervous shiver through him; he +was aware the next instant that he gripped the pencil more closely in +his hand; and then, rising to his feet with a breathless impulse to be +face to face at once with the inevitable moment, he made a single step +forward, while he watched the knob turn, the door open slowly, and +Connie cross the threshold and pause confusedly as if blinded by the +lamplight. + +The pencil dropped from his hand; he heard it fall with a thud upon the +carpet; and then he heard nothing else except the beating of his own +arteries in his ears. Time seemed to stop suddenly and then to whirl +madly forward while he stood rooted to his square of carpet, with his +useless hands hanging helplessly at his sides. It was the supreme +instant his life that was before him, and yet he was as powerless to +meet it as the infant in the womb to avert the hour of its birth. Dumb +and petrified by very force of the will within him, he waited immovable +on the spot of carpet, while his eyes saw only the visible wreck of the +woman who stood upon his threshold. His dreams of her had been visions +of horror, but the most pitiable of them had fallen far short of the +reality as he saw it now. From her streaked blonde hair, already +powdered with gray, to her exhausted bedraggled feet, which seemed +hardly to support her trembling body, she stood there, terrible and full +of anguish, like the most tragic ghost of his imaginary horrors. Face to +face with each other they were held speechless by the knowledge that +there was no word by which the past might be justified or the future +made any easier for them to meet; and as in all great instants of life +the thing that was said between them was uttered at last in an unbroken +silence. + +Then as they stood there a slight sound changed the atmosphere of the +room. The shade of the lamp, which Adams had raised too high, cracked +with a sharp noise and fell to the floor in broken pieces; and at the +shock Connie gave a hysterical shriek and lifted to Adams the frightened +glance of her ignorant blue eyes. + +"I--I had nowhere to go and I am very tired," she said, in her old tone +of childish irritation, "I don't think I was ever so tired in my life +before." + +Her voice snapped the icy constraint which held him and he knew now that +he was ready to face the hour on its own terms. His will was as the +strength of the strong, and he felt standing there, that he would ask +no quarter of his fate. Let it be what it would, he knew that it was +powerless to close on him again the door of his prison. + +"Then you did right to come back; Connie," he said quietly, "you did +right to come back." + +His words rang out almost exultantly, but the moment afterward he was +terrified by their immediate effect--for Connie--throwing herself +forward upon the floor, burst wildly into one of her old spells of +weeping, calling upon God, upon himself, and upon the man whom she had +loved and hated. The frenzied beating of her small, helpless hands, the +streaming of her tears, the quiver of her wrecked, emaciated body, the +convulsed agony that looked at him from her face--these things made +their appeal to that compassion by which he lived, and he found that the +way which he had thought difficult had become to him as familiar as the +breath he drew. + +"It is all over now--there is nothing but quiet here," he said. + +She lay still instantly at his words, her face half hidden in the +cushions of the sofa; and turning from her he went into the dining-room +and brought back a glass of wine and some bread and milk. As he fed her, +she opened her lips with a little humble, tired movement which was +utterly unlike the Connie whom he remembered. Was it possible that in +her degradation she had learned the first rare grace of spirit which is +meekness? + +"Take it all, every drop," he said once, when she would have pushed the +spoon away; and turning obediently, she swallowed the last drops of +milk. + +"It is very good," she murmured as he rose to put down the emptied +bowl. The words brought a quick moisture of recollection to his eyes, +and he found himself asking if the time had come at last when Connie +could find pleasure in the taste of bread and milk? + +After this she lay motionless on the floor until he carried her upstairs +and placed her upon the bed as he had done so often on her past reckless +nights. But there was no remembrance in his mind now of that former +service; and as he turned on the electric light and drew the blankets +over her shivering body, he was hardly surprised even by the readiness +with which events, left perfectly alone, had managed to adjust +themselves. Why he had acted as he had done, he could not have told; had +he stopped to think of it he would probably have said that he had seen +no other way. Connie as his wife, as the mother even of his dead child, +had come to mean nothing to him any more; but Connie as something far +deeper than this--as the object of inexhaustible compassion, as the +tragedy of mortal failure--possessed now a significance which no human +relation could cover by a name. Beyond the abandoned wife, he could +see--not less clearly than on that night when he had waited in the snow +outside the opera house--the small terrified soul caught in a web of +circumstance from which there was no escape. + +Standing at daybreak in the centre of his study floor, he remembered the +last humble look with which she had closed her eyes; and he saw in it a +gratitude that was like the first faint dawning of the daybreak. For the +first time in his life he had watched in Connie's eyes the struggle for +consciousness which was as the struggle of an animal in whom a soul had +come painfully to birth; and the memory of it sent a strange, an almost +divine happiness to his heart. Was it possible that the will of God had +moved here while he slept? Was it possible, he asked himself in an +ecstasy of wonder, that in spite of all sin, all failure, all +degradation, all despair, he had really won Connie's soul? + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +ADAMS WATCHES IN THE NIGHT AND SEES THE DAWN + + +For a week after her home-coming Connie lay ill and almost unconscious +in her chamber. Since her first wild outburst on the night of her return +she had allowed no hint of remorse or gratitude to break through the +obstinate silence upon her lips; and the impression she gave Adams, on +his occasional visits to her room, was of a soul and body too exhausted +for even the slightest emotional activity. She had made of her life what +her desire prompted; and she seemed to suggest now, lying there wrecked +and silent, that the end of all self-gratification is in utter weariness +of spirit. + +Then gradually, as the long June days went by, life appeared feebly to +renew itself and move within her. At first it was only a look, raised to +Adams, when he bent over her, with something of the pathetic, expectant +wonder of a sick child; then a helpless expressive gesture, and at last +he found in her eye a clearer and fuller recognition of her surroundings +and of himself. The gratitude he had seen on that terrible night +surprised him again one day as he spoke to her; and after this he began +to watch for its reappearance with an eagerness which he himself found +it difficult to understand. Of all virtues gratitude was most lacking +in the woman who had been his wife; and this slow, silent growth of it, +showed to him as no less a miracle than the coming of the spring or the +resurrection of the dead earth beneath the rain. There were moments +even, when he felt that he must move softly, lest he disturb the working +of those spiritual forces which make for righteousness by strange and +wonderful ways. Strange and wonderful, indeed, he had found, beyond all +miracles were the means by which the soul might be brought back to the +knowledge of its immortal destiny. Was it not under the eyes of a harlot +that he, himself, had seen the mystery which is God's goodness? and so +might he not find that Connie had learned, in the depths of her +self-abasement, that the light which surrounds the pleasures of the +senses is full of enchantment only for the distant, deluded vision? + +But there were other hours when he asked himself if he were strong +enough for the thing which he had before him--strong enough, not for the +swift, exalted moment of the sacrifice, but for the daily fret and +torment of a perfectly unpoetic self-denial. Would the light go out +again and the exaltation fail him before many days? Then he remembered +the pathos of her struggling smile, the timid groping of her hands, the +deprecating gratitude he found in her look; and it seemed to him when +all other resources were exhausted--when his energy, his duty, his +religion flagged--that his compassion would still remain in his heart to +render possible all that was impossible to his will alone. Compassion! +this, he came to find in the end, was the true and the necessary key to +any serious understanding of life. + +He was still putting these questions to himself, when, coming in one +afternoon from his office, he found Connie, wearing a loose fitting +wrapper of some pale coloured muslin, awaiting him in an easy chair +beside her window. It was the first time that she had left her bed; and +when he offered a few cheerful congratulations upon her recovered +strength, she looked up at him with a face which still showed signs of +the hideous ravages of the last few months. In her hollowed cheeks, in +her quivering unsteady lips, and in the dull grayness of her hair, from +which the golden dye had faded, he could find now no faint traces of +that delicate beauty he had loved. At less than thirty years she looked +the embodiment of uncontrolled and reckless middle-age. + +"It isn't that I'm really better--not really," she said, in answer to +his look almost more than to his words, "but the doctor told me that I +must get up and dress to-day. He wants me to go to the hospital this +afternoon." + +Her voice was so composed--so unlike the usual nervous quiver of her +speech--that at first he could only repeat her words in the vague +blankness of his surprise. + +"To the hospital? Then you are ill?" + +"I asked him not to tell you," she replied, with a tremor of the lips +which had almost the effect of a smile, "he didn't understand--he +couldn't, so I wanted you to hear it first from me. I'll never be any +better--I'll never get really well again--without such an operation--and +he thinks, he says, that it must be at once--without delay." + +As she spoke she stretched out her hand for a glass of water that stood +at her side, and in the movement her wedding ring slipped from her thin +finger and rolled to a little distance upon the floor. Picking it up he +handed it back to her, but she placed it indifferently upon the table. +Her attitude, with its dull quiet of sensation, impressed him at the +instant almost more than the greater importance of what she told him. +Was it this acceptance of the thing, he wondered, which appeared to rob +it of all terror in her mind? and was the dumb resignation in her face +and voice, merely an expression of the physical listlessness of despair? +There was about her now that peculiar dignity which belongs less to the +human creature than to the gravity of the moment in which he stands; and +he remembered vividly that he had never watched any soul in the supreme +crisis of its experience without the stirring in himself of a strange +sentiment of reverence. Even the most abandoned was covered in that +exalted hour by some last rag of honour. + +"Then you have suffered great pain?" he asked, because no other words +came to him that he could utter. + +"Weeks ago--yes--but not now. It does not hurt me now." + +"And you thought, yourself, that it was so serious as this?" + +She shook her head. "Oh, no, I never thought of it. When it came I drove +it off with brandy." + +The absence in her of any appeal for pity moved him far more than the +loudest outcry could have done. + +"Poor girl!" he said, and stopped in terror, lest he had obtruded the +personal element into a situation which seemed so devoid of feeling. + +"It was a pity," she returned to his surprise very quietly; and without +looking at him, she spoke presently in a voice which struck him as +having a strange quality of hollowness, "it was a pity; but it can't be +helped. You might try and try because you're made that way, but it +wouldn't, in the end, do the very least bit of good. If I live till +to-morrow and get well and come out of the hospital, it will all be over +just exactly what it was before. Not at first, perhaps--oh, I know, not +at first!--but afterward, when things bored me, the taste would come +back again." + +"Hush!" he said quickly, with a forward movement, "hush! you shall not +think such things!" + +"The taste would come back again!" she repeated, with a kind of savage +sternness. "I am not strong and the doctor told me long ago that there +was no cure." + +"Then he lied--there is always a cure." + +"There is not--there is not," she insisted harshly, dwelling upon the +words because in them she found a keen agony which relieved her lethargy +of bitterness, "I am different now for a while, but it would not last. I +am very tired, but after I have rested--" + +"What would not last?" he broke in, as she hesitated over her unfinished +sentence. + +For a long pause she waited, searching in vain, he saw, for some phrase +which might describe the thing she had not as yet thought out clearly in +her own dazed mind. Then, at last, she spoke almost in a whisper, "the +freedom." + +The word gave him a sudden shock of gladness. "Then you are free +to-day--you feel it now?" + +She raised her hand, pushing back her faded hair, as if she would look +more closely at an object which rose but dimly before her eyes. + +"I want you to know all--everything," she went on slowly, "I want you to +understand how low I sank--to what fearful places I came in the end. At +first it was merely discontent, and I felt that it was only happiness I +wanted. I loved him--for a time, I think, I really loved him--you know +whom I mean--but at last, when I began to weary him, when he knew what I +took, he cursed me and left me alone in the street one night. Then a +devil was let loose within me--I wanted hell, and I went +further--further." + +Her voice was still lifeless, but while she spoke he felt his teeth bite +into his lips with a force which stung him to the consciousness of what +she said. There awoke in him a triumph, almost a glory in the rage he +felt, and he knew now why men had always believed in a hell--why they +had even come at last to hope for it. + +"I never meant to come back," she began again, after a pause in which +the tumult of his feeling seemed to fill the air with violence, "but I +had reached the end of wretchedness, I was tired and hungry, and nothing +that happened really mattered. If you had told me to go away I don't +think that I should have cared. I meant, in that case, to sell my coat +for a bottle of brandy, and to put an end to it all while I had the +courage of drink." + +Her bent disordered head trembled slightly, but she appeared to him to +have passed in her misery beyond the bounds where any human sympathy +could be of use. She was no longer his wife, nor he her husband; she was +no longer even a fellow mortal between whom and himself there might be +some common ground of understanding. Absolutely alone and +unapproachable, he knew that she had reached the ultimate desolation of +her soul. + +"It was because you did not send me away that I have told you," she said +quietly. "It is because, too, I want you to know that I--understand." + +To the end her thoughts were but poor faltering, half-developed things; +yet he knew what she meant to say, though she, herself, had divined it +only through some pathetic, dumb instinct. + +"I think I know what you mean," he said presently, when it appeared to +him that her confession was over; but after he had spoken she took up +her sentence with the dead calm in which she had come to rest. + +"There's no use saying that I'm sorry and yet--I am sorry." + +Her look of weariness was so great that with the words she seemed to +lose instantly her remaining strength; and he gathered in her silence, +an impression that she was reaching blindly out to him for help. + +"Promise me that you will stay with me as long as they will let you?" +she implored, with a quick return to her convulsion of childish terror. + +He promised readily; but when the time came for her to go, she had +entirely recovered her aspect of listless fortitude, and during the +short drive to the hospital, she talked, without stopping, of perfectly +indifferent subjects--of the dust in the street, the deserted look of +the closed houses, and of the wedding present she wished to buy for a +maid who was to be married in the coming week. + +"Let it be something really thee," she asked, and this single request +marked for him, as she uttered it, a change in Connie greater than any +he had seen before. + +At the hospital he expected a relapse into her hysterical dread, but, to +his surprise, she watched the surgical preparations with a calmness in +which there was a kind of passive curiosity. While the nurse laid out +her nightdress on the small white iron bed, and braided her hair in two +long, slender braids, she assisted with a patient attention to such +details which seemed hardly to account for the terrible event for which +they prepared. Her hair, he noticed, was combed straight back from her +forehead in the fashion in which she might have worn it as a little +girl; and this simple change gave her an expression which was almost one +of injured innocence. Age and experience were suddenly wiped out of her +face, not by any act of mental illumination, but merely by the ruffles +of her white nightdress and the simple childish fashion in which they +had combed her hair. + +When they came to take her upstairs to the operating room upon the roof, +he would have gone also, but after reaching the top landing, she turned +to him upon the threshold and told him that she would rather he came no +farther. + +"I can bear everything better alone now," she said; and so when they +carried her inside he turned away and entered the little waiting room +at the other end of the hall. The place stifled him with the odours of +chloroform and ether, and going to the window, he threw open the blinds +and leaned out into the street. With the first breath of air in his +face, he realised that it was he, and not Connie, who had turned coward +at the end; and he wondered if it were merely waning vitality which had +assumed in her an appearance of such natural dignity. She had lived her +life in terror of imaginary horrors and now in presence of the actual +suffering she could show herself to be absolutely unafraid. Not she but +he, himself, now shivered at the thought of her unconscious body in the +surgeon's hands, and he felt that it would be a positive relief to +change places with her at the instant--to confront in her stead either +the returning pangs of consciousness or the greater mystery of her +unawakening. + +In the small, newly painted room, which smelt of chloroform and varnish, +he sat staring through the half open door to the hall where a surgeon, +wearing a shirt with roiled-up sleeves, had just hurried by. A nurse +passed carrying a basin from which a light steam rose; then a young +doctor with a brown leather bag, and presently a second surgeon, who +walked rapidly, and turned up his cuffs over his fat arms, just before +he reached the threshold. + +Connie was no longer his wife, Adams had told himself; and yet this fact +seemed not in the least to lessen the importance of the news which he +awaited. For the first time he understood clearly how trivial are any +mere social relations between man and woman. + +Then, while he watched the hand of the clock on the mantel drag slowly +around the great staring face, he compelled his thoughts gradually to +detach themselves from her helpless body, as it lay outstretched on the +table across the hall, and to regather about the girlish figure he had +first seen under cherry coloured ribbons. The old vibrant emotion was +but ashes; try as he would he could bring back but a pale memory of that +golden moment; and this emptiness where there had once been life, +lessened forever in his mind the value of all purely human passion. But +his personal attitude to her was lost suddenly in his wider regret that +such tragedies were possible--that the girl with the delicate babyish +face could have become a creature to whom vice was a desired familiar +thing. + +"Did the outcome lie in my hands? and might I have prevented it?" he +demanded. "If I had stood in the way of her impulse, would it have +turned aside from me at the last?" And the salvation of the world +appeared to him to depend upon just this courageous coming between evil +and the desire which it invited--for had not the soul of the weak, been +delivered, in spite of all moral subterfuge, into the power of the +strong? + +Then his vision broadened, and he looked from Connie's life to the lives +of men and women who were more fortunate than she; but all human +existence, everywhere one and the same, showed to him as the ceaseless +struggle after the illusion of a happiness which had no part in any +possession nor in any object. He thought of Laura, with the radiance of +her illusion still upon her; of Gerty, groping after the torn and +soiled shreds of hers; of Kemper, stripped of his and yet making the +pretence that it had not left him naked; of Perry Bridewell, dragging +his through the defiling mire that led to emptiness; and then of all the +miserable multitude of those that live for pleasure. And he saw them, +one and all, bound to the wheel which turned even as he looked. + +The door across the hall opened and they brought Connie out, breathing +quietly and still unconscious. He followed the stretcher downstairs; but +after they had placed her upon the bed, he came back again and sat down, +as before, in the little stuffy room. Presently he would go home, he +thought, but as the night wore on, he became too exhausted for further +effort, and closing his eyes at last, he fell heavily asleep. + +When he awoke the day was already breaking, and the electric light +burned dimly in the general wash of grayness. About him the atmosphere +had a strangely sketchy effect, as if it had been laid on crudely with a +few strokes from a paint brush. + +The window was still open, and going over to it he leaned out and stood +for several minutes, too tired to make the necessary effort to collect +his thoughts, while he looked across the sleeping city to the pale amber +dawn which was beginning to streak the sky with colour. The silence was +very great; in the faint light the ordinary objects upon which he +gazed--the familiar look of the houses and the streets--appeared to him +less the forms of a material substance than the result of some shadowy +projection of mind. All the earth and sky showed suddenly as belonging +to this same transient manifestation of thought; and gradually, as he +stood there, his perceptions were reinforced by a sense which is not +that of the eye nor of the ear. He neither saw nor heard, yet he felt +that the spirit had moved toward him on the face of the dawn; and the +"I" was not more evident to his illumined consciousness than was the +"Thou." He beheld God, with the vision which is beyond vision; the light +of his eyes, the breath of his body were less plain to him than was the +mystery of his soul. And the universal life, he saw--spirit and matter, +fibre and impulse, vibration of atom and quiver of aspiration--was but +an agonised working out into this consciousness of God. With the +revelation his own life was changed as by a miracle of nature; right +became no longer difficult, but easy; and not the day only, but his +whole existence and the end to which it moved were made as clear to him +as the light before his eyes. + +Again he thought of Laura, still under the troubled radiance of her +illusion, and his heart dissolved in sympathy, not for her only, but for +all mankind--for Kemper, whom she loved, for Gerty, for Connie, for +Perry Bridewell. "They seek for happiness, but it is mine," he thought; +"and because they seek it first, it will keep away from them forever. It +is not to be found in pleasure, nor in the desire of any object, nor in +the fulfilment of any love--for I, who have none of these things, am +happier than they." + +He turned away from the window toward the door, and it was at this +instant that one of the nurses ran up to him. + +"We thought you had gone home," she said, "so we have rung you up by +telephone for an hour--" She stopped and paused hesitating for an +instant; then meeting the quiet question in his look, she added simply, +"Your wife died, still unconscious, an hour ago." + + + + +CHAPTER V + +TREATS OF THE POVERTY OF RICHES + + +On the morning of Connie's death, Gerty, dropping in shortly before +luncheon, brought the news to Laura. + +"Do you know for once in my life my social instinct has failed me," she +confessed in her first breath, "I am perfectly at a loss as to how the +situation should be met. Ought one to ignore her death or ought one not +to?" + +"Do you mean," asked Laura, "that you can't decide whether to write to +him or not?" + +"Of course that's a part of it, but, the main thing is to know in one's +own mind whether one ought to regard it as an affliction or a blessing. +It really isn't just to Providence to be so undecided about the +character of its actions--particularly when in this case it appears to +have arranged things so beautifully to suit everybody who is concerned." + +"It was, to say the least, considerate," remarked Laura, with the +cynical flavour she adopted occasionally from Kemper or from Gerty, "and +it is certainly a merciful solution of the problem, but does it ever +occur to you," she added more earnestly, "to wonder what would have +happened if she hadn't died?" + +"Oh, she simply had to die," said Gerty, "there was nothing else that +she could do in decency--not that she would have been greatly +influenced by such a necessity," she commented blandly. + +"I'd like all the same to know how he would have met the difficulty, for +that he would have met it, I am perfectly assured." + +"Well, I, for one, can afford to leave my curiosity unsatisfied," +responded Gerty; then she added in a voice that was almost serious. "Do +you know there's really something strangely loveable about the man. I +sometimes think," she concluded with her fantastic humour, "that I might +have married him myself with very little effort on either side." + +"And lived happily forever after on the _International Review?