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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mistress Anne, by Temple Bailey
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mistress Anne
+
+Author: Temple Bailey
+
+Illustrator: F. Vaux Wilson
+
+Release Date: October 30, 2007 [EBook #23246]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MISTRESS ANNE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net and the booksmiths
+at http://www.eBookForge.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MISTRESS ANNE
+
+BY
+TEMPLE BAILEY
+
+AUTHOR OF
+CONTRARY MARY, ETC.
+
+FRONTISPIECE BY
+F. VAUX WILSON
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP
+PUBLISHERS    NEW YORK
+
+Made in the United States of America
+
+[Illustration: SHE SHOWED HIM HER SCHOOL]
+
+COPYRIGHT
+1917 BY
+THE PENN
+PUBLISHING
+COMPANY
+
+_Made in U. S. A._
+
+Mistress Anne
+
+_To_
+
+P. V. B.
+
+_who sees the sunsets_
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+    I. IN WHICH THINGS ARE SAID OF DIOGENES
+         AND OF A LADY WITH A LANTERN                11
+
+   II. IN WHICH A PRINCESS SERVING FINDS THAT THE
+         MOTTO OF KINGS IS MEANINGLESS               21
+
+  III. IN WHICH THE CROWN PRINCE ENTERS UPON HIS
+         OWN                                         36
+
+   IV. IN WHICH THREE KINGS COME TO CROSSROADS       51
+
+    V. IN WHICH PEGGY TAKES THE CENTER OF THE
+         STAGE                                       62
+
+   VI. IN WHICH A GRAY PLUSH PUSSY CAT SUPPLIES
+         A THEME                                     77
+
+  VII. IN WHICH GEOFFREY WRITES OF SOLDIERS AND
+         THEIR SOULS                                 91
+
+ VIII. IN WHICH A GREEN-EYED MONSTER GRIPS EVE      111
+
+   IX. IN WHICH ANNE, PASSING A SHOP, TURNS IN      136
+
+    X. IN WHICH A BLIND BEGGAR AND A BUTTERFLY GO
+         TO A BALL                                  149
+
+   XI. IN WHICH BRINSLEY SPEAKS OF THE WAY TO WIN A
+         WOMAN                                      160
+
+  XII. IN WHICH EVE USURPS AN ANCIENT MASCULINE
+         PRIVILEGE                                  178
+
+ XIII. IN WHICH GEOFFREY PLAYS CAVE MAN             196
+
+  XIV. IN WHICH THERE IS MUCH SAID OF MARRIAGE AND
+          OF GIVING IN MARRIAGE                     210
+
+   XV. IN WHICH ANNE ASKS AND JIMMIE ANSWERS        226
+
+  XVI. IN WHICH PAN PIPES TO THE STARS              239
+
+ XVII. IN WHICH FEAR WALKS IN A STORM               256
+
+XVIII. IN WHICH WE HEAR ONCE MORE OF A SANDALWOOD
+         FAN                                        274
+
+  XIX. IN WHICH CHRISTMAS COMES TO CROSSROADS       284
+
+   XX. IN WHICH A DRESDEN-CHINA SHEPHERDESS AND A
+         COUNTRY MOUSE MEET ON COMMON GROUND        298
+
+  XXI. IN WHICH ST. MICHAEL HEARS A CALL            314
+
+ XXII. IN WHICH ANNE WEIGHS THE PEOPLE OF TWO
+         WORLDS                                     333
+
+XXIII. IN WHICH RICHARD RIDES ALONE                 347
+
+ XXIV. IN WHICH ST. MICHAEL FINDS LOVE IN A
+         GARDEN                                     361
+
+
+
+
+Mistress Anne
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+_In Which Things Are Said of Diogenes and of a Lady With a Lantern._
+
+
+THE second day of the New Year came on Saturday. The holiday atmosphere
+had thus been extended over the week-end. The Christmas wreaths still
+hung in the windows, and there had been an added day of feasting.
+Holidays always brought people from town who ate with sharp appetites.
+
+It was mostly men who came, men who fished and men who hunted. In the
+long low house by the river one found good meals and good beds, warm
+fires in winter and a wide porch in summer. There were few luxuries, but
+it pleased certain wise Old Gentlemen to take their sport simply, and to
+take pride in the simplicity. They considered the magnificence of modern
+camps and clubs vulgar, and as savoring somewhat of riches newly
+acquired; and they experienced an almost æsthetic satisfaction in the
+contrast between the rough cleanliness of certain little lodges along the
+Chesapeake and its tributary tide-water streams, and the elegance of the
+Charles Street mansions which they had, for the moment, left behind.
+
+It was these Old Gentlemen who, in khaki and tweed, each in its proper
+season, came to Peter Bower's, and ate the food which Peter's wife cooked
+for them. They went out in the morning fresh and radiant, and returned at
+night, tired but still radiant, to sit by the fire or on the porch, and,
+in jovial content, to tell of the delights of earlier days and of what
+sport had been before the invasion of the Philistines.
+
+They knew much of gastronomic lore, these Old Gentlemen, and they liked
+to talk of things to eat. But they spoke of other things, and now and
+then they fell into soft silences when a sunset was upon them or a night
+of stars.
+
+And they could tell stories! Stories backed by sparkling wit and a nice
+sense of discrimination. On winter nights or on holiday afternoons like
+this, as, gathered around the fire they grew mildly convivial, the sound
+of their laughter would rise to Anne Warfield's room under the eaves; she
+would push back the papers which held her to her desk, and wish with a
+sigh that the laughter were that of young men, and that she might be
+among them.
+
+To-day, however, she was not at her desk. She was taking down the
+decorations which had made the little room bright during the brief
+holiday. To-morrow she would go back to school and to the forty children
+whom she taught. Life would again stretch out before her, dull and
+uneventful. The New Year would hold for her no meaning that the old year
+had not held.
+
+It had snowed all of the night before, and from her window she could see
+the river, slate-gray against the whiteness. Out-of-doors it was very
+cold, but her own room was hot with the heat of the little round stove.
+With her holly wreaths in her arms, she stood uncertain in front of it.
+She had thought to burn the holly, but it had seemed to her, all at once,
+that to end thus the vividness of berry and of leaf would be desecration.
+Surely they deserved to die out in that clear cold world in which they
+had been born and bred!
+
+It was a fanciful thought, but she yielded to it. Besides, there was
+Diogenes! She must make sure of his warmth and comfort before night
+closed in.
+
+She put on her red scarf and cap and, with the wreaths in her arms, she
+went down-stairs. The Old Gentlemen were in the front room and she had to
+pass through. They rose to a man. She liked the courtliness, and gave in
+return her lovely smile and a little bow.
+
+They gazed after her with frank admiration. "Who is she?" asked one who
+was not old, and who, slim and dark and with a black ribbon for his
+eye-glasses, seemed a stranger in this circle.
+
+"The new teacher of the Crossroads school. There wasn't any place for her
+to board but this. So they took her in."
+
+"Pretty girl."
+
+The Old Gentlemen agreed, but they did not discuss her charms at length.
+They belonged to a generation which preferred not to speak in a crowd of
+a woman's attractions. One of them remarked, however, that he envied her
+the good fortune of feasting all the year round at Peter Bower's table.
+
+Anne, trudging through the snow with the wreaths in her arms, would have
+laughed mockingly if she had heard them. It was not food that she wanted,
+not the game and oysters and fish over which these old gourmands gloated.
+What she wanted was the nectar and ambrosia of life, the color and
+glow--the companionship of young things like herself!
+
+Of course there were the school children and there was Peggy. But to the
+children and Peggy she was a grown-up creature. Loving her, they still
+made her feel age's immeasurable distance, as she had felt her own
+distance from the Old Gentlemen.
+
+It was Peggy, who, wound in her mother's knitted white shawl until she
+looked like a dingy snowball, bounced from the kitchen to meet her.
+
+"Where are you going?" she asked.
+
+The young teacher laughed. "Peggy," she said, "if you will never tell,
+you may come with me."
+
+"Where?" demanded Peggy.
+
+"Across the road and into the woods and down to the river."
+
+"What are you carrying the wreaths for?"
+
+"Wait and see."
+
+The road which they crossed was the railroad. Over the iron rails the
+trains thundered from one big city to another, with a river to cross just
+before they reached Peter Bower's. Very few of the trains stopped at
+Peter's, and it was this neglect of theirs, and the consequent isolation,
+which constituted the charm of Bower's for town-tired folk. Yet Anne
+Warfield always wished that some palatial express might tarry for a
+moment to take her aboard, and whirl her on to the world of flashing
+lights, of sky-scraping towers and streaming crowds.
+
+"What are you going to do with the wreaths?" Peggy was still demanding as
+they entered upon the frozen silence of the pine woods.
+
+"I am going down as close as I can to the water's edge, and I am going to
+fling them out as far as I can into the river. And perhaps the river will
+carry them down to the sea, and the sea will say, 'Whence came you?' and
+the wreaths will whisper, 'We came from the forest to die on your breast,
+the river brought us, and the winds sang to us, and above us the sky
+smiled. And now we are ready to die, for we have seen life and its
+loveliness. It would have been dreadful if we had come to our end in the
+ashes of a little round stove.'"
+
+Peggy stared, open-eyed. She had missed the application, but she liked
+the story.
+
+"Let me throw one of them," she said.
+
+"You couldn't throw them far enough, dear heart. But you shall count,
+'one, two, three' for me. And when you say 'three' I'll throw one of them
+away, and then you must count again, and I will throw the others."
+
+So Peggy, quite entranced by the importance of her office, took her part
+in the ceremony, and Anne Warfield stood on top of the snowy bank above
+the river, and cast upon its tumbling surface the bright burden which it
+was to carry to the sea.
+
+It was at this moment that there crossed the bridge the only train from
+the north which stopped by day at Peter Bower's. The passengers looking
+out saw, far below them, sullen stream, somber woods, and a girl in a gay
+red scarf. They saw, too, a dingy white dot of a child who danced up and
+down. When the train stopped a few minutes later at Bower's, six of the
+passengers stepped from it, three men and three women, a smartly-dressed,
+cosmopolitan group, quite evidently indifferent to the glances which
+followed them.
+
+Anne and Peggy had no eyes for the new arrivals. If they noticed the
+train at all, it was merely to give it a slurring thought, as bringing
+more Old Gentlemen who would eat and be merry, then hurry back again to
+town. As for themselves, having finished the business of the moment,
+they had yet to look after Diogenes.
+
+Diogenes was a drake. He lived a somewhat cloistered life in the stable
+which had been made over into a garage. He had wandered in one morning
+soon after Anne had come to teach in the school. Peter had suggested that
+he be killed and eaten. But Anne, lonely in her new quarters, had
+appreciated the forlornness of the old drake and had adopted him. She had
+named him Diogenes because he had an air of searching always for
+something which could not be found. Once when a flock of wild ducks had
+flown overhead, Diogenes had listened, and, as their faint cries had come
+down to him, he had stretched his wings as if he, too, would fly. But his
+fat body had held him, and so still chained to earth, he waddled within
+the limits of his narrow domain.
+
+In a cozy corner of the garage there was plenty of straw and a blanket to
+keep off draughts. Mrs. Bower had declared such luxury unsettling. But
+Anne had laughed at her. "Why should pleasant things hurt us?" she had
+asked, and Mrs. Bower had shaken her head.
+
+"If you had seen the old men who come here and stuff, and die because
+their livers are wrong, you'd know what I mean. Give him enough, but
+don't pamper him."
+
+In the face of this warning, however, Anne fed the old drake on tidbits,
+and visited him at least once a day. He returned her favors by waiting
+for her at the gate when it was not too cold and, preceding her to the
+house, gave a sort of major-domo effect to her progress.
+
+Entering the stable, they found a lantern lighting the gloom, and
+Diogenes in a state of agitation. His solitude had been invaded by an
+Irish setter--a lovely auburn-coated creature with melting eyes, who,
+held by a leash, lay at length on Diogenes' straw with Diogenes' blanket
+keeping off the cold.
+
+The old drake from some remote fastness flung his protest to the four
+winds!
+
+"He's a new one." Peggy patted the dog, who rose to welcome them. "He
+ought to be in the kennels. Somebody didn't know."
+
+Somebody probably had not known, but had learned. For now the door
+opened, and a young man came in. He was a big young man with fair hair,
+and he had arrived on the train.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said, as he saw them, "but they told me I had put
+my dog in the wrong place."
+
+Peggy was important. "He belongs at the kennels. He's in Diogenes'
+corner."
+
+"Diogenes?"
+
+The old drake, reassured by the sound of voices, showed himself for a
+moment in the track of the lantern light.
+
+"There he is," Peggy said, excitedly; "he lives in here by himself."
+
+Anne had not spoken, but as she lifted the lantern from its nail and held
+it high, Richard Brooks was aware that this was the same girl whom he had
+glimpsed from the train. He had noted then her slenderness of outline,
+the grace and freedom of her pose; at closer range he saw her delicate
+smallness; the bloom on her cheek; the dusky softness of her hair; the
+length of her lashes; the sapphire deeps of her eyes. Yet it was not
+these charms which arrested his attention; it was, rather, a certain
+swift thought of her as superior to her surroundings.
+
+"Then it is Diogenes whose pardon I must beg," he said, his eyes
+twinkling as the old drake took refuge behind Anne's skirts. "Toby, come
+out of that. It's you for a cold kennel."
+
+"It's not cold in the kennels," Peggy protested; "it is nice and warm,
+and the food is fixed by Eric Brand."
+
+"And where can I find Eric Brand?"
+
+"He isn't here." It was Anne who answered him. "He is away for the New
+Year. Peggy and I have been looking after the dogs."
+
+She did not tell him that she had done it because she liked dogs, and not
+because it was a part of her day's work. And he did not know that she
+taught school. Hence, as he walked beside her toward the kennels, with
+Peggy dancing on ahead with Toby, and with Diogenes left behind in full
+possession, he thought of her, quite naturally, as the daughter of Peter
+Bower.
+
+It was an uproarious pack which greeted them. Every Old Gentleman owned a
+dog, and there was Peter's Mamie, two or three eager-eyed pointers,
+setters, hounds and Chesapeake Bay dogs. Old Mamie was nondescript, and
+was shut up in the kennels to-night only because Eric was away. She was
+eminently trustworthy, and usually ran at large.
+
+Toby, given a box to himself, turned his melting eyes upon his master and
+whined.
+
+"He was sent to me just before I left New York," Richard explained. "I
+fancy he is rather homesick. I am the only thing in sight that he knows."
+
+"You might take him into the house," Anne said doubtfully, "only it is a
+rule that if there are many dogs they all have to share alike and stay
+out here. When there are only two or three they go into the sitting-room
+with the men."
+
+"He can lie down behind the stove in the kitchen," Peggy offered
+hospitably. "Mamie does."
+
+Richard shook his head. "Toby will have to learn with the rest of us that
+life isn't always what we want it to be."
+
+He was startled by the look which the girl with the lantern gave him.
+"Why shouldn't it be as we want it?" she said, with sudden fire; "if I
+were Providence, I'd make things pleasant, and you are playing Providence
+to Toby. Why not let him have the comfort of the kitchen stove?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+_In Which a Princess Serving Finds That the Motto of Kings is
+Meaningless._
+
+
+TOBY, safe and snug behind the kitchen stove, was keenly alive to the
+fact that supper was being served. He had had his own supper, so that his
+interest was purely impersonal.
+
+Mrs. Bower cooked, and her daughter Beulah waited on the table. The
+service was not elaborate. Everything went in at once, and Peter helped
+the women carry the loaded trays.
+
+Anne Warfield ate usually with the family. She would have liked to sit
+with the Old Gentlemen at their genial gatherings, but it would not, she
+felt, have been sanctioned by the Bowers. Their own daughter, Beulah,
+would not have done it. Beulah had nothing in common with the jovial
+hunters and fishers. She had her own circle of companions, her own small
+concerns, her own convictions as to the frivolity of these elderly
+guests. She would not have cared to listen to what they had to say. She
+did not know that their travels, their adventures, their stored-up
+experience had made them rich in anecdote, ready of tongue to tell of
+wonders undreamed of in the dullness of her own monotonous days.
+
+But Anne Warfield knew. Now and then from the threshold she had caught
+the drift of their discourse, and she had yearned to draw closer, to sail
+with them on unknown seas of romance and of reminiscence, to leave behind
+her for the moment the atmosphere of schoolhouse, of small gossip, of
+trivial circumstance.
+
+It was with this feeling strong upon her that to-night, when the supper
+bell rang, she came into the kitchen and asked Mrs. Bower if she might
+help Beulah. She had no feeling that such labor was beneath her. If a
+princess cared to serve, she was none the less a princess!
+
+Secure, therefore, in her sense of unassailable dignity, she entered the
+dining-room. She might have been a goddess chained to menial tasks--a
+small and vivid goddess, with dusky hair. Richard Brooks, observing her,
+had once more a swift and certain sense of her fineness and of her
+unlikeness to those about her.
+
+The young man with the black ribbon on his eye-glass also observed her.
+Later he said to Mrs. Bower, "Can you give me a room here for a month?"
+
+"I might. Usually people don't care to stay so long at this time of
+year."
+
+"I am writing a book. I want to stay."
+
+Beside Richard Brooks at the table sat Evelyn Chesley. With the
+Dutton-Ames, and Philip Meade, she had come down with Richard and his
+mother to speed them upon their mad adventure.
+
+Evelyn had taken off her hat. Her wonderful hair was swept up in a new
+fashion from her forehead, a dull gold comb against its native gold. She
+wore a silken blouse of white, slightly open at the neck. On her fingers
+diamonds sparkled. It seemed to Anne, serving, as if the air of the long
+low room were charged with some thrilling quality. Here were youth and
+beauty, wit and light laughter, the perfume of the roses which Evelyn
+wore tucked in her belt. There was the color, too, of the roses, and of
+the cloak in which Winifred Ames had wrapped her shivering fairness. The
+cloak was blue, a marvelous pure shade like the Madonna blue of some old
+picture.
+
+Even Richard's mother seemed illumined by the radiance which enveloped
+the rest. She was a slender little thing and wore plain and simple
+widow's black. Yet her delicate cheeks were flushed, her eyes were
+shining, and her son had made her, too, wear a red rose.
+
+The supper was suited to the tastes of the old epicures for whom it had
+been planned. There were oysters and ducks with the juices following the
+knife, hot breads, wild grape jelly, hominy and celery.
+
+The fattest Old Gentleman carved the ducks. The people who had come on
+the train were evidently his friends. Indeed, he called the little lady
+with the shining eyes "Cousin Nancy."
+
+"So you've brought your boy back?" he said, smiling down at her.
+
+"Oh, yes, yes. Cousin Brin, I feel as if I had reached the promised
+land."
+
+"You'll find things changed. Nothing as it was in your father's time.
+Foreigners to the right of you, foreigners to the left. Italians,
+Greeks--barbarians--cutting the old place into little farms--blotting out
+the old landmarks."
+
+"I don't care; the house still stands, and Richard will hang out my
+father's sign, and when people want a doctor, they will come again to
+Crossroads."
+
+"People in these days go to town for their doctors."
+
+Richard's head went up. "I'll make them come to me, sir. And you mustn't
+think that mother brought me back. I came because I wanted to come. I
+hate New York."
+
+The listening Old Gentlemen, whose allegiance was given to a staid and
+stately town on the Patapsco, quite glowed at that, but Evelyn flamed:
+
+"You might have made a million in New York, Richard."
+
+"I don't want a million."
+
+"Oh," she appealed to Brinsley Tyson, "what can you do with a man like
+that--without red blood--without ambition?"
+
+And now it was Richard who flamed. "I am ambitious enough, Eve, but it
+isn't to make money."
+
+"He has some idea," the girl proclaimed recklessly to the whole table,
+"of living as his ancestors lived; as if one _could_. He believes that
+people should go back to plain manners and to strict morals. His mission
+is to keep this mad world sane."
+
+A ripple of laughter greeted her scorn. Her own laughter met it. The slim
+young man at the other end of the table swung his eye-glasses from their
+black ribbon negligently, but his eyes missed nothing.
+
+"It is my only grievance against you, Mrs. Nancy," Eve told the little
+shining lady. "I love you for everything else, but not for this."
+
+"I am sorry, my dear. But Richard and I think alike. So we are going to
+settle at Crossroads--and live happy ever after."
+
+Anne Warfield, outwardly calm, felt the blood racing in her veins. The
+old house at Crossroads was just across the way from her little school.
+She had walked in the garden every day, and now and then she had taken
+the children there. They had watched the squirrels getting ready for the
+winter, and had fed the belated birds with crumbs from the little lunch
+baskets. And there had been the old sun-dial to mark the hour when the
+recess ended and to warn them that work must begin.
+
+She had a rapturous vision of what it might be to have the old house
+open, and to see Nancy Brooks and her son Richard coming in and out.
+
+Later, however, alone in her dull room, stripped of its holiday
+trappings, the vision faded. To Nancy and Richard she would be just the
+school-teacher across the way, as to-night she had been the girl who
+waited on the table!
+
+There was music down-stairs. The whine of the phonograph came up to her.
+
+Peggy, knocking, brought an interesting bulletin.
+
+"They are dancing," she said. "Let's sit on the stairs and look."
+
+From the top of the stairs they could see straight into the long front
+room. The hall was dimly lighted so that they were themselves free from
+observation. Philip Meade and Eve were dancing, and the Dutton-Ames. Eve
+had on very high shoes with very high heels. Her skirt was wide and
+flaring. She dipped and swayed and floated, and the grace of the man with
+whom she danced matched her own.
+
+"Isn't it lovely," said Peggy's little voice, "isn't it lovely, Anne?"
+
+It was lovely, lovely as a dream. It was a sort of ecstasy of motion. It
+was youth and joy incarnate. Anne had a wild moment of rebellion. Why
+must she sit always at the head of the stairs?
+
+The music stopped. Eve and Philip became one of the circle around the
+fireplace in the front room. Again Eve's roses and Winifred's cloak gave
+color to the group. There was also the leaping golden flame of the fire,
+and, in the background, a slight blue haze where some of the Old
+Gentlemen smoked.
+
+The young man with the eye-glasses was telling a story. He told it well,
+and there was much laughter when he finished. When the music began again,
+he danced with Winifred Ames. Dutton Ames watched them, smiling. He
+always smiled when his eyes rested on his lovely wife.
+
+Evelyn danced with Richard. He did not dance as well as Philip, but he
+gave the effect of doing it easily. He swung her finally out into the
+hall. The whine of the phonograph ceased. Richard and Eve sat down on a
+lower step of the stairway.
+
+The girl's voice came up to the quiet watchers clearly. "When are you
+coming to New York to dance with me again, Dicky Boy?"
+
+"You must come down here. Pip will bring you in his car for the
+week-ends, with the Dutton-Ames. And I'll get a music box and a lot of
+new records. The old dining-room has a wonderful floor."
+
+"I hate your wonderful floor and your horrid old house. And when I think
+of Fifth Avenue and the lights and the theaters and you away from it
+all----"
+
+"Poor young doctors have no right to the lights and all the rest of it.
+Eve, don't let's quarrel at the last moment. You'll be reconciled to it
+all some day."
+
+"I shall never be reconciled."
+
+And now Philip Meade was claiming her. "You promised me this, Eve."
+
+"I shall have all the rest of the winter for you, Pip."
+
+"As if that made any difference! I never put off till to-morrow the
+things I want to do to-day. And as for Richard, he'll come running back
+to us before the winter is over."
+
+Richard shrugged. "You're a pair of cheerful prophets. Go and fox-trot
+with him, Eve."
+
+Left alone, the eyes of the young doctor went at once to the top of the
+stairs.
+
+"Come down and dance," he said.
+
+"Do you mean me?" Peggy demanded out of the dimness.
+
+"I mean both of you."
+
+"I can't dance--not the new dances." Anne was conscious of an
+overwhelming shyness. "Take Peggy."
+
+"How did you know we were up here?" Peggy asked.
+
+"Well, I heard a little laugh, and a little whisper, and I looked up and
+saw a little girl."
+
+"Oh, oh, did you really?"
+
+"Really."
+
+"Well, I can't dance. But I can try."
+
+So they tried, with Richard lifting the child lightly to the lilting
+tune.
+
+When he brought her back, he sat down beside Anne. Shyness still chained
+her, but he chatted easily. Anne could not have told why she was shy. In
+the stable she had felt at her ease with him. But then she had not seen
+Eve or Winifred. It was the women who had seemed to make the difference.
+
+Presently, however, he had her telling of her school. "It begins again
+to-morrow."
+
+"Do you like it?"
+
+"Teaching? No. But I love the children."
+
+"Do you teach Peggy?"
+
+"Yes. She is too young, really, but she insists upon going."
+
+"There used to be a schoolhouse across the road from my grandfather's. A
+red brick school with a bell on top."
+
+"There is still a bell. I always ring it myself, although the boys beg to
+do it. But I like to think of myself as the bell ringer."
+
+It was while they sat there that Eric Brand came in through the
+kitchen-way to the hall. He stood for a moment looking into the lighted
+front room where Eve still danced with Philip Meade, and where the young
+man with the eye-glasses talked with the Dutton-Ames. Anne instinctively
+kept silent. It was Peggy who revealed their hiding place to him.
+
+"Oh, Eric," she piped, "are you back?" She went flying down the stairs to
+him.
+
+He caught her, and holding her in his arms, peered up. "Who's there?"
+
+Peggy answered. "It's Anne and the new doctor. I danced with him, and he
+came on the train with those other people in there--and he has a dog
+named Toby--it's in the kitchen."
+
+"So that's his dog? It will have to go to the kennels for the night."
+
+Richard, descending, apologized. "I shouldn't have let Toby stay in the
+house, but Miss Bower put in a plea for him."
+
+"Beulah?"
+
+"He means Anne," Peggy explained. "Her name is Warfield. It's funny you
+didn't know."
+
+"How could I?" Richard had a feeling that he owed the little goddess-girl
+an explanation of his stupidity. He found himself again ascending the
+stairs.
+
+But Anne had fled. Overwhelmingly she realized that Richard had believed
+her to be the daughter of Peter Bower. Daughter of that crude and common
+man! Sister of Beulah! Friend of Eric Brand!
+
+Well, she had brought it on herself. She had looked after the dogs and
+she had waited on the table. People thought differently of these things.
+The ideals she had tried to teach her children were not the ideals of
+the larger world. Labor did not dignify itself. The motto of kings was
+meaningless! A princess serving was no longer a princess!
+
+Sitting very tense and still in the little rocking-chair in her own room,
+she decided that of course Richard looked down on her. He had perceived
+in her no common ground of birth or of breeding. Yet her grandfather had
+been the friend of the grandfather of Richard Brooks!
+
+When Peggy came up, she announced that she was to sleep with Anne. It was
+an arrangement often made when the house was full. To-night Anne welcomed
+the cheery presence of the child. She sang her to sleep, and then sat for
+a long time by the little round stove with Peggy in her arms.
+
+She laid her down as a knock sounded on her door.
+
+"Are you up?" some one asked, and she opened it, to find Evelyn Chesley.
+
+"May I borrow a needle?" She showed a torn length of lace-trimmed
+flounce. "I caught it on a rocker in my room. There shouldn't be any
+rocker."
+
+"Mrs. Bower loves them," Anne said, as she hunted through her little
+basket; "she loves to rock and rock. All the women around here do."
+
+"Then you're not one of them?"
+
+"No. My grandmother was Cynthia Warfield of Carroll."
+
+The name meant nothing to Evelyn. It would have meant much to Nancy
+Brooks.
+
+"How did you happen to come here? I don't see how any one could choose to
+come."
+
+"My mother died--and there was no one but my Great-uncle Rodman Warfield.
+I had to get something to do--so I came here, and Uncle Rod went to live
+with a married cousin."
+
+Evelyn had perched herself on the post of Anne's bed and was mending the
+flounce. Although she was not near the lamp, she gave an effect of
+gathering to her all the light of the room. She was wrapped in a robe of
+rose-color, a strange garment with fur to set it off, and of enormous
+fullness. It spread about her and billowed out until it almost hid the
+little bed and the child upon it.
+
+Beside her, Anne in her blue serge felt clumsy and common. She knew that
+she ought not to feel that way, but she did. She would have told her
+scholars that it was not clothes that made the man, or dress the woman.
+But then she told her scholars many things that were right and good. She
+tried herself to be as right and good as her theories. But it was not
+always possible. It was not possible at this moment.
+
+"What brought you here?" Eve persisted.
+
+"I teach school. I came in September."
+
+"What do you teach?"
+
+"Everything. We are not graded."
+
+"I hope you teach them to be honest with themselves."
+
+"I am not sure that I know what you mean?"
+
+"Don't let them pretend to be something that they are not. That's why so
+many people fail. They reach too high, and fall. That's what Nancy Brooks
+is doing to Richard. She is making him reach too high."
+
+She laughed as she bent above her needle. "I fancy you are not interested
+in that. But I can't think of anything but--the waste of it. I hope you
+will all be so healthy that you won't need him, and then he will have to
+come back to New York."
+
+"I don't see how anybody could leave New York. Not to come down here."
+Anne drew a quick breath.
+
+Eve spoke carelessly: "Oh, well, I suppose it isn't so bad here for a
+woman, but for a man--a man needs big spaces. Richard will be
+cramped--he'll shrink to the measure of all this--narrowness." She had
+finished her flounce, and she rose and gave Anne the needle. "In the
+morning, if the weather is good, we are to ride to Crossroads. Is your
+school very far away?"
+
+"It is opposite Crossroads. Mrs. Brooks' father built it."
+
+Anne spoke stiffly. She had felt the sting of Eve's indifference, and she
+was furious with herself for her consciousness of Eve's clothes, of her
+rings--of the gold comb in her hair.
+
+When her visitor had gone, Anne took down her own hair, and flung it up
+into a soft knot on the top of her head. Swept back thus, her face seemed
+to bloom into sudden beauty. She slipped the blue dress from her
+shoulders and saw the long slim line of her neck and the whiteness of her
+skin.
+
+The fire had died down in the little round stove. The room was cold. She
+thought of Eve's rose-color, and of the warmth of her furs.
+
+Bravely, however, she hummed the tune to which the others had danced. She
+lifted her feet in time. Her shoes were heavy, and she took them off. She
+tried to get the rhythm, the lightness, the grace of movement. But these
+things must be taught, and she had no one to teach her.
+
+When at last she crept into bed beside the sleeping Peggy, she was
+chilled to the bone, and she was crying.
+
+Peggy stirred and murmured.
+
+Soothing the child, Anne told herself fiercely that she was a goose to be
+upset because Eve Chesley had rings and wore rose-color. Why, she was no
+better than Diogenes, who had fumed and fussed because Toby had taken his
+straw in the stable.
+
+But her philosophy failed to bring peace of mind. For a long time she lay
+awake, working it out. At last she decided, wearily, that she had wept
+because she really didn't know any of the worth-while things. She didn't
+know any of the young things and the gay things. She didn't know how to
+dance or to talk to men like Richard Brooks. The only things that she
+knew in the whole wide world were--books!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+_In Which the Crown Prince Enters Upon His Own._
+
+
+IT developed that the name of the young man with the eye-glasses was
+Geoffrey Fox. Mrs. Bower told Anne at the breakfast table, as the two
+women sat alone.
+
+"He is writing a book, and he wants to stay."
+
+"The little dark man?"
+
+"I shouldn't call him little. He is thin, but he is as tall as Richard
+Brooks."
+
+"Is he?" To Anne it had seemed as if Richard had towered above her like a
+young giant. She had scarcely noticed the young man with the eye-glasses.
+He had melted into the background of old gentlemen; had become, as it
+were, a part of a composite instead of a single personality.
+
+But to be writing a book!
+
+"What kind of a book, Mrs. Bower?"
+
+"I don't know. He didn't say. I am going to give him the front room in
+the south wing; then he will have a view of the river."
+
+When Anne met the dark young man in the hall an hour later, she
+discovered that he had keen eyes and a mocking smile.
+
+He stopped her. "Do we have to be introduced? I am going to stay here.
+Did Mrs. Bower tell you?"
+
+"She told me you were writing a book."
+
+"Don't tell anybody else; I'm not proud of it."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+He shrugged. "My stories are pot-boilers, most of them--with everybody
+happy in the end."
+
+"Why shouldn't everybody be happy in the end?"
+
+"Because life isn't that way."
+
+"Life is what we make it."
+
+"Who told you that?"
+
+She flushed. "It is what I tell my school children."
+
+"But have you found it so?"
+
+She faltered. "No--but perhaps it is my fault."
+
+"It isn't anybody's fault. If the gods smile--we are happy. If they
+frown, we are miserable. That's all there is to it."
+
+"I should hate to think that was all." She was roused and ready to fight
+for her ideals. "I should hate to think it."
+
+"All your hating won't make it as you want it," his glance was quizzical,
+"but we won't quarrel about it."
+
+"Of course not," stiffly.
+
+"And we are to be friends? You see I am to stay a month."
+
+"Are you going to write about us?"
+
+"I shall write about the Old Gentlemen. Is there always such a crowd of
+them?"
+
+"Only on holidays and week-ends."
+
+"Perhaps I shall write about you----" daringly. "I need a little lovely
+heroine."
+
+Her look stopped him. His face changed. "I beg your pardon," he said
+quickly. "I should not have said that."
+
+"Would you have said it if I had not waited on the table?" Her voice was
+tremulous. The color that had flamed in her cheeks still dyed them. "I
+thought of it last night, after I went up-stairs. I have been trying to
+teach my little children in my school that there is dignity in service,
+and so--I have helped Mrs. Bower. But I felt that people did not
+understand."
+
+"You felt that we--thought less of you?"
+
+"Yes," very low.
+
+"And that I spoke as I did because I did not--respect you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then I beg your pardon. Indeed, I do beg your pardon. It was
+thoughtless. Will you believe that it was only because I was
+thoughtless?"
+
+"Yes." But her troubled eyes did not meet his. "Perhaps I am too
+sensitive. Perhaps you would have said--the same things--to Eve
+Chesley--if you had just met her. But I am sure you would not have said
+it in the same tone."
+
+He held out his hand to her. "You'll forgive me? Yes? And be friends?"
+
+She did not seem to see his hand. "Of course I forgive you," she said,
+with a girlish dignity which sat well upon her, "and perhaps I have made
+too much of it, but you see I am so much alone, and I think so much."
+
+He wanted to ask her questions, of why she was there and of why she was
+alone. But something in her manner forbade, and so they spoke of other
+things until she left him.
+
+Geoffrey went out later for a walk in the blinding snow. All night it had
+snowed and the storm had a blizzard quality, with the wind howling and
+the drifts piling to prodigious heights. Geoffrey faced the elements with
+a strength which won the respect of Richard Brooks who, also out in it,
+with his dog Toby, was battling gloriously with wind and weather.
+
+"If we can reach the shelter of the pines," he shouted, "they'll break
+the force of the storm."
+
+Within the wood the snow was in winding sheets about the great trees.
+
+"What giant ghosts!" Geoffrey said. "Yet in a month or two the sap will
+run warm in their veins, and the silence will be lapped by waves of
+sound--the singing of birds and of little streams."
+
+"I used to come here when I was a boy," Richard told him. "There were
+violets under the bank, and I picked them and made tight bunches of them
+and gave them to my mother. She was young then. I remember that she
+usually wore white dresses, with a blue sash fluttering."
+
+"You lived here then?"
+
+"No, we visited at my grandfather's, a mile or two away. He used to drive
+us down, and he would sit out there on the point and fish,--a grand old
+figure, in his broad hat, with his fishing creel over his shoulder. There
+were just two sports that my grandfather loved, fishing and fox-hunting;
+but he was a very busy doctor and couldn't ride often to hounds. But he
+kept a lot of them. He would have had a great contempt for Toby. His own
+dogs were a wiry little breed."
+
+"My grandfather was blind, and always in his library. So my boyhood was
+different. I used to read to him. I liked it, and I wouldn't exchange my
+memories for yours, except the violets--I should like to pick them here
+in the spring--perhaps I shall--I told Mrs. Bower I would take a room for
+a month or more--and since we have spoken of violets--I may wait for
+their blooming."
+
+He laughed, and as they turned back, "I have found several things to keep
+me," he said, but he did not name them.
+
+All day Anne was aware of the presence in the house of the young guests.
+She was aware of Winifred Ames' blue cloak and of Eve's roses. She was
+aware of Richard's big voice booming through the hall, of Geoffrey's
+mocking laugh.
+
+But she did not go down among them. She ate her meals after the others
+had finished. She did not wait upon the table and she did not sit upon
+the stairs. In the afternoon she wrote a long letter to her Great-uncle
+Rodman, and she went early to bed.
+
+She was waked in the morning by the bustle of departure. Some of the Old
+Gentlemen went back by motor, others by train. Warmed by a hearty
+breakfast, bundled into their big coats, they were lighted on their way
+by Eric Brand.
+
+It was just as the sun flashed over the horizon and showed the whiteness
+of a day swept clear by the winds of the night that the train for the
+north carried off the Dutton-Ames, Philip and Eve.
+
+Evelyn went protesting. "Some day you are going to regret it, Richard."
+
+"Don't croak. Wish me good luck, Eve."
+
+But she would not. Yet when she stood at last on the train steps to say
+"Good-bye," she had in her hand one of the roses he had given her and
+which she had worn. She touched it lightly to her lips and tossed it to
+him.
+
+By the time he had picked it up the train was on its way, and Evelyn,
+looking back, had her last glimpse of him standing straight and tall
+against the morning sky, the rose in his hand.
+
+It was eight o'clock when Eric drove Anne and Peggy through the drifts
+to the Crossroads school. It was nine when Geoffrey Fox came down to a
+late breakfast. It was ten when Richard and his mother and the dog Toby
+in a hired conveyance arrived at the place which had once been Nancy's
+home.
+
+Imposing, even in its shabbiness, stood the old house, at the end of an
+avenue of spired cedars.
+
+As they opened the door a grateful warmth met them.
+
+"David has been here," Nancy said. "Oh, Richard, Richard, what a glorious
+day to begin."
+
+And now there came from among the shadows a sound which made them stop
+and listen. "Tick, tock," said the great hall clock.
+
+"Mother, who wound it?"
+
+Nancy Brooks laughed tremulously. "Cousin David had the key. In all these
+years he has never let the old clock run down. It seemed queer to think
+of it ticking away in this empty house."
+
+There were tears in her eyes. He stooped and kissed her. "And now that
+you are here, you are going to be happy?"
+
+"Very happy, dear boy."
+
+It was nearly twelve when David Tyson came limping up the path. He had a
+basket in one hand, and a cane in the other. Behind him trotted a
+weedy-looking foxhound. The dog Toby, charging out of the door as Nancy
+opened it, fell, as it were, upon the neck of the hound. His overtures
+of friendship were met with a dignified aloofness which merged gradually
+into a reluctant cordiality.
+
+Nancy held out both hands to the old man. "I saw you coming. Oh, how good
+it seems to be here again, Cousin David."
+
+"Let me look at you." He set the basket down, and took her hands in his.
+Then he shook his head. "New York has done things to you," he said. "It
+has given you a few gray hairs. But now that you are back again I shall
+try to forgive it."
+
+"I shall never forgive it," she said, "for what it has done to me and
+mine."
+
+"But you are here, and you have brought your boy; that's a thing to be
+thankful for, Nancy."
+
+They were silent in the face of overwhelming memories. The only sound in
+the shadowy hall was the ticking of the old clock--the old clock which
+had tick-tocked in all the years of loneliness with no one to listen.
+
+Richard greeted him with heartiness. "This looks pretty good to me,
+Cousin David."
+
+"It's God's country, Richard. Brin hates it. He loves his club and the
+city streets. But for me there's nothing worth while but this sweep of
+the hills and the river between."
+
+He uncovered his basket. "Tom put up some things for you. I've engaged
+Milly, a mulatto girl, but she can't get here until to-morrow. She is
+about the best there is left. Most of them go to town. She'll probably
+seem pretty crude after New York servants, Nancy."
+
+"I don't care." Nancy almost sang the words. "I don't care what I have to
+put up with, Cousin David. I shall sleep to-night under my own roof with
+nothing between me and the stars. And there won't be anybody overhead or
+underneath, and there won't be a pianola to the right of me, and a
+phonograph to the left, and there won't be the rumble of the subway or
+the crash of the elevated, and in the morning I shall open my eyes and
+see the sun rise over the river, and I shall look out upon the world that
+I love and have loved all of these years----"
+
+And now she was crying, and Richard had her in his arms. Over her head he
+looked at the older man. "I didn't dream that she felt like this."
+
+"I knew--as soon as I saw her. You must never take her back, Richard."
+
+"Of course not," hotly.
+
+Yet with the perverseness of youth he was aware, as he said it, of a
+sudden sense of revolt against the prospect of a future spent in this
+quiet place. Flashing came a vision of the city he had left, of crowded
+hospitals, of big men consulting with big men, of old men imparting their
+secrets of healing to the young; of limousines speeding luxuriously on
+errands of mercy; of patients pouring out their wealth to the men who had
+made them well.
+
+All this he had given up because his mother had asked it. She had spoken
+of the place which his grandfather had filled, of the dignity of a
+country practice, of the opportunities for research and for experiment.
+At close range, the big town set between its rivers and the sea had
+seemed noisy and vulgar. Its people had seemed mad in their race for
+money. Its medical men had seemed to lack the fineness and finish which
+come to those who move and meditate in quiet places.
+
+But seen from afar as he saw it now, it seemed a wonder city, its tall
+buildings outlined like gigantic castles against the sky. It seemed
+filled to the brim with vivid life. It seemed, indeed, to call him back!
+
+While David and Nancy talked he went out, and, from the top of the snowy
+steps, surveyed his domain. Back and back in the wide stretch of country
+which faced him, beyond the valleys, on the other side of the hills, were
+people who would some day listen for the step of young Richard as those
+who had gone before had listened for the step of his grandfather. He saw
+himself going forth on stormy nights to fight pain and pestilence; to
+minister to little children, to patient mothers; to men beaten down by an
+enemy before whom their strength was as wax. They would wait for him,
+anxious for his verdict, yet fearing it, welcoming him as a saviour, who
+would stand with flaming sword between disease and the Dark Angel.
+
+The schoolhouse was on the other side of the road. It was built of brick
+like the house. Richard's grandfather had paid for the brick. He had
+believed in public schools and had made this one possible. Children came
+to it from all the countryside. There were other schools in the sleepy
+town. This was the Crossroads school, as Richard Tyson had been the
+Crossroads doctor. He had given himself to a rural community--his
+journeys had been long and his life hard, but he had loved the labor.
+
+The bell rang for the noon recess. The children appeared presently,
+trudging homeward through the snow to their midday dinners. Then Anne
+Warfield came out. She wore a heavy brown coat and soft brown hat. In her
+hand was a small earthen dish. She strewed seeds for the birds, and they
+flew down in front of her--juncoes and sparrows, a tufted titmouse, a
+cardinal blood-red against the whiteness. She was like a bird herself in
+all her brown.
+
+When the dish was empty, she turned it upside down, and spread her hands
+to show that there was nothing more. On the Saturday night when she had
+waited on the table, Richard had noticed the loveliness of her hands.
+They were small and white, and without rings. Yet in spite of their
+smallness and whiteness, he knew that they were useful hands, for she had
+served well at Bower's. And now he knew that they were kindly hands, for
+she had fed the birds who had come begging to her door.
+
+Peggy joined her, and the two came out the gate together. Anne looking
+across saw Richard. She hesitated, then crossed the road.
+
+He at once went to meet her. She flushed a little as she spoke to him.
+"Peggy and I want to ask a favor. We've always had our little Twelfth
+Night play in the Crossroads stable. And we had planned for it this
+year--you see, we didn't know that you were coming."
+
+"And we were afraid that you wouldn't want us," Peggy told him.
+
+"Were you really afraid?"
+
+"I wasn't. But Miss Anne was."
+
+"I told the children that they mustn't be disappointed if we were not
+able to do this year as we had done before. I felt that with people in
+the house, it might not be pleasant for them to have us coming in such a
+crowd."
+
+"It will be pleasant, and mother will be much interested. I wish you'd
+come up and tell us about it."
+
+She shook her head. "Peggy and I have just time to get back to Bower's
+for our dinner."
+
+"Aren't the roads bad?"
+
+"Not when the snow is hard."
+
+Peggy went reluctantly. "I think he is perfectly lovely," she said, at a
+safe distance. "Don't you?"
+
+Anne's reply was guarded. "He is very kind. I am glad that he doesn't
+mind about the Twelfth Night play, Peggy."
+
+Richard spoke to David of Anne as the two men, a few minutes later,
+climbed the hill toward David's house.
+
+"She seems unusual."
+
+"She is the best teacher we have ever had, but she ought not to be at
+Bower's. She isn't their kind."
+
+David's little house, set on top of a hill, was small and shabby without,
+but within it was as compact as a ship's cabin. David's old servant, Tom,
+kept it immaculate, and there were books everywhere, old portraits,
+precious bits of mahogany.
+
+From the window beside the fireplace there was a view of the river. It
+was a blue river to-day, sparkling in the sunshine. David, standing
+beside Richard, spoke of it.
+
+"It isn't always blue, but it is always beautiful. Even when the snow
+flies as it did yesterday."
+
+"And are you content with this, Cousin David?"
+
+The answer was evasive. "I have my little law practice, and my books. And
+is any one ever content, Richard?"
+
+Going down the hill, Richard pondered. Was Eve right after all? Did a man
+who turned his face away from the rush of cities really lack red blood?
+
+Stopping at the schoolhouse, he found teacher and scholars still gone.
+But the door was unlocked and he went in. The low-ceiled room was
+charming, and the good taste of the teacher was evident in its
+decorations. There were branches of pine and cedar on the walls, a
+picture of Washington at one end with a flag draped over it, a pot of
+primroses in the south window.
+
+There were several books on Anne's desk. Somewhat curiously he examined
+the titles. A shabby Browning, a modern poet or two, Chesterton, a volume
+of Pepys, the pile topped by a small black Bible. Moved by a sudden
+impulse, he opened the Bible. The leaves fell back at a marked passage:
+
+"_Let not your heart be troubled._"
+
+He shut the book sharply. It was as if he had peered into the girl's
+soul. The red was in his cheeks as he turned away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night Nancy Brooks went with Richard to his room. On the threshold
+she stopped.
+
+"I have given this room to you," she said, "because it was mine when I
+was a girl, and all my dreams have been shut in--waiting for you."
+
+"Mother," he caught her hands in his, "you mustn't dream too much for
+me."
+
+"Let me dream to-night;" she was looking up at him with her shining eyes;
+"to-morrow I shall be just a commonplace mother of a commonplace son; but
+to-night I am queen, and you are the crown prince on the eve of
+coronation. Oh, Hickory Dickory, I am such a happy mother."
+
+Hickory Dickory! It was her child-name for him. She had not often used
+it of late. He felt that she would not often use it again. He was much
+moved by her dedication of him to his new life. He held her close. His
+doubts fled. He thought no more of Eve and of her flaming arguments.
+Somewhere out in the snow her rose lay frozen and faded where he had
+dropped it.
+
+And when he slept and dreamed it was of a little brown bird which sang in
+the snow, and the song that it sang seemed to leap from the pages of a
+Book, "_Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid._"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+_In Which Three Kings Come to Crossroads._
+
+
+ANNE'S budget of news to her Great-uncle Rod swelled to unusual
+proportions in the week following the opening of Crossroads. She had so
+much to say to him, and there was no one else to whom she could speak
+with such freedom and frankness.
+
+_By the Round Stove._
+
+MY DEAR:
+
+I am sending this as an antidote for my doleful Sunday screed. Now that
+the Lovely Ladies are gone, I am myself again!
+
+I know that you are saying, "You should never have been anything but
+yourself." That's all very well for you who know Me-Myself, but these
+people know only the Outside-Person part of me, and the Outside-Person
+part is stiff and old-fashioned, and self-conscious. You see it has been
+so many months since I have hobnobbed with Lilies-of-the-Field and with
+Solomons-in-all-their-Glory. And even when I did hobnob with them it was
+for such a little time, and it ended so heart-breakingly. But I am not
+going to talk of that, or I shall weep and wail again, and that wouldn't
+be fair to you.
+
+The last Old Gentleman left yesterday in the wake of the Lovely Ladies.
+Did I tell you that Brinsley Tyson is a cousin of Mrs. Brooks? His twin
+brother, David, lives up the road. Brinsley is the city mouse and David
+is the country one. They are as different as you can possibly imagine.
+Brinsley is fat and round and red, and David is thin and tall and pale.
+Yet there is the "twin look" in their faces. The high noses and square
+chins. Neither of them wears a beard. None of the Old Gentlemen does. Why
+is it? Is hoary-headed age a thing of the dark and distant past? Are you
+the only one left whose silver banner blows in the breeze? Are the
+grandfathers all trying to look like boys to match the grandmothers who
+try to look like girls?
+
+Mrs. Brooks won't be that kind of grandmother. She is gentle and serene,
+and the years will touch her softly. I shall like her if she will let me.
+But perhaps little school-teachers won't come within her line of vision.
+You see I learned my lesson in those short months when I peeped into
+Paradise.
+
+I wonder how it would seem to be a Lily-of-the-Field. I've never been
+one, have I? Even when I was a little girl I used to stand on a chair to
+wipe the dishes while you washed them. I felt very important to be
+helping mother, and you would talk about the dignity of labor--_you
+darling_, with the hot water wrinkling and reddening your lovely long
+fingers, which were made to paint masterpieces.
+
+I am trying to pass on to my school children what you have given to me,
+and oh, Uncle Rod, when I speak to them I seem to be looking with you,
+straight through the kitchen window, at the sunset. We never knew that
+the kitchen sink was there, did we? We saw only the sunsets. And now
+because you are a darling dear, and because you are always seeing
+sunsets, I am sending you a verse or two which I have copied from a book
+which Geoffrey Fox left last night at my door.
+
+    "When Salomon sailed from Ophir,
+               With Olliphants and gold,
+     The kings went up, the kings went down,
+     Trying to match King Salomon's crown;
+               But Salomon sacked the sunset,
+               Wherever his black ships rolled.
+     He rolled it up like a crimson cloth,
+         And crammed it into his hold.
+
+CHORUS: "Salomon sacked the sunset,
+            Salomon sacked the sunset,
+            He rolled it up like a crimson cloth,
+            And crammed it into his hold.
+
+    "His masts were Lebanon cedars,
+               His sheets were singing blue,
+     But that was never the reason why
+     He stuffed his hold with the sunset sky!
+               The kings could cut their cedars,
+               And sail from Ophir, too;
+     But Salomon packed his heart with dreams,
+         _And all the dreams were true_."
+
+Now join in the chorus, you old dear--and I'll think that I am a little
+girl again--
+
+    "The kings could cut their cedars,
+     Cut their Lebanon cedars;
+     But Salomon packed his heart with dreams,
+     _And all_
+             _the dreams_
+                        _were true_!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_In the Schoolroom._
+
+I told you that Geoffrey Fox left a book for me to read. I told you that
+he wore eye-glasses on a black ribbon, that he is writing a novel, and
+that I don't like him. Well, he went into Baltimore this morning to get
+his belongings, and when he comes back he will stay until his book is
+finished. It will be interesting to be under the same roof with a story.
+All the shadows and corners will seem full of it. The house will speak to
+him, and the people in it, though none of the rest of us will hear the
+voices, and the wind will speak and the leaping flames in the fireplace,
+and the sun and the moon--and when the snow comes it will whisper secrets
+in his ear and presently it will be snowing all through the pages.
+
+It snowed this morning, and from my desk I can see young Dr. Brooks
+shoveling a path from his front porch. He and his mother came to
+Crossroads yesterday, and they have been very busy getting settled. They
+have a colored maid, Milly, but no man, and young Richard does all of
+the outside work. I think I shall like him. Don't you remember how as a
+little girl I always adored the Lion-hearted king? I always think of him
+when I see Dr. Brooks. He isn't handsome, but he is broad-shouldered and
+big and blond. I haven't had but one chance to speak to him since he and
+his mother left Bower's. Perhaps I shan't have many chances to speak to
+him. But a cat may look at a king!
+
+I am all alone in the schoolroom. The children went an hour ago. Eric and
+Beulah are to call for me on their way home from town. They took Peggy
+with them. Did I tell you that Eric is falling in love with Beulah? I am
+not sure whether it is the best thing for him, but I am sure it is for
+her. She is very happy, and blushes when he looks at her. He is finer
+than she, and bigger, mentally and spiritually. He is crude, but he will
+grow as so many American men do grow--and there are dreams in his clear
+blue eyes. And, after all, it is the dreams that count--as Salomon
+discovered.
+
+Yet it may be that Eric will bring Beulah up to his level. She is an
+honest little thing and good and loving. Her life is narrow, and she
+thinks narrow thoughts. But he is wise and kind, and already I can see
+that she is trying to keep step with him--which is as it should be.
+
+I like to think that father and mother kept step through all the years.
+She was his equal, his comrade; she marched by his side with her head up
+fitting her two short steps to his long stride.
+
+King Richard has just waved to me. I stood up to see the sunset--a band
+of gold with black above, and he waved, and started to run across the
+road. Then somebody called him from the house. Perhaps it was the
+telephone and his first patient. If I am ever ill, I should like to have
+a Lion-hearted Doctor--wouldn't you?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_At the Sign of the Lantern._
+
+I am with Diogenes in the stable, with the lantern making deep shadows,
+and the loft steps for a desk. Eric and Beulah came for me before I had
+asked a question--an important question--so I am finishing my letter
+here, while Eric puts Daisy in her stall, and then he will post it for
+me.
+
+Diogenes has had his corn, and is as happy as Brinsley Tyson after a good
+dinner. Oh, such eating and drinking! How these old men love it! And you
+with your bread and milk and your book propped up against the lamp, or
+your handful of raisins and your book under a tree!
+
+But I must scribble fast and ask my question. It isn't easy to ask. So
+I'll put it in sections:
+
+Do you
+       ever
+            see
+                Jimmie--Ford?
+
+That is the first time that I have written his name since I came here. I
+had made up my mind that I wouldn't write it. But somehow the
+rose-colored atmosphere of the other night, and these men of his kind
+have brought it back--all those whirling weeks when you warned me and I
+wouldn't listen. Uncle Rod, if a woman hadn't an ounce of pride she might
+meet such things. If I had not had a grandmother as good as Jimmie's and
+better--I might have felt less--stricken. Geoffrey Fox spoke to me on
+Saturday in a way which--hurt. Perhaps I am too sensitive--but I haven't
+quite learned to--hold up my head.
+
+You mustn't think that I am unhappy. Indeed, I am not, except that I
+cannot be with you. But it is good to know that you are comfortable, and
+that Cousin Margaret is making it seem like home. Some day we are to have
+a home, you and I, when our ship comes in "with the sunset packed in the
+hold." But now it is well that I have work to do. I know that this is my
+opportunity, and that I must make the most of it. There's that proverb of
+yours, "The Lord sends us quail, but he doesn't send them roasted." I
+have written it out, and have tucked it into my mirror frame. I shall
+have to roast my own quail. I only hope that I may prove a competent
+cook!
+
+Eric is here, and I must say "Good-bye." Diogenes sends love, and a
+little feather that dropped from his wing. Some day he will send a big
+one for you to make a pen and write letters to me. I love your letters,
+and I love you. And oh, you know that you have all the heart's best of
+your own
+
+ANNE.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_The Morning After the Magi Came._
+
+I am up early to tell you about it. But I must go back a little because I
+have had so much else to talk about that I haven't spoken of the Twelfth
+Night play.
+
+It seems that years ago, when old Dr. Brooks first built the schoolhouse,
+the children used his stable on Twelfth Night for a spectacle
+representing the coming of the Wise Men.
+
+Mr. David had told me of it, and I had planned to revive the old custom
+this year, and had rehearsed the children. I thought when I heard that
+the house was to be occupied that I might have to give it up. But Peggy
+and I plucked up our courage and asked King Richard, and he graciously
+gave permission.
+
+It was a heavenly night. Snow on the ground and all the stars out. The
+children met in the schoolhouse and we started in a procession. They all
+wore simple little costumes, just some bit of bright color draped to give
+them a quaint picturesqueness. One of the boys led a cow, and there was
+an old ewe. Then riding on a donkey, borrowed by Mr. David, came the
+oldest Mary in our school. I chose her because I wanted her to understand
+the sacred significance of her name, and our only little Joseph walked by
+her side. The children followed and their parents, with the wise men
+quite in the rear, so that they might enter after the others.
+
+When we reached the stable, I grouped Joseph and Mary in one of the old
+mangers, where the Babe lay, and he was a dear, real, baby brother of
+Mary. I hid a light behind the straw, so that the place was illumined.
+And then my little wise men came in; and the children, who with their
+parents were seated on the hay back in the shadows, sang, "We Three
+Kings" and other carols. The gifts which the Magi brought were the
+children's own pennies which they are giving to the other little children
+across the sea who are fatherless because of the war.
+
+It was quite wonderful to hear their sweet little voices, and to see
+their rapt faces and to know that, however sordid their lives might be,
+here was Dream, founded on the Greatest Truth, which would lift them
+above the sordidness.
+
+Dr. Brooks and his mother and Mr. David were not far from me, and Dr.
+Brooks leaned over and asked if he might speak to the children. I said I
+should be glad, so he stood up and told them in such simple, fine fashion
+that he wanted to be to them all that his grandfather had been to their
+parents and grandparents. He wanted them to feel that his life and
+service belonged to them. He wanted them to know how pleased he was with
+the Twelfth Night spectacle, and that he wanted it to become an annual
+custom.
+
+Then in his mother's name, he asked them to come up to the house--all of
+them--and we were shown into the Garden Room which opens out upon what
+was once a terraced garden, and there was a great cake with candles, and
+sandwiches, and coffee for the grown-ups and hot chocolate for the
+kiddies.
+
+Wasn't that dear? I had little François thank them, and he did it so
+well. Why is it that these small foreigners lack the self-consciousness
+of our own boys and girls? He had been one of the wise men in the
+spectacle, and he still wore his white beard and turban and his long blue
+and red robes. Yet he wasn't in the least fussed; he simply made a bow,
+said what he had to say, made another bow, with never a blush or a quaver
+or giggle. His mother was there, and she was so happy--she is a widow,
+and sews in the neighborhood, plain sewing, and they are very poor.
+
+I rode home with the Bowers, and as we drove along, I heard the children
+singing. I am sure they will never forget the night under the winter
+stars, nor the scene in the stable with the cow and the little donkey and
+the old ewe, and the Light that illumined the manger. I want them always
+to remember, Uncle Rod, and I want to remember. It is only when I forget
+that I lose faith and hope.
+
+Blessed dear, good-night.
+
+YOUR ANNE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+_In Which Peggy Takes the Center of the Stage._
+
+
+THE bell on the schoolhouse had a challenging note. It seemed to call to
+the distant hills, and the echo came back in answer. It was the voice of
+civilization. "I am here that you may learn of other hills and of other
+valleys, of men who have dreamed and of men who have discovered, of
+nations which have conquered and of nations which have fallen into decay.
+I am here that you may learn--_ding dong_--that you may learn, _ding
+ding_--that you may learn--_ding dong ding_--of Life."
+
+As she rang the bell, Anne had always a feeling of exhilaration. Its
+message was clear to her. She hoped it would be clear to others. She
+tried at least to make it clear to her children.
+
+And now they came streaming over the countryside, big boys with their
+little sisters beside them, big girls with their little brothers. Some on
+sleds and some sliding. All rosy-cheeked with the coldness of the
+morning.
+
+As they filed in, Anne stood behind her desk. They had opening exercises,
+and then the work of the day began.
+
+It began scrappily. Nobody had his mind upon it. The children were much
+excited over the events of the preceding night--over the play and the
+feast which had followed.
+
+Anne, too, was excited. On the way to school she had met Richard, and he
+had joined her and had told her of his first patient.
+
+"I had to walk at one o'clock in the morning. I must get a horse or a
+car. I am not quite sure that I ought to afford a car. And I like the
+idea of a horse. My grandfather rode a horse."
+
+"Are you going to do all the things that your grandfather did?"
+
+He was aware of her quick smile. He smiled back.
+
+"Perhaps. I might do worse. He made great cures with his calomel and his
+catnip tea."
+
+"Did you cure your patient with catnip tea?"
+
+"Last night? No. It was a child. Measles. I told the rest of the family
+to stay away from school."
+
+"It is probably too late. They will all have it."
+
+"Have you?"
+
+"No. I am never sick."
+
+Her good health seemed to him another goddess attribute. Goddesses were
+never ill. They lived eternally with lovely smiles.
+
+He felt this morning that the world was his. He had been called up the
+night before by a man in whose household there had been a tradition of
+the skill of Richard's grandfather. There had been the memory, too, in
+the minds of the older ones of the days when that other doctor had
+thundered up the road to succor and to save. It was a proud moment in
+their lives when they gave to Richard Tyson's grandson his first patient.
+They felt that Providence in sending sickness upon them had imposed not a
+penance but a privilege.
+
+Richard had known of their pride and had been touched by it, and with the
+glow of their gratitude still upon him, he had trudged down the snowy
+road and had met Anne Warfield!
+
+"You'd better let me come and look over your pupils," he had said to her
+as they parted; "we don't want an epidemic!"
+
+He was to come at the noon recess. Anne, anticipating his visit, was
+quite thrillingly emphatic in her history lesson. Not that history had
+anything to do with measles, but she felt fired by his example to do her
+best.
+
+She loved to teach history, and she had a lesson not only for her
+children, but for herself. She was much ashamed of her mood of Sunday. It
+had been easy enough this morning to talk to Richard; and with Evelyn
+away, clothes had seemed to sink to their proper significance. And if she
+had waited on the table she had at least done it well.
+
+Her exposition gained emphasis, therefore, from her state of mind.
+
+"In this beautiful land of ours," she said, "all men are free--and equal.
+You mustn't think this means that all of you will have the same amount of
+money or the same kind of clothes, or the same things to eat, or even the
+same kind of minds. But I think it means that you ought all to have the
+same kind of consciences. You ought to be equal in right doing. And in
+love of country. You ought to know when war is righteous, and when peace
+is righteous. And you can all be equal in this, that no man can make you
+lie or steal or be a coward."
+
+Thus she inspired them. Thus she saw them thrill as she had herself been
+thrilled. And that was her reward. For in her school were not only the
+little Johns and the little Thomases and the little Richards--she found
+herself quite suddenly understanding why there were so many
+Richards--there were also the little Ottos and the little Ulrics and the
+little Wilhelms, and there was François, whose mother went out to sew by
+the day, and there were Raphael and Alessandro and Simon. Out from the
+big cities had come the parents of these children, seeking the land,
+usurping the places of the old American stock, doing what had been left
+undone in the way of sowing and planting and reaping, making the little
+gardens yield as they had never yielded, even in those wonder days before
+the war.
+
+It was Anne Warfield's task to train the children of the newcomers to the
+American ideal. With the blood in her of statesmen and of soldiers it
+was given to her to pass on the tradition of good citizenship. She was,
+indeed, a torch-bearer, lighting the way to love of country. Yet for a
+little while she had forgotten it.
+
+She had cried because she could not wear rose-color!
+
+But now her head was high again, and when Richard came she showed him her
+school, and he shook hands first with the little girls and then with the
+little boys, and he looked down their throats, and asked them questions,
+and joked and prodded and took their temperature, and he did it all in
+such happy fashion that not even the littlest one was afraid.
+
+And when Richard was ready to go, he said to her, "I'll look after their
+bodies if you'll look after their minds," and as she watched him walk
+away, she had a tingling sense that they had formed a compact which had
+to do with things above and beyond the commonplace.
+
+It began to snow in the afternoon, and it was snowing hard when the
+school day ended. Eric Brand came for Anne and Peggy in the funny little
+station carriage which was kept at Bower's. Eric and Anne sat on the
+front seat with Peggy between them. The fat mare, Daisy, jogged placidly
+along the still white road. There was a top to the carriage, but the snow
+sifted in, so Anne wrapped Peggy in an old shawl.
+
+"I don't need anything," she said, when Eric offered her a heavier
+covering. "I love it--like this----"
+
+Eric Brand was big and blond and somewhat slow in his movements. But he
+had brains and held the position of telegraph operator at Bower's
+Station. He had, too, a heart of romance. The day before he had seen
+Evelyn toss the rose to Richard, and he had found it later where Richard
+had dropped it. He had picked it up, and had put it in water. It had
+seemed to him that the flower must feel the slight which had been put
+upon it.
+
+He spoke now to Anne of Richard. "They say he is a good doctor."
+
+"I can't see why he came here."
+
+"His mother wanted him to come. She hates the city. She went there as a
+bride. Her husband was rich, but he was always speculating. Sometimes
+they were so poor that she had to do her own work, and sometimes they had
+a half dozen servants. But they never had a home. And then all at once he
+lost other people's money as well as his own--and he killed himself----"
+
+She turned on him her startled eyes. "Richard's father?"
+
+"Yes. And after that young Brooks decided that as soon as he finished his
+medical course he would come here. He thinks that he came because he
+wanted to come. But he won't stay."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"You saw his friends. And the women. Some day he'll go back and marry
+that girl----"
+
+"Evelyn Chesley?"
+
+"Is that her name? She threw him a rose;" he forgot to tell her that he
+had seen it fade.
+
+They had reached the stable garage. Diogenes welcomed them from his warm
+corner. The old dog Mamie who had followed the carriage shook the snow
+from her coat and flopped down on the floor to rest. The little horse
+Daisy steamed and whinnied. It was a homely scene of sheltered creatures
+in comfortable quarters. Anne knelt down by the old drake, and he bent
+his head under her caressing hand. Her face was grave. Eric, watching
+her, asked; "Has it been a hard day?"
+
+"No;" but she found herself suddenly tired.
+
+She went in with Eric presently. They had a good hot supper, and Anne was
+hungry. Gathered around the table were Peter and his wife, Beulah and
+Eric, with Peggy rounding out the half dozen. Geoffrey Fox had gone to
+town to get his belongings.
+
+Anne had a vision of Richard and his mother in the big house. At their
+table would be lovely linen and shining silver, and some little formality
+of service. She felt that she belonged to people like that. She had
+nothing in common with Peter and his wife and with Eric Brand. Nor with
+Beulah.
+
+Beulah was planning a little party for the evening. There was to have
+been skating, but the warmer weather and the snow had made that
+impossible.
+
+"I don't know just what I'll do with them," she said; "we might have
+games."
+
+"Anne knows a lot of things." This from Peggy, who was busy with her
+bread and milk.
+
+"What things?"
+
+"Oh, dancing----"
+
+Anne flushed. "Peggy!"
+
+"But we do. We make bows like this----"
+
+Peggy slid out of her chair and bobbed for them--a most entrancing little
+curtsey, with all her curls flying.
+
+"And the boys do this." She was quite stiff as she showed them how the
+little boys bowed.
+
+Anne seemed to feel some need of defense. "Well, they must learn
+manners."
+
+Peggy, wound up, would not be interrupted. "We dance like this," and away
+she went in a mad gallop.
+
+Anne laughed. "It warms their blood when the fire won't burn. Peggy, it
+isn't quite as bad as that. Show them nicely."
+
+So Peggy showed them some pretty steps, and then came back to her bread
+and milk.
+
+"We might dance." Beulah's mind was on her party. "But some of them don't
+know how."
+
+Anne offered no suggestions. She really might have helped if she had
+cared to do it. But she did not care.
+
+When she had finished supper, Eric followed her into the hall. "You'll
+come down, won't you?"
+
+"I'm not sure."
+
+"Beulah would like it if you would."
+
+"I have a lot of things to do."
+
+"Let them go. You can always work. When you hear the fire roaring up the
+chimney, you will know that it is calling to you, 'Come down, come
+down!'"
+
+He stood and watched her as she climbed the stairs. Then he went back and
+helped Beulah.
+
+Beulah was really very pretty, and to-night her cheeks were pink as she
+made her little plans with him.
+
+He gave himself pleasantly to her guidance. He moved the furniture for
+her into the big front room, so that there would be a space for dancing.
+And presently it became not a sanctum for staid Old Gentlemen, but a
+gathering place for youth and joy.
+
+Eric made his rounds before the company came. He looked after the dogs in
+the kennels and at Daisy in her stall. He flashed his lantern into
+Diogenes' dark corner and saw the old drake at rest.
+
+The snow was whirling in a blinding storm when at last he staggered in
+with a great log for the fire, and with a basket of cones to make the air
+sweet. And it was as he knelt to put the cones on the fire that Anne came
+in and stood beside him.
+
+She had swept up her hair in the new way from her forehead. She wore
+white silk stockings and little flat-heeled black slippers, and a
+flounced white frock. She was not in the least in fashion, but she was
+quaintly childish and altogether lovely.
+
+The big man looked up at her. "You look nice in that dress."
+
+She smiled down at him. "I'm glad you like it, Eric."
+
+When the young belles and beauties of the countryside came in later, Anne
+found herself quite eclipsed by their blooming charms. The young men,
+knowing her as the school-teacher, were afraid of her brains. They talked
+to her stiffly, and left her as soon as possible for the easier society
+of girls of their own kind. Peggy sat with Anne on the big settle beside
+the fire. The child's hand was hot, and she seemed sleepy.
+
+"My eyes hurt," she said, crossly.
+
+"You ought to be in bed, Peggy; shall I take you?"
+
+"No. There's going to be an oyster stew. Daddy said I might sit up."
+
+Beulah in pink and very important came over to them. "Could you show us
+some of the dances, Anne?"
+
+"Oh, Beulah, can't they play games?"
+
+"I think you might help us." Beulah's tone was slightly petulant.
+
+Anne stood up. "There's a march I taught the children. We could begin
+with that."
+
+She led the march with Eric. Behind her was the loud laughter of the
+brawny young men, the loud laughter of the blooming young women. Their
+merriment sounded a different note from that struck by the genial Old
+Gentlemen or by the gay group of young folk from New York. What was the
+difference? Training? Birth?
+
+Anne felt suddenly much alone. She had not belonged to Evelyn Chesley's
+crowd, she did not belong with Beulah's friends. She wondered if she
+really belonged anywhere.
+
+Yet as her mind went over and over these things, her little slippered
+feet led the march. Eric was not awkward, and he fell easily into the
+step.
+
+"How nicely we do it together," he said, and beamed down on her, and
+because her heart was really a kind little heart and a womanly one, she
+smiled up at him and tried to be as fine and friendly as she would have
+wanted her children to be.
+
+After the dance, the young folks played old-fashioned games--"Going to
+Jerusalem" and "Post Office." Anne fled to the settle when the last game
+was announced. Peggy was moping among the cushions.
+
+"Let me take you up to bed, dearie."
+
+"No, I won't. I want to stay here."
+
+The fun was fast and furious. Anne had a little shivery feeling as she
+watched the girls go out into the hall and come back blushing. How could
+they give so lightly what seemed to her so sacred? A woman's lips were
+for her lover.
+
+She sat very still among the cushions. The fire roared up the chimney.
+Outside the wind blew; far away in the distance a dog barked.
+
+The barking dog was young Toby. At the heels of his master he was headed
+straight for the long low house and the grateful shelter of its warmth.
+
+Richard stood for a moment on the porch, looking in through the lighted
+window. A romping game was in full progress. This time it was "Drop the
+Handkerchief" and a plump and pretty girl was having a tussle with her
+captor. Everybody was shouting, clapping. Everybody? On an old settle by
+the fire sat a slim girl in a white gown. Peggy lay in the curve of her
+arm, and she was looking down at Peggy.
+
+Richard laughed a big laugh. He could not have told why he laughed, but
+he flung the door open, and stood there radiant.
+
+"May I come in?" he demanded of Beulah, "or will I break up your party?"
+
+"Oh, Dr. Brooks, as if you could. We are so glad to have you."
+
+"I had a sick call, and we are half frozen, Toby and I, and we saw the
+lights----"
+
+Now the best place for a half-frozen man is by the fire, and the best
+place for an anxious and shivering dog is in a warm chimney corner, so
+in a moment the young dog Toby was where he could thaw out in a luxurious
+content, and Richard was on the settle beside Anne, and was saying,
+"Isn't this great? Do you think I ought to stay? I'm not really invited,
+you know."
+
+"There's never any formality. Everybody just comes."
+
+"I like your frock," he said suddenly. "You remind me of a little
+porcelain figure I saw in a Fifth Avenue window not long ago."
+
+"Tell me about it," she said with eagerness.
+
+"About what?"
+
+"New York and the shops. Oh, I saw them once. They were like--Heaven."
+
+She laughed up at him as she said it, and he laughed back.
+
+"You'd get tired of them if you lived there."
+
+"I should never get tired. And if I had money I'd go on in and try on
+everything. I saw a picture of a gown I'd like--all silver spangles with
+a pointed train. Do you know I've never worn a train? I should like
+one--and a big fan with feathers."
+
+He shook his head. "Trains wouldn't suit your style. Nor big fans. You
+ought to have a little fan--of sandalwood, with a purple and green tassel
+and smelling sweet. Mother says that her mother carried a fan like that
+at a White House ball."
+
+"I've never been to a ball."
+
+"Well, you needn't want to go. It's a cram and a jam and everybody bored
+to death."
+
+"I shouldn't be bored. I should love it."
+
+His eyes were on the fire. And presently he said, "It seems queer to be
+away from it--New York. There's something about it that gets into your
+blood. You want it--as you do--drink."
+
+"Then you'll be going back."
+
+He jerked around to look at her. "No," sharply; "what makes you say
+that?"
+
+"Because--it--it doesn't seem possible that you could be--buried--here."
+
+"Do you feel buried?"
+
+She nodded. "Oh, yes."
+
+His face was grave. "And doesn't the school work--help?"
+
+She caught her breath. "That's the best part of it. You see I love--the
+children."
+
+He flashed a quick glance at her. "Then you're lonely sometimes?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I fancy these people aren't exactly--your kind. I wish you'd come and
+see my mother. She's awfully worth while, you know. And she'd be so glad
+to have you."
+
+She found herself saying, "My grandmother was Cynthia Warfield. She knew
+your grandfather. I have some old letters. I think your mother might like
+to see them."
+
+"No wonder I've been puzzling over you! Cynthia Warfield's portrait hangs
+in our library. And you're like your grandmother. Only you're young
+and--alive."
+
+Again his ringing laugh and her own to meet it. She felt so young and
+happy. So very, very young, and so very, very happy!
+
+Mrs. Bower, appearing importantly, announced supper. Beyond the hall,
+through the open door of the dining-room they could see the loaded table
+with the tureens of steaming oysters at each end.
+
+There was at once a rollicking stampede.
+
+Anne leaned down to wake Peggy. The child opened her heavy eyes, and
+murmured: "I want a drink."
+
+Richard glanced at her. "Hello, hello," he said, quickly. "What's the
+matter, Pussy?"
+
+"I'm not Pussy--I'm Peggy." The child was ready for tears.
+
+He picked her up in his arms and carried her to the light. With careful
+finger he lifted the heavy eyelids and touched the hot little cheeks.
+"How long has she been this way?" he asked Anne.
+
+"Just since supper. Is there anything the matter with her? Is she really
+sick, Dr. Brooks?"
+
+"Measles," he said succinctly. "You'd better get her straight to bed."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+_In Which a Gray Plush Pussy Cat Supplies a Theme._
+
+
+ANNE at the top of the stairs talked to Geoffrey Fox at the foot.
+
+"But you really ought not to stay."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because if you haven't had the measles you might get them, and, besides,
+poor Mrs. Bower is so busy."
+
+"Why not tell me the truth? You don't want me to stay."
+
+"What difference can it possibly make to me?"
+
+"It may make a great difference," Geoffrey said, quietly, "whether I go
+or stay, but we won't talk of that. I am here. All my traps, bag and
+baggage, typewriter and trunks--books and bathrobe--and yet you want to
+send me away."
+
+"I haven't anything to do with it. But the house is closed to every one."
+
+"And everything smells of antiseptics. I rather like that. I spent six
+weeks in a hospital once. I had a nervous breakdown, and the quiet was
+heavenly, and all the nurses were angels."
+
+She would not smile. "Of course if you will stay," she said, "you must
+take things as they come. Mrs. Bower will send your meals up to you. She
+won't have time to set a company table."
+
+"I'm not company; let me eat with the rest of you."
+
+She hesitated. "You wouldn't like it. I don't like it. There's no
+service, you see--we all just help ourselves."
+
+"I can help myself."
+
+She shook her head. "It will be easier for Mrs. Bower to bring it up."
+
+He climbed three steps and stopped. "Are you going to do all the
+nursing?"
+
+"I shall do some of it. Peggy is really ill. There are complications. And
+Mrs. Bower and Beulah have so much to do. We shall have to close the
+school. Dr. Brooks wants to save as many as possible from having it."
+
+"So Brooks is handling Peggy's case."
+
+"Of course. Peter Bower knew his grandfather."
+
+"Well, it is something to have a grandfather. And to follow in his
+footsteps."
+
+But her mind was not on grandfathers. "Dr. Brooks will be here in an hour
+and I must get Peggy's room ready. And will you please look after
+yourself for a little while? Eric will attend to your trunks."
+
+It took Geoffrey all the morning to settle. He heard Richard come and
+go. At noon Anne brought up his tray.
+
+Opening the door to her knock, he protested. "You shouldn't have done
+it."
+
+"Why not? It is all in the day's work. And I am not going to be silly
+about it any more."
+
+"You were never silly about it."
+
+"Yes, I was. But I have worked it all out in my mind. My bringing up the
+tray to you won't make me any less than I am or any more. It is the way
+we feel about ourselves that counts--not what other people think of us."
+
+"So you don't care what I think of you?"
+
+"No, not if I am doing the things I think are right."
+
+"And you don't care what Richard Brooks thinks?"
+
+The color mounted. "No," steadily.
+
+"Nor Miss Chesley?"
+
+"Of course not."
+
+"Not of course. You do care. You'd hate it if you thought they'd
+criticize. And you'd cry after you went to bed."
+
+She felt that such clairvoyance was uncanny. "I wouldn't cry."
+
+"Well, you'd feel like it."
+
+"Please don't talk about me in that way. It really doesn't make any
+difference how I feel, does it? And your lunch is getting cold."
+
+"What made you bring it? Why didn't you let Mrs. Bower or Beulah?"
+
+"Mrs. Bower is lying down, and Beulah has been ironing all the morning."
+
+"The next time call me, and I'll wait upon myself."
+
+"Perhaps I shall." She surveyed his tray. "I've forgotten the cream for
+your coffee."
+
+"I don't take cream. Oh, please don't go. I want you to see my books and
+my other belongings."
+
+He had brought dozens of books, a few pictures, a little gilded Chinese
+god, a bronze bust of Napoleon.
+
+"Everything has a reason for being dragged around with me. That etching
+of Helleu's is like my little sister, Mimi, who is at school in a
+convent, and who constitutes my whole family. The gilded Chinese god is a
+mascot--the Napoleon intrigues the imagination."
+
+"Do you think so much of Napoleon?" coldly. "He was a little great man.
+I'd rather talk to my children of George Washington."
+
+"You women have a grudge against him because of Josephine."
+
+"Yes. He killed something in himself when he put her from him. And the
+world knew it, and his downfall began. He forgot that love is the
+greatest thing in the world."
+
+How lovely she was, all fire and feeling!
+
+"Jove," he said, staring, "if you could write, you'd make people sit up
+and listen. You've kept your dreams. That's what the world wants--the
+stuff that dreams are made of. And most of us have lost ours by the time
+we know how to put things on paper."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For days the sound of Geoffrey's typewriter could be heard in the hall.
+"Does it disturb Peggy?" he asked Anne late one night as he met her on
+the stairs.
+
+"No; her room is too far away. You were so good to send her the lovely
+toys. She adores the plush pussy cat."
+
+"I like cats. They are coy--and caressing. Dogs are too frankly adoring."
+
+"The eternal masculine." She smiled at him. "Is your work coming on?"
+
+"I have a first chapter. May I read it to you?"
+
+"Please--I should love it."
+
+She was glad to sit quietly by the big fireplace. With eyes half-closed,
+she listened to the opening sentences. But as he proceeded, her
+listlessness vanished. And when he laid down the manuscript she was
+leaning forward, her slim hands clasped tensely on her knees, her eyes
+wide with interest.
+
+"Oh, oh," she told him, "how do you know it all--how can you make them
+live and breathe--like that?"
+
+For a moment he did not answer, then he said, "I don't know how I do it.
+No artist knows how he creates. It is like Life and Death--and other
+miracles. If I could keep to this pace, I'd have a masterpiece. But I
+shan't keep to it."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I never do."
+
+"But this time--with such a beginning."
+
+"Will you be my critic, Mistress Anne? Let me read to you now and
+then--like this?"
+
+"I am afraid I should spoil you with praise. It all seems so--wonderful."
+
+"You can't spoil me, and I like to be wonderful."
+
+In spite of his egotism, she found herself modifying her first
+unfavorable estimate of him. His quick eager speech, his mobile mouth,
+his mop of dark hair, his white restless hands, his long-lashed
+near-sighted eyes, these contributed a personality which had in it
+nothing commonplace or conventional.
+
+For three nights he read to her. On the fourth he had nothing to read.
+"It is the same old story," he burst out passionately. "I see mountain
+peaks, then, suddenly, darkness falls and my brain is blank."
+
+"Wait a little," she told him; "it will come back."
+
+"But it never comes back. All of my good beginnings flat out toward the
+end. And that's why I'm pot-boiling, because," bitterly, "I am not big
+enough for anything else."
+
+"You mustn't say such things. We achieve only as we believe in ourselves.
+Don't you know that? If you believe that things are going to end badly,
+they will end badly."
+
+"Oh, wise little school-teacher, how do you know?"
+
+"It is what I teach my children. That they must believe in themselves."
+
+"What else do you teach them?"
+
+"That they must believe in God and love their country, and then nothing
+can happen to them that they cannot bear. It is only when one loses faith
+and hope that life doesn't seem worth while."
+
+"And do you believe all that you teach?"
+
+Silence. She was gazing into the fire thoughtfully. "I believe it, but I
+don't always live up to it. That's the hard part, acting up the things
+that we believe. I tell my children that, and I tell them, too, that they
+must always keep on trying."
+
+She was delicious with her theories and her seriousness. And she was
+charming in the crisp blue gown that had been her uniform since the
+beginning of Peggy's illness.
+
+He laughed and leaned toward her. "Oh, Mistress Anne, Mistress Anne, how
+much you have to learn."
+
+She stood up. "Perhaps I know more than you think."
+
+"Are you angry because I said that? But I love your arguments."
+
+His frankness was irresistible; she could not take offense so she sat
+down again.
+
+"Perhaps," she said, hesitating, "you might understand better how I feel
+if I told you about my Great-uncle Rodman Warfield. When he was very
+young he went to Paris to study art, and he attracted much attention.
+Then after a while he began to find the people interested him more than
+pictures. You see we come from old Maryland stock. My grandmother,
+Cynthia Warfield, was one of the proudest women in Carroll. But Uncle
+Rodman doesn't believe in family pride, not the kind that sticks its nose
+in the air; and so when he came back to America he resolved to devote his
+talents to glorifying the humble. He lived among the poor and he painted
+pictures of them. And then one day there was an accident. He saved a
+woman from drowning between a ferry-boat and the slip, and he hurt his
+back. There was a sort of paralysis that affected the nerves of his
+hand--and he couldn't paint any more. He came to us--when I was a little
+girl. My father was dead, and mother had a small income. We couldn't
+afford servants, so mother sewed and Uncle Rod and I did the housework.
+And it was he who tried to teach me that work is the one royal thing in
+our lives."
+
+"Where is he now?"
+
+"When mother died our income was cut off, and--I had to leave him. He
+could have a home with a cousin of ours and teach her children. I might
+have stayed with her, but there was nothing for me to do. And we felt
+that it was best for me to--find myself. So I came here. He writes to
+me--every day----" She drew a long breath. "I don't think I could live
+without letters from my Uncle Rod."
+
+"So you are really a princess in disguise, and you would love to stick
+your nose in the air, but you don't quite dare?"
+
+"I shouldn't love to do anything snobbish."
+
+"There is no use in pretending that you are humble when you are not. And
+your Great-uncle Rodman is a dreamer. Life is what it is, not what we
+want it to be."
+
+"I like his dreams," she said, simply, "and I want to be as good as he
+thinks I am."
+
+"You don't have to be too good. You are too pretty. Do you know that
+Cynthia Warfield's granddaughter is a great beauty, Mistress Anne?"
+
+"I know that I don't like to have you say such things to me."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I am not sure that you mean them."
+
+"But I do mean them," eagerly.
+
+"Perhaps," stiffly, "but we won't talk about it. I must go up to Peggy."
+
+Peter Bower was with Peggy. He was a round and red-faced Peter with the
+kindest heart in the world. And Peggy was the apple of his eye.
+
+"Do you think she is better, Miss Anne?"
+
+"Indeed I do. And now you go and get some sleep, Mr. Bower. I'll stay
+with her until four, and then I'll wake Beulah."
+
+He left her with the daily paper and a new magazine, and with the light
+shaded, Anne sat down to read. Peggy was sleeping soundly with both arms
+around the plush pussy which Geoffrey had given her. It was a most
+lifelike pussy, gray-striped with green glass eyes and with a little red
+mouth that opened and mewed when you pulled a string. Hung by a ribbon
+around the pussy cat's neck was a little brass bell. As the child stirred
+in her sleep the little bell tinkled. There was no sound except the
+sighing of the wind. All the house was still.
+
+The paper was full of news of the great war. Anne read it carefully, and
+the articles on the same subject in the magazine. She felt that she must
+know as much as possible, so that she might speak to her children
+intelligently of the great conflict. Of Belgium and England, of France
+and Germany. She must be fair, with all those clear eyes focussed upon
+her. She must, indeed, attempt a sort of neutrality. But how could she be
+neutral, with her soul burning candles on the altar of the allies?
+
+As she read on and on in the silence of the night, there came to her the
+thought of the dead on the field of battle. What of those shining souls?
+What happened after men went out into the Great Beyond? Hun and Norman,
+Saxon and Slav, among the shadows were they all at Peace?
+
+Again the child stirred and the little bell tinkled. It seemed to Anne
+that the bell and the staring eyes were symbolic. The gay world played
+its foolish music and looked with unseeing eyes upon murder and madness.
+If little Peggy had lain there dead, the little bell would still have
+tinkled, the wide green eyes would still have stared.
+
+But Peggy, thank God, was alive. Her face, like old ivory against the
+whiteness of her pillow, showed the ravages of illness, but the doctor
+had said she was out of danger.
+
+The child stirred and spoke. "Anne," she whispered, "tell me about the
+bears."
+
+Anne knelt beside the bed. "We must be very quiet," she said. "I don't
+want to wake Beulah."
+
+So very softly she told the story. Of the Daddy Bear and the Mother Bear
+and the Baby Bear; of the little House in the Woods; of Goldilocks, the
+three bowls of soup, the three chairs, the three beds----
+
+In the midst of it all Peggy sat up. "I want a bowl of soup like the
+little bear."
+
+"But, darling, you've had your lovely supper."
+
+"I don't care." Peggy's lip quivered. "I'm just starved, and I can't wait
+until I have my breakfast."
+
+"Let me tell you the rest of the story."
+
+"No. I don't want to hear it. I want a bowl of soup like the little
+bear's."
+
+"Maybe it wasn't nice soup, Peggy."
+
+"But you _said_ it was. You said that the Mother Bear made it out of the
+corn from the farmer's field, and the cock that the fox brought, and she
+seasoned it with herbs that she found at the edge of the forest. You said
+yourself it was _dee-licious_ soup, Miss Anne."
+
+She began to cry weakly.
+
+"Dearie, don't. If I go down into the kitchen and warm some broth will
+you keep very still?"
+
+"Yes. Only I don't want just broth. I want soup like the little bear
+had."
+
+"Peggy, I am not a fairy godmother. I can't wave my wand and get things
+in the middle of the night."
+
+"Well, anyhow, you can put it in a blue bowl, you _said_ the little bear
+had his in a blue bowl, and you said he had ten crackers in it. I want
+ten crackers----"
+
+The kitchen was warm and shadowy, with the light of a kerosene lamp above
+the cook-stove. Anne flitted about noiselessly, finding a little
+saucepan, finding a little blue bowl, breaking one cracker into ten bits
+to satisfy the insistent Peggy, stirring the bubbling broth with a spoon
+as she bent above it.
+
+And as she stirred, she was thinking of Geoffrey Fox, not as she had
+thought of Richard, with pulses throbbing and heart fluttering, but
+calmly; of his book and of the little bust of Napoleon, and of the
+things that she had been reading about the war.
+
+She poured the soup out of the saucepan, and set it steaming on a low
+tray. Then quietly she ascended the stairs. Geoffrey's door was wide open
+and his room was empty, but through the dimness of the long hall she
+discerned his figure, outlined against a wide window at the end. Back of
+him the world under the light of the waning moon showed black and white
+like a great wash drawing.
+
+He turned as she came toward him. "I heard you go down," he said. "I've
+been writing all night--and I've written--perfect rot." His hands went
+out in a despairing gesture.
+
+Composed and quiet in her crisp linen, she looked up at him. "Write about
+the war," she said; "take three soldiers,--French, German and English.
+Make their hearts hot with hatred, and then--let them lie wounded
+together on the field of battle in the darkness of the night--with death
+ahead--and let each one tell his story--let them be drawn together by the
+knowledge of a common lot--a common destiny----"
+
+"What made you think of that?" he demanded.
+
+"Peggy's pussy cat." She told him of the staring eyes and the tinkling
+bell. "But I mustn't stay. Peggy is waiting for her soup."
+
+He gazed at her with admiration. "How do you do it?"
+
+"Do what?"
+
+"Dictate a heaven-born plot to me in one breath, and speak of Peggy's
+soup in the next. You are like Werther's Charlotte."
+
+"I am like myself. And we mustn't stay here talking. It is time we were
+both in bed. I am going to wake Beulah when I have fed Peggy."
+
+He made a motion of salute. "The princess serves," he said, laughing.
+
+But as she passed on, calm and cool and collected, carrying the tray
+before her like the famous Chocolate lady on the backs of magazines, the
+laugh died on his lips. She was not to be laughed at, this little Anne
+Warfield, who held her head so high!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+_In Which Geoffrey Writes of Soldiers and Their Souls._
+
+
+EVE CHESLEY writing from New York was still in a state of rebellion.
+
+"And now they all have the _measles_. Richard, it needed only your letter
+to let me know what you have done to yourself. When I think of you,
+tearing around the country on your old white horse, with your ears tied
+up--I am sure you tie up your ears--it is a perfect nightmare. Oh, Dicky
+Boy, and you might be here specializing on appendicitis or something
+equally reasonable and modern. I feel as if the world were upside down.
+Do children in New York ever have the measles? Somehow I never hear of
+it. It seems to me almost archaic--like mumps. Nobody in society ever has
+the mumps, or if they do, they keep it a dead secret, like a family
+skeleton, or a hard-working grandfather.
+
+"Your letters are so short, and they don't tell me what you do with your
+evenings. Don't you miss us? Don't you miss me? And our good times? And
+the golden lights of the city? Winifred Ames wants you for a dinner dance
+on the twentieth. Can't you turn the measley kiddies over to some one
+else and come? Say 'yes,' Dicky, dear. Oh, you musn't be just a country
+doctor. You were born for bigger things, and some day you will see it and
+be sorry."
+
+Richard's letter, dashed off between visits to the "measley kiddies," was
+as follows:
+
+"There aren't any bigger things, Eve, and I shan't be sorry. I can't get
+away just now, and to be frank, I don't want to. There is nothing dull
+about measles. They have aspects of interest unknown to a dinner dance. I
+am not saying that I don't miss some of the things that I have left
+behind--my good friends--you and Pip and the Dutton-Ames. But there are
+compensations. And you should see my horse. He's a heavy fellow like a
+horse of Flanders; I call him Ben because he is big and gentle. I don't
+tie up my ears, but I should if I wanted to. And please don't think I am
+ungrateful because I am not coming to the Dutton-Ames dance. Why don't
+you and the rest drift down here for a week-end? Next Friday, the Friday
+after? Let me know. There's good skating now that the snows have
+stopped."
+
+He signed it and sealed it and on the way to see little Peggy he dropped
+it into the box. Then he entirely forgot it. It was a wonderful morning,
+with a sky like sapphire above a white world, the dog Toby racing ahead
+of him, and big gentle Ben at a trot.
+
+At the innocent word "compensations" Evelyn Chesley pricked up her ears.
+What compensations? She got Philip Meade on the telephone.
+
+"Richard has asked us for the week-end, Pip. Could we go in your car?"
+
+"Unless it snows again. But why seek such solitudes, Eve?"
+
+"I want to take Richard a fur cap. I am sure he ties up his ears."
+
+"Send it."
+
+"In a cold-blooded parcel post package? I will not. Pip, if you won't go,
+I'll kidnap Aunt Maude, and carry her off by train."
+
+"And leave me out? Not much. 'Whither thou goest----'"
+
+"Even when I am on the trail of another man? Pip, you are a dear idiot."
+
+"The queen's fool."
+
+So it was decided that on Friday, weather permitting, they should go.
+
+Aunt Maude, protesting, said, "It isn't proper, Eve. Girls in my day
+didn't go running around after men. They sat at home and waited."
+
+"Why wait, dearest? When I see a good thing I go for it."
+
+"Eve----!"
+
+"And anyhow I am not running after Dicky. I am rescuing him."
+
+"From what?"
+
+"From his mother, dearest, and his own dreams. Their heads are in the
+clouds, and they don't know it."
+
+"I think myself that Nancy is making a mistake."
+
+"More of a mistake than she understands." The lightness left Eve's voice.
+She was silent as she ate an orange and drank a cup of clear coffee.
+Eve's fashionable and adorable thinness was the result of abstinence and
+of exercise. Facing daily Aunt Maude's plumpness, she had sacrificed ease
+and appetite on the altar of grace and beauty.
+
+Yet Aunt Maude's plumpness was not the plumpness of inelegance. Nothing
+about Aunt Maude was inelegant. She was of ancient Knickerbocker stock.
+She had been petrified by years of social exclusiveness into something
+less amiable than her curves and dimples promised. Her hair was gray, and
+not much of it was her own. Her curled bang and high coronet braid were
+held flatly against her head by a hair net. She wore always certain
+chains and bracelets which proclaimed the family's past prosperity. Her
+present prosperity was evidenced by the somewhat severe richness of her
+attire. Her complexion was delicately yellow and her wrinkles were deep.
+Her eyes were light blue and coldly staring. In manner she seemed to set
+herself against any world but her own.
+
+The money on which the two women lived was Aunt Maude's. She expected to
+make Eve her heir. In the meantime she gave her a generous allowance and
+indulged most of her whims.
+
+The latest whim was the new breakfast room in which they now sat, with
+the winter sun streaming through the small panes of a wide south window.
+
+For sixty odd years Aunt Maude had eaten her breakfast promptly at eight
+from a tray in her own room. It had been a hearty breakfast of hot breads
+and chops. At one she had lunched decently in the long dim dining-room in
+a mid-Victorian atmosphere of Moquet and marble mantels, carved walnut
+and plush curtains.
+
+And now back of this sacred dining-room Eve had built out a structure of
+glass and of stone, looking over a scrap of enclosed city garden, and
+furnished in black and white, relieved by splashes of brilliant color.
+Aunt Maude hated the green parrot and the flame-colored fishes in the
+teakwood aquarium. She thought that Eve looked like an actress in the
+little jacket with the apple-green ribbons which she wore when she came
+down at twelve.
+
+"Aren't we ever going to eat any more luncheons?" had been Aunt Maude's
+plaintive question when she realized that she was in the midst of a
+gastronomic revolution.
+
+"Nobody does, dearest. If you are really up-to-date you breakfast and
+dine--the other meals are vague--illusory."
+
+"People in my time----" Aunt Maude had stated.
+
+"People in your time," Evelyn had interrupted flippantly, "were wise and
+good. Nobody wants to be wise and good in these days. We want to be smart
+and sophisticated. Your good old stuffy dining-rooms were like your good
+old stuffy consciences. Now my breakfast room is symbolic--the green and
+white for the joy of living, and the black for my sins."
+
+She stood up on tiptoe to feed the parrot. "To-morrow," she announced, "I
+am to have a black cat. I found one at the cat show--with green eyes. And
+I am going to match his cushion to his eyes."
+
+"I'd like a cat," Aunt Maude said, unexpectedly, "but I can't say that I
+care for black ones. The grays are the best mousers."
+
+Eve looked at her reproachfully. "Do you think that cats catch mice?" she
+demanded,--"up-to-date cats? They sit on cushions and add emphasis to the
+color scheme. Winifred Ames has a yellow one to go with her primrose
+panels."
+
+The telephone rang. A maid answered it. "It is for you, Miss Evelyn."
+
+"It is Pip," Eve said, as she turned from the telephone; "he's coming
+up."
+
+Aunt Maude surveyed her. "You're not going to receive him as you are?"
+
+"As I am? Why not?"
+
+"Eve, go to your room and put something _on_," Aunt Maude agonized; "when
+I was a girl----"
+
+Evelyn dropped a kiss on her cheek. "When you were a girl, Aunt Maude,
+you were very pretty, and you wore very low necks and short sleeves on
+the street, and short dresses--and--and----"
+
+Remembering the family album, Aunt Maude stopped her hastily. "It doesn't
+make any difference what I wore. You are not going to receive any
+gentleman in that ridiculous jacket."
+
+Eve surveyed herself in an oval mirror set above a console-table. "I
+think I look rather nice. And Pip would like me in anything. Aunt Maude,
+it's a queer world for us women. The men that we want don't want us, and
+the men that we don't want adore us. The emancipation of women will come
+when they can ask men to marry them."
+
+She was ruffling the feathers on the green parrot's head. He caught her
+finger carefully in his claw and crooned.
+
+Aunt Maude rose. "I had twenty proposals--your uncle's was the twentieth.
+I loved him at first sight, and I loved him until he left me."
+
+"Uncle was a dear," Eve agreed, "but suppose he hadn't asked you, Aunt
+Maude?"
+
+"I should have remained single to the end of my days."
+
+"Oh, no, you wouldn't, Aunt Maude. You would have married the wrong
+man--that's the way it always ends--if women didn't marry the wrong men
+half the world would be old maids."
+
+Philip Meade was much in love. He had money, family, good looks and
+infinite patience. Some day he meant to marry Eve. But he was aware that
+she was not yet in love with him.
+
+She came down gowned for the street. And thus kept him waiting. "It was
+Aunt Maude's fault. She made me dress. Pip, where shall we walk?"
+
+He did not care. He cared only to be with her. He told her so, and she
+smiled up at him wistfully. "You're such a dear--I wish----"
+
+She stopped.
+
+"What do you wish?" he asked eagerly.
+
+"For the--sun. You are the moon. May I call you my moon-man, Pip?"
+
+He knew what she meant "Yes. But you must remember that some day I shall
+not be content to take second place--I shall fight for the head of your
+line of lovers."
+
+"Line of lovers--_Pip_. I don't like the sound of it."
+
+"Why not? It's true."
+
+Again she was wistful. "I wonder how many of them really--care? Pip, it
+is the one-proposal girl who is lucky. She has no problems. She simply
+takes the man she can get!"
+
+They were swinging along Fifth Avenue. He stopped at a flower shop and
+bought her a tight little knot of yellow roses which matched her hair.
+She was in brown velvet with brown boots and brown furs. Her skin showed
+pink and white in the clear cold. She and the big man by her side were a
+pair good to look upon, and people turned to look.
+
+Coming to a famous jewel shop she turned in. "I am going to have all of
+Aunt Maude's opals set in platinum to make a long chain. She gave them to
+me; and there'll be diamonds at intervals. I want to wear smoke-colored
+tulle at Winifred Ames' dinner dance--and the opals will light it."
+
+Philip Meade's mind was not poetic, yet as his eyes followed Evelyn, he
+was aware that this was an atmosphere which belonged to her. Her beauty
+was opulent, needing richness to set it off, needing the shine of jewels,
+the shimmer of silk----
+
+If he married her he could give her--a tiara of diamonds--a necklace of
+pearls--a pendant--a ring. His eyes swept the store adorning her.
+
+When they came out he said, "I think I am showing a greatness of mind
+which should win your admiration."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"In taking you to Crossroads."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"You know why. Shall you write to Brooks that we are coming?"
+
+"No. I want it to be a surprise. That's half the fun."
+
+But there was nothing funny about it, as it proved, for it was on that
+very Friday morning that Richard had found Peggy much better, and Anne
+very pale with circles under her eyes.
+
+He went away, and later his mother called Anne up. She asked her to spend
+the day at Crossroads. Richard would come for her and would bring her
+home after dinner.
+
+Anne, with a fluttering sense of excitement, packed her ruffled white
+frock in a little bag, and was ready when Richard arrived.
+
+At the gate they met Geoffrey Fox. The young doctor stopped his horse.
+"Come and have lunch with us, Fox?"
+
+"I'm sorry. But I must get to work. How long are you going to keep Miss
+Warfield?"
+
+"As late as we can."
+
+"To-night?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I have a chapter ready to read to her, and you ask her to eat with you
+as if she were any every-day sort of person. Did you know that she is to
+play Beatrice to my Dante?"
+
+"Don't be silly," Anne said; "you mustn't listen to him, Dr. Brooks."
+
+Richard's eyes went from one to the other. "What do you know of Fox?" he
+asked, as they drove on.
+
+"Nothing, except that he is writing a book."
+
+"I'll ask Eve about him; she's a lion-hunter and she's in with a lot of
+literary lights."
+
+Even as he spoke Evelyn was speeding toward him in Philip's car. He had
+forgotten her and his invitation for the week-end. But she had not
+forgotten, and she sparkled and glowed as she thought of Richard's royal
+welcome. For how could she know, as she drew near and nearer, that he was
+welcoming another guest, taking off the little teacher's old brown coat,
+noting the flush on her young cheeks, the pretty appeal of her manner to
+his mother.
+
+"You are sure I won't be in the way, Mrs. Brooks?"
+
+"My dear, my dear, of course not. Richard has been telling me that your
+grandmother was Cynthia Warfield. Did you know that my father was in love
+with Cynthia before he married my mother?"
+
+"The letters said so."
+
+"I shall want to see them. And to hear about your Great-uncle Rodman. We
+thought at one time that he was going to be famous, and then came that
+dreadful accident."
+
+They had her in a big chair now, with a high back which peaked over her
+head and Nancy had another high-backed chair, and Richard standing on the
+hearth-rug surveyed the two of them contentedly.
+
+"Mother, I am going to give myself fifteen minutes right here and a half
+hour for lunch, and then I'll go out and make calls, and you and Miss
+Warfield can take a nap and be ready to talk to me to-night."
+
+Anne smiled up at him. "Do you always make everybody mind?"
+
+"I try to boss mother a bit--but I am not sure that I succeed."
+
+Before luncheon was served Cynthia Warfield's picture, which hung in the
+library, was pointed out to Anne. She was made to stand under it, so that
+they might see that her hair was the same color--and her eyes. Cynthia
+was painted in pink silk with a petticoat of fine lace, and with pearls
+in her hair.
+
+"Some day," Anne said, "when my ship comes in, I am going to wear stiff
+pink silk and pearls and buckled slippers and yards and yards of old
+lace."
+
+"No, you're not," Richard told her; "you are going to wear white with
+more than a million ruffles, and little flat black shoes. Mother, you
+should have seen her at Beulah Bower's party."
+
+"White is always nice for a young girl," said pleasant Nancy Brooks.
+
+The dining-room looked out upon the river, with an old-fashioned bay
+window curving out. The table was placed near the window. Anne's eyes
+brightened as she looked at the table. It was just as she had pictured
+it, all twinkling glass and silver, and with Richard at the head of it.
+But what she had not pictured was the moment in which he stood to say the
+simple and beautiful grace which his grandfather had said years before
+in that room of many memories.
+
+The act seemed to set him apart from other men. It added dignity and
+strength to his youth and radiance. He was master of a house, and he felt
+that his house should have a soul!
+
+Anne, writing of it the next night to her Uncle Rod, spoke of that simple
+grace:
+
+"Uncle Rod, it seemed to me that while most of the world was forgetting
+God, he was remembering Him. Nobody says grace at Bower's--and sometimes
+I don't even say it in my heart. He looked like a saint as he stood there
+with the window behind him. Wasn't there a soldier saint--St. Michael?
+
+"Could you imagine Jimmie Ford saying grace? Could you imagine him even
+at the head of his own table? When I used to think of marrying him, I had
+a vision of eternal motor riding in his long blue car--with the world
+rushing by in a green streak.
+
+"But I am not wanting much to talk of Jimmie Ford. Though perhaps before
+I finish this I shall whisper what I thought of the things you had to say
+of him in your letter.
+
+"Well, after lunch I had a nap, and then there was dinner with David
+Tyson in an old-fashioned dress-suit, and Mrs. Nancy in thin black with
+pearls, and St. Michael groomed and shining.
+
+"It was all quite like a slice of Heaven after my hard days nursing
+Peggy. We had coffee in the library, and then Dr. Richard and I went
+into the music-room and I played for him. I sang the song that you like
+about the 'Lady of the West Country':
+
+    "'I think she was the most beautiful lady
+      That ever was in the West Country.
+      But beauty vanishes, beauty passes,
+      However rare, rare it be;
+      And when I crumble who shall remember
+      That Lady of the West Country?'
+
+"He liked it and made me sing it twice, and then a dreadful thing
+happened. A motor stopped at the door and some one ran up the steps. We
+heard voices and turned around, and there were the Lovely Ladies back
+again with the two men, and a chauffeur in the background with the bags!
+
+"It seems that they had motored down at Dr. Richard's invitation for a
+week-end, and that he had forgotten it!
+
+"Of course you are asking, 'Why was it a dreadful thing, my dear?' Uncle
+Rod, I stood there smiling a welcome at them all, and Dr. Richard said:
+'You know Miss Warfield, Eve,' and then she said, 'Oh, yes,' in a frigid
+fashion, and I knew by her manner that back in her mind she was
+remembering that I was the girl who had waited on the table!
+
+"Oh, you needn't tell me that I mustn't feel that way, Uncle Rod. I feel
+it, and feel it, and _feel_ it. How can I help feeling it when I know
+that if I had Evelyn Chesley's friends and Evelyn's fortune, people
+would look on Me-Myself in quite a different way. You see, they would
+judge me by the Outside-Person part of me, which would be soft and silky
+and secure, and not dowdy and diffident.
+
+"Oh, Uncle Rod, is Geoffrey Fox right? And have you and I been dreaming
+all these years? The rest of the world doesn't dream; it makes money and
+spends it, and makes money and spends it, and makes money and spends it.
+Only you and I are still old-fashioned enough to want sunsets; the rest
+of them want motor cars and yachts and trips to Europe. That was what
+Jimmie Ford wanted, and that was why he didn't want me.
+
+"There, I have said it, Uncle Rod. Your letter made me know it. Perhaps I
+have hoped and hoped a little that he might come back to me. I have made
+up scenes in my mind of how I would scorn him and send him away, and
+indeed I would send him away, for there isn't any love left--only a lot
+of hurt pride.
+
+"To think that he saw you and spoke to you and didn't say one word about
+me. And just a year ago at Christmas time, do you remember, Uncle Rod?
+The flowers he sent, and the pearl ring--and now the flowers are dead,
+and the ring went back to him.
+
+"Oh, I can't talk about it even to you!
+
+"Well, all the evening Eve Chesley held the center of the stage. And the
+funny part of it was that I found myself much interested in the things
+she had to tell. Her life is a sort of Arabian Nights' existence. She
+lives with her Aunt Maude in a big house east of Central Park, and she
+told about the green parrot for her new black and white breakfast room,
+and the flame-colored fishes in an aquarium--and she is having her opals
+set in platinum to go with a silver gown that she is to wear at the
+Dutton-Ames dance.
+
+"I like the Dutton-Ames. He is dark and massive--a splendid foil for his
+wife's slenderness and fairness. They are much in love with each other.
+He always sits beside her if he can, and she looks up at him and smiles,
+and last night I saw him take her hand where it hung among the folds of
+her gown, and he held it after that--and it made me think of father and
+mother--and of the way they cared. Jimmie Ford could never care like
+that--but Dr. Richard could. He cares that way for his mother--he could
+care for the woman he loved.
+
+"He took me home in Mr. Meade's limousine. It was moonlight, and he told
+the chauffeur to drive the long way by the river road.
+
+"I like him very much. He believes in things, and--and I rather think,
+that _his_ ship is packed with dreams--but I am not sure, Uncle Rod."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was when Anne had come in from her moonlight ride with Richard,
+shutting the door carefully behind her, that she found Geoffrey Fox
+waiting for her in the big front room.
+
+"Oh," she stammered.
+
+"And you really have the grace to blush? Do you know what time it is?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Twelve! Midnight! And you have been riding with only the chauffeur for
+chaperone."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"And you have kept me waiting. That's the worst of it. You may break all
+of the conventional commandments if you wish. But you mustn't keep me
+waiting."
+
+His laugh rang high, his cheeks were flushed. Anne had never seen him in
+a mood like this. In his loose coat with a flowing black tie and with his
+ruffled hair curling close about his ears, he looked boyish and handsome
+like the pictures she had seen of Byron in an old book.
+
+"Sit down, sit down," he was insisting; "now that you are here, you must
+listen."
+
+"It is too late," she demurred, "and we'll wake everybody up."
+
+"No, we shan't. The doors are shut. I saw to that. We are as much alone
+as if we were in a desert. And I can't sleep until I have read that
+chapter to you--please----"
+
+Reluctantly, with her wraps on, she sat down.
+
+"Take off your hat."
+
+He stood over her while she removed it, and helped her out of her coat
+"Look at me," he said, peremptorily. "I hate to read to wandering eyes."
+
+He threw himself into a chair and began:
+
+"_So they marched away--young Franz from Nuremberg and young George from
+London, and Michel straight from the vineyards on the coast of France._"
+
+That was the beginning of Geoffrey Fox's famous story: "The Three Souls,"
+the story which was to bring him something of fortune as well as of fame,
+the story which had been suggested to Anne Warfield by the staring eyes
+of Peggy's pussy cat.
+
+As she listened, Anne saw three youths starting out from home, marching
+gaily through the cities and steadily along the roads--marching,
+marching--Franz from Nuremburg, young George from London, and Michel from
+his sunlighted vineyards, drawing close and closer, unconscious of the
+fate that was bringing them together, thinking of the glory of battle,
+and of the honor of Kaiser and King and of the Republic.
+
+The shadow of the great conflict falls gradually upon them. They meet the
+wounded, the refugees, they hear the roar of the guns, they listen to the
+tales of those who have been in the thick of it.
+
+Then come privations, suffering, winter in the trenches--Franz on one
+side, young George on the other, and Michel; then fighting--fear----
+
+Geoffrey stopped there. "Shall I have them afraid?"
+
+"I think they would be afraid. But they would keep on fighting, and that
+would be heroic."
+
+She added, "How well you do it!"
+
+"This part is easy. It will be the last of it that I shall find
+hard--when I deal with their souls."
+
+"Oh, you must show at the last that it is because of their souls that
+they are brothers. Each man has had a home, he has had love, each of them
+has had his hopes and dreams for the future, for his middle-age and his
+old age, and now there is to be no middle-age, no old age--and in their
+knowledge of their common lot their hatred dies."
+
+"I am afraid I can't do it," he said, moodily. "I should have to swing
+myself out into an atmosphere which I have never breathed."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Oh, I am of the earth--earthy. I have sold my birthright, I have yearned
+for the flesh-pots, I have fed among--swine. I have done all of the other
+things which haven't Biblical sanction. And now you expect me to write of
+souls."
+
+"I expect you to give to the world your best. You speak of your talent as
+if it were a little thing. And it is not a little thing."
+
+"Do you mean that----?"
+
+"I mean that it is--God given."
+
+Out of a long silence he said: "I thank you for saying that. Nobody has
+ever said such a thing to me before."
+
+He let her go then. And as she stood before her door a little later and
+whispered, "Good-night," he caught her hand and held it. "Mistress
+Anne--will you remember me--now and then--in your little white prayers?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+_In Which a Green-Eyed Monster Grips Eve._
+
+
+EVELYN, coming down late on the morning after her unexpected arrival,
+asked: "How did you happen to have her here, Dicky?"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"The little waitress?"
+
+"Eve----" warningly.
+
+"Well, then, the little school-teacher."
+
+"Since when did you become a snob, Eve?"
+
+"Don't be so sharp about it, Dicky. I'm not a snob. But you must admit
+that it was rather surprising to find her here, when the last time I saw
+her she was passing things at the Bower's table."
+
+"She is a granddaughter of Cynthia Warfield."
+
+"Who's Cynthia? I never heard of her."
+
+"You have seen her portrait in our library."
+
+"Which portrait?"
+
+He led the way and showed it to her. Eve, looking at it thoughtfully,
+remarked, "Why should a girl like that lower herself by serving----?"
+
+"She probably doesn't feel that she can lower herself by anything. She is
+what she is."
+
+She shrugged. "You know as well as I that people can't do such
+things--and get away with it. She may be very nice and all that----"
+
+"She is nice."
+
+"Well, don't lose your temper over it, and don't fall in love with her,
+Dicky."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Haven't you done enough foolish things without doing--that?"
+
+"Doing what?" ominously.
+
+"Oh, you know what I mean," impatiently. "Aren't you ever going to come
+to your senses, Dicky?"
+
+"Suppose we don't talk of it, Eve."
+
+She found herself wanting to talk of it. She wanted to rage and rant. She
+was astonished at the primitiveness of her emotions. She had laughed her
+way through life and had prided herself on the dispassionateness of her
+point of view. And now it was only by the exercise of the utmost
+self-control that she was able to swing the conversation toward other
+topics.
+
+The coming of the rest of the party eased things up a little. They had
+all slept late, and Richard had made a half dozen calls before he had
+joined Eve in the Garden Room. He had stopped at David's, and had heard
+that on Monday there was to be a drag-hunt and breakfast at the club.
+David hoped they would all stay over for it.
+
+"Cousin David has a bunch of weedy-looking hounds," Richard explained;
+"he lets them run as they please, and they've been getting up a fox
+nearly every night. He thought you might like to ride up to the ridge in
+the moonlight and have a view of them. I can get you some pretty fair
+mounts at Bower's."
+
+There was a note of wistful appeal in Eve's voice. "Do you really want
+us, Dicky?"
+
+He smiled at her. "Of course. Don't be silly, Eve."
+
+She saw that she was forgiven, and smiled back. She had not slept much
+the night before. She had heard Richard come in after his ride with Anne,
+and she had been waked later by the sound of the telephone. In the room
+next to hers Richard's subdued voice had answered. And presently there
+had been the sound of his careful footsteps on the stairs.
+
+She had crept out of bed and between the curtains had looked out. The
+world was full of the shadowy paleness which comes with the waning of the
+moon. The road beyond the garden showed like a dull gray ribbon against
+the blackness of the hills. On this road appeared presently Richard on
+his big white horse, the dog Toby, a shadow among the shadows as he ran
+on ahead of them.
+
+On and on they sped up the dull gray road, a spectral rider on a spectral
+horse. She had wondered where he might be going. It must have been some
+sudden and urgent call to take him out thus in the middle of the night.
+For the first time she realized what his life meant. He could never
+really be at his ease. Always there was before him the possibility of
+some dread adventure--death might be on its way at this very moment.
+
+Wide-awake and wrapped in her great rug, she had waited, and after a time
+Richard had returned. The dawn was rising on the hills, and the world was
+pink. His head was up and he was urging his horse to a swift gallop.
+
+When at last he reached his room, she had gone to bed. But when she slept
+it was to dream that the man on the white horse was riding away from her,
+and that when she called he would not come.
+
+But now with his smile upon her, she decided that she was making too much
+of it all. The affair with the little school-teacher might not be in the
+least serious. Men had their fancies, and Dicky was not a fool.
+
+She knew her power over him, and her charm. His little boyhood had been
+heavy with sorrow and soberness; she had lightened it by her gaiety and
+good nature. Eve had taken her orphaned state philosophically. Her
+parents had died before she knew them. Her Aunt Maude was rich and gave
+her everything; she was queen of her small domain. Richard, on the other
+hand, had been early oppressed by anxieties--his care for his strong
+little mother, his real affection for his weak father, culminating in
+the tragedy which had come during his college days. In all the years Eve
+had been his good comrade and companion. She had cheered him, commanded
+him, loved him.
+
+And he had loved her. He had never analyzed the quality of his love. She
+was his good friend, his sister. If he had ever thought of her as his
+sweetheart or as his wife, it had always been with the feeling that Eve
+had too much money. No man had a right to live on his wife's bounty.
+
+He had a genuinely happy day with her. He showed her the charming old
+house which she had never seen. He showed her the schoolhouse, still
+closed on account of the epidemic. He showed her the ancient ballroom
+built out in a separate wing.
+
+"A little money would make it lovely, Richard."
+
+"It is lovely without the money."
+
+Winifred Ames spoke earnestly from the window where, with her husband's
+arm about her, she was observing the sunset. "Some day Tony and I are
+going to have a house like this--and then we'll be happy."
+
+"Aren't you happy now?" her husband demanded.
+
+"Yes. But not on my own plan, as it were." Then softly so that no one
+else could hear, "I want just you, Tony--and all the rest of the world
+away."
+
+"Dear Heart----" He dared not say more, for Pip's envious eyes were upon
+them.
+
+"When I marry you, Eve, may I hold your hand in public?"
+
+"You may--when I marry you."
+
+"Good. Whenever I lose faith in the bliss of matrimony, I have only to
+look at Win and Tony to be cheered and sustained by their example."
+
+Nancy, playing the little lovely hostess, agreed. "If they weren't so
+new-fashioned in every way I should call them an old-fashioned couple."
+
+"Love is never out of fashion, Mrs. Nancy," said Eve; "is it, Dicky Boy?"
+
+"Ask Pip."
+
+"Love," said Philip solemnly, "is the newest thing in the world and the
+oldest. Each lover is a Columbus discovering an unknown continent."
+
+In the hall the old clock chimed. "Nobody is to dress for dinner,"
+Richard said, "if we are to ride afterward. I'll telephone for the
+horses."
+
+He telephoned and rode down later on his big Ben to bring the horses up.
+As he came into the yard at Bower's he saw a light in the old stable.
+Dismounting, he went to the open door. Anne was with Diogenes. The
+lantern was set on the step above her, and she was feeding the old drake.
+Her body was in the shadow, her face luminous. Yet it was a sober little
+face, set with tired lines. Looking at her, Richard reached a sudden
+determination.
+
+He would ask her to ride with them to the ridge.
+
+At the sound of his voice she turned and her face changed. "Did I startle
+you?" he asked.
+
+"No," she smiled at him. "Only I was thinking about you, and there you
+were." There was no coquetry in her tone; she stated the fact frankly and
+simply. "Do you remember how you put Toby in here, and how Diogenes hated
+it?"
+
+"I remember how you looked under the lantern."
+
+"Oh,"--she had not expected that,--"do you?"
+
+"Yes. But I had seen you before. You were standing on a rock with holly
+in your arms. I saw you from the train throw something into the river. I
+have often wondered what it was."
+
+"I didn't want to burn my holly wreaths after Christmas. I hate to burn
+things that have been alive."
+
+"So do I. Eve would say that we were sentimentalists. But I have never
+quite been able to see why a sentimentalist isn't quite as worthy of
+respect as a materialist--however, I am not here to argue that. I want
+you to ride with me to the ridge. To see the foxes by moonlight," he
+further elucidated. "Run in and get ready. I am to take some horses up
+for the others."
+
+She rose and reached for her lantern. "The others?" she looked an inquiry
+over her shoulder.
+
+"Eve and her crowd. They are still at Crossroads."
+
+She stood irresolute. Then, "I think I'd rather not go."
+
+"Why not?" sharply.
+
+She told him the truth bravely. "I am a little afraid of women like
+that."
+
+"Of Eve and Winifred? Why?"
+
+"We are people of two worlds, Dr. Brooks--and they feel it."
+
+His conversation with Eve recurring to him, he was not prepared to argue.
+But he was prepared to have his own way.
+
+"Isn't your world mine?" he demanded. "And you mustn't mind Eve. She's
+all right when you know her. Just stiffen your backbone, and remember
+that you are the granddaughter of Cynthia Warfield."
+
+After that she gave in and came down presently in a shabby little habit
+with her hair tied with a black bow. "It's a good thing it is dark," she
+said. "I haven't any up-to-date clothes."
+
+As they went along he asked her to go to the hunt breakfast on Monday.
+
+"I can't. School opens and my work begins."
+
+"By Jove, I had forgotten. I shall be glad to hear the bell. When I am
+riding over the hills it seems to call--as it called to my grandfather
+and to be saying the same things; it is a great inspiration to have a
+background like that to one's life. Do you know what I mean?"
+
+She did know, and they talked about it--these two young and eager souls
+to whom life spoke of things to be done, and done well.
+
+Eve, standing on the steps at Crossroads, saw them coming. "Oh, I'm not
+going," she said to Winifred passionately.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"He has that girl with him."
+
+"What girl?"
+
+"Anne Warfield."
+
+Winifred's eyes opened wide. "She's a darling, Eve. I liked her so much
+last night."
+
+"I don't see why he has to bring her into everything."
+
+"All the men are in love with her; even Tony has eyes for her, and
+Pip----"
+
+"What makes you defend her, Win? She isn't one of us, and you know it."
+
+"I don't know it. She belongs to older stock than either you or I, Eve.
+And if she didn't, don't you know a lady when you see one?"
+
+Eve threw up her hands. "I sometimes think the world is going mad--there
+aren't any more lines drawn."
+
+"If there were," said Winifred softly, and perhaps a bit maliciously, "I
+fancy that Anne Warfield might be the one to draw them--and leave us on
+the wrong side, Eve."
+
+It was Winifred who welcomed Anne, and who rode beside her later, and it
+was of Winifred that Anne spoke repentantly as she and Richard rode
+together in the hills. "I want to take back the things I said about Mrs.
+Ames. She is just--heavenly sweet."
+
+He smiled. "I knew you would like her," he said. But neither of them
+mentioned Eve.
+
+For Evelyn's manner had been insufferable. Anne might have been a shadow
+on the grass, a cloud across the sky, a stone in the road for all the
+notice she had taken of her. It was a childish thing to do, but then Eve
+was childish. And she was having the novel experience of being overlooked
+for the first time by Richard. She was aware, too, that she had offended
+him deeply and that the cause of her offending was another woman.
+
+When they came to the ridge Richard drew Anne's horse, with his own,
+among the trees. He left Eve to Pip. Winifred and her husband were with
+David.
+
+Far off in the distance a steady old hound gave tongue--then came the
+music of the pack--the swift silent figure of the fox, straight across
+the open moonlighted space in front of them.
+
+Anne gave a little gasp. "It is old Pete," Richard murmured; "they'll
+never catch him. I'll tell you about him on the way down."
+
+So as he rode beside her after that perfect hour in which the old fox
+played with the tumultuous pack, at his ease, monarch of his domain,
+unmindful of silent watchers in the shadows, Richard told her of old
+Pete; he told her, too, of the traditions of a ghostly fox who now and
+then troubled the hounds, leading them into danger and sometimes to
+death.
+
+He went on with her to Bower's, and when he left her he handed her a
+feathery bit of pine. "I picked it on the ridge," he said. "I don't know
+whether you feel as I do about the scrub pines of Maryland and of
+Virginia; somehow they seem to belong, as you and I do, to this country."
+
+When Anne went to her room she stuck the bit of pine in her mirror. Then
+in an uplifted mood she wrote to Uncle Rod. But she said little to him of
+Richard or of Eve. Her own feelings were too mixed in the matter to
+permit of analysis. But she told of the fox in the moonlight. "And the
+loveliest part of it all was that nothing happened to him. I don't think
+that I could have stood it to have had him killed. He was so free--and
+unafraid----"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next night Anne in the long front room at Bower's told Peggy and
+François all about it. François' mother was sewing for Mrs. Bower, and as
+the distance was great, and she could not go home at night, her small son
+was sharing with her the hospitality which seemed to him rich and royal
+in comparison with the economies practised in his own small home.
+
+It was a select company which was gathered in front of the fire.
+François and Peggy and Anne and old Mamie, with the white house cat,
+Josephine, and three kittens in a basket, and Brinsley Tyson smoking his
+pipe in the background.
+
+"And the old fox went tit-upping and tit-upping along the road in the
+moonlight, and Dr. Richard and I stood very still, and we saw him----"
+
+"Last night?"
+
+Anne nodded.
+
+"And what did you do, Miss Anne?"
+
+"We listened and heard the dogs----"
+
+Little François clasped his hands. "Oh, were the dogs after him?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did they get him?"
+
+"No. He is a wise old fox. He lives up beyond the Crossroads garden. Dr.
+Brooks thought when they came there to live that he would go away but he
+hasn't. You see, it is his home. The hunters here all know him, and they
+are always glad when he gets away."
+
+Brinsley agreed. "There are so few native foxes left in the county that
+most of us call off the dogs before a killing--we'd soon be without sport
+if we didn't. An imported fox is a creature in a trap; you want the sly
+old natives to give you a run for your money."
+
+Little François, dark-eyed and dreamy, delivered an energetic opinion. "I
+think it is horrid."
+
+Peggy, less sensitive, and of the country, reproved him. "It's
+gentleman's sport, isn't it, Mr. Brinsley?"
+
+"Yes. To me the dogs and horses are the best part of it. The older I grow
+the more I hate to kill--that's why I fish. They are cold-blooded
+creatures."
+
+Peggy, leaning on his knee, demanded a fish story. "The one you told us
+the last time."
+
+Brinsley's fish story was a poem written by one of the Old Gentlemen,
+hunting now, it was to be hoped, in happier fields. It was an idyl of the
+Chesapeake:
+
+    "In the Chesapeake and its tribute streams,
+     Where broadening out to the bay they come,
+     And the great fresh waters meet the brine,
+     There lives a fish that is called the drum."
+
+The drum fish and an old negro, Ned, were the actors in the drama. Ned,
+fishing one day in his dug-out canoe,
+
+    "Tied his line to his ankle tight,
+     To be ready to haul if the fish should bite,
+     And seized his fiddle----"
+
+He played:
+
+    "But slower and slower he drew the bow,
+     And soft grew the music sweet and low,
+     The lids fell wearily over the eyes,
+     The bow arm stopped and the melodies.
+     The last strain melted along the deep,
+     And Ned, the old fisherman, sank to sleep.
+     Just then a huge drum, sent hither by fate,
+     Caught a passing glimpse of the tempting bait. . . .
+     . . . . One terrible jerk of wrath and dread
+     From the wounded fish as away he sped
+     With a strength by rage made double--
+     And into the water went old Ned.
+     No time for any 'last words' to be said,
+     For the waves settled placidly over his head,
+     And his last remark was a bubble."
+
+The children's eyes were wide. Peggy was entranced, but François was not
+so sure that he liked it. Brinsley's hand dropped on the little lad's
+shoulder as he told how the two were found
+
+    "So looped and tangled together
+     That their fate was involved in a dark mystery
+     As to which was the catcher and which the catchee . . .
+     And the fishermen thought it could never be known
+     After all their thinking and figuring,
+     Whether the nigger a-fishing had gone,
+     Or the fish had gone out a-niggering."
+
+There were defects in meter and rhythm, but Brinsley's sprightly delivery
+made these of minor importance, and the company had no criticism.
+François, shivering a little, admitted that he wanted to hear it again,
+and climbed to Brinsley's knee. The old man with his arm about him
+decided that to say it over would be to spoil the charm, and that anyhow
+the time had come to pop the corn.
+
+To François this was a new art, but when he had followed the fascinating
+process through all its stages until the white grains boiled up in the
+popper and threatened to burst the cover, his rapture knew no bounds.
+
+"Could I do it myself, Miss Anne?" he asked, and she let him empty the
+snowy kernels into a big bowl, and fill the popper for a second supply.
+
+She bent above him, showing him how to shake it steadily.
+
+Geoffrey Fox coming in smiled at the scene. How far away it seemed from
+anything modern--this wide hearth-stone with the dog and the pussy
+cat--and the little children, the lovely girl and the old man--the wind
+blowing outside--the corn popping away like little pistols.
+
+"May I have some?" he asked, and Anne smiled up at him, while Peggy
+brought little plates and set the big bowl on a stool within reach of
+them all.
+
+"What brings you up, sir?" Geoffrey asked Brinsley.
+
+"The drag-hunt and breakfast at the club. I am too stiff to follow, but
+David and I like to meet old friends--you see I was born in this
+country."
+
+That was the beginning of a string of reminiscences to which they all
+listened breathlessly. The fox hunting instinct was an inheritance in
+this part of the country. It had its traditions and legends and Brinsley
+knew them all.
+
+If any one had told Geoffrey Fox a few weeks before that he would be
+content to spend his time as he was spending it now, writing all day and
+reading the chapters at night to a serious-eyed little school-teacher
+who scolded him and encouraged him by turns, he would have scoffed at
+such an impossible prospect. Yet he was not only doing it, but was glad
+to be swept away from the atmosphere of somewhat sordid Bohemianism with
+which he had in these later years been surrounded.
+
+And as Brinsley talked, Geoffrey watched Anne. She had Peggy in her arms.
+Such women were made, he felt, to be not only the mothers of children,
+but the mothers of the men they loved--made for brooding tenderness--to
+inspire--to sympathize.
+
+Yet with all her gentleness he knew that Anne was a strong little thing.
+She would never be a clinging vine; she was rather like a rose high on a
+trellis--a man must reach up to draw her to him.
+
+As she glanced up, he smiled at her, and she smiled back. Then the smile
+froze.
+
+Framed in the front doorway stood Eve Chesley! She came straight to Anne
+and held out her hand. "I made Richard bring me down," she said. "I want
+to talk to you about the Crossroads ball."
+
+Eve repentant was Eve in her most charming mood. On Sunday morning she
+had apologized to Richard. "I was horrid, Dicky."
+
+"Last night? You were. I wouldn't have believed it of you, Eve."
+
+"Oh, well, don't be a prig. Do you remember how we used to make up after
+a quarrel?"
+
+He laughed. "We had to go down on our knees."
+
+She went down on hers, sinking slowly and gracefully to the floor.
+"Please, I'm sorry."
+
+"Eve, will you ever grow up?"
+
+"I don't want to grow up," wistfully. "Dicky, do you remember that after
+I had said I was sorry you always bought chocolate drops, and made me eat
+them all. You were such a good little boy, Richard."
+
+"I was not," hotly.
+
+"Why is it that men don't like to be told that they were good little
+boys? You are a good little boy now."
+
+"I'm not."
+
+"You are--and you are tied to your mother's apron strings."
+
+"Dicky," she wailed, as he rose in wrath, "I didn't mean that. Honestly.
+And I'll be good."
+
+Still, with her feet tucked under her, she sat on the floor. "I've been
+thinking----"
+
+"Yes, Eve."
+
+"You and I have a birthday in March. Why can't we have a big
+house-warming, and ask all the county families and a lot of people from
+town?"
+
+"I'm not a millionaire, Eve."
+
+"Neither am I. But there's always Aunt Maude."
+
+She spread out her hands, palms upward. "All I shall have to do is to
+wheedle her a bit, and she'll give it to me for a birthday present.
+Please, Dicky. If you say 'yes' I'll go down to Bower's my very own self
+and ask Anne Warfield to come to our ball."
+
+He stared at her incredulously. "You'll do _what_?"
+
+"Ask your little--school-teacher. Win scolded me last night, and said
+that I was a selfish pig. That I couldn't expect to keep you always to
+myself. But you see I have kept you, Dicky. I have always thought that
+you and I could go on being--friends, with no one to break in on it."
+
+Her eyes as she raised them to his were shadowed. He spoke heartily. "My
+dear girl, as if anything could ever come between us." He rose and drew
+her up from her lowly seat. "I'm glad we talked it out. I confess I was
+feeling pretty sore over the way you acted, Eve. It wasn't like you."
+
+Eve stuck to her resolution to go to Bower's to seek out and conciliate
+Anne, and thus it happened that they found her making a Madonna of
+herself with Peggy in her arms, and Geoffrey Fox's eyes adoring her.
+
+Little François told his mother later that at first he had thought the
+lovely lady was a fairy princess; for Eve was quite sumptuous in her
+dinner gown of white and shining satin, with a fur-trimmed wrap of white
+and silver. She wore, also, a princess air of graciousness, quite
+different from the half appealing impertinence of her morning mood when
+she had knelt at Richard's feet.
+
+Anne, appeased and fascinated by the warmth of Eve's manner, found
+herself drawn in spite of herself to the charming creature who discussed
+so frankly her plans for their pleasure.
+
+"Dicky and I were born on the same day," she explained, "and we always
+have a party together, with two cakes with candles, and this year it is
+to be at Crossroads."
+
+She invited Brinsley and Geoffrey on the spot, and promised the children
+a peep into fairy-land. Then having settled the matter to the
+satisfaction of all concerned, she demanded a fresh popper of corn,
+insisted on a repetition of Brinsley's fish story, asked about Geoffrey's
+book, and went away leaving behind her a trail of laughter and
+light-heartedness.
+
+Later Anne was aware that she had left also a feeling of bewilderment. It
+seemed incredible that the distance between the mood of last night and of
+to-night should have been bridged so successfully.
+
+Brushing her hair in front of the mirror, she asked herself, "How much of
+it was real friendliness?" Uncle Rod had a proverb, "'_A false friend has
+honey in his mouth, gall in his heart._'"
+
+She chided herself for her mistrust. One must not inquire too much into
+motives.
+
+The sight of Richard's bit of pine in the mirror frame shed a gleam of
+naturalness across the strangeness of the hour just spent. It seemed to
+say, "You and I of the country----"
+
+Eve was of the town!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The weeks which followed were rare ones. Anne went forth joyous in the
+morning, and came home joyous at night. She saw Richard daily; now on the
+road, again in the schoolhouse, less often, but most satisfyingly, by the
+fire at Bower's.
+
+Geoffrey, noting jealously these evenings that the young doctor spent in
+the long front room, at last spoke his mind.
+
+"What makes you look like that?" he demanded, as having watched Richard
+safely out of the way from an upper window, he came down to find Anne
+gazing dreamily into the coals.
+
+"Like what?"
+
+"Oh, a sort of seventh-heaven look."
+
+"I don't know what you mean."
+
+"You won't admit that you know what I mean."
+
+She rose.
+
+"Sit down. I want to read to you."
+
+"I am afraid I haven't time."
+
+"You had time for Brooks. If you don't let me read to you I shall have to
+sit all alone--in the dark--my eyes are hurting me."
+
+"Why don't you ask Dr. Brooks about your eyes?"
+
+"Is Dr. Brooks the oracle?"
+
+"He could tell you about your eyes."
+
+"Does he tell you about yours?"
+
+With a scornful glance she left him, but he followed her. "Why shouldn't
+he tell you about your eyes? They are lovely eyes, Mistress Anne."
+
+"I hate to have you talk like that. It seems to separate me in some way
+from your friendship, and I thought we were friends."
+
+Her gentleness conquered his mad mood. "Oh, you little saint, you little
+saint, and I am such a sinner."
+
+So they patched it up, and he read to her the last chapter of his book.
+
+"_And now in the darkness they lay dying, young Franz from Nuremberg, and
+young George from London, and Michel straight from the vineyards on the
+coast of France._"
+
+In the darkness they spoke of their souls. Soon they would go out into
+the Great Beyond. What then, after death? Franz thought they might go
+marching on. Young George had a vision of green fields and of hawthorn
+hedges. But it was young Michel who spoke of the face of God.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Was this the Geoffrey who had teased her on the stairs? This man who
+wrote words which made one shake and shiver and sob?
+
+"Oh, how do you do it, how do you do it?" The tears were running down her
+cheeks.
+
+She saw him then as people rarely saw Geoffrey Fox. "God knows," he said,
+seriously, "but I think that your prayers have helped."
+
+And after she had gone up-stairs he sat long by the fire, alone, with his
+hand shading his eyes.
+
+The next morning he went to see Richard. The young doctor was in the
+Garden Room which he used as an office. It was on the ground floor of the
+big house, with a deer's horns over the fireplace, an ancient desk in one
+corner, a sideboard against the north wall. In days gone by this room had
+served many purposes. Here men in hunting pink had gathered for the gay
+breakfasts which were to fortify them for their sport. On the sideboard
+mighty roasts had been carved, and hot dishes had steamed. On the round
+table had been set forth bottles and glasses on Sheffield trays. Men ate
+much and rode hard. They had left to their descendants a divided heritage
+of indigestion and of strong sinews, to make of it what they could.
+
+Geoffrey entering asked at once, "Why the Garden Room? There is no
+garden."
+
+"There was a garden," Richard told him, "but there is a tradition that a
+pair of lovers eloped over the wall, and the irate father destroyed every
+flower, every shrub, as if the garden had betrayed him."
+
+"There's a story in that. Did the girl ever come back to find the garden
+dead?"
+
+"Who knows?" Richard said lightly; "and now, what's the matter with your
+eyes?"