_" + +"Oh, I don't know but what it would be quite as easy as to live on +clothes. I don't believe poverty, after all, is a bit worse than +boredom. What one wants is to be interested, and if one isn't, life is +pretty much the same in a surface car or in an automobile. I don't +believe I should have minded surface cars the least bit," she finished +pensively. + +"Wait till you've tried them--I have." + +"What really matters is the one great thing," pursued Gerty with a +positive philosophy, "and money has about as much relation to happiness +as the frame has to the finished picture--all it does is to show it off +to the world. Now I like being shown off, I admit--but I'd like it all +the better if there were a little more of the stuff upon the canvas." + +"If you were only as happy as I am!" said Laura softly. + +For a moment Gerty looked at her with a sweetness in which there was an +almost maternal understanding. "I wish I were, darling," was what she +answered. + +Her hard, bright eyes grew suddenly wistful, and she looked at Laura as +if she would pierce through the enveloping flesh to the soul within. Of +all the people she had ever known Laura was the only one, she had +sometimes declared, who had never lied to her. The world had lied to +her, Kemper had lied to her, Perry had lied to her more than all; and +she had come at last to feel, almost without explaining it to herself, +that the truth was in Laura as in some obscure, mystic sense the +sacrament was in the bread and wine upon the altar. Though she herself +was quite content to slip away from her ideals, she felt that to believe +in somebody was as necessary to her life as the bread she ate. It made +no difference that she should number among the profane multitude who +found their way back to the fleshpots, but her heart demanded that her +friend should remain constant to the prophetic vision and the promised +land. Laura was not only the woman whom she loved, she had become to her +at last almost a vicarious worship. What she couldn't believe Laura +believed in her stead; where she was powerless even to be good, Laura +became not only good but noble. And through all her friendship, from +that first day at school to the present moment, she remembered now that +no hint of jealousy had ever looked at her from Laura's eyes. "A thrush +could hardly borrow the plumage of a paroquet," Trent had said; and the +brilliant loveliness which had disturbed the peace of other women she +had known, had produced in Laura only an increasing delight, a more +fervent rapture. As she looked on the delicate, poetic face of the +woman before her, she found herself asking, almost in terror, if it were +possible that her friend was not only reconciled but positively +enamoured of the world? Had Laura, also, entered into a rivalry which +would be as relentless and more futile than her own? Would she, too, +waste her life in an effort to give substance to a shadow and to render +permanent the most impermanent of earthly things? But the question came +and went so abruptly that the minute afterward she had entirely +forgotten the passage of it through her mind. + +"What a bore of a summer I shall have," she observed lightly, with one +of those swift changes of subject so characteristic of her restless +temperament. "The doctor has ordered me back to camp in the Adirondacks, +and unless Arnold and yourself take pity on me heaven knows whether I'll +be any better than a fungus by the autumn." + +She was arranging her veil before the mirror as she spoke, and she +paused now to survey with a dissatisfied frown one of the large black +spots which had settled across her nose. "I told Camille I couldn't +stand dots like these," she remarked with an equally irrelevant flash of +irritation. + +"Of course I'll come for July if you ask me," replied Laura, ignoring +the question of the veil for the sake of the more important issue, "I +can't answer for Arnold, but I think it's rather what he's looking +forward to." + +"Oh, he told me yesterday that he'd come if I could persuade you. He +didn't have the good manners to leave me in doubt as to what the +attraction for him would be." + +Laura's happy laugh rewarded her. "This will be the first summer he's +spent in America for ten years," she replied, "so I hope he'll find me +worth the sacrifice of Europe." + +"Then he's really given up his trip abroad for you?" + +"There's hardly need to ask that--but don't you think it a quite +sufficient reason?" + +"Oh, I guess so," returned Gerty carelessly. "Once I'd have been quite +positive about it, but that was in the days when I was a fool. Now I'm +not honestly sure that you're doing wisely to let him stay. A man is +perfectly capable of making a sacrifice for a woman in the heat of +emotion, but there are nine chances to one that he never forgives her +for it afterward. Take my advice, my dear, and simply _make_ him +go--shove the boat off yourself if there's no other way. He'll probably +love you ten times more while he's missing you than he will be able to +do through a long hot summer at your side." + +"Gerty, Gerty, how little you know love!" said Laura. + +"My dear, I never pretended to. I've given my undivided time and +attention to men." + +"Well, he doesn't want in the least to go--he'll tell you so himself +when you see him--but I do wish that your views of life weren't quite so +awful." + +Gerty was still critically regarding her appearance in the mirror, and +before answering she ran her hand lightly over the exquisite curve of +her hip in her velvet gown. + +"I'm sorry they strike you that way," she responded amiably, "because +they are probably what your own will be five years from now. Then I may +positively count on you both for July?" she asked without the slightest +change in her flippant tone, "and I'll try to decoy Billy Lancaster for +August. He's still young enough to find the virgin forest congenial +company." + +"But I thought Perry hated him!" exclaimed Laura, in surprise. + +"He does--perfectly--but I can't see that you've made an argument out of +that. Billy's really very handsome--I wish you knew him--he's one of the +few men of my acquaintance who has any hair left on the top of his +head." + +Her flippancy, her shallowness left Laura for a minute in doubt as to +how she should accept her words. Then rising from her chair, she laid +her restraining hands on Gerty's shoulders. + +"My darling, do be careful," she entreated. + +The shoulders beneath her hands rose in an indifferent shrug. "Oh, I've +been careful," laughed Gerty, "but it isn't any fun. Perry isn't careful +and he gets a great deal more out of life than I do." + +"A great deal more of what?" demanded Laura. + +For an instant Gerty thought attentively, while the mocking gayety +changed to a serious hardness upon her face. + +"More forgetfulness," she answered presently. "That's what we all want +isn't it? Call it by what name you will--religion, dissipation, +morphia--what we are all trying to do is to intoxicate ourselves into +forgetting that life is life." + +"But it isn't what I want," insisted Laura, "I want to feel everything +and to know that I feel it." + +"Well, you're different," rejoined Gerty. "What I'm after is to be +happy, and I care very little what form it takes or what kind of +happiness mine may be. I've ceased to be particular about the details +even--if Billy Lancaster is my happiness I'll devour him and never waste +an idle moment in regret. Why should I?--Perry doesn't." + +"So there's an end to Perry?" + +"An end! Oh, you delicious child, there's only a beginning. Perry's cult +is the inaccessible--present him with all the virtues and he will run +away; ignore him utterly and he'll make your life insupportable by his +presence. For the last twenty-four hours I assure you he's stuck to +me--like a briar." + +"Then it's all for Perry--I mean this Billy?" asked Laura. + +Gerty shook her head while her brows grew slowly together in an +expression of angry bitterness. + +"It was in the beginning," she responded, "but I'm not sure that it is +now--not entirely at any rate. The boy's worship is incense to my +nostrils, I suppose. Yes, I've always been a monument of indifference to +men, but I confess to an increasing enthusiasm for Billy's looks." + +"An enthusiasm which Perry doesn't share?" + +The laughter in Gerty's voice was a little sad. "I declare it really +hurts me that I've ceased to notice. The poor silly man offered to give +up his golf to go motoring with me yesterday afternoon, and I went and +was absolutely bored to death. I couldn't help thinking how much more +interesting Billy is." + +Her veil was at last adjusted to her satisfaction; and with a last +brilliant glance, which swept her entire figure, she turned from the +mirror and paused to draw on her gloves while she bent over and kissed +Laura upon the cheek. + +"Goodbye, dear, if Billy turns out to be any real comfort, I'll share +him with you." + +"Oh, I have a Billy of my own!" retorted Laura; and though her words +were mirthful there was a seriousness in her look which lasted long +after the door had closed upon her friend. She was thinking of Adams, +wondering if she should write to him, and how she should word her note; +and whether any expression of sympathy would not sound both trivial and +absurd? Then it seemed to her that there was nothing that she could say +because she realised that she stood now at an impassable distance from +him. The connection of thought even which had existed between them was +snapped at the instant; and she felt that she was no longer interested +in the things which had once absorbed them. The friendship was still +there, she supposed, but the spirit of each, the thoughts, the very +language, had become strangely different, and she told herself that she +could no longer speak to him since she had lost the power to speak in +any words he might understand. + +"How can I pretend to value what no longer even interests me?" she +thought, "and if I attempt to explain--if I tell him that my whole +nature has changed because I have chosen one thing from out the +many--what possible good, after all, could come of putting this into +words? Suppose I say to him quite frankly: 'I am content to let +everything else go since I have found happiness?' And yet is it true +that I have found it? and how do I know that this is really happiness, +after all?" + +It seemed to her, as she asked the question, that her whole life +dissolved itself into the answer; and she became conscious again of the +two natures which dwelt within her--of the nature which lived and of the +nature which kept apart and questioned. She remembered the night after +her first meeting with Kemper and the conviction she had felt then that +her destiny lay mapped out for her in the hand of God. Her soul on that +night had seemed, in the words of the quaint old metaphor, a vase which +she held up for God to fill. The light had run over then, but now, she +realised with a pang, it had ceased to shine through her body, and her +vase was empty. Even love had not filled it for her as her dream had +done. + +Again she asked if it were happiness, and still she could find no +answer. The quickened vibration of the pulses, the concentration of +thought upon a single presence, the restless imagination which leaped +from the disappointment of to-day to the possible fulfilment of +to-morrow--these things were bound up in her every instant, and yet +could she, even in her own thoughts, call these things happiness? She +told off her minutes by her heartbeats; but there were brief suspensions +of feeling when she turned to ask herself if in all its height and force +and vividness there was still no perceptible division between agony and +joy. + +For at times the way grew dark to her and she felt that she stumbled +blindly in a strange place. From the heights of the ideal she had come +down to the ordinary level of the actual; and she was as ignorant of the +forces among which she moved as a bird in the air is ignorant of a cage. +Gerty alone, she knew, was familiar with it all--had travelled step by +step over the road before her--yet, she realised that she found no help +in Gerty, nor in any other human being--for was it not ordained in the +beginning that every man must come at last into the knowledge of the +spirit only through the confirming agony of flesh? + +"No, I am not happy now because he is not utterly and entirely mine," +she thought, "there are only a few hours of the day when he is with +me--all the rest of the twenty-four he leads a life of which I know +nothing, which I cannot even follow in my thoughts. Whom does he see in +those hours? and of what does he think when I am not with him? Next week +in the Adirondacks we shall be together without interruption, and then I +shall discern his real and hidden self--then I shall understand him as +fully as I wish to be understood." And that coming month appeared to her +suddenly as luminous with happiness. Here, now, she was dissatisfied and +incapable of rest, but just six days ahead of her she saw the beginning +of unspeakable joy. An impatient eagerness ran through her like a flame +and she began immediately the preparations for her visit. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE FEET OF THE GOD + + +When Kemper, in an emotional moment, had declared that he would give up +his trip to Europe, he had expected that Laura would see in the +sacrifice a convincing proof of the stability of his affection; but, to +his surprise, she had accepted the suggestion as a shade too much in the +natural order of events. Europe, empty of his presence, would have been +in her eyes a desert; and that any grouping of mountains or arrangement +of buildings could offer the slightest temptation beside the promised +month in the Adirondacks appeared to her as entirely beyond the +question. If the truth were told he did immeasurably prefer the prospect +of a summer spent by her side, but he felt at the same time--though he +hardly admitted this even to himself--that in remaining in America he +was giving up a good deal of his ordinary physical enjoyments. It was +not that he wanted in the very least to go; he felt merely that he ought +to have been seriously commended because he stayed away. Since he had +never relinquished so much as a day's pleasure for any woman in the +past, he was almost overcome by appreciation of his present generosity. + +For a time the very virtue in his decision produced in him the agreeable +humour which succeeds any particular admiration for one's own conduct. +Of all states of mind the complacent suavity resulting from self-esteem +is, perhaps, the most pleasantly apparent in one's attitude to others; +and no sooner had Kemper assured himself that he had made an unusual +sacrifice for Laura than he was rewarded by the overwhelming conviction +that she was more than worth it all. In some way peculiar to the +emotions her value increased in direct relation to the amount of +pleasure he told himself he had given up for her sake. + +When at last he had freed himself from a few financial worries he had +lingered to attend to, and was hurrying toward her in the night express +which left New York, he assured himself that now for the first time he +was comfortably settled in a state which might be reasonably expected to +endure. The careless first impulse of his affection would wane, he +knew--it were as useless to regret the inevitable passing of the +spring--but beyond this was it not possible that Laura might hold his +interest by qualities more permanent than any transient exaltation of +the emotions? He thought of the soul in her face rather than of the mere +changing accident of form--of the smile which moved like an edge of +light across her eyes and lips--and this rare spiritual quality in her +appearance appealed to him at the instant as vividly as it had done on +the first day he saw her. This charm of strangeness had worn with him as +nothing in the domain of the sensations had worn in his life before. In +the smoking car, when he entered it a little later, he found a man named +Barclay, whom he saw sometimes at his club; and they sat talking +together until long after midnight. Barclay was a keen, aggressively +energetic person, who lived in a continual rush of affairs, which had +not kept him from a decided over-development about the waist. He was +married to an invalid wife, who, as he now told Kemper, was threatened +with consumption and condemned to spend the whole year in the +Adirondacks. Kemper had seen her once, and though she was neither pretty +nor intelligent, he remembered her with respect as the owner of a +property of forty millions. The knowledge of this fact covered her with +a certain distinction in his mind, and because of it he condoned almost +unconsciously the absence in her of any more personal attraction than +that of wealth. The marriage, so far as he could judge, had been, from +Barclay's point of view, entirely satisfactory--domestic affairs +occupied no place whatever in the man's existence, which was devoted +exclusively to speculation in stocks; and he had solved the eternal +problem of philosophy by reducing life, not to a formula, but to a +figure. Of scandal there had never blown the faintest breath about him; +he paid apparently as little attention to other women as to his wife; +and money, Kemper decided now, not without an irrational envy, appeared +to satisfy as well as absorb his every instant. + +"Yes, it's a great thing to get back to the woods now and then," Barclay +was saying, "I usually manage to run up for Sunday--and then I find time +to look over all the news of the week." + +By "news," Kemper was aware he meant only the changes in the stock +market; but his recognition that the man had not so much as a casual +interest above the accumulation of wealth, did not detract in the least +from the admiration with which Barclay inspired him. This was a life +that counted! he thought with generous enthusiasm; and success +incarnate, he felt, was riding beside him in the train. + +Barclay had drawn a paper from his pocket, and was following the list of +figures with the point of his toothpick. Though there was but one +subject upon which he possessed even the rudiments of knowledge, the +fact that he could speak with authority in a single department of life +had conferred upon him a certain dignity of manner; and so Kemper, as he +fell into conversation with him, found himself wishing that he might +arrange to be thrown with him during the month of his vacation. Money, +though he himself was ignorant of it, possessed almost as vital an +attraction for him as he found in love. + +But the next morning, when he descended from the train and saw Laura +awaiting him against a green background of forest, all recollection of +Barclay and his financial genius, was swept from his thoughts. As he +looked at her small distinguished figure, and met her charming eyes, +radiant with love, he told himself that he had, indeed, got to the good +place in his life at last. The pressure of her hand, the surrender in +her look, the tremor of her voice, appealed to his inflammable senses +with a freshness which he found as delicious as the dawn in which they +stood. + +"To think that I'm only beginning to live when I've past forty years!" +he exclaimed, as they rolled in the little cart over the forest road. + +Laura held the reins, and while she drove he flung his arm about her +with a boyish laugh. + +"But this is heavenly--how did you manage it?" he asked. + +"Oh, I came alone in the cart because I wanted these first minutes all +to ourselves," she answered, "I didn't want even Gerty to see how happy +we could be." And it seemed to her as she spoke that all that she had +demanded of happiness was fulfilled at last. + +A week later she could still tell herself that the dream was true. +Kemper had thrown himself into his love making with all the zest, as he +said, of his college days; and there was in his complete absorption in +it something of the exclusive attention he devoted to a game of +billiards. It was a law of his nature that he should live each minute to +its utmost and let it go; and this romance of the forest was less an +idyl to him than a delicious experience which one must enjoy to the +fullest and have over. There were moments even when Laura saw his +temperamental impatience awake in his face, as if his thoughts were +beginning already to plunge from the fruition of to-day after the +capricious possibility which lies in to-morrow. In the midst of the +forest, under the gold and green of the leaves, she realised at times +that his moods were more in harmony with the city streets and the rush +of his accustomed eager life. + +And yet to Kemper the month was full of an enchantment which belonged +half to his actual existence and half to some fairy stories he +remembered from his childhood. It was more beautiful than the reality, +but still it was not real; and this very beauty in it reminded him at +times of the vanishing loveliness which results from a mere chance +effect--of the sunlight on the green leaves or the flutter of Laura's +blue gown against the balsam. In the very intensity of his enjoyment +there was at certain instants almost a terrified presentiment; and +following this there were periods of flagging impulse when he asked +himself indifferently if a life of the emotions brought as its Nemesis +an essential incapacity for love? If Laura had only kept up the pursuit +a little longer, he complained once in a despondent mood, if she had +only fluttered her tinted veil as skilfully as a woman of the world +might have done. "Yet was it not for this unworldliness--for this lack +of artifice in her--that I first loved her?" he demanded, indignant with +her, with nature, with himself. She had surrendered her soul, he +realised, with the frankness of inexperience; the excitement of the +chase was now over forever, and he saw stretching ahead of him only the +radiant monotony of love. Was the satiety with which, in these listless +instants, he looked forward to it merely, he questioned bitterly, the +inevitable end to which his life had reached? + +Lying in a hammock on the broad piazza of Gerty's camp, he asked himself +the question while he watched Laura, who stood at a little distance +examining some decorations for the hall. + +"Oh, I'd choose the green tapestry by all means," he heard her say; and +he told himself as he listened to the ordinary words that if she had +been a perfect stranger to him he would have known her voice for the +voice of a woman who was in love. Was she really lacking, he asked +himself in amusement, in the quality which he called for want of a +better phrase--"the finesse of sentiment?" or was the angelic candour of +her emotion only the outward expression of that largeness of nature +which inspired him at times with a respect akin to awe? The absence of +any coquetry in her attitude impressed him as the final proof of her +inherent nobility; and yet there were instants when he admitted almost +in spite of himself, that he would have relished the display of a little +amorous evasion. Laura, he believed, was perfectly capable of a great +emotion, but the great emotion, after all, he concluded humorously, was +less conducive to his immediate enjoyment than was the small flirtation. + +The two women were still discussing the bit of tapestry; and while he +watched them, a ray of sunlight, piercing the bough of a maple beside +the porch, felt with a charming brightness upon Gerty's hair Each +brilliant red strand he noticed, appeared to leap instantly into life +and colour. + +It was pure effect, a mere creation of changing light and shade and yet, +as he looked, he was aware of a sudden tremor in his blood. The time had +been when Gerty had rather liked him, he remembered--or was it, after +all, merely that he had exaggerated the subtle suggestion in her look? +Something had passed between them--just what it was, he could hardly +recall with distinctness--a mere fervent glance, perhaps a half spoken +phrase, or at most a cousinly kiss which had contained the passion of a +lover. The incident had passed, and though he told himself now that it +had vanished entirely from his memory, he felt that it had left behind a +vague longing that it might some day occur again. + +"I can't for the life of me remember what it was, nor how it happened," +he thought. "It was out of the question, of course, that I should fall +in love with Perry's wife--and yet, by Jove, I'd like to know what she +felt about it all. I'm glad," he added earnestly after a moment, "that +Laura doesn't happen to be the flirtatious kind." Nevertheless he +continued to wonder, as he looked at the sunlight on Gerty's hair, if +there could have been, after all, a grain of truth in those hints she +had so carelessly let fall. + + * * * * * + +Early in August Laura was summoned home by the illness of Angela; and +Kemper, after a few days spent with her in the city, started upon a +yachting cruise which occupied him for two weeks. On the day of his +return, when as yet he had not seen Laura he accidentally ran across +Adams shortly before the luncheon hour. + +"Look here, old chap, let's lunch together at the club," he suggested, +adding with a laugh, "if I let you go now, heaven knows when I'll be so +fortunate as to knock up against you any more." + +Adams readily agreed; and a little later, as they sat opposite each +other at table, he showed, as usual, a sincere enough enjoyment of his +companion's society. Though he had never taken Kemper as he said, "quite +seriously," there were few men whom he found it pleasanter to meet at +dinner. + +"I wish you came more in my way," he observed, while Kemper gave the +order, with the absorbed attention he devoted to such details, "I don't +believe I've laid eyes on you but once in the last six months." + +"Oh, you've something better to think of," returned Kemper carelessly. +"Do you know," he pursued after a moment's thought, "I'm sometimes +tempted to wish that I could change place with you and get beaten into +shape for some serious work. It's the only thing in life that counts, +when you come to think of it," he concluded with an irritation directed +less against himself than against his fate. + +"Well, I can't say I'd object to standing in your shoes for a while," +rejoined Adams, "I've a taste for the particular brand of cigar you +smoke." + +"Oh, they're good enough--in fact everything is good enough--it comes +too easily, that's the trouble. I've never found anything yet that was +seriously worth trying for." + +Adams regarded him for a moment with a smile, to which his whimsical +humour lent a peculiar attraction. + +"I, on the other hand, have tried pretty hard for some things I didn't +get," he answered, "the difference between us, I guess, is that I had a +tough time in my youth and you didn't. A man's middle age is usually a +reaction from his youth." + +"I've never had a tough time anywhere," replied Kemper, almost in +disgust, "it's' been too soft--that's the deuced part of it. And yet +I've got the stuff in me for a good fight if the opportunity would only +come my way." + +The expression of satiety--of moral weariness--was etched indelibly +beneath the brightness of his smile; and yet, Adams, looking at him, +remembered, a little bitterly, that this man had won from him the woman +whom he loved. To Kemper belonged both her body and her spirit; the +touch of her hand no less than the charm of her intellect! At the +thought his old human longing for her awoke and stirred restlessly +again in his heart. + +"Yes, the only thing is to have one particular interest," resumed +Kemper, "to occupy oneself with something that is eternally worth while. +Now, look at Barclay--I went up in the train with him to the +Adirondacks, and, upon my word, I never envied a man more in my whole +life. You know Barclay, don't you?" + +Adams nodded. "I'd find a little of his financial ability rather useful +myself," he observed. Then he broke into a boyish laugh at a +recollection the name aroused, "the last time I had a talk with him was +at the beginning of our war with Spain, and he told me he was interested +in news from the front because he happened to own some Spanish bonds." + +Kemper joined in the laugh. "Oh, he's narrow, of course," he replied, +"but all the same I'd like the chance to get in his place. By Jove, I +don't believe he's ever bored a minute of the day!" And it seemed to +him, as he thought of Barclay, that his own life held nothing for him +but boredom from this time on. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +IN WHICH KEMPER IS PUZZLED + + +Late in October Kemper went South for a couple of weeks shooting; and It +was not until the first day of November that he parted from his +companions of the trip and returned to New York. He had enjoyed every +minute of his absence--until the last few days when the strangeness +appeared, somehow, to have worn from his out-door life--and as he drove +now, on the bright autumn afternoon, from the station to his rooms, he +was agreeably aware that he had never felt physically or mentally in +better shape. After a fortnight spent away from civilisation, he found a +refreshing excitement in watching the crowd in Fifth Avenue, the passing +carriages, and particularly the well-dressed figures of the women in +their winter furs. Taken all in all life was a pretty interesting +business, he admitted; and he remembered with eagerness that he would +see Laura again before the day was over. Though he had barely thought of +her once during the past two weeks, this very forgetfulness served to +surround her with the charm of novelty in his awakened memory. + +A woman in a sable coat rolled past him in an automobile; and his eyes +followed her with an admiration which seemed strangely mixed with a +vague longing in his blood--a longing which was in some way produced by +the animated street, the changing November brightness and the crispness +of frost which was in the air. Then he caught sight of a milliner's +pretty assistant carrying a hat box along the sidewalk, and his gaze +hung with pleasure upon her trim and graceful figure in a cheap cloth +coat bordered with imitation ermine. A feeling of benevolence, of +universal good will pervaded his heart; his chest expanded in a sigh of +thankfulness, and it seemed to him that he asked nothing better than to +be alive. He was in the mood when a man is grateful to God, charitable +to himself and generous to his creditors. + +The cab stopped before his door, and while he paid the man, he gave +careful directions to Wilkins about the removal of his shooting traps. +Then he entered the apartment house, and passing the elevator with his +rapid step, went gayly humming up the staircase. + +On the third landing he paused a moment to catch his breath, and as he +laid his hand, the instant afterward, on the door of his sitting-room, +he became aware of a faint, familiar, and yet almost forgotten perfume, +which entered his nostrils from the apartment before which he stood. The +perfume, distant as it was, revived in him instantly, with that curious +association between odours and visual memory, a recollection which might +otherwise have slumbered for years in his brain--and though he had not +thought of Jennie Alta once during the summer and autumn months, there +rose immediately before him now the memory of her dressing table with +the silver box in which she kept some rare highly scented powder. Every +incident of his acquaintance with her thronged in a disordered series +through his brain; and it was with an odd presentiment of what awaited +him, that he entered his sitting room and found her occupying a chair +before his fireside. When she sprang up and faced him in her coarsened +beauty, it seemed the most natural thing in the world that he should +accept the fact of her presence with merely an ironic protest. + +"So you've turned up again," he remarked, as he held out his hand with a +smile, "I was led to believe that the last parting would be final." + +"Oh, it was," she answered lightly, "but there's an end even to +finality, you know." + +The flute-like soprano of her voice fell pleasantly upon his ears, and +as he looked into her face he told himself that it was marvellous how +well she had managed to preserve an effect of youthfulness. Under the +flaring wings in her hat her eyes were still clear and large and heavy +lidded, her thin red lips still held the shape of their sensual curve. A +white fur boa was thrown carelessly about her neck, and he remembered +that underneath it, encircling her short throat there was the soft +crease of flesh which the ancient poets had named "the necklace of +Venus." + +"Well, I can but accept this visit as a compliment, I suppose," he +observed with amiable indifference, "it means--doesn't it? that you won +your fight about the opera contract?" + +An expression of anger--of the uncontrolled, majestic anger of a +handsome animal, awoke in her face, and she pulled off her long white +glove as if seeking to free herself from some restraint of custom. Her +hand, he noticed, with a keen eye for such feminine details, was large, +roughly shaped and over fleshy about the wrist. + +"I'd starve before I'd sing again by that old contract," she responded. +"No, it's not opera--Parker refused to pay me what I asked and I held +out to the end--I shall sing in concert for the first time, and I shan't +be happy until I have every seat in the opera house left empty." + +He laughed with an acute enjoyment of her repressed violence. "Oh, +you're welcome to mine," he returned good-humouredly, "but what is the +day of your great first battle?" + +"Not until December. I'm going West and South before I sing in New +York." + +"Then you aren't here for much of a stay, after all?" + +She shook her head and the orange coloured wings in her hat waved to and +fro. + +"Only a few days at a time. After Christmas I sail back again. In +February I'm engaged for Monte Carlo." + +Then her expression underwent a curious change--as if personality, +colour, passion pulsed into her half averted face--and the hard +professional tones in which she had spoken were softened as if by an +awakening memory. + +"So you still keep my portrait, I see," she observed, lifting her eyes +to the picture above the mantel, "you don't hate me, then, so bitterly +as I thought." + +He shrugged his shoulders with the gesture he had acquired abroad. + +"I did take it down, but it left a smudge on the wall, so I had to put +it back again." + +"Then you sometimes think of me?" she enquired, with curiosity. + +"Not when I can help it," he retorted, laughing. + +His ironic pleasantry stung her into an irritation which showed plainly +in her face; and she appeared, for the first time, to bend her +intelligence toward some definite achievement. + +"And is that always easy?" she asked, in a tone of mere flippant banter. + +A petty impulse of revenge lent sharpness to his voice. "Easier than you +think," he responded coolly. + +"Well, I suppose, I'll have to take the punishment," she answered, as +lightly as before; and then turning to the mantelpiece again, she raised +her glance to the portrait. "I never liked it," she commented frankly, +"he's got me in an unnatural position--I never stood like that in my +life--and there's an open smirk about the mouth." + +He saw her face in the admirable pose which he remembered--the chin held +slightly forward, the cheek rounded upward, the eyes uplifted--and for +an instant he waited, half hoping that her voice of wine and honey would +roll from between her lips. But she was frugal of her notes, he recalled +the instant afterward. + +"I've always considered it a pretty fair likeness," he remarked. + +"Then you've always considered me pretty hideous," she flashed back in +annoyance. + +As she swung round upon the hearthrug, the white fur boa slipped from +her throat, and he saw "the necklace of Venus" above the string of opals +that edged her collarless lace blouse. + +"On the contrary I admire you very much when you are in a good humour," +he observed in his genial raillery. + +"Then you thought I had a temper?" + +He laughed softly, as if at a returning recollection. "A perfectly +artistic one," he answered. + +Her annoyance disappeared beneath his gaze, and the smile he had but +half forgotten--a faint sweet ripple of expression, which seemed less +the result of an inner working of intelligence than of some outward +fascination in the curve of mouth and chin--hovered, while he watched +her attentively, upon her bright red lips. In the making of her the soul +he recognised had dissolved into the senses; and yet the accident of her +one exquisite gift had conferred upon her the effect, if not the quality +of genius. Because of the voice in her throat she appeared to stand +apart by some divine election of nature. + +"I believe I did slap your face once," she confessed, laughing, "but I +begged your pardon afterward--and you must admit that you were sometimes +trying." + +"Perhaps--but what's the use of bringing all this up now? It's well +over, isn't it?" + +"Isn't it?" she repeated softly; and he had an odd impression that her +voice was melting into liquid honey. The thought made him laugh aloud +and at the sound she relapsed quickly into her indifferent attitude. + +"Of course, it's over," she resumed promptly. "If it were not over--if I +didn't feel myself entirely safe--do you think that I'd ever dare come +back again?" + +The absence of any hint of emotion in her words produced in him an +agreeable feeling of security, and for the first time he went so close +to her that he might almost have touched her hand. + +"Safe?" he repeated, smiling, "then were you ever really in danger?" + +Her glance puzzled him, and she followed it a moment afterward with a +sentence which had the effect of increasing, rather than diminishing, +the obscurity in which he floundered. + +"In danger of losing my head, do you mean?" she asked, "Wasn't that +question answered when I ran away?" + +But the next instant she burst into a laugh of ridicule, and threw +herself back into the chair upon the hearthrug, with the particular fall +of drapery by which she delighted the eyes of her audience in the opera +house. + +"I asked your man to bring me tea, for I'm famished," she remarked; "do +you think he has forgotten it?" + +"He had, probably, to go out to buy the cakes," he replied, with a touch +upon the bell which was immediately answered by Wilkins bearing the +silver tray. As she rose to make tea, Kemper took the fur boa from her +shoulders and held it for a minute to his nostrils. + +"You use the same perfume, I notice," he observed. + +She waited until the door had closed upon Wilkins, and then looked up, +smiling, as she handed him his cup. + +"There are two things one should never change," she returned, "a perfume +and a lover." + +With a laugh he tossed the fur upon the sofa. "By Jove, you've arrived +at the conventional morality at last." + +"Is it morality?" she rejoined sweetly, "I thought it was experience." + +"Well, any way, you're right and I'm moral," he remarked, "the joy of +living, after all, is not in having a thing, but in wanting it." + +"Which proves, as I have said," she concluded, "that one love is as good +as a thousand." + +There was a sharp edge of ridicule to his glance; but the words he spoke +were uttered from some mere impulse of audacity. + +"I wonder if I taught you that?" he questioned. + +Leaning slightly forward she clasped her large white hands upon her +knees; and the position, while she kept it, showed plainly the rounded +ample length of her figure. + +"I might tell you the truth--but, after all, why should I?" she +demanded. + +An emotional curiosity which was almost as powerful as love flamed in +his face. How much or how little did she feel? he wondered; and the +vanity which was the inspiration of his largest as well as his smallest +passion, dominated for the time all other impressions which she +produced. + +"Would it be possible for you to tell the truth if you tried?" he asked. + +"I never try--all the harm on earth comes from women telling men the +truth. It is the woman who tells the truth who becomes--a door mat. If I +ever felt myself in danger of speaking the truth--" she hesitated for a +quick breath, while her eyes drew his gaze as by a cord--"I would run +away." + +It was his turn to breathe quickly now. "You did run away--once." + +"I ran because--" her voice was so low that he felt it like a breath +upon his cheek. + +"Because?" he echoed impatiently; and the vehemence in his tone wrought +an immediate change in her seductive attitude. With a laugh that was +almost insolent, she rose to her feet and looked indifferently down upon +him. + +"Oh, that's over long ago and we've both forgotten. I came to-day only +to ask the honour of your presence at my first concert." + +An impulse to irritate her--to provoke her into an expression of her +hidden violence--succeeded quickly the curiosity she had aroused; and he +felt again the fiendish delight with which, as a savage small boy, he +had prodded the sleeping wild animals in their cages in the park. + +"I'm not sure that I can arrange it," he responded, "I may be off on my +honeymoon, you know." + +"Ah, yes," she nodded while he saw a perceptible flicker of her heavy +eyelids, "but when, if I'm not impertinent, does the interesting event +take place? I might be able to postpone my concert," she concluded +jestingly. + +He shook his head. "You can't do that because I expect it to last +forever." + +"One usually does, I believe, but it is easy to miscalculate. Have you a +photograph visible of the lady?" + +He shook his head, but with the denial, his glance travelled to a +picture of Laura upon his desk; and crossing the room, she took it up +and returned with it to the firelight, where she dropped upon her knees +in order to study it the more closely. + +"Has she money?" was her first enquiry at the end of her examination. + +"If she has I am not aware of it," he retorted angrily. + +"Well, I wonder what you see in her," she remarked, with her attentive +gaze still upon the picture, "though she looks as if she'd never let a +man go if she once got hold of him." + +Her vulgar insolence worked him into an uncontrollable spasm of anger; +and with a smothered oath he wrenched the photograph from her and flung +it into the open drawer of his desk. + +"She is too sacred to me to be made the subject of your criticism," he +exclaimed. + +Whether she was frankly offended or unaffectedly amused he could not +tell, but she burst into so musical a laugh that he found himself +listening to it with positive pleasure. + +"There! there! don't be foolish--I was only joking," she returned, +"please don't think for one minute that it's worth my while to be +jealous of you." + +"I don't think so," he replied, with open annoyance, "but I wish you +wouldn't come here." + +She had taken up her fur and stood now wrapping it about her throat, +while her eyes were fixed upon him with an expression he found it +impossible to read. Was it anger, seduction, passion or disappointment? +Or was it some deeper feeling than he had ever believed it possible for +her face to show? + +"It is the last time, I promise you," she said, "but do you know why I +came this afternoon?" + +"Why?--no, and I doubt if you do." + +For a moment she was silent; then he watched the curious physical +fascination grow in her smile. + +"I came because I had a very vivid dream about you on the boat last +night," she said, "I dreamed of that evening, during the first winter, +in my dressing-room after the second act in 'Faust.' I thought I had +forgotten it, but in my sleep it all came clearly back again--every +minute and--" + +"And?" the word burst from him eagerly as he leaned toward her. + +"I broke a bottle of perfume, do you remember?" her soft laugh shook in +her full, white throat, "your coat still smelt of it next day, you +said." + +Her wonderful voice, softened now to a speaking tone, seemed to endow +each word, not only with melody, but with form and colour. They became +living things to him while she spoke, and the night he had almost +forgotten, stood out presently as in the glow of a conflagration of his +memory. He smelt again the perfume which she had spilled on his coat; he +saw again the fading roses, heaped on chairs and tables, that overflowed +her dressing room. It was the night of her great triumph--the eyes with +which she looked at him still held the intoxication of her own +music--and it was to the applause of a multitude, that, alone with her +behind the scenes, he had first taken her in his arms. + +"It's all over, I tell you," he said angrily; "so what's the use of +this?" + +"It's never over!--it's never over!" she repeated in her singing voice. + +She was very close to him at last; but breaking away with an effort, he +crossed the room and laid his hand upon the door. + +"It was over forever two years ago," he said, "and now good-bye!" + +He held out his hand, but without taking it, she stood motionless while +she looked at him with her unchanging smile. + +"Then I'll let it be good-bye," she answered, "but not this way--not +just like this--" + +Her voice mocked him; and moved by an impulse which was half daring, +half vanity, he closed the door again and came back to where she stood. + +"So long as it's good-bye, I'll have it any way you wish," he said. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +SHOWS THAT LOVE WITHOUT WISDOM IS FOLLY + + +The odd part was, he admitted next morning as he sat at breakfast, that +from first to last he had not found one moment's pleasure in the society +of Madame Alta. Pleasure in a suitable quantity he was inclined to +regard as sufficient excuse for the most serious indiscretion; but in +this case the temptation to which he had yielded appeared to him, by the +light of day, to be entirely out of proportion to any actual enjoyment +he had experienced. An impulse which was neither vanity nor daring, but +a mixture of the two, had swept away his resolve before he was clearly +aware, as he expressed it, "of the drift of the wind." He had not wanted +to go with her and yet he had gone, impelled by some fury of adventure +which had seemed all the time to pull against his saner inclinations. + +While he ate his two eggs and his four pieces of toast, as he had done +every morning for the last fifteen years, he remembered, with a mild +pang of remorse, that he had not seen Laura since his return. Without +doubt she had expected him last evening, had put on, probably, her most +becoming gown to receive him; and the thought of her disappointment +entered his heart with a very positive reproach. This reproach, short +lived as it was, had the effect of enkindling his imaginary picture of +her; and the eagerness with which he now looked forward to his visit +completely crowded from his mind the recollection that, but for his own +fault, he might have seen her with as little effort on the evening +before. + +As he sat there over his breakfast, with an unfolded newspaper on the +table beside him, he realised, in a proper spirit of thankfulness, that +he had never felt himself to be in a more thoroughly domestic mood. His +face, in which the clear red from his country trip was still visible, +settled immediately into its most genial lines, while he expanded his +chest with a deep breath which strained the topmost button on the new +English waistcoat which he wore. The sober prospect of marriage no +longer annoyed him when he thought of it, and he could even look forward +complacently to seeing the same woman opposite to him at breakfast for +twenty years. + +"By Jove, I've come to the place when to settle down and live quietly is +the best thing I can do," he concluded, as he helped himself to +marmalade. "I've reached the time of life when a man has to pull up and +go easily or else break to pieces. It's all very well to take one's +fling in youth, but middle age is the period for retrenchment." + +Then, while he still congratulated himself upon the expediency of +virtue, another image appeared in his reflections, and the paternal +instinct, so strong in men of his kind, responded instantly to the +argument which clothed his mere natural impulse. Marriage, he told +himself, would mean a son of his own, and the stability which he had +always missed in any relation with a woman would be secured through the +responsibility which fatherhood involved. Here was the interest his +life had lacked, after all--here was the explanation of that vacancy his +emotions had not filled; and it appeared to him that his loves had +failed in definiteness, in any vital purpose, because he had never seen +himself fulfilled in the son which he now desired. + +"I shouldn't wonder if this is what I've been wanting all the time," he +thought; and the generous fervour, the ideal purity, he had never been +able to introduce into his romances, gathered luminously about the +cradle of his unborn child. It seemed to him, as he smoked his second +cigar in the face of this paternal vision, that he had stumbled by +accident upon the one secret of happiness which he had overlooked; and +it was while the beaming effulgence of this mood still lasted, that he +finished his papers, and determined to look in upon Laura on his way +down town. The memory of last evening was placed at the distance of a +thousand miles by his sudden change of humour, and it seemed as useless +to reproach himself for an act so far beyond his present area of +personality as it would have been to moralise upon an indiscretion in +ancient history. A little later, as he ascended Laura's steps, he felt +serenely assured that he had made the best possible disposition of his +future. + +To his surprise she was not in her sitting-room when he entered, and it +was several minutes before she came in, very quietly and with an averted +face. When he would have taken her in his arms, she drew back quickly +with an indignant and wounded gesture. Her eyes were burning, but he had +never heard her speak in so hard a voice. + +"You were in town last night," she said, and by her look more than her +words he was brought face to face with the suspicion that she was +capable of a jealous outburst. + +"I wanted to come, but I couldn't," he answered, with an attempt at his +quizzical humour. "I rushed here as soon as I dared this morning--isn't +that enough to prove something?" + +Again he made a movement to take her in his arms, but her face was so +unyielding that his hands, which he had outstretched, fell to his sides. +From the look in her eyes he could almost believe that she had grown to +hate him in the night; and at the thought his earlier impetuous emotion +flamed in his heart. + +"Don't lie to me," she said passionately, "there's nothing I hate so +much as a lie." + +"I never lied to you in my life," he answered, as he drew back with an +expression of cold reproach--for it seemed to him that her attack had +offered an unpardonable affront to his honour. + +"When you did not come I sent a note to you--I feared something had +happened--I hardly knew what--but something. The note came back. They +told the messenger--" the words were wrenched out of her as by some act +of bodily torture, and, at last, in spite of her struggle, she could go +no further. Pausing she looked at him in silence, while her hand pressed +into her bosom as if to keep down by physical force the passion which +she could no longer control by a mental effort. The violence of temper +which in a coarser--a more flesh-and-blood beauty--would have been +repelling and almost vulgar, was in her chastened and ennobled by the +ethereal quality in her outward form--and the emotion she expressed +seemed to belong less to the ordinary human impulses than to some finer +rage of spirit which was independent of the gesture or the utterance of +flesh. + +"And you suspected what?" he demanded, in a hurt and angry voice, "you +were told some story by a servant--and without waiting for my +explanation--without giving me a decent chance to clear myself--you were +ready, on the instant, to believe me capable--of what?" + +Her suspicion worked him into a furious resentment; and the +consciousness that he, himself, was at fault was swallowed up by the +greater wrong of her unuttered accusation. While he spoke he was +honestly of the opinion that their whole future happiness was wrecked by +the fact that she believed him capable of the thing which he had done. + +"I would die now before I would justify myself to you," he added. + +Before the unaffected resentment in his face, she was suddenly, and +without knowing it, thrown into a position of defence. + +"What could I believe? What else was there for me to believe?" she asked +in a muffled voice. Then, as she looked up at him, it seemed to her that +for the first time she saw the man as he really was in the truth of his +own nature--saw his egoism, his vanity, his shallowness and saw, too, +with the same mental clearness, that he had ceased to love her. But at +the instant with this vision before her, she told herself that the +discovery made no difference--that it no longer mattered whether he +loved or hated her. Afterward, when he had gone, her perceptions would +be blunted again and she would suffer, she knew; but now, while she +stood there face to face with him, she could not feel that he bore any +vital part in her existence. + +"You must believe whatever your feeling for me dictates," he retorted. +"I shall not stoop to meet a charge of which I am still ignorant--I have +loved you," he added, "more than I have ever loved any man or woman in +my life." + +"You have never loved me--you do not love me now," she responded coolly. + +She had not meant to speak the words; they held no particular meaning +for her ears; and yet they had no sooner passed her lips than she had a +strange impression that they remained like detached, living things in +the space between them. Why she had spoken as she had done, she could +not tell, nor why she had really cared so little at the instant when she +had uttered her passionate reproach. Then she remembered a wooden figure +she had once seen on the stage--a figure that walked and moved its arms +and uttered sounds which resembled a human voice--and it seemed to her +that she, herself, was this figure and that her gestures and the words +she spoke were the result of the hidden automaton within her. + +She saw him pass to the door, look back once, and then leave the room +with his rapid step, and while her eyes followed him, she felt that the +man who had just gone from her with that angry glance was a different +individual from the man whom she still loved and for whom she would +presently suffer an agony of longing. Then as the sound of the hall door +closing sharply fell on her ears, she passed instantly from the +deadening lethargy of her senses into a vivid realisation of the thing +which had just happened--of the meaning of the words which she had +spoken and of the look which he had thrown back at her as he went. A +passion of despair rose in her throat, struggling for release until it +became a physical torture, and she cried out in her loneliness that +nothing mattered--neither truth nor falsehood--so long as she could be +brought again face to face with his actual presence. + +But--if she had only known the truth!