+
+There was much the matter, and when Richard had made a thorough
+examination he spoke of a specialist. "Have you ever had trouble with
+them before?"
+
+"Once, when I was a youngster. I thought I was losing my sight. I used to
+open my eyes in the dark and think that the curse had come upon me. My
+grandfather was blind."
+
+"It is rarely inherited, and not in this form. But there might be a
+predisposition. Anyhow, you'll have to stop work for a time."
+
+"I can't stop work. My book is in the last chapters. And it is a great
+book. I've never written a great book before. I can talk freely to you,
+doctor. You know that we artists can't help our egotism. It's a disease
+that is easily diagnosed."
+
+Richard laughed. "What's the name of your book?"
+
+"'Three Souls.' Anne Warfield gave me the theme."
+
+As he spoke her name it was like a living flame between them. Richard
+tried to answer naturally. "She ought to be able to write books herself."
+
+Geoffrey shrugged. "She will live her life stories, not write them."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because we men don't let such women live their own lives. We demand
+their service and the inspiration of their sympathy. And so we won't let
+them achieve. We make them light our torches. We are selfish beasts, you
+know, in the last analysis."
+
+He laughed and rose. "I'll see a specialist. But nobody shall make me
+stop writing. Not till I have scribbled 'Finis' to my manuscript."
+
+"It isn't well to defy nature."
+
+"Defiance is better than submission. Nature's a cruel jade. You know
+that. In the end she gets us all. That's why I hate the country. It's
+there that we see Nature unmasked. I stayed three weeks at a farm last
+summer, and from morning to night murder went on. A cat killed a
+cardinal, and a blue jay killed a grosbeak. One of the servants shot a
+squirrel. And when I walked out one morning to see the sheep, a lamb was
+gone and we had a roast with mint sauce for dinner. For lunch we had the
+squirrel in a stew. A hawk swept down upon the chickens, and all that
+escaped we ate later fried, with cream gravy."
+
+"In most of your instances man was the offender."
+
+"Well, if man didn't kill, something else would. For every lamb there's a
+wolf."
+
+"You are looking on only one side of it."
+
+"When you can show me the other I'll believe in it. But not to-day when
+you tell me that my sun may be blotted out."
+
+Something in his voice made the young doctor lay his hand on his shoulder
+and say quietly: "My dear fellow, don't begin to dread that which may
+never come. There should be years of light before you. Only you'll have
+to be careful."
+
+They stood now in the door of the Garden Room. The sun was shining, the
+snow was melting. There was the acrid smell of box from the hedge beyond.
+
+"I hate caution," said young Geoffrey; "I want to do as I please."
+
+"So does every man," said Richard, "but life teaches him that he can't."
+
+"Oh, Life," scoffed Geoffrey Fox; "life isn't a school. It is a joy ride,
+with rocks ahead."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+_In Which Anne, Passing a Shop, Turns In._
+
+
+ANNE had the Crossroads ball much on her mind. She spoke to Beulah about
+it.
+
+"I don't know what to wear."
+
+"You'd better go to town with me on Saturday and look for something."
+
+"Perhaps I will. If I had plenty of money it would be easy. Beulah, did
+you ever see such clothes as Eve Chesley's?"
+
+"If I could spend as much as she does, I'd make more of a show."
+
+"Think of all the tailors and dressmakers and dancing masters and
+hair-dressers it has taken to make Eve what she is. And yet all the art
+is hidden."
+
+"I don't think it is hidden. I saw her powder her nose right in front of
+the men that day she first came. She had a little gold case with a mirror
+in it, and while Dr. Brooks and Mr. Fox were sitting on the stairs with
+her, she took it out and looked at herself and rubbed some rouge on her
+cheeks."
+
+Anne had a vision of the three of them sitting on the stairs. "Well,"
+she said, in a fierce little fashion, "I don't know what the world is
+coming to."
+
+Beulah cared little about Eve's world. For the moment Eric filled her
+horizon, and the dress she was to get to make herself pretty for him.
+
+"Shall we go Saturday?" she asked.
+
+Anne, rummaging in the drawer of her desk, produced a small and shabby
+pocketbook. She shook the money out and counted it. "With the check that
+Uncle Rod sent me," she said, "there's enough for a really lovely frock.
+But I don't know whether I ought to spend it."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Everybody ought to save something--I am teaching my children to have
+penny banks--and yet I go on spending and spending with nothing to show
+for it."
+
+Beulah was quite placid. "I don't see why you should save. Some day you
+will get married, and then you won't have to."
+
+"If a woman marries a poor man she ought to be careful of finances. She
+has to think of her children and of their future."
+
+Beulah shrugged. "What's the use of looking so far ahead? And 'most any
+husband will see that his wife doesn't get too much to spend."
+
+Before Anne went to bed that night she put a part of her small store of
+money into a separate compartment of her purse. She would buy a cheaper
+frock and save herself the afterpangs of extravagance. And the penny
+banks of the children would no longer accuse her of inconsistency!
+
+The shopping expedition proved a strenuous one. Anne had fixed her mind
+on certain things which proved to be too expensive. "You go for your
+fitting," she said to Beulah desperately, as the afternoon waned, "and I
+will take a last look up Charles Street. We can meet at the train."
+
+The way which she had to travel was a familiar one, but its charm held
+her--the street lights glimmered pale gold in the early dusk, the crowd
+swung along in its brisk city manner toward home. Beyond the shops was
+the Cardinal's house. The Monument topped the hill; to its left the
+bronze lions guarded the great square; to the right there was the thin
+spire of the Methodist Church.
+
+She had an hour before train time and she lingered a little, stopping at
+this window and that, and all the time the money which she had elected to
+save burned a hole in her pocket.
+
+For there were such things to buy! Passing a flower shop there were
+violets and roses. Passing a candy shop were chocolates. Passing a hat
+shop there was a veil flung like a cloud over a celestial _chapeau_!
+Passing an Everything-that-is-Lovely shop she saw an enchanting length of
+silk--as pink as a sea-shell--silk like that which Cynthia Warfield had
+worn when she sat for the portrait which hung in the library at
+Crossroads!
+
+Anne did not pass the Lovely Shop; she turned and went in, and bought ten
+yards of silk with the money that she had meant to spend--and the money
+she had meant to save!
+
+And she missed the train!
+
+Beulah was waiting for her as she came in breathless. "There isn't
+another train for two hours," she complained.
+
+Anne sank down on a bench. "I am sorry, Beulah. I didn't know it was so
+late."
+
+"We'll have to get supper in the station," Beulah said, "and I have spent
+all my money."
+
+"Oh, and I've spent mine." Anne reflected that if she had not bought the
+silk she could have paid for Beulah's supper. But she was glad that she
+had bought it, and that she had it under her arm in a neat package.
+
+She dug into her slim purse and produced a dime. "Never mind, Beulah, we
+can buy some chocolates."
+
+But they were not destined for such meager fare. Rushing into the station
+came Geoffrey Fox. As he saw the clock he stopped with the air of a man
+baffled by fate.
+
+Anne moving toward him across the intervening space saw his face change.
+
+"By all that's wonderful," he said, "how did this happen?"
+
+"We missed our train."
+
+"And I missed mine. Who is 'we'?"
+
+"Beulah is with me."
+
+"Can't you both have dinner with me somewhere? There are two hours of
+waiting ahead of us."
+
+Anne demurred. "I'm not very hungry."
+
+But Beulah, who had joined them, was hungry, and she said so, frankly. "I
+am starved. If I could have just a sandwich----"
+
+"You shall have more than that. We'll have a feast and a frolic. Let me
+check your parcels, Mistress Anne."
+
+Back they went to the golden-lighted streets and turning down toward the
+city they reached at last the big hotel which has usurped the place of
+the stately and substantial edifices which were once the abodes of
+ancient and honorable families.
+
+Within were soft lights and the sound of music. The rugs were thick, and
+there was much marble. As they entered the dining-room, they seemed to
+move through a golden haze. It was early, and most of the tables were
+empty.
+
+Beulah was rapturous. "I have always wanted to come here. It is perfectly
+lovely."
+
+The attentive waiter at Geoffrey's elbow was being told to bring----
+Anne's quick ear caught the word.
+
+"No, please," she said at once, "not for Beulah and me."
+
+His keen glance commanded her. "Of course not," he said, easily.
+Presently he had the whole matter of the menu settled, and could talk to
+Anne. She was enjoying it all immensely and said so.
+
+"I should like to do this sort of thing every day."
+
+"Heaven forbid. You would lose your dreams, and grow self-satisfied--and
+fat--like that woman over there."
+
+Anne shuddered. "It isn't that she is fat--it's her eyes, and the way she
+makes up."
+
+"That is the way they get when they live in places like this. If you want
+to be slender and lovely and keep your dreams you must teach school."
+
+"Oh, but there's drudgery in that."
+
+"It is the people who drudge who dream. They don't know it, but they do.
+People who have all they want learn that there is nothing more for life
+to give. And they drink and take drugs to bring back the illusions they
+have lost."
+
+They fell into silence after that, and then it was Beulah who became
+voluble. Her fair round face beamed. It was a common little face, but it
+was good and honest. Beulah was having the time of her life. She did not
+know that she owed her good fortune to Anne, that if Anne had not been
+there, Geoffrey would not have asked her to dine. But if she had known
+it, she would not have cared.
+
+"What train did you come in on?" she asked.
+
+"At noon. Brooks thought I ought to see a specialist. He doesn't give me
+much encouragement about my eyes. He wants me to stop writing, but I
+shan't until I get through with my book."
+
+He spoke recklessly, but Anne saw the shadow on his face. "You aren't
+telling us how really serious it is," she said, as Beulah's attention was
+diverted.
+
+"It is so serious that for the first time in my life I know myself to
+be--a coward. Last night I lay in bed with my eyes shut to see how it
+would seem to be blind. It was a pretty morbid thing to do--and this
+morning finished me."
+
+She tried to speak her sympathy, but could not. Her eyes were full of
+tears.
+
+"Don't," he said, softly, "my good little friend--my good little friend."
+
+She dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief. The unconscious Beulah, busy
+with her oysters, asked: "Is the Tobasco too hot? I'm all burning up with
+it."
+
+Geoffrey was able later to speak lightly of his affliction. "I shall go
+to the Brooks ball as a Blind Beggar."
+
+"Oh, how can you make fun of it?"
+
+"It is better to laugh than to cry. But your tears were--a benediction."
+
+Silence fell between them, and after a while he asked, "What shall you
+wear?"
+
+"To the ball? Pink silk. A heavenly pink. I have just bought it, and I
+paid more than I should for it."
+
+"Such extravagance!"
+
+"I'm to be Cynthia Warfield--like the portrait in the Crossroads library
+of my grandmother. It came to me when I saw the silk in the shop window.
+I shall have to do without the pearls, but I have the lace flounces. They
+were left to my mother."
+
+"And so Cinderella will go to the ball, and dance with the Prince. Is
+Brooks the Prince?"
+
+She flushed, and evaded. "I can't dance. Not the new dances."
+
+"I can teach you if you'll let me."
+
+"Really?"
+
+"Yes. But you must pay. You must give the Blind Beggar the first dance
+and as many more as he demands."
+
+"But I can't dance all of them with you."
+
+"You can dance some of them. And that's my price."
+
+To promise him dances seemed to her quite delicious and delightful since
+she could not dance at all. But he made a little contract and had her
+sign it, and put it in his pocket.
+
+Going home Anne had little to say. It was Geoffrey who talked, while
+Beulah slept in a seat by herself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Anne made her own lovely gown, running over now and then to take
+surreptitious peeps at Cynthia's portrait. She had let Mrs. Brooks into
+her secret, and the little lady was enthusiastic.
+
+"You shall wear my pearls, my dear. They will be very effective in your
+dark hair."
+
+She brought the jewels down in an old blue velvet box--milk-white against
+a yellowed satin lining.
+
+"My father gave them to me on my wedding day. Some day I shall give them
+to Richard's wife."
+
+She could not know how her words stirred the heart of the girl who stood
+looking so quietly down at the pearls.
+
+"I am almost afraid to wear them," Anne said breathlessly. She gave Nancy
+a shy little kiss. "You were _dear_ to think of it."
+
+And now busy days were upon her. There was the school with Richard
+running in after closing time, and staying, too, and keeping her from the
+work that was waiting at home. Then at twilight a dancing lesson with
+Geoffrey in the long front room, with Beulah playing audience and
+sometimes Eric, and with Peggy capering madly to the music.
+
+Then the evening, with its enchanting task of stitching on yards of rosy
+silk. Usually Geoffrey read to her while she worked. His story was
+nearing the end. He was wearing heavy goggles which gave him an owl-like
+appearance, of which he complained.
+
+"It spoils my beauty, Mistress Anne. I am just an ugly gnome who sits at
+the feet of the Princess."
+
+"You are not ugly, and you know it. And men shouldn't be vain."
+
+"We are worse than women. Do you know what you look like with all that
+silk around you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Like Aurora. Do you remember that Stevenson speaks of a 'pink dawn'?
+Well, you are a pink dawn."
+
+"Please stop talking about me, and read your last chapter. I am so glad
+that you have reached the end."
+
+"Because you are tired of hearing it?"
+
+"Because of your poor eyes."
+
+He took off his goggles. "Do my eyes look different? Are they changed
+or--dim?"
+
+"They are as bright as stars," and he sighed with relief.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"_And now it was young Michel who whispered, 'God is good! In a moment we
+shall see his face, and we shall say to him, "We fought, but there is no
+hatred in our hearts. We cannot hate--our brothers----"'_"
+
+That was the end.
+
+"It is a great book," Anne told him solemnly. "It will be a great
+success."
+
+He seemed to shrink and grow small in his chair. "It will come--too
+late."
+
+She looked up and saw the mood that was upon him. "Oh, you must not--not
+that," she said, hurriedly; "if you give up now it will be a losing
+fight."
+
+"Don't you suppose that I would fight if I felt that I could win? But
+what can a man do with a thing like this that is dragging him down to
+darkness?"
+
+"You mustn't be discouraged. Dr. Brooks says that it isn't--inevitable.
+You know that he said that, and that the specialist said it."
+
+"I know. But something tells me that I am facing--darkness." He threw up
+his head. "Why should we talk of it? Let me tell you rather how much you
+have helped me with my book. If it had not been for you I could not have
+written it."
+
+"I am glad if I have been of service." Her words sounded formal after the
+warmth of his own.
+
+He laughed, with a touch of bitterness. "The Princess serves," he said,
+"always and always serves. She never grabs, as the rest of us do, at
+happiness."
+
+"I shall grab when it comes," she said, smiling a little, "and I am happy
+now, because I am going to wear my pretty gown."
+
+"Which reminds me," he said, quickly, and brought from his pocket a
+little box. "Your costume won't be complete without these. I bought them
+for you with the advance check which my publishers sent after they had
+read the first chapters of my book."
+
+She opened the box. Within lay a little string of pearls. Not such pearls
+as Nancy had shown her, but milk-white none the less, with shining lovely
+lights.
+
+"Oh," she gave a distressed cry, "you shouldn't have done it."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I can't accept them. Indeed I can't."
+
+"I shall feel as if you had flung them in my face if you give them back
+to me," heatedly.
+
+"You shouldn't take it that way. It isn't fair to take it that way."
+
+"It isn't a question of fairness. It is a question of kindness on your
+part."
+
+"I want to be kind."
+
+"Then take them."
+
+She thought for a moment with her eyes on the fire. When she raised them
+it was to say, "Would you--want your little sister, Mimi, to take jewels
+from any man?"
+
+"Yes. If he loved her as I love you."
+
+It was out, and they stood aghast. Then Geoffrey stammered, "Can't you
+see that my soul kneels at your feet? That to me these pearls aren't as
+white as your--whiteness?"
+
+The rosy silk had slipped to the floor. She was like a very small goddess
+in a morning cloud. "I can't take them. Oh, I can't."
+
+He made a quick gesture. But for her restraining hand he would have cast
+the pearls into the flames.
+
+"Oh, don't," she said, the little hand tense on his arm. "Don't--hurt
+me--like that."
+
+He dropped the pearls into his pocket. "If you won't wear them nobody
+shall. I suppose I seem to you like all sorts of a fool. I seem like all
+sorts of a fool to myself."
+
+He turned and left her.
+
+An hour later he came back and found her still sewing on the rosy silk.
+Her eyes were red, as if she had wept a little.
+
+"I was a brute," he said, repentantly; "forgive me and smile. I am a
+tempestuous fellow, and I forgot myself."
+
+"I was afraid we weren't ever going to be friends again."
+
+"I shall always be your friend. Yet--who wants a Blind Beggar for a
+friend--tell me that, Mistress Anne?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+_In Which a Blind Beggar and a Butterfly Go to a Ball._
+
+
+_In my Own Little Room._
+
+UNCLE ROD, I went to the party!
+
+I came home an hour ago, and since then I have been sitting all shivery
+and shaky in my pink silk. It will be daylight in a few minutes, but I
+shan't go to bed. I couldn't sleep if I did. I feel as if I shouldn't
+ever sleep again.
+
+Uncle Rod, Jimmie Ford was at the Crossroads ball!
+
+I went early, because Mrs. Nancy had asked me to be there to help with
+her guests. Geoffrey Fox went with me. He was very picturesque in a
+ragged jerkin with a black bandage over his eyes and with old Mamie
+leading him at the end of a cord. She enjoyed it immensely, and they
+attracted a lot of attention, as he went tap-tapping along with his cane
+over the polished floor, or whined for alms, while she sat up on her
+haunches with a tin cup in her mouth.
+
+Well, Dr. Richard met us at the door, looking the young squire to
+perfection in his grandfather's old dress coat of blue with brass
+buttons. The people from New York hadn't come, so Mrs. Nancy put the
+pearls in my hair, and they made me stand under the portrait in the
+library, to see if I were really like my grandmother. I can't believe
+that I looked as lovely as she, but they said I did, and I began to feel
+as happy and excited as Cinderella at her ball.
+
+Then the New York crowd arrived in motors, and they were all masked. I
+knew Eve Chesley at once and Winifred Ames, but it was hard to be sure of
+any one else. Eve Chesley was a Rose, with a thousand fluttering flounces
+of pink chiffon. She was pursued by two men dressed as Butterflies, slim
+and shining in close caps with great silken wings--a Blue Butterfly and a
+Brown one. I was pretty sure that the Brown one was Philip Meade. It was
+quite wonderful to watch them with their wings waving. Eve carried a
+pocketful of rose petals and threw them into the air as she went. I had
+never imagined anything so lovely.
+
+Well, I danced with Dr. Richard and I danced with Geoffrey Fox, and I
+danced with Dutton Ames, and with some men that I had never met before.
+It seemed so _good_ to be doing things like the rest. Then all at once I
+began to feel that the Blue Butterfly was watching me. He drifted away
+from his pursuit of Evelyn Chesley, and whenever I raised my eyes, I
+could see him in corners staring at me.
+
+It gave me a queer feeling. I couldn't be sure, and yet--there he was.
+And, Uncle Rod, suddenly I knew him! Something in the way he carried
+himself. You know Jimmie's little swagger!
+
+I think I lost my head after that. I flirted with Dr. Richard and with
+Geoffrey Fox. I think I even flirted a little with Dutton Ames. I wanted
+them to be nice to me. I wanted Jimmie to see that what he had scorned
+other men could value. I wanted him to know that I had forgotten him. I
+laughed and danced as if my heart was as light as my heels, and all the
+while I was just sick and faint with the thought of it--"Jimmie Ford is
+here, and he hasn't said a word to me. Jimmie Ford is here--and--he
+hasn't said a word----"
+
+At last I couldn't stand it any longer, and when I was dancing with
+Geoffrey Fox I said, "Do you think we could go down to the Garden Room? I
+must get away."
+
+He didn't ask any question. And presently we were down there in the
+quiet, and he had his bandage off, and was looking at me, anxiously.
+"What has happened, Mistress Anne?"
+
+And then, oh, Uncle Rod, I told him. I don't know how I came to do it,
+but it seemed to me that he would understand, and he did.
+
+When I had finished his face was white and set. "Do you mean to tell me
+that any man has tried to break your heart?"
+
+I think I was crying a little. "Yes. But the worst of all is my--pride."
+
+"My little Princess," he said softly, "that this should have come--to
+you."
+
+Uncle Rod, I think that if I had ever had a brother, I should have wanted
+him to be like Geoffrey Fox. All his lightness and frivolity seemed to
+slip from him. "He has thrown away what I would give my life for," he
+said. "Oh, the young fool, not to know that Paradise was being handed to
+him on a platter."
+
+I didn't tell him Jimmie's name. That is not to be spoken to any one but
+you. And of course he could not know, though perhaps he guessed it, after
+what happened later.
+
+While we sat there, Dr. Richard came to hunt for us. "Everybody is going
+in to supper," he said. He seemed surprised to find us there together,
+and there was a sort of stiffness in his manner. "Mother has been asking
+for you."
+
+We went at once to the dining-room. There were long tables set in the
+old-fashioned way for everybody. Mrs. Nancy wanted things to be as they
+had been in her own girlhood. On the table in the wide window were two
+birthday cakes, and at that table Dr. Richard sat with his mother on one
+side of him, and Eve Chesley on the other. Eve's cake had pink candles
+and his had white, and there were twenty-five candles on each cake.
+
+Geoffrey Fox and I sat directly opposite; Dutton Ames was on my right,
+Mrs. Ames was on Geoffrey's left, and straight across the table, with
+his mask off, was Jimmie Ford, staring at me with all his eyes!
+
+For a minute I didn't know what to do. I just sat and stared, and then
+suddenly I picked up the glass that stood by my plate, raised it in
+salute and drank smiling. His face cleared, he hesitated just a fraction
+of a second, then his glass went up, and he returned my greeting. I
+wonder if he thought that I would cut him dead, Uncle Rod?
+
+And don't worry about _what_ I drank. It was white grape juice. Mrs.
+Nancy won't have anything stronger.
+
+Well, after that I ate, and didn't know what I ate, for everything seemed
+as dry as dust. I know my cheeks were red and that my eyes shone, and I
+smiled until my face ached. And all the while I watched Jimmie and Jimmie
+watched me, and pretty soon, Uncle Rod, I understood why Jimmie was
+there.
+
+He was making love to Eve Chesley!
+
+Making love is very different from being in love, isn't it? Perhaps love
+is something that Jimmie really doesn't understand. But he was using on
+Eve all of the charming tricks that he had tried on me. She is more
+sophisticated, and they mean less to her than to me, but I could see him
+bending toward her in that flattering worshipful way of his--and when he
+took one of her roses and touched it to his lips and then to her cheek,
+everything was dark for a minute. That kind of kiss was the only kind
+that Jimmie Ford ever gave me, but to me it had meant that he--cared--and
+that I cared--and here he was doing it before the eyes of all the
+world--and for love of another woman!
+
+After supper he came around the table and spoke to me. I suppose he
+thought he had to. I don't know what he said and I don't care. I only
+know that I wanted to get away. I think it was then that Geoffrey Fox
+guessed. For when Jimmie had gone he said, very gently, "Would you like
+to go home? You look like your own little ghost, Mistress Anne."
+
+But I had promised one more dance to Dr. Richard, and I wanted to dance
+it. If you could have seen at the table how he towered above Jimmie Ford.
+And when he stood up to make a little speech in response to a toast from
+Dutton Ames, his voice rang out in such a--man's way. Do you remember
+Jimmie Ford's falsetto?
+
+I had my dance with him, and then Geoffrey took me home, and all the way
+I kept remembering the things Dr. Richard had said to me, such pleasant
+friendly things, and when his mother told me "good-night" she took my
+face between her hands and kissed me. "You must come often, little
+Cynthia Warfield," she said. "Richard and I both want you."
+
+But now that I am at home again, I can't think of anything but how Jimmie
+Ford has spoiled it all. When you have given something, you can't ever
+really take it back, can you? When you've given faith and constancy to
+one man, what have you left to give another?
+
+The river is beginning to show like a silver streak, and a rooster is
+crowing. Oh, Uncle Rod, if you were only here. Write and tell me that you
+love me.
+
+Your
+
+LITTLE GIRL.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_In the Telegraph Tower._
+
+MY VERY DEAR:
+
+It is after supper, and Beulah and I are out here with Eric. He likes to
+have her come, and I play propriety, for Mrs. Bower, in common with most
+women of her class, is very careful of her daughter. I know you don't
+like that word "class," but please don't think I am using it snobbishly.
+Indeed, I think Beulah is much better brought up than the daughters of
+folk who think themselves much finer, and Mrs. Bower in her simple way is
+doing some very effective chaperoning.
+
+Eric is on night duty in the telegraph tower this week; the other
+operator has the day work. The evenings are long, so Beulah brings her
+sewing, and keeps Eric company. They really don't have much to say to
+each other, so that I am not interrupted when I write. They seem to like
+to sit and look out on the river and the stars and the moon coming up
+behind the hills.
+
+It is all settled now. Eric told me yesterday. "I am very happy," he
+said; "I have been a lonely man."
+
+They are to be married in June, and the things that she is making are to
+go into the cedar chest which her father has given her. He found it one
+day when he was in Baltimore, and when he showed it to her, he shone with
+pleasure. He's a good old Peter, and he is so glad that Beulah is to
+marry Eric. Eric will rent a little house not far up the road. It is a
+dear of a cottage, and Peggy and I call it the Playhouse. We sit on the
+porch when we come home from school, and peep in at the windows and plan
+what we would put into it if we had the furnishing of it. I should like a
+house like that, Uncle Rod, for you and me and Diogenes. We'd live happy
+ever after, wouldn't we? Some day the world is going to build
+"teacherages" just as it now builds parsonages, and the little houses
+will help to dignify and uplift the profession.
+
+Your dear letter came just in time, and it was just right. I should have
+gone to pieces if you had pitied me, for I was pitying myself dreadfully.
+But when I read "Little School-teacher, what would you tell your
+scholars?" I knew what you wanted me to answer. I carried your letter in
+my pocket to school, and when I rang the bell I kept saying over and
+over to myself, "Life is what we make it. Life is what we make it," and
+all at once the bells began to ring it:
+
+    "Life is--what we--make it--
+     Life is--what we--make it."
+
+When the children came in, before we began the day's work, I talked to
+them. I find it is always uplifting when we have failed in anything to
+try to tell others how not to fail! Perhaps it isn't preaching what we
+practice, but at least it supplies a working theory.
+
+I made up a fairy-story for them, too, about a Princess who was so ill
+and unhappy that all the kingdom was searched far and wide for some one
+to cure her. And at last an old crone was found who swore that she had
+the right remedy. "What is it?" all the wise men asked; but the old woman
+said, "It is written in this scroll. To-morrow the Princess must start
+out alone upon a journey. Whatever difficulty she encounters she must
+open this scroll and read, and the scroll will tell her what to do."
+
+Well, the Princess started out, and when she had traveled a little way
+she found that she was hungry and tired, and she cried: "Oh, I haven't
+anything to eat." Then the scroll said, "Read me," and she opened the
+scroll and read: "There is corn in the fields. You must shell it and
+grind it on a stone and mix it with water, and bake it into the best
+bread that you can." So the Princess shelled the corn and ground it and
+mixed it with water, and baked it, and it tasted as sweet as honey and as
+crisp as apples. And the Princess ate with an appetite, and then she lay
+down to rest. And in the night a storm came up and there was no shelter,
+and the Princess cried out, "Oh, what shall I do?" and the scroll said,
+"Read me." So she opened the scroll and read: "There is wood on the
+ground. You must gather it and stack it and build the best little house
+that you can." So the Princess worked all that day and the next and the
+next, and when the hut was finished it was strong and dry and no storms
+could destroy it. So the Princess stayed there in the little hut that she
+had made, and ate the sweet loaves that she had baked, and one day a
+great black bear came down the road, and the Princess cried out, "Oh, I
+have no weapon; what shall I do?" And the scroll said, "Read me." So she
+opened the scroll and read, "Walk straight up to the bear, and make the
+best fight that you can." So the Princess, trembling, walked straight up
+to the big black bear, and behold! when he saw her coming, he ran away!
+
+Now the year was up, and the king sent his wise men to bring the Princess
+home, and one day they came to her little hut and carried her back to the
+palace, and she was so rosy and well that everybody wondered. Then the
+king called the people together, and said, "Oh, Princess, speak to us,
+and let us know how you were cured." So the Princess told them of how she
+had baked the bread, and built the hut, and conquered the bear; and of
+how she had found health and happiness. For the bread that you make with
+your own hands is the sweetest, and the shelter that you build for
+yourself is the snuggest, and the fear that you face is no fear at all.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The children liked my story, and I felt very brave when I had finished
+it. You see, I have been forgetting our sunsets, and I have been shivery
+and shaky when I should have faced my Big Black Bear!
+
+Beulah is ready to go--and so--good-night. The moon is high up and round,
+and as pure gold as your own loving heart.
+
+Ever your own
+
+ANNE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+_In Which Brinsley Speaks of the Way to Win a Woman._
+
+
+AND now spring was coming to the countryside. The snow melted, and the
+soft rains fell, and on sunny days Diogenes, splashing in the little
+puddles, picked and pulled at his feathers as he preened himself in the
+shelter of the south bank which overlooked the river.
+
+Some of the feathers were tipped with shining green and some with brown.
+Some of them fell by the way, some floated out on blue tides, and one of
+them was wafted by the wind to the feet of Geoffrey Fox, as, on a certain
+morning, he, too, stood on the south bank.
+
+He picked it up and stuck it in his hat. "I'll wear it for my lady," he
+said to the old drake, "and much good may it do me!"
+
+The old drake lifted his head toward the sky, and gave a long cry. But it
+was not for Anne that he called. She still gave him food and drink. He
+still met her at the gate. If her mind was less upon him than in the
+past, it mattered little. The things that held meaning for him this
+morning were the glory of the sunshine, and the softness of the breeze.
+Stirring within him was a need above and beyond anything that Geoffrey
+could give, or Anne. He listened not for the step of the little
+school-teacher, but for the whirring wings of some comrade of his own
+kind. Again and again he sent forth his cry to the empty air.
+
+Geoffrey's heart echoed the cry. His book was finished, and it was time
+for him to go. Yet he was held by a tie stronger than any which had
+hitherto bound him. Here in the big old house at Bower's was the one
+thing that his heart wanted.
+
+"I could make her happy," he whispered to that inner self which warned
+him. "With her as my wife and with my book a success, I could defy fate."
+
+The day was Saturday, and all the eager old fishermen had arrived the
+night before. Brinsley Tyson coming out with his rod in his hand and a
+broad-brimmed hat on his head invited Geoffrey to join him. "I've a motor
+boat that will take us out to the island after we have done a morning's
+fishing, and Mrs. Bower has put up a lunch."
+
+"The glare is bad for my eyes."
+
+"Been working them too hard?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"There's an awning and smoked glasses if you'll wear them. And I don't
+want to go alone. David went back on me; he's got a new book. It's a
+puzzle to me why any man should want to read when he can have a day's
+fishing."
+
+"If people didn't read what would become of my books?"
+
+"Let 'em read. But not on days like this." Brinsley's fat face was
+upturned to the sun. With a vine-wreath instead of his broad hat and
+tunic in place of his khaki he might have posed for any of the plump old
+gods who loved the good things of life.
+
+Geoffrey, because he had nothing else to do, went with him. Anne was
+invisible. On Saturday mornings she did all of the things she had left
+undone during the week. She mended and sewed and washed her brushes, and
+washed her hair, and gave all of her little belongings a special rub and
+scrub, and showed herself altogether exquisite and housewifely.
+
+She saw Geoffrey start out, and she waved to him. He waved back, his hand
+shading his eyes. When he had gone, she cleaned all of her toilet silver,
+and ran ribbons into nicely embroidered nainsook things, and put her
+pillows in the sun and tied up her head and swept and dusted, and when
+she had made everything shining, she had a bit of lunch on a tray, and
+then she washed her hair.
+
+Geoffrey ate lunch on the island with Brinsley Tyson. He liked the old
+man immensely. There was a flavor about his worldliness which had nothing
+to do with stale frivolities; it was rather a thing of fastidious taste
+and of tempered wit. He was keen in his judgments of men, and charitable
+in his estimates of women.
+
+Brinsley Tyson had known Baltimore before the days of modern cities. He
+had known it before it had cut its hotels after the palace pattern, and
+when Rennert's in more primitive quarters had been the Mecca for
+epicureans. He had known its theaters when the footlight favorites were
+Lotta and Jo Emmet, and when the incomparable Booth and Jefferson had
+held audiences spellbound at Ford's and at Albaugh's. He had known
+Charles Street before it was extended, and he had known its Sunday
+parade. He had known the Bay Line Boats, the harbor and the noisy streets
+that led to the wharves. He had known Lexington Market on Saturday
+afternoons; the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in the heyday of its
+importance, and more than all he had known the beauties and belles of old
+Baltimore, and it added piquancy to many of his anecdotes when he spoke
+of his single estate as a tragedy resulting from his devotion to too many
+charmers, with no possibility of making a choice.
+
+It was of these things that he spoke while Geoffrey, lying in the grass
+with his arm across his eyes, listened and enjoyed.
+
+"And you never married, sir?"
+
+"I've told you there were too many of them. If I could have had any one
+of those girls on this island with 'tother dear charmers away, there
+wouldn't have been any trouble. But a choice with them all about me
+was--impossible." His old eyes twinkled.
+
+"Suppose you had made a choice, and she hadn't cared for you?" said the
+voice of the man on the grass.
+
+"Any woman will care if you go at it the right way."
+
+"What is the right way?"
+
+"There's only one way to win a woman. If she says she won't marry you,
+carry her off by force to a clergyman, and when you get her there make
+her say 'Yes.'"
+
+Geoffrey sat up. "You don't mean that literally?"
+
+Brinsley nodded. "Indeed I do. Take the attitude with them of Man the
+Conqueror. They all like it. Man the Suppliant never gets what he wants."
+
+"But in these days primitive methods aren't possible."
+
+Brinsley skipped a chicken bone expertly across the surface of the water.
+"Primitive methods are always possible. The trouble is that man has lost
+his nerve. The cult of chivalry has spoiled him. It has taught him to
+kneel at his lady's feet, where pre-historically he kept his foot on her
+neck!"
+
+Geoffrey laughed. "You'd be mobbed in a suffrage meeting."
+
+"Suffrage, my dear fellow, is the green carnation in the garden of
+femininity. Every woman blooms for her lover. It is the lack of lovers
+that produces the artificial--hence votes for women. What does the woman
+being carried off under the arm of conquering man care for yellow banners
+or speeches from the tops of busses? She is too busy trying to please
+him."
+
+"It would be a great experiment. I'd like to try it."
+
+Brinsley, uncorking a hot and cold bottle, boldly surmised, "It is the
+little school-teacher?"
+
+Geoffrey, again flat on the grass, murmured, "Yes."
+
+"And it is neck and neck between you and that young cousin of mine?"
+
+"I am afraid he is a neck ahead."
+
+"It all depends upon which runs away with her first."
+
+Again Geoffrey murmured, "I'd like to try it."
+
+"Why not?" said Brinsley and beamed over his coffee cup like a benevolent
+spider at an unsuspecting fly. He had no idea that his fooling might be
+taken seriously. It was not given to his cynicism to comprehend the mood
+of the seemingly composed young person who lay on the grass with his hat
+over his eyes--torn by contending emotions, maddened by despair and the
+dread of darkness, awakened to new impulses in which youth and hot blood
+fought against an almost reverent tenderness for the object of his
+adoration. Since the night of the Crossroads ball Geoffrey had permitted
+himself to hope. She had turned to him then. For the first time he had
+felt that the barriers were down between them.
+
+"Now Richard," Brinsley was saying, as he smoked luxuriously after the
+feast, "ought to marry Eve. She'll get her Aunt Maude's money, and be the
+making of him."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Richard, who at that very moment was riding through the country on his
+old white horse, had no thought of Eve.
+
+The rhythm of old Ben's even trot formed an accompaniment to the song
+that his heart was singing--
+
+    "I think she was the most beautiful lady,
+     That ever was in the West Country----"
+
+As he passed along the road, he was aware of the world's awakening. His
+ears caught the faint flat bleating of lambs, the call of the cocks, the
+high note of the hens, the squeal of little pigs, and above all, the
+clamor of blackbirds and of marauding crows.
+
+The trees, too, were beginning to show the pale tints of spring, and an
+amethyst haze enveloped the hills. The river was silver in the shadow and
+gold in the sun; the little streams that ran down to it seemed to sing as
+they went.
+
+Coming at last to an old white farmhouse, Richard dismounted and went in.
+The old man bent with rheumatism welcomed him, and the old wife said,
+"He is always better when he knows that you are coming, doctor."
+
+The old man nodded. "Your gran'dad used to come. I was a little boy an'
+croupy, and he seemed big as a house when he came in at the door. He was
+taller than you, and thin."
+
+"Now, father," the old woman protested, "the young doctor ain't fat."
+
+"He's fatter'n his gran'dad. But I ain't saying that I don't like it. I
+like meat on a man's bones."
+
+Richard laughed. "Just so that I don't go the way of Cousin Brin. You
+know Brinsley Tyson, don't you?"
+
+"He's the fat twin. Yes, I know him and David. David comes and reads to
+me, but Brinsley went to Baltimore, and now he don't seem to remember
+that we were boys together, and went to the Crossroads school."
+
+After that they spoke of the little new teacher, and Richard revelled in
+the praise they gave her. She was worshipped, they said, by the people
+roundabout. There had never been another like her.
+
+    "_I think she was the most beautiful lady,_
+     _That ever was in the West Country_----"
+
+was Richard's enlargement of their theme. In the weeks just past he had
+seen much of her, and it had seemed to him that life began and ended with
+his thought of her.
+
+When he rose to go the old woman went to the door with him. "I guess we
+owe you a lot by this time," she remarked; "you've made so many calls. It
+cheers him up to have you, but you'd better stop now that he don't need
+you. It's so far, and we ain't good pay like some of them."
+
+Richard squared his shoulders--a characteristic gesture. "Don't bother
+about the bill. I have a sort of sentiment about my grandfather's old
+patients. It is a pleasure to know them and serve them."
+
+"If you didn't mind taking your pay in chickens," she stated as he
+mounted his horse, "we could let you have some broilers."
+
+"You will need all you can raise." Then as his eyes swept the green hill
+which sloped down to the river, he perceived an orderly line of waddling
+fowls making their way toward the house.
+
+"I'd like a white duck," he said, "if you could let me take her now."
+
+He chose a meek and gentle creature who submitted to the separation from
+the rest of her kind without rebellion. Tucked under Richard's arm, she
+surveyed the world with some alarm, but presently, as he rode on with
+her, she seemed to acquiesce in her abduction and faced the adventure
+with serene eyes, murmuring now and then some note of demure
+interrogation as she nestled quite confidently against the big man who
+rode so easily his great white horse.
+
+And thus they came to Bower's, to find Anne on the south bank, like a
+very modern siren, drying her hair, with Diogenes nipping the new young
+grass near her.
+
+She saw them coming. Richard wore a short rough coat and an old alpine
+hat of green. His leggings were splashed with mud, and the white horse
+was splashed, but there was about the pair of them an air of gallant
+achievement.
+
+She rose to greet them. She was blushing a little and with her dark hair
+blowing she was "the most beautiful," like the lady in the song.
+
+"I thought no one would be coming," was her apology, "and out here I get
+the wind and sun."
+
+"All the old fishermen will be wrecked on the rocks if they get a glimpse
+of you," he told her gravely; "you mustn't turn their poor old heads."
+
+And now the white duck murmured.
+
+"The lovely dear, where did you get her?" Anne asked.
+
+"In the hills, to cheer up Diogenes."
+
+He set the white duck down. She shook her feathers and again spoke
+interrogatively. And now Diogenes lifted his head and answered. For a few
+moments he rent the air with his song of triumph. Then he turned and led
+the way to the river. There was a quiet pool in the bend of the bank. The
+old drake breasted its shining waters, and presently the white duck
+followed. With a sort of restrained coquetry she turned her head from
+side to side. All her questions were answered, all her murmurs stilled.
+
+Richard and Anne smiled at each other. "What made you think of it?" she
+asked.
+
+"I thought you'd like it."
+
+"I do." She began to twist up her hair.
+
+"Please don't. I like to see it down."
+
+"But people will be coming in."
+
+"Why should we be here when they come? I'll put Ben in the stable--and
+we'll go for a walk. Do you know there are violets in the wood?"
+
+From under the red-striped awning of Brinsley's boat Geoffrey Fox saw
+Anne's hair blowing like a sable banner in the breeze. He saw Richard's
+square figure peaked up to the alpine hat. He saw them enter the wood.
+
+He shut his eyes from the glare of the sun and lay quietly on the
+cushions of the little launch. But though his eyes were shut, he could
+still see those two figures walking together in the dreamy dimness of the
+spring forest.
+
+"What were the ethics of the primitive man?" he asked Brinsley suddenly.
+"Did he run away with a woman who belonged to somebody else?"
+
+"Why not?" Brinsley's reel was whirring. "And now if you don't mind, Fox,
+you might be ready with the net. If this fish is as big as he pulls, he
+will weigh a ton."
+
+Geoffrey, coming in, found Peggy disconsolate on the pier.
+
+"What's the matter?" he asked.
+
+"I can't find Anne. She said that after her hair dried she'd go for a
+walk to Beulah's playhouse, and we were to have tea. Beulah was to bring
+it."
+
+"She has gone for a walk with some one else."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Dr. Brooks. Let's go and look for her, Peggy, and when we find her we
+will tell her what we think of her for running away."
+
+The green stillness of the grove was very grateful after the glare of the
+river. Geoffrey walked quickly, with the child's hand in his. He had a
+feeling that if he did not walk quickly he would be too late.
+
+He was not too late; he saw that at a glance. Richard had dallied in his
+wooing. It had been so wonderful to be with her. Once when he had knelt
+beside her to pick violets, the wind had blown across his face a soft
+sweet strand of her hair. It was then that she had braided it, sitting on
+a fallen log under a blossoming dogwood.
+
+"It is so long," she had said with a touch of pride, "that it is a great
+trouble to care for it. Cynthia Warfield had hair like mine."
+
+"I don't believe that any one ever had hair like yours. It seems to me as
+if every strand must have been made specially in some celestial shop, and
+then the pattern destroyed."
+
+How lovely she was when she blushed like that! How little and lovely and
+wise and good. He liked little women. His mother was small, and he was
+glad that both she and Anne had delicate hands and feet. He was aware
+that this preference was old-fashioned, but it was, none the less, the
+way he felt about it.
+
+And now there broke upon the silence of the wood the sound of murmuring
+voices. Peggy and Geoffrey Fox had invaded their Paradise!
+
+"We thought," Peggy complained, "that we had lost you. Anne, you promised
+about the tea."
+
+"Oh, Peggy, I forgot."
+
+"Beulah's gone with the basket and Eric, and we can't be late because
+there are hot biscuits."
+
+Hurrying toward the biscuits and their hotness, Anne ran ahead with
+Peggy.
+
+"How about the eyes?" Richard asked as he and Geoffrey followed.
+
+"I've been on the water, and it is bad for them. But I'm not going to
+worry. I am getting out of life more than I hoped--more than I dared
+hope."
+
+His voice had a high note of excitement. Richard glanced at him. For a
+moment he wondered if Fox had been drinking.
+
+But Geoffrey was intoxicated with the wine of his dreams. With a quick
+gesture in which he seemed to throw from him all the fears which had
+oppressed him, he told his triumphant lie.
+
+"I am going to marry Anne Warfield; she has promised to be eyes for me,
+and light--the sun and the moon."
+
+Richard's face grew gray. He spoke with difficulty. "She has promised?"
+
+Then again Geoffrey lied, meaning indeed before the night had passed to
+make his words come true. "She is going to marry me--and I am the
+happiest man alive!"
+
+The light went out of Richard's world. How blind he had been. He had
+taken her smiles and blushes to himself when she had glowed with a
+happiness which had nothing to do with him.
+
+He steadied himself to speak. "You are a lucky fellow, Fox; you must let
+me congratulate you."
+
+"The world doesn't know," Geoffrey said, "not yet. But I had to tell it
+to some one, and a doctor is a sort of secular father confessor."
+
+Richard's laugh was without mirth. "If you mean that it's not to be told,
+you may rely on my discretion."
+
+"Of course. I told you she was to play Beatrice to my Dante, but she
+shall be more than that."
+
+It was a rather silent party which had tea on the porch of the Playhouse.
+But Beulah and Eric were not aware of any lack in their guests. Eric had
+been to Baltimore the day before, and Beulah wore her new ring. She
+accepted Richard's congratulations shyly.
+
+"I like my little new house," she said; "have you been over it?"
+
+He said that he had not, and she took him. Eric went with them, and as
+they stood in the door of an upper room, he put his arm quite frankly
+about Beulah's shoulders as she explained their plans to Richard. "This
+is to be in pink and the other one in white, and all the furniture is to
+be pink and white."
+
+She was as pink and white and pretty as the rooms she was planning, and
+to see her standing there within the circle of her lover's arm was
+heart-warming.
+
+"You must get some roses from my mother, Beulah, for your little garden,"
+the young doctor told her; "all pink and white like the rest of it."
+
+He let them go down ahead of him, and so it happened that he stood for a
+moment alone in a little upper porch at the back of the house which
+overlooked the wood. The shadows were gathering in its dim aisles,
+shutting out the daylight, shutting out the dreams which he had lost that
+day in the fragrant depths.
+
+When later he came with the rest of them to Bower's, the river was
+stained with the sunset. Diogenes and the white duck breasted serenely
+the crimson surface. Certain old fishermen trailed belatedly up the bank.
+Others sat spick and span and ready for supper on the porch.
+
+Brinsley Tyson over the top of his newspaper hailed Richard.
+
+"There's a telephone call for you. They've been trying to get you for an
+hour."
+
+He went in at once, and coming out told Anne good-night. "Thank you for a
+happy afternoon," he said.
+
+But she missed something in his voice, something that had been there when
+they had walked in the wood.
+
+She watched him as he went away, square-shouldered and strong on his big
+white horse. She had a troubled sense that things had in some fateful and
+tragic way gone wrong with her afternoon, but it was not yet given to her
+to know that young Richard on his big white horse was riding out of her
+life.
+
+It was after supper that Geoffrey asked her to go out on the river with
+him.
+
+"Not to-night. I'm tired."
+
+"Just a little minute, Mistress Anne. To see the moon come up over the
+island. Please." So she consented.
+
+Helping her into the boat, Geoffrey's hands were shaking. The boat swept
+out from the pier in a wide curve, and he drew a long breath. He had her
+now--it would be a great adventure--like a book--better than any book.
+
+Primitive man in prehistoric days carried his woman off captive under his
+arm. Geoffrey, pursuing modern methods, had borrowed Brinsley's boat. A
+rug was folded innocently on the cushions; in a snug little cupboard
+under the stern seat were certain supplies--a great adventure, surely!
+
+And now the boat was under the bridge; the signal lights showed red and
+green. Then as they slipped around the first island there was only the
+silver of the moonshine spread out over the waters.
+
+Geoffrey stopped the motor. "We'll drift and talk."
+
+"You talk," she told him, "and I'll listen, and we mustn't be too late."
+
+"What is too late?"
+
+"I told you I would stay just a little minute."
+
+"There is no real reason why we shouldn't stay as long as we wish. You
+are surely not so prim that you are doing it for propriety."
+
+"You know I am not prim."
+
+"Yes you are. You are prim and Puritan and sometimes you are a prig. But
+I like you that way, Mistress Anne. Only to-night I shall do as I
+please."
+
+"Don't be silly."
+
+"Is it silly to love you--why?"
+
+He argued it with her brilliantly--so that it was only when the red and
+green lights of a second bridge showed ahead of them that she said,
+sharply, "We are miles away from Bower's; we must go back."
+
+"It won't take us long," he said, easily, and presently they were purring
+up-stream.
+
+Then all at once the motor stopped. Geoffrey, inspecting it with a
+flashlight, said, succinctly, "Engine's on the blink."
+
+"You mean that we can't go on?"
+
+"Oh, I'll tinker it up. Only you'll have to let me get into that box
+under the stern seat for the tools. You can hold the light while I work."
+
+As he worked they drifted. They passed the second bridge. Anne, steering,
+grew cold and shivered. But she did not complain. She was glad, however,
+when Geoffrey said, "You'd better curl down among the cushions, and let
+me wrap you in this rug."
+
+"Can you manage without me?"
+
+"Yes. I've patched it up partially. And you'll freeze in this bitter
+air."
+
+The wind had changed and there was now no moon. She was glad of the
+warmth of the rug and the comfort of the cushioned space. She shut her
+eyes, after a time, and, worn out by the emotions of the day, she dropped
+into fitful slumber.
+
+Then Geoffrey, his hair blown back by the wind, stood at the wheel and
+steered his boat not up-stream toward the bridge at Bower's, but straight
+down toward the wider waters, where the river stretches out into the
+Bay.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+_In Which Eve Usurps an Ancient Masculine Privilege._
+
+
+AUNT MAUDE CHESLEY belonged to the various patriotic societies which are
+dependent on Revolutionary fighting blood, on Dutch forbears, or on the
+ancestral holding of Colonial office. The last stood highest in her
+esteem. It was the hardest to get into, hence there was about it the
+sanctity of exclusiveness. Any man might spill his blood for his country,
+and among those early Hollanders were many whose blood was red instead of
+blue, but it was only a choice few who in the early days of the country's
+history had been appointed by the Crown or elected by the people to
+positions of influence and of authority.
+
+When Aunt Maude went to the meeting of her favorite organization, she
+wore always black velvet which showed the rounds of her shoulders, point
+lace in a deep bertha, the family diamonds, and all of her badges. The
+badges had bars and jewels, and the effect was imposing.
+
+Evelyn laughed at her. "Nobody cares for ancestors any more. Not since
+people began to hunt them up. You can find anything if you look for it,
+Aunt Maude. And most of the crests are bought or borrowed so that if one
+really belongs to you, you don't like to speak of it, any more than to
+tell that you are a lady or take a daily bath."
+
+"Our ancestors," said Aunt Maude solemnly, "are our heritage from the
+past--but you have reverence for nothing."
+
+"They were a jolly old lot," Eve agreed, "and I am proud of them. But
+some of their descendants are a scream. If men had their minds on being
+ancestors instead of bragging of them there'd be some hope for the future
+of old families."
+
+Aunt Maude, having been swathed by her maid in a silk scarf, so that her
+head was stiff with it, batted her eyes. "If you would go with me," she
+said, "and hear some of the speeches, you might look at it differently.
+Now there was a Van Tromp----"
+
+"And in New England there were Codcapers, and in Virginia there were
+Pantops. I take off my hat to them, but not to their descendants,
+indiscriminately."
+
+And now Aunt Maude, more than ever mummified in a gold and black brocade
+wrap trimmed with black fur, steered her uncertain way toward the motor
+at the door.
+
+"People in my time----" floated over her shoulder and then as the door
+closed behind her, her eloquence was lost.
+
+Eve, alone, faced a radiant prospect. Richard was coming. He had
+telephoned. She had not told Aunt Maude. She wanted him to herself.
+
+When at last he arrived she positively crowed over him. "Oh, Dicky, this
+is darling of you."
+
+A shadow fell across her face, however, when he told her why he had come.
+
+"Austin wanted me with him in an operation. He telegraphed me and I took
+the first train. I have been here for two days without a minute's time in
+which to call you up."
+
+"I thought that perhaps you had come to see me."
+
+"Seeing you is a pleasant part of it, Eve."
+
+He was really glad to see her; to be drawn away by it all from the
+somberness of his thoughts. The night before he had left the train on the
+Jersey side and had ferried over so that he might view once more the
+sky-line of the great city. There had been a stiff breeze blowing and it
+had seemed to him that he drew the first full breath since the moment
+when he had walked with Geoffrey in the wood. What had followed had been
+like a dream; the knowledge that the great surgeon wanted him, his
+mother's quick service in helping him pack his bag, the walk to Bower's
+in the fragrant dark to catch the ten o'clock train; the moment on the
+porch at Bower's when he had learned from a word dropped by Beulah that
+Anne was on the river with Geoffrey.
+
+And now it all seemed so far away--the river with the moon's broad path,
+Bower's low house and its yellow-lighted panes, the silence, the
+darkness.
+
+Since morning he had done a thousand things. He had been to the hospital
+and had yielded once more to the spell of its splendid machinery; he had
+talked with Austin and the talk had been like wine to a thirsty soul. In
+such an atmosphere a man would have little time to--think. He craved the
+action, the excitement, the uplift.
+
+He came back to Eve's prattle. "I told Winifred Ames we would come to her
+little supper after the play. I was to have gone with her and Pip and
+Jimmie Ford. Tony is away. But when you 'phoned, I called the first part
+of it off. I wanted to have a little time just with you, Richard."
+
+He smiled at her. "Who is Jimmie Ford?"
+
+"A lovely youth who is in love with me--or with my money--he was at your
+birthday party, Dicky Boy; don't you remember?"
+
+"The Blue Butterfly? Yes. Is he another victim, Eve?"
+
+She shrugged. "Who knows? If he is in love with me, he'll get hurt; if he
+is in love with Aunt Maude's money, he won't get it. Oh, how can a woman
+know?" The lightness left her voice. "Sometimes I think that I'll go off
+somewhere and see if somebody won't love me for what I am, and not for
+what he thinks Aunt Maude is going to leave me."
+
+"And you with a string of scalps at your belt, and Pip ready at any
+moment to die for you."
+
+She nodded. "Pip is pure gold. Nobody can question his motives. And
+anyhow he has more money than I can ever hope to have. But I am not in
+love with him, Dicky."
+
+"You are not in love with anybody. You are a cold-blooded little thing,
+Eve. A man would need much fire to melt your ice."
+
+"Would he?"
+
+"You know he would."
+
+He swept away from her petulances to the thing which was for the moment
+uppermost in his mind. "I have had an offer, Eve, from Austin. He wants
+an assistant, a younger man who can work into his practice. It is a
+wonderful working opportunity."
+
+"It would be wicked to throw it away," she told him, breathlessly,
+"wicked, Richard."
+
+"It looks that way. But there's mother to think of, and Crossroads has
+come to mean a lot to me, Eve."
+
+"Oh, but New York, Dicky! Think of the good times we'd have, and of your
+getting into Austin's line of work and his patients. You would be rolling
+in your own limousine before you'd know it."
+
+Rolling in his own limousine! And missing the rhythm of big Ben's
+measured trot----!
+
+"_I think--she was the--most beautiful_----"
+
+As they motored to Winifred's, Eve spoke of his quiet mood. "Why don't
+you talk, Dicky?"
+
+"It has been a busy day--I'll wake up presently and realize that I am
+here."
+
+It was before he went down-stairs at the Dutton-Ames that he had a moment
+alone with Jimmie Ford.
+
+Jimmie was not in the best of moods. Winifred had asked him a week ago to
+join a choice quartette which included Pip and Eve. Of course Meade made
+a troublesome fourth, but Jimmie's conceit saved him from realizing the
+real fact of the importance of the plain and heavy Pip to that group. And
+now, things had been shifted, so that Eve had stayed to talk to a country
+doctor, and he had been left to the callow company of an indefinite
+debutante whom Winifred had invited to fill the vacancy.
+
+"When did you come down, Brooks?" he asked coldly.
+
+"This morning."
+
+"Nice old place of yours in Harford."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Owned it long?"
+
+"Several generations."
+
+"Oh, ancestral halls, and all that----?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I saw Cynthia Warfield's picture on the wall--used to know the family
+down in Carroll--our old estates joined--Anne Warfield and I were brought
+up together."
+
+They had reached the head of the stairway. Richard stopped and stood
+looking down. "Anne Warfield?"
+
+"Yes. Surprised to find her teaching. I fancy they've been pretty hard
+up--grandfather drank, and all that, you know."
+
+"I didn't know." It was now Richard's turn to speak coldly.
+
+"Oh, yes, ran through with all their money. Years ago. Anne's a little
+queen. Engaged to her once myself, you know. Boy and girl affair, broken
+off----"
+
+Below them in the hall, Richard could see the women with whom he was to
+sup. Shining, shimmering figures in silk and satin and tulle. For these,
+softness and ease of living. And that other one! Oh, the cheap little
+gown, the braided hair! Before he had known her she had been Jimmie's and
+now she was Geoffrey's. And he had fatuously thought himself the first.
+
+He threw himself uproariously into the fun which followed. After all, it
+was good to be with them again, good to hear the familiar talk of people
+and of things, good to eat and drink and be merry in the fashion of the
+town, good to have this taste of the old tumultuous life.
+
+He and Eve went home together. Philip's honest face clouded as he saw
+them off. "Don't run away with her, Brooks," he said, as he leaned in to
+have a last look at her. "Good-night, little lady."
+
+"Good-night."
+
+It was when they were motoring through the park that Eve said, "I am
+troubled about Pip."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Oh, I sometimes have a feeling that he has a string tied to me--and that
+he is pulling me--his way. And I don't want to go. But I shall, if
+something doesn't save me from him, Richard."
+
+"You can save yourself."
+
+"That's all you know about it. Women take what they can get in this
+world, not what they want. Every morning Pip sends me flowers, sweetheart
+roses to-day, and lilies yesterday, and before that gardenias and
+orchids, and when I open the boxes every flower seems to be shouting,
+'Come and marry me, come and marry me.'"
+
+"No woman need marry a man she doesn't care for, Eve."
+
+"Lots of them do."
+
+"You won't. You are too sensible."
+
+"Am I?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+She sighed a little. "I am not half as sensible as you think."
+
+When they reached home, they found Aunt Maude before them. She had been
+unswathed from her veil and her cloak, released from her black velvet,
+and was comfortable before her sitting-room fire in a padded wisteria
+robe and a boudoir cap with satin bow. Underneath the cap there were no
+flat gray curls. These were whisked mysteriously away each night by
+Hannah, the maid, to be returned in the morning, fresh from their pins
+with no hurt to Aunt Maude's old head.
+
+She greeted Richard cordially. "I sent Hannah down when I heard you. Eve
+didn't let me know you were here; she never lets me know. And now tell me
+about your poor mother."
+
+"Why poor, dear lady? You know she loves Crossroads."
+
+"How anybody can---- I'd die of loneliness. Now to-night--so many people
+of my own kind----"
+
+"Everybody in black velvet or brocade, everybody with badges, everybody
+with blue blood," Eve interrupted flippantly; "nobody with ideas, nobody
+with enthusiasms, nobody with an ounce of originality--ugh!"
+
+"My dear----!"
+
+"Dicky, Aunt Maude's idea of Heaven is a place where everybody wears
+coronets instead of halos, and where the angel chorus is a Dutch version
+of 'God save the King.'"
+
+"My idea of Heaven," Aunt Maude retorted, "is a place where young girls
+have ladylike manners."
+
+Richard roared. It had been long since he had tasted this atmosphere of
+salt and spice. Aunt Maude and her sprightly niece were as good as a
+play.
+
+"How long shall you be in town, Richard?"
+
+"Three or four days. It depends on the condition of our patient. It may
+be necessary to operate again, and Austin wants me to be here."
+
+"Aunt Maude, Dicky may come back to New York to live."
+
+"He should never have left. What does your mother think of it?"
+
+"I haven't told her of Austin's offer. I shall write to-night."
+
+"If she has a grain of sense, she'll make you take it."
+
+Eve was restless. "Come on down, Dicky. It is time that Aunt Maude was in
+bed."
+
+"I never go until you do, Eve, and in my day young men went home before
+morning."
+
+"Dearest, Dicky shall leave in ten minutes. I'll send him."
+
+But when they were once more in the great drawing-room, she forgot the
+time limit. "Don't let your mother settle things for you, Dicky. Think of
+yourself and your future. Of your--manhood, Dicky--please."
+
+She was very lovely as she stood before him, with her hands on his
+shoulders. "I want you to be the biggest of them--all," she said, and her
+laugh was tremulous.
+
+"I know. Eve, I want to stay."
+
+"Oh, Dicky--really?"
+
+"Really, Eve."
+
+Their hands came together in a warm clasp.
+
+She let him go after that. There had been nothing more than brotherly
+warmth in his manner, but it was enough that in the days to come she was
+to have him near her.
+
+Richard, writing to his mother, told her something of his state of mind.
+"I'll admit that it tempts me. It is a big thing, a very big thing, to
+work with a man like that. Yet knowing how you feel about it, I dare not
+decide. We shall have to face one thing, however. The Crossroads practice
+will never be a money-making practice. I know how little money means to
+you, but the lack of it will mean that I shall be tied to rather small
+things as the years go on. I should like to be one of the Big Men,
+mother. You see I am being very frank. I'll admit that I dreamed with
+you--of bringing all my talents to the uplift of a small community, of
+reviving at Crossroads the dignity of other days. But--perhaps we have
+dreamed too much--the world doesn't wait for the dreamers--the only way
+is to join the procession."
+
+In the day which intervened between his letter and his mother's answer,
+he had breakfast with Eve in the room with the flame-colored fishes and
+the parrot and the green-eyed cat. He motored with Eve out to
+Westchester, and they had lunch at an inn on the side of a hill which
+overlooked the Hudson; later they went to a matinée, to tea in a special
+little corner of a down-town hotel for the sake of old days, then back
+again to dress for dinner at Eve's, with Aunt Maude at the head of the
+table, and Tony and Winifred and Pip completing the party. Then another
+play, another supper, another ride home with Eve, and in the morning in
+quiet contrast to all this, his mother's letter.
+
+"Dear Boy," she said, "I am glad you spoke to me frankly of what you
+feel. I want no secrets between us, no reservations, no sacrifices which
+in the end may mean a barrier between us.
+
+"Our sojourn at Crossroads has been an experiment. And it has failed. I
+had hoped that as the days went on, you might find happiness. Indeed, I
+had been deceiving myself with the thought that you were happy. But now I
+know that you are not, and I know, too, what it must mean to you to feel
+that from among all the others you have been chosen to help a great man
+like Dr. Austin, who was the friend of my father, and my friend through
+everything.
+
+"But Richard, I can't go back. I literally crawled to Crossroads, after
+my years in New York, as a wounded animal seeks its lair. And I have a
+morbid shrinking from it all, unworthy of me, perhaps, but none the less
+impossible to overcome. I feel that the very stones of the streets would
+speak of the tragedy and dishonor of the past: houses would stare at me,
+the crowds would shun me.
+
+"And now I have this to propose. That I stay here at Crossroads, keeping
+the old house open for you. David is near me, and any one of Cousin Mary
+Tyson's daughters would be glad to come to me. And you shall run down at
+week-ends, and tell me all about it, and I shall live in your letters and
+in the things which you have to tell. We can be one in spirit, even
+though there are miles between us. This is the only solution which seems
+possible to me at this moment. I cannot hold you back from what may be
+your destiny. I can only pray here in my old home for the happiness and
+success that must come to you--my boy--my little--boy----"
+
+The letter broke off there. Richard, high up in the room of the big
+hotel, found himself pacing the floor. Back of the carefully penned lines
+of his mother's letter he could see her slender tense figure, the
+whiteness of her face, the shadow in her eyes. How often he had seen it
+when a boy, how often he had sworn that when he was the master of the
+house he would make her happy.
+
+The telephone rang. It was Eve. "I was afraid you might have left for the
+hospital."
+
+"I am leaving in a few minutes."
+
+"Can you go for a ride with me?"
+
+"In the afternoon. There's to be another operation--it may be very late
+before I am through."
+
+"Not too late for dinner out of town somewhere and a ride under the May
+moon." Her voice rang high and happy.
+
+For the rest of the morning he had no time to think of his own affairs.
+The operation was extremely rare and interesting, and Austin's skill was
+superb. Richard felt as if he were taking part in a play, in which the
+actors were the white clad and competent doctors and nurses, and the
+stage was the surgical room.
+
+Eve coming for him, found him tired and taciturn. She respected his mood,
+and said little, and they rode out and out from the town and up and up
+into the Westchester hills, dotted with dogwood, pink and white like huge
+nosegays. As the night came on there was the fragrance of the gardens,
+the lights of the little towns; then once more the shadows as they swept
+again into the country.
+
+"We will go as far as we dare," Eve said. "I know an adorable place to
+dine."
+
+She tried more than once to bring him to speak of Austin, but he put her
+off. "I am dead tired, dear girl; you talk until we have something to
+eat."
+
+"Oh," Eve surveyed him scornfully, "oh, men and their appetites!"
+
+But she had a thousand things to tell him, and her light chatter carried
+him away from somber thoughts, so that when they reached at last the
+quaint hostelry toward which their trip had tended, he was ready to meet
+Eve's mood half-way, and enter with some zest upon their gay adventure.
+She chose a little table on a side porch, where they were screened from
+observation, and which overlooked the river, and there took off her hat
+and powdered her nose, and gave her attention to the selection of the
+dinner.
+
+"A clear soup, Dicky Boy, and Maryland chicken, hot asparagus, a Russian
+dressing for our lettuce, and at the end red raspberries with little
+cakes. They are sponge cakes, Dicky, filled with cream, and they are food
+for the gods."
+
+He was hungry and tired and he wanted to eat. He was glad when the food
+came on.
+
+When he finished he leaned back and talked shop. "If you don't like it,"
+he told Eve, "I'll stop. Some women hate it."
+
+"I love it," Eve said. "Dicky, when I dream of your future you are always
+at the top of things, with smaller men running after you and taking your
+orders."
+
+He smiled. "Don't dream. It doesn't pay. I've stopped."
+
+She glanced at him. His face was stern.
+
+"What's up, Dicky Boy?"
+
+He laughed without mirth. "Oh, I'm beginning to think we are puppets
+pulled by strings; that things happen as Fate wills and not as we want
+them."
+
+"Men haven't any right to talk that way. It's their world. If you were a
+woman you might complain. Look at me! Everything that I have comes from
+Aunt Maude. She could leave me without a cent if she chose, and she
+knows it. She owns me, and unless I marry she'll own me until I die."
+
+"You'll marry, Eve. Old Pip will see to that."
+
+"Pip," passionately. "Dicky, why do you always fling Pip in my face?"
+
+"Eve----!"
+
+"You do. Everybody does. And I don't want him."
+
+"Then don't have him. There are others. And you needn't lose your temper
+over a little thing like that."
+
+"It isn't a little thing."
+
+"Oh, well----" The conversation lapsed into silence until Eve said, "I
+was horrid--and I think we had better be getting back, Dicky."
+
+Again in the big limousine, with the stolid chauffeur separated from them
+by the glass screen, she said, softly, "Oh, Dicky, it seems too good to
+be true that we shall have other nights like this--other rides. When will
+you come up for good?"
+
+"I am not coming, Eve."
+
+She turned to him, her face frozen into whiteness.
+
+"Not coming? Why not?"
+
+"While mother lives I must make her happy."
+
+"Oh, don't be goody-goody."
+
+He blazed. "I'm not."
+
+"You are. Aren't you ever going to live your own life?"
+
+"I am living it. But I can't break mother's heart."
+
+"You might as well break hers as--mine."
+
+He stared down at her. Mingled forever after with his thoughts of that
+moment was a blurred vision of her whiteness and stillness. Her slim
+hands were crossed tensely on her knees.
+
+He laid one of his own awkwardly over them. "Dear girl," he said, "you
+don't in the least mean it."
+
+"I do. Dicky, why shouldn't I say it? Why shouldn't I? Hasn't a woman the
+right? Hasn't she?"
+
+She was shaking with silent sobs, the tears running down her cheeks. He
+had not seen her cry like this since little girlhood, when her mother had
+died, and he, a clumsy lad, had tried to comfort her.
+
+He was faced by a situation so stupendous that for a moment he sat there
+stunned. Proud little Eve for love of him had made the supreme sacrifice
+of her pride. Could any man in his maddest moment have imagined a thing
+like this----!
+
+He bent down to her, and took her hands in his.
+
+"Hush, Eve, hush. I can't bear to see you cry. I'm not the fellow to make
+you happy, dear."
+
+Her head dropped against his shoulder. The perfumed gold of her hair was
+against his cheeks. "No one else can make me happy, Dicky."
+
+Then he felt the world whirl about him, and it seemed to him as he
+answered that his voice came from a long distance.
+
+"If you'll marry me, Eve, I'll stay."
+
+It was the knightly thing to do, and the necessary thing. Yet as they
+swept on through the night, his mother's face, all the joy struck from
+it, seemed to stare at him out of the darkness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+_In Which Geoffrey Plays Cave Man._
+
+
+MINE OWN UNCLE:
+
+I don't know whether to begin at the beginning or at the end of what I
+have to tell you. And even now as I think back over the events of the
+last twenty-four hours I feel that I must have dreamed them, and that I
+will wake and find that nothing has really happened.
+
+But something has happened, and "of a strangeness" which makes it seem to
+belong to some of those queer old dime "thrillers" which you never wanted
+me to read.
+
+Last night Geoffrey Fox asked me to go out with him on the river. I don't
+often go at night, yet as there was a moon, it seemed as if I might.
+
+We went in Brinsley Tyson's motor boat. It is big and roomy and is
+equipped with everything to make one comfortable for extended trips. I
+wondered a little that Geoffrey should take it, for he has a little boat
+of his own, but he said that Mr. Tyson had offered it, and they had been
+out in it all day.
+
+Well, it was lovely on the water; I was feeling tired and as blue as
+blue--some day I may tell you about _that_, Uncle Rod, and I was glad of
+the quiet and beauty of it all; and of late Geoffrey and I have been such
+good friends.
+
+Can't you ever really know people, Uncle Rod, or am I so dull and stupid
+that I misunderstand? Men are such a puzzle--all except you, you darling
+dear--and if you were young and not my uncle, even you might be as much
+of a puzzle as the rest.
+
+Well, I would never have believed it of Geoffrey Fox, and even now I
+can't really feel that he was responsible. But it isn't what I think but
+what you will think that is important--for I have, somehow, ceased to
+believe in myself.
+
+It was when we reached the second bridge that I told Geoffrey that we
+must turn back. We had, even then, gone farther than I had intended. But
+as we started up-stream, I felt that we would get to Bower's before Peter
+went back on the bridge, which is always the signal for the house to
+close, although it is never really closed; but the lights are turned down
+and the family go to bed, and I have always known that I ought not to
+stay out after that.
+
+Well, just as we left the second bridge, something happened to the motor.
+
+Uncle Rod, _that was last night_, and I didn't get back to Bower's until
+a few hours ago, and here is the whole truth before I write any more----
+
+_Geoffrey Fox tried to run away with me!_
+
+It would seem like a huge joke if it were not so serious. I don't know
+how he got such an idea in his head. Perhaps he thought that life was
+like one of his books--that all he had to do was to plan a plot, and then
+make it work out in his own way. He said, in that first awful moment,
+when I knew what he had done, "I thought I could play Cave Man and get
+away with it." You see, he hadn't taken into consideration that I wasn't
+a Cave Woman!
+
+When the engine first went wrong I wasn't in the least worried. He fixed
+it, and we went on. Then it stopped and we drifted: the moon went down
+and it was cold, and finally Geoffrey made me curl up among the cushions.
+I felt that it must be very late, but Geoffrey showed me his watch, and
+it was only a little after ten. I knew Peter wouldn't be going to the
+bridge until eleven, and I hoped by that time we would be home.
+
+But we weren't. We were far, far down the river. At last I gave up hope
+of arriving before the house closed, but I knew that I could explain to
+Mrs. Bower.
+
+After that I napped and nodded, for I was very tired, and all the time
+Geoffrey tinkered with the broken motor. Each time that I waked I asked
+questions but he always quieted me--and at last--as the dawn began to
+light the world, a pale gray spectral sort of light, Uncle Rod, I saw
+that the shore on one side of us was not far away, but on the other it
+was a mere dark line in the distance--double the width that the river is
+at Bower's. Geoffrey was standing up and steering toward a little pier
+that stuck its nose into shallow water. Back of the pier was what seemed
+to be an old warehouse, and in a clump of trees back of that there was a
+thin church spire.
+
+I said, "Where are we?" and he said, "I am not sure, but I am going in to
+see if I can get the motor mended."
+
+I couldn't think of anything but how worried the Bowers would be. "You
+must find a telephone," I told him, "and call Beulah, and let her know
+what has happened."
+
+He ran up to the landing and fastened the boat, and then he helped me
+out. "We will sit here and have a bit of breakfast first," he said;
+"there's some coffee left in Brinsley's hot and cold bottle, and some
+supplies under the stern seat."
+
+It was really quite cheerful sitting there, eating sardines and crackers
+and olives and orange marmalade. A fresh breeze was blowing, and the
+river was wrinkled all over its silver surface, and we could see nothing
+but water ahead of us, straight to the horizon, where there was just the
+faint streak of a steamer's smoke.
+
+"We must be almost in the Bay," I said. "Couldn't you have steered
+up-stream instead of down?"
+
+He sat very still for a moment looking at me, and then he said quickly
+and sharply, "I didn't want to go up-stream. I wanted to go down. And I
+came in here because I saw a church spire, and where there is a church
+there is always a preacher. Will you marry me, Mistress Anne?"
+
+At first I thought that he had lost his mind. Uncle Rod, I don't think
+that I shall ever see a sardine or a cracker without a vision of Geoffrey
+with his breakfast in his hand and his face as white as chalk above it.
+
+"That's a very silly joke," I said. "Why should I marry you?"
+
+He looked at me, and--I didn't need any answer, for it came to me then
+that I had been out all night on the river with him, and that he was
+thinking of a way to quiet people's tongues!
+
+I tried to speak, but my voice shook, and finally I managed to stammer
+that when we got back I was sure it would be all right.
+
+"It won't be all right," he said; "the world will have things to say
+about you, and I'd rather die than have them say it. And I could make you
+happy, Anne."
+
+Then I told him that I did not love him, that he was my dear friend, my
+brother--and suddenly his face grew red, and he came over and caught hold
+of my hands. "I am not your brother," he said. "I want you whether you
+want me or not. I could make you love me--I've got to have you in my
+life. I am not going on alone to meet darkness--and despair."
+
+Oh, Uncle Rod, then I knew and I looked straight at him and asked:
+"Geoffrey Fox, did you break the motor?"
+
+"It isn't broken," he said; "there has never been a thing the matter with
+it."
+
+I think for the first time that I was a little afraid. Not of him, but of
+what he had done.
+
+"Oh, how could you," I said, "how could you?"
+
+And it was then that he said, "I thought that I could play Cave Man and
+get away with it."
+
+After that he told me how much he cared. He said that I had helped him
+and inspired him. That I had shown him a side of himself that no one else
+had ever shown. That I had made him believe in himself--and in--God. That
+if he didn't have me in his life his future would be--dead. He begged and
+begged me to let him take me into the little town and find some one to
+marry us. He said that if we went back I would be lost to him--that--that
+Brooks would get me--that was the way he put it, Uncle Rod. He said that
+he was going blind; that I hadn't any heart; that he would love me as no
+one else could; that he would write his books for me; that he would spend
+his whole life making it up to me.
+
+I don't know how I held out against him. But I did. Something in me
+seemed to say that I must hold out. Some sense of dignity and of
+self-respect, and at last I conquered.
+
+"I will not marry you," I said; "don't speak of it again. I am going back
+to Bower's. I am not a heroine of a melodrama, and there's no use to act
+as if I had done an unpardonable thing. I haven't, and the Bowers won't
+think it, and nobody else will know. But you have hurt me more than I can
+tell by what you have done to-night. When you first came to Bower's there
+were things about you that I didn't like, but--as I came to know you, I
+thought I had found another man in you. The night at the Crossroads ball
+you seemed like a big kind brother--and I told you what I had suffered,
+and now you have made me suffer."
+
+And then--oh, I don't quite know how to tell you. He dropped on his knees
+at my feet and hid his face in my dress and cried--hard dry sobs--with
+his hands clutching.
+
+I just couldn't stand it, Uncle Rod, and presently I was saying, "Oh, you
+poor boy, you poor boy----" and I think I smoothed his hair, and he
+whispered, "Can't you?" and I said, "Oh, Geoffrey, I can't."
+
+At last he got control of himself. He sat at a little distance from me
+and told me what he was going to do.
+
+"I think I was mad," he said. "I can't even ask your forgiveness, for I
+don't deserve it. I am going up to town to telephone to Beulah, and when
+I come back I will take you up the river where you can get the train. I
+shall break the engine and leave it here, so that when Brinsley gets it
+back there will be nothing to spoil our story."
+
+He was gone half an hour. When he came he brought me a hat. He had bought
+it at the one little store where he had telephoned, and he had bought one
+for himself. I think we both laughed a little when we put them on,
+although it wasn't a laughing matter, but we did look funny.
+
+He unfastened the boat, and we turned up the river and in about an hour
+we came into quite a thriving port with the Sunday quiet over everything,
+and Geoffrey did things to the engine that put it out of commission, and
+then he left it with a man on the pier, and we took the train.
+
+It seems that all night at Bower's they were looking for us. They even
+took other boats, and followed. And they called. I know that if Geoffrey
+heard them call he didn't answer.
+
+Every one seemed to accept our explanation. Perhaps they thought it
+queer. But I can't help that.
+
+Geoffrey is going away to-morrow. When we were alone in the hall for a
+moment he told me that he was going. "If you can ever forgive me," he
+said, "will you write and tell me? What I have done may seem
+unforgivable. But when a man dreams a great deal he sometimes thinks
+that he can make his dreams come true."
+
+Uncle Rod, I think the worst thing in the whole wide world is to be
+disappointed in people. As soon as school closes I am coming back to you.
+Perhaps you can make me see the sunsets. And what do you say about life
+now? Is it what we make it? Did I have anything to do with this mad
+adventure? Yet the memory of it will always--smirch.
+
+And if life isn't what we make it, where is our hope and where are our
+sunsets? Tell me that, you old dear.
+
+ANNE.
+
+P.S. When I opened my door just now, I found that Geoffrey had left on
+the threshold his little Napoleon, and a letter. I am sending the letter
+to you. I cried over it, and I am afraid it is blurred--but I haven't
+time to make a copy before the mail goes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What Geoffrey said:
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MY LITTLE CHILD:
+
+I am calling you that because there is something so young and untouched
+about you. If I were an artist I should paint you as young Psyche--and
+there should be a hint of angels' wings in the air and it should be
+spring--with a silver dawn. But if I could paint should I ever be able to
+put on canvas the light in your eyes when you have talked to me by the
+fire, my kind little friend whom I have lost?
+
+I cannot even now understand the mood that possessed me. Yet I will be
+frank. I saw you go into the wood with Richard Brooks. I felt that if he
+should say to you what I was sure he wanted to say that there would be no
+chance for me--so I hurried after you. The thing which was going to
+happen must not happen; and I arrived in time. After that I told Brooks
+as we walked back that I was going to marry you, and I took you out in my
+boat intending to make my words come true.
+
+These last few days have been strange days. Perhaps when I have described
+them you may find it in your heart to feel sorry for me. The book is
+finished. That of itself has left me with a sense of loss, as if I had
+put away from me something that had been a part of me. Then--I am going
+blind. Do you know what that means, the desperate meaning? To lose the
+light out of your life--never to see the river as I saw it this morning?
+Never to see the moonlight or the starlight--never to see your face?
+
+The specialist has given me a few months--and then darkness.
+
+Was it selfishness to want to tie you to a blind man? If you knew that
+you were losing the light wouldn't you want to steal a star to illumine
+the night?--and you were my--Star.
+
+I am going now to my little sister, Mimi. She leaves the convent in a few
+days. There are just the two of us. I have been a wayward chap, loving
+my own way; it will be a sorry thing for her to find, I fancy, that
+henceforth I shall be in leading strings.
+
+It is because of this thing that is coming that I am begging you still to
+be my friend--to send me now and then a little letter; that I may feel in
+the night that you are holding out your hand to me. There can be no
+greater punishment than your complete silence, no greater purgatory than
+the thought that I have forfeited your respect. Looking into the future I
+can see no way to regain it, but if the day ever comes when a Blind
+Beggar can serve you, you will show that you have forgiven him by asking
+that service of him.
+
+I am leaving my little Napoleon for you. You once called him a little
+great man. Perhaps those of us who have some elements of greatness find
+our balance in something that is small and mean and mad.
+
+Will you tell Brooks that you are not bound to me in any way? It is best
+that you should do it. I shall hope for a line from you. If it does not
+come--if I have indeed lost my little friend through my own fault--then
+indeed the shadows will shut me in.
+
+GEOFFREY.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Uncle Rodman writes:
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MY BELOVED NIECE:
+
+Once upon a time you and I read together "The Arabian Nights," and when
+we had finished the first book you laid your little hand on my knee and
+looked up at me. "Is it true, Uncle Rod?" you asked. "Oh, Uncle Rod, is
+it true?" And I said, "What it tells about the Roc's egg and the Old Man
+of the Sea and the Serpent is not true, but what it says about the
+actions and motives of people is true, because people have acted in that
+way and have thought like that through all the ages, and the tales have
+lived because of it, and have been written in all languages." I was sure,
+when I said it, that you did not quite understand; but you were to grow
+to it, which was all that was required.
+
+Blessed child, what your Geoffrey Fox has done, though I hate him for it
+and blame him, is what other hotheads have done. The protective is not
+the primitive masculine instinct. Men have thought of themselves first
+and of women afterward since the beginning of time. Only with
+Christianity was chivalry born in them. And since many of our youths have
+elected to be pagan, what can you expect?
+
+So your Geoffrey Fox being pagan, primitive--primordial, whatever it is
+now the fashion to call it, reverted to type, and you were the victim.
+
+I have read his letter and might find it in my heart to forgive him were
+it not that he has made you suffer; but that I cannot forgive; although,
+indeed, his coming blindness is something that pleads for him, and his
+fear of it--and his fear of losing you.
+
+I am glad that you are coming home to me. Margaret and her family are
+going away, and we can have their big house to ourselves during the
+summer. We shall like that, I am sure, and we shall have many talks, and
+try to straighten out this matter of dreams--and of sunsets, which is
+really very important, and not in the least to be ignored.
+
+But let me leave this with you to ponder on. You remember how you have
+told me that when you were a tiny child you walked once between me and my
+good old friend, General Ross, and you heard it said by one of us that
+life was what we made it. Before that you had always cried when it
+rained; now you were anxious that the rain might come so that you could
+see if you could really keep from crying. And when the rain arrived you
+were so immensely entertained that you didn't shed a tear, and you went
+to bed that night feeling like a conqueror, and never again cried out
+against the elements.
+
+It would have been dreadful if all your life you had gone on crying about
+rain, wouldn't it? And isn't this adventure your rainy day? You rose
+above it, dearest child. I am proud of the way you handled your mad
+lover.
+
+Life _is_ what we make it. Never doubt that. "He knows the water best who
+has waded through it," and I have lived long and have learned my lesson.
+When I knew that I could paint no more real pictures I knew that I must
+have dream pictures to hang on the walls of memory. Shall I make you a
+little catalogue of them, dear heart--thus:
+
+No. 1.--Your precious mother sewing by the west window in our shadowed
+sitting-room, her head haloed by the sunset.
+
+No. 2.--Anne in a blue pinafore, with the wind blowing her hair back on a
+gray March morning.
+
+No. 3.--Anne in a white frock amid a blur of candle-light on
+Christmas----
+
+Oh, my list would be long! People have said that I have lacked pride
+because I have chosen to take my troubles philosophically. There have
+been times when my soul has wept. I have cried often on my rainy days.
+But--there have always been the sunsets--and after that--the stars.
+
+I fear that I have been but little help to you. But you know my
+love--blessed one. And the eagerness with which I await your coming. Ever
+your own
+
+UNCLE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+_In Which There is Much Said of Marriage and of Giving in Marriage._
+
+
+EVE'S green-eyed cat sat on a chair and watched the flame-colored fishes.
+It was her morning amusement. When her mistress came down she would have
+her cream and her nap. In the meantime, the flashing, golden things in
+the clear water aroused an ancient instinct. She reached out a quick paw
+and patted the water, flinging showers of sparkling drops on her sleek
+fur.
+
+Aunt Maude, eating waffles and reading her morning paper, approved her.
+"I hope you'll catch them," she said, "especially the turtles and the
+tadpoles--the idea of having such things where you eat."
+
+The green-eyed cat licked her wet paw, then she jumped down from the
+chair and trotted to the door to meet Eve, who picked her up and hugged
+her. "Pats," she demanded, "what have you been doing? Your little pads
+are wet."
+
+"She's been fishing," said Aunt Maude, "in your aquarium. She has more
+sense than I thought."
+
+Eve, pouring cream into a crystal dish, laughed. "Pats is as wise as the
+ages--you can see it in her eyes. She doesn't say anything, she just
+looks. Women ought to follow her example. It's the mysterious, the
+silent, that draws men. Now Polly prattles and prattles, and nobody
+listens, and we all get a little tired of her; don't we, Polly?"
+
+She set the cream carefully by the green cushion, and Pats, classically
+posed on her haunches, lapped it luxuriously. The Polly-parrot coaxed and
+wheedled and was rewarded with her morning biscuit. The flame-colored
+fishes rose to the snowy particles which Eve strewed on the surface of
+the water, and then with all of her family fed, Eve turned to the table,
+sat down, and pulled away Aunt Maude's paper.
+
+"My dear," the old lady protested.
+
+"I want to talk to you," Eve announced. "Aunt Maude, I'm going to marry
+Dicky."
+
+Aunt Maude pushed back her plate of waffles. The red began to rise in her
+cheeks. "Oh, of all the fools----"
+
+"'He who calleth his brother a fool----'" Eve murmured pensively. "Aunt
+Maude, I'm in love with him."
+
+"You're in love with yourself," tartly, "and with having your own way.
+The husband for you is Philip Meade. But he wants you, and so--you don't
+want him."
+
+"Dicky wants me, too," Eve said, a little wistfully; "you mustn't forget
+that, Aunt Maude."
+
+"I'm not forgetting it." Then sharply, "Shall you go to live at
+Crossroads?"
+
+"No. Austin has made him an offer. He's coming back to town."
+
+"What do you expect to live on?"
+
+Silence. Then, uncertainly, "I thought perhaps until he gets on his feet
+you'd make us an allowance."
+
+The old lady exploded in a short laugh. She gathered up her paper and her
+spectacles case and her bag of fancy work. Then she rose. "Not if you
+marry Richard Brooks. You may as well know that now as later, Eve. All
+your life you have shaken the plum tree and have gathered the fruit. You
+may come to your senses when you find there isn't any tree to shake."
+
+The deep red in the cheeks of the old woman was matched by the red that
+stained Eve's fairness. "Keep your money," she said, passionately; "I can
+get along without it. You've always made me feel like a pauper, Aunt
+Maude."
+
+The old woman's hand went up. There was about her a dignity not to be
+ignored. "I think you are saying more than you mean, Eve. I have tried to
+be generous."
+
+They were much alike as they faced each other, the same clear cold eyes,
+the same set of the head, the only difference Eve's youth and
+slenderness and radiant beauty. Perhaps in some far distant past Aunt
+Maude had been like Eve. Perhaps in some far distant future Eve's soft
+lines would stiffen into a second edition of Aunt Maude.
+
+"I have tried to be generous," Aunt Maude repeated.
+
+"You have been. I shouldn't have said that. But, Aunt Maude, it hasn't
+been easy to eat the bread of dependence."
+
+"You are feeling that now," said the old lady shrewdly, "because you are
+ready for the great adventure of being poor with your young Richard.
+Well, try it. You'll wish more than once that you were back with your
+old--plum tree."
+
+Flash of eye met flash of eye. "I shall never ask for another penny," Eve
+declared.
+
+"I shall buy your trousseau, of course, and set you up in housekeeping,
+but when a woman is married her husband must take care of her." And Aunt
+Maude sailed away with her bag and her spectacles and her morning paper,
+and Eve was left alone in the black and white breakfast room, where Pats
+slept on her green cushion, the Polly-parrot swung in her ring, and the
+flame-colored fishes hung motionless in the clear water.
+
+Eve ate no breakfast. She sat with her chin in her hand and tried to
+think it out. Aunt Maude had not proved tractable, and Richard's income
+would be small. Never having known poverty, she was not appalled by the
+prospect of it. Her imagination cast a glamour over the future. She saw
+herself making a home for Richard. She saw herself inviting Pip and
+Winifred Ames and Tony to small suppers and perfectly served little
+dinners. She did not see herself washing dishes or cooking the meals.
+Knowing nothing of the day's work, how could she conceive its sordidness?
+
+She roused herself presently to go and write notes to her friends.
+Triumphant notes which told of her happiness.
+
+Her note to Pip brought him that night. He came in white-faced. As she
+went toward him, he rose to meet her and caught her hands in a hard grip,
+looking down at her. "You're mine, Eve. Do you think I am going to let
+any one else have you?"
+
+"Don't be silly, Pip."
+
+"Is it silly to say that there will never be for me any other woman? I
+shall love you until I die. If that is foolishness, I never want to be
+wise."
+
+He was kissing her hands now.
+
+"Don't, Pip, _don't_."
+
+She wrenched herself away from him, and stood as it were at bay. "You'll
+get over it."
+
+"Shall I? How little you know me, Eve. I haven't even given you up. If I
+were a story-book sort of hero I'd bestow my blessing on you and Brooks
+and go and drive an ambulance in France, and break my heart at long
+distance. But I shan't. I shall stay right here on the job, and see that
+Brooks doesn't get you."
+
+"Pip, I didn't think you were so--small."
+
+The telephone rang. Eve answered it. "It was Winifred to wish me
+happiness," she said, as she came in from the hall.
+
+She was blushing faintly. He gave her a keen glance. "What else did she
+say?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"You're fibbing. Tell me the truth, Eve."
+
+She yielded to his masterfulness.
+
+"Well, she said--'I wanted it to be Pip.'"
+
+"Good old Win, I'll send her a bunch of roses." He wandered restlessly
+about the room, then came back to her. "Why, Eve, I planned the
+house--our house. It was to have the sea in front of it and a forest
+behind it, and your room was to have a wide window and a balcony, and
+under the balcony there was to be a rose garden."
+
+"How sure you were of me, Pip."
+
+"I have never been sure. But what I want, I--get. Remember that, dear
+girl. When I shut my eyes I can see you at the head of my table, in a
+high gold chair--like a throne."
+
+She stared at him in amazement. "Pip, it doesn't sound a bit like you."
+
+"No. What a man thinks is apt to be--different. On the surface I'm a
+rather practical sort of fellow. But when I plan my future with you I am
+playing king to your queen, and I'm not half bad at it."
+
+And now it was she who was restless. "If I married you, what would I get
+out of it but--money?"
+
+"Thank you."
+
+"You know I don't mean it that way. But I like to think that I can help
+Richard--in his career."
+
+"You're not made of that kind of stuff. You want your own good time.
+Women who help men to achieve must be content to lose their looks and
+their figures and to do without pretty clothes, and you wouldn't be
+content. You want to live your own life, and be admired and petted and
+envied, Eve."
+
+She faced him, blazing. "You and Aunt Maude and Win are all alike. You
+think I can't be happy unless I live in the lap of luxury. Well, I can
+tell you this, I'd rather have a crust of bread with Richard than live in
+a palace with you, Pip."
+
+He stood up. "You don't mean it. But you needn't have put it quite that
+way, and some day you'll be sorry, and you'll tell me that you're sorry.
+Tell me now, Eve."
+
+He put his hands on her shoulders, holding her with a masterful grip. Her
+eyes met his and fell. "Oh, I hate your--sureness."
+
+"Some day you are going to love it. Look at me, Eve."
+
+She forced herself to do so. But she was not at ease. Then almost
+wistfully she yielded. "I--am sorry, Pip."
+
+His hands dropped from her shoulders. "Good little girl."
+
+He kissed both of her hands before he went away. "I am glad we are
+friends"--that was his way of putting it--"and you mustn't forget that
+some day we are going to be more than that," and when he had gone she
+found herself still shaken by the sureness of his attitude.
+
+Pip on his way down-town stopped in to order Winifred's roses, and the
+next day he went to her apartment and unburdened his heart.
+
+"If it was in the day of duels I'd call him out. Just at this moment I am
+in the mood for pistols or poison, I'm not sure which."
+
+"Why not try--patience?"
+
+He glanced at her quickly. "You think she'll tire?"
+
+"I think--it can never happen. For Richard's sake I--hope not."
+
+"Why for his sake?"
+
+Winifred smiled. "I'd like to see him marry little Anne."
+
+"The school-teacher?"
+
+"Yes. Oh, I am broken-hearted to think he's spoiling Nancy's dreams for
+him. There was something so idyllic in them. And now he'll marry Eve."
+
+"You say that as if it were a tragedy."
+
+"It is, for him and for her. Eve was never made to be poor."
+
+"Don't tell her that. She took my head off. Said she'd rather have a
+crust of bread with Richard----"
+
+"Oh, oh!"
+
+"Than a palace with me."
+
+"Poor Pip. It wasn't nice of her."
+
+"I shall make her eat her words."
+
+Winifred shook her head. "Don't be hard on her, Pip. We women are so
+helpless in our loves. Richard might make her happy if he cared enough,
+but he doesn't. Perhaps Eve will be broadened and deepened by it all. I
+don't know. No one knows."
+
+"I know this. That you and Tony seem to get a lot out of things, Win."
+
+"Of marriage? We do. Yet we've had all of the little antagonisms and
+differences. But underneath it we know--that we're made for each other.
+And that helps. It has helped us to push the wrong things out of our
+lives and to hold on to the right ones."
+
+Philip's young face was set. "I wanted to have my chance with Eve. We are
+young and pretty light-weight on the surface, but life together might
+make us a bit more like you and Tony. And now Richard is spoiling
+things."
+
+Back at Crossroads, Nancy was trying to convince her son that he was not
+spoiling things for her. "I have always been such a dreamer, dear boy.
+It was silly for me to think that I could stand between you and your big
+future. I have written to Sulie Tyson, and she'll stay with me, and you
+can run down for week-ends--and I'll always have David."
+
+"Mother, let me go to Eve and tell her----"
+
+"Tell her what?"
+
+"That I shall stay--with you."
+
+She was white with the whiteness which had never left her since he had
+told her that he was going to marry Eve.
+
+"Hickory-Dickory, if I kept you here in the end you would hate me."
+
+"_Mother!_"
+
+"Not consciously. But I should be a barrier--and you'd find yourself
+wishing for--freedom. If I let you go--you'll come back now and then--and
+be--glad."
+
+He gathered her up in his arms and declared fiercely that he would not
+leave her, but she stayed firm. And so the thing was settled, and as soon
+as he could settle his affairs at Crossroads he was to go to Austin.
+
+Anne, writing to Uncle Rod about it, said:
+
+"St. Michael is to marry the Lily-of-the-Field. You see, after all, he
+likes that kind of thing, though I had fancied that he did not. She is
+not as fine and simple as he is, and somehow I can't help feeling sorry.
+
+"But that isn't the worst of it, Uncle Bobs. He is going back to New
+York. And now what becomes of _his_ sunsets? I don't believe he ever had
+any. And oh, his poor little mother. She is fooling him and making him
+think that it is just as it should be and that she was foolish to expect
+anything else. But to me it is unspeakable that he should leave her. But
+he'll have Eve Chesley. Think of changing Nancy Brooks for Eve!"
+
+It was at Beulah's wedding that Anne and Richard saw each other for the
+last time before his departure.
+
+Beulah was married in the big front room at Bower's. She was married at
+six o'clock because it was easy for the farmer folk to come at that time,
+and because the evening could be given up afterward to the reception and
+a big supper and Beulah and Eric could take the ten o'clock train for New
+York.
+
+She had no bridesmaids except Peggy, who was quite puffed up with the
+importance of her office. Anne had instructed her, and at the last moment
+held a rehearsal on the side porch.
+
+"Now, play I am the bride, Peggy."
+
+"You look like a bride," Peggy said. "Aren't you ever going to be a
+bride, Miss Anne?"
+
+"I am not sure, Peggy. Perhaps no one will ever ask me."
+
+"I'd ask you if I were a man," Peggy reassured her. "Now, go on and show
+me, Anne."
+
+"You must take Beulah's bouquet when she hands it to you, and after she
+is married you must give it back to her, and----"
+
+"And then I must kiss her."
+
+"You must let Eric kiss her first."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because he will be her husband."
+
+"But I've been her sister for ever and ever."
+
+"Oh, but a husband, Peggy. Husbands are _very_ important."
+
+"Why are they?"
+
+"Well, they give you a new name and a new house, and you have new clothes
+to marry them in, and you go away with them on a honeymoon."
+
+"What's a honeymoon?"
+
+"The honey is for the sweetness, and the moon is for the madness, Peggy,
+dear."
+
+"Do people always go away on trains for their honeymoons?"
+
+"Not always. I shouldn't like a train. I should like to get into a boat
+with silver sails, and sail straight down a singing river into the heart
+of the sunset."
+
+"Well, of course, you couldn't," said the plump and practical Peggy, "but
+it sounds nice to say it. Does our river sing, Miss Anne?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What does it say?"
+
+Anne stretched out her arms with a little yearning gesture. "It
+says--'_Come and see the world, see the world, see the world!_'"
+
+"It never says that to me."
+
+"Perhaps you haven't ears to hear, Peggy."
+
+It was a very charming wedding. Richard was there and Nancy, and David
+and Brinsley. The country folk came from far and wide, and there was a
+brave showing of Old Gentlemen from Bower's who brought generous gifts
+for Peter's pretty daughter.
+
+Richard, standing back of his mother during the ceremony, could see over
+her head to where Anne waited not far from Peggy to prompt her in her
+bridesmaid's duties. She was in white. Her dark hair was swept up in the
+fashion which she had borrowed from Eve. She seemed very small and slight
+against the background of Bower's buxom kinsfolk.
+
+As he caught her eye he smiled at her, but she did not smile back. She
+felt that she could not. How could he smile with that little mother
+drooping before his very eyes? How _could_ he?
+
+She found herself later, when the refreshments were served, brooding over
+Nancy. The little lady tasted nothing, but was not permitted to refuse
+the cup of tea which Anne brought to her.
+
+"I had it made especially for you," she said; "you looked so tired."
+
+"I am tired. You see we are having rather strenuous days."
+
+"I know."
+
+"It isn't easy to let--him--go."
+
+"It isn't easy for anybody to let him go."
+
+The eyes of the two women went to where Richard in the midst of a
+protesting group was trying to explain his reasons for deserting
+Crossroads.
+
+He couldn't explain. They had a feeling that he was turning his back on
+them. "It's hard lines to have a good doctor and then lose him," was the
+general sentiment. He was made to feel that it would have been better not
+to have come than to end by deserting.
+
+He was aware that he had forfeited something precious, and he voiced his
+thought when he joined his mother and Anne.
+
+"I'll never have a practice quite like this. Neighborhood ties are
+something they know little about in cities."
+
+His mother smiled up at him bravely. "There'll be other things."
+
+"Perhaps;" he patted her hand. Then he fired a question at Anne. "Do you
+think I ought to go?"
+
+"How can I tell?" Her eyes met his candidly. "I felt when you came that I
+couldn't understand how a man could bury himself here. And now I am
+wondering how you can leave. It seems as if you belong."
+
+"I know what you mean."
+
+She went on: "And I can't quite think of this dear lady alone."
+
+Nancy stopped her. "Don't speak of that, my dear. I don't want you to
+speak of it. It is right that Richard should go."
+
+Anne was telling herself passionately that it was not right, when Beulah
+sent for her, and presently the little bride came down in her going-away
+gown, to be joined by Eric in the stiff clothes which seemed to rob him
+of the picturesqueness which belonged to him in less formal moments.
+
+But Richard had no eyes for the bride and groom; he saw only Anne at the
+head of the stairway where he had first talked to her. How long ago it
+seemed, and how sweet she had been, and how shy.
+
+The train was on the bridge, and a laughing crowd hurried out into the
+night to meet it. Peggy in the lead threw roses with a prodigal hand.
+"Kiss me, Beulah," she begged at the last.
+
+Beulah bent down to her, then was lifted in Eric's strong arms to the
+platform. Then the train drew out and she was gone!
+
+Alone on the stairway, Anne and Richard had a moment before the crowd
+swept back upon them.
+
+"Dr. Brooks, take your mother with you."
+
+"She won't go."
+
+"Then stay with her."
+
+He caught at the edge of her flowing sleeve, and held it as if he would
+anchor her to him. "Do you want me to stay?"
+
+Her eyes came up to him. She saw in them something which lifted her
+above and beyond her doubts of him. She had an ineffable sense of having
+found something which she could never lose.
+
+Then as he drew back he was stammering, "Forgive me. I have been wanting
+to wish you happiness. Geoffrey told me----"
+
+And now Peggy bore down upon them and all the heedless happy crowd, and
+Richard said, "Good-night," and was gone.
+
+Yet when she was left alone, Anne felt desperately that she should have
+shouted after him, "I am not going to marry Geoffrey Fox. I am not going
+to be married at all."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+_In Which Anne Asks and Jimmie Answers._
+
+
+"'A MONEYLESS man,'" said Uncle Rod, "'goes quickly through the market.'"
+
+He had a basket on his arm. Anne, who was at her easel, looked up. "What
+did you buy?"
+
+He laughed. His laugh had in it a quality of youth which seemed to
+contradict the signs of age which were upon him. Yet even these signs
+were modified by the carefulness of his attire and the distinction of his
+carriage. Great-uncle Rodman had been a dandy in his day, and even now
+his Norfolk coat and knickerbockers, his long divided beard and flowing
+tie gave him an air half foreign, wholly his own.
+
+In his basket was a melon, crusty rolls, peaches and a bottle of cream.
+
+"Such extravagance!" Anne said, as he showed her the bottle.
+
+"It was the price of two chops. And not a lamb the less for it. Two chops
+would have been an extravagance, and now we shall feast innocently and
+economically."
+
+"Where shall we eat?" Anne asked.
+
+"Under the oak?"
+
+She shook her head. "Too sunny."
+
+"In the garden?"
+
+"Not till to-night--people can see us from the road."
+
+"You choose then." It was a game that they had played ever since she had
+come to him. It gave to each meal the atmosphere of an adventure.
+
+"I choose," she clapped her hands, "I choose--by the fish-pond, Uncle
+Rod."
+
+The fish-pond was at the end of the garden walk. Just beyond it a wooden
+gate connected a high brick wall and opened upon an acre or two of
+pasture where certain cows browsed luxuriously. The brick wall and the
+cows and the quiet of the corner made the fish-pond seem miles away from
+the town street which was faced by the front of Cousin Margaret's house.
+
+The fish-pond was a favorite choice in the game played by Anne and Uncle
+Rod. But they did not always choose it because that would have made it
+commonplace and would have robbed it of its charm.
+
+Anne, rising to arrange the tray, was stopped by Uncle Rodman. "Sit
+still, my dear; I'll get things ready."
+
+To see him at his housekeeping was a pleasant sight. He liked it, and
+gave to it his whole mind. The peeling of the peaches with a silver
+knife, the selection of a bowl of old English ware to put them in, and
+making of the coffee in a copper machine, the fresh linen, the roses as a
+last perfect touch.
+
+Anne carried the tray, for his weak arm could not be depended upon; and
+by the fish-pond they ate their simple meal.
+
+The old fishes had crumbs and came to the top of the water to get them,
+and a cow looking over the gate was rewarded by the remaining half of the
+crusty roll. She walked away presently to give place to a slender youth
+who had crossed the fields and now stood with his hat off looking in.
+
+"If it isn't Anne," he said, "and Uncle Rod."
+
+Uncle Rod stood up. He did not smile and he did not ask the slender youth
+to enter. But Anne was more hospitable.
+
+"Come in, Jimmie," she said. "I can't offer you any lunch because we have
+eaten it all up. But there's some coffee."
+
+Jimmie entered with alacrity. He had come back from New York in a mood of
+great discontent, to meet the pleasant news that Anne Warfield was in
+town. He had flown at once to find her. If he had expected the Fatted
+Calf, he found none. Uncle Rodman left them at once. He had a certain
+amount of philosophy, but it had never taught him patience with Jimmie
+Ford.
+
+Jimmie drank a cup of coffee, and talked of his summer.
+
+"Saw your Dr. Richard in New York, out at Austin's."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"He's going to marry Eve."
+
+"Is he?"
+
+"Yes. I don't understand what she sees in him--he isn't good style."
+
+"He doesn't have to be."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Men like Richard Brooks mean more to the world than just--clothes,
+Jimmie."
+
+"I don't see it."
+
+"You wouldn't."
+
+"Why shouldn't I?"
+
+"Well, you look so nice in your clothes--and you need them to look nice
+in."
+
+He stared at her. He felt dimly that she was making fun of him.
+
+"From the way you put it," he said, with irritation, "from the way you
+put it any one might think that it was just my clothes----"
+
+"That make you attractive? Oh, _no_, Jimmie. You have nice eyes and--and
+a way with you."
+
+She was sewing on a scrap of fancy work, and her own eyes were on it. She
+was as demure as possible, but she seemed unusually and disconcertingly
+self-possessed.
+
+And now Jimmie became plaintive. Plaintiveness had always been his strong
+suit with Anne. He was eager for sympathy. His affair with Eve had hurt
+his vanity.
+
+"I have never seen a girl like her. She doesn't care what the world
+thinks. She doesn't care what any one thinks. She goes right along taking
+everything that comes her way--and giving nothing."
+
+"Did you want her to give you--anything, Jimmie?"
+
+"Me? Not me. She's a beauty and all that. But I wouldn't marry her if she
+were as rich as Rockefeller--and she isn't. Her money is her Aunt
+Maude's."
+
+"Oh, Jimmie--sour grapes."
+
+"Sour nothing. She isn't my kind. She said one day that if she wanted a
+man she'd ask him to marry her. That it was a woman's right to choose. I
+can't stand that sort of thing."
+
+"But if she should ask you, Jimmie?"
+
+Again he stared at her. "I jolly well shouldn't give her a chance. Not
+after the way she treated me."
+
+"What way?"
+
+"Oh, making me think I was the whole thing--and then--throwing me down."
+
+"Oh, so you don't like being thrown down?"
+
+"No. I don't like that kind of a woman. You know the kind of woman I
+like, Anne."
+
+The caressing note in his voice came to her like an echo of other days.
+But now it had no power to move her.
+
+"I am not sure that I do know the kind of woman you like--tell me."
+
+"Oh, I like a woman that is a woman, and makes a man feel that he's the
+whole thing."
+
+"But mustn't he be the whole thing to make her feel that he is?"
+
+He flung himself out of his chair and stood before her. "Anne," he
+demanded, "can't you do anything but ask questions? You aren't a bit like
+you used to be."
+
+She laid down her work and now he could see her eyes. Such steady eyes!
+"No, I'm not like myself. You see, Jimmie, I have been away for a year,
+and one learns such a lot in a year."
+
+He felt a sudden sense of loss. There had always been the old Anne to
+come back to. The Anne who had believed and had sympathized. Again his
+voice took on a plaintive note. "Be good to me, girl," he said. Then very
+low, "Anne, I was half afraid to come to-day."
+
+"Afraid--why?"
+
+"Oh, I suppose you think I acted like a--cad."
+
+"What do _you_ think?"
+
+"Oh, stop asking questions. It was the only thing to do. You were poor
+and I was poor, and there wasn't anything ahead of me--or of you--surely
+you can't blame me."
+
+"How can I blame you for what was, after all, my great good fortune?"
+
+"Your what?"
+
+She said it again, quietly, "My great good fortune, Jimmie. I couldn't
+see it then. Indeed, I was very unhappy and sentimental and cynical over
+it. But now I know what life can hold for me--and what it would not have
+held if I had married you."
+
+"Anne, who has been making love to you?"
+
+"Jimmie!"
+
+"Oh, no woman ever talks like that until she has found somebody else. And
+I thought you were constant."
+
+"Constant to what?"
+
+"To the thought--to--to the thought of what we might be to each other
+some day."
+
+"And in the meantime you were asking Eve to marry you. Was it her money
+that you wanted?"
+
+"Her money! Do you think I am a fortune-hunter?"
+
+"I am asking you, Jimmie?"
+
+"For Heaven's sake, stop asking questions. You know how a pretty woman
+goes to my head. And she's the kind that flits away to make you follow. I
+can't fancy your doing that sort of a thing, Anne."
+
+"No," quietly, "women like myself, Jimmie, go on expecting that things
+will come to them--and when they don't come, we keep on--expecting. But
+somehow we never seem to be able to reach out our hands to take--what we
+might have."
+
+He began to feel better. This was the wistful Anne of the old days.
+
+"There has never been any one like you, Anne. It seems good to be here.
+Women like Eve madden a man, but your kind are so--comfortable."
+
+Always the old Jimmie! Wanting his ease! After he had left her she sat
+looking out over the gate beyond the fields to the gold of the west.
+
+When at last she went up to the house Uncle Rod had had his nap and was
+in his big chair on the front porch.
+
+"Jimmie and I are friends again," she told him.
+
+He looked at her inquiringly. "Real friends?"
+
+"Surface friends. He is coming again to tell me his troubles and get my
+sympathy. Uncle Rod, what makes me so clear-eyed all of a sudden?"
+
+He smoothed his beard. "My dear, 'the eyes of the hare are one thing, the
+eyes of the owl another.' You are looking at life from a different point
+of view. I knew that if you ever met a real man you'd know the difference
+between him and Jimmie Ford."
+
+She came over, and standing behind him, put her hands on his shoulders.
+"I've found him, Uncle Rod."
+
+"St. Michael?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Poor little girl."
+
+"I am not poor, Uncle Rod. I am rich. It is enough to have known him."
+
+The sunset was showing above the wooden gate. The cows had gone home. The
+old fish swam lazily in the shadowed water.
+
+Anne drew her low chair to the old man's side. "Uncle Rod, isn't it
+queer, the difference between the things we ask for and the things we
+get? To have a dream come true doesn't mean always that you must get what
+you want, does it? For sometimes you get something that is more wonderful
+than any dream. And now if you'll listen, and not look at me, I'll tell
+you all about it, you darling dear."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was in late August that Anne received the first proof sheets of
+Geoffrey's book. "I want you to read it before any one else. It will be
+dedicated to you and it is better than I dared believe--I could never
+have written it without your help, your inspiration."
+
+It was a great book. Anne, remembering the moment the plot had been
+conceived on that quiet night by Peggy's bedside when she had seen the
+pussy cat and had heard the tinkling bell, laid it down with a feeling
+almost of awe.
+
+She wrote Geoffrey about it. It was her first real letter to him. She had
+written one little note of forgiveness and of friendliness, but she had
+felt that for a time at least she should do no more than that, and Uncle
+Rod had commended her resolution.
+
+"Hot fires had best burn out," he said.
+
+"If you never do anything else," Anne wrote to Geoffrey, "you can be
+content. There isn't a line of pot-boiling in it. It is as if you had
+dipped your pen in magic ink. Rereading it to Uncle Rodman has brought
+back the nights when we talked it over, and I can't help feeling a little
+peacock-y to know that I had a part in it.
+
+"And now I am going to tell you what Uncle Rod's comment was when I
+finished the very last word. He sat as still as a solemn old statue, and
+then he said, 'Geoffrey Fox is a great man. No one could have written
+like that who was sordid of mind or small of soul.'
+
+"If you knew my Uncle Rodman you would understand all that his opinion
+stands for. He is never flattering, but he has had much time to think--he
+is like one of the old prophets--so that, indeed, I sometimes feel that
+he ought to sing his sentences like David, instead of saying wise things
+in an ordinary way. And his proverbs! he has such a collection, he is
+making a book of them, and he digs into old volumes in all sorts of
+languages--oh, some day you must know him!
+
+"I am going back to Crossroads. It seems that my work lies there. And I
+have great news for you. I am to live with Mrs. Brooks. She has her
+cousin, Sulie Tyson, with her, but she wants me. And it will be so much
+better than Bower's.
+
+"All through Mrs. Nancy's letters I can read her loneliness. She tries to
+keep it out. But she can't. She is proud of her son's success--but she
+feels the separation intensely. He has his work, she only her thoughts of
+him--and that's the tragedy.
+
+"In the meantime, here we are at Cousin Margaret's doing funny little
+stunts in the way of cooking and catering. We can't afford the kind of
+housekeeping which requires servants, so it is a case of plain living and
+high thinking. Uncle Rod hates to eat anything that has been killed, and
+makes all sorts of excuses not to. He won't call himself a vegetarian,
+for he thinks that people who label themselves are apt to be cranks. So
+he does our bit of marketing and comes home triumphant with his basket
+innocent of birds or beasts, and we live on ambrosia and nectar or the
+modern equivalent. We are quite classic with our feasts by the old
+fish-pond at the end of the garden.
+
+"Cousin Margaret's garden is flaming in the August days with phlox, and
+is fragrant with day lilies. There's a grass walk and a sun-dial, and
+best of all, as I have said, the fish-pond.
+
+"And while I am on the subject of gardens, Uncle Rod rises up in wrath
+when people insist upon giving the botanical names to all of our lovely
+blooms. He says that the pedants are taking all of the poetry out of
+language, and it does seem so, doesn't it? Why should we call larkspur
+_Delphinium_? or a forget-me-not _Myostis Palustria_, and would a
+primrose by the river's brim ever be to you or to me _primula vulgaris_?
+Uncle Rod says that a rose by any other name would _not_ smell as sweet;
+and it is fortunate that the worst the botanists may do cannot spoil the
+generic--_rosa_.
+
+"And now with my talk of Uncle Rod and of Me, I am stringing this letter
+far beyond all limits, and yet I have not told you half the news.
+
+"I had a little note from Beulah, and she and Eric are at home in the
+Playhouse. She loves your silver candlesticks. So many of her presents
+were practical and she prefers the 'pretties.'
+
+"You have heard, of course, that Dr. Brooks is to marry Eve Chesley. The
+wedding will not take place for some time. I wonder if they will live
+with Aunt Maude. I can't quite imagine Dr. Richard's wings clipped to
+such a cage."
+
+She signed herself, "Always your friend, Anne Warfield."
+
+Far up in the Northern woods Geoffrey read her letter. He could use his
+eyes a little, but most of the time he lay with them shut and Mimi read
+to him, or wrote for him at his dictation. He had grown to be very
+dependent on Mimi; there were even times when he had waked in the night,
+groping and calling out, and she had gathered him in her arms and had
+held him against her breast until he stopped shaking and shivering and
+saying that he could not see.
+
+He spoke her name now, and she came to him. He put Anne's letter in her
+hand. "Read it!" and when she had read, he said, "You see she says that I
+am great--and she used to say it. Am I, Mimi?"
+
+"Oh, Geoffrey, yes."
+
+"I want you to make it true, Mimi. Shall I begin my new book to-morrow?"
+
+It was what she had wanted, what she had begged that he would do, but he
+had refused to listen. And now he was listening to another voice!
+
+She brought her note-book, and sat beside him. Being ignorant of
+shorthand she had invented a little system of her own, and she was glad
+when she could make him laugh over her funny pot-hooks and her straggling
+sketches.
+
+Thus in the darkness Geoffrey struggled and strove. "Speaking of
+candlesticks," he wrote to Anne, "it was as if a thousand candles lighted
+my world when I read your letter!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+_In Which Pan Pipes to the Stars._
+
+
+THAT Richard in New York should miss his mother was inevitable. But he
+was not homesick. He was too busy for that. Austin's vogue was
+tremendous.
+
+"Every successful man ought to be two men," he told Richard, as they
+talked together one Sunday night at Austin's place in Westchester,
+"'another and himself,' as Browning puts it. Then there would be one to
+labor and the other to enjoy. I want to retire, and I can't. There's a
+selfish instinct in all of us to grip and hold. That is why I am pinning
+my faith to you. You can slip in as I slip out. I have visions of riding
+to hounds and sailing the seas some day, to say nothing of putting up a
+good game of golf. But perhaps that's a dream. A man can't get away from
+his work, not when he loves it."
+
+"That's why you're such a success, sir," Richard told him, honestly; "you
+go to every operation as if it were a banquet."
+
+Austin laughed. "I'm not such a ghoul. But there's always the wonder of
+it with me. I sometimes wish I had been a churchgoing man, Brooks. There
+isn't much more for me to learn about bodies, but there's much about
+souls. I have a feeling that some day in some physical experiment I shall
+find tangible evidence of the spiritual. That's why I say my prayers to
+Something every night, and I rather think It's God."
+
+"I know it's God," said Richard, simply, "on such a night as this."
+
+They were silent in the face of the evening's beauty. The great trees on
+the old estate were black against a silver sky. White statues shone like
+pale ghosts among them. Back of Richard and his host, in a semicircle of
+dark cedars, a marble Pan piped to the stars.
+
+"And in the cities babies are sleeping on fire escapes," Austin
+meditated. "If I had had a son I should have sent him to the slums to
+find his work. But the Fates have given me only Marie-Louise."
+
+And now his laugh was forced. "Brooks, the Gods have checkmated me.
+Marie-Louise is the son of her father. I had planned that she should be
+the daughter of her mother. I sowed some rather wild oats in my youth,
+and waked in middle age to the knowledge that my materialism had led me
+astray. So I married an idealist. I wanted my children to have a
+spiritual background of character such as I have not possessed. And the
+result of that marriage is--Marie-Louise! If she has a soul it is yet to
+be discovered."
+
+"She is young. Give her time."
+
+"I have been giving her time for eighteen years. I have wanted to see her
+mother in her, to see some gleam of that exquisite fineness. There are
+things we men, the most material of us, want in our women, and I want it
+in Marie-Louise. But she gives back what I have given her--nothing more.
+And I don't know what to do with her."
+
+"Her mother?" Richard hinted.
+
+"Julie is worn out with trying to meet a nature so unlike her own. Our
+love for each other has made us understand. But neither of us understands
+Marie-Louise. I sent her away to school, but she wouldn't stay. She likes
+her home and she hates rules. She loves animals, and if she were a boy
+she would practice medicine. Being a woman and having no outlet for her
+energies, she is freakish. You saw the way she was dressed at dinner."
+
+"I liked it," Richard said; "all that dead silver with her red hair."
+
+"But it is too--sophisticated, for a young girl. Why, man, she ought to
+be in white frocks and pearls, and putting cushions behind her mother's
+back."
+
+"You say that because her mother wore white and pearls, and put
+cushions behind _her_ mother's back. There aren't many of the
+white-frocks-and-pearls kind left. It's a new generation. Perhaps dead
+silver with red hair is an expression of it. And it is we who don't
+understand."
+
+"Perhaps. But it's a problem." Austin rose. "If you'll excuse me, Brooks,
+I'll go to my wife. We always read together on Sunday nights."
+
+He sent Marie-Louise out to Richard. She came through the starlight, a
+shining figure in her silver dress, with a silver Persian kitten hugged
+up in her arms. She sat on the sun-dial and swung her jade bracelet for
+the kitten to play with.
+
+"Dad and mother are reading the Bible. He doesn't believe in it, and she
+gets him to listen once a week. And then she reads the prayers for the
+day. When I was a little girl I had to listen--but never again!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Why should I listen to things that I don't believe? To-night it is the
+ten virgins and their lamps. And Dad's pretending that he's interested. I
+am writing a play about it, but mother doesn't know. The Wise Virgins are
+Bernard Shaw women who know what they want in the way of husbands and go
+to it. The Foolish Virgins are the old maids, who think it unwomanly to
+get ready, and find themselves left in the end!"
+
+The silver kitten clawed at the silver dress, and climbed on her
+mistress's shoulder.
+
+"All of the parables make good modern plots. Mother would be shocked if
+she knew I was writing them that way. So I don't tell her. Mother is a
+dear, but she doesn't understand. I should like to tell things to Dad,
+but he won't listen. If I were a boy he would listen. But he thinks I
+ought to be like mother."
+
+She slipped from the sun-dial and came and sat in the chair which her
+father had vacated. "If I were a boy I should have studied medicine. I
+wanted to be a trained nurse, but Dad wouldn't let me. He said I'd hate
+having to do the hard work, and perhaps I should. I like to wear pretty
+clothes, and a nurse never has a chance."
+
+"Perhaps you'll marry."
+
+"Oh, no. I should _hate_ to be like mother."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"She just lives for Dad. Now I couldn't do that. I am not going to marry.
+I don't like men. They ask too much. I like books and cats and being by
+myself. I am never lonesome. Sometimes I talk to Pan over there, and
+pretend he is playing to me on his pipes, and then I write poetry. Real
+poetry. I'll read it to you some time. There's one called 'The Rose
+Garden.' I wrote it about a woman who was a patient of father's. When she
+knew she was going to die she wrote him a little note and asked him to
+see that her body was cremated, and that the ashes were strewn over the
+roses in his garden. He didn't seem to see anything in it but just a
+sick woman's fancy. But I knew that she was in love with him. And my poem
+tells that her blessed dust gathered itself into a gentle wraith which
+lives and breathes near him."
+
+"And you aren't afraid to feel that her gentle wraith is here in the
+garden?"
+
+"Why should I be? I don't believe in ghosts. I don't believe in fairies,
+either, or Santa Claus. But I like to read about them and write about
+them, and--and wish that it might be so."
+
+There was something almost wistful in her voice. Richard, aware suddenly
+of what a child she was, bent forward.
+
+"I think I half believe in fairies, and Christmas wouldn't be anything
+without Santa Claus, and as for the soul of your gentle lady, I have a
+feeling that it is finding Heaven in the rose garden."
+
+She was stroking the silver kitten which had curled up in her lap. "I
+wish I weren't such a--heathen," she said, suddenly. "I know what you
+mean. But it is only the poetic sense in me that makes me know. I can't
+_believe_ anything. Not about souls--or prayers. Do you ever pray?"
+
+"Every night. On my knees."
+
+"On your knees? Oh, is it as bad as that?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Richard, writing to his mother, said of Marie-Louise, "Her mind isn't in
+a healthy state. It hasn't anything to feed on. Her father is too busy
+and her mother too ill to realize that she needs companionship of a
+certain kind. I wish she might have been a pupil at the Crossroads
+school, with Anne Warfield for her teacher. But no hope of that."
+
+He wrote, too, of his rushing days, and Nancy, answering, hid from him
+the utter hopelessness of her outlook. Her life began and ended with his
+letters and the week-ends which he was able to give her. But some of his
+week-ends had to be spent with Eve; a man cannot completely ignore the
+fact that he has a fiancée, and Richard would have been less than human
+if he had not responded to the appeal of youth and beauty. So he motored
+with Eve and danced with Eve, and did all of the delightful summer things
+which are possible in the big city near the sea. Aunt Maude went to the
+North Shore, but Eve stayed with Winifred, and wove about Richard her
+spells of flattery and of frivolity.
+
+"I want to be near you, Dicky boy. If I'm not you'll work too hard."
+
+"It is work that I like."
+
+"I believe that you like it better than you do me, Dicky."
+
+"Don't be silly, Eve."
+
+"You are always saying that. Do you like your work better than you do me,
+Dicky?"
+
+"Of course not." But he had no pretty things to say.
+
+The life that he lived with her, however, and with Pip and Winifred and
+Tony was a heady wine which swept away regrets. He had no time to think.
+He worked by day and played by night, and often after their play there
+was work again. Now and then, as the Sunday night when he had first met
+Marie-Louise, he motored with Austin out to Westchester. Mrs. Austin
+spent her summers there. Long journeys tired her, and she would not leave
+her husband. Marie-Louise stayed at "Rose Acres" because she hated big
+hotels, and found cottage colonies stupid. The great gardens swept down
+to the river--the wide, blue river with the high bluffs on the sunset
+side.
+
+The river at Bower's was not blue; it showed in the spring the red of the
+clay which was washed into it, and now and then a clear green when the
+rains held off, but it was rarely blue except on certain sapphire days in
+the fall, when a northwest wind swept all clouds from the sky.
+
+And this was not a singing river. It was too near the sea, and too full
+of boats, and there was no reason why it should say, "_Come and see--come
+and see--the world_," when the world was at its feet!
+
+And so the great Hudson had no song for Richard. Yet now and then, as he
+walked down to it in the warm darkness, his ears seemed to catch a faint
+echo of the harmonies which had filled his soul on the day that Anne
+Warfield had dried her hair on the bank of the old river at Bower's, and
+had walked with him in the wood.
+
+Except at such moments, however, it must be confessed that he thought
+little of Anne Warfield. It hurt to think of her. And he was too much of
+a surgeon to want to turn the knife in the wound.
+
+Marie-Louise, developing a keen interest in his affairs as they grew
+better acquainted, questioned him about Evelyn.
+
+"Dad says you are going to marry her."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Is she pretty?"
+
+"Rather more than that."
+
+"Why don't you bring her out?"
+
+"Nobody asked me, sir, she said."
+
+She flashed a smile at him.
+
+"I like your nursery-rhyme way of talking. You are the humanest thing
+that we have ever had in this house. Mother is a harp of a thousand
+strings, and Dad is a dynamo. But you are flesh and blood."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+"I wish you'd ask your Evelyn out here, and her friends. For tea and
+tennis some Saturday afternoon. I want to see you together."
+
+But after she had seen them together, she said, shrewdly, "You are not in
+love with her."
+
+"I am going to marry her, child. Isn't that proof enough?"
+
+"It isn't any proof at all. The big man is the one who really cares."
+
+"The big man? Pip?"
+
+"Is that what you call him? He looks at her like a dog waiting for a
+bone. And he brightens when she speaks to him. And her eyes are always on
+you and yours are never on her."
+
+"Marie-Louise, you are an uncanny creature. Like your little silver cat.
+She watches mice and you watch me. I have a feeling that you are going to
+pounce on me."
+
+"Some day I shall pounce," she poked her finger at him, "and shake you as
+my little cat shakes a mouse, and you'll wake up."
+
+"Am I asleep, Marie-Louise?"
+
+"Yes. You haven't heard Pan pipe." She was leaning on the sun-dial and
+looking up at the grinning god. "Men who live in cities have no ears to
+hear."
+
+"Are you a thousand years old, Marie-Louise?"
+
+"I am as old as the centuries," she told him gravely. "I played with Pan
+when the world was young."
+
+They smiled at each other, and then he said, "My mother wants me to live
+in the country. Do you think if I were there I should hear Pan pipe?"
+
+"Not if you were there because your mother wished it. It is only when you
+love it yourself that the river calls and you hear the fluting of the
+wind in the rushes."
+
+It was an August Saturday, hot and humid. Marie-Louise was in thin white,
+but it was a white with a difference from the demure summer frocks of a
+former generation. The modern note was in the white fur which came high
+up about Marie-Louise's throat. Yet she did not look warm. Her skin was
+as pale as the pearls in her ears. Her red hair flamed, but without
+warmth; it rippled back from her forehead to a cool and classic coil.
+
+"If you marry your Eve," she told Richard, "and stay with father, you'll
+grow rich and fat, and forget the state of your soul."
+
+"I thought you didn't believe in souls."
+
+She flushed faintly. "I believe in yours. But your Eve doesn't. She likes
+you because you don't care, and everybody else does. And that isn't
+love."
+
+"What is love?"
+
+She pondered. "I don't know. I've never felt it. And I don't want to feel
+it. If I loved too much I should die--and if I didn't love enough I
+should be ashamed."
+
+"You are a queer child, Marie-Louise."
+
+"I am not a child. Dad thinks I am, and mother. But they don't know."
+
+There were day lilies growing about the sun-dial. She gathered a handful
+of white blooms and laid them at the feet of the piping Pan. "I shall
+write a poem about it," she said, "of a girl who loved a marble god, and
+who found it--enough. Every day she laid a flower at his feet. And a
+human came to woo her, and she told him, 'If I loved you, you would ask
+more of me than my marble lover. He asks only that I lay flowers at his
+feet.'"
+
+He could never be sure whether she was in jest or earnest. And now she
+narrowed her eyes in a quizzical smile and was gone.
+
+He spoke of Marie-Louise to Eve. "She hasn't enough to do. She ought to
+be busy with her fancy work and her household matters."
+
+"No woman is busy with household matters in this age, Dicky. Nor with
+fancy work. Is that what you expect of a wife?"
+
+He didn't know what he expected, and he told her so. But he knew he was
+expecting more than she was prepared to give. Eve had an
+off-with-the-old-and-on-with-the-new theory of living which left him
+breathless. She expressed it one night when she said that she shouldn't
+have "obey" in her marriage service. "I never expect to mind you, Dicky,
+so what's the use?"
+
+There was no use, of course. Yet he had a feeling that he was being
+robbed of something sweet and sacred. The quaint old service asked things
+of men as well as of women. Good and loving and fine things. He was
+old-fashioned enough to want to promise all that it asked, and to have
+his wife promise.
+
+Eve laughed, too, at Richard's grace before meat. "You mustn't embarrass
+me at formal dinners, Dicky. Somehow it won't seem quite in keeping with
+the cocktails, will it?"
+
+Thus the spirit of Eve, contending with all that made him the son of his
+mother, meeting his spiritual revolts with material arguments, banking
+the fires of his flaming aspirations!
+
+Yet he rarely let himself dwell upon this aspect of it. He had set his
+feet in a certain path, and he was prepared to follow it.
+
+On this path, at every turning, he met Philip. The big man had not been
+driven from the field by the fact of Eve's engagement. He still asked her
+to go with him, he still planned pleasures for her. His money made things
+easy, and while he included Richard in most of his plans, he looked upon
+him as a necessary evil. Eve refused to go without her young doctor.
+
+Now and then, however, he had her alone. "Dicky's called to an
+appendicitis case," she informed him ruefully, one night over the
+telephone, "and I am dead lonesome. Come and cheer me up."
+
+He went to her, and during the evening proposed a week-end yachting trip
+which should take them to the North Shore and Aunt Maude.
+
+"Is Dicky invited?"
+
+"Of course. But I'm not sure that I want him."
+
+"He wouldn't come if he knew that you felt like that."
+
+"It isn't anything personal. And you know my manner is perfect when I'm
+with him."
+
+"Yes. Poor Dicky. Pip, we are a pair of deceivers. I sometimes think I
+ought to tell him."
+
+"There's nothing to tell."
+
+"Nothing tangible,--but he's so straightforward. And he'd hate the idea
+that I'm letting you--make love to me."
+
+"I don't make love. I have never touched the tip of your finger."
+
+"_Pip!_ Of course not. But your eyes make love, and your manner--and deep
+down in my heart I am afraid."
+
+"Afraid of what?"
+
+"That Fate isn't going to give me what I want. I don't want you, Pip. I
+want Dicky. And if you loved me--you'd let me alone."
+
+"Tell me to go,--and I won't come back."
+
+"Not ever?"
+
+"Never."
+
+She weakened. "But I don't want you to go away. You see, you are my good
+friend, Pip."
+
+She should not have let him stay. She knew that. She found it necessary
+to apologize to Richard. "You see, Pip cares an awful lot."
+
+Richard had little sympathy. "He might as well take his medicine and not
+hang around you, Eve."
+
+"If you would hang around a little more perhaps he wouldn't."
+
+"I am very busy. You know that."
+
+His voice was stern. "If I am a busy husband, will you make that an
+excuse for having Pip at your heels?"
+
+"_Richard._"
+
+"I beg your pardon. I shouldn't have said that. But marriage to me means
+more than good times. Life means more than good times. When I am here in
+New York it seems to me sometimes that I am drugged by work and pleasure.
+That there isn't a moment in which to live in a leisurely thoughtful
+sense."
+
+"You should have stayed at Crossroads."
+
+"I can't go back. I have burned my bridges. Austin expects things of me,
+and I must live up to his expectations. And, besides, I like it."
+
+"Really, Dicky?"
+
+"Really. There's a stimulus about the rush of it and the big things we
+are doing. Austin is a giant. My association with him is the biggest
+thing that has ever come into my life."
+
+"Bigger than your love for me?"
+
+Thus she brought him back to it. Making always demands upon him which he
+could not meet. He found himself harassed by her continued harping on the
+personal point of view, yet there were moments when she swung him into
+step with her. And one of the moments came when she spoke of the yachting
+trip. It was very hot, and Richard loved the sea.
+
+"Dicky, I'll keep Pip in the background if you I promise to come."
+
+"How can you keep him in the background when he is our host?"
+
+"He is going to invite Marie-Louise. And he'll have to be nice to her.
+And you and I----! Dicky, we'll feel the slap of the breeze in our faces,
+and forget that there's a big city back of us with sick people in it, and
+slums and hot nights. Dicky--I love you--and I am going to be your wife.
+Won't you come--because I want you--_Dicky_?"
+
+There were tears on her cheeks as she made her plea, and he was always
+moved by her tears. It was his protective sense that had first tied him
+to her; it was still through his chivalry that she made her most potent
+appeal.
+
+Marie-Louise was glad to go. "It will be like watching a play."
+
+She and Richard were waiting for Pip's "Mermaid" to make a landing at the
+pier at Rose Acres. A man-servant with their bags stood near, and
+Marie-Louise's maid was coated and hatted to accompany her mistress. "It
+will be like watching a play," Marie-Louise repeated. "The eternal trio.
+Two men and a girl."
+
+She waved to the quartette on the forward deck. "Your big man looks fine
+in his yachting things. And your Eve is nice in white."
+
+Marie-Louise was not in white. In spite of the heat she was wrapped to
+the ears in a great coat of pale buff. On her head was a Chinese hat of
+yellow straw, with a peacock's feather. Yet in spite of the blueness and
+yellowness, and the redness of her head, she preserved that air of
+amazing coolness, as if her blood were mixed with snow and ran slowly.
+
+Arriving on deck, she gave Pip her hand. "I am glad it is clear. I hate
+storms. I am going to ask Dr. Brooks to pray that it won't be rough. He
+is a good man, and the gods should listen."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+_In Which Fear Walks in a Storm._
+
+
+THE "Mermaid," having swept like a bird out of the harbor, stopped at
+Coney Island. Marie-Louise wanted her fortune told. Eve wanted peanuts
+and pop-corn. "It will make me seem a little girl again."
+
+Marie-Louise, cool in her buff coat, shrugged her shoulders. "I was never
+allowed to be that kind of a little girl," she said, "but I think I'd
+like to try it for a day."
+
+Eve and Marie-Louise got on very well together. They spoke the same
+language. And if Marie-Louise was more artificial in some ways, she was
+more open than Eve.
+
+"You'd better tell Dr. Brooks," she told the older girl, as the two of
+them walked ahead of Richard and Pip on the pier. Tony and Winifred had
+elected to stay on board.
+
+"Tell him what?"
+
+"That you are keeping the big man in reserve."
+
+Eve flushed. "Marie-Louise, you're horrid."
+
+"I am honest," was the calm response.
+
+Pip bought them unlimited peanuts and pop-corn, and Marie-Louise piloted
+them to the tent of a fat Armenian who told fortunes.
+
+In spite of his fatness, however, he was immaculate in European clothing;
+he charged exorbitantly and achieved extraordinary results.
+
+"He said the last time that I should marry a poet," Marie-Louise informed
+them, "which isn't true. I am not going to be married at all. But it
+amuses me to hear him."
+
+The black eyes of the fat Armenian twinkled. "There will be a time when
+you will not be amused. You will be married."
+
+He pulled out a chair for her. "Will your friends stay while I tell you
+the rest?"
+
+"No, they are children; they want to buy peanuts and pop-corn--they want
+to play."
+
+The others laughed. But the fat Armenian did not laugh. "Your soul is
+old!"
+
+"You see," she asked the others, "what I mean? He says things like that
+to me. He told me once that in a former incarnation I had walked beside
+the Nile and had loved a king."
+
+"A king-poet," the man corrected.
+
+"Will you tell mine?" Eve asked suddenly.
+
+"Certainly, madam."
+
+"I am mademoiselle. You go first, Marie-Louise."
+
+But Marie-Louise insisted on yielding to her. "We will come back for
+you."
+
+Coming back, they found Eve in an irritable temper. "He told
+me--nothing."
+
+"I told you what you did not want to hear. But I told you the truth."
+
+"I don't believe in such things." Eve was lofty. Her cold eyes challenged
+the Oriental. "I don't believe you know anything about it."
+
+"If Mademoiselle will write it down----" He was fat and puffy, but he had
+a sort of large dignity which ignored her rudeness. "If Mademoiselle will
+write it down, she will not say--next year--'I do not believe.'"
+
+She shivered. "I wish I hadn't come. Dicky boy, let's go and play. Pip
+and Marie-Louise can stay if they like it. I don't."
+
+When Marie-Louise had had her imagination once more fed on poets, kings,
+and previous incarnations, she and Pip went forth to seek the others.
+
+"I wonder what he told Eve?" Pip speculated.
+
+Marie-Louise spoke with shrewdness. "He probably told her that she would
+marry you--only he wouldn't put it that way. He would say that in
+reaching for a star she would stumble on a diamond."
+
+"And is Brooks the star?"
+
+She nodded, grinning. "And you are the diamond. It is what she
+wants--diamonds."
+
+"She wants more than that"--tenderness crept into his voice--"she wants
+love--and I can give it."
+
+"She wants Dr. Brooks. 'Most any woman would," said Marie-Louise cruelly.
+"We all know he is different. You know it, and I know it, and Eve knows
+it. He is bigger in some ways, and better!"
+
+They found Eve and Richard in a pavilion dancing in strange company, to
+raucous music. Later the four of them rode on a merry-go-round, with
+Marie-Louise on a dolphin and Eve on a swan, with the two men mounted on
+twin dragons. They ate chowder and broiled lobster in a restaurant high
+in a fantastic tower. They swept up painted Alpine slopes in reckless
+cars, they drifted through dark tunnels in gorgeous gondolas. Eve took
+her pleasures with a sort of feverish enthusiasm, Marie-Louise with the
+air of a skeptic trying out a new thing.
+
+"Mother would faint and fade away if she knew I was here," Marie-Louise
+told Richard as she sat next to him in a movie show, "and so would Dad.
+He would object to the germs and she would object to the crowd. Mother is
+like a flower in a sunlighted garden. She can't imagine that a lily could
+grow with its feet in the mud. But they do. And Dad knows it. But he
+likes to have mother stay in the sunlighted garden. He would never have
+fallen in love with her if her roots had been in the mud."
+
+She was murmuring this into Richard's ear. Eve was on the other side of
+him, with Pip beyond.
+
+"I've never had a day like this," Marie-Louise further confided, "and I
+am not sure that I like it. It seems so far away from--Pan--and the
+trees--and the river."
+
+Her voice dropped into silence, and Richard sat there beside her like a
+stone, seeing nothing of the pictures thrown on the screen. He saw a road
+which led between spired cedars, he saw an old house with a wide porch.
+He saw a golden-lighted table, and his mother's face across the candles.
+He saw a girl in a brown coat scattering food for the birds with a kind
+little hand--he heard the sound of a bell!
+
+When they reached the yacht, Winifred was dressed for dinner, and Eve and
+Marie-Louise scurried below to change. They dined on the upper deck by
+moonlight, and sat late enjoying the still warmth of the night. There was
+no wind and they seemed to sail through silver waters.
+
+Marie-Louise sang for them. Strange little songs for which she had
+composed both words and music. They had haunting cadences, and Pip told
+her "For Heaven's sake, kiddie, cheer up. You are making us cry."
+
+She laughed, and gave them a group of old nursery rhymes. Most of them
+had to do with things to eat. There was the Dame who baked her pies "on
+Christmas day in the morning," and the Queen who made the tarts, and
+Jenny Wren and her currant wine.
+
+"They are what I call appetizing," she said quaintly. "When I was a tiny
+tot Dad kept me on a diet. I was never allowed to eat pies or tarts or
+puddings. So I used to feast vicariously on my nursery rhymes."
+
+They laughed, as she had meant they should, and Pip said, "Give us
+another," so she chanted with increasing dramatic effect the story of
+King Arthur.
+
+    "A bag pudding the king did make,
+     And stuffed it well with plums,
+     And in it put great hunks of fat,
+     As big as my two thumbs----"
+
+"Think of the effect of those hunks of fat," she explained amid their
+roars of laughter, "on my dieted mind."
+
+"I hate to think of things to eat," Eve said. "And I can't imagine myself
+cooking--in a kitchen."
+
+"Where else would you cook?" Marie-Louise demanded practically. "I'd like
+it. I went once with my nurse to her mother's house, and she was cooking
+ham and frying eggs and we sat down to a table with a red cloth and had
+the ham and eggs with great slices of bread and strong tea. My nurse let
+me eat all I wanted, because her mother said it wouldn't hurt me, and it
+didn't. But my mother never knew. And always after that I liked to think
+of Lucy's mother and that warm nice kitchen, and the plump, pleasant
+woman and the ham and eggs and tea."
+
+She was very serious, but they roared again. She was so far away from
+anything that was homely and housewifely, with her red hair peaked up to
+a high knot, her thick white coat with its black animal skin enveloping
+her shoulders, the gleam of silver slippers.
+
+"Dicky," Eve said, "I hope you are not expecting me to cook in Arcadia."
+
+"I don't expect anything."
+
+"Every man expects something," Winifred interposed; "subconsciously he
+wants a hearth-woman. That's the primitive."
+
+"I don't want a hearth-woman," Pip announced.
+
+Dutton Ames chuckled. "You're a stone-age man, Meade. You'd like to woo
+with a club, and carry the day's kill to the woman in your tent."
+
+A quick fire lighted Pip's eyes. "Jove, it wouldn't be bad, would it?
+What do you think, Eve?"
+
+"I like your yacht better, and your chef and your alligator pears, and
+caviar."
+
+An hour later Eve and Richard were alone on deck. The others had gone
+down. The lovers had preferred the moonlight.
+
+"Eve, old lady," Richard said, "you know that even with Austin's help I'm
+not going to be a Croesus. There won't be yachts--and chefs--and
+alligator pears."
+
+"Jealous, Dicky?"
+
+"No. But you've always had these things, Eve."
+
+"I shall still have them. Aunt Maude won't let us suffer. She's a good
+old soul."
+
+"Do you think I shall care to partake of Aunt Maude's bounty?"
+
+"Perhaps not. But I am not so stiff-necked. Oh, Ducky Dick, do you think
+that I am going to let you keep on being poor and priggish and
+steady-minded?"
+
+"Am I that, Eve?"
+
+"You know you are."
+
+Her laughing eyes challenged him. He would have been less than a man if
+he had not responded to the appeal of her youth and beauty. "Dicky," she
+said, "when we are married I am going to give you the time of your young
+life. All work and no play will make you a dull boy, Dicky."
+
+In the night the clouds came up over the moon, and when the late and lazy
+party appeared on deck for luncheon, Marie-Louise complained. "I hate it
+this way. There's going to be a storm."
+
+There was a storm before night. It blew up tearingly from the south and
+there was menace in it and madness.
+
+Winifred and Eve were good sailors. But Marie-Louise went to pieces. She
+was frantic with fear, and as the night wore on, Richard found himself
+much concerned for her.
+
+She insisted on staying on deck. "I feel like a rat in a trap when I am
+inside. I want to face it."
+
+The wind was roaring about them. The sea was black and the sky was black,
+a thick velvety black that turned to copper when the lightning came.
+
+"Aren't you afraid?" Marie-Louise demanded; "aren't you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why shouldn't you be? Why shouldn't anybody be?"
+
+"My nerves are strong, Marie-Louise."
+
+"It isn't nerves. It's faith. You believe that the boat won't go down,
+and you believe that if it did go down your soul wouldn't die."
+
+Her white face was close to him. "I wish I could believe like that," she
+said in a high, sharp voice. Then she screamed as the little ship seemed
+caught up into the air and flung down again.
+
+"Hush," Richard told her; "hush, Marie-Louise."
+
+She was shaking and shivering. "I hate it," she sobbed.
+
+Pip, like a yellow specter in oilskins, came up to them. "Eve wants you,
+Brooks," he shouted above the clamor of wind and wave.
+
+"Shall we go in, Marie-Louise?"
+
+"No, no." She cowered against his arm.
+
+Over her head Richard said to Pip, "I shall come as soon as I can."
+
+So Pip went down, and the two were left alone in the tumult and blackness
+of the night.
+
+As Marie-Louise lay for a moment quiet against his arm, Richard bent
+down to her. "Are you still afraid?"
+
+"Yes, oh, yes. I keep thinking--if I should die. And I am afraid to die."
+
+"You are not going to die. And if you were there would be nothing to
+fear. Death is just--falling asleep. Rarely any terror. We doctors know,
+who see people die. I know it, and your father knows it."
+
+By the light of a blinding flash he saw her white face with its wet red
+hair.
+
+"Dad doesn't know it as you know," she said, chokingly. "He couldn't say
+it as you--say it."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"He's like I am. _Dad's afraid._"
+
+The storm swept on, leaving the waves rough behind it, and Richard at
+last put Marie-Louise to bed with a sleeping powder. Then he went to hunt
+up Eve. He was very tired and it was very late. The night had passed, and
+the dawn would soon be coming up over the horizon. He found Pip in the
+smoking room. Eve had gone to bed. Everybody had gone to bed. It had been
+a terrible storm.
+
+Richard agreed that it had been terrible. He was glad that Eve could
+sleep. He couldn't understand why Austin had allowed Marie-Louise to take
+such a trip. Her fear of storms was evidently quite uncontrollable. And
+she was at all times hysterical and high-strung.
+
+Pip was not interested in Marie-Louise. "Eve lost her nerve at the last."
+
+Richard was solicitous. "I'm sorry. I wanted to come down, but I couldn't
+leave Marie-Louise. Eve's normal, and she'll be all right as soon as the
+storm stops. But Marie-Louise may suffer for days. The sooner she gets on
+shore the better."
+
+He went on deck, and looked out upon a gray wind-swept world.
+
+Then the sun came up, and there was a great light upon the waters.
+
+All the next day Marie-Louise lay in a long chair. "Dad told me not to
+come," she confessed to Richard. "I've been this way before. But I
+wouldn't listen."
+
+"If I had been your father," Richard said, "you would have listened, and
+you would have stayed at home."
+
+She grinned. "You can't be sure. Nobody can be sure. I don't like to take
+orders."
+
+"Until you learn to take orders you aren't going to amount to much,
+Marie-Louise."
+
+"I amount to a great deal. And your ideas are--old-fashioned; that's what
+your Eve says, Dr. Dicky."
+
+She looked at him through her long eyelashes. "What's the matter with
+your Eve?"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"She is punishing you, but you don't know it. She is down-stairs playing
+bridge with Pip and Tony and Win, and leaving you alone to meditate on
+your sins. And you aren't meditating. You are talking to me. I am going
+to write a poem about a Laggard Lover. I'll make you a shepherd boy who
+sits on the hills and watches his sheep. And when the girl who loves him
+calls to him, he refuses to go--he still watches--his sheep."
+
+He looked puzzled. "I don't know in the least what you are talking
+about."
+
+"You are the shepherd. Your work is the sheep--Eve is the girl. Your work
+will always be more to you than the woman. Dad's work isn't. He never
+forgets mother for a minute."
+
+"And you think that I'll forget Eve?"
+
+"Yes. And she'll hate that."
+
+There was a spark in his eye.
+
+"I think that we won't discuss Eve, Marie-Louise."
+
+"Then I'll discuss her in a poem. Lend me a pencil, please."
+
+He gave her the pencil and a prescription pad, and she set to work. She
+read snatches to him as she progressed. It was remarkably clever, with a
+constantly recurring refrain.
+
+"_Let me watch my sheep," said the lover, "my sheep on the hills._"
+
+The verses went on to relate that the girl, finding her shepherd
+dilatory, turned her attention to another swain, and at last she flouts
+the shepherd.
+
+"_Go watch your sheep, laggard lover, your sheep on the hills._"
+
+She laid the verses aside as Tony and Win joined them.
+
+"Three rubbers, and Pip and Eve are ahead."
+
+"Isn't Eve coming?"
+
+"She said she was coming up soon."
+
+But she did not come, and Pip did not come. Marie-Louise, with a great
+rug spread over her, slept in her chair. Dutton Ames read aloud to his
+wife. Richard rose and went to look for Eve.
+
+There was a little room which Pip called "The Skipper's own." It was
+furnished in a man's way as a den, with green leather and carved oak and
+plenty of books. Its windows gave a forward view of sky and water.
+
+It was here that the four of them had been playing auction. Eve was now
+shuffling the cards for Solitaire.
+
+Pip, watching her, caught suddenly at her left hand. "Why didn't Brooks
+give you a better ring?"
+
+"I like my ring. Let go of my hand, Pip."
+
+"I won't. What's the matter with the man that he should dare dream of
+tying you down to what he can give you? It seems to me that he lacks
+pride."
+
+"He doesn't lack anything. Let go of my hand, Pip."
+
+But he still held it. "How he could have the courage to ask--until he
+had made a name for himself."
+
+She blazed. "He didn't ask. I asked him, Pip. I cared enough for that."
+
+He dropped her hand as if it had stung him. "You cared--as much as that?"
+
+She faced him bravely. "As much as that--it pleased me to say what it was
+my right to say."
+
+"Oh! It was the queen, then, and the--beggar man. _Eve_, come back."
+
+She was at the door, but she turned. "I'll come back if you will beg my
+pardon. Richard is not a beggar, and I am not the queen. How hateful you
+are, Pip."
+
+"I won't beg your pardon. And let's have this out right now, Eve."
+
+"Have what out?"
+
+"Sit down, and I'll tell you."
+
+Once more they were seated with the table between them. Pip's back was to
+the window, but Eve faced the broad expanse of sky and sea. A faint pink
+flush was on the waters: a silver star hung at the edge of a crescent
+moon. There was no sound but the purr of machinery and the mewing of
+gulls in the distance.
+
+Eve was in pink--a straight linen frock with a low white collar. It gave
+her an air of simplicity quite unlike her usual elegance. Pip feasted his
+eyes on her.
+
+"You've got to face it. Brooks doesn't care."
+
+"He does care."
+
+"He didn't care enough to come down last night when you were afraid--and
+wanted him. And you turned to me, just for one little minute, Eve. Do you
+think I shall ever forget the thrill of the thought that you turned to
+me?"
+
+She was staring straight out at the little moon. "Marie-Louise was his
+patient--he had to stay with her."
+
+"You are saying that to me, but in your heart you know you are resenting
+the fact that he didn't come when you called. Aren't you, Eve? Aren't you
+resenting it?"
+
+She told him the truth. "Yes. But I know that when I am his wife, I shall
+have to let him think about his patients. I ought to be big enough for
+that."
+
+"You are big enough for anything. But you are not always going to be
+content with crumbs from the king's table. And that's what you are
+getting from Brooks. And I have a feast ready. Eve, can't you see that I
+would give, give, give, and he will take, take, take? Eve, can't you
+see?"
+
+She did see, and for the moment she was swayed by the force of his
+passionate eloquence.
+
+She leaned toward him a little. "Pip, dear, I wish--sometimes--that it
+might have been--you."
+
+It needed only this. He swept the card table aside with his strong arms.
+He was on his knees begging for love, for life. Her hair swept his cheek.
+
+The little moon shone clear in the quiet sky. There was not much light,
+but there was enough for a man standing in the door to see two dark
+figures outlined against the silver space beyond.
+
+And Richard was standing in the door!
+
+Eve saw him first. "Go away, Pip," she said, and stood up. "I--I think I
+can make him understand."
+
+When they were alone she said to Richard in a strained voice, "It was my
+fault, Dicky."
+
+"Do you mean that you--let him, Eve?"
+
+"No. But I let him talk about his love for me--and--and--he cares very
+much."
+
+"He knows that you are engaged to me."
+
+"Yes. But last night when you stayed on deck when I needed you and asked
+for you, Pip knew that you wouldn't come--and he was sorry for me."
+
+"And he was sorry again this afternoon?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And he showed it by making love to you?"
+
+"He thinks I won't be happy with you. He thinks that you don't care. He
+thinks----"
+
+"I don't care what Meade thinks. I want to know what you think, Eve."
+
+Their voices had come out of the darkness. She pulled the little chain of
+a wall bracket, and the room was enveloped in a warm wave of light. "I
+don't know what I think. But I hated to have you with Marie-Louise."
+
+"She was very ill. You knew that. Eve, if we can't trust each other, what
+possible happiness can there be ahead?"
+
+She had no answer ready.
+
+"Of course I can't stay on Meade's boat after this," he went on; "I'll
+get them to run in here somewhere and drop me."
+
+She sank back in the chair from which she had risen when Philip left
+them. His troubled eyes resting upon her saw a blur of pink and gold out
+of which emerged her white face.
+
+"But I want you to stay."
+
+"You shouldn't want me to stay, Eve. I can't accept his hospitality,
+after this, and call myself--a man."
+
+"Oh, Dicky--I detest heroics."
+
+She was startled by the tone in which he said, "If that is the way you
+feel about it, we might as well end it here."
+
+"Dicky----"
+
+"I mean it, Eve. The whole thing is based on the fact that I stayed with
+a patient when you wanted me. Well, I shall always be staying with
+patients after we are married, and if you are unable to see why I must do
+the thing I did last night, then you will never be able to see it. And a
+doctor's wife must see it."
+
+She came up to him, and in the darkness laid her cheek against his arm.
+"Dicky, don't joke about a thing like that. I can't stand it. And I'm
+sorry about--Pip. Dicky, I shall die if you don't forgive me."
+
+He forgave her. He even made himself believe that Pip might be forgiven.
+He exerted himself to seem at his ease at dinner. He said nothing more
+about leaving at the next landing.
+
+But late that night he sat alone on deck in the darkness. He was a plain
+man, and he saw things straight. And this thing was crooked. The hot
+honor of his youth revolted against the situation in which he saw
+himself. He felt hurt and ashamed. It was as if the dreams of his boyhood
+had been dragged in the dust.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+_In Which We Hear Once More of a Sandalwood Fan._
+
+
+IN the winter which followed Richard often wondered if he were the same
+man who had ridden his old Ben up over the hills, and had said his solemn
+grace at his own candle-lighted table.
+
+It had been decided that he and Eve should wait until another year for
+their wedding. Richard wanted to get a good start. Eve was impatient, but
+acquiesced.
+
+It was not Richard's engagement, however, which gave to his life the
+effect of strangeness. It was, rather, his work, which swept him into a
+maelstrom of new activities. Austin needed rest and he knew it. Richard
+was young and strong. The older man, using his assistant as a buffer
+between himself and a demanding public, felt no compunction. His own
+apprenticeship had been hard.
+
+So Richard in Austin's imposing limousine was whirled through fashionable
+neighborhoods and up to exclusive doorways. He presided at operations
+where the fees were a year's income for a poor man. A certain percentage
+of these fees came to him. He found that he need have no fears for his
+financial future.
+
+His letters from his mother were his only link with the old life. She
+wrote that she was well. That Anne Warfield was with her, and Cousin
+Sulie, and that the three of them and Cousin David played whist. That
+Anne was such a dear--that she didn't know what she would do without her.
+
+Richard went as often as he could on Sundays to Crossroads. But at such
+times he saw little of Anne. She felt that no one should intrude on the
+reunions of mother and son. So she visited at Beulah's or Bower's and
+came back on Mondays.
+
+Nancy persisted in her refusal to go back to New York. "I know I am
+silly," she told her son, "but I have a feeling that I shouldn't be able
+to breathe, and should die of suffocation."
+
+Richard spoke to Dr. Austin of his mother's state of mind. "Queer thing,
+isn't it?"
+
+"A natural thing, I should say. Your father's death was an awful blow. I
+often wonder how she lived out the years while she waited for you to
+finish school."
+
+"But she did live them, so that I might be prepared to practice at
+Crossroads. As I think of it, it seems monstrous that I should disappoint
+her."
+
+"Fledglings always leave the nest. Mothers have that to expect. The
+selfishness of the young makes for progress. It would have been equally
+monstrous if you had stayed in that dull place wasting your talents."
+
+"Would it have been wasted, sir? There's no one taking my place in the
+old country. And there are many who could fill it here. There's a chance
+at Crossroads for big work for the right man. Community water
+supply--better housing, the health conditions of the ignorant foreign
+folk who work the small farms. A country doctor ought to have the
+missionary spirit."
+
+"There are plenty of little men for such places."
+
+"It takes big men. I could make our old countryside bloom like a rose if
+I could put into it half the effort that I am putting into my work with
+you. But it would be lean living--and I have chosen the flesh-pots."
+
+"Don't despise yourself because you couldn't go on being poor in a big
+way. You are going to be rich in a big way, and that is better."
+
+As the days went on, however, Richard wondered if it were really better
+to be rich in a big way. Sometimes the very bigness and richness
+oppressed him. He found himself burdened by the splendor of the mansions
+at which he made his morning calls. He hated the sleekness of the men in
+livery who preceded him up the stairs, the trimness of the maids waiting
+on the threshold of hushed boudoirs. Disease and death in these sumptuous
+palaces seemed divorced from reality as if the palaces were stage
+structures, and the people in them were actors who would presently walk
+out into the wings.
+
+It was therefore with some of the feelings which had often assailed him
+when he had stepped from a dim theater out into the open air that Richard
+made his way one morning to a small apartment on a down-town side street
+to call on a little girl who had recently left the charity ward at
+Austin's hospital. Richard had operated for appendicitis, and had found
+himself much interested in the child. He had dismissed the limousine
+farther up. It had seemed out of place in the shabby street.
+
+He stopped at the florist's for a pot of pink posies and at another shop
+for fruit. Laden with parcels he climbed the high stairs to the top floor
+of the tenement.
+
+The little girl and her grandmother lived together. The grandmother had a
+small pension, and sewed by the day for several old customers. They thus
+managed to pay expenses, but poverty pinched. Richard had from the first,
+however, been impressed by their hopefulness. Neither the grandmother nor
+the child seemed to look upon their lot as hard. The grandmother made
+savory stews on a snug little stove and baked her own sweet loaves. Now
+and then she baked a cake. Things were spotlessly clean, and there were
+sunshine and fresh air. To have pitied those two would have been
+superfluous.
+
+After he had walked briskly out into Fifth Avenue, he was thinking of
+another grandmother on whom he had called a few days before. She was a
+haughty old dame, but she was browbeaten by her maid. Her grandchildren
+were brought in now and then to kiss her hand. They were glad to get
+away. They had no real need of her. They had no hopes or fears to
+confide. So in spite of her magnificence and her millions, she was a
+lonely soul.
+
+Snow had fallen the night before, and was now melting in the streets, but
+the sky was very blue above the tall buildings. Christmas was not far
+away, and as Richard went up-town the crowd surged with him, meeting the
+crowd that was coming down.
+
+He had a fancy to lunch at a little place on Thirty-third Street, where
+they served a soup with noodles that was in itself a hearty meal. In the
+days when money had been scarce the little German café had furnished many
+a feast. Now and then he and his mother had come together, and had talked
+of how, when their ship came in, they would dine at the big hotel around
+the corner.
+
+And now that his ship was in, and he could afford the big hotel, it had
+no charms. He hated the women dawdling in its alleys, the men smoking in
+its corridors, the whole idle crowd, lunching in acres of table-crowded
+space.
+
+So he set as his goal the clean little restaurant, and swung along toward
+it with something of his old boyish sense of elation.
+
+And then a strange thing happened. For the first time in months he found
+his heart marking time to the tune of the song which old Ben's hoofs had
+beaten out of the roads as they made their way up into the hills--
+
+    "I think she was the most beautiful lady,
+     That ever was in the West Country----"
+
+He was even humming it under his breath, unheard amid the hum and stir of
+the crowded city street.
+
+The shops on either side of him displayed in their low windows a wealth
+of tempting things. Rugs with a sheen like the bloom of a
+peach--alabaster in curved and carved bowls and vases, old prints in dull
+gilt frames--furniture following the lines of Florentine
+elaborateness--his eyes took in all the color and glow, though he rarely
+stopped for a closer view.
+
+In front of one broad window, however, he hesitated. The opening of the
+door had spilled into the frosty air of this alien city the scent of the
+Orient--the fragrance of incense--of spicy perfumed woods.
+
+In the window a jade god sat high on a teakwood pedestal. A string of
+scarlet beads lighted a shadowy corner. On an ancient and priceless
+lacquered cabinet were enthroned two other gods of gold and ivory. A
+crystal ball reflected a length of blue brocade. A clump of Chinese bulbs
+bloomed in an old Ming bowl.
+
+Richard went into the shop. Subconsciously, he went with a purpose. But
+the purpose was not revealed to him until he came to a case in which was
+set forth a certain marvelous collection. He knew then that the old song
+and the scents had formed an association of ideas which had lured him
+away from the streets and into the shop, that he might buy for Anne
+Warfield a sandalwood fan.
+
+He found what he wanted. A sweet and wonderful bit of wood, carved like
+lace, with green and purple tassels.
+
+It was when he had it safe in his pocket, in a box that was gay with
+yellow and green and gold, that he was aware of voices in the back of the
+shop.
+
+There were tables where tea was served to special customers--at the
+expense of the management. Thus a vulgar bargain became as it were a
+hospitality--you bought teakwood and had tea; carved ivories, and were
+rewarded with little cakes.
+
+In that dim space under a low hung lamp, Marie-Louise talked with the fat
+Armenian.
+
+He was the same Armenian who had told her fortune at Coney. He stood by
+Marie-Louise's side while she drank her tea, and spoke to her of the
+poet-king with whom she had walked on the banks of the Nile.
+
+Richard approaching asked, "How did you happen to come here,
+Marie-Louise?"
+
+"I often come. I like it. It is next to traveling in far countries." She
+indicated the fat Armenian. "He tells me about things that happened to
+me--in the ages--when I lived before."
+
+A slender youth in white silk with a crimson sash brought tea for
+Richard. But he refused it. "I am on my way to lunch, Marie-Louise. Will
+you go with me?"
+
+She hesitated and glanced at the fat Armenian. "I've some things to buy."
+
+"I'll wait."
+
+She flitted about the shop with the fat Armenian in her train. He showed
+her treasures shut away from the public eye, and she bought long lengths
+of heavy silks, embroideries thick with gold, a moonstone bracelet linked
+with silver.
+
+The fat Armenian, bending over her, seemed to direct and suggest.
+Richard, watching, hated the man's manner.
+
+Outside in the sunshine, he spoke of it. "I wouldn't go there alone."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I don't like to see you among those people--on such terms. They don't
+understand, and they're--different."
+
+"I like them because they are different," obstinately.
+
+He shifted his ground. "Marie-Louise, will you lunch with me at a cheap
+little place around the corner?"
+
+"Why a cheap little place?"
+
+"Because I like the good soup, and the clean little German woman, and the
+quiet and--the memories."
+
+"What memories?"
+
+"I used to go there when I was poor."
+
+She entered eagerly into the adventure, and ordered her car to wait. Then
+away they fared around the corner!
+
+Within the homely little restaurant, Marie-Louise's elegance was more
+than ever apparent. Her long coat of gray velvet with its silver fox
+winked opulently from the back of her chair at the coarse table-cloth and
+the paper napkins.
+
+But the soup was good, and the German woman smiled at them, and brought
+them a special dish of hard almond cakes with their coffee.
+
+"I love it," Marie-Louise said. "It is like Hans Andersen and my fairy
+books. Will you bring me here again, Dr. Richard?"
+
+"I am glad you like it," he told her. "I wanted you to like it."
+
+"I like it because I like you," she said with frankness, "and you seem to
+belong in the fairy tale. You are so big and strong and young. I don't
+feel a thousand years old when I am with you. You are such a change from
+everybody else, Dr. Dicky."
+
+Richard spoke the next day to Austin of Marie-Louise and the fat
+Armenian. "She shouldn't be going to such shops alone. She has a romantic
+streak in her, and they take advantage of it."
+
+"She ought never to go alone," Austin agreed, "and I have told her. But
+what am I going to do? I can rule a world of patients, Brooks, but I
+can't rule my woman child," he laughed ruefully. "I've tried having a
+maid accompany her, but she sends her home."
+
+"I wish she might have gone to the Crossroads school, and have known the
+Crossroads teacher--Anne Warfield. You remember Cynthia Warfield, sir;
+this is her granddaughter."
+
+Austin remembered Cynthia, and he wanted to know more of Anne. Richard
+told him of Anne's saneness and common sense. "I am so glad that she can
+be with my mother, and that the children have her in the school. She is
+so wise and good."
+
+He thought more than once in the days that followed of Anne's wisdom and
+goodness. He decided to send the fan. He expected to go to Crossroads for
+Christmas, but he was not at all sure that he should see Anne. Something
+had been said about her going for the holidays to her Uncle Rod.
+
+Was it only a year since he had seen her on the rocks above the river
+with a wreath in her hand, and in the stable at Bower's, with the lantern
+shining above her head?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+_In Which Christmas Comes to Crossroads._
+
+
+NANCY'S plans for Christmas were ambitious. She talked it over with Sulie
+Tyson. "I'll have Anne and her Uncle Rod. If she goes to him they will
+eat their Christmas dinner alone. Her cousins are to be out of town."
+
+Cousin Sulie agreed. She was a frail little woman, with gray hair drawn
+up from her forehead above a high-bred face. She spoke with earnestness
+on even the most trivial subjects. Now and then she had flashes of humor,
+but they were rare. Her life had been sad, and she had always been
+dependent. The traditions of her family had made it impossible for her to
+indulge in any money-making occupation. Hence she had lived in other
+people's houses. Usually with one or the other of two brothers, in
+somewhat large households.
+
+Her days, therefore, with Nancy were rapturous ones.
+
+"There's something in the freedom which two women can have when they are
+alone," she said, "that is glorious. We are ourselves. When men are
+around we are always acting."
+
+Nancy was not so subtle. "I am myself with Richard."
+
+"No, you're not, Nancy. You are always trying to please him. You make him
+feel important. You make him feel that he is the head of the house. You
+know what I mean."
+
+Nancy did know. But she didn't choose to admit it.
+
+"Well, I like to please him." Then with a sudden burst of longing,
+"Sulie, I want him here all of the time--to please."
+
+"Oh, my dear," Sulie caught Nancy's hands up in her own, "oh, my dear.
+How mothers love their sons. I am glad I haven't any. I used to long for
+children. I don't any more. Nothing can hurt me as Richard hurts you,
+Nancy."
+
+Nancy refused to talk of it. "We will ask David and Brinsley; that will
+be four men and three women, Sulie."
+
+"Well, I can take care of David if you'll look after Brinsley and Rodman
+Warfield. And that will leave your Richard for Anne."
+
+Nancy's candid glance met her cousin's. "That is the way I had hoped it
+might be--Richard and Anne. At first I thought it might be--and then
+something happened. He went to New York and that was the--end."
+
+"If you had been more of a match-maker," Sulie said, "you might have
+managed. But you always think that such things are on the knees of the
+gods. Why didn't you bring them together?"
+
+"I tried," Nancy confessed. "But Eve--I hate to say it, Sulie. Eve was
+determined."
+
+The two old-fashioned women, making mental estimates of this modern
+feminine product, found themselves indignant. "To think that any girl
+could----"
+
+It was lunch time, and Anne came in. She had Diogenes under her arm. "He
+will come across the road to meet me. And I am afraid of the automobiles.
+When he brings the white duck and all of the little Diogenes with him he
+obstructs traffic. He stopped a touring car the other day, and the men
+swore at him, and Diogenes swore back."
+
+She laughed and set the old drake on his feet. "May I have a slice of
+bread for him, Mother Nancy?"
+
+"Of course, my dear. Two, if you wish."
+
+Diogenes, having been towed by his beloved mistress out-of-doors, was
+appeased with the slice of bread. He was a patriarch now, with a lovely
+mate and a line of waddling offspring to claim his devotion. But not an
+inch did he swerve from his loyalty to Anne. She had brought him with her
+from Bower's, and he lived in the barn with his family. Twice a day,
+however, he made a pilgrimage to the Crossroads school. It was these
+excursions which Anne deprecated.
+
+"He comes in when I ring for recess and distracts the children. He
+waddles straight up to my desk--and he is such an old dear."
+
+She laughed, and the two women laughed with her. She was their
+heart-warming comrade. She brought into their lonely lives something
+vivid and sparkling, at which they drank for their soul's refreshment.
+
+Nancy spoke of Rodman Warfield. "We want him here for Christmas and the
+holidays. Do you think he can come?"
+
+Anne flashed her radiance at them. "I don't think. I know. Mother Nancy,
+you're an angel."
+
+"Richard is coming, of course. It will be just a family party. Not many
+young people for you, my dear. Just--Richard."
+
+There was holly and crow's-foot up in the hills, and David and Anne
+hitched big Ben to a cart and went after it. It was a winter of snow, and
+in the depths of the woods there was a great stillness. David chopped a
+tall cedar and his blows echoed and reëchoed in the white spaces. The
+holly berries that dropped from the cut branches were like drops of blood
+on the shining crust.
+
+Nancy and Sulie made up the wreaths and the ropes of green, and fashioned
+ornaments for the tree. There was to be a bigger tree at the school for
+the children, but this was to be a family affair and was to be free from
+tawdry tinsel and colored glass. Nancy liked straight little candles and
+silver stars. "It shall be an old-fashioned tree," she said, "such as I
+used to have when I was a child."
+
+Sulie's raptures were almost solemn in their intensity. Richard sent
+money, plenty of it, and Sulie and Nancy went to Baltimore and spent it.
+"I never expected," Sulie said, "to go into shops and pick out things
+that I liked. I've always had to choose things that I needed."
+
+Now and then on Saturdays when Anne went with them, they rushed through
+their shopping, had lunch at the Woman's Exchange and went to a matinée.
+
+Nancy was always glad to get back home, but Sulie revelled in the
+excitement of it all. Anne made her buy a hat with a flat pink rose which
+lay enchantingly against her gray hair.
+
+"I feel sometimes as if I had been born again," Sulie said quaintly;
+"like a flower that had shriveled up and grown brown, and suddenly found
+itself blooming in the spring."
+
+Thus the days went on, and Christmas was not far away. Anne coming in one
+afternoon found Nancy by the library fire with a letter in her hand.
+
+"Richard hopes to get here on Friday, Anne, in time for the tree and the
+children's festival. Something may keep him, however, until Christmas
+morning. He is very busy--and there are some important operations."
+
+"How proud you are of him," Anne sank down on the rug, and reached up her
+hand for Nancy, "and how happy you will be with your big son. Could you
+ever have loved a daughter as much, Mother Nancy?"
+
+"I'm not sure; perhaps," smiling, "if she had been like you. And a
+daughter would have stayed with me. Men have wandering natures--they must
+be up and out."
+
+"Women have wandering natures, too," Anne told her. "Do you know that
+last Christmas I cried and cried because I was tied to the Crossroads
+school and to Bower's? I wanted to live in the city and have lovely
+things. You can't imagine how I hated all Eve Chesley's elegance. I
+seemed so--clumsy and common."
+
+Nancy stared at her in amazement. "But you surely don't feel that way
+now."
+
+"Yes, I do. But I am not unhappy any more. It was silly to be unhappy
+when I had so much in my life. But if I were a man, I'd be a rover, a
+vagabond--I'd take to the open road rather than be tied to one spot."
+
+There was laughter in her eyes, but the words rang true. "I want to see
+new things in new people. I want to have new experiences--there must be a
+bigger, broader world than this."
+
+Nancy gazing into the fire pondered. "It's the spirit of the age. Perhaps
+it is the youth in you. I wanted to go, too. But oh, my dear, how I
+wanted to come back!"
+
+There was silence between them, then Anne said, "Perhaps if I could have
+my one little fling I'd be content. Perhaps it wouldn't be all that I
+expected. But I'd like to try."
+
+On Thursday Anne met the postman as he drove up. There were two parcels
+for her. One was square and one was long and narrow. There were parcels
+also for Nancy and Sulie. Anne delivered them, and took her own treasures
+to her room. She shut and locked her door. Then she stood very still in
+the middle of the room. Not since she had seen the writing on the long
+and narrow parcel had her heart ceased to beat madly.
+
+When at last she sat down and untied the string a faint fragrance
+assailed her nostrils. Then the gay box with its purple and green and
+gold was revealed!
+
+The little fan was folded about with many thicknesses of soft paper. But
+at last she had it out, the dear lovely thing that her love had sent!
+
+In that moment all the barriers which she had built about her thoughts of
+Richard were beaten down and battered by his remembrance of her. There
+was not a line from him, not a word. Nothing but the writing on the
+wrapper, and the memory of their talk together by the big fire at Bower's
+on the night of Beulah's party when he had said, "You ought to have a
+little fan--of--sandalwood--with purple and green tassels and smelling
+sweet."
+
+When she went down her cheeks were red with color. "How pretty you are!"
+Sulie said, and kissed her.
+
+Anne showed the book which had come in the square parcel. It was Geoffrey
+Fox's "Three Souls," and it was dedicated to Anne.
+
+She did not show the sandalwood fan. It was hidden in her desk. She had a
+feeling that Nancy and Sulie would not understand, and that Richard had
+not meant that she should show it.
+
+Nancy, too, had something which she did not show. One of her letters was
+from Dr. Austin. He had written without Richard's knowledge. He wished to
+inquire about Anne Warfield. He had been much impressed by what Richard
+had said of her. He needed a companion for his daughter Marie-Louise. He
+wanted a lady, and Cynthia Warfield's grandchild would, of course, be
+that. He wanted, too, some one who was fearless, and who thought
+straight. He fancied that from what Richard had said that Anne would be
+the antidote for his daughter's abnormality. If Nancy would confirm
+Richard's opinion, he would write at once to Miss Warfield. A woman's
+estimate in such a matter would, naturally, be more satisfying. He would
+pay well, and Anne would be treated in every way as one of the family.
+Marie-Louise might at first be a little difficult. But in the end, no
+doubt, she would yield to tact and firmness.
+
+And he was always devotedly, her old friend!
+
+It had seemed to Nancy as she read that something gripped at her heart.
+It was Anne's presence which had kept her from the black despair of
+loneliness. Sulie was good and true, but she had no power to fill the
+void made by Richard's absence. If Anne went away, they would be two old
+women, gazing blankly into an empty future.
+
+Yet it was Anne's opportunity. The opportunity which her soul had craved.
+"To see new things and new people." And she was young and wanting much to
+live. It would not be right or fair to hold her back.
+
+She had, however, laid the letter aside. When Richard came she would talk
+it over with him, and then they could talk to Anne. She tried to forget
+it in the bustle of preparation, but it lay like a shadow in the back of
+her mind, dimming the brightness of the days.
+
+Everybody was busy. Milly and Sulie and Nancy seeded and chopped and
+baked, and polished silver, and got out piles of linen, and made up beds,
+and were all beautifully ready and swept and garnished when Uncle Rodman
+arrived from Carroll and Brinsley from Baltimore.
+
+The two old men came on the same train, and David brought them over from
+Bower's behind big Ben. By the time they reached Crossroads, they had
+dwelt upon old times and old friends and old loves until they were in the
+warm and genial state of content which is age's recompense for the loss
+of youthful ardors.
+
+They were, indeed, three ancient Musketeers, who, untouched now by any
+flame of great emotion, might adventure safely in a past of sentiment
+from which they were separated by long years. But there had been a time
+when passion had burned brightly for them all, even in gentle David, who
+had loved Cynthia Warfield.
+
+What wonder, then, if to these three Anne typified that past, and all it
+meant to them, as she ran to meet them with her arms outflung to welcome
+Uncle Rod.
+
+She had them all presently safe on the hearth with the fire roaring, and
+with Milly bringing them hot coffee, and Sulie and Nancy smiling in an
+ecstasy of welcome.
+
+"It is perfect," Anne said, "to have you all here--like this."
+
+Yet deep in her heart she knew that it was not perfect. For youth calls
+to youth. And Richard was yet to come!
+
+Brinsley had brought hampers of things to eat. He had made epicurean
+pilgrimages to the Baltimore markets. There were turkeys and ducks and
+oysters--Smithfield hams, a young pig with an apple in its mouth.
+
+He superintended the unloading of the hampers when Eric brought them
+over. Uncle Rod shook his head as he saw them opened.
+
+"I can make a jar of honey and a handful of almonds suffice," he said. "I
+am not keen about butchered birds and beasts."
+
+Brinsley laughed. "Don't rob me of the joy of living, Rod," he said.
+"Nancy is bad enough. I wanted to send up some wine. But she wouldn't
+have it. Even her mince pies are innocent. Nancy sees the whole world
+through eyes of anxiety for her boy. I don't believe she'd care a snap
+for temperance if she wasn't afraid that her Dicky might drink."
+
+"Perhaps it is the individual mother's solicitude for her own particular
+child which makes the feminine influence a great moral force," Rodman
+ventured.
+
+"Perhaps," carelessly. "Now Nancy has a set of wine-glasses that it is a
+shame not to use." He slapped his hands to warm them. "Let's take a long
+walk, Rod. I exercise to keep the fat down."
+
+"I exercise because it is a good old world to walk in," and Rodman swung
+his long lean legs into an easy stride.
+
+They picked David up as they passed his little house. They climbed the
+hill till they came to the edge of the wood where David had cut the tree.
+
+There was a sunset over the frozen river as they turned to look at it.
+The river sang no songs to-day. It was as still and silent as their own
+dead youth. Yet above it was the clear gold of the evening sky.
+
+"The last time we came we were boys," Brinsley said, "and I was in love
+with Cynthia Warfield. And we were both in love with her, David; do you
+remember?"
+
+David did remember. "Anne is like her."
+
+Rodman protested. "She is and she isn't. Anne has none of Cynthia's
+faults."
+
+Brinsley chuckled. "I'll bet you've spoiled her."
+
+"No, I haven't. But Anne has had to work and wait for things, and it
+hasn't hurt her."
+
+"She's a beauty," Brinsley stated, "and she ought to be a belle."
+
+"She's good," David supplemented; "the children at the little school
+worship her."
+
+"She's mine," Uncle Rod straightened his shoulders, "and in that
+knowledge I envy no man anything."
+
+As they sat late that night by Nancy's fire, Anne in a white frock played
+for them, and sang:
+
+    "I think she was the most beautiful lady
+     That ever was in the West Country,
+     But beauty vanishes, beauty passes,
+     However rare, rare it be,
+     And when I am gone, who shall remember
+     That lady of the West Country?"
+
+And when she sang it was of Cynthia Warfield that all of the Old
+Gentlemen dreamed.
+
+When the last note had died away, she went over and stood behind her
+uncle. She was little and slim and straight and her soft hair was swept
+up high from her forehead. Her eyes above Uncle Rod's head met Nancy's
+eyes. The two women smiled at each other.
+
+"To-morrow," Nancy said, and she seemed to say it straight to Anne,
+"to-morrow Richard will be here."
+
+Anne caught a quick breath. "To-morrow," she said. "How lovely it will
+be!"
+
+But Richard did not come on Christmas Eve. A telegram told of imperative
+demands on him. He would get there in the morning.
+
+"We won't light the tree until he comes," was Nancy's brave decision.
+"The early train will get him here in time for breakfast."
+
+David drove big Ben down to meet him. Milly cooked a mammoth breakfast.
+Anne slipped across the road to the Crossroads school to ring the bell
+for the young master's return. The rest of the household waited in the
+library. Brinsley was there with a story to tell, but no one listened.
+Their ears were strained to catch the first sharp sound of big Ben's
+trot. Sulie was there with a red rose in her hair to match the fires
+which were warming her old heart. Nancy was there at the window,
+watching.
+
+Then the telephone rang. Nancy was wanted. Long distance.
+
+It was many minutes before she came back. Yet the message had been short.
+She had hung up the receiver, and had stood in the hall in a whirling
+world of darkness.
+
+_Richard was not coming._
+
+He had been sorry. Tender. Her own sweet son. Yet he had seemed to think
+that business was a sufficient excuse for breaking her heart. Surely
+there were doctors enough in that octopus of a town to take his patients
+off of his hands. And she was his mother and wanted him.
+
+She had a sense of utter rebellion. She wanted to cry out to the world,
+"This is my son, for whom I have sacrificed."
+
+And now the bell across the street began to ring its foolish
+chime--Richard was not coming, _ding, dong_. She must get through the day
+without him, _ding, dong_, she must get through all the years!
+
+When she faced the solicitous group in the library, only her whiteness
+showed what she was feeling.
+
+"Richard is detained by--an important--operation. And breakfast
+is--waiting. Sulie, will you call Anne, and light the little tree?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+_In Which a Dresden-China Shepherdess and a Country Mouse Meet on Common
+Ground._
+
+
+MARIE-LOUISE'S room at Rose Acres was all in white with two tall
+candlesticks to light it, and a silver bowl for flowers. It was by means
+of the flowers in the bowl that Marie-Louise expressed her moods. There
+were days when scarlet flowers flamed, and other days when pale roses or
+violets or lilies suggested a less exotic state of mind.
+
+On the day when Anne Warfield arrived, the flowers in the bowl were
+yellow. Marie-Louise stayed in bed all of the morning. She had ordered
+the flowers sent up from the hothouse, and, dragging a length of silken
+dressing-gown behind her, she had arranged them. Then she had had her
+breakfast on a tray.
+
+Her hair was nicely combed under a lace cap; the dressing-gown was faint
+blue. In the center of the big bed she looked very small but very
+elegant, as if a Dresden-China Shepherdess had been put between the
+covers.
+
+She had told her maid that when Anne arrived she was to be shown up at
+once. Austin had suggested that Marie-Louise go down-town to meet her.
+But Marie-Louise had refused.
+
+"I don't want to see her. Why should I?"
+
+"She is very charming, Marie-Louise."
+
+"Who told you?"
+
+"Dr. Brooks. And I knew her grandmother."
+
+"Will Dr. Dicky meet her?"
+
+"Yes. And bring her out. I have given him the day."
+
+"You might have asked me if I wanted her, Dad. I don't want anybody to
+look after me. I belong to myself."
+
+"I don't know to whom you belong, Marie-Louise. You're a changeling."
+
+"I'm not. I'm your child. But you don't like my horns and hoofs."
+
+He gazed at her aghast. "My dear child!"
+
+She began to sob. "I am not your dear child. But I am your child, and I
+shall hate to have somebody tagging around."
+
+"Miss Warfield is not to tag. And you'll like her."
+
+"I shall hate her," said Marie-Louise, between her teeth.
+
+It was because of this hatred that she had filled her bowl with yellow
+flowers. Yellow meant jealousy. And she had shrewdly analyzed her state
+of mind. She was jealous of Anne because Dad and Dr. Richard and
+everybody else thought that Anne was going to set her a good example.
+
+It was early in January that Anne came. The whole thing had been hurried.
+Austin had been peremptory in his demand that she should not delay. So
+Nancy, very white but smiling, had packed her off. Sulie had cried over
+her, and Uncle Rod had wished her "Godspeed."
+
+Richard met her at the station in the midst of a raging blizzard, and in
+a sort of dream she had been whirled with him through the gray streets
+shut in by the veil of the falling snow. They had stopped for tea at a
+big hotel, which had seemed as they entered to swim in a sea of golden
+light. And now here she was at last in this palace of a house!
+
+Therese led her straight to Marie-Louise.
+
+The Dresden-China Shepherdess in bed looked down the length of the
+shadowed room to the door. The figure that stood on the threshold was
+somehow different from what she had expected. Smaller. More girlish.
+Lovelier.
+
+Anne, making her way across a sea of polished floor, became aware of the
+Shepherdess in bed.
+
+"Oh," she said, "I am sorry you are ill."
+
+"I am not ill," said Marie-Louise. "I didn't want you to come."
+
+Anne smiled. "Oh, but if you knew how much I _wanted_ to come."
+
+Marie-Louise sat up. "What made you want to come?"
+
+"Because I am a country mouse, and I wanted to see the world."
+
+"Rose Acres isn't the world."
+
+"New York is. To me. There is so much that I haven't seen. It is going to
+be a great adventure."
+
+The Dresden-China Shepherdess fell down flat. "So that's what you've come
+for," she said, dully, "adventures--here."
+
+There was a long silence, out of which Anne asked, "How many miles is it
+to my room?"
+
+"Miles?"
+
+"Yes. You see, I am not used to such great houses."
+
+"It is down the hall in the west wing."
+
+"If I get lost it will be my first adventure."
+
+Marie-Louise turned and took a good look at this girl who made so much
+out of nothing. Then she said, "Therese will show you. And you can dress
+at once for dinner. I am not going down."
+
+"Please do. I shall hate going alone."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well, there's your father, you know, and your--mother. And I'm a country
+mouse."
+
+Their eyes met. Marie-Louise had a sudden feeling that there was no gulf
+between them of years or of authority.
+
+"What shall I call you?" she asked. "I won't say Miss Warfield."
+
+"Geoffrey Fox calls me Mistress Anne."
+
+"Who is Geoffrey Fox?"
+
+"He writes books, and he is going blind. He wrote 'Three Souls.'"
+
+Marie-Louise stared. "Oh, do you know him? I loved his book."
+
+"Would you like to know how he came to write it?"
+
+"Yes. Tell me."
+
+"Not now. I must go and dress."
+
+Some instinct told Marie-Louise that argument would be useless.
+
+"I'll dress, too, and come down. Is Dr. Dicky going to be at dinner?"
+
+"No. He had to go back at once. He is very busy."
+
+Marie-Louise slipped out of bed. "Therese," she called, "come and dress
+me, after you have shown Miss Warfield the way."
+
+Anne never forgot the moment of entrance into the great dining-room.
+There were just four of them. Dr. Austin and his wife, herself and
+Marie-Louise. But for these four there was a formality transcending
+anything in Anne's experience. Carved marble, tapestry, liveried
+servants, a massive table with fruit piled high in a Sheffield basket.
+
+The people were dwarfed by the room. It was as if the house had been
+built for giants, and had been divorced from its original purpose. Anne,
+walking with Marie-Louise, wondered whimsically if there were any
+ceilings or whether the roof touched the stars.
+
+Mrs. Austin was supported by her husband. She was a little woman with
+gray hair. She wore pearls and silver. Anne was in white. Marie-Louise in
+a quaint frock of gold brocade. There seemed to be no color in the room
+except the gold of the fire on the great hearth, the gold of the oranges
+on the table, and the gold of Marie-Louise's gown.
+
+Mrs. Austin was pale and silent. But she had attentive eyes. Anne was
+uncomfortably possessed with the idea that the little lady listened and
+criticized, or at least that she held her opinion in reserve.
+
+Marie-Louise spoke of Geoffrey Fox. "Miss Warfield knows him. She knows
+how he came to write his book."
+
+Anne told them how he came to write it. Of Peggy ill at Bower's, of the
+gray plush pussy cat, and of how, coming up the hall with the bowl of
+soup in her hand, she had found Fox in a despairing mood and had
+suggested the plot.
+
+Austin, watching her, decided that she was most unusual. She was
+beautiful, but there was something more than beauty. It was as if she was
+lighted from within by a fire which gave warmth not only to herself but
+to those about her.
+
+He was glad that he had brought her here to be with Marie-Louise. For the
+moment even his wife's pale beauty seemed cold.
+
+"We'll have Fox up," he said, when she finished her story.
+
+Anne was sure that he would be glad to come. She blushed a little as she
+said it.
+
+Later, when they were having coffee in the little drawing-room,
+Marie-Louise taxed her with the blush. "Is he in love with you?"
+
+Anne felt it best to be frank. "He thought he was."
+
+"Don't you love him?"
+
+"No, Marie-Louise. And we mustn't talk about it. Love is a sacred thing."
+
+"I like to talk about it. In summer I talk to Pan. But he's out now in
+the snow and his pipes are frozen."
+
+The little drawing-room seemed to Anne anything but little until she
+learned that there was a larger one across the hall. Austin and his wife
+went up-stairs as soon as the coffee had been served, and Marie-Louise
+led Anne through the shadowy vastness of the great drawing-room to a
+window which overlooked the river. "You can't see the river, but the
+light over the doorway shines on my old Pan's head. You can see him
+grinning out of the snow."
+
+The effect of that white head peering from the blackness was uncanny. The
+shaft of light struck straight across the peaked chin and twisted mouth.
+The snow had made him a cap which covered his horns and which gave him
+the look of a rakish old tipster.
+
+"Oh, Marie-Louise, do you talk to him of love?"
+
+"Yes. Wait till you see him in the spring with the pink roses back of
+him. He seems to get younger in the spring."
+
+Anne, going to bed that night in a suite of rooms which might have
+belonged to a princess, wondered if she should wake in the morning and
+find herself dreaming. To have her own bath, a silk canopy over her head,
+to know that breakfast would be served when she rang for it, and that her
+mail and newspapers would be brought--these were unbelievable things. She
+had a feeling that if she told Uncle Rod he would shake his head over it.
+He had a theory that luxury tended to cramp the soul.
+
+Yet her last thought was not of Uncle Rod but of Richard. She had come
+intending to give him a sharp opinion of his neglect of Nancy. But he had
+been so glad to see her, and had given her such a good time. Yet she had
+spoken of Nancy's loneliness.
+
+"I hated to leave her," she said, "but it seemed as if I had to come."
+
+"Of course," he agreed, with his eyes on her glowing face, "and anyhow,
+she has Sulie."
+
+Marie-Louise, in the days that followed, found interest and occupation in
+showing the Country Mouse the sights of the city.
+
+"If you want to see such things," she said rather grandly, "I shall be
+glad to go with you."
+
+Anne insisted that they should not be driven in state and style. "People
+make pilgrimages on foot," she told Marie-Louise gravely, but with a
+twinkle in her eye. "I don't want to whirl up to Grant's tomb, or to the
+door of Trinity. And I like the subway and the elevated and the surface
+cars."
+
+If now and then they compromised on a taxi, it was because distances were
+too great at times, and other means of transportation too slow. But in
+the main they stuck to their original plan, and Marie-Louise entered a
+new world.
+
+"Oh, I love you for it," she said to Anne one night when they came home
+from the Battery after a day in which they had gazed down into the pit of
+the Stock Exchange, had lunched at Faunce's Tavern, had circled the great
+Aquarium, and ended with a ride on top of a Fifth Avenue 'bus in the
+twilight.
+
+It was from the top of the 'bus that Anne for the first time since she
+had come to New York saw Evelyn Chesley.
+
+She was coming out of a shop with Richard. It was a great shop with a
+world-famous name over the door. One bought furniture there of a rare
+kind and draperies of a rare kind and now and then a picture.
+
+"They are getting things for their apartment," Marie-Louise explained,
+and her words struck cold against Anne's heart. "Eve is paying for them
+with Aunt Maude's money."
+
+"When will they be married?"
+
+"Next October. But Eve is buying things as she sees them. I don't want
+her to marry Dr. Dicky."
+
+"Why not, Marie-Louise?"
+
+"He isn't her kind. He ought to have fallen in love with you."
+
+"Marie-Louise, I told you not to talk of love."
+
+"I shall talk of anything I please."
+
+"Then you'll talk to the empty air. I won't listen. I'll go up there and
+sit with that fat man in front."
+
+Marie-Louise laughed. "You're such an old dear. Do you know how nice you
+look in those furs?"
+
+"I feel so elegant that I am ashamed of myself. I've peeped into every
+mirror. They cost a whole month's salary, Marie-Louise. I feel horribly
+extravagant--and happy."
+
+They laughed together, and it was then that Marie-Louise said, "I love
+it."
+
+"Love what?"
+
+"Going with you and being young."
+
+In the days that followed Anne found herself revelling in the elegances
+of her life, in the excitements. It was something of an experience to
+meet Evelyn Chesley on equal grounds in the little drawing-room. Anne
+always took Mrs. Austin's place when there were gatherings of young
+folks. Marie-Louise refused to be tied, and came and went as the spirit
+moved her. So it was Anne who in something shimmering and silken moved
+among the tea guests, and danced later in slippers as shining as anything
+Eve had ever worn.
+
+It was on this day that Geoffrey Fox came and met Marie-Louise for the
+first time.
+
+"I can't dance," he told her; "my eyes are bad, and things seem to
+whirl."
+
+"If you'll talk," she said, "I'll sit at your feet and listen."
+
+She did it literally, perched on a small gold stool.
+
+"Tell me about your book," she said, looking up at him. "Anne Warfield
+says that you wrote it at Bower's."
+
+"I wrote it because she helped me to write it. But she did more for me
+than that." His eyes were following the shining figure.
+
+"What did she do?"
+
+"She gave me a soul. She taught me that there was something in me that
+was not--the flesh and the--devil."
+
+The girl on the footstool understood. "She believes in things, and makes
+you believe."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I hated to have her come," Marie-Louise confessed, "and now I should
+hate to have her go away. She calls herself a country mouse, and I am
+showing her the sights--we go to corking places--on pilgrimages. We went
+to Grant's tomb, and she made me carry a wreath. And we ride in the
+subway and drink hot chocolate in drug stores.
+
+"She says I haven't learned the big lessons of democracy," Marie-Louise
+pursued, "that I've looked out over the world, but that I have never been
+a part of it. That I've sat on a tower in a garden and have peered
+through a telescope."
+
+She told him of the play that she had written, and of the verses that she
+had read to the piping Pan.
+
+Later she pointed out Pan to him from the window of the big drawing-room.
+The snow had melted in the last mild days, and there was an icicle on his
+nose, and the sun from across the river reddened his cheeks.
+
+"And there, everlastingly, he makes music," Geoffrey said, "'on the reed
+which he tore from the river.'"
+
+    "'Yes, half a beast is the great god, Pan,
+      To laugh as he sits by the river,
+      Making a poet out of a man.
+      The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,
+      For the reed that grows nevermore again,
+      As a reed with the reeds in the river.'"
+
+His voice died away into silence. "That is the price which the writer
+pays. He is separated, as it were, from his kind."
+
+"Oh, no," Marie-Louise breathed, "oh, no. Not you. Your writings bring
+you--close. Your book made me--cry."
+
+She was such a child as she stood there, yet with something in her, too,
+of womanliness.
+
+"When your three soldiers died," she said, "it made me believe something
+that I hadn't believed before--about souls marching toward a
+great--light."
+
+Geoffrey found himself confiding in her. "I don't know whether you will
+understand. But ever since I wrote that book I have felt that I must live
+up to it. That I must be worthy of the thing I had written."
+
+Richard, dancing in the music room with Anne, found himself saying, "How
+different it all is."
+
+"From Bower's?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you like it?"
+
+"Sometimes. And then sometimes it all seems so big--and useless."
+
+The music stopped, and they made their way back to the little
+drawing-room.
+
+"Won't you sit here and talk to me?" Richard said. "Somehow we never seem
+to find time to talk."
+
+She smiled. "There is always so much to do."
+
+But she knew that it was not the things to be done which had kept her
+from him. It was rather a sense that safety lay in seeing as little of
+him as possible. And so, throughout the winter she had built about
+herself barriers of reserve. Yet there had never been a moment when he
+had dined with them, or when he had danced, or when he had shared their
+box at the opera, that she had not been keenly conscious of his presence.
+
+"And so you think it is all so big--and useless?" He picked up the
+conversation where they had dropped it when the dance stopped.
+
+She nodded. "A house like this isn't a home. I told Marie-Louise the
+other day that a home was a place where there was a little fire, with
+somebody on each side of it, and where there was a little table with two
+people smiling across it, and with a pot boiling and a woman to stir it,
+and with a light in the window and a man coming home."
+
+"And what did Marie-Louise say to that?"
+
+"She wrote a poem about it. A nice healthy sane little poem--not one of
+those dreadful things about the ashes of dead women which I found her
+doing when I came."
+
+"How did you cure her?"
+
+"I am giving her real things to think of. When she gets in a morbid mood
+I whisk her off to the gardener's cottage, and we wash and dress the baby
+and take him for an airing."
+
+Richard gave a big laugh. "With your head in the stars, you have your
+feet always firmly on the ground."
+
+"I try to, but I like to know that there are always--stars."
+
+"No one could be near you and not know that," he told her gravely.
+
+It was a danger signal. She rose. "I have a feeling that you are
+neglecting somebody. You haven't danced yet with Miss Chesley."
+
+"Oh, Eve's all right," easily; "sit down."
+
+But she would not. She sent him from her. His place was by Eve's side. He
+was going to marry Eve.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was late that night when Marie-Louise came into Anne's room. "Are you
+asleep?" she asked, with the door at a crack.
+
+"No."
+
+"Will you mind--if I talk?"
+
+"No."
+
+Anne was in front of her open fire, writing to Uncle Rod. The fire was
+another of the luxuries in which she revelled. It was such a wonder of a
+fireplace, with its twinkling brasses, and its purring logs. She
+remembered the little round stove in her room at Bower's.
+
+Marie-Louise had come to talk of Geoffrey Fox.
+
+"I adore his eye-glasses."
+
+"Oh, Marie-Louise--his poor eyes."
+
+"He isn't poor," the child said, passionately, "not even his eyes. Milton
+was blind--and--and there was his poetry."
+
+"Dr. Dicky hopes his eyes are getting better."
+
+"He says they are. That he sees things now through a sort of silver rain.
+He has to have some one write for him. His little sister Mimi has been
+doing it, but she is going to be married."
+
+"Mimi?"
+
+"Yes. He found out that she had a lover, and so he has insisted. And then
+he will be left alone."
+
+She sat gazing into the fire, a small humped-up figure in a gorgeous
+dressing-gown. At last she said, "Why didn't you love him?"
+
+"There was some one else, Marie-Louise."
+
+Marie-Louise drew close and laid her red head on Anne's knee. "Some one
+that you are going to marry?"
+
+Anne shook her head. "Some one whom I shall never marry. He
+loves--another girl, Marie-Louise."
+
+"Oh!" There was a long silence, as the two of them gazed into the fire.
+Then Marie-Louise reached up a thin little hand to Anne's warm clasp.
+"That's always the way, isn't it? It is a sort of game, with Love always
+flitting away to--another girl."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+_In Which St. Michael Hears a Call._
+
+
+IT was in April that Geoffrey Fox wrote to Anne.
+
+"When I told you that I was coming back to Bower's, I said that I wanted
+quiet to think out my new book, but I did not tell you that I fancied I
+might find your ghost flitting through the halls, or on the road to the
+schoolhouse. I felt that there might linger in the long front room the
+glowing spirit of the little girl who sat by the fire and talked to me of
+my soldiers and their souls.
+
+"And what I thought has come true. You are everywhere, Mistress Anne, not
+as I last saw you at Rose Acres in silken attire, but fluttering before
+me in your frock of many flounces, carrying your star of a lantern
+through the twilight on your way to Diogenes, scolding me on the
+stairs----! What days, what hours! And always you were the little
+school-teacher, showing your wayward scholars what to do with life!
+
+"Perhaps I have done with it less than you expected. But at least I have
+done more with it than I had hoped. I am lining my pockets with money,
+and Mimi has a chest of silver. That is the immediate material effect of
+the sale of 'Three Souls.' But there is more than the material effect.
+The letters which I get from the people who have read the book are like
+wine to my soul. To think that I, Geoffrey Fox, who have frittered and
+frivoled, should have put on paper things which have burned into men's
+consciousness and have made them better. I could never have done it
+except for you. Yet in all humility I can say that I have done it, and
+that never while life lasts shall I think again of my talent as a little
+thing.
+
+"For it is a great thing, Mistress Anne, to have written a book. In all
+of my pot-boiling days I would never have believed it. A plot was a plot,
+and presto, the thing was done! The world read and forgot. But the world
+doesn't forget. Not when we give our best, and when we aim to get below
+the surface things and the shallow things and call up out of men's hearts
+that which, in these practical days, they try to hide.
+
+"I suppose Brooks has told you about my eyes, and of how it may happen
+that I shall, for the rest of my life, be able to see through a glass
+darkly.
+
+"That is something to be thankful for, isn't it? It is a rather weird
+experience when, having adjusted one's self in anticipation of a
+catastrophe, the catastrophe hangs fire. Like old Pepys, I had resigned
+myself to the inevitable--indeed in those awful waiting days I read, more
+than once, the last paragraph of his diary.
+
+"'And so I betake myself to that course which it is almost as much as to
+see myself go into my grave; for which, and all the discomforts that will
+accompany my being blind, the good God prepare me!'
+
+"Yet Pepys kept his sight all the rest of his life, and regretted, I
+fancy, more than once, that he did not finish his diary. And, perhaps, I,
+too, shall be granted this dim vision until the end.
+
+"It seems to me that there are many things which I ought to tell you--I
+know there are a thousand things which are forbidden. But at least I can
+speak of Diogenes. I saw him at Crossroads the other day, much puffed up
+with pride of family. And I can speak of Mrs. Nancy, who is a white
+shadow of herself. Why doesn't Brooks see it? He was down here for a week
+recently, and he didn't seem to realize that anything was wrong. Perhaps
+she is always so radiant when he comes that she dazzles his eyes.
+
+"She and Miss Sulie are a pathetic pair. I meet them on the road on their
+errands of mercy. They are like two sisters of charity in their long
+capes and little bonnets. Evidently Mrs. Brooks feels that if her son
+cannot doctor the community she can at least nurse it. The country folks
+adore her, and go to her for advice, so that Crossroads still opens wide
+its doors to the people, as it did in the days of old Dr. Brooks.
+
+"And now, does the Princess still serve? I can see you with your blue
+bowl on your way to Peggy, and stopping on the stairs to light for me the
+torch of inspiration. And now all of this service and inspiration is
+being spilled at the feet of--Marie-Louise! Will you give her greetings,
+and ask her how soon I may come and worship at the shrine of her grinning
+old god?"
+
+Anne, carrying his letter to Marie-Louise, asked, "Shall I tell him to
+come?"
+
+"Yes. I didn't want him to go away, but he said he must--that he couldn't
+write here. But I knew why he went, and you knew."
+
+"You needn't look at me so reproachfully, Marie-Louise. It isn't my
+fault."
+
+"It is your fault," Marie-Louise accused her, "for being like a flame.
+Father says that people hold out their hands to you as they do to a
+fire."
+
+"And what," Anne demanded, "has all this to do with Geoffrey Fox?"
+
+"You know," Marie-Louise told her bluntly, "he loves you and looks up to
+you--and I--sit at his feet."
+
+There was something of tenseness in the small face framed by the red
+hair. Anne touched Marie-Louise's cheek with a tender finger. "Dear
+heart," she said, "he is just a man."
+
+For a moment the child stood very still, then she said, "Is he? Or is he
+a god, like my Pan in the garden?"
+
+Later she decided that Geoffrey should come in May. "When there are
+roses. And I'll have some people out."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was in May that Rose Acres justified its name. The marble Pan piping
+on his reeds faced a garden abloom with beauty. At the right, a grass
+walk led down to a sunken fountain approached by wide stone steps.
+
+It was on these steps that Marie-Louise sat one morning, weaving a
+garland.
+
+"I am going to tie it with gold ribbon," she said. "Tibbs got the laurel
+for me."
+
+"Who is it for?"
+
+"It may be for--Pan," Marie-Louise wore an air of mystery, "and it may
+not."
+
+She stuck it later on Pan's head, but the effect did not please her. "You
+are nothing but a grinning old marble doll," she told him, and Anne
+laughed at her.
+
+"I hoped some day you'd find that out."
+
+Richard, arriving late that afternoon, found Mrs. Austin on the terrace.
+"The young people are in the garden," she said; "will you hunt them up?"
+
+"I want to talk to Dr. Austin, if I may."
+
+"He's in the house. He was called to the telephone."
+
+Austin, coming out, found his young assistant on the portico.
+
+"Can you give me a second, sir? I've a letter from mother. There's a lot
+of sickness at Crossroads. And I feel responsible."
+
+"Why should you feel responsible?"
+
+"It's the water supply. Typhoid. If I had been there I should have had it
+looked into. I had started an investigation but there was no one to push
+it. And now there are a dozen cases. Eric Brand's little wife, Beulah,
+and old Peter Bower, and the mother of little François."
+
+"And you are thinking that you ought to go down?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I don't see how I can let you go. It doesn't make much difference where
+people are sick, Brooks, there's always so much for us doctors to do."
+
+"But if I could be spared----"
+
+"You can't, Brooks. I am sorry. But I've learned to depend on you."
+
+The older man laid his hand affectionately on the shoulder of the
+younger. If for the moment Richard felt beneath the softness of that
+touch the iron glove of one who expected obedience from a subordinate, he
+did not show it by word or glance.
+
+They talked of other things after that, and presently Richard wandered
+off to find Eve. He passed beyond the terraces to the garden. He felt
+tired and depressed. The fragrance of the roses was heavy and almost
+overpowering. There was a stone bench set in the midst of a tangle of
+bloom. He sank down on it, asking nothing better than to sit there alone
+and think it out.
+
+He felt at this moment, strongly, what had come to him many times during
+the winter--that he was not in any sense his own master. Austin directed,
+controlled, commanded. For the opportunity which he had given young
+Brooks he expected the return of acquiescence. Thus it happened that
+Richard found less of big things and more of little ones in his life than
+he had anticipated. There had been times when the moral side of a case
+had appealed to him more than the medical, when he had been moved by
+generosities such as had moved his grandfather, when he had wanted to be
+human rather than professional, and always he had found Austin blocking
+his idealistic impulses, scoffing at the things he had valued, imposing
+upon him a somewhat hard philosophy in the place of a living faith. It
+seemed to Richard that in his profession, as well as in his love affair,
+he was no longer meeting life with a direct glance.
+
+He rose and went on. He must find Eve. He had promised and yet in that
+moment he knew that he did not want to see her. He wanted his mother's
+touch, her understanding, her love. He wanted Crossroads and big Ben--and
+the people who, because of his grandfather, had called him--"friend."
+
+He found Anne and Geoffrey and Marie-Louise by the fountain at the end of
+the grass walk. Marie-Louise perched on the rim was, in her pale green
+gown, like some nymph freshly risen. Her hat was off, and her red hair
+caught the sunlight.
+
+Anne was reading the first chapter of Geoffrey's new book. He sat just
+above her on the steps of the fountain. His glasses were off, and as he
+looked down at her his eyes showed a brilliancy which seemed to
+contradict his failing sight.
+
+Marie-Louise held up a warning finger. "Sit down," she said, "and listen.
+It is such a wonder-book, Dr. Dicky."
+
+So Richard sat down and Anne went on reading. She read well; her voice
+had a thrilling quality, and once it broke.
+
+"Oh, why did you make it so sad?" she said.
+
+"Could I make it glad?" he asked, and to Richard, watching, there came
+the jealous certainty that between the two of them there was some subtle
+understanding.
+
+When at last Anne had read all that he had written Marie-Louise said,
+importantly, "Anne is the heroine, the Princess who serves. Will you ever
+make me the heroine of a book, Geoffrey Fox?"
+
+"Perhaps. Give me a plot?"
+
+"Have a girl who loves a marble god--then some day she meets a man--and
+the god is afraid he will lose her, so he wakes to life and says, 'If you
+love this man, you will have to accept the common lot of women, you will
+have to work for him and obey him--and some day he will die and your soul
+will be rent with sorrow. But if you love me, I shall be here when you
+are forgotten, and while you live my love will demand nothing but the
+verses that you read to me and the roses that lay at my feet.'"
+
+Geoffrey gave her an eager glance. "Jove, there's more in that than a
+joke. Some day I shall get you to amplify your idea."
+
+"I'll give it to you if you promise to write the book here. There's a
+balcony room that overlooks the river--and nobody would ever interrupt
+you but me, and I'd only come when you wanted me."
+
+Marie-Louise's breath was short as she finished. To cover her emotion she
+caught up the wreath which she had made in the morning, and which lay
+beside her.
+
+"I made it for you," she told Geoffrey, "and now that I've done it, I
+don't know what to do with it."
+
+She was blushing and glowing, less of an imp and more of a girl than
+Richard had ever seen her.
+
+Geoffrey rose to the occasion. "It shall be a mascot for my new book.
+I'll hang it on the wall over my desk, and every time I look up at it, it
+shall say to me, 'These are the laurels you are to win.'"
+
+"You have won them," Marie-Louise flashed.
+
+"No artist ever feels himself worthy of laurel. His achievement always
+falls short of his ambition."
+
+"But 'Three Souls,'" Marie-Louise said; "surely you were satisfied?"
+
+"I did not write it--the credit belongs to Mistress Anne. Your wreath
+should be hers."
+
+But Marie-Louise's mind was made up. Before Geoffrey could grasp what she
+was about to do, she fluttered up the steps, and dropped the garland
+lightly on his dark locks.
+
+It became him well.
+
+"Do you like it?" he asked Anne.
+
+"To the Victor--the spoils," she told him, smiling.
+
+Richard felt out of it. He wanted to get away, and he knew that he must
+find Eve. Eve, who when he met her would laugh her light laugh, and call
+him "Dicky Boy," and refuse to listen when he spoke of Crossroads.
+
+The path that he took led to a little tea house built on the bank, which
+gave a wide view of the river and the Jersey hills. He found Winifred and
+Tony side by side and silent.
+
+"Better late than never," was Tony's greeting.
+
+"I am hunting for Eve."
+
+"She and Meade were here a moment ago," Winifred informed him. "Sit down
+and give an account of yourself. We haven't seen you in a million years."
+
+"Just a week, dear lady. I have been horribly busy."
+
+"You say that as if you meant the 'horribly.'"
+
+"I do. It has been a 'bluggy' business, and I am tired." He laughed with
+a certain amount of constraint. "If I were a boy, I should say 'I want to
+go home.'"
+
+Winifred gave him a quick glance. "What has happened?"
+
+"Oh, everybody is ill at Crossroads. Beastly conditions. And they ought
+to have been corrected. Beulah's ill."
+
+"The little bride?"
+
+"Yes. And Eric is frantic. He has written me, asking me to come down. But
+Austin can't see it."
+
+"Could you go for the day?"
+
+"If I went for a day I should stay longer. There's everything to be
+done."
+
+He switched away from the subject. "Crowd seems to have separated. Fox
+and Anne Warfield by the fountain. You and Tony here, and Eve and Pip as
+yet undiscovered."
+
+"It is the day," Winifred decided, "all romance and roses. Even Tony and
+I were a-lovering when Eve found us."
+
+Richard rose. "Tony, she wants to hold your hand. I'll get out."
+
+Winifred laughed. "You'd better go and hold Eve's."
+
+As he went away, Richard wondered if there was anything significant in
+her way of saying it.
+
+Eve and Pip were in the enclosed space where Pan gleamed white against
+the dark cedars. Eve was seated on the sun-dial. Pip had lifted her
+there, and he stood leaning against it. Her lap was full of roses, and
+there were roses on her hat. The high note of color was repeated in the
+pink sunshade which lay open where the wind had wafted it to the feet of
+the piping Pan.
+
+Pip straightened up as he saw Richard approaching. "There comes your
+eager lover, Eve. Give me a rose before he gets here."
+
+"No."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I'm afraid."
+
+"Of me?"
+
+"No. But if I give you anything you'll take more. And I want to give
+everything to--Dicky."
+
+He laughed a triumphant laugh. "I take all _I_ can get. Give me a rose,
+Eve."
+
+She yielded to his masterfulness. Out of the mass of bloom she chose a
+pink bud. "I shall give a red one to Dicky, so don't feel puffed up."
+
+"I told you I should take what I could get, and Brooks isn't thinking of
+roses. Look at his face."
+
+"I am sorry to be so late, Eve," Richard said, as he came up. "I am
+always apologizing, it seems to me."
+
+"Little Boy Blue----! Dicky, what's the matter?"
+
+"I want to go home." He tried to speak lightly--to follow her mood.
+
+"Home--to Crossroads?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"There's typhoid, and they don't know how to cope with it."
+
+"Aren't there other doctors?"
+
+"Yes, but not enough."
+
+"Nonsense; what did they do before you came to the county? You must get
+rid of the feeling that you are so--important." She was angry. Little
+sparks were in her eyes.
+
+"Don't worry, Eve. Austin doesn't want me to go. I can't get away. But it
+is on my mind."
+
+"Put it off and come and help me with my roses. I gave Pip a bud. Are you
+jealous, Dicky?"
+
+Still trying to follow her mood, he said, "You and the rest of the roses
+belong to me. Why should I care for one poor bud?"
+
+She stuck a red rose in his coat, and when she had made her flowers into
+a nosegay, he lifted her down from the sun-dial. For a moment she clung
+to him. Meade had gone to rescue the sunshade which was blowing down the
+slope, and for the moment they were alone. "Dicky," she whispered, "I was
+horrid, but you mustn't go."
+
+"I told you I couldn't, Eve."
+
+Then Pip came back, and the three of them made their way to the
+fountain, picking up Winifred and Tony as they passed. Tea was served on
+the terrace, and a lot of other people motored out. There was much
+laughter and lightness--as if there were no trouble in the whole wide
+world.
+
+Richard felt separated from it all by his mood, and when he went to the
+house to send a message for Austin to the hospital, he did not at once
+return to the terrace. He sought the great library. It was dim and quiet
+and he lay back in one of the big chairs and shut his eyes. The vision
+was before him of Pip leaning on the sun-dial against a rose-splashed
+background, with Eve smiling down at him. It had come to him then that
+Pip should have married Eve. Pip would make her happy. The thing was all
+wrong in some way, but he could not see clearly how to make it right.
+
+There was a sound in the room and he opened his eyes to find Marie-Louise
+on the ladder which gave access to the shelves of the great bookcases
+which lined the walls. She had not seen him, and she was singing softly
+to herself. In the dimness the color of her hair and gown gave a
+stained-glass effect against a background of high square east window.
+
+Richard sat up. What was she singing?
+
+    "_I think she was the most beautiful lady_
+     _That ever was in the West Country,_
+     _But beauty vanishes, beauty passes,_
+     _However rare, rare it be._
+     _And when I am gone, who shall remember_
+     _That lady of the West Country?_"
+
+"Marie-Louise," he asked so suddenly that she nearly fell off of the
+shelves, "where did you learn that song?"
+
+"From Mistress Anne."
+
+"When you sing it do you think of--her?"
+
+"Yes. Do you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Marie-Louise sat down on the top step of the ladder. "Dr. Dicky, may I
+ask a question?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why didn't you fall in love with Anne?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"Oh! Then why didn't you marry her?"
+
+"She is going to marry Geoffrey Fox."
+
+Dead silence. Then, "Did she tell you?"
+
+"No. He told me. Last spring."
+
+"Before you came here?"
+
+"Yes. That was the reason I came. I wanted to get away from everything
+that--spoke of her."
+
+Marie-Louise slipped down from the ladder and came and stood beside him.
+"_He told you_," she said in a sharp whisper, "but there must be some
+mistake. She doesn't love him. She said that she didn't. I wonder why he
+lied."
+
+There was nothing cold about her now. She was a fiery spark. "Only
+a--_cad_ could do such a thing--and I thought--oh, Dr. Dicky, I thought
+he was a _man_----"
+
+She flung herself at his feet like a stricken child. He went down to her.
+"Marie-Louise, stop. Sit up and tell me what's the matter."
+
+She sat up. "I shall ask Anne. I shall go and get her and ask her."
+
+He found himself calling after her, "Marie-Louise," but she was gone.
+
+She came back presently, dragging the protesting Anne. "But Marie-Louise,
+what do you want of me?"
+
+Richard, rising, said, "Please don't think I permitted this. I tried to
+stop her."
+
+"I didn't want to be stopped," Marie-Louise told them. "I want to know
+whether you and Geoffrey Fox are going to be married."
+
+Anne's cheeks were stained red. "Of course not. But it isn't anything to
+get so excited about, is it, Marie-Louise?"
+
+"Yes, it is. He told Dr. Dicky that you were, and he _lied_. And I
+thought, oh, you know the wonderful things I thought about him, Mistress
+Anne."
+
+Anne's arm went around the sad little nymph in green. "You must still
+think wonderful things of him. He was very unhappy, and desperate about
+his eyes. And it seemed to him that to assert a thing might make it come
+true."
+
+"But you didn't love him?"
+
+"Never, Marie-Louise."
+
+And now Richard, ignoring the presence of Marie-Louise, ignoring
+everything but the question which beat against his heart, demanded:
+
+"If you knew that he had told me this, why didn't you make things clear?"
+
+"When I might have made things clear--you were engaged to Eve."
+
+She turned abruptly from him to Marie-Louise. "Run back to your poet,
+dear heart. He is waiting for the book that you were going to bring him.
+And remember that you are not to sit in judgment. You are to be eyes for
+him, and light."
+
+It was a sober little nymph in green who marched away with her book.
+Geoffrey sat on the stone bench a little withdrawn from the others. His
+lean face, straining toward the house, relaxed as she came within his
+line of vision.
+
+"You were a long time away," he said, and made a place for her beside
+him, and she sat down and opened her book.
+
+And now, back in the dim library, Anne and Richard!
+
+"I stayed," she said, "because they were speaking out there of
+Crossroads. I have had a letter, too, from Sulie. She says that the
+situation is desperate."
+
+"Yes. They need me. And I ought to go. They are my people. I feel that in
+a sense I belong to them--as my grandfather belonged."
+
+"Do you mean that if you go now you will stay?"
+
+"I am not sure. The future must take care of itself."
+
+"Your mother would be glad if your decision finally came to that."
+
+"Yes. And I should be glad. But this time I shall not go for my mother's
+sake alone. Something deeper is drawing me. I can't quite analyze it. It
+is a call"--he laughed a little--"such as men describe who enter the
+ministry,--an irresistible impulse, as if I were to find something there
+that I had lost in the city."
+
+She held out her hand to him. "Do you know the name I had for you when
+you were at Crossroads?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I called you St. Michael--because it always seemed to me that you
+carried a sword."
+
+He tightened his grip on the little hand. "Some day I shall hope to
+justify the name; I don't deserve it now."
+
+Her eyes came up to him. "You'll fight to win," she said, softly.
+
+He did not want to let her go. But there was no other way. But when she
+had joined the others on the terrace he made a wide detour of the garden,
+and wandered down to the river.
+
+It was not a singing river, but to-day it seemed to have a song, "_Go
+back, go back_," it said; "_you have seen the world, you have seen the
+world_."
+
+And when he had listened for a little while he climbed the hill to tell
+Austin and to tell--Eve.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+_In Which Anne Weighs the People of Two Worlds._
+
+
+"RICHARD!"
+
+"Yes, mother, I'm here. Austin thinks I am crazy, and Eve won't speak to
+me. But--I came. And to think you have turned the house into a hospital!"
+
+"It seemed the only thing to do. François' mother had no one to take care
+of her--and there were others, and the house is big."
+
+"You are the biggest thing in it. Mother, if I ever pray to a saint, it
+will be one with gray hair in a nurse's cap and apron, and with shining
+eyes."
+
+"They are shining because you are here, Richard."
+
+Cousin Sulie, in the door, broke down and cried, "Oh, we've prayed for
+it."
+
+They clung to him, the two little growing-old women, who had wanted him,
+and who had worked without him.
+
+He had no words for them, for he could not speak with steadiness. But in
+that moment he knew that he should never go back to Austin. That he
+should live and die in the home of his fathers. And that his work was
+here.
+
+He tried, a little later, to make a joke of their devotion. "Mother, you
+and Cousin Sulie mustn't. I shall need a body-guard to protect me. You'll
+spoil me with softness and ease."
+
+"I shall buckle on your armor soon enough," she told him. "Did Eric meet
+you at the station?"
+
+"Yes, I shall go straight to Beulah's. I stopped in to see old Peter
+before I came up. I can pull him through, but I shall have to have some
+nurses."
+
+And now big Ben, at an even trot, carried Richard to the Playhouse. Toby,
+mad with gladness at the return of his master, raced ahead.
+
+Up in the pretty pink and white room lay Beulah. No longer plump and
+blooming, but wasted and wan with dry lips and hollow eyes.
+
+Eric had said to Richard, "If she dies I shall die, too."
+
+"She is not going to die."
+
+And now he said it again, cheerfully, to the wasted figure in the bed. "I
+have come to make you well, Beulah."
+
+But Beulah was not at all sure that she wanted to be--well. She was too
+tired. She was tired of Eric, tired of her mother, tired of taking
+medicine, tired of having to breathe.
+
+So she shut her eyes and turned away.
+
+Eric sat by the bed. "Dear heart," he said, "it is Dr. Dicky."
+
+But she did not open her eyes.
+
+In the days that followed Richard fought to make his words come true. He
+felt that if Beulah died it would, in some way, be his fault. He was
+aware that this was a morbid state of mind, but he could not help the way
+he felt. Beulah's life would be the price of his self-respect.
+
+But it was not only for Beulah's life that he fought, but for the lives
+of others. He had nurses up from Baltimore and down from New York. He had
+experts to examine wells and springs and other sources of water supply.
+He had a motor car that he might cover the miles quickly, using old Ben
+only for short distances. Toby, adapting himself to the car, sat on the
+front seat with the wind in his face, drunk with the excitement of it.
+
+When Nancy spoke of the expense to which Richard was putting himself, he
+said, "I have saved something, mother, and Eric and the rest can pay."
+
+Surely in those days St. Michael needed his sword, for the fight was to
+the finish. Night and day the battle waged. Richard went from bedside to
+bedside, coming always last to Beulah in the shadowed pink and white room
+at the Playhouse.
+
+There were nurses now, but Eric Brand would not be turned out. "Every
+minute that I am away from her," he told Richard, "I'm afraid. It seems
+as if when I am in sight of her I can hold her--back."
+
+So, night after night, Richard found him in the chair by Beulah's bed,
+his face shaded by his hand, rousing only when Beulah stirred, to smile
+at her.
+
+But Beulah did not smile back. She moaned a little now and then, and
+sometimes talked of things that never were on sea or land. There was a
+flowered chintz screen in the corner of the room and she peopled it with
+strange creatures, and murmured of them now and then, until the nurse
+covered the screen with a white sheet, which seemed to blot it out of
+Beulah's mind forever.
+
+There was always a pot of coffee boiling in the kitchen for the young
+doctor, and Eric would go down with him and they would drink and talk,
+and all that Eric said led back to Beulah.
+
+"If there was only something that I could do for her," he said; "if I
+could go out and work until I dropped, I should feel as if I were
+helping. But just to sit there and see her--fade."
+
+Again he said, "I had always thought of our living--never of dying. There
+can be no future for me without her."
+
+So it was for Eric's future as well as for Beulah's life that Richard
+strove. He grew worn and weary, but he never gave up.
+
+Night after night, day after day, from house to house he went, along the
+two roads and up into the hills. Everywhere he met an anxious welcome.
+Where the conditions were unfavorable, he transferred the patient to
+Crossroads, where Nancy and Sulie and Milly and a trio of nurses formed
+an enthusiastic hospital staff.
+
+The mother of little François was the first patient that Richard lost.
+She was tired and overworked, and she felt that it was good to fall
+asleep. Afterward Richard, with the little boy in his arms, went out and
+sat where they could look over the river and talk together.
+
+"I told her that you were to stay with me, François."
+
+"And she was glad?"
+
+"Yes. I need a little lad in my office, and when I take the car you can
+ride with me."
+
+And thus it came about that little François, a sober little François,
+with a band of black about his arm, became one of the Crossroads
+household, and was made much of by the women, even by black Milly, who
+baked cookies for him and tarts whenever he cried for his mother.
+
+Cousin Sulie rose nobly to meet the new demands upon her. "It is a
+feeling I never had before," she said to Richard, as she helped him pack
+his bag before going on his rounds, "that what I am doing is worth while.
+I know I should have felt it when I was darning stockings, but I didn't."
+
+She gloried in the professional aspect which she gave to everything. She
+installed little François at a small table in the Garden Room. He
+answered the telephone and wrote the messages on slips of paper which he
+laid on the doctor's desk. Cousin Sulie at another table saw the people
+who came in Richard's absence.
+
+"Nancy can read to the patients up-stairs and cut flowers for them and
+cook nice things for them," she confided, "but I like to be down here
+when the children come in to ask for medicine, and when the mothers come
+to find out what they shall feed the convalescents. Richard, I never
+heard anything like their--hungriness--when they are getting well."
+
+Beulah, emerging slowly from among the shadows, began to think of things
+to eat. She didn't care about anything else. She didn't care for Eric's
+love, or her mother's gladness, or Richard's cheerfulness, or the nurses'
+sympathy. She cared only to think of every kind of food that she had ever
+liked in her whole life, and to ask if she might have it.
+
+"But, dear heart, the doctor doesn't think that you should," Eric would
+protest.
+
+She would cry, weakly, "You don't love me, or you would let me."
+
+She begged and begged, and at last he couldn't stand it.
+
+"You are starving her," he told the nurses fiercely.
+
+They referred him to the doctor.
+
+Eric telephoned Richard.
+
+"My dear fellow," was the response, "her appetite is a sign that she is
+getting well."
+
+"But she is so hungry."
+
+"So are they all. I have to steel my heart against them, especially the
+children. And half of the convalescents are reading cook books."
+
+"Cook books!"
+
+"Yes. In that way they get a meal by proxy. I tell them to pick out the
+things they are going to have when they are well enough to eat all they
+want. Their choice ranges from Welsh rarebits to plum puddings."
+
+He laughed, but Eric saw nothing funny in the matter. "I can't bear to
+see her--suffer."
+
+Richard was sobered at once. "Don't think that I am not sympathetic.
+But--Brand, I don't dare-_feel_. If I did, I should go to pieces."
+
+Slowly the weeks passed. Besides François' mother, two of Richard's
+patients died. Slowly the pendulum of time swung the rest of the sick
+ones toward recovery. Nancy and Sulie and Milly changed the rooms at
+Crossroads back to their original uses. The nurses, no longer needed,
+packed their competent bags, and departed. Beulah at the Playhouse had
+her first square meal, and smiled back at Eric.
+
+The strain had told fearfully on Richard. Yet he persisted in his efforts
+long after it seemed that the countryside was safe. He tried to pack into
+twelve short weeks what he would normally have done in twelve long
+months. He spurred his fellow physicians to increased activities, he
+urged authorities to unprecedented exertions. He did the work of two men
+and sometimes of three. And he was so exhausted that he felt that if ever
+his work was finished he would sleep for a million years.
+
+It was in September that he began to wonder how he would square things up
+with Eve. At first she had written to him blaming him for his desertion.
+But not for a moment did she take it seriously. "You'll be coming back,
+Dicky," was the burden of her song. He wrote hurried pleasant letters
+which were to some extent bulletins of the day's work. If Eve was not
+satisfied she consoled herself with the thought that he was tearingly
+busy and terribly tired.
+
+In her last letter she had said, "Austin doesn't know what to do without
+you. He told Pip that you were his right hand."
+
+Austin had said more than that to Anne. He had found her one hot day by
+the fountain. Nancy had written to her of the death of François' mother.
+The letter was in her hand.
+
+Austin had also had a letter. "Brooks is a fool. He writes that he is
+going to stay."
+
+Anne shook her head. "He is not a fool," she said; "he is doing what he
+_had_ to do. You would know if you had ever lived at Crossroads. Why, the
+Brooks family belongs there, and the Brooks doctors."
+
+"So you have encouraged him?" Austin said.
+
+"I have had nothing to do with it. I haven't heard from him since he
+left, and I haven't written."
+
+"And you think he is--right to--bury--himself?"
+
+Anne sat very still, her hands folded quietly. Her calm eyes were on the
+golden fish which swam in the waters at the base of the fountain.
+
+"I am not sure," she said; "it all has so much to do with--old
+traditions--and inherited feelings--and ideals. He could be just as
+useful here, but he would never be happy. You can't imagine how they look
+up to him down there. And here he looked up to you."
+
+"Then you think I didn't give him a free hand?"
+
+"No. But there he is a Brooks of Crossroads. And it isn't because he
+wants the honor of it that he has gone back, but because the
+responsibility rests upon him to make the community all that it ought to
+be. And he can't shirk it."
+
+"Eve Chesley says that he is tied to his mother's apron strings."
+
+"She doesn't understand, I do. I sometimes feel that way about the
+Crossroads school--as if I had shirked something to have--a good time."
+
+"But you have had a good time."
+
+"Yes, you have all been wonderful to me," her smile warmed him, "but you
+won't think that I am ungrateful when I say that there was something in
+my life in the little school which carried me--higher--than this."
+
+"Higher? What do you mean?"
+
+"I was a leader down there. And a force. The children looked to me for
+something that I could give and which the teacher they have isn't giving.
+She just teaches books, and I tried to teach them something of life, and
+love of country, and love of God."
+
+"But here you have Marie-Louise, and you know how grateful we are for
+what you have done for her."
+
+"I have only developed what was in her. What a flaming little genius she
+is!"
+
+"With a poem accepted by an important magazine, and Fox believing that
+she can write more of them."
+
+Anne spoke quietly: "And now I am really not needed. Marie-Louise can go
+on alone."
+
+He stopped her. "We want you to stay--my wife wants you--Marie-Louise
+can't do without you. And I want you to get Brooks back."
+
+She looked her amazement. "Get him back?"
+
+"He will come if you ask it. I am not blind. Eve Chesley is. The things
+she says make him stubborn. But you could call him back. You could call
+to life anything in any man if you willed it. You are inspirational--a
+star to light the way."
+
+His voice was shaken. After a pause he went on: "Will you help me to get
+Brooks back?"
+
+She shook her head. "I shall not try. He is among his own people. He has
+found his place."
+
+Yet now that Richard was gone, Anne found herself missing him more than
+she dared admit. She was, for the first time, aware that the knowledge
+that she should see him now and then had kept her from loneliness which
+might otherwise have assailed her. The thought that she might meet him
+had added zest to her engagements. His week-ends at Rose Acres had been
+the goal toward which her thoughts had raced.
+
+And now the great house was empty because of his absence. The city was
+empty--because he had left it--forever. She had no hope that he would
+come back. Crossroads had claimed him. He had, indeed, come into his own.
+
+When the rest of his friends spoke of him, praised or blamed, she was
+silent. Geoffrey Fox, who came often, complained, "You are always sitting
+off in a corner somewhere with your work, putting in a million stitches,
+when I want you to talk."
+
+"You can talk to Marie-Louise. She is your ardent disciple. She burns
+candles at your altar."
+
+"She is a charming--child."
+
+"She is more than that. When her poem was accepted she cried over the
+letter. She thinks that she couldn't have done it except for your help
+and criticism."
+
+"She will do more than she has done."
+
+When Marie-Louise joined them, Anne was glad to see Geoffrey's protective
+manner, as if he wanted to be nice to the child who had cried.
+
+She had to listen to much criticism of Richard. When Eve and the
+Dutton-Ames dined one night in the early fall at Rose Acres, Richard's
+quixotic action formed the theme of their discourse.
+
+Eve was very frank. "Somebody ought to tie Dicky down. His head is in the
+clouds."
+
+Marie-Louise flashed: "I like people whose heads are in the clouds. He is
+doing a wonderful thing and a wise thing--and we are all acting as if it
+were silly."
+
+Anne wanted to hug Marie-Louise, and with heightened color she listened
+to Winifred's defense.
+
+"I think we should all like to feel that we are equal to it--to give up
+money and fame--for the thing that--called."
+
+"There is no better or bigger work for him there than here," Austin
+proclaimed.
+
+"No," Winifred agreed, and her eyes were bright, "but it is because he is
+giving up something which the rest of us value that I like him.
+Renunciation isn't fashionable, but it is stimulating."
+
+"The usual process is to 'grab and git,'" her husband sustained her. "We
+always like to see some one who isn't bitten by the modern bacillus."
+
+After dinner Anne left them and made her way down in the darkness to the
+river. The evening boat was coming up, starred with lights, its big
+search-light sweeping the shores. When it passed, the darkness seemed
+deeper. The night was cool, and Anne, wrapped in a white cloak, was like
+a ghost among the shadows. Far up on the terrace she could see the big
+house, and hear the laughter. She felt much alone. Those people were not
+her people. Her people were of Nancy's kind, well-born and well bred, but
+not smart in the modern sense. They were quiet folk, liking their homes,
+their friends, their neighbors. They were not so rich that they were
+separated by their money from those about them. They had time to read and
+to think. They were perhaps no better than the people in the big house on
+top of the terrace, but they lived at a more leisurely pace, and it
+seemed to her at this moment that they got more out of life.
+
+She wanted more than anything in the world to be to-night with that
+little group at Crossroads, to meet Cousin Sulie's sparkling glance, to
+sit at Nancy's knee, to hear Richard's big laugh, as he came in and found
+the women waiting for the news of the outside world that he would bring.
+
+She knew that she could have the little school if she asked for it. But a
+sense of dignity restrained her. She could not go back now. It would seem
+to the world that she had followed Richard. Well, her heart followed him,
+but the world did not know that.
+
+She heard voices. Geoffrey and Marie-Louise were at the river's edge.
+
+"It is as if there were just the two of us in the whole wide world,"
+Marie-Louise was saying. "That's what I like about the darkness. It seems
+to shut everybody out."
+
+"But suppose the darkness followed you into the day," Geoffrey said,
+"suppose that for you there were no light?"
+
+A rim of gold showed above the blackness of the Jersey hills.
+
+"Oh," Marie-Louise exulted, "look at the moon. In a moment there will be
+light, and you thought you were in the dark."
+
+"You mean that it is an omen?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What a small and comfortable person you are," Geoffrey said, and now
+Anne could see the two of them silhouetted against the brightening sky,
+one tall and slim, the other slim and short. They walked on, and she
+heard their voices faintly.
+
+"Do I really make you comfortable, Geoffrey Fox?"
+
+"You make me more than that, Marie-Louise."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+_In Which Richard Rides Alone._
+
+
+"EVE."
+
+"Yes, Pip."
+
+"Can't you see that if he cared Richard would do the thing that pleased
+you--that New York would be Paradise if you were in it?"
+
+"Why shouldn't Crossroads be Paradise to me--with him?"
+
+"It couldn't be."
+
+"I am going to make it. I talked it over last night with Aunt Maude.
+She's an old dear. And I shall be the Lady of the Manor. If Dicky won't
+come to New York, I'll bring New York down to him."
+
+"It can't be done. And it's going to fail."
+
+"What is going to fail?"
+
+"Your marriage. If you are mad enough to marry Brooks."
+
+She mused. "Pip, do you remember the fat Armenian?"
+
+"At Coney? Yes."
+
+"He said that--I had reached for something beyond my grasp. That my
+fingers would touch it, but that it would soar always above me."
+
+"Sounds as if Brooks were some fat sort of a bird. I can't think of him
+as soaring. I should call him the cock that crowed at Crossroads. Oh,
+it's all rot, Eve, this idea that love makes things equal. I went to the
+Hippodrome not long ago and saw 'Pinafore.' Our fathers and mothers raved
+over it. But that was a sentimental age, and Gilbert poked fun at them.
+He made the simple sailor a captain in the end, so that Josephine
+shouldn't wash dishes and cook smelly things in pots and hang out the
+family wash. But your hero balks and won't be turned into a millionaire.
+If you were writing a book you might make it work out to your
+satisfaction, but you can't twist life to the happy ending."
+
+"I shall try, Pip."
+
+"In Heaven's name, Eve! It is sheer obstinacy. If everybody wanted you to
+marry Brooks, you'd want to marry me. But because Aunt Maude and Winifred
+and I, and a lot of others know that you shouldn't, you have set your
+heart on it."
+
+She flashed her eyes at him. "Is it obstinacy, Pip, I wonder? Do you know
+I rather think I am going to like it."
+
+Her letters said something of the sort to Richard. "I shall love it down
+there. But you must let me have my own way with the house and garden.
+Don't you think I shall make a charming chatelaine, Dicky, dear?"
+
+He had a sense of relief in her unexpected acquiescence in his decision.
+If she had objected, he would have felt as if he had turned his back not
+only on the work that he hated but on the woman he had promised to marry.
+It would have looked that way to others. Yet no matter how it had looked,
+he could not have done differently. The call had been insistent, and the
+deeps of his nature been stirred.
+
+He was thinking of it all as one morning in October he rode to the
+Playhouse on big Ben to see Beulah.
+
+Dismounting at the gate, he followed the path which led to the kitchen.
+Beulah was not there, and, searching, he saw her under an old apple tree
+at the end of the garden. She wore a checked blue apron, stiffly
+starched, and she was holding it up by the corners. A black cat and three
+sable kittens frisked at her feet.
+
+Some one was dropping red apples carefully into the apron, some one who
+laughed as he swung himself down and tipped Beulah's chin up with his
+hand and kissed her. Richard felt a lump in his throat. It was such a
+homely little scene, but it held a meaning that love had never held for
+himself and Eve.
+
+Eric untied Beulah's apron string, and carrying the apples in this
+improvised bag, with his arm about her waist sustaining her, they came
+down the walk.
+
+"This is Beulah's pet tree. When she was sick she asked for apples and
+apples and apples."
+
+Beulah, sinking her little white teeth into a red one, nodded. "It is
+perfectly wonderful," she said when she was able to speak, "how good
+everything tastes, and I can't get enough."
+
+Eric pinched her cheek. "Pretty good color, doctor. We'll have them
+matching the apples yet."
+
+Richard wanted to ask Eric about the dogs. "Some of my friends are coming
+down to-morrow for the Middlefield hunt."
+
+"If they start old Pete there'll be some sport," Eric said.
+
+"I shall be half sorry if they do," Richard told him. "I am always afraid
+I shall lose him out of my garden. He is a part of the place, like the
+box hedge and the cedars."
+
+He said it lightly, but he meant it. He had hunting blood in his veins,
+and he loved the horses and the dogs. He loved the cold crisp air, and
+the excitement of the chase. But what he did not love was the hunted
+animal, doubling on its tracks, pursued, panting, torn to pieces by the
+hounds.
+
+"Old Pete deserved to live and die among the hills," Beulah said. "Is
+Miss Chesley coming down?"
+
+"Yes, and a lot of others. They will put up at the club. Mother and Sulie
+aren't up to entertaining a crowd."
+
+He wanted Eric's dogs for ducks. Dutton-Ames and one or two others did
+not ride to hounds, and would come to Bower's in the morning.
+
+As he rode away, he was conscious that as soon as his back was turned
+Eric's arm would again be about Beulah, and Beulah's head would be on
+Eric's shoulder. And that he would lift her over the threshold as they
+went in.
+
+That afternoon Richard motored over to the Country Club to welcome Eve.
+She laughed at his little car. "I'd rather see you on big Ben than in
+that."
+
+"Ben can't carry me fast enough."
+
+"Don't expect me to ride in it, Dicky."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Oh, Dicky, can you _ask_?"
+
+Meade's great limousine which had brought them seemed to stare the little
+car out of countenance. But Richard refused to be embarrassed by the
+contrast. "She's a snug little craft, and she has carried me miles. What
+would Meade's car do on these roads and in the hills?"
+
+Pip had come up and as the two men stood together Eve's quick eye
+contrasted them. There was no doubt of Richard's shabbiness. His old
+riding coat was much the worse for wear. He had on the wrong kind of hat
+and the wrong kind of shoes, and he seemed most aggravatingly not to
+care. He was to ride to-morrow one of the horses which had been sent down
+from Pip's stables. He hadn't even a proper mount!
+
+Pip, on the other hand, was perfectly groomed. He was shining and
+immaculate from the top of his smooth head to the heel of his boots. And
+he wore an air of gay inconsequence. It seemed to Eve that Richard's
+shoulders positively sagged with responsibility.
+
+There was a dance at the club that night. Richard, coming in, saw Eve in
+Pip's arms. They were a graceful pair, and their steps matched perfectly.
+Eve was all in white, wide-skirted, and her shoulders and arms were bare.
+She had on gold slippers, and her hair was gold. Richard had a sense of
+discomfort as he watched them. He was going to marry her, yet she was
+letting Pip look at her like that. His cheeks burned. What was Pip
+saying? Was he making love to Eve?
+
+He had tried to meet the situation with dignity. Yet there was no dignity
+in Eve's willingness to let Pip follow her. To speak of it would,
+however, seem to crystallize his feeling into a complaint.
+
+Hence when he danced with her later, he tried to respond to the lightness
+and brightness of her mood. He tried to measure up to all the
+requirements of his position as an engaged man and as a lover. But he did
+not find it easy.
+
+When he reached home that night, he found little François awake, and
+ready to ask questions about the hunt.
+
+"Do you think they will get him?" he challenged Richard, coming in small
+pink pajamas to the door of the young doctor's room.
+
+"Get who?"
+
+"Old Pete."
+
+"He is too cunning."
+
+"Will he come through here?"
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"I shall stick my fingers in my ears and shut my eyes. Are you going to
+ride with them?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You won't let them kill old Pete, will you?"
+
+"Not if I can help it."
+
+After that, the child was more content. But when Richard was at last in
+bed, François came again across the hall, and stood on the threshold in
+the moonlight. "It would be dreadful if it was his last night."
+
+"Whose last night, François?" sleepily.
+
+"Old Pete's."
+
+"Don't worry. And you must go to bed, François."
+
+Richard waked to a glorious morning and to the hunt. Pink coats dotted
+the countryside. It seemed as if half the world was on its way to the
+club. Richard, as he mounted one of Pip's hunters, a powerful bay, felt
+the thrill of it all, and when he joined Eve and her party he found them
+in an uproarious mood.
+
+Presently over hills streamed a picturesque procession--the hounds in the
+lead, the horses following with riders whose pink blazed against the
+green of the pines, against the blue of the river, against the fainter
+blue of the skies above.
+
+And oh, the music of it, the sound of the horn, the bell-like baying, the
+thud of flying feet!
+
+Then, ahead of them all, as the hounds broke into full cry, a silent,
+swift shadow--the old fox, Pete!
+
+At first he ran easily. He had done it so often. He had thrown them off
+after a chase which had stirred his blood. He would throw them off again.
+
+In leisurely fashion he led them. As the morning advanced, however, he
+found himself hard pushed. He was driven from one stronghold to another.
+Tireless, the hounds followed and followed, until at last he knew himself
+weary, seeking sanctuary.
+
+He came with confidence to Crossroads. Beyond the garden was his den.
+Once within and the thing would end.
+
+Across the lawn he loped, and little François, anxious at the window,
+spied him. "Will he get to it, will he get to it?" he said to Nancy, his
+small face white with the fear of what might happen, "and when he gets
+there will he be safe?"
+
+"Yes," she assured him; "and when they have run him aground, they will
+ride away."
+
+But they did not ride away. It happened that those who were in the lead
+were unaware of the tradition of the country, and so they began to dig
+him out, this old king of foxes, who had felt himself secure in his
+castle!
+
+They set the dogs at one end, and fetched mattocks and spades from the
+stable.
+
+Pip and Eve were among them. Pip directing, Eve mad with the excitement
+of it all.
+
+Little François, watching, clung to Nancy. "Oh, they can't, they
+mustn't!"
+
+She soothed him, and at last sent Milly out, but they would not listen.
+
+Nancy and Sulie were as white now as little François. "Oh, where is
+Richard?" Nancy said. "It is like murder to do a thing like that. It is
+bad enough in the open--but like a rat--in a trap."
+
+The big bay was charging down the hill with Richard yelling at the top of
+his voice. The bay had proved troublesome and had bolted in the wrong
+direction, but Richard had brought him back to Crossroads just in time!
+
+François screamed. "It is Dr. Dicky. He'll make them stop. He'll make
+them."
+
+He did make them. His voice rang sharply. "Get the dogs away, Meade, and
+stop digging."
+
+They were too eager at first to heed him. Eve hung on his arm, but he
+shook her off. "We don't like things like that down here. Our foxes are
+too rare."
+
+It was a motley group which gathered later at the club for the hunt
+breakfast. There were fox-hunting farmers born on the land, of sturdy
+yeoman stock, and careless of form. There were the lords of newly
+acquired acres, who rode carefully on little saddles with short stirrups
+in the English style.
+
+There were the descendants of the great old planters, daring, immensely
+picturesque. There was Eve's crowd, trained for the sport, and at their
+ease.
+
+A big fire burned on the hearth. A copper-covered table held steaming
+dishes. Another table groaned under its load of cold meats and cheese. On
+an ancient mahogany sideboard were various bottles and bowls of punch.
+
+Old songs were sung and old stories told. Brinsley beamed on everybody
+with his face like a round full moon. There were other round and
+red-faced gentlemen who, warmed by the fire and the punch, twinkled like
+unsteady old stars.
+
+Eve was the pivotal center of all the hilarity. She sat on the table and
+served the punch. Her coat was off, and in her silk blouse and riding
+breeches she was like a lovely boy. The men crowded around her. Pip,
+always at her elbow, delivered an admiring opinion. "No one can hold a
+candle to you, Eve."
+
+Richard was out of it. He sat quietly in a corner with David, old Jo at
+their feet, and watched the others. Eve had been angry with him for his
+interference at Crossroads. "I didn't know you were a molly-coddle,
+Dicky," she had said, "and I wanted the brush."
+
+She was punishing him now by paying absolutely no attention to him. She
+was punishing him, too, by making herself conspicuous, which she knew he
+hated. The scene was not to his liking. The women of his household,
+Nancy, Sulie and Anne, had had a fastidious sense of what belonged to
+them as ladies. Eve had not that sense. As he sat there, it occurred to
+him that things were moving to some stupendous climax. He and Eve
+couldn't go on like this.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Far up in the hills a man was in danger of bleeding to death. He had cut
+himself while butchering a pig. The doctor was called.
+
+Richard, making his way through the shouting and singing crowd which
+surrounded Eve, told her, "I shall have to go for a little while. There's
+a man hurt. I'll be back in an hour."
+
+She looked down at him with hard eyes. "We are going to ride
+cross-country--to the Ridge. You might meet us there, if you care to
+come."
+
+"You know I care."
+
+"I'm not sure. You don't show it. I--I am tired of never having a
+lover--Dicky."
+
+It was a wonderful afternoon. The heavy frost had chilled the air, the
+leaves were red, and the sky was blue--and there was green and brown and
+gold. But Richard as he rode up in the hills had no eyes for the color,
+no ears for the song beaten out by big Ben's hoofs. The vision which held
+him was of Eve in the midst of that shouting circle.
+
+The man who had cut himself was black. He was thin and tall and his hair
+was gray. He had worked hard all of his life, but he had never worked out
+of himself the spirit of joyous optimism.
+
+"I jes' tole 'um," he said, "to send for Dr. Brooks, and he'd beat the
+devil gettin' to me."
+
+When Richard reached the Ridge, a flash of scarlet at once caught his
+eye. On the slope below Eve, far ahead of Meade, in a mad race, was
+making for a grove at the edge of the Crossroads boundaries. She was a
+reckless rider, and Richard held his breath as she took fences, leaped
+hurdles, and cleared the flat wide stream.
+
+As she came to the grove she turned and waved triumphantly to Pip. For a
+moment she made a vivid and brilliant figure in her scarlet against the
+green. Then the little wood swallowed her up.
+
+Pip came pounding after, and Richard, spurring his big Ben to
+unaccustomed efforts, circled the grove to meet them on the other side.
+
+But they did not come. From the point where he finally drew up he could
+command a view of both sides of the slope. Unless they had turned back,
+they were still in the grove.
+
+Then out of the woods came Pip, running. He had something in his arms.
+
+"It is Eve," he said, panting; "there was a hole and her horse stumbled.
+I found her."
+
+Poor honest Pip! As if she were his own, he held her now in his arms.
+Her golden head, swung up to his shoulder, rested heavily above his
+heart. Her eyes were shut.
+
+Richard's practiced eye saw at once her state of collapse. He jumped from
+his horse. "Give her to me, Meade," he said, "and get somebody's car as
+quickly as you can."
+
+And now the tiger in Pip flashed out. "She's mine," he said, breathing
+hoarsely. "I love her. You go and get the car."
+
+"Man," the young doctor said steadily, "this isn't the time to quarrel.
+Lay her down, then, and let me have a look at her."
+
+He had his little case of medicines, and he hunted for something to bring
+her back to consciousness. Pip, pale and shaken, folded his coat under
+her head and chafed her hands.
+
+Presently life seemed to sweep through her body. She shivered and moved.
+
+Her eyes came open. "What happened?"
+
+"You fell from your horse. Meade found you."
+
+There were no bones broken, but the shock had been great. She lay very
+still and white against Pip's arm.
+
+Richard closed his medicine case and rose. He stood looking down at her.
+
+"Better, old lady?"
+
+"Yes, Dicky."
+
+He spoke a little awkwardly. "I'll ride down if you don't mind, and come
+back for you in Meade's car." His eyes did not meet hers.
+
+As he plunged over the hill on his heavy old horse, her puzzled gaze
+followed him. Then she gave a queer little laugh. "Is he running away
+from me, Pip?"
+
+"I told him you were--mine," the big man burst out.
+
+"You told him? Oh, Pip, what did he say?"
+
+"That this was not the time to talk about it."
+
+She lay very still thinking it out. Then she turned on his arm. "Good old
+Pip," she said. He drew her up to him, and she said it again, with that
+queer little laugh, "Good old Pip, you're the best ever. And all this
+time I have been looking straight over your blessed old head at--Dicky."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+_In Which St. Michael Finds Love in a Garden._
+
+
+THE flowers in Marie-Louise's bowl were lilacs. And Marie-Louise, sitting
+up in bed, writing verses, was in pale mauve. Her windows were wide open,
+and the air from the river, laden with fragrance, swept through the room.
+
+The big house had been closed all winter. Austin had elected to spend the
+season in Florida, and had taken all of his household with him, including
+Anne. He had definitely retired from practice when Richard left him. "I
+can't carry it on alone, and I don't want to break in anybody else," he
+had said, and had turned the whole thing over to one of his colleagues.
+
+But April had brought him back to "Rose Acres" in time for the lilacs,
+and Marie-Louise, uplifted by the fact that Geoffrey Fox was at that very
+moment finishing his book in the balcony room, had decided that lilacs in
+the silver bowl should express the ecstatic state of her mind.
+
+Anne, coming in at noon, asked, "What are you writing?"
+
+"_Vers libre._ This is called, 'To Dr. Dicky, Dinging.'"
+
+"What a subject, and you call it poetry?"
+
+"Why not? Isn't he coming to dinner for the first time since--he left New
+York, and since he broke off with Eve, and since--a lot of other
+things--and isn't it an important occasion, Mistress Anne?"
+
+Anne ignored the question. "What have you written?"
+
+"Only the outline. He comes--has caviar, and his eyes are on the queen.
+He drinks his soup--and dreams. He has fish--and a vision of the future;
+rhapsodies with the roast," she twinkled; "do you like it?"
+
+"As far as it goes."
+
+"It goes very far, and you know it. And you are blushing."
+
+"I am not."
+
+"You are. Look in the glass. Mistress Anne, aren't you glad that Eve is
+married?"
+
+"Yes," honestly, "and that she is happy."
+
+"Pip was made for her. I loved him at Palm Beach, adoring her, didn't
+you?"
+
+"Yes." Anne's mind went back to it. The marriage had followed immediately
+upon the announcement of the broken engagement. People had pitied poor
+young Dr. Brooks. But Anne had not. One does not pity a man who, having
+been bound, is free.
+
+He had written to her a half dozen times during the winter, friendly
+letters with news of Crossroads, and now that she was again at Rose
+Acres, he was coming up.
+
+The spring day was bright. Rich with possibilities. "Marie-Louise, don't
+stay in bed. Nobody has a right to be in the house on such a day as
+this."
+
+But Marie-Louise wouldn't be moved. "I want to finish my verses."
+
+So Anne went out alone into the garden. It was ablaze with spring bloom,
+the river was blue, and Pan piped on his reeds. Geoffrey waved to her
+from his balcony. She waved back, then went for a walk alone. She
+returned to have tea on the terrace. The day seemed interminable. The
+hour for dinner astonishingly remote.
+
+At last, however, it was time to dress. The gown that she chose was of
+pale rose, heavily weighted with silver. It hung straight and slim. Her
+slippers were of silver, and she still wore her dark hair in the smooth
+swept-up fashion which so well became her.
+
+Richard, seeing her approach down the length of the big drawing-room
+where he stood with Austin, was conscious of a sense of shock. It was as
+if he had expected that she would come to him in her old blue serge, or
+in the little white gown with the many ruffles. That she came in such
+elegance made her seem--alien. Like Eve. Oh, where was the Anne of
+yesterday?
+
+Even when she spoke to him, when her hand was in his, when she walked
+beside him on the way to the dining-room, he had this sense of
+strangeness, as if the girl in rose-color was not the girl of whom he had
+dreamed through all the days since he had known that he was not to marry
+Eve.
+
+The winter had been a busy one for him, but satisfying in the sense that
+he was at last in his rightful place. He had come into his own. He had no
+more doubts that his work was wisely chosen. But his life was as yet
+unfinished. To complete it, he had felt that he must round out his days
+with the woman he loved.
+
+But now that he was here, he saw her fitted to her new surroundings as a
+jewel fitted to a golden setting. And she liked lovely things, she liked
+excitement, and the nearness of the great metropolis. There were men who
+had wanted to marry her. Marie-Louise had told him that in a gay little
+letter which she had sent from the South.
+
+As he reviewed it now disconsolately, he reminded himself that he had
+never had any real reason to know that Anne cared for him. There had been
+a flash of the eye, a few grave words, a break in her voice, his answered
+letters; but a woman might dole out these small favors to a friend.
+
+Thus from caviar to soup, and from soup to roast, he contradicted
+Marie-Louise's conception of his state of mind. Fear and doubt,
+discouragement, a touch of despair, these carried him as far as the
+salad.
+
+And then he heard Austin's voice speaking. "So you are really contented
+at Crossroads, Brooks?"
+
+"Yes. I wish you would come down and let me show you some of the things I
+am doing. A bit primitive, perhaps, in the light of your larger
+experience. But none the less effective, and interesting."
+
+Austin shrugged. "I can't imagine anything but martyrdom in such a
+life--for me. What do you do with yourself when you are not working--with
+no theaters--opera--restaurants--excitements?"
+
+"We get along rather well without them--except for an occasional trip to
+town."
+
+"But you need such things," dogmatically; "a man can't live out of the
+world and not--degenerate."
+
+"He may live in it, and degenerate." Anne was speaking. Her cheeks were
+as pink as her gown. She leaned a little forward. "You don't know all
+that they have at Crossroads, and Dr. Brooks is too polite to tell you
+how poor New York seems to those of us who--know."
+
+"Poor?" Richard had turned to her, his face illumined.
+
+"Isn't it? Think of the things you have that New York doesn't know of. A
+singing river--this river doesn't sing, or if it does nobody would have
+time to listen. And Crossroads has a bell on its school that calls to the
+countryside. City children are not called by a bell--that's why they are
+all alike--they ride on trolleys and watch the clocks. My little pupils
+ran across the fields and down the road, and hurried when I rang for
+them, and came in--rosy."
+
+She was rosy herself as she recounted it.
+
+"Oh, we have a lot of things--the bridge with the lights--and the road up
+to the Ridge--and Diogenes. Dr. Austin, you should see Diogenes."
+
+She laughed, and they all laughed with her, but back of Richard's laugh
+there was an emotion which swept him on and up to heights beyond anything
+that he had ever hoped or dreamed.
+
+After that, he could hardly wait for the ending of the dinner, hardly
+wait to get away from them all, and out under the stars.
+
+It was when they were at last alone on the steps above the fountain, with
+the garden pouring all of its fragrance down upon them, that he said, "I
+should not have dared ask it if you had not said what you said."
+
+"Oh, St. Michael, St. Michael," she whispered, "where was your courage?"
+
+"But in this gown, this lovely gown, you didn't look like anything that I
+could--have. I am only a country doctor, Anne."
+
+"Only my beloved--Richard."
+
+They clung together, these two who had found Love in the garden. But they
+had found more than Love. They had found the meaning for all that Richard
+had done, and for all that Anne would do. And that which they had found
+they would never give up!
+
+
+
+
+"_The Books You Like to Read at the Price You Like to Pay_"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_There Are Two Sides to Everything_--
+
+--including the wrapper which covers every Grosset & Dunlap book. When
+you feel in the mood for a good romance, refer to the carefully selected
+list of modern fiction comprising most of the successes by prominent
+writers of the day which is printed on the back of every Grosset & Dunlap
+book wrapper.
+
+You will find more than five hundred titles to choose from--books for
+every mood and every taste and every pocketbook.
+
+_Don't forget the other side, but in case the wrapper is lost, write to
+the publishers for a complete catalog._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_There is a Grosset & Dunlap Book for every mood and for every taste_
+
+
+RUBY M. AYRES' NOVELS
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.
+
+
+THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART
+Why was Barbara held captive in a deserted hermit's hut for days by a
+"man without a heart" and in the end how was it that she held the winning
+cards.
+
+THE ROMANCE OF A ROGUE
+Twenty-four hours after his release from prison Bruce Lawn finds himself
+playing a most surprising role in a drama of human relationships that
+sweeps on to a wonderfully emotional climax.
+
+THE MATHERSON MARRIAGE
+She married for money. With her own hands she had locked the door on
+happiness and thrown away the key. But read the story which is very
+interesting and well told.
+
+RICHARD CHATTERTON
+A fascinating story in which love and jealousy play strange tricks with
+women's souls.
+
+A BACHELOR HUSBAND
+Can a woman love two men at the same time?
+
+In its solving of this particular variety of triangle "A Bachelor
+Husband" will particularly interest, and strangely enough, without one
+shock to the most conventional minded.
+
+THE SCAR
+With fine comprehension and insight the author shows a terrific contrast
+between the woman whose love was of the flesh and one whose love was of
+the spirit.
+
+THE MARRIAGE OF BARRY WICKLOW
+Here is a man and woman who, marrying for love, yet try to build their
+wedded life upon a gospel of hate for each other and yet win back to a
+greater love for each other in the end.
+
+THE UPHILL ROAD
+The heroine of this story was a consort of thieves. The man was fine,
+clean, fresh from the West. It is a story of strength and passion.
+
+WINDS OF THE WORLD
+Jill, a poor little typist, marries the great Henry Sturgess and inherits
+millions, but not happiness. Then at last--but we must leave that to Ruby
+M. Ayres to tell you as only she can.
+
+THE SECOND HONEYMOON
+In this story the author has produced a book which no one who has loved
+or hopes to love can afford to miss. The story fairly leaps from climax
+to climax.
+
+THE PHANTOM LOVER
+Have you not often heard of someone being in love with love rather than
+the person they believed the object of their affections? That was Esther!
+But she passes through the crisis into a deep and profound love.
+
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP,  PUBLISHERS,  NEW YORK
+
+
+STORIES OF RARE CHARM BY GENE STRATTON-PORTER
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+
+THE WHITE FLAG.
+How a young girl, singlehanded, fought against the power of the Morelands
+who held the town of Ashwater in their grip.
+
+HER FATHER'S DAUGHTER.
+This story is of California and tells of that charming girl, Linda
+Strong, otherwise known as "Her Father's Daughter."
+
+A DAUGHTER OF THE LAND.
+Kate Bates, the heroine of this story, is a true "Daughter of the Land,"
+and to read about her is truly inspiring.
+
+MICHAEL O'HALLORAN.
+Michael is a quick-witted little Irish newsboy, living in Northern
+Indiana. He adopts a deserted little girl, a cripple. He also aspires to
+lead the entire rural community upward and onward.
+
+LADDIE.
+This is a bright, cheery tale with the scenes laid in Indiana. The story
+is told by Little Sister, the youngest member of a large family, but it
+is concerned not so much with childish doings as with the love affairs of
+older members of the family.
+
+THE HARVESTER.
+"The Harvester," is a man of the woods and fields, and is well worth
+knowing, but when the Girl comes to his "Medicine Woods," there begins a
+romance of the rarest idyllic quality.
+
+FRECKLES.
+Freckles is a nameless waif when the tale opens, but the way in which he
+takes hold of life; the nature friendships he forms; and his love-story
+with "The Angel" are full of real sentiment.
+
+A GIRL OF THE LIMBERLOST.
+The story of a girl of the Michigan woods; a buoyant, loveable type of
+the self-reliant American. Her philosophy is one of love and kindness
+toward all things; her hope is never dimmed.
+
+AT THE FOOT OF THE RAINBOW.
+The scene of this charming love story is laid in Central Indiana. It is
+one of devoted friendship, and tender self-sacrificing love.
+
+THE SONG OF THE CARDINAL.
+The love idyl of the Cardinal and his mate, told with rare delicacy and
+humor.
+
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP,  PUBLISHERS,  NEW YORK
+
+
+THE NOVELS OF GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL (MRS. LUTZ)
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.
+
+
+BEST MAN, THE
+CLOUDY JEWEL
+DAWN OF THE MORNING
+ENCHANTED BARN, THE
+EXIT BETTY
+FINDING OF JASPER HOLT, THE
+GIRL FROM MONTANA, THE
+LO, MICHAEL!
+MAN OF THE DESERT, THE
+MARCIA SCHUYLER
+MIRANDA
+MYSTERY OF MARY, THE
+OBSESSION OF VICTORIA GRACEN, THE
+PHOEBE DEANE
+RED SIGNAL, THE
+SEARCH, THE
+TRYST, THE
+VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS, A
+WITNESS, THE
+
+_Ask for Complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction_
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP,   PUBLISHERS,  NEW YORK
+
+
+ETHEL M. DELL'S NOVELS
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+
+CHARLES REX
+The struggle against a hidden secret and the love of a strong man and a
+courageous woman.
+
+THE TOP OF THE WORLD
+Tells of the path which leads at last to the "top of the world," which it
+is given to few seekers to find.
+
+THE LAMP IN THE DESERT
+Tells of the lamp of love that continues to shine through all sorts of
+tribulations to final happiness.
+
+GREATHEART
+The story of a cripple whose deformed body conceals a noble soul.
+
+THE HUNDREDTH CHANCE
+A hero who worked to win even when there was only "a hundredth chance."
+
+THE SWINDLER
+The story of a "bad man's" soul revealed by a woman's faith.
+
+THE TIDAL WAVE
+Tales of love and of women who learned to know the true from the false.
+
+THE SAFETY CURTAIN
+A very vivid love story of India. The volume also contains four other
+long stories of equal interest.
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP,   PUBLISHERS,  NEW YORK
+
+
+ELEANOR H. PORTER'S NOVELS
+
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+
+JUST DAVID
+The tale of a loveable boy and the place he comes to fill in the hearts
+of the gruff farmer folk to whose care he is left.
+
+THE ROAD TO UNDERSTANDING
+A compelling romance of love and marriage.
+
+OH, MONEY! MONEY!
+Stanley Fulton, a wealthy bachelor, to test the dispositions of his
+relatives, sends them each a check for $100,000, and then as plain John
+Smith comes among them to watch the result of his experiment.
+
+SIX STAR RANCH
+A wholesome story of a club of six girls and their summer on Six Star
+Ranch.
+
+DAWN
+The story of a blind boy whose courage leads him through the gulf of
+despair into a final victory gained by dedicating his life to the service
+of blind soldiers.
+
+ACROSS THE YEARS
+Short stories of our own kind and of our own people. Contains some of the
+best writing Mrs. Porter has done.
+
+THE TANGLED THREADS
+In these stories we find the concentrated charm and tenderness of all her
+other books.
+
+THE TIE THAT BINDS
+Intensely human stories told with Mrs. Porter's wonderful talent for warm
+and vivid character drawing.
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP,  PUBLISHERS,  NEW YORK
+
+
+FLORENCE L. BARCLAY'S NOVELS
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+
+THE WHITE LADIES OF WORCESTER
+A novel of the 12th Century. The heroine, believing she had lost her
+lover, enters a convent. He returns, and interesting developments follow.
+
+THE UPAS TREE
+A love story of rare charm. It deals with a successful author and his
+wife.
+
+THROUGH THE POSTERN GATE
+The story of a seven day courtship, in which the discrepancy in ages
+vanished into insignificance before the convincing demonstration of
+abiding love.
+
+THE ROSARY
+The story of a young artist who is reputed to love beauty above all else
+in the world, but who, when blinded through an accident, gains life's
+greatest happiness. A rare story of the great passion of two real people
+superbly capable of love, its sacrifices and its exceeding reward.
+
+THE MISTRESS OF SHENSTONE
+The lovely young Lady Ingleby, recently widowed by the death of a husband
+who never understood her, meets a fine, clean young chap who is ignorant
+of her title and they fall deeply in love with each other. When he learns
+her real identity a situation of singular power is developed.
+
+THE BROKEN HALO
+The story of a young man whose religious belief was shattered in
+childhood and restored to him by the little white lady, many years older
+than himself, to whom he is passionately devoted.
+
+THE FOLLOWING OF THE STAR
+The story of a young missionary, who, about to start for Africa, marries
+wealthy Diana Rivers, in order to help her fulfill the conditions of her
+uncle's will, and how they finally come to love each other and are
+reunited after experiences that soften and purify.
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP,  PUBLISHERS,  NEW YORK
+
+
+BOOTH TARKINGTON'S NOVELS
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+
+SEVENTEEN.
+Illustrated by Arthur William Brown.
+No one but the creator of Penrod could have portrayed the immortal young
+people of this story. Its humor is irresistible and reminiscent of the
+time when the reader was Seventeen.
+
+PENROD.
+Illustrated by Gordon Grant.
+This is a picture of a boy's heart, full of the lovable, humorous, tragic
+things which are locked secrets to most older folks. It is a finished,
+exquisite work.
+
+PENROD AND SAM.
+Illustrated by Worth Brehm.
+Like "Penrod" and "Seventeen," this book contains some remarkable phases
+of real boyhood and some of the best stories of juvenile prankishness
+that have ever been written.
+
+THE TURMOIL.
+Illustrated by C. E. Chambers.
+Bibbs Sheridan is a dreamy, imaginative youth, who revolts against his
+father's plans for him to be a servitor of big business. The love of a
+fine girl turns Bibb's life from failure to success.
+
+THE GENTLEMAN FROM INDIANA.
+Frontispiece.
+A story of love and politics,--more especially a picture of a country
+editor's life in Indiana, but the charm of the book lies in the love
+interest.
+
+THE FLIRT.
+Illustrated by Clarence F. Underwood.
+The "Flirt," the younger of two sisters, breaks one girl's engagement,
+drives one man to suicide, causes the murder of another, leads another to
+lose his fortune, and in the end marries a stupid and unpromising suitor,
+leaving the really worthy one to marry her sister.
+
+
+_Ask for Complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction_
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP,  PUBLISHERS,  NEW YORK
+
+
+KATHLEEN NORRIS' STORIES
+
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+
+SISTERS.
+Frontispiece by Frank Street.
+The California Redwoods furnish the background for this beautiful story
+of sisterly devotion and sacrifice.
+
+POOR, DEAR, MARGARET KIRBY.
+Frontispiece by George Gibbs.
+A collection of delightful stories, including "Bridging the Years" and
+"The Tide-Marsh." This story is now shown in moving pictures.
+
+JOSSELYN'S WIFE.
+Frontispiece by C. Allan Gilbert.
+The story of a beautiful woman who fought a bitter fight for happiness
+and love.
+
+MARTIE, THE UNCONQUERED.
+Illustrated by Charles E. Chambers.
+The triumph of a dauntless spirit over adverse conditions.
+
+THE HEART OF RACHAEL.
+Frontispiece by Charles E. Chambers.
+An interesting story of divorce and the problems that come with a second
+marriage.
+
+THE STORY OF JULIA PAGE.
+Frontispiece by C. Allan Gilbert.
+A sympathetic portrayal of the quest of a normal girl, obscure and
+lonely, for the happiness of life.
+
+SATURDAY'S CHILD.
+Frontispiece by F. Graham Cootes.
+Can a girl, born in rather sordid conditions, lift herself through sheer
+determination to the better things for which her soul hungered?
+
+MOTHER.
+Illustrated by F. C. Yohn.
+A story of the big mother heart that beats in the background of every
+girl's life, and some dreams which came true.
+
+
+_Ask for Complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction_
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP,   PUBLISHERS,   NEW YORK
+
+
+EMERSON HOUGH'S NOVELS
+
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.
+
+
+THE COVERED WAGON
+NORTH OF 36
+THE WAY OF A MAN
+THE STORY OF THE OUTLAW
+THE SAGEBRUSHER
+THE GIRL AT THE HALFWAY HOUSE
+THE WAY OUT
+THE MAN NEXT DOOR
+THE MAGNIFICENT ADVENTURE
+THE BROKEN GATE
+THE STORY OF THE COWBOY
+THE WAY TO THE WEST
+54-40 OR FIGHT
+HEART'S DESIRE
+THE MISSISSIPPI BUBBLE
+THE PURCHASE PRICE
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK
+
+
+GEORGE W. OGDEN'S WESTERN NOVELS
+
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+
+THE BARON OF DIAMOND TAIL
+The Elk Mountain Cattle Co. had not paid a dividend in years; so Edgar
+Barrett, fresh from the navy, was sent West to see what was wrong at the
+ranch. The tale of this tenderfoot outwitting the buckaroos at their own
+play will sweep you into the action of this salient western novel.
+
+THE BONDBOY
+Joe Newbolt, bound out by force of family conditions to work for a number
+of years, is accused of murder and circumstances are against him. His
+mouth is sealed; he cannot, as a gentleman, utter the words that would
+clear him. A dramatic, romantic tale of intense interest.
+
+CLAIM NUMBER ONE
+Dr. Warren Slavens drew claim number one, which entitled him to first
+choice of rich lands on an Indian reservation in Wyoming. It meant a
+fortune; but before he established his ownership he had a hard battle
+with crooks and politicians.
+
+THE DUKE OF CHIMNEY BUTTE
+When Jerry Lambert, "the Duke," attempts to safeguard the cattle ranch of
+Vesta Philbrook from thieving neighbors, his work is appallingly
+handicapped because of Grace Kerr, one of the chief agitators, and a
+deadly enemy of Vesta's. A stirring tale of brave deeds, gun-play and a
+love that shines above all.
+
+THE FLOCKMASTER OF POISON CREEK
+John Mackenzie trod the trail from Jasper to the great sheep country
+where fortunes were being made by the flock-masters. Shepherding was not
+a peaceful pursuit in those bygone days. Adventure met him at every
+turn--there is a girl of course--men fight their best fights for a
+woman--it is an epic of the sheeplands.
+
+THE LAND OF LAST CHANCE
+Jim Timberlake and Capt. David Scott waited with restless thousands on
+the Oklahoma line for the signal to dash across the border. How the city
+of Victory arose overnight on the plains, how people savagely defended
+their claims against the "sooners;" how good men and bad played politics,
+makes a strong story of growth and American initiative.
+
+TRAIL'S END
+Ascalon was the end of the trail for thirsty cowboys who gave vent to
+their pent-up feelings without restraint. Calvin Morgan was not concerned
+with its wickedness until Seth Craddock's malevolence directed itself
+against him. He did not emerge from the maelstrom until he had
+obliterated every vestige of lawlessness, and assured himself of the
+safety of a certain dark-eyed girl.
+
+
+_Ask for Complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction_
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK
+
+
+PETER B. KYNE'S NOVELS
+
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+
+THE PRIDE OF PALOMAR
+When two strong men clash and the under-dog has Irish blood in his
+veins--there's a tale that Kyne can tell! And "the girl" is also very
+much in evidence.
+
+KINDRED OF THE DUST
+Donald McKay, son of Hector McKay, millionaire lumber king, falls in love
+with "Nan of the Sawdust Pile," a charming girl who has been ostracized
+by her townsfolk.
+
+THE VALLEY OF THE GIANTS
+The fight of the Cardigans, father and son, to hold the Valley of the
+Giants against treachery. The reader finishes with a sense of having
+lived with big men and women in a big country.
+
+CAPPY RICKS
+The story of old Cappy Ricks and of Matt Peasley, the boy he tried to
+break because he knew the acid test was good for his soul.
+
+WEBSTER: MAN'S MAN
+In a little Jim Crow Republic in Central America, a man and a woman,
+hailing from the "States," met up with a revolution and for a while
+adventures and excitement came so thick and fast that their love affair
+had to wait for a lull in the game.
+
+CAPTAIN SCRAGGS
+This sea yarn recounts the adventures of three rapscallion sea-faring
+men--a Captain Scraggs, owner of the green vegetable freighter Maggie,
+Gibney the mate and McGuffney the engineer.
+
+THE LONG CHANCE
+A story fresh from the heart of the West, of San Pasqual, a sun-baked
+desert town, of Harley P. Hennage, the best gambler, the best and worst
+man of San Pasqual and of lovely Donna.
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP,  PUBLISHERS,  NEW YORK
+
+
+JACKSON GREGORY'S NOVELS
+
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.
+
+
+DAUGHTER OF THE SUN
+A tale of Aztec treasure--of American adventurers, who seek it--of
+Zoraida, who hides it.
+
+TIMBER-WOLF
+This is a story of action and of the wide open, dominated always by the
+heroic figure of Timber-Wolf.
+
+THE EVERLASTING WHISPER
+The story of a strong man's struggle against savage nature and humanity,
+and of a beautiful girl's regeneration from a spoiled child of wealth
+into a courageous strong-willed woman.
+
+DESERT VALLEY
+A college professor sets out with his daughter to find gold. They meet a
+rancher who loses his heart, and becomes involved in a feud.
+
+MAN TO MAN
+How Steve won his game and the girl he loved, is a story filled with
+breathless situations.
+
+THE BELLS OF SAN JUAN
+Dr. Virginia Page is forced to go with the sheriff on a night journey
+into the strongholds of a lawless band.
+
+JUDITH OF BLUE LAKE RANCH
+Judith Sanford part owner of a cattle ranch realizes she is being robbed
+by her foreman. With the help of Bud Lee, she checkmates Trevor's scheme.
+
+THE SHORT CUT
+Wayne is suspected of killing his brother after a quarrel. Financial
+complications, a horse-race and beautiful Wanda, make up a thrilling
+romance.
+
+THE JOYOUS TROUBLE MAKER
+A reporter sets up housekeeping close to Beatrice's Ranch much to her
+chagrin. There is "another man" who complicates matters.
+
+SIX FEET FOUR
+Beatrice Waverly is robbed of $5,000 and suspicion fastens upon Buck
+Thornton, but she soon realizes he is not guilty.
+
+WOLF BREED
+No Luck Drennan, a woman hater and sharp of tongue, finds a match in
+Ygerne whose clever fencing wins the admiration and love of the "Lone
+Wolf."
+
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP,  PUBLISHERS,  NEW YORK
+
+
+ZANE GREY'S NOVELS
+
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+
+TO THE LAST MAN
+THE MYSTERIOUS RIDER
+THE MAN OF THE FOREST
+THE DESERT OF WHEAT
+THE U. P. TRAIL
+WILDFIRE
+THE BORDER LEGION
+THE RAINBOW TRAIL
+THE HERITAGE OF THE DESERT
+RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE
+THE LIGHT OF WESTERN STARS
+THE LAST OF THE PLAINSMEN
+THE LONE STAR RANGER
+DESERT GOLD
+BETTY ZANE
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LAST OF THE GREAT SCOUTS
+
+The life story of "Buffalo Bill" by his sister Helen Cody Wetmore, with
+Foreword and conclusion by Zane Grey.