--Kemper had never desired her so +ardently as in the hour when he told himself that, by his own fault, he +had lost her forever; she had never shown herself so worthy to be won as +when she had looked down upon him from the remoteness of her disdain. +Like many men of flexible morality, he entertained a profound respect +for any rigid ethical standard; and had Laura maintained her unyielding +attitude, he would probably have suffered a hopeless passion for her to +the end of his embittered but still elastic experience. Though he was +hardly aware of it, the only virtues he could perfectly appreciate were +the ones which usually present themselves in a masculine shape--courage, +honour, fair play among men and chivalry to women; and it seemed to him +that Laura, in exacting his entire fidelity, was acting upon an +essentially masculine prerogative. The more she demanded, the more, +unconsciously to himself, he felt that he was ready to surrender--and he +cursed now the intervention of Madame Alta with a vehemence he would +never have felt had the course of his love flowed on smoothly in spite +of his relapses. + +"What a damned fool I made of myself," he confessed, as he walked +rapidly away from Gramercy Park. "I got no pleasure from seeing Jennie +Alta--not an atom of enjoyment even--and yet I've ruined my whole life +because of her, and the chances are nine to one that if I had it to go +over I'd act the same blooming idiot again. And all the time I'm more in +love with Laura than I've ever been with any woman in my life. Here's +the whole happiness of my future swept away at a single blow." + +And the domestic dream which Madame Alta had destroyed was mapped out +for him by his imagination, until she seemed, not only to have prevented +his marriage, but, by some singular eccentricity of feeling, to have +murdered the son who had played so large a part in his confident +expectations. + +"But why should this have happened to me when I'm no worse than other +men?" he questioned, "when I'm even better than a hundred whom I know? +I've never willingly harmed any human being in my life--I've never +cheated, I've never lied to get myself out of a tight place, I've never +breathed a word against the reputation of any woman." He thought of +Brady, who, although he was a cad and had ruined Connie Adams, was now +reconciled with his wife and received everywhere he went; of Perry +Bridewell whose numerous affairs had never interfered with either his +domestic existence or his appetite. Beside either of these men he felt +himself to glow inwardly with virtue, yet he saw that his greater +decency had not in the least prevented his receiving the larger +punishment; and it seemed to him that he must be pursued by some malign +destiny because, though he was so much better than Brady or Perry +Bridewell, he should have been overtaken by a retribution which they had +so easily escaped. An unreasonable anger against Laura pervaded his +thoughts, but this very anger lent fervour to the admiration he now felt +for her. He knew she loved him and if--as in the case of no other woman +he had ever known--her love could be dominated and subdued by her +recognition of what was due her honour, his feeling rather than his +thought, assured him that he would be reduced to a moral submission +approaching the abject. Though he hoped passionately that she would +yield, he realised in his heart that he would adore her if she remained +implacable. Love is not always pleased with reverence, but reverence, he +saw dimly through some pathetic instinct for virtue, is the strongest +possible hold that love can claim. He, himself, would always live in the +external world of the senses, yet deep within him, half smothered by the +clouds of his egoism, there was still a blind recognition of that other +world beyond sense which he had shut out. To this other world, for the +time at least, Laura, with all the enchantment of the distance, appeared +to belong. + +The morning, with its unusual burden of introspection, was, perhaps, the +most miserable he had ever spent, and after he had lunched at his +club--when to his surprise he found that his appetite was entirely +undisturbed by his mental processes--he returned to his rooms before +starting dejectedly for a long run in his automobile. But a letter from +Laura was the first object he noticed upon his desk, and his afternoon +plans were swept from his mind with the beginning of her heart-broken +entreaty for reconciliation. While he read it there was recognition in +his thoughts for no feeling except his rapture in her recovery, and he +took up his pen with a hand which trembled in the shock of his reaction +from despair to happiness. Then, while he still hesitated, in a mixture +of self-reproach and tenderness, there was a knock at his door, it +opened and shut quickly, with an abruptness which even in inanimate +things speak of excitement, and Laura, herself, breathing rapidly and +very pale, came hurriedly across the room. + +"I could not stay away--you did not answer my note--it would have killed +me," she began brokenly; and as he stretched out his arms she threw +herself into them with a burst of tears. + +"Oh, you angel!" he exclaimed, in a tenderness which was almost an +ecstasy of feeling; and then, moved by a passion of sympathy, he called +her by every endearing name his mind could catch at or his voice utter. +The depth of his nature responded in all its volume, as she lay there +weeping for joy, in his arms, and in her coming to him as she had done +he beheld then only an exquisite proof of her nobility of soul, of the +unworldly innocence for which he loved her. In that embrace, for that +one supreme instant, their spirits touched more nearly than they had +ever done in the past or would ever do again in the future--for even +while he held her the tide of being receded from its violence and they +drew apart. + +"If you had only waited I should have come to you at once," he said, +looking at her in a rapture which, though he himself was ignorant of it, +struggled against a disappointment because she had shown herself to be +closer to his own level than he had believed. + +Drawing slightly away Laura stood shaking the tear drops from her +lashes, while she regarded him with her radiant smile. The misty +brightness of her eyes showed to him in an almost unreal loveliness. + +"I didn't care--nothing mattered to me," she answered, "it made no +difference what the world said--nor whether I lived or died." + +Though the flattery of her coming moved him strongly, he found himself +wishing while she spoke that she had not proved herself to be so +ardently regardless of conventions--that she had appeared, for once, +less natural and more worldly-wise. + +"Well, I'll take you home now," he said, smiling; then as he saw her +gaze, passing curiously about the room, rest enquiringly upon the +portrait of Madame Alta, he broke into a laugh which sounded, for all +its pleasantness, a little strained. + +"That goes out of the way as soon as I can get something to cover the +spot," he remarked, adding gayly, "Symonds says he will finish his +portrait of me next week, and I'll hang it there until you claim it." + +Her face had clouded, and without looking at him she moved toward the +door. "Are you really glad that I came?" she asked abruptly, turning +upon the threshold. + +"Glad! My darling girl, I'm simply overjoyed. You gave me the most +miserable morning of my life." + +It was the truth--he knew it for the truth while he uttered it, but, in +his heart of hearts, he felt without confessing it to himself, that his +love had dropped back from that divine height beyond which mere human +impulse becomes ideal passion. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +OF THE FEAR IN LOVE + + +When Laura reached the sidewalk she was seized by one of those reactions +of feeling which are possible only in periods of unnatural and +overstrained excitement. + +"I would rather you didn't come with me now," she said, "I've promised +Gerty to go to her this afternoon, and I'd honestly rather go alone." + +"But I've seen nothing of you at all," he urged, "put Gerty aside--she +won't mind. If she does, tell her I made you do it." + +She shook her head, shrinking slightly away from him in the street. "It +isn't that, but I want to be alone--to think. Come this evening and I'll +be quite myself again. Only just now I--I can't talk." + +In the end he had yielded, overborne by so unusual a spirit of +opposition; and with a reproachful good-bye he had returned to his +rooms, while she went slowly up the street in the pale autumn sunshine. + +The impulse in which she had gone to him had utterly died down; and she +asked herself, with a curiosity that was almost indifferent, why, since +the reconciliation she had longed for was now complete, she should feel +only melancholy where she had expected to find happiness? Kemper had +never been more impassioned, had never shown himself to be more +thoroughly the lover--yet in some way she admitted, it had all been +different from the deeper reunion she had hoped for; there had come to +her even while she lay in his arms that strange, though familiar sense +of unreality in her own emotion; and beneath the touch of his hands she +had felt herself to be separated from him by the space of a whole inner +world. Though she appeared to have got everything, she realised, with a +pang of resentment directed against herself, that she had wanted a great +deal more than he had had the power to bestow. Could it be that the +thing she had missed was that finer sympathy of spirit without which all +human passion is but the withered husk where the flower has never +bloomed? + +"Is it true that I must be forever content with the mere gesture of +love?" she thought. "Is it true that I shall never reach his soul, which +is surely there if I could but find it? Has it eluded me, after all, +only because I did not know the way?" + +This longing for the immortal soul of love seized her like an +unquenchable thirst, until it seemed to her that all outward forms of +expression--all embraces all words--were but dead earthly things until +the breath of the spirit had entered in to raise them from mere trivial +accidents into eternal symbols. + +Then suddenly she understood, for the first time, that she had +humiliated herself by going to his rooms, and she felt her cheek burn in +remembering a step which she had taken, under the stress of feeling, +without an instant's hesitation. It seemed to her now, when she looked +back upon it, that it would have been better to have lost him forever +than to have lowered her pride in the way that she had done--but before +seeing him her pride had been nothing to her, and she realised that if +she felt his affection slipping from her again she would be driven to +the same or even to greater lengths of self-abasement. + +"But I did wrong--I have lowered myself forever in his eyes," she +thought, "he can never feel the same respect for me again, and because I +have lost his respect I have lost also my power to keep him constant to +me in his heart." + +With the confession, she was aware that a spiritual battle took place +within her, and she thought of her soul, not as one but as multiple--as +consisting of hosts of good and evil angels who warred against one +another without ceasing. And she felt assured that presently the good or +the evil host would be vanquished and that henceforth she would belong +to the victorious side forever--not for this life only, but for a +thousand lives and an eternal evolution along the course which she +herself had chosen. A passage she had once read in an old book occurred +to her, and she recalled that the writer had spoken of God as "the place +of the soul." If this were so, had she not filled that place which is +God with a confusion in which there was only terror and disorder. + +"Why has it all happened as it has?" she demanded almost in despair. +"Why did I love him in the beginning? Why did I humiliate myself in his +eyes to-day?" But her motives, which appeared only as impulses, were +still shrouded in the obscurity of her ignorance; and the one thing that +remained clear to her was that she had struggled breathlessly for the +happiness she had not possessed. Was it this desire for happiness, she +asked, which had returned to her now in the form of an avenging fury? + +At the corner of Fifth Avenue, while she stopped upon the sidewalk to +wait for the stage, she was joined by Mr. Wilberforce, who told her that +he had just come from her house. + +"I was particularly sorry to miss you," he added, "because I brought a +book of poems I wanted to talk over with you--the work of a young +Irishman with a touch of genius." + +"Yes, yes," she responded vaguely, without knowing what she said. +Literature appeared to her suddenly as the most uninteresting pursuit +upon the earth, and she longed to escape from the presence of Mr. +Wilberforce, because she knew that he would weary her by ceaseless +allusions to books which she no longer read. + +"I'm on my way to Gerty's--she made me promise to come this afternoon," +she explained hurriedly, recalling with surprise that she had once found +pleasure in the companionship of this ineffectual old man, with his +placid face and his interminable discussions of books. Feeling that her +impatience might provoke her presently into an act of rudeness which she +would afterward regret, she held out her hand while she signalled with +the other to the approaching stage. + +"Come to-morrow when I shall be at home," she said; and though she +remembered that she would probably spend the next afternoon with Kemper, +this suggestion of an untruth seemed at the time to make no difference. +A moment later as she seated herself in the stage, she drew a long +breath as if she had escaped from an oppressive atmosphere; and the +rumbling of the vehicle was a relief to her because it silenced for +awhile the noise of the opposing hosts of angels that warred unceasingly +within her soul. + +When she reached Gerty's house in Sixty-ninth Street, she found not only +her friend, whom she wished to see, but Perry Bridewell, whom she had +tried particularly to avoid. At first she felt almost angry with Gerty +for not receiving her alone; but Gerty, suspecting as much from her +chilled look, burst out at once into a comic protest: + +"I tried my best to get rid of Perry," she said, "perhaps you may make +the attempt with better success." + +"I've caught a beastly cold," responded Perry, from the cushioned chair +on the hearthrug, where he sat prodding the wood fire with a small brass +poker, "it's stuck in my chest, and the doctor tells me if I don't look +out I'll be in for bronchitis or pneumonia or something or other of the +kind." + +That he was genuinely frightened showed clearly by the unusual pallor on +his handsome face; and with an appearance of giving emphasis to the +danger in which he stood, he held out to Laura, as he spoke, a glass +bottle filled with large brown lozenges. + +"He remembers his last illness," observed Gerty seriously, "which was an +attack of croup at the age of two--and he's afraid they will bandage his +chest as they did then." + +As he fell back languidly in his easy chair, resting his profile against +the pale green cushions, Laura noticed, for the first time, a striking +resemblance to Kemper in the full, almost brutal curve of his jaw and +chin. Ridiculous as her annoyance was, she felt that it mounted through +her veins and showed in her reddening face. + +"Since you are ill I'll not take Gerty away from you to-day," she said, +rising hastily. + +"Oh, don't think of going on my account," replied Perry, with a pale +reflection of his amiable smile, "a little cheerful company is the very +thing I need." Then, as a servant entered with a cup of tea and a plate +of toast, he sat up, with his invalid air, to receive the tray upon his +knees. "I manage to take a little nourishment every hour or two," he +explained, as he crumbled his toast into bits. + +"I've racked my brain to amuse him," remarked Gerty, while she watched +him gravely, "but he can't get his mind off that possible attack of +pneumonia, and he's even made me look up the death rate from it in the +bulletin of the Board of Health. Do you think Arnold would come if I +telephoned him? or shall I send instead for Roger Adams? I have even +thought of writing invitations to his entire club list." + +"Oh, I'll send Arnold myself," rejoined Laura, "he got back just last +night, you know." + +"I saw him coming up at five o'clock when I went to the doctor's," +returned Gerty; and this innocent chance remark plunged Laura +immediately into a melancholy which not only arrested the words upon her +lips, but seemed to deaden her whole body even to her hands which held +her muff. An intolerable suspicion seized her that they were aware of +the return of Madame Alta, that they blamed Arnold for something of +which they did not speak, that they pitied her because she was deluded +into an acceptance of the situation. Though her judgment told her that +this suspicion was a mere wild fancy, still she could not succeed in +driving it from her thoughts, and the more she struggled against it, the +stronger was the hold it gained upon her imagination if not upon her +reason. In the effort to banish this persistent torment, she began to +talk fast and recklessly of other things, until the animation with which +she spoke rekindled the old brilliant fervour in her face. + +She was still talking with her restless gayety, when Adams came in to +ask after Perry, but with his presence a stillness which was almost one +of peace, came over her. At the end of a few minutes she rose to leave, +and a little later as he walked with her along Sixty-ninth Street in the +direction of the Park, she had, for the first time in her life, a vague +intuition that the secret of happiness, after all, might lie for her, +not in the gratification but in the relinquishment of desire. + +"I saw Kemper a while ago," he remarked, as they crossed Fifth Avenue to +the opposite sidewalk which ran along the wall under the bared November +trees. "He seemed very much interested in some mining scheme which +Barclay has gone in for. I never saw him more enthusiastic." + +"Was he?" she asked indifferently; and she felt almost a resentment +against Kemper because he could pass so easily from the reconciliation +with her to the subject of mining. Since the evening before, when she +had received the news of his absence with Madame Alta, her attitude to +her lover had, unconsciously to herself, undergone a change; and her +critical faculty, so long dominated by her feeling, appeared now to have +usurped the place which was formerly held by her ideal image of him. But +this awakening of her intellect had no power whatever over her love, +which remained unaltered, and the one result of her clearer mental +vision was to destroy her happiness, while it did not lessen the +strength of her emotion. + +She glanced up at Adams as he walked beside her in the pale sunshine, +and the smile with which he responded to her look, awoke in her the +impulse to confess to him the burden which oppressed her thoughts. +Realising that it would be impossible to confide these things to any +human being, she changed the subject by asking him a trivial question +about Trent's play. + +"There's no doubt of his success, I think," he answered, "but just now +his mind is absorbed with other things. He's as deep in his love as he +ever was in his ambition." + +"So he has found her?" enquired Laura, with but little animation. She +was glad that Trent was happy at last, but she could not force herself +to feel an interest in this love affair which was so unlike her own. + +"Well, he didn't have to look far," rejoined Adams, laughing, "he +discovered her, I believe, in the same apartment house. Some of us," he +concluded a little sadly, "go a good deal farther with considerably less +success." + +"It does puzzle one," said Laura, thinking of Kemper, "that some people +should find what they want lying on their very doorstep, while others +must go on looking for it their whole lives through." + +He smiled at her with a tenderness which seemed, somehow, a part of his +strength. "But yours was the easier fate," he said. + +"Is it the easier? I hardly know," she answered, and the note of pain in +her voice entered his heart. "I sometimes think that the best of life is +to go on wanting till one dies." + +"Not the best--not the best," he responded, with a touch of his +whimsical humour. "I have had my share of wanting and I speak of what I +know. It all comes right in the end, I suppose, but it's a pretty tough +experience while it lasts, and, after all, we live in the minute not in +eternity." + +Her gaze had dropped away from him, but at his words she lifted her eyes +again to meet his look. + +"I wonder what it was you wanted so," she said--for he impressed her +suddenly as possessing a force of will which it would be not only +ineffectual, but even foolish to resist. The aggressive bulk of Perry +Bridewell, the impetuous egoism of Kemper showed, not as strength, but +as violence compared to the power which controlled the man at her side. +Where had he found this power? she wondered, and by what miracle had he +been able to make it his own? + +"If I told you, I dare say it wouldn't enlighten you much," he answered. +"Isn't it enough to confess that I've done my share of crying for the +moon?" + +"And if it had dropped into your hands, you would have found, probably, +that it was made only of green cheese," she replied. + +For an instant he looked at her with a glance in which his humour +seemed to cover a memory which she could not grasp. + +"Oh, well, I'd have risked it!" he retorted almost gayly. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE END OF THE PATH + + +Having decided that Laura was to be married on the nineteenth of +December, Mrs. Payne had gathered not only the invitations, but the +entire trousseau into the house three weeks before the date upon which +she had fixed. Laura, who had at first entered enthusiastically into the +question of clothes, had shown during the last fortnight an indifference +which was almost an open avoidance of the subject; and the lively old +lady was forced to conduct an unsupported campaign against dressmakers +and milliners. + +"It's fortunate, to put it mildly, my dear, that you have me to attend +to such matters," she remarked one day, "or you would most likely have +started on your wedding journey a dowd--and there can be no happy +marriage," she concluded with caustic philosophy, "which is not founded +upon a carefully selected trousseau." + +"If his love for me depends on clothes, I don't want it," replied Laura +in an indignant voice. + +Mrs. Payne shook her false gray curls, until the little wire hairpins +which held them in place slipped out and dropped into her lap. + +"It might very well depend upon something more difficult to procure," +she retorted with reason. Then in a last effort to arouse Laura into the +pride of possession, she brought out her multitude of boxes and +unfolded her treasures of old lace. + +At the time Laura looked on with listless inattention, but two days +later she returned in a change of mood which put to blush the worldly +materialism of Mrs. Payne. + +"Aunt Rosa, you're right," she said, "I haven't paid half enough +attention to my clothes. I believe, after all, that clothes are among +the most important things in life." + +"I regard it as a merciful providence that you have come to your senses +in time," observed the old lady, with a sincerity which survived even +the extravagance into which her niece immediately plunged--for, after +looking carelessly over the contents of the large white boxes, Laura +turned away as if disappointed, and demanded in her next breath a sable +coat. + +"Arnold admired a woman in a sable coat yesterday," she said, with a +gravity which impressed Mrs. Payne as almost solemn. + +But her reaction into the vanities of the world was as short lived as +her former disdain of them; and by the time the sable coat arrived she +had almost begun to regret that she had ever asked for it. Since the +selection of it she had heard Kemper quite as carelessly express +approval of an ermine wrap, and her heart had suddenly sickened over the +fruitlessness of her ambition. She was still trying on the coat under +Mrs. Payne's eyes, when Gerty, coming in, as she announced, to deliver a +message, paused in the centre of the room as if petrified into an +attitude of admiration. + +"My dear, you're so gorgeous that you look like nothing short of a +tragic actress. Well, you ought to be a happy woman." + +"If clothes can make me happy, I suppose I shall be," rejoined Laura. +"Aunt Rosa has spared neither her own strength nor Uncle Horace's +money." + +"That's because I love you better than my ease and Horace loves you +better than his foundling hospital," replied Mrs. Payne. + +Standing before the long mirror, Laura looked with a frown at the sable +coat, which gave her, as Gerty had said, the air of a tragic actress. +Her dark hair, with its soft waves about the forehead, her brilliant +eyes, and the delicate poetic charm of her figure, borrowed from the +costly furs a distinction which Gerty felt to be less that of style than +of personality. + +"He will like me in this," she thought; and then remembering the ermine +wrap, which was becoming also, she wondered if another woman would buy +it, if Kemper would see it at the opera, and if he would, perhaps, +admire it again as he had done that day. + +"If he does I shall regret these though they were so much more costly," +she concluded, "and my whole pleasure in them may be destroyed by a +chance remark which he will let fall." She understood, all at once, the +relentless tyranny which clothes might acquire--the jealousy, the +extravagance, the feverish emulation, and the dislike which one woman +might feel for another who wore a better gown. "Yet if I give my whole +life to it there will always be someone who is richer, who is better +dressed and more beautiful than I," she thought. "Though my +individuality wins to-day, to-morrow I shall meet a woman beside whom I +shall be utterly extinguished. And there is no escape from this; it is +inevitable and must happen." A shiver of disgust went through her, and +it seemed to her that she saw her life as plainly as if the glass before +her revealed her whole future and not merely her figure in the sable +coat. She shrank from her destiny, and yet she knew that in spite of +herself, she must still follow it; she longed for her old freedom of +spirit, and instead she struggled helplessly in the net which her own +temperament cast about her. "Is it possible that I can ever enter into +this warfare which I have always despised?" she asked, "into this +conflict of self against self, of vanity against vanity? Shall I, like +Gerty, grow to fear and to hate other women in my foolish effort to keep +alive a passion which I know to be worthless? Shall I even come in the +end to feel terror and suspicion in my love for Gerty?" But this last +thought was so terrible to her that she lacked the courage with which to +face it, and so she put it now resolutely aside as she had learned to +put aside at will all the disturbing questions which her conscience +asked. + +"I know that you are over head and ears in it all," Gerty was saying, +"and I shouldn't have dropped in if I hadn't just been called to the +telephone by Arnold. He was, of course, rushing off to a meeting about +those everlasting mines--Perry's in it, too, and it's really helped his +mind to get the better of his lungs at last." + +"But I thought Arnold was coming this afternoon," returned Laura, a +little hurt. + +With a laughing glance at Mrs. Payne, who sat counting silk stockings by +the window, Gerty buried her face in her muff while she shook with +unaffected merriment. + +"Oh, my dear, what a wife you'll make if you haven't learned to mask +your feelings!" she exclaimed, "but as for Arnold, he wants me to bring +you to his rooms for tea. The Symonds portrait has come and he'd like us +to see it before it's hung. He'll hurry back, he says, the minute that +abominable meeting is over-though between you and me he is almost as +much interested in those mines as he is in his marriage." + +The disappointment in Laura's face was succeeded by an expression of +impatient eagerness, and a little later as she drove with Gerty through +the streets she was able to convince herself that the uncertainty of the +last fortnight had yielded finally to the perfect security for which she +longed Sitting there in Gerty's carriage, she felt with a compassionate +heart-throb, that out of her own fulness she could look down and pity +the emptiness of her friend's life; and this thought filled her bosom +with a sympathy which overflowed in the smile she turned upon the +brilliant woman at her side. + +"I find myself continually rejoicing because you are to take a house up +town," remarked Gerty, as she pressed Laura's hand under the fur robe. +"When you come back we'll see each other every day, and when you land, +I'll be there to welcome you with the house full of flowers and the +dinner ordered." + +"There's no use trying to realise it all, I can't," responded Laura; and +the interest with which she entered immediately into a discussion of +furnishing and housekeeping banished from her mind all recollection of +the despondency, the tormenting doubts, of the last few weeks. Yes, all +would go well--all must go well in spite of everything she had imagined. +Once married she would see this foolish foreboding dissolve in air, and +with the wedding ceremony she would enter into that cloudless happiness +which she had expected so confidently to find in the Adirondacks. This +new hope possessed her instantly to the exclusion of all other ideas, +and she clung to it as passionately as she had clung to every illusion +of the kind which had presented itself to her imagination. + +When they reached his rooms, Kemper had not returned, and while Gerty +amused herself by examining every photograph upon his desk and mantel, +Laura drew a chair before the portrait, which was a bold, half-length +study painted with a daring breadth of handling. The artist was a new +French painter, who had leaped into prominence because of a certain +extravagance of style which he affected; and his work had taken Kemper's +fancy as everything took it either in art or in life which deviated in +any marked eccentricity from the ordinary level of culture or of +experience. + +"There's something queer about it--I don't like it," said Laura, with +her first glance. "Why, it makes him look almost brutal--there's a +quality in it I'll never grow accustomed to." + +Then, as she looked a moment longer at the picture, she saw that the +quality in Kemper which the painter had caught and arrested with an +excellent technique upon the canvas, was the resemblance to Perry +Bridewell which had offended her when she noticed it the other day. It +was there, evidently--this foreign painter had seized upon it as the +most subtle characteristic of Kemper's face--and in dwelling upon it in +the portrait as he had done, she realised that he had attempted to +produce, not so much the likeness of the man, as a startling, almost +sinister study of a personality. What he had shown her was the +temperament, not the face of her lover--not her lover, indeed, she told +herself the next instant, but Madame Alta's. + +"I can't get used to it--I'll never like it," she repeated, and rising +from her chair, as if the view of the portrait annoyed her, she went +over to the centre table to glance idly over the current fiction with +which Kemper occupied his leisure hours. Her eyes were still wandering +aimlessly over the titles of the books, when her attention was diverted +by the sound of Wilkins' voice, lowered discreetly to an apologetic +whisper; and immediately afterward she heard the softened soprano of a +woman, who insisted, apparently, upon leaving the elevator and crossing +the hall outside. The conversation with Wilkins had reached Gerty's ears +at the same instant, and she, too, sat now with her enquiring gaze bent +on the door, which opened presently to admit the ample person of Madame +Alta. At sight of them she showed no tremor of surprise, but stood +poised there, in an impressive stage entrance, upon the threshold, +presiding, as it were, over the situation with all the brilliant +publicity which her exquisite gift conferred. Her art had not only +placed her below the level of her sex's morality, it had lifted her +above any embarrassment of accident, and as she hesitated for a single +smiling minute in the doorway, she appeared more at home in her +surroundings than either of the two women who stood, in silence, +awaiting her advance. With her ermine, her ostrich feathers, her smile, +and her scented powder, she impressed Laura less as extinguishing her by +the splendour of a presence than as smothering her in the softness of an +effect. For it was at Laura that, after the first gently enquiring +glance, she levelled her words as well as her caressing look. + +"It was such a happy chance to meet you that I couldn't let it slip," +she said, as she bore down upon her with a large, soft hand +outstretched, "Mr. Kemper has been so good a friend to me that I am +overjoyed to have the opportunity of telling you how much I think of +him. He has been really the greatest help about some speculations, +too--don't you think he has quite a genius for that kind of thing?" + +For a moment Laura looked at her in a surprise caused less by the +other's entrance than by her own inward composure. For weeks she had +told herself that she hated Madame Alta in her heart, yet, brought face +to face with her, feeling the soft pressure of her hand, she realised +that she had hated merely a creature of straw and not this woman whose +humanity was, after all, of the same flesh and blood and spirit as her +own. By the wonder of her intuition she had recognised in her first +glance the thing which Kemper, for all his worldly knowledge, had missed +in his more intimate association, and this was that the soul of the +woman before her had not perished, but was still tossed wildly in the +fires of art, of greed, of sensuality. Between her lover and the prima +donna she knew that for this one instant at least, she was strong +enough to stand absolutely detached and incapable of judgment. And in a +sudden light, as from a lamp that was turned inward, she saw that if she +could but maintain this attitude of pity, she would place her happiness +beyond any harm from the attacks of Madame Alta or of her kind. She saw +this, yet she felt that the vision was almost useless, for even while +she stood there the light went out and she knew that it would not shine +for her again. + +"I know but little of that side of him," she answered, smiling. "It is +pleasant to hear that he has a gift I did not suspect." + +"Oh, I dare say he has others," retorted Madame Alta, "but I came about +these very speculations to-day," she added, "and since he isn't at +home--if you'll let me--I'll leave a note on his desk. I start for +Chicago to-night for a month of continuous hard work. Until you know +what it is to race about the country for your life," she wound up +merrily, "never stop to waste your pity on a day labourer." + +With a smiling apology to Gerty, she crossed to Kemper's desk, where she +wrote a short note which she proceeded coolly to place in an envelope +and seal. As she moistened the flap of the envelope with her lips, she +turned to glance at Laura over her ermine stole. + +"I hope you'll remember to tell him that my visit was by no means thrown +away, since I saw you," she remarked, with her exaggerated sweetness. + +"Why not wait and tell him yourself?" suggested Laura, so composedly +that she wondered why her heart was beating quickly, "he'll probably be +back in a few minutes for tea, and in that case it wouldn't be +necessary for me to deliver so flattering a message." + +"Oh, but I want you to--I particularly want you to," insisted the other, +creating, as she rose, a lovely commotion by the flutter of her lace +veil and her ostrich feathers. "I send him my liveliest congratulations, +and the part he'll like best is that I am able to send them by you." + +The door closed softly after her, and Gerty, going to the window, threw +it open with a bang which served as an outlet to the emotion she lacked +either the courage or the opportunity to put into words. + +"I don't like her perfume," she observed, with an affected contortion of +her nostrils, "there's something to be said for the odour of sanctity, +after all." + +"Why, I thought it delicious," returned Laura, as if astonished. "It +even occurred to me to ask her where she got it." + +"Well, I'm thankful you didn't," exclaimed Gerty; and she concluded +dismally after a moment, "What hurts me most is to think I've wasted +bouquets on her over the footlights, for a more perfectly odious +person--" + +"I found her wonderfully handsome," remarked Laura, in a voice which had +a curious quality of remoteness, as if she spoke from some dream-like +state of mental abstraction. "Wonderfully handsome," she insisted, +indignant at the scornful denial in Gerty's look. + +"Well, it's the kind of handsomeness that makes me want to scratch her +in the face," rejoined Gerty, with the unshakable courage of her +impressions. + +Turning away from her friend, Laura went over to the desk as if drawn in +spite of her resolution, by the large sealed envelope lying on the white +blotter. The handwriting of the address, with its bold, free flourish at +the end, appeared to fascinate her eyes, for after looking at it +attentively a moment, she took it up and brought it over to the hearth +where Gerty stood. + +"Yes, she is wonderfully handsome," she repeated; and her tone was so +indifferent that it came with a shock of surprise to Gerty, when she +bent over and laid the letter upon the burning logs. Dropping on her +knees, she watched the paper catch fire, redden in the flame, turn to +ashes, and at last dissolve in smoke. Then she leaned forward and pushed +the logs together, as if she wished to destroy some last vestige of the +words which were still visible to her eyes. + +"Laura!" called Gerty sharply. She had made a step forward, but as Laura +rose from her knees and faced her, she fell back into her former +attitude. + +"If you want to tell him," said Laura coldly, "you may do it when he +comes. I shan't mind it in the least." + +"Tell him!" cried Gerty, and her voice shook with a tremor she could not +control, "but, oh! Laura, what made you do it?" + +She knew that she wanted to go away by herself and weep; but she could +not tell at the moment whether it was for Laura or for her own +disappointment that she was more concerned. Her whole outlook on life +was altered by the thing which Laura had done; she felt that she no +longer believed in anybody and that it was impossible for her to go on +living as she had lived until to-day. + +"I don't know," replied Laura, with a curiosity so vague that it sounded +almost impersonal, "I don't know why I did it." As she uttered the words +the question seemed to absorb her thoughts; then, before Gerty caught +the sound of Kemper's approaching footsteps, she knew that he must be +coming by the abruptness of the change with which Laura spoke. + +"I wonder why it is that men never appreciate the necessity for tea!" +she exclaimed, and laughing she went quickly toward the door. "I don't +believe you'd have cared if you'd found us starving on your threshold," +she wound up with reproachful gayety. + +"Oh, I hoped you'd ordered it," said Kemper, "upon my word I'm sorry--I +fear you must have had a stupid wait." + +He entered with his breathless, though smiling, apology, touched the +bell for Wilkins as he crossed the room, and offered his hand first to +Gerty and then to Laura with an equally enthusiastic pressure. The clear +red was still in his face, and his eyes beamed with animation as he +stood warming himself before the fire. + +"Have you been here long?" he asked, looking at his watch with a slight +frown. "By Jove, I'm a good half hour after time. What did you do with +yourselves while you cursed me?" + +"First we looked at the portrait--which I hate--then we read the names +of all your silly books," responded Laura, with a dissimulation so +natural that Gerty was divided between regret for her sincerity and +admiration for her acting. + +"Well, it doesn't do to quarrel not only with our bread and meat, but +with our automobiles, too," protested Kemper lightly, "It's a good thing +I've gone in for, and it all came of my riding up in the train with +Barclay to the Adirondacks--otherwise he'd have been too sharp to have +put me on to the tip." Then his rapid glance travelled to the portrait +leaning against a chair, and he put a question with the same eager +interest he had shown in the subject of mining. "So you've had time to +come to judgment on the French fellow. What do you think of him?" + +"It's not you--I won't believe it," replied Laura merrily, "if he's +right, then I've been deluded into marrying the wrong man." + +"Oh, he goes in for style, of course," remarked Kemper, closing one eye +as he fell back and examined the picture, "most of the French people do, +you know." + +The radiance which belonged to an inner illumination rather than to any +outward flush of colour, had suffused Laura's face, until she seemed to +glow with an animation which revealed itself not only in her look and +voice, but in her whole delicate figure, so fragile, yet so full of +energy. There was something unnatural, almost feverish in the brightness +of her eyes and in the rapid gestures of her small expressive hands. To +Gerty she appeared to resemble a beautiful wild bird, helplessly beating +its wings in the fowler's net. + +"But isn't their style mostly affectation as their strength is only +coarseness?" she asked eagerly, wondering as she spoke, what her words +meant and why she should have chosen these out of the whole English +language. "Isn't it truth, after all," she added, with the same excited +emphasis, "that we need in life?" It occurred to her suddenly that she +was repeating words which someone else had said before her, and she +tried to remember what the occasion was and who had uttered them. + +Then as she looked at Kemper, she found herself wondering if they would +be obliged, in order to make life bearable, to lie to each other every +day they lived? The letter which she had destroyed was her half of this +lie, she saw, and it seemed to her that Kemper's share was in his old +love for Jennie Alta. But, to her surprise, when she thought of this it +aroused no torment, hardly any disturbance in her heart, for Kemper and +his love for her appeared to her now in an entirely new and different +aspect, and she realised that because of the lie between them, even the +emotion he aroused in her had turned worthless in her eyes. + + + + +PART IV + +RECONCILIATION + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE SECRET CHAMBERS + + +Waking in the night, with a start, Laura asked herself why she had +burned the letter. As she lay there in the darkness it seemed to her +that the sudden light shone in her thoughts again, and she saw +everything made clear to her as she had seen it while she held Jennie +Alta's hand. In that instant she had looked beyond the small personal +emotions to the woman's soul with its burden of greed and sensuality, +and because she had been able to do this, she had felt herself to be +composed and released from hatred. To discern the soul was to feel not +only tolerance, but pity for the flesh, and it appeared to her now that +in that one moment she had ceased to be herself alone, and had shared in +the divine wisdom which the sudden light had revealed to her in her +breast. Yet the instant afterward her personality had triumphed and she +had burned the letter! + +The illumination within her faded now, and as she lay there with wide +open eyes, she saw only the surrounding darkness. Her own motives were +still vague to her; when she tried to remember the prompting of her +thoughts she could recall only a physical pain which had entered her +bosom while she looked at the large white envelope upon the blotter. +"Before this I had never lied in my life," she said, "I had never been +capable of the slightest dishonest act, I had even taken a pride in my +truth like the pride some women take in beauty--and yet I did this thing +without effort and I do not know now why I did, nor what I thought of at +the time, nor whether I regretted it the moment afterward." + +With a resolution which had seldom failed her, she attempted to banish +the recollection from her mind; and turning her face from the pale +darkness of the window, she closed her eyes again and lay breathing +quietly. "Why should I worry--it will all come right--everything will +come right if I have patience," she thought, trying to persuade herself +to sleep. + +But she had no sooner shut her eyes than she began to live over again +the afternoon in Kemper's room; and her heart beat so high that she +heard the muffled sound under the coverlet "Why did Gerty look at me +so?" she asked. "Did she really look at me as if she were afraid, or was +it only my imagination?" From Gerty her excited thoughts flew back to +Kemper and it seemed to her that she had read scorn and suspicion in the +beaming glance he had thrown upon her--in the breathless apology of his +entrance. "Had he met her downstairs? Did he know all the time? and was +he only waiting for Gerty's absence to accuse me face to face of my +dishonesty? But it was a very little thing," she argued aloud, as if +justifying herself to a presence beside her bed, "it was such a little +thing that it had almost escaped my memory." Then, as she uttered the +words, she realised that the justification she attempted was for her own +soul rather than for her lover; and she saw that whether Kemper +suspected or not made no vital difference to her so long as the +dishonesty was there. "The unspoken lie is still between us and his +knowledge of it can neither take it away nor undo the fact that it has +been. And if I burned the letter might I not be guilty of even greater +things under the same impulse? Since I trust neither him nor myself what +is there but misery in any future that we may share? Shall I give him up +even now? Can I give him up?" But as she demanded this of herself there +returned to her the look in his eyes at certain animated instants, and +she felt that the charm of his look, which meant nothing, was stronger +to hold her than a multitude of reasons. "If I could forget this look in +his face, I might forget him," she thought, "but though I struggle to +forget it I cannot any more than I can forget the letter lying on his +desk." + +Again she closed her eyes in a fresh effort to shut out consciousness; +but when she determined to sleep the darkness seemed to grow suddenly +alive about her, and starting up in a spasm of terror, she lighted the +candle on the table beside her bed. + +"In the morning I shall tell him," she exclaimed aloud, "I shall tell +him everything and if he looks at me with anger I shall go away and not +see him any more." At the time it appeared to her very easy, and she +felt that it made no difference to her however things might happen on +the morrow. "It will be as it will be, and I cannot alter it, for in any +event I shall be miserable whether I marry him or give him up." Then she +remembered that though she had pardoned Kemper greater sins than this, +by the courage of his attitude he had always succeeded in placing her +hopelessly in the wrong. "Even after his meeting with Madame Alta it was +he who forgave me," she thought with the strange mental clearness, which +destroyed her happiness without lessening her emotion, "and through his +whole life, however deeply he may wrong me, I know that I shall always +be the one to justify myself and seek forgiveness. Is it, after all, +only necessary to have the courage of one's acts that one may do +anything and not be punished?" + +The light of the candle flickering on the mirror gave back her own face +to her as if reflected in the dim surface of a pool. She watched the +shadows from a vase, of autumn leaves come and go across it, until it +seemed to her that the rippling reflection resembled a drowned face that +was still her own; and shrinking back in horror, she sat holding the +candle in her hand, so that the light would shine on the walls and +floor. + +"Yes, that is settled--I shall tell him to-morrow," she said, as if +surrendering her future into the power of chance or God or whatever +stood outside herself, "it will happen as it must, I cannot change it." +For a moment there was some comfort in the fatalism of this thought, and +after blowing out the candle, she turned her face to the wall and fell +at last into a troubled sleep. But her sleep even was filled with +perplexing questions, which she continued to ask herself with the same +piercing mental clearness that tormented her when she was awake; and she +passed presently into a vivid dream, in which she rescued the letter +with burned hands, from the fire, and carried it to Kemper, who laughed +and kissed her burns and threw the letter back into the flames. "It has +never really happened--you have imagined it all," he said, "you've +dreamed Jennie Alta and now you're dreaming me and yourself also. Look +up, for you are just beginning to awake." And when she looked up at his +words, his face changed suddenly and she saw that it was Roger Adams who +held her hands. + +From this dream she awoke with a more distinct memory of Adams than she +had had for many days; and she felt again the impulse to unburden her +heart to him, which she had resisted on the afternoon they walked +together down Fifth Avenue. The dawn had begun to break, and while she +waited impatiently for the growing light, she resolved with one of those +promptings of wisdom, in which ordinary reason appeared to have no