+
+
+ZANE GREY'S BOOKS FOR BOYS
+KEN WARD IN THE JUNGLE
+THE YOUNG LION HUNTER
+THE YOUNG FORESTER
+THE YOUNG PITCHER
+THE SHORT STOP
+THE RED-HEADED OUTFIELD AND OTHER BASEBALL STORIES
+
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP,  PUBLISHERS,  NEW YORK
+
+
+JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD'S STORIES OF ADVENTURE
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+
+THE COUNTRY BEYOND
+THE FLAMING FOREST
+THE VALLEY OF SILENT MEN
+THE RIVER'S END
+THE GOLDEN SNARE
+NOMADS OF THE NORTH
+KAZAN
+BAREE, SON OF KAZAN
+THE COURAGE OF CAPTAIN PLUM
+THE DANGER TRAIL
+THE HUNTED WOMAN
+THE FLOWER OF THE NORTH
+THE GRIZZLY KING
+ISOBEL
+THE WOLF HUNTERS
+THE GOLD HUNTERS
+THE COURAGE OF MARGE O'DOONE
+BACK TO GOD'S COUNTRY
+
+
+_Ask for Complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction_
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mistress Anne, by Temple Bailey
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MISTRESS ANNE ***
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mistress Anne, by Temple Bailey
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mistress Anne
+
+Author: Temple Bailey
+
+Illustrator: F. Vaux Wilson
+
+Release Date: October 30, 2007 [EBook #23246]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MISTRESS ANNE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net and the booksmiths
+at http://www.eBookForge.net
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+</pre>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i"></a>[<a href="./images/i.png">i</a>]</span></p>
+<h1>MISTRESS ANNE</h1>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>BY</h3>
+<h2>TEMPLE BAILEY</h2>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>AUTHOR OF<br />
+CONTRARY MARY, <span class="smcap">Etc.</span></h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>FRONTISPIECE BY</h3>
+<h2>F. VAUX WILSON</h2>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><a href="./images/ill-dec.jpg"><img src="./images/ill-dec_th.jpg" alt="decoration" title="decoration" /></a></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>G&ensp;R&ensp;O&ensp;S&ensp;S&ensp;E&ensp;T&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&amp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;D&ensp;U&ensp;N&ensp;L&ensp;A&ensp;P</h3>
+<h4>P&ensp;U&ensp;B&ensp;L&ensp;I&ensp;S&ensp;H&ensp;E&ensp;R&ensp;S&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;N&ensp;E&ensp;W&ensp;&ensp;Y&ensp;O&ensp;R&ensp;K</h4>
+
+<h5>Made in the United States of America</h5>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii"></a>[<a href="./images/ill-front.jpg">ii</a>]</span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><a href="./images/ill-front.jpg"><img src="./images/ill-front_th.jpg" alt="SHE SHOWED HIM HER SCHOOL" title="SHE SHOWED HIM HER SCHOOL" /></a></p>
+<p class="figcenter">SHE SHOWED HIM HER SCHOOL</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii"></a>[<a href="./images/iii.png">iii</a>]</span></p>
+
+<h3>COPYRIGHT<br />
+1917 BY<br />
+THE PENN<br />
+PUBLISHING<br />
+COMPANY</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><a href="./images/ill-logo.jpg"><img src="./images/ill-logo_th.jpg" alt="logo" title="logo" /></a></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3><i>Made in U. S. A.</i></h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16">Mistress Anne</span></div></div>
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv"></a>[<a href="./images/iv.png">iv</a>]</span></p>
+<h3><i>To</i></h3>
+
+<h2>P. V. B.</h2>
+
+<h3><i>who sees the sunsets</i></h3>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v"></a>[<a href="./images/v.png">v</a>]</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7"></a>[<a href="./images/7.png">7</a>]</span></p>
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+<div class='centered'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Table of Contents">
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_I">I.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In Which Things Are Said of Diogenes and of a Lady With a Lantern</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_11">11</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_II">II.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In Which a Princess Serving Finds That the Motto of Kings Is Meaningless</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_21">21</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_III">III.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In Which the Crown Prince Enters Upon His Own</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_36">36</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In Which Three Kings Come to Crossroads</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_51">51</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_V">V.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In Which Peggy Takes the Center of the Stage</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_62">62</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In Which a Gray Plush Pussy Cat Supplies a Theme</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_77">77</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In Which Geoffrey Writes of Soldiers and Their Souls</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_91">91</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">VIII.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In Which a Green-Eyed Monster Grips Eve</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_111">111</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">IX.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In Which Anne, Passing a Shop, Turns In</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_136">136</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_X">X.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In Which a Blind Beggar and a Butterfly Go To a Ball</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_149">149</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">XI.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In Which Brinsley Speaks of the Way to Win a Woman</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_160">160</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">XII.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In Which Eve Usurps an Ancient Masculine Privilege</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_178">178</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8"></a>[<a href="./images/8.png">8</a>]</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">XIII.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In Which Geoffrey Plays Cave Man</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_196">196</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">XIV.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In Which There Is Much Said of Marriage and of Giving in Marriage</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_210">210</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">XV.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In Which Anne Asks and Jimmie Answers</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_226">226</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">XVI.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In Which Pan Pipes to the Stars</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_239">239</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">XVII.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In Which Fear Walks in a Storm</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_256">256</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">XVIII.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In Which We Hear Once More of a Sandalwood Fan</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_274">274</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">XIX.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In Which Christmas Comes to Crossroads</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_284">284</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XX">XX.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In Which a Dresden-China Shepherdess and a Country Mouse Meet on Common Ground</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_298">298</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">XXI.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In Which St. Michael Hears a Call</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_314">314</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">XXII.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In Which Anne Weighs the People of Two Worlds</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_333">333</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">XXIII.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In Which Richard Rides Alone</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_347">347</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">XXIV.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In Which St. Michael Finds Love in a Garden</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_361">361</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11"></a>[<a href="./images/11.png">11</a>]</span></p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h1>Mistress Anne</h1>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h3><i>In Which Things Are Said of Diogenes and of a
+Lady With a Lantern.</i></h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> second day of the New Year came on Saturday.
+The holiday atmosphere had thus been
+extended over the week-end. The Christmas wreaths
+still hung in the windows, and there had been an
+added day of feasting. Holidays always brought
+people from town who ate with sharp appetites.</p>
+
+<p>It was mostly men who came, men who fished and
+men who hunted. In the long low house by the
+river one found good meals and good beds, warm
+fires in winter and a wide porch in summer. There
+were few luxuries, but it pleased certain wise Old
+Gentlemen to take their sport simply, and to take
+pride in the simplicity. They considered the magnificence
+of modern camps and clubs vulgar, and as
+savoring somewhat of riches newly acquired; and
+they experienced an almost &aelig;sthetic satisfaction in
+the contrast between the rough cleanliness of certain
+little lodges along the Chesapeake and its tributary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12"></a>[<a href="./images/12.png">12</a>]</span>
+tide-water streams, and the elegance of the Charles
+Street mansions which they had, for the moment, left
+behind.</p>
+
+<p>It was these Old Gentlemen who, in khaki and
+tweed, each in its proper season, came to Peter
+Bower's, and ate the food which Peter's wife cooked
+for them. They went out in the morning fresh and
+radiant, and returned at night, tired but still radiant,
+to sit by the fire or on the porch, and, in jovial
+content, to tell of the delights of earlier days and of
+what sport had been before the invasion of the
+Philistines.</p>
+
+<p>They knew much of gastronomic lore, these Old
+Gentlemen, and they liked to talk of things to eat.
+But they spoke of other things, and now and then
+they fell into soft silences when a sunset was upon
+them or a night of stars.</p>
+
+<p>And they could tell stories! Stories backed by
+sparkling wit and a nice sense of discrimination.
+On winter nights or on holiday afternoons like this,
+as, gathered around the fire they grew mildly convivial,
+the sound of their laughter would rise to Anne
+Warfield's room under the eaves; she would push
+back the papers which held her to her desk, and
+wish with a sigh that the laughter were that of young
+men, and that she might be among them.</p>
+
+<p>To-day, however, she was not at her desk. She
+was taking down the decorations which had made
+the little room bright during the brief holiday. To-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13"></a>[<a href="./images/13.png">13</a>]</span>morrow
+she would go back to school and to the
+forty children whom she taught. Life would again
+stretch out before her, dull and uneventful. The
+New Year would hold for her no meaning that the
+old year had not held.</p>
+
+<p>It had snowed all of the night before, and from
+her window she could see the river, slate-gray against
+the whiteness. Out-of-doors it was very cold, but
+her own room was hot with the heat of the little
+round stove. With her holly wreaths in her arms,
+she stood uncertain in front of it. She had thought
+to burn the holly, but it had seemed to her, all at
+once, that to end thus the vividness of berry and of
+leaf would be desecration. Surely they deserved to
+die out in that clear cold world in which they had
+been born and bred!</p>
+
+<p>It was a fanciful thought, but she yielded to it.
+Besides, there was Diogenes! She must make sure
+of his warmth and comfort before night closed in.</p>
+
+<p>She put on her red scarf and cap and, with the
+wreaths in her arms, she went down-stairs. The Old
+Gentlemen were in the front room and she had to
+pass through. They rose to a man. She liked the
+courtliness, and gave in return her lovely smile and
+a little bow.</p>
+
+<p>They gazed after her with frank admiration.
+"Who is she?" asked one who was not old, and
+who, slim and dark and with a black ribbon for his
+eye-glasses, seemed a stranger in this circle.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14"></a>[<a href="./images/14.png">14</a>]</span>
+"The new teacher of the Crossroads school.
+There wasn't any place for her to board but this.
+So they took her in."</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty girl."</p>
+
+<p>The Old Gentlemen agreed, but they did not discuss
+her charms at length. They belonged to a
+generation which preferred not to speak in a crowd
+of a woman's attractions. One of them remarked,
+however, that he envied her the good fortune of
+feasting all the year round at Peter Bower's table.</p>
+
+<p>Anne, trudging through the snow with the wreaths
+in her arms, would have laughed mockingly if she
+had heard them. It was not food that she wanted,
+not the game and oysters and fish over which these
+old gourmands gloated. What she wanted was the
+nectar and ambrosia of life, the color and glow&mdash;the
+companionship of young things like herself!</p>
+
+<p>Of course there were the school children and there
+was Peggy. But to the children and Peggy she was
+a grown-up creature. Loving her, they still made
+her feel age's immeasurable distance, as she had felt
+her own distance from the Old Gentlemen.</p>
+
+<p>It was Peggy, who, wound in her mother's knitted
+white shawl until she looked like a dingy snowball,
+bounced from the kitchen to meet her.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you going?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>The young teacher laughed. "Peggy," she said,
+"if you will never tell, you may come with me."</p>
+
+<p>"Where?" demanded Peggy.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15"></a>[<a href="./images/15.png">15</a>]</span>
+"Across the road and into the woods and down to
+the river."</p>
+
+<p>"What are you carrying the wreaths for?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wait and see."</p>
+
+<p>The road which they crossed was the railroad.
+Over the iron rails the trains thundered from one
+big city to another, with a river to cross just before
+they reached Peter Bower's. Very few of the trains
+stopped at Peter's, and it was this neglect of theirs,
+and the consequent isolation, which constituted the
+charm of Bower's for town-tired folk. Yet Anne
+Warfield always wished that some palatial express
+might tarry for a moment to take her aboard, and
+whirl her on to the world of flashing lights, of sky-scraping
+towers and streaming crowds.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you going to do with the wreaths?"
+Peggy was still demanding as they entered upon
+the frozen silence of the pine woods.</p>
+
+<p>"I am going down as close as I can to the water's
+edge, and I am going to fling them out as far as I
+can into the river. And perhaps the river will carry
+them down to the sea, and the sea will say, 'Whence
+came you?' and the wreaths will whisper, 'We came
+from the forest to die on your breast, the river
+brought us, and the winds sang to us, and above us
+the sky smiled. And now we are ready to die, for
+we have seen life and its loveliness. It would have
+been dreadful if we had come to our end in the ashes
+of a little round stove.'"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16"></a>[<a href="./images/16.png">16</a>]</span>
+Peggy stared, open-eyed. She had missed the
+application, but she liked the story.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me throw one of them," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"You couldn't throw them far enough, dear heart.
+But you shall count, 'one, two, three' for me. And
+when you say 'three' I'll throw one of them away,
+and then you must count again, and I will throw the
+others."</p>
+
+<p>So Peggy, quite entranced by the importance of
+her office, took her part in the ceremony, and Anne
+Warfield stood on top of the snowy bank above the
+river, and cast upon its tumbling surface the bright
+burden which it was to carry to the sea.</p>
+
+<p>It was at this moment that there crossed the bridge
+the only train from the north which stopped by day
+at Peter Bower's. The passengers looking out saw,
+far below them, sullen stream, somber woods, and a
+girl in a gay red scarf. They saw, too, a dingy
+white dot of a child who danced up and down.
+When the train stopped a few minutes later at
+Bower's, six of the passengers stepped from it, three
+men and three women, a smartly-dressed, cosmopolitan
+group, quite evidently indifferent to the
+glances which followed them.</p>
+
+<p>Anne and Peggy had no eyes for the new arrivals.
+If they noticed the train at all, it was merely to give
+it a slurring thought, as bringing more Old Gentlemen
+who would eat and be merry, then hurry back
+again to town. As for themselves, having finished<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17"></a>[<a href="./images/17.png">17</a>]</span>
+the business of the moment, they had yet to look
+after Diogenes.</p>
+
+<p>Diogenes was a drake. He lived a somewhat
+cloistered life in the stable which had been made
+over into a garage. He had wandered in one morning
+soon after Anne had come to teach in the school.
+Peter had suggested that he be killed and eaten.
+But Anne, lonely in her new quarters, had appreciated
+the forlornness of the old drake and had adopted him.
+She had named him Diogenes because he had an air
+of searching always for something which could not
+be found. Once when a flock of wild ducks had
+flown overhead, Diogenes had listened, and, as their
+faint cries had come down to him, he had stretched
+his wings as if he, too, would fly. But his fat body
+had held him, and so still chained to earth, he
+waddled within the limits of his narrow domain.</p>
+
+<p>In a cozy corner of the garage there was plenty
+of straw and a blanket to keep off draughts. Mrs.
+Bower had declared such luxury unsettling. But
+Anne had laughed at her. "Why should pleasant
+things hurt us?" she had asked, and Mrs. Bower
+had shaken her head.</p>
+
+<p>"If you had seen the old men who come here and
+stuff, and die because their livers are wrong, you'd
+know what I mean. Give him enough, but don't
+pamper him."</p>
+
+<p>In the face of this warning, however, Anne fed the
+old drake on tidbits, and visited him at least once a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18"></a>[<a href="./images/18.png">18</a>]</span>
+day. He returned her favors by waiting for her at
+the gate when it was not too cold and, preceding
+her to the house, gave a sort of major-domo effect
+to her progress.</p>
+
+<p>Entering the stable, they found a lantern lighting
+the gloom, and Diogenes in a state of agitation.
+His solitude had been invaded by an Irish setter&mdash;a
+lovely auburn-coated creature with melting eyes, who,
+held by a leash, lay at length on Diogenes' straw
+with Diogenes' blanket keeping off the cold.</p>
+
+<p>The old drake from some remote fastness flung
+his protest to the four winds!</p>
+
+<p>"He's a new one." Peggy patted the dog, who
+rose to welcome them. "He ought to be in the
+kennels. Somebody didn't know."</p>
+
+<p>Somebody probably had not known, but had
+learned. For now the door opened, and a young
+man came in. He was a big young man with fair
+hair, and he had arrived on the train.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon," he said, as he saw them, "but
+they told me I had put my dog in the wrong place."</p>
+
+<p>Peggy was important. "He belongs at the kennels.
+He's in Diogenes' corner."</p>
+
+<p>"Diogenes?"</p>
+
+<p>The old drake, reassured by the sound of voices,
+showed himself for a moment in the track of the
+lantern light.</p>
+
+<p>"There he is," Peggy said, excitedly; "he lives in
+here by himself."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19"></a>[<a href="./images/19.png">19</a>]</span>
+Anne had not spoken, but as she lifted the lantern
+from its nail and held it high, Richard Brooks was
+aware that this was the same girl whom he had
+glimpsed from the train. He had noted then her
+slenderness of outline, the grace and freedom of her
+pose; at closer range he saw her delicate smallness;
+the bloom on her cheek; the dusky softness of her
+hair; the length of her lashes; the sapphire deeps
+of her eyes. Yet it was not these charms which arrested
+his attention; it was, rather, a certain swift
+thought of her as superior to her surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>"Then it is Diogenes whose pardon I must beg,"
+he said, his eyes twinkling as the old drake took
+refuge behind Anne's skirts. "Toby, come out of
+that. It's you for a cold kennel."</p>
+
+<p>"It's not cold in the kennels," Peggy protested; "it
+is nice and warm, and the food is fixed by Eric Brand."</p>
+
+<p>"And where can I find Eric Brand?"</p>
+
+<p>"He isn't here." It was Anne who answered him.
+"He is away for the New Year. Peggy and I have
+been looking after the dogs."</p>
+
+<p>She did not tell him that she had done it because
+she liked dogs, and not because it was a part of her
+day's work. And he did not know that she taught
+school. Hence, as he walked beside her toward the
+kennels, with Peggy dancing on ahead with Toby,
+and with Diogenes left behind in full possession, he
+thought of her, quite naturally, as the daughter of
+Peter Bower.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20"></a>[<a href="./images/20.png">20</a>]</span>
+It was an uproarious pack which greeted them.
+Every Old Gentleman owned a dog, and there was
+Peter's Mamie, two or three eager-eyed pointers,
+setters, hounds and Chesapeake Bay dogs. Old
+Mamie was nondescript, and was shut up in the
+kennels to-night only because Eric was away. She
+was eminently trustworthy, and usually ran at large.</p>
+
+<p>Toby, given a box to himself, turned his melting
+eyes upon his master and whined.</p>
+
+<p>"He was sent to me just before I left New York,"
+Richard explained. "I fancy he is rather homesick.
+I am the only thing in sight that he knows."</p>
+
+<p>"You might take him into the house," Anne said
+doubtfully, "only it is a rule that if there are many
+dogs they all have to share alike and stay out here.
+When there are only two or three they go into the
+sitting-room with the men."</p>
+
+<p>"He can lie down behind the stove in the kitchen,"
+Peggy offered hospitably. "Mamie does."</p>
+
+<p>Richard shook his head. "Toby will have to
+learn with the rest of us that life isn't always what
+we want it to be."</p>
+
+<p>He was startled by the look which the girl with the
+lantern gave him. "Why shouldn't it be as we
+want it?" she said, with sudden fire; "if I were
+Providence, I'd make things pleasant, and you are
+playing Providence to Toby. Why not let him
+have the comfort of the kitchen stove?"</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21"></a>[<a href="./images/21.png">21</a>]</span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<h3><i>In Which a Princess Serving Finds That the Motto
+of Kings is Meaningless.</i></h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Toby</span>, safe and snug behind the kitchen stove,
+was keenly alive to the fact that supper was
+being served. He had had his own supper, so that
+his interest was purely impersonal.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bower cooked, and her daughter Beulah
+waited on the table. The service was not elaborate.
+Everything went in at once, and Peter helped the
+women carry the loaded trays.</p>
+
+<p>Anne Warfield ate usually with the family. She
+would have liked to sit with the Old Gentlemen at
+their genial gatherings, but it would not, she felt,
+have been sanctioned by the Bowers. Their own
+daughter, Beulah, would not have done it. Beulah
+had nothing in common with the jovial hunters and
+fishers. She had her own circle of companions, her
+own small concerns, her own convictions as to the
+frivolity of these elderly guests. She would not
+have cared to listen to what they had to say. She
+did not know that their travels, their adventures,
+their stored-up experience had made them rich in
+anecdote, ready of tongue to tell of wonders un<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22"></a>[<a href="./images/22.png">22</a>]</span>dreamed
+of in the dullness of her own monotonous
+days.</p>
+
+<p>But Anne Warfield knew. Now and then from the
+threshold she had caught the drift of their discourse,
+and she had yearned to draw closer, to sail with
+them on unknown seas of romance and of reminiscence,
+to leave behind her for the moment the atmosphere
+of schoolhouse, of small gossip, of trivial
+circumstance.</p>
+
+<p>It was with this feeling strong upon her that to-night,
+when the supper bell rang, she came into the
+kitchen and asked Mrs. Bower if she might help
+Beulah. She had no feeling that such labor was beneath
+her. If a princess cared to serve, she was
+none the less a princess!</p>
+
+<p>Secure, therefore, in her sense of unassailable dignity,
+she entered the dining-room. She might have
+been a goddess chained to menial tasks&mdash;a small
+and vivid goddess, with dusky hair. Richard
+Brooks, observing her, had once more a swift and
+certain sense of her fineness and of her unlikeness to
+those about her.</p>
+
+<p>The young man with the black ribbon on his eye-glass
+also observed her. Later he said to Mrs.
+Bower, "Can you give me a room here for a
+month?"</p>
+
+<p>"I might. Usually people don't care to stay so
+long at this time of year."</p>
+
+<p>"I am writing a book. I want to stay."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23"></a>[<a href="./images/23.png">23</a>]</span>
+Beside Richard Brooks at the table sat Evelyn
+Chesley. With the Dutton-Ames, and Philip Meade,
+she had come down with Richard and his mother to
+speed them upon their mad adventure.</p>
+
+<p>Evelyn had taken off her hat. Her wonderful hair
+was swept up in a new fashion from her forehead, a
+dull gold comb against its native gold. She wore a
+silken blouse of white, slightly open at the neck.
+On her fingers diamonds sparkled. It seemed to
+Anne, serving, as if the air of the long low room were
+charged with some thrilling quality. Here were
+youth and beauty, wit and light laughter, the perfume
+of the roses which Evelyn wore tucked in her
+belt. There was the color, too, of the roses, and of
+the cloak in which Winifred Ames had wrapped her
+shivering fairness. The cloak was blue, a marvelous
+pure shade like the Madonna blue of some old
+picture.</p>
+
+<p>Even Richard's mother seemed illumined by the
+radiance which enveloped the rest. She was a slender
+little thing and wore plain and simple widow's
+black. Yet her delicate cheeks were flushed, her
+eyes were shining, and her son had made her, too,
+wear a red rose.</p>
+
+<p>The supper was suited to the tastes of the old
+epicures for whom it had been planned. There were
+oysters and ducks with the juices following the
+knife, hot breads, wild grape jelly, hominy and
+celery.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24"></a>[<a href="./images/24.png">24</a>]</span>
+The fattest Old Gentleman carved the ducks.
+The people who had come on the train were evidently
+his friends. Indeed, he called the little lady
+with the shining eyes "Cousin Nancy."</p>
+
+<p>"So you've brought your boy back?" he said,
+smiling down at her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, yes. Cousin Brin, I feel as if I had
+reached the promised land."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll find things changed. Nothing as it was
+in your father's time. Foreigners to the right of
+you, foreigners to the left. Italians, Greeks&mdash;barbarians&mdash;cutting
+the old place into little farms&mdash;blotting
+out the old landmarks."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care; the house still stands, and Richard
+will hang out my father's sign, and when people
+want a doctor, they will come again to Crossroads."</p>
+
+<p>"People in these days go to town for their
+doctors."</p>
+
+<p>Richard's head went up. "I'll make them come
+to me, sir. And you mustn't think that mother
+brought me back. I came because I wanted to
+come. I hate New York."</p>
+
+<p>The listening Old Gentlemen, whose allegiance
+was given to a staid and stately town on the
+Patapsco, quite glowed at that, but Evelyn flamed:</p>
+
+<p>"You might have made a million in New York,
+Richard."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want a million."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," she appealed to Brinsley Tyson, "what can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25"></a>[<a href="./images/25.png">25</a>]</span>
+you do with a man like that&mdash;without red blood&mdash;without
+ambition?"</p>
+
+<p>And now it was Richard who flamed. "I am ambitious
+enough, Eve, but it isn't to make money."</p>
+
+<p>"He has some idea," the girl proclaimed recklessly
+to the whole table, "of living as his ancestors
+lived; as if one <i>could</i>. He believes that people
+should go back to plain manners and to strict
+morals. His mission is to keep this mad world
+sane."</p>
+
+<p>A ripple of laughter greeted her scorn. Her own
+laughter met it. The slim young man at the other
+end of the table swung his eye-glasses from their
+black ribbon negligently, but his eyes missed
+nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"It is my only grievance against you, Mrs.
+Nancy," Eve told the little shining lady. "I love
+you for everything else, but not for this."</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry, my dear. But Richard and I think
+alike. So we are going to settle at Crossroads&mdash;and
+live happy ever after."</p>
+
+<p>Anne Warfield, outwardly calm, felt the blood
+racing in her veins. The old house at Crossroads
+was just across the way from her little school. She
+had walked in the garden every day, and now and
+then she had taken the children there. They had
+watched the squirrels getting ready for the winter,
+and had fed the belated birds with crumbs from the
+little lunch baskets. And there had been the old<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26"></a>[<a href="./images/26.png">26</a>]</span>
+sun-dial to mark the hour when the recess ended
+and to warn them that work must begin.</p>
+
+<p>She had a rapturous vision of what it might be to
+have the old house open, and to see Nancy Brooks
+and her son Richard coming in and out.</p>
+
+<p>Later, however, alone in her dull room, stripped
+of its holiday trappings, the vision faded. To
+Nancy and Richard she would be just the school-teacher
+across the way, as to-night she had been the
+girl who waited on the table!</p>
+
+<p>There was music down-stairs. The whine of the
+phonograph came up to her.</p>
+
+<p>Peggy, knocking, brought an interesting bulletin.</p>
+
+<p>"They are dancing," she said. "Let's sit on the
+stairs and look."</p>
+
+<p>From the top of the stairs they could see straight
+into the long front room. The hall was dimly
+lighted so that they were themselves free from observation.
+Philip Meade and Eve were dancing, and
+the Dutton-Ames. Eve had on very high shoes with
+very high heels. Her skirt was wide and flaring.
+She dipped and swayed and floated, and the grace
+of the man with whom she danced matched her own.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it lovely," said Peggy's little voice, "isn't
+it lovely, Anne?"</p>
+
+<p>It was lovely, lovely as a dream. It was a sort of
+ecstasy of motion. It was youth and joy incarnate.
+Anne had a wild moment of rebellion. Why must
+she sit always at the head of the stairs?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27"></a>[<a href="./images/27.png">27</a>]</span>
+The music stopped. Eve and Philip became one
+of the circle around the fireplace in the front room.
+Again Eve's roses and Winifred's cloak gave color
+to the group. There was also the leaping golden
+flame of the fire, and, in the background, a slight
+blue haze where some of the Old Gentlemen smoked.</p>
+
+<p>The young man with the eye-glasses was telling
+a story. He told it well, and there was much
+laughter when he finished. When the music began
+again, he danced with Winifred Ames. Dutton
+Ames watched them, smiling. He always smiled
+when his eyes rested on his lovely wife.</p>
+
+<p>Evelyn danced with Richard. He did not dance as
+well as Philip, but he gave the effect of doing it
+easily. He swung her finally out into the hall. The
+whine of the phonograph ceased. Richard and Eve
+sat down on a lower step of the stairway.</p>
+
+<p>The girl's voice came up to the quiet watchers
+clearly. "When are you coming to New York to
+dance with me again, Dicky Boy?"</p>
+
+<p>"You must come down here. Pip will bring you
+in his car for the week-ends, with the Dutton-Ames.
+And I'll get a music box and a lot of new records.
+The old dining-room has a wonderful floor."</p>
+
+<p>"I hate your wonderful floor and your horrid old
+house. And when I think of Fifth Avenue and the
+lights and the theaters and you away from it
+all&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Poor young doctors have no right to the lights<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28"></a>[<a href="./images/28.png">28</a>]</span>
+and all the rest of it. Eve, don't let's quarrel at the
+last moment. You'll be reconciled to it all some
+day."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall never be reconciled."</p>
+
+<p>And now Philip Meade was claiming her. "You
+promised me this, Eve."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall have all the rest of the winter for you,
+Pip."</p>
+
+<p>"As if that made any difference! I never put off
+till to-morrow the things I want to do to-day. And
+as for Richard, he'll come running back to us before
+the winter is over."</p>
+
+<p>Richard shrugged. "You're a pair of cheerful
+prophets. Go and fox-trot with him, Eve."</p>
+
+<p>Left alone, the eyes of the young doctor went at
+once to the top of the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"Come down and dance," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean me?" Peggy demanded out of the
+dimness.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean both of you."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't dance&mdash;not the new dances." Anne was
+conscious of an overwhelming shyness. "Take
+Peggy."</p>
+
+<p>"How did you know we were up here?" Peggy
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I heard a little laugh, and a little whisper,
+and I looked up and saw a little girl."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, oh, did you really?"</p>
+
+<p>"Really."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29"></a>[<a href="./images/29.png">29</a>]</span>
+"Well, I can't dance. But I can try."</p>
+
+<p>So they tried, with Richard lifting the child lightly
+to the lilting tune.</p>
+
+<p>When he brought her back, he sat down beside
+Anne. Shyness still chained her, but he chatted easily.
+Anne could not have told why she was shy. In
+the stable she had felt at her ease with him. But
+then she had not seen Eve or Winifred. It was the
+women who had seemed to make the difference.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, however, he had her telling of her
+school. "It begins again to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you like it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Teaching? No. But I love the children."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you teach Peggy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. She is too young, really, but she insists
+upon going."</p>
+
+<p>"There used to be a schoolhouse across the road
+from my grandfather's. A red brick school with a
+bell on top."</p>
+
+<p>"There is still a bell. I always ring it myself, although
+the boys beg to do it. But I like to think of
+myself as the bell ringer."</p>
+
+<p>It was while they sat there that Eric Brand came
+in through the kitchen-way to the hall. He stood
+for a moment looking into the lighted front room
+where Eve still danced with Philip Meade, and where
+the young man with the eye-glasses talked with the
+Dutton-Ames. Anne instinctively kept silent. It
+was Peggy who revealed their hiding place to him.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30"></a>[<a href="./images/30.png">30</a>]</span>
+"Oh, Eric," she piped, "are you back?" She
+went flying down the stairs to him.</p>
+
+<p>He caught her, and holding her in his arms, peered
+up. "Who's there?"</p>
+
+<p>Peggy answered. "It's Anne and the new doctor.
+I danced with him, and he came on the train with
+those other people in there&mdash;and he has a dog named
+Toby&mdash;it's in the kitchen."</p>
+
+<p>"So that's his dog? It will have to go to the
+kennels for the night."</p>
+
+<p>Richard, descending, apologized. "I shouldn't
+have let Toby stay in the house, but Miss Bower put
+in a plea for him."</p>
+
+<p>"Beulah?"</p>
+
+<p>"He means Anne," Peggy explained. "Her name
+is Warfield. It's funny you didn't know."</p>
+
+<p>"How could I?" Richard had a feeling that he
+owed the little goddess-girl an explanation of his
+stupidity. He found himself again ascending the
+stairs.</p>
+
+<p>But Anne had fled. Overwhelmingly she realized
+that Richard had believed her to be the daughter of
+Peter Bower. Daughter of that crude and common
+man! Sister of Beulah! Friend of Eric
+Brand!</p>
+
+<p>Well, she had brought it on herself. She had
+looked after the dogs and she had waited on the
+table. People thought differently of these things.
+The ideals she had tried to teach her children were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31"></a>[<a href="./images/31.png">31</a>]</span>
+not the ideals of the larger world. Labor did not
+dignify itself. The motto of kings was meaningless!
+A princess serving was no longer a princess!</p>
+
+<p>Sitting very tense and still in the little rocking-chair
+in her own room, she decided that of course
+Richard looked down on her. He had perceived in
+her no common ground of birth or of breeding. Yet
+her grandfather had been the friend of the grandfather
+of Richard Brooks!</p>
+
+<p>When Peggy came up, she announced that she
+was to sleep with Anne. It was an arrangement often
+made when the house was full. To-night Anne welcomed
+the cheery presence of the child. She sang
+her to sleep, and then sat for a long time by the little
+round stove with Peggy in her arms.</p>
+
+<p>She laid her down as a knock sounded on her
+door.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you up?" some one asked, and she opened
+it, to find Evelyn Chesley.</p>
+
+<p>"May I borrow a needle?" She showed a torn
+length of lace-trimmed flounce. "I caught it on
+a rocker in my room. There shouldn't be any
+rocker."</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Bower loves them," Anne said, as she hunted
+through her little basket; "she loves to rock and
+rock. All the women around here do."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you're not one of them?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. My grandmother was Cynthia Warfield of
+Carroll."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32"></a>[<a href="./images/32.png">32</a>]</span>
+The name meant nothing to Evelyn. It would
+have meant much to Nancy Brooks.</p>
+
+<p>"How did you happen to come here? I don't see
+how any one could choose to come."</p>
+
+<p>"My mother died&mdash;and there was no one but my
+Great-uncle Rodman Warfield. I had to get something
+to do&mdash;so I came here, and Uncle Rod went
+to live with a married cousin."</p>
+
+<p>Evelyn had perched herself on the post of Anne's
+bed and was mending the flounce. Although she
+was not near the lamp, she gave an effect of gathering
+to her all the light of the room. She was wrapped
+in a robe of rose-color, a strange garment with fur
+to set it off, and of enormous fullness. It spread
+about her and billowed out until it almost hid the
+little bed and the child upon it.</p>
+
+<p>Beside her, Anne in her blue serge felt clumsy and
+common. She knew that she ought not to feel that
+way, but she did. She would have told her scholars
+that it was not clothes that made the man, or dress
+the woman. But then she told her scholars many
+things that were right and good. She tried herself
+to be as right and good as her theories. But it was
+not always possible. It was not possible at this
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>"What brought you here?" Eve persisted.</p>
+
+<p>"I teach school. I came in September."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you teach?"</p>
+
+<p>"Everything. We are not graded."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33"></a>[<a href="./images/33.png">33</a>]</span>
+"I hope you teach them to be honest with themselves."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not sure that I know what you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let them pretend to be something that
+they are not. That's why so many people fail.
+They reach too high, and fall. That's what Nancy
+Brooks is doing to Richard. She is making him
+reach too high."</p>
+
+<p>She laughed as she bent above her needle. "I
+fancy you are not interested in that. But I can't
+think of anything but&mdash;the waste of it. I hope you
+will all be so healthy that you won't need him, and
+then he will have to come back to New York."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see how anybody could leave New York.
+Not to come down here." Anne drew a quick breath.</p>
+
+<p>Eve spoke carelessly: "Oh, well, I suppose it
+isn't so bad here for a woman, but for a man&mdash;a
+man needs big spaces. Richard will be cramped&mdash;he'll
+shrink to the measure of all this&mdash;narrowness."
+She had finished her flounce, and she rose and gave
+Anne the needle. "In the morning, if the weather is
+good, we are to ride to Crossroads. Is your school
+very far away?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is opposite Crossroads. Mrs. Brooks' father
+built it."</p>
+
+<p>Anne spoke stiffly. She had felt the sting of Eve's
+indifference, and she was furious with herself for her
+consciousness of Eve's clothes, of her rings&mdash;of the
+gold comb in her hair.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34"></a>[<a href="./images/34.png">34</a>]</span>
+When her visitor had gone, Anne took down her
+own hair, and flung it up into a soft knot on the top
+of her head. Swept back thus, her face seemed to
+bloom into sudden beauty. She slipped the blue
+dress from her shoulders and saw the long slim line
+of her neck and the whiteness of her skin.</p>
+
+<p>The fire had died down in the little round stove.
+The room was cold. She thought of Eve's rose-color,
+and of the warmth of her furs.</p>
+
+<p>Bravely, however, she hummed the tune to which
+the others had danced. She lifted her feet in time.
+Her shoes were heavy, and she took them off. She
+tried to get the rhythm, the lightness, the grace of
+movement. But these things must be taught, and
+she had no one to teach her.</p>
+
+<p>When at last she crept into bed beside the sleeping
+Peggy, she was chilled to the bone, and she was
+crying.</p>
+
+<p>Peggy stirred and murmured.</p>
+
+<p>Soothing the child, Anne told herself fiercely that
+she was a goose to be upset because Eve Chesley
+had rings and wore rose-color. Why, she was no
+better than Diogenes, who had fumed and fussed
+because Toby had taken his straw in the stable.</p>
+
+<p>But her philosophy failed to bring peace of mind.
+For a long time she lay awake, working it out. At
+last she decided, wearily, that she had wept because
+she really didn't know any of the worth-while things.
+She didn't know any of the young things and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35"></a>[<a href="./images/35.png">35</a>]</span>
+gay things. She didn't know how to dance or
+to talk to men like Richard Brooks. The only
+things that she knew in the whole wide world were&mdash;books!</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36"></a>[<a href="./images/36.png">36</a>]</span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<h3><i>In Which the Crown Prince Enters Upon His Own.</i></h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> developed that the name of the young man with
+the eye-glasses was Geoffrey Fox. Mrs. Bower
+told Anne at the breakfast table, as the two women
+sat alone.</p>
+
+<p>"He is writing a book, and he wants to stay."</p>
+
+<p>"The little dark man?"</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't call him little. He is thin, but he is
+as tall as Richard Brooks."</p>
+
+<p>"Is he?" To Anne it had seemed as if Richard
+had towered above her like a young giant. She had
+scarcely noticed the young man with the eye-glasses.
+He had melted into the background of old gentlemen;
+had become, as it were, a part of a composite
+instead of a single personality.</p>
+
+<p>But to be writing a book!</p>
+
+<p>"What kind of a book, Mrs. Bower?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. He didn't say. I am going to
+give him the front room in the south wing; then he
+will have a view of the river."</p>
+
+<p>When Anne met the dark young man in the hall
+an hour later, she discovered that he had keen eyes
+and a mocking smile.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37"></a>[<a href="./images/37.png">37</a>]</span>
+He stopped her. "Do we have to be introduced?
+I am going to stay here. Did Mrs. Bower tell
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"She told me you were writing a book."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't tell anybody else; I'm not proud of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>He shrugged. "My stories are pot-boilers, most
+of them&mdash;with everybody happy in the end."</p>
+
+<p>"Why shouldn't everybody be happy in the end?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because life isn't that way."</p>
+
+<p>"Life is what we make it."</p>
+
+<p>"Who told you that?"</p>
+
+<p>She flushed. "It is what I tell my school children."</p>
+
+<p>"But have you found it so?"</p>
+
+<p>She faltered. "No&mdash;but perhaps it is my fault."</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't anybody's fault. If the gods smile&mdash;we
+are happy. If they frown, we are miserable. That's
+all there is to it."</p>
+
+<p>"I should hate to think that was all." She was
+roused and ready to fight for her ideals. "I should
+hate to think it."</p>
+
+<p>"All your hating won't make it as you want it,"
+his glance was quizzical, "but we won't quarrel
+about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not," stiffly.</p>
+
+<p>"And we are to be friends? You see I am to stay
+a month."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going to write about us?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38"></a>[<a href="./images/38.png">38</a>]</span>
+"I shall write about the Old Gentlemen. Is there
+always such a crowd of them?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only on holidays and week-ends."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I shall write about you&mdash;&mdash;" daringly.
+"I need a little lovely heroine."</p>
+
+<p>Her look stopped him. His face changed. "I
+beg your pardon," he said quickly. "I should not
+have said that."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you have said it if I had not waited on
+the table?" Her voice was tremulous. The color
+that had flamed in her cheeks still dyed them. "I
+thought of it last night, after I went up-stairs. I
+have been trying to teach my little children in my
+school that there is dignity in service, and so&mdash;I
+have helped Mrs. Bower. But I felt that people did
+not understand."</p>
+
+<p>"You felt that we&mdash;thought less of you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," very low.</p>
+
+<p>"And that I spoke as I did because I did not&mdash;respect
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I beg your pardon. Indeed, I do beg your
+pardon. It was thoughtless. Will you believe that
+it was only because I was thoughtless?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes." But her troubled eyes did not meet his.
+"Perhaps I am too sensitive. Perhaps you would
+have said&mdash;the same things&mdash;to Eve Chesley&mdash;if you
+had just met her. But I am sure you would not have
+said it in the same tone."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39"></a>[<a href="./images/39.png">39</a>]</span>
+He held out his hand to her. "You'll forgive me?
+Yes? And be friends?"</p>
+
+<p>She did not seem to see his hand. "Of course I
+forgive you," she said, with a girlish dignity which
+sat well upon her, "and perhaps I have made too
+much of it, but you see I am so much alone, and I
+think so much."</p>
+
+<p>He wanted to ask her questions, of why she was
+there and of why she was alone. But something in
+her manner forbade, and so they spoke of other
+things until she left him.</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey went out later for a walk in the blinding
+snow. All night it had snowed and the storm had
+a blizzard quality, with the wind howling and the
+drifts piling to prodigious heights. Geoffrey faced
+the elements with a strength which won the respect
+of Richard Brooks who, also out in it, with his
+dog Toby, was battling gloriously with wind and
+weather.</p>
+
+<p>"If we can reach the shelter of the pines," he
+shouted, "they'll break the force of the storm."</p>
+
+<p>Within the wood the snow was in winding sheets
+about the great trees.</p>
+
+<p>"What giant ghosts!" Geoffrey said. "Yet in a
+month or two the sap will run warm in their veins,
+and the silence will be lapped by waves of sound&mdash;the
+singing of birds and of little streams."</p>
+
+<p>"I used to come here when I was a boy," Richard
+told him. "There were violets under the bank, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40"></a>[<a href="./images/40.png">40</a>]</span>
+I picked them and made tight bunches of them and
+gave them to my mother. She was young then. I
+remember that she usually wore white dresses, with
+a blue sash fluttering."</p>
+
+<p>"You lived here then?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, we visited at my grandfather's, a mile or
+two away. He used to drive us down, and he
+would sit out there on the point and fish,&mdash;a grand
+old figure, in his broad hat, with his fishing creel
+over his shoulder. There were just two sports that
+my grandfather loved, fishing and fox-hunting; but
+he was a very busy doctor and couldn't ride often
+to hounds. But he kept a lot of them. He would
+have had a great contempt for Toby. His own dogs
+were a wiry little breed."</p>
+
+<p>"My grandfather was blind, and always in his
+library. So my boyhood was different. I used to
+read to him. I liked it, and I wouldn't exchange
+my memories for yours, except the violets&mdash;I should
+like to pick them here in the spring&mdash;perhaps I shall&mdash;I
+told Mrs. Bower I would take a room for a
+month or more&mdash;and since we have spoken of violets&mdash;I
+may wait for their blooming."</p>
+
+<p>He laughed, and as they turned back, "I have
+found several things to keep me," he said, but he
+did not name them.</p>
+
+<p>All day Anne was aware of the presence in the
+house of the young guests. She was aware of Winifred
+Ames' blue cloak and of Eve's roses. She was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41"></a>[<a href="./images/41.png">41</a>]</span>
+aware of Richard's big voice booming through the
+hall, of Geoffrey's mocking laugh.</p>
+
+<p>But she did not go down among them. She ate
+her meals after the others had finished. She did not
+wait upon the table and she did not sit upon the
+stairs. In the afternoon she wrote a long letter to
+her Great-uncle Rodman, and she went early to bed.</p>
+
+<p>She was waked in the morning by the bustle of
+departure. Some of the Old Gentlemen went back
+by motor, others by train. Warmed by a hearty
+breakfast, bundled into their big coats, they were
+lighted on their way by Eric Brand.</p>
+
+<p>It was just as the sun flashed over the horizon and
+showed the whiteness of a day swept clear by the
+winds of the night that the train for the north carried
+off the Dutton-Ames, Philip and Eve.</p>
+
+<p>Evelyn went protesting. "Some day you are going
+to regret it, Richard."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't croak. Wish me good luck, Eve."</p>
+
+<p>But she would not. Yet when she stood at last
+on the train steps to say "Good-bye," she had in
+her hand one of the roses he had given her and
+which she had worn. She touched it lightly to her
+lips and tossed it to him.</p>
+
+<p>By the time he had picked it up the train was on
+its way, and Evelyn, looking back, had her last
+glimpse of him standing straight and tall against
+the morning sky, the rose in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>It was eight o'clock when Eric drove Anne and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42"></a>[<a href="./images/42.png">42</a>]</span>
+Peggy through the drifts to the Crossroads school.
+It was nine when Geoffrey Fox came down to a late
+breakfast. It was ten when Richard and his mother
+and the dog Toby in a hired conveyance arrived at
+the place which had once been Nancy's home.</p>
+
+<p>Imposing, even in its shabbiness, stood the old
+house, at the end of an avenue of spired cedars.</p>
+
+<p>As they opened the door a grateful warmth met
+them.</p>
+
+<p>"David has been here," Nancy said. "Oh,
+Richard, Richard, what a glorious day to begin."</p>
+
+<p>And now there came from among the shadows a
+sound which made them stop and listen. "Tick,
+tock," said the great hall clock.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, who wound it?"</p>
+
+<p>Nancy Brooks laughed tremulously. "Cousin
+David had the key. In all these years he has never
+let the old clock run down. It seemed queer to
+think of it ticking away in this empty house."</p>
+
+<p>There were tears in her eyes. He stooped and
+kissed her. "And now that you are here, you are
+going to be happy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very happy, dear boy."</p>
+
+<p>It was nearly twelve when David Tyson came
+limping up the path. He had a basket in one hand,
+and a cane in the other. Behind him trotted a
+weedy-looking foxhound. The dog Toby, charging
+out of the door as Nancy opened it, fell, as it were,
+upon the neck of the hound. His overtures of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43"></a>[<a href="./images/43.png">43</a>]</span>
+friendship were met with a dignified aloofness which
+merged gradually into a reluctant cordiality.</p>
+
+<p>Nancy held out both hands to the old man. "I
+saw you coming. Oh, how good it seems to be
+here again, Cousin David."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me look at you." He set the basket down,
+and took her hands in his. Then he shook his
+head. "New York has done things to you," he
+said. "It has given you a few gray hairs. But
+now that you are back again I shall try to forgive
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall never forgive it," she said, "for what it
+has done to me and mine."</p>
+
+<p>"But you are here, and you have brought your
+boy; that's a thing to be thankful for, Nancy."</p>
+
+<p>They were silent in the face of overwhelming
+memories. The only sound in the shadowy hall was
+the ticking of the old clock&mdash;the old clock which
+had tick-tocked in all the years of loneliness with no
+one to listen.</p>
+
+<p>Richard greeted him with heartiness. "This looks
+pretty good to me, Cousin David."</p>
+
+<p>"It's God's country, Richard. Brin hates it. He
+loves his club and the city streets. But for me there's
+nothing worth while but this sweep of the hills and
+the river between."</p>
+
+<p>He uncovered his basket. "Tom put up some
+things for you. I've engaged Milly, a mulatto girl,
+but she can't get here until to-morrow. She is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44"></a>[<a href="./images/44.png">44</a>]</span>
+about the best there is left. Most of them go to
+town. She'll probably seem pretty crude after New
+York servants, Nancy."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care." Nancy almost sang the words.
+"I don't care what I have to put up with, Cousin
+David. I shall sleep to-night under my own roof
+with nothing between me and the stars. And there
+won't be anybody overhead or underneath, and there
+won't be a pianola to the right of me, and a phonograph
+to the left, and there won't be the rumble of
+the subway or the crash of the elevated, and in the
+morning I shall open my eyes and see the sun rise
+over the river, and I shall look out upon the world
+that I love and have loved all of these years&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>And now she was crying, and Richard had her in
+his arms. Over her head he looked at the older
+man. "I didn't dream that she felt like this."</p>
+
+<p>"I knew&mdash;as soon as I saw her. You must never
+take her back, Richard."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not," hotly.</p>
+
+<p>Yet with the perverseness of youth he was aware,
+as he said it, of a sudden sense of revolt against the
+prospect of a future spent in this quiet place. Flashing
+came a vision of the city he had left, of crowded
+hospitals, of big men consulting with big men, of old
+men imparting their secrets of healing to the young;
+of limousines speeding luxuriously on errands of
+mercy; of patients pouring out their wealth to the
+men who had made them well.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45"></a>[<a href="./images/45.png">45</a>]</span>
+All this he had given up because his mother had
+asked it. She had spoken of the place which his
+grandfather had filled, of the dignity of a country
+practice, of the opportunities for research and for
+experiment. At close range, the big town set between
+its rivers and the sea had seemed noisy and
+vulgar. Its people had seemed mad in their race for
+money. Its medical men had seemed to lack the
+fineness and finish which come to those who move
+and meditate in quiet places.</p>
+
+<p>But seen from afar as he saw it now, it seemed a
+wonder city, its tall buildings outlined like gigantic
+castles against the sky. It seemed filled to the brim
+with vivid life. It seemed, indeed, to call him back!</p>
+
+<p>While David and Nancy talked he went out, and,
+from the top of the snowy steps, surveyed his
+domain. Back and back in the wide stretch of
+country which faced him, beyond the valleys, on the
+other side of the hills, were people who would some
+day listen for the step of young Richard as those
+who had gone before had listened for the step of his
+grandfather. He saw himself going forth on stormy
+nights to fight pain and pestilence; to minister to
+little children, to patient mothers; to men beaten
+down by an enemy before whom their strength was
+as wax. They would wait for him, anxious for his
+verdict, yet fearing it, welcoming him as a saviour,
+who would stand with flaming sword between disease
+and the Dark Angel.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46"></a>[<a href="./images/46.png">46</a>]</span>
+The schoolhouse was on the other side of the road.
+It was built of brick like the house. Richard's grandfather
+had paid for the brick. He had believed in
+public schools and had made this one possible.
+Children came to it from all the countryside. There
+were other schools in the sleepy town. This was
+the Crossroads school, as Richard Tyson had been
+the Crossroads doctor. He had given himself to a
+rural community&mdash;his journeys had been long and
+his life hard, but he had loved the labor.</p>
+
+<p>The bell rang for the noon recess. The children
+appeared presently, trudging homeward through
+the snow to their midday dinners. Then Anne Warfield
+came out. She wore a heavy brown coat and
+soft brown hat. In her hand was a small earthen
+dish. She strewed seeds for the birds, and they flew
+down in front of her&mdash;juncoes and sparrows, a tufted
+titmouse, a cardinal blood-red against the whiteness.
+She was like a bird herself in all her brown.</p>
+
+<p>When the dish was empty, she turned it upside
+down, and spread her hands to show that there was
+nothing more. On the Saturday night when she
+had waited on the table, Richard had noticed the
+loveliness of her hands. They were small and white,
+and without rings. Yet in spite of their smallness
+and whiteness, he knew that they were useful hands,
+for she had served well at Bower's. And now he
+knew that they were kindly hands, for she had fed
+the birds who had come begging to her door.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47"></a>[<a href="./images/47.png">47</a>]</span>
+Peggy joined her, and the two came out the gate
+together. Anne looking across saw Richard. She
+hesitated, then crossed the road.</p>
+
+<p>He at once went to meet her. She flushed a little
+as she spoke to him. "Peggy and I want to ask a
+favor. We've always had our little Twelfth Night
+play in the Crossroads stable. And we had planned
+for it this year&mdash;you see, we didn't know that you
+were coming."</p>
+
+<p>"And we were afraid that you wouldn't want us,"
+Peggy told him.</p>
+
+<p>"Were you really afraid?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't. But Miss Anne was."</p>
+
+<p>"I told the children that they mustn't be disappointed
+if we were not able to do this year as we had
+done before. I felt that with people in the house, it
+might not be pleasant for them to have us coming in
+such a crowd."</p>
+
+<p>"It will be pleasant, and mother will be much interested.
+I wish you'd come up and tell us about it."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head. "Peggy and I have just
+time to get back to Bower's for our dinner."</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't the roads bad?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not when the snow is hard."</p>
+
+<p>Peggy went reluctantly. "I think he is perfectly
+lovely," she said, at a safe distance. "Don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne's reply was guarded. "He is very kind. I
+am glad that he doesn't mind about the Twelfth
+Night play, Peggy."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48"></a>[<a href="./images/48.png">48</a>]</span>
+Richard spoke to David of Anne as the two men, a
+few minutes later, climbed the hill toward David's
+house.</p>
+
+<p>"She seems unusual."</p>
+
+<p>"She is the best teacher we have ever had, but
+she ought not to be at Bower's. She isn't their
+kind."</p>
+
+<p>David's little house, set on top of a hill, was small
+and shabby without, but within it was as compact as
+a ship's cabin. David's old servant, Tom, kept it
+immaculate, and there were books everywhere, old
+portraits, precious bits of mahogany.</p>
+
+<p>From the window beside the fireplace there was
+a view of the river. It was a blue river to-day,
+sparkling in the sunshine. David, standing beside
+Richard, spoke of it.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't always blue, but it is always beautiful.
+Even when the snow flies as it did yesterday."</p>
+
+<p>"And are you content with this, Cousin David?"</p>
+
+<p>The answer was evasive. "I have my little law
+practice, and my books. And is any one ever content,
+Richard?"</p>
+
+<p>Going down the hill, Richard pondered. Was
+Eve right after all? Did a man who turned his face
+away from the rush of cities really lack red blood?</p>
+
+<p>Stopping at the schoolhouse, he found teacher
+and scholars still gone. But the door was unlocked
+and he went in. The low-ceiled room was charming,
+and the good taste of the teacher was evident in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49"></a>[<a href="./images/49.png">49</a>]</span>
+its decorations. There were branches of pine and
+cedar on the walls, a picture of Washington at one
+end with a flag draped over it, a pot of primroses in
+the south window.</p>
+
+<p>There were several books on Anne's desk. Somewhat
+curiously he examined the titles. A shabby
+Browning, a modern poet or two, Chesterton, a
+volume of Pepys, the pile topped by a small black
+Bible. Moved by a sudden impulse, he opened the
+Bible. The leaves fell back at a marked passage:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Let not your heart be troubled.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>He shut the book sharply. It was as if he had
+peered into the girl's soul. The red was in his
+cheeks as he turned away.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>That night Nancy Brooks went with Richard to
+his room. On the threshold she stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"I have given this room to you," she said,
+"because it was mine when I was a girl, and all my
+dreams have been shut in&mdash;waiting for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Mother," he caught her hands in his, "you
+mustn't dream too much for me."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me dream to-night;" she was looking up at
+him with her shining eyes; "to-morrow I shall be
+just a commonplace mother of a commonplace son;
+but to-night I am queen, and you are the crown
+prince on the eve of coronation. Oh, Hickory
+Dickory, I am such a happy mother."</p>
+
+<p>Hickory Dickory! It was her child-name for him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50"></a>[<a href="./images/50.png">50</a>]</span>
+She had not often used it of late. He felt that she
+would not often use it again. He was much moved
+by her dedication of him to his new life. He held
+her close. His doubts fled. He thought no more
+of Eve and of her flaming arguments. Somewhere
+out in the snow her rose lay frozen and faded where
+he had dropped it.</p>
+
+<p>And when he slept and dreamed it was of a little
+brown bird which sang in the snow, and the song
+that it sang seemed to leap from the pages of a Book,
+"<i>Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be
+afraid.</i>"</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51"></a>[<a href="./images/51.png">51</a>]</span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h3><i>In Which Three Kings Come to Crossroads.</i></h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Anne's</span> budget of news to her Great-uncle Rod
+swelled to unusual proportions in the week following
+the opening of Crossroads. She had so much
+to say to him, and there was no one else to whom
+she could speak with such freedom and frankness.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><i>By the Round Stove.</i>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dear:</span></p>
+
+<p>I am sending this as an antidote for my doleful
+Sunday screed. Now that the Lovely Ladies are
+gone, I am myself again!</p>
+
+<p>I know that you are saying, "You should never
+have been anything but yourself." That's all very
+well for you who know Me-Myself, but these people
+know only the Outside-Person part of me, and the
+Outside-Person part is stiff and old-fashioned, and
+self-conscious. You see it has been so many months
+since I have hobnobbed with Lilies-of-the-Field and
+with Solomons-in-all-their-Glory. And even when I
+did hobnob with them it was for such a little time,
+and it ended so heart-breakingly. But I am not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52"></a>[<a href="./images/52.png">52</a>]</span>
+going to talk of that, or I shall weep and wail again,
+and that wouldn't be fair to you.</p>
+
+<p>The last Old Gentleman left yesterday in the wake
+of the Lovely Ladies. Did I tell you that Brinsley
+Tyson is a cousin of Mrs. Brooks? His twin
+brother, David, lives up the road. Brinsley is the
+city mouse and David is the country one. They are
+as different as you can possibly imagine. Brinsley
+is fat and round and red, and David is thin and tall
+and pale. Yet there is the "twin look" in their
+faces. The high noses and square chins. Neither
+of them wears a beard. None of the Old Gentlemen
+does. Why is it? Is hoary-headed age a thing of
+the dark and distant past? Are you the only one
+left whose silver banner blows in the breeze? Are
+the grandfathers all trying to look like boys to
+match the grandmothers who try to look like girls?</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Brooks won't be that kind of grandmother.
+She is gentle and serene, and the years will touch
+her softly. I shall like her if she will let me. But
+perhaps little school-teachers won't come within her
+line of vision. You see I learned my lesson in those
+short months when I peeped into Paradise.</p>
+
+<p>I wonder how it would seem to be a Lily-of-the-Field.
+I've never been one, have I? Even when I
+was a little girl I used to stand on a chair to wipe
+the dishes while you washed them. I felt very important
+to be helping mother, and you would talk
+about the dignity of labor&mdash;<i>you darling</i>, with the hot<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53"></a>[<a href="./images/53.png">53</a>]</span>
+water wrinkling and reddening your lovely long
+fingers, which were made to paint masterpieces.</p>
+
+<p>I am trying to pass on to my school children what
+you have given to me, and oh, Uncle Rod, when I
+speak to them I seem to be looking with you, straight
+through the kitchen window, at the sunset. We
+never knew that the kitchen sink was there, did we?
+We saw only the sunsets. And now because you
+are a darling dear, and because you are always seeing
+sunsets, I am sending you a verse or two which
+I have copied from a book which Geoffrey Fox left
+last night at my door.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"When Salomon sailed from Ophir,<br /></span>
+<span class="i12">With Olliphants and gold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4half">The kings went up, the kings went down,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4half">Trying to match King Salomon's crown;<br /></span>
+<span class="i12">But Salomon sacked the sunset,<br /></span>
+<span class="i12">Wherever his black ships rolled.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4half">He rolled it up like a crimson cloth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">And crammed it into his hold.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">CHORUS: "Salomon sacked the sunset,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Salomon sacked the sunset,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">He rolled it up like a crimson cloth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">And crammed it into his hold.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"His masts were Lebanon cedars,<br /></span>
+<span class="i12">His sheets were singing blue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4half">But that was never the reason why<br /></span>
+<span class="i4half">He stuffed his hold with the sunset sky!<br /></span>
+<span class="i12">The kings could cut their cedars,<br /></span>
+<span class="i12">And sail from Ophir, too;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4half">But Salomon packed his heart with dreams,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8"><i>And all the dreams were true</i>."<br /></span></div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54"></a>[<a href="./images/54.png">54</a>]</span>Now join in the chorus, you old dear&mdash;and I'll
+think that I am a little girl again&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"The kings could cut their cedars,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4half">Cut their Lebanon cedars;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4half">But Salomon packed his heart with dreams,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4half"><i>And all</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i8"><i>the dreams</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i16"><i>were true!</i>&nbsp;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p class="right"><i>In the Schoolroom.</i>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;</p>
+
+<p>I told you that Geoffrey Fox left a book for me to
+read. I told you that he wore eye-glasses on a black
+ribbon, that he is writing a novel, and that I don't
+like him. Well, he went into Baltimore this morning
+to get his belongings, and when he comes back
+he will stay until his book is finished. It will be interesting
+to be under the same roof with a story. All
+the shadows and corners will seem full of it. The
+house will speak to him, and the people in it, though
+none of the rest of us will hear the voices, and the
+wind will speak and the leaping flames in the fireplace,
+and the sun and the moon&mdash;and when the
+snow comes it will whisper secrets in his ear and
+presently it will be snowing all through the pages.</p>
+
+<p>It snowed this morning, and from my desk I can
+see young Dr. Brooks shoveling a path from his
+front porch. He and his mother came to Crossroads
+yesterday, and they have been very busy getting
+settled. They have a colored maid, Milly, but no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55"></a>[<a href="./images/55.png">55</a>]</span>
+man, and young Richard does all of the outside
+work. I think I shall like him. Don't you remember
+how as a little girl I always adored the
+Lion-hearted king? I always think of him when I
+see Dr. Brooks. He isn't handsome, but he is broad-shouldered
+and big and blond. I haven't had but
+one chance to speak to him since he and his mother
+left Bower's. Perhaps I shan't have many chances
+to speak to him. But a cat may look at a king!</p>
+
+<p>I am all alone in the schoolroom. The children
+went an hour ago. Eric and Beulah are to call for
+me on their way home from town. They took
+Peggy with them. Did I tell you that Eric is falling
+in love with Beulah? I am not sure whether it
+is the best thing for him, but I am sure it is for her.
+She is very happy, and blushes when he looks at her.
+He is finer than she, and bigger, mentally and spiritually.
+He is crude, but he will grow as so many
+American men do grow&mdash;and there are dreams in
+his clear blue eyes. And, after all, it is the dreams
+that count&mdash;as Salomon discovered.</p>
+
+<p>Yet it may be that Eric will bring Beulah up to
+his level. She is an honest little thing and good and
+loving. Her life is narrow, and she thinks narrow
+thoughts. But he is wise and kind, and already I
+can see that she is trying to keep step with him&mdash;which
+is as it should be.</p>
+
+<p>I like to think that father and mother kept step
+through all the years. She was his equal, his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56"></a>[<a href="./images/56.png">56</a>]</span>comrade;
+she marched by his side with her head up
+fitting her two short steps to his long stride.</p>
+
+<p>King Richard has just waved to me. I stood up
+to see the sunset&mdash;a band of gold with black above,
+and he waved, and started to run across the road.
+Then somebody called him from the house. Perhaps
+it was the telephone and his first patient. If
+I am ever ill, I should like to have a Lion-hearted
+Doctor&mdash;wouldn't you?</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+<p class="right"><i>At the Sign of the Lantern.</i>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;</p>
+
+<p>I am with Diogenes in the stable, with the lantern
+making deep shadows, and the loft steps for a desk.
+Eric and Beulah came for me before I had asked a
+question&mdash;an important question&mdash;so I am finishing
+my letter here, while Eric puts Daisy in her stall,
+and then he will post it for me.</p>
+
+<p>Diogenes has had his corn, and is as happy as
+Brinsley Tyson after a good dinner. Oh, such eating
+and drinking! How these old men love it!
+And you with your bread and milk and your book
+propped up against the lamp, or your handful of
+raisins and your book under a tree!</p>
+
+<p>But I must scribble fast and ask my question. It
+isn't easy to ask. So I'll put it in sections:</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">Do you</span>
+<span class="i8">ever</span>
+<span class="i12">see</span>
+<span class="i16">Jimmie&mdash;Ford?</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57"></a>[<a href="./images/57.png">57</a>]</span></p>
+
+<p>That is the first time that I have written his name
+since I came here. I had made up my mind that I
+wouldn't write it. But somehow the rose-colored
+atmosphere of the other night, and these men of his
+kind have brought it back&mdash;all those whirling weeks
+when you warned me and I wouldn't listen. Uncle
+Rod, if a woman hadn't an ounce of pride she might
+meet such things. If I had not had a grandmother
+as good as Jimmie's and better&mdash;I might have felt
+less&mdash;stricken. Geoffrey Fox spoke to me on Saturday
+in a way which&mdash;hurt. Perhaps I am too sensitive&mdash;but
+I haven't quite learned to&mdash;hold up my
+head.</p>
+
+<p>You mustn't think that I am unhappy. Indeed, I
+am not, except that I cannot be with you. But it is
+good to know that you are comfortable, and that
+Cousin Margaret is making it seem like home.
+Some day we are to have a home, you and I, when
+our ship comes in "with the sunset packed in the
+hold." But now it is well that I have work to do.
+I know that this is my opportunity, and that I must
+make the most of it. There's that proverb of yours,
+"The Lord sends us quail, but he doesn't send them
+roasted." I have written it out, and have tucked it
+into my mirror frame. I shall have to roast my own
+quail. I only hope that I may prove a competent
+cook!</p>
+
+<p>Eric is here, and I must say "Good-bye." Diogenes
+sends love, and a little feather that dropped<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58"></a>[<a href="./images/58.png">58</a>]</span>
+from his wing. Some day he will send a big one
+for you to make a pen and write letters to me. I
+love your letters, and I love you. And oh, you know
+that you have all the heart's best of your own</p>
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Anne.</span>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p class="right"><i>The Morning After the Magi Came.</i>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;</p>
+
+<p>I am up early to tell you about it. But I must go
+back a little because I have had so much else to talk
+about that I haven't spoken of the Twelfth Night
+play.</p>
+
+<p>It seems that years ago, when old Dr. Brooks
+first built the schoolhouse, the children used his
+stable on Twelfth Night for a spectacle representing
+the coming of the Wise Men.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. David had told me of it, and I had planned to
+revive the old custom this year, and had rehearsed
+the children. I thought when I heard that the house
+was to be occupied that I might have to give it
+up. But Peggy and I plucked up our courage and
+asked King Richard, and he graciously gave permission.</p>
+
+<p>It was a heavenly night. Snow on the ground
+and all the stars out. The children met in the
+schoolhouse and we started in a procession. They
+all wore simple little costumes, just some bit of
+bright color draped to give them a quaint picturesqueness.
+One of the boys led a cow, and there
+was an old ewe. Then riding on a donkey, bor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59"></a>[<a href="./images/59.png">59</a>]</span>rowed
+by Mr. David, came the oldest Mary in our
+school. I chose her because I wanted her to understand
+the sacred significance of her name, and our
+only little Joseph walked by her side. The children
+followed and their parents, with the wise men quite
+in the rear, so that they might enter after the
+others.</p>
+
+<p>When we reached the stable, I grouped Joseph
+and Mary in one of the old mangers, where the Babe
+lay, and he was a dear, real, baby brother of Mary.
+I hid a light behind the straw, so that the place was
+illumined. And then my little wise men came in;
+and the children, who with their parents were seated
+on the hay back in the shadows, sang, "We Three
+Kings" and other carols. The gifts which the Magi
+brought were the children's own pennies which they
+are giving to the other little children across the sea
+who are fatherless because of the war.</p>
+
+<p>It was quite wonderful to hear their sweet little
+voices, and to see their rapt faces and to know that,
+however sordid their lives might be, here was
+Dream, founded on the Greatest Truth, which would
+lift them above the sordidness.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Brooks and his mother and Mr. David were
+not far from me, and Dr. Brooks leaned over and
+asked if he might speak to the children. I said I
+should be glad, so he stood up and told them in
+such simple, fine fashion that he wanted to be to
+them all that his grandfather had been to their par<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60"></a>[<a href="./images/60.png">60</a>]</span>ents
+and grandparents. He wanted them to feel
+that his life and service belonged to them. He
+wanted them to know how pleased he was with the
+Twelfth Night spectacle, and that he wanted it to
+become an annual custom.</p>
+
+<p>Then in his mother's name, he asked them to
+come up to the house&mdash;all of them&mdash;and we were
+shown into the Garden Room which opens out upon
+what was once a terraced garden, and there was a
+great cake with candles, and sandwiches, and
+coffee for the grown-ups and hot chocolate for the
+kiddies.</p>
+
+<p>Wasn't that dear? I had little Fran&ccedil;ois thank
+them, and he did it so well. Why is it that these
+small foreigners lack the self-consciousness of our
+own boys and girls? He had been one of the wise
+men in the spectacle, and he still wore his white
+beard and turban and his long blue and red robes.
+Yet he wasn't in the least fussed; he simply made a
+bow, said what he had to say, made another bow,
+with never a blush or a quaver or giggle. His
+mother was there, and she was so happy&mdash;she is a
+widow, and sews in the neighborhood, plain sewing,
+and they are very poor.</p>
+
+<p>I rode home with the Bowers, and as we drove
+along, I heard the children singing. I am sure they
+will never forget the night under the winter stars,
+nor the scene in the stable with the cow and the
+little donkey and the old ewe, and the Light that il<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61"></a>[<a href="./images/61.png">61</a>]</span>lumined
+the manger. I want them always to remember,
+Uncle Rod, and I want to remember. It
+is only when I forget that I lose faith and hope.</p>
+<p class="right">Blessed dear, good-night.&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;</p>
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Your Anne.</span>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62"></a>[<a href="./images/62.png">62</a>]</span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h3><i>In Which Peggy Takes the Center of the Stage.</i></h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> bell on the schoolhouse had a challenging
+note. It seemed to call to the distant hills,
+and the echo came back in answer. It was the voice
+of civilization. "I am here that you may learn of
+other hills and of other valleys, of men who have
+dreamed and of men who have discovered, of nations
+which have conquered and of nations which
+have fallen into decay. I am here that you may
+learn&mdash;<i>ding dong</i>&mdash;that you may learn, <i>ding ding</i>&mdash;that
+you may learn&mdash;<i>ding dong ding</i>&mdash;of Life."</p>
+
+<p>As she rang the bell, Anne had always a feeling of
+exhilaration. Its message was clear to her. She
+hoped it would be clear to others. She tried at least
+to make it clear to her children.</p>
+
+<p>And now they came streaming over the countryside,
+big boys with their little sisters beside them,
+big girls with their little brothers. Some on sleds
+and some sliding. All rosy-cheeked with the coldness
+of the morning.</p>
+
+<p>As they filed in, Anne stood behind her desk.
+They had opening exercises, and then the work of
+the day began.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63"></a>[<a href="./images/63.png">63</a>]</span>
+It began scrappily. Nobody had his mind upon
+it. The children were much excited over the events
+of the preceding night&mdash;over the play and the feast
+which had followed.</p>
+
+<p>Anne, too, was excited. On the way to school she
+had met Richard, and he had joined her and had
+told her of his first patient.</p>
+
+<p>"I had to walk at one o'clock in the morning. I
+must get a horse or a car. I am not quite sure that
+I ought to afford a car. And I like the idea of a
+horse. My grandfather rode a horse."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going to do all the things that your
+grandfather did?"</p>
+
+<p>He was aware of her quick smile. He smiled
+back.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps. I might do worse. He made great
+cures with his calomel and his catnip tea."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you cure your patient with catnip tea?"</p>
+
+<p>"Last night? No. It was a child. Measles. I
+told the rest of the family to stay away from school."</p>
+
+<p>"It is probably too late. They will all have it."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. I am never sick."</p>
+
+<p>Her good health seemed to him another goddess
+attribute. Goddesses were never ill. They lived
+eternally with lovely smiles.</p>
+
+<p>He felt this morning that the world was his. He
+had been called up the night before by a man in
+whose household there had been a tradition of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64"></a>[<a href="./images/64.png">64</a>]</span>
+skill of Richard's grandfather. There had been the
+memory, too, in the minds of the older ones of the
+days when that other doctor had thundered up the
+road to succor and to save. It was a proud moment
+in their lives when they gave to Richard Tyson's
+grandson his first patient. They felt that Providence
+in sending sickness upon them had imposed not a
+penance but a privilege.</p>
+
+<p>Richard had known of their pride and had been
+touched by it, and with the glow of their gratitude
+still upon him, he had trudged down the snowy road
+and had met Anne Warfield!</p>
+
+<p>"You'd better let me come and look over your
+pupils," he had said to her as they parted; "we
+don't want an epidemic!"</p>
+
+<p>He was to come at the noon recess. Anne, anticipating
+his visit, was quite thrillingly emphatic in her
+history lesson. Not that history had anything to do
+with measles, but she felt fired by his example to do
+her best.</p>
+
+<p>She loved to teach history, and she had a lesson
+not only for her children, but for herself. She was
+much ashamed of her mood of Sunday. It had been
+easy enough this morning to talk to Richard; and
+with Evelyn away, clothes had seemed to sink to their
+proper significance. And if she had waited on the
+table she had at least done it well.</p>
+
+<p>Her exposition gained emphasis, therefore, from
+her state of mind.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65"></a>[<a href="./images/65.png">65</a>]</span>
+"In this beautiful land of ours," she said, "all
+men are free&mdash;and equal. You mustn't think this
+means that all of you will have the same amount of
+money or the same kind of clothes, or the same
+things to eat, or even the same kind of minds. But
+I think it means that you ought all to have the same
+kind of consciences. You ought to be equal in right
+doing. And in love of country. You ought to know
+when war is righteous, and when peace is righteous.
+And you can all be equal in this, that no man can
+make you lie or steal or be a coward."</p>
+
+<p>Thus she inspired them. Thus she saw them
+thrill as she had herself been thrilled. And that was
+her reward. For in her school were not only the
+little Johns and the little Thomases and the little
+Richards&mdash;she found herself quite suddenly understanding
+why there were so many Richards&mdash;there
+were also the little Ottos and the little Ulrics and the
+little Wilhelms, and there was Fran&ccedil;ois, whose mother
+went out to sew by the day, and there were Raphael
+and Alessandro and Simon. Out from the big cities
+had come the parents of these children, seeking the
+land, usurping the places of the old American stock,
+doing what had been left undone in the way of sowing
+and planting and reaping, making the little
+gardens yield as they had never yielded, even in
+those wonder days before the war.</p>
+
+<p>It was Anne Warfield's task to train the children
+of the newcomers to the American ideal. With the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66"></a>[<a href="./images/66.png">66</a>]</span>
+blood in her of statesmen and of soldiers it was
+given to her to pass on the tradition of good citizenship.
+She was, indeed, a torch-bearer, lighting the
+way to love of country. Yet for a little while she
+had forgotten it.</p>
+
+<p>She had cried because she could not wear rose-color!</p>
+
+<p>But now her head was high again, and when
+Richard came she showed him her school, and he
+shook hands first with the little girls and then with
+the little boys, and he looked down their throats, and
+asked them questions, and joked and prodded and
+took their temperature, and he did it all in such happy
+fashion that not even the littlest one was afraid.</p>
+
+<p>And when Richard was ready to go, he said to
+her, "I'll look after their bodies if you'll look after
+their minds," and as she watched him walk away,
+she had a tingling sense that they had formed a compact
+which had to do with things above and beyond
+the commonplace.</p>
+
+<p>It began to snow in the afternoon, and it was
+snowing hard when the school day ended. Eric
+Brand came for Anne and Peggy in the funny little
+station carriage which was kept at Bower's. Eric
+and Anne sat on the front seat with Peggy between
+them. The fat mare, Daisy, jogged placidly along
+the still white road. There was a top to the carriage,
+but the snow sifted in, so Anne wrapped Peggy in
+an old shawl.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67"></a>[<a href="./images/67.png">67</a>]</span>
+"I don't need anything," she said, when Eric
+offered her a heavier covering. "I love it&mdash;like
+this&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Eric Brand was big and blond and somewhat
+slow in his movements. But he had brains and held
+the position of telegraph operator at Bower's Station.
+He had, too, a heart of romance. The day before
+he had seen Evelyn toss the rose to Richard, and he
+had found it later where Richard had dropped it.
+He had picked it up, and had put it in water. It
+had seemed to him that the flower must feel the
+slight which had been put upon it.</p>
+
+<p>He spoke now to Anne of Richard. "They say
+he is a good doctor."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't see why he came here."</p>
+
+<p>"His mother wanted him to come. She hates the
+city. She went there as a bride. Her husband was
+rich, but he was always speculating. Sometimes
+they were so poor that she had to do her own work,
+and sometimes they had a half dozen servants. But
+they never had a home. And then all at once he
+lost other people's money as well as his own&mdash;and
+he killed himself&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She turned on him her startled eyes. "Richard's
+father?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. And after that young Brooks decided that
+as soon as he finished his medical course he would
+come here. He thinks that he came because he
+wanted to come. But he won't stay."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68"></a>[<a href="./images/68.png">68</a>]</span>
+"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"You saw his friends. And the women. Some
+day he'll go back and marry that girl&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Evelyn Chesley?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is that her name? She threw him a rose;" he
+forgot to tell her that he had seen it fade.</p>
+
+<p>They had reached the stable garage. Diogenes
+welcomed them from his warm corner. The old dog
+Mamie who had followed the carriage shook the
+snow from her coat and flopped down on the floor
+to rest. The little horse Daisy steamed and whinnied.
+It was a homely scene of sheltered creatures
+in comfortable quarters. Anne knelt down by the
+old drake, and he bent his head under her caressing
+hand. Her face was grave. Eric, watching her,
+asked; "Has it been a hard day?"</p>
+
+<p>"No;" but she found herself suddenly tired.</p>
+
+<p>She went in with Eric presently. They had a
+good hot supper, and Anne was hungry. Gathered
+around the table were Peter and his wife, Beulah
+and Eric, with Peggy rounding out the half dozen.
+Geoffrey Fox had gone to town to get his belongings.</p>
+
+<p>Anne had a vision of Richard and his mother in the
+big house. At their table would be lovely linen and
+shining silver, and some little formality of service.
+She felt that she belonged to people like that. She
+had nothing in common with Peter and his wife and
+with Eric Brand. Nor with Beulah.</p>
+
+<p>Beulah was planning a little party for the evening.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69"></a>[<a href="./images/69.png">69</a>]</span>
+There was to have been skating, but the warmer
+weather and the snow had made that impossible.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know just what I'll do with them," she
+said; "we might have games."</p>
+
+<p>"Anne knows a lot of things." This from Peggy,
+who was busy with her bread and milk.</p>
+
+<p>"What things?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dancing&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Anne flushed. "Peggy!"</p>
+
+<p>"But we do. We make bows like this&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Peggy slid out of her chair and bobbed for them&mdash;a
+most entrancing little curtsey, with all her curls
+flying.</p>
+
+<p>"And the boys do this." She was quite stiff as she
+showed them how the little boys bowed.</p>
+
+<p>Anne seemed to feel some need of defense.
+"Well, they must learn manners."</p>
+
+<p>Peggy, wound up, would not be interrupted. "We
+dance like this," and away she went in a mad gallop.</p>
+
+<p>Anne laughed. "It warms their blood when the
+fire won't burn. Peggy, it isn't quite as bad as that.
+Show them nicely."</p>
+
+<p>So Peggy showed them some pretty steps, and
+then came back to her bread and milk.</p>
+
+<p>"We might dance." Beulah's mind was on her
+party. "But some of them don't know how."</p>
+
+<p>Anne offered no suggestions. She really might
+have helped if she had cared to do it. But she did
+not care.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70"></a>[<a href="./images/70.png">70</a>]</span>
+When she had finished supper, Eric followed her
+into the hall. "You'll come down, won't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not sure."</p>
+
+<p>"Beulah would like it if you would."</p>
+
+<p>"I have a lot of things to do."</p>
+
+<p>"Let them go. You can always work. When
+you hear the fire roaring up the chimney, you will
+know that it is calling to you, 'Come down, come
+down!'"</p>
+
+<p>He stood and watched her as she climbed the stairs.
+Then he went back and helped Beulah.</p>
+
+<p>Beulah was really very pretty, and to-night her
+cheeks were pink as she made her little plans with
+him.</p>
+
+<p>He gave himself pleasantly to her guidance. He
+moved the furniture for her into the big front room,
+so that there would be a space for dancing. And
+presently it became not a sanctum for staid Old
+Gentlemen, but a gathering place for youth and joy.</p>
+
+<p>Eric made his rounds before the company came.
+He looked after the dogs in the kennels and at
+Daisy in her stall. He flashed his lantern into Diogenes'
+dark corner and saw the old drake at rest.</p>
+
+<p>The snow was whirling in a blinding storm when
+at last he staggered in with a great log for the fire,
+and with a basket of cones to make the air sweet.
+And it was as he knelt to put the cones on the fire
+that Anne came in and stood beside him.</p>
+
+<p>She had swept up her hair in the new way from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71"></a>[<a href="./images/71.png">71</a>]</span>
+her forehead. She wore white silk stockings and
+little flat-heeled black slippers, and a flounced white
+frock. She was not in the least in fashion, but she
+was quaintly childish and altogether lovely.</p>
+
+<p>The big man looked up at her. "You look nice
+in that dress."</p>
+
+<p>She smiled down at him. "I'm glad you like it,
+Eric."</p>
+
+<p>When the young belles and beauties of the countryside
+came in later, Anne found herself quite eclipsed
+by their blooming charms. The young men, knowing
+her as the school-teacher, were afraid of her
+brains. They talked to her stiffly, and left her as
+soon as possible for the easier society of girls of
+their own kind. Peggy sat with Anne on the big
+settle beside the fire. The child's hand was hot, and
+she seemed sleepy.</p>
+
+<p>"My eyes hurt," she said, crossly.</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to be in bed, Peggy; shall I take you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. There's going to be an oyster stew.
+Daddy said I might sit up."</p>
+
+<p>Beulah in pink and very important came over to
+them. "Could you show us some of the dances,
+Anne?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Beulah, can't they play games?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think you might help us." Beulah's tone was
+slightly petulant.</p>
+
+<p>Anne stood up. "There's a march I taught the
+children. We could begin with that."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72"></a>[<a href="./images/72.png">72</a>]</span>
+She led the march with Eric. Behind her was the
+loud laughter of the brawny young men, the loud
+laughter of the blooming young women. Their
+merriment sounded a different note from that struck
+by the genial Old Gentlemen or by the gay group of
+young folk from New York. What was the difference?
+Training? Birth?</p>
+
+<p>Anne felt suddenly much alone. She had not belonged
+to Evelyn Chesley's crowd, she did not belong
+with Beulah's friends. She wondered if she
+really belonged anywhere.</p>
+
+<p>Yet as her mind went over and over these things,
+her little slippered feet led the march. Eric was not
+awkward, and he fell easily into the step.</p>
+
+<p>"How nicely we do it together," he said, and
+beamed down on her, and because her heart was
+really a kind little heart and a womanly one, she
+smiled up at him and tried to be as fine and friendly
+as she would have wanted her children to be.</p>
+
+<p>After the dance, the young folks played old-fashioned
+games&mdash;"Going to Jerusalem" and "Post
+Office." Anne fled to the settle when the last game
+was announced. Peggy was moping among the
+cushions.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me take you up to bed, dearie."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I won't. I want to stay here."</p>
+
+<p>The fun was fast and furious. Anne had a little
+shivery feeling as she watched the girls go out into
+the hall and come back blushing. How could they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73"></a>[<a href="./images/73.png">73</a>]</span>
+give so lightly what seemed to her so sacred? A
+woman's lips were for her lover.</p>
+
+<p>She sat very still among the cushions. The fire
+roared up the chimney. Outside the wind blew;
+far away in the distance a dog barked.</p>
+
+<p>The barking dog was young Toby. At the
+heels of his master he was headed straight for
+the long low house and the grateful shelter of its
+warmth.</p>
+
+<p>Richard stood for a moment on the porch, looking
+in through the lighted window. A romping game
+was in full progress. This time it was "Drop the
+Handkerchief" and a plump and pretty girl was
+having a tussle with her captor. Everybody was
+shouting, clapping. Everybody? On an old settle
+by the fire sat a slim girl in a white gown. Peggy
+lay in the curve of her arm, and she was looking
+down at Peggy.</p>
+
+<p>Richard laughed a big laugh. He could not have
+told why he laughed, but he flung the door open,
+and stood there radiant.</p>
+
+<p>"May I come in?" he demanded of Beulah, "or
+will I break up your party?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Dr. Brooks, as if you could. We are so
+glad to have you."</p>
+
+<p>"I had a sick call, and we are half frozen, Toby
+and I, and we saw the lights&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Now the best place for a half-frozen man is by the
+fire, and the best place for an anxious and shivering<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74"></a>[<a href="./images/74.png">74</a>]</span>
+dog is in a warm chimney corner, so in a moment
+the young dog Toby was where he could thaw out
+in a luxurious content, and Richard was on the settle
+beside Anne, and was saying, "Isn't this great? Do
+you think I ought to stay? I'm not really invited,
+you know."</p>
+
+<p>"There's never any formality. Everybody just
+comes."</p>
+
+<p>"I like your frock," he said suddenly. "You remind
+me of a little porcelain figure I saw in a Fifth
+Avenue window not long ago."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me about it," she said with eagerness.</p>
+
+<p>"About what?"</p>
+
+<p>"New York and the shops. Oh, I saw them once.
+They were like&mdash;Heaven."</p>
+
+<p>She laughed up at him as she said it, and he
+laughed back.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd get tired of them if you lived there."</p>
+
+<p>"I should never get tired. And if I had money
+I'd go on in and try on everything. I saw a picture
+of a gown I'd like&mdash;all silver spangles with a pointed
+train. Do you know I've never worn a train? I
+should like one&mdash;and a big fan with feathers."</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head. "Trains wouldn't suit your
+style. Nor big fans. You ought to have a little
+fan&mdash;of sandalwood, with a purple and green tassel
+and smelling sweet. Mother says that her mother
+carried a fan like that at a White House ball."</p>
+
+<p>"I've never been to a ball."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75"></a>[<a href="./images/75.png">75</a>]</span>
+"Well, you needn't want to go. It's a cram and
+a jam and everybody bored to death."</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't be bored. I should love it."</p>
+
+<p>His eyes were on the fire. And presently he said,
+"It seems queer to be away from it&mdash;New York.
+There's something about it that gets into your blood.
+You want it&mdash;as you do&mdash;drink."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you'll be going back."</p>
+
+<p>He jerked around to look at her. "No," sharply;
+"what makes you say that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because&mdash;it&mdash;it doesn't seem possible that you
+could be&mdash;buried&mdash;here."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you feel buried?"</p>
+
+<p>She nodded. "Oh, yes."</p>
+
+<p>His face was grave. "And doesn't the school
+work&mdash;help?"</p>
+
+<p>She caught her breath. "That's the best part of
+it. You see I love&mdash;the children."</p>
+
+<p>He flashed a quick glance at her. "Then you're
+lonely sometimes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"I fancy these people aren't exactly&mdash;your kind.
+I wish you'd come and see my mother. She's awfully
+worth while, you know. And she'd be so glad
+to have you."</p>
+
+<p>She found herself saying, "My grandmother was
+Cynthia Warfield. She knew your grandfather. I
+have some old letters. I think your mother might
+like to see them."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76"></a>[<a href="./images/76.png">76</a>]</span>
+"No wonder I've been puzzling over you! Cynthia
+Warfield's portrait hangs in our library. And
+you're like your grandmother. Only you're young
+and&mdash;alive."</p>
+
+<p>Again his ringing laugh and her own to meet it.
+She felt so young and happy. So very, very young,
+and so very, very happy!</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bower, appearing importantly, announced
+supper. Beyond the hall, through the open door of
+the dining-room they could see the loaded table
+with the tureens of steaming oysters at each end.</p>
+
+<p>There was at once a rollicking stampede.</p>
+
+<p>Anne leaned down to wake Peggy. The child
+opened her heavy eyes, and murmured: "I want
+a drink."</p>
+
+<p>Richard glanced at her. "Hello, hello," he said,
+quickly. "What's the matter, Pussy?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not Pussy&mdash;I'm Peggy." The child was
+ready for tears.</p>
+
+<p>He picked her up in his arms and carried her to
+the light. With careful finger he lifted the heavy
+eyelids and touched the hot little cheeks. "How
+long has she been this way?" he asked Anne.</p>
+
+<p>"Just since supper. Is there anything the matter
+with her? Is she really sick, Dr. Brooks?"</p>
+
+<p>"Measles," he said succinctly. "You'd better get
+her straight to bed."</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77"></a>[<a href="./images/77.png">77</a>]</span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h3><i>In Which a Gray Plush Pussy Cat Supplies a Theme.</i></h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Anne</span> at the top of the stairs talked to Geoffrey
+Fox at the foot.</p>
+
+<p>"But you really ought not to stay."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because if you haven't had the measles you
+might get them, and, besides, poor Mrs. Bower is so
+busy."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not tell me the truth? You don't want
+me to stay."</p>
+
+<p>"What difference can it possibly make to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"It may make a great difference," Geoffrey said,
+quietly, "whether I go or stay, but we won't talk of
+that. I am here. All my traps, bag and baggage,
+typewriter and trunks&mdash;books and bathrobe&mdash;and
+yet you want to send me away."</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't anything to do with it. But the house
+is closed to every one."</p>
+
+<p>"And everything smells of antiseptics. I rather
+like that. I spent six weeks in a hospital once. I
+had a nervous breakdown, and the quiet was
+heavenly, and all the nurses were angels."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78"></a>[<a href="./images/78.png">78</a>]</span>
+She would not smile. "Of course if you will
+stay," she said, "you must take things as they
+come. Mrs. Bower will send your meals up to you.
+She won't have time to set a company table."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not company; let me eat with the rest of
+you."</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated. "You wouldn't like it. I don't
+like it. There's no service, you see&mdash;we all just
+help ourselves."</p>
+
+<p>"I can help myself."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head. "It will be easier for Mrs.
+Bower to bring it up."</p>
+
+<p>He climbed three steps and stopped. "Are you
+going to do all the nursing?"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall do some of it. Peggy is really ill. There
+are complications. And Mrs. Bower and Beulah
+have so much to do. We shall have to close the
+school. Dr. Brooks wants to save as many as possible
+from having it."</p>
+
+<p>"So Brooks is handling Peggy's case."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. Peter Bower knew his grandfather."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it is something to have a grandfather.
+And to follow in his footsteps."</p>
+
+<p>But her mind was not on grandfathers. "Dr.
+Brooks will be here in an hour and I must get
+Peggy's room ready. And will you please look
+after yourself for a little while? Eric will attend to
+your trunks."</p>
+
+<p>It took Geoffrey all the morning to settle. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79"></a>[<a href="./images/79.png">79</a>]</span>
+heard Richard come and go. At noon Anne brought
+up his tray.</p>
+
+<p>Opening the door to her knock, he protested.
+"You shouldn't have done it."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not? It is all in the day's work. And I
+am not going to be silly about it any more."</p>
+
+<p>"You were never silly about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I was. But I have worked it all out in my
+mind. My bringing up the tray to you won't make
+me any less than I am or any more. It is the way
+we feel about ourselves that counts&mdash;not what other
+people think of us."</p>
+
+<p>"So you don't care what I think of you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, not if I am doing the things I think are
+right."</p>
+
+<p>"And you don't care what Richard Brooks
+thinks?"</p>
+
+<p>The color mounted. "No," steadily.</p>
+
+<p>"Nor Miss Chesley?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not."</p>
+
+<p>"Not of course. You do care. You'd hate it if
+you thought they'd criticize. And you'd cry after
+you went to bed."</p>
+
+<p>She felt that such clairvoyance was uncanny. "I
+wouldn't cry."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you'd feel like it."</p>
+
+<p>"Please don't talk about me in that way. It really
+doesn't make any difference how I feel, does it?
+And your lunch is getting cold."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80"></a>[<a href="./images/80.png">80</a>]</span>
+"What made you bring it? Why didn't you let
+Mrs. Bower or Beulah?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Bower is lying down, and Beulah has been
+ironing all the morning."</p>
+
+<p>"The next time call me, and I'll wait upon myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I shall." She surveyed his tray. "I've
+forgotten the cream for your coffee."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't take cream. Oh, please don't go. I
+want you to see my books and my other belongings."</p>
+
+<p>He had brought dozens of books, a few pictures,
+a little gilded Chinese god, a bronze bust of
+Napoleon.</p>
+
+<p>"Everything has a reason for being dragged
+around with me. That etching of Helleu's is like
+my little sister, Mimi, who is at school in a convent,
+and who constitutes my whole family. The gilded
+Chinese god is a mascot&mdash;the Napoleon intrigues
+the imagination."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think so much of Napoleon?" coldly.
+"He was a little great man. I'd rather talk to my
+children of George Washington."</p>
+
+<p>"You women have a grudge against him because
+of Josephine."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. He killed something in himself when he
+put her from him. And the world knew it, and his
+downfall began. He forgot that love is the greatest
+thing in the world."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81"></a>[<a href="./images/81.png">81</a>]</span>
+How lovely she was, all fire and feeling!</p>
+
+<p>"Jove," he said, staring, "if you could write,
+you'd make people sit up and listen. You've kept
+your dreams. That's what the world wants&mdash;the
+stuff that dreams are made of. And most of us
+have lost ours by the time we know how to put
+things on paper."</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>For days the sound of Geoffrey's typewriter could
+be heard in the hall. "Does it disturb Peggy?" he
+asked Anne late one night as he met her on the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"No; her room is too far away. You were so
+good to send her the lovely toys. She adores the
+plush pussy cat."</p>
+
+<p>"I like cats. They are coy&mdash;and caressing. Dogs
+are too frankly adoring."</p>
+
+<p>"The eternal masculine." She smiled at him.
+"Is your work coming on?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have a first chapter. May I read it to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Please&mdash;I should love it."</p>
+
+<p>She was glad to sit quietly by the big fireplace.
+With eyes half-closed, she listened to the opening
+sentences. But as he proceeded, her listlessness
+vanished. And when he laid down the manuscript
+she was leaning forward, her slim hands clasped
+tensely on her knees, her eyes wide with interest.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, oh," she told him, "how do you know it all&mdash;how
+can you make them live and breathe&mdash;like
+that?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82"></a>[<a href="./images/82.png">82</a>]</span>
+For a moment he did not answer, then he said,
+"I don't know how I do it. No artist knows how
+he creates. It is like Life and Death&mdash;and other
+miracles. If I could keep to this pace, I'd have a
+masterpiece. But I shan't keep to it."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"I never do."</p>
+
+<p>"But this time&mdash;with such a beginning."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you be my critic, Mistress Anne? Let me
+read to you now and then&mdash;like this?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid I should spoil you with praise. It
+all seems so&mdash;wonderful."</p>
+
+<p>"You can't spoil me, and I like to be wonderful."</p>
+
+<p>In spite of his egotism, she found herself modifying
+her first unfavorable estimate of him. His quick
+eager speech, his mobile mouth, his mop of dark
+hair, his white restless hands, his long-lashed near-sighted
+eyes, these contributed a personality which
+had in it nothing commonplace or conventional.</p>
+
+<p>For three nights he read to her. On the fourth he
+had nothing to read. "It is the same old story," he
+burst out passionately. "I see mountain peaks,
+then, suddenly, darkness falls and my brain is
+blank."</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a little," she told him; "it will come back."</p>
+
+<p>"But it never comes back. All of my good beginnings
+flat out toward the end. And that's why I'm
+pot-boiling, because," bitterly, "I am not big enough
+for anything else."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83"></a>[<a href="./images/83.png">83</a>]</span>
+"You mustn't say such things. We achieve only
+as we believe in ourselves. Don't you know that?
+If you believe that things are going to end badly,
+they will end badly."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, wise little school-teacher, how do you
+know?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is what I teach my children. That they must
+believe in themselves."</p>
+
+<p>"What else do you teach them?"</p>
+
+<p>"That they must believe in God and love their
+country, and then nothing can happen to them that
+they cannot bear. It is only when one loses faith
+and hope that life doesn't seem worth while."</p>
+
+<p>"And do you believe all that you teach?"</p>
+
+<p>Silence. She was gazing into the fire thoughtfully.
+"I believe it, but I don't always live up to it.
+That's the hard part, acting up the things that we
+believe. I tell my children that, and I tell them, too,
+that they must always keep on trying."</p>
+
+<p>She was delicious with her theories and her seriousness.
+And she was charming in the crisp blue
+gown that had been her uniform since the beginning
+of Peggy's illness.</p>
+
+<p>He laughed and leaned toward her. "Oh, Mistress
+Anne, Mistress Anne, how much you have to learn."</p>
+
+<p>She stood up. "Perhaps I know more than you
+think."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you angry because I said that? But I love
+your arguments."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84"></a>[<a href="./images/84.png">84</a>]</span>
+His frankness was irresistible; she could not take
+offense so she sat down again.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps," she said, hesitating, "you might understand
+better how I feel if I told you about my Great-uncle
+Rodman Warfield. When he was very young
+he went to Paris to study art, and he attracted much
+attention. Then after a while he began to find the
+people interested him more than pictures. You see
+we come from old Maryland stock. My grandmother,
+Cynthia Warfield, was one of the proudest
+women in Carroll. But Uncle Rodman doesn't believe
+in family pride, not the kind that sticks its nose
+in the air; and so when he came back to America
+he resolved to devote his talents to glorifying the
+humble. He lived among the poor and he painted
+pictures of them. And then one day there was an
+accident. He saved a woman from drowning between
+a ferry-boat and the slip, and he hurt his back.
+There was a sort of paralysis that affected the nerves
+of his hand&mdash;and he couldn't paint any more. He
+came to us&mdash;when I was a little girl. My father was
+dead, and mother had a small income. We couldn't
+afford servants, so mother sewed and Uncle Rod and
+I did the housework. And it was he who tried to
+teach me that work is the one royal thing in our
+lives."</p>
+
+<p>"Where is he now?"</p>
+
+<p>"When mother died our income was cut off, and&mdash;I
+had to leave him. He could have a home with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85"></a>[<a href="./images/85.png">85</a>]</span>
+a cousin of ours and teach her children. I might
+have stayed with her, but there was nothing for me
+to do. And we felt that it was best for me to&mdash;find
+myself. So I came here. He writes to me&mdash;every
+day&mdash;&mdash;" She drew a long breath. "I don't think
+I could live without letters from my Uncle Rod."</p>
+
+<p>"So you are really a princess in disguise, and
+you would love to stick your nose in the air, but you
+don't quite dare?"</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't love to do anything snobbish."</p>
+
+<p>"There is no use in pretending that you are
+humble when you are not. And your Great-uncle
+Rodman is a dreamer. Life is what it is, not what
+we want it to be."</p>
+
+<p>"I like his dreams," she said, simply, "and I want
+to be as good as he thinks I am."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't have to be too good. You are too
+pretty. Do you know that Cynthia Warfield's
+granddaughter is a great beauty, Mistress Anne?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know that I don't like to have you say such
+things to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am not sure that you mean them."</p>
+
+<p>"But I do mean them," eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps," stiffly, "but we won't talk about it.
+I must go up to Peggy."</p>
+
+<p>Peter Bower was with Peggy. He was a round
+and red-faced Peter with the kindest heart in the
+world. And Peggy was the apple of his eye.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86"></a>[<a href="./images/86.png">86</a>]</span>
+"Do you think she is better, Miss Anne?"</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed I do. And now you go and get some
+sleep, Mr. Bower. I'll stay with her until four, and
+then I'll wake Beulah."</p>
+
+<p>He left her with the daily paper and a new
+magazine, and with the light shaded, Anne sat down
+to read. Peggy was sleeping soundly with both
+arms around the plush pussy which Geoffrey had
+given her. It was a most lifelike pussy, gray-striped
+with green glass eyes and with a little red
+mouth that opened and mewed when you pulled a
+string. Hung by a ribbon around the pussy cat's
+neck was a little brass bell. As the child stirred in
+her sleep the little bell tinkled. There was no sound
+except the sighing of the wind. All the house was
+still.</p>
+
+<p>The paper was full of news of the great war.
+Anne read it carefully, and the articles on the same
+subject in the magazine. She felt that she must
+know as much as possible, so that she might speak
+to her children intelligently of the great conflict. Of
+Belgium and England, of France and Germany.
+She must be fair, with all those clear eyes focussed
+upon her. She must, indeed, attempt a sort of
+neutrality. But how could she be neutral, with her
+soul burning candles on the altar of the allies?</p>
+
+<p>As she read on and on in the silence of the night,
+there came to her the thought of the dead on the
+field of battle. What of those shining souls? What<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87"></a>[<a href="./images/87.png">87</a>]</span>
+happened after men went out into the Great Beyond?
+Hun and Norman, Saxon and Slav, among
+the shadows were they all at Peace?</p>
+
+<p>Again the child stirred and the little bell tinkled.
+It seemed to Anne that the bell and the staring eyes
+were symbolic. The gay world played its foolish
+music and looked with unseeing eyes upon murder
+and madness. If little Peggy had lain there dead,
+the little bell would still have tinkled, the wide green
+eyes would still have stared.</p>
+
+<p>But Peggy, thank God, was alive. Her face, like
+old ivory against the whiteness of her pillow, showed
+the ravages of illness, but the doctor had said she
+was out of danger.</p>
+
+<p>The child stirred and spoke. "Anne," she whispered,
+"tell me about the bears."</p>
+
+<p>Anne knelt beside the bed. "We must be very
+quiet," she said. "I don't want to wake Beulah."</p>
+
+<p>So very softly she told the story. Of the Daddy
+Bear and the Mother Bear and the Baby Bear; of
+the little House in the Woods; of Goldilocks, the
+three bowls of soup, the three chairs, the three
+beds&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of it all Peggy sat up. "I want a
+bowl of soup like the little bear."</p>
+
+<p>"But, darling, you've had your lovely supper."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care." Peggy's lip quivered. "I'm just
+starved, and I can't wait until I have my breakfast."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me tell you the rest of the story."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88"></a>[<a href="./images/88.png">88</a>]</span>
+"No. I don't want to hear it. I want a bowl of
+soup like the little bear's."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe it wasn't nice soup, Peggy."</p>
+
+<p>"But you <i>said</i> it was. You said that the Mother
+Bear made it out of the corn from the farmer's field,
+and the cock that the fox brought, and she seasoned
+it with herbs that she found at the edge of the forest.
+You said yourself it was <i>dee-licious</i> soup, Miss Anne."</p>
+
+<p>She began to cry weakly.</p>
+
+<p>"Dearie, don't. If I go down into the kitchen
+and warm some broth will you keep very still?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Only I don't want just broth. I want
+soup like the little bear had."</p>
+
+<p>"Peggy, I am not a fairy godmother. I can't
+wave my wand and get things in the middle of the
+night."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, anyhow, you can put it in a blue bowl, you
+<i>said</i> the little bear had his in a blue bowl, and you
+said he had ten crackers in it. I want ten crackers&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The kitchen was warm and shadowy, with the
+light of a kerosene lamp above the cook-stove. Anne
+flitted about noiselessly, finding a little saucepan,
+finding a little blue bowl, breaking one cracker into
+ten bits to satisfy the insistent Peggy, stirring the
+bubbling broth with a spoon as she bent above it.</p>
+
+<p>And as she stirred, she was thinking of Geoffrey
+Fox, not as she had thought of Richard, with pulses
+throbbing and heart fluttering, but calmly; of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89"></a>[<a href="./images/89.png">89</a>]</span>
+book and of the little bust of Napoleon, and of the
+things that she had been reading about the war.</p>
+
+<p>She poured the soup out of the saucepan, and set
+it steaming on a low tray. Then quietly she ascended
+the stairs. Geoffrey's door was wide open
+and his room was empty, but through the dimness
+of the long hall she discerned his figure, outlined
+against a wide window at the end. Back of him the
+world under the light of the waning moon showed
+black and white like a great wash drawing.</p>
+
+<p>He turned as she came toward him. "I heard
+you go down," he said. "I've been writing all
+night&mdash;and I've written&mdash;perfect rot." His hands
+went out in a despairing gesture.</p>
+
+<p>Composed and quiet in her crisp linen, she looked
+up at him. "Write about the war," she said; "take
+three soldiers,&mdash;French, German and English. Make
+their hearts hot with hatred, and then&mdash;let them lie
+wounded together on the field of battle in the darkness
+of the night&mdash;with death ahead&mdash;and let each
+one tell his story&mdash;let them be drawn together by
+the knowledge of a common lot&mdash;a common destiny&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What made you think of that?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Peggy's pussy cat." She told him of the staring
+eyes and the tinkling bell. "But I mustn't stay.
+Peggy is waiting for her soup."</p>
+
+<p>He gazed at her with admiration. "How do you
+do it?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90"></a>[<a href="./images/90.png">90</a>]</span>
+"Do what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dictate a heaven-born plot to me in one breath,
+and speak of Peggy's soup in the next. You are
+like Werther's Charlotte."</p>
+
+<p>"I am like myself. And we mustn't stay here
+talking. It is time we were both in bed. I am going
+to wake Beulah when I have fed Peggy."</p>
+
+<p>He made a motion of salute. "The princess
+serves," he said, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>But as she passed on, calm and cool and collected,
+carrying the tray before her like the famous Chocolate
+lady on the backs of magazines, the laugh died
+on his lips. She was not to be laughed at, this little
+Anne Warfield, who held her head so high!</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91"></a>[<a href="./images/91.png">91</a>]</span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<h3><i>In Which Geoffrey Writes of Soldiers and Their
+Souls.</i></h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Eve chesley</span> writing from New York was
+still in a state of rebellion.</p>
+
+<p>"And now they all have the <i>measles</i>. Richard, it
+needed only your letter to let me know what you
+have done to yourself. When I think of you, tearing
+around the country on your old white horse,
+with your ears tied up&mdash;I am sure you tie up your
+ears&mdash;it is a perfect nightmare. Oh, Dicky Boy,
+and you might be here specializing on appendicitis
+or something equally reasonable and modern. I
+feel as if the world were upside down. Do children
+in New York ever have the measles? Somehow I
+never hear of it. It seems to me almost archaic&mdash;like
+mumps. Nobody in society ever has the
+mumps, or if they do, they keep it a dead secret, like
+a family skeleton, or a hard-working grandfather.</p>
+
+<p>"Your letters are so short, and they don't tell me
+what you do with your evenings. Don't you miss
+us? Don't you miss me? And our good times?
+And the golden lights of the city? Winifred Ames
+wants you for a dinner dance on the twentieth.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92"></a>[<a href="./images/92.png">92</a>]</span>
+Can't you turn the measley kiddies over to some
+one else and come? Say 'yes,' Dicky, dear. Oh,
+you musn't be just a country doctor. You were
+born for bigger things, and some day you will see
+it and be sorry."</p>
+
+<p>Richard's letter, dashed off between visits to the
+"measley kiddies," was as follows:</p>
+
+<p>"There aren't any bigger things, Eve, and I
+shan't be sorry. I can't get away just now, and to
+be frank, I don't want to. There is nothing dull
+about measles. They have aspects of interest unknown
+to a dinner dance. I am not saying that I
+don't miss some of the things that I have left behind&mdash;my
+good friends&mdash;you and Pip and the Dutton-Ames.
+But there are compensations. And you
+should see my horse. He's a heavy fellow like a
+horse of Flanders; I call him Ben because he is big
+and gentle. I don't tie up my ears, but I should if I
+wanted to. And please don't think I am ungrateful
+because I am not coming to the Dutton-Ames dance.
+Why don't you and the rest drift down here for a
+week-end? Next Friday, the Friday after? Let me
+know. There's good skating now that the snows
+have stopped."</p>
+
+<p>He signed it and sealed it and on the way to see
+little Peggy he dropped it into the box. Then he
+entirely forgot it. It was a wonderful morning, with a
+sky like sapphire above a white world, the dog Toby
+racing ahead of him, and big gentle Ben at a trot.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93"></a>[<a href="./images/93.png">93</a>]</span>
+At the innocent word "compensations" Evelyn
+Chesley pricked up her ears. What compensations?
+She got Philip Meade on the telephone.</p>
+
+<p>"Richard has asked us for the week-end, Pip.
+Could we go in your car?"</p>
+
+<p>"Unless it snows again. But why seek such
+solitudes, Eve?"</p>
+
+<p>"I want to take Richard a fur cap. I am sure he
+ties up his ears."</p>
+
+<p>"Send it."</p>
+
+<p>"In a cold-blooded parcel post package? I will
+not. Pip, if you won't go, I'll kidnap Aunt Maude,
+and carry her off by train."</p>
+
+<p>"And leave me out? Not much. 'Whither thou
+goest&mdash;&mdash;'"</p>
+
+<p>"Even when I am on the trail of another man?
+Pip, you are a dear idiot."</p>
+
+<p>"The queen's fool."</p>
+
+<p>So it was decided that on Friday, weather permitting,
+they should go.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Maude, protesting, said, "It isn't proper,
+Eve. Girls in my day didn't go running around
+after men. They sat at home and waited."</p>
+
+<p>"Why wait, dearest? When I see a good thing
+I go for it."</p>
+
+<p>"Eve&mdash;&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>"And anyhow I am not running after Dicky. I
+am rescuing him."</p>
+
+<p>"From what?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94"></a>[<a href="./images/94.png">94</a>]</span>
+"From his mother, dearest, and his own dreams.
+Their heads are in the clouds, and they don't
+know it."</p>
+
+<p>"I think myself that Nancy is making a mistake."</p>
+
+<p>"More of a mistake than she understands." The
+lightness left Eve's voice. She was silent as she ate
+an orange and drank a cup of clear coffee. Eve's
+fashionable and adorable thinness was the result
+of abstinence and of exercise. Facing daily Aunt
+Maude's plumpness, she had sacrificed ease and
+appetite on the altar of grace and beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Yet Aunt Maude's plumpness was not the plumpness
+of inelegance. Nothing about Aunt Maude was
+inelegant. She was of ancient Knickerbocker stock.
+She had been petrified by years of social exclusiveness
+into something less amiable than her curves
+and dimples promised. Her hair was gray, and not
+much of it was her own. Her curled bang and high
+coronet braid were held flatly against her head by a
+hair net. She wore always certain chains and bracelets
+which proclaimed the family's past prosperity.
+Her present prosperity was evidenced by the somewhat
+severe richness of her attire. Her complexion
+was delicately yellow and her wrinkles were deep.
+Her eyes were light blue and coldly staring. In
+manner she seemed to set herself against any world
+but her own.</p>
+
+<p>The money on which the two women lived was
+Aunt Maude's. She expected to make Eve her heir.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95"></a>[<a href="./images/95.png">95</a>]</span>
+In the meantime she gave her a generous allowance
+and indulged most of her whims.</p>
+
+<p>The latest whim was the new breakfast room in
+which they now sat, with the winter sun streaming
+through the small panes of a wide south window.</p>
+
+<p>For sixty odd years Aunt Maude had eaten her
+breakfast promptly at eight from a tray in her own
+room. It had been a hearty breakfast of hot breads
+and chops. At one she had lunched decently in
+the long dim dining-room in a mid-Victorian atmosphere
+of Moquet and marble mantels, carved walnut
+and plush curtains.</p>
+
+<p>And now back of this sacred dining-room Eve
+had built out a structure of glass and of stone, looking
+over a scrap of enclosed city garden, and furnished
+in black and white, relieved by splashes of
+brilliant color. Aunt Maude hated the green parrot
+and the flame-colored fishes in the teakwood
+aquarium. She thought that Eve looked like an
+actress in the little jacket with the apple-green ribbons
+which she wore when she came down at twelve.</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't we ever going to eat any more luncheons?"
+had been Aunt Maude's plaintive question
+when she realized that she was in the midst of a
+gastronomic revolution.</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody does, dearest. If you are really up-to-date
+you breakfast and dine&mdash;the other meals are
+vague&mdash;illusory."</p>
+
+<p>"People in my time&mdash;&mdash;" Aunt Maude had stated.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96"></a>[<a href="./images/96.png">96</a>]</span>
+"People in your time," Evelyn had interrupted flippantly,
+"were wise and good. Nobody wants to be
+wise and good in these days. We want to be smart
+and sophisticated. Your good old stuffy dining-rooms
+were like your good old stuffy consciences.
+Now my breakfast room is symbolic&mdash;the green and
+white for the joy of living, and the black for my
+sins."</p>
+
+<p>She stood up on tiptoe to feed the parrot. "To-morrow,"
+she announced, "I am to have a black
+cat. I found one at the cat show&mdash;with green eyes.
+And I am going to match his cushion to his eyes."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like a cat," Aunt Maude said, unexpectedly,
+"but I can't say that I care for black ones. The
+grays are the best mousers."</p>
+
+<p>Eve looked at her reproachfully. "Do you think
+that cats catch mice?" she demanded,&mdash;"up-to-date
+cats? They sit on cushions and add emphasis to
+the color scheme. Winifred Ames has a yellow one
+to go with her primrose panels."</p>
+
+<p>The telephone rang. A maid answered it. "It
+is for you, Miss Evelyn."</p>
+
+<p>"It is Pip," Eve said, as she turned from the telephone;
+"he's coming up."</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Maude surveyed her. "You're not going to
+receive him as you are?"</p>
+
+<p>"As I am? Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Eve, go to your room and put something <i>on</i>,"
+Aunt Maude agonized; "when I was a girl&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97"></a>[<a href="./images/97.png">97</a>]</span>
+Evelyn dropped a kiss on her cheek. "When you
+were a girl, Aunt Maude, you were very pretty, and
+you wore very low necks and short sleeves on the
+street, and short dresses&mdash;and&mdash;and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Remembering the family album, Aunt Maude
+stopped her hastily. "It doesn't make any difference
+what I wore. You are not going to receive
+any gentleman in that ridiculous jacket."</p>
+
+<p>Eve surveyed herself in an oval mirror set above
+a console-table. "I think I look rather nice. And
+Pip would like me in anything. Aunt Maude, it's a
+queer world for us women. The men that we want
+don't want us, and the men that we don't want adore
+us. The emancipation of women will come when
+they can ask men to marry them."</p>
+
+<p>She was ruffling the feathers on the green parrot's
+head. He caught her finger carefully in his claw
+and crooned.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Maude rose. "I had twenty proposals&mdash;your
+uncle's was the twentieth. I loved him at first
+sight, and I loved him until he left me."</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle was a dear," Eve agreed, "but suppose
+he hadn't asked you, Aunt Maude?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should have remained single to the end of my
+days."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, you wouldn't, Aunt Maude. You would
+have married the wrong man&mdash;that's the way it always
+ends&mdash;if women didn't marry the wrong men
+half the world would be old maids."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98"></a>[<a href="./images/98.png">98</a>]</span>
+Philip Meade was much in love. He had money,
+family, good looks and infinite patience. Some day
+he meant to marry Eve. But he was aware that
+she was not yet in love with him.</p>
+
+<p>She came down gowned for the street. And thus
+kept him waiting. "It was Aunt Maude's fault.
+She made me dress. Pip, where shall we walk?"</p>
+
+<p>He did not care. He cared only to be with her.
+He told her so, and she smiled up at him wistfully.
+"You're such a dear&mdash;I wish&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you wish?" he asked eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"For the&mdash;sun. You are the moon. May I call
+you my moon-man, Pip?"</p>
+
+<p>He knew what she meant "Yes. But you
+must remember that some day I shall not be content
+to take second place&mdash;I shall fight for the head
+of your line of lovers."</p>
+
+<p>"Line of lovers&mdash;<i>Pip</i>. I don't like the sound
+of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not? It's true."</p>
+
+<p>Again she was wistful. "I wonder how many of
+them really&mdash;care? Pip, it is the one-proposal girl
+who is lucky. She has no problems. She simply
+takes the man she can get!"</p>
+
+<p>They were swinging along Fifth Avenue. He
+stopped at a flower shop and bought her a tight
+little knot of yellow roses which matched her hair.
+She was in brown velvet with brown boots and brown<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99"></a>[<a href="./images/99.png">99</a>]</span>
+furs. Her skin showed pink and white in the clear
+cold. She and the big man by her side were a pair
+good to look upon, and people turned to look.</p>
+
+<p>Coming to a famous jewel shop she turned in. "I
+am going to have all of Aunt Maude's opals set in
+platinum to make a long chain. She gave them to
+me; and there'll be diamonds at intervals. I want
+to wear smoke-colored tulle at Winifred Ames' dinner
+dance&mdash;and the opals will light it."</p>
+
+<p>Philip Meade's mind was not poetic, yet as his
+eyes followed Evelyn, he was aware that this was an
+atmosphere which belonged to her. Her beauty was
+opulent, needing richness to set it off, needing the
+shine of jewels, the shimmer of silk&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>If he married her he could give her&mdash;a tiara of
+diamonds&mdash;a necklace of pearls&mdash;a pendant&mdash;a ring.
+His eyes swept the store adorning her.</p>
+
+<p>When they came out he said, "I think I am
+showing a greatness of mind which should win
+your admiration."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"In taking you to Crossroads."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"You know why. Shall you write to Brooks that
+we are coming?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. I want it to be a surprise. That's half the
+fun."</p>
+
+<p>But there was nothing funny about it, as it
+proved, for it was on that very Friday morning that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100"></a>[<a href="./images/100.png">100</a>]</span>
+Richard had found Peggy much better, and Anne
+very pale with circles under her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>He went away, and later his mother called Anne
+up. She asked her to spend the day at Crossroads.
+Richard would come for her and would bring her
+home after dinner.</p>
+
+<p>Anne, with a fluttering sense of excitement, packed
+her ruffled white frock in a little bag, and was ready
+when Richard arrived.</p>
+
+<p>At the gate they met Geoffrey Fox. The young
+doctor stopped his horse. "Come and have lunch
+with us, Fox?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry. But I must get to work. How long
+are you going to keep Miss Warfield?"</p>
+
+<p>"As late as we can."</p>
+
+<p>"To-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"I have a chapter ready to read to her, and you
+ask her to eat with you as if she were any every-day
+sort of person. Did you know that she is to play
+Beatrice to my Dante?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be silly," Anne said; "you mustn't listen
+to him, Dr. Brooks."</p>
+
+<p>Richard's eyes went from one to the other.
+"What do you know of Fox?" he asked, as they
+drove on.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing, except that he is writing a book."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll ask Eve about him; she's a lion-hunter and
+she's in with a lot of literary lights."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101"></a>[<a href="./images/101.png">101</a>]</span>
+Even as he spoke Evelyn was speeding toward
+him in Philip's car. He had forgotten her and his
+invitation for the week-end. But she had not forgotten,
+and she sparkled and glowed as she thought
+of Richard's royal welcome. For how could she
+know, as she drew near and nearer, that he was
+welcoming another guest, taking off the little
+teacher's old brown coat, noting the flush on her
+young cheeks, the pretty appeal of her manner to
+his mother.</p>
+
+<p>"You are sure I won't be in the way, Mrs.
+Brooks?"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, my dear, of course not. Richard has
+been telling me that your grandmother was Cynthia
+Warfield. Did you know that my father was in
+love with Cynthia before he married my mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"The letters said so."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall want to see them. And to hear about
+your Great-uncle Rodman. We thought at one time
+that he was going to be famous, and then came that
+dreadful accident."</p>
+
+<p>They had her in a big chair now, with a high
+back which peaked over her head and Nancy had
+another high-backed chair, and Richard standing
+on the hearth-rug surveyed the two of them contentedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, I am going to give myself fifteen minutes
+right here and a half hour for lunch, and then
+I'll go out and make calls, and you and Miss War<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102"></a>[<a href="./images/102.png">102</a>]</span>field
+can take a nap and be ready to talk to me to-night."</p>
+
+<p>Anne smiled up at him. "Do you always make
+everybody mind?"</p>
+
+<p>"I try to boss mother a bit&mdash;but I am not sure
+that I succeed."</p>
+
+<p>Before luncheon was served Cynthia Warfield's
+picture, which hung in the library, was pointed out
+to Anne. She was made to stand under it, so that
+they might see that her hair was the same color&mdash;and
+her eyes. Cynthia was painted in pink silk with a
+petticoat of fine lace, and with pearls in her hair.</p>
+
+<p>"Some day," Anne said, "when my ship comes
+in, I am going to wear stiff pink silk and pearls and
+buckled slippers and yards and yards of old lace."</p>
+
+<p>"No, you're not," Richard told her; "you are going
+to wear white with more than a million ruffles,
+and little flat black shoes. Mother, you should have
+seen her at Beulah Bower's party."</p>
+
+<p>"White is always nice for a young girl," said pleasant
+Nancy Brooks.</p>
+
+<p>The dining-room looked out upon the river, with
+an old-fashioned bay window curving out. The table
+was placed near the window. Anne's eyes brightened
+as she looked at the table. It was just as she had
+pictured it, all twinkling glass and silver, and with
+Richard at the head of it. But what she had not
+pictured was the moment in which he stood to say
+the simple and beautiful grace which his grandfather<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103"></a>[<a href="./images/103.png">103</a>]</span>
+had said years before in that room of many memories.</p>
+
+<p>The act seemed to set him apart from other men.
+It added dignity and strength to his youth and radiance.
+He was master of a house, and he felt that
+his house should have a soul!</p>
+
+<p>Anne, writing of it the next night to her Uncle
+Rod, spoke of that simple grace:</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle Rod, it seemed to me that while most of
+the world was forgetting God, he was remembering
+Him. Nobody says grace at Bower's&mdash;and sometimes
+I don't even say it in my heart. He looked
+like a saint as he stood there with the window behind
+him. Wasn't there a soldier saint&mdash;St. Michael?</p>
+
+<p>"Could you imagine Jimmie Ford saying grace?
+Could you imagine him even at the head of his own
+table? When I used to think of marrying him, I
+had a vision of eternal motor riding in his long blue
+car&mdash;with the world rushing by in a green streak.</p>
+
+<p>"But I am not wanting much to talk of Jimmie
+Ford. Though perhaps before I finish this I shall
+whisper what I thought of the things you had to say
+of him in your letter.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, after lunch I had a nap, and then there was
+dinner with David Tyson in an old-fashioned dress-suit,
+and Mrs. Nancy in thin black with pearls, and
+St. Michael groomed and shining.</p>
+
+<p>"It was all quite like a slice of Heaven after my
+hard days nursing Peggy. We had coffee in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104"></a>[<a href="./images/104.png">104</a>]</span>
+library, and then Dr. Richard and I went into the
+music-room and I played for him. I sang the song
+that you like about the 'Lady of the West Country':</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"&nbsp;'I think she was the most beautiful lady<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">That ever was in the West Country.<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">But beauty vanishes, beauty passes,<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">However rare, rare it be;<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">And when I crumble who shall remember<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">That Lady of the West Country?'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"He liked it and made me sing it twice, and then
+a dreadful thing happened. A motor stopped at
+the door and some one ran up the steps. We heard
+voices and turned around, and there were the Lovely
+Ladies back again with the two men, and a chauffeur
+in the background with the bags!</p>
+
+<p>"It seems that they had motored down at Dr.
+Richard's invitation for a week-end, and that he had
+forgotten it!</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you are asking, 'Why was it a dreadful
+thing, my dear?' Uncle Rod, I stood there
+smiling a welcome at them all, and Dr. Richard
+said: 'You know Miss Warfield, Eve,' and then she
+said, 'Oh, yes,' in a frigid fashion, and I knew by
+her manner that back in her mind she was remembering
+that I was the girl who had waited on the
+table!</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you needn't tell me that I mustn't feel that
+way, Uncle Rod. I feel it, and feel it, and <i>feel</i> it.
+How can I help feeling it when I know that if I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105"></a>[<a href="./images/105.png">105</a>]</span>
+had Evelyn Chesley's friends and Evelyn's fortune,
+people would look on Me-Myself in quite a different
+way. You see, they would judge me by the Outside-Person
+part of me, which would be soft and
+silky and secure, and not dowdy and diffident.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Uncle Rod, is Geoffrey Fox right? And
+have you and I been dreaming all these years? The
+rest of the world doesn't dream; it makes money
+and spends it, and makes money and spends it, and
+makes money and spends it. Only you and I are
+still old-fashioned enough to want sunsets; the rest
+of them want motor cars and yachts and trips to
+Europe. That was what Jimmie Ford wanted, and
+that was why he didn't want me.</p>
+
+<p>"There, I have said it, Uncle Rod. Your letter
+made me know it. Perhaps I have hoped and
+hoped a little that he might come back to me. <ins class="err" title="Transcriber's Note: added missing word, 'I'">I</ins>
+have made up scenes in my mind of how I would
+scorn him and send him away, and indeed I would
+send him away, for there isn't any love left&mdash;only a
+lot of hurt pride.</p>
+
+<p>"To think that he saw you and spoke to you and
+didn't say one word about me. And just a year ago
+at Christmas time, do you remember, Uncle Rod?
+The flowers he sent, and the pearl ring&mdash;and now
+the flowers are dead, and the ring went back to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I can't talk about it even to you!</p>
+
+<p>"Well, all the evening Eve Chesley held the
+center of the stage. And the funny part of it was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106"></a>[<a href="./images/106.png">106</a>]</span>
+that I found myself much interested in the things
+she had to tell. Her life is a sort of Arabian Nights'
+existence. She lives with her Aunt Maude in a big
+house east of Central Park, and she told about the
+green parrot for her new black and white breakfast
+room, and the flame-colored fishes in an aquarium&mdash;and
+she is having her opals set in platinum to go
+with a silver gown that she is to wear at the Dutton-Ames
+dance.</p>
+
+<p>"I like the Dutton-Ames. He is dark and massive&mdash;a
+splendid foil for his wife's slenderness and
+fairness. They are much in love with each other.
+He always sits beside her if he can, and she looks up
+at him and smiles, and last night I saw him take her
+hand where it hung among the folds of her gown,
+and he held it after that&mdash;and it made me think of
+father and mother&mdash;and of the way they cared.
+Jimmie Ford could never care like that&mdash;but Dr.
+Richard could. He cares that way for his mother&mdash;he
+could care for the woman he loved.</p>
+
+<p>"He took me home in Mr. Meade's limousine. It
+was moonlight, and he told the chauffeur to drive
+the long way by the river road.</p>
+
+<p>"I like him very much. He believes in things,
+and&mdash;and I rather think, that <i>his</i> ship is packed with
+dreams&mdash;but I am not sure, Uncle Rod."</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>It was when Anne had come in from her moonlight
+ride with Richard, shutting the door carefully<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107"></a>[<a href="./images/107.png">107</a>]</span>
+behind her, that she found Geoffrey Fox waiting for
+her in the big front room.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," she stammered.</p>
+
+<p>"And you really have the grace to blush? Do
+you know what time it is?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Twelve! Midnight! And you have been riding
+with only the chauffeur for chaperone."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"And you have kept me waiting. That's the
+worst of it. You may break all of the conventional
+commandments if you wish. But you mustn't keep
+me waiting."</p>
+
+<p>His laugh rang high, his cheeks were flushed.
+Anne had never seen him in a mood like this. In
+his loose coat with a flowing black tie and with his
+ruffled hair curling close about his ears, he looked
+boyish and handsome like the pictures she had seen
+of Byron in an old book.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down, sit down," he was insisting; "now
+that you are here, you must listen."</p>
+
+<p>"It is too late," she demurred, "and we'll wake
+everybody up."</p>
+
+<p>"No, we shan't. The doors are shut. I saw to
+that. We are as much alone as if we were in a
+desert. And I can't sleep until I have read that
+chapter to you&mdash;please&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Reluctantly, with her wraps on, she sat down.</p>
+
+<p>"Take off your hat."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108"></a>[<a href="./images/108.png">108</a>]</span>
+He stood over her while she removed it, and
+helped her out of her coat "Look at me," he
+said, peremptorily. "I hate to read to wandering
+eyes."</p>
+
+<p>He threw himself into a chair and began:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>So they marched away&mdash;young Franz from Nuremberg
+and young George from London, and Michel
+straight from the vineyards on the coast of France.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>That was the beginning of Geoffrey Fox's famous
+story: "The Three Souls," the story which was to
+bring him something of fortune as well as of fame,
+the story which had been suggested to Anne Warfield
+by the staring eyes of Peggy's pussy cat.</p>
+
+<p>As she listened, Anne saw three youths starting
+out from home, marching gaily through the cities
+and steadily along the roads&mdash;marching, marching&mdash;Franz
+from Nuremburg, young George from London,
+and Michel from his sunlighted vineyards,
+drawing close and closer, unconscious of the fate
+that was bringing them together, thinking of the
+glory of battle, and of the honor of Kaiser and King
+and of the Republic.</p>
+
+<p>The shadow of the great conflict falls gradually
+upon them. They meet the wounded, the refugees,
+they hear the roar of the guns, they listen to the
+tales of those who have been in the thick of it.</p>
+
+<p>Then come privations, suffering, winter in the
+trenches&mdash;Franz on one side, young George on the
+other, and Michel; then fighting&mdash;fear&mdash;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109"></a>[<a href="./images/109.png">109</a>]</span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey stopped there. "Shall I have them
+afraid?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think they would be afraid. But they would
+keep on fighting, and that would be heroic."</p>
+
+<p>She added, "How well you do it!"</p>
+
+<p>"This part is easy. It will be the last of it that
+I shall find hard&mdash;when I deal with their souls."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you must show at the last that it is because
+of their souls that they are brothers. Each man has
+had a home, he has had love, each of them has had
+his hopes and dreams for the future, for his middle-age
+and his old age, and now there is to be no
+middle-age, no old age&mdash;and in their knowledge of
+their common lot their hatred dies."</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid I can't do it," he said, moodily. "I
+should have to swing myself out into an atmosphere
+which I have never breathed."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I am of the earth&mdash;earthy. I have sold my
+birthright, I have yearned for the flesh-pots, I have
+fed among&mdash;swine. I have done all of the other
+things which haven't Biblical sanction. And now
+you expect me to write of souls."</p>
+
+<p>"I expect you to give to the world your best.
+You speak of your talent as if it were a little thing.
+And it is not a little thing."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean that&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that it is&mdash;God given."</p>
+
+<p>Out of a long silence he said: "I thank you for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110"></a>[<a href="./images/110.png">110</a>]</span>
+saying that. Nobody has ever said such a thing to
+me before."</p>
+
+<p>He let her go then. And as she stood before her
+door a little later and whispered, "Good-night," he
+caught her hand and held it. "Mistress Anne&mdash;will
+you remember me&mdash;now and then&mdash;in your little
+white prayers?"</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111"></a>[<a href="./images/111.png">111</a>]</span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<h3><i>In Which a Green-Eyed Monster Grips Eve.</i></h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Evelyn</span>, coming down late on the morning
+after her unexpected arrival, asked: "How did
+you happen to have her here, Dicky?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who?"</p>
+
+<p>"The little waitress?"</p>
+
+<p>"Eve&mdash;&mdash;" warningly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, the little school-teacher."</p>
+
+<p>"Since when did you become a snob, Eve?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be so sharp about it, Dicky. I'm not a
+snob. But you must admit that it was rather surprising
+to find her here, when the last time I saw
+her she was passing things at the Bower's table."</p>
+
+<p>"She is a granddaughter of Cynthia Warfield."</p>
+
+<p>"Who's Cynthia? I never heard of her."</p>
+
+<p>"You have seen her portrait in our library."</p>
+
+<p>"Which portrait?"</p>
+
+<p>He led the way and showed it to her. Eve,
+looking at it thoughtfully, remarked, "Why should
+a girl like that lower herself by serving&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"She probably doesn't feel that she can lower herself
+by anything. She is what she is."</p>
+
+<p>She shrugged. "You know as well as I that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112"></a>[<a href="./images/112.png">112</a>]</span>
+people can't do such things&mdash;and get away with it.
+She may be very nice and all that&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"She is nice."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, don't lose your temper over it, and don't
+fall in love with her, Dicky."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't you done enough foolish things without
+doing&mdash;that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Doing what?" ominously.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you know what I mean," impatiently.
+"Aren't you ever going to come to your senses,
+Dicky?"</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose we don't talk of it, Eve."</p>
+
+<p>She found herself wanting to talk of it. She
+wanted to rage and rant. She was astonished at
+the primitiveness of her emotions. She had laughed
+her way through life and had prided herself on the
+dispassionateness of her point of view. And now it
+was only by the exercise of the utmost self-control
+that she was able to swing the conversation toward
+other topics.</p>
+
+<p>The coming of the rest of the party eased things
+up a little. They had all slept late, and Richard
+had made a half dozen calls before he had joined
+Eve in the Garden Room. He had stopped at
+David's, and had heard that on Monday there was
+to be a drag-hunt and breakfast at the club. David
+hoped they would all stay over for it.</p>
+
+<p>"Cousin David has a bunch of weedy-looking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113"></a>[<a href="./images/113.png">113</a>]</span>
+hounds," Richard explained; "he lets them run as
+they please, and they've been getting up a fox nearly
+every night. He thought you might like to ride up
+to the ridge in the moonlight and have a view of
+them. I can get you some pretty fair mounts at
+Bower's."</p>
+
+<p>There was a note of wistful appeal in Eve's voice.
+"Do you really want us, Dicky?"</p>
+
+<p>He smiled at her. "Of course. Don't be silly,
+Eve."</p>
+
+<p>She saw that she was forgiven, and smiled back.
+She had not slept much the night before. She had
+heard Richard come in after his ride with Anne, and
+she had been waked later by the sound of the telephone.
+In the room next to hers Richard's subdued
+voice had answered. And presently there had been
+the sound of his careful footsteps on the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>She had crept out of bed and between the curtains
+had looked out. The world was full of the shadowy
+paleness which comes with the waning of the moon.
+The road beyond the garden showed like a dull gray
+ribbon against the blackness of the hills. On this
+road appeared presently Richard on his big white
+horse, the dog Toby, a shadow among the shadows
+as he ran on ahead of them.</p>
+
+<p>On and on they sped up the dull gray road, a
+spectral rider on a spectral horse. She had wondered
+where he might be going. It must have been
+some sudden and urgent call to take him out thus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114"></a>[<a href="./images/114.png">114</a>]</span>
+in the middle of the night. For the first time she
+realized what his life meant. He could never really
+be at his ease. Always there was before him the
+possibility of some dread adventure&mdash;death might
+be on its way at this very moment.</p>
+
+<p>Wide-awake and wrapped in her great rug, she
+had waited, and after a time Richard had returned.
+The dawn was rising on the hills, and the world was
+pink. His head was up and he was urging his
+horse to a swift gallop.</p>
+
+<p>When at last he reached his room, she had gone
+to bed. But when she slept it was to dream that
+the man on the white horse was riding away from
+her, and that when she called he would not come.</p>
+
+<p>But now with his smile upon her, she decided that
+she was making too much of it all. The affair with
+the little school-teacher might not be in the least
+serious. Men had their fancies, and Dicky was not
+a fool.</p>
+
+<p>She knew her power over him, and her charm.
+His little boyhood had been heavy with sorrow and
+soberness; she had lightened it by her gaiety and
+good nature. Eve had taken her orphaned state
+philosophically. Her parents had died before she
+knew them. Her Aunt Maude was rich and gave
+her everything; she was queen of her small domain.
+Richard, on the other hand, had been early oppressed
+by anxieties&mdash;his care for his strong little
+mother, his real affection for his weak father, cul<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115"></a>[<a href="./images/115.png">115</a>]</span>minating
+in the tragedy which had come during his
+college days. In all the years Eve had been his
+good comrade and companion. She had cheered
+him, commanded him, loved him.</p>
+
+<p>And he had loved her. He had never analyzed
+the quality of his love. She was his good friend,
+his sister. If he had ever thought of her as his
+sweetheart or as his wife, it had always been with
+the feeling that Eve had too much money. No man
+had a right to live on his wife's bounty.</p>
+
+<p>He had a genuinely happy day with her. He
+showed her the charming old house which she had
+never seen. He showed her the schoolhouse, still
+closed on account of the epidemic. He showed her
+the ancient ballroom built out in a separate wing.</p>
+
+<p>"A little money would make it lovely, Richard."</p>
+
+<p>"It is lovely without the money."</p>
+
+<p>Winifred Ames spoke earnestly from the window
+where, with her husband's arm about her, she was
+observing the sunset. "Some day Tony and I are
+going to have a house like this&mdash;and then we'll be
+happy."</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you happy now?" her husband demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. But not on my own plan, as it were."
+Then softly so that no one else could hear, "I want
+just you, Tony&mdash;and all the rest of the world away."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Heart&mdash;&mdash;" He dared not say more, for
+Pip's envious eyes were upon them.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116"></a>[<a href="./images/116.png">116</a>]</span>
+"When I marry you, Eve, may I hold your hand
+in public?"</p>
+
+<p>"You may&mdash;when I marry you."</p>
+
+<p>"Good. Whenever I lose faith in the bliss of
+matrimony, I have only to look at Win and Tony
+to be cheered and sustained by their example."</p>
+
+<p>Nancy, playing the little lovely hostess, agreed.
+"If they weren't so new-fashioned in every way I
+should call them an old-fashioned couple."</p>
+
+<p>"Love is never out of fashion, Mrs. Nancy," said
+Eve; "is it, Dicky Boy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ask Pip."</p>
+
+<p>"Love," said Philip solemnly, "is the newest
+thing in the world and the oldest. Each lover is a
+Columbus discovering an unknown continent."</p>
+
+<p>In the hall the old clock chimed. "Nobody is to
+dress for dinner," Richard said, "if we are to ride
+afterward. I'll telephone for the horses."</p>
+
+<p>He telephoned and rode down later on his big
+Ben to bring the horses up. As he came into the
+yard at Bower's he saw a light in the old stable.
+Dismounting, he went to the open door. Anne was
+with Diogenes. The lantern was set on the step
+above her, and she was feeding the old drake. Her
+body was in the shadow, her face luminous. Yet
+it was a sober little face, set with tired lines. Looking
+at her, Richard reached a sudden determination.</p>
+
+<p>He would ask her to ride with them to the ridge.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117"></a>[<a href="./images/117.png">117</a>]</span>
+At the sound of his voice she turned and her face
+changed. "Did I startle you?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No," she smiled at him. "Only I was thinking
+about you, and there you were." There was no
+coquetry in her tone; she stated the fact frankly and
+simply. "Do you remember how you put Toby in
+here, and how Diogenes hated it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I remember how you looked under the lantern."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh,"&mdash;she had not expected that,&mdash;"do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. But I had seen you before. You were
+standing on a rock with holly in your arms. I saw
+you from the train throw something into the river.