part, +that when the morning came she would go to Adams' office before seeing +Kemper. Then she remembered the distance which had sprung between them +in the last few months, and it seemed to her to have grown still more +impassable since the evening before. But because the visit offered an +excuse to postpone her confession to Kemper until the afternoon, she +caught at it with an eagerness, which hurried her into her hat and coat +as soon as her pretence of breakfasting with Angela was at an end. + +The morning was bright and clear, and as she walked through the early +sunshine in the street, she remembered the day, so long ago now, when +she had met Adams going to his office at this hour, and she recalled, +with a smile, that she had pitied him then because of the worn places on +his overcoat. She no longer pitied him now--Gerty, herself, Perry +Bridewell, even Kemper, she felt, might be deserving of compassion, but +not Adams. Yes, she, herself, in spite of her boasted strength had come +at last to feel the need of being loved for the very weakness she had +once despised. But she knew that, though Adams might understand and +forgive this weakness, in Kemper it would provoke only the scorn which +she had begun to fear and dread. Yet her intellect rather than her heart +told her that Adams was a stronger man than Kemper and that his wider +sympathies proved only that he was, also, the larger of the two. Was the +difference between them merely one of goodness, after all, her +intellect, not her heart, demanded, and was it true that the perfect +love could not enter except where this goodness had been to blaze the +way before it in the soul? + +As she walked through the streets fanciful comparisons between the two +men thronged in her brain, but when presently she reached Adams' office, +and stood beside his desk, with her hand in his hearty grasp, she +realised all at once that the visit was useless, and that there was +nothing she could say to him which would not sound hysterical and +absurd. + +"So, thank heaven, there's something I can do for you!" he exclaimed, +with his cordial smile. "Wait till I get into my overcoat and then we'll +see about it." + +"No--no," she protested in a terror, which she could not explain even to +herself, "don't come out with me--there's nothing you can do. I came +because I couldn't help myself," she added, smiling; "and I'll go for no +better reason, in a little while." + +"Well, I'm ready whenever you say so. If it's to overturn Brooklyn +Bridge, I'll set about it for the asking." + +"It isn't anything so serious--there's nothing really I want done," she +answered gayly, though the pain in her eyes stabbed him to the heart, +"all I wanted was to make sure of you--to make sure, I mean, that you +are really here." + +"Oh, I'm here all right!" he replied, with energy. She looked at him +steadily for a moment with her excited eyes which had grown darkly +brilliant. + +"Do you know what I sometimes think?" she said, breaking into a pathetic +little laugh, "it is that I remind myself of one of those angels who, +after falling out of heaven, could neither get back again nor reconcile +themselves to the things of earth." + +Her hand lay on his desk, and while she spoke he bent forward and +touched it an instant with his own. Light as the gesture was, it +possessed a peculiar power of sympathy; and she was conscious as he +looked at her that there was no further need for her to speak, because +he understood, not only all that she had meant to put into words, but +everything that was hidden in her heart as well. + +"I can't preach to you, Laura," he said, "but--but--oh, I can't express +even what is in my mind," he added. "I wish I could!" + +"It wouldn't help me," she replied, "because although I am not +reconciled with the things of earth I want to be--oh, how I want to be!" + +"But you can't be--not you," he said. "You're of that particular fibre +which grows stronger through pain, I think--and, in the end, how much +easier it is to be made all spirit or all clay--it's the combination, +not the pure quantity that hurts." + +"I wonder if you ever know what it is?" she rejoined. "Does the earth +ever pull you back when you want to climb?" + +His smile faded, and he looked at her again with the sympathy which +accepted, without explanation, not only her outward aspect, but the soul +within. "There's not much in my life that counts for a great deal, +Laura," he said, "but you come in for considerably the larger share of +it. At this moment I am ready to do either of two things, as you may +wish--I am ready to stand aside and let your future settle itself as it +probably will, or I am ready, at your word, to hear everything and to +judge for you as I would judge for myself. No--no, don't answer me now," +he added, "carry it away with you, and remember or forget it, as you +choose." + +Though there were tears in her eyes as she looked at him, she turned +away, after an instant, with a flippant laugh. + +"Why, it all sounds as if I were really unhappy!" she exclaimed, "but +you won't believe that, will you?" + +"I'll gladly believe otherwise when you prove it." + +"But haven't I proved it? Don't I prove it every day I live?" + +"You prove to me at this minute that you are particularly wretched," he +returned. + +"I am not--I am not," she retorted angrily, while a frown drew her dark +brows together. "You have no right to think such things of me--they are +not true." + +"I have a right to think anything that occurs to me," he corrected +quietly, "though I am willing to beg your pardon for putting it into +words. Well, since you assure me that you are entirely happy, I can +only say that I am overjoyed to hear it." + +"I am happy," she insisted passionately; and a little later when she was +alone in the street, she told herself that a lie had become more +familiar to her than the truth. The conversation with Adams appeared a +mistake when she looked back upon it--for instead of lessening it seemed +only to increase the weight of her troubles--so she determined presently +to think no more either of Adams or of the reasons which had prompted +her impulsive visit to him. To forget oneself! Yes, Gerty was right in +the end, and the object of all society, all occupations, all amusements, +showed to her now as so many unsuccessful attempts to escape the +haunting particular curse of personality. Gerty escaped it by her +frivolous pursuits and her interminable flirtations, which meant +nothing; Kemper escaped it by living purely in the objective world of +sense; Adams escaped it--The name checked her abruptly, and she stopped +in her thoughts as if a light had flashed suddenly before her eyes. +Here, at last, was the explanation of happiness, she felt, and yet she +felt also, that it presented itself to her mind in an enigma which she +could not solve--for Adams, she recognised, had mastered, not escaped, +his personality. The poison of bitterness was gone, but the +effectiveness of power was still as great; and his temperament, in +passing through the fiery waters of experience, was mellowed into a +charm which seemed less a fortunate grace of aspect than the result of a +peculiar quality of vision. Was it his own life that had opened his eyes +until he could look into the secret chambers in the lives of others? + +In Gramercy Park she found Mrs. Payne waiting for her with the carriage, +and she accepted almost eagerly the old lady's invitation to spend the +morning in a search for hats. At the moment it seemed to her that hats +offered as promising an aid to forgetfulness as any other, and she threw +herself immediately into the pursuit of them with an excitement which +enabled her, for the time, at least, to extinguish the fierce hunger of +her soul in supplying the more visible exactions of her body. + +At luncheon Gerty appeared, wearing a startling French gown, which, she +said, had just arrived that morning. After the first casual greeting +they fell into an animated discussion of the choice of veils, during +which Gerty declared that Laura had never selected the particular spots +which would be most becoming to her features. "You get them too large +and too far apart," she insisted, picking up a black net veil from a +pile on Laura's table, "even I with my silly nose can't stand this +kind." + +Laura's eyes were fixed upon her with their singular intensity of look, +but in spite of the absorption of her gaze, she had not heard a single +word that Gerty uttered. + +"Yes, yes, you're right," she said; but instead of thinking of the +veils, she was wondering all the time if Gerty had really forgotten her +jealousy of Madame Alta and the letter she had burned. + +"I shall tell him this afternoon and that will make everything easy," +she thought; and when, after a little frivolous conversation Gerty had +remembered an engagement and driven hurriedly away, the situation +appeared to Laura to have become perfectly smooth again. At the +announcement of Kemper's name, she crossed the room to meet him with +this impulse still struggling for expression. "I shall tell him now, and +then everything will be made easy," she repeated. + +But when she opened her lips to speak, she found that the confession +would not come into words, and what she really said was: + +"It has been a century since yesterday, for I've done nothing but shop." + +Laughing he caught her hands, and she saw with her first glance, that he +was in one of his ironic moods. + +"I thought I'd netted a wren," he answered, "but it seems I've caught a +bird of Paradise." + +"Then it was your ignorance of natural history, and not I, that deceived +you," she retorted gayly, "because I didn't spread my wings for you, did +you imagine that they were not brilliant?" + +There was a note almost of relief in her voice as she spoke--for she +knew now that, so long as he refused to be serious, she could not tell +him until to-morrow. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +IN WHICH LAURA ENTERS THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION + + +Two weeks later Laura was still able to assure herself that it was this +lack of "seriousness" in Kemper's manner which had kept her from +alluding to the burned letter. Since the morning on which she had seen +Adams, she felt that she had merely skimmed experience without actually +touching it; and three days from the date of her marriage she was as far +from any deeper understanding of the situation as she had been in the +beginning of her love. In the end it was so much easier to ignore her +difficulties than to face them; and it seemed to her now that she was +forced almost in spite of herself into Gerty's frivolous attitude toward +life. To evade the real--to crowd one's existence with little lies until +there was no space left through which the larger truth might enter--this +was the only solution which she had found ready for her immediate need. + +Adams she had not met again; once he had called, but impelled by a +shrinking which was almost one of fear, she had turned back on the +threshold and refused to see him. Even Gerty she had tried to avoid +since the afternoon in Kemper's rooms, but Gerty, who was in her gayest +mood, drove down every day "to overturn," as she carelessly remarked, +"the newest presents." + +"I'm heartily glad you're going to Europe," she said, "and I hope by the +time you come back you'll have lost that nervous look in your face. It +never used to be there and I don't like it." + +At her words Laura threw an alarmed glance at the mirror; then she +turned her head with a laugh in which there was a note of bitterness. + +"It came there in my effort to make conversation," she answered. "I've +been engaged to Arnold eight months and we've talked out every subject +that we have in common. Do you know what it is to be in love with a man +and yet to rack your brain for something to say to him?" she finished +merrily. + +"That's because you ought to have married Roger Adams, as I was the only +one to suggest," retorted Gerty, "then you'd have had conversation +enough to flow on, without a pause, till Judgment Day. It's a very good +thing, too," she added seriously, "because the real bug-a-boo of +marriage is boredom, you know." + +"But how can two people bore each other when they are in love?" demanded +Laura, almost indignant. + +The possibility appeared to her at the moment as little short of +ridiculous, yet she knew, in her heart of hearts, that she faced, not +without approaching dread, the thought of those two months in Europe; +and she admitted now for the first time that beyond the absorption of +their love, she and Kemper had hardly an interest which they shared. +Even the eyes with which they looked on Europe would be divided by the +space of that whole inner world which stretched between them. Yet +because of the supremacy of this one sentiment she had striven to crush +out her brain in order that she might have the larger heart with which +to nourish the emotion which held them together. In the pauses of this +sentiment she realised that their thoughts sprang as far asunder as the +poles, and as she looked from Gerty to the wedding presents scattered in +satin boxes on chairs and tables, the fact that the step she took was +irrevocable, that in three days she would be Kemper's wife, that there +was no possible escape from it now, produced a sudden sickening terror +in her heart. Then with a desperate clutch at her old fatalistic +comfort, she told herself that it would all come right if she were only +patient--that with her marriage everything would be settled and become +entirely simple. + +Gerty was unpacking a case from a silversmith's when Kemper came in; and +he gave a low whistle of dismay as he glanced about the room strewn with +boxes. + +"By Jove, I believe they think we're going to set up a business!" he +exclaimed. + +"Oh, you can't imagine how all this comes in for entertaining," replied +Gerty, shaking out her skirt as she rose from her knees. + +Laura's eyes were on Kemper's face, and she saw that it wore a look of +annoyance beneath the conventional smile with which he responded to +Gerty's words. Something had evidently happened to displease him, and +she waited a little anxiously half hoping for, half dreading her +friend's departure. + +"I trust you'll go through the ceremony more gracefully than Perry did," +Gerty was saying with a teasing merriment, while she broke a white +rosebud from the vase of flowers and fastened it in his coat. "I declare +he quite spoiled the whole effect, he looked so frightened. I never +realised how little sense of humour Perry has until I saw him at the +altar." + +"Well, it isn't exactly a joke, you know," retorted Kemper. + +For the first time, as Laura watched him, she remembered that he had +been through it all before without her; and the thought entered her +heart like a dagger, that even now there was another woman alive +somewhere in the world who had been his wife--who had been almost as +much loved, almost as close to him as she herself was to-day. The +thought sickened her, and she felt again her blind terror of a step so +irrevocable. + +Gerty had gone at last; and Kemper, after walking twice up and down the +room, stopped to examine a silver coffee service with an attention which +was so evidently assumed that Laura was convinced he might as well have +fixed his gaze upon the fireplace. His thoughts were busily occupied in +quite an opposite direction from his eyes, for turning presently, he +laid down the sugar bowl he had picked up, and went rapidly to the +mantel piece, where he took down a photograph of Roger Adams. + +"You don't see much of Adams now?" he remarked enquiringly. + +"Not much," she went over to the mantel and glanced carelessly at the +picture in his hand. "I never shall again." + +"How's that? and why?" + +"Oh, I don't know--one never sees much of one's friends after marriage, +somehow. To supply the world to me," she added gayly, "is a part of the +responsibility of your position." + +Though his gaze was fixed intently upon her face, she saw clearly that +he had hardly taken in her words, for while she spoke his hands wandered +to the inside pocket of his coat, as if he wished to make sure of a +letter he had placed there. + +"By the way, Laura, a queer thing happened to-day," he said, frowning. + +She looked up a little startled. + +"A queer thing?" + +"I had a letter from Madame Alta asking why I hadn't sold some stock I'd +been holding for her? She lost a good deal by my not selling and she was +in a devilish temper about it." + +Laura had not lowered her eyes, and as he finished she smiled into his +face. + +"And you did not sell?" she asked. + +"I never got the letter--but the odd part is she says she came to see me +about it the day you were there with Gerty--that she saw you and that +she left the letter with you to deliver--" + +He broke off and stood waiting with a half angry, half baffled look; and +then as she was still silent he picked up a red leather box from the +table, laid it down again and came nearer to where she stood. + +"Is it all a lie, Laura?" he demanded. + +The justification which she had attempted alone in the night came back +to her while she stood there with her hands, which felt like dead +things, hanging limp at her sides. "It was so very little that it +escaped my memory," was what she had said to herself in the darkness; +but now, face to face with him in the light of day, she could not bring +her mind to think these words nor her lips to utter them. + +"No, it isn't a lie--it is true," she answered. + +"It is true?" he repeated in an astonishment which gave place to anger +as he went on. "Do you mean you really met her in my rooms?" + +"I met her there--I met her there!" she rejoined in a bitter triumph of +truth which seemed, somehow, a relief to her. + +"And you did not tell me?" + +She shook her head. "I'd never have told you." + +"But the letter? What became of the letter?" + +She had drawn a step away from him, not in any fresh spirit of evasion, +but that she might gain a better view of the look with which he +confronted her. Her eyes had not wavered from his since the first +question he had asked, but her hands were nervously knotting and +unknotting a silver cord which she had picked up from a jeweller's box +upon the table at her side. + +"Why didn't I get the letter, Laura?" he asked again. + +"Because I burned it," she answered slowly, "I burned it in the fire in +your room just before you came in--I burned it," she repeated for the +third time, raising her voice to clearer distinctness. + +A dark flush rose to his face and the sombre colour gave him an almost +brutal look. + +"In God's name why did you do it?" he asked; and she saw the contempt in +his eyes as she had seen it before in her imagination. "I am to presume, +I suppose, that you were prompted by jealousy?" he added. "An amiable +beginning for a marriage." + +"I don't know why I did it," she replied, in a voice which was so +constrained as to sound unfeeling. "I didn't know at the time and I +don't know now. Yes, I suppose jealousy is as good a reason as any +other." + +"And is this what I am to expect in the future?" he enquired, with an +irony which he might as well have flung at a figure of wood. "Good God!" +he exclaimed as his righteous resentment swept from his mind all +recollection of his own relapses. "Are you willing to marry a man whom +you can't trust out of your sight?" + +The force with which he uttered the words drove them so deeply into his +consciousness that he was convinced by his own violence of the justice +in the stand he took. "Have you absolutely no faith in me?" he demanded. + +For a moment the question occupied her thoughts. + +"No, I don't think I have any now," she answered, "I've tried to make +myself believe I had--I've told a lie to my conscience about it every +day I lived--but I don't think I've ever really had faith in you since +that night--" + +"And yet you are willing to marry me?" he asked, and the scorn in his +voice stung her like a physical blow. He looked at her with an angry +glance, and while his eyes rested upon her, she understood that he had +never really seen her in his life--that he had never penetrated beyond +the outward aspect, the trick of gesture. + +"No!--No!" she cried out suddenly, as if she had awakened in terror from +her sleep. At the instant she saw herself through his eyes, humiliated, +beaten down, unwomanly, and she was possessed by a horror of her own +individuality which she felt in some way to be a part of her horror of +the man who had revealed it to her. + +In his perplexity he had fallen back a step and stood now pulling +nervously at his moustache with a gesture which recalled his resemblance +to Perry Bridewell. This gesture, more than any words he spoke, shocked +her into an acuteness of perception which was almost unnatural in its +vividness. It was as if her soul, so long drugged to insensibility, had +started up in the last battle for liberation. + +"No--no--it is impossible!" she repeated. + +"Aren't you rather late in coming to this decision?" he enquired with a +short laugh. + +But his irony was wasted upon her, for she saw only the look in his +eyes, which revealed her deception to her in a blaze of scorn--and she +felt that she hated him and herself with an almost equal hatred. + +"I am sorry, but--but I can't," she stammered. Feeling her words to be +ineffectual she cast about wildly for some reason, some explanation +however trivial--and in the effort she found her eyes wandering +aimlessly about the room, taking in the scattered wedding presents, his +dejected yet angry look, and the fading white rosebud Gerty had pinned +jauntily in his coat. Then at last she realised that there was nothing +further that she could say, so she stood helplessly knotting the silver +cord while she watched the furious perplexity in which he tugged at his +moustache. + +"I can't for the life of me see why you should be so damned jealous, +Laura," he burst out presently, thrust back from the surface +conventions into a brute impulse of rage. + +"I told you I didn't know," she answered irritably, "I told you that--" + +"Of course, I'm willing to let it go this time," he went on, with what +she felt to be a complacent return to his lordly attitude, "there's no +use making a fuss, so we may as well forget it--but, for heaven's sake, +don't give me a jealous wife. There's nothing under heaven more likely +to drive a man insane." + +Some elusive grace in her attitude--a suggestion of a wild thing poised +for flight--arrested him suddenly as he looked at her; and she saw his +face change instantly while the fire of passion leaped to his eyes. + +"Be a darling and we'll forget it all!" he exclaimed. + +He made a step forward, but shrinking back until she appeared almost to +crouch against the wall, she put out her hands as if warding off his +approach. + +"Don't touch me!" she said; and though she spoke in a whisper, her words +seemed to shriek back at her from the air. The thought that she was +fighting for the freedom of her soul rushed through her brain, and at +the instant, had he laid his hand upon her, she knew that she would have +thrown herself from the window. + +"I don't want to touch you," he returned, cooling immediately, "but +can't you come to your senses and be reasonable?" + +"If you don't mind I wish you'd go," she said, looking at him with a +smile which was like the smile of a statue. + +"If I go now will you promise to get sensible again?" he asked, with +annoyance, for it occurred to him that since he had made up his mind to +be magnanimous, she had repulsed his generosity in a most ungrateful +fashion. + +"I am sensible," she responded, "I am sensible for the first time for +months." + +"Well, you've a pretty way of showing it," he retorted. His irritation +got suddenly the better of him, and fearing that it might break out in +spite of his control, he turned toward the door. "For God's sake, let's +make the best of it now," he added desperately. + +In his nervousness he stumbled against the table and upset the red +leather box which contained the coffee service. + +"I beg your pardon," he said, and stooping to pick it up, he replaced +the silver in the case before he went into the hall and closed the door +behind him. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +PROVES A GREAT CITY TO BE A GREAT SOLITUDE + + +After he had gone Laura remained standing where he had left her, until +the sound of the hall door closing sharply caused her to draw a breath +of relief as if there had come a temporary lifting of the torture she +endured. Then, with her first movement, as she looked about the room in +the effort to bring order into the confusion of her thoughts, her eyes +encountered the array of wedding presents, and the expression of her +face changed back into the panic terror in which she had couched against +the wall before Kemper's approach. She still saw herself revealed in the +light of the scorn which had blazed in his eyes; and the one idea which +possessed her now was to escape beyond the place where that look might +again reach her. An instinct for flight like that of a wild thing in a +jungle shook through her until she stood in a quiver from head to foot; +and though she knew neither where she was going, nor of what use this +flight would be to her, she went into her bedroom and began to dress +herself hastily in her walking clothes. As she tied on her veil and took +up her little black bag from the drawer she heard her own voice, which +sounded to her ears like the voice of a stranger, repeating the words +she had said to Kemper a little earlier: "No--no--I cant. It is +impossible." And she said over these words many times because they +infused into her heart the courage of despair which she needed to impel +her to the step before her. When the door closed after her and she went +down into the street, she was still speaking them half aloud to herself: +"No--no--it is impossible." + +The dusk had already settled; ahead of her the lights of the city shone +blurred through the greyness, while above the housetops Auriga was +driving higher in the east. With the first touch of fresh air in her +face, she felt herself inspired by an energy; which seemed a part of the +wind that blew about her; and as she walked rapidly through streets +which she did not notice toward an end of which she was still ignorant, +her thoughts breaking from the restraint which held them, rushed in an +excited tumult through her brain. + +"Why did he look at me so?" she asked, "for it is this look which has +driven me away--which has made me hate both him and myself." She tried +to recall the other expression which she had loved in his face, but +instead there returned to her only the angry look with which he had +responded to her confession. + +As she thought of it now it appeared to her that death was the only +means by which she could free herself and him from this marriage; and +the several ways of dying which were possible to her crowded upon her +with the force of an outside pressure. She might be crushed in the +street? or walk on till she found the river? But the different +approaches to death showed to her as so hideous that she knew she could +not summon the courage with which to select a particular one and follow +it to the end. "Yet I shall never go back," she thought, "he does not +love me--he wishes only to spare himself the scandal. If he loved me he +could never have looked at me like that. And I loved him three weeks +ago," she added. Her love was gone now, and the memory of it had become +intolerable to her, yet the vacancy where it had been was so great that +death occurred to her again as the only outcome. "Though I hate him it +seems impossible that I should live on without him," she said. + +But the next instant when she endeavored to recall his face she could +remember him only by his casual likeness to Perry Bridewell, and she saw +him standing upon the hearthrug while he pulled in angry perplexity at +his moustache. The words he had spoken, the tones of his voice, and her +own emotion, were blotted from her recollection as if a thick darkness +had wiped them out, and from the hour of her deepest anguish she could +bring back only a meaningless gesture and the white rosebud he had worn +in his coat. What she had suffered then was the dying agony of the thing +within her which was really herself, and there remained to her now only +the vacant image from which the passion and the life had flown. "How +could it make so much difference when I can barely remember it?" she +asked; and it seemed to her at the instant that nothing that could +happen in one's existence really mattered, since big and little were all +equal, and the memory of an emotion faded sooner than the memory of a +gesture. + +Pausing for a moment on the corner, she watched curiously the faces +moving under the electric lights, and she found herself wondering +presently if each man or woman in the crowd was loving and hating or +seeking an escape from both love and hatred? A stout man wearing a red +necktie, a pretty woman in a purple coat, a pale girl carrying a heavy +bundle, a bent shouldered clerk who walked with a satisfied and affected +air--as each one passed she saw his features and even his hidden +thoughts in a grotesque clearness which seemed to come partly from an +illumination within herself and partly from the glare of the lights +without. "The man in the red necktie is happy because he has made money; +the pretty woman is happy because she is loved--but the pale girl and +the bent shouldered clerk are wretched. They have neither love nor +money, and they have not found out how little either is worth." + +For a while she watched them, almost forgetting her own unhappiness in +the excitement of their discovered histories; but wearying suddenly, she +turned away and entered a street where the darkness had already +gathered. Here she came close upon a pair of lovers who walked arm in +arm, but the sight irritated her so she turned again at the next corner. +The question whether she should go home or not thrust itself upon her, +and it seemed to her that it would be better to die in the street than +to return to the persuasions of Gerty, the reproaches of Mrs. Payne, and +the complacency of Kemper. As she hurried on in the darkness she saw her +past as distinctly as if her eyes were turned backward, and in this +vision of it there showed to her the steep upward way of the spirit, and +she remembered the day when her destiny had seemed to lie mapped out for +her in the hand of God. "Was this what God meant?" she demanded, and +because there was no answer to the question she asked it again and again +the more passionately. "Or perhaps there is no God after all," she +added. + +A sob broke from her lips, and a policeman, who was passing, threw first +an enquiring, then a respectful glance at her, and went on again. A +child playing in the street ran up to beg for some money, and she opened +her bag and gave him a piece of silver with a smile. + +"Thank you, lady," he responded, and ran back into the shadows. As he +crossed the street she followed him with her eyes, seeing him hasten, +his palm outstretched, to an Italian who was roasting chestnuts in a +charcoal burner on the opposite sidewalk. + +The darkness had grown heavier and as she walked rapidly through streets +which she did not know, her nervous energy failed her, and she began to +tremble presently from exhaustion. Again she asked herself for the last +time if it were possible for her to go home and face Mrs. Payne and +Gerty and marry Kemper in three days. A fantastic humour in the +situation brought a laugh to her lips--for whenever she was confronted +by the hopelessness of her escape, the arguments for her marriage +presented themselves to her in the forms of cases of silver and of her +wedding dress in its white satin box. Mrs. Payne had spent the +afternoon, she knew, in arranging this silver on covered tables in an +empty room, and she could see plainly the old lady's animated movements, +the careful eye with which she estimated the value of each gift, and +the expression of approval or contempt with which she grouped it +according to its importance. Then she thought of Kemper held to his love +by the embarrassment of these presents, by the hopelessness of returning +them, and by his conventional horror of "getting into print," and at the +picture the laugh grew almost hysterical on her lips. How sordid it all +was! This array of silver, Mrs. Payne's reproachful comic mask, and +Kemper, pulling his moustache as he stood upon the hearthrug, all +whirled confusedly in the dimly lighted street before her. She felt her +knees tremble, and while this weakness lasted it seemed to her that it +would be better to go back and get warm again, and submit to anything +they forced upon her. Her flesh, in its weakness, would have yielded, +but something more powerful than the flesh--the soul within which she +had so long rejected--struggled on after the impulses of the body had +surrendered. + +The lights grew suddenly blurred before her eyes, and looking up, she +found that she had reached a ferry, and that a crowd from a neighbouring +factory was hurrying through the open doors into the boat which was +about to put off. For the first time it occurred to her that she might +leave the city; and going inside she bought a ticket and followed the +people who were rushing across the gangway. Where it would take her she +had no idea, but when after a few minutes the boat had crossed to the +other side, she went out again with the crowd, and then turning in the +direction where there appeared to be open country, she walked on more +rapidly as if her thoughts flew straight ahead into the broader spaces +of the horizon. + +At first there were rows of streets, a few scattered shops in among the +houses, and groups of workmen from the factories lounging upon the +sidewalk. A child, with a crooked back, in a red dress, ran across the +pavement in front of her and stopped with an exclamation before a window +which contained a display of pink and white candy. Then a second child +joined her, and the two fell to discussing the various highly coloured +sweets arrayed on little fancy squares of paper behind the glass. As +Laura watched them, pausing breathlessly in her walk, every trivial +detail of this incident seemed to her to possess an equal importance +with all other happenings large or small: for the events of her +individual experience had so distorted her perceptions of the ascending +values of life, that her own luckless pursuit of happiness appeared of +no greater importance in her eyes than the child, with the crooked back, +making her choice of sweets. Her own emotions, indeed, interested her no +longer, but she was aware of a dull curiosity concerning the crippled +child. Would her whole life become misshapen because of the physical +form which she wore like an outer garment? And she felt, at the thought, +that she would like to stand upon the side of the child and upon the +side of all who were oppressed and made miserable by the crookedness +either of the body or of destiny. + +While this pity was still in her mind she tried to recall Kemper as she +had first known him, but it was to remember only that he had reddened +with anger as he spoke to her, and that the sunlight, falling upon him, +had revealed the gray hair on his temples. The physical aspect which had +meant so little in her love was all that the recollection of him could +suggest to her now, for she found that the visual memory still remained +after the passion which had informed it with life and colour was blotted +out. + +The child interested her no longer, and walking on again, she passed, +after a time, the scattered houses, and came out upon the open road +which showed white and deserted beneath the stars. Looking overhead, as +she went on, her gaze swept the heavens with that sense of absolute +stillness which comes under the solitude of the sky, and standing +presently in the dust of the road, she fixed her eyes upon the Pleiades +shining softly far above the jagged line of the horizon. Her feet ached +beneath her, but her head seemed suddenly spinning through clear spaces +among the stars, and while she stood there, she felt that the distance +between her and the sky existed only in the hindrance of her body. With +that laid aside might she not recover her soul and God there as well as +here? + +Again she went on, but this time she found that her limbs could make no +further effort, and struggling step by step, to a bend in the road, she +looked about her in a physical agony which left her consciousness only +of her desire for rest. A house, set back from the roadside in a clump +of trees, showed to her as she turned, and going through the little +whitewashed gate and up the path, she knocked at the door and then stood +trembling before the threshold. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +SHOWS THAT TRUE LOVE IS TRUE SERVICE + + +On the evening of the day upon which Laura was to have been married, +Adams went, as usual, into his study and lit the green lamp upon his +desk; but his mind was so filled with the mystery of her absence that +even the pretence of distraction became unendurable. Since the news of +her broken engagement and her flight had reached him, he had spent three +days in a fruitless, though still hopeful, search for her; and the +nights when he was forced to relax his efforts were filled with agonised +imaginings of her loneliness at so great a distance and yet in reality +so near. From the moment that he had heard through Gerty of her +disappearance, there had ceased to exist all uncertainty as to the +position in which he now stood to her; and he reproached himself, as he +remembered her visit to his office, because he had failed then to take +into his hands a decision which from an external view appeared so little +to affect him. + +But the external view, he realised, was nothing to him to-night. On that +last day he had penetrated beneath the shallow surface of the +conventions, and he had read in her tormented heart the whole story of +the bitter disillusionment which she did not dare to put in words. Her +imagination, he saw, had created an ideal lover in Kemper's shape, and +in the moment of her awakening she had turned away not from the +falsehood, but from the truth. "Though he is not what I loved yet I will +still love him!" her heart had cried, in a subjection to the old false +feminine belief that faithfulness to a mistaken ideal is not weakness +but virtue. Yet in the end she had fled from that ultimate choice +between the higher and the lower nature. How could she have lived on a +lie when her spirit had forged so clear a path of truth before her? + +Rising from his chair he walked for a few minutes rapidly up and down +the room. How far or how near was she to-night? Had she remembered him +in her misery? Would God reveal Himself to her in the most terrible +hour? His trust in her final deliverance was so great that even as he +put the questions, he knew in his heart that she was one of those who, +in the end, "win their own souls through perseverance." His eyes fell on +her picture above his desk, and then turning away rested on Connie's +which stood where he had placed it in the first years of his marriage. +Connie and her life with him was like a half-forgotten dream to him now, +yet, looking back upon it, he could not tell himself that there had been +for him no gain of strength, for Connie no growth of understanding, in +the pitiless failure of their marriage. All was softened in his memory +by that last afternoon when he had seen the shame of experience wiped +from her face as they combed her hair straight back from her forehead in +the old childish fashion; and he had realised from that instant that a +soul had come to birth in the hour before her death. A single ray of the +divine light had dispelled the thick darkness, and her blind eyes were +opened for one minute before she closed them to the body forever. Was +that one minute not worth every heart throb he had suffered and every +difficult hope for which he had battled in his thoughts? Having looked +though for a fleeting glimpse only upon the unity of life, was not her +spirit's growth measured in the instant of that flashing vision? For God +had worked here--had worked in the pity of his heart, as well as in the +awakening gratitude in Connie's; and because of the deeper insight he +had attained, he could look back over the whole sordid tragedy and +discern one of those steep and arduous roads by which the spirit mounts +to enlightenment through the flesh. And if this were so here--if in +ugliness such as this he could find beauty, was it not one and the same +over the broad field of human effort? Had not his own life proved to him +that let a man's eyes be opened, and even in the depths of abasement he +may look in his soul and discover God? + +And Laura? His heart was flooded with tenderness, and he felt again a +confident, an almost mystic assurance that her destiny was one with his. +In this growing conviction his anxiety appeared to him suddenly as a +pitiable and cowardly denial of his faith--and he was possessed by the +certainty that he had only to send out his will in order to smooth the +way of her return to peace. + +The room had become warm, and opening the window he stood looking beyond +the housetops to the stars which shone dimly over the city. The noise in +the streets grew fainter in his ears, and as he stood there with his +eyes on the stars, he could tell himself in the joy of his +reconciliation, that the law by which they moved gloriously toward +their end was the law which controlled his own and Laura's life. The +sense which is less a belief than an intimate knowledge of immortality +belonged to him now, and he realised that so far as he lived at all he +lived not in the hour alone, but in eternity, that so far as he had won +peace it was bound up in a passionate conviction of the survival of the +universe within his soul. To-day or to-morrow, in the minute or in +eternity, he saw that wherever God is there will always be immortal +life. + +Turning back into the room he looked again at Laura's picture with a +longing which had not freed itself as yet from the idea of renouncement. +Even now he realised that he had been strong enough to live without her, +and with the admission, he was aware again of that wider sympathy which +had been his compensation in a forefeiture of personal love. His +happiness he had told himself a year ago depended neither upon +possession nor upon any passage of events, yet to-night his heart +strained after her in a tenderness which seemed to bring her visible +presence before him in the room. His love for her appeared not only as a +part of his love for God, but as a part, also, of his sorrows, his +bitter patience, his renouncement and of the compassion which had sprung +from the agony and the enlightenment of his failure. Sorrow he could +still feel--the deepest human grief might be his portion to-morrow, but +while this unfading light shone in his soul, he knew that it was +ordained that he should conquer in the end. By this knowledge alone he +had at last won through suffering into the open places of the spirit +where were joy and freedom. + +A ring at the bell startled him from his abstraction, and with an +impatient eagerness for news, he hastened to the door, where a boy +thrust at him a small folded sheet of paper. As he opened it he felt +that his hand trembled, for even before he read the words, he knew that +Laura's appeal to him had come. + +"I need a friend. Will you help me?" was all that she had written. + +He motioned the boy to come inside, and then stood looking at him +enquiringly as he got into his overcoat. + +"Do you go back with me?" he asked. + +The boy nodded while he pulled at a scarlet handkerchief about his neck. +Adams noticed that though he was stunted and anæmic in appearance, he +wore his shabby overcoat with an almost rakish swagger. His mouth was +filled with chewing-gum which he rolled aside in his cheek when he +talked. + +"Is it far?" Adams enquired in a hopeless effort to extort information +however meagre. + +The boy looked important, almost mysterious. + +"Yep," he responded, adding immediately, "She's the other side of the +ferry." + +"Do you mean the lady?" He opened the door, and hurried to the sidewalk +where he stopped to call a cab from the corner. + +"She's been there three nights, so tired she couldn't move," replied the +boy, as he followed Adams into the cab. "A fine lady, too," he commented +with a wink. + +"Well, she's all right now, and I'm much obliged to you," said Adams, +but he asked no further questions until they were seated side by side in +the ferry, when he tried again to draw out the bare facts of Laura's +flight. + +During the walk through the town and along the country road, he learned +that Laura had reached the house of the boy's mother in an exhaustion of +mind and body which had compelled them to harbour her for the night. On +the next day her appearance and the money with which she was supplied +had so won upon the mother's sympathy that her desire to remain a few +days longer had been met almost with eagerness by the older woman. When +he had, with difficulty, extracted this account of what had passed, +Adams fell a little ahead of his companion, and they went on in silence +until they came, at the end of several miles, in sight of the cottage +withdrawn from the roadside in its clump of trees. A single lighted +window was visible through the bared boughs, and standing out clearly +from the interior, Adams saw a dark figure which his heart recognised +with a bound. + +The boy pushed back the gate and Adams went up the path inside, and +entering the house opened the door of the room in which he had seen +Laura standing. She was still there, motionless in the lamplight, and as +he went toward her she lifted her eyes and gazed back at him in the mute +defiance which is the outward expression of despair. + +"Do you think you have been quite just to me, Laura?" he asked, not +tenderly, but with a stern and reproachful face. + +Without lowering her eyes she looked at him while she shook her head. + +"I sent for you because I could not help it. I had nowhere to go," she +said. + +"Do you think you have been just to me?" he asked again. + +"You? I never thought of you until to-day," she answered. "I came here +because I had to go somewhere--it did not matter where. I was too tired +to walk any farther, so they were very good to me." + +"And you have let us search for you three days." His voice was +constrained, but as he looked into her wan face between the loosened +waves of her hair, his heart melted over her in an agony of tenderness. +Every drop of blood appeared to have left her body, which was so pallid +that he seemed to see the light shining through her drawn features. + +"So they have been looking for me?" she observed, with but little +interest. + +"What did you expect?" he questioned in his turn. + +"But I didn't want to be found--I would rather stay lost," she +responded. Shrinking away from him she went to the window and stood +there, pressed closely against the panes, as if in a blind impulse to +put the space of the room between them. "I will not go back even now--I +will not go back," she insisted. + +As he entered he had closed the door behind him, and leaning against it +now, he looked at her with a flicker of his quiet smile. + +"I'm not talking about going back, am I?" he rejoined. "Heaven knows you +may stay here if you like the place." He glanced quickly about the +crudely furnished little room hung with cheap crayon portraits. "It's +rather hard, though, to fit you into these surroundings," he remarked +with a flash of humour. + +She shook her head. "They suit me as well as any other." + +"And the people who live here?--What of them?" + +"I like them because they are so near to the ground," she answered, +"they've no surface of culture, or personality, or convention to bother +one--they've no surface, indeed, of any kind." + +"Well, it's all very interesting," he remarked, smiling, "but, in common +decency, don't you think you might have sent me word?" + +"I never thought of you an instant," she replied. + +"You never thought of me in your life," he retorted, "and yet when I say +I'm better worth your thinking of than Kemper--God knows I don't pretend +to boast." + +A weaker man would have hesitated over the name, but he had seen at the +first glance that the way to save her was not by softness, and his lips, +after he had uttered the word, closed tightly like the lips of a surgeon +who applies the knife. + +"Don't speak to me of him!" she cried out sharply, "I had forgotten!" + +Her eyes hung upon his in a returning agony, and it was through this +agony alone that he hoped to bring back her consciousness of life. + +"This is not the way to forget," he answered, "you are not a coward, yet +you have chosen the cowardly means. There can he no forgetfulness until +you are strong enough to admit the truth to your own heart--to say +'there is no mistake that is final, no wrong done that has power to +crush me.'" + +"But there is no truth in my heart," she answered, with sudden energy, +"it is all a lie--I am a lie all over, and it makes no difference +because I have ceased to care. I used to think that people only died +when they were put in coffins, but I know now that you can be dead and +yet move and walk about and even laugh and pretend to be like all the +rest--some of whom are dead also. And I didn't die slowly," she added, +with a vague impersonal interest, which impressed him as almost +delirious in its detachment, "I wasn't killed in a year, but in a +minute. One instant I was quite alive--as alive as you are now--and the +next I was as dead as if I had been buried centuries ago." + +"And who is to blame for this?" he demanded, white to the lips. + +"Oh, it wasn't he--it was life," she went on calmly, "he couldn't help +it, nor could I--nobody can help anything. Do you understand that?" she +asked, with the searching mental clearness which seemed always lying +behind her dazed consciousness, "that we're all drawn by wires like +puppets, and the strongest wire pulls us in the direction in which we +are meant to go? It's curious that I should never have known this before +because it has become perfectly plain to me now--there is no soul, no +aspiration, no motive for good or evil, for we're every one worked by +wires while we are pretending to move ourselves." + +"All right, but it's my turn at the wire now," responded Adams, smiling. + +At his words she broke out into little hard dry sobs, which had in them +none of the softness of tears. "Nobody is to blame for anything," she +repeated, still striving, in a dazed way, to be just to Kemper. + +Even more than her face and her voice, this pathetic groping of her +reason, moved him into a passion of sympathy; and while he looked at +her, he resisted an impulse to gather her, in spite of her coldness, +against his breast. + +"What is it, Laura, that has made you suffer like this?" he asked. + +But his words made no impression upon her, perhaps because they could +not penetrate the outer husk of deadness which enveloped her. + +"Do you know what it is to feel ashamed?" she demanded suddenly, "to +feel ashamed, not in a passing quiver, but in a settled state every +instant that you live? Do you know what it is to have every sensation of +your body merged into this one feeling of shame--to be ashamed with your +eyes and hands and feet as well as with your mind and heart and soul? I +could have stood anything but this," she added, pressing closer against +the window. + +An exclamation which was almost one of anger burst from him, and going +to where she stood, he laid his hand upon her arm as if in the effort to +recall her reason by physical force. But with his first touch his grasp +lost its energy and grew gentle, for her anguish appeared to him, as he +held her, to be only the instinctive crying out of a child that is hurt. +His hold slipped from her arm, and taking her hands, he bent over and +kissed them until they lay quiet in his own. + +"Laura, do you trust my love for you?" he asked. + +"I trust you, yes," she answered, "but not love--it is only one of the +wires by which we are moved." + +"Trust anything you please about me, so long as you trust--that is all I +ask," he let her hands fall from his and looked into her face. "Promise +me that you will be here waiting when I return." + +"There's no place for me to go--I shall be here," she answered. + +Her eyes followed him with a pathetic child-like fear while he crossed +the room and went out leaving her alone. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +BETWEEN LAURA AND GERTY + + +Did he possess the strength as well as the love that she needed? Adams +asked himself a little later as he walked back under the stars. He saw +her as he had just left her--wan, despairing; so bloodless that the +light seemed shining through her features, and then he remembered the +radiant smile which she had lost, the glorious womanhood obscured now by +humiliation. An assurance, in which there was almost exultation, flooded +his thoughts, and he was aware that the passion he felt for her had been +suddenly strengthened by an emotion of equal power--by the longing born +in his heart to afford protection to whatever suffered within his sight. + +Never for an instant, since he had entered the room where she retreated +before him, had he doubted either his appointed mission or his power of +renewal. His whole experience, he understood now, had directed him to +this hour which he had not foreseen, and the worldly success for which +he had once struggled meant to him at last only that he might bring hope +where there was failure. Even Connie--her love, her tragic history, her +pitiable reliance upon him at the end--showed to him in the aspect of a +human revelation--for his fuller understanding of Connie had confirmed +him in the patience by which alone he might win back Laura to the +happiness which she had lost. + +The road stretching ahead of him was no longer obscured, but shone +faintly luminous out of the surrounding darkness. Not the future alone +but the desert places through which he had come had blossomed, and the +beauty which was revealed to him at last was the beauty in all things +that have form or being--in the earth no less than in the sky, in the +flesh no less than in the spirit, for were not earth and flesh, after +all, only sky and spirit in the making? The perfect plan, he had +learned, in the end, is not for any part but for the whole. + +Across the ferry, he found a cab which took him to Gerty's house, and in +response to his message, she came down immediately, looking excited and +perturbed, in an evening gown of black and silver. + +"Have you brought me news of Laura?" she asked breathlessly. "Perry's +dragging me to a dinner, but if she's ill, I can't go--I won't." + +"Don't go," he answered, "she's not ill, but if she were it would be +better. Will you come with me now and bring her back with you?" + +Without replying to his question, she ran from the room and returned, in +a moment, wearing a hat and a long coat which covered her black and +silver dress. + +"The carriage is waiting now," she said, "we can take it and let Perry +go to his dinner in a cab." + +"But--good Lord, Gerty--what am I to say to them?" demanded Perry while +he shook hands with Adams. "I never could make up an excuse in my life, +you know." + +Then his eyes blinked rapidly and he fell back with merely a muttered +protest, for Gerty shone, at the instant, with a beauty which neither he +nor Adams had ever seen in her before. The wonderful child quality +softened her look, and they watched her soul bloom in her face like a +closed flower that expands in sunlight. + +"I don't know, my dear," she responded gently, and with her hand on +Adams's arm, she ran down the steps and into the carriage before the +door. As they drove away, she looked up at him with a tender little +smile. + +"I am so glad that she has you," she said. + +"In having you, she has a great deal more." + +"It is you who have done it all--you expected me to have courage, so I +have it. Had you expected me to be cowardly, I should have been so." + +"Well, I expect you to save her," he answered quietly. + +"Does she need it? What was it? What does it mean?" + +"You'll know to-night, perhaps. I shall never know, but what does it +matter?" + +"I saw Arnold to-day," she said, "he is terribly--terribly--" she +hesitated for a word, "cut up about it. Yet he swears he can't for the +life of him see that he was to blame. Had he been to blame, he says, he +would have shot himself." + +"Would he?" he remarked indifferently. + +"He sails for Europe on Saturday--if he hears she's found." + +He bit back an exclamation of anger. + +"What, under heaven, has he to do with it?" he asked. + +"A great deal, one would think. But have you seen her? Tell me of her." + +"Be good to her," he answered, "she is in a hard place and needs a great +deal of love." + +"And we can give it to her, you and I?" + +"Mine is hers already, if it's any help." + +"Was it hers before she knew Arnold even?" + +"Long before--before he or you or I were born." + +"And does she understand?" + +"She doesn't know--but what difference does that make?" + +Her eyes, in the flickering light, gave him an impression of remoteness +as of dim stars. + +"I wonder how it feels to be loved like that?" she said, a little +wistfully. + +"You would never have cared for it," he answered, with a flash of his +penetrating insight, "for the kind of man who could have loved you in +that way you couldn't have loved." + +"You mean that I was born to adore the god in the brute?" she asked. + +"Oh, well, so long as it's the god!" he retorted laughing. + +But she paid no heed to his remark, and drawing her coat about her as if +she were cold, she sat in silence until the carriage was driven upon the +ferry and they began the trip across. + +"She came this way all alone and at night?" she said. + +"How or why we shall probably never know entirely," he answered. "I +doubt if she realised herself where she was going." + +"It looks meaningless from a distance, but, I suppose, in reality, it +was a courageous flight?" + +"Yes, I think there was courage in it," he responded quietly. + +She turned her eyes away, looking out as they drove through the open +country upon the black fields and the stars. Neither of them spoke again +until the carriage stopped and the footman jumped down to ask for some +directions. Then as they drew up presently before the little gate, Adams +helped her out and along the path into the house. + +"She is in there," he said, pointing to a closed door, "when you see her +you will understand." + +"But you will come, too?" she asked, hesitating. + +He shook his head. "Her heart is bleeding--it's a woman that she wants." + +Then he opened the door, and pushing her gently inside, closed it after +her. + +At first Gerty could see but faintly by the light of a lamp which +smoked, but as she went quickly forward, Laura rose from the sofa upon +which she had been lying, and came a step to meet her. + +"Why did you come? I didn't want you--I didn't want anyone," she said. + +Before the hard tones of her voice, Gerty stood still, shrinking +slightly away in her baffled splendour. Her heart strained toward her +friend, yet when she tried to think of some comforting word that she +might utter, she found only a vacancy of scattered phrases. What would +words mean to Laura now? What word among all others was there that she +could speak to her? + +For a moment, groping blindly for light, she hesitated; then her arms +opened, and she caught Laura into them in spite of her feeble effort at +resistance. + +"Dearest! dearest! dearest!" she repeated, for she had found the word at +last. + +Partly because she was a woman and partly because of her bitter +triumphs, she had understood that the wisdom in love is the only wisdom +which avails in the supreme agony of life. Neither philosophy nor +religion mattered now, for presently she felt that her bosom was warm +with tears, and when Laura lifted her head, the two women kissed in that +intimate knowledge which is uttered without speech. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +RENEWAL + + +In that strange spiritual death--which was still death though the +members of her body lived--Laura seemed to lose gradually all personal +connection with the events through which she had passed; and when after +three months she turned again to look back upon them, she found that +they stood out, clear, detached, and remote as the incidents of history. +She was not only dead herself, but the whole world about her showed to +her in a curious aspect of unreality, as if a thin veil obscured it, and +there were moments when even Adams and Gerty seemed to her to be barely +alive. To the last she had refused to return to Gramercy Park, and on the +night that she reached Gerty's house she had been aware that she was +slipping away from any actual contact with her former life. Her body +might breathe and move, but her soul and even her senses had become +inanimate, and she felt that they had ceased to take part in any words +she uttered. + +Though she had persistently denied herself to her aunts, she sent for +Mr. Payne on the first day that she was able to sit up, and the only +softness she showed was in answer to the compassionate kiss he placed +upon her forehead. + +"My child, my child, what did I tell you?" he asked gently. + +"It is because of that I wanted to see you," she said, "because you are +the only person, I believe, who can really understand." + +"I think I can, my dear." + +"You have had beautiful dreams, too, that were false ones?" + +"It isn't that the dreams are false," he replied, "but that the stuff of +this earth isn't the kind to grow illusions. They must either wither in +the bud or be wrenched up root and branch." + +"And there's only the ugly reality, after all?" + +"There's only the reality, but it isn't ugly when one grows accustomed +to it. You'll find it good enough for you yet, my child." + +"No--no," she said, "I've always lived on pretty lies, I see that +now--I've always had to find an outlet for my imagination, however +false. My poetry was never more than this--it was all quotation--all a +reflection of the things I had wanted to feel in life. I never wrote a +sincere line," she added. + +He pressed her hand--it was his way of showing that he loved her none +the less because she was not a poet--and then as the unnatural wanness +overspread her face, he went out softly, leaving her in Gerty's care. By +different roads they had come at last to the same place in life--she +with her blighted youth and he with his beautiful old age and his +disappointed hopes. + +With the beginning of the year Gerty went South with her, but the soft +air or the cold made little difference to Laura, when, as she said, she +could feel neither. There had been no outburst of grief; since the night +when she had wept on Gerty's bosom, she had not shed a tear; and once +when Gerty had alluded to Kemper in her hearing, she had listened with +the polite attention she might have bestowed upon the name of a +stranger. At Gerty's bidding she came or went, admired or disapproved, +but of her old impulsive energy there was so little left that Gerty +sometimes wondered if her friend had really, as she insisted, "turned to +stone." For Laura's face even had frozen until it wore the impassive +smile of a statue, and there was in her movements and her voice +something of the insensibility of extreme old age. She was no longer +young, nor was she middle-aged; it was as if she had outlived, not only +the emotions, but the years of life. + +In April they came back again, and on the morning after their return +Gerty paid a dejected visit to Adams in his office. + +"I can do nothing with her--she's turned to stone," she said. + +"Oh, she'll come alive again," he responded. "Where is she?" + +"In Gramercy Park. It makes no difference to her now where she is, nor +whether she sees Mrs. Payne or not. She even sits for hours and listens +to Uncle Percival play upon his flute." + +"It will be the death of her," he answered gravely. "Is there nothing we +can do?" + +"Nothing. I've done everything--she's really stone." + +"Well, we'll bring her round," said Adams cheerfully; but when he saw +Laura herself in the afternoon, he instinctively turned his eyes away +from the frozen sweetness in her look. He was aware that she made an +effort to be pleasant, but her pleasantness reminded him of an +artificial light on a figure of snow. + +"I had hoped you would grow stronger in the South," he said, though all +conversation seemed to him to have become suddenly the most impersonal +thing on earth. + +"But I am strong," she answered, "I am never ill a day." + +"There's something about you, all the same, that I don't like," he +responded frankly. + +"I know," she nodded, smiling, "you aren't used to seeing a dead person +walk about. But it's very comfortable when you grow accustomed to it," +she added, with a laugh. + +At this he would have brought a more intimate note into his voice, but +she evaded his first hint of earnestness by a cynical little jest she +had picked up from Gerty. Her intention--if she intended anything--he +saw clearly now was to confine her perceptions to the immediate surface +of life presented before her eyes. She spoke with animation of the +country she had left, of Gerty's gayeties, of the wonderful brightness +of the weather; but when by a more serious question he sought to +penetrate below this fluency of words, he was repelled again by the +impression of a mere hollow amiability in her manner. After a few casual +remarks he left her with the most hopeless feeling he had known for +months, and when, as the days went on, he endeavored fruitlessly to +arouse in her a single sincere interest in human affairs, he found +himself wondering if it were possible for any creature to be still alive +and yet to resemble so closely a figure of marble. Day after day he came +only to yield at last to his baffled efforts; and the thin cold smile +with which she responded to his words appeared to him sadder than any +passionate outburst of tears. Even Connie on that last afternoon had +seemed to him more human and less unapproachable than Laura now. + +Through the spring he saw her almost every day, and when in June he put +her on the train with Gerty for the Adirondacks, he came away with the +clutch, as if from a hand of ice, at his heart. He had given her his +best and yet he had not penetrated by word or look beneath the unnatural +gentleness which enveloped her like an outer covering. Then his heart +hardened and he felt that he cursed Kemper for the thing which he had +killed. + +Back again in the forest, under the green and gold of the leaves, Laura +asked herself why the associations of that last summer failed so +strangely to disturb her as she looked on the familiar road and +mountains? A single year or a whole lifetime ago, it was all one to her +now, and while she wandered along the paths down which she had walked +with Kemper in the most blissful hours of her love, she found herself +almost regretting that she had ceased to suffer--that since her heart +was broken it had lost even the power to throb. In the city she had felt +herself to be a part of the houses and the streets, and as perfectly +indifferent to the passage of life as they; but here with her heart +against Nature's she would have liked to pulsate with the other live +things in the forest. For the first time for months she began as the +days went by, to quicken to an interest in the songs of the birds, or +the sunsets on the mountains, or the springing up of a new flower beside +the doorstep. And as in every rebound of the emotions from extreme +despair, her connection with life came at last through the eye of the +mind rather than through the heart, and the lesson was taught her +neither by Gerty nor by Adams, but through an awakening to the beauty in +the sights and the sounds of the green natural world about her. + +Gerty had left her one afternoon, and as the cart drove away she went +out of the house and sat down in the sun upon the roadside which +bordered the edge of the wood. Behind her was the silence of the forest, +and straight ahead the faint purple hills rose against a pale sky above +which the white clouds sailed like birds. For a while she gazed with +blind eyes at the view for the sake of which the spot was chosen, but +the mountains and the sky left her unmoved, and leaning her arm +presently upon the warm earth, she lay looking at a little blue flower +blooming in the sand at her feet. Her shadow stretched beside her in the +road, and it seemed to her that there was as little difference, save in +her consciousness, between her and her shadow, as there was between her +shadow and the flower. Even her love and her disillusion showed to her +now as of no larger consequence than the wind blowing upon her shadow or +the dew and the storm falling upon the flower. Then as the minutes +passed and her gaze did not waver from the blue petals filled with +sunshine, she was aware gradually, as if between dream and waking, of a +peculiar deepening of her mental vision, until there was revealed to +her, while she looked, not only the outward semblance, but the essence +of the flower which was its soul. And this essence of the flower came +suddenly in contact with the dead soul within her bosom, while she felt +again the energy which is life flowing through her body. At this +instant, by that divine miracle of resurrection she began to live +anew--to live not her old life alone, but a life that was larger and +fuller than the one which had been hers. She began to live anew in +herself as well as in the sky and in humanity and in the songs of birds; +and in this ecstasy of recovered life, she felt her soul to be of one +substance, not only with God and the stars, but with the flower and the +child in the street as well. For that love which had recoiled from its +individual object overflowed her heart again until she felt that it had +touched the boundaries of the world. + +When Adams saw her in the autumn, he discovered the change almost with +the first touch of her hand. Not only the outward form, but the +indwelling intellect was alive again, and all that reminded him of her +past anguish were a deeper earnestness in her smile and a faint +powdering of silver on the dark wing-like waves of her hair. That veiled +joy which is the expression of the soul that has found peace shone in +her face with a radiance which if less bright was to him more beautiful +than the sparkling energy she had lost. For the life and the passion of +her womanhood were still there, mellowed and ennobled by that shadow of +experience without which mere beauty of feature had always seemed to him +a meaningless and empty shape. His belief was justified forever in that +instant, and he recognised in her then one of those nobler spirits who +in passing through the tragedy of disillusionment drain from it the +strength without the bitterness that is its portion. + +"I want to work, to help," she said eagerly, almost with her first +breath, and while he listened with a tenderness tinged with amusement, +she described to him the elaborate plans she had made for going among +the poor. "It isn't that the poor need help any more than the rich," +she added, "but the poor are the only ones that I can reach." + +He nodded, smiling, while he watched the animated gestures of her hands. +Her poetry, her groping for love, her longing at last to give help to +the oppressed, each phase of thought or feeling through which she had +passed, showed to him only as the effort of the soul within her to find +expression. In this passionate search after the eternal upon earth was +she not, in reality, only seeking in outward forms the thing which was +herself? + +"I will help you, of course," he answered, with a gravity which he found +it difficult afterward to maintain, for from that moment she had thrown +her heart into the work of uplifting until her whole existence appeared +to round presently about this new point of interest. While he could +follow her here, he waited almost impatiently for the reaction of her +temperament which would bring her back to him, he felt, as inevitably as +the changes of the seasons would bring the spring again to the earth. + +On Christmas Eve she had arranged for some celebration among the poor on +the East Side, and when they came away together, she asked him to take +her to Gerty's house instead of to Gramercy Park. Then as they walked +along the cross-town blocks from the elevated road, she alluded for the +first time to the evening a year ago when he had found her in her +deepest misery. + +"I thought then that my life was over," she said, "but to-day I have put +my foot upon my old grief and it has helped me to spring upward. The +world is so full for me now that I can hardly distinguish among so many +vivid interests--and yet nothing in it is changed except myself. Do you +know what it is to feel suddenly that you have found the key?" + +"I know," he replied, "for I have found it, too, and it is love." + +"Love for the world--for all mankind," she corrected. "No, don't look at +me like that," she added, "I am perfectly happy to-day, but it is the +happiness of freedom." + +For a moment he did not answer; then he turned his eyes upon the bright +pallor of her cheek showing above the dark furs she wore, and there was +a smile in his eyes though his voice, when he spoke, was grave. + +"Do you know what I have sometimes thought about that, Laura," he said, +"it is that I all along, from first to last, have known your heart +better than you knew it for all your desperate certainty." + +"I never knew it," she responded; "I do not know it now." + +"And yet I think I do," he answered. + +She shook her head. "It is no longer a mystery--there is only light in +it to-day." + +"I never thought you loved Kemper," he went on. "What you built your +dream upon was an imaginary image that wore his shape. In my heart, even +when I stood aside--when I was forced to stand aside because of other +claims upon me--I think I was sure all the time that your love was meant +for me at last." + +"For you? Oh, no, not now," she answered. + +"It's a bold way of saying it, I suppose," he pursued, "here I am +neither rich nor successful as the world counts these things--in debt +probably for several years to come, and with not so much as an athletic +lustre to my name. It's not a cheerful picture I'm drawing, but because +there's a struggle in it I am not afraid to ask you to come and share +it. I wonder if you know how I have loved you, Laura." + +"I have known since--since that night," she replied. + +"The one argument I have to offer," he said, smiling, "is that in spite +of the unpromising outlook, I happen to be the only man on earth who +could make you happy." + +"You might have been once," she responded. + +"And if once, why not now? Is not forever as good as yesterday?" + +"Do you know why?" she answered, turning upon him in sudden passion. +"You think I am brave and yet I am afraid--afraid, though I won't admit +it, every minute that I live. I walk the streets in terror of a memory." + +"But I do not," he answered quietly. "Do you doubt my power to keep what +I have won--my dearest?" + +At the word the colour rose to her cheek, but as they reached Gerty's +door, she stopped and put her hand into the one which he held out. + +"Like everything else it has come too late," she said. + +He shook his head, and then pressing her hand, let it fall. + +"I can be patient a little longer," he responded before he turned away. + +His words were still in her thoughts when she entered the house; and as +she went quickly upstairs to Gerty's sitting-room, she wondered what +counsel of indecision she would content herself with at last? Then as +she crossed the threshold into the warm firelight, she discovered that +Gerty was absent and that Arnold Kemper was standing upon the hearth +rug. + +As he recognised her he came forward, smiling, and held out his hand. + +"So we've met again, after all, Laura," he remarked, without +embarrassment. + +At the sound of his voice there had come a single high throb of her +heart and immediately afterward she was aware of an exultation which +showed in the uplifting of her head and in her shining eyes--for as she +looked into his face she measured for the first time the distance which +divided her dream from her awakening. + +"One always meets again, you know," she answered, "but if you're waiting +for Gerty now, she is usually after time." + +"Women always are," he commented gayly, with his foreign shrug. + +The window was just behind him, and as he glanced out into the street, +she looked at him in the puzzled wonder with which one seeks in +unchanged features; a discernible justification of a passion which is +altered. Where was the power to-day against which her heart had beat so +helplessly a year ago? Was it possible that she had felt the charm in +this man who was already middle-aged, who was satisfied with the mere +concrete form of life, and in whose eyes she could see now the heaviness +which grows through self-indulgence? His old intimate smile, his +disturbing ironic glance, even the quickening of his first passive +interest into the emotional curiosity which was the strongest impulse +his world-weariness had left alive--each and all of these effects which +she remembered impressed her as little to-day as did the bulky +fascination of Perry Bridewell. When at last she could escape in the +flutter of Gerty's entrance, she left the room and the house with a +tremor of her pulses which was strangely associated with a delicious +sense of peace--for this chance meeting had revealed to her not only +Kemper but herself. + +As she walked slowly toward the golden circle of the sky which was +visible through the bared trees in the park, she recognised with every +fibre of her body as unerringly as with her intellect that she had come +at last into that knowledge which is the centre of outgoing life. And as +Adams had seen in his deeper vision, that all life is an evolution into +the consciousness of God, so she divined now through her mere vague +instinct for light, that all emotion is but the blind striving of love +after the consciousness of itself. Her whole experience flashed back +before her, and in that swiftness of memory which prefigures either an +accession of vitality or a tragic death, she understood that both her +illusion and her disenchantment were necessary to the building of the +structure within her soul. She had mounted by her mistake as surely as +by her aspiration, and every pang which she had suffered was but the +rending of the veil between her flesh and spirit. + +Looking up as she walked she saw, without surprise, that Adams was +standing under the bared trees before her; and with her first glance +into his face she realised that there are moments charged with so deep a +meaning that all explanations, all promises, all self-reproaches become +only such vain and barren things as words. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14696 *** |