+I have often wondered what it was."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't want to burn my holly wreaths after
+Christmas. I hate to burn things that have been
+alive."</p>
+
+<p>"So do I. Eve would say that we were sentimentalists.
+But I have never quite been able to see
+why a sentimentalist isn't quite as worthy of respect
+as a materialist&mdash;however, I am not here to argue
+that. I want you to ride with me to the ridge. To
+see the foxes by moonlight," he further elucidated.
+"Run in and get ready. I am to take some horses
+up for the others."</p>
+
+<p>She rose and reached for her lantern. "The
+others?" she looked an inquiry over her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Eve and her crowd. They are still at Crossroads."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118"></a>[<a href="./images/118.png">118</a>]</span>
+She stood irresolute. Then, "I think I'd rather
+not go."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" sharply.</p>
+
+<p>She told him the truth bravely. "I am a little
+afraid of women like that."</p>
+
+<p>"Of Eve and Winifred? Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"We are people of two worlds, Dr. Brooks&mdash;and
+they feel it."</p>
+
+<p>His conversation with Eve recurring to him, he
+was not prepared to argue. But he was prepared to
+have his own way.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't your world mine?" he demanded. "And
+you mustn't mind Eve. She's all right when you
+know her. Just stiffen your backbone, and remember
+that you are the granddaughter of Cynthia
+Warfield."</p>
+
+<p>After that she gave in and came down presently
+in a shabby little habit with her hair tied with a
+black bow. "It's a good thing it is dark," she said.
+"I haven't any up-to-date clothes."</p>
+
+<p>As they went along he asked her to go to the
+hunt breakfast on Monday.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't. School opens and my work begins."</p>
+
+<p>"By Jove, I had forgotten. I shall be glad to
+hear the bell. When I am riding over the hills it
+seems to call&mdash;as it called to my grandfather and to
+be saying the same things; it is a great inspiration
+to have a background like that to one's life. Do
+you know what I mean?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119"></a>[<a href="./images/119.png">119</a>]</span>
+She did know, and they talked about it&mdash;these two
+young and eager souls to whom life spoke of things
+to be done, and done well.</p>
+
+<p>Eve, standing on the steps at Crossroads, saw
+them coming. "Oh, I'm not going," she said to
+Winifred passionately.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"He has that girl with him."</p>
+
+<p>"What girl?"</p>
+
+<p>"Anne Warfield."</p>
+
+<p>Winifred's eyes opened wide. "She's a darling,
+Eve. I liked her so much last night."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see why he has to bring her into everything."</p>
+
+<p>"All the men are in love with her; even Tony has
+eyes for her, and Pip&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What makes you defend her, Win? She isn't
+one of us, and you know it."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know it. She belongs to older stock
+than either you or I, Eve. And if she didn't, don't
+you know a lady when you see one?"</p>
+
+<p>Eve threw up her hands. "I sometimes think
+the world is going mad&mdash;there aren't any more lines
+drawn."</p>
+
+<p>"If there were," said Winifred softly, and perhaps
+a bit maliciously, "I fancy that Anne Warfield might
+be the one to draw them&mdash;and leave us on the wrong
+side, Eve."</p>
+
+<p>It was Winifred who welcomed Anne, and who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120"></a>[<a href="./images/120.png">120</a>]</span>
+rode beside her later, and it was of Winifred that
+Anne spoke repentantly as she and Richard rode
+together in the hills. "I want to take back the
+things I said about Mrs. Ames. She is just&mdash;heavenly
+sweet."</p>
+
+<p>He smiled. "I knew you would like her," he
+said. But neither of them mentioned Eve.</p>
+
+<p>For Evelyn's manner had been insufferable. Anne
+might have been a shadow on the grass, a cloud
+across the sky, a stone in the road for all the notice
+she had taken of her. It was a childish thing to do,
+but then Eve was childish. And she was having
+the novel experience of being overlooked for the first
+time by Richard. She was aware, too, that she had
+offended him deeply and that the cause of her offending
+was another woman.</p>
+
+<p>When they came to the ridge Richard drew Anne's
+horse, with his own, among the trees. He left Eve
+to Pip. Winifred and her husband were with David.</p>
+
+<p>Far off in the distance a steady old hound gave
+tongue&mdash;then came the music of the pack&mdash;the
+swift silent figure of the fox, straight across the open
+moonlighted space in front of them.</p>
+
+<p>Anne gave a little gasp. "It is old Pete," Richard
+murmured; "they'll never catch him. I'll tell you
+about him on the way down."</p>
+
+<p>So as he rode beside her after that perfect hour in
+which the old fox played with the tumultuous pack,
+at his ease, monarch of his domain, unmindful of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121"></a>[<a href="./images/121.png">121</a>]</span>
+silent watchers in the shadows, Richard told her of old
+Pete; he told her, too, of the traditions of a ghostly
+fox who now and then troubled the hounds, leading
+them into danger and sometimes to death.</p>
+
+<p>He went on with her to Bower's, and when he
+left her he handed her a feathery bit of pine. "I
+picked it on the ridge," he said. "I don't know
+whether you feel as I do about the scrub pines of
+Maryland and of Virginia; somehow they seem to
+belong, as you and I do, to this country."</p>
+
+<p>When Anne went to her room she stuck the bit
+of pine in her mirror. Then in an uplifted mood
+she wrote to Uncle Rod. But she said little to him
+of Richard or of Eve. Her own feelings were too
+mixed in the matter to permit of analysis. But she
+told of the fox in the moonlight. "And the loveliest
+part of it all was that nothing happened to him. I
+don't think that I could have stood it to have had
+him killed. He was so free&mdash;and unafraid&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>The next night Anne in the long front room at
+Bower's told Peggy and Fran&ccedil;ois all about it.
+Fran&ccedil;ois' mother was sewing for Mrs. Bower, and as
+the distance was great, and she could not go home
+at night, her small son was sharing with her the
+hospitality which seemed to him rich and royal in
+comparison with the economies practised in his own
+small home.</p>
+
+<p>It was a select company which was gathered in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122"></a>[<a href="./images/122.png">122</a>]</span>
+front of the fire. Fran&ccedil;ois and Peggy and Anne and
+old Mamie, with the white house cat, Josephine, and
+three kittens in a basket, and Brinsley Tyson smoking
+his pipe in the background.</p>
+
+<p>"And the old fox went tit-upping and tit-upping
+along the road in the moonlight, and Dr. Richard
+and I stood very still, and we saw him&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Last night?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"And what did you do, Miss Anne?"</p>
+
+<p>"We listened and heard the dogs&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Little Fran&ccedil;ois clasped his hands. "Oh, were the
+dogs after him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Did they get him?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. He is a wise old fox. He lives up beyond
+the Crossroads garden. Dr. Brooks thought when
+they came there to live that he would go away but
+he hasn't. You see, it is his home. The hunters
+here all know him, and they are always glad when
+he gets away."</p>
+
+<p>Brinsley agreed. "There are so few native foxes
+left in the county that most of us call off the dogs
+before a killing&mdash;we'd soon be without sport if we
+didn't. An imported fox is a creature in a trap; you
+want the sly old natives to give you a run for your
+money."</p>
+
+<p>Little Fran&ccedil;ois, dark-eyed and dreamy, delivered
+an energetic opinion. "I think it is horrid."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123"></a>[<a href="./images/123.png">123</a>]</span>
+Peggy, less sensitive, and of the country, reproved
+him. "It's gentleman's sport, isn't it, Mr. Brinsley?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. To me the dogs and horses are the best
+part of it. The older I grow the more I hate to kill&mdash;that's
+why I fish. They are cold-blooded creatures."</p>
+
+<p>Peggy, leaning on his knee, demanded a fish story.
+"The one you told us the last time."</p>
+
+<p>Brinsley's fish story was a poem written by one of
+the Old Gentlemen, hunting now, it was to be hoped,
+in happier fields. It was an idyl of the Chesapeake:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"In the Chesapeake and its tribute streams,<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">Where broadening out to the bay they come,<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">And the great fresh waters meet the brine,<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">There lives a fish that is called the drum."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The drum fish and an old negro, Ned, were the
+actors in the drama. Ned, fishing one day in his
+dug-out canoe,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Tied his line to his ankle tight,<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">To be ready to haul if the fish should bite,<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">And seized his fiddle&mdash;&mdash;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He played:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"But slower and slower he drew the bow,<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">And soft grew the music sweet and low,<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">The lids fell wearily over the eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">The bow arm stopped and the melodies.<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">The last strain melted along the deep,<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">And Ned, the old fisherman, sank to sleep.<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">Just then a huge drum, sent hither by fate,<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">Caught a passing glimpse of the tempting bait. . . .<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124"></a>[<a href="./images/124.png">124</a>]</span><br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">. . . . One terrible jerk of wrath and dread<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">From the wounded fish as away he sped<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">With a strength by rage made double&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">And into the water went old Ned.<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">No time for any 'last words' to be said,<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">For the waves settled placidly over his head,<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">And his last remark was a bubble."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The children's eyes were wide. Peggy was entranced,
+but Fran&ccedil;ois was not so sure that he liked
+it. Brinsley's hand dropped on the little lad's shoulder
+as he told how the two were found</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"So looped and tangled together<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">That their fate was involved in a dark mystery<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">As to which was the catcher and which the catchee . . .<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">And the fishermen thought it could never be known<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">After all their thinking and figuring,<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">Whether the nigger a-fishing had gone,<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">Or the fish had gone out a-niggering."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There were defects in meter and rhythm, but
+Brinsley's sprightly delivery made these of minor
+importance, and the company had no criticism.
+Fran&ccedil;ois, shivering a little, admitted that he wanted
+to hear it again, and climbed to Brinsley's knee.
+The old man with his arm about him decided that to
+say it over would be to spoil the charm, and that
+anyhow the time had come to pop the corn.</p>
+
+<p>To Fran&ccedil;ois this was a new art, but when he had
+followed the fascinating process through all its stages
+until the white grains boiled up in the popper and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125"></a>[<a href="./images/125.png">125</a>]</span>
+threatened to burst the cover, his rapture knew no
+bounds.</p>
+
+<p>"Could I do it myself, Miss Anne?" he asked,
+and she let him empty the snowy kernels into a big
+bowl, and fill the popper for a second supply.</p>
+
+<p>She bent above him, showing him how to shake it
+steadily.</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey Fox coming in smiled at the scene.
+How far away it seemed from anything modern&mdash;this
+wide hearth-stone with the dog and the pussy
+cat&mdash;and the little children, the lovely girl and the
+old man&mdash;the wind blowing outside&mdash;the corn popping
+away like little pistols.</p>
+
+<p>"May I have some?" he asked, and Anne smiled
+up at him, while Peggy brought little plates and set
+the big bowl on a stool within reach of them all.</p>
+
+<p>"What brings you up, sir?" Geoffrey asked
+Brinsley.</p>
+
+<p>"The drag-hunt and breakfast at the club. I am
+too stiff to follow, but David and I like to meet old
+friends&mdash;you see I was born in this country."</p>
+
+<p>That was the beginning of a string of reminiscences
+to which they all listened breathlessly. The
+fox hunting instinct was an inheritance in this part
+of the country. It had its traditions and legends
+and Brinsley knew them all.</p>
+
+<p>If any one had told Geoffrey Fox a few weeks
+before that he would be content to spend his time as
+he was spending it now, writing all day and reading<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126"></a>[<a href="./images/126.png">126</a>]</span>
+the chapters at night to a serious-eyed little school-teacher
+who scolded him and encouraged him by
+turns, he would have scoffed at such an impossible
+prospect. Yet he was not only doing it, but was
+glad to be swept away from the atmosphere of somewhat
+sordid Bohemianism with which he had in
+these later years been surrounded.</p>
+
+<p>And as Brinsley talked, Geoffrey watched Anne.
+She had Peggy in her arms. Such women were
+made, he felt, to be not only the mothers of children,
+but the mothers of the men they loved&mdash;made for
+brooding tenderness&mdash;to inspire&mdash;to sympathize.</p>
+
+<p>Yet with all her gentleness he knew that Anne was
+a strong little thing. She would never be a clinging
+vine; she was rather like a rose high on a trellis&mdash;a
+man must reach up to draw her to him.</p>
+
+<p>As she glanced up, he smiled at her, and she
+smiled back. Then the smile froze.</p>
+
+<p>Framed in the front doorway stood Eve Chesley!
+She came straight to Anne and held out her hand.
+"I made Richard bring me down," she said. "I
+want to talk to you about the Crossroads ball."</p>
+
+<p>Eve repentant was Eve in her most charming
+mood. On Sunday morning she had apologized to
+Richard. "I was horrid, Dicky."</p>
+
+<p>"Last night? You were. I wouldn't have believed
+it of you, Eve."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well, don't be a prig. Do you remember
+how we used to make up after a quarrel?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127"></a>[<a href="./images/127.png">127</a>]</span>
+He laughed. "We had to go down on our
+knees."</p>
+
+<p>She went down on hers, sinking slowly and gracefully
+to the floor. "Please, I'm sorry."</p>
+
+<p>"Eve, will you ever grow up?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to grow up," wistfully. "Dicky,
+do you remember that after I had said I was sorry
+you always bought chocolate drops, and made me
+eat them all. You were such a good little boy,
+Richard."</p>
+
+<p>"I was not," hotly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why is it that men don't like to be told that
+they were good little boys? You are a good little
+boy now."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not."</p>
+
+<p>"You are&mdash;and you are tied to your mother's
+apron strings."</p>
+
+<p>"Dicky," she wailed, as he rose in wrath, "I
+didn't mean that. Honestly. And I'll be good."</p>
+
+<p>Still, with her feet tucked under her, she sat on
+the floor. "I've been thinking&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Eve."</p>
+
+<p>"You and I have a birthday in March. Why
+can't we have a big house-warming, and ask all the
+county families and a lot of people from town?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not a millionaire, Eve."</p>
+
+<p>"Neither am I. But there's always Aunt Maude."</p>
+
+<p>She spread out her hands, palms upward. "All I
+shall have to do is to wheedle her a bit, and she'll<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128"></a>[<a href="./images/128.png">128</a>]</span>
+give it to me for a birthday present. Please, Dicky.
+If you say 'yes' I'll go down to Bower's my very
+own self and ask Anne Warfield to come to our
+ball."</p>
+
+<p>He stared at her incredulously. "You'll do
+<i>what</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ask your little&mdash;school-teacher. Win scolded me
+last night, and said that I was a selfish pig. That I
+couldn't expect to keep you always to myself. But
+you see I have kept you, Dicky. I have always
+thought that you and I could go on being&mdash;friends,
+with no one to break in on it."</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes as she raised them to his were shadowed.
+He spoke heartily. "My dear girl, as if anything
+could ever come between us." He rose and drew
+her up from her lowly seat. "I'm glad we talked it
+out. I confess I was feeling pretty sore over the
+way you acted, Eve. It wasn't like you."</p>
+
+<p>Eve stuck to her resolution to go to Bower's
+to seek out and conciliate Anne, and thus it happened
+that they found her making a Madonna of
+herself with Peggy in her arms, and Geoffrey Fox's
+eyes adoring her.</p>
+
+<p>Little Fran&ccedil;ois told his mother later that at first he
+had thought the lovely lady was a fairy princess; for
+Eve was quite sumptuous in her dinner gown of
+white and shining satin, with a fur-trimmed wrap
+of white and silver. She wore, also, a princess air
+of graciousness, quite different from the half appeal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129"></a>[<a href="./images/129.png">129</a>]</span>ing
+impertinence of her morning mood when she had
+knelt at Richard's feet.</p>
+
+<p>Anne, appeased and fascinated by the warmth of
+Eve's manner, found herself drawn in spite of herself
+to the charming creature who discussed so frankly
+her plans for their pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>"Dicky and I were born on the same day," she
+explained, "and we always have a party together,
+with two cakes with candles, and this year it is to be
+at Crossroads."</p>
+
+<p>She invited Brinsley and Geoffrey on the spot,
+and promised the children a peep into fairy-land.
+Then having settled the matter to the satisfaction of
+all concerned, she demanded a fresh popper of corn,
+insisted on a repetition of Brinsley's fish story, asked
+about Geoffrey's book, and went away leaving behind
+her a trail of laughter and light-heartedness.</p>
+
+<p>Later Anne was aware that she had left also a feeling
+of bewilderment. It seemed incredible that the
+distance between the mood of last night and of to-night
+should have been bridged so successfully.</p>
+
+<p>Brushing her hair in front of the mirror, she asked
+herself, "How much of it was real friendliness?"
+Uncle Rod had a proverb, "'<i>A false friend has
+honey in his mouth, gall in his heart.</i>'"</p>
+
+<p>She chided herself for her mistrust. One must not
+inquire too much into motives.</p>
+
+<p>The sight of Richard's bit of pine in the mirror
+frame shed a gleam of naturalness across the strange<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130"></a>[<a href="./images/130.png">130</a>]</span>ness
+of the hour just spent. It seemed to say, "You
+and I of the country&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Eve was of the town!</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>The weeks which followed were rare ones. Anne
+went forth joyous in the morning, and came home
+joyous at night. She saw Richard daily; now on
+the road, again in the schoolhouse, less often, but
+most satisfyingly, by the fire at Bower's.</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey, noting jealously these evenings that
+the young doctor spent in the long front room, at
+last spoke his mind.</p>
+
+<p>"What makes you look like that?" he demanded,
+as having watched Richard safely out of the way
+from an upper window, he came down to find Anne
+gazing dreamily into the coals.</p>
+
+<p>"Like what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, a sort of seventh-heaven look."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what you mean."</p>
+
+<p>"You won't admit that you know what I mean."</p>
+
+<p>She rose.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down. I want to read to you."</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid I haven't time."</p>
+
+<p>"You had time for Brooks. If you don't let me
+read to you I shall have to sit all alone&mdash;in the
+dark&mdash;my eyes are hurting me."</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you ask Dr. Brooks about your
+eyes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is Dr. Brooks the oracle?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131"></a>[<a href="./images/131.png">131</a>]</span>
+"He could tell you about your eyes."</p>
+
+<p>"Does he tell you about yours?"</p>
+
+<p>With a scornful glance she left him, but he followed
+her. "Why shouldn't he tell you about your
+eyes? They are lovely eyes, Mistress Anne."</p>
+
+<p>"I hate to have you talk like that. It seems to
+separate me in some way from your friendship, and
+I thought we were friends."</p>
+
+<p>Her gentleness conquered his mad mood. "Oh,
+you little saint, you little saint, and I am such a
+sinner."</p>
+
+<p>So they patched it up, and he read to her the last
+chapter of his book.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>And now in the darkness they lay dying, young
+Franz from Nuremberg, and young George from
+London, and Michel straight from the vineyards on
+the coast of France.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>In the darkness they spoke of their souls. Soon
+they would go out into the Great Beyond. What
+then, after death? Franz thought they might go
+marching on. Young George had a vision of green
+fields and of hawthorn hedges. But it was young
+Michel who spoke of the face of God.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>Was this the Geoffrey who had teased her on the
+stairs? This man who wrote words which made one
+shake and shiver and sob?</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how do you do it, how do you do it?" The
+tears were running down her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132"></a>[<a href="./images/132.png">132</a>]</span>
+She saw him then as people rarely saw Geoffrey
+Fox. "God knows," he said, seriously, "but I think
+that your prayers have helped."</p>
+
+<p>And after she had gone up-stairs he sat long by
+the fire, alone, with his hand shading his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning he went to see Richard. The
+young doctor was in the Garden Room which he
+used as an office. It was on the ground floor of the
+big house, with a deer's horns over the fireplace, an
+ancient desk in one corner, a sideboard against the
+north wall. In days gone by this room had served
+many purposes. Here men in hunting pink had
+gathered for the gay breakfasts which were to fortify
+them for their sport. On the sideboard mighty
+roasts had been carved, and hot dishes had steamed.
+On the round table had been set forth bottles and
+glasses on Sheffield trays. Men ate much and rode
+hard. They had left to their descendants a divided
+heritage of indigestion and of strong sinews, to make
+of it what they could.</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey entering asked at once, "Why the
+Garden Room? There is no garden."</p>
+
+<p>"There was a garden," Richard told him, "but
+there is a tradition that a pair of lovers eloped
+over the wall, and the irate father destroyed every
+flower, every shrub, as if the garden had betrayed
+him."</p>
+
+<p>"There's a story in that. Did the girl ever come
+back to find the garden dead?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133"></a>[<a href="./images/133.png">133</a>]</span>
+"Who knows?" Richard said lightly; "and now,
+what's the matter with your eyes?"</p>
+
+<p>There was much the matter, and when Richard
+had made a thorough examination he spoke of a
+specialist. "Have you ever had trouble with them
+before?"</p>
+
+<p>"Once, when I was a youngster. I thought I was
+losing my sight. I used to open my eyes in the
+dark and think that the curse had come upon me.
+My grandfather was blind."</p>
+
+<p>"It is rarely inherited, and not in this form. But
+there might be a predisposition. Anyhow, you'll
+have to stop work for a time."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't stop work. My book is in the last chapters.
+And it is a great book. I've never written a
+great book before. I can talk freely to you, doctor.
+You know that we artists can't help our egotism.
+It's a disease that is easily diagnosed."</p>
+
+<p>Richard laughed. "What's the name of your
+book?"</p>
+
+<p>"'Three Souls.' Anne Warfield gave me the
+theme."</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke her name it was like a living flame
+between them. Richard tried to answer naturally.
+"She ought to be able to write books herself."</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey shrugged. "She will live her life stories,
+not write them."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because we men don't let such women live their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134"></a>[<a href="./images/134.png">134</a>]</span>
+own lives. We demand their service and the inspiration
+of their sympathy. And so we won't let
+them achieve. We make them light our torches.
+We are selfish beasts, you know, in the last analysis."</p>
+
+<p>He laughed and rose. "I'll see a specialist. But
+nobody shall make me stop writing. Not till I have
+scribbled 'Finis' to my manuscript."</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't well to defy nature."</p>
+
+<p>"Defiance is better than submission. Nature's a
+cruel jade. You know that. In the end she gets us
+all. That's why I hate the country. It's there that
+we see Nature unmasked. I stayed three weeks at
+a farm last summer, and from morning to night
+murder went on. A cat killed a cardinal, and a blue
+jay killed a grosbeak. One of the servants shot a
+squirrel. And when I walked out one morning to
+see the sheep, a lamb was gone and we had a roast
+with mint sauce for dinner. For lunch we had the
+squirrel in a stew. A hawk swept down upon the
+chickens, and all that escaped we ate later fried,
+with cream gravy."</p>
+
+<p>"In most of your instances man was the offender."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if man didn't kill, something else would.
+For every lamb there's a wolf."</p>
+
+<p>"You are looking on only one side of it."</p>
+
+<p>"When you can show me the other I'll believe in
+it. But not to-day when you tell me that my sun
+may be blotted out."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135"></a>[<a href="./images/135.png">135</a>]</span>
+Something in his voice made the young doctor
+lay his hand on his shoulder and say quietly: "My
+dear fellow, don't begin to dread that which may
+never come. There should be years of light before
+you. Only you'll have to be careful."</p>
+
+<p>They stood now in the door of the Garden Room.
+The sun was shining, the snow was melting. There
+was the acrid smell of box from the hedge beyond.</p>
+
+<p>"I hate caution," said young Geoffrey; "I want
+to do as I please."</p>
+
+<p>"So does every man," said Richard, "but life
+teaches him that he can't."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Life," scoffed Geoffrey Fox; "life isn't a
+school. It is a joy ride, with rocks ahead."</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136"></a>[<a href="./images/136.png">136</a>]</span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<h3><i>In Which Anne, Passing a Shop, Turns In.</i></h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Anne</span> had the Crossroads ball much on her
+mind. She spoke to Beulah about it.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what to wear."</p>
+
+<p>"You'd better go to town with me on Saturday
+and look for something."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I will. If I had plenty of money it
+would be easy. Beulah, did you ever see such
+clothes as Eve Chesley's?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I could spend as much as she does, I'd make
+more of a show."</p>
+
+<p>"Think of all the tailors and dressmakers and
+dancing masters and hair-dressers it has taken to
+make Eve what she is. And yet all the art is
+hidden."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think it is hidden. I saw her powder her
+nose right in front of the men that day she first
+came. She had a little gold case with a mirror in
+it, and while Dr. Brooks and Mr. Fox were sitting
+on the stairs with her, she took it out and looked at
+herself and rubbed some rouge on her cheeks."</p>
+
+<p>Anne had a vision of the three of them sitting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137"></a>[<a href="./images/137.png">137</a>]</span>
+on the stairs. "Well," she said, in a fierce little
+fashion, "I don't know what the world is coming
+to."</p>
+
+<p>Beulah cared little about Eve's world. For the
+moment Eric filled her horizon, and the dress she
+was to get to make herself pretty for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we go Saturday?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>Anne, rummaging in the drawer of her desk,
+produced a small and shabby pocketbook. She
+shook the money out and counted it. "With the
+check that Uncle Rod sent me," she said, "there's
+enough for a really lovely frock. But I don't know
+whether I ought to spend it."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Everybody ought to save something&mdash;I am
+teaching my children to have penny banks&mdash;and
+yet I go on spending and spending with nothing to
+show for it."</p>
+
+<p>Beulah was quite placid. "I don't see why you
+should save. Some day you will get married, and
+then you won't have to."</p>
+
+<p>"If a woman marries a poor man she ought to be
+careful of finances. She has to think of her children
+and of their future."</p>
+
+<p>Beulah shrugged. "What's the use of looking so
+far ahead? And 'most any husband will see that his
+wife doesn't get too much to spend."</p>
+
+<p>Before Anne went to bed that night she put a part
+of her small store of money into a separate compart<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138"></a>[<a href="./images/138.png">138</a>]</span>ment
+of her purse. She would buy a cheaper frock
+and save herself the afterpangs of extravagance.
+And the penny banks of the children would no
+longer accuse her of inconsistency!</p>
+
+<p>The shopping expedition proved a strenuous one.
+Anne had fixed her mind on certain things which
+proved to be too expensive. "You go for your
+fitting," she said to Beulah desperately, as the afternoon
+waned, "and I will take a last look up Charles
+Street. We can meet at the train."</p>
+
+<p>The way which she had to travel was a familiar
+one, but its charm held her&mdash;the street lights glimmered
+pale gold in the early dusk, the crowd swung
+along in its brisk city manner toward home. Beyond
+the shops was the Cardinal's house. The Monument
+topped the hill; to its left the bronze lions guarded
+the great square; to the right there was the thin
+spire of the Methodist Church.</p>
+
+<p>She had an hour before train time and she lingered
+a little, stopping at this window and that, and all the
+time the money which she had elected to save burned
+a hole in her pocket.</p>
+
+<p>For there were such things to buy! Passing a
+flower shop there were violets and roses. Passing
+a candy shop were chocolates. Passing a hat shop
+there was a veil flung like a cloud over a celestial <i>chapeau</i>!
+Passing an Everything-that-is-Lovely shop
+she saw an enchanting length of silk&mdash;as pink as a
+sea-shell&mdash;silk like that which Cynthia Warfield had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139"></a>[<a href="./images/139.png">139</a>]</span>
+worn when she sat for the portrait which hung in
+the library at Crossroads!</p>
+
+<p>Anne did not pass the Lovely Shop; she turned
+and went in, and bought ten yards of silk with the
+money that she had meant to spend&mdash;and the money
+she had meant to save!</p>
+
+<p>And she missed the train!</p>
+
+<p>Beulah was waiting for her as she came in breathless.
+"There isn't another train for two hours," she
+complained.</p>
+
+<p>Anne sank down on a bench. "I am sorry,
+Beulah. I didn't know it was so late."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll have to get supper in the station," Beulah
+said, "and I have spent all my money."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, and I've spent mine." Anne reflected that
+if she had not bought the silk she could have paid
+for Beulah's supper. But she was glad that she had
+bought it, and that she had it under her arm in a
+neat package.</p>
+
+<p>She dug into her slim purse and produced a dime.
+"Never mind, Beulah, we can buy some chocolates."</p>
+
+<p>But they were not destined for such meager fare.
+Rushing into the station came Geoffrey Fox. As he
+saw the clock he stopped with the air of a man
+baffled by fate.</p>
+
+<p>Anne moving toward him across the intervening
+space saw his face change.</p>
+
+<p>"By all that's wonderful," he said, "how did this
+happen?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140"></a>[<a href="./images/140.png">140</a>]</span>
+"We missed our train."</p>
+
+<p>"And I missed mine. Who is 'we'?"</p>
+
+<p>"Beulah is with me."</p>
+
+<p>"Can't you both have dinner with me somewhere?
+There are two hours of waiting ahead of us."</p>
+
+<p>Anne demurred. "I'm not very hungry."</p>
+
+<p>But Beulah, who had joined them, was hungry,
+and she said so, frankly. "I am starved. If I could
+have just a sandwich&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You shall have more than that. We'll have a
+feast and a frolic. Let me check your parcels,
+Mistress Anne."</p>
+
+<p>Back they went to the golden-lighted streets and
+turning down toward the city they reached at last
+the big hotel which has usurped the place of the
+stately and substantial edifices which were once the
+abodes of ancient and honorable families.</p>
+
+<p>Within were soft lights and the sound of music.
+The rugs were thick, and there was much marble.
+As they entered the dining-room, they seemed to
+move through a golden haze. It was early, and most
+of the tables were empty.</p>
+
+<p>Beulah was rapturous. "I have always wanted to
+come here. It is perfectly lovely."</p>
+
+<p>The attentive waiter at Geoffrey's elbow was being
+told to bring&mdash;&mdash; Anne's quick ear caught the
+word.</p>
+
+<p>"No, please," she said at once, "not for Beulah
+and me."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141"></a>[<a href="./images/141.png">141</a>]</span>
+His keen glance commanded her. "Of course
+not," he said, easily. Presently he had the whole
+matter of the menu settled, and could talk to Anne.
+She was enjoying it all immensely and said so.</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to do this sort of thing every day."</p>
+
+<p>"Heaven forbid. You would lose your dreams,
+and grow self-satisfied&mdash;and fat&mdash;like that woman
+over there."</p>
+
+<p>Anne shuddered. "It isn't that she is fat&mdash;it's
+her eyes, and the way she makes up."</p>
+
+<p>"That is the way they get when they live in
+places like this. If you want to be slender and
+lovely and keep your dreams you must teach
+school."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but there's drudgery in that."</p>
+
+<p>"It is the people who drudge who dream. They
+don't know it, but they do. People who have all
+they want learn that there is nothing more for life to
+give. And they drink and take drugs to bring back
+the illusions they have lost."</p>
+
+<p>They fell into silence after that, and then it was
+Beulah who became voluble. Her fair round face
+beamed. It was a common little face, but it was
+good and honest. Beulah was having the time of
+her life. She did not know that she owed her good
+fortune to Anne, that if Anne had not been there,
+Geoffrey would not have asked her to dine. But
+if she had known it, she would not have cared.</p>
+
+<p>"What train did you come in on?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142"></a>[<a href="./images/142.png">142</a>]</span>
+"At noon. Brooks thought I ought to see a
+specialist. He doesn't give me much encouragement
+about my eyes. He wants me to stop writing,
+but I shan't until I get through with my book."</p>
+
+<p>He spoke recklessly, but Anne saw the shadow on
+his face. "You aren't telling us how really serious it
+is," she said, as Beulah's attention was diverted.</p>
+
+<p>"It is so serious that for the first time in my life I
+know myself to be&mdash;a coward. Last night I lay in
+bed with my eyes shut to see how it would seem to
+be blind. It was a pretty morbid thing to do&mdash;and
+this morning finished me."</p>
+
+<p>She tried to speak her sympathy, but could not.
+Her eyes were full of tears.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't," he said, softly, "my good little friend&mdash;my
+good little friend."</p>
+
+<p>She dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief. The
+unconscious Beulah, busy with her oysters, asked:
+"Is the Tobasco too hot? I'm all burning up with
+it."</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey was able later to speak lightly of his
+affliction. "I shall go to the Brooks ball as a Blind
+Beggar."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how can you make fun of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is better to laugh than to cry. But your tears
+were&mdash;a benediction."</p>
+
+<p>Silence fell between them, and after a while he
+asked, "What shall you wear?"</p>
+
+<p>"To the ball? Pink silk. A heavenly pink. I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143"></a>[<a href="./images/143.png">143</a>]</span>
+have just bought it, and I paid more than I should
+for it."</p>
+
+<p>"Such extravagance!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm to be Cynthia Warfield&mdash;like the portrait in
+the Crossroads library of my grandmother. It came
+to me when I saw the silk in the shop window. I
+shall have to do without the pearls, but I have the
+lace flounces. They were left to my mother."</p>
+
+<p>"And so Cinderella will go to the ball, and dance
+with the Prince. Is Brooks the Prince?"</p>
+
+<p>She flushed, and evaded. "I can't dance. Not
+the new dances."</p>
+
+<p>"I can teach you if you'll let me."</p>
+
+<p>"Really?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. But you must pay. You must give the
+Blind Beggar the first dance and as many more as
+he demands."</p>
+
+<p>"But I can't dance all of them with you."</p>
+
+<p>"You can dance some of them. And that's my
+price."</p>
+
+<p>To promise him dances seemed to her quite delicious
+and delightful since she could not dance at
+all. But he made a little contract and had her sign
+it, and put it in his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>Going home Anne had little to say. It was Geoffrey
+who talked, while Beulah slept in a seat by herself.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>Anne made her own lovely gown, running over
+now and then to take surreptitious peeps at Cynthia's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144"></a>[<a href="./images/144.png">144</a>]</span>
+portrait. She had let Mrs. Brooks into her secret,
+and the little lady was enthusiastic.</p>
+
+<p>"You shall wear my pearls, my dear. They will
+be very effective in your dark hair."</p>
+
+<p>She brought the jewels down in an old blue velvet
+box&mdash;milk-white against a yellowed satin lining.</p>
+
+<p>"My father gave them to me on my wedding day.
+Some day I shall give them to Richard's wife."</p>
+
+<p>She could not know how her words stirred the
+heart of the girl who stood looking so quietly down
+at the pearls.</p>
+
+<p>"I am almost afraid to wear them," Anne said
+breathlessly. She gave Nancy a shy little kiss.
+"You were <i>dear</i> to think of it."</p>
+
+<p>And now busy days were upon her. There was
+the school with Richard running in after closing time,
+and staying, too, and keeping her from the work
+that was waiting at home. Then at twilight a
+dancing lesson with Geoffrey in the long front room,
+with Beulah playing audience and sometimes Eric,
+and with Peggy capering madly to the music.</p>
+
+<p>Then the evening, with its enchanting task of
+stitching on yards of rosy silk. Usually Geoffrey
+read to her while she worked. His story was nearing
+the end. He was wearing heavy goggles which
+gave him an owl-like appearance, of which he complained.</p>
+
+<p>"It spoils my beauty, Mistress Anne. I am just
+an ugly gnome who sits at the feet of the Princess."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145"></a>[<a href="./images/145.png">145</a>]</span>
+"You are not ugly, and you know it. And men
+shouldn't be vain."</p>
+
+<p>"We are worse than women. Do you know what
+you look like with all that silk around you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Like Aurora. Do you remember that Stevenson
+speaks of a 'pink dawn'? Well, you are a pink
+dawn."</p>
+
+<p>"Please stop talking about me, and read your last
+chapter. I am so glad that you have reached the
+end."</p>
+
+<p>"Because you are tired of hearing it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because of your poor eyes."</p>
+
+<p>He took off his goggles. "Do my eyes look different?
+Are they changed or&mdash;dim?"</p>
+
+<p>"They are as bright as stars," and he sighed with
+relief.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>"<i>And now it was young Michel who whispered,
+'God is good! In a moment we shall see his face,
+and we shall say to him, "We fought, but there
+is no hatred in our hearts. We cannot hate&mdash;our
+brothers&mdash;&mdash;"'</i>"</p>
+
+<p>That was the end.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a great book," Anne told him solemnly. "It
+will be a great success."</p>
+
+<p>He seemed to shrink and grow small in his chair.
+"It will come&mdash;too late."</p>
+
+<p>She looked up and saw the mood that was upon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146"></a>[<a href="./images/146.png">146</a>]</span>
+him. "Oh, you must not&mdash;not that," she said, hurriedly;
+"if you give up now it will be a losing fight."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you suppose that I would fight if I felt
+that I could win? But what can a man do with a
+thing like this that is dragging him down to darkness?"</p>
+
+<p>"You mustn't be discouraged. Dr. Brooks says
+that it isn't&mdash;inevitable. You know that he said
+that, and that the specialist said it."</p>
+
+<p>"I know. But something tells me that I am facing&mdash;darkness."
+He threw up his head. "Why
+should we talk of it? Let me tell you rather how
+much you have helped me with my book. If it had
+not been for you I could not have written it."</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad if I have been of service." Her words
+sounded formal after the warmth of his own.</p>
+
+<p>He laughed, with a touch of bitterness. "The
+Princess serves," he said, "always and always
+serves. She never grabs, as the rest of us do, at
+happiness."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall grab when it comes," she said, smiling a
+little, "and I am happy now, because I am going to
+wear my pretty gown."</p>
+
+<p>"Which reminds me," he said, quickly, and
+brought from his pocket a little box. "Your costume
+won't be complete without these. I bought
+them for you with the advance check which my
+publishers sent after they had read the first chapters
+of my book."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147"></a>[<a href="./images/147.png">147</a>]</span>
+She opened the box. Within lay a little string of
+pearls. Not such pearls as Nancy had shown her,
+but milk-white none the less, with shining lovely
+lights.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," she gave a distressed cry, "you shouldn't
+have done it."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't accept them. Indeed I can't."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall feel as if you had flung them in my face
+if you give them back to me," heatedly.</p>
+
+<p>"You shouldn't take it that way. It isn't fair to
+take it that way."</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't a question of fairness. It is a question of
+kindness on your part."</p>
+
+<p>"I want to be kind."</p>
+
+<p>"Then take them."</p>
+
+<p>She thought for a moment with her eyes on the
+fire. When she raised them it was to say, "Would
+you&mdash;want your little sister, Mimi, to take jewels
+from any man?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. If he loved her as I love you."</p>
+
+<p>It was out, and they stood aghast. Then Geoffrey
+stammered, "Can't you see that my soul kneels at
+your feet? That to me these pearls aren't as white
+as your&mdash;whiteness?"</p>
+
+<p>The rosy silk had slipped to the floor. She was
+like a very small goddess in a morning cloud. "I
+can't take them. Oh, I can't."</p>
+
+<p>He made a quick gesture. But for her restrain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148"></a>[<a href="./images/148.png">148</a>]</span>ing
+hand he would have cast the pearls into the
+flames.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't," she said, the little hand tense on his
+arm. "Don't&mdash;hurt me&mdash;like that."</p>
+
+<p>He dropped the pearls into his pocket. "If you
+won't wear them nobody shall. I suppose I seem to
+you like all sorts of a fool. I seem like all sorts of a
+fool to myself."</p>
+
+<p>He turned and left her.</p>
+
+<p>An hour later he came back and found her still
+sewing on the rosy silk. Her eyes were red, as if
+she had wept a little.</p>
+
+<p>"I was a brute," he said, repentantly; "forgive
+me and smile. I am a tempestuous fellow, and I
+forgot myself."</p>
+
+<p>"I was afraid we weren't ever going to be friends
+again."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall always be your friend. Yet&mdash;who wants
+a Blind Beggar for a friend&mdash;tell me that, Mistress
+Anne?"</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149"></a>[<a href="./images/149.png">149</a>]</span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<h3><i>In Which a Blind Beggar and a Butterfly Go to a Ball.</i></h3>
+
+<p class="right"><i>In my Own Little Room.</i>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Uncle rod</span>, I went to the party!</p>
+
+<p>I came home an hour ago, and since then I
+have been sitting all shivery and shaky in my pink
+silk. It will be daylight in a few minutes, but I
+shan't go to bed. I couldn't sleep if I did. I feel
+as if I shouldn't ever sleep again.</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Rod, Jimmie Ford was at the Crossroads
+ball!</p>
+
+<p>I went early, because Mrs. Nancy had asked me to
+be there to help with her guests. Geoffrey Fox
+went with me. He was very picturesque in a
+ragged jerkin with a black bandage over his eyes
+and with old Mamie leading him at the end of a
+cord. She enjoyed it immensely, and they attracted
+a lot of attention, as he went tap-tapping along with
+his cane over the polished floor, or whined for alms,
+while she sat up on her haunches with a tin cup in
+her mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Well, Dr. Richard met us at the door, looking the
+young squire to perfection in his grandfather's old
+dress coat of blue with brass buttons. The people<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150"></a>[<a href="./images/150.png">150</a>]</span>
+from New York hadn't come, so Mrs. Nancy put the
+pearls in my hair, and they made me stand under
+the portrait in the library, to see if I were really like
+my grandmother. I can't believe that I looked as
+lovely as she, but they said I did, and I began to
+feel as happy and excited as Cinderella at her ball.</p>
+
+<p>Then the New York crowd arrived in motors, and
+they were all masked. I knew Eve Chesley at
+once and Winifred Ames, but it was hard to be sure
+of any one else. Eve Chesley was a Rose, with a
+thousand fluttering flounces of pink chiffon. She
+was pursued by two men dressed as Butterflies, slim
+and shining in close caps with great silken wings&mdash;a
+Blue Butterfly and a Brown one. I was pretty
+sure that the Brown one was Philip Meade. It was
+quite wonderful to watch them with their wings
+waving. Eve carried a pocketful of rose petals and
+threw them into the air as she went. I had never
+imagined anything so lovely.</p>
+
+<p>Well, I danced with Dr. Richard and I danced
+with Geoffrey Fox, and I danced with Dutton Ames,
+and with some men that I had never met before. It
+seemed so <i>good</i> to be doing things like the rest.
+Then all at once I began to feel that the Blue
+Butterfly was watching me. He drifted away from
+his pursuit of Evelyn Chesley, and whenever I raised
+my eyes, I could see him in corners staring at me.</p>
+
+<p>It gave me a queer feeling. I couldn't be sure,
+and yet&mdash;there he was. And, Uncle Rod, suddenly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151"></a>[<a href="./images/151.png">151</a>]</span>
+I knew him! Something in the way he carried himself.
+You know Jimmie's little swagger!</p>
+
+<p>I think I lost my head after that. I flirted with
+Dr. Richard and with Geoffrey Fox. I think I even
+flirted a little with Dutton Ames. I wanted them to
+be nice to me. I wanted Jimmie to see that what he
+had scorned other men could value. I wanted him
+to know that I had forgotten him. I laughed and
+danced as if my heart was as light as my heels, and
+all the while I was just sick and faint with the
+thought of it&mdash;"Jimmie Ford is here, and he hasn't
+said a word to me. Jimmie Ford is here&mdash;and&mdash;he
+hasn't said a word&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>At last I couldn't stand it any longer, and when I
+was dancing with Geoffrey Fox I said, "Do you
+think we could go down to the Garden Room? I
+must get away."</p>
+
+<p>He didn't ask any question. And presently we
+were down there in the quiet, and he had his bandage
+off, and was looking at me, anxiously. "What
+has happened, Mistress Anne?"</p>
+
+<p>And then, oh, Uncle Rod, I told him. I don't
+know how I came to do it, but it seemed to me that
+he would understand, and he did.</p>
+
+<p>When I had finished his face was white and set.
+"Do you mean to tell me that any man has tried to
+break your heart?"</p>
+
+<p>I think I was crying a little. "Yes. But the
+worst of all is my&mdash;pride."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152"></a>[<a href="./images/152.png">152</a>]</span>
+"My little Princess," he said softly, "that this
+should have come&mdash;to you."</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Rod, I think that if I had ever had a
+brother, I should have wanted him to be like Geoffrey
+Fox. All his lightness and frivolity seemed to
+slip from him. "He has thrown away what I would
+give my life for," he said. "Oh, the young fool, not
+to know that Paradise was being handed to him on
+a platter."</p>
+
+<p>I didn't tell him Jimmie's name. That is not to
+be spoken to any one but you. And of course he
+could not know, though perhaps he guessed it, after
+what happened later.</p>
+
+<p>While we sat there, Dr. Richard came to hunt for
+us. "Everybody is going in to supper," he said.
+He seemed surprised to find us there together, and
+there was a sort of stiffness in his manner. "Mother
+has been asking for you."</p>
+
+<p>We went at once to the dining-room. There
+were long tables set in the old-fashioned way for
+everybody. Mrs. Nancy wanted things to be as
+they had been in her own girlhood. On the table in
+the wide window were two birthday cakes, and at
+that table Dr. Richard sat with his mother on one
+side of him, and Eve Chesley on the other. Eve's
+cake had pink candles and his had white, and there
+were twenty-five candles on each cake.</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey Fox and I sat directly opposite; Dutton
+Ames was on my right, Mrs. Ames was on Geoffrey's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153"></a>[<a href="./images/153.png">153</a>]</span>
+left, and straight across the table, with his mask off,
+was Jimmie Ford, staring at me with all his eyes!</p>
+
+<p>For a minute I didn't know what to do. I just sat
+and stared, and then suddenly I picked up the glass
+that stood by my plate, raised it in salute and drank
+smiling. His face cleared, he hesitated just a fraction
+of a second, then his glass went up, and he returned
+my greeting. I wonder if he thought that I would
+cut him dead, Uncle Rod?</p>
+
+<p>And don't worry about <i>what</i> I drank. It was
+white grape juice. Mrs. Nancy won't have anything
+stronger.</p>
+
+<p>Well, after that I ate, and didn't know what I
+ate, for everything seemed as dry as dust. I know
+my cheeks were red and that my eyes shone, and I
+smiled until my face ached. And all the while I
+watched Jimmie and Jimmie watched me, and
+pretty soon, Uncle Rod, I understood why Jimmie
+was there.</p>
+
+<p>He was making love to Eve Chesley!</p>
+
+<p>Making love is very different from being in love,
+isn't it? Perhaps love is something that Jimmie
+really doesn't understand. But he was using on
+Eve all of the charming tricks that he had tried
+on me. She is more sophisticated, and they mean
+less to her than to me, but I could see him bending
+toward her in that flattering worshipful way of his&mdash;and
+when he took one of her roses and touched
+it to his lips and then to her cheek, everything was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154"></a>[<a href="./images/154.png">154</a>]</span>
+dark for a minute. That kind of kiss was the only
+kind that Jimmie Ford ever gave me, but to me it
+had meant that he&mdash;cared&mdash;and that I cared&mdash;and
+here he was doing it before the eyes of all the world&mdash;and
+for love of another woman!</p>
+
+<p>After supper he came around the table and spoke
+to me. I suppose he thought he had to. I don't
+know what he said and I don't care. I only know
+that I wanted to get away. I think it was then that
+Geoffrey Fox guessed. For when Jimmie had gone
+he said, very gently, "Would you like to go home?
+You look like your own little ghost, Mistress Anne."</p>
+
+<p>But I had promised one more dance to Dr. Richard,
+and I wanted to dance it. If you could have
+seen at the table how he towered above Jimmie
+Ford. And when he stood up to make a little
+speech in response to a toast from Dutton Ames,
+his voice rang out in such a&mdash;man's way. Do you
+remember Jimmie Ford's falsetto?</p>
+
+<p>I had my dance with him, and then Geoffrey took
+me home, and all the way I kept remembering the
+things Dr. Richard had said to me, such pleasant
+friendly things, and when his mother told me "good-night"
+she took my face between her hands and
+kissed me. "You must come often, little Cynthia
+Warfield," she said. "Richard and I both want
+you."</p>
+
+<p>But now that I am at home again, I can't think
+of anything but how Jimmie Ford has spoiled it all.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155"></a>[<a href="./images/155.png">155</a>]</span>
+When you have given something, you can't ever
+really take it back, can you? When you've given
+faith and constancy to one man, what have you left
+to give another?</p>
+
+<p>The river is beginning to show like a silver
+streak, and a rooster is crowing. Oh, Uncle Rod,
+if you were only here. Write and tell me that you
+love me.</p>
+<p class="right">Your&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Little Girl.</span>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p class="right"><i>In the Telegraph Tower.</i>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My very Dear:</span></p>
+
+<p>It is after supper, and Beulah and I are out
+here with Eric. He likes to have her come, and
+I play propriety, for Mrs. Bower, in common with
+most women of her class, is very careful of her
+daughter. I know you don't like that word "class,"
+but please don't think I am using it snobbishly.
+Indeed, I think Beulah is much better brought up
+than the daughters of folk who think themselves
+much finer, and Mrs. Bower in her simple way is
+doing some very effective chaperoning.</p>
+
+<p>Eric is on night duty in the telegraph tower this
+week; the other operator has the day work. The
+evenings are long, so Beulah brings her sewing,
+and keeps Eric company. They really don't have
+much to say to each other, so that I am not interrupted
+when I write. They seem to like to sit and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156"></a>[<a href="./images/156.png">156</a>]</span>
+look out on the river and the stars and the moon
+coming up behind the hills.</p>
+
+<p>It is all settled now. Eric told me yesterday.
+"I am very happy," he said; "I have been a lonely
+man."</p>
+
+<p>They are to be married in June, and the things
+that she is making are to go into the cedar
+chest which her father has given her. He found it
+one day when he was in Baltimore, and when he
+showed it to her, he shone with pleasure. He's
+a good old Peter, and he is so glad that Beulah
+is to marry Eric. Eric will rent a little house not
+far up the road. It is a dear of a cottage, and Peggy
+and I call it the Playhouse. We sit on the porch when
+we come home from school, and peep in at the windows
+and plan what we would put into it if we had
+the furnishing of it. I should like a house like that,
+Uncle Rod, for you and me and Diogenes. We'd
+live happy ever after, wouldn't we? Some day the
+world is going to build "teacherages" just as it now
+builds parsonages, and the little houses will help to
+dignify and uplift the profession.</p>
+
+<p>Your dear letter came just in time, and it was just
+right. I should have gone to pieces if you had
+pitied me, for I was pitying myself dreadfully. But
+when I read "Little School-teacher, what would you
+tell your scholars?" I knew what you wanted me to
+answer. I carried your letter in my pocket to school,
+and when I rang the bell I kept saying over and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157"></a>[<a href="./images/157.png">157</a>]</span>
+over to myself, "Life is what we make it. Life is
+what we make it," and all at once the bells began
+to ring it:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Life is&mdash;what we&mdash;make it&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">Life is&mdash;what we&mdash;make it."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>When the children came in, before we began the
+day's work, I talked to them. I find it is always uplifting
+when we have failed in anything to try to tell
+others how not to fail! Perhaps it isn't preaching
+what we practice, but at least it supplies a working
+theory.</p>
+
+<p>I made up a fairy-story for them, too, about a
+Princess who was so ill and unhappy that all the
+kingdom was searched far and wide for some one to
+cure her. And at last an old crone was found who
+swore that she had the right remedy. "What is
+it?" all the wise men asked; but the old woman
+said, "It is written in this scroll. To-morrow the
+Princess must start out alone upon a journey. Whatever
+difficulty she encounters she must open this
+scroll and read, and the scroll will tell her what to
+do."</p>
+
+<p>Well, the Princess started out, and when she had
+traveled a little way she found that she was hungry
+and tired, and she cried: "Oh, I haven't anything
+to eat." Then the scroll said, "Read me," and she
+opened the scroll and read: "There is corn in the
+fields. You must shell it and grind it on a stone<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158"></a>[<a href="./images/158.png">158</a>]</span>
+and mix it with water, and bake it into the best
+bread that you can." So the Princess shelled the
+corn and ground it and mixed it with water, and
+baked it, and it tasted as sweet as honey and as
+crisp as apples. And the Princess ate with an appetite,
+and then she lay down to rest. And in the
+night a storm came up and there was no shelter, and
+the Princess cried out, "Oh, what shall I do?" and
+the scroll said, "Read me." So she opened the
+scroll and read: "There is wood on the ground.
+You must gather it and stack it and build the best
+little house that you can." So the Princess worked
+all that day and the next and the next, and when
+the hut was finished it was strong and dry and no
+storms could destroy it. So the Princess stayed
+there in the little hut that she had made, and ate the
+sweet loaves that she had baked, and one day a
+great black bear came down the road, and the Princess
+cried out, "Oh, I have no weapon; what shall
+I do?" And the scroll said, "Read me." So she
+opened the scroll and read, "Walk straight up to
+the bear, and make the best fight that you can."
+So the Princess, trembling, walked straight up to
+the big black bear, and behold! when he saw her
+coming, he ran away!</p>
+
+<p>Now the year was up, and the king sent his wise
+men to bring the Princess home, and one day they
+came to her little hut and carried her back to the
+palace, and she was so rosy and well that everybody<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159"></a>[<a href="./images/159.png">159</a>]</span>
+wondered. Then the king called the people together,
+and said, "Oh, Princess, speak to us, and
+let us know how you were cured." So the Princess
+told them of how she had baked the bread, and built
+the hut, and conquered the bear; and of how she had
+found health and happiness. For the bread that you
+make with your own hands is the sweetest, and the
+shelter that you build for yourself is the snuggest,
+and the fear that you face is no fear at all.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>The children liked my story, and I felt very brave
+when I had finished it. You see, I have been forgetting
+our sunsets, and I have been shivery and
+shaky when I should have faced my Big Black
+Bear!</p>
+
+<p>Beulah is ready to go&mdash;and so&mdash;good-night. The
+moon is high up and round, and as pure gold as
+your own loving heart.</p>
+<p class="right">Ever your own&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;</p>
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Anne.</span>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160"></a>[<a href="./images/160.png">160</a>]</span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<h3><i>In Which Brinsley Speaks of the Way to Win a
+Woman.</i></h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">And</span> now spring was coming to the countryside.
+The snow melted, and the soft rains fell, and
+on sunny days Diogenes, splashing in the little
+puddles, picked and pulled at his feathers as he
+preened himself in the shelter of the south bank
+which overlooked the river.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the feathers were tipped with shining
+green and some with brown. Some of them fell by
+the way, some floated out on blue tides, and one of
+them was wafted by the wind to the feet of Geoffrey
+Fox, as, on a certain morning, he, too, stood on the
+south bank.</p>
+
+<p>He picked it up and stuck it in his hat. "I'll
+wear it for my lady," he said to the old drake, "and
+much good may it do me!"</p>
+
+<p>The old drake lifted his head toward the sky, and
+gave a long cry. But it was not for Anne that he
+called. She still gave him food and drink. He still
+met her at the gate. If her mind was less upon him
+than in the past, it mattered little. The things that
+held meaning for him this morning were the glory
+of the sunshine, and the softness of the breeze.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161"></a>[<a href="./images/161.png">161</a>]</span>
+Stirring within him was a need above and beyond
+anything that Geoffrey could give, or Anne. He
+listened not for the step of the little school-teacher,
+but for the whirring wings of some comrade of his
+own kind. Again and again he sent forth his cry to
+the empty air.</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey's heart echoed the cry. His book was
+finished, and it was time for him to go. Yet he was
+held by a tie stronger than any which had hitherto
+bound him. Here in the big old house at Bower's
+was the one thing that his heart wanted.</p>
+
+<p>"I could make her happy," he whispered to that
+inner self which warned him. "With her as my
+wife and with my book a success, I could defy fate."</p>
+
+<p>The day was Saturday, and all the eager old
+fishermen had arrived the night before. Brinsley
+Tyson coming out with his rod in his hand and a
+broad-brimmed hat on his head invited Geoffrey to
+join him. "I've a motor boat that will take us out
+to the island after we have done a morning's fishing,
+and Mrs. Bower has put up a lunch."</p>
+
+<p>"The glare is bad for my eyes."</p>
+
+<p>"Been working them too hard?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"There's an awning and smoked glasses if you'll
+wear them. And I don't want to go alone. David
+went back on me; he's got a new book. It's a
+puzzle to me why any man should want to read
+when he can have a day's fishing."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162"></a>[<a href="./images/162.png">162</a>]</span>
+"If people didn't read what would become of my
+books?"</p>
+
+<p>"Let 'em read. But not on days like this."
+Brinsley's fat face was upturned to the sun. With
+a vine-wreath instead of his broad hat and tunic in
+place of his khaki he might have posed for any of
+the plump old gods who loved the good things of
+life.</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey, because he had nothing else to do, went
+with him. Anne was invisible. On Saturday mornings
+she did all of the things she had left undone
+during the week. She mended and sewed and
+washed her brushes, and washed her hair, and gave
+all of her little belongings a special rub and scrub,
+and showed herself altogether exquisite and housewifely.</p>
+
+<p>She saw Geoffrey start out, and she waved to him.
+He waved back, his hand shading his eyes. When
+he had gone, she cleaned all of her toilet silver, and
+ran ribbons into nicely embroidered nainsook things,
+and put her pillows in the sun and tied up her head
+and swept and dusted, and when she had made
+everything shining, she had a bit of lunch on a tray,
+and then she washed her hair.</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey ate lunch on the island with Brinsley
+Tyson. He liked the old man immensely. There
+was a flavor about his worldliness which had nothing
+to do with stale frivolities; it was rather a thing of
+fastidious taste and of tempered wit. He was keen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163"></a>[<a href="./images/163.png">163</a>]</span>
+in his judgments of men, and charitable in his estimates
+of women.</p>
+
+<p>Brinsley Tyson had known Baltimore before the
+days of modern cities. He had known it before it
+had cut its hotels after the palace pattern, and when
+Rennert's in more primitive quarters had been the
+Mecca for epicureans. He had known its theaters
+when the footlight favorites were Lotta and Jo
+Emmet, and when the incomparable Booth and
+Jefferson had held audiences spellbound at Ford's
+and at Albaugh's. He had known Charles Street
+before it was extended, and he had known its Sunday
+parade. He had known the Bay Line Boats,
+the harbor and the noisy streets that led to the
+wharves. He had known Lexington Market on
+Saturday afternoons; the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
+in the heyday of its importance, and more than
+all he had known the beauties and belles of old
+Baltimore, and it added piquancy to many of his
+anecdotes when he spoke of his single estate as a
+tragedy resulting from his devotion to too many
+charmers, with no possibility of making a choice.</p>
+
+<p>It was of these things that he spoke while Geoffrey,
+lying in the grass with his arm across his eyes,
+listened and enjoyed.</p>
+
+<p>"And you never married, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've told you there were too many of them. If I
+could have had any one of those girls on this island
+with 'tother dear charmers away, there wouldn't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164"></a>[<a href="./images/164.png">164</a>]</span>
+have been any trouble. But a choice with them all
+about me was&mdash;impossible." His old eyes twinkled.</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose you had made a choice, and she hadn't
+cared for you?" said the voice of the man on the
+grass.</p>
+
+<p>"Any woman will care if you go at it the right
+way."</p>
+
+<p>"What is the right way?"</p>
+
+<p>"There's only one way to win a woman. If she
+says she won't marry you, carry her off by force to a
+clergyman, and when you get her there make her
+say 'Yes.'"</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey sat up. "You don't mean that literally?"</p>
+
+<p>Brinsley nodded. "Indeed I do. Take the attitude
+with them of Man the Conqueror. They all
+like it. Man the Suppliant never gets what he
+wants."</p>
+
+<p>"But in these days primitive methods aren't
+possible."</p>
+
+<p>Brinsley skipped a chicken bone expertly across
+the surface of the water. "Primitive methods are
+always possible. The trouble is that man has lost
+his nerve. The cult of chivalry has spoiled him.
+It has taught him to kneel at his lady's feet, where
+pre-historically he kept his foot on her neck!"</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey laughed. "You'd be mobbed in a suffrage
+meeting."</p>
+
+<p>"Suffrage, my dear fellow, is the green carnation
+in the garden of femininity. Every woman blooms<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165"></a>[<a href="./images/165.png">165</a>]</span>
+for her lover. It is the lack of lovers that produces
+the artificial&mdash;hence votes for women. What does
+the woman being carried off under the arm of conquering
+man care for yellow banners or speeches
+from the tops of busses? She is too busy trying to
+please him."</p>
+
+<p>"It would be a great experiment. I'd like to try
+it."</p>
+
+<p>Brinsley, uncorking a hot and cold bottle, boldly
+surmised, "It is the little school-teacher?"</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey, again flat on the grass, murmured,
+"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"And it is neck and neck between you and that
+young cousin of mine?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid he is a neck ahead."</p>
+
+<p>"It all depends upon which runs away with her
+first."</p>
+
+<p>Again Geoffrey murmured, "I'd like to try it."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" said Brinsley and beamed over his
+coffee cup like a benevolent spider at an unsuspecting
+fly. He had no idea that his fooling might be taken
+seriously. It was not given to his cynicism to comprehend
+the mood of the seemingly composed young
+person who lay on the grass with his hat over his
+eyes&mdash;torn by contending emotions, maddened by
+despair and the dread of darkness, awakened to new
+impulses in which youth and hot blood fought
+against an almost reverent tenderness for the object
+of his adoration. Since the night of the Crossroads<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166"></a>[<a href="./images/166.png">166</a>]</span>
+ball Geoffrey had permitted himself to hope. She
+had turned to him then. For the first time he had
+felt that the barriers were down between them.</p>
+
+<p>"Now Richard," Brinsley was saying, as he
+smoked luxuriously after the feast, "ought to marry
+Eve. She'll get her Aunt Maude's money, and be
+the making of him."</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>Richard, who at that very moment was riding
+through the country on his old white horse, had no
+thought of Eve.</p>
+
+<p>The rhythm of old Ben's even trot formed an
+accompaniment to the song that his heart was
+singing&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I think she was the most beautiful lady,<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">That ever was in the West Country&mdash;&mdash;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>As he passed along the road, he was aware of the
+world's awakening. His ears caught the faint flat
+bleating of lambs, the call of the cocks, the high
+note of the hens, the squeal of little pigs, and above
+all, the clamor of blackbirds and of marauding crows.</p>
+
+<p>The trees, too, were beginning to show the pale
+tints of spring, and an amethyst haze enveloped the
+hills. The river was silver in the shadow and gold
+in the sun; the little streams that ran down to it
+seemed to sing as they went.</p>
+
+<p>Coming at last to an old white farmhouse, Richard
+dismounted and went in. The old man bent with
+rheumatism welcomed him, and the old wife said,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167"></a>[<a href="./images/167.png">167</a>]</span>
+"He is always better when he knows that you are
+coming, doctor."</p>
+
+<p>The old man nodded. "Your gran'dad used to
+come. I was a little boy an' croupy, and he seemed
+big as a house when he came in at the door. He
+was taller than you, and thin."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, father," the old woman protested, "the
+young doctor ain't fat."</p>
+
+<p>"He's fatter'n his gran'dad. But I ain't saying
+that I don't like it. I like meat on a man's bones."</p>
+
+<p>Richard laughed. "Just so that I don't go the way
+of Cousin Brin. You know Brinsley Tyson, don't
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"He's the fat twin. Yes, I know him and David.
+David comes and reads to me, but Brinsley went to
+Baltimore, and now he don't seem to remember that
+we were boys together, and went to the Crossroads
+school."</p>
+
+<p>After that they spoke of the little new teacher, and
+Richard revelled in the praise they gave her. She
+was worshipped, they said, by the people roundabout.
+There had never been another like her.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"<i>I think she was the most beautiful lady,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf"><i>That ever was in the West Country</i>&mdash;&mdash;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>was Richard's enlargement of their theme. In the
+weeks just past he had seen much of her, and it had
+seemed to him that life began and ended with his
+thought of her.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168"></a>[<a href="./images/168.png">168</a>]</span>
+When he rose to go the old woman went to the
+door with him. "I guess we owe you a lot by this
+time," she remarked; "you've made so many calls.
+It cheers him up to have you, but you'd better stop
+now that he don't need you. It's so far, and we
+ain't good pay like some of them."</p>
+
+<p>Richard squared his shoulders&mdash;a characteristic
+gesture. "Don't bother about the bill. I have a sort
+of sentiment about my grandfather's old patients.
+It is a pleasure to know them and serve them."</p>
+
+<p>"If you didn't mind taking your pay in chickens,"
+she stated as he mounted his horse, "we could let
+you have some broilers."</p>
+
+<p>"You will need all you can raise." Then as his
+eyes swept the green hill which sloped down to the
+river, he perceived an orderly line of waddling fowls
+making their way toward the house.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like a white duck," he said, "if you could let
+me take her now."</p>
+
+<p>He chose a meek and gentle creature who submitted
+to the separation from the rest of her kind
+without rebellion. Tucked under Richard's arm,
+she surveyed the world with some alarm, but presently,
+as he rode on with her, she seemed to acquiesce
+in her abduction and faced the adventure with
+serene eyes, murmuring now and then some note of
+demure interrogation as she nestled quite confidently
+against the big man who rode so easily his great
+white horse.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169"></a>[<a href="./images/169.png">169</a>]</span>
+And thus they came to Bower's, to find Anne on
+the south bank, like a very modern siren, drying her
+hair, with Diogenes nipping the new young grass
+near her.</p>
+
+<p>She saw them coming. Richard wore a short
+rough coat and an old alpine hat of green. His
+leggings were splashed with mud, and the white horse
+was splashed, but there was about the pair of them
+an air of gallant achievement.</p>
+
+<p>She rose to greet them. She was blushing a little
+and with her dark hair blowing she was "the most
+beautiful," like the lady in the song.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought no one would be coming," was her
+apology, "and out here I get the wind and sun."</p>
+
+<p>"All the old fishermen will be wrecked on the
+rocks if they get a glimpse of you," he told her
+gravely; "you mustn't turn their poor old heads."</p>
+
+<p>And now the white duck murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"The lovely dear, where did you get her?" Anne
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"In the hills, to cheer up Diogenes."</p>
+
+<p>He set the white duck down. She shook her
+feathers and again spoke interrogatively. And now
+Diogenes lifted his head and answered. For a few
+moments he rent the air with his song of triumph.
+Then he turned and led the way to the river. There
+was a quiet pool in the bend of the bank. The old
+drake breasted its shining waters, and presently the
+white duck followed. With a sort of restrained<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170"></a>[<a href="./images/170.png">170</a>]</span>
+coquetry she turned her head from side to side. All
+her questions were answered, all her murmurs
+stilled.</p>
+
+<p>Richard and Anne smiled at each other. "What
+made you think of it?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you'd like it."</p>
+
+<p>"I do." She began to twist up her hair.</p>
+
+<p>"Please don't. I like to see it down."</p>
+
+<p>"But people will be coming in."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should we be here when they come? I'll
+put Ben in the stable&mdash;and we'll go for a walk. Do
+you know there are violets in the wood?"</p>
+
+<p>From under the red-striped awning of Brinsley's
+boat Geoffrey Fox saw Anne's hair blowing like a
+sable banner in the breeze. He saw Richard's
+square figure peaked up to the alpine hat. He saw
+them enter the wood.</p>
+
+<p>He shut his eyes from the glare of the sun and
+lay quietly on the cushions of the little launch. But
+though his eyes were shut, he could still see those
+two figures walking together in the dreamy dimness
+of the spring forest.</p>
+
+<p>"What were the ethics of the primitive man?"
+he asked Brinsley suddenly. "Did he run away
+with a woman who belonged to somebody else?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" Brinsley's reel was whirring. "And
+now if you don't mind, Fox, you might be ready
+with the net. If this fish is as big as he pulls, he
+will weigh a ton."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171"></a>[<a href="./images/171.png">171</a>]</span>
+Geoffrey, coming in, found Peggy disconsolate on
+the pier.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't find Anne. She said that after her hair
+dried she'd go for a walk to Beulah's playhouse, and
+we were to have tea. Beulah was to bring it."</p>
+
+<p>"She has gone for a walk with some one else."</p>
+
+<p>"Who?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Brooks. Let's go and look for her, Peggy,
+and when we find her we will tell her what we think
+of her for running away."</p>
+
+<p>The green stillness of the grove was very grateful
+after the glare of the river. Geoffrey walked quickly,
+with the child's hand in his. He had a feeling that
+if he did not walk quickly he would be too late.</p>
+
+<p>He was not too late; he saw that at a glance.
+Richard had dallied in his wooing. It had been so
+wonderful to be with her. Once when he had knelt
+beside her to pick violets, the wind had blown across
+his face a soft sweet strand of her hair. It was then
+that she had braided it, sitting on a fallen log under
+a blossoming dogwood.</p>
+
+<p>"It is so long," she had said with a touch of
+pride, "that it is a great trouble to care for it.
+Cynthia Warfield had hair like mine."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe that any one ever had hair like
+yours. It seems to me as if every strand must have
+been made specially in some celestial shop, and then
+the pattern destroyed."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172"></a>[<a href="./images/172.png">172</a>]</span>
+How lovely she was when she blushed like that!
+How little and lovely and wise and good. He liked
+little women. His mother was small, and he was
+glad that both she and Anne had delicate hands and
+feet. He was aware that this preference was old-fashioned,
+but it was, none the less, the way he felt
+about it.</p>
+
+<p>And now there broke upon the silence of the
+wood the sound of murmuring voices. Peggy and
+Geoffrey Fox had invaded their Paradise!</p>
+
+<p>"We thought," Peggy complained, "that we had
+lost you. Anne, you promised about the tea."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Peggy, I forgot."</p>
+
+<p>"Beulah's gone with the basket and Eric, and we
+can't be late because there are hot biscuits."</p>
+
+<p>Hurrying toward the biscuits and their hotness,
+Anne ran ahead with Peggy.</p>
+
+<p>"How about the eyes?" Richard asked as he and
+Geoffrey followed.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been on the water, and it is bad for them.
+But I'm not going to worry. I am getting out of
+life more than I hoped&mdash;more than I dared hope."</p>
+
+<p>His voice had a high note of excitement. Richard
+glanced at him. For a moment he wondered if Fox
+had been drinking.</p>
+
+<p>But Geoffrey was intoxicated with the wine of his
+dreams. With a quick gesture in which he seemed
+to throw from him all the fears which had oppressed
+him, he told his triumphant lie.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173"></a>[<a href="./images/173.png">173</a>]</span>
+"I am going to marry Anne Warfield; she has
+promised to be eyes for me, and light&mdash;the sun and
+the moon."</p>
+
+<p>Richard's face grew gray. He spoke with difficulty.
+"She has promised?"</p>
+
+<p>Then again Geoffrey lied, meaning indeed before
+the night had passed to make his words come true.
+"She is going to marry me&mdash;and I am the happiest
+man alive!"</p>
+
+<p>The light went out of Richard's world. How
+blind he had been. He had taken her smiles and
+blushes to himself when she had glowed with a
+happiness which had nothing to do with him.</p>
+
+<p>He steadied himself to speak. "You are a lucky
+fellow, Fox; you must let me congratulate you."</p>
+
+<p>"The world doesn't know," Geoffrey said, "not
+yet. But I had to tell it to some one, and a doctor
+is a sort of secular father confessor."</p>
+
+<p>Richard's laugh was without mirth. "If you
+mean that it's not to be told, you may rely on my
+discretion."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. I told you she was to play Beatrice
+to my Dante, but she shall be more than that."</p>
+
+<p>It was a rather silent party which had tea on the
+porch of the Playhouse. But Beulah and Eric were
+not aware of any lack in their guests. Eric had
+been to Baltimore the day before, and Beulah wore
+her new ring. She accepted Richard's congratulations
+shyly.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174"></a>[<a href="./images/174.png">174</a>]</span>
+"I like my little new house," she said; "have
+you been over it?"</p>
+
+<p>He said that he had not, and she took him. Eric
+went with them, and as they stood in the door of an
+upper room, he put his arm quite frankly about
+Beulah's shoulders as she explained their plans to
+Richard. "This is to be in pink and the other one
+in white, and all the furniture is to be pink and
+white."</p>
+
+<p>She was as pink and white and pretty as the
+rooms she was planning, and to see her standing
+there within the circle of her lover's arm was heart-warming.</p>
+
+<p>"You must get some roses from my mother,
+Beulah, for your little garden," the young doctor
+told her; "all pink and white like the rest of it."</p>
+
+<p>He let them go down ahead of him, and so it
+happened that he stood for a moment alone in a
+little upper porch at the back of the house which
+overlooked the wood. The shadows were gathering
+in its dim aisles, shutting out the daylight, shutting
+out the dreams which he had lost that day in the
+fragrant depths.</p>
+
+<p>When later he came with the rest of them to
+Bower's, the river was stained with the sunset.
+Diogenes and the white duck breasted serenely the
+crimson surface. Certain old fishermen trailed belatedly
+up the bank. Others sat spick and span
+and ready for supper on the porch.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175"></a>[<a href="./images/175.png">175</a>]</span>
+Brinsley Tyson over the top of his newspaper
+hailed Richard.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a telephone call for you. They've been
+trying to get you for an hour."</p>
+
+<p>He went in at once, and coming out told Anne
+good-night. "Thank you for a happy afternoon,"
+he said.</p>
+
+<p>But she missed something in his voice, something
+that had been there when they had walked in the
+wood.</p>
+
+<p>She watched him as he went away, square-shouldered
+and strong on his big white horse. She had
+a troubled sense that things had in some fateful and
+tragic way gone wrong with her afternoon, but it
+was not yet given to her to know that young Richard
+on his big white horse was riding out of her life.</p>
+
+<p>It was after supper that Geoffrey asked her to go
+out on the river with him.</p>
+
+<p>"Not to-night. I'm tired."</p>
+
+<p>"Just a little minute, Mistress Anne. To see the
+moon come up over the island. Please." So she
+consented.</p>
+
+<p>Helping her into the boat, Geoffrey's hands were
+shaking. The boat swept out from the pier in a
+wide curve, and he drew a long breath. He had her
+now&mdash;it would be a great adventure&mdash;like a book&mdash;better
+than any book.</p>
+
+<p>Primitive man in prehistoric days carried his
+woman off captive under his arm. Geoffrey, pursu<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176"></a>[<a href="./images/176.png">176</a>]</span>ing
+modern methods, had borrowed Brinsley's boat.
+A rug was folded innocently on the cushions; in a
+snug little cupboard under the stern seat were certain
+supplies&mdash;a great adventure, surely!</p>
+
+<p>And now the boat was under the bridge; the signal
+lights showed red and green. Then as they slipped
+around the first island there was only the silver of
+the moonshine spread out over the waters.</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey stopped the motor. "We'll drift and
+talk."</p>
+
+<p>"You talk," she told him, "and I'll listen, and we
+mustn't be too late."</p>
+
+<p>"What is too late?"</p>
+
+<p>"I told you I would stay just a little minute."</p>
+
+<p>"There is no real reason why we shouldn't stay as
+long as we wish. You are surely not so prim that
+you are doing it for propriety."</p>
+
+<p>"You know I am not prim."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes you are. You are prim and Puritan and
+sometimes you are a prig. But I like you that way,
+Mistress Anne. Only to-night I shall do as I please."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be silly."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it silly to love you&mdash;why?"</p>
+
+<p>He argued it with her brilliantly&mdash;so that it was
+only when the red and green lights of a second bridge
+showed ahead of them that she said, sharply, "We
+are miles away from Bower's; we must go back."</p>
+
+<p>"It won't take us long," he said, easily, and presently
+they were purring up-stream.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177"></a>[<a href="./images/177.png">177</a>]</span>
+Then all at once the motor stopped. Geoffrey,
+inspecting it with a flashlight, said, succinctly,
+"Engine's on the blink."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean that we can't go on?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'll tinker it up. Only you'll have to let me
+get into that box under the stern seat for the tools.
+You can hold the light while I work."</p>
+
+<p>As he worked they drifted. They passed the
+second bridge. Anne, steering, grew cold and
+shivered. But she did not complain. She was
+glad, however, when Geoffrey said, "You'd better
+curl down among the cushions, and let me wrap you
+in this rug."</p>
+
+<p>"Can you manage without me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I've patched it up partially. And you'll
+freeze in this bitter air."</p>
+
+<p>The wind had changed and there was now no
+moon. She was glad of the warmth of the rug and
+the comfort of the cushioned space. She shut her
+eyes, after a time, and, worn out by the emotions of
+the day, she dropped into fitful slumber.</p>
+
+<p>Then Geoffrey, his hair blown back by the wind,
+stood at the wheel and steered his boat not up-stream
+toward the bridge at Bower's, but straight down
+toward the wider waters, where the river stretches
+out into the Bay.</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178"></a>[<a href="./images/178.png">178</a>]</span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<h3><i>In Which Eve Usurps an Ancient Masculine Privilege.</i></h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Aunt maude chesley</span> belonged to the
+various patriotic societies which are dependent
+on Revolutionary fighting blood, on Dutch forbears,
+or on the ancestral holding of Colonial office. The
+last stood highest in her esteem. It was the hardest
+to get into, hence there was about it the sanctity of
+exclusiveness. Any man might spill his blood for
+his country, and among those early Hollanders were
+many whose blood was red instead of blue, but it
+was only a choice few who in the early days of the
+country's history had been appointed by the Crown
+or elected by the people to positions of influence and
+of authority.</p>
+
+<p>When Aunt Maude went to the meeting of her
+favorite organization, she wore always black velvet
+which showed the rounds of her shoulders, point lace
+in a deep bertha, the family diamonds, and all of her
+badges. The badges had bars and jewels, and the
+effect was imposing.</p>
+
+<p>Evelyn laughed at her. "Nobody cares for ancestors
+any more. Not since people began to hunt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179"></a>[<a href="./images/179.png">179</a>]</span>
+them up. You can find anything if you look for it,
+Aunt Maude. And most of the crests are bought or
+borrowed so that if one really belongs to you, you
+don't like to speak of it, any more than to tell that
+you are a lady or take a daily bath."</p>
+
+<p>"Our ancestors," said Aunt Maude solemnly, "are
+our heritage from the past&mdash;but you have reverence
+for nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"They were a jolly old lot," Eve agreed, "and I
+am proud of them. But some of their descendants
+are a scream. If men had their minds on being ancestors
+instead of bragging of them there'd be some
+hope for the future of old families."</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Maude, having been swathed by her maid
+in a silk scarf, so that her head was stiff with it,
+batted her eyes. "If you would go with me," she
+said, "and hear some of the speeches, you might look
+at it differently. Now there was a Van Tromp&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And in New England there were Codcapers, and
+in Virginia there were Pantops. I take off my hat
+to them, but not to their descendants, indiscriminately."</p>
+
+<p>And now Aunt Maude, more than ever mummified
+in a gold and black brocade wrap trimmed with
+black fur, steered her uncertain way toward the
+motor at the door.</p>
+
+<p>"People in my time&mdash;&mdash;" floated over her shoulder
+and then as the door closed behind her, her eloquence
+was lost.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180"></a>[<a href="./images/180.png">180</a>]</span>
+Eve, alone, faced a radiant prospect. Richard
+was coming. He had telephoned. She had not
+told Aunt Maude. She wanted him to herself.</p>
+
+<p>When at last he arrived she positively crowed
+over him. "Oh, Dicky, this is darling of you."</p>
+
+<p>A shadow fell across her face, however, when he
+told her why he had come.</p>
+
+<p>"Austin wanted me with him in an operation.
+He telegraphed me and I took the first train. I
+have been here for two days without a minute's
+time in which to call you up."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought that perhaps you had come to see me."</p>
+
+<p>"Seeing you is a pleasant part of it, Eve."</p>
+
+<p>He was really glad to see her; to be drawn away
+by it all from the somberness of his thoughts. The
+night before he had left the train on the Jersey side
+and had ferried over so that he might view once
+more the sky-line of the great city. There had been
+a stiff breeze blowing and it had seemed to him that
+he drew the first full breath since the moment when
+he had walked with Geoffrey in the wood. What
+had followed had been like a dream; the knowledge
+that the great surgeon wanted him, his mother's
+quick service in helping him pack his bag, the walk
+to Bower's in the fragrant dark to catch the ten
+o'clock train; the moment on the porch at Bower's
+when he had learned from a word dropped by
+Beulah that Anne was on the river with Geoffrey.</p>
+
+<p>And now it all seemed so far away&mdash;the river with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181"></a>[<a href="./images/181.png">181</a>]</span>
+the moon's broad path, Bower's low house and its
+yellow-lighted panes, the silence, the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>Since morning he had done a thousand things.
+He had been to the hospital and had yielded once
+more to the spell of its splendid machinery; he had
+talked with Austin and the talk had been like wine
+to a thirsty soul. In such an atmosphere a man
+would have little time to&mdash;think. He craved the
+action, the excitement, the uplift.</p>
+
+<p>He came back to Eve's prattle. "I told Winifred
+Ames we would come to her little supper after the
+play. I was to have gone with her and Pip and
+Jimmie Ford. Tony is away. But when you
+'phoned, I called the first part of it off. I wanted
+to have a little time just with you, Richard."</p>
+
+<p>He smiled at her. "Who is Jimmie Ford?"</p>
+
+<p>"A lovely youth who is in love with me&mdash;or
+with my money&mdash;he was at your birthday party,
+Dicky Boy; don't you remember?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Blue Butterfly? Yes. Is he another victim,
+Eve?"</p>
+
+<p>She shrugged. "Who knows? If he is in love
+with me, he'll get hurt; if he is in love with Aunt
+Maude's money, he won't get it. Oh, how can a
+woman know?" The lightness left her voice.
+"Sometimes I think that I'll go off somewhere and
+see if somebody won't love me for what I am, and
+not for what he thinks Aunt Maude is going to
+leave me."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182"></a>[<a href="./images/182.png">182</a>]</span>
+"And you with a string of scalps at your belt,
+and Pip ready at any moment to die for you."</p>
+
+<p>She nodded. "Pip is pure gold. Nobody can
+question his motives. And anyhow he has more
+money than I can ever hope to have. But I am not
+in love with him, Dicky."</p>
+
+<p>"You are not in love with anybody. You are a
+cold-blooded little thing, Eve. A man would need
+much fire to melt your ice."</p>
+
+<p>"Would he?"</p>
+
+<p>"You know he would."</p>
+
+<p>He swept away from her petulances to the thing
+which was for the moment uppermost in his mind.
+"I have had an offer, Eve, from Austin. He wants
+an assistant, a younger man who can work into
+his practice. It is a wonderful working opportunity."</p>
+
+<p>"It would be wicked to throw it away," she told
+him, breathlessly, "wicked, Richard."</p>
+
+<p>"It looks that way. But there's mother to think
+of, and Crossroads has come to mean a lot to me,
+Eve."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but New York, Dicky! Think of the good
+times we'd have, and of your getting into Austin's
+line of work and his patients. You would be rolling
+in your own limousine before you'd know it."</p>
+
+<p>Rolling in his own limousine! And missing
+the rhythm of big Ben's measured trot&mdash;&mdash;!</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I think&mdash;she was the&mdash;most beautiful</i>&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183"></a>[<a href="./images/183.png">183</a>]</span>
+As they motored to Winifred's, Eve spoke of his
+quiet mood. "Why don't you talk, Dicky?"</p>
+
+<p>"It has been a busy day&mdash;I'll wake up presently
+and realize that I am here."</p>
+
+<p>It was before he went down-stairs at the Dutton-Ames
+that he had a moment alone with Jimmie Ford.</p>
+
+<p>Jimmie was not in the best of moods. Winifred
+had asked him a week ago to join a choice quartette
+which included Pip and Eve. Of course Meade
+made a troublesome fourth, but Jimmie's conceit
+saved him from realizing the real fact of the importance
+of the plain and heavy Pip to that group.
+And now, things had been shifted, so that Eve had
+stayed to talk to a country doctor, and he had been
+left to the callow company of an indefinite debutante
+whom Winifred had invited to fill the vacancy.</p>
+
+<p>"When did you come down, Brooks?" he asked
+coldly.</p>
+
+<p>"This morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Nice old place of yours in Harford."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Owned it long?"</p>
+
+<p>"Several generations."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, ancestral halls, and all that&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"I saw Cynthia Warfield's picture on the wall&mdash;used
+to know the family down in Carroll&mdash;our
+old estates joined&mdash;Anne Warfield and I were
+brought up together."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184"></a>[<a href="./images/184.png">184</a>]</span>
+They had reached the head of the stairway. Richard
+stopped and stood looking down. "Anne Warfield?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Surprised to find her teaching. I fancy
+they've been pretty hard up&mdash;grandfather drank,
+and all that, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't know." It was now Richard's turn to
+speak coldly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, ran through with all their money.
+Years ago. Anne's a little queen. Engaged to her
+once myself, you know. Boy and girl affair, broken
+off&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Below them in the hall, Richard could see the
+women with whom he was to sup. Shining, shimmering
+figures in silk and satin and tulle. For
+these, softness and ease of living. And that other
+one! Oh, the cheap little gown, the braided hair!
+Before he had known her she had been Jimmie's
+and now she was Geoffrey's. And he had fatuously
+thought himself the first.</p>
+
+<p>He threw himself uproariously into the fun which
+followed. After all, it was good to be with them
+again, good to hear the familiar talk of people and
+of things, good to eat and drink and be merry in
+the fashion of the town, good to have this taste of
+the old tumultuous life.</p>
+
+<p>He and Eve went home together. Philip's honest
+face clouded as he saw them off. "Don't run away
+with her, Brooks," he said, as he leaned in to have a
+last look at her. "Good-night, little lady."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185"></a>[<a href="./images/185.png">185</a>]</span>
+"Good-night."</p>
+
+<p>It was when they were motoring through the park
+that Eve said, "I am troubled about Pip."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I sometimes have a feeling that he has a
+string tied to me&mdash;and that he is pulling me&mdash;his
+way. And I don't want to go. But I shall, if something
+doesn't save me from him, Richard."</p>
+
+<p>"You can save yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"That's all you know about it. Women take
+what they can get in this world, not what they
+want. Every morning Pip sends me flowers, sweetheart
+roses to-day, and lilies yesterday, and before
+that gardenias and orchids, and when I open the
+boxes every flower seems to be shouting, 'Come
+and marry me, come and marry me.'"</p>
+
+<p>"No woman need marry a man she doesn't care
+for, Eve."</p>
+
+<p>"Lots of them do."</p>
+
+<p>"You won't. You are too sensible."</p>
+
+<p>"Am I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course."</p>
+
+<p>She sighed a little. "I am not half as sensible as
+you think."</p>
+
+<p>When they reached home, they found Aunt Maude
+before them. She had been unswathed from her
+veil and her cloak, released from her black velvet, and
+was comfortable before her sitting-room fire in a padded
+wisteria robe and a boudoir cap with satin bow.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186"></a>[<a href="./images/186.png">186</a>]</span>
+Underneath the cap there were no flat gray curls.
+These were whisked mysteriously away each night
+by Hannah, the maid, to be returned in the morning,
+fresh from their pins with no hurt to Aunt
+Maude's old head.</p>
+
+<p>She greeted Richard cordially. "I sent Hannah
+down when I heard you. Eve didn't let me know
+you were here; she never lets me know. And now
+tell me about your poor mother."</p>
+
+<p>"Why poor, dear lady? You know she loves
+Crossroads."</p>
+
+<p>"How anybody can&mdash;&mdash; I'd die of loneliness.
+Now to-night&mdash;so many people of my own kind&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Everybody in black velvet or brocade, everybody
+with badges, everybody with blue blood," Eve
+interrupted flippantly; "nobody with ideas, nobody
+with enthusiasms, nobody with an ounce of originality&mdash;ugh!"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear&mdash;&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>"Dicky, Aunt Maude's idea of Heaven is a place
+where everybody wears coronets instead of halos,
+and where the angel chorus is a Dutch version of
+'God save the King.'"</p>
+
+<p>"My idea of Heaven," Aunt Maude retorted, "is
+a place where young girls have ladylike manners."</p>
+
+<p>Richard roared. It had been long since he had
+tasted this atmosphere of salt and spice. Aunt Maude
+and her sprightly niece were as good as a play.</p>
+
+<p>"How long shall you be in town, Richard?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187"></a>[<a href="./images/187.png">187</a>]</span>
+"Three or four days. It depends on the condition
+of our patient. It may be necessary to operate
+again, and Austin wants me to be here."</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Maude, Dicky may come back to New
+York to live."</p>
+
+<p>"He should never have left. What does your
+mother think of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't told her of Austin's offer. I shall write
+to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"If she has a grain of sense, she'll make you
+take it."</p>
+
+<p>Eve was restless. "Come on down, Dicky. It is
+time that Aunt Maude was in bed."</p>
+
+<p>"I never go until you do, Eve, and in my day
+young men went home before morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest, Dicky shall leave in ten minutes. I'll
+send him."</p>
+
+<p>But when they were once more in the great drawing-room,
+she forgot the time limit. "Don't let
+your mother settle things for you, Dicky. Think
+of yourself and your future. Of your&mdash;manhood,
+Dicky&mdash;please."</p>
+
+<p>She was very lovely as she stood before him, with
+her hands on his shoulders. "I want you to be the
+biggest of them&mdash;all," she said, and her laugh was
+tremulous.</p>
+
+<p>"I know. Eve, I want to stay."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Dicky&mdash;really?"</p>
+
+<p>"Really, Eve."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188"></a>[<a href="./images/188.png">188</a>]</span>
+Their hands came together in a warm clasp.</p>
+
+<p>She let him go after that. There had been nothing
+more than brotherly warmth in his manner, but
+it was enough that in the days to come she was to
+have him near her.</p>
+
+<p>Richard, writing to his mother, told her something
+of his state of mind. "I'll admit that it tempts
+me. It is a big thing, a very big thing, to work
+with a man like that. Yet knowing how you feel
+about it, I dare not decide. We shall have to face
+one thing, however. The Crossroads practice will
+never be a money-making practice. I know how
+little money means to you, but the lack of it will
+mean that I shall be tied to rather small things as
+the years go on. I should like to be one of the Big
+Men, mother. You see I am being very frank. I'll
+admit that I dreamed with you&mdash;of bringing all my
+talents to the uplift of a small community, of reviving
+at Crossroads the dignity of other days. But&mdash;perhaps
+we have dreamed too much&mdash;the world
+doesn't wait for the dreamers&mdash;the only way is to
+join the procession."</p>
+
+<p>In the day which intervened between his letter and
+his mother's answer, he had breakfast with Eve in
+the room with the flame-colored fishes and the parrot
+and the green-eyed cat. He motored with Eve
+out to Westchester, and they had lunch at an inn on
+the side of a hill which overlooked the Hudson; later
+they went to a matin&eacute;e, to tea in a special little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189"></a>[<a href="./images/189.png">189</a>]</span>
+corner of a down-town hotel for the sake of old days,
+then back again to dress for dinner at Eve's, with
+Aunt Maude at the head of the table, and Tony and
+Winifred and Pip completing the party. Then
+another play, another supper, another ride home with
+Eve, and in the morning in quiet contrast to all this,
+his mother's letter.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Boy," she said, "I am glad you spoke to
+me frankly of what you feel. I want no secrets between
+us, no reservations, no sacrifices which in the
+end may mean a barrier between us.</p>
+
+<p>"Our sojourn at Crossroads has been an experiment.
+And it has failed. I had hoped that as the
+days went on, you might find happiness. Indeed, I
+had been deceiving myself with the thought that you
+were happy. But now I know that you are not, and
+I know, too, what it must mean to you to feel that
+from among all the others you have been chosen to
+help a great man like Dr. Austin, who was the friend
+of my father, and my friend through everything.</p>
+
+<p>"But Richard, I can't go back. I literally crawled
+to Crossroads, after my years in New York, as a
+wounded animal seeks its lair. And I have a morbid
+shrinking from it all, unworthy of me, perhaps,
+but none the less impossible to overcome. I feel
+that the very stones of the streets would speak of the
+tragedy and dishonor of the past: houses would
+stare at me, the crowds would shun me.</p>
+
+<p>"And now I have this to propose. That I stay<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190"></a>[<a href="./images/190.png">190</a>]</span>
+here at Crossroads, keeping the old house open for
+you. David is near me, and any one of Cousin
+Mary Tyson's daughters would be glad to come to
+me. And you shall run down at week-ends, and tell
+me all about it, and I shall live in your letters and in
+the things which you have to tell. We can be one
+in spirit, even though there are miles between us.
+This is the only solution which seems possible to me
+at this moment. I cannot hold you back from what
+may be your destiny. I can only pray here in my
+old home for the happiness and success that must
+come to you&mdash;my boy&mdash;my little&mdash;boy&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The letter broke off there. Richard, high up in the
+room of the big hotel, found himself pacing the
+floor. Back of the carefully penned lines of his
+mother's letter he could see her slender tense figure,
+the whiteness of her face, the shadow in her eyes.
+How often he had seen it when a boy, how often he
+had sworn that when he was the master of the house
+he would make her happy.</p>
+
+<p>The telephone rang. It was Eve. "I was afraid
+you might have left for the hospital."</p>
+
+<p>"I am leaving in a few minutes."</p>
+
+<p>"Can you go for a ride with me?"</p>
+
+<p>"In the afternoon. There's to be another operation&mdash;it
+may be very late before I am through."</p>
+
+<p>"Not too late for dinner out of town somewhere
+and a ride under the May moon." Her voice rang
+high and happy.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191"></a>[<a href="./images/191.png">191</a>]</span>
+For the rest of the morning he had no time to
+think of his own affairs. The operation was extremely
+rare and interesting, and Austin's skill was
+superb. Richard felt as if he were taking part in a
+play, in which the actors were the white clad and
+competent doctors and nurses, and the stage was
+the surgical room.</p>
+
+<p>Eve coming for him, found him tired and taciturn.
+She respected his mood, and said little, and they
+rode out and out from the town and up and up into
+the Westchester hills, dotted with dogwood, pink and
+white like huge nosegays. As the night came on
+there was the fragrance of the gardens, the lights of
+the little towns; then once more the shadows as they
+swept again into the country.</p>
+
+<p>"We will go as far as we dare," Eve said. "I
+know an adorable place to dine."</p>
+
+<p>She tried more than once to bring him to speak
+of Austin, but he put her off. "I am dead tired, dear
+girl; you talk until we have something to eat."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," Eve surveyed him scornfully, "oh, men
+and their appetites!"</p>
+
+<p>But she had a thousand things to tell him, and her
+light chatter carried him away from somber thoughts,
+so that when they reached at last the quaint hostelry
+toward which their trip had tended, he was ready to
+meet Eve's mood half-way, and enter with some zest
+upon their gay adventure. She chose a little table
+on a side porch, where they were screened from ob<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192"></a>[<a href="./images/192.png">192</a>]</span>servation,
+and which overlooked the river, and there
+took off her hat and powdered her nose, and gave
+her attention to the selection of the dinner.</p>
+
+<p>"A clear soup, Dicky Boy, and Maryland chicken,
+hot asparagus, a Russian dressing for our lettuce,
+and at the end red raspberries with little cakes.
+They are sponge cakes, Dicky, filled with cream,
+and they are food for the gods."</p>
+
+<p>He was hungry and tired and he wanted to eat.
+He was glad when the food came on.</p>
+
+<p>When he finished he leaned back and talked shop.
+"If you don't like it," he told Eve, "I'll stop. Some
+women hate it."</p>
+
+<p>"I love it," Eve said. "Dicky, when I dream of
+your future you are always at the top of things, with
+smaller men running after you and taking your
+orders."</p>
+
+<p>He smiled. "Don't dream. It doesn't pay. I've
+stopped."</p>
+
+<p>She glanced at him. His face was stern.</p>
+
+<p>"What's up, Dicky Boy?"</p>
+
+<p>He laughed without mirth. "Oh, I'm beginning
+to think we are puppets pulled by strings; that
+things happen as Fate wills and not as we want
+them."</p>
+
+<p>"Men haven't any right to talk that way. It's
+their world. If you were a woman you might complain.
+Look at me! Everything that I have comes
+from Aunt Maude. She could leave me without a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193"></a>[<a href="./images/193.png">193</a>]</span>
+cent if she chose, and she knows it. She owns me,
+and unless I marry she'll own me until I die."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll marry, Eve. Old Pip will see to that."</p>
+
+<p>"Pip," passionately. "Dicky, why do you always
+fling Pip in my face?"</p>
+
+<p>"Eve&mdash;&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>"You do. Everybody does. And I don't want
+him."</p>
+
+<p>"Then don't have him. There are others. And
+you needn't lose your temper over a little thing like
+that."</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't a little thing."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well&mdash;&mdash;" The conversation lapsed into
+silence until Eve said, "I was horrid&mdash;and I think
+we had better be getting back, Dicky."</p>
+
+<p>Again in the big limousine, with the stolid chauffeur
+separated from them by the glass screen, she
+said, softly, "Oh, Dicky, it seems too good to be
+true that we shall have other nights like this&mdash;other
+rides. When will you come up for good?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am not coming, Eve."</p>
+
+<p>She turned to him, her face frozen into whiteness.</p>
+
+<p>"Not coming? Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"While mother lives I must make her happy."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't be goody-goody."</p>
+
+<p>He blazed. "I'm not."</p>
+
+<p>"You are. Aren't you ever going to live your
+own life?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am living it. But I can't break mother's heart."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194"></a>[<a href="./images/194.png">194</a>]</span>
+"You might as well break hers as&mdash;mine."</p>
+
+<p>He stared down at her. Mingled forever after
+with his thoughts of that moment was a blurred
+vision of her whiteness and stillness. Her slim
+hands were crossed tensely on her knees.</p>
+
+<p>He laid one of his own awkwardly over them.
+"Dear girl," he said, "you don't in the least mean it."</p>
+
+<p>"I do. Dicky, why shouldn't I say it? Why
+shouldn't I? Hasn't a woman the right? Hasn't
+she?"</p>
+
+<p>She was shaking with silent sobs, the tears running
+down her cheeks. He had not seen her cry
+like this since little girlhood, when her mother had
+died, and he, a clumsy lad, had tried to comfort her.</p>
+
+<p>He was faced by a situation so stupendous that
+for a moment he sat there stunned. Proud little
+Eve for love of him had made the supreme sacrifice
+of her pride. Could any man in his maddest moment
+have imagined a thing like this&mdash;&mdash;!</p>
+
+<p>He bent down to her, and took her hands in his.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, Eve, hush. I can't bear to see you cry.
+I'm not the fellow to make you happy, dear."</p>
+
+<p>Her head dropped against his shoulder. The
+perfumed gold of her hair was against his cheeks.
+"No one else can make me happy, Dicky."</p>
+
+<p>Then he felt the world whirl about him, and it
+seemed to him as he answered that his voice came
+from a long distance.</p>
+
+<p>"If you'll marry me, Eve, I'll stay."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195"></a>[<a href="./images/195.png">195</a>]</span>
+It was the knightly thing to do, and the necessary
+thing. Yet as they swept on through the night, his
+mother's face, all the joy struck from it, seemed to
+stare at him out of the darkness.</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196"></a>[<a href="./images/196.png">196</a>]</span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+<h3><i>In Which Geoffrey Plays Cave Man.</i></h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mine own uncle:</span></p>
+
+<p>I don't know whether to begin at the beginning
+or at the end of what I have to tell you. And
+even now as I think back over the events of the last
+twenty-four hours I feel that I must have dreamed
+them, and that I will wake and find that nothing has
+really happened.</p>
+
+<p>But something has happened, and "of a strangeness"
+which makes it seem to belong to some of those
+queer old dime "thrillers" which you never wanted
+me to read.</p>
+
+<p>Last night Geoffrey Fox asked me to go out with
+him on the river. I don't often go at night, yet
+as there was a moon, it seemed as if I might.</p>
+
+<p>We went in Brinsley Tyson's motor boat. It is
+big and roomy and is equipped with everything to
+make one comfortable for extended trips. I wondered
+a little that Geoffrey should take it, for he has
+a little boat of his own, but he said that Mr. Tyson
+had offered it, and they had been out in it all day.</p>
+
+<p>Well, it was lovely on the water; I was feeling
+tired and as blue as blue&mdash;some day I may tell you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197"></a>[<a href="./images/197.png">197</a>]</span>
+about <i>that</i>, Uncle Rod, and I was glad of the quiet
+and beauty of it all; and of late Geoffrey and I
+have been such good friends.</p>
+
+<p>Can't you ever really know people, Uncle Rod, or
+am I so dull and stupid that I misunderstand? Men
+are such a puzzle&mdash;all except you, you darling
+dear&mdash;and if you were young and not my uncle,
+even you might be as much of a puzzle as the rest.</p>
+
+<p>Well, I would never have believed it of Geoffrey
+Fox, and even now I can't really feel that he was responsible.
+But it isn't what I think but what you will
+think that is important&mdash;for I have, somehow, ceased
+to believe in myself.</p>
+
+<p>It was when we reached the second bridge that I
+told Geoffrey that we must turn back. We had,
+even then, gone farther than I had intended. But
+as we started up-stream, I felt that we would get to
+Bower's before Peter went back on the bridge, which
+is always the signal for the house to close, although
+it is never really closed; but the lights are turned
+down and the family go to bed, and I have always
+known that I ought not to stay out after that.</p>
+
+<p>Well, just as we left the second bridge, something
+happened to the motor.</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Rod, <i>that was last night</i>, and I didn't get
+back to Bower's until a few hours ago, and here is
+the whole truth before I write any more&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Geoffrey Fox tried to run away with me!</i></p>
+
+<p>It would seem like a huge joke if it were not so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198"></a>[<a href="./images/198.png">198</a>]</span>
+serious. I don't know how he got such an idea in
+his head. Perhaps he thought that life was like one
+of his books&mdash;that all he had to do was to plan a
+plot, and then make it work out in his own way. He
+said, in that first awful moment, when I knew what
+he had done, "I thought I could play Cave Man
+and get away with it." You see, he hadn't taken
+into consideration that I wasn't a Cave Woman!</p>
+
+<p>When the engine first went wrong I wasn't in the
+least worried. He fixed it, and we went on. Then
+it stopped and we drifted: the moon went down and
+it was cold, and finally Geoffrey made me curl up
+among the cushions. I felt that it must be very
+late, but Geoffrey showed me his watch, and it was
+only a little after ten. I knew Peter wouldn't be
+going to the bridge until eleven, and I hoped by
+that time we would be home.</p>
+
+<p>But we weren't. We were far, far down the river.
+At last I gave up hope of arriving before the house
+closed, but I knew that I could explain to Mrs.
+Bower.</p>
+
+<p>After that I napped and nodded, for I was very
+tired, and all the time Geoffrey tinkered with the
+broken motor. Each time that I waked I asked
+questions but he always quieted me&mdash;and at last&mdash;as
+the dawn began to light the world, a pale gray
+spectral sort of light, Uncle Rod, I saw that the
+shore on one side of us was not far away, but on the
+other it was a mere dark line in the distance&mdash;double<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199"></a>[<a href="./images/199.png">199</a>]</span>
+the width that the river is at Bower's. Geoffrey was
+standing up and steering toward a little pier that
+stuck its nose into shallow water. Back of the pier
+was what seemed to be an old warehouse, and in a
+clump of trees back of that there was a thin church
+spire.</p>
+
+<p>I said, "Where are we?" and he said, "I am not
+sure, but I am going in to see if I can get the motor
+mended."</p>
+
+<p>I couldn't think of anything but how worried the
+Bowers would be. "You must find a telephone," I
+told him, "and call Beulah, and let her know what
+has happened."</p>
+
+<p>He ran up to the landing and fastened the boat,
+and then he helped me out. "We will sit here and
+have a bit of breakfast first," he said; "there's some
+coffee left in Brinsley's hot and cold bottle, and
+some supplies under the stern seat."</p>
+
+<p>It was really quite cheerful sitting there, eating sardines
+and crackers and olives and orange marmalade.
+A fresh breeze was blowing, and the river was
+wrinkled all over its silver surface, and we could see
+nothing but water ahead of us, straight to the
+horizon, where there was just the faint streak of a
+steamer's smoke.</p>
+
+<p>"We must be almost in the Bay," I said.
+"Couldn't you have steered up-stream instead of
+down?"</p>
+
+<p>He sat very still for a moment looking at me, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200"></a>[<a href="./images/200.png">200</a>]</span>
+then he said quickly and sharply, "I didn't want to
+go up-stream. I wanted to go down. And I came
+in here because I saw a church spire, and where
+there is a church there is always a preacher. Will
+you marry me, Mistress Anne?"</p>
+
+<p>At first I thought that he had lost his mind.
+Uncle Rod, I don't think that I shall ever see a
+sardine or a cracker without a vision of Geoffrey
+with his breakfast in his hand and his face as white
+as chalk above it.</p>
+
+<p>"That's a very silly joke," I said. "Why should
+I marry you?"</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me, and&mdash;I didn't need any answer,
+for it came to me then that I had been out all night
+on the river with him, and that he was thinking of a
+way to quiet people's tongues!</p>
+
+<p>I tried to speak, but my voice shook, and finally I
+managed to stammer that when we got back I was
+sure it would be all right.</p>
+
+<p>"It won't be all right," he said; "the world will
+have things to say about you, and I'd rather die
+than have them say it. And I could make you
+happy, Anne."</p>
+
+<p>Then I told him that I did not love him, that he
+was my dear friend, my brother&mdash;and suddenly his
+face grew red, and he came over and caught hold of
+my hands. "I am not your brother," he said. "I
+want you whether you want me or not. I could
+make you love me&mdash;I've got to have you in my life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201"></a>[<a href="./images/201.png">201</a>]</span>
+I am not going on alone to meet darkness&mdash;and
+despair."</p>
+
+<p>Oh, Uncle Rod, then I knew and I looked straight
+at him and asked: "Geoffrey Fox, did you break the
+motor?"</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't broken," he said; "there has never been
+a thing the matter with it."</p>
+
+<p>I think for the first time that I was a little afraid.
+Not of him, but of what he had done.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how could you," I said, "how could you?"</p>
+
+<p>And it was then that he said, "I thought that I
+could play Cave Man and get away with it."</p>
+
+<p>After that he told me how much he cared. He
+said that I had helped him and inspired him. That
+I had shown him a side of himself that no one else
+had ever shown. That I had made him believe in
+himself&mdash;and in&mdash;God. That if he didn't have me
+in his life his future would be&mdash;dead. He begged
+and begged me to let him take me into the little
+town and find some one to marry us. He said that
+if we went back I would be lost to him&mdash;that&mdash;that
+Brooks would get me&mdash;that was the way he put it,
+Uncle Rod. He said that he was going blind; that
+I hadn't any heart; that he would love me as no one
+else could; that he would write his books for me;
+that he would spend his whole life making it up
+to me.</p>
+
+<p>I don't know how I held out against him. But I
+did. Something in me seemed to say that I must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202"></a>[<a href="./images/202.png">202</a>]</span>
+hold out. Some sense of dignity and of self-respect,
+and at last I conquered.</p>
+
+<p>"I will not marry you," I said; "don't speak of
+it again. I am going back to Bower's. I am not a
+heroine of a melodrama, and there's no use to act as
+if I had done an unpardonable thing. I haven't, and
+the Bowers won't think it, and nobody else will
+know. But you have hurt me more than I can tell
+by what you have done to-night. When you first
+came to Bower's there were things about you that I
+didn't like, but&mdash;as I came to know you, I thought
+I had found another man in you. The night at the
+Crossroads ball you seemed like a big kind brother&mdash;and
+I told you what I had suffered, and now you
+have made me suffer."</p>
+
+<p>And then&mdash;oh, I don't quite know how to tell you.
+He dropped on his knees at my feet and hid his face
+in my dress and cried&mdash;hard dry sobs&mdash;with his
+hands clutching.</p>
+
+<p>I just couldn't stand it, Uncle Rod, and presently
+I was saying, "Oh, you poor boy, you poor
+boy&mdash;&mdash;" and I think I smoothed his hair, and he
+whispered, "Can't you?" and I said, "Oh, Geoffrey,
+I can't."</p>
+
+<p>At last he got control of himself. He sat at a
+little distance from me and told me what he was
+going to do.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I was mad," he said. "I can't even ask
+your forgiveness, for I don't deserve it. I am going<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203"></a>[<a href="./images/203.png">203</a>]</span>
+up to town to telephone to Beulah, and when I come
+back I will take you up the river where you can get
+the train. I shall break the engine and leave it
+here, so that when Brinsley gets it back there will
+be nothing to spoil our story."</p>
+
+<p>He was gone half an hour. When he came he
+brought me a hat. He had bought it at the one
+little store where he had telephoned, and he had
+bought one for himself. I think we both laughed a
+little when we put them on, although it wasn't a
+laughing matter, but we did look funny.</p>
+
+<p>He unfastened the boat, and we turned up the
+river and in about an hour we came into quite a
+thriving port with the Sunday quiet over everything,
+and Geoffrey did things to the engine that put it out
+of commission, and then he left it with a man on the
+pier, and we took the train.</p>
+
+<p>It seems that all night at Bower's they were looking
+for us. They even took other boats, and followed.
+And they called. I know that if Geoffrey
+heard them call he didn't answer.</p>
+
+<p>Every one seemed to accept our explanation.
+Perhaps they thought it queer. But I can't help
+that.</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey is going away to-morrow. When we
+were alone in the hall for a moment he told me that
+he was going. "If you can ever forgive me," he
+said, "will you write and tell me? What I have
+done may seem unforgivable. But when a man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204"></a>[<a href="./images/204.png">204</a>]</span>
+dreams a great deal he sometimes thinks that he
+can make his dreams come true."</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Rod, I think the worst thing in the whole
+wide world is to be disappointed in people. As soon
+as school closes I am coming back to you. Perhaps
+you can make me see the sunsets. And what
+do you say about life now? Is it what we make it?
+Did I have anything to do with this mad adventure?
+Yet the memory of it will always&mdash;smirch.</p>
+
+<p>And if life isn't what we make it, where is our
+hope and where are our sunsets? Tell me that, you
+old dear.</p>
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Anne.</span>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;</p>
+
+<p>P.S. When I opened my door just now, I found
+that Geoffrey had left on the threshold his little Napoleon,
+and a letter. I am sending the letter to you.
+I cried over it, and I am afraid it is blurred&mdash;but I
+haven't time to make a copy before the mail goes.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>What Geoffrey said:</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My little Child:</span></p>
+
+<p>I am calling you that because there is something
+so young and untouched about you. If I were
+an artist I should paint you as young Psyche&mdash;and
+there should be a hint of angels' wings in the air
+and it should be spring&mdash;with a silver dawn. But if
+I could paint should I ever be able to put on canvas
+the light in your eyes when you have talked to me
+by the fire, my kind little friend whom I have lost?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205"></a>[<a href="./images/205.png">205</a>]</span>
+I cannot even now understand the mood that possessed
+me. Yet I will be frank. I saw you go into
+the wood with Richard Brooks. I felt that if he
+should say to you what I was sure he wanted to say
+that there would be no chance for me&mdash;so I hurried
+after you. The thing which was going to happen
+must not happen; and I arrived in time. After that
+I told Brooks as we walked back that I was going
+to marry you, and I took you out in my boat intending
+to make my words come true.</p>
+
+<p>These last few days have been strange days.
+Perhaps when I have described them you may find
+it in your heart to feel sorry for me. The book is
+finished. That of itself has left me with a sense of
+loss, as if I had put away from me something that
+had been a part of me. Then&mdash;I am going blind.
+Do you know what that means, the desperate meaning?
+To lose the light out of your life&mdash;never to see
+the river as I saw it this morning? Never to see the
+moonlight or the starlight&mdash;never to see your face?</p>
+
+<p>The specialist has given me a few months&mdash;and
+then darkness.</p>
+
+<p>Was it selfishness to want to tie you to a blind
+man? If you knew that you were losing the light
+wouldn't you want to steal a star to illumine the
+night?&mdash;and you were my&mdash;Star.</p>
+
+<p>I am going now to my little sister, Mimi. She
+leaves the convent in a few days. There are just the
+two of us. I have been a wayward chap, loving my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206"></a>[<a href="./images/206.png">206</a>]</span>
+own way; it will be a sorry thing for her to find, I
+fancy, that henceforth I shall be in leading strings.</p>
+
+<p>It is because of this thing that is coming that I
+am begging you still to be my friend&mdash;to send me
+now and then a little letter; that I may feel in the
+night that you are holding out your hand to me.
+There can be no greater punishment than your complete
+silence, no greater purgatory than the thought
+that I have forfeited your respect. Looking into the
+future I can see no way to regain it, but if the day
+ever comes when a Blind Beggar can serve you, you
+will show that you have forgiven him by asking that
+service of him.</p>
+
+<p>I am leaving my little Napoleon for you. You
+once called him a little great man. Perhaps those
+of us who have some elements of greatness find our
+balance in something that is small and mean and
+mad.</p>
+
+<p>Will you tell Brooks that you are not bound to me
+in any way? It is best that you should do it. I
+shall hope for a line from you. If it does not come&mdash;if
+I have indeed lost my little friend through my own
+fault&mdash;then indeed the shadows will shut me in.</p>
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Geoffrey.</span>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>Uncle Rodman writes:</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My beloved Niece:</span></p>
+
+<p>Once upon a time you and I read together
+"The Arabian Nights," and when we had finished<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207"></a>[<a href="./images/207.png">207</a>]</span>
+the first book you laid your little hand on my knee
+and looked up at me. "Is it true, Uncle Rod?"
+you asked. "Oh, Uncle Rod, is it true?" And I
+said, "What it tells about the Roc's egg and the
+Old Man of the Sea and the Serpent is not true, but
+what it says about the actions and motives of people
+is true, because people have acted in that way and
+have thought like that through all the ages, and
+the tales have lived because of it, and have been
+written in all languages." I was sure, when I said it,
+that you did not quite understand; but you were to
+grow to it, which was all that was required.</p>
+
+<p>Blessed child, what your Geoffrey Fox has done,
+though I hate him for it and blame him, is what other
+hotheads have done. The protective is not the
+primitive masculine instinct. Men have thought of
+themselves first and of women afterward since the
+beginning of time. Only with Christianity was
+chivalry born in them. And since many of our
+youths have elected to be pagan, what can you
+expect?</p>
+
+<p>So your Geoffrey Fox being pagan, primitive&mdash;primordial,
+whatever it is now the fashion to call it,
+reverted to type, and you were the victim.</p>
+
+<p>I have read his letter and might find it in my heart
+to forgive him were it not that he has made you suffer;
+but that I cannot forgive; although, indeed, his
+coming blindness is something that pleads for him,
+and his fear of it&mdash;and his fear of losing you.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208"></a>[<a href="./images/208.png">208</a>]</span>
+I am glad that you are coming home to me.
+Margaret and her family are going away, and we
+can have their big house to ourselves during the
+summer. We shall like that, I am sure, and we shall
+have many talks, and try to straighten out this matter
+of dreams&mdash;and of sunsets, which is really very
+important, and not in the least to be ignored.</p>
+
+<p>But let me leave this with you to ponder on. You
+remember how you have told me that when you were
+a tiny child you walked once between me and my
+good old friend, General Ross, and you heard it said
+by one of us that life was what we made it. Before that
+you had always cried when it rained; now you were
+anxious that the rain might come so that you could
+see if you could really keep from crying. And when
+the rain arrived you were so immensely entertained
+that you didn't shed a tear, and you went to bed that
+night feeling like a conqueror, and never again cried
+out against the elements.</p>
+
+<p>It would have been dreadful if all your life you
+had gone on crying about rain, wouldn't it? And
+isn't this adventure your rainy day? You rose
+above it, dearest child. I am proud of the way you
+handled your mad lover.</p>
+
+<p>Life <i>is</i> what we make it. Never doubt that.
+"He knows the water best who has waded through
+it," and I have lived long and have learned my lesson.
+When I knew that I could paint no more
+real pictures I knew that I must have dream pic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209"></a>[<a href="./images/209.png">209</a>]</span>tures
+to hang on the walls of memory. Shall I
+make you a little catalogue of them, dear heart&mdash;thus:</p>
+
+<p>No. 1.&mdash;Your precious mother sewing by the west
+window in our shadowed sitting-room, her head
+haloed by the sunset.</p>
+
+<p>No. 2.&mdash;Anne in a blue pinafore, with the wind
+blowing her hair back on a gray March morning.</p>
+
+<p>No. 3.&mdash;Anne in a white frock amid a blur of
+candle-light on Christmas&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Oh, my list would be long! People have said
+that I have lacked pride because I have chosen to
+take my troubles philosophically. There have been
+times when my soul has wept. I have cried often
+on my rainy days. But&mdash;there have always been
+the sunsets&mdash;and after that&mdash;the stars.</p>
+
+<p>I fear that I have been but little help to you. But
+you know my love&mdash;blessed one. And the eagerness
+with which I await your coming. Ever your
+own</p>
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Uncle.</span>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210"></a>[<a href="./images/210.png">210</a>]</span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+<h3><i>In Which There is Much Said of Marriage and of
+Giving in Marriage.</i></h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Eve's</span> green-eyed cat sat on a chair and watched
+the flame-colored fishes. It was her morning
+amusement. When her mistress came down she
+would have her cream and her nap. In the meantime,
+the flashing, golden things in the clear water
+aroused an ancient instinct. She reached out a quick
+paw and patted the water, flinging showers of sparkling
+drops on her sleek fur.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Maude, eating waffles and reading her morning
+paper, approved her. "I hope you'll catch
+them," she said, "especially the turtles and the tadpoles&mdash;the
+idea of having such things where you
+eat."</p>
+
+<p>The green-eyed cat licked her wet paw, then she
+jumped down from the chair and trotted to the
+door to meet Eve, who picked her up and hugged
+her. "Pats," she demanded, "what have you been
+doing? Your little pads are wet."</p>
+
+<p>"She's been fishing," said Aunt Maude, "in your
+aquarium. She has more sense than I thought."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211"></a>[<a href="./images/211.png">211</a>]</span>
+Eve, pouring cream into a crystal dish, laughed.
+"Pats is as wise as the ages&mdash;you can see it in her
+eyes. She doesn't say anything, she just looks.
+Women ought to follow her example. It's the mysterious,
+the silent, that draws men. Now Polly
+prattles and prattles, and nobody listens, and we
+all get a little tired of her; don't we, Polly?"</p>
+
+<p>She set the cream carefully by the green cushion,
+and Pats, classically posed on her haunches, lapped
+it luxuriously. The Polly-parrot coaxed and wheedled
+and was rewarded with her morning biscuit.
+The flame-colored fishes rose to the snowy particles
+which Eve strewed on the surface of the water, and
+then with all of her family fed, Eve turned to the
+table, sat down, and pulled away Aunt Maude's
+paper.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear," the old lady protested.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to talk to you," Eve announced. "Aunt
+Maude, I'm going to marry Dicky."</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Maude pushed back her plate of waffles.
+The red began to rise in her cheeks. "Oh, of all
+the fools&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"'He who calleth his brother a fool&mdash;&mdash;'" Eve
+murmured pensively. "Aunt Maude, I'm in love
+with him."</p>
+
+<p>"You're in love with yourself," tartly, "and with
+having your own way. The husband for you is
+Philip Meade. But he wants you, and so&mdash;you
+don't want him."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212"></a>[<a href="./images/212.png">212</a>]</span>
+"Dicky wants me, too," Eve said, a little wistfully;
+"you mustn't forget that, Aunt Maude."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not forgetting it." Then sharply, "Shall
+you go to live at Crossroads?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. Austin has made him an offer. He's coming
+back to town."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you expect to live on?"</p>
+
+<p>Silence. Then, uncertainly, "I thought perhaps
+until he gets on his feet you'd make us an allowance."</p>
+
+<p>The old lady exploded in a short laugh. She
+gathered up her paper and her spectacles case and
+her bag of fancy work. Then she rose. "Not if
+you marry Richard Brooks. You may as well know
+that now as later, Eve. All your life you have
+shaken the plum tree and have gathered the fruit.
+You may come to your senses when you find there
+isn't any tree to shake."</p>
+
+<p>The deep red in the cheeks of the old woman was
+matched by the red that stained Eve's fairness.
+"Keep your money," she said, passionately; "I
+can get along without it. You've always made me
+feel like a pauper, Aunt Maude."</p>
+
+<p>The old woman's hand went up. There was
+about her a dignity not to be ignored. "I think
+you are saying more than you mean, Eve. I have
+tried to be generous."</p>
+
+<p>They were much alike as they faced each other,
+the same clear cold eyes, the same set of the head,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213"></a>[<a href="./images/213.png">213</a>]</span>
+the only difference Eve's youth and slenderness and
+radiant beauty. Perhaps in some far distant past
+Aunt Maude had been like Eve. Perhaps in some
+far distant future Eve's soft lines would stiffen into a
+second edition of Aunt Maude.</p>
+
+<p>"I have tried to be generous," Aunt Maude repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"You have been. I shouldn't have said that.
+But, Aunt Maude, it hasn't been easy to eat the
+bread of dependence."</p>
+
+<p>"You are feeling that now," said the old lady
+shrewdly, "because you are ready for the great
+adventure of being poor with your young Richard.
+Well, try it. You'll wish more than once that you
+were back with your old&mdash;plum tree."</p>
+
+<p>Flash of eye met flash of eye. "I shall never ask
+for another penny," Eve declared.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall buy your trousseau, of course, and set
+you up in housekeeping, but when a woman is
+married her husband must take care of her." And
+Aunt Maude sailed away with her bag and her
+spectacles and her morning paper, and Eve was left
+alone in the black and white breakfast room, where
+Pats slept on her green cushion, the Polly-parrot
+swung in her ring, and the flame-colored fishes hung
+motionless in the clear water.</p>
+
+<p>Eve ate no breakfast. She sat with her chin in
+her hand and tried to think it out. Aunt Maude had
+not proved tractable, and Richard's income would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214"></a>[<a href="./images/214.png">214</a>]</span>
+be small. Never having known poverty, she was
+not appalled by the prospect of it. Her imagination
+cast a glamour over the future. She saw herself
+making a home for Richard. She saw herself
+inviting Pip and Winifred Ames and Tony to small
+suppers and perfectly served little dinners. She did
+not see herself washing dishes or cooking the meals.
+Knowing nothing of the day's work, how could she
+conceive its sordidness?</p>
+
+<p>She roused herself presently to go and write notes
+to her friends. Triumphant notes which told of her
+happiness.</p>
+
+<p>Her note to Pip brought him that night. He
+came in white-faced. As she went toward him, he
+rose to meet her and caught her hands in a hard
+grip, looking down at her. "You're mine, Eve.
+Do you think I am going to let any one else have
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be silly, Pip."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it silly to say that there will never be for me
+any other woman? I shall love you until I die. If
+that is foolishness, I never want to be wise."</p>
+
+<p>He was kissing her hands now.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't, Pip, <i>don't</i>."</p>
+
+<p>She wrenched herself away from him, and stood
+as it were at bay. "You'll get over it."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I? How little you know me, Eve. I
+haven't even given you up. If I were a story-book
+sort of hero I'd bestow my blessing on you and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215"></a>[<a href="./images/215.png">215</a>]</span>
+Brooks and go and drive an ambulance in France,
+and break my heart at long distance. But I shan't.
+I shall stay right here on the job, and see that
+Brooks doesn't get you."</p>
+
+<p>"Pip, I didn't think you were so&mdash;small."</p>
+
+<p>The telephone rang. Eve answered it. "It was
+Winifred to wish me happiness," she said, as she
+came in from the hall.</p>
+
+<p>She was blushing faintly. He gave her a keen
+glance. "What else did she say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"You're fibbing. Tell me the truth, Eve."</p>
+
+<p>She yielded to his masterfulness.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, she said&mdash;'I wanted it to be Pip.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Good old Win, I'll send her a bunch of roses."
+He wandered restlessly about the room, then came
+back to her. "Why, Eve, I planned the house&mdash;our
+house. It was to have the sea in front of it and a
+forest behind it, and your room was to have a wide
+window and a balcony, and under the balcony there
+was to be a rose garden."</p>
+
+<p>"How sure you were of me, Pip."</p>
+
+<p>"I have never been sure. But what I want, I&mdash;get.
+Remember that, dear girl. When I shut my
+eyes I can see you at the head of my table, in a high
+gold chair&mdash;like a throne."</p>
+
+<p>She stared at him in amazement. "Pip, it
+doesn't sound a bit like you."</p>
+
+<p>"No. What a man thinks is apt to be&mdash;different.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216"></a>[<a href="./images/216.png">216</a>]</span>
+On the surface I'm a rather practical sort of fellow.
+But when I plan my future with you I am playing
+king to your queen, and I'm not half bad at it."</p>
+
+<p>And now it was she who was restless. "If I married
+you, what would I get out of it but&mdash;money?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you."</p>
+
+<p>"You know I don't mean it that way. But I like
+to think that I can help Richard&mdash;in his career."</p>
+
+<p>"You're not made of that kind of stuff. You
+want your own good time. Women who help men
+to achieve must be content to lose their looks and
+their figures and to do without pretty clothes, and
+you wouldn't be content. You want to live your own
+life, and be admired and petted and envied, Eve."</p>
+
+<p>She faced him, blazing. "You and Aunt Maude
+and Win are all alike. You think I can't be happy
+unless I live in the lap of luxury. Well, I can tell
+you this, I'd rather have a crust of bread with
+Richard than live in a palace with you, Pip."</p>
+
+<p>He stood up. "You don't mean it. But you
+needn't have put it quite that way, and some day
+you'll be sorry, and you'll tell me that you're sorry.
+Tell me now, Eve."</p>
+
+<p>He put his hands on her shoulders, holding her
+with a masterful grip. Her eyes met his and fell.
+"Oh, I hate your&mdash;sureness."</p>
+
+<p>"Some day you are going to love it. Look at
+me, Eve."</p>
+
+<p>She forced herself to do so. But she was not at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217"></a>[<a href="./images/217.png">217</a>]</span>
+ease. Then almost wistfully she yielded. "I&mdash;am
+sorry, Pip."</p>
+
+<p>His hands dropped from her shoulders. "Good
+little girl."</p>
+
+<p>He kissed both of her hands before he went away.
+"I am glad we are friends"&mdash;that was his way of
+putting it&mdash;"and you mustn't forget that some day
+we are going to be more than that," and when he
+had gone she found herself still shaken by the sureness
+of his attitude.</p>
+
+<p>Pip on his way down-town stopped in to order
+Winifred's roses, and the next day he went to her
+apartment and unburdened his heart.</p>
+
+<p>"If it was in the day of duels I'd call him out.
+Just at this moment I am in the mood for pistols or
+poison, I'm not sure which."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not try&mdash;patience?"</p>
+
+<p>He glanced at her quickly. "You think she'll
+tire?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think&mdash;it can never happen. For Richard's
+sake I&mdash;hope not."</p>
+
+<p>"Why for his sake?"</p>
+
+<p>Winifred smiled. "I'd like to see him marry
+little Anne."</p>
+
+<p>"The school-teacher?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Oh, I am broken-hearted to think he's
+spoiling Nancy's dreams for him. There was something
+so idyllic in them. And now he'll marry Eve."</p>
+
+<p>"You say that as if it were a tragedy."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218"></a>[<a href="./images/218.png">218</a>]</span>
+"It is, for him and for her. Eve was never made
+to be poor."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't tell her that. She took my head off.
+Said she'd rather have a crust of bread with Richard&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, oh!"</p>
+
+<p>"Than a palace with me."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Pip. It wasn't nice of her."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall make her eat her words."</p>
+
+<p>Winifred shook her head. "Don't be hard on
+her, Pip. We women are so helpless in our loves.
+Richard might make her happy if he cared enough,
+but he doesn't. Perhaps Eve will be broadened and
+deepened by it all. I don't know. No one knows."</p>
+
+<p>"I know this. That you and Tony seem to get a
+lot out of things, Win."</p>
+
+<p>"Of marriage? We do. Yet we've had all of
+the little antagonisms and differences. But underneath
+it we know&mdash;that we're made for each other.
+And that helps. It has helped us to push the wrong
+things out of our lives and to hold on to the right
+ones."</p>
+
+<p>Philip's young face was set. "I wanted to have
+my chance with Eve. We are young and pretty
+light-weight on the surface, but life together might
+make us a bit more like you and Tony. And now
+Richard is spoiling things."</p>
+
+<p>Back at Crossroads, Nancy was trying to convince
+her son that he was not spoiling things for her. "I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219"></a>[<a href="./images/219.png">219</a>]</span>
+have always been such a dreamer, dear boy. It was
+silly for me to think that I could stand between you
+and your big future. I have written to Sulie Tyson,
+and she'll stay with me, and you can run down for
+week-ends&mdash;and I'll always have David."</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, let me go to Eve and tell her&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Tell her what?"</p>
+
+<p>"That I shall stay&mdash;with you."</p>
+
+<p>She was white with the whiteness which had never
+left her since he had told her that he was going to
+marry Eve.</p>
+
+<p>"Hickory-Dickory, if I kept you here in the end
+you would hate me."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Mother!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Not consciously. But I should be a barrier&mdash;and
+you'd find yourself wishing for&mdash;freedom. If I
+let you go&mdash;you'll come back now and then&mdash;and
+be&mdash;glad."</p>
+
+<p>He gathered her up in his arms and declared
+fiercely that he would not leave her, but she stayed
+firm. And so the thing was settled, and as soon as
+he could settle his affairs at Crossroads he was to go
+to Austin.</p>
+
+<p>Anne, writing to Uncle Rod about it, said:</p>
+
+<p>"St. Michael is to marry the Lily-of-the-Field.
+You see, after all, he likes that kind of thing, though
+I had fancied that he did not. She is not as fine
+and simple as he is, and somehow I can't help feeling
+sorry.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220"></a>[<a href="./images/220.png">220</a>]</span>
+"But that isn't the worst of it, Uncle Bobs. He
+is going back to New York. And now what becomes
+of <i>his</i> sunsets? I don't believe he ever had
+any. And oh, his poor little mother. She is fooling
+him and making him think that it is just as it should
+be and that she was foolish to expect anything else.
+But to me it is unspeakable that he should leave
+her. But he'll have Eve Chesley. Think of changing
+Nancy Brooks for Eve!"</p>
+
+<p>It was at Beulah's wedding that Anne and Richard
+saw each other for the last time before his departure.</p>
+
+<p>Beulah was married in the big front room at
+Bower's. She was married at six o'clock because it
+was easy for the farmer folk to come at that time,
+and because the evening could be given up afterward
+to the reception and a big supper and Beulah
+and Eric could take the ten o'clock train for New
+York.</p>
+
+<p>She had no bridesmaids except Peggy, who was
+quite puffed up with the importance of her office.
+Anne had instructed her, and at the last moment held
+a rehearsal on the side porch.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, play I am the bride, Peggy."</p>
+
+<p>"You look like a bride," Peggy said. "Aren't
+you ever going to be a bride, Miss Anne?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am not sure, Peggy. Perhaps no one will ever
+ask me."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd ask you if I were a man," Peggy reassured
+her. "Now, go on and show me, Anne."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221"></a>[<a href="./images/221.png">221</a>]</span>
+"You must take Beulah's bouquet when she hands
+it to you, and after she is married you must give it
+back to her, and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And then I must kiss her."</p>
+
+<p>"You must let Eric kiss her first."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because he will be her husband."</p>
+
+<p>"But I've been her sister for ever and ever."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but a husband, Peggy. Husbands are <i>very</i>
+important."</p>
+
+<p>"Why are they?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they give you a new name and a new
+house, and you have new clothes to marry them in,
+and you go away with them on a honeymoon."</p>
+
+<p>"What's a honeymoon?"</p>
+
+<p>"The honey is for the sweetness, and the moon is
+for the madness, Peggy, dear."</p>
+
+<p>"Do people always go away on trains for their
+honeymoons?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not always. I shouldn't like a train. I should
+like to get into a boat with silver sails, and sail
+straight down a singing river into the heart of the
+sunset."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, of course, you couldn't," said the plump
+and practical Peggy, "but it sounds nice to say it.
+Does our river sing, Miss Anne?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"What does it say?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne stretched out her arms with a little yearning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222"></a>[<a href="./images/222.png">222</a>]</span>
+gesture. "It says&mdash;'<i>Come and see the world, see
+the world, see the world!</i>'"</p>
+
+<p>"It never says that to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you haven't ears to hear, Peggy."</p>
+
+<p>It was a very charming wedding. Richard was
+there and Nancy, and David and Brinsley. The
+country folk came from far and wide, and there was
+a brave showing of Old Gentlemen from Bower's who
+brought generous gifts for Peter's pretty daughter.</p>
+
+<p>Richard, standing back of his mother during the
+ceremony, could see over her head to where Anne
+waited not far from Peggy to prompt her in her
+bridesmaid's duties. She was in white. Her dark
+hair was swept up in the fashion which she had borrowed
+from Eve. She seemed very small and slight
+against the background of Bower's buxom kinsfolk.</p>
+
+<p>As he caught her eye he smiled at her, but she did
+not smile back. She felt that she could not. How
+could he smile with that little mother drooping before
+his very eyes? How <i>could</i> he?</p>
+
+<p>She found herself later, when the refreshments
+were served, brooding over Nancy. The little lady
+tasted nothing, but was not permitted to refuse the
+cup of tea which Anne brought to her.</p>
+
+<p>"I had it made especially for you," she said;
+"you looked so tired."</p>
+
+<p>"I am tired. You see we are having rather strenuous
+days."</p>
+
+<p>"I know."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223"></a>[<a href="./images/223.png">223</a>]</span>
+"It isn't easy to let&mdash;him&mdash;go."</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't easy for anybody to let him go."</p>
+
+<p>The eyes of the two women went to where Richard
+in the midst of a protesting group was trying to
+explain his reasons for deserting Crossroads.</p>
+
+<p>He couldn't explain. They had a feeling that he
+was turning his back on them. "It's hard lines to
+have a good doctor and then lose him," was the general
+sentiment. He was made to feel that it would
+have been better not to have come than to end by
+deserting.</p>
+
+<p>He was aware that he had forfeited something
+precious, and he voiced his thought when he joined
+his mother and Anne.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll never have a practice quite like this. Neighborhood
+ties are something they know little about in
+cities."</p>
+
+<p>His mother smiled up at him bravely. "There'll
+be other things."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps;" he patted her hand. Then he fired a
+question at Anne. "Do you think I ought to go?"</p>
+
+<p>"How can I tell?" Her eyes met his candidly.
+"I felt when you came that I couldn't understand
+how a man could bury himself here. And now I am
+wondering how you can leave. It seems as if you
+belong."</p>
+
+<p>"I know what you mean."</p>
+
+<p>She went on: "And I can't quite think of this
+dear lady alone."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224"></a>[<a href="./images/224.png">224</a>]</span>
+Nancy stopped her. "Don't speak of that, my
+dear. I don't want you to speak of it. It is right
+that Richard should go."</p>
+
+<p>Anne was telling herself passionately that it was
+not right, when Beulah sent for her, and presently
+the little bride came down in her going-away gown,
+to be joined by Eric in the stiff clothes which seemed
+to rob him of the picturesqueness which belonged to
+him in less formal moments.</p>
+
+<p>But Richard had no eyes for the bride and groom;
+he saw only Anne at the head of the stairway where
+he had first talked to her. How long ago it seemed,
+and how sweet she had been, and how shy.</p>
+
+<p>The train was on the bridge, and a laughing
+crowd hurried out into the night to meet it. Peggy
+in the lead threw roses with a prodigal hand. "Kiss
+me, Beulah," she begged at the last.</p>
+
+<p>Beulah bent down to her, then was lifted in Eric's
+strong arms to the platform. Then the train drew
+out and she was gone!</p>
+
+<p>Alone on the stairway, Anne and Richard had a
+moment before the crowd swept back upon them.</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Brooks, take your mother with you."</p>
+
+<p>"She won't go."</p>
+
+<p>"Then stay with her."</p>
+
+<p>He caught at the edge of her flowing sleeve, and
+held it as if he would anchor her to him. "Do you
+want me to stay?"</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes came up to him. She saw in them some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225"></a>[<a href="./images/225.png">225</a>]</span>thing
+which lifted her above and beyond her doubts
+of him. She had an ineffable sense of having found
+something which she could never lose.</p>
+
+<p>Then as he drew back he was stammering, "Forgive
+me. I have been wanting to wish you happiness.
+Geoffrey told me&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>And now Peggy bore down upon them and all
+the heedless happy crowd, and Richard said, "Good-night,"
+and was gone.</p>
+
+<p>Yet when she was left alone, Anne felt desperately
+that she should have shouted after him, "I am not
+going to marry Geoffrey Fox. I am not going to
+be married at all."</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226"></a>[<a href="./images/226.png">226</a>]</span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+<h3><i>In Which Anne Asks and Jimmie Answers.</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>"'<span class="smcap">A moneyless</span> man,'" said Uncle Rod,
+"'goes quickly through the market.'"</p>
+
+<p>He had a basket on his arm. Anne, who was at
+her easel, looked up. "What did you buy?"</p>
+
+<p>He laughed. His laugh had in it a quality of youth
+which seemed to contradict the signs of age which
+were upon him. Yet even these signs were modified
+by the carefulness of his attire and the distinction
+of his carriage. Great-uncle Rodman had been a
+dandy in his day, and even now his Norfolk coat
+and knickerbockers, his long divided beard and
+flowing tie gave him an air half foreign, wholly his
+own.</p>
+
+<p>In his basket was a melon, crusty rolls, peaches
+and a bottle of cream.</p>
+
+<p>"Such extravagance!" Anne said, as he showed
+her the bottle.</p>
+
+<p>"It was the price of two chops. And not a lamb
+the less for it. Two chops would have been an extravagance,
+and now we shall feast innocently and
+economically."</p>
+
+<p>"Where shall we eat?" Anne asked.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227"></a>[<a href="./images/227.png">227</a>]</span>
+"Under the oak?"</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head. "Too sunny."</p>
+
+<p>"In the garden?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not till to-night&mdash;people can see us from the
+road."</p>
+
+<p>"You choose then." It was a game that they
+had played ever since she had come to him. It
+gave to each meal the atmosphere of an adventure.</p>
+
+<p>"I choose," she clapped her hands, "I choose&mdash;by
+the fish-pond, Uncle Rod."</p>
+
+<p>The fish-pond was at the end of the garden walk.
+Just beyond it a wooden gate connected a high
+brick wall and opened upon an acre or two of pasture
+where certain cows browsed luxuriously. The
+brick wall and the cows and the quiet of the corner
+made the fish-pond seem miles away from the town
+street which was faced by the front of Cousin Margaret's
+house.</p>
+
+<p>The fish-pond was a favorite choice in the game
+played by Anne and Uncle Rod. But they did not
+always choose it because that would have made it
+commonplace and would have robbed it of its
+charm.</p>
+
+<p>Anne, rising to arrange the tray, was stopped by
+Uncle Rodman. "Sit still, my dear; I'll get things
+ready."</p>
+
+<p>To see him at his housekeeping was a pleasant
+sight. He liked it, and gave to it his whole mind.
+The peeling of the peaches with a silver knife, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228"></a>[<a href="./images/228.png">228</a>]</span>
+selection of a bowl of old English ware to put them
+in, and making of the coffee in a copper machine,
+the fresh linen, the roses as a last perfect touch.</p>
+
+<p>Anne carried the tray, for his weak arm could not
+be depended upon; and by the fish-pond they ate
+their simple meal.</p>
+
+<p>The old fishes had crumbs and came to the top of
+the water to get them, and a cow looking over the
+gate was rewarded by the remaining half of the
+crusty roll. She walked away presently to give
+place to a slender youth who had crossed the fields
+and now stood with his hat off looking in.</p>
+
+<p>"If it isn't Anne," he said, "and Uncle Rod."</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Rod stood up. He did not smile and he
+did not ask the slender youth to enter. But Anne
+was more hospitable.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in, Jimmie," she said. "I can't offer you
+any lunch because we have eaten it all up. But
+there's some coffee."</p>
+
+<p>Jimmie entered with alacrity. He had come back
+from New York in a mood of great discontent, to
+meet the pleasant news that Anne Warfield was in
+town. He had flown at once to find her. If he had
+expected the Fatted Calf, he found none. Uncle
+Rodman left them at once. He had a certain
+amount of philosophy, but it had never taught him
+patience with Jimmie Ford.</p>
+
+<p>Jimmie drank a cup of coffee, and talked of his
+summer.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229"></a>[<a href="./images/229.png">229</a>]</span>
+"Saw your Dr. Richard in New York, out at
+Austin's."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"He's going to marry Eve."</p>
+
+<p>"Is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I don't understand what she sees in him&mdash;he
+isn't good style."</p>
+
+<p>"He doesn't have to be."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Men like Richard Brooks mean more to the
+world than just&mdash;clothes, Jimmie."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see it."</p>
+
+<p>"You wouldn't."</p>
+
+<p>"Why shouldn't I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you look so nice in your clothes&mdash;and you
+need them to look nice in."</p>
+
+<p>He stared at her. He felt dimly that she was
+making fun of him.</p>
+
+<p>"From the way you put it," he said, with irritation,
+"from the way you put it any one might think
+that it was just my clothes&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That make you attractive? Oh, <i>no</i>, Jimmie.
+You have nice eyes and&mdash;and a way with you."</p>
+
+<p>She was sewing on a scrap of fancy work, and
+her own eyes were on it. She was as demure as
+possible, but she seemed unusually and disconcertingly
+self-possessed.</p>
+
+<p>And now Jimmie became plaintive. Plaintiveness
+had always been his strong suit with Anne. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230"></a>[<a href="./images/230.png">230</a>]</span>
+was eager for sympathy. His affair with Eve had
+hurt his vanity.</p>
+
+<p>"I have never seen a girl like her. She doesn't
+care what the world thinks. She doesn't care what
+any one thinks. She goes right along taking
+everything that comes her way&mdash;and giving nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you want her to give you&mdash;anything,
+Jimmie?"</p>
+
+<p>"Me? Not me. She's a beauty and all that.
+But I wouldn't marry her if she were as rich as
+Rockefeller&mdash;and she isn't. Her money is her Aunt
+Maude's."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Jimmie&mdash;sour grapes."</p>
+
+<p>"Sour nothing. She isn't my kind. She said
+one day that if she wanted a man she'd ask him to
+marry her. That it was a woman's right to choose.
+I can't stand that sort of thing."</p>
+
+<p>"But if she should ask you, Jimmie?"</p>
+
+<p>Again he stared at her. "I jolly well shouldn't
+give her a chance. Not after the way she treated
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"What way?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, making me think I was the whole thing&mdash;and
+then&mdash;throwing me down."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, so you don't like being thrown down?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. I don't like that kind of a woman. You
+know the kind of woman I like, Anne."</p>
+
+<p>The caressing note in his voice came to her like<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231"></a>[<a href="./images/231.png">231</a>]</span>
+an echo of other days. But now it had no power to
+move her.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not sure that I do know the kind of woman
+you like&mdash;tell me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I like a woman that is a woman, and makes
+a man feel that he's the whole thing."</p>
+
+<p>"But mustn't he be the whole thing to make her
+feel that he is?"</p>
+
+<p>He flung himself out of his chair and stood before
+her. "Anne," he demanded, "can't you do anything
+but ask questions? You aren't a bit like you
+used to be."</p>
+
+<p>She laid down her work and now he could see her
+eyes. Such steady eyes! "No, I'm not like myself.
+You see, Jimmie, I have been away for a year,
+and one learns such a lot in a year."</p>
+
+<p>He felt a sudden sense of loss. There had always
+been the old Anne to come back to. The Anne who
+had believed and had sympathized. Again his voice
+took on a plaintive note. "Be good to me, girl,"
+he said. Then very low, "Anne, I was half afraid
+to come to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"Afraid&mdash;why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I suppose you think I acted like a&mdash;cad."</p>
+
+<p>"What do <i>you</i> think?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, stop asking questions. It was the only
+thing to do. You were poor and I was poor, and
+there wasn't anything ahead of me&mdash;or of you&mdash;surely
+you can't blame me."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232"></a>[<a href="./images/232.png">232</a>]</span>
+"How can I blame you for what was, after all, my
+great good fortune?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your what?"</p>
+
+<p>She said it again, quietly, "My great good
+fortune, Jimmie. I couldn't see it then. Indeed, I
+was very unhappy and sentimental and cynical over
+it. But now I know what life can hold for me&mdash;and
+what it would not have held if I had married
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"Anne, who has been making love to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Jimmie!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no woman ever talks like that until she has
+found somebody else. And I thought you were
+constant."</p>
+
+<p>"Constant to what?"</p>
+
+<p>"To the thought&mdash;to&mdash;to the thought of what we
+might be to each other some day."</p>
+
+<p>"And in the meantime you were asking Eve to
+marry you. Was it her money that you wanted?"</p>
+
+<p>"Her money! Do you think I am a fortune-hunter?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am asking you, Jimmie?"</p>
+
+<p>"For Heaven's sake, stop asking questions. You
+know how a pretty woman goes to my head. And
+she's the kind that flits away to make you follow.
+I can't fancy your doing that sort of a thing,
+Anne."</p>
+
+<p>"No," quietly, "women like myself, Jimmie, go
+on expecting that things will come to them&mdash;and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233"></a>[<a href="./images/233.png">233</a>]</span>
+when they don't come, we keep on&mdash;expecting. But
+somehow we never seem to be able to reach out our
+hands to take&mdash;what we might have."</p>
+
+<p>He began to feel better. This was the wistful
+Anne of the old days.</p>
+
+<p>"There has never been any one like you, Anne.
+It seems good to be here. Women like Eve madden
+a man, but your kind are so&mdash;comfortable."</p>
+
+<p>Always the old Jimmie! Wanting his ease!
+After he had left her she sat looking out over the
+gate beyond the fields to the gold of the west.</p>
+
+<p>When at last she went up to the house Uncle Rod
+had had his nap and was in his big chair on the front
+porch.</p>
+
+<p>"Jimmie and I are friends again," she told him.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her inquiringly. "Real friends?"</p>
+
+<p>"Surface friends. He is coming again to tell me
+his troubles and get my sympathy. Uncle Rod,
+what makes me so clear-eyed all of a sudden?"</p>
+
+<p>He smoothed his beard. "My dear, 'the eyes of
+the hare are one thing, the eyes of the owl another.'
+You are looking at life from a different point of view.
+I knew that if you ever met a real man you'd know
+the difference between him and Jimmie Ford."</p>
+
+<p>She came over, and standing behind him, put her
+hands on his shoulders. "I've found him, Uncle
+Rod."</p>
+
+<p>"St. Michael?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234"></a>[<a href="./images/234.png">234</a>]</span>
+"Poor little girl."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not poor, Uncle Rod. I am rich. It is
+enough to have known him."</p>
+
+<p>The sunset was showing above the wooden gate.
+The cows had gone home. The old fish swam
+lazily in the shadowed water.</p>
+
+<p>Anne drew her low chair to the old man's side.
+"Uncle Rod, isn't it queer, the difference between the
+things we ask for and the things we get? To have
+a dream come true doesn't mean always that you
+must get what you want, does it? For sometimes
+you get something that is more wonderful than any
+dream. And now if you'll listen, and not look at
+me, I'll tell you all about it, you darling dear."</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>It was in late August that Anne received the first
+proof sheets of Geoffrey's book. "I want you to
+read it before any one else. It will be dedicated to
+you and it is better than I dared believe&mdash;I could
+never have written it without your help, your inspiration."</p>
+
+<p>It was a great book. Anne, remembering the
+moment the plot had been conceived on that quiet
+night by Peggy's bedside when she had seen the
+pussy cat and had heard the tinkling bell, laid it
+down with a feeling almost of awe.</p>
+
+<p>She wrote Geoffrey about it. It was her first real
+letter to him. She had written one little note of forgiveness
+and of friendliness, but she had felt that for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235"></a>[<a href="./images/235.png">235</a>]</span>
+a time at least she should do no more than that,
+and Uncle Rod had commended her resolution.</p>
+
+<p>"Hot fires had best burn out," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"If you never do anything else," Anne wrote to
+Geoffrey, "you can be content. There isn't a line
+of pot-boiling in it. It is as if you had dipped your
+pen in magic ink. Rereading it to Uncle Rodman
+has brought back the nights when we talked it over,
+and I can't help feeling a little peacock-y to know
+that I had a part in it.</p>
+
+<p>"And now I am going to tell you what Uncle
+Rod's comment was when I finished the very last
+word. He sat as still as a solemn old statue, and
+then he said, 'Geoffrey Fox is a great man. No one
+could have written like that who was sordid of mind
+or small of soul.'</p>
+
+<p>"If you knew my Uncle Rodman you would
+understand all that his opinion stands for. He is
+never flattering, but he has had much time to think&mdash;he
+is like one of the old prophets&mdash;so that, indeed, I
+sometimes feel that he ought to sing his sentences
+like David, instead of saying wise things in an
+ordinary way. And his proverbs! he has such a
+collection, he is making a book of them, and he digs
+into old volumes in all sorts of languages&mdash;oh, some
+day you must know him!</p>
+
+<p>"I am going back to Crossroads. It seems that
+my work lies there. And I have great news for you.
+I am to live with Mrs. Brooks. She has her cousin,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236"></a>[<a href="./images/236.png">236</a>]</span>
+Sulie Tyson, with her, but she wants me. And it
+will be so much better than Bower's.</p>
+
+<p>"All through Mrs. Nancy's letters I can read her
+loneliness. She tries to keep it out. But she can't.
+She is proud of her son's success&mdash;but she feels the
+separation intensely. He has his work, she only
+her thoughts of him&mdash;and that's the tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>"In the meantime, here we are at Cousin Margaret's
+doing funny little stunts in the way of cooking
+and catering. We can't afford the kind of
+housekeeping which requires servants, so it is a case
+of plain living and high thinking. Uncle Rod hates
+to eat anything that has been killed, and makes all
+sorts of excuses not to. He won't call himself a
+vegetarian, for he thinks that people who label
+themselves are apt to be cranks. So he does our
+bit of marketing and comes home triumphant with
+his basket innocent of birds or beasts, and we live
+on ambrosia and nectar or the modern equivalent.
+We are quite classic with our feasts by the old fish-pond
+at the end of the garden.</p>
+
+<p>"Cousin Margaret's garden is flaming in the
+August days with phlox, and is fragrant with day
+lilies. There's a grass walk and a sun-dial, and best
+of all, as I have said, the fish-pond.</p>
+
+<p>"And while I am on the subject of gardens, Uncle
+Rod rises up in wrath when people insist upon giving
+the botanical names to all of our lovely blooms.
+He says that the pedants are taking all of the poetry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237"></a>[<a href="./images/237.png">237</a>]</span>
+out of language, and it does seem so, doesn't it?
+Why should we call larkspur <i>Delphinium</i>? or a forget-me-not
+<i>Myostis Palustria</i>, and would a primrose
+by the river's brim ever be to you or to me <i>primula
+vulgaris</i>? Uncle Rod says that a rose by any other
+name would <i>not</i> smell as sweet; and it is fortunate
+that the worst the botanists may do cannot spoil the
+generic&mdash;<i>rosa</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"And now with my talk of Uncle Rod and of Me,
+I am stringing this letter far beyond all limits, and
+yet I have not told you half the news.</p>
+
+<p>"I had a little note from Beulah, and she and
+Eric are at home in the Playhouse. She loves your
+silver candlesticks. So many of her presents were
+practical and she prefers the 'pretties.'</p>
+
+<p>"You have heard, of course, that Dr. Brooks is to
+marry Eve Chesley. The wedding will not take
+place for some time. I wonder if they will live with
+Aunt Maude. I can't quite imagine Dr. Richard's
+wings clipped to such a cage."</p>
+
+<p>She signed herself, "Always your friend, Anne
+Warfield."</p>
+
+<p>Far up in the Northern woods Geoffrey read her
+letter. He could use his eyes a little, but most of
+the time he lay with them shut and Mimi read to
+him, or wrote for him at his dictation. He had
+grown to be very dependent on Mimi; there were
+even times when he had waked in the night, groping
+and calling out, and she had gathered him in her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238"></a>[<a href="./images/238.png">238</a>]</span>
+arms and had held him against her breast until he
+stopped shaking and shivering and saying that he
+could not see.</p>
+
+<p>He spoke her name now, and she came to him.
+He put Anne's letter in her hand. "Read it!" and
+when she had read, he said, "You see she says that
+I am great&mdash;and she used to say it. Am I, Mimi?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Geoffrey, yes."</p>
+
+<p>"I want you to make it true, Mimi. Shall I begin
+my new book to-morrow?"</p>
+
+<p>It was what she had wanted, what she had begged
+that he would do, but he had refused to listen. And
+now he was listening to another voice!</p>
+
+<p>She brought her note-book, and sat beside him.
+Being ignorant of shorthand she had invented a
+little system of her own, and she was glad when she
+could make him laugh over her funny pot-hooks and
+her straggling sketches.</p>
+
+<p>Thus in the darkness Geoffrey struggled and
+strove. "Speaking of candlesticks," he wrote to
+Anne, "it was as if a thousand candles lighted my
+world when I read your letter!"</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239"></a>[<a href="./images/239.png">239</a>]</span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+<h3><i>In Which Pan Pipes to the Stars.</i></h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">That</span> Richard in New York should miss his
+mother was inevitable. But he was not homesick.
+He was too busy for that. Austin's vogue
+was tremendous.</p>
+
+<p>"Every successful man ought to be two men," he
+told Richard, as they talked together one Sunday
+night at Austin's place in Westchester, "'another
+and himself,' as Browning puts it. Then there
+would be one to labor and the other to enjoy. I
+want to retire, and I can't. There's a selfish instinct
+in all of us to grip and hold. That is why I am
+pinning my faith to you. You can slip in as I slip
+out. I have visions of riding to hounds and sailing
+the seas some day, to say nothing of putting up a
+good game of golf. But perhaps that's a dream. A
+man can't get away from his work, not when he
+loves it."</p>
+
+<p>"That's why you're such a success, sir," Richard
+told him, honestly; "you go to every operation as if
+it were a banquet."</p>
+
+<p>Austin laughed. "I'm not such a ghoul. But
+there's always the wonder of it with me. I some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240"></a>[<a href="./images/240.png">240</a>]</span>times
+wish I had been a churchgoing man, Brooks.
+There isn't much more for me to learn about bodies,
+but there's much about souls. I have a feeling that
+some day in some physical experiment I shall find
+tangible evidence of the spiritual. That's why I say
+my prayers to Something every night, and I rather
+think It's God."</p>
+
+<p>"I know it's God," said Richard, simply, "on
+such a night as this."</p>
+
+<p>They were silent in the face of the evening's
+beauty. The great trees on the old estate were
+black against a silver sky. White statues shone
+like pale ghosts among them. Back of Richard
+and his host, in a semicircle of dark cedars, a marble
+Pan piped to the stars.</p>
+
+<p>"And in the cities babies are sleeping on fire
+escapes," Austin meditated. "If I had had a son
+I should have sent him to the slums to find his
+work. But the Fates have given me only Marie-Louise."</p>
+
+<p>And now his laugh was forced. "Brooks, the
+Gods have checkmated me. Marie-Louise is the
+son of her father. I had planned that she should be
+the daughter of her mother. I sowed some rather
+wild oats in my youth, and waked in middle age to
+the knowledge that my materialism had led me
+astray. So I married an idealist. I wanted my
+children to have a spiritual background of character
+such as I have not possessed. And the result of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241"></a>[<a href="./images/241.png">241</a>]</span>
+that marriage is&mdash;Marie-Louise! If she has a soul
+it is yet to be discovered."</p>
+
+<p>"She is young. Give her time."</p>
+
+<p>"I have been giving her time for eighteen years.
+I have wanted to see her mother in her, to see some
+gleam of that exquisite fineness. There are things
+we men, the most material of us, want in our
+women, and I want it in Marie-Louise. But she
+gives back what I have given her&mdash;nothing more.
+And I don't know what to do with her."</p>
+
+<p>"Her mother?" Richard hinted.</p>
+
+<p>"Julie is worn out with trying to meet a nature so
+unlike her own. Our love for each other has made
+us understand. But neither of us understands
+Marie-Louise. I sent her away to school, but she
+wouldn't stay. She likes her home and she hates
+rules. She loves animals, and if she were a boy she
+would practice medicine. Being a woman and having
+no outlet for her energies, she is freakish. You
+saw the way she was dressed at dinner."</p>
+
+<p>"I liked it," Richard said; "all that dead silver
+with her red hair."</p>
+
+<p>"But it is too&mdash;sophisticated, for a young girl.
+Why, man, she ought to be in white frocks and
+pearls, and putting cushions behind her mother's
+back."</p>
+
+<p>"You say that because her mother wore white and
+pearls, and put cushions behind <i>her</i> mother's back.
+There aren't many of the white-frocks-and-pearls<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242"></a>[<a href="./images/242.png">242</a>]</span>
+kind left. It's a new generation. Perhaps dead
+silver with red hair is an expression of it. And it is
+we who don't understand."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps. But it's a problem." Austin rose. "If
+you'll excuse me, Brooks, I'll go to my wife. We
+always read together on Sunday nights."</p>
+
+<p>He sent Marie-Louise out to Richard. She came
+through the starlight, a shining figure in her silver
+dress, with a silver Persian kitten hugged up in her
+arms. She sat on the sun-dial and swung her jade
+bracelet for the kitten to play with.</p>
+
+<p>"Dad and mother are reading the Bible. He
+doesn't believe in it, and she gets him to listen once
+a week. And then she reads the prayers for the
+day. When I was a little girl I had to listen&mdash;but
+never again!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I listen to things that I don't believe?
+To-night it is the ten virgins and their
+lamps. And Dad's pretending that he's interested.
+I am writing a play about it, but mother doesn't
+know. The Wise Virgins are Bernard Shaw women
+who know what they want in the way of husbands
+and go to it. The Foolish Virgins are the old
+maids, who think it unwomanly to get ready, and
+find themselves left in the end!"</p>
+
+<p>The silver kitten clawed at the silver dress, and
+climbed on her mistress's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"All of the parables make good modern plots.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243"></a>[<a href="./images/243.png">243</a>]</span>
+Mother would be shocked if she knew I was writing
+them that way. So I don't tell her. Mother is a
+dear, but she doesn't understand. I should like to
+tell things to Dad, but he won't listen. If I were a
+boy he would listen. But he thinks I ought to be
+like mother."</p>
+
+<p>She slipped from the sun-dial and came and sat
+in the chair which her father had vacated. "If I
+were a boy I should have studied medicine. I
+wanted to be a trained nurse, but Dad wouldn't let
+me. He said I'd hate having to do the hard work,
+and perhaps I should. I like to wear pretty clothes,
+and a nurse never has a chance."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you'll marry."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no. I should <i>hate</i> to be like mother."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"She just lives for Dad. Now I couldn't do that.
+I am not going to marry. I don't like men. They
+ask too much. I like books and cats and being by
+myself. I am never lonesome. Sometimes I talk
+to Pan over there, and pretend he is playing to me
+on his pipes, and then I write poetry. Real poetry.
+I'll read it to you some time. There's one called
+'The Rose Garden.' I wrote it about a woman who
+was a patient of father's. When she knew she
+was going to die she wrote him a little note and
+asked him to see that her body was cremated, and
+that the ashes were strewn over the roses in his
+garden. He didn't seem to see anything in it but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244"></a>[<a href="./images/244.png">244</a>]</span>
+just a sick woman's fancy. But I knew that she
+was in love with him. And my poem tells that
+her blessed dust gathered itself into a gentle wraith
+which lives and breathes near him."</p>
+
+<p>"And you aren't afraid to feel that her gentle
+wraith is here in the garden?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I be? I don't believe in ghosts.
+I don't believe in fairies, either, or Santa Claus.
+But I like to read about them and write about them,
+and&mdash;and wish that it might be so."</p>
+
+<p>There was something almost wistful in her voice.
+Richard, aware suddenly of what a child she was,
+bent forward.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I half believe in fairies, and Christmas
+wouldn't be anything without Santa Claus, and as
+for the soul of your gentle lady, I have a feeling
+that it is finding Heaven in the rose garden."</p>
+
+<p>She was stroking the silver kitten which had
+curled up in her lap. "I wish I weren't such a&mdash;heathen,"
+she said, suddenly. "I know what you
+mean. But it is only the poetic sense in me that
+makes me know. I can't <i>believe</i> anything. Not
+about souls&mdash;or prayers. Do you ever pray?"</p>
+
+<p>"Every night. On my knees."</p>
+
+<p>"On your knees? Oh, is it as bad as that?"</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>Richard, writing to his mother, said of Marie-Louise,
+"Her mind isn't in a healthy state. It
+hasn't anything to feed on. Her father is too busy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245"></a>[<a href="./images/245.png">245</a>]</span>
+and her mother too ill to realize that she needs companionship
+of a certain kind. I wish she might have
+been a pupil at the Crossroads school, with Anne
+Warfield for her teacher. But no hope of that."</p>
+
+<p>He wrote, too, of his rushing days, and Nancy,
+answering, hid from him the utter hopelessness of
+her outlook. Her life began and ended with his
+letters and the week-ends which he was able to give
+her. But some of his week-ends had to be spent
+with Eve; a man cannot completely ignore the fact
+that he has a fianc&eacute;e, and Richard would have been
+less than human if he had not responded to the
+appeal of youth and beauty. So he motored with
+Eve and danced with Eve, and did all of the delightful
+summer things which are possible in the
+big city near the sea. Aunt Maude went to the
+North Shore, but Eve stayed with Winifred, and
+wove about Richard her spells of flattery and of
+frivolity.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to be near you, Dicky boy. If I'm not
+you'll work too hard."</p>
+
+<p>"It is work that I like."</p>
+
+<p>"I believe that you like it better than you do me,
+Dicky."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be silly, Eve."</p>
+
+<p>"You are always saying that. Do you like your
+work better than you do me, Dicky?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not." But he had no pretty things to
+say.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246"></a>[<a href="./images/246.png">246</a>]</span>
+The life that he lived with her, however, and with
+Pip and Winifred and Tony was a heady wine
+which swept away regrets. He had no time to
+think. He worked by day and played by night, and
+often after their play there was work again. Now
+and then, as the Sunday night when he had first
+met Marie-Louise, he motored with Austin out to
+Westchester. Mrs. Austin spent her summers there.
+Long journeys tired her, and she would not leave
+her husband. Marie-Louise stayed at "Rose Acres"
+because she hated big hotels, and found cottage
+colonies stupid. The great gardens swept down to
+the river&mdash;the wide, blue river with the high bluffs
+on the sunset side.</p>
+
+<p>The river at Bower's was not blue; it showed in
+the spring the red of the clay which was washed
+into it, and now and then a clear green when the
+rains held off, but it was rarely blue except on certain
+sapphire days in the fall, when a northwest wind
+swept all clouds from the sky.</p>
+
+<p>And this was not a singing river. It was too
+near the sea, and too full of boats, and there was no
+reason why it should say, "<i>Come and see&mdash;come and
+see&mdash;the world</i>," when the world was at its feet!</p>
+
+<p>And so the great Hudson had no song for Richard.
+Yet now and then, as he walked down to it
+in the warm darkness, his ears seemed to catch a
+faint echo of the harmonies which had filled his soul
+on the day that Anne Warfield had dried her hair<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247"></a>[<a href="./images/247.png">247</a>]</span>
+on the bank of the old river at Bower's, and had
+walked with him in the wood.</p>
+
+<p>Except at such moments, however, it must be confessed
+that he thought little of Anne Warfield. It
+hurt to think of her. And he was too much of a
+surgeon to want to turn the knife in the wound.</p>
+
+<p>Marie-Louise, developing a keen interest in his
+affairs as they grew better acquainted, questioned
+him about Evelyn.</p>
+
+<p>"Dad says you are going to marry her."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Is she pretty?"</p>
+
+<p>"Rather more than that."</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you bring her out?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody asked me, sir, she said."</p>
+
+<p>She flashed a smile at him.</p>
+
+<p>"I like your nursery-rhyme way of talking. You
+are the humanest thing that we have ever had in
+this house. Mother is a harp of a thousand strings,
+and Dad is a dynamo. But you are flesh and
+blood."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you'd ask your Evelyn out here, and her
+friends. For tea and tennis some Saturday afternoon.
+I want to see you together."</p>
+
+<p>But after she had seen them together, she said,
+shrewdly, "You are not in love with her."</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to marry her, child. Isn't that proof
+enough?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248"></a>[<a href="./images/248.png">248</a>]</span>
+"It isn't any proof at all. The big man is the one
+who really cares."</p>
+
+<p>"The big man? Pip?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is that what you call him? He looks at her like
+a dog waiting for a bone. And he brightens when
+she speaks to him. And her eyes are always on you
+and yours are never on her."</p>
+
+<p>"Marie-Louise, you are an uncanny creature.
+Like your little silver cat. She watches mice and
+you watch me. I have a feeling that you are going
+to pounce on me."</p>
+
+<p>"Some day I shall pounce," she poked her finger
+at him, "and shake you as my little cat shakes a
+mouse, and you'll wake up."</p>
+
+<p>"Am I asleep, Marie-Louise?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. You haven't heard Pan pipe." She was
+leaning on the sun-dial and looking up at the grinning
+god. "Men who live in cities have no ears to hear."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you a thousand years old, Marie-Louise?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am as old as the centuries," she told him
+gravely. "I played with Pan when the world was
+young."</p>
+
+<p>They smiled at each other, and then he said, "My
+mother wants me to live in the country. Do you
+think if I were there I should hear Pan pipe?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not if you were there because your mother wished
+it. It is only when you love it yourself that the river
+calls and you hear the fluting of the wind in the
+rushes."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249"></a>[<a href="./images/249.png">249</a>]</span>
+It was an August Saturday, hot and humid.
+Marie-Louise was in thin white, but it was a white
+with a difference from the demure summer frocks of
+a former generation. The modern note was in the
+white fur which came high up about Marie-Louise's
+throat. Yet she did not look warm. Her skin was
+as pale as the pearls in her ears. Her red hair
+flamed, but without warmth; it rippled back from
+her forehead to a cool and classic coil.</p>
+
+<p>"If you marry your Eve," she told Richard, "and
+stay with father, you'll grow rich and fat, and forget
+the state of your soul."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you didn't believe in souls."</p>
+
+<p>She flushed faintly. "I believe in yours. But
+your Eve doesn't. She likes you because you don't
+care, and everybody else does. And that isn't love."</p>
+
+<p>"What is love?"</p>
+
+<p>She pondered. "I don't know. I've never felt
+it. And I don't want to feel it. If I loved too much
+I should die&mdash;and if I didn't love enough I should
+be ashamed."</p>
+
+<p>"You are a queer child, Marie-Louise."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not a child. Dad thinks I am, and mother.
+But they don't know."</p>
+
+<p>There were day lilies growing about the sun-dial.
+She gathered a handful of white blooms and laid
+them at the feet of the piping Pan. "I shall write a
+poem about it," she said, "of a girl who loved a
+marble god, and who found it&mdash;enough. Every day<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250"></a>[<a href="./images/250.png">250</a>]</span>
+she laid a flower at his feet. And a human came to
+woo her, and she told him, 'If I loved you, you
+would ask more of me than my marble lover. He
+asks only that I lay flowers at his feet.'"</p>
+
+<p>He could never be sure whether she was in jest or
+earnest. And now she narrowed her eyes in a quizzical
+smile and was gone.</p>
+
+<p>He spoke of Marie-Louise to Eve. "She hasn't
+enough to do. She ought to be busy with her fancy
+work and her household matters."</p>
+
+<p>"No woman is busy with household matters in
+this age, Dicky. Nor with fancy work. Is that
+what you expect of a wife?"</p>
+
+<p>He didn't know what he expected, and he told her
+so. But he knew he was expecting more than she
+was prepared to give. Eve had an off-with-the-old-and-on-with-the-new
+theory of living which left him
+breathless. She expressed it one night when she
+said that she shouldn't have "obey" in her marriage
+service. "I never expect to mind you, Dicky, so
+what's the use?"</p>
+
+<p>There was no use, of course. Yet he had a feeling
+that he was being robbed of something sweet and
+sacred. The quaint old service asked things of men as
+well as of women. Good and loving and fine things.
+He was old-fashioned enough to want to promise all
+that it asked, and to have his wife promise.</p>
+
+<p>Eve laughed, too, at Richard's grace before meat.
+"You mustn't embarrass me at formal dinners,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251"></a>[<a href="./images/251.png">251</a>]</span>
+Dicky. Somehow it won't seem quite in keeping
+with the cocktails, will it?"</p>
+
+<p>Thus the spirit of Eve, contending with all that
+made him the son of his mother, meeting his
+spiritual revolts with material arguments, banking
+the fires of his flaming aspirations!</p>
+
+<p>Yet he rarely let himself dwell upon this aspect
+of it. He had set his feet in a certain path, and he
+was prepared to follow it.</p>
+
+<p>On this path, at every turning, he met Philip.
+The big man had not been driven from the field by
+the fact of Eve's engagement. He still asked her to
+go with him, he still planned pleasures for her. His
+money made things easy, and while he included
+Richard in most of his plans, he looked upon him as
+a necessary evil. Eve refused to go without her
+young doctor.</p>
+
+<p>Now and then, however, he had her alone.
+"Dicky's called to an appendicitis case," she informed
+him ruefully, one night over the telephone,
+"and I am dead lonesome. Come and cheer me
+up."</p>
+
+<p>He went to her, and during the evening proposed
+a week-end yachting trip which should take them to
+the North Shore and Aunt Maude.</p>
+
+<p>"Is Dicky invited?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. But I'm not sure that I want him."</p>
+
+<p>"He wouldn't come if he knew that you felt like
+that."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252"></a>[<a href="./images/252.png">252</a>]</span>
+"It isn't anything personal. And you know my
+manner is perfect when I'm with him."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Poor Dicky. Pip, we are a pair of deceivers.
+I sometimes think I ought to tell him."</p>
+
+<p>"There's nothing to tell."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing tangible,&mdash;but he's so straightforward.
+And he'd hate the idea that I'm letting you&mdash;make
+love to me."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't make love. I have never touched the
+tip of your finger."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Pip!</i> Of course not. But your eyes make love,
+and your manner&mdash;and deep down in my heart I am
+afraid."</p>
+
+<p>"Afraid of what?"</p>
+
+<p>"That Fate isn't going to give me what I want.
+I don't want you, Pip. I want Dicky. And if you
+loved me&mdash;you'd let me alone."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me to go,&mdash;and I won't come back."</p>
+
+<p>"Not ever?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never."</p>
+
+<p>She weakened. "But I don't want you to go
+away. You see, you are my good friend, Pip."</p>
+
+<p>She should not have let him stay. She knew
+that. She found it necessary to apologize to Richard.
+"You see, Pip cares an awful lot."</p>
+
+<p>Richard had little sympathy. "He might as well
+take his medicine and not hang around you, Eve."</p>
+
+<p>"If you would hang around a little more perhaps
+he wouldn't."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253"></a>[<a href="./images/253.png">253</a>]</span>
+"I am very busy. You know that."</p>
+
+<p>His voice was stern. "If I am a busy husband,
+will you make that an excuse for having Pip at
+your heels?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Richard.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon. I shouldn't have said that.
+But marriage to me means more than good times.
+Life means more than good times. When I am here
+in New York it seems to me sometimes that I am
+drugged by work and pleasure. That there isn't a
+moment in which to live in a leisurely thoughtful
+sense."</p>
+
+<p>"You should have stayed at Crossroads."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't go back. I have burned my bridges.
+Austin expects things of me, and I must live up to
+his expectations. And, besides, I like it."</p>
+
+<p>"Really, Dicky?"</p>
+
+<p>"Really. There's a stimulus about the rush of it
+and the big things we are doing. Austin is a giant.
+My association with him is the biggest thing that
+has ever come into my life."</p>
+
+<p>"Bigger than your love for me?"</p>
+
+<p>Thus she brought him back to it. Making always
+demands upon him which he could not meet. He
+found himself harassed by her continued harping on
+the personal point of view, yet there were moments
+when she swung him into step with her. And one
+of the moments came when she spoke of the yachting
+trip. It was very hot, and Richard loved the sea.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254"></a>[<a href="./images/254.png">254</a>]</span>
+"Dicky, I'll keep Pip in the background if you I
+promise to come."</p>
+
+<p>"How can you keep him in the background when
+he is our host?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is going to invite Marie-Louise. And he'll
+have to be nice to her. And you and I&mdash;&mdash;!
+Dicky, we'll feel the slap of the breeze in our faces,
+and forget that there's a big city back of us with
+sick people in it, and slums and hot nights. Dicky&mdash;I
+love you&mdash;and I am going to be your wife.
+Won't you come&mdash;because I want you&mdash;<i>Dicky</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>There were tears on her cheeks as she made her
+plea, and he was always moved by her tears. It
+was his protective sense that had first tied him to
+her; it was still through his chivalry that she made
+her most potent appeal.</p>
+
+<p>Marie-Louise was glad to go. "It will be like
+watching a play."</p>
+
+<p>She and Richard were waiting for Pip's "Mermaid"
+to make a landing at the pier at Rose Acres.
+A man-servant with their bags stood near, and
+Marie-Louise's maid was coated and hatted to accompany
+her mistress. "It will be like watching a
+play," Marie-Louise repeated. "The eternal trio.
+Two men and a girl."</p>
+
+<p>She waved to the quartette on the forward deck.
+"Your big man looks fine in his yachting things.
+And your Eve is nice in white."</p>
+
+<p>Marie-Louise was not in white. In spite of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255"></a>[<a href="./images/255.png">255</a>]</span>
+heat she was wrapped to the ears in a great coat of
+pale buff. On her head was a Chinese hat of yellow
+straw, with a peacock's feather. Yet in spite of the
+blueness and yellowness, and the redness of her
+head, she preserved that air of amazing coolness,
+as if her blood were mixed with snow and ran
+slowly.</p>
+
+<p>Arriving on deck, she gave Pip her hand. "I am
+glad it is clear. I hate storms. I am going to ask
+Dr. Brooks to pray that it won't be rough. He is a
+good man, and the gods should listen."</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256"></a>[<a href="./images/256.png">256</a>]</span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+<h3><i>In Which Fear Walks in a Storm.</i></h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> "Mermaid," having swept like a bird out
+of the harbor, stopped at Coney Island. Marie-Louise
+wanted her fortune told. Eve wanted peanuts
+and pop-corn. "It will make me seem a little
+girl again."</p>
+
+<p>Marie-Louise, cool in her buff coat, shrugged her
+shoulders. "I was never allowed to be that kind of
+a little girl," she said, "but I think I'd like to try it
+for a day."</p>
+
+<p>Eve and Marie-Louise got on very well together.
+They spoke the same language. And if Marie-Louise
+was more artificial in some ways, she was
+more open than Eve.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd better tell Dr. Brooks," she told the older
+girl, as the two of them walked ahead of Richard
+and Pip on the pier. Tony and Winifred had elected
+to stay on board.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell him what?"</p>
+
+<p>"That you are keeping the big man in reserve."</p>
+
+<p>Eve flushed. "Marie-Louise, you're horrid."</p>
+
+<p>"I am honest," was the calm response.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257"></a>[<a href="./images/257.png">257</a>]</span>
+Pip bought them unlimited peanuts and pop-corn,
+and Marie-Louise piloted them to the tent of a fat
+Armenian who told fortunes.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of his fatness, however, he was immaculate
+in European clothing; he charged exorbitantly
+and achieved extraordinary results.</p>
+
+<p>"He said the last time that I should marry a poet,"
+Marie-Louise informed them, "which isn't true. I
+am not going to be married at all. But it amuses
+me to hear him."</p>
+
+<p>The black eyes of the fat Armenian twinkled.
+"There will be a time when you will not be amused.
+You will be married."</p>
+
+<p>He pulled out a chair for her. "Will your friends
+stay while I tell you the rest?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, they are children; they want to buy peanuts
+and pop-corn&mdash;they want to play."</p>
+
+<p>The others laughed. But the fat Armenian did
+not laugh. "Your soul is old!"</p>
+
+<p>"You see," she asked the others, "what I mean?
+He says things like that to me. He told me once
+that in a former incarnation I had walked beside the
+Nile and had loved a king."</p>
+
+<p>"A king-poet," the man corrected.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you tell mine?" Eve asked suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, madam."</p>
+
+<p>"I am mademoiselle. You go first, Marie-Louise."</p>
+
+<p>But Marie-Louise insisted on yielding to her.
+"We will come back for you."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258"></a>[<a href="./images/258.png">258</a>]</span>
+Coming back, they found Eve in an irritable temper.
+"He told me&mdash;nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"I told you what you did not want to hear. But
+I told you the truth."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe in such things." Eve was lofty.
+Her cold eyes challenged the Oriental. "I don't
+believe you know anything about it."</p>
+
+<p>"If Mademoiselle will write it down&mdash;&mdash;" He
+was fat and puffy, but he had a sort of large dignity
+which ignored her rudeness. "If Mademoiselle will
+write it down, she will not say&mdash;next year&mdash;'I do
+not believe.'"</p>
+
+<p>She shivered. "I wish I hadn't come. Dicky
+boy, let's go and play. Pip and Marie-Louise can
+stay if they like it. I don't."</p>
+
+<p>When Marie-Louise had had her imagination once
+more fed on poets, kings, and previous incarnations,
+she and Pip went forth to seek the others.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder what he told Eve?" Pip speculated.</p>
+
+<p>Marie-Louise spoke with shrewdness. "He probably
+told her that she would marry you&mdash;only he
+wouldn't put it that way. He would say that in
+reaching for a star she would stumble on a diamond."</p>
+
+<p>"And is Brooks the star?"</p>
+
+<p>She nodded, grinning. "And you are the diamond.
+It is what she wants&mdash;diamonds."</p>
+
+<p>"She wants more than that"&mdash;tenderness crept
+into his voice&mdash;"she wants love&mdash;and I can give it."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259"></a>[<a href="./images/259.png">259</a>]</span>
+"She wants Dr. Brooks. 'Most any woman
+would," said Marie-Louise cruelly. "We all know
+he is different. You know it, and I know it, and
+Eve knows it. He is bigger in some ways, and
+better!"</p>
+
+<p>They found Eve and Richard in a pavilion dancing
+in strange company, to raucous music. Later the
+four of them rode on a merry-go-round, with Marie-Louise
+on a dolphin and Eve on a swan, with the
+two men mounted on twin dragons. They ate
+chowder and broiled lobster in a restaurant high in
+a fantastic tower. They swept up painted Alpine
+slopes in reckless cars, they drifted through dark
+tunnels in gorgeous gondolas. Eve took her pleasures
+with a sort of feverish enthusiasm, Marie-Louise
+with the air of a skeptic trying out a new thing.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother would faint and fade away if she knew I
+was here," Marie-Louise told Richard as she sat next
+to him in a movie show, "and so would Dad. He
+would object to the germs and she would object to
+the crowd. Mother is like a flower in a sunlighted
+garden. She can't imagine that a lily could grow
+with its feet in the mud. But they do. And Dad
+knows it. But he likes to have mother stay in the
+sunlighted garden. He would never have fallen in
+love with her if her roots had been in the mud."</p>
+
+<p>She was murmuring this into Richard's ear. Eve
+was on the other side of him, with Pip beyond.</p>
+
+<p>"I've never had a day like this," Marie-Louise<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260"></a>[<a href="./images/260.png">260</a>]</span>
+further confided, "and I am not sure that I like it.
+It seems so far away from&mdash;Pan&mdash;and the trees&mdash;and
+the river."</p>
+
+<p>Her voice dropped into silence, and Richard sat
+there beside her like a stone, seeing nothing of the
+pictures thrown on the screen. He saw a road which
+led between spired cedars, he saw an old house with
+a wide porch. He saw a golden-lighted table, and
+his mother's face across the candles. He saw a girl
+in a brown coat scattering food for the birds with a
+kind little hand&mdash;he heard the sound of a bell!</p>
+
+<p>When they reached the yacht, Winifred was
+dressed for dinner, and Eve and Marie-Louise scurried
+below to change. They dined on the upper
+deck by moonlight, and sat late enjoying the still
+warmth of the night. There was no wind and they
+seemed to sail through silver waters.</p>
+
+<p>Marie-Louise sang for them. Strange little songs
+for which she had composed both words and music.
+They had haunting cadences, and Pip told her "For
+Heaven's sake, kiddie, cheer up. You are making
+us cry."</p>
+
+<p>She laughed, and gave them a group of old
+nursery rhymes. Most of them had to do with
+things to eat. There was the Dame who baked her
+pies "on Christmas day in the morning," and the
+Queen who made the tarts, and Jenny Wren and her
+currant wine.</p>
+
+<p>"They are what I call appetizing," she said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261"></a>[<a href="./images/261.png">261</a>]</span>
+quaintly. "When I was a tiny tot Dad kept me on
+a diet. I was never allowed to eat pies or tarts or
+puddings. So I used to feast vicariously on my
+nursery rhymes."</p>
+
+<p>They laughed, as she had meant they should, and
+Pip said, "Give us another," so she chanted with increasing
+dramatic effect the story of King Arthur.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"A bag pudding the king did make,<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">And stuffed it well with plums,<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">And in it put great hunks of fat,<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">As big as my two thumbs&mdash;&mdash;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Think of the effect of those hunks of fat," she
+explained amid their roars of laughter, "on my dieted
+mind."</p>
+
+<p>"I hate to think of things to eat," Eve said. "And
+I can't imagine myself cooking&mdash;in a kitchen."</p>
+
+<p>"Where else would you cook?" Marie-Louise demanded
+practically. "I'd like it. I went once with
+my nurse to her mother's house, and she was cooking
+ham and frying eggs and we sat down to a table
+with a red cloth and had the ham and eggs with
+great slices of bread and strong tea. My nurse let
+me eat all I wanted, because her mother said it
+wouldn't hurt me, and it didn't. But my mother
+never knew. And always after that I liked to think
+of Lucy's mother and that warm nice kitchen, and
+the plump, pleasant woman and the ham and eggs
+and tea."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262"></a>[<a href="./images/262.png">262</a>]</span>
+She was very serious, but they roared again. She
+was so far away from anything that was homely and
+housewifely, with her red hair peaked up to a high
+knot, her thick white coat with its black animal skin
+enveloping her shoulders, the gleam of silver slippers.</p>
+
+<p>"Dicky," Eve said, "I hope you are not expecting
+me to cook in Arcadia."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't expect anything."</p>
+
+<p>"Every man expects something," Winifred interposed;
+"subconsciously he wants a hearth-woman.
+That's the primitive."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want a hearth-woman," Pip announced.</p>
+
+<p>Dutton Ames chuckled. "You're a stone-age
+man, Meade. You'd like to woo with a club, and
+carry the day's kill to the woman in your tent."</p>
+
+<p>A quick fire lighted Pip's eyes. "Jove, it wouldn't
+be bad, would it? What do you think, Eve?"</p>
+
+<p>"I like your yacht better, and your chef and your
+alligator pears, and caviar."</p>
+
+<p>An hour later Eve and Richard were alone on
+deck. The others had gone down. The lovers had
+preferred the moonlight.</p>
+
+<p>"Eve, old lady," Richard said, "you know that
+even with Austin's help I'm not going to be a Cr[oe]sus.
+There won't be yachts&mdash;and chefs&mdash;and alligator
+pears."</p>
+
+<p>"Jealous, Dicky?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. But you've always had these things, Eve."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263"></a>[<a href="./images/263.png">263</a>]</span>
+"I shall still have them. Aunt Maude won't let
+us suffer. She's a good old soul."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think I shall care to partake of Aunt
+Maude's bounty?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps not. But I am not so stiff-necked. Oh,
+Ducky Dick, do you think that I am going to let
+you keep on being poor and priggish and steady-minded?"</p>
+
+<p>"Am I that, Eve?"</p>
+
+<p>"You know you are."</p>
+
+<p>Her laughing eyes challenged him. He would
+have been less than a man if he had not responded
+to the appeal of her youth and beauty. "Dicky,"
+she said, "when we are married I am going to give
+you the time of your young life. All work and no
+play will make you a dull boy, Dicky."</p>
+
+<p>In the night the clouds came up over the moon,
+and when the late and lazy party appeared on deck
+for luncheon, Marie-Louise complained. "I hate it
+this way. There's going to be a storm."</p>
+
+<p>There was a storm before night. It blew up
+tearingly from the south and there was menace in it
+and madness.</p>
+
+<p>Winifred and Eve were good sailors. But Marie-Louise
+went to pieces. She was frantic with fear,
+and as the night wore on, Richard found himself
+much concerned for her.</p>
+
+<p>She insisted on staying on deck. "I feel like a
+rat in a trap when I am inside. I want to face it."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264"></a>[<a href="./images/264.png">264</a>]</span>
+The wind was roaring about them. The sea was
+black and the sky was black, a thick velvety black
+that turned to copper when the lightning came.</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you afraid?" Marie-Louise demanded;
+"aren't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Why shouldn't you be? Why shouldn't anybody
+be?"</p>
+
+<p>"My nerves are strong, Marie-Louise."</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't nerves. It's faith. You believe that the
+boat won't go down, and you believe that if it did
+go down your soul wouldn't die."</p>
+
+<p>Her white face was close to him. "I wish I could
+believe like that," she said in a high, sharp voice.
+Then she screamed as the little ship seemed caught
+up into the air and flung down again.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush," Richard told her; "hush, Marie-Louise."</p>
+
+<p>She was shaking and shivering. "I hate it," she
+sobbed.</p>
+
+<p>Pip, like a yellow specter in oilskins, came up to
+them. "Eve wants you, Brooks," he shouted above
+the clamor of wind and wave.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we go in, Marie-Louise?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no." She cowered against his arm.</p>
+
+<p>Over her head Richard said to Pip, "I shall come
+as soon as I can."</p>
+
+<p>So Pip went down, and the two were left alone in
+the tumult and blackness of the night.</p>
+
+<p>As Marie-Louise lay for a moment quiet against<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265"></a>[<a href="./images/265.png">265</a>]</span>
+his arm, Richard bent down to her. "Are you still
+afraid?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, oh, yes. I keep thinking&mdash;if I should die.
+And I am afraid to die."</p>
+
+<p>"You are not going to die. And if you were
+there would be nothing to fear. Death is just&mdash;falling
+asleep. Rarely any terror. We doctors
+know, who see people die. I know it, and your
+father knows it."</p>
+
+<p>By the light of a blinding flash he saw her white
+face with its wet red hair.</p>
+
+<p>"Dad doesn't know it as you know," she said,
+chokingly. "He couldn't say it as you&mdash;say it."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"He's like I am. <i>Dad's afraid.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>The storm swept on, leaving the waves rough
+behind it, and Richard at last put Marie-Louise to
+bed with a sleeping powder. Then he went to hunt
+up Eve. He was very tired and it was very late.
+The night had passed, and the dawn would soon
+be coming up over the horizon. He found Pip in
+the smoking room. Eve had gone to bed. Everybody
+had gone to bed. It had been a terrible storm.</p>
+
+<p>Richard agreed that it had been terrible. He was
+glad that Eve could sleep. He couldn't understand
+why Austin had allowed Marie-Louise to take such
+a trip. Her fear of storms was evidently quite uncontrollable.
+And she was at all times hysterical
+and high-strung.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266"></a>[<a href="./images/266.png">266</a>]</span>
+Pip was not interested in Marie-Louise. "Eve
+lost her nerve at the last."</p>
+
+<p>Richard was solicitous. "I'm sorry. I wanted
+to come down, but I couldn't leave Marie-Louise.
+Eve's normal, and she'll be all right as soon as the
+storm stops. But Marie-Louise may suffer for days.
+The sooner she gets on shore the better."</p>
+
+<p>He went on deck, and looked out upon a gray
+wind-swept world.</p>
+
+<p>Then the sun came up, and there was a great light
+upon the waters.</p>
+
+<p>All the next day Marie-Louise lay in a long chair.
+"Dad told me not to come," she confessed to Richard.
+"I've been this way before. But I wouldn't
+listen."</p>
+
+<p>"If I had been your father," Richard said, "you
+would have listened, and you would have stayed at
+home."</p>
+
+<p>She grinned. "You can't be sure. Nobody can
+be sure. I don't like to take orders."</p>
+
+<p>"Until you learn to take orders you aren't going
+to amount to much, Marie-Louise."</p>
+
+<p>"I amount to a great deal. And your ideas
+are&mdash;old-fashioned; that's what your Eve says,
+Dr. Dicky."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him through her long eyelashes.
+"What's the matter with your Eve?"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"She is punishing you, but you don't know it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267"></a>[<a href="./images/267.png">267</a>]</span>
+She is down-stairs playing bridge with Pip and Tony
+and Win, and leaving you alone to meditate on your
+sins. And you aren't meditating. You are talking
+to me. I am going to write a poem about a Laggard
+Lover. I'll make you a shepherd boy who sits on
+the hills and watches his sheep. And when the girl
+who loves him calls to him, he refuses to go&mdash;he
+still watches&mdash;his sheep."</p>
+
+<p>He looked puzzled. "I don't know in the least
+what you are talking about."</p>
+
+<p>"You are the shepherd. Your work is the sheep&mdash;Eve
+is the girl. Your work will always be more
+to you than the woman. Dad's work isn't. He
+never forgets mother for a minute."</p>
+
+<p>"And you think that I'll forget Eve?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. And she'll hate that."</p>
+
+<p>There was a spark in his eye.</p>
+
+<p>"I think that we won't discuss Eve, Marie-Louise."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'll discuss her in a poem. Lend me a
+pencil, please."</p>
+
+<p>He gave her the pencil and a prescription pad,
+and she set to work. She read snatches to him as
+she progressed. It was remarkably clever, with a
+constantly recurring refrain.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Let me watch my sheep," said the lover, "my
+sheep on the hills.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>The verses went on to relate that the girl, finding
+her shepherd dilatory, turned her attention to another
+swain, and at last she flouts the shepherd.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268"></a>[<a href="./images/268.png">268</a>]</span>
+"<i>Go watch your sheep, laggard lover, your sheep on
+the hills.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>She laid the verses aside as Tony and Win joined
+them.</p>
+
+<p>"Three rubbers, and Pip and Eve are ahead."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't Eve coming?"</p>
+
+<p>"She said she was coming up soon."</p>
+
+<p>But she did not come, and Pip did not come.
+Marie-Louise, with a great rug spread over her,
+slept in her chair. Dutton Ames read aloud to his
+wife. Richard rose and went to look for Eve.</p>
+
+<p>There was a little room which Pip called "The
+Skipper's own." It was furnished in a man's way
+as a den, with green leather and carved oak and
+plenty of books. Its windows gave a forward view
+of sky and water.</p>
+
+<p>It was here that the four of them had been playing
+auction. Eve was now shuffling the cards for
+Solitaire.</p>
+
+<p>Pip, watching her, caught suddenly at her left
+hand. "Why didn't Brooks give you a better
+ring?"</p>
+
+<p>"I like my ring. Let go of my hand, Pip."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't. What's the matter with the man that
+he should dare dream of tying you down to what he
+can give you? It seems to me that he lacks pride."</p>
+
+<p>"He doesn't lack anything. Let go of my hand,
+Pip."</p>
+
+<p>But he still held it. "How he could have the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269"></a>[<a href="./images/269.png">269</a>]</span>
+courage to ask&mdash;until he had made a name for
+himself."</p>
+
+<p>She blazed. "He didn't ask. I asked him, Pip.
+I cared enough for that."</p>
+
+<p>He dropped her hand as if it had stung him.
+"You cared&mdash;as much as that?"</p>
+
+<p>She faced him bravely. "As much as that&mdash;it
+pleased me to say what it was my right to say."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! It was the queen, then, and the&mdash;beggar
+man. <i>Eve</i>, come back."</p>
+
+<p>She was at the door, but she turned. "I'll come
+back if you will beg my pardon. Richard is not a
+beggar, and I am not the queen. How hateful you
+are, Pip."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't beg your pardon. And let's have this
+out right now, Eve."</p>
+
+<p>"Have what out?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down, and I'll tell you."</p>
+
+<p>Once more they were seated with the table between
+them. Pip's back was to the window, but Eve faced
+the broad expanse of sky and sea. A faint pink flush
+was on the waters: a silver star hung at the edge of
+a crescent moon. There was no sound but the purr
+of machinery and the mewing of gulls in the distance.</p>
+
+<p>Eve was in pink&mdash;a straight linen frock with a low
+white collar. It gave her an air of simplicity quite
+unlike her usual elegance. Pip feasted his eyes on
+her.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270"></a>[<a href="./images/270.png">270</a>]</span>
+"You've got to face it. Brooks doesn't care."</p>
+
+<p>"He does care."</p>
+
+<p>"He didn't care enough to come down last night
+when you were afraid&mdash;and wanted him. And you
+turned to me, just for one little minute, Eve. Do
+you think I shall ever forget the thrill of the thought
+that you turned to me?"</p>
+
+<p>She was staring straight out at the little moon.
+"Marie-Louise was his patient&mdash;he had to stay with
+her."</p>
+
+<p>"You are saying that to me, but in your heart
+you know you are resenting the fact that he didn't
+come when you called. Aren't you, Eve? Aren't
+you resenting it?"</p>
+
+<p>She told him the truth. "Yes. But I know that
+when I am his wife, I shall have to let him think
+about his patients. I ought to be big enough for
+that."</p>
+
+<p>"You are big enough for anything. But you are
+not always going to be content with crumbs from the
+king's table. And that's what you are getting from
+Brooks. And I have a feast ready. Eve, can't you
+see that I would give, give, give, and he will take,
+take, take? Eve, can't you see?"</p>
+
+<p>She did see, and for the moment she was swayed
+by the force of his passionate eloquence.</p>
+
+<p>She leaned toward him a little. "Pip, dear, I
+wish&mdash;sometimes&mdash;that it might have been&mdash;you."</p>
+
+<p>It needed only this. He swept the card table<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271"></a>[<a href="./images/271.png">271</a>]</span>
+aside with his strong arms. He was on his knees
+begging for love, for life. Her hair swept his cheek.</p>
+
+<p>The little moon shone clear in the quiet sky.
+There was not much light, but there was enough for
+a man standing in the door to see two dark figures
+outlined against the silver space beyond.</p>
+
+<p>And Richard was standing in the door!</p>
+
+<p>Eve saw him first. "Go away, Pip," she said,
+and stood up. "I&mdash;I think I can make him understand."</p>
+
+<p>When they were alone she said to Richard in a
+strained voice, "It was my fault, Dicky."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean that you&mdash;let him, Eve?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. But I let him talk about his love for me&mdash;and&mdash;and&mdash;he
+cares very much."</p>
+
+<p>"He knows that you are engaged to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. But last night when you stayed on deck
+when I needed you and asked for you, Pip knew
+that you wouldn't come&mdash;and he was sorry for me."</p>
+
+<p>"And he was sorry again this afternoon?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"And he showed it by making love to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"He thinks I won't be happy with you. He
+thinks that you don't care. He thinks&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care what Meade thinks. I want to know
+what you think, Eve."</p>
+
+<p>Their voices had come out of the darkness. She
+pulled the little chain of a wall bracket, and the room
+was enveloped in a warm wave of light. "I don't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272"></a>[<a href="./images/272.png">272</a>]</span>
+know what I think. But I hated to have you with
+Marie-Louise."</p>
+
+<p>"She was very ill. You knew that. Eve, if we
+can't trust each other, what possible happiness can
+there be ahead?"</p>
+
+<p>She had no answer ready.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I can't stay on Meade's boat after
+this," he went on; "I'll get them to run in here
+somewhere and drop me."</p>
+
+<p>She sank back in the chair from which she had
+risen when Philip left them. His troubled eyes resting
+upon her saw a blur of pink and gold out of which
+emerged her white face.</p>
+
+<p>"But I want you to stay."</p>
+
+<p>"You shouldn't want me to stay, Eve. I can't
+accept his hospitality, after this, and call myself&mdash;a
+man."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Dicky&mdash;I detest heroics."</p>
+
+<p>She was startled by the tone in which he said, "If
+that is the way you feel about it, we might as well
+end it here."</p>
+
+<p>"Dicky&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean it, Eve. The whole thing is based
+on the fact that I stayed with a patient when you
+wanted me. Well, I shall always be staying with
+patients after we are married, and if you are unable
+to see why I must do the thing I did last night, then
+you will never be able to see it. And a doctor's wife
+must see it."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273"></a>[<a href="./images/273.png">273</a>]</span>
+She came up to him, and in the darkness laid her
+cheek against his arm. "Dicky, don't joke about a
+thing like that. I can't stand it. And I'm sorry
+about&mdash;Pip. Dicky, I shall die if you don't forgive
+me."</p>
+
+<p>He forgave her. He even made himself believe
+that Pip might be forgiven. He exerted himself to
+seem at his ease at dinner. He said nothing more
+about leaving at the next landing.</p>
+
+<p>But late that night he sat alone on deck in the
+darkness. He was a plain man, and he saw things
+straight. And this thing was crooked. The hot
+honor of his youth revolted against the situation in
+which he saw himself. He felt hurt and ashamed.
+It was as if the dreams of his boyhood had been
+dragged in the dust.</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274"></a>[<a href="./images/274.png">274</a>]</span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+<h3><i>In Which We Hear Once More of a Sandalwood Fan.</i></h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">In</span> the winter which followed Richard often wondered
+if he were the same man who had ridden
+his old Ben up over the hills, and had said his
+solemn grace at his own candle-lighted table.</p>
+
+<p>It had been decided that he and Eve should
+wait until another year for their wedding. Richard
+wanted to get a good start. Eve was impatient, but
+acquiesced.</p>
+
+<p>It was not Richard's engagement, however, which
+gave to his life the effect of strangeness. It was,
+rather, his work, which swept him into a maelstrom
+of new activities. Austin needed rest and he knew
+it. Richard was young and strong. The older man,
+using his assistant as a buffer between himself and
+a demanding public, felt no compunction. His own
+apprenticeship had been hard.</p>
+
+<p>So Richard in Austin's imposing limousine was
+whirled through fashionable neighborhoods and up
+to exclusive doorways. He presided at operations
+where the fees were a year's income for a poor man.
+A certain percentage of these fees came to him. He
+found that he need have no fears for his financial
+future.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275"></a>[<a href="./images/275.png">275</a>]</span>
+His letters from his mother were his only link
+with the old life. She wrote that she was well.
+That Anne Warfield was with her, and Cousin Sulie,
+and that the three of them and Cousin David played
+whist. That Anne was such a dear&mdash;that she didn't
+know what she would do without her.</p>
+
+<p>Richard went as often as he could on Sundays to
+Crossroads. But at such times he saw little of Anne.
+She felt that no one should intrude on the reunions
+of mother and son. So she visited at Beulah's or
+Bower's and came back on Mondays.</p>
+
+<p>Nancy persisted in her refusal to go back to New
+York. "I know I am silly," she told her son, "but
+I have a feeling that I shouldn't be able to breathe,
+and should die of suffocation."</p>
+
+<p>Richard spoke to Dr. Austin of his mother's state
+of mind. "Queer thing, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"A natural thing, I should say. Your father's
+death was an awful blow. I often wonder how she
+lived out the years while she waited for you to
+finish school."</p>
+
+<p>"But she did live them, so that I might be prepared
+to practice at Crossroads. As I think of it,
+it seems monstrous that I should disappoint her."</p>
+
+<p>"Fledglings always leave the nest. Mothers have
+that to expect. The selfishness of the young makes
+for progress. It would have been equally monstrous
+if you had stayed in that dull place wasting your
+talents."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276"></a>[<a href="./images/276.png">276</a>]</span>
+"Would it have been wasted, sir? There's no
+one taking my place in the old country. And there
+are many who could fill it here. There's a chance
+at Crossroads for big work for the right man. Community
+water supply&mdash;better housing, the health
+conditions of the ignorant foreign folk who work
+the small farms. A country doctor ought to have
+the missionary spirit."</p>
+
+<p>"There are plenty of little men for such places."</p>
+
+<p>"It takes big men. I could make our old countryside
+bloom like a rose if I could put into it half the
+effort that I am putting into my work with you.
+But it would be lean living&mdash;and I have chosen the
+flesh-pots."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't despise yourself because you couldn't go
+on being poor in a big way. You are going to be
+rich in a big way, and that is better."</p>
+
+<p>As the days went on, however, Richard wondered
+if it were really better to be rich in a big way.
+Sometimes the very bigness and richness oppressed
+him. He found himself burdened by the splendor
+of the mansions at which he made his morning calls.
+He hated the sleekness of the men in livery who
+preceded him up the stairs, the trimness of the maids
+waiting on the threshold of hushed boudoirs. Disease
+and death in these sumptuous palaces seemed
+divorced from reality as if the palaces were stage
+structures, and the people in them were actors who
+would presently walk out into the wings.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277"></a>[<a href="./images/277.png">277</a>]</span>
+It was therefore with some of the feelings which
+had often assailed him when he had stepped from
+a dim theater out into the open air that Richard
+made his way one morning to a small apartment on
+a down-town side street to call on a little girl who
+had recently left the charity ward at Austin's hospital.
+Richard had operated for appendicitis, and
+had found himself much interested in the child. He
+had dismissed the limousine farther up. It had
+seemed out of place in the shabby street.</p>
+
+<p>He stopped at the florist's for a pot of pink posies
+and at another shop for fruit. Laden with parcels
+he climbed the high stairs to the top floor of the
+tenement.</p>
+
+<p>The little girl and her grandmother lived together.
+The grandmother had a small pension, and sewed
+by the day for several old customers. They thus
+managed to pay expenses, but poverty pinched.
+Richard had from the first, however, been impressed
+by their hopefulness. Neither the grandmother nor
+the child seemed to look upon their lot as hard. The
+grandmother made savory stews on a snug little
+stove and baked her own sweet loaves. Now and
+then she baked a cake. Things were spotlessly
+clean, and there were sunshine and fresh air. To
+have pitied those two would have been superfluous.</p>
+
+<p>After he had walked briskly out into Fifth Avenue,
+he was thinking of another grandmother on whom
+he had called a few days before. She was a haughty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278"></a>[<a href="./images/278.png">278</a>]</span>
+old dame, but she was browbeaten by her maid. Her
+grandchildren were brought in now and then to kiss
+her hand. They were glad to get away. They had
+no real need of her. They had no hopes or fears to
+confide. So in spite of her magnificence and her
+millions, she was a lonely soul.</p>
+
+<p>Snow had fallen the night before, and was now
+melting in the streets, but the sky was very blue
+above the tall buildings. Christmas was not far
+away, and as Richard went up-town the crowd surged
+with him, meeting the crowd that was coming down.</p>
+
+<p>He had a fancy to lunch at a little place on Thirty-third
+Street, where they served a soup with noodles
+that was in itself a hearty meal. In the days when
+money had been scarce the little German caf&eacute; had
+furnished many a feast. Now and then he and his
+mother had come together, and had talked of how,
+when their ship came in, they would dine at the big
+hotel around the corner.</p>
+
+<p>And now that his ship was in, and he could afford
+the big hotel, it had no charms. He hated the
+women dawdling in its alleys, the men smoking in
+its corridors, the whole idle crowd, lunching in acres
+of table-crowded space.</p>
+
+<p>So he set as his goal the clean little restaurant,
+and swung along toward it with something of his old
+boyish sense of elation.</p>
+
+<p>And then a strange thing happened. For the first
+time in months he found his heart marking time to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279"></a>[<a href="./images/279.png">279</a>]</span>
+the tune of the song which old Ben's hoofs had beaten
+out of the roads as they made their way up into the
+hills&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I think she was the most beautiful lady,<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">That ever was in the West Country&mdash;&mdash;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He was even humming it under his breath, unheard
+amid the hum and stir of the crowded city street.</p>
+
+<p>The shops on either side of him displayed in their
+low windows a wealth of tempting things. Rugs
+with a sheen like the bloom of a peach&mdash;alabaster in
+curved and carved bowls and vases, old prints in dull
+gilt frames&mdash;furniture following the lines of Florentine
+elaborateness&mdash;his eyes took in all the color and
+glow, though he rarely stopped for a closer view.</p>
+
+<p>In front of one broad window, however, he hesitated.
+The opening of the door had spilled into the
+frosty air of this alien city the scent of the Orient&mdash;the
+fragrance of incense&mdash;of spicy perfumed woods.</p>
+
+<p>In the window a jade god sat high on a teakwood
+pedestal. A string of scarlet beads lighted a shadowy
+corner. On an ancient and priceless lacquered
+cabinet were enthroned two other gods of gold and
+ivory. A crystal ball reflected a length of blue
+brocade. A clump of Chinese bulbs bloomed in an
+old Ming bowl.</p>
+
+<p>Richard went into the shop. Subconsciously, he
+went with a purpose. But the purpose was not revealed
+to him until he came to a case in which was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280"></a>[<a href="./images/280.png">280</a>]</span>
+set forth a certain marvelous collection. He knew
+then that the old song and the scents had formed an
+association of ideas which had lured him away from
+the streets and into the shop, that he might buy for
+Anne Warfield a sandalwood fan.</p>
+
+<p>He found what he wanted. A sweet and wonderful
+bit of wood, carved like lace, with green and
+purple tassels.</p>
+
+<p>It was when he had it safe in his pocket, in a box
+that was gay with yellow and green and gold, that
+he was aware of voices in the back of the shop.</p>
+
+<p>There were tables where tea was served to special
+customers&mdash;at the expense of the management.
+Thus a vulgar bargain became as it were a hospitality&mdash;you
+bought teakwood and had tea; carved
+ivories, and were rewarded with little cakes.</p>
+
+<p>In that dim space under a low hung lamp, Marie-Louise
+talked with the fat Armenian.</p>
+
+<p>He was the same Armenian who had told her fortune
+at Coney. He stood by Marie-Louise's side
+while she drank her tea, and spoke to her of the poet-king
+with whom she had walked on the banks of the
+Nile.</p>
+
+<p>Richard approaching asked, "How did you happen
+to come here, Marie-Louise?"</p>
+
+<p>"I often come. I like it. It is next to traveling
+in far countries." She indicated the fat Armenian.
+"He tells me about things that happened to me&mdash;in
+the ages&mdash;when I lived before."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281"></a>[<a href="./images/281.png">281</a>]</span>
+A slender youth in white silk with a crimson sash
+brought tea for Richard. But he refused it. "I am
+on my way to lunch, Marie-Louise. Will you go
+with me?"</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated and glanced at the fat Armenian.
+"I've some things to buy."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll wait."</p>
+
+<p>She flitted about the shop with the fat Armenian
+in her train. He showed her treasures shut away
+from the public eye, and she bought long lengths of
+heavy silks, embroideries thick with gold, a moonstone
+bracelet linked with silver.</p>
+
+<p>The fat Armenian, bending over her, seemed to
+direct and suggest. Richard, watching, hated the
+man's manner.</p>
+
+<p>Outside in the sunshine, he spoke of it. "I
+wouldn't go there alone."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't like to see you among those people&mdash;on
+such terms. They don't understand, and they're&mdash;different."</p>
+
+<p>"I like them because they are different," obstinately.</p>
+
+<p>He shifted his ground. "Marie-Louise, will you
+lunch with me at a cheap little place around the
+corner?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why a cheap little place?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I like the good soup, and the clean little
+German woman, and the quiet and&mdash;the memories.<ins class="err" title="Transcriber's Note: added missing quotation mark">"</ins></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282"></a>[<a href="./images/282.png">282</a>]</span>
+"What memories?"</p>
+
+<p>"I used to go there when I was poor."</p>
+
+<p>She entered eagerly into the adventure, and
+ordered her car to wait. Then away they fared
+around the corner!</p>
+
+<p>Within the homely little restaurant, Marie-Louise's
+elegance was more than ever apparent. Her long
+coat of gray velvet with its silver fox winked opulently
+from the back of her chair at the coarse table-cloth
+and the paper napkins.</p>
+
+<p>But the soup was good, and the German woman
+smiled at them, and brought them a special dish of
+hard almond cakes with their coffee.</p>
+
+<p>"I love it," Marie-Louise said. "It is like Hans
+Andersen and my fairy books. Will you bring me
+here again, Dr. Richard?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad you like it," he told her. "I wanted
+you to like it."</p>
+
+<p>"I like it because I like you," she said with frankness,
+"and you seem to belong in the fairy tale.
+You are so big and strong and young. I don't feel
+a thousand years old when I am with you. You are
+such a change from everybody else, Dr. Dicky."</p>
+
+<p>Richard spoke the next day to Austin of Marie-Louise
+and the fat Armenian. "She shouldn't be
+going to such shops alone. She has a romantic
+streak in her, and they take advantage of it."</p>
+
+<p>"She ought never to go alone," Austin agreed,
+"and I have told her. But what am I going to do?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283"></a>[<a href="./images/283.png">283</a>]</span>
+I can rule a world of patients, Brooks, but I can't
+rule my woman child," he laughed ruefully. "I've
+tried having a maid accompany her, but she sends
+her home."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish she might have gone to the Crossroads
+school, and have known the Crossroads teacher&mdash;Anne
+Warfield. You remember Cynthia Warfield,
+sir; this is her granddaughter."</p>
+
+<p>Austin remembered Cynthia, and he wanted to
+know more of Anne. Richard told him of Anne's
+saneness and common sense. "I am so glad that
+she can be with my mother, and that the children
+have her in the school. She is so wise and good."</p>
+
+<p>He thought more than once in the days that followed
+of Anne's wisdom and goodness. He decided
+to send the fan. He expected to go to Crossroads
+for Christmas, but he was not at all sure that he
+should see Anne. Something had been said about
+her going for the holidays to her Uncle Rod.</p>
+
+<p>Was it only a year since he had seen her on the
+rocks above the river with a wreath in her hand, and
+in the stable at Bower's, with the lantern shining
+above her head?</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284"></a>[<a href="./images/284.png">284</a>]</span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+
+<h3><i>In Which Christmas Comes to Crossroads.</i></h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Nancy's</span> plans for Christmas were ambitious.
+She talked it over with Sulie Tyson. "I'll
+have Anne and her Uncle Rod. If she goes to him
+they will eat their Christmas dinner alone. Her
+cousins are to be out of town."</p>
+
+<p>Cousin Sulie agreed. She was a frail little woman,
+with gray hair drawn up from her forehead above a
+high-bred face. She spoke with earnestness on even
+the most trivial subjects. Now and then she had
+flashes of humor, but they were rare. Her life had
+been sad, and she had always been dependent. The
+traditions of her family had made it impossible for
+her to indulge in any money-making occupation.
+Hence she had lived in other people's houses. Usually
+with one or the other of two brothers, in somewhat
+large households.</p>
+
+<p>Her days, therefore, with Nancy were rapturous
+ones.</p>
+
+<p>"There's something in the freedom which two
+women can have when they are alone," she said,
+"that is glorious. We are ourselves. When men
+are around we are always acting."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285"></a>[<a href="./images/285.png">285</a>]</span>
+Nancy was not so subtle. "I am myself with
+Richard."</p>
+
+<p>"No, you're not, Nancy. You are always trying
+to please him. You make him feel important. You
+make him feel that he is the head of the house.
+You know what I mean."</p>
+
+<p>Nancy did know. But she didn't choose to admit
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I like to please him." Then with a sudden
+burst of longing, "Sulie, I want him here all of
+the time&mdash;to please."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my dear," Sulie caught Nancy's hands up
+in her own, "oh, my dear. How mothers love their
+sons. I am glad I haven't any. I used to long for
+children. I don't any more. Nothing can hurt me
+as Richard hurts you, Nancy."</p>
+
+<p>Nancy refused to talk of it. "We will ask David
+and Brinsley; that will be four men and three
+women, Sulie."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I can take care of David if you'll look after
+Brinsley and Rodman Warfield. And that will leave
+your Richard for Anne."</p>
+
+<p>Nancy's candid glance met her cousin's. "That
+is the way I had hoped it might be&mdash;Richard and
+Anne. At first I thought it might be&mdash;and then
+something happened. He went to New York and
+that was the&mdash;end."</p>
+
+<p>"If you had been more of a match-maker," Sulie
+said, "you might have managed. But you always<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286"></a>[<a href="./images/286.png">286</a>]</span>
+think that such things are on the knees of the gods.
+Why didn't you bring them together?"</p>
+
+<p>"I tried," Nancy confessed. "But Eve&mdash;I hate
+to say it, Sulie. Eve was determined."</p>
+
+<p>The two old-fashioned women, making mental
+estimates of this modern feminine product, found
+themselves indignant. "To think that any girl
+could&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>It was lunch time, and Anne came in. She had
+Diogenes under her arm. "He will come across
+the road to meet me. And I am afraid of the automobiles.
+When he brings the white duck and all of
+the little Diogenes with him he obstructs traffic.
+He stopped a touring car the other day, and the
+men swore at him, and Diogenes swore back."</p>
+
+<p>She laughed and set the old drake on his feet.
+"May I have a slice of bread for him, Mother
+Nancy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, my dear. Two, if you wish."</p>
+
+<p>Diogenes, having been towed by his beloved mistress
+out-of-doors, was appeased with the slice of
+bread. He was a patriarch now, with a lovely mate
+and a line of waddling offspring to claim his devotion.
+But not an inch did he swerve from his loyalty
+to Anne. She had brought him with her from
+Bower's, and he lived in the barn with his family.
+Twice a day, however, he made a pilgrimage to the
+Crossroads school. It was these excursions which
+Anne deprecated.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287"></a>[<a href="./images/287.png">287</a>]</span>
+"He comes in when I ring for recess and distracts
+the children. He waddles straight up to my desk&mdash;and
+he is such an old dear."</p>
+
+<p>She laughed, and the two women laughed with
+her. She was their heart-warming comrade. She
+brought into their lonely lives something vivid and
+sparkling, at which they drank for their soul's refreshment.</p>
+
+<p>Nancy spoke of Rodman Warfield. "We want
+him here for Christmas and the holidays. Do you
+think he can come?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne flashed her radiance at them. "I don't
+think. I know. Mother Nancy, you're an angel."</p>
+
+<p>"Richard is coming, of course. It will be just a
+family party. Not many young people for you, my
+dear. Just&mdash;Richard."</p>
+
+<p>There was holly and crow's-foot up in the hills,
+and David and Anne hitched big Ben to a cart and
+went after it. It was a winter of snow, and in the
+depths of the woods there was a great stillness.
+David chopped a tall cedar and his blows echoed
+and re&euml;choed in the white spaces. The holly berries
+that dropped from the cut branches were like drops
+of blood on the shining crust.</p>
+
+<p>Nancy and Sulie made up the wreaths and the
+ropes of green, and fashioned ornaments for the
+tree. There was to be a bigger tree at the school
+for the children, but this was to be a family affair
+and was to be free from tawdry tinsel and colored<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288"></a>[<a href="./images/288.png">288</a>]</span>
+glass. Nancy liked straight little candles and silver
+stars. "It shall be an old-fashioned tree," she
+said, "such as I used to have when I was a child."</p>
+
+<p>Sulie's raptures were almost solemn in their intensity.
+Richard sent money, plenty of it, and Sulie
+and Nancy went to Baltimore and spent it. "I
+never expected," Sulie said, "to go into shops and
+pick out things that I liked. I've always had to
+choose things that I needed."</p>
+
+<p>Now and then on Saturdays when Anne went
+with them, they rushed through their shopping, had
+lunch at the Woman's Exchange and went to a
+matin&eacute;e.</p>
+
+<p>Nancy was always glad to get back home, but
+Sulie revelled in the excitement of it all. Anne
+made her buy a hat with a flat pink rose which lay
+enchantingly against her gray hair.</p>
+
+<p>"I feel sometimes as if I had been born again,"
+Sulie said quaintly; "like a flower that had shriveled
+up and grown brown, and suddenly found itself
+blooming in the spring."</p>
+
+<p>Thus the days went on, and Christmas was not far
+away. Anne coming in one afternoon found Nancy
+by the library fire with a letter in her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Richard hopes to get here on Friday, Anne, in
+time for the tree and the children's festival. Something
+may keep him, however, until Christmas
+morning. He is very busy&mdash;and there are some
+important operations."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289"></a>[<a href="./images/289.png">289</a>]</span>
+"How proud you are of him," Anne sank down
+on the rug, and reached up her hand for Nancy,
+"and how happy you will be with your big son.
+Could you ever have loved a daughter as much,
+Mother Nancy?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not sure; perhaps," smiling, "if she had
+been like you. And a daughter would have stayed
+with me. Men have wandering natures&mdash;they must
+be up and out."</p>
+
+<p>"Women have wandering natures, too," Anne
+told her. "Do you know that last Christmas I cried
+and cried because I was tied to the Crossroads school
+and to Bower's? I wanted to live in the city and
+have lovely things. You can't imagine how I hated
+all Eve Chesley's elegance. I seemed so&mdash;clumsy
+and common."</p>
+
+<p>Nancy stared at her in amazement. "But you
+surely don't feel that way now."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I do. But I am not unhappy any more.
+It was silly to be unhappy when I had so much in
+my life. But if I were a man, I'd be a rover, a vagabond&mdash;I'd
+take to the open road rather than be tied
+to one spot."</p>
+
+<p>There was laughter in her eyes, but the words
+rang true. "I want to see new things in new people.
+I want to have new experiences&mdash;there must
+be a bigger, broader world than this."</p>
+
+<p>Nancy gazing into the fire pondered. "It's the
+spirit of the age. Perhaps it is the youth in you.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290"></a>[<a href="./images/290.png">290</a>]</span>
+I wanted to go, too. But oh, my dear, how I wanted
+to come back!"</p>
+
+<p>There was silence between them, then Anne said,
+"Perhaps if I could have my one little fling I'd be
+content. Perhaps it wouldn't be all that I expected.
+But I'd like to try."</p>
+
+<p>On Thursday Anne met the postman as he drove
+up. There were two parcels for her. One was
+square and one was long and narrow. There were
+parcels also for Nancy and Sulie. Anne delivered
+them, and took her own treasures to her room. She
+shut and locked her door. Then she stood very still
+in the middle of the room. Not since she had seen
+the writing on the long and narrow parcel had her
+heart ceased to beat madly.</p>
+
+<p>When at last she sat down and untied the string
+a faint fragrance assailed her nostrils. Then the
+gay box with its purple and green and gold was
+revealed!</p>
+
+<p>The little fan was folded about with many thicknesses
+of soft paper. But at last she had it out, the
+dear lovely thing that her love had sent!</p>
+
+<p>In that moment all the barriers which she had
+built about her thoughts of Richard were beaten
+down and battered by his remembrance of her.
+There was not a line from him, not a word. Nothing
+but the writing on the wrapper, and the memory
+of their talk together by the big fire at Bower's on
+the night of Beulah's party when he had said,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291"></a>[<a href="./images/291.png">291</a>]</span>
+"You ought to have a little fan&mdash;of&mdash;sandalwood&mdash;with
+purple and green tassels and smelling sweet."</p>
+
+<p>When she went down her cheeks were red with
+color. "How pretty you are!" Sulie said, and
+kissed her.</p>
+
+<p>Anne showed the book which had come in the
+square parcel. It was Geoffrey Fox's "Three Souls,"
+and it was dedicated to Anne.</p>
+
+<p>She did not show the sandalwood fan. It was
+hidden in her desk. She had a feeling that Nancy
+and Sulie would not understand, and that Richard
+had not meant that she should show it.</p>
+
+<p>Nancy, too, had something which she did not
+show. One of her letters was from Dr. Austin. He
+had written without Richard's knowledge. He
+wished to inquire about Anne Warfield. He had
+been much impressed by what Richard had said of
+her. He needed a companion for his daughter
+Marie-Louise. He wanted a lady, and Cynthia
+Warfield's grandchild would, of course, be that. He
+wanted, too, some one who was fearless, and who
+thought straight. He fancied that from what Richard
+had said that Anne would be the antidote for
+his daughter's abnormality. If Nancy would confirm
+Richard's opinion, he would write at once to
+Miss Warfield. A woman's estimate in such a matter
+would, naturally, be more satisfying. He would
+pay well, and Anne would be treated in every way
+as one of the family. Marie-Louise might at first be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292"></a>[<a href="./images/292.png">292</a>]</span>
+a little difficult. But in the end, no doubt, she would
+yield to tact and firmness.</p>
+
+<p>And he was always devotedly, her old friend!</p>
+
+<p>It had seemed to Nancy as she read that something
+gripped at her heart. It was Anne's presence
+which had kept her from the black despair of loneliness.
+Sulie was good and true, but she had no
+power to fill the void made by Richard's absence.
+If Anne went away, they would be two old women,
+gazing blankly into an empty future.</p>
+
+<p>Yet it was Anne's opportunity. The opportunity
+which her soul had craved. "To see new things and
+new people." And she was young and wanting much
+to live. It would not be right or fair to hold her back.</p>
+
+<p>She had, however, laid the letter aside. When
+Richard came she would talk it over with him, and
+then they could talk to Anne. She tried to forget
+it in the bustle of preparation, but it lay like a
+shadow in the back of her mind, dimming the brightness
+of the days.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody was busy. Milly and Sulie and Nancy
+seeded and chopped and baked, and polished silver,
+and got out piles of linen, and made up beds, and
+were all beautifully ready and swept and garnished
+when Uncle Rodman arrived from Carroll and
+Brinsley from Baltimore.</p>
+
+<p>The two old men came on the same train, and
+David brought them over from Bower's behind big
+Ben. By the time they reached Crossroads, they had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293"></a>[<a href="./images/293.png">293</a>]</span>
+dwelt upon old times and old friends and old loves
+until they were in the warm and genial state of content
+which is age's recompense for the loss of youthful
+ardors.</p>
+
+<p>They were, indeed, three ancient Musketeers,
+who, untouched now by any flame of great emotion,
+might adventure safely in a past of sentiment from
+which they were separated by long years. But
+there had been a time when passion had burned
+brightly for them all, even in gentle David, who had
+loved Cynthia Warfield.</p>
+
+<p>What wonder, then, if to these three Anne typified
+that past, and all it meant to them, as she ran
+to meet them with her arms outflung to welcome
+Uncle Rod.</p>
+
+<p>She had them all presently safe on the hearth
+with the fire roaring, and with Milly bringing them
+hot coffee, and Sulie and Nancy smiling in an ecstasy
+of welcome.</p>
+
+<p>"It is perfect," Anne said, "to have you all here&mdash;like
+this."</p>
+
+<p>Yet deep in her heart she knew that it was not
+perfect. For youth calls to youth. And Richard
+was yet to come!</p>
+
+<p>Brinsley had brought hampers of things to eat.
+He had made epicurean pilgrimages to the Baltimore
+markets. There were turkeys and ducks and
+oysters&mdash;Smithfield hams, a young pig with an apple
+in its mouth.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294"></a>[<a href="./images/294.png">294</a>]</span>
+He superintended the unloading of the hampers
+when Eric brought them over. Uncle Rod shook
+his head as he saw them opened.</p>
+
+<p>"I can make a jar of honey and a handful of almonds
+suffice," he said. "I am not keen about
+butchered birds and beasts."</p>
+
+<p>Brinsley laughed. "Don't rob me of the joy of
+living, Rod," he said. "Nancy is bad enough. I
+wanted to send up some wine. But she wouldn't
+have it. Even her mince pies are innocent. Nancy
+sees the whole world through eyes of anxiety for
+her boy. I don't believe she'd care a snap for temperance
+if she wasn't afraid that her Dicky might
+drink."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps it is the individual mother's solicitude
+for her own particular child which makes the feminine
+influence a great moral force," Rodman ventured.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps," carelessly. "Now Nancy has a set of
+wine-glasses that it is a shame not to use." He
+slapped his hands to warm them. "Let's take a
+long walk, Rod. I exercise to keep the fat down."</p>
+
+<p>"I exercise because it is a good old world to walk
+in," and Rodman swung his long lean legs into an
+easy stride.</p>
+
+<p>They picked David up as they passed his little
+house. They climbed the hill till they came to the
+edge of the wood where David had cut the tree.</p>
+
+<p>There was a sunset over the frozen river as they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295"></a>[<a href="./images/295.png">295</a>]</span>
+turned to look at it. The river sang no songs to-day.
+It was as still and silent as their own dead
+youth. Yet above it was the clear gold of the evening
+sky.</p>
+
+<p>"The last time we came we were boys," Brinsley
+said, "and I was in love with Cynthia Warfield.
+And we were both in love with her, David; do you
+remember?"</p>
+
+<p>David did remember. "Anne is like her."</p>
+
+<p>Rodman protested. "She is and she isn't. Anne
+has none of Cynthia's faults."</p>
+
+<p>Brinsley chuckled. "I'll bet you've spoiled her."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I haven't. But Anne has had to work and
+wait for things, and it hasn't hurt her."</p>
+
+<p>"She's a beauty," Brinsley stated, "and she
+ought to be a belle."</p>
+
+<p>"She's good," David supplemented; "the children
+at the little school worship her."</p>
+
+<p>"She's mine," Uncle Rod straightened his shoulders,
+"and in that knowledge I envy no man
+anything."</p>
+
+<p>As they sat late that night by Nancy's fire, Anne
+in a white frock played for them, and sang:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I think she was the most beautiful lady<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">That ever was in the West Country,<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">But beauty vanishes, beauty passes,<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">However rare, rare it be,<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">And when I am gone, who shall remember<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">That lady of the West Country?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296"></a>[<a href="./images/296.png">296</a>]</span>And when she sang it was of Cynthia Warfield that
+all of the Old Gentlemen dreamed.</p>
+
+<p>When the last note had died away, she went over
+and stood behind her uncle. She was little and
+slim and straight and her soft hair was swept up
+high from her forehead. Her eyes above Uncle
+Rod's head met Nancy's eyes. The two women
+smiled at each other.</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow," Nancy said, and she seemed to say
+it straight to Anne, "to-morrow Richard will be
+here."</p>
+
+<p>Anne caught a quick breath. "To-morrow," she
+said. "How lovely it will be!"</p>
+
+<p>But Richard did not come on Christmas Eve. A
+telegram told of imperative demands on him. He
+would get there in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>"We won't light the tree until he comes," was
+Nancy's brave decision. "The early train will get
+him here in time for breakfast."</p>
+
+<p>David drove big Ben down to meet him. Milly
+cooked a mammoth breakfast. Anne slipped across
+the road to the Crossroads school to ring the bell for
+the young master's return. The rest of the household
+waited in the library. Brinsley was there with
+a story to tell, but no one listened. Their ears were
+strained to catch the first sharp sound of big Ben's
+trot. Sulie was there with a red rose in her hair to
+match the fires which were warming her old heart.
+Nancy was there at the window, watching.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297"></a>[<a href="./images/297.png">297</a>]</span>
+Then the telephone rang. Nancy was wanted.
+Long distance.</p>
+
+<p>It was many minutes before she came back. Yet
+the message had been short. She had hung up the
+receiver, and had stood in the hall in a whirling
+world of darkness.</p>
+
+<p><i>Richard was not coming.</i></p>
+
+<p>He had been sorry. Tender. Her own sweet
+son. Yet he had seemed to think that business was
+a sufficient excuse for breaking her heart. Surely
+there were doctors enough in that octopus of a
+town to take his patients off of his hands. And she
+was his mother and wanted him.</p>
+
+<p>She had a sense of utter rebellion. She wanted
+to cry out to the world, "This is my son, for whom
+I have sacrificed."</p>
+
+<p>And now the bell across the street began to ring
+its foolish chime&mdash;Richard was not coming, <i>ding,
+dong</i>. She must get through the day without him,
+<i>ding, dong</i>, she must get through all the years!</p>
+
+<p>When she faced the solicitous group in the library,
+only her whiteness showed what she was feeling.</p>
+
+<p>"Richard is detained by&mdash;an important&mdash;operation.
+And breakfast is&mdash;waiting. Sulie, will you
+call Anne, and light the little tree?"</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298"></a>[<a href="./images/298.png">298</a>]</span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+
+<h3><i>In Which a Dresden-China Shepherdess and a Country
+Mouse Meet on Common Ground.</i></h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Marie-louise's</span> room at Rose Acres was all
+in white with two tall candlesticks to light it,
+and a silver bowl for flowers. It was by means of
+the flowers in the bowl that Marie-Louise expressed
+her moods. There were days when scarlet flowers
+flamed, and other days when pale roses or violets or
+lilies suggested a less exotic state of mind.</p>
+
+<p>On the day when Anne Warfield arrived, the
+flowers in the bowl were yellow. Marie-Louise
+stayed in bed all of the morning. She had ordered
+the flowers sent up from the hothouse, and, dragging
+a length of silken dressing-gown behind her,
+she had arranged them. Then she had had her
+breakfast on a tray.</p>
+
+<p>Her hair was nicely combed under a lace cap; the
+dressing-gown was faint blue. In the center of the
+big bed she looked very small but very elegant, as
+if a Dresden-China Shepherdess had been put between
+the covers.</p>
+
+<p>She had told her maid that when Anne arrived
+she was to be shown up at once. Austin had sug<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299"></a>[<a href="./images/299.png">299</a>]</span>gested
+that Marie-Louise go down-town to meet her.
+But Marie-Louise had refused.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to see her. Why should I?"</p>
+
+<p>"She is very charming, Marie-Louise."</p>
+
+<p>"Who told you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Brooks. And I knew her grandmother."</p>
+
+<p>"Will Dr. Dicky meet her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. And bring her out. I have given him the
+day."</p>
+
+<p>"You might have asked me if I wanted her, Dad.
+I don't want anybody to look after me. I belong to
+myself."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know to whom you belong, Marie-Louise.
+You're a changeling."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not. I'm your child. But you don't like
+my horns and hoofs."</p>
+
+<p>He gazed at her aghast. "My dear child!"</p>
+
+<p>She began to sob. "I am not your dear child.
+But I am your child, and I shall hate to have somebody
+tagging around."</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Warfield is not to tag. And you'll like her."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall hate her," said Marie-Louise, between her
+teeth.</p>
+
+<p>It was because of this hatred that she had filled
+her bowl with yellow flowers. Yellow meant jealousy.
+And she had shrewdly analyzed her state of
+mind. She was jealous of Anne because Dad and
+Dr. Richard and everybody else thought that Anne
+was going to set her a good example.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300"></a>[<a href="./images/300.png">300</a>]</span>
+It was early in January that Anne came. The
+whole thing had been hurried. Austin had been
+peremptory in his demand that she should not delay.
+So Nancy, very white but smiling, had packed
+her off. Sulie had cried over her, and Uncle Rod
+had wished her "Godspeed."</p>
+
+<p>Richard met her at the station in the midst of a
+raging blizzard, and in a sort of dream she had
+been whirled with him through the gray streets
+shut in by the veil of the falling snow. They had
+stopped for tea at a big hotel, which had seemed
+as they entered to swim in a sea of golden light.
+And now here she was at last in this palace of a
+house!</p>
+
+<p>Therese led her straight to Marie-Louise.</p>
+
+<p>The Dresden-China Shepherdess in bed looked
+down the length of the shadowed room to the door.
+The figure that stood on the threshold was somehow
+different from what she had expected. Smaller.
+More girlish. Lovelier.</p>
+
+<p>Anne, making her way across a sea of polished
+floor, became aware of the Shepherdess in bed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," she said, "I am sorry you are ill."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not ill," said Marie-Louise. "I didn't want
+you to come."</p>
+
+<p>Anne smiled. "Oh, but if you knew how much
+I <i>wanted</i> to come."</p>
+
+<p>Marie-Louise sat up. "What made you want to
+come?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301"></a>[<a href="./images/301.png">301</a>]</span>
+"Because I am a country mouse, and I wanted
+to see the world."</p>
+
+<p>"Rose Acres isn't the world."</p>
+
+<p>"New York is. To me. There is so much that I
+haven't seen. It is going to be a great adventure."</p>
+
+<p>The Dresden-China Shepherdess fell down flat.
+"So that's what you've come for," she said, dully,
+"adventures&mdash;here."</p>
+
+<p>There was a long silence, out of which Anne
+asked, "How many miles is it to my room?"</p>
+
+<p>"Miles?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. You see, I am not used to such great
+houses."</p>
+
+<p>"It is down the hall in the west wing."</p>
+
+<p>"If I get lost it will be my first adventure."</p>
+
+<p>Marie-Louise turned and took a good look at this
+girl who made so much out of nothing. Then she
+said, "Therese will show you. And you can dress
+at once for dinner. I am not going down."</p>
+
+<p>"Please do. I shall hate going alone."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, there's your father, you know, and your&mdash;mother.
+And I'm a country mouse."</p>
+
+<p>Their eyes met. Marie-Louise had a sudden feeling
+that there was no gulf between them of years or
+of authority.</p>
+
+<p>"What shall I call you?" she asked. "I won't
+say Miss Warfield."</p>
+
+<p>"Geoffrey Fox calls me Mistress Anne."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302"></a>[<a href="./images/302.png">302</a>]</span>
+"Who is Geoffrey Fox?"</p>
+
+<p>"He writes books, and he is going blind. He
+wrote 'Three Souls.'"</p>
+
+<p>Marie-Louise stared. "Oh, do you know him?
+I loved his book."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you like to know how he came to write
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Tell me."</p>
+
+<p>"Not now. I must go and dress."</p>
+
+<p>Some instinct told Marie-Louise that argument
+would be useless.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll dress, too, and come down. Is Dr. Dicky
+going to be at dinner?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. He had to go back at once. He is very
+busy."</p>
+
+<p>Marie-Louise slipped out of bed. "Therese," she
+called, "come and dress me, after you have shown
+Miss Warfield the way."</p>
+
+<p>Anne never forgot the moment of entrance into the
+great dining-room. There were just four of them.
+Dr. Austin and his wife, herself and Marie-Louise.
+But for these four there was a formality transcending
+anything in Anne's experience. Carved marble,
+tapestry, liveried servants, a massive table with fruit
+piled high in a Sheffield basket.</p>
+
+<p>The people were dwarfed by the room. It was as
+if the house had been built for giants, and had been
+divorced from its original purpose. Anne, walking
+with Marie-Louise, wondered whimsically if there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303"></a>[<a href="./images/303.png">303</a>]</span>
+were any ceilings or whether the roof touched the
+stars.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Austin was supported by her husband. She
+was a little woman with gray hair. She wore pearls
+and silver. Anne was in white. Marie-Louise in
+a quaint frock of gold brocade. There seemed to
+be no color in the room except the gold of the fire
+on the great hearth, the gold of the oranges on the
+table, and the gold of Marie-Louise's gown.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Austin was pale and silent. But she had
+attentive eyes. Anne was uncomfortably possessed
+with the idea that the little lady listened and criticized,
+or at least that she held her opinion in reserve.</p>
+
+<p>Marie-Louise spoke of Geoffrey Fox. "Miss Warfield
+knows him. She knows how he came to write
+his book."</p>
+
+<p>Anne told them how he came to write it. Of
+Peggy ill at Bower's, of the gray plush pussy cat,
+and of how, coming up the hall with the bowl of
+soup in her hand, she had found Fox in a despairing
+mood and had suggested the plot.</p>
+
+<p>Austin, watching her, decided that she was most
+unusual. She was beautiful, but there was something
+more than beauty. It was as if she was lighted
+from within by a fire which gave warmth not only
+to herself but to those about her.</p>
+
+<p>He was glad that he had brought her here to be
+with Marie-Louise. For the moment even his wife's
+pale beauty seemed cold.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304"></a>[<a href="./images/304.png">304</a>]</span>
+"We'll have Fox up," he said, when she finished
+her story.</p>
+
+<p>Anne was sure that he would be glad to come.
+She blushed a little as she said it.</p>
+
+<p>Later, when they were having coffee in the little
+drawing-room, Marie-Louise taxed her with the
+blush. "Is he in love with you?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne felt it best to be frank. "He thought he
+was."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you love him?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, Marie-Louise. And we mustn't talk about
+it. Love is a sacred thing."</p>
+
+<p>"I like to talk about it. In summer I talk to Pan.
+But he's out now in the snow and his pipes are
+frozen."</p>
+
+<p>The little drawing-room seemed to Anne anything
+but little until she learned that there was a larger
+one across the hall. Austin and his wife went up-stairs
+as soon as the coffee had been served, and
+Marie-Louise led Anne through the shadowy vastness
+of the great drawing-room to a window which
+overlooked the river. "You can't see the river,
+but the light over the doorway shines on my old
+Pan's head. You can see him grinning out of the
+snow."</p>
+
+<p>The effect of that white head peering from the
+blackness was uncanny. The shaft of light struck
+straight across the peaked chin and twisted mouth.
+The snow had made him a cap which covered his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305"></a>[<a href="./images/305.png">305</a>]</span>
+horns and which gave him the look of a rakish old
+tipster.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Marie-Louise, do you talk to him of love?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Wait till you see him in the spring with
+the pink roses back of him. He seems to get
+younger in the spring."</p>
+
+<p>Anne, going to bed that night in a suite of rooms
+which might have belonged to a princess, wondered
+if she should wake in the morning and find herself
+dreaming. To have her own bath, a silk canopy
+over her head, to know that breakfast would be
+served when she rang for it, and that her mail and
+newspapers would be brought&mdash;these were unbelievable
+things. She had a feeling that if she told Uncle
+Rod he would shake his head over it. He had a
+theory that luxury tended to cramp the soul.</p>
+
+<p>Yet her last thought was not of Uncle Rod but of
+Richard. She had come intending to give him a
+sharp opinion of his neglect of Nancy. But he had
+been so glad to see her, and had given her such a
+good time. Yet she had spoken of Nancy's loneliness.</p>
+
+<p>"I hated to leave her," she said, "but it seemed
+as if I had to come."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," he agreed, with his eyes on her glowing
+face, "and anyhow, she has Sulie."</p>
+
+<p>Marie-Louise, in the days that followed, found interest
+and occupation in showing the Country Mouse
+the sights of the city.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306"></a>[<a href="./images/306.png">306</a>]</span>
+"If you want to see such things," she said rather
+grandly, "I shall be glad to go with you."</p>
+
+<p>Anne insisted that they should not be driven in
+state and style. "People make pilgrimages on
+foot," she told Marie-Louise gravely, but with a
+twinkle in her eye. "I don't want to whirl up to
+Grant's tomb, or to the door of Trinity. And I like
+the subway and the elevated and the surface cars."</p>
+
+<p>If now and then they compromised on a taxi, it
+was because distances were too great at times, and
+other means of transportation too slow. But in the
+main they stuck to their original plan, and Marie-Louise
+entered a new world.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I love you for it," she said to Anne one
+night when they came home from the Battery after
+a day in which they had gazed down into the pit of
+the Stock Exchange, had lunched at Faunce's Tavern,
+had circled the great Aquarium, and ended with
+a ride on top of a Fifth Avenue 'bus in the twilight.</p>
+
+<p>It was from the top of the 'bus that Anne for the
+first time since she had come to New York saw
+Evelyn Chesley.</p>
+
+<p>She was coming out of a shop with Richard. It
+was a great shop with a world-famous name over
+the door. One bought furniture there of a rare kind
+and draperies of a rare kind and now and then a
+picture.</p>
+
+<p>"They are getting things for their apartment,"
+Marie-Louise explained, and her words struck cold<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307"></a>[<a href="./images/307.png">307</a>]</span>
+against Anne's heart. "Eve is paying for them
+with Aunt Maude's money."</p>
+
+<p>"When will they be married?"</p>
+
+<p>"Next October. But Eve is buying things as she
+sees them. I don't want her to marry Dr. Dicky."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not, Marie-Louise?"</p>
+
+<p>"He isn't her kind. He ought to have fallen in
+love with you."</p>
+
+<p>"Marie-Louise, I told you not to talk of love."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall talk of anything I please."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you'll talk to the empty air. I won't
+listen. I'll go up there and sit with that fat man in
+front."</p>
+
+<p>Marie-Louise laughed. "You're such an old
+dear. Do you know how nice you look in those
+furs?"</p>
+
+<p>"I feel so elegant that I am ashamed of myself.
+I've peeped into every mirror. They cost a whole
+month's salary, Marie-Louise. I feel horribly extravagant&mdash;and
+happy."</p>
+
+<p>They laughed together, and it was then that
+Marie-Louise said, "I love it."</p>
+
+<p>"Love what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Going with you and being young."</p>
+
+<p>In the days that followed Anne found herself
+revelling in the elegances of her life, in the excitements.
+It was something of an experience to meet
+Evelyn Chesley on equal grounds in the little drawing-room.
+Anne always took Mrs. Austin's place<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308"></a>[<a href="./images/308.png">308</a>]</span>
+when there were gatherings of young folks. Marie-Louise
+refused to be tied, and came and went as the
+spirit moved her. So it was Anne who in something
+shimmering and silken moved among the tea guests,
+and danced later in slippers as shining as anything
+Eve had ever worn.</p>
+
+<p>It was on this day that Geoffrey Fox came and
+met Marie-Louise for the first time.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't dance," he told her; "my eyes are bad,
+and things seem to whirl."</p>
+
+<p>"If you'll talk," she said, "I'll sit at your feet and
+listen."</p>
+
+<p>She did it literally, perched on a small gold stool.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me about your book," she said, looking up
+at him. "Anne Warfield says that you wrote it at
+Bower's."</p>
+
+<p>"I wrote it because she helped me to write it.
+But she did more for me than that." His eyes were
+following the shining figure.</p>
+
+<p>"What did she do?"</p>
+
+<p>"She gave me a soul. She taught me that there
+was something in me that was not&mdash;the flesh and
+the&mdash;devil."</p>
+
+<p>The girl on the footstool understood. "She believes
+in things, and makes you believe."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"I hated to have her come," Marie-Louise confessed,
+"and now I should hate to have her go
+away. She calls herself a country mouse, and I am<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309"></a>[<a href="./images/309.png">309</a>]</span>
+showing her the sights&mdash;we go to corking places&mdash;on
+pilgrimages. We went to Grant's tomb, and she
+made me carry a wreath. And we ride in the subway
+and drink hot chocolate in drug stores.</p>
+
+<p>"She says I haven't learned the big lessons of
+democracy," Marie-Louise pursued, "that I've looked
+out over the world, but that I have never been a
+part of it. That I've sat on a tower in a garden and
+have peered through a telescope."</p>
+
+<p>She told him of the play that she had written, and
+of the verses that she had read to the piping Pan.</p>
+
+<p>Later she pointed out Pan to him from the window
+of the big drawing-room. The snow had melted in
+the last mild days, and there was an icicle on his
+nose, and the sun from across the river reddened his
+cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"And there, everlastingly, he makes music,"
+Geoffrey said, "'on the reed which he tore from
+the river.'"</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"&nbsp;'Yes, half a beast is the great god, Pan,<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">To laugh as he sits by the river,<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">Making a poet out of a man.<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">For the reed that grows nevermore again,<br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf">As a reed with the reeds in the river.'"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>His voice died away into silence. "That is the
+price which the writer pays. He is separated, as it
+were, from his kind."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no," Marie-Louise breathed, "oh, no. Not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310"></a>[<a href="./images/310.png">310</a>]</span>
+you. Your writings bring you&mdash;close. Your book
+made me&mdash;cry."</p>
+
+<p>She was such a child as she stood there, yet with
+something in her, too, of womanliness.</p>
+
+<p>"When your three soldiers died," she said, "it
+made me believe something that I hadn't believed
+before&mdash;about souls marching toward a great&mdash;light."</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey found himself confiding in her. "I don't
+know whether you will understand. But ever since
+I wrote that book I have felt that I must live up to
+it. That I must be worthy of the thing I had written."</p>
+
+<p>Richard, dancing in the music room with Anne,
+found himself saying, "How different it all is."</p>
+
+<p>"From Bower's?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you like it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes. And then sometimes it all seems
+so big&mdash;and useless."</p>
+
+<p>The music stopped, and they made their way back
+to the little drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you sit here and talk to me?" Richard
+said. "Somehow we never seem to find time to
+talk."</p>
+
+<p>She smiled. "There is always so much to do."</p>
+
+<p>But she knew that it was not the things to be done
+which had kept her from him. It was rather a sense
+that safety lay in seeing as little of him as possible.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311"></a>[<a href="./images/311.png">311</a>]</span>
+And so, throughout the winter she had built about
+herself barriers of reserve. Yet there had never been
+a moment when he had dined with them, or when
+he had danced, or when he had shared their box at
+the opera, that she had not been keenly conscious of
+his presence.</p>
+
+<p>"And so you think it is all so big&mdash;and useless?"
+He picked up the conversation where they had
+dropped it when the dance stopped.</p>
+
+<p>She nodded. "A house like this isn't a home. I
+told Marie-Louise the other day that a home was a
+place where there was a little fire, with somebody
+on each side of it, and where there was a little table
+with two people smiling across it, and with a pot
+boiling and a woman to stir it, and with a light in
+the window and a man coming home."</p>
+
+<p>"And what did Marie-Louise say to that?"</p>
+
+<p>"She wrote a poem about it. A nice healthy
+sane little poem&mdash;not one of those dreadful things
+about the ashes of dead women which I found her
+doing when I came."</p>
+
+<p>"How did you cure her?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am giving her real things to think of. When
+she gets in a morbid mood I whisk her off to the
+gardener's cottage, and we wash and dress the baby
+and take him for an airing."</p>
+
+<p>Richard gave a big laugh. "With your head in
+the stars, you have your feet always firmly on the
+ground."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312"></a>[<a href="./images/312.png">312</a>]</span>
+"I try to, but I like to know that there are always&mdash;stars."</p>
+
+<p>"No one could be near you and not know that,"
+he told her gravely.</p>
+
+<p>It was a danger signal. She rose. "I have a
+feeling that you are neglecting somebody. You
+haven't danced yet with Miss Chesley."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Eve's all right," easily; "sit down."</p>
+
+<p>But she would not. She sent him from her. His
+place was by Eve's side. He was going to marry Eve.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>It was late that night when Marie-Louise came
+into Anne's room. "Are you asleep?" she asked,
+with the door at a crack.</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you mind&mdash;if I talk?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>Anne was in front of her open fire, writing to
+Uncle Rod. The fire was another of the luxuries in
+which she revelled. It was such a wonder of a fireplace,
+with its twinkling brasses, and its purring logs.
+She remembered the little round stove in her room
+at Bower's.</p>
+
+<p>Marie-Louise had come to talk of Geoffrey Fox.</p>
+
+<p>"I adore his eye-glasses."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Marie-Louise&mdash;his poor eyes."</p>
+
+<p>"He isn't poor," the child said, passionately, "not
+even his eyes. Milton was blind&mdash;and&mdash;and there
+was his poetry."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313"></a>[<a href="./images/313.png">313</a>]</span>
+"Dr. Dicky hopes his eyes are getting better."</p>
+
+<p>"He says they are. That he sees things now
+through a sort of silver rain. He has to have some
+one write for him. His little sister Mimi has been
+doing it, but she is going to be married."</p>
+
+<p>"Mimi?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. He found out that she had a lover, and so
+he has insisted. And then he will be left alone."</p>
+
+<p>She sat gazing into the fire, a small humped-up
+figure in a gorgeous dressing-gown. At last she
+said, "Why didn't you love him?"</p>
+
+<p>"There was some one else, Marie-Louise."</p>
+
+<p>Marie-Louise drew close and laid her red head on
+Anne's knee. "Some one that you are going to
+marry?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne shook her head. "Some one whom I shall
+never marry. He loves&mdash;another girl, Marie-Louise."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" There was a long silence, as the two
+of them gazed into the fire. Then Marie-Louise
+reached up a thin little hand to Anne's warm clasp.
+"That's always the way, isn't it? It is a sort of
+game, with Love always flitting away to&mdash;another
+girl."</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314"></a>[<a href="./images/314.png">314</a>]</span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+
+<h3><i>In Which St. Michael Hears a Call.</i></h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> was in April that Geoffrey Fox wrote to Anne.</p>
+
+<p>"When I told you that I was coming back to
+Bower's, I said that I wanted quiet to think out my
+new book, but I did not tell you that I fancied I
+might find your ghost flitting through the halls, or
+on the road to the schoolhouse. I felt that there
+might linger in the long front room the glowing
+spirit of the little girl who sat by the fire and talked
+to me of my soldiers and their souls.</p>
+
+<p>"And what I thought has come true. You are
+everywhere, Mistress Anne, not as I last saw you at
+Rose Acres in silken attire, but fluttering before me
+in your frock of many flounces, carrying your star
+of a lantern through the twilight on your way to
+Diogenes, scolding me on the stairs&mdash;&mdash;! What
+days, what hours! And always you were the little
+school-teacher, showing your wayward scholars what
+to do with life!</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I have done with it less than you expected.
+But at least I have done more with it than
+I had hoped. I am lining my pockets with money,
+and Mimi has a chest of silver. That is the immediate
+material effect of the sale of 'Three Souls.' But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315"></a>[<a href="./images/315.png">315</a>]</span>
+there is more than the material effect. The letters
+which I get from the people who have read the book
+are like wine to my soul. To think that I, Geoffrey
+Fox, who have frittered and frivoled, should have
+put on paper things which have burned into men's
+consciousness and have made them better. I could
+never have done it except for you. Yet in all humility
+I can say that I have done it, and that never
+while life lasts shall I think again of my talent as a
+little thing.</p>
+
+<p>"For it is a great thing, Mistress Anne, to have
+written a book. In all of my pot-boiling days I
+would never have believed it. A plot was a plot,
+and presto, the thing was done! The world read
+and forgot. But the world doesn't forget. Not
+when we give our best, and when we aim to get
+below the surface things and the shallow things and
+call up out of men's hearts that which, in these practical
+days, they try to hide.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose Brooks has told you about my eyes,
+and of how it may happen that I shall, for the rest
+of my life, be able to see through a glass darkly.</p>
+
+<p>"That is something to be thankful for, isn't it?
+It is a rather weird experience when, having adjusted
+one's self in anticipation of a catastrophe, the catastrophe
+hangs fire. Like old Pepys, I had resigned
+myself to the inevitable&mdash;indeed in those awful waiting
+days I read, more than once, the last paragraph
+of his diary.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316"></a>[<a href="./images/316.png">316</a>]</span>
+"'And so I betake myself to that course which it is
+almost as much as to see myself go into my grave;
+for which, and all the discomforts that will accompany
+my being blind, the good God prepare me!'</p>
+
+<p>"Yet Pepys kept his sight all the rest of his life,
+and regretted, I fancy, more than once, that he did
+not finish his diary. And, perhaps, I, too, shall be
+granted this dim vision until the end.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems to me that there are many things which
+I ought to tell you&mdash;I know there are a thousand
+things which are forbidden. But at least I can speak
+of Diogenes. I saw him at Crossroads the other
+day, much puffed up with pride of family. And I
+can speak of Mrs. Nancy, who is a white shadow of
+herself. Why doesn't Brooks see it? He was down
+here for a week recently, and he didn't seem to
+realize that anything was wrong. Perhaps she is
+always so radiant when he comes that she dazzles
+his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"She and Miss Sulie are a pathetic pair. I meet
+them on the road on their errands of mercy. They
+are like two sisters of charity in their long capes and
+little bonnets. Evidently Mrs. Brooks feels that if
+her son cannot doctor the community she can at
+least nurse it. The country folks adore her, and go
+to her for advice, so that Crossroads still opens wide
+its doors to the people, as it did in the days of old
+Dr. Brooks.</p>
+
+<p>"And now, does the Princess still serve? I can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317"></a>[<a href="./images/317.png">317</a>]</span>
+see you with your blue bowl on your way to Peggy,
+and stopping on the stairs to light for me the torch
+of inspiration. And now all of this service and inspiration
+is being spilled at the feet of&mdash;Marie-Louise!
+Will you give her greetings, and ask her how soon I
+may come and worship at the shrine of her grinning
+old god?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne, carrying his letter to Marie-Louise, asked,
+"Shall I tell him to come?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I didn't want him to go away, but he said
+he must&mdash;that he couldn't write here. But I knew
+why he went, and you knew."</p>
+
+<p>"You needn't look at me so reproachfully, Marie-Louise.
+It isn't my fault."</p>
+
+<p>"It is your fault," Marie-Louise accused her, "for
+being like a flame. Father says that people hold
+out their hands to you as they do to a fire."</p>
+
+<p>"And what," Anne demanded, "has all this to do
+with Geoffrey Fox?"</p>
+
+<p>"You know," Marie-Louise told her bluntly, "he
+loves you and looks up to you&mdash;and I&mdash;sit at his
+feet."</p>
+
+<p>There was something of tenseness in the small face
+framed by the red hair. Anne touched Marie-Louise's
+cheek with a tender finger. "Dear heart,"
+she said, "he is just a man."</p>
+
+<p>For a moment the child stood very still, then she
+said, "Is he? Or is he a god, like my Pan in the
+garden?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318"></a>[<a href="./images/318.png">318</a>]</span>
+Later she decided that Geoffrey should come in
+May. "When there are roses. And I'll have some
+people out."</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>It was in May that Rose Acres justified its name.
+The marble Pan piping on his reeds faced a garden
+abloom with beauty. At the right, a grass walk led
+down to a sunken fountain approached by wide stone
+steps.</p>
+
+<p>It was on these steps that Marie-Louise sat one
+morning, weaving a garland.</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to tie it with gold ribbon," she said.
+"Tibbs got the laurel for me."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is it for?"</p>
+
+<p>"It may be for&mdash;Pan," Marie-Louise wore an air
+of mystery, "and it may not."</p>
+
+<p>She stuck it later on Pan's head, but the effect did
+not please her. "You are nothing but a grinning
+old marble doll," she told him, and Anne laughed at
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"I hoped some day you'd find that out."</p>
+
+<p>Richard, arriving late that afternoon, found Mrs.
+Austin on the terrace. "The young people are in
+the garden," she said; "will you hunt them up?"</p>
+
+<p>"I want to talk to Dr. Austin, if I may."</p>
+
+<p>"He's in the house. He was called to the telephone."</p>
+
+<p>Austin, coming out, found his young assistant on
+the portico.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319"></a>[<a href="./images/319.png">319</a>]</span>
+"Can you give me a second, sir? I've a letter
+from mother. There's a lot of sickness at Crossroads.
+And I feel responsible."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should you feel responsible?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's the water supply. Typhoid. If I had been
+there I should have had it looked into. I had started
+an investigation but there was no one to push it.
+And now there are a dozen cases. Eric Brand's little
+wife, Beulah, and old Peter Bower, and the mother
+of little Fran&ccedil;ois."</p>
+
+<p>"And you are thinking that you ought to go
+down?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see how I can let you go. It doesn't
+make much difference where people are sick, Brooks,
+there's always so much for us doctors to do."</p>
+
+<p>"But if I could be spared&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You can't, Brooks. I am sorry. But I've learned
+to depend on you."</p>
+
+<p>The older man laid his hand affectionately on the
+shoulder of the younger. If for the moment Richard
+felt beneath the softness of that touch the iron glove
+of one who expected obedience from a subordinate,
+he did not show it by word or glance.</p>
+
+<p>They talked of other things after that, and presently
+Richard wandered off to find Eve. He passed
+beyond the terraces to the garden. He felt tired and
+depressed. The fragrance of the roses was heavy
+and almost overpowering. There was a stone bench<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320"></a>[<a href="./images/320.png">320</a>]</span>
+set in the midst of a tangle of bloom. He sank down
+on it, asking nothing better than to sit there alone
+and think it out.</p>
+
+<p>He felt at this moment, strongly, what had come
+to him many times during the winter&mdash;that he was
+not in any sense his own master. Austin directed,
+controlled, commanded. For the opportunity which
+he had given young Brooks he expected the return
+of acquiescence. Thus it happened that Richard
+found less of big things and more of little ones in his
+life than he had anticipated. There had been times
+when the moral side of a case had appealed to him
+more than the medical, when he had been moved by
+generosities such as had moved his grandfather,
+when he had wanted to be human rather than professional,
+and always he had found Austin blocking
+his idealistic impulses, scoffing at the things he had
+valued, imposing upon him a somewhat hard philosophy
+in the place of a living faith. It seemed to
+Richard that in his profession, as well as in his love
+affair, he was no longer meeting life with a direct
+glance.</p>
+
+<p>He rose and went on. He must find Eve. He
+had promised and yet in that moment he knew that
+he did not want to see her. He wanted his mother's
+touch, her understanding, her love. He wanted
+Crossroads and big Ben&mdash;and the people who,
+because of his grandfather, had called him&mdash;"friend."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321"></a>[<a href="./images/321.png">321</a>]</span>
+He found Anne and Geoffrey and Marie-Louise
+by the fountain at the end of the grass walk. Marie-Louise
+perched on the rim was, in her pale green
+gown, like some nymph freshly risen. Her hat was
+off, and her red hair caught the sunlight.</p>
+
+<p>Anne was reading the first chapter of Geoffrey's
+new book. He sat just above her on the steps of
+the fountain. His glasses were off, and as he looked
+down at her his eyes showed a brilliancy which
+seemed to contradict his failing sight.</p>
+
+<p>Marie-Louise held up a warning finger. "Sit
+down," she said, "and listen. It is such a wonder-book,
+Dr. Dicky."</p>
+
+<p>So Richard sat down and Anne went on reading.
+She read well; her voice had a thrilling quality, and
+once it broke.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, why did you make it so sad?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Could I make it glad?" he asked, and to
+Richard, watching, there came the jealous certainty
+that between the two of them there was some subtle
+understanding.</p>
+
+<p>When at last Anne had read all that he had
+written Marie-Louise said, importantly, "Anne is
+the heroine, the Princess who serves. Will you ever
+make me the heroine of a book, Geoffrey Fox?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps. Give me a plot?"</p>
+
+<p>"Have a girl who loves a marble god&mdash;then some
+day she meets a man&mdash;and the god is afraid he will
+lose her, so he wakes to life and says, 'If you love<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322"></a>[<a href="./images/322.png">322</a>]</span>
+this man, you will have to accept the common lot of
+women, you will have to work for him and obey him&mdash;and
+some day he will die and your soul will be
+rent with sorrow. But if you love me, I shall be
+here when you are forgotten, and while you live my
+love will demand nothing but the verses that you
+read to me and the roses that lay at my feet.'"</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey gave her an eager glance. "Jove,
+there's more in that than a joke. Some day I shall
+get you to amplify your idea."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll give it to you if you promise to write the
+book here. There's a balcony room that overlooks
+the river&mdash;and nobody would ever interrupt you but
+me, and I'd only come when you wanted me."</p>
+
+<p>Marie-Louise's breath was short as she finished.
+To cover her emotion she caught up the wreath
+which she had made in the morning, and which lay
+beside her.</p>
+
+<p>"I made it for you," she told Geoffrey, "and now
+that I've done it, I don't know what to do with it."</p>
+
+<p>She was blushing and glowing, less of an imp
+and more of a girl than Richard had ever seen her.</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey rose to the occasion. "It shall be a
+mascot for my new book. I'll hang it on the wall
+over my desk, and every time I look up at it, it shall
+say to me, 'These are the laurels you are to win.'"</p>
+
+<p>"You have won them," Marie-Louise flashed.</p>
+
+<p>"No artist ever feels himself worthy of laurel.
+His achievement always falls short of his ambition."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323"></a>[<a href="./images/323.png">323</a>]</span>
+"But 'Three Souls,'" Marie-Louise said; "surely
+you were satisfied?"</p>
+
+<p>"I did not write it&mdash;the credit belongs to Mistress
+Anne. Your wreath should be hers."</p>
+
+<p>But Marie-Louise's mind was made up. Before
+Geoffrey could grasp what she was about to do, she
+fluttered up the steps, and dropped the garland
+lightly on his dark locks.</p>
+
+<p>It became him well.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you like it?" he asked Anne.</p>
+
+<p>"To the Victor&mdash;the spoils," she told him, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>Richard felt out of it. He wanted to get away,
+and he knew that he must find Eve. Eve, who
+when he met her would laugh her light laugh, and
+call him "Dicky Boy," and refuse to listen when he
+spoke of Crossroads.</p>
+
+<p>The path that he took led to a little tea house
+built on the bank, which gave a wide view of the
+river and the Jersey hills. He found Winifred and
+Tony side by side and silent.</p>
+
+<p>"Better late than never," was Tony's greeting.</p>
+
+<p>"I am hunting for Eve."</p>
+
+<p>"She and Meade were here a moment ago,"
+Winifred informed him. "Sit down and give an
+account of yourself. We haven't seen you in a
+million years."</p>
+
+<p>"Just a week, dear lady. I have been horribly
+busy."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324"></a>[<a href="./images/324.png">324</a>]</span>
+"You say that as if you meant the 'horribly.'"</p>
+
+<p>"I do. It has been a 'bluggy' business, and I
+am tired." He laughed with a certain amount of
+constraint. "If I were a boy, I should say 'I want
+to go home.'"</p>
+
+<p>Winifred gave him a quick glance. "What has
+happened?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, everybody is ill at Crossroads. Beastly
+conditions. And they ought to have been corrected.
+Beulah's ill."</p>
+
+<p>"The little bride?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. And Eric is frantic. He has written me,
+asking me to come down. But Austin can't see it."</p>
+
+<p>"Could you go for the day?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I went for a day I should stay longer. There's
+everything to be done."</p>
+
+<p>He switched away from the subject. "Crowd
+seems to have separated. Fox and Anne Warfield
+by the fountain. You and Tony here, and Eve and
+Pip as yet undiscovered."</p>
+
+<p>"It is the day," Winifred decided, "all romance
+and roses. Even Tony and I were a-lovering when
+Eve found us."</p>
+
+<p>Richard rose. "Tony, she wants to hold your
+hand. I'll get out."</p>
+
+<p>Winifred laughed. "You'd better go and hold
+Eve's."</p>
+
+<p>As he went away, Richard wondered if there was
+anything significant in her way of saying it.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325"></a>[<a href="./images/325.png">325</a>]</span>
+Eve and Pip were in the enclosed space where
+Pan gleamed white against the dark cedars. Eve
+was seated on the sun-dial. Pip had lifted her there,
+and he stood leaning against it. Her lap was full of
+roses, and there were roses on her hat. The high
+note of color was repeated in the pink sunshade
+which lay open where the wind had wafted it to the
+feet of the piping Pan.</p>
+
+<p>Pip straightened up as he saw Richard approaching.
+"There comes your eager lover, Eve. Give
+me a rose before he gets here."</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid."</p>
+
+<p>"Of me?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. But if I give you anything you'll take
+more. And I want to give everything to&mdash;Dicky."</p>
+
+<p>He laughed a triumphant laugh. "I take all <i>I</i>
+can get. Give me a rose, Eve."</p>
+
+<p>She yielded to his masterfulness. Out of the mass
+of bloom she chose a pink bud. "I shall give a red
+one to Dicky, so don't feel puffed up."</p>
+
+<p>"I told you I should take what I could get, and
+Brooks isn't thinking of roses. Look at his face."</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry to be so late, Eve," Richard said, as
+he came up. "I am always apologizing, it seems
+to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Little Boy Blue&mdash;&mdash;! Dicky, what's the matter?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326"></a>[<a href="./images/326.png">326</a>]</span>
+"I want to go home." He tried to speak lightly&mdash;to
+follow her mood.</p>
+
+<p>"Home&mdash;to Crossroads?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"But why?"</p>
+
+<p>"There's typhoid, and they don't know how to
+cope with it."</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't there other doctors?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but not enough."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense; what did they do before you came to
+the county? You must get rid of the feeling that
+you are so&mdash;important." She was angry. Little
+sparks were in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't worry, Eve. Austin doesn't want me to
+go. I can't get away. But it is on my mind."</p>
+
+<p>"Put it off and come and help me with my roses.
+I gave Pip a bud. Are you jealous, Dicky?"</p>
+
+<p>Still trying to follow her mood, he said, "You
+and the rest of the roses belong to me. Why should
+I care for one poor bud?"</p>
+
+<p>She stuck a red rose in his coat, and when she had
+made her flowers into a nosegay, he lifted her down
+from the sun-dial. For a moment she clung to him.
+Meade had gone to rescue the sunshade which was
+blowing down the slope, and for the moment they
+were alone. "Dicky," she whispered, "I was horrid,
+but you mustn't go."</p>
+
+<p>"I told you I couldn't, Eve."</p>
+
+<p>Then Pip came back, and the three of them made<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327"></a>[<a href="./images/327.png">327</a>]</span>
+their way to the fountain, picking up Winifred and
+Tony as they passed. Tea was served on the terrace,
+and a lot of other people motored out. There was
+much laughter and lightness&mdash;as if there were no
+trouble in the whole wide world.</p>
+
+<p>Richard felt separated from it all by his mood,
+and when he went to the house to send a message
+for Austin to the hospital, he did not at once return
+to the terrace. He sought the great library. It was
+dim and quiet and he lay back in one of the big
+chairs and shut his eyes. The vision was before
+him of Pip leaning on the sun-dial against a rose-splashed
+background, with Eve smiling down at
+him. It had come to him then that Pip should have
+married Eve. Pip would make her happy. The
+thing was all wrong in some way, but he could not
+see clearly how to make it right.</p>
+
+<p>There was a sound in the room and he opened his
+eyes to find Marie-Louise on the ladder which gave
+access to the shelves of the great bookcases which
+lined the walls. She had not seen him, and she
+was singing softly to herself. In the dimness the
+color of her hair and gown gave a stained-glass
+effect against a background of high square east window.</p>
+
+<p>Richard sat up. What was she singing?</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"<i>I think she was the most beautiful lady</i><br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf"><i>That ever was in the West Country,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf"><i>But beauty vanishes, beauty passes,</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328"></a>[<a href="./images/328.png">328</a>]</span><br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf"><i>However rare, rare it be.</i><br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf"><i>And when I am gone, who shall remember</i><br /></span>
+<span class="ihalf"><i>That lady of the West Country?</i>&nbsp;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Marie-Louise," he asked so suddenly that she
+nearly fell off of the shelves, "where did you learn
+that song?"</p>
+
+<p>"From Mistress Anne."</p>
+
+<p>"When you sing it do you think of&mdash;her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Marie-Louise sat down on the top step of the ladder.
+"Dr. Dicky, may I ask a question?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you fall in love with Anne?"</p>
+
+<p>"I did."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Then why didn't you marry her?"</p>
+
+<p>"She is going to marry Geoffrey Fox."</p>
+
+<p>Dead silence. Then, "Did she tell you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. He told me. Last spring."</p>
+
+<p>"Before you came here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. That was the reason I came. I wanted to
+get away from everything that&mdash;spoke of her."</p>
+
+<p>Marie-Louise slipped down from the ladder and
+came and stood beside him. "<i>He told you</i>," she
+said in a sharp whisper, "but there must be some
+mistake. She doesn't love him. She said that she
+didn't. I wonder why he lied."</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing cold about her now. She was
+a fiery spark. "Only a&mdash;<i>cad</i> could do such a thing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329"></a>[<a href="./images/329.png">329</a>]</span>&mdash;and
+I thought&mdash;oh, Dr. Dicky, I thought he was
+a <i>man</i>&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She flung herself at his feet like a stricken child.
+He went down to her. "Marie-Louise, stop. Sit
+up and tell me what's the matter."</p>
+
+<p>She sat up. "I shall ask Anne. I shall go and
+get her and ask her."</p>
+
+<p>He found himself calling after her, "Marie-Louise,"
+but she was gone.</p>
+
+<p>She came back presently, dragging the protesting
+Anne. "But Marie-Louise, what do you want of
+me?"</p>
+
+<p>Richard, rising, said, "Please don't think I permitted
+this. I tried to stop her."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't want to be stopped," Marie-Louise told
+them. "I want to know whether you and Geoffrey
+Fox are going to be married."</p>
+
+<p>Anne's cheeks were stained red. "Of course not.
+But it isn't anything to get so excited about, is it,
+Marie-Louise?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it is. He told Dr. Dicky that you were, and
+he <i>lied</i>. And I thought, oh, you know the wonderful
+things I thought about him, Mistress Anne."</p>
+
+<p>Anne's arm went around the sad little nymph in
+green. "You must still think wonderful things of
+him. He was very unhappy, and desperate about
+his eyes. And it seemed to him that to assert a
+thing might make it come true."</p>
+
+<p>"But you didn't love him?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330"></a>[<a href="./images/330.png">330</a>]</span>
+"Never, Marie-Louise."</p>
+
+<p>And now Richard, ignoring the presence of Marie-Louise,
+ignoring everything but the question which
+beat against his heart, demanded:</p>
+
+<p>"If you knew that he had told me this, why didn't
+you make things clear?"</p>
+
+<p>"When I might have made things clear&mdash;you
+were engaged to Eve."</p>
+
+<p>She turned abruptly from him to Marie-Louise.
+"Run back to your poet, dear heart. He is waiting
+for the book that you were going to bring him. And
+remember that you are not to sit in judgment. You
+are to be eyes for him, and light."</p>
+
+<p>It was a sober little nymph in green who marched
+away with her book. Geoffrey sat on the stone
+bench a little withdrawn from the others. His lean
+face, straining toward the house, relaxed as she
+came within his line of vision.</p>
+
+<p>"You were a long time away," he said, and made
+a place for her beside him, and she sat down and
+opened her book.</p>
+
+<p>And now, back in the dim library, Anne and
+Richard!</p>
+
+<p>"I stayed," she said, "because they were speaking
+out there of Crossroads. I have had a letter, too,
+from Sulie. She says that the situation is desperate."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. They need me. And I ought to go.
+They are my people. I feel that in a sense I belong
+to them&mdash;as my grandfather belonged."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331"></a>[<a href="./images/331.png">331</a>]</span>
+"Do you mean that if you go now you will
+stay?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am not sure. The future must take care of itself."</p>
+
+<p>"Your mother would be glad if your decision
+finally came to that."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. And I should be glad. But this time I
+shall not go for my mother's sake alone. Something
+deeper is drawing me. I can't quite analyze
+it. It is a call"&mdash;he laughed a little&mdash;"such as men
+describe who enter the ministry,&mdash;an irresistible impulse,
+as if I were to find something there that I had
+lost in the city."</p>
+
+<p>She held out her hand to him. "Do you know
+the name I had for you when you were at Crossroads?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"I called you St. Michael&mdash;because it always
+seemed to me that you carried a sword."</p>
+
+<p>He tightened his grip on the little hand. "Some
+day I shall hope to justify the name; I don't deserve
+it now."</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes came up to him. "You'll fight to win,"
+she said, softly.</p>
+
+<p>He did not want to let her go. But there was no
+other way. But when she had joined the others on
+the terrace he made a wide detour of the garden,
+and wandered down to the river.</p>
+
+<p>It was not a singing river, but to-day it seemed to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332"></a>[<a href="./images/332.png">332</a>]</span>
+have a song, "<i>Go back, go back</i>," it said; "<i>you have
+seen the world, you have seen the world</i>."</p>
+
+<p>And when he had listened for a little while he
+climbed the hill to tell Austin and to tell&mdash;Eve.</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333"></a>[<a href="./images/333.png">333</a>]</span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+
+<h3><i>In Which Anne Weighs the People of Two Worlds.</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Richard!</span>"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, mother, I'm here. Austin thinks I
+am crazy, and Eve won't speak to me. But&mdash;I
+came. And to think you have turned the house
+into a hospital!"</p>
+
+<p>"It seemed the only thing to do. Fran&ccedil;ois'
+mother had no one to take care of her&mdash;and there
+were others, and the house is big."</p>
+
+<p>"You are the biggest thing in it. Mother, if I
+ever pray to a saint, it will be one with gray hair in
+a nurse's cap and apron, and with shining eyes."</p>
+
+<p>"They are shining because you are here, Richard."</p>
+
+<p>Cousin Sulie, in the door, broke down and cried,
+"Oh, we've prayed for it."</p>
+
+<p>They clung to him, the two little growing-old
+women, who had wanted him, and who had worked
+without him.</p>
+
+<p>He had no words for them, for he could not speak
+with steadiness. But in that moment he knew that
+he should never go back to Austin. That he should
+live and die in the home of his fathers. And that
+his work was here.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334"></a>[<a href="./images/334.png">334</a>]</span>
+He tried, a little later, to make a joke of their devotion.
+"Mother, you and Cousin Sulie mustn't.
+I shall need a body-guard to protect me. You'll
+spoil me with softness and ease."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall buckle on your armor soon enough," she
+told him. "Did Eric meet you at the station?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I shall go straight to Beulah's. I stopped
+in to see old Peter before I came up. I can pull him
+through, but I shall have to have some nurses."</p>
+
+<p>And now big Ben, at an even trot, carried Richard
+to the Playhouse. Toby, mad with gladness at the
+return of his master, raced ahead.</p>
+
+<p>Up in the pretty pink and white room lay Beulah.
+No longer plump and blooming, but wasted and wan
+with dry lips and hollow eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Eric had said to Richard, "If she dies I shall
+die, too."</p>
+
+<p>"She is not going to die."</p>
+
+<p>And now he said it again, cheerfully, to the wasted
+figure in the bed. "I have come to make you well,
+Beulah."</p>
+
+<p>But Beulah was not at all sure that she wanted to
+be&mdash;well. She was too tired. She was tired of Eric,
+tired of her mother, tired of taking medicine, tired
+of having to breathe.</p>
+
+<p>So she shut her eyes and turned away.</p>
+
+<p>Eric sat by the bed. "Dear heart," he said, "it
+is Dr. Dicky."</p>
+
+<p>But she did not open her eyes.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335"></a>[<a href="./images/335.png">335</a>]</span>
+In the days that followed Richard fought to make
+his words come true. He felt that if Beulah died it
+would, in some way, be his fault. He was aware
+that this was a morbid state of mind, but he could
+not help the way he felt. Beulah's life would be the
+price of his self-respect.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not only for Beulah's life that he fought,
+but for the lives of others. He had nurses up from
+Baltimore and down from New York. He had experts
+to examine wells and springs and other sources
+of water supply. He had a motor car that he might
+cover the miles quickly, using old Ben only for short
+distances. Toby, adapting himself to the car, sat on
+the front seat with the wind in his face, drunk with
+the excitement of it.</p>
+
+<p>When Nancy spoke of the expense to which Richard
+was putting himself, he said, "I have saved
+something, mother, and Eric and the rest can pay."</p>
+
+<p>Surely in those days St. Michael needed his sword,
+for the fight was to the finish. Night and day the
+battle waged. Richard went from bedside to bedside,
+coming always last to Beulah in the shadowed
+pink and white room at the Playhouse.</p>
+
+<p>There were nurses now, but Eric Brand would not
+be turned out. "Every minute that I am away from
+her," he told Richard, "I'm afraid. It seems as if
+when I am in sight of her I can hold her&mdash;back."</p>
+
+<p>So, night after night, Richard found him in the
+chair by Beulah's bed, his face shaded by his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336"></a>[<a href="./images/336.png">336</a>]</span>
+hand, rousing only when Beulah stirred, to smile at
+her.</p>
+
+<p>But Beulah did not smile back. She moaned a
+little now and then, and sometimes talked of things
+that never were on sea or land. There was a flowered
+chintz screen in the corner of the room and she
+peopled it with strange creatures, and murmured of
+them now and then, until the nurse covered the
+screen with a white sheet, which seemed to blot it
+out of Beulah's mind forever.</p>
+
+<p>There was always a pot of coffee boiling in the
+kitchen for the young doctor, and Eric would go
+down with him and they would drink and talk, and
+all that Eric said led back to Beulah.</p>
+
+<p>"If there was only something that I could do for
+her," he said; "if I could go out and work until I
+dropped, I should feel as if I were helping. But just
+to sit there and see her&mdash;fade."</p>
+
+<p>Again he said, "I had always thought of our living&mdash;never
+of dying. There can be no future for
+me without her."</p>
+
+<p>So it was for Eric's future as well as for Beulah's
+life that Richard strove. He grew worn and weary,
+but he never gave up.</p>
+
+<p>Night after night, day after day, from house to
+house he went, along the two roads and up into the
+hills. Everywhere he met an anxious welcome.
+Where the conditions were unfavorable, he transferred
+the patient to Crossroads, where Nancy and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337"></a>[<a href="./images/337.png">337</a>]</span>
+Sulie and Milly and a trio of nurses formed an enthusiastic
+hospital staff.</p>
+
+<p>The mother of little Fran&ccedil;ois was the first patient
+that Richard lost. She was tired and overworked,
+and she felt that it was good to fall asleep. Afterward
+Richard, with the little boy in his arms, went
+out and sat where they could look over the river
+and talk together.</p>
+
+<p>"I told her that you were to stay with me, Fran&ccedil;ois."</p>
+
+<p>"And she was glad?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I need a little lad in my office, and when
+I take the car you can ride with me."</p>
+
+<p>And thus it came about that little Fran&ccedil;ois, a
+sober little Fran&ccedil;ois, with a band of black about his
+arm, became one of the Crossroads household, and
+was made much of by the women, even by black
+Milly, who baked cookies for him and tarts whenever
+he cried for his mother.</p>
+
+<p>Cousin Sulie rose nobly to meet the new demands
+upon her. "It is a feeling I never had before," she
+said to Richard, as she helped him pack his bag before
+going on his rounds, "that what I am doing is
+worth while. I know I should have felt it when I
+was darning stockings, but I didn't."</p>
+
+<p>She gloried in the professional aspect which she
+gave to everything. She installed little Fran&ccedil;ois at
+a small table in the Garden Room. He answered
+the telephone and wrote the messages on slips of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338"></a>[<a href="./images/338.png">338</a>]</span>
+paper which he laid on the doctor's desk. Cousin
+Sulie at another table saw the people who came in
+Richard's absence.</p>
+
+<p>"Nancy can read to the patients up-stairs and cut
+flowers for them and cook nice things for them,"
+she confided, "but I like to be down here when the
+children come in to ask for medicine, and when the
+mothers come to find out what they shall feed the
+convalescents. Richard, I never heard anything
+like their&mdash;hungriness&mdash;when they are getting well."</p>
+
+<p>Beulah, emerging slowly from among the shadows,
+began to think of things to eat. She didn't
+care about anything else. She didn't care for Eric's
+love, or her mother's gladness, or Richard's cheerfulness,
+or the nurses' sympathy. She cared only
+to think of every kind of food that she had ever
+liked in her whole life, and to ask if she might
+have it.</p>
+
+<p>"But, dear heart, the doctor doesn't think that
+you should," Eric would protest.</p>
+
+<p>She would cry, weakly, "You don't love me, or
+you would let me."</p>
+
+<p>She begged and begged, and at last he couldn't
+stand it.</p>
+
+<p>"You are starving her," he told the nurses fiercely.</p>
+
+<p>They referred him to the doctor.</p>
+
+<p>Eric telephoned Richard.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear fellow," was the response, "her appetite
+is a sign that she is getting well."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339"></a>[<a href="./images/339.png">339</a>]</span>
+"But she is so hungry."</p>
+
+<p>"So are they all. I have to steel my heart against
+them, especially the children. And half of the convalescents
+are reading cook books."</p>
+
+<p>"Cook books!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. In that way they get a meal by proxy. I
+tell them to pick out the things they are going to
+have when they are well enough to eat all they want.
+Their choice ranges from Welsh rarebits to plum
+puddings."</p>
+
+<p>He laughed, but Eric saw nothing funny in the
+matter. "I can't bear to see her&mdash;suffer."</p>
+
+<p>Richard was sobered at once. "Don't think that
+I am not sympathetic. But&mdash;Brand, I don't dare-<i>feel</i>.
+If I did, I should go to pieces."</p>
+
+<p>Slowly the weeks passed. Besides Fran&ccedil;ois'
+mother, two of Richard's patients died. Slowly the
+pendulum of time swung the rest of the sick ones
+toward recovery. Nancy and Sulie and Milly
+changed the rooms at Crossroads back to their original
+uses. The nurses, no longer needed, packed
+their competent bags, and departed. Beulah at the
+Playhouse had her first square meal, and smiled back
+at Eric.</p>
+
+<p>The strain had told fearfully on Richard. Yet he
+persisted in his efforts long after it seemed that the
+countryside was safe. He tried to pack into twelve
+short weeks what he would normally have done in
+twelve long months. He spurred his fellow physi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340"></a>[<a href="./images/340.png">340</a>]</span>cians
+to increased activities, he urged authorities to
+unprecedented exertions. He did the work of two
+men and sometimes of three. And he was so exhausted
+that he felt that if ever his work was finished
+he would sleep for a million years.</p>
+
+<p>It was in September that he began to wonder how
+he would square things up with Eve. At first she
+had written to him blaming him for his desertion.
+But not for a moment did she take it seriously.
+"You'll be coming back, Dicky," was the burden of
+her song. He wrote hurried pleasant letters which
+were to some extent bulletins of the day's work. If
+Eve was not satisfied she consoled herself with the
+thought that he was tearingly busy and terribly
+tired.</p>
+
+<p>In her last letter she had said, "Austin doesn't
+know what to do without you. He told Pip that you
+were his right hand."</p>
+
+<p>Austin had said more than that to Anne. He had
+found her one hot day by the fountain. Nancy had
+written to her of the death of Fran&ccedil;ois' mother. The
+letter was in her hand.</p>
+
+<p>Austin had also had a letter. "Brooks is a fool.
+He writes that he is going to stay."</p>
+
+<p>Anne shook her head. "He is not a fool," she
+said; "he is doing what he <i>had</i> to do. You would
+know if you had ever lived at Crossroads. Why,
+the Brooks family belongs there, and the Brooks
+doctors."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341"></a>[<a href="./images/341.png">341</a>]</span>
+"So you have encouraged him?" Austin said.</p>
+
+<p>"I have had nothing to do with it. I haven't
+heard from him since he left, and I haven't written."</p>
+
+<p>"And you think he is&mdash;right to&mdash;bury&mdash;himself?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne sat very still, her hands folded quietly. Her
+calm eyes were on the golden fish which swam in
+the waters at the base of the fountain.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not sure," she said; "it all has so much
+to do with&mdash;old traditions&mdash;and inherited feelings&mdash;and
+ideals. He could be just as useful here, but he
+would never be happy. You can't imagine how they
+look up to him down there. And here he looked up
+to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you think I didn't give him a free hand?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. But there he is a Brooks of Crossroads.
+And it isn't because he wants the honor of it that he
+has gone back, but because the responsibility rests
+upon him to make the community all that it ought
+to be. And he can't shirk it."</p>
+
+<p>"Eve Chesley says that he is tied to his mother's
+apron strings."</p>
+
+<p>"She doesn't understand, I do. I sometimes
+feel that way about the Crossroads school&mdash;as if I
+had shirked something to have&mdash;a good time."</p>
+
+<p>"But you have had a good time."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you have all been wonderful to me," her
+smile warmed him, "but you won't think that I am
+ungrateful when I say that there was something in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342"></a>[<a href="./images/342.png">342</a>]</span>
+my life in the little school which carried me&mdash;higher&mdash;than
+this."</p>
+
+<p>"Higher? What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was a leader down there. And a force. The
+children looked to me for something that I could
+give and which the teacher they have isn't giving.
+She just teaches books, and I tried to teach them
+something of life, and love of country, and love of
+God."</p>
+
+<p>"But here you have Marie-Louise, and you know
+how grateful we are for what you have done for her."</p>
+
+<p>"I have only developed what was in her. What
+a flaming little genius she is!"</p>
+
+<p>"With a poem accepted by an important magazine,
+and Fox believing that she can write more of
+them."</p>
+
+<p>Anne spoke quietly: "And now I am really not
+needed. Marie-Louise can go on alone."</p>
+
+<p>He stopped her. "We want you to stay&mdash;my
+wife wants you&mdash;Marie-Louise can't do without you.
+And I want you to get Brooks back."</p>
+
+<p>She looked her amazement. "Get him back?"</p>
+
+<p>"He will come if you ask it. I am not blind.
+Eve Chesley is. The things she says make him
+stubborn. But you could call him back. You could
+call to life anything in any man if you willed it.
+You are inspirational&mdash;a star to light the way."</p>
+
+<p>His voice was shaken. After a pause he went on:
+"Will you help me to get Brooks back?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343"></a>[<a href="./images/343.png">343</a>]</span>
+She shook her head. "I shall not try. He is
+among his own people. He has found his place."</p>
+
+<p>Yet now that Richard was gone, Anne found herself
+missing him more than she dared admit. She
+was, for the first time, aware that the knowledge that
+she should see him now and then had kept her from
+loneliness which might otherwise have assailed her.
+The thought that she might meet him had added
+zest to her engagements. His week-ends at Rose
+Acres had been the goal toward which her thoughts
+had raced.</p>
+
+<p>And now the great house was empty because of
+his absence. The city was empty&mdash;because he had
+left it&mdash;forever. She had no hope that he would
+come back. Crossroads had claimed him. He had,
+indeed, come into his own.</p>
+
+<p>When the rest of his friends spoke of him, praised
+or blamed, she was silent. Geoffrey Fox, who came
+often, complained, "You are always sitting off in a
+corner somewhere with your work, putting in a
+million stitches, when I want you to talk."</p>
+
+<p>"You can talk to Marie-Louise. She is your
+ardent disciple. She burns candles at your altar."</p>
+
+<p>"She is a charming&mdash;child."</p>
+
+<p>"She is more than that. When her poem was
+accepted she cried over the letter. She thinks that
+she couldn't have done it except for your help and
+criticism."</p>
+
+<p>"She will do more than she has done."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344"></a>[<a href="./images/344.png">344</a>]</span>
+When Marie-Louise joined them, Anne was glad
+to see Geoffrey's protective manner, as if he wanted
+to be nice to the child who had cried.</p>
+
+<p>She had to listen to much criticism of Richard.
+When Eve and the Dutton-Ames dined one night in
+the early fall at Rose Acres, Richard's quixotic
+action formed the theme of their discourse.</p>
+
+<p>Eve was very frank. "Somebody ought to tie
+Dicky down. His head is in the clouds."</p>
+
+<p>Marie-Louise flashed: "I like people whose heads
+are in the clouds. He is doing a wonderful thing
+and a wise thing&mdash;and we are all acting as if it were
+silly."</p>
+
+<p>Anne wanted to hug Marie-Louise, and with
+heightened color she listened to Winifred's defense.</p>
+
+<p>"I think we should all like to feel that we are
+equal to it&mdash;to give up money and fame&mdash;for the
+thing that&mdash;called."</p>
+
+<p>"There is no better or bigger work for him there
+than here," Austin proclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"No," Winifred agreed, and her eyes were bright,
+"but it is because he is giving up something which
+the rest of us value that I like him. Renunciation
+isn't fashionable, but it is stimulating."</p>
+
+<p>"The usual process is to 'grab and git,'" her
+husband sustained her. "We always like to see
+some one who isn't bitten by the modern bacillus."</p>
+
+<p>After dinner Anne left them and made her way
+down in the darkness to the river. The evening<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345"></a>[<a href="./images/345.png">345</a>]</span>
+boat was coming up, starred with lights, its big
+search-light sweeping the shores. When it passed,
+the darkness seemed deeper. The night was cool,
+and Anne, wrapped in a white cloak, was like a
+ghost among the shadows. Far up on the terrace
+she could see the big house, and hear the laughter.
+She felt much alone. Those people were not her
+people. Her people were of Nancy's kind, well-born
+and well bred, but not smart in the modern sense.
+They were quiet folk, liking their homes, their friends,
+their neighbors. They were not so rich that they
+were separated by their money from those about
+them. They had time to read and to think. They
+were perhaps no better than the people in the big
+house on top of the terrace, but they lived at a more
+leisurely pace, and it seemed to her at this moment
+that they got more out of life.</p>
+
+<p>She wanted more than anything in the world to
+be to-night with that little group at Crossroads, to
+meet Cousin Sulie's sparkling glance, to sit at Nancy's
+knee, to hear Richard's big laugh, as he came in and
+found the women waiting for the news of the outside
+world that he would bring.</p>
+
+<p>She knew that she could have the little school if
+she asked for it. But a sense of dignity restrained
+her. She could not go back now. It would seem
+to the world that she had followed Richard. Well,
+her heart followed him, but the world did not know
+that.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346"></a>[<a href="./images/346.png">346</a>]</span>
+She heard voices. Geoffrey and Marie-Louise
+were at the river's edge.</p>
+
+<p>"It is as if there were just the two of us in
+the whole wide world," Marie-Louise was saying.
+"That's what I like about the darkness. It seems to
+shut everybody out."</p>
+
+<p>"But suppose the darkness followed you into the
+day," Geoffrey said, "suppose that for you there
+were no light?"</p>
+
+<p>A rim of gold showed above the blackness of the
+Jersey hills.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," Marie-Louise exulted, "look at the moon.
+In a moment there will be light, and you thought
+you were in the dark."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean that it is an omen?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"What a small and comfortable person you are,"
+Geoffrey said, and now Anne could see the two of
+them silhouetted against the brightening sky, one
+tall and slim, the other slim and short. They walked
+on, and she heard their voices faintly.</p>
+
+<p>"Do I really make you comfortable, Geoffrey
+Fox?"</p>
+
+<p>"You make me more than that, Marie-Louise."</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347"></a>[<a href="./images/347.png">347</a>]</span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+
+<h3><i>In Which Richard Rides Alone.</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Eve.</span>"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Pip."</p>
+
+<p>"Can't you see that if he cared Richard would do
+the thing that pleased you&mdash;that New York would
+be Paradise if you were in it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why shouldn't Crossroads be Paradise to me&mdash;with
+him?"</p>
+
+<p>"It couldn't be."</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to make it. I talked it over last
+night with Aunt Maude. She's an old dear. And I
+shall be the Lady of the Manor. If Dicky won't
+come to New York, I'll bring New York down to
+him."</p>
+
+<p>"It can't be done. And it's going to fail."</p>
+
+<p>"What is going to fail?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your marriage. If you are mad enough to
+marry Brooks."</p>
+
+<p>She mused. "Pip, do you remember the fat
+Armenian?"</p>
+
+<p>"At Coney? Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"He said that&mdash;I had reached for something beyond
+my grasp. That my fingers would touch it,
+but that it would soar always above me."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348"></a>[<a href="./images/348.png">348</a>]</span>
+"Sounds as if Brooks were some fat sort of a bird.
+I can't think of him as soaring. I should call him
+the cock that crowed at Crossroads. Oh, it's all rot,
+Eve, this idea that love makes things equal. I went
+to the Hippodrome not long ago and saw 'Pinafore.'
+Our fathers and mothers raved over it. But that
+was a sentimental age, and Gilbert poked fun at
+them. He made the simple sailor a captain in the
+end, so that Josephine shouldn't wash dishes and
+cook smelly things in pots and hang out the family
+wash. But your hero balks and won't be turned
+into a millionaire. If you were writing a book you
+might make it work out to your satisfaction, but you
+can't twist life to the happy ending."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall try, Pip."</p>
+
+<p>"In Heaven's name, Eve! It is sheer obstinacy.
+If everybody wanted you to marry Brooks, you'd
+want to marry me. But because Aunt Maude and
+Winifred and I, and a lot of others know that you
+shouldn't, you have set your heart on it."</p>
+
+<p>She flashed her eyes at him. "Is it obstinacy,
+Pip, I wonder? Do you know I rather think I am
+going to like it."</p>
+
+<p>Her letters said something of the sort to Richard.
+"I shall love it down there. But you must let me
+have my own way with the house and garden.
+Don't you think I shall make a charming chatelaine,
+Dicky, dear?"</p>
+
+<p>He had a sense of relief in her unexpected acqui<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349"></a>[<a href="./images/349.png">349</a>]</span>escence
+in his decision. If she had objected, he
+would have felt as if he had turned his back not
+only on the work that he hated but on the woman he
+had promised to marry. It would have looked that
+way to others. Yet no matter how it had looked, he
+could not have done differently. The call had been
+insistent, and the deeps of his nature been stirred.</p>
+
+<p>He was thinking of it all as one morning in October
+he rode to the Playhouse on big Ben to see
+Beulah.</p>
+
+<p>Dismounting at the gate, he followed the path
+which led to the kitchen. Beulah was not there,
+and, searching, he saw her under an old apple tree
+at the end of the garden. She wore a checked blue
+apron, stiffly starched, and she was holding it up by
+the corners. A black cat and three sable kittens
+frisked at her feet.</p>
+
+<p>Some one was dropping red apples carefully into
+the apron, some one who laughed as he swung himself
+down and tipped Beulah's chin up with his hand
+and kissed her. Richard felt a lump in his throat.
+It was such a homely little scene, but it held a meaning
+that love had never held for himself and Eve.</p>
+
+<p>Eric untied Beulah's apron string, and carrying
+the apples in this improvised bag, with his arm
+about her waist sustaining her, they came down the
+walk.</p>
+
+<p>"This is Beulah's pet tree. When she was sick
+she asked for apples and apples and apples."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350"></a>[<a href="./images/350.png">350</a>]</span>
+Beulah, sinking her little white teeth into a red
+one, nodded. "It is perfectly wonderful," she said
+when she was able to speak, "how good everything
+tastes, and I can't get enough."</p>
+
+<p>Eric pinched her cheek. "Pretty good color, doctor.
+We'll have them matching the apples yet."</p>
+
+<p>Richard wanted to ask Eric about the dogs.
+"Some of my friends are coming down to-morrow
+for the Middlefield hunt."</p>
+
+<p>"If they start old Pete there'll be some sport,"
+Eric said.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be half sorry if they do," Richard told
+him. "I am always afraid I shall lose him out of
+my garden. He is a part of the place, like the box
+hedge and the cedars."</p>
+
+<p>He said it lightly, but he meant it. He had hunting
+blood in his veins, and he loved the horses and
+the dogs. He loved the cold crisp air, and the excitement
+of the chase. But what he did not love
+was the hunted animal, doubling on its tracks, pursued,
+panting, torn to pieces by the hounds.</p>
+
+<p>"Old Pete deserved to live and die among the
+hills," Beulah said. "Is Miss Chesley coming down?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and a lot of others. They will put up at
+the club. Mother and Sulie aren't up to entertaining
+a crowd."</p>
+
+<p>He wanted Eric's dogs for ducks. Dutton-Ames
+and one or two others did not ride to hounds, and
+would come to Bower's in the morning.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351"></a>[<a href="./images/351.png">351</a>]</span>
+As he rode away, he was conscious that as soon
+as his back was turned Eric's arm would again be
+about Beulah, and Beulah's head would be on Eric's
+shoulder. And that he would lift her over the threshold
+as they went in.</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon Richard motored over to the Country
+Club to welcome Eve. She laughed at his little
+car. "I'd rather see you on big Ben than in that."</p>
+
+<p>"Ben can't carry me fast enough."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't expect me to ride in it, Dicky."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Dicky, can you <i>ask</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>Meade's great limousine which had brought them
+seemed to stare the little car out of countenance.
+But Richard refused to be embarrassed by the contrast.
+"She's a snug little craft, and she has carried
+me miles. What would Meade's car do on these
+roads and in the hills?"</p>
+
+<p>Pip had come up and as the two men stood together
+Eve's quick eye contrasted them. There was
+no doubt of Richard's shabbiness. His old riding
+coat was much the worse for wear. He had on the
+wrong kind of hat and the wrong kind of shoes,
+and he seemed most aggravatingly not to care.
+He was to ride to-morrow one of the horses which
+had been sent down from Pip's stables. He hadn't
+even a proper mount!</p>
+
+<p>Pip, on the other hand, was perfectly groomed.
+He was shining and immaculate from the top of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352"></a>[<a href="./images/352.png">352</a>]</span>
+smooth head to the heel of his boots. And he wore
+an air of gay inconsequence. It seemed to Eve
+that Richard's shoulders positively sagged with responsibility.</p>
+
+<p>There was a dance at the club that night. Richard,
+coming in, saw Eve in Pip's arms. They were
+a graceful pair, and their steps matched perfectly.
+Eve was all in white, wide-skirted, and her shoulders
+and arms were bare. She had on gold slippers, and
+her hair was gold. Richard had a sense of discomfort
+as he watched them. He was going to marry
+her, yet she was letting Pip look at her like that.
+His cheeks burned. What was Pip saying? Was
+he making love to Eve?</p>
+
+<p>He had tried to meet the situation with dignity.
+Yet there was no dignity in Eve's willingness to let
+Pip follow her. To speak of it would, however, seem
+to crystallize his feeling into a complaint.</p>
+
+<p>Hence when he danced with her later, he tried to
+respond to the lightness and brightness of her mood.
+He tried to measure up to all the requirements of
+his position as an engaged man and as a lover.
+But he did not find it easy.</p>
+
+<p>When he reached home that night, he found little
+Fran&ccedil;ois awake, and ready to ask questions about
+the hunt.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think they will get him?" he challenged
+Richard, coming in small pink pajamas to the door
+of the young doctor's room.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353"></a>[<a href="./images/353.png">353</a>]</span>
+"Get who?"</p>
+
+<p>"Old Pete."</p>
+
+<p>"He is too cunning."</p>
+
+<p>"Will he come through here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall stick my fingers in my ears and shut my
+eyes. Are you going to ride with them?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"You won't let them kill old Pete, will you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not if I can help it."</p>
+
+<p>After that, the child was more content. But when
+Richard was at last in bed, Fran&ccedil;ois came again
+across the hall, and stood on the threshold in the
+moonlight. "It would be dreadful if it was his last
+night."</p>
+
+<p>"Whose last night, Fran&ccedil;ois?" sleepily.</p>
+
+<p>"Old Pete's."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't worry. And you must go to bed, Fran&ccedil;ois."</p>
+
+<p>Richard waked to a glorious morning and to the
+hunt. Pink coats dotted the countryside. It seemed
+as if half the world was on its way to the club.
+Richard, as he mounted one of Pip's hunters, a
+powerful bay, felt the thrill of it all, and when he
+joined Eve and her party he found them in an uproarious
+mood.</p>
+
+<p>Presently over hills streamed a picturesque procession&mdash;the
+hounds in the lead, the horses following
+with riders whose pink blazed against the green of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354"></a>[<a href="./images/354.png">354</a>]</span>
+the pines, against the blue of the river, against the
+fainter blue of the skies above.</p>
+
+<p>And oh, the music of it, the sound of the horn,
+the bell-like baying, the thud of flying feet!</p>
+
+<p>Then, ahead of them all, as the hounds broke into
+full cry, a silent, swift shadow&mdash;the old fox, Pete!</p>
+
+<p>At first he ran easily. He had done it so often.
+He had thrown them off after a chase which had
+stirred his blood. He would throw them off again.</p>
+
+<p>In leisurely fashion he led them. As the morning
+advanced, however, he found himself hard pushed.
+He was driven from one stronghold to another.
+Tireless, the hounds followed and followed, until at
+last he knew himself weary, seeking sanctuary.</p>
+
+<p>He came with confidence to Crossroads. Beyond
+the garden was his den. Once within and the thing
+would end.</p>
+
+<p>Across the lawn he loped, and little Fran&ccedil;ois, anxious
+at the window, spied him. "Will he get to it,
+will he get to it?" he said to Nancy, his small face
+white with the fear of what might happen, "and
+when he gets there will he be safe?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she assured him; "and when they have
+run him aground, they will ride away."</p>
+
+<p>But they did not ride away. It happened that
+those who were in the lead were unaware of the tradition
+of the country, and so they began to dig him
+out, this old king of foxes, who had felt himself secure
+in his castle!</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355"></a>[<a href="./images/355.png">355</a>]</span>
+They set the dogs at one end, and fetched mattocks
+and spades from the stable.</p>
+
+<p>Pip and Eve were among them. Pip directing,
+Eve mad with the excitement of it all.</p>
+
+<p>Little Fran&ccedil;ois, watching, clung to Nancy. "Oh,
+they can't, they mustn't!"</p>
+
+<p>She soothed him, and at last sent Milly out, but
+they would not listen.</p>
+
+<p>Nancy and Sulie were as white now as little Fran&ccedil;ois.
+"Oh, where is Richard?" Nancy said. "It
+is like murder to do a thing like that. It is bad
+enough in the open&mdash;but like a rat&mdash;in a trap."</p>
+
+<p>The big bay was charging down the hill with
+Richard yelling at the top of his voice. The bay
+had proved troublesome and had bolted in the
+wrong direction, but Richard had brought him back
+to Crossroads just in time!</p>
+
+<p>Fran&ccedil;ois screamed. "It is Dr. Dicky. He'll
+make them stop. He'll make them."</p>
+
+<p>He did make them. His voice rang sharply.
+"Get the dogs away, Meade, and stop digging."</p>
+
+<p>They were too eager at first to heed him. Eve
+hung on his arm, but he shook her off. "We don't
+like things like that down here. Our foxes are too
+rare."</p>
+
+<p>It was a motley group which gathered later at the
+club for the hunt breakfast. There were fox-hunting
+farmers born on the land, of sturdy yeoman stock,
+and careless of form. There were the lords of newly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356"></a>[<a href="./images/356.png">356</a>]</span>
+acquired acres, who rode carefully on little saddles
+with short stirrups in the English style.</p>
+
+<p>There were the descendants of the great old planters,
+daring, immensely picturesque. There was
+Eve's crowd, trained for the sport, and at their ease.</p>
+
+<p>A big fire burned on the hearth. A copper-covered
+table held steaming dishes. Another table
+groaned under its load of cold meats and cheese.
+On an ancient mahogany sideboard were various
+bottles and bowls of punch.</p>
+
+<p>Old songs were sung and old stories told. Brinsley
+beamed on everybody with his face like a round
+full moon. There were other round and red-faced
+gentlemen who, warmed by the fire and the punch,
+twinkled like unsteady old stars.</p>
+
+<p>Eve was the pivotal center of all the hilarity. She
+sat on the table and served the punch. Her coat
+was off, and in her silk blouse and riding breeches
+she was like a lovely boy. The men crowded around
+her. Pip, always at her elbow, delivered an admiring
+opinion. "No one can hold a candle to you, Eve."</p>
+
+<p>Richard was out of it. He sat quietly in a corner
+with David, old Jo at their feet, and watched the
+others. Eve had been angry with him for his interference
+at Crossroads. "I didn't know you were a
+molly-coddle, Dicky," she had said, "and I wanted
+the brush."</p>
+
+<p>She was punishing him now by paying absolutely
+no attention to him. She was punishing him, too,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357"></a>[<a href="./images/357.png">357</a>]</span>
+by making herself conspicuous, which she knew he
+hated. The scene was not to his liking. The
+women of his household, Nancy, Sulie and Anne,
+had had a fastidious sense of what belonged to them
+as ladies. Eve had not that sense. As he sat there,
+it occurred to him that things were moving to some
+stupendous climax. He and Eve couldn't go on
+like this.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>Far up in the hills a man was in danger of bleeding
+to death. He had cut himself while butchering
+a pig. The doctor was called.</p>
+
+<p>Richard, making his way through the shouting
+and singing crowd which surrounded Eve, told her,
+"I shall have to go for a little while. There's a man
+hurt. I'll be back in an hour."</p>
+
+<p>She looked down at him with hard eyes. "We
+are going to ride cross-country&mdash;to the Ridge. You
+might meet us there, if you care to come."</p>
+
+<p>"You know I care."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not sure. You don't show it. I&mdash;I am tired
+of never having a lover&mdash;Dicky."</p>
+
+<p>It was a wonderful afternoon. The heavy frost
+had chilled the air, the leaves were red, and the sky
+was blue&mdash;and there was green and brown and gold.
+But Richard as he rode up in the hills had no eyes
+for the color, no ears for the song beaten out by big
+Ben's hoofs. The vision which held him was of Eve
+in the midst of that shouting circle.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358"></a>[<a href="./images/358.png">358</a>]</span>
+The man who had cut himself was black. He was
+thin and tall and his hair was gray. He had worked
+hard all of his life, but he had never worked out of
+himself the spirit of joyous optimism.</p>
+
+<p>"I jes' tole 'um," he said, "to send for Dr. Brooks,
+and he'd beat the devil gettin' to me."</p>
+
+<p>When Richard reached the Ridge, a flash of scarlet
+at once caught his eye. On the slope below Eve,
+far ahead of Meade, in a mad race, was making for
+a grove at the edge of the Crossroads boundaries.
+She was a reckless rider, and Richard held his breath
+as she took fences, leaped hurdles, and cleared the
+flat wide stream.</p>
+
+<p>As she came to the grove she turned and waved
+triumphantly to Pip. For a moment she made a
+vivid and brilliant figure in her scarlet against the
+green. Then the little wood swallowed her up.</p>
+
+<p>Pip came pounding after, and Richard, spurring
+his big Ben to unaccustomed efforts, circled the grove
+to meet them on the other side.</p>
+
+<p>But they did not come. From the point where he
+finally drew up he could command a view of both
+sides of the slope. Unless they had turned back,
+they were still in the grove.</p>
+
+<p>Then out of the woods came Pip, running. He
+had something in his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"It is Eve," he said, panting; "there was a hole
+and her horse stumbled. I found her."</p>
+
+<p>Poor honest Pip! As if she were his own, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359"></a>[<a href="./images/359.png">359</a>]</span>
+held her now in his arms. Her golden head, swung
+up to his shoulder, rested heavily above his heart.
+Her eyes were shut.</p>
+
+<p>Richard's practiced eye saw at once her state of
+collapse. He jumped from his horse. "Give her to
+me, Meade," he said, "and get somebody's car as
+quickly as you can."</p>
+
+<p>And now the tiger in Pip flashed out. "She's
+mine," he said, breathing hoarsely. "I love her.
+You go and get the car."</p>
+
+<p>"Man," the young doctor said steadily, "this isn't
+the time to quarrel. Lay her down, then, and let
+me have a look at her."</p>
+
+<p>He had his little case of medicines, and he hunted
+for something to bring her back to consciousness.
+Pip, pale and shaken, folded his coat under her
+head and chafed her hands.</p>
+
+<p>Presently life seemed to sweep through her body.
+She shivered and moved.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes came open. "What happened?"</p>
+
+<p>"You fell from your horse. Meade found you."</p>
+
+<p>There were no bones broken, but the shock had
+been great. She lay very still and white against
+Pip's arm.</p>
+
+<p>Richard closed his medicine case and rose. He
+stood looking down at her.</p>
+
+<p>"Better, old lady?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Dicky."</p>
+
+<p>He spoke a little awkwardly. "I'll ride down if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360"></a>[<a href="./images/360.png">360</a>]</span>
+you don't mind, and come back for you in Meade's
+car." His eyes did not meet hers.</p>
+
+<p>As he plunged over the hill on his heavy old horse,
+her puzzled gaze followed him. Then she gave a
+queer little laugh. "Is he running away from me,
+Pip?"</p>
+
+<p>"I told him you were&mdash;mine," the big man burst
+out.</p>
+
+<p>"You told him? Oh, Pip, what did he say?"</p>
+
+<p>"That this was not the time to talk about it."</p>
+
+<p>She lay very still thinking it out. Then she
+turned on his arm. "Good old Pip," she said. He
+drew her up to him, and she said it again, with that
+queer little laugh, "Good old Pip, you're the best
+ever. And all this time I have been looking straight
+over your blessed old head at&mdash;Dicky."</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361"></a>[<a href="./images/361.png">361</a>]</span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
+
+<h3><i>In Which St. Michael Finds Love in a Garden.</i></h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> flowers in Marie-Louise's bowl were lilacs.
+And Marie-Louise, sitting up in bed, writing
+verses, was in pale mauve. Her windows were wide
+open, and the air from the river, laden with fragrance,
+swept through the room.</p>
+
+<p>The big house had been closed all winter. Austin
+had elected to spend the season in Florida, and had
+taken all of his household with him, including Anne.
+He had definitely retired from practice when Richard
+left him. "I can't carry it on alone, and I don't
+want to break in anybody else," he had said, and
+had turned the whole thing over to one of his colleagues.</p>
+
+<p>But April had brought him back to "Rose Acres"
+in time for the lilacs, and Marie-Louise, uplifted by
+the fact that Geoffrey Fox was at that very moment
+finishing his book in the balcony room, had decided
+that lilacs in the silver bowl should express the ecstatic
+state of her mind.</p>
+
+<p>Anne, coming in at noon, asked, "What are you
+writing?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362"></a>[<a href="./images/362.png">362</a>]</span>
+"<i>Vers libre.</i> This is called, 'To Dr. Dicky, Dinging.'"</p>
+
+<p>"What a subject, and you call it poetry?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not? Isn't he coming to dinner for the
+first time since&mdash;he left New York, and since he
+broke off with Eve, and since&mdash;a lot of other things&mdash;and
+isn't it an important occasion, Mistress Anne?"</p>
+
+<p>Anne ignored the question. "What have you
+written?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only the outline. He comes&mdash;has caviar, and
+his eyes are on the queen. He drinks his soup&mdash;and
+dreams. He has fish&mdash;and a vision of the future;
+rhapsodies with the roast," she twinkled; "do
+you like it?"</p>
+
+<p>"As far as it goes."</p>
+
+<p>"It goes very far, and you know it. And you are
+blushing."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not."</p>
+
+<p>"You are. Look in the glass. Mistress Anne,
+aren't you glad that Eve is married?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," honestly, "and that she is happy."</p>
+
+<p>"Pip was made for her. I loved him at Palm
+Beach, adoring her, didn't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes." Anne's mind went back to it. The marriage
+had followed immediately upon the announcement
+of the broken engagement. People had pitied
+poor young Dr. Brooks. But Anne had not. One
+does not pity a man who, having been bound, is
+free.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363"></a>[<a href="./images/363.png">363</a>]</span>
+He had written to her a half dozen times during
+the winter, friendly letters with news of Crossroads,
+and now that she was again at Rose Acres, he was
+coming up.</p>
+
+<p>The spring day was bright. Rich with possibilities.
+"Marie-Louise, don't stay in bed. Nobody
+has a right to be in the house on such a day as
+this."</p>
+
+<p>But Marie-Louise wouldn't be moved. "I want
+to finish my verses."</p>
+
+<p>So Anne went out alone into the garden. It was
+ablaze with spring bloom, the river was blue, and
+Pan piped on his reeds. Geoffrey waved to her
+from his balcony. She waved back, then went for a
+walk alone. She returned to have tea on the terrace.
+The day seemed interminable. The hour for
+dinner astonishingly remote.</p>
+
+<p>At last, however, it was time to dress. The gown
+that she chose was of pale rose, heavily weighted
+with silver. It hung straight and slim. Her slippers
+were of silver, and she still wore her dark hair
+in the smooth swept-up fashion which so well became
+her.</p>
+
+<p>Richard, seeing her approach down the length of
+the big drawing-room where he stood with Austin,
+was conscious of a sense of shock. It was as if he
+had expected that she would come to him in her old
+blue serge, or in the little white gown with the many
+ruffles. That she came in such elegance made her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364"></a>[<a href="./images/364.png">364</a>]</span>
+seem&mdash;alien. Like Eve. Oh, where was the Anne
+of yesterday?</p>
+
+<p>Even when she spoke to him, when her hand was
+in his, when she walked beside him on the way to
+the dining-room, he had this sense of strangeness,
+as if the girl in rose-color was not the girl of whom
+he had dreamed through all the days since he had
+known that he was not to marry Eve.</p>
+
+<p>The winter had been a busy one for him, but satisfying
+in the sense that he was at last in his rightful
+place. He had come into his own. He had no
+more doubts that his work was wisely chosen. But
+his life was as yet unfinished. To complete it, he
+had felt that he must round out his days with the
+woman he loved.</p>
+
+<p>But now that he was here, he saw her fitted to her
+new surroundings as a jewel fitted to a golden setting.
+And she liked lovely things, she liked excitement,
+and the nearness of the great metropolis.
+There were men who had wanted to marry her.
+Marie-Louise had told him that in a gay little letter
+which she had sent from the South.</p>
+
+<p>As he reviewed it now disconsolately, he reminded
+himself that he had never had any real reason to
+know that Anne cared for him. There had been a
+flash of the eye, a few grave words, a break in her
+voice, his answered letters; but a woman might dole
+out these small favors to a friend.</p>
+
+<p>Thus from caviar to soup, and from soup to roast,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365"></a>[<a href="./images/365.png">365</a>]</span>
+he contradicted Marie-Louise's conception of his
+state of mind. Fear and doubt, discouragement, a
+touch of despair, these carried him as far as the salad.</p>
+
+<p>And then he heard Austin's voice speaking. "So
+you are really contented at Crossroads, Brooks?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I wish you would come down and let me
+show you some of the things I am doing. A bit
+primitive, perhaps, in the light of your larger experience.
+But none the less effective, and interesting."</p>
+
+<p>Austin shrugged. "I can't imagine anything but
+martyrdom in such a life&mdash;for me. What do you
+do with yourself when you are not working&mdash;with
+no theaters&mdash;opera&mdash;restaurants&mdash;excitements?"</p>
+
+<p>"We get along rather well without them&mdash;except
+for an occasional trip to town."</p>
+
+<p>"But you need such things," dogmatically; "a
+man can't live out of the world and not&mdash;degenerate."</p>
+
+<p>"He may live in it, and degenerate." Anne was
+speaking. Her cheeks were as pink as her gown.
+She leaned a little forward. "You don't know all
+that they have at Crossroads, and Dr. Brooks is too
+polite to tell you how poor New York seems to those
+of us who&mdash;know."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor?" Richard had turned to her, his face
+illumined.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it? Think of the things you have that
+New York doesn't know of. A singing river&mdash;this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366"></a>[<a href="./images/366.png">366</a>]</span>
+river doesn't sing, or if it does nobody would have
+time to listen. And Crossroads has a bell on its
+school that calls to the countryside. City children
+are not called by a bell&mdash;that's why they are all
+alike&mdash;they ride on trolleys and watch the clocks.
+My little pupils ran across the fields and down the
+road, and hurried when I rang for them, and came
+in&mdash;rosy."</p>
+
+<p>She was rosy herself as she recounted it.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we have a lot of things&mdash;the bridge with the
+lights&mdash;and the road up to the Ridge&mdash;and Diogenes.
+Dr. Austin, you should see Diogenes."</p>
+
+<p>She laughed, and they all laughed with her, but
+back of Richard's laugh there was an emotion which
+swept him on and up to heights beyond anything
+that he had ever hoped or dreamed.</p>
+
+<p>After that, he could hardly wait for the ending of
+the dinner, hardly wait to get away from them all,
+and out under the stars.</p>
+
+<p>It was when they were at last alone on the steps
+above the fountain, with the garden pouring all of
+its fragrance down upon them, that he said, "I
+should not have dared ask it if you had not said
+what you said."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, St. Michael, St. Michael," she whispered,
+"where was your courage?"</p>
+
+<p>"But in this gown, this lovely gown, you didn't
+look like anything that I could&mdash;have. I am only a
+country doctor, Anne."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367"></a>[<a href="./images/367.png">367</a>]</span>
+"Only my beloved&mdash;Richard."</p>
+
+<p>They clung together, these two who had found
+Love in the garden. But they had found more than
+Love. They had found the meaning for all that
+Richard had done, and for all that Anne would do.
+And that which they had found they would never
+give up!</p>
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368"></a>[<a href="./images/368.png">368</a>]</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox">
+<div class="boxtext">
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">"<i>The Books You Like to Read<br />
+at the Price You Like to Pay</i>"</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<h3><i>There Are Two Sides<br />
+to Everything</i>&mdash;
+</h3>
+
+<p>&mdash;including the wrapper which covers
+every Grosset &amp; Dunlap book. When
+you feel in the mood for a good romance,
+refer to the carefully selected list
+of modern fiction comprising most of
+the successes by prominent writers of
+the day which is printed on the back of
+every Grosset &amp; Dunlap book wrapper.</p>
+
+<p>You will find more than five hundred
+titles to choose from&mdash;books for every
+mood and every taste and every pocketbook.</p>
+
+<p><i>Don't forget the other side, but in case
+the wrapper is lost, write to the publishers
+for a complete catalog.</i></p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p class="center"><i>There is a Grosset &amp; Dunlap Book<br />
+for every mood and for every taste</i></p>
+</div></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369"></a>[<a href="./images/369.png">369</a>]</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox">
+<div class="boxtext">
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>RUBY M. AYRES' NOVELS</h3>
+
+<p class="center">May be had wherever books are sold.&ensp;&ensp;Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Why was Barbara held captive in a deserted hermit's hut for days by a "man
+without a heart" and in the end how was it that she held the winning cards.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE ROMANCE OF A ROGUE</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Twenty-four hours after his release from prison Bruce Lawn finds himself playing
+a most surprising role in a drama of human relationships that sweeps on to a
+wonderfully emotional climax.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE MATHERSON MARRIAGE</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;She married for money. With her own hands she had locked the door on happiness
+and thrown away the key. But read the story which is very interesting and
+well told.</p>
+
+<p><b>RICHARD CHATTERTON</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;A fascinating story in which love and jealousy play strange tricks with women's
+souls.</p>
+
+<p><b>A BACHELOR HUSBAND</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Can a woman love two men at the same time?</p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;In its solving of this particular variety of triangle "A Bachelor Husband" will
+particularly interest, and strangely enough, without one shock to the most conventional
+minded.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE SCAR</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;With fine comprehension and insight the author shows a terrific contrast between
+the woman whose love was of the flesh and one whose love was of the spirit.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE MARRIAGE OF BARRY WICKLOW</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Here is a man and woman who, marrying for love, yet try to build their wedded
+life upon a gospel of hate for each other and yet win back to a greater love for each
+other in the end.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE UPHILL ROAD</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;The heroine of this story was a consort of thieves. The man was fine, clean,
+fresh from the West. It is a story of strength and passion.</p>
+
+<p><b>WINDS OF THE WORLD</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Jill, a poor little typist, marries the great Henry Sturgess and inherits millions,
+but not happiness. Then at last&mdash;but we must leave that to Ruby M. Ayres to tell
+you as only she can.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE SECOND HONEYMOON</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;In this story the author has produced a book which no one who has loved or
+hopes to love can afford to miss. The story fairly leaps from climax to climax.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE PHANTOM LOVER</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Have you not often heard of someone being in love with love rather than the
+person they believed the object of their affections? That was Esther! But she
+passes through the crisis into a deep and profound love.</p>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Grosset &amp; Dunlap,&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Publishers,&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;New York</span></h4>
+</div></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370"></a>[<a href="./images/370.png">370</a>]</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox">
+<div class="boxtext">
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>STORIES OF RARE CHARM BY<br />
+GENE STRATTON-PORTER</h3>
+
+<p class="center">May be had wherever books are sold.&ensp;&ensp;Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE WHITE FLAG.</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;How a young girl, singlehanded, fought against the power of the Morelands
+who held the town of Ashwater in their grip.</p>
+
+<p><b>HER FATHER'S DAUGHTER.</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;This story is of California and tells of that charming girl, Linda Strong,
+otherwise known as "Her Father's Daughter."</p>
+
+<p><b>A DAUGHTER OF THE LAND.</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Kate Bates, the heroine of this story, is a true "Daughter of the Land,"
+and to read about her is truly inspiring.</p>
+
+<p><b>MICHAEL O'HALLORAN.</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Michael is a quick-witted little Irish newsboy, living in Northern Indiana.
+He adopts a deserted little girl, a cripple. He also aspires to lead the entire
+rural community upward and onward.</p>
+
+<p><b>LADDIE.</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;This is a bright, cheery tale with the scenes laid in Indiana. The story is
+told by Little Sister, the youngest member of a large family, but it is concerned
+not so much with childish doings as with the love affairs of older
+members of the family.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE HARVESTER.</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;"The Harvester," is a man of the woods and fields, and is well worth
+knowing, but when the Girl comes to his "Medicine Woods," there begins a
+romance of the rarest idyllic quality.</p>
+
+<p><b>FRECKLES.</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Freckles is a nameless waif when the tale opens, but the way in which he
+takes hold of life; the nature friendships he forms; and his love-story with
+"The Angel" are full of real sentiment.</p>
+
+<p><b>A GIRL OF THE LIMBERLOST.</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;The story of a girl of the Michigan woods; a buoyant, loveable type of
+the self-reliant American. Her philosophy is one of love and kindness toward
+all things; her hope is never dimmed.</p>
+
+<p><b>AT THE FOOT OF THE RAINBOW.</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;The scene of this charming love story is laid in Central Indiana. It is one
+of devoted friendship, and tender self-sacrificing love.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE SONG OF THE CARDINAL.</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;The love idyl of the Cardinal and his mate, told with rare delicacy and
+humor.</p>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Grosset &amp; Dunlap,&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Publishers,&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;New York</span></h4>
+</div></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371"></a>[<a href="./images/371.png">371</a>]</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox">
+<div class="boxtext">
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>THE NOVELS OF<br />
+GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL<br />
+(MRS. LUTZ)</h3>
+
+<p class="center">May be had wherever books are sold.&ensp;&ensp;Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.</p>
+
+<p><b>BEST MAN, THE</b></p>
+
+<p><b>CLOUDY JEWEL</b></p>
+
+<p><b>DAWN OF THE MORNING</b></p>
+
+<p><b>ENCHANTED BARN, THE</b></p>
+
+<p><b>EXIT BETTY</b></p>
+
+<p><b>FINDING OF JASPER HOLT, THE</b></p>
+
+<p><b>GIRL FROM MONTANA, THE</b></p>
+
+<p><b>LO, MICHAEL!</b></p>
+
+<p><b>MAN OF THE DESERT, THE</b></p>
+
+<p><b>MARCIA SCHUYLER</b></p>
+
+<p><b>MIRANDA</b></p>
+
+<p><b>MYSTERY OF MARY, THE</b></p>
+
+<p><b>OBSESSION OF VICTORIA GRACEN, THE</b></p>
+
+<p><b>PHOEBE DEANE</b></p>
+
+<p><b>RED SIGNAL, THE</b></p>
+
+<p><b>SEARCH, THE</b></p>
+
+<p><b>TRYST, THE</b></p>
+
+<p><b>VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS, A</b></p>
+
+<p><b>WITNESS, THE</b></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Ask for Complete free list of G. &amp; D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction</i></p>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Grosset &amp; Dunlap,&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Publishers,&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;New York</span></h4>
+</div></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372"></a>[<a href="./images/372.png">372</a>]</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox">
+<div class="boxtext">
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>ETHEL M. DELL'S NOVELS</h3>
+
+<p class="center">May be had wherever books are sold.&ensp;&ensp;Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.</p>
+
+<p><b>CHARLES REX</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;The struggle against a hidden secret and the love of a
+strong man and a courageous woman.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE TOP OF THE WORLD</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Tells of the path which leads at last to the "top of the
+world," which it is given to few seekers to find.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE LAMP IN THE DESERT</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Tells of the lamp of love that continues to shine through
+all sorts of tribulations to final happiness.</p>
+
+<p><b>GREATHEART</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;The story of a cripple whose deformed body conceals
+a noble soul.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE HUNDREDTH CHANCE</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;A hero who worked to win even when there was only
+"a hundredth chance."</p>
+
+<p><b>THE SWINDLER</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;The story of a "bad man's" soul revealed by a
+woman's faith.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE TIDAL WAVE</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Tales of love and of women who learned to know the
+true from the false.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE SAFETY CURTAIN</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;A very vivid love story of India. The volume also
+contains four other long stories of equal interest.</p>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Grosset &amp; Dunlap,&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Publishers,&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;New York</span></h4>
+</div></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373"></a>[<a href="./images/373.png">373</a>]</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox">
+<div class="boxtext">
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>ELEANOR H. PORTER'S NOVELS</h3>
+
+<p class="center">May be had wherever books are sold.&ensp;&ensp;Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.</p>
+
+<p><b>JUST DAVID</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;The tale of a loveable boy and the place he comes to
+fill in the hearts of the gruff farmer folk to whose care he
+is left.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE ROAD TO UNDERSTANDING</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;A compelling romance of love and marriage.</p>
+
+<p><b>OH, MONEY! MONEY!</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Stanley Fulton, a wealthy bachelor, to test the dispositions
+of his relatives, sends them each a check for $100,000,
+and then as plain John Smith comes among them to
+watch the result of his experiment.</p>
+
+<p><b>SIX STAR RANCH</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;A wholesome story of a club of six girls and their summer
+on Six Star Ranch.</p>
+
+<p><b>DAWN</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;The story of a blind boy whose courage leads him
+through the gulf of despair into a final victory gained by
+dedicating his life to the service of blind soldiers.</p>
+
+<p><b>ACROSS THE YEARS</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Short stories of our own kind and of our own people.
+Contains some of the best writing Mrs. Porter has done.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE TANGLED THREADS</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;In these stories we find the concentrated charm and
+tenderness of all her other books.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE TIE THAT BINDS</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Intensely human stories told with Mrs. Porter's wonderful
+talent for warm and vivid character drawing.</p>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Grosset &amp; Dunlap,&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Publishers,&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;New York</span></h4>
+</div></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374"></a>[<a href="./images/374.png">374</a>]</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox">
+<div class="boxtext">
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>FLORENCE L. BARCLAY'S<br />
+NOVELS</h3>
+
+<p class="center">May be had wherever books are sold.&ensp;&ensp;Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE WHITE LADIES OF WORCESTER</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;A novel of the 12th Century. The heroine, believing she
+had lost her lover, enters a convent. He returns, and interesting
+developments follow.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE UPAS TREE</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;A love story of rare charm. It deals with a successful
+author and his wife.</p>
+
+<p><b>THROUGH THE POSTERN GATE</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;The story of a seven day courtship, in which the discrepancy
+in ages vanished into insignificance before the
+convincing demonstration of abiding love.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE ROSARY</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;The story of a young artist who is reputed to love beauty
+above all else in the world, but who, when blinded through
+an accident, gains life's greatest happiness. A rare story
+of the great passion of two real people superbly capable of
+love, its sacrifices and its exceeding reward.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE MISTRESS OF SHENSTONE</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;The lovely young Lady Ingleby, recently widowed by the
+death of a husband who never understood her, meets a fine,
+clean young chap who is ignorant of her title and they fall
+deeply in love with each other. When he learns her real
+identity a situation of singular power is developed.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE BROKEN HALO</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;The story of a young man whose religious belief was
+shattered in childhood and restored to him by the little
+white lady, many years older than himself, to whom he is
+passionately devoted.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE FOLLOWING OF THE STAR</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;The story of a young missionary, who, about to start for
+Africa, marries wealthy Diana Rivers, in order to help her
+fulfill the conditions of her uncle's will, and how they finally
+come to love each other and are reunited after experiences
+that soften and purify.</p>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Grosset &amp; Dunlap,&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Publishers,&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;New York</span></h4>
+</div></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375"></a>[<a href="./images/375.png">375</a>]</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox">
+<div class="boxtext">
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>BOOTH TARKINGTON'S<br />
+NOVELS</h3>
+
+<p class="center">May be had wherever books are sold.&ensp;&ensp;Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.</p>
+
+<p><b>SEVENTEEN.</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Illustrated by Arthur William Brown.</p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;No one but the creator of Penrod could have portrayed
+the immortal young people of this story. Its humor is irresistible
+and reminiscent of the time when the reader was
+Seventeen.</p>
+
+<p><b>PENROD.</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Illustrated by Gordon Grant.</p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;This is a picture of a boy's heart, full of the lovable, humorous,
+tragic things which are locked secrets to most older
+folks. It is a finished, exquisite work.</p>
+
+<p><b>PENROD AND SAM.</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Illustrated by Worth Brehm.</p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Like "Penrod" and "Seventeen," this book contains
+some remarkable phases of real boyhood and some of the best
+stories of juvenile prankishness that have ever been written.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE TURMOIL.</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Illustrated by C. E. Chambers.</p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Bibbs Sheridan is a dreamy, imaginative youth, who revolts
+against his father's plans for him to be a servitor of
+big business. The love of a fine girl turns Bibb's life from
+failure to success.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE GENTLEMAN FROM INDIANA.</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Frontispiece.</p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;A story of love and politics,&mdash;more especially a picture of
+a country editor's life in Indiana, but the charm of the book
+lies in the love interest.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE FLIRT.</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Illustrated by Clarence F. Underwood.</p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;The "Flirt," the younger of two sisters, breaks one girl's
+engagement, drives one man to suicide, causes the murder
+of another, leads another to lose his fortune, and in the end
+marries a stupid and unpromising suitor, leaving the really
+worthy one to marry her sister.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Ask for Complete free list of G. &amp; D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction</i></p>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Grosset &amp; Dunlap,&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Publishers,&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;New York</span></h4>
+</div></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376"></a>[<a href="./images/376.png">376</a>]</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox">
+<div class="boxtext">
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>KATHLEEN NORRIS' STORIES</h3>
+
+<p class="center">May be had wherever books are sold.&ensp;&ensp;Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.</p>
+
+<p><b>SISTERS.</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Frontispiece by Frank Street.</p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;The California Redwoods furnish the background for this
+beautiful story of sisterly devotion and sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p><b>POOR, DEAR, MARGARET KIRBY.</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Frontispiece by George Gibbs.</p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;A collection of delightful stories, including "Bridging the
+Years" and "The Tide-Marsh." This story is now shown in
+moving pictures.</p>
+
+<p><b>JOSSELYN'S WIFE.</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Frontispiece by C. Allan Gilbert.</p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;The story of a beautiful woman who fought a bitter fight for
+happiness and love.</p>
+
+<p><b>MARTIE, THE UNCONQUERED.</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Illustrated by Charles E. Chambers.</p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;The triumph of a dauntless spirit over adverse conditions.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE HEART OF RACHAEL.</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Frontispiece by Charles E. Chambers.</p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;An interesting story of divorce and the problems that come
+with a second marriage.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE STORY OF JULIA PAGE.</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Frontispiece by C. Allan Gilbert.</p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;A sympathetic portrayal of the quest of a normal girl, obscure
+and lonely, for the happiness of life.</p>
+
+<p><b>SATURDAY'S CHILD.</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Frontispiece by F. Graham Cootes.</p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Can a girl, born in rather sordid conditions, lift herself through
+sheer determination to the better things for which her soul
+hungered?</p>
+
+<p><b>MOTHER.</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Illustrated by F. C. Yohn.</p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;A story of the big mother heart that beats in the background
+of every girl's life, and some dreams which came true.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Ask for Complete free list of G. &amp; D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction</i></p>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Grosset &amp; Dunlap,&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Publishers,&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;New York</span></h4>
+</div></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377"></a>[<a href="./images/377.png">377</a>]</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox">
+<div class="boxtext">
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>EMERSON HOUGH'S NOVELS</h3>
+
+<p class="center">May be had wherever books are sold.&ensp;&ensp;Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE COVERED WAGON</b></p>
+
+<p><b>NORTH OF 36</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE WAY OF A MAN</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE STORY OF THE OUTLAW</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE SAGEBRUSHER</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE GIRL AT THE HALFWAY HOUSE</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE WAY OUT</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE MAN NEXT DOOR</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE MAGNIFICENT ADVENTURE</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE BROKEN GATE</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE STORY OF THE COWBOY</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE WAY TO THE WEST</b></p>
+
+<p><b>54-40 OR FIGHT</b></p>
+
+<p><b>HEART'S DESIRE</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE MISSISSIPPI BUBBLE</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE PURCHASE PRICE</b></p>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Grosset &amp; Dunlap,&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Publishers,&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;New York</span></h4>
+</div></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378"></a>[<a href="./images/378.png">378</a>]</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox">
+<div class="boxtext">
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>GEORGE W. OGDEN'S WESTERN NOVELS</h3>
+
+<p class="center">May be had wherever books are sold.&ensp;&ensp;Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE BARON OF DIAMOND TAIL</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;The Elk Mountain Cattle Co. had not paid a dividend in years;
+so Edgar Barrett, fresh from the navy, was sent West to see what
+was wrong at the ranch. The tale of this tenderfoot outwitting the
+buckaroos at their own play will sweep you into the action of this
+salient western novel.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE BONDBOY</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Joe Newbolt, bound out by force of family conditions to work for
+a number of years, is accused of murder and circumstances are
+against him. His mouth is sealed; he cannot, as a gentleman, utter
+the words that would clear him. A dramatic, romantic tale of intense
+interest.</p>
+
+<p><b>CLAIM NUMBER ONE</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Dr. Warren Slavens drew claim number one, which entitled him
+to first choice of rich lands on an Indian reservation in Wyoming. It
+meant a fortune; but before he established his ownership he had a
+hard battle with crooks and politicians.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE DUKE OF CHIMNEY BUTTE</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;When Jerry Lambert, "the Duke," attempts to safeguard the
+cattle ranch of Vesta Philbrook from thieving neighbors, his work is
+appallingly handicapped because of Grace Kerr, one of the chief agitators,
+and a deadly enemy of Vesta's. A stirring tale of brave deeds,
+gun-play and a love that shines above all.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE FLOCKMASTER OF POISON CREEK</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;John Mackenzie trod the trail from Jasper to the great sheep
+country where fortunes were being made by the flock-masters.
+Shepherding was not a peaceful pursuit in those bygone days. Adventure
+met him at every turn&mdash;there is a girl of course&mdash;men fight
+their best fights for a woman&mdash;it is an epic of the sheeplands.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE LAND OF LAST CHANCE</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Jim Timberlake and Capt. David Scott waited with restless
+thousands on the Oklahoma line for the signal to dash across the
+border. How the city of Victory arose overnight on the plains, how
+people savagely defended their claims against the "sooners;" how
+good men and bad played politics, makes a strong story of growth
+and American initiative.</p>
+
+<p><b>TRAIL'S END</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Ascalon was the end of the trail for thirsty cowboys who gave
+vent to their pent-up feelings without restraint. Calvin Morgan was
+not concerned with its wickedness until Seth Craddock's malevolence
+directed itself against him. He did not emerge from the maelstrom
+until he had obliterated every vestige of lawlessness, and assured
+himself of the safety of a certain dark-eyed girl.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Ask for Complete free list of G. &amp; D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction</i></p>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Grosset &amp; Dunlap,&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Publishers,&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;New York</span></h4>
+</div></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379"></a>[<a href="./images/379.png">379</a>]</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox">
+<div class="boxtext">
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>PETER B. KYNE'S NOVELS</h3>
+
+<p class="center">May be had wherever books are sold.&ensp;&ensp;Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE PRIDE OF PALOMAR</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;When two strong men clash and the under-dog has Irish
+blood in his veins&mdash;there's a tale that Kyne can tell! And
+"the girl" is also very much in evidence.</p>
+
+<p><b>KINDRED OF THE DUST</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Donald McKay, son of Hector McKay, millionaire lumber
+king, falls in love with "Nan of the Sawdust Pile," a
+charming girl who has been ostracized by her townsfolk.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE VALLEY OF THE GIANTS</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;The fight of the Cardigans, father and son, to hold the
+Valley of the Giants against treachery. The reader finishes
+with a sense of having lived with big men and women in a
+big country.</p>
+
+<p><b>CAPPY RICKS</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;The story of old Cappy Ricks and of Matt Peasley, the
+boy he tried to break because he knew the acid test was
+good for his soul.</p>
+
+<p><b>WEBSTER: MAN'S MAN</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;In a little Jim Crow Republic in Central America, a man
+and a woman, hailing from the "States," met up with a
+revolution and for a while adventures and excitement came
+so thick and fast that their love affair had to wait for a lull
+in the game.</p>
+
+<p><b>CAPTAIN SCRAGGS</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;This sea yarn recounts the adventures of three rapscallion
+sea-faring men&mdash;a Captain Scraggs, owner of the green
+vegetable freighter Maggie, Gibney the mate and McGuffney
+the engineer.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE LONG CHANCE</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;A story fresh from the heart of the West, of San Pasqual,
+a sun-baked desert town, of Harley P. Hennage, the best
+gambler, the best and worst man of San Pasqual and of
+lovely Donna.</p>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Grosset &amp; Dunlap,&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Publishers,&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;New York</span></h4>
+</div></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380"></a>[<a href="./images/380.png">380</a>]</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox">
+<div class="boxtext">
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>JACKSON GREGORY'S NOVELS</h3>
+
+<p class="center">May be had wherever books are sold.&ensp;&ensp;Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.</p>
+
+<p><b>DAUGHTER OF THE SUN</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;A tale of Aztec treasure&mdash;of American adventurers, who seek it&mdash;of
+Zoraida, who hides it.</p>
+
+<p><b>TIMBER-WOLF</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;This is a story of action and of the wide open, dominated always by
+the heroic figure of Timber-Wolf.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE EVERLASTING WHISPER</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;The story of a strong man's struggle against savage nature and humanity,
+and of a beautiful girl's regeneration from a spoiled child of wealth into a
+courageous strong-willed woman.</p>
+
+<p><b>DESERT VALLEY</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;A college professor sets out with his daughter to find gold. They meet
+a rancher who loses his heart, and becomes involved in a feud.</p>
+
+<p><b>MAN TO MAN</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;How Steve won his game and the girl he loved, is a story filled with
+breathless situations.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE BELLS OF SAN JUAN</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Dr. Virginia Page is forced to go with the sheriff on a night journey
+into the strongholds of a lawless band.</p>
+
+<p><b>JUDITH OF BLUE LAKE RANCH</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Judith Sanford part owner of a cattle ranch realizes she is being robbed
+by her foreman. With the help of Bud Lee, she checkmates Trevor's scheme.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE SHORT CUT</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Wayne is suspected of killing his brother after a quarrel. Financial complications,
+a horse-race and beautiful Wanda, make up a thrilling romance.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE JOYOUS TROUBLE MAKER</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;A reporter sets up housekeeping close to Beatrice's Ranch much to her
+chagrin. There is "another man" who complicates matters.</p>
+
+<p><b>SIX FEET FOUR</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;Beatrice Waverly is robbed of $5,000 and suspicion fastens upon Buck
+Thornton, but she soon realizes he is not guilty.</p>
+
+<p><b>WOLF BREED</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;No Luck Drennan, a woman hater and sharp of tongue, finds a match
+in Ygerne whose clever fencing wins the admiration and love of the "Lone
+Wolf."</p>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Grosset &amp; Dunlap,&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Publishers,&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;New York</span></h4>
+</div></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381"></a>[<a href="./images/381.png">381</a>]</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox">
+<div class="boxtext">
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>ZANE GREY'S NOVELS</h3>
+
+<p class="center">May be had wherever books are sold.&ensp;&ensp;Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.</p>
+
+<p><b>TO THE LAST MAN</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE MYSTERIOUS RIDER</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE MAN OF THE FOREST</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE DESERT OF WHEAT</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE U. P. TRAIL</b></p>
+
+<p><b>WILDFIRE</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE BORDER LEGION</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE RAINBOW TRAIL</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE HERITAGE OF THE DESERT</b></p>
+
+<p><b>RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE LIGHT OF WESTERN STARS</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE LAST OF THE PLAINSMEN</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE LONE STAR RANGER</b></p>
+
+<p><b>DESERT GOLD</b></p>
+
+<p><b>BETTY ZANE</b></p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p><b>LAST OF THE GREAT SCOUTS</b></p>
+
+<p>&ensp;&ensp;The life story of "Buffalo Bill" by his sister Helen Cody
+Wetmore, with Foreword and conclusion by Zane Grey.</p>
+
+<h3>ZANE GREY'S BOOKS FOR BOYS</h3>
+
+<p><b>KEN WARD IN THE JUNGLE</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE YOUNG LION HUNTER</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE YOUNG FORESTER</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE YOUNG PITCHER</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE SHORT STOP</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE RED-HEADED OUTFIELD AND OTHER<br />
+&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;BASEBALL STORIES</b></p>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Grosset &amp; Dunlap,&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Publishers,&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;New York</span></h4>
+</div></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382"></a>[<a href="./images/382.png">382</a>]</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox">
+<div class="boxtext">
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD'S<br />
+STORIES OF ADVENTURE</h3>
+
+<p class="center">May be had wherever books are sold.&ensp;&ensp;Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.</p>
+
+<p><b>THE COUNTRY BEYOND</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE FLAMING FOREST</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE VALLEY OF SILENT MEN</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE RIVER'S END</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE GOLDEN SNARE</b></p>
+
+<p><b>NOMADS OF THE NORTH</b></p>
+
+<p><b>KAZAN</b></p>
+
+<p><b>BAREE, SON OF KAZAN</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE COURAGE OF CAPTAIN PLUM</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE DANGER TRAIL</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE HUNTED WOMAN</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE FLOWER OF THE NORTH</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE GRIZZLY KING</b></p>
+
+<p><b>ISOBEL</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE WOLF HUNTERS</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE GOLD HUNTERS</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE COURAGE OF MARGE O'DOONE</b></p>
+
+<p><b>BACK TO GOD'S COUNTRY</b></p>
+
+<p><i>Ask for Complete free list of G. &amp; D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction</i></p>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Grosset &amp; Dunlap,&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;Publishers,&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;New York</span></h4>
+</div></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class='tnote'><h3>Transcriber's Notes</h3>
+<p>Corrections which have been made are indicated by dotted lines under
+the corrected text.
+Scroll the mouse over the word and the original text will <ins class="err"
+title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'apprear'">appear</ins>.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mistress Anne, by Temple Bailey
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+</pre>
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,11482 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mistress Anne, by Temple Bailey
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mistress Anne
+
+Author: Temple Bailey
+
+Illustrator: F. Vaux Wilson
+
+Release Date: October 30, 2007 [EBook #23246]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MISTRESS ANNE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net and the booksmiths
+at http://www.eBookForge.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MISTRESS ANNE
+
+BY
+TEMPLE BAILEY
+
+AUTHOR OF
+CONTRARY MARY, ETC.
+
+FRONTISPIECE BY
+F. VAUX WILSON
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP
+PUBLISHERS    NEW YORK
+
+Made in the United States of America
+
+[Illustration: SHE SHOWED HIM HER SCHOOL]
+
+COPYRIGHT
+1917 BY
+THE PENN
+PUBLISHING
+COMPANY
+
+_Made in U. S. A._
+
+Mistress Anne
+
+_To_
+
+P. V. B.
+
+_who sees the sunsets_
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+    I. IN WHICH THINGS ARE SAID OF DIOGENES
+         AND OF A LADY WITH A LANTERN                11
+
+   II. IN WHICH A PRINCESS SERVING FINDS THAT THE
+         MOTTO OF KINGS IS MEANINGLESS               21
+
+  III. IN WHICH THE CROWN PRINCE ENTERS UPON HIS
+         OWN                                         36
+
+   IV. IN WHICH THREE KINGS COME TO CROSSROADS       51
+
+    V. IN WHICH PEGGY TAKES THE CENTER OF THE
+         STAGE                                       62
+
+   VI. IN WHICH A GRAY PLUSH PUSSY CAT SUPPLIES
+         A THEME                                     77
+
+  VII. IN WHICH GEOFFREY WRITES OF SOLDIERS AND
+         THEIR SOULS                                 91
+
+ VIII. IN WHICH A GREEN-EYED MONSTER GRIPS EVE      111
+
+   IX. IN WHICH ANNE, PASSING A SHOP, TURNS IN      136
+
+    X. IN WHICH A BLIND BEGGAR AND A BUTTERFLY GO
+         TO A BALL                                  149
+
+   XI. IN WHICH BRINSLEY SPEAKS OF THE WAY TO WIN A
+         WOMAN                                      160
+
+  XII. IN WHICH EVE USURPS AN ANCIENT MASCULINE
+         PRIVILEGE                                  178
+
+ XIII. IN WHICH GEOFFREY PLAYS CAVE MAN             196
+
+  XIV. IN WHICH THERE IS MUCH SAID OF MARRIAGE AND
+          OF GIVING IN MARRIAGE                     210
+
+   XV. IN WHICH ANNE ASKS AND JIMMIE ANSWERS        226
+
+  XVI. IN WHICH PAN PIPES TO THE STARS              239
+
+ XVII. IN WHICH FEAR WALKS IN A STORM               256
+
+XVIII. IN WHICH WE HEAR ONCE MORE OF A SANDALWOOD
+         FAN                                        274
+
+  XIX. IN WHICH CHRISTMAS COMES TO CROSSROADS       284
+
+   XX. IN WHICH A DRESDEN-CHINA SHEPHERDESS AND A
+         COUNTRY MOUSE MEET ON COMMON GROUND        298
+
+  XXI. IN WHICH ST. MICHAEL HEARS A CALL            314
+
+ XXII. IN WHICH ANNE WEIGHS THE PEOPLE OF TWO
+         WORLDS                                     333
+
+XXIII. IN WHICH RICHARD RIDES ALONE                 347
+
+ XXIV. IN WHICH ST. MICHAEL FINDS LOVE IN A
+         GARDEN                                     361
+
+
+
+
+Mistress Anne
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+_In Which Things Are Said of Diogenes and of a Lady With a Lantern._
+
+
+THE second day of the New Year came on Saturday. The holiday atmosphere
+had thus been extended over the week-end. The Christmas wreaths still
+hung in the windows, and there had been an added day of feasting.
+Holidays always brought people from town who ate with sharp appetites.
+
+It was mostly men who came, men who fished and men who hunted. In the
+long low house by the river one found good meals and good beds, warm
+fires in winter and a wide porch in summer. There were few luxuries, but
+it pleased certain wise Old Gentlemen to take their sport simply, and to
+take pride in the simplicity. They considered the magnificence of modern
+camps and clubs vulgar, and as savoring somewhat of riches newly
+acquired; and they experienced an almost aesthetic satisfaction in the
+contrast between the rough cleanliness of certain little lodges along the
+Chesapeake and its tributary tide-water streams, and the elegance of the
+Charles Street mansions which they had, for the moment, left behind.
+
+It was these Old Gentlemen who, in khaki and tweed, each in its proper
+season, came to Peter Bower's, and ate the food which Peter's wife cooked
+for them. They went out in the morning fresh and radiant, and returned at
+night, tired but still radiant, to sit by the fire or on the porch, and,
+in jovial content, to tell of the delights of earlier days and of what
+sport had been before the invasion of the Philistines.
+
+They knew much of gastronomic lore, these Old Gentlemen, and they liked
+to talk of things to eat. But they spoke of other things, and now and
+then they fell into soft silences when a sunset was upon them or a night
+of stars.
+
+And they could tell stories! Stories backed by sparkling wit and a nice
+sense of discrimination. On winter nights or on holiday afternoons like
+this, as, gathered around the fire they grew mildly convivial, the sound
+of their laughter would rise to Anne Warfield's room under the eaves; she
+would push back the papers which held her to her desk, and wish with a
+sigh that the laughter were that of young men, and that she might be
+among them.
+
+To-day, however, she was not at her desk. She was taking down the
+decorations which had made the little room bright during the brief
+holiday. To-morrow she would go back to school and to the forty children
+whom she taught. Life would again stretch out before her, dull and
+uneventful. The New Year would hold for her no meaning that the old year
+had not held.
+
+It had snowed all of the night before, and from her window she could see
+the river, slate-gray against the whiteness. Out-of-doors it was very
+cold, but her own room was hot with the heat of the little round stove.
+With her holly wreaths in her arms, she stood uncertain in front of it.
+She had thought to burn the holly, but it had seemed to her, all at once,
+that to end thus the vividness of berry and of leaf would be desecration.
+Surely they deserved to die out in that clear cold world in which they
+had been born and bred!
+
+It was a fanciful thought, but she yielded to it. Besides, there was
+Diogenes! She must make sure of his warmth and comfort before night
+closed in.
+
+She put on her red scarf and cap and, with the wreaths in her arms, she
+went down-stairs. The Old Gentlemen were in the front room and she had to
+pass through. They rose to a man. She liked the courtliness, and gave in
+return her lovely smile and a little bow.
+
+They gazed after her with frank admiration. "Who is she?" asked one who
+was not old, and who, slim and dark and with a black ribbon for his
+eye-glasses, seemed a stranger in this circle.
+
+"The new teacher of the Crossroads school. There wasn't any place for her
+to board but this. So they took her in."
+
+"Pretty girl."
+
+The Old Gentlemen agreed, but they did not discuss her charms at length.
+They belonged to a generation which preferred not to speak in a crowd of
+a woman's attractions. One of them remarked, however, that he envied her
+the good fortune of feasting all the year round at Peter Bower's table.
+
+Anne, trudging through the snow with the wreaths in her arms, would have
+laughed mockingly if she had heard them. It was not food that she wanted,
+not the game and oysters and fish over which these old gourmands gloated.
+What she wanted was the nectar and ambrosia of life, the color and
+glow--the companionship of young things like herself!
+
+Of course there were the school children and there was Peggy. But to the
+children and Peggy she was a grown-up creature. Loving her, they still
+made her feel age's immeasurable distance, as she had felt her own
+distance from the Old Gentlemen.
+
+It was Peggy, who, wound in her mother's knitted white shawl until she
+looked like a dingy snowball, bounced from the kitchen to meet her.
+
+"Where are you going?" she asked.
+
+The young teacher laughed. "Peggy," she said, "if you will never tell,
+you may come with me."
+
+"Where?" demanded Peggy.
+
+"Across the road and into the woods and down to the river."
+
+"What are you carrying the wreaths for?"
+
+"Wait and see."
+
+The road which they crossed was the railroad. Over the iron rails the
+trains thundered from one big city to another, with a river to cross just
+before they reached Peter Bower's. Very few of the trains stopped at
+Peter's, and it was this neglect of theirs, and the consequent isolation,
+which constituted the charm of Bower's for town-tired folk. Yet Anne
+Warfield always wished that some palatial express might tarry for a
+moment to take her aboard, and whirl her on to the world of flashing
+lights, of sky-scraping towers and streaming crowds.
+
+"What are you going to do with the wreaths?" Peggy was still demanding as
+they entered upon the frozen silence of the pine woods.
+
+"I am going down as close as I can to the water's edge, and I am going to
+fling them out as far as I can into the river. And perhaps the river will
+carry them down to the sea, and the sea will say, 'Whence came you?' and
+the wreaths will whisper, 'We came from the forest to die on your breast,
+the river brought us, and the winds sang to us, and above us the sky
+smiled. And now we are ready to die, for we have seen life and its
+loveliness. It would have been dreadful if we had come to our end in the
+ashes of a little round stove.'"
+
+Peggy stared, open-eyed. She had missed the application, but she liked
+the story.
+
+"Let me throw one of them," she said.
+
+"You couldn't throw them far enough, dear heart. But you shall count,
+'one, two, three' for me. And when you say 'three' I'll throw one of them
+away, and then you must count again, and I will throw the others."
+
+So Peggy, quite entranced by the importance of her office, took her part
+in the ceremony, and Anne Warfield stood on top of the snowy bank above
+the river, and cast upon its tumbling surface the bright burden which it
+was to carry to the sea.
+
+It was at this moment that there crossed the bridge the only train from
+the north which stopped by day at Peter Bower's. The passengers looking
+out saw, far below them, sullen stream, somber woods, and a girl in a gay
+red scarf. They saw, too, a dingy white dot of a child who danced up and
+down. When the train stopped a few minutes later at Bower's, six of the
+passengers stepped from it, three men and three women, a smartly-dressed,
+cosmopolitan group, quite evidently indifferent to the glances which
+followed them.
+
+Anne and Peggy had no eyes for the new arrivals. If they noticed the
+train at all, it was merely to give it a slurring thought, as bringing
+more Old Gentlemen who would eat and be merry, then hurry back again to
+town. As for themselves, having finished the business of the moment,
+they had yet to look after Diogenes.
+
+Diogenes was a drake. He lived a somewhat cloistered life in the stable
+which had been made over into a garage. He had wandered in one morning
+soon after Anne had come to teach in the school. Peter had suggested that
+he be killed and eaten. But Anne, lonely in her new quarters, had
+appreciated the forlornness of the old drake and had adopted him. She had
+named him Diogenes because he had an air of searching always for
+something which could not be found. Once when a flock of wild ducks had
+flown overhead, Diogenes had listened, and, as their faint cries had come
+down to him, he had stretched his wings as if he, too, would fly. But his
+fat body had held him, and so still chained to earth, he waddled within
+the limits of his narrow domain.
+
+In a cozy corner of the garage there was plenty of straw and a blanket to
+keep off draughts. Mrs. Bower had declared such luxury unsettling. But
+Anne had laughed at her. "Why should pleasant things hurt us?" she had
+asked, and Mrs. Bower had shaken her head.
+
+"If you had seen the old men who come here and stuff, and die because
+their livers are wrong, you'd know what I mean. Give him enough, but
+don't pamper him."
+
+In the face of this warning, however, Anne fed the old drake on tidbits,
+and visited him at least once a day. He returned her favors by waiting
+for her at the gate when it was not too cold and, preceding her to the
+house, gave a sort of major-domo effect to her progress.
+
+Entering the stable, they found a lantern lighting the gloom, and
+Diogenes in a state of agitation. His solitude had been invaded by an
+Irish setter--a lovely auburn-coated creature with melting eyes, who,
+held by a leash, lay at length on Diogenes' straw with Diogenes' blanket
+keeping off the cold.
+
+The old drake from some remote fastness flung his protest to the four
+winds!
+
+"He's a new one." Peggy patted the dog, who rose to welcome them. "He
+ought to be in the kennels. Somebody didn't know."
+
+Somebody probably had not known, but had learned. For now the door
+opened, and a young man came in. He was a big young man with fair hair,
+and he had arrived on the train.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said, as he saw them, "but they told me I had put
+my dog in the wrong place."
+
+Peggy was important. "He belongs at the kennels. He's in Diogenes'
+corner."
+
+"Diogenes?"
+
+The old drake, reassured by the sound of voices, showed himself for a
+moment in the track of the lantern light.
+
+"There he is," Peggy said, excitedly; "he lives in here by himself."
+
+Anne had not spoken, but as she lifted the lantern from its nail and held
+it high, Richard Brooks was aware that this was the same girl whom he had
+glimpsed from the train. He had noted then her slenderness of outline,
+the grace and freedom of her pose; at closer range he saw her delicate
+smallness; the bloom on her cheek; the dusky softness of her hair; the
+length of her lashes; the sapphire deeps of her eyes. Yet it was not
+these charms which arrested his attention; it was, rather, a certain
+swift thought of her as superior to her surroundings.
+
+"Then it is Diogenes whose pardon I must beg," he said, his eyes
+twinkling as the old drake took refuge behind Anne's skirts. "Toby, come
+out of that. It's you for a cold kennel."
+
+"It's not cold in the kennels," Peggy protested; "it is nice and warm,
+and the food is fixed by Eric Brand."
+
+"And where can I find Eric Brand?"
+
+"He isn't here." It was Anne who answered him. "He is away for the New
+Year. Peggy and I have been looking after the dogs."
+
+She did not tell him that she had done it because she liked dogs, and not
+because it was a part of her day's work. And he did not know that she
+taught school. Hence, as he walked beside her toward the kennels, with
+Peggy dancing on ahead with Toby, and with Diogenes left behind in full
+possession, he thought of her, quite naturally, as the daughter of Peter
+Bower.
+
+It was an uproarious pack which greeted them. Every Old Gentleman owned a
+dog, and there was Peter's Mamie, two or three eager-eyed pointers,
+setters, hounds and Chesapeake Bay dogs. Old Mamie was nondescript, and
+was shut up in the kennels to-night only because Eric was away. She was
+eminently trustworthy, and usually ran at large.
+
+Toby, given a box to himself, turned his melting eyes upon his master and
+whined.
+
+"He was sent to me just before I left New York," Richard explained. "I
+fancy he is rather homesick. I am the only thing in sight that he knows."
+
+"You might take him into the house," Anne said doubtfully, "only it is a
+rule that if there are many dogs they all have to share alike and stay
+out here. When there are only two or three they go into the sitting-room
+with the men."
+
+"He can lie down behind the stove in the kitchen," Peggy offered
+hospitably. "Mamie does."
+
+Richard shook his head. "Toby will have to learn with the rest of us that
+life isn't always what we want it to be."
+
+He was startled by the look which the girl with the lantern gave him.
+"Why shouldn't it be as we want it?" she said, with sudden fire; "if I
+were Providence, I'd make things pleasant, and you are playing Providence
+to Toby. Why not let him have the comfort of the kitchen stove?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+_In Which a Princess Serving Finds That the Motto of Kings is
+Meaningless._
+
+
+TOBY, safe and snug behind the kitchen stove, was keenly alive to the
+fact that supper was being served. He had had his own supper, so that his
+interest was purely impersonal.
+
+Mrs. Bower cooked, and her daughter Beulah waited on the table. The
+service was not elaborate. Everything went in at once, and Peter helped
+the women carry the loaded trays.
+
+Anne Warfield ate usually with the family. She would have liked to sit
+with the Old Gentlemen at their genial gatherings, but it would not, she
+felt, have been sanctioned by the Bowers. Their own daughter, Beulah,
+would not have done it. Beulah had nothing in common with the jovial
+hunters and fishers. She had her own circle of companions, her own small
+concerns, her own convictions as to the frivolity of these elderly
+guests. She would not have cared to listen to what they had to say. She
+did not know that their travels, their adventures, their stored-up
+experience had made them rich in anecdote, ready of tongue to tell of
+wonders undreamed of in the dullness of her own monotonous days.
+
+But Anne Warfield knew. Now and then from the threshold she had caught
+the drift of their discourse, and she had yearned to draw closer, to sail
+with them on unknown seas of romance and of reminiscence, to leave behind
+her for the moment the atmosphere of schoolhouse, of small gossip, of
+trivial circumstance.
+
+It was with this feeling strong upon her that to-night, when the supper
+bell rang, she came into the kitchen and asked Mrs. Bower if she might
+help Beulah. She had no feeling that such labor was beneath her. If a
+princess cared to serve, she was none the less a princess!
+
+Secure, therefore, in her sense of unassailable dignity, she entered the
+dining-room. She might have been a goddess chained to menial tasks--a
+small and vivid goddess, with dusky hair. Richard Brooks, observing her,
+had once more a swift and certain sense of her fineness and of her
+unlikeness to those about her.
+
+The young man with the black ribbon on his eye-glass also observed her.
+Later he said to Mrs. Bower, "Can you give me a room here for a month?"
+
+"I might. Usually people don't care to stay so long at this time of
+year."
+
+"I am writing a book. I want to stay."
+
+Beside Richard Brooks at the table sat Evelyn Chesley. With the
+Dutton-Ames, and Philip Meade, she had come down with Richard and his
+mother to speed them upon their mad adventure.
+
+Evelyn had taken off her hat. Her wonderful hair was swept up in a new
+fashion from her forehead, a dull gold comb against its native gold. She
+wore a silken blouse of white, slightly open at the neck. On her fingers
+diamonds sparkled. It seemed to Anne, serving, as if the air of the long
+low room were charged with some thrilling quality. Here were youth and
+beauty, wit and light laughter, the perfume of the roses which Evelyn
+wore tucked in her belt. There was the color, too, of the roses, and of
+the cloak in which Winifred Ames had wrapped her shivering fairness. The
+cloak was blue, a marvelous pure shade like the Madonna blue of some old
+picture.
+
+Even Richard's mother seemed illumined by the radiance which enveloped
+the rest. She was a slender little thing and wore plain and simple
+widow's black. Yet her delicate cheeks were flushed, her eyes were
+shining, and her son had made her, too, wear a red rose.
+
+The supper was suited to the tastes of the old epicures for whom it had
+been planned. There were oysters and ducks with the juices following the
+knife, hot breads, wild grape jelly, hominy and celery.
+
+The fattest Old Gentleman carved the ducks. The people who had come on
+the train were evidently his friends. Indeed, he called the little lady
+with the shining eyes "Cousin Nancy."
+
+"So you've brought your boy back?" he said, smiling down at her.
+
+"Oh, yes, yes. Cousin Brin, I feel as if I had reached the promised
+land."
+
+"You'll find things changed. Nothing as it was in your father's time.
+Foreigners to the right of you, foreigners to the left. Italians,
+Greeks--barbarians--cutting the old place into little farms--blotting out
+the old landmarks."
+
+"I don't care; the house still stands, and Richard will hang out my
+father's sign, and when people want a doctor, they will come again to
+Crossroads."
+
+"People in these days go to town for their doctors."
+
+Richard's head went up. "I'll make them come to me, sir. And you mustn't
+think that mother brought me back. I came because I wanted to come. I
+hate New York."
+
+The listening Old Gentlemen, whose allegiance was given to a staid and
+stately town on the Patapsco, quite glowed at that, but Evelyn flamed:
+
+"You might have made a million in New York, Richard."
+
+"I don't want a million."
+
+"Oh," she appealed to Brinsley Tyson, "what can you do with a man like
+that--without red blood--without ambition?"
+
+And now it was Richard who flamed. "I am ambitious enough, Eve, but it
+isn't to make money."
+
+"He has some idea," the girl proclaimed recklessly to the whole table,
+"of living as his ancestors lived; as if one _could_. He believes that
+people should go back to plain manners and to strict morals. His mission
+is to keep this mad world sane."
+
+A ripple of laughter greeted her scorn. Her own laughter met it. The slim
+young man at the other end of the table swung his eye-glasses from their
+black ribbon negligently, but his eyes missed nothing.
+
+"It is my only grievance against you, Mrs. Nancy," Eve told the little
+shining lady. "I love you for everything else, but not for this."
+
+"I am sorry, my dear. But Richard and I think alike. So we are going to
+settle at Crossroads--and live happy ever after."
+
+Anne Warfield, outwardly calm, felt the blood racing in her veins. The
+old house at Crossroads was just across the way from her little school.
+She had walked in the garden every day, and now and then she had taken
+the children there. They had watched the squirrels getting ready for the
+winter, and had fed the belated birds with crumbs from the little lunch
+baskets. And there had been the old sun-dial to mark the hour when the
+recess ended and to warn them that work must begin.
+
+She had a rapturous vision of what it might be to have the old house
+open, and to see Nancy Brooks and her son Richard coming in and out.
+
+Later, however, alone in her dull room, stripped of its holiday
+trappings, the vision faded. To Nancy and Richard she would be just the
+school-teacher across the way, as to-night she had been the girl who
+waited on the table!
+
+There was music down-stairs. The whine of the phonograph came up to her.
+
+Peggy, knocking, brought an interesting bulletin.
+
+"They are dancing," she said. "Let's sit on the stairs and look."
+
+From the top of the stairs they could see straight into the long front
+room. The hall was dimly lighted so that they were themselves free from
+observation. Philip Meade and Eve were dancing, and the Dutton-Ames. Eve
+had on very high shoes with very high heels. Her skirt was wide and
+flaring. She dipped and swayed and floated, and the grace of the man with
+whom she danced matched her own.
+
+"Isn't it lovely," said Peggy's little voice, "isn't it lovely, Anne?"
+
+It was lovely, lovely as a dream. It was a sort of ecstasy of motion. It
+was youth and joy incarnate. Anne had a wild moment of rebellion. Why
+must she sit always at the head of the stairs?
+
+The music stopped. Eve and Philip became one of the circle around the
+fireplace in the front room. Again Eve's roses and Winifred's cloak gave
+color to the group. There was also the leaping golden flame of the fire,
+and, in the background, a slight blue haze where some of the Old
+Gentlemen smoked.
+
+The young man with the eye-glasses was telling a story. He told it well,
+and there was much laughter when he finished. When the music began again,
+he danced with Winifred Ames. Dutton Ames watched them, smiling. He
+always smiled when his eyes rested on his lovely wife.
+
+Evelyn danced with Richard. He did not dance as well as Philip, but he
+gave the effect of doing it easily. He swung her finally out into the
+hall. The whine of the phonograph ceased. Richard and Eve sat down on a
+lower step of the stairway.
+
+The girl's voice came up to the quiet watchers clearly. "When are you
+coming to New York to dance with me again, Dicky Boy?"
+
+"You must come down here. Pip will bring you in his car for the
+week-ends, with the Dutton-Ames. And I'll get a music box and a lot of
+new records. The old dining-room has a wonderful floor."
+
+"I hate your wonderful floor and your horrid old house. And when I think
+of Fifth Avenue and the lights and the theaters and you away from it
+all----"
+
+"Poor young doctors have no right to the lights and all the rest of it.
+Eve, don't let's quarrel at the last moment. You'll be reconciled to it
+all some day."
+
+"I shall never be reconciled."
+
+And now Philip Meade was claiming her. "You promised me this, Eve."
+
+"I shall have all the rest of the winter for you, Pip."
+
+"As if that made any difference! I never put off till to-morrow the
+things I want to do to-day. And as for Richard, he'll come running back
+to us before the winter is over."
+
+Richard shrugged. "You're a pair of cheerful prophets. Go and fox-trot
+with him, Eve."
+
+Left alone, the eyes of the young doctor went at once to the top of the
+stairs.
+
+"Come down and dance," he said.
+
+"Do you mean me?" Peggy demanded out of the dimness.
+
+"I mean both of you."
+
+"I can't dance--not the new dances." Anne was conscious of an
+overwhelming shyness. "Take Peggy."
+
+"How did you know we were up here?" Peggy asked.
+
+"Well, I heard a little laugh, and a little whisper, and I looked up and
+saw a little girl."
+
+"Oh, oh, did you really?"
+
+"Really."
+
+"Well, I can't dance. But I can try."
+
+So they tried, with Richard lifting the child lightly to the lilting
+tune.
+
+When he brought her back, he sat down beside Anne. Shyness still chained
+her, but he chatted easily. Anne could not have told why she was shy. In
+the stable she had felt at her ease with him. But then she had not seen
+Eve or Winifred. It was the women who had seemed to make the difference.
+
+Presently, however, he had her telling of her school. "It begins again
+to-morrow."
+
+"Do you like it?"
+
+"Teaching? No. But I love the children."
+
+"Do you teach Peggy?"
+
+"Yes. She is too young, really, but she insists upon going."
+
+"There used to be a schoolhouse across the road from my grandfather's. A
+red brick school with a bell on top."
+
+"There is still a bell. I always ring it myself, although the boys beg to
+do it. But I like to think of myself as the bell ringer."
+
+It was while they sat there that Eric Brand came in through the
+kitchen-way to the hall. He stood for a moment looking into the lighted
+front room where Eve still danced with Philip Meade, and where the young
+man with the eye-glasses talked with the Dutton-Ames. Anne instinctively
+kept silent. It was Peggy who revealed their hiding place to him.
+
+"Oh, Eric," she piped, "are you back?" She went flying down the stairs to
+him.
+
+He caught her, and holding her in his arms, peered up. "Who's there?"
+
+Peggy answered. "It's Anne and the new doctor. I danced with him, and he
+came on the train with those other people in there--and he has a dog
+named Toby--it's in the kitchen."
+
+"So that's his dog? It will have to go to the kennels for the night."
+
+Richard, descending, apologized. "I shouldn't have let Toby stay in the
+house, but Miss Bower put in a plea for him."
+
+"Beulah?"
+
+"He means Anne," Peggy explained. "Her name is Warfield. It's funny you
+didn't know."
+
+"How could I?" Richard had a feeling that he owed the little goddess-girl
+an explanation of his stupidity. He found himself again ascending the
+stairs.
+
+But Anne had fled. Overwhelmingly she realized that Richard had believed
+her to be the daughter of Peter Bower. Daughter of that crude and common
+man! Sister of Beulah! Friend of Eric Brand!
+
+Well, she had brought it on herself. She had looked after the dogs and
+she had waited on the table. People thought differently of these things.
+The ideals she had tried to teach her children were not the ideals of
+the larger world. Labor did not dignify itself. The motto of kings was
+meaningless! A princess serving was no longer a princess!
+
+Sitting very tense and still in the little rocking-chair in her own room,
+she decided that of course Richard looked down on her. He had perceived
+in her no common ground of birth or of breeding. Yet her grandfather had
+been the friend of the grandfather of Richard Brooks!
+
+When Peggy came up, she announced that she was to sleep with Anne. It was
+an arrangement often made when the house was full. To-night Anne welcomed
+the cheery presence of the child. She sang her to sleep, and then sat for
+a long time by the little round stove with Peggy in her arms.
+
+She laid her down as a knock sounded on her door.
+
+"Are you up?" some one asked, and she opened it, to find Evelyn Chesley.
+
+"May I borrow a needle?" She showed a torn length of lace-trimmed
+flounce. "I caught it on a rocker in my room. There shouldn't be any
+rocker."
+
+"Mrs. Bower loves them," Anne said, as she hunted through her little
+basket; "she loves to rock and rock. All the women around here do."
+
+"Then you're not one of them?"
+
+"No. My grandmother was Cynthia Warfield of Carroll."
+
+The name meant nothing to Evelyn. It would have meant much to Nancy
+Brooks.
+
+"How did you happen to come here? I don't see how any one could choose to
+come."
+
+"My mother died--and there was no one but my Great-uncle Rodman Warfield.
+I had to get something to do--so I came here, and Uncle Rod went to live
+with a married cousin."
+
+Evelyn had perched herself on the post of Anne's bed and was mending the
+flounce. Although she was not near the lamp, she gave an effect of
+gathering to her all the light of the room. She was wrapped in a robe of
+rose-color, a strange garment with fur to set it off, and of enormous
+fullness. It spread about her and billowed out until it almost hid the
+little bed and the child upon it.
+
+Beside her, Anne in her blue serge felt clumsy and common. She knew that
+she ought not to feel that way, but she did. She would have told her
+scholars that it was not clothes that made the man, or dress the woman.
+But then she told her scholars many things that were right and good. She
+tried herself to be as right and good as her theories. But it was not
+always possible. It was not possible at this moment.
+
+"What brought you here?" Eve persisted.
+
+"I teach school. I came in September."
+
+"What do you teach?"
+
+"Everything. We are not graded."
+
+"I hope you teach them to be honest with themselves."
+
+"I am not sure that I know what you mean?"
+
+"Don't let them pretend to be something that they are not. That's why so
+many people fail. They reach too high, and fall. That's what Nancy Brooks
+is doing to Richard. She is making him reach too high."
+
+She laughed as she bent above her needle. "I fancy you are not interested
+in that. But I can't think of anything but--the waste of it. I hope you
+will all be so healthy that you won't need him, and then he will have to
+come back to New York."
+
+"I don't see how anybody could leave New York. Not to come down here."
+Anne drew a quick breath.
+
+Eve spoke carelessly: "Oh, well, I suppose it isn't so bad here for a
+woman, but for a man--a man needs big spaces. Richard will be
+cramped--he'll shrink to the measure of all this--narrowness." She had
+finished her flounce, and she rose and gave Anne the needle. "In the
+morning, if the weather is good, we are to ride to Crossroads. Is your
+school very far away?"
+
+"It is opposite Crossroads. Mrs. Brooks' father built it."
+
+Anne spoke stiffly. She had felt the sting of Eve's indifference, and she
+was furious with herself for her consciousness of Eve's clothes, of her
+rings--of the gold comb in her hair.
+
+When her visitor had gone, Anne took down her own hair, and flung it up
+into a soft knot on the top of her head. Swept back thus, her face seemed
+to bloom into sudden beauty. She slipped the blue dress from her
+shoulders and saw the long slim line of her neck and the whiteness of her
+skin.
+
+The fire had died down in the little round stove. The room was cold. She
+thought of Eve's rose-color, and of the warmth of her furs.
+
+Bravely, however, she hummed the tune to which the others had danced. She
+lifted her feet in time. Her shoes were heavy, and she took them off. She
+tried to get the rhythm, the lightness, the grace of movement. But these
+things must be taught, and she had no one to teach her.
+
+When at last she crept into bed beside the sleeping Peggy, she was
+chilled to the bone, and she was crying.
+
+Peggy stirred and murmured.
+
+Soothing the child, Anne told herself fiercely that she was a goose to be
+upset because Eve Chesley had rings and wore rose-color. Why, she was no
+better than Diogenes, who had fumed and fussed because Toby had taken his
+straw in the stable.
+
+But her philosophy failed to bring peace of mind. For a long time she lay
+awake, working it out. At last she decided, wearily, that she had wept
+because she really didn't know any of the worth-while things. She didn't
+know any of the young things and the gay things. She didn't know how to
+dance or to talk to men like Richard Brooks. The only things that she
+knew in the whole wide world were--books!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+_In Which the Crown Prince Enters Upon His Own._
+
+
+IT developed that the name of the young man with the eye-glasses was
+Geoffrey Fox. Mrs. Bower told Anne at the breakfast table, as the two
+women sat alone.
+
+"He is writing a book, and he wants to stay."
+
+"The little dark man?"
+
+"I shouldn't call him little. He is thin, but he is as tall as Richard
+Brooks."
+
+"Is he?" To Anne it had seemed as if Richard had towered above her like a
+young giant. She had scarcely noticed the young man with the eye-glasses.
+He had melted into the background of old gentlemen; had become, as it
+were, a part of a composite instead of a single personality.
+
+But to be writing a book!
+
+"What kind of a book, Mrs. Bower?"
+
+"I don't know. He didn't say. I am going to give him the front room in
+the south wing; then he will have a view of the river."
+
+When Anne met the dark young man in the hall an hour later, she
+discovered that he had keen eyes and a mocking smile.
+
+He stopped her. "Do we have to be introduced? I am going to stay here.
+Did Mrs. Bower tell you?"
+
+"She told me you were writing a book."
+
+"Don't tell anybody else; I'm not proud of it."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+He shrugged. "My stories are pot-boilers, most of them--with everybody
+happy in the end."
+
+"Why shouldn't everybody be happy in the end?"
+
+"Because life isn't that way."
+
+"Life is what we make it."
+
+"Who told you that?"
+
+She flushed. "It is what I tell my school children."
+
+"But have you found it so?"
+
+She faltered. "No--but perhaps it is my fault."
+
+"It isn't anybody's fault. If the gods smile--we are happy. If they
+frown, we are miserable. That's all there is to it."
+
+"I should hate to think that was all." She was roused and ready to fight
+for her ideals. "I should hate to think it."
+
+"All your hating won't make it as you want it," his glance was quizzical,
+"but we won't quarrel about it."
+
+"Of course not," stiffly.
+
+"And we are to be friends? You see I am to stay a month."
+
+"Are you going to write about us?"
+
+"I shall write about the Old Gentlemen. Is there always such a crowd of
+them?"
+
+"Only on holidays and week-ends."
+
+"Perhaps I shall write about you----" daringly. "I need a little lovely
+heroine."
+
+Her look stopped him. His face changed. "I beg your pardon," he said
+quickly. "I should not have said that."
+
+"Would you have said it if I had not waited on the table?" Her voice was
+tremulous. The color that had flamed in her cheeks still dyed them. "I
+thought of it last night, after I went up-stairs. I have been trying to
+teach my little children in my school that there is dignity in service,
+and so--I have helped Mrs. Bower. But I felt that people did not
+understand."
+
+"You felt that we--thought less of you?"
+
+"Yes," very low.
+
+"And that I spoke as I did because I did not--respect you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then I beg your pardon. Indeed, I do beg your pardon. It was
+thoughtless. Will you believe that it was only because I was
+thoughtless?"
+
+"Yes." But her troubled eyes did not meet his. "Perhaps I am too
+sensitive. Perhaps you would have said--the same things--to Eve
+Chesley--if you had just met her. But I am sure you would not have said
+it in the same tone."
+
+He held out his hand to her. "You'll forgive me? Yes? And be friends?"
+
+She did not seem to see his hand. "Of course I forgive you," she said,
+with a girlish dignity which sat well upon her, "and perhaps I have made
+too much of it, but you see I am so much alone, and I think so much."
+
+He wanted to ask her questions, of why she was there and of why she was
+alone. But something in her manner forbade, and so they spoke of other
+things until she left him.
+
+Geoffrey went out later for a walk in the blinding snow. All night it had
+snowed and the storm had a blizzard quality, with the wind howling and
+the drifts piling to prodigious heights. Geoffrey faced the elements with
+a strength which won the respect of Richard Brooks who, also out in it,
+with his dog Toby, was battling gloriously with wind and weather.
+
+"If we can reach the shelter of the pines," he shouted, "they'll break
+the force of the storm."
+
+Within the wood the snow was in winding sheets about the great trees.
+
+"What giant ghosts!" Geoffrey said. "Yet in a month or two the sap will
+run warm in their veins, and the silence will be lapped by waves of
+sound--the singing of birds and of little streams."
+
+"I used to come here when I was a boy," Richard told him. "There were
+violets under the bank, and I picked them and made tight bunches of them
+and gave them to my mother. She was young then. I remember that she
+usually wore white dresses, with a blue sash fluttering."
+
+"You lived here then?"
+
+"No, we visited at my grandfather's, a mile or two away. He used to drive
+us down, and he would sit out there on the point and fish,--a grand old
+figure, in his broad hat, with his fishing creel over his shoulder. There
+were just two sports that my grandfather loved, fishing and fox-hunting;
+but he was a very busy doctor and couldn't ride often to hounds. But he
+kept a lot of them. He would have had a great contempt for Toby. His own
+dogs were a wiry little breed."
+
+"My grandfather was blind, and always in his library. So my boyhood was
+different. I used to read to him. I liked it, and I wouldn't exchange my
+memories for yours, except the violets--I should like to pick them here
+in the spring--perhaps I shall--I told Mrs. Bower I would take a room for
+a month or more--and since we have spoken of violets--I may wait for
+their blooming."
+
+He laughed, and as they turned back, "I have found several things to keep
+me," he said, but he did not name them.
+
+All day Anne was aware of the presence in the house of the young guests.
+She was aware of Winifred Ames' blue cloak and of Eve's roses. She was
+aware of Richard's big voice booming through the hall, of Geoffrey's
+mocking laugh.
+
+But she did not go down among them. She ate her meals after the others
+had finished. She did not wait upon the table and she did not sit upon
+the stairs. In the afternoon she wrote a long letter to her Great-uncle
+Rodman, and she went early to bed.
+
+She was waked in the morning by the bustle of departure. Some of the Old
+Gentlemen went back by motor, others by train. Warmed by a hearty
+breakfast, bundled into their big coats, they were lighted on their way
+by Eric Brand.
+
+It was just as the sun flashed over the horizon and showed the whiteness
+of a day swept clear by the winds of the night that the train for the
+north carried off the Dutton-Ames, Philip and Eve.
+
+Evelyn went protesting. "Some day you are going to regret it, Richard."
+
+"Don't croak. Wish me good luck, Eve."
+
+But she would not. Yet when she stood at last on the train steps to say
+"Good-bye," she had in her hand one of the roses he had given her and
+which she had worn. She touched it lightly to her lips and tossed it to
+him.
+
+By the time he had picked it up the train was on its way, and Evelyn,
+looking back, had her last glimpse of him standing straight and tall
+against the morning sky, the rose in his hand.
+
+It was eight o'clock when Eric drove Anne and Peggy through the drifts
+to the Crossroads school. It was nine when Geoffrey Fox came down to a
+late breakfast. It was ten when Richard and his mother and the dog Toby
+in a hired conveyance arrived at the place which had once been Nancy's
+home.
+
+Imposing, even in its shabbiness, stood the old house, at the end of an
+avenue of spired cedars.
+
+As they opened the door a grateful warmth met them.
+
+"David has been here," Nancy said. "Oh, Richard, Richard, what a glorious
+day to begin."
+
+And now there came from among the shadows a sound which made them stop
+and listen. "Tick, tock," said the great hall clock.
+
+"Mother, who wound it?"
+
+Nancy Brooks laughed tremulously. "Cousin David had the key. In all these
+years he has never let the old clock run down. It seemed queer to think
+of it ticking away in this empty house."
+
+There were tears in her eyes. He stooped and kissed her. "And now that
+you are here, you are going to be happy?"
+
+"Very happy, dear boy."
+
+It was nearly twelve when David Tyson came limping up the path. He had a
+basket in one hand, and a cane in the other. Behind him trotted a
+weedy-looking foxhound. The dog Toby, charging out of the door as Nancy
+opened it, fell, as it were, upon the neck of the hound. His overtures
+of friendship were met with a dignified aloofness which merged gradually
+into a reluctant cordiality.
+
+Nancy held out both hands to the old man. "I saw you coming. Oh, how good
+it seems to be here again, Cousin David."
+
+"Let me look at you." He set the basket down, and took her hands in his.
+Then he shook his head. "New York has done things to you," he said. "It
+has given you a few gray hairs. But now that you are back again I shall
+try to forgive it."
+
+"I shall never forgive it," she said, "for what it has done to me and
+mine."
+
+"But you are here, and you have brought your boy; that's a thing to be
+thankful for, Nancy."
+
+They were silent in the face of overwhelming memories. The only sound in
+the shadowy hall was the ticking of the old clock--the old clock which
+had tick-tocked in all the years of loneliness with no one to listen.
+
+Richard greeted him with heartiness. "This looks pretty good to me,
+Cousin David."
+
+"It's God's country, Richard. Brin hates it. He loves his club and the
+city streets. But for me there's nothing worth while but this sweep of
+the hills and the river between."
+
+He uncovered his basket. "Tom put up some things for you. I've engaged
+Milly, a mulatto girl, but she can't get here until to-morrow. She is
+about the best there is left. Most of them go to town. She'll probably
+seem pretty crude after New York servants, Nancy."
+
+"I don't care." Nancy almost sang the words. "I don't care what I have to
+put up with, Cousin David. I shall sleep to-night under my own roof with
+nothing between me and the stars. And there won't be anybody overhead or
+underneath, and there won't be a pianola to the right of me, and a
+phonograph to the left, and there won't be the rumble of the subway or
+the crash of the elevated, and in the morning I shall open my eyes and
+see the sun rise over the river, and I shall look out upon the world that
+I love and have loved all of these years----"
+
+And now she was crying, and Richard had her in his arms. Over her head he
+looked at the older man. "I didn't dream that she felt like this."
+
+"I knew--as soon as I saw her. You must never take her back, Richard."
+
+"Of course not," hotly.
+
+Yet with the perverseness of youth he was aware, as he said it, of a
+sudden sense of revolt against the prospect of a future spent in this
+quiet place. Flashing came a vision of the city he had left, of crowded
+hospitals, of big men consulting with big men, of old men imparting their
+secrets of healing to the young; of limousines speeding luxuriously on
+errands of mercy; of patients pouring out their wealth to the men who had
+made them well.
+
+All this he had given up because his mother had asked it. She had spoken
+of the place which his grandfather had filled, of the dignity of a
+country practice, of the opportunities for research and for experiment.
+At close range, the big town set between its rivers and the sea had
+seemed noisy and vulgar. Its people had seemed mad in their race for
+money. Its medical men had seemed to lack the fineness and finish which
+come to those who move and meditate in quiet places.
+
+But seen from afar as he saw it now, it seemed a wonder city, its tall
+buildings outlined like gigantic castles against the sky. It seemed
+filled to the brim with vivid life. It seemed, indeed, to call him back!
+
+While David and Nancy talked he went out, and, from the top of the snowy
+steps, surveyed his domain. Back and back in the wide stretch of country
+which faced him, beyond the valleys, on the other side of the hills, were
+people who would some day listen for the step of young Richard as those
+who had gone before had listened for the step of his grandfather. He saw
+himself going forth on stormy nights to fight pain and pestilence; to
+minister to little children, to patient mothers; to men beaten down by an
+enemy before whom their strength was as wax. They would wait for him,
+anxious for his verdict, yet fearing it, welcoming him as a saviour, who
+would stand with flaming sword between disease and the Dark Angel.
+
+The schoolhouse was on the other side of the road. It was built of brick
+like the house. Richard's grandfather had paid for the brick. He had
+believed in public schools and had made this one possible. Children came
+to it from all the countryside. There were other schools in the sleepy
+town. This was the Crossroads school, as Richard Tyson had been the
+Crossroads doctor. He had given himself to a rural community--his
+journeys had been long and his life hard, but he had loved the labor.
+
+The bell rang for the noon recess. The children appeared presently,
+trudging homeward through the snow to their midday dinners. Then Anne
+Warfield came out. She wore a heavy brown coat and soft brown hat. In her
+hand was a small earthen dish. She strewed seeds for the birds, and they
+flew down in front of her--juncoes and sparrows, a tufted titmouse, a
+cardinal blood-red against the whiteness. She was like a bird herself in
+all her brown.
+
+When the dish was empty, she turned it upside down, and spread her hands
+to show that there was nothing more. On the Saturday night when she had
+waited on the table, Richard had noticed the loveliness of her hands.
+They were small and white, and without rings. Yet in spite of their
+smallness and whiteness, he knew that they were useful hands, for she had
+served well at Bower's. And now he knew that they were kindly hands, for
+she had fed the birds who had come begging to her door.
+
+Peggy joined her, and the two came out the gate together. Anne looking
+across saw Richard. She hesitated, then crossed the road.
+
+He at once went to meet her. She flushed a little as she spoke to him.
+"Peggy and I want to ask a favor. We've always had our little Twelfth
+Night play in the Crossroads stable. And we had planned for it this
+year--you see, we didn't know that you were coming."
+
+"And we were afraid that you wouldn't want us," Peggy told him.
+
+"Were you really afraid?"
+
+"I wasn't. But Miss Anne was."
+
+"I told the children that they mustn't be disappointed if we were not
+able to do this year as we had done before. I felt that with people in
+the house, it might not be pleasant for them to have us coming in such a
+crowd."
+
+"It will be pleasant, and mother will be much interested. I wish you'd
+come up and tell us about it."
+
+She shook her head. "Peggy and I have just time to get back to Bower's
+for our dinner."
+
+"Aren't the roads bad?"
+
+"Not when the snow is hard."
+
+Peggy went reluctantly. "I think he is perfectly lovely," she said, at a
+safe distance. "Don't you?"
+
+Anne's reply was guarded. "He is very kind. I am glad that he doesn't
+mind about the Twelfth Night play, Peggy."
+
+Richard spoke to David of Anne as the two men, a few minutes later,
+climbed the hill toward David's house.
+
+"She seems unusual."
+
+"She is the best teacher we have ever had, but she ought not to be at
+Bower's. She isn't their kind."
+
+David's little house, set on top of a hill, was small and shabby without,
+but within it was as compact as a ship's cabin. David's old servant, Tom,
+kept it immaculate, and there were books everywhere, old portraits,
+precious bits of mahogany.
+
+From the window beside the fireplace there was a view of the river. It
+was a blue river to-day, sparkling in the sunshine. David, standing
+beside Richard, spoke of it.
+
+"It isn't always blue, but it is always beautiful. Even when the snow
+flies as it did yesterday."
+
+"And are you content with this, Cousin David?"
+
+The answer was evasive. "I have my little law practice, and my books. And
+is any one ever content, Richard?"
+
+Going down the hill, Richard pondered. Was Eve right after all? Did a man
+who turned his face away from the rush of cities really lack red blood?
+
+Stopping at the schoolhouse, he found teacher and scholars still gone.
+But the door was unlocked and he went in. The low-ceiled room was
+charming, and the good taste of the teacher was evident in its
+decorations. There were branches of pine and cedar on the walls, a
+picture of Washington at one end with a flag draped over it, a pot of
+primroses in the south window.
+
+There were several books on Anne's desk. Somewhat curiously he examined
+the titles. A shabby Browning, a modern poet or two, Chesterton, a volume
+of Pepys, the pile topped by a small black Bible. Moved by a sudden
+impulse, he opened the Bible. The leaves fell back at a marked passage:
+
+"_Let not your heart be troubled._"
+
+He shut the book sharply. It was as if he had peered into the girl's
+soul. The red was in his cheeks as he turned away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night Nancy Brooks went with Richard to his room. On the threshold
+she stopped.
+
+"I have given this room to you," she said, "because it was mine when I
+was a girl, and all my dreams have been shut in--waiting for you."
+
+"Mother," he caught her hands in his, "you mustn't dream too much for
+me."
+
+"Let me dream to-night;" she was looking up at him with her shining eyes;
+"to-morrow I shall be just a commonplace mother of a commonplace son; but
+to-night I am queen, and you are the crown prince on the eve of
+coronation. Oh, Hickory Dickory, I am such a happy mother."
+
+Hickory Dickory! It was her child-name for him. She had not often used
+it of late. He felt that she would not often use it again. He was much
+moved by her dedication of him to his new life. He held her close. His
+doubts fled. He thought no more of Eve and of her flaming arguments.
+Somewhere out in the snow her rose lay frozen and faded where he had
+dropped it.
+
+And when he slept and dreamed it was of a little brown bird which sang in
+the snow, and the song that it sang seemed to leap from the pages of a
+Book, "_Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid._"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+_In Which Three Kings Come to Crossroads._
+
+
+ANNE'S budget of news to her Great-uncle Rod swelled to unusual
+proportions in the week following the opening of Crossroads. She had so
+much to say to him, and there was no one else to whom she could speak
+with such freedom and frankness.
+
+_By the Round Stove._
+
+MY DEAR:
+
+I am sending this as an antidote for my doleful Sunday screed. Now that
+the Lovely Ladies are gone, I am myself again!
+
+I know that you are saying, "You should never have been anything but
+yourself." That's all very well for you who know Me-Myself, but these
+people know only the Outside-Person part of me, and the Outside-Person
+part is stiff and old-fashioned, and self-conscious. You see it has been
+so many months since I have hobnobbed with Lilies-of-the-Field and with
+Solomons-in-all-their-Glory. And even when I did hobnob with them it was
+for such a little time, and it ended so heart-breakingly. But I am not
+going to talk of that, or I shall weep and wail again, and that wouldn't
+be fair to you.
+
+The last Old Gentleman left yesterday in the wake of the Lovely Ladies.
+Did I tell you that Brinsley Tyson is a cousin of Mrs. Brooks? His twin
+brother, David, lives up the road. Brinsley is the city mouse and David
+is the country one. They are as different as you can possibly imagine.
+Brinsley is fat and round and red, and David is thin and tall and pale.
+Yet there is the "twin look" in their faces. The high noses and square
+chins. Neither of them wears a beard. None of the Old Gentlemen does. Why
+is it? Is hoary-headed age a thing of the dark and distant past? Are you
+the only one left whose silver banner blows in the breeze? Are the
+grandfathers all trying to look like boys to match the grandmothers who
+try to look like girls?
+
+Mrs. Brooks won't be that kind of grandmother. She is gentle and serene,
+and the years will touch her softly. I shall like her if she will let me.
+But perhaps little school-teachers won't come within her line of vision.
+You see I learned my lesson in those short months when I peeped into
+Paradise.
+
+I wonder how it would seem to be a Lily-of-the-Field. I've never been
+one, have I? Even when I was a little girl I used to stand on a chair to
+wipe the dishes while you washed them. I felt very important to be
+helping mother, and you would talk about the dignity of labor--_you
+darling_, with the hot water wrinkling and reddening your lovely long
+fingers, which were made to paint masterpieces.
+
+I am trying to pass on to my school children what you have given to me,
+and oh, Uncle Rod, when I speak to them I seem to be looking with you,
+straight through the kitchen window, at the sunset. We never knew that
+the kitchen sink was there, did we? We saw only the sunsets. And now
+because you are a darling dear, and because you are always seeing
+sunsets, I am sending you a verse or two which I have copied from a book
+which Geoffrey Fox left last night at my door.
+
+    "When Salomon sailed from Ophir,
+               With Olliphants and gold,
+     The kings went up, the kings went down,
+     Trying to match King Salomon's crown;
+               But Salomon sacked the sunset,
+               Wherever his black ships rolled.
+     He rolled it up like a crimson cloth,
+         And crammed it into his hold.
+
+CHORUS: "Salomon sacked the sunset,
+            Salomon sacked the sunset,
+            He rolled it up like a crimson cloth,
+            And crammed it into his hold.
+
+    "His masts were Lebanon cedars,
+               His sheets were singing blue,
+     But that was never the reason why
+     He stuffed his hold with the sunset sky!
+               The kings could cut their cedars,
+               And sail from Ophir, too;
+     But Salomon packed his heart with dreams,
+         _And all the dreams were true_."
+
+Now join in the chorus, you old dear--and I'll think that I am a little
+girl again--
+
+    "The kings could cut their cedars,
+     Cut their Lebanon cedars;
+     But Salomon packed his heart with dreams,
+     _And all_
+             _the dreams_
+                        _were true_!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_In the Schoolroom._
+
+I told you that Geoffrey Fox left a book for me to read. I told you that
+he wore eye-glasses on a black ribbon, that he is writing a novel, and
+that I don't like him. Well, he went into Baltimore this morning to get
+his belongings, and when he comes back he will stay until his book is
+finished. It will be interesting to be under the same roof with a story.
+All the shadows and corners will seem full of it. The house will speak to
+him, and the people in it, though none of the rest of us will hear the
+voices, and the wind will speak and the leaping flames in the fireplace,
+and the sun and the moon--and when the snow comes it will whisper secrets
+in his ear and presently it will be snowing all through the pages.
+
+It snowed this morning, and from my desk I can see young Dr. Brooks
+shoveling a path from his front porch. He and his mother came to
+Crossroads yesterday, and they have been very busy getting settled. They
+have a colored maid, Milly, but no man, and young Richard does all of
+the outside work. I think I shall like him. Don't you remember how as a
+little girl I always adored the Lion-hearted king? I always think of him
+when I see Dr. Brooks. He isn't handsome, but he is broad-shouldered and
+big and blond. I haven't had but one chance to speak to him since he and
+his mother left Bower's. Perhaps I shan't have many chances to speak to
+him. But a cat may look at a king!
+
+I am all alone in the schoolroom. The children went an hour ago. Eric and
+Beulah are to call for me on their way home from town. They took Peggy
+with them. Did I tell you that Eric is falling in love with Beulah? I am
+not sure whether it is the best thing for him, but I am sure it is for
+her. She is very happy, and blushes when he looks at her. He is finer
+than she, and bigger, mentally and spiritually. He is crude, but he will
+grow as so many American men do grow--and there are dreams in his clear
+blue eyes. And, after all, it is the dreams that count--as Salomon
+discovered.
+
+Yet it may be that Eric will bring Beulah up to his level. She is an
+honest little thing and good and loving. Her life is narrow, and she
+thinks narrow thoughts. But he is wise and kind, and already I can see
+that she is trying to keep step with him--which is as it should be.
+
+I like to think that father and mother kept step through all the years.
+She was his equal, his comrade; she marched by his side with her head up
+fitting her two short steps to his long stride.
+
+King Richard has just waved to me. I stood up to see the sunset--a band
+of gold with black above, and he waved, and started to run across the
+road. Then somebody called him from the house. Perhaps it was the
+telephone and his first patient. If I am ever ill, I should like to have
+a Lion-hearted Doctor--wouldn't you?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_At the Sign of the Lantern._
+
+I am with Diogenes in the stable, with the lantern making deep shadows,
+and the loft steps for a desk. Eric and Beulah came for me before I had
+asked a question--an important question--so I am finishing my letter
+here, while Eric puts Daisy in her stall, and then he will post it for
+me.
+
+Diogenes has had his corn, and is as happy as Brinsley Tyson after a good
+dinner. Oh, such eating and drinking! How these old men love it! And you
+with your bread and milk and your book propped up against the lamp, or
+your handful of raisins and your book under a tree!
+
+But I must scribble fast and ask my question. It isn't easy to ask. So
+I'll put it in sections:
+
+Do you
+       ever
+            see
+                Jimmie--Ford?
+
+That is the first time that I have written his name since I came here. I
+had made up my mind that I wouldn't write it. But somehow the
+rose-colored atmosphere of the other night, and these men of his kind
+have brought it back--all those whirling weeks when you warned me and I
+wouldn't listen. Uncle Rod, if a woman hadn't an ounce of pride she might
+meet such things. If I had not had a grandmother as good as Jimmie's and
+better--I might have felt less--stricken. Geoffrey Fox spoke to me on
+Saturday in a way which--hurt. Perhaps I am too sensitive--but I haven't
+quite learned to--hold up my head.
+
+You mustn't think that I am unhappy. Indeed, I am not, except that I
+cannot be with you. But it is good to know that you are comfortable, and
+that Cousin Margaret is making it seem like home. Some day we are to have
+a home, you and I, when our ship comes in "with the sunset packed in the
+hold." But now it is well that I have work to do. I know that this is my
+opportunity, and that I must make the most of it. There's that proverb of
+yours, "The Lord sends us quail, but he doesn't send them roasted." I
+have written it out, and have tucked it into my mirror frame. I shall
+have to roast my own quail. I only hope that I may prove a competent
+cook!
+
+Eric is here, and I must say "Good-bye." Diogenes sends love, and a
+little feather that dropped from his wing. Some day he will send a big
+one for you to make a pen and write letters to me. I love your letters,
+and I love you. And oh, you know that you have all the heart's best of
+your own
+
+ANNE.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_The Morning After the Magi Came._
+
+I am up early to tell you about it. But I must go back a little because I
+have had so much else to talk about that I haven't spoken of the Twelfth
+Night play.
+
+It seems that years ago, when old Dr. Brooks first built the schoolhouse,
+the children used his stable on Twelfth Night for a spectacle
+representing the coming of the Wise Men.
+
+Mr. David had told me of it, and I had planned to revive the old custom
+this year, and had rehearsed the children. I thought when I heard that
+the house was to be occupied that I might have to give it up. But Peggy
+and I plucked up our courage and asked King Richard, and he graciously
+gave permission.
+
+It was a heavenly night. Snow on the ground and all the stars out. The
+children met in the schoolhouse and we started in a procession. They all
+wore simple little costumes, just some bit of bright color draped to give
+them a quaint picturesqueness. One of the boys led a cow, and there was
+an old ewe. Then riding on a donkey, borrowed by Mr. David, came the
+oldest Mary in our school. I chose her because I wanted her to understand
+the sacred significance of her name, and our only little Joseph walked by
+her side. The children followed and their parents, with the wise men
+quite in the rear, so that they might enter after the others.
+
+When we reached the stable, I grouped Joseph and Mary in one of the old
+mangers, where the Babe lay, and he was a dear, real, baby brother of
+Mary. I hid a light behind the straw, so that the place was illumined.
+And then my little wise men came in; and the children, who with their
+parents were seated on the hay back in the shadows, sang, "We Three
+Kings" and other carols. The gifts which the Magi brought were the
+children's own pennies which they are giving to the other little children
+across the sea who are fatherless because of the war.
+
+It was quite wonderful to hear their sweet little voices, and to see
+their rapt faces and to know that, however sordid their lives might be,
+here was Dream, founded on the Greatest Truth, which would lift them
+above the sordidness.
+
+Dr. Brooks and his mother and Mr. David were not far from me, and Dr.
+Brooks leaned over and asked if he might speak to the children. I said I
+should be glad, so he stood up and told them in such simple, fine fashion
+that he wanted to be to them all that his grandfather had been to their
+parents and grandparents. He wanted them to feel that his life and
+service belonged to them. He wanted them to know how pleased he was with
+the Twelfth Night spectacle, and that he wanted it to become an annual
+custom.
+
+Then in his mother's name, he asked them to come up to the house--all of
+them--and we were shown into the Garden Room which opens out upon what
+was once a terraced garden, and there was a great cake with candles, and
+sandwiches, and coffee for the grown-ups and hot chocolate for the
+kiddies.
+
+Wasn't that dear? I had little Francois thank them, and he did it so
+well. Why is it that these small foreigners lack the self-consciousness
+of our own boys and girls? He had been one of the wise men in the
+spectacle, and he still wore his white beard and turban and his long blue
+and red robes. Yet he wasn't in the least fussed; he simply made a bow,
+said what he had to say, made another bow, with never a blush or a quaver
+or giggle. His mother was there, and she was so happy--she is a widow,
+and sews in the neighborhood, plain sewing, and they are very poor.
+
+I rode home with the Bowers, and as we drove along, I heard the children
+singing. I am sure they will never forget the night under the winter
+stars, nor the scene in the stable with the cow and the little donkey and
+the old ewe, and the Light that illumined the manger. I want them always
+to remember, Uncle Rod, and I want to remember. It is only when I forget
+that I lose faith and hope.
+
+Blessed dear, good-night.
+
+YOUR ANNE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+_In Which Peggy Takes the Center of the Stage._
+
+
+THE bell on the schoolhouse had a challenging note. It seemed to call to
+the distant hills, and the echo came back in answer. It was the voice of
+civilization. "I am here that you may learn of other hills and of other
+valleys, of men who have dreamed and of men who have discovered, of
+nations which have conquered and of nations which have fallen into decay.
+I am here that you may learn--_ding dong_--that you may learn, _ding
+ding_--that you may learn--_ding dong ding_--of Life."
+
+As she rang the bell, Anne had always a feeling of exhilaration. Its
+message was clear to her. She hoped it would be clear to others. She
+tried at least to make it clear to her children.
+
+And now they came streaming over the countryside, big boys with their
+little sisters beside them, big girls with their little brothers. Some on
+sleds and some sliding. All rosy-cheeked with the coldness of the
+morning.
+
+As they filed in, Anne stood behind her desk. They had opening exercises,
+and then the work of the day began.
+
+It began scrappily. Nobody had his mind upon it. The children were much
+excited over the events of the preceding night--over the play and the
+feast which had followed.
+
+Anne, too, was excited. On the way to school she had met Richard, and he
+had joined her and had told her of his first patient.
+
+"I had to walk at one o'clock in the morning. I must get a horse or a
+car. I am not quite sure that I ought to afford a car. And I like the
+idea of a horse. My grandfather rode a horse."
+
+"Are you going to do all the things that your grandfather did?"
+
+He was aware of her quick smile. He smiled back.
+
+"Perhaps. I might do worse. He made great cures with his calomel and his
+catnip tea."
+
+"Did you cure your patient with catnip tea?"
+
+"Last night? No. It was a child. Measles. I told the rest of the family
+to stay away from school."
+
+"It is probably too late. They will all have it."
+
+"Have you?"
+
+"No. I am never sick."
+
+Her good health seemed to him another goddess attribute. Goddesses were
+never ill. They lived eternally with lovely smiles.
+
+He felt this morning that the world was his. He had been called up the
+night before by a man in whose household there had been a tradition of
+the skill of Richard's grandfather. There had been the memory, too, in
+the minds of the older ones of the days when that other doctor had
+thundered up the road to succor and to save. It was a proud moment in
+their lives when they gave to Richard Tyson's grandson his first patient.
+They felt that Providence in sending sickness upon them had imposed not a
+penance but a privilege.
+
+Richard had known of their pride and had been touched by it, and with the
+glow of their gratitude still upon him, he had trudged down the snowy
+road and had met Anne Warfield!
+
+"You'd better let me come and look over your pupils," he had said to her
+as they parted; "we don't want an epidemic!"
+
+He was to come at the noon recess. Anne, anticipating his visit, was
+quite thrillingly emphatic in her history lesson. Not that history had
+anything to do with measles, but she felt fired by his example to do her
+best.
+
+She loved to teach history, and she had a lesson not only for her
+children, but for herself. She was much ashamed of her mood of Sunday. It
+had been easy enough this morning to talk to Richard; and with Evelyn
+away, clothes had seemed to sink to their proper significance. And if she
+had waited on the table she had at least done it well.
+
+Her exposition gained emphasis, therefore, from her state of mind.
+
+"In this beautiful land of ours," she said, "all men are free--and equal.
+You mustn't think this means that all of you will have the same amount of
+money or the same kind of clothes, or the same things to eat, or even the
+same kind of minds. But I think it means that you ought all to have the
+same kind of consciences. You ought to be equal in right doing. And in
+love of country. You ought to know when war is righteous, and when peace
+is righteous. And you can all be equal in this, that no man can make you
+lie or steal or be a coward."
+
+Thus she inspired them. Thus she saw them thrill as she had herself been
+thrilled. And that was her reward. For in her school were not only the
+little Johns and the little Thomases and the little Richards--she found
+herself quite suddenly understanding why there were so many
+Richards--there were also the little Ottos and the little Ulrics and the
+little Wilhelms, and there was Francois, whose mother went out to sew by
+the day, and there were Raphael and Alessandro and Simon. Out from the
+big cities had come the parents of these children, seeking the land,
+usurping the places of the old American stock, doing what had been left
+undone in the way of sowing and planting and reaping, making the little
+gardens yield as they had never yielded, even in those wonder days before
+the war.
+
+It was Anne Warfield's task to train the children of the newcomers to the
+American ideal. With the blood in her of statesmen and of soldiers it
+was given to her to pass on the tradition of good citizenship. She was,
+indeed, a torch-bearer, lighting the way to love of country. Yet for a
+little while she had forgotten it.
+
+She had cried because she could not wear rose-color!
+
+But now her head was high again, and when Richard came she showed him her
+school, and he shook hands first with the little girls and then with the
+little boys, and he looked down their throats, and asked them questions,
+and joked and prodded and took their temperature, and he did it all in
+such happy fashion that not even the littlest one was afraid.
+
+And when Richard was ready to go, he said to her, "I'll look after their
+bodies if you'll look after their minds," and as she watched him walk
+away, she had a tingling sense that they had formed a compact which had
+to do with things above and beyond the commonplace.
+
+It began to snow in the afternoon, and it was snowing hard when the
+school day ended. Eric Brand came for Anne and Peggy in the funny little
+station carriage which was kept at Bower's. Eric and Anne sat on the
+front seat with Peggy between them. The fat mare, Daisy, jogged placidly
+along the still white road. There was a top to the carriage, but the snow
+sifted in, so Anne wrapped Peggy in an old shawl.
+
+"I don't need anything," she said, when Eric offered her a heavier
+covering. "I love it--like this----"
+
+Eric Brand was big and blond and somewhat slow in his movements. But he
+had brains and held the position of telegraph operator at Bower's
+Station. He had, too, a heart of romance. The day before he had seen
+Evelyn toss the rose to Richard, and he had found it later where Richard
+had dropped it. He had picked it up, and had put it in water. It had
+seemed to him that the flower must feel the slight which had been put
+upon it.
+
+He spoke now to Anne of Richard. "They say he is a good doctor."
+
+"I can't see why he came here."
+
+"His mother wanted him to come. She hates the city. She went there as a
+bride. Her husband was rich, but he was always speculating. Sometimes
+they were so poor that she had to do her own work, and sometimes they had
+a half dozen servants. But they never had a home. And then all at once he
+lost other people's money as well as his own--and he killed himself----"
+
+She turned on him her startled eyes. "Richard's father?"
+
+"Yes. And after that young Brooks decided that as soon as he finished his
+medical course he would come here. He thinks that he came because he
+wanted to come. But he won't stay."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"You saw his friends. And the women. Some day he'll go back and marry
+that girl----"
+
+"Evelyn Chesley?"
+
+"Is that her name? She threw him a rose;" he forgot to tell her that he
+had seen it fade.
+
+They had reached the stable garage. Diogenes welcomed them from his warm
+corner. The old dog Mamie who had followed the carriage shook the snow
+from her coat and flopped down on the floor to rest. The little horse
+Daisy steamed and whinnied. It was a homely scene of sheltered creatures
+in comfortable quarters. Anne knelt down by the old drake, and he bent
+his head under her caressing hand. Her face was grave. Eric, watching
+her, asked; "Has it been a hard day?"
+
+"No;" but she found herself suddenly tired.
+
+She went in with Eric presently. They had a good hot supper, and Anne was
+hungry. Gathered around the table were Peter and his wife, Beulah and
+Eric, with Peggy rounding out the half dozen. Geoffrey Fox had gone to
+town to get his belongings.
+
+Anne had a vision of Richard and his mother in the big house. At their
+table would be lovely linen and shining silver, and some little formality
+of service. She felt that she belonged to people like that. She had
+nothing in common with Peter and his wife and with Eric Brand. Nor with
+Beulah.
+
+Beulah was planning a little party for the evening. There was to have
+been skating, but the warmer weather and the snow had made that
+impossible.
+
+"I don't know just what I'll do with them," she said; "we might have
+games."
+
+"Anne knows a lot of things." This from Peggy, who was busy with her
+bread and milk.
+
+"What things?"
+
+"Oh, dancing----"
+
+Anne flushed. "Peggy!"
+
+"But we do. We make bows like this----"
+
+Peggy slid out of her chair and bobbed for them--a most entrancing little
+curtsey, with all her curls flying.
+
+"And the boys do this." She was quite stiff as she showed them how the
+little boys bowed.
+
+Anne seemed to feel some need of defense. "Well, they must learn
+manners."
+
+Peggy, wound up, would not be interrupted. "We dance like this," and away
+she went in a mad gallop.
+
+Anne laughed. "It warms their blood when the fire won't burn. Peggy, it
+isn't quite as bad as that. Show them nicely."
+
+So Peggy showed them some pretty steps, and then came back to her bread
+and milk.
+
+"We might dance." Beulah's mind was on her party. "But some of them don't
+know how."
+
+Anne offered no suggestions. She really might have helped if she had
+cared to do it. But she did not care.
+
+When she had finished supper, Eric followed her into the hall. "You'll
+come down, won't you?"
+
+"I'm not sure."
+
+"Beulah would like it if you would."
+
+"I have a lot of things to do."
+
+"Let them go. You can always work. When you hear the fire roaring up the
+chimney, you will know that it is calling to you, 'Come down, come
+down!'"
+
+He stood and watched her as she climbed the stairs. Then he went back and
+helped Beulah.
+
+Beulah was really very pretty, and to-night her cheeks were pink as she
+made her little plans with him.
+
+He gave himself pleasantly to her guidance. He moved the furniture for
+her into the big front room, so that there would be a space for dancing.
+And presently it became not a sanctum for staid Old Gentlemen, but a
+gathering place for youth and joy.
+
+Eric made his rounds before the company came. He looked after the dogs in
+the kennels and at Daisy in her stall. He flashed his lantern into
+Diogenes' dark corner and saw the old drake at rest.
+
+The snow was whirling in a blinding storm when at last he staggered in
+with a great log for the fire, and with a basket of cones to make the air
+sweet. And it was as he knelt to put the cones on the fire that Anne came
+in and stood beside him.
+
+She had swept up her hair in the new way from her forehead. She wore
+white silk stockings and little flat-heeled black slippers, and a
+flounced white frock. She was not in the least in fashion, but she was
+quaintly childish and altogether lovely.
+
+The big man looked up at her. "You look nice in that dress."
+
+She smiled down at him. "I'm glad you like it, Eric."
+
+When the young belles and beauties of the countryside came in later, Anne
+found herself quite eclipsed by their blooming charms. The young men,
+knowing her as the school-teacher, were afraid of her brains. They talked
+to her stiffly, and left her as soon as possible for the easier society
+of girls of their own kind. Peggy sat with Anne on the big settle beside
+the fire. The child's hand was hot, and she seemed sleepy.
+
+"My eyes hurt," she said, crossly.
+
+"You ought to be in bed, Peggy; shall I take you?"
+
+"No. There's going to be an oyster stew. Daddy said I might sit up."
+
+Beulah in pink and very important came over to them. "Could you show us
+some of the dances, Anne?"
+
+"Oh, Beulah, can't they play games?"
+
+"I think you might help us." Beulah's tone was slightly petulant.
+
+Anne stood up. "There's a march I taught the children. We could begin
+with that."
+
+She led the march with Eric. Behind her was the loud laughter of the
+brawny young men, the loud laughter of the blooming young women. Their
+merriment sounded a different note from that struck by the genial Old
+Gentlemen or by the gay group of young folk from New York. What was the
+difference? Training? Birth?
+
+Anne felt suddenly much alone. She had not belonged to Evelyn Chesley's
+crowd, she did not belong with Beulah's friends. She wondered if she
+really belonged anywhere.
+
+Yet as her mind went over and over these things, her little slippered
+feet led the march. Eric was not awkward, and he fell easily into the
+step.
+
+"How nicely we do it together," he said, and beamed down on her, and
+because her heart was really a kind little heart and a womanly one, she
+smiled up at him and tried to be as fine and friendly as she would have
+wanted her children to be.
+
+After the dance, the young folks played old-fashioned games--"Going to
+Jerusalem" and "Post Office." Anne fled to the settle when the last game
+was announced. Peggy was moping among the cushions.
+
+"Let me take you up to bed, dearie."
+
+"No, I won't. I want to stay here."
+
+The fun was fast and furious. Anne had a little shivery feeling as she
+watched the girls go out into the hall and come back blushing. How could
+they give so lightly what seemed to her so sacred? A woman's lips were
+for her lover.
+
+She sat very still among the cushions. The fire roared up the chimney.
+Outside the wind blew; far away in the distance a dog barked.
+
+The barking dog was young Toby. At the heels of his master he was headed
+straight for the long low house and the grateful shelter of its warmth.
+
+Richard stood for a moment on the porch, looking in through the lighted
+window. A romping game was in full progress. This time it was "Drop the
+Handkerchief" and a plump and pretty girl was having a tussle with her
+captor. Everybody was shouting, clapping. Everybody? On an old settle by
+the fire sat a slim girl in a white gown. Peggy lay in the curve of her
+arm, and she was looking down at Peggy.
+
+Richard laughed a big laugh. He could not have told why he laughed, but
+he flung the door open, and stood there radiant.
+
+"May I come in?" he demanded of Beulah, "or will I break up your party?"
+
+"Oh, Dr. Brooks, as if you could. We are so glad to have you."
+
+"I had a sick call, and we are half frozen, Toby and I, and we saw the
+lights----"
+
+Now the best place for a half-frozen man is by the fire, and the best
+place for an anxious and shivering dog is in a warm chimney corner, so
+in a moment the young dog Toby was where he could thaw out in a luxurious
+content, and Richard was on the settle beside Anne, and was saying,
+"Isn't this great? Do you think I ought to stay? I'm not really invited,
+you know."
+
+"There's never any formality. Everybody just comes."
+
+"I like your frock," he said suddenly. "You remind me of a little
+porcelain figure I saw in a Fifth Avenue window not long ago."
+
+"Tell me about it," she said with eagerness.
+
+"About what?"
+
+"New York and the shops. Oh, I saw them once. They were like--Heaven."
+
+She laughed up at him as she said it, and he laughed back.
+
+"You'd get tired of them if you lived there."
+
+"I should never get tired. And if I had money I'd go on in and try on
+everything. I saw a picture of a gown I'd like--all silver spangles with
+a pointed train. Do you know I've never worn a train? I should like
+one--and a big fan with feathers."
+
+He shook his head. "Trains wouldn't suit your style. Nor big fans. You
+ought to have a little fan--of sandalwood, with a purple and green tassel
+and smelling sweet. Mother says that her mother carried a fan like that
+at a White House ball."
+
+"I've never been to a ball."
+
+"Well, you needn't want to go. It's a cram and a jam and everybody bored
+to death."
+
+"I shouldn't be bored. I should love it."
+
+His eyes were on the fire. And presently he said, "It seems queer to be
+away from it--New York. There's something about it that gets into your
+blood. You want it--as you do--drink."
+
+"Then you'll be going back."
+
+He jerked around to look at her. "No," sharply; "what makes you say
+that?"
+
+"Because--it--it doesn't seem possible that you could be--buried--here."
+
+"Do you feel buried?"
+
+She nodded. "Oh, yes."
+
+His face was grave. "And doesn't the school work--help?"
+
+She caught her breath. "That's the best part of it. You see I love--the
+children."
+
+He flashed a quick glance at her. "Then you're lonely sometimes?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I fancy these people aren't exactly--your kind. I wish you'd come and
+see my mother. She's awfully worth while, you know. And she'd be so glad
+to have you."
+
+She found herself saying, "My grandmother was Cynthia Warfield. She knew
+your grandfather. I have some old letters. I think your mother might like
+to see them."
+
+"No wonder I've been puzzling over you! Cynthia Warfield's portrait hangs
+in our library. And you're like your grandmother. Only you're young
+and--alive."
+
+Again his ringing laugh and her own to meet it. She felt so young and
+happy. So very, very young, and so very, very happy!
+
+Mrs. Bower, appearing importantly, announced supper. Beyond the hall,
+through the open door of the dining-room they could see the loaded table
+with the tureens of steaming oysters at each end.
+
+There was at once a rollicking stampede.
+
+Anne leaned down to wake Peggy. The child opened her heavy eyes, and
+murmured: "I want a drink."
+
+Richard glanced at her. "Hello, hello," he said, quickly. "What's the
+matter, Pussy?"
+
+"I'm not Pussy--I'm Peggy." The child was ready for tears.
+
+He picked her up in his arms and carried her to the light. With careful
+finger he lifted the heavy eyelids and touched the hot little cheeks.
+"How long has she been this way?" he asked Anne.
+
+"Just since supper. Is there anything the matter with her? Is she really
+sick, Dr. Brooks?"
+
+"Measles," he said succinctly. "You'd better get her straight to bed."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+_In Which a Gray Plush Pussy Cat Supplies a Theme._
+
+
+ANNE at the top of the stairs talked to Geoffrey Fox at the foot.
+
+"But you really ought not to stay."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because if you haven't had the measles you might get them, and, besides,
+poor Mrs. Bower is so busy."
+
+"Why not tell me the truth? You don't want me to stay."
+
+"What difference can it possibly make to me?"
+
+"It may make a great difference," Geoffrey said, quietly, "whether I go
+or stay, but we won't talk of that. I am here. All my traps, bag and
+baggage, typewriter and trunks--books and bathrobe--and yet you want to
+send me away."
+
+"I haven't anything to do with it. But the house is closed to every one."
+
+"And everything smells of antiseptics. I rather like that. I spent six
+weeks in a hospital once. I had a nervous breakdown, and the quiet was
+heavenly, and all the nurses were angels."
+
+She would not smile. "Of course if you will stay," she said, "you must
+take things as they come. Mrs. Bower will send your meals up to you. She
+won't have time to set a company table."
+
+"I'm not company; let me eat with the rest of you."
+
+She hesitated. "You wouldn't like it. I don't like it. There's no
+service, you see--we all just help ourselves."
+
+"I can help myself."
+
+She shook her head. "It will be easier for Mrs. Bower to bring it up."
+
+He climbed three steps and stopped. "Are you going to do all the
+nursing?"
+
+"I shall do some of it. Peggy is really ill. There are complications. And
+Mrs. Bower and Beulah have so much to do. We shall have to close the
+school. Dr. Brooks wants to save as many as possible from having it."
+
+"So Brooks is handling Peggy's case."
+
+"Of course. Peter Bower knew his grandfather."
+
+"Well, it is something to have a grandfather. And to follow in his
+footsteps."
+
+But her mind was not on grandfathers. "Dr. Brooks will be here in an hour
+and I must get Peggy's room ready. And will you please look after
+yourself for a little while? Eric will attend to your trunks."
+
+It took Geoffrey all the morning to settle. He heard Richard come and
+go. At noon Anne brought up his tray.
+
+Opening the door to her knock, he protested. "You shouldn't have done
+it."
+
+"Why not? It is all in the day's work. And I am not going to be silly
+about it any more."
+
+"You were never silly about it."
+
+"Yes, I was. But I have worked it all out in my mind. My bringing up the
+tray to you won't make me any less than I am or any more. It is the way
+we feel about ourselves that counts--not what other people think of us."
+
+"So you don't care what I think of you?"
+
+"No, not if I am doing the things I think are right."
+
+"And you don't care what Richard Brooks thinks?"
+
+The color mounted. "No," steadily.
+
+"Nor Miss Chesley?"
+
+"Of course not."
+
+"Not of course. You do care. You'd hate it if you thought they'd
+criticize. And you'd cry after you went to bed."
+
+She felt that such clairvoyance was uncanny. "I wouldn't cry."
+
+"Well, you'd feel like it."
+
+"Please don't talk about me in that way. It really doesn't make any
+difference how I feel, does it? And your lunch is getting cold."
+
+"What made you bring it? Why didn't you let Mrs. Bower or Beulah?"
+
+"Mrs. Bower is lying down, and Beulah has been ironing all the morning."
+
+"The next time call me, and I'll wait upon myself."
+
+"Perhaps I shall." She surveyed his tray. "I've forgotten the cream for
+your coffee."
+
+"I don't take cream. Oh, please don't go. I want you to see my books and
+my other belongings."
+
+He had brought dozens of books, a few pictures, a little gilded Chinese
+god, a bronze bust of Napoleon.
+
+"Everything has a reason for being dragged around with me. That etching
+of Helleu's is like my little sister, Mimi, who is at school in a
+convent, and who constitutes my whole family. The gilded Chinese god is a
+mascot--the Napoleon intrigues the imagination."
+
+"Do you think so much of Napoleon?" coldly. "He was a little great man.
+I'd rather talk to my children of George Washington."
+
+"You women have a grudge against him because of Josephine."
+
+"Yes. He killed something in himself when he put her from him. And the
+world knew it, and his downfall began. He forgot that love is the
+greatest thing in the world."
+
+How lovely she was, all fire and feeling!
+
+"Jove," he said, staring, "if you could write, you'd make people sit up
+and listen. You've kept your dreams. That's what the world wants--the
+stuff that dreams are made of. And most of us have lost ours by the time
+we know how to put things on paper."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For days the sound of Geoffrey's typewriter could be heard in the hall.
+"Does it disturb Peggy?" he asked Anne late one night as he met her on
+the stairs.
+
+"No; her room is too far away. You were so good to send her the lovely
+toys. She adores the plush pussy cat."
+
+"I like cats. They are coy--and caressing. Dogs are too frankly adoring."
+
+"The eternal masculine." She smiled at him. "Is your work coming on?"
+
+"I have a first chapter. May I read it to you?"
+
+"Please--I should love it."
+
+She was glad to sit quietly by the big fireplace. With eyes half-closed,
+she listened to the opening sentences. But as he proceeded, her
+listlessness vanished. And when he laid down the manuscript she was
+leaning forward, her slim hands clasped tensely on her knees, her eyes
+wide with interest.
+
+"Oh, oh," she told him, "how do you know it all--how can you make them
+live and breathe--like that?"
+
+For a moment he did not answer, then he said, "I don't know how I do it.
+No artist knows how he creates. It is like Life and Death--and other
+miracles. If I could keep to this pace, I'd have a masterpiece. But I
+shan't keep to it."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I never do."
+
+"But this time--with such a beginning."
+
+"Will you be my critic, Mistress Anne? Let me read to you now and
+then--like this?"
+
+"I am afraid I should spoil you with praise. It all seems so--wonderful."
+
+"You can't spoil me, and I like to be wonderful."
+
+In spite of his egotism, she found herself modifying her first
+unfavorable estimate of him. His quick eager speech, his mobile mouth,
+his mop of dark hair, his white restless hands, his long-lashed
+near-sighted eyes, these contributed a personality which had in it
+nothing commonplace or conventional.
+
+For three nights he read to her. On the fourth he had nothing to read.
+"It is the same old story," he burst out passionately. "I see mountain
+peaks, then, suddenly, darkness falls and my brain is blank."
+
+"Wait a little," she told him; "it will come back."
+
+"But it never comes back. All of my good beginnings flat out toward the
+end. And that's why I'm pot-boiling, because," bitterly, "I am not big
+enough for anything else."
+
+"You mustn't say such things. We achieve only as we believe in ourselves.
+Don't you know that? If you believe that things are going to end badly,
+they will end badly."
+
+"Oh, wise little school-teacher, how do you know?"
+
+"It is what I teach my children. That they must believe in themselves."
+
+"What else do you teach them?"
+
+"That they must believe in God and love their country, and then nothing
+can happen to them that they cannot bear. It is only when one loses faith
+and hope that life doesn't seem worth while."
+
+"And do you believe all that you teach?"
+
+Silence. She was gazing into the fire thoughtfully. "I believe it, but I
+don't always live up to it. That's the hard part, acting up the things
+that we believe. I tell my children that, and I tell them, too, that they
+must always keep on trying."
+
+She was delicious with her theories and her seriousness. And she was
+charming in the crisp blue gown that had been her uniform since the
+beginning of Peggy's illness.
+
+He laughed and leaned toward her. "Oh, Mistress Anne, Mistress Anne, how
+much you have to learn."
+
+She stood up. "Perhaps I know more than you think."
+
+"Are you angry because I said that? But I love your arguments."
+
+His frankness was irresistible; she could not take offense so she sat
+down again.
+
+"Perhaps," she said, hesitating, "you might understand better how I feel
+if I told you about my Great-uncle Rodman Warfield. When he was very
+young he went to Paris to study art, and he attracted much attention.
+Then after a while he began to find the people interested him more than
+pictures. You see we come from old Maryland stock. My grandmother,
+Cynthia Warfield, was one of the proudest women in Carroll. But Uncle
+Rodman doesn't believe in family pride, not the kind that sticks its nose
+in the air; and so when he came back to America he resolved to devote his
+talents to glorifying the humble. He lived among the poor and he painted
+pictures of them. And then one day there was an accident. He saved a
+woman from drowning between a ferry-boat and the slip, and he hurt his
+back. There was a sort of paralysis that affected the nerves of his
+hand--and he couldn't paint any more. He came to us--when I was a little
+girl. My father was dead, and mother had a small income. We couldn't
+afford servants, so mother sewed and Uncle Rod and I did the housework.
+And it was he who tried to teach me that work is the one royal thing in
+our lives."
+
+"Where is he now?"
+
+"When mother died our income was cut off, and--I had to leave him. He
+could have a home with a cousin of ours and teach her children. I might
+have stayed with her, but there was nothing for me to do. And we felt
+that it was best for me to--find myself. So I came here. He writes to
+me--every day----" She drew a long breath. "I don't think I could live
+without letters from my Uncle Rod."
+
+"So you are really a princess in disguise, and you would love to stick
+your nose in the air, but you don't quite dare?"
+
+"I shouldn't love to do anything snobbish."
+
+"There is no use in pretending that you are humble when you are not. And
+your Great-uncle Rodman is a dreamer. Life is what it is, not what we
+want it to be."
+
+"I like his dreams," she said, simply, "and I want to be as good as he
+thinks I am."
+
+"You don't have to be too good. You are too pretty. Do you know that
+Cynthia Warfield's granddaughter is a great beauty, Mistress Anne?"
+
+"I know that I don't like to have you say such things to me."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I am not sure that you mean them."
+
+"But I do mean them," eagerly.
+
+"Perhaps," stiffly, "but we won't talk about it. I must go up to Peggy."
+
+Peter Bower was with Peggy. He was a round and red-faced Peter with the
+kindest heart in the world. And Peggy was the apple of his eye.
+
+"Do you think she is better, Miss Anne?"
+
+"Indeed I do. And now you go and get some sleep, Mr. Bower. I'll stay
+with her until four, and then I'll wake Beulah."
+
+He left her with the daily paper and a new magazine, and with the light
+shaded, Anne sat down to read. Peggy was sleeping soundly with both arms
+around the plush pussy which Geoffrey had given her. It was a most
+lifelike pussy, gray-striped with green glass eyes and with a little red
+mouth that opened and mewed when you pulled a string. Hung by a ribbon
+around the pussy cat's neck was a little brass bell. As the child stirred
+in her sleep the little bell tinkled. There was no sound except the
+sighing of the wind. All the house was still.
+
+The paper was full of news of the great war. Anne read it carefully, and
+the articles on the same subject in the magazine. She felt that she must
+know as much as possible, so that she might speak to her children
+intelligently of the great conflict. Of Belgium and England, of France
+and Germany. She must be fair, with all those clear eyes focussed upon
+her. She must, indeed, attempt a sort of neutrality. But how could she be
+neutral, with her soul burning candles on the altar of the allies?
+
+As she read on and on in the silence of the night, there came to her the
+thought of the dead on the field of battle. What of those shining souls?
+What happened after men went out into the Great Beyond? Hun and Norman,
+Saxon and Slav, among the shadows were they all at Peace?
+
+Again the child stirred and the little bell tinkled. It seemed to Anne
+that the bell and the staring eyes were symbolic. The gay world played
+its foolish music and looked with unseeing eyes upon murder and madness.
+If little Peggy had lain there dead, the little bell would still have
+tinkled, the wide green eyes would still have stared.
+
+But Peggy, thank God, was alive. Her face, like old ivory against the
+whiteness of her pillow, showed the ravages of illness, but the doctor
+had said she was out of danger.
+
+The child stirred and spoke. "Anne," she whispered, "tell me about the
+bears."
+
+Anne knelt beside the bed. "We must be very quiet," she said. "I don't
+want to wake Beulah."
+
+So very softly she told the story. Of the Daddy Bear and the Mother Bear
+and the Baby Bear; of the little House in the Woods; of Goldilocks, the
+three bowls of soup, the three chairs, the three beds----
+
+In the midst of it all Peggy sat up. "I want a bowl of soup like the
+little bear."
+
+"But, darling, you've had your lovely supper."
+
+"I don't care." Peggy's lip quivered. "I'm just starved, and I can't wait
+until I have my breakfast."
+
+"Let me tell you the rest of the story."
+
+"No. I don't want to hear it. I want a bowl of soup like the little
+bear's."
+
+"Maybe it wasn't nice soup, Peggy."
+
+"But you _said_ it was. You said that the Mother Bear made it out of the
+corn from the farmer's field, and the cock that the fox brought, and she
+seasoned it with herbs that she found at the edge of the forest. You said
+yourself it was _dee-licious_ soup, Miss Anne."
+
+She began to cry weakly.
+
+"Dearie, don't. If I go down into the kitchen and warm some broth will
+you keep very still?"
+
+"Yes. Only I don't want just broth. I want soup like the little bear
+had."
+
+"Peggy, I am not a fairy godmother. I can't wave my wand and get things
+in the middle of the night."
+
+"Well, anyhow, you can put it in a blue bowl, you _said_ the little bear
+had his in a blue bowl, and you said he had ten crackers in it. I want
+ten crackers----"
+
+The kitchen was warm and shadowy, with the light of a kerosene lamp above
+the cook-stove. Anne flitted about noiselessly, finding a little
+saucepan, finding a little blue bowl, breaking one cracker into ten bits
+to satisfy the insistent Peggy, stirring the bubbling broth with a spoon
+as she bent above it.
+
+And as she stirred, she was thinking of Geoffrey Fox, not as she had
+thought of Richard, with pulses throbbing and heart fluttering, but
+calmly; of his book and of the little bust of Napoleon, and of the
+things that she had been reading about the war.
+
+She poured the soup out of the saucepan, and set it steaming on a low
+tray. Then quietly she ascended the stairs. Geoffrey's door was wide open
+and his room was empty, but through the dimness of the long hall she
+discerned his figure, outlined against a wide window at the end. Back of
+him the world under the light of the waning moon showed black and white
+like a great wash drawing.
+
+He turned as she came toward him. "I heard you go down," he said. "I've
+been writing all night--and I've written--perfect rot." His hands went
+out in a despairing gesture.
+
+Composed and quiet in her crisp linen, she looked up at him. "Write about
+the war," she said; "take three soldiers,--French, German and English.
+Make their hearts hot with hatred, and then--let them lie wounded
+together on the field of battle in the darkness of the night--with death
+ahead--and let each one tell his story--let them be drawn together by the
+knowledge of a common lot--a common destiny----"
+
+"What made you think of that?" he demanded.
+
+"Peggy's pussy cat." She told him of the staring eyes and the tinkling
+bell. "But I mustn't stay. Peggy is waiting for her soup."
+
+He gazed at her with admiration. "How do you do it?"
+
+"Do what?"
+
+"Dictate a heaven-born plot to me in one breath, and speak of Peggy's
+soup in the next. You are like Werther's Charlotte."
+
+"I am like myself. And we mustn't stay here talking. It is time we were
+both in bed. I am going to wake Beulah when I have fed Peggy."
+
+He made a motion of salute. "The princess serves," he said, laughing.
+
+But as she passed on, calm and cool and collected, carrying the tray
+before her like the famous Chocolate lady on the backs of magazines, the
+laugh died on his lips. She was not to be laughed at, this little Anne
+Warfield, who held her head so high!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+_In Which Geoffrey Writes of Soldiers and Their Souls._
+
+
+EVE CHESLEY writing from New York was still in a state of rebellion.
+
+"And now they all have the _measles_. Richard, it needed only your letter
+to let me know what you have done to yourself. When I think of you,
+tearing around the country on your old white horse, with your ears tied
+up--I am sure you tie up your ears--it is a perfect nightmare. Oh, Dicky
+Boy, and you might be here specializing on appendicitis or something
+equally reasonable and modern. I feel as if the world were upside down.
+Do children in New York ever have the measles? Somehow I never hear of
+it. It seems to me almost archaic--like mumps. Nobody in society ever has
+the mumps, or if they do, they keep it a dead secret, like a family
+skeleton, or a hard-working grandfather.
+
+"Your letters are so short, and they don't tell me what you do with your
+evenings. Don't you miss us? Don't you miss me? And our good times? And
+the golden lights of the city? Winifred Ames wants you for a dinner dance
+on the twentieth. Can't you turn the measley kiddies over to some one
+else and come? Say 'yes,' Dicky, dear. Oh, you musn't be just a country
+doctor. You were born for bigger things, and some day you will see it and
+be sorry."
+
+Richard's letter, dashed off between visits to the "measley kiddies," was
+as follows:
+
+"There aren't any bigger things, Eve, and I shan't be sorry. I can't get
+away just now, and to be frank, I don't want to. There is nothing dull
+about measles. They have aspects of interest unknown to a dinner dance. I
+am not saying that I don't miss some of the things that I have left
+behind--my good friends--you and Pip and the Dutton-Ames. But there are
+compensations. And you should see my horse. He's a heavy fellow like a
+horse of Flanders; I call him Ben because he is big and gentle. I don't
+tie up my ears, but I should if I wanted to. And please don't think I am
+ungrateful because I am not coming to the Dutton-Ames dance. Why don't
+you and the rest drift down here for a week-end? Next Friday, the Friday
+after? Let me know. There's good skating now that the snows have
+stopped."
+
+He signed it and sealed it and on the way to see little Peggy he dropped
+it into the box. Then he entirely forgot it. It was a wonderful morning,
+with a sky like sapphire above a white world, the dog Toby racing ahead
+of him, and big gentle Ben at a trot.
+
+At the innocent word "compensations" Evelyn Chesley pricked up her ears.
+What compensations? She got Philip Meade on the telephone.
+
+"Richard has asked us for the week-end, Pip. Could we go in your car?"
+
+"Unless it snows again. But why seek such solitudes, Eve?"
+
+"I want to take Richard a fur cap. I am sure he ties up his ears."
+
+"Send it."
+
+"In a cold-blooded parcel post package? I will not. Pip, if you won't go,
+I'll kidnap Aunt Maude, and carry her off by train."
+
+"And leave me out? Not much. 'Whither thou goest----'"
+
+"Even when I am on the trail of another man? Pip, you are a dear idiot."
+
+"The queen's fool."
+
+So it was decided that on Friday, weather permitting, they should go.
+
+Aunt Maude, protesting, said, "It isn't proper, Eve. Girls in my day
+didn't go running around after men. They sat at home and waited."
+
+"Why wait, dearest? When I see a good thing I go for it."
+
+"Eve----!"
+
+"And anyhow I am not running after Dicky. I am rescuing him."
+
+"From what?"
+
+"From his mother, dearest, and his own dreams. Their heads are in the
+clouds, and they don't know it."
+
+"I think myself that Nancy is making a mistake."
+
+"More of a mistake than she understands." The lightness left Eve's voice.
+She was silent as she ate an orange and drank a cup of clear coffee.
+Eve's fashionable and adorable thinness was the result of abstinence and
+of exercise. Facing daily Aunt Maude's plumpness, she had sacrificed ease
+and appetite on the altar of grace and beauty.
+
+Yet Aunt Maude's plumpness was not the plumpness of inelegance. Nothing
+about Aunt Maude was inelegant. She was of ancient Knickerbocker stock.
+She had been petrified by years of social exclusiveness into something
+less amiable than her curves and dimples promised. Her hair was gray, and
+not much of it was her own. Her curled bang and high coronet braid were
+held flatly against her head by a hair net. She wore always certain
+chains and bracelets which proclaimed the family's past prosperity. Her
+present prosperity was evidenced by the somewhat severe richness of her
+attire. Her complexion was delicately yellow and her wrinkles were deep.
+Her eyes were light blue and coldly staring. In manner she seemed to set
+herself against any world but her own.
+
+The money on which the two women lived was Aunt Maude's. She expected to
+make Eve her heir. In the meantime she gave her a generous allowance and
+indulged most of her whims.
+
+The latest whim was the new breakfast room in which they now sat, with
+the winter sun streaming through the small panes of a wide south window.
+
+For sixty odd years Aunt Maude had eaten her breakfast promptly at eight
+from a tray in her own room. It had been a hearty breakfast of hot breads
+and chops. At one she had lunched decently in the long dim dining-room in
+a mid-Victorian atmosphere of Moquet and marble mantels, carved walnut
+and plush curtains.
+
+And now back of this sacred dining-room Eve had built out a structure of
+glass and of stone, looking over a scrap of enclosed city garden, and
+furnished in black and white, relieved by splashes of brilliant color.
+Aunt Maude hated the green parrot and the flame-colored fishes in the
+teakwood aquarium. She thought that Eve looked like an actress in the
+little jacket with the apple-green ribbons which she wore when she came
+down at twelve.
+
+"Aren't we ever going to eat any more luncheons?" had been Aunt Maude's
+plaintive question when she realized that she was in the midst of a
+gastronomic revolution.
+
+"Nobody does, dearest. If you are really up-to-date you breakfast and
+dine--the other meals are vague--illusory."
+
+"People in my time----" Aunt Maude had stated.
+
+"People in your time," Evelyn had interrupted flippantly, "were wise and
+good. Nobody wants to be wise and good in these days. We want to be smart
+and sophisticated. Your good old stuffy dining-rooms were like your good
+old stuffy consciences. Now my breakfast room is symbolic--the green and
+white for the joy of living, and the black for my sins."
+
+She stood up on tiptoe to feed the parrot. "To-morrow," she announced, "I
+am to have a black cat. I found one at the cat show--with green eyes. And
+I am going to match his cushion to his eyes."
+
+"I'd like a cat," Aunt Maude said, unexpectedly, "but I can't say that I
+care for black ones. The grays are the best mousers."
+
+Eve looked at her reproachfully. "Do you think that cats catch mice?" she
+demanded,--"up-to-date cats? They sit on cushions and add emphasis to the
+color scheme. Winifred Ames has a yellow one to go with her primrose
+panels."
+
+The telephone rang. A maid answered it. "It is for you, Miss Evelyn."
+
+"It is Pip," Eve said, as she turned from the telephone; "he's coming
+up."
+
+Aunt Maude surveyed her. "You're not going to receive him as you are?"
+
+"As I am? Why not?"
+
+"Eve, go to your room and put something _on_," Aunt Maude agonized; "when
+I was a girl----"
+
+Evelyn dropped a kiss on her cheek. "When you were a girl, Aunt Maude,
+you were very pretty, and you wore very low necks and short sleeves on
+the street, and short dresses--and--and----"
+
+Remembering the family album, Aunt Maude stopped her hastily. "It doesn't
+make any difference what I wore. You are not going to receive any
+gentleman in that ridiculous jacket."
+
+Eve surveyed herself in an oval mirror set above a console-table. "I
+think I look rather nice. And Pip would like me in anything. Aunt Maude,
+it's a queer world for us women. The men that we want don't want us, and
+the men that we don't want adore us. The emancipation of women will come
+when they can ask men to marry them."
+
+She was ruffling the feathers on the green parrot's head. He caught her
+finger carefully in his claw and crooned.
+
+Aunt Maude rose. "I had twenty proposals--your uncle's was the twentieth.
+I loved him at first sight, and I loved him until he left me."
+
+"Uncle was a dear," Eve agreed, "but suppose he hadn't asked you, Aunt
+Maude?"
+
+"I should have remained single to the end of my days."
+
+"Oh, no, you wouldn't, Aunt Maude. You would have married the wrong
+man--that's the way it always ends--if women didn't marry the wrong men
+half the world would be old maids."
+
+Philip Meade was much in love. He had money, family, good looks and
+infinite patience. Some day he meant to marry Eve. But he was aware that
+she was not yet in love with him.
+
+She came down gowned for the street. And thus kept him waiting. "It was
+Aunt Maude's fault. She made me dress. Pip, where shall we walk?"
+
+He did not care. He cared only to be with her. He told her so, and she
+smiled up at him wistfully. "You're such a dear--I wish----"
+
+She stopped.
+
+"What do you wish?" he asked eagerly.
+
+"For the--sun. You are the moon. May I call you my moon-man, Pip?"
+
+He knew what she meant "Yes. But you must remember that some day I shall
+not be content to take second place--I shall fight for the head of your
+line of lovers."
+
+"Line of lovers--_Pip_. I don't like the sound of it."
+
+"Why not? It's true."
+
+Again she was wistful. "I wonder how many of them really--care? Pip, it
+is the one-proposal girl who is lucky. She has no problems. She simply
+takes the man she can get!"
+
+They were swinging along Fifth Avenue. He stopped at a flower shop and
+bought her a tight little knot of yellow roses which matched her hair.
+She was in brown velvet with brown boots and brown furs. Her skin showed
+pink and white in the clear cold. She and the big man by her side were a
+pair good to look upon, and people turned to look.
+
+Coming to a famous jewel shop she turned in. "I am going to have all of
+Aunt Maude's opals set in platinum to make a long chain. She gave them to
+me; and there'll be diamonds at intervals. I want to wear smoke-colored
+tulle at Winifred Ames' dinner dance--and the opals will light it."
+
+Philip Meade's mind was not poetic, yet as his eyes followed Evelyn, he
+was aware that this was an atmosphere which belonged to her. Her beauty
+was opulent, needing richness to set it off, needing the shine of jewels,
+the shimmer of silk----
+
+If he married her he could give her--a tiara of diamonds--a necklace of
+pearls--a pendant--a ring. His eyes swept the store adorning her.
+
+When they came out he said, "I think I am showing a greatness of mind
+which should win your admiration."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"In taking you to Crossroads."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"You know why. Shall you write to Brooks that we are coming?"
+
+"No. I want it to be a surprise. That's half the fun."
+
+But there was nothing funny about it, as it proved, for it was on that
+very Friday morning that Richard had found Peggy much better, and Anne
+very pale with circles under her eyes.
+
+He went away, and later his mother called Anne up. She asked her to spend
+the day at Crossroads. Richard would come for her and would bring her
+home after dinner.
+
+Anne, with a fluttering sense of excitement, packed her ruffled white
+frock in a little bag, and was ready when Richard arrived.
+
+At the gate they met Geoffrey Fox. The young doctor stopped his horse.
+"Come and have lunch with us, Fox?"
+
+"I'm sorry. But I must get to work. How long are you going to keep Miss
+Warfield?"
+
+"As late as we can."
+
+"To-night?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I have a chapter ready to read to her, and you ask her to eat with you
+as if she were any every-day sort of person. Did you know that she is to
+play Beatrice to my Dante?"
+
+"Don't be silly," Anne said; "you mustn't listen to him, Dr. Brooks."
+
+Richard's eyes went from one to the other. "What do you know of Fox?" he
+asked, as they drove on.
+
+"Nothing, except that he is writing a book."
+
+"I'll ask Eve about him; she's a lion-hunter and she's in with a lot of
+literary lights."
+
+Even as he spoke Evelyn was speeding toward him in Philip's car. He had
+forgotten her and his invitation for the week-end. But she had not
+forgotten, and she sparkled and glowed as she thought of Richard's royal
+welcome. For how could she know, as she drew near and nearer, that he was
+welcoming another guest, taking off the little teacher's old brown coat,
+noting the flush on her young cheeks, the pretty appeal of her manner to
+his mother.
+
+"You are sure I won't be in the way, Mrs. Brooks?"
+
+"My dear, my dear, of course not. Richard has been telling me that your
+grandmother was Cynthia Warfield. Did you know that my father was in love
+with Cynthia before he married my mother?"
+
+"The letters said so."
+
+"I shall want to see them. And to hear about your Great-uncle Rodman. We
+thought at one time that he was going to be famous, and then came that
+dreadful accident."
+
+They had her in a big chair now, with a high back which peaked over her
+head and Nancy had another high-backed chair, and Richard standing on the
+hearth-rug surveyed the two of them contentedly.
+
+"Mother, I am going to give myself fifteen minutes right here and a half
+hour for lunch, and then I'll go out and make calls, and you and Miss
+Warfield can take a nap and be ready to talk to me to-night."
+
+Anne smiled up at him. "Do you always make everybody mind?"
+
+"I try to boss mother a bit--but I am not sure that I succeed."
+
+Before luncheon was served Cynthia Warfield's picture, which hung in the
+library, was pointed out to Anne. She was made to stand under it, so that
+they might see that her hair was the same color--and her eyes. Cynthia
+was painted in pink silk with a petticoat of fine lace, and with pearls
+in her hair.
+
+"Some day," Anne said, "when my ship comes in, I am going to wear stiff
+pink silk and pearls and buckled slippers and yards and yards of old
+lace."
+
+"No, you're not," Richard told her; "you are going to wear white with
+more than a million ruffles, and little flat black shoes. Mother, you
+should have seen her at Beulah Bower's party."
+
+"White is always nice for a young girl," said pleasant Nancy Brooks.
+
+The dining-room looked out upon the river, with an old-fashioned bay
+window curving out. The table was placed near the window. Anne's eyes
+brightened as she looked at the table. It was just as she had pictured
+it, all twinkling glass and silver, and with Richard at the head of it.
+But what she had not pictured was the moment in which he stood to say the
+simple and beautiful grace which his grandfather had said years before
+in that room of many memories.
+
+The act seemed to set him apart from other men. It added dignity and
+strength to his youth and radiance. He was master of a house, and he felt
+that his house should have a soul!
+
+Anne, writing of it the next night to her Uncle Rod, spoke of that simple
+grace:
+
+"Uncle Rod, it seemed to me that while most of the world was forgetting
+God, he was remembering Him. Nobody says grace at Bower's--and sometimes
+I don't even say it in my heart. He looked like a saint as he stood there
+with the window behind him. Wasn't there a soldier saint--St. Michael?
+
+"Could you imagine Jimmie Ford saying grace? Could you imagine him even
+at the head of his own table? When I used to think of marrying him, I had
+a vision of eternal motor riding in his long blue car--with the world
+rushing by in a green streak.
+
+"But I am not wanting much to talk of Jimmie Ford. Though perhaps before
+I finish this I shall whisper what I thought of the things you had to say
+of him in your letter.
+
+"Well, after lunch I had a nap, and then there was dinner with David
+Tyson in an old-fashioned dress-suit, and Mrs. Nancy in thin black with
+pearls, and St. Michael groomed and shining.
+
+"It was all quite like a slice of Heaven after my hard days nursing
+Peggy. We had coffee in the library, and then Dr. Richard and I went
+into the music-room and I played for him. I sang the song that you like
+about the 'Lady of the West Country':
+
+    "'I think she was the most beautiful lady
+      That ever was in the West Country.
+      But beauty vanishes, beauty passes,
+      However rare, rare it be;
+      And when I crumble who shall remember
+      That Lady of the West Country?'
+
+"He liked it and made me sing it twice, and then a dreadful thing
+happened. A motor stopped at the door and some one ran up the steps. We
+heard voices and turned around, and there were the Lovely Ladies back
+again with the two men, and a chauffeur in the background with the bags!
+
+"It seems that they had motored down at Dr. Richard's invitation for a
+week-end, and that he had forgotten it!
+
+"Of course you are asking, 'Why was it a dreadful thing, my dear?' Uncle
+Rod, I stood there smiling a welcome at them all, and Dr. Richard said:
+'You know Miss Warfield, Eve,' and then she said, 'Oh, yes,' in a frigid
+fashion, and I knew by her manner that back in her mind she was
+remembering that I was the girl who had waited on the table!
+
+"Oh, you needn't tell me that I mustn't feel that way, Uncle Rod. I feel
+it, and feel it, and _feel_ it. How can I help feeling it when I know
+that if I had Evelyn Chesley's friends and Evelyn's fortune, people
+would look on Me-Myself in quite a different way. You see, they would
+judge me by the Outside-Person part of me, which would be soft and silky
+and secure, and not dowdy and diffident.
+
+"Oh, Uncle Rod, is Geoffrey Fox right? And have you and I been dreaming
+all these years? The rest of the world doesn't dream; it makes money and
+spends it, and makes money and spends it, and makes money and spends it.
+Only you and I are still old-fashioned enough to want sunsets; the rest
+of them want motor cars and yachts and trips to Europe. That was what
+Jimmie Ford wanted, and that was why he didn't want me.
+
+"There, I have said it, Uncle Rod. Your letter made me know it. Perhaps I
+have hoped and hoped a little that he might come back to me. I have made
+up scenes in my mind of how I would scorn him and send him away, and
+indeed I would send him away, for there isn't any love left--only a lot
+of hurt pride.
+
+"To think that he saw you and spoke to you and didn't say one word about
+me. And just a year ago at Christmas time, do you remember, Uncle Rod?
+The flowers he sent, and the pearl ring--and now the flowers are dead,
+and the ring went back to him.
+
+"Oh, I can't talk about it even to you!
+
+"Well, all the evening Eve Chesley held the center of the stage. And the
+funny part of it was that I found myself much interested in the things
+she had to tell. Her life is a sort of Arabian Nights' existence. She
+lives with her Aunt Maude in a big house east of Central Park, and she
+told about the green parrot for her new black and white breakfast room,
+and the flame-colored fishes in an aquarium--and she is having her opals
+set in platinum to go with a silver gown that she is to wear at the
+Dutton-Ames dance.
+
+"I like the Dutton-Ames. He is dark and massive--a splendid foil for his
+wife's slenderness and fairness. They are much in love with each other.
+He always sits beside her if he can, and she looks up at him and smiles,
+and last night I saw him take her hand where it hung among the folds of
+her gown, and he held it after that--and it made me think of father and
+mother--and of the way they cared. Jimmie Ford could never care like
+that--but Dr. Richard could. He cares that way for his mother--he could
+care for the woman he loved.
+
+"He took me home in Mr. Meade's limousine. It was moonlight, and he told
+the chauffeur to drive the long way by the river road.
+
+"I like him very much. He believes in things, and--and I rather think,
+that _his_ ship is packed with dreams--but I am not sure, Uncle Rod."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was when Anne had come in from her moonlight ride with Richard,
+shutting the door carefully behind her, that she found Geoffrey Fox
+waiting for her in the big front room.
+
+"Oh," she stammered.
+
+"And you really have the grace to blush? Do you know what time it is?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Twelve! Midnight! And you have been riding with only the chauffeur for
+chaperone."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"And you have kept me waiting. That's the worst of it. You may break all
+of the conventional commandments if you wish. But you mustn't keep me
+waiting."
+
+His laugh rang high, his cheeks were flushed. Anne had never seen him in
+a mood like this. In his loose coat with a flowing black tie and with his
+ruffled hair curling close about his ears, he looked boyish and handsome
+like the pictures she had seen of Byron in an old book.
+
+"Sit down, sit down," he was insisting; "now that you are here, you must
+listen."
+
+"It is too late," she demurred, "and we'll wake everybody up."
+
+"No, we shan't. The doors are shut. I saw to that. We are as much alone
+as if we were in a desert. And I can't sleep until I have read that
+chapter to you--please----"
+
+Reluctantly, with her wraps on, she sat down.
+
+"Take off your hat."
+
+He stood over her while she removed it, and helped her out of her coat
+"Look at me," he said, peremptorily. "I hate to read to wandering eyes."
+
+He threw himself into a chair and began:
+
+"_So they marched away--young Franz from Nuremberg and young George from
+London, and Michel straight from the vineyards on the coast of France._"
+
+That was the beginning of Geoffrey Fox's famous story: "The Three Souls,"
+the story which was to bring him something of fortune as well as of fame,
+the story which had been suggested to Anne Warfield by the staring eyes
+of Peggy's pussy cat.
+
+As she listened, Anne saw three youths starting out from home, marching
+gaily through the cities and steadily along the roads--marching,
+marching--Franz from Nuremburg, young George from London, and Michel from
+his sunlighted vineyards, drawing close and closer, unconscious of the
+fate that was bringing them together, thinking of the glory of battle,
+and of the honor of Kaiser and King and of the Republic.
+
+The shadow of the great conflict falls gradually upon them. They meet the
+wounded, the refugees, they hear the roar of the guns, they listen to the
+tales of those who have been in the thick of it.
+
+Then come privations, suffering, winter in the trenches--Franz on one
+side, young George on the other, and Michel; then fighting--fear----
+
+Geoffrey stopped there. "Shall I have them afraid?"
+
+"I think they would be afraid. But they would keep on fighting, and that
+would be heroic."
+
+She added, "How well you do it!"
+
+"This part is easy. It will be the last of it that I shall find
+hard--when I deal with their souls."
+
+"Oh, you must show at the last that it is because of their souls that
+they are brothers. Each man has had a home, he has had love, each of them
+has had his hopes and dreams for the future, for his middle-age and his
+old age, and now there is to be no middle-age, no old age--and in their
+knowledge of their common lot their hatred dies."
+
+"I am afraid I can't do it," he said, moodily. "I should have to swing
+myself out into an atmosphere which I have never breathed."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Oh, I am of the earth--earthy. I have sold my birthright, I have yearned
+for the flesh-pots, I have fed among--swine. I have done all of the other
+things which haven't Biblical sanction. And now you expect me to write of
+souls."
+
+"I expect you to give to the world your best. You speak of your talent as
+if it were a little thing. And it is not a little thing."
+
+"Do you mean that----?"
+
+"I mean that it is--God given."
+
+Out of a long silence he said: "I thank you for saying that. Nobody has
+ever said such a thing to me before."
+
+He let her go then. And as she stood before her door a little later and
+whispered, "Good-night," he caught her hand and held it. "Mistress
+Anne--will you remember me--now and then--in your little white prayers?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+_In Which a Green-Eyed Monster Grips Eve._
+
+
+EVELYN, coming down late on the morning after her unexpected arrival,
+asked: "How did you happen to have her here, Dicky?"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"The little waitress?"
+
+"Eve----" warningly.
+
+"Well, then, the little school-teacher."
+
+"Since when did you become a snob, Eve?"
+
+"Don't be so sharp about it, Dicky. I'm not a snob. But you must admit
+that it was rather surprising to find her here, when the last time I saw
+her she was passing things at the Bower's table."
+
+"She is a granddaughter of Cynthia Warfield."
+
+"Who's Cynthia? I never heard of her."
+
+"You have seen her portrait in our library."
+
+"Which portrait?"
+
+He led the way and showed it to her. Eve, looking at it thoughtfully,
+remarked, "Why should a girl like that lower herself by serving----?"
+
+"She probably doesn't feel that she can lower herself by anything. She is
+what she is."
+
+She shrugged. "You know as well as I that people can't do such
+things--and get away with it. She may be very nice and all that----"
+
+"She is nice."
+
+"Well, don't lose your temper over it, and don't fall in love with her,
+Dicky."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Haven't you done enough foolish things without doing--that?"
+
+"Doing what?" ominously.
+
+"Oh, you know what I mean," impatiently. "Aren't you ever going to come
+to your senses, Dicky?"
+
+"Suppose we don't talk of it, Eve."
+
+She found herself wanting to talk of it. She wanted to rage and rant. She
+was astonished at the primitiveness of her emotions. She had laughed her
+way through life and had prided herself on the dispassionateness of her
+point of view. And now it was only by the exercise of the utmost
+self-control that she was able to swing the conversation toward other
+topics.
+
+The coming of the rest of the party eased things up a little. They had
+all slept late, and Richard had made a half dozen calls before he had
+joined Eve in the Garden Room. He had stopped at David's, and had heard
+that on Monday there was to be a drag-hunt and breakfast at the club.
+David hoped they would all stay over for it.
+
+"Cousin David has a bunch of weedy-looking hounds," Richard explained;
+"he lets them run as they please, and they've been getting up a fox
+nearly every night. He thought you might like to ride up to the ridge in
+the moonlight and have a view of them. I can get you some pretty fair
+mounts at Bower's."
+
+There was a note of wistful appeal in Eve's voice. "Do you really want
+us, Dicky?"
+
+He smiled at her. "Of course. Don't be silly, Eve."
+
+She saw that she was forgiven, and smiled back. She had not slept much
+the night before. She had heard Richard come in after his ride with Anne,
+and she had been waked later by the sound of the telephone. In the room
+next to hers Richard's subdued voice had answered. And presently there
+had been the sound of his careful footsteps on the stairs.
+
+She had crept out of bed and between the curtains had looked out. The
+world was full of the shadowy paleness which comes with the waning of the
+moon. The road beyond the garden showed like a dull gray ribbon against
+the blackness of the hills. On this road appeared presently Richard on
+his big white horse, the dog Toby, a shadow among the shadows as he ran
+on ahead of them.
+
+On and on they sped up the dull gray road, a spectral rider on a spectral
+horse. She had wondered where he might be going. It must have been some
+sudden and urgent call to take him out thus in the middle of the night.
+For the first time she realized what his life meant. He could never
+really be at his ease. Always there was before him the possibility of
+some dread adventure--death might be on its way at this very moment.
+
+Wide-awake and wrapped in her great rug, she had waited, and after a time
+Richard had returned. The dawn was rising on the hills, and the world was
+pink. His head was up and he was urging his horse to a swift gallop.
+
+When at last he reached his room, she had gone to bed. But when she slept
+it was to dream that the man on the white horse was riding away from her,
+and that when she called he would not come.
+
+But now with his smile upon her, she decided that she was making too much
+of it all. The affair with the little school-teacher might not be in the
+least serious. Men had their fancies, and Dicky was not a fool.
+
+She knew her power over him, and her charm. His little boyhood had been
+heavy with sorrow and soberness; she had lightened it by her gaiety and
+good nature. Eve had taken her orphaned state philosophically. Her
+parents had died before she knew them. Her Aunt Maude was rich and gave
+her everything; she was queen of her small domain. Richard, on the other
+hand, had been early oppressed by anxieties--his care for his strong
+little mother, his real affection for his weak father, culminating in
+the tragedy which had come during his college days. In all the years Eve
+had been his good comrade and companion. She had cheered him, commanded
+him, loved him.
+
+And he had loved her. He had never analyzed the quality of his love. She
+was his good friend, his sister. If he had ever thought of her as his
+sweetheart or as his wife, it had always been with the feeling that Eve
+had too much money. No man had a right to live on his wife's bounty.
+
+He had a genuinely happy day with her. He showed her the charming old
+house which she had never seen. He showed her the schoolhouse, still
+closed on account of the epidemic. He showed her the ancient ballroom
+built out in a separate wing.
+
+"A little money would make it lovely, Richard."
+
+"It is lovely without the money."
+
+Winifred Ames spoke earnestly from the window where, with her husband's
+arm about her, she was observing the sunset. "Some day Tony and I are
+going to have a house like this--and then we'll be happy."
+
+"Aren't you happy now?" her husband demanded.
+
+"Yes. But not on my own plan, as it were." Then softly so that no one
+else could hear, "I want just you, Tony--and all the rest of the world
+away."
+
+"Dear Heart----" He dared not say more, for Pip's envious eyes were upon
+them.
+
+"When I marry you, Eve, may I hold your hand in public?"
+
+"You may--when I marry you."
+
+"Good. Whenever I lose faith in the bliss of matrimony, I have only to
+look at Win and Tony to be cheered and sustained by their example."
+
+Nancy, playing the little lovely hostess, agreed. "If they weren't so
+new-fashioned in every way I should call them an old-fashioned couple."
+
+"Love is never out of fashion, Mrs. Nancy," said Eve; "is it, Dicky Boy?"
+
+"Ask Pip."
+
+"Love," said Philip solemnly, "is the newest thing in the world and the
+oldest. Each lover is a Columbus discovering an unknown continent."
+
+In the hall the old clock chimed. "Nobody is to dress for dinner,"
+Richard said, "if we are to ride afterward. I'll telephone for the
+horses."
+
+He telephoned and rode down later on his big Ben to bring the horses up.
+As he came into the yard at Bower's he saw a light in the old stable.
+Dismounting, he went to the open door. Anne was with Diogenes. The
+lantern was set on the step above her, and she was feeding the old drake.
+Her body was in the shadow, her face luminous. Yet it was a sober little
+face, set with tired lines. Looking at her, Richard reached a sudden
+determination.
+
+He would ask her to ride with them to the ridge.
+
+At the sound of his voice she turned and her face changed. "Did I startle
+you?" he asked.
+
+"No," she smiled at him. "Only I was thinking about you, and there you
+were." There was no coquetry in her tone; she stated the fact frankly and
+simply. "Do you remember how you put Toby in here, and how Diogenes hated
+it?"
+
+"I remember how you looked under the lantern."
+
+"Oh,"--she had not expected that,--"do you?"
+
+"Yes. But I had seen you before. You were standing on a rock with holly
+in your arms. I saw you from the train throw something into the river. I
+have often wondered what it was."
+
+"I didn't want to burn my holly wreaths after Christmas. I hate to burn
+things that have been alive."
+
+"So do I. Eve would say that we were sentimentalists. But I have never
+quite been able to see why a sentimentalist isn't quite as worthy of
+respect as a materialist--however, I am not here to argue that. I want
+you to ride with me to the ridge. To see the foxes by moonlight," he
+further elucidated. "Run in and get ready. I am to take some horses up
+for the others."
+
+She rose and reached for her lantern. "The others?" she looked an inquiry
+over her shoulder.
+
+"Eve and her crowd. They are still at Crossroads."
+
+She stood irresolute. Then, "I think I'd rather not go."
+
+"Why not?" sharply.
+
+She told him the truth bravely. "I am a little afraid of women like
+that."
+
+"Of Eve and Winifred? Why?"
+
+"We are people of two worlds, Dr. Brooks--and they feel it."
+
+His conversation with Eve recurring to him, he was not prepared to argue.
+But he was prepared to have his own way.
+
+"Isn't your world mine?" he demanded. "And you mustn't mind Eve. She's
+all right when you know her. Just stiffen your backbone, and remember
+that you are the granddaughter of Cynthia Warfield."
+
+After that she gave in and came down presently in a shabby little habit
+with her hair tied with a black bow. "It's a good thing it is dark," she
+said. "I haven't any up-to-date clothes."
+
+As they went along he asked her to go to the hunt breakfast on Monday.
+
+"I can't. School opens and my work begins."
+
+"By Jove, I had forgotten. I shall be glad to hear the bell. When I am
+riding over the hills it seems to call--as it called to my grandfather
+and to be saying the same things; it is a great inspiration to have a
+background like that to one's life. Do you know what I mean?"
+
+She did know, and they talked about it--these two young and eager souls
+to whom life spoke of things to be done, and done well.
+
+Eve, standing on the steps at Crossroads, saw them coming. "Oh, I'm not
+going," she said to Winifred passionately.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"He has that girl with him."
+
+"What girl?"
+
+"Anne Warfield."
+
+Winifred's eyes opened wide. "She's a darling, Eve. I liked her so much
+last night."
+
+"I don't see why he has to bring her into everything."
+
+"All the men are in love with her; even Tony has eyes for her, and
+Pip----"
+
+"What makes you defend her, Win? She isn't one of us, and you know it."
+
+"I don't know it. She belongs to older stock than either you or I, Eve.
+And if she didn't, don't you know a lady when you see one?"
+
+Eve threw up her hands. "I sometimes think the world is going mad--there
+aren't any more lines drawn."
+
+"If there were," said Winifred softly, and perhaps a bit maliciously, "I
+fancy that Anne Warfield might be the one to draw them--and leave us on
+the wrong side, Eve."
+
+It was Winifred who welcomed Anne, and who rode beside her later, and it
+was of Winifred that Anne spoke repentantly as she and Richard rode
+together in the hills. "I want to take back the things I said about Mrs.
+Ames. She is just--heavenly sweet."
+
+He smiled. "I knew you would like her," he said. But neither of them
+mentioned Eve.
+
+For Evelyn's manner had been insufferable. Anne might have been a shadow
+on the grass, a cloud across the sky, a stone in the road for all the
+notice she had taken of her. It was a childish thing to do, but then Eve
+was childish. And she was having the novel experience of being overlooked
+for the first time by Richard. She was aware, too, that she had offended
+him deeply and that the cause of her offending was another woman.
+
+When they came to the ridge Richard drew Anne's horse, with his own,
+among the trees. He left Eve to Pip. Winifred and her husband were with
+David.
+
+Far off in the distance a steady old hound gave tongue--then came the
+music of the pack--the swift silent figure of the fox, straight across
+the open moonlighted space in front of them.
+
+Anne gave a little gasp. "It is old Pete," Richard murmured; "they'll
+never catch him. I'll tell you about him on the way down."
+
+So as he rode beside her after that perfect hour in which the old fox
+played with the tumultuous pack, at his ease, monarch of his domain,
+unmindful of silent watchers in the shadows, Richard told her of old
+Pete; he told her, too, of the traditions of a ghostly fox who now and
+then troubled the hounds, leading them into danger and sometimes to
+death.
+
+He went on with her to Bower's, and when he left her he handed her a
+feathery bit of pine. "I picked it on the ridge," he said. "I don't know
+whether you feel as I do about the scrub pines of Maryland and of
+Virginia; somehow they seem to belong, as you and I do, to this country."
+
+When Anne went to her room she stuck the bit of pine in her mirror. Then
+in an uplifted mood she wrote to Uncle Rod. But she said little to him of
+Richard or of Eve. Her own feelings were too mixed in the matter to
+permit of analysis. But she told of the fox in the moonlight. "And the
+loveliest part of it all was that nothing happened to him. I don't think
+that I could have stood it to have had him killed. He was so free--and
+unafraid----"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next night Anne in the long front room at Bower's told Peggy and
+Francois all about it. Francois' mother was sewing for Mrs. Bower, and as
+the distance was great, and she could not go home at night, her small son
+was sharing with her the hospitality which seemed to him rich and royal
+in comparison with the economies practised in his own small home.
+
+It was a select company which was gathered in front of the fire.
+Francois and Peggy and Anne and old Mamie, with the white house cat,
+Josephine, and three kittens in a basket, and Brinsley Tyson smoking his
+pipe in the background.
+
+"And the old fox went tit-upping and tit-upping along the road in the
+moonlight, and Dr. Richard and I stood very still, and we saw him----"
+
+"Last night?"
+
+Anne nodded.
+
+"And what did you do, Miss Anne?"
+
+"We listened and heard the dogs----"
+
+Little Francois clasped his hands. "Oh, were the dogs after him?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did they get him?"
+
+"No. He is a wise old fox. He lives up beyond the Crossroads garden. Dr.
+Brooks thought when they came there to live that he would go away but he
+hasn't. You see, it is his home. The hunters here all know him, and they
+are always glad when he gets away."
+
+Brinsley agreed. "There are so few native foxes left in the county that
+most of us call off the dogs before a killing--we'd soon be without sport
+if we didn't. An imported fox is a creature in a trap; you want the sly
+old natives to give you a run for your money."
+
+Little Francois, dark-eyed and dreamy, delivered an energetic opinion. "I
+think it is horrid."
+
+Peggy, less sensitive, and of the country, reproved him. "It's
+gentleman's sport, isn't it, Mr. Brinsley?"
+
+"Yes. To me the dogs and horses are the best part of it. The older I grow
+the more I hate to kill--that's why I fish. They are cold-blooded
+creatures."
+
+Peggy, leaning on his knee, demanded a fish story. "The one you told us
+the last time."
+
+Brinsley's fish story was a poem written by one of the Old Gentlemen,
+hunting now, it was to be hoped, in happier fields. It was an idyl of the
+Chesapeake:
+
+    "In the Chesapeake and its tribute streams,
+     Where broadening out to the bay they come,
+     And the great fresh waters meet the brine,
+     There lives a fish that is called the drum."
+
+The drum fish and an old negro, Ned, were the actors in the drama. Ned,
+fishing one day in his dug-out canoe,
+
+    "Tied his line to his ankle tight,
+     To be ready to haul if the fish should bite,
+     And seized his fiddle----"
+
+He played:
+
+    "But slower and slower he drew the bow,
+     And soft grew the music sweet and low,
+     The lids fell wearily over the eyes,
+     The bow arm stopped and the melodies.
+     The last strain melted along the deep,
+     And Ned, the old fisherman, sank to sleep.
+     Just then a huge drum, sent hither by fate,
+     Caught a passing glimpse of the tempting bait. . . .
+     . . . . One terrible jerk of wrath and dread
+     From the wounded fish as away he sped
+     With a strength by rage made double--
+     And into the water went old Ned.
+     No time for any 'last words' to be said,
+     For the waves settled placidly over his head,
+     And his last remark was a bubble."
+
+The children's eyes were wide. Peggy was entranced, but Francois was not
+so sure that he liked it. Brinsley's hand dropped on the little lad's
+shoulder as he told how the two were found
+
+    "So looped and tangled together
+     That their fate was involved in a dark mystery
+     As to which was the catcher and which the catchee . . .
+     And the fishermen thought it could never be known
+     After all their thinking and figuring,
+     Whether the nigger a-fishing had gone,
+     Or the fish had gone out a-niggering."
+
+There were defects in meter and rhythm, but Brinsley's sprightly delivery
+made these of minor importance, and the company had no criticism.
+Francois, shivering a little, admitted that he wanted to hear it again,
+and climbed to Brinsley's knee. The old man with his arm about him
+decided that to say it over would be to spoil the charm, and that anyhow
+the time had come to pop the corn.
+
+To Francois this was a new art, but when he had followed the fascinating
+process through all its stages until the white grains boiled up in the
+popper and threatened to burst the cover, his rapture knew no bounds.
+
+"Could I do it myself, Miss Anne?" he asked, and she let him empty the
+snowy kernels into a big bowl, and fill the popper for a second supply.
+
+She bent above him, showing him how to shake it steadily.
+
+Geoffrey Fox coming in smiled at the scene. How far away it seemed from
+anything modern--this wide hearth-stone with the dog and the pussy
+cat--and the little children, the lovely girl and the old man--the wind
+blowing outside--the corn popping away like little pistols.
+
+"May I have some?" he asked, and Anne smiled up at him, while Peggy
+brought little plates and set the big bowl on a stool within reach of
+them all.
+
+"What brings you up, sir?" Geoffrey asked Brinsley.
+
+"The drag-hunt and breakfast at the club. I am too stiff to follow, but
+David and I like to meet old friends--you see I was born in this
+country."
+
+That was the beginning of a string of reminiscences to which they all
+listened breathlessly. The fox hunting instinct was an inheritance in
+this part of the country. It had its traditions and legends and Brinsley
+knew them all.
+
+If any one had told Geoffrey Fox a few weeks before that he would be
+content to spend his time as he was spending it now, writing all day and
+reading the chapters at night to a serious-eyed little school-teacher
+who scolded him and encouraged him by turns, he would have scoffed at
+such an impossible prospect. Yet he was not only doing it, but was glad
+to be swept away from the atmosphere of somewhat sordid Bohemianism with
+which he had in these later years been surrounded.
+
+And as Brinsley talked, Geoffrey watched Anne. She had Peggy in her arms.
+Such women were made, he felt, to be not only the mothers of children,
+but the mothers of the men they loved--made for brooding tenderness--to
+inspire--to sympathize.
+
+Yet with all her gentleness he knew that Anne was a strong little thing.
+She would never be a clinging vine; she was rather like a rose high on a
+trellis--a man must reach up to draw her to him.
+
+As she glanced up, he smiled at her, and she smiled back. Then the smile
+froze.
+
+Framed in the front doorway stood Eve Chesley! She came straight to Anne
+and held out her hand. "I made Richard bring me down," she said. "I want
+to talk to you about the Crossroads ball."
+
+Eve repentant was Eve in her most charming mood. On Sunday morning she
+had apologized to Richard. "I was horrid, Dicky."
+
+"Last night? You were. I wouldn't have believed it of you, Eve."
+
+"Oh, well, don't be a prig. Do you remember how we used to make up after
+a quarrel?"
+
+He laughed. "We had to go down on our knees."
+
+She went down on hers, sinking slowly and gracefully to the floor.
+"Please, I'm sorry."
+
+"Eve, will you ever grow up?"
+
+"I don't want to grow up," wistfully. "Dicky, do you remember that after
+I had said I was sorry you always bought chocolate drops, and made me eat
+them all. You were such a good little boy, Richard."
+
+"I was not," hotly.
+
+"Why is it that men don't like to be told that they were good little
+boys? You are a good little boy now."
+
+"I'm not."
+
+"You are--and you are tied to your mother's apron strings."
+
+"Dicky," she wailed, as he rose in wrath, "I didn't mean that. Honestly.
+And I'll be good."
+
+Still, with her feet tucked under her, she sat on the floor. "I've been
+thinking----"
+
+"Yes, Eve."
+
+"You and I have a birthday in March. Why can't we have a big
+house-warming, and ask all the county families and a lot of people from
+town?"
+
+"I'm not a millionaire, Eve."
+
+"Neither am I. But there's always Aunt Maude."
+
+She spread out her hands, palms upward. "All I shall have to do is to
+wheedle her a bit, and she'll give it to me for a birthday present.
+Please, Dicky. If you say 'yes' I'll go down to Bower's my very own self
+and ask Anne Warfield to come to our ball."
+
+He stared at her incredulously. "You'll do _what_?"
+
+"Ask your little--school-teacher. Win scolded me last night, and said
+that I was a selfish pig. That I couldn't expect to keep you always to
+myself. But you see I have kept you, Dicky. I have always thought that
+you and I could go on being--friends, with no one to break in on it."
+
+Her eyes as she raised them to his were shadowed. He spoke heartily. "My
+dear girl, as if anything could ever come between us." He rose and drew
+her up from her lowly seat. "I'm glad we talked it out. I confess I was
+feeling pretty sore over the way you acted, Eve. It wasn't like you."
+
+Eve stuck to her resolution to go to Bower's to seek out and conciliate
+Anne, and thus it happened that they found her making a Madonna of
+herself with Peggy in her arms, and Geoffrey Fox's eyes adoring her.
+
+Little Francois told his mother later that at first he had thought the
+lovely lady was a fairy princess; for Eve was quite sumptuous in her
+dinner gown of white and shining satin, with a fur-trimmed wrap of white
+and silver. She wore, also, a princess air of graciousness, quite
+different from the half appealing impertinence of her morning mood when
+she had knelt at Richard's feet.
+
+Anne, appeased and fascinated by the warmth of Eve's manner, found
+herself drawn in spite of herself to the charming creature who discussed
+so frankly her plans for their pleasure.
+
+"Dicky and I were born on the same day," she explained, "and we always
+have a party together, with two cakes with candles, and this year it is
+to be at Crossroads."
+
+She invited Brinsley and Geoffrey on the spot, and promised the children
+a peep into fairy-land. Then having settled the matter to the
+satisfaction of all concerned, she demanded a fresh popper of corn,
+insisted on a repetition of Brinsley's fish story, asked about Geoffrey's
+book, and went away leaving behind her a trail of laughter and
+light-heartedness.
+
+Later Anne was aware that she had left also a feeling of bewilderment. It
+seemed incredible that the distance between the mood of last night and of
+to-night should have been bridged so successfully.
+
+Brushing her hair in front of the mirror, she asked herself, "How much of
+it was real friendliness?" Uncle Rod had a proverb, "'_A false friend has
+honey in his mouth, gall in his heart._'"
+
+She chided herself for her mistrust. One must not inquire too much into
+motives.
+
+The sight of Richard's bit of pine in the mirror frame shed a gleam of
+naturalness across the strangeness of the hour just spent. It seemed to
+say, "You and I of the country----"
+
+Eve was of the town!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The weeks which followed were rare ones. Anne went forth joyous in the
+morning, and came home joyous at night. She saw Richard daily; now on the
+road, again in the schoolhouse, less often, but most satisfyingly, by the
+fire at Bower's.
+
+Geoffrey, noting jealously these evenings that the young doctor spent in
+the long front room, at last spoke his mind.
+
+"What makes you look like that?" he demanded, as having watched Richard
+safely out of the way from an upper window, he came down to find Anne
+gazing dreamily into the coals.
+
+"Like what?"
+
+"Oh, a sort of seventh-heaven look."
+
+"I don't know what you mean."
+
+"You won't admit that you know what I mean."
+
+She rose.
+
+"Sit down. I want to read to you."
+
+"I am afraid I haven't time."
+
+"You had time for Brooks. If you don't let me read to you I shall have to
+sit all alone--in the dark--my eyes are hurting me."
+
+"Why don't you ask Dr. Brooks about your eyes?"
+
+"Is Dr. Brooks the oracle?"
+
+"He could tell you about your eyes."
+
+"Does he tell you about yours?"
+
+With a scornful glance she left him, but he followed her. "Why shouldn't
+he tell you about your eyes? They are lovely eyes, Mistress Anne."
+
+"I hate to have you talk like that. It seems to separate me in some way
+from your friendship, and I thought we were friends."
+
+Her gentleness conquered his mad mood. "Oh, you little saint, you little
+saint, and I am such a sinner."
+
+So they patched it up, and he read to her the last chapter of his book.
+
+"_And now in the darkness they lay dying, young Franz from Nuremberg, and
+young George from London, and Michel straight from the vineyards on the
+coast of France._"
+
+In the darkness they spoke of their souls. Soon they would go out into
+the Great Beyond. What then, after death? Franz thought they might go
+marching on. Young George had a vision of green fields and of hawthorn
+hedges. But it was young Michel who spoke of the face of God.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Was this the Geoffrey who had teased her on the stairs? This man who
+wrote words which made one shake and shiver and sob?
+
+"Oh, how do you do it, how do you do it?" The tears were running down her
+cheeks.
+
+She saw him then as people rarely saw Geoffrey Fox. "God knows," he said,
+seriously, "but I think that your prayers have helped."
+
+And after she had gone up-stairs he sat long by the fire, alone, with his
+hand shading his eyes.
+
+The next morning he went to see Richard. The young doctor was in the
+Garden Room which he used as an office. It was on the ground floor of the
+big house, with a deer's horns over the fireplace, an ancient desk in one
+corner, a sideboard against the north wall. In days gone by this room had
+served many purposes. Here men in hunting pink had gathered for the gay
+breakfasts which were to fortify them for their sport. On the sideboard
+mighty roasts had been carved, and hot dishes had steamed. On the round
+table had been set forth bottles and glasses on Sheffield trays. Men ate
+much and rode hard. They had left to their descendants a divided heritage
+of indigestion and of strong sinews, to make of it what they could.
+
+Geoffrey entering asked at once, "Why the Garden Room? There is no
+garden."
+
+"There was a garden," Richard told him, "but there is a tradition that a
+pair of lovers eloped over the wall, and the irate father destroyed every
+flower, every shrub, as if the garden had betrayed him."
+
+"There's a story in that. Did the girl ever come back to find the garden
+dead?"
+
+"Who knows?" Richard said lightly; "and now, what's the matter with your
+eyes?"
+
+There was much the matter, and when Richard had made a thorough
+examination he spoke of a specialist. "Have you ever had trouble with
+them before?"
+
+"Once, when I was a youngster. I thought I was losing my sight. I used to
+open my eyes in the dark and think that the curse had come upon me. My
+grandfather was blind."
+
+"It is rarely inherited, and not in this form. But there might be a
+predisposition. Anyhow, you'll have to stop work for a time."
+
+"I can't stop work. My book is in the last chapters. And it is a great
+book. I've never written a great book before. I can talk freely to you,
+doctor. You know that we artists can't help our egotism. It's a disease
+that is easily diagnosed."
+
+Richard laughed. "What's the name of your book?"
+
+"'Three Souls.' Anne Warfield gave me the theme."
+
+As he spoke her name it was like a living flame between them. Richard
+tried to answer naturally. "She ought to be able to write books herself."
+
+Geoffrey shrugged. "She will live her life stories, not write them."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because we men don't let such women live their own lives. We demand
+their service and the inspiration of their sympathy. And so we won't let
+them achieve. We make them light our torches. We are selfish beasts, you
+know, in the last analysis."
+
+He laughed and rose. "I'll see a specialist. But nobody shall make me
+stop writing. Not till I have scribbled 'Finis' to my manuscript."
+
+"It isn't well to defy nature."
+
+"Defiance is better than submission. Nature's a cruel jade. You know
+that. In the end she gets us all. That's why I hate the country. It's
+there that we see Nature unmasked. I stayed three weeks at a farm last
+summer, and from morning to night murder went on. A cat killed a
+cardinal, and a blue jay killed a grosbeak. One of the servants shot a
+squirrel. And when I walked out one morning to see the sheep, a lamb was
+gone and we had a roast with mint sauce for dinner. For lunch we had the
+squirrel in a stew. A hawk swept down upon the chickens, and all that
+escaped we ate later fried, with cream gravy."
+
+"In most of your instances man was the offender."
+
+"Well, if man didn't kill, something else would. For every lamb there's a
+wolf."
+
+"You are looking on only one side of it."
+
+"When you can show me the other I'll believe in it. But not to-day when
+you tell me that my sun may be blotted out."
+
+Something in his voice made the young doctor lay his hand on his shoulder
+and say quietly: "My dear fellow, don't begin to dread that which may
+never come. There should be years of light before you. Only you'll have
+to be careful."
+
+They stood now in the door of the Garden Room. The sun was shining, the
+snow was melting. There was the acrid smell of box from the hedge beyond.
+
+"I hate caution," said young Geoffrey; "I want to do as I please."
+
+"So does every man," said Richard, "but life teaches him that he can't."
+
+"Oh, Life," scoffed Geoffrey Fox; "life isn't a school. It is a joy ride,
+with rocks ahead."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+_In Which Anne, Passing a Shop, Turns In._
+
+
+ANNE had the Crossroads ball much on her mind. She spoke to Beulah about
+it.
+
+"I don't know what to wear."
+
+"You'd better go to town with me on Saturday and look for something."
+
+"Perhaps I will. If I had plenty of money it would be easy. Beulah, did
+you ever see such clothes as Eve Chesley's?"
+
+"If I could spend as much as she does, I'd make more of a show."
+
+"Think of all the tailors and dressmakers and dancing masters and
+hair-dressers it has taken to make Eve what she is. And yet all the art
+is hidden."
+
+"I don't think it is hidden. I saw her powder her nose right in front of
+the men that day she first came. She had a little gold case with a mirror
+in it, and while Dr. Brooks and Mr. Fox were sitting on the stairs with
+her, she took it out and looked at herself and rubbed some rouge on her
+cheeks."
+
+Anne had a vision of the three of them sitting on the stairs. "Well,"
+she said, in a fierce little fashion, "I don't know what the world is
+coming to."
+
+Beulah cared little about Eve's world. For the moment Eric filled her
+horizon, and the dress she was to get to make herself pretty for him.
+
+"Shall we go Saturday?" she asked.
+
+Anne, rummaging in the drawer of her desk, produced a small and shabby
+pocketbook. She shook the money out and counted it. "With the check that
+Uncle Rod sent me," she said, "there's enough for a really lovely frock.
+But I don't know whether I ought to spend it."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Everybody ought to save something--I am teaching my children to have
+penny banks--and yet I go on spending and spending with nothing to show
+for it."
+
+Beulah was quite placid. "I don't see why you should save. Some day you
+will get married, and then you won't have to."
+
+"If a woman marries a poor man she ought to be careful of finances. She
+has to think of her children and of their future."
+
+Beulah shrugged. "What's the use of looking so far ahead? And 'most any
+husband will see that his wife doesn't get too much to spend."
+
+Before Anne went to bed that night she put a part of her small store of
+money into a separate compartment of her purse. She would buy a cheaper
+frock and save herself the afterpangs of extravagance. And the penny
+banks of the children would no longer accuse her of inconsistency!
+
+The shopping expedition proved a strenuous one. Anne had fixed her mind
+on certain things which proved to be too expensive. "You go for your
+fitting," she said to Beulah desperately, as the afternoon waned, "and I
+will take a last look up Charles Street. We can meet at the train."
+
+The way which she had to travel was a familiar one, but its charm held
+her--the street lights glimmered pale gold in the early dusk, the crowd
+swung along in its brisk city manner toward home. Beyond the shops was
+the Cardinal's house. The Monument topped the hill; to its left the
+bronze lions guarded the great square; to the right there was the thin
+spire of the Methodist Church.
+
+She had an hour before train time and she lingered a little, stopping at
+this window and that, and all the time the money which she had elected to
+save burned a hole in her pocket.
+
+For there were such things to buy! Passing a flower shop there were
+violets and roses. Passing a candy shop were chocolates. Passing a hat
+shop there was a veil flung like a cloud over a celestial _chapeau_!
+Passing an Everything-that-is-Lovely shop she saw an enchanting length of
+silk--as pink as a sea-shell--silk like that which Cynthia Warfield had
+worn when she sat for the portrait which hung in the library at
+Crossroads!
+
+Anne did not pass the Lovely Shop; she turned and went in, and bought ten
+yards of silk with the money that she had meant to spend--and the money
+she had meant to save!
+
+And she missed the train!
+
+Beulah was waiting for her as she came in breathless. "There isn't
+another train for two hours," she complained.
+
+Anne sank down on a bench. "I am sorry, Beulah. I didn't know it was so
+late."
+
+"We'll have to get supper in the station," Beulah said, "and I have spent
+all my money."
+
+"Oh, and I've spent mine." Anne reflected that if she had not bought the
+silk she could have paid for Beulah's supper. But she was glad that she
+had bought it, and that she had it under her arm in a neat package.
+
+She dug into her slim purse and produced a dime. "Never mind, Beulah, we
+can buy some chocolates."
+
+But they were not destined for such meager fare. Rushing into the station
+came Geoffrey Fox. As he saw the clock he stopped with the air of a man
+baffled by fate.
+
+Anne moving toward him across the intervening space saw his face change.
+
+"By all that's wonderful," he said, "how did this happen?"
+
+"We missed our train."
+
+"And I missed mine. Who is 'we'?"
+
+"Beulah is with me."
+
+"Can't you both have dinner with me somewhere? There are two hours of
+waiting ahead of us."
+
+Anne demurred. "I'm not very hungry."
+
+But Beulah, who had joined them, was hungry, and she said so, frankly. "I
+am starved. If I could have just a sandwich----"
+
+"You shall have more than that. We'll have a feast and a frolic. Let me
+check your parcels, Mistress Anne."
+
+Back they went to the golden-lighted streets and turning down toward the
+city they reached at last the big hotel which has usurped the place of
+the stately and substantial edifices which were once the abodes of
+ancient and honorable families.
+
+Within were soft lights and the sound of music. The rugs were thick, and
+there was much marble. As they entered the dining-room, they seemed to
+move through a golden haze. It was early, and most of the tables were
+empty.
+
+Beulah was rapturous. "I have always wanted to come here. It is perfectly
+lovely."
+
+The attentive waiter at Geoffrey's elbow was being told to bring----
+Anne's quick ear caught the word.
+
+"No, please," she said at once, "not for Beulah and me."
+
+His keen glance commanded her. "Of course not," he said, easily.
+Presently he had the whole matter of the menu settled, and could talk to
+Anne. She was enjoying it all immensely and said so.
+
+"I should like to do this sort of thing every day."
+
+"Heaven forbid. You would lose your dreams, and grow self-satisfied--and
+fat--like that woman over there."
+
+Anne shuddered. "It isn't that she is fat--it's her eyes, and the way she
+makes up."
+
+"That is the way they get when they live in places like this. If you want
+to be slender and lovely and keep your dreams you must teach school."
+
+"Oh, but there's drudgery in that."
+
+"It is the people who drudge who dream. They don't know it, but they do.
+People who have all they want learn that there is nothing more for life
+to give. And they drink and take drugs to bring back the illusions they
+have lost."
+
+They fell into silence after that, and then it was Beulah who became
+voluble. Her fair round face beamed. It was a common little face, but it
+was good and honest. Beulah was having the time of her life. She did not
+know that she owed her good fortune to Anne, that if Anne had not been
+there, Geoffrey would not have asked her to dine. But if she had known
+it, she would not have cared.
+
+"What train did you come in on?" she asked.
+
+"At noon. Brooks thought I ought to see a specialist. He doesn't give me
+much encouragement about my eyes. He wants me to stop writing, but I
+shan't until I get through with my book."
+
+He spoke recklessly, but Anne saw the shadow on his face. "You aren't
+telling us how really serious it is," she said, as Beulah's attention was
+diverted.
+
+"It is so serious that for the first time in my life I know myself to
+be--a coward. Last night I lay in bed with my eyes shut to see how it
+would seem to be blind. It was a pretty morbid thing to do--and this
+morning finished me."
+
+She tried to speak her sympathy, but could not. Her eyes were full of
+tears.
+
+"Don't," he said, softly, "my good little friend--my good little friend."
+
+She dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief. The unconscious Beulah, busy
+with her oysters, asked: "Is the Tobasco too hot? I'm all burning up with
+it."
+
+Geoffrey was able later to speak lightly of his affliction. "I shall go
+to the Brooks ball as a Blind Beggar."
+
+"Oh, how can you make fun of it?"
+
+"It is better to laugh than to cry. But your tears were--a benediction."
+
+Silence fell between them, and after a while he asked, "What shall you
+wear?"
+
+"To the ball? Pink silk. A heavenly pink. I have just bought it, and I
+paid more than I should for it."
+
+"Such extravagance!"
+
+"I'm to be Cynthia Warfield--like the portrait in the Crossroads library
+of my grandmother. It came to me when I saw the silk in the shop window.
+I shall have to do without the pearls, but I have the lace flounces. They
+were left to my mother."
+
+"And so Cinderella will go to the ball, and dance with the Prince. Is
+Brooks the Prince?"
+
+She flushed, and evaded. "I can't dance. Not the new dances."
+
+"I can teach you if you'll let me."
+
+"Really?"
+
+"Yes. But you must pay. You must give the Blind Beggar the first dance
+and as many more as he demands."
+
+"But I can't dance all of them with you."
+
+"You can dance some of them. And that's my price."
+
+To promise him dances seemed to her quite delicious and delightful since
+she could not dance at all. But he made a little contract and had her
+sign it, and put it in his pocket.
+
+Going home Anne had little to say. It was Geoffrey who talked, while
+Beulah slept in a seat by herself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Anne made her own lovely gown, running over now and then to take
+surreptitious peeps at Cynthia's portrait. She had let Mrs. Brooks into
+her secret, and the little lady was enthusiastic.
+
+"You shall wear my pearls, my dear. They will be very effective in your
+dark hair."
+
+She brought the jewels down in an old blue velvet box--milk-white against
+a yellowed satin lining.
+
+"My father gave them to me on my wedding day. Some day I shall give them
+to Richard's wife."
+
+She could not know how her words stirred the heart of the girl who stood
+looking so quietly down at the pearls.
+
+"I am almost afraid to wear them," Anne said breathlessly. She gave Nancy
+a shy little kiss. "You were _dear_ to think of it."
+
+And now busy days were upon her. There was the school with Richard
+running in after closing time, and staying, too, and keeping her from the
+work that was waiting at home. Then at twilight a dancing lesson with
+Geoffrey in the long front room, with Beulah playing audience and
+sometimes Eric, and with Peggy capering madly to the music.
+
+Then the evening, with its enchanting task of stitching on yards of rosy
+silk. Usually Geoffrey read to her while she worked. His story was
+nearing the end. He was wearing heavy goggles which gave him an owl-like
+appearance, of which he complained.
+
+"It spoils my beauty, Mistress Anne. I am just an ugly gnome who sits at
+the feet of the Princess."
+
+"You are not ugly, and you know it. And men shouldn't be vain."
+
+"We are worse than women. Do you know what you look like with all that
+silk around you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Like Aurora. Do you remember that Stevenson speaks of a 'pink dawn'?
+Well, you are a pink dawn."
+
+"Please stop talking about me, and read your last chapter. I am so glad
+that you have reached the end."
+
+"Because you are tired of hearing it?"
+
+"Because of your poor eyes."
+
+He took off his goggles. "Do my eyes look different? Are they changed
+or--dim?"
+
+"They are as bright as stars," and he sighed with relief.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"_And now it was young Michel who whispered, 'God is good! In a moment we
+shall see his face, and we shall say to him, "We fought, but there is no
+hatred in our hearts. We cannot hate--our brothers----"'_"
+
+That was the end.
+
+"It is a great book," Anne told him solemnly. "It will be a great
+success."
+
+He seemed to shrink and grow small in his chair. "It will come--too
+late."
+
+She looked up and saw the mood that was upon him. "Oh, you must not--not
+that," she said, hurriedly; "if you give up now it will be a losing
+fight."
+
+"Don't you suppose that I would fight if I felt that I could win? But
+what can a man do with a thing like this that is dragging him down to
+darkness?"
+
+"You mustn't be discouraged. Dr. Brooks says that it isn't--inevitable.
+You know that he said that, and that the specialist said it."
+
+"I know. But something tells me that I am facing--darkness." He threw up
+his head. "Why should we talk of it? Let me tell you rather how much you
+have helped me with my book. If it had not been for you I could not have
+written it."
+
+"I am glad if I have been of service." Her words sounded formal after the
+warmth of his own.
+
+He laughed, with a touch of bitterness. "The Princess serves," he said,
+"always and always serves. She never grabs, as the rest of us do, at
+happiness."
+
+"I shall grab when it comes," she said, smiling a little, "and I am happy
+now, because I am going to wear my pretty gown."
+
+"Which reminds me," he said, quickly, and brought from his pocket a
+little box. "Your costume won't be complete without these. I bought them
+for you with the advance check which my publishers sent after they had
+read the first chapters of my book."
+
+She opened the box. Within lay a little string of pearls. Not such pearls
+as Nancy had shown her, but milk-white none the less, with shining lovely
+lights.
+
+"Oh," she gave a distressed cry, "you shouldn't have done it."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I can't accept them. Indeed I can't."
+
+"I shall feel as if you had flung them in my face if you give them back
+to me," heatedly.
+
+"You shouldn't take it that way. It isn't fair to take it that way."
+
+"It isn't a question of fairness. It is a question of kindness on your
+part."
+
+"I want to be kind."
+
+"Then take them."
+
+She thought for a moment with her eyes on the fire. When she raised them
+it was to say, "Would you--want your little sister, Mimi, to take jewels
+from any man?"
+
+"Yes. If he loved her as I love you."
+
+It was out, and they stood aghast. Then Geoffrey stammered, "Can't you
+see that my soul kneels at your feet? That to me these pearls aren't as
+white as your--whiteness?"
+
+The rosy silk had slipped to the floor. She was like a very small goddess
+in a morning cloud. "I can't take them. Oh, I can't."
+
+He made a quick gesture. But for her restraining hand he would have cast
+the pearls into the flames.
+
+"Oh, don't," she said, the little hand tense on his arm. "Don't--hurt
+me--like that."
+
+He dropped the pearls into his pocket. "If you won't wear them nobody
+shall. I suppose I seem to you like all sorts of a fool. I seem like all
+sorts of a fool to myself."
+
+He turned and left her.
+
+An hour later he came back and found her still sewing on the rosy silk.
+Her eyes were red, as if she had wept a little.
+
+"I was a brute," he said, repentantly; "forgive me and smile. I am a
+tempestuous fellow, and I forgot myself."
+
+"I was afraid we weren't ever going to be friends again."
+
+"I shall always be your friend. Yet--who wants a Blind Beggar for a
+friend--tell me that, Mistress Anne?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+_In Which a Blind Beggar and a Butterfly Go to a Ball._
+
+
+_In my Own Little Room._
+
+UNCLE ROD, I went to the party!
+
+I came home an hour ago, and since then I have been sitting all shivery
+and shaky in my pink silk. It will be daylight in a few minutes, but I
+shan't go to bed. I couldn't sleep if I did. I feel as if I shouldn't
+ever sleep again.
+
+Uncle Rod, Jimmie Ford was at the Crossroads ball!
+
+I went early, because Mrs. Nancy had asked me to be there to help with
+her guests. Geoffrey Fox went with me. He was very picturesque in a
+ragged jerkin with a black bandage over his eyes and with old Mamie
+leading him at the end of a cord. She enjoyed it immensely, and they
+attracted a lot of attention, as he went tap-tapping along with his cane
+over the polished floor, or whined for alms, while she sat up on her
+haunches with a tin cup in her mouth.
+
+Well, Dr. Richard met us at the door, looking the young squire to
+perfection in his grandfather's old dress coat of blue with brass
+buttons. The people from New York hadn't come, so Mrs. Nancy put the
+pearls in my hair, and they made me stand under the portrait in the
+library, to see if I were really like my grandmother. I can't believe
+that I looked as lovely as she, but they said I did, and I began to feel
+as happy and excited as Cinderella at her ball.
+
+Then the New York crowd arrived in motors, and they were all masked. I
+knew Eve Chesley at once and Winifred Ames, but it was hard to be sure of
+any one else. Eve Chesley was a Rose, with a thousand fluttering flounces
+of pink chiffon. She was pursued by two men dressed as Butterflies, slim
+and shining in close caps with great silken wings--a Blue Butterfly and a
+Brown one. I was pretty sure that the Brown one was Philip Meade. It was
+quite wonderful to watch them with their wings waving. Eve carried a
+pocketful of rose petals and threw them into the air as she went. I had
+never imagined anything so lovely.
+
+Well, I danced with Dr. Richard and I danced with Geoffrey Fox, and I
+danced with Dutton Ames, and with some men that I had never met before.
+It seemed so _good_ to be doing things like the rest. Then all at once I
+began to feel that the Blue Butterfly was watching me. He drifted away
+from his pursuit of Evelyn Chesley, and whenever I raised my eyes, I
+could see him in corners staring at me.
+
+It gave me a queer feeling. I couldn't be sure, and yet--there he was.
+And, Uncle Rod, suddenly I knew him! Something in the way he carried
+himself. You know Jimmie's little swagger!
+
+I think I lost my head after that. I flirted with Dr. Richard and with
+Geoffrey Fox. I think I even flirted a little with Dutton Ames. I wanted
+them to be nice to me. I wanted Jimmie to see that what he had scorned
+other men could value. I wanted him to know that I had forgotten him. I
+laughed and danced as if my heart was as light as my heels, and all the
+while I was just sick and faint with the thought of it--"Jimmie Ford is
+here, and he hasn't said a word to me. Jimmie Ford is here--and--he
+hasn't said a word----"
+
+At last I couldn't stand it any longer, and when I was dancing with
+Geoffrey Fox I said, "Do you think we could go down to the Garden Room? I
+must get away."
+
+He didn't ask any question. And presently we were down there in the
+quiet, and he had his bandage off, and was looking at me, anxiously.
+"What has happened, Mistress Anne?"
+
+And then, oh, Uncle Rod, I told him. I don't know how I came to do it,
+but it seemed to me that he would understand, and he did.
+
+When I had finished his face was white and set. "Do you mean to tell me
+that any man has tried to break your heart?"
+
+I think I was crying a little. "Yes. But the worst of all is my--pride."
+
+"My little Princess," he said softly, "that this should have come--to
+you."
+
+Uncle Rod, I think that if I had ever had a brother, I should have wanted
+him to be like Geoffrey Fox. All his lightness and frivolity seemed to
+slip from him. "He has thrown away what I would give my life for," he
+said. "Oh, the young fool, not to know that Paradise was being handed to
+him on a platter."
+
+I didn't tell him Jimmie's name. That is not to be spoken to any one but
+you. And of course he could not know, though perhaps he guessed it, after
+what happened later.
+
+While we sat there, Dr. Richard came to hunt for us. "Everybody is going
+in to supper," he said. He seemed surprised to find us there together,
+and there was a sort of stiffness in his manner. "Mother has been asking
+for you."
+
+We went at once to the dining-room. There were long tables set in the
+old-fashioned way for everybody. Mrs. Nancy wanted things to be as they
+had been in her own girlhood. On the table in the wide window were two
+birthday cakes, and at that table Dr. Richard sat with his mother on one
+side of him, and Eve Chesley on the other. Eve's cake had pink candles
+and his had white, and there were twenty-five candles on each cake.
+
+Geoffrey Fox and I sat directly opposite; Dutton Ames was on my right,
+Mrs. Ames was on Geoffrey's left, and straight across the table, with
+his mask off, was Jimmie Ford, staring at me with all his eyes!
+
+For a minute I didn't know what to do. I just sat and stared, and then
+suddenly I picked up the glass that stood by my plate, raised it in
+salute and drank smiling. His face cleared, he hesitated just a fraction
+of a second, then his glass went up, and he returned my greeting. I
+wonder if he thought that I would cut him dead, Uncle Rod?
+
+And don't worry about _what_ I drank. It was white grape juice. Mrs.
+Nancy won't have anything stronger.
+
+Well, after that I ate, and didn't know what I ate, for everything seemed
+as dry as dust. I know my cheeks were red and that my eyes shone, and I
+smiled until my face ached. And all the while I watched Jimmie and Jimmie
+watched me, and pretty soon, Uncle Rod, I understood why Jimmie was
+there.
+
+He was making love to Eve Chesley!
+
+Making love is very different from being in love, isn't it? Perhaps love
+is something that Jimmie really doesn't understand. But he was using on
+Eve all of the charming tricks that he had tried on me. She is more
+sophisticated, and they mean less to her than to me, but I could see him
+bending toward her in that flattering worshipful way of his--and when he
+took one of her roses and touched it to his lips and then to her cheek,
+everything was dark for a minute. That kind of kiss was the only kind
+that Jimmie Ford ever gave me, but to me it had meant that he--cared--and
+that I cared--and here he was doing it before the eyes of all the
+world--and for love of another woman!
+
+After supper he came around the table and spoke to me. I suppose he
+thought he had to. I don't know what he said and I don't care. I only
+know that I wanted to get away. I think it was then that Geoffrey Fox
+guessed. For when Jimmie had gone he said, very gently, "Would you like
+to go home? You look like your own little ghost, Mistress Anne."
+
+But I had promised one more dance to Dr. Richard, and I wanted to dance
+it. If you could have seen at the table how he towered above Jimmie Ford.
+And when he stood up to make a little speech in response to a toast from
+Dutton Ames, his voice rang out in such a--man's way. Do you remember
+Jimmie Ford's falsetto?
+
+I had my dance with him, and then Geoffrey took me home, and all the way
+I kept remembering the things Dr. Richard had said to me, such pleasant
+friendly things, and when his mother told me "good-night" she took my
+face between her hands and kissed me. "You must come often, little
+Cynthia Warfield," she said. "Richard and I both want you."
+
+But now that I am at home again, I can't think of anything but how Jimmie
+Ford has spoiled it all. When you have given something, you can't ever
+really take it back, can you? When you've given faith and constancy to
+one man, what have you left to give another?
+
+The river is beginning to show like a silver streak, and a rooster is
+crowing. Oh, Uncle Rod, if you were only here. Write and tell me that you
+love me.
+
+Your
+
+LITTLE GIRL.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_In the Telegraph Tower._
+
+MY VERY DEAR:
+
+It is after supper, and Beulah and I are out here with Eric. He likes to
+have her come, and I play propriety, for Mrs. Bower, in common with most
+women of her class, is very careful of her daughter. I know you don't
+like that word "class," but please don't think I am using it snobbishly.
+Indeed, I think Beulah is much better brought up than the daughters of
+folk who think themselves much finer, and Mrs. Bower in her simple way is
+doing some very effective chaperoning.
+
+Eric is on night duty in the telegraph tower this week; the other
+operator has the day work. The evenings are long, so Beulah brings her
+sewing, and keeps Eric company. They really don't have much to say to
+each other, so that I am not interrupted when I write. They seem to like
+to sit and look out on the river and the stars and the moon coming up
+behind the hills.
+
+It is all settled now. Eric told me yesterday. "I am very happy," he
+said; "I have been a lonely man."
+
+They are to be married in June, and the things that she is making are to
+go into the cedar chest which her father has given her. He found it one
+day when he was in Baltimore, and when he showed it to her, he shone with
+pleasure. He's a good old Peter, and he is so glad that Beulah is to
+marry Eric. Eric will rent a little house not far up the road. It is a
+dear of a cottage, and Peggy and I call it the Playhouse. We sit on the
+porch when we come home from school, and peep in at the windows and plan
+what we would put into it if we had the furnishing of it. I should like a
+house like that, Uncle Rod, for you and me and Diogenes. We'd live happy
+ever after, wouldn't we? Some day the world is going to build
+"teacherages" just as it now builds parsonages, and the little houses
+will help to dignify and uplift the profession.
+
+Your dear letter came just in time, and it was just right. I should have
+gone to pieces if you had pitied me, for I was pitying myself dreadfully.
+But when I read "Little School-teacher, what would you tell your
+scholars?" I knew what you wanted me to answer. I carried your letter in
+my pocket to school, and when I rang the bell I kept saying over and
+over to myself, "Life is what we make it. Life is what we make it," and
+all at once the bells began to ring it:
+
+    "Life is--what we--make it--
+     Life is--what we--make it."
+
+When the children came in, before we began the day's work, I talked to
+them. I find it is always uplifting when we have failed in anything to
+try to tell others how not to fail! Perhaps it isn't preaching what we
+practice, but at least it supplies a working theory.
+
+I made up a fairy-story for them, too, about a Princess who was so ill
+and unhappy that all the kingdom was searched far and wide for some one
+to cure her. And at last an old crone was found who swore that she had
+the right remedy. "What is it?" all the wise men asked; but the old woman
+said, "It is written in this scroll. To-morrow the Princess must start
+out alone upon a journey. Whatever difficulty she encounters she must
+open this scroll and read, and the scroll will tell her what to do."
+
+Well, the Princess started out, and when she had traveled a little way
+she found that she was hungry and tired, and she cried: "Oh, I haven't
+anything to eat." Then the scroll said, "Read me," and she opened the
+scroll and read: "There is corn in the fields. You must shell it and
+grind it on a stone and mix it with water, and bake it into the best
+bread that you can." So the Princess shelled the corn and ground it and
+mixed it with water, and baked it, and it tasted as sweet as honey and as
+crisp as apples. And the Princess ate with an appetite, and then she lay
+down to rest. And in the night a storm came up and there was no shelter,
+and the Princess cried out, "Oh, what shall I do?" and the scroll said,
+"Read me." So she opened the scroll and read: "There is wood on the
+ground. You must gather it and stack it and build the best little house
+that you can." So the Princess worked all that day and the next and the
+next, and when the hut was finished it was strong and dry and no storms
+could destroy it. So the Princess stayed there in the little hut that she
+had made, and ate the sweet loaves that she had baked, and one day a
+great black bear came down the road, and the Princess cried out, "Oh, I
+have no weapon; what shall I do?" And the scroll said, "Read me." So she
+opened the scroll and read, "Walk straight up to the bear, and make the
+best fight that you can." So the Princess, trembling, walked straight up
+to the big black bear, and behold! when he saw her coming, he ran away!
+
+Now the year was up, and the king sent his wise men to bring the Princess
+home, and one day they came to her little hut and carried her back to the
+palace, and she was so rosy and well that everybody wondered. Then the
+king called the people together, and said, "Oh, Princess, speak to us,
+and let us know how you were cured." So the Princess told them of how she
+had baked the bread, and built the hut, and conquered the bear; and of
+how she had found health and happiness. For the bread that you make with
+your own hands is the sweetest, and the shelter that you build for
+yourself is the snuggest, and the fear that you face is no fear at all.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The children liked my story, and I felt very brave when I had finished
+it. You see, I have been forgetting our sunsets, and I have been shivery
+and shaky when I should have faced my Big Black Bear!
+
+Beulah is ready to go--and so--good-night. The moon is high up and round,
+and as pure gold as your own loving heart.
+
+Ever your own
+
+ANNE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+_In Which Brinsley Speaks of the Way to Win a Woman._
+
+
+AND now spring was coming to the countryside. The snow melted, and the
+soft rains fell, and on sunny days Diogenes, splashing in the little
+puddles, picked and pulled at his feathers as he preened himself in the
+shelter of the south bank which overlooked the river.
+
+Some of the feathers were tipped with shining green and some with brown.
+Some of them fell by the way, some floated out on blue tides, and one of
+them was wafted by the wind to the feet of Geoffrey Fox, as, on a certain
+morning, he, too, stood on the south bank.
+
+He picked it up and stuck it in his hat. "I'll wear it for my lady," he
+said to the old drake, "and much good may it do me!"
+
+The old drake lifted his head toward the sky, and gave a long cry. But it
+was not for Anne that he called. She still gave him food and drink. He
+still met her at the gate. If her mind was less upon him than in the
+past, it mattered little. The things that held meaning for him this
+morning were the glory of the sunshine, and the softness of the breeze.
+Stirring within him was a need above and beyond anything that Geoffrey
+could give, or Anne. He listened not for the step of the little
+school-teacher, but for the whirring wings of some comrade of his own
+kind. Again and again he sent forth his cry to the empty air.
+
+Geoffrey's heart echoed the cry. His book was finished, and it was time
+for him to go. Yet he was held by a tie stronger than any which had
+hitherto bound him. Here in the big old house at Bower's was the one
+thing that his heart wanted.
+
+"I could make her happy," he whispered to that inner self which warned
+him. "With her as my wife and with my book a success, I could defy fate."
+
+The day was Saturday, and all the eager old fishermen had arrived the
+night before. Brinsley Tyson coming out with his rod in his hand and a
+broad-brimmed hat on his head invited Geoffrey to join him. "I've a motor
+boat that will take us out to the island after we have done a morning's
+fishing, and Mrs. Bower has put up a lunch."
+
+"The glare is bad for my eyes."
+
+"Been working them too hard?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"There's an awning and smoked glasses if you'll wear them. And I don't
+want to go alone. David went back on me; he's got a new book. It's a
+puzzle to me why any man should want to read when he can have a day's
+fishing."
+
+"If people didn't read what would become of my books?"
+
+"Let 'em read. But not on days like this." Brinsley's fat face was
+upturned to the sun. With a vine-wreath instead of his broad hat and
+tunic in place of his khaki he might have posed for any of the plump old
+gods who loved the good things of life.
+
+Geoffrey, because he had nothing else to do, went with him. Anne was
+invisible. On Saturday mornings she did all of the things she had left
+undone during the week. She mended and sewed and washed her brushes, and
+washed her hair, and gave all of her little belongings a special rub and
+scrub, and showed herself altogether exquisite and housewifely.
+
+She saw Geoffrey start out, and she waved to him. He waved back, his hand
+shading his eyes. When he had gone, she cleaned all of her toilet silver,
+and ran ribbons into nicely embroidered nainsook things, and put her
+pillows in the sun and tied up her head and swept and dusted, and when
+she had made everything shining, she had a bit of lunch on a tray, and
+then she washed her hair.
+
+Geoffrey ate lunch on the island with Brinsley Tyson. He liked the old
+man immensely. There was a flavor about his worldliness which had nothing
+to do with stale frivolities; it was rather a thing of fastidious taste
+and of tempered wit. He was keen in his judgments of men, and charitable
+in his estimates of women.
+
+Brinsley Tyson had known Baltimore before the days of modern cities. He
+had known it before it had cut its hotels after the palace pattern, and
+when Rennert's in more primitive quarters had been the Mecca for
+epicureans. He had known its theaters when the footlight favorites were
+Lotta and Jo Emmet, and when the incomparable Booth and Jefferson had
+held audiences spellbound at Ford's and at Albaugh's. He had known
+Charles Street before it was extended, and he had known its Sunday
+parade. He had known the Bay Line Boats, the harbor and the noisy streets
+that led to the wharves. He had known Lexington Market on Saturday
+afternoons; the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in the heyday of its
+importance, and more than all he had known the beauties and belles of old
+Baltimore, and it added piquancy to many of his anecdotes when he spoke
+of his single estate as a tragedy resulting from his devotion to too many
+charmers, with no possibility of making a choice.
+
+It was of these things that he spoke while Geoffrey, lying in the grass
+with his arm across his eyes, listened and enjoyed.
+
+"And you never married, sir?"
+
+"I've told you there were too many of them. If I could have had any one
+of those girls on this island with 'tother dear charmers away, there
+wouldn't have been any trouble. But a choice with them all about me
+was--impossible." His old eyes twinkled.
+
+"Suppose you had made a choice, and she hadn't cared for you?" said the
+voice of the man on the grass.
+
+"Any woman will care if you go at it the right way."
+
+"What is the right way?"
+
+"There's only one way to win a woman. If she says she won't marry you,
+carry her off by force to a clergyman, and when you get her there make
+her say 'Yes.'"
+
+Geoffrey sat up. "You don't mean that literally?"
+
+Brinsley nodded. "Indeed I do. Take the attitude with them of Man the
+Conqueror. They all like it. Man the Suppliant never gets what he wants."
+
+"But in these days primitive methods aren't possible."
+
+Brinsley skipped a chicken bone expertly across the surface of the water.
+"Primitive methods are always possible. The trouble is that man has lost
+his nerve. The cult of chivalry has spoiled him. It has taught him to
+kneel at his lady's feet, where pre-historically he kept his foot on her
+neck!"
+
+Geoffrey laughed. "You'd be mobbed in a suffrage meeting."
+
+"Suffrage, my dear fellow, is the green carnation in the garden of
+femininity. Every woman blooms for her lover. It is the lack of lovers
+that produces the artificial--hence votes for women. What does the woman
+being carried off under the arm of conquering man care for yellow banners
+or speeches from the tops of busses? She is too busy trying to please
+him."
+
+"It would be a great experiment. I'd like to try it."
+
+Brinsley, uncorking a hot and cold bottle, boldly surmised, "It is the
+little school-teacher?"
+
+Geoffrey, again flat on the grass, murmured, "Yes."
+
+"And it is neck and neck between you and that young cousin of mine?"
+
+"I am afraid he is a neck ahead."
+
+"It all depends upon which runs away with her first."
+
+Again Geoffrey murmured, "I'd like to try it."
+
+"Why not?" said Brinsley and beamed over his coffee cup like a benevolent
+spider at an unsuspecting fly. He had no idea that his fooling might be
+taken seriously. It was not given to his cynicism to comprehend the mood
+of the seemingly composed young person who lay on the grass with his hat
+over his eyes--torn by contending emotions, maddened by despair and the
+dread of darkness, awakened to new impulses in which youth and hot blood
+fought against an almost reverent tenderness for the object of his
+adoration. Since the night of the Crossroads ball Geoffrey had permitted
+himself to hope. She had turned to him then. For the first time he had
+felt that the barriers were down between them.
+
+"Now Richard," Brinsley was saying, as he smoked luxuriously after the
+feast, "ought to marry Eve. She'll get her Aunt Maude's money, and be the
+making of him."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Richard, who at that very moment was riding through the country on his
+old white horse, had no thought of Eve.
+
+The rhythm of old Ben's even trot formed an accompaniment to the song
+that his heart was singing--
+
+    "I think she was the most beautiful lady,
+     That ever was in the West Country----"
+
+As he passed along the road, he was aware of the world's awakening. His
+ears caught the faint flat bleating of lambs, the call of the cocks, the
+high note of the hens, the squeal of little pigs, and above all, the
+clamor of blackbirds and of marauding crows.
+
+The trees, too, were beginning to show the pale tints of spring, and an
+amethyst haze enveloped the hills. The river was silver in the shadow and
+gold in the sun; the little streams that ran down to it seemed to sing as
+they went.
+
+Coming at last to an old white farmhouse, Richard dismounted and went in.
+The old man bent with rheumatism welcomed him, and the old wife said,
+"He is always better when he knows that you are coming, doctor."
+
+The old man nodded. "Your gran'dad used to come. I was a little boy an'
+croupy, and he seemed big as a house when he came in at the door. He was
+taller than you, and thin."
+
+"Now, father," the old woman protested, "the young doctor ain't fat."
+
+"He's fatter'n his gran'dad. But I ain't saying that I don't like it. I
+like meat on a man's bones."
+
+Richard laughed. "Just so that I don't go the way of Cousin Brin. You
+know Brinsley Tyson, don't you?"
+
+"He's the fat twin. Yes, I know him and David. David comes and reads to
+me, but Brinsley went to Baltimore, and now he don't seem to remember
+that we were boys together, and went to the Crossroads school."
+
+After that they spoke of the little new teacher, and Richard revelled in
+the praise they gave her. She was worshipped, they said, by the people
+roundabout. There had never been another like her.
+
+    "_I think she was the most beautiful lady,_
+     _That ever was in the West Country_----"
+
+was Richard's enlargement of their theme. In the weeks just past he had
+seen much of her, and it had seemed to him that life began and ended with
+his thought of her.
+
+When he rose to go the old woman went to the door with him. "I guess we
+owe you a lot by this time," she remarked; "you've made so many calls. It
+cheers him up to have you, but you'd better stop now that he don't need
+you. It's so far, and we ain't good pay like some of them."
+
+Richard squared his shoulders--a characteristic gesture. "Don't bother
+about the bill. I have a sort of sentiment about my grandfather's old
+patients. It is a pleasure to know them and serve them."
+
+"If you didn't mind taking your pay in chickens," she stated as he
+mounted his horse, "we could let you have some broilers."
+
+"You will need all you can raise." Then as his eyes swept the green hill
+which sloped down to the river, he perceived an orderly line of waddling
+fowls making their way toward the house.
+
+"I'd like a white duck," he said, "if you could let me take her now."
+
+He chose a meek and gentle creature who submitted to the separation from
+the rest of her kind without rebellion. Tucked under Richard's arm, she
+surveyed the world with some alarm, but presently, as he rode on with
+her, she seemed to acquiesce in her abduction and faced the adventure
+with serene eyes, murmuring now and then some note of demure
+interrogation as she nestled quite confidently against the big man who
+rode so easily his great white horse.
+
+And thus they came to Bower's, to find Anne on the south bank, like a
+very modern siren, drying her hair, with Diogenes nipping the new young
+grass near her.
+
+She saw them coming. Richard wore a short rough coat and an old alpine
+hat of green. His leggings were splashed with mud, and the white horse
+was splashed, but there was about the pair of them an air of gallant
+achievement.
+
+She rose to greet them. She was blushing a little and with her dark hair
+blowing she was "the most beautiful," like the lady in the song.
+
+"I thought no one would be coming," was her apology, "and out here I get
+the wind and sun."
+
+"All the old fishermen will be wrecked on the rocks if they get a glimpse
+of you," he told her gravely; "you mustn't turn their poor old heads."
+
+And now the white duck murmured.
+
+"The lovely dear, where did you get her?" Anne asked.
+
+"In the hills, to cheer up Diogenes."
+
+He set the white duck down. She shook her feathers and again spoke
+interrogatively. And now Diogenes lifted his head and answered. For a few
+moments he rent the air with his song of triumph. Then he turned and led
+the way to the river. There was a quiet pool in the bend of the bank. The
+old drake breasted its shining waters, and presently the white duck
+followed. With a sort of restrained coquetry she turned her head from
+side to side. All her questions were answered, all her murmurs stilled.
+
+Richard and Anne smiled at each other. "What made you think of it?" she
+asked.
+
+"I thought you'd like it."
+
+"I do." She began to twist up her hair.
+
+"Please don't. I like to see it down."
+
+"But people will be coming in."
+
+"Why should we be here when they come? I'll put Ben in the stable--and
+we'll go for a walk. Do you know there are violets in the wood?"
+
+From under the red-striped awning of Brinsley's boat Geoffrey Fox saw
+Anne's hair blowing like a sable banner in the breeze. He saw Richard's
+square figure peaked up to the alpine hat. He saw them enter the wood.
+
+He shut his eyes from the glare of the sun and lay quietly on the
+cushions of the little launch. But though his eyes were shut, he could
+still see those two figures walking together in the dreamy dimness of the
+spring forest.
+
+"What were the ethics of the primitive man?" he asked Brinsley suddenly.
+"Did he run away with a woman who belonged to somebody else?"
+
+"Why not?" Brinsley's reel was whirring. "And now if you don't mind, Fox,
+you might be ready with the net. If this fish is as big as he pulls, he
+will weigh a ton."
+
+Geoffrey, coming in, found Peggy disconsolate on the pier.
+
+"What's the matter?" he asked.
+
+"I can't find Anne. She said that after her hair dried she'd go for a
+walk to Beulah's playhouse, and we were to have tea. Beulah was to bring
+it."
+
+"She has gone for a walk with some one else."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Dr. Brooks. Let's go and look for her, Peggy, and when we find her we
+will tell her what we think of her for running away."
+
+The green stillness of the grove was very grateful after the glare of the
+river. Geoffrey walked quickly, with the child's hand in his. He had a
+feeling that if he did not walk quickly he would be too late.
+
+He was not too late; he saw that at a glance. Richard had dallied in his
+wooing. It had been so wonderful to be with her. Once when he had knelt
+beside her to pick violets, the wind had blown across his face a soft
+sweet strand of her hair. It was then that she had braided it, sitting on
+a fallen log under a blossoming dogwood.
+
+"It is so long," she had said with a touch of pride, "that it is a great
+trouble to care for it. Cynthia Warfield had hair like mine."
+
+"I don't believe that any one ever had hair like yours. It seems to me as
+if every strand must have been made specially in some celestial shop, and
+then the pattern destroyed."
+
+How lovely she was when she blushed like that! How little and lovely and
+wise and good. He liked little women. His mother was small, and he was
+glad that both she and Anne had delicate hands and feet. He was aware
+that this preference was old-fashioned, but it was, none the less, the
+way he felt about it.
+
+And now there broke upon the silence of the wood the sound of murmuring
+voices. Peggy and Geoffrey Fox had invaded their Paradise!
+
+"We thought," Peggy complained, "that we had lost you. Anne, you promised
+about the tea."
+
+"Oh, Peggy, I forgot."
+
+"Beulah's gone with the basket and Eric, and we can't be late because
+there are hot biscuits."
+
+Hurrying toward the biscuits and their hotness, Anne ran ahead with
+Peggy.
+
+"How about the eyes?" Richard asked as he and Geoffrey followed.
+
+"I've been on the water, and it is bad for them. But I'm not going to
+worry. I am getting out of life more than I hoped--more than I dared
+hope."
+
+His voice had a high note of excitement. Richard glanced at him. For a
+moment he wondered if Fox had been drinking.
+
+But Geoffrey was intoxicated with the wine of his dreams. With a quick
+gesture in which he seemed to throw from him all the fears which had
+oppressed him, he told his triumphant lie.
+
+"I am going to marry Anne Warfield; she has promised to be eyes for me,
+and light--the sun and the moon."
+
+Richard's face grew gray. He spoke with difficulty. "She has promised?"
+
+Then again Geoffrey lied, meaning indeed before the night had passed to
+make his words come true. "She is going to marry me--and I am the
+happiest man alive!"
+
+The light went out of Richard's world. How blind he had been. He had
+taken her smiles and blushes to himself when she had glowed with a
+happiness which had nothing to do with him.
+
+He steadied himself to speak. "You are a lucky fellow, Fox; you must let
+me congratulate you."
+
+"The world doesn't know," Geoffrey said, "not yet. But I had to tell it
+to some one, and a doctor is a sort of secular father confessor."
+
+Richard's laugh was without mirth. "If you mean that it's not to be told,
+you may rely on my discretion."
+
+"Of course. I told you she was to play Beatrice to my Dante, but she
+shall be more than that."
+
+It was a rather silent party which had tea on the porch of the Playhouse.
+But Beulah and Eric were not aware of any lack in their guests. Eric had
+been to Baltimore the day before, and Beulah wore her new ring. She
+accepted Richard's congratulations shyly.
+
+"I like my little new house," she said; "have you been over it?"
+
+He said that he had not, and she took him. Eric went with them, and as
+they stood in the door of an upper room, he put his arm quite frankly
+about Beulah's shoulders as she explained their plans to Richard. "This
+is to be in pink and the other one in white, and all the furniture is to
+be pink and white."
+
+She was as pink and white and pretty as the rooms she was planning, and
+to see her standing there within the circle of her lover's arm was
+heart-warming.
+
+"You must get some roses from my mother, Beulah, for your little garden,"
+the young doctor told her; "all pink and white like the rest of it."
+
+He let them go down ahead of him, and so it happened that he stood for a
+moment alone in a little upper porch at the back of the house which
+overlooked the wood. The shadows were gathering in its dim aisles,
+shutting out the daylight, shutting out the dreams which he had lost that
+day in the fragrant depths.
+
+When later he came with the rest of them to Bower's, the river was
+stained with the sunset. Diogenes and the white duck breasted serenely
+the crimson surface. Certain old fishermen trailed belatedly up the bank.
+Others sat spick and span and ready for supper on the porch.
+
+Brinsley Tyson over the top of his newspaper hailed Richard.
+
+"There's a telephone call for you. They've been trying to get you for an
+hour."
+
+He went in at once, and coming out told Anne good-night. "Thank you for a
+happy afternoon," he said.
+
+But she missed something in his voice, something that had been there when
+they had walked in the wood.
+
+She watched him as he went away, square-shouldered and strong on his big
+white horse. She had a troubled sense that things had in some fateful and
+tragic way gone wrong with her afternoon, but it was not yet given to her
+to know that young Richard on his big white horse was riding out of her
+life.
+
+It was after supper that Geoffrey asked her to go out on the river with
+him.
+
+"Not to-night. I'm tired."
+
+"Just a little minute, Mistress Anne. To see the moon come up over the
+island. Please." So she consented.
+
+Helping her into the boat, Geoffrey's hands were shaking. The boat swept
+out from the pier in a wide curve, and he drew a long breath. He had her
+now--it would be a great adventure--like a book--better than any book.
+
+Primitive man in prehistoric days carried his woman off captive under his
+arm. Geoffrey, pursuing modern methods, had borrowed Brinsley's boat. A
+rug was folded innocently on the cushions; in a snug little cupboard
+under the stern seat were certain supplies--a great adventure, surely!
+
+And now the boat was under the bridge; the signal lights showed red and
+green. Then as they slipped around the first island there was only the
+silver of the moonshine spread out over the waters.
+
+Geoffrey stopped the motor. "We'll drift and talk."
+
+"You talk," she told him, "and I'll listen, and we mustn't be too late."
+
+"What is too late?"
+
+"I told you I would stay just a little minute."
+
+"There is no real reason why we shouldn't stay as long as we wish. You
+are surely not so prim that you are doing it for propriety."
+
+"You know I am not prim."
+
+"Yes you are. You are prim and Puritan and sometimes you are a prig. But
+I like you that way, Mistress Anne. Only to-night I shall do as I
+please."
+
+"Don't be silly."
+
+"Is it silly to love you--why?"
+
+He argued it with her brilliantly--so that it was only when the red and
+green lights of a second bridge showed ahead of them that she said,
+sharply, "We are miles away from Bower's; we must go back."
+
+"It won't take us long," he said, easily, and presently they were purring
+up-stream.
+
+Then all at once the motor stopped. Geoffrey, inspecting it with a
+flashlight, said, succinctly, "Engine's on the blink."
+
+"You mean that we can't go on?"
+
+"Oh, I'll tinker it up. Only you'll have to let me get into that box
+under the stern seat for the tools. You can hold the light while I work."
+
+As he worked they drifted. They passed the second bridge. Anne, steering,
+grew cold and shivered. But she did not complain. She was glad, however,
+when Geoffrey said, "You'd better curl down among the cushions, and let
+me wrap you in this rug."
+
+"Can you manage without me?"
+
+"Yes. I've patched it up partially. And you'll freeze in this bitter
+air."
+
+The wind had changed and there was now no moon. She was glad of the
+warmth of the rug and the comfort of the cushioned space. She shut her
+eyes, after a time, and, worn out by the emotions of the day, she dropped
+into fitful slumber.
+
+Then Geoffrey, his hair blown back by the wind, stood at the wheel and
+steered his boat not up-stream toward the bridge at Bower's, but straight
+down toward the wider waters, where the river stretches out into the
+Bay.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+_In Which Eve Usurps an Ancient Masculine Privilege._
+
+
+AUNT MAUDE CHESLEY belonged to the various patriotic societies which are
+dependent on Revolutionary fighting blood, on Dutch forbears, or on the
+ancestral holding of Colonial office. The last stood highest in her
+esteem. It was the hardest to get into, hence there was about it the
+sanctity of exclusiveness. Any man might spill his blood for his country,
+and among those early Hollanders were many whose blood was red instead of
+blue, but it was only a choice few who in the early days of the country's
+history had been appointed by the Crown or elected by the people to
+positions of influence and of authority.
+
+When Aunt Maude went to the meeting of her favorite organization, she
+wore always black velvet which showed the rounds of her shoulders, point
+lace in a deep bertha, the family diamonds, and all of her badges. The
+badges had bars and jewels, and the effect was imposing.
+
+Evelyn laughed at her. "Nobody cares for ancestors any more. Not since
+people began to hunt them up. You can find anything if you look for it,
+Aunt Maude. And most of the crests are bought or borrowed so that if one
+really belongs to you, you don't like to speak of it, any more than to
+tell that you are a lady or take a daily bath."
+
+"Our ancestors," said Aunt Maude solemnly, "are our heritage from the
+past--but you have reverence for nothing."
+
+"They were a jolly old lot," Eve agreed, "and I am proud of them. But
+some of their descendants are a scream. If men had their minds on being
+ancestors instead of bragging of them there'd be some hope for the future
+of old families."
+
+Aunt Maude, having been swathed by her maid in a silk scarf, so that her
+head was stiff with it, batted her eyes. "If you would go with me," she
+said, "and hear some of the speeches, you might look at it differently.
+Now there was a Van Tromp----"
+
+"And in New England there were Codcapers, and in Virginia there were
+Pantops. I take off my hat to them, but not to their descendants,
+indiscriminately."
+
+And now Aunt Maude, more than ever mummified in a gold and black brocade
+wrap trimmed with black fur, steered her uncertain way toward the motor
+at the door.
+
+"People in my time----" floated over her shoulder and then as the door
+closed behind her, her eloquence was lost.
+
+Eve, alone, faced a radiant prospect. Richard was coming. He had
+telephoned. She had not told Aunt Maude. She wanted him to herself.
+
+When at last he arrived she positively crowed over him. "Oh, Dicky, this
+is darling of you."
+
+A shadow fell across her face, however, when he told her why he had come.
+
+"Austin wanted me with him in an operation. He telegraphed me and I took
+the first train. I have been here for two days without a minute's time in
+which to call you up."
+
+"I thought that perhaps you had come to see me."
+
+"Seeing you is a pleasant part of it, Eve."
+
+He was really glad to see her; to be drawn away by it all from the
+somberness of his thoughts. The night before he had left the train on the
+Jersey side and had ferried over so that he might view once more the
+sky-line of the great city. There had been a stiff breeze blowing and it
+had seemed to him that he drew the first full breath since the moment
+when he had walked with Geoffrey in the wood. What had followed had been
+like a dream; the knowledge that the great surgeon wanted him, his
+mother's quick service in helping him pack his bag, the walk to Bower's
+in the fragrant dark to catch the ten o'clock train; the moment on the
+porch at Bower's when he had learned from a word dropped by Beulah that
+Anne was on the river with Geoffrey.
+
+And now it all seemed so far away--the river with the moon's broad path,
+Bower's low house and its yellow-lighted panes, the silence, the
+darkness.
+
+Since morning he had done a thousand things. He had been to the hospital
+and had yielded once more to the spell of its splendid machinery; he had
+talked with Austin and the talk had been like wine to a thirsty soul. In
+such an atmosphere a man would have little time to--think. He craved the
+action, the excitement, the uplift.
+
+He came back to Eve's prattle. "I told Winifred Ames we would come to her
+little supper after the play. I was to have gone with her and Pip and
+Jimmie Ford. Tony is away. But when you 'phoned, I called the first part
+of it off. I wanted to have a little time just with you, Richard."
+
+He smiled at her. "Who is Jimmie Ford?"
+
+"A lovely youth who is in love with me--or with my money--he was at your
+birthday party, Dicky Boy; don't you remember?"
+
+"The Blue Butterfly? Yes. Is he another victim, Eve?"
+
+She shrugged. "Who knows? If he is in love with me, he'll get hurt; if he
+is in love with Aunt Maude's money, he won't get it. Oh, how can a woman
+know?" The lightness left her voice. "Sometimes I think that I'll go off
+somewhere and see if somebody won't love me for what I am, and not for
+what he thinks Aunt Maude is going to leave me."
+
+"And you with a string of scalps at your belt, and Pip ready at any
+moment to die for you."
+
+She nodded. "Pip is pure gold. Nobody can question his motives. And
+anyhow he has more money than I can ever hope to have. But I am not in
+love with him, Dicky."
+
+"You are not in love with anybody. You are a cold-blooded little thing,
+Eve. A man would need much fire to melt your ice."
+
+"Would he?"
+
+"You know he would."
+
+He swept away from her petulances to the thing which was for the moment
+uppermost in his mind. "I have had an offer, Eve, from Austin. He wants
+an assistant, a younger man who can work into his practice. It is a
+wonderful working opportunity."
+
+"It would be wicked to throw it away," she told him, breathlessly,
+"wicked, Richard."
+
+"It looks that way. But there's mother to think of, and Crossroads has
+come to mean a lot to me, Eve."
+
+"Oh, but New York, Dicky! Think of the good times we'd have, and of your
+getting into Austin's line of work and his patients. You would be rolling
+in your own limousine before you'd know it."
+
+Rolling in his own limousine! And missing the rhythm of big Ben's
+measured trot----!
+
+"_I think--she was the--most beautiful_----"
+
+As they motored to Winifred's, Eve spoke of his quiet mood. "Why don't
+you talk, Dicky?"
+
+"It has been a busy day--I'll wake up presently and realize that I am
+here."
+
+It was before he went down-stairs at the Dutton-Ames that he had a moment
+alone with Jimmie Ford.
+
+Jimmie was not in the best of moods. Winifred had asked him a week ago to
+join a choice quartette which included Pip and Eve. Of course Meade made
+a troublesome fourth, but Jimmie's conceit saved him from realizing the
+real fact of the importance of the plain and heavy Pip to that group. And
+now, things had been shifted, so that Eve had stayed to talk to a country
+doctor, and he had been left to the callow company of an indefinite
+debutante whom Winifred had invited to fill the vacancy.
+
+"When did you come down, Brooks?" he asked coldly.
+
+"This morning."
+
+"Nice old place of yours in Harford."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Owned it long?"
+
+"Several generations."
+
+"Oh, ancestral halls, and all that----?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I saw Cynthia Warfield's picture on the wall--used to know the family
+down in Carroll--our old estates joined--Anne Warfield and I were brought
+up together."
+
+They had reached the head of the stairway. Richard stopped and stood
+looking down. "Anne Warfield?"
+
+"Yes. Surprised to find her teaching. I fancy they've been pretty hard
+up--grandfather drank, and all that, you know."
+
+"I didn't know." It was now Richard's turn to speak coldly.
+
+"Oh, yes, ran through with all their money. Years ago. Anne's a little
+queen. Engaged to her once myself, you know. Boy and girl affair, broken
+off----"
+
+Below them in the hall, Richard could see the women with whom he was to
+sup. Shining, shimmering figures in silk and satin and tulle. For these,
+softness and ease of living. And that other one! Oh, the cheap little
+gown, the braided hair! Before he had known her she had been Jimmie's and
+now she was Geoffrey's. And he had fatuously thought himself the first.
+
+He threw himself uproariously into the fun which followed. After all, it
+was good to be with them again, good to hear the familiar talk of people
+and of things, good to eat and drink and be merry in the fashion of the
+town, good to have this taste of the old tumultuous life.
+
+He and Eve went home together. Philip's honest face clouded as he saw
+them off. "Don't run away with her, Brooks," he said, as he leaned in to
+have a last look at her. "Good-night, little lady."
+
+"Good-night."
+
+It was when they were motoring through the park that Eve said, "I am
+troubled about Pip."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Oh, I sometimes have a feeling that he has a string tied to me--and that
+he is pulling me--his way. And I don't want to go. But I shall, if
+something doesn't save me from him, Richard."
+
+"You can save yourself."
+
+"That's all you know about it. Women take what they can get in this
+world, not what they want. Every morning Pip sends me flowers, sweetheart
+roses to-day, and lilies yesterday, and before that gardenias and
+orchids, and when I open the boxes every flower seems to be shouting,
+'Come and marry me, come and marry me.'"
+
+"No woman need marry a man she doesn't care for, Eve."
+
+"Lots of them do."
+
+"You won't. You are too sensible."
+
+"Am I?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+She sighed a little. "I am not half as sensible as you think."
+
+When they reached home, they found Aunt Maude before them. She had been
+unswathed from her veil and her cloak, released from her black velvet,
+and was comfortable before her sitting-room fire in a padded wisteria
+robe and a boudoir cap with satin bow. Underneath the cap there were no
+flat gray curls. These were whisked mysteriously away each night by
+Hannah, the maid, to be returned in the morning, fresh from their pins
+with no hurt to Aunt Maude's old head.
+
+She greeted Richard cordially. "I sent Hannah down when I heard you. Eve
+didn't let me know you were here; she never lets me know. And now tell me
+about your poor mother."
+
+"Why poor, dear lady? You know she loves Crossroads."
+
+"How anybody can---- I'd die of loneliness. Now to-night--so many people
+of my own kind----"
+
+"Everybody in black velvet or brocade, everybody with badges, everybody
+with blue blood," Eve interrupted flippantly; "nobody with ideas, nobody
+with enthusiasms, nobody with an ounce of originality--ugh!"
+
+"My dear----!"
+
+"Dicky, Aunt Maude's idea of Heaven is a place where everybody wears
+coronets instead of halos, and where the angel chorus is a Dutch version
+of 'God save the King.'"
+
+"My idea of Heaven," Aunt Maude retorted, "is a place where young girls
+have ladylike manners."
+
+Richard roared. It had been long since he had tasted this atmosphere of
+salt and spice. Aunt Maude and her sprightly niece were as good as a
+play.
+
+"How long shall you be in town, Richard?"
+
+"Three or four days. It depends on the condition of our patient. It may
+be necessary to operate again, and Austin wants me to be here."
+
+"Aunt Maude, Dicky may come back to New York to live."
+
+"He should never have left. What does your mother think of it?"
+
+"I haven't told her of Austin's offer. I shall write to-night."
+
+"If she has a grain of sense, she'll make you take it."
+
+Eve was restless. "Come on down, Dicky. It is time that Aunt Maude was in
+bed."
+
+"I never go until you do, Eve, and in my day young men went home before
+morning."
+
+"Dearest, Dicky shall leave in ten minutes. I'll send him."
+
+But when they were once more in the great drawing-room, she forgot the
+time limit. "Don't let your mother settle things for you, Dicky. Think of
+yourself and your future. Of your--manhood, Dicky--please."
+
+She was very lovely as she stood before him, with her hands on his
+shoulders. "I want you to be the biggest of them--all," she said, and her
+laugh was tremulous.
+
+"I know. Eve, I want to stay."
+
+"Oh, Dicky--really?"
+
+"Really, Eve."
+
+Their hands came together in a warm clasp.
+
+She let him go after that. There had been nothing more than brotherly
+warmth in his manner, but it was enough that in the days to come she was
+to have him near her.
+
+Richard, writing to his mother, told her something of his state of mind.
+"I'll admit that it tempts me. It is a big thing, a very big thing, to
+work with a man like that. Yet knowing how you feel about it, I dare not
+decide. We shall have to face one thing, however. The Crossroads practice
+will never be a money-making practice. I know how little money means to
+you, but the lack of it will mean that I shall be tied to rather small
+things as the years go on. I should like to be one of the Big Men,
+mother. You see I am being very frank. I'll admit that I dreamed with
+you--of bringing all my talents to the uplift of a small community, of
+reviving at Crossroads the dignity of other days. But--perhaps we have
+dreamed too much--the world doesn't wait for the dreamers--the only way
+is to join the procession."
+
+In the day which intervened between his letter and his mother's answer,
+he had breakfast with Eve in the room with the flame-colored fishes and
+the parrot and the green-eyed cat. He motored with Eve out to
+Westchester, and they had lunch at an inn on the side of a hill which
+overlooked the Hudson; later they went to a matinee, to tea in a special
+little corner of a down-town hotel for the sake of old days, then back
+again to dress for dinner at Eve's, with Aunt Maude at the head of the
+table, and Tony and Winifred and Pip completing the party. Then another
+play, another supper, another ride home with Eve, and in the morning in
+quiet contrast to all this, his mother's letter.
+
+"Dear Boy," she said, "I am glad you spoke to me frankly of what you
+feel. I want no secrets between us, no reservations, no sacrifices which
+in the end may mean a barrier between us.
+
+"Our sojourn at Crossroads has been an experiment. And it has failed. I
+had hoped that as the days went on, you might find happiness. Indeed, I
+had been deceiving myself with the thought that you were happy. But now I
+know that you are not, and I know, too, what it must mean to you to feel
+that from among all the others you have been chosen to help a great man
+like Dr. Austin, who was the friend of my father, and my friend through
+everything.
+
+"But Richard, I can't go back. I literally crawled to Crossroads, after
+my years in New York, as a wounded animal seeks its lair. And I have a
+morbid shrinking from it all, unworthy of me, perhaps, but none the less
+impossible to overcome. I feel that the very stones of the streets would
+speak of the tragedy and dishonor of the past: houses would stare at me,
+the crowds would shun me.
+
+"And now I have this to propose. That I stay here at Crossroads, keeping
+the old house open for you. David is near me, and any one of Cousin Mary
+Tyson's daughters would be glad to come to me. And you shall run down at
+week-ends, and tell me all about it, and I shall live in your letters and
+in the things which you have to tell. We can be one in spirit, even
+though there are miles between us. This is the only solution which seems
+possible to me at this moment. I cannot hold you back from what may be
+your destiny. I can only pray here in my old home for the happiness and
+success that must come to you--my boy--my little--boy----"
+
+The letter broke off there. Richard, high up in the room of the big
+hotel, found himself pacing the floor. Back of the carefully penned lines
+of his mother's letter he could see her slender tense figure, the
+whiteness of her face, the shadow in her eyes. How often he had seen it
+when a boy, how often he had sworn that when he was the master of the
+house he would make her happy.
+
+The telephone rang. It was Eve. "I was afraid you might have left for the
+hospital."
+
+"I am leaving in a few minutes."
+
+"Can you go for a ride with me?"
+
+"In the afternoon. There's to be another operation--it may be very late
+before I am through."
+
+"Not too late for dinner out of town somewhere and a ride under the May
+moon." Her voice rang high and happy.
+
+For the rest of the morning he had no time to think of his own affairs.
+The operation was extremely rare and interesting, and Austin's skill was
+superb. Richard felt as if he were taking part in a play, in which the
+actors were the white clad and competent doctors and nurses, and the
+stage was the surgical room.
+
+Eve coming for him, found him tired and taciturn. She respected his mood,
+and said little, and they rode out and out from the town and up and up
+into the Westchester hills, dotted with dogwood, pink and white like huge
+nosegays. As the night came on there was the fragrance of the gardens,
+the lights of the little towns; then once more the shadows as they swept
+again into the country.
+
+"We will go as far as we dare," Eve said. "I know an adorable place to
+dine."
+
+She tried more than once to bring him to speak of Austin, but he put her
+off. "I am dead tired, dear girl; you talk until we have something to
+eat."
+
+"Oh," Eve surveyed him scornfully, "oh, men and their appetites!"
+
+But she had a thousand things to tell him, and her light chatter carried
+him away from somber thoughts, so that when they reached at last the
+quaint hostelry toward which their trip had tended, he was ready to meet
+Eve's mood half-way, and enter with some zest upon their gay adventure.
+She chose a little table on a side porch, where they were screened from
+observation, and which overlooked the river, and there took off her hat
+and powdered her nose, and gave her attention to the selection of the
+dinner.
+
+"A clear soup, Dicky Boy, and Maryland chicken, hot asparagus, a Russian
+dressing for our lettuce, and at the end red raspberries with little
+cakes. They are sponge cakes, Dicky, filled with cream, and they are food
+for the gods."
+
+He was hungry and tired and he wanted to eat. He was glad when the food
+came on.
+
+When he finished he leaned back and talked shop. "If you don't like it,"
+he told Eve, "I'll stop. Some women hate it."
+
+"I love it," Eve said. "Dicky, when I dream of your future you are always
+at the top of things, with smaller men running after you and taking your
+orders."
+
+He smiled. "Don't dream. It doesn't pay. I've stopped."
+
+She glanced at him. His face was stern.
+
+"What's up, Dicky Boy?"
+
+He laughed without mirth. "Oh, I'm beginning to think we are puppets
+pulled by strings; that things happen as Fate wills and not as we want
+them."
+
+"Men haven't any right to talk that way. It's their world. If you were a
+woman you might complain. Look at me! Everything that I have comes from
+Aunt Maude. She could leave me without a cent if she chose, and she
+knows it. She owns me, and unless I marry she'll own me until I die."
+
+"You'll marry, Eve. Old Pip will see to that."
+
+"Pip," passionately. "Dicky, why do you always fling Pip in my face?"
+
+"Eve----!"
+
+"You do. Everybody does. And I don't want him."
+
+"Then don't have him. There are others. And you needn't lose your temper
+over a little thing like that."
+
+"It isn't a little thing."
+
+"Oh, well----" The conversation lapsed into silence until Eve said, "I
+was horrid--and I think we had better be getting back, Dicky."
+
+Again in the big limousine, with the stolid chauffeur separated from them
+by the glass screen, she said, softly, "Oh, Dicky, it seems too good to
+be true that we shall have other nights like this--other rides. When will
+you come up for good?"
+
+"I am not coming, Eve."
+
+She turned to him, her face frozen into whiteness.
+
+"Not coming? Why not?"
+
+"While mother lives I must make her happy."
+
+"Oh, don't be goody-goody."
+
+He blazed. "I'm not."
+
+"You are. Aren't you ever going to live your own life?"
+
+"I am living it. But I can't break mother's heart."
+
+"You might as well break hers as--mine."
+
+He stared down at her. Mingled forever after with his thoughts of that
+moment was a blurred vision of her whiteness and stillness. Her slim
+hands were crossed tensely on her knees.
+
+He laid one of his own awkwardly over them. "Dear girl," he said, "you
+don't in the least mean it."
+
+"I do. Dicky, why shouldn't I say it? Why shouldn't I? Hasn't a woman the
+right? Hasn't she?"
+
+She was shaking with silent sobs, the tears running down her cheeks. He
+had not seen her cry like this since little girlhood, when her mother had
+died, and he, a clumsy lad, had tried to comfort her.
+
+He was faced by a situation so stupendous that for a moment he sat there
+stunned. Proud little Eve for love of him had made the supreme sacrifice
+of her pride. Could any man in his maddest moment have imagined a thing
+like this----!
+
+He bent down to her, and took her hands in his.
+
+"Hush, Eve, hush. I can't bear to see you cry. I'm not the fellow to make
+you happy, dear."
+
+Her head dropped against his shoulder. The perfumed gold of her hair was
+against his cheeks. "No one else can make me happy, Dicky."
+
+Then he felt the world whirl about him, and it seemed to him as he
+answered that his voice came from a long distance.
+
+"If you'll marry me, Eve, I'll stay."
+
+It was the knightly thing to do, and the necessary thing. Yet as they
+swept on through the night, his mother's face, all the joy struck from
+it, seemed to stare at him out of the darkness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+_In Which Geoffrey Plays Cave Man._
+
+
+MINE OWN UNCLE:
+
+I don't know whether to begin at the beginning or at the end of what I
+have to tell you. And even now as I think back over the events of the
+last twenty-four hours I feel that I must have dreamed them, and that I
+will wake and find that nothing has really happened.
+
+But something has happened, and "of a strangeness" which makes it seem to
+belong to some of those queer old dime "thrillers" which you never wanted
+me to read.
+
+Last night Geoffrey Fox asked me to go out with him on the river. I don't
+often go at night, yet as there was a moon, it seemed as if I might.
+
+We went in Brinsley Tyson's motor boat. It is big and roomy and is
+equipped with everything to make one comfortable for extended trips. I
+wondered a little that Geoffrey should take it, for he has a little boat
+of his own, but he said that Mr. Tyson had offered it, and they had been
+out in it all day.
+
+Well, it was lovely on the water; I was feeling tired and as blue as
+blue--some day I may tell you about _that_, Uncle Rod, and I was glad of
+the quiet and beauty of it all; and of late Geoffrey and I have been such
+good friends.
+
+Can't you ever really know people, Uncle Rod, or am I so dull and stupid
+that I misunderstand? Men are such a puzzle--all except you, you darling
+dear--and if you were young and not my uncle, even you might be as much
+of a puzzle as the rest.
+
+Well, I would never have believed it of Geoffrey Fox, and even now I
+can't really feel that he was responsible. But it isn't what I think but
+what you will think that is important--for I have, somehow, ceased to
+believe in myself.
+
+It was when we reached the second bridge that I told Geoffrey that we
+must turn back. We had, even then, gone farther than I had intended. But
+as we started up-stream, I felt that we would get to Bower's before Peter
+went back on the bridge, which is always the signal for the house to
+close, although it is never really closed; but the lights are turned down
+and the family go to bed, and I have always known that I ought not to
+stay out after that.
+
+Well, just as we left the second bridge, something happened to the motor.
+
+Uncle Rod, _that was last night_, and I didn't get back to Bower's until
+a few hours ago, and here is the whole truth before I write any more----
+
+_Geoffrey Fox tried to run away with me!_
+
+It would seem like a huge joke if it were not so serious. I don't know
+how he got such an idea in his head. Perhaps he thought that life was
+like one of his books--that all he had to do was to plan a plot, and then
+make it work out in his own way. He said, in that first awful moment,
+when I knew what he had done, "I thought I could play Cave Man and get
+away with it." You see, he hadn't taken into consideration that I wasn't
+a Cave Woman!
+
+When the engine first went wrong I wasn't in the least worried. He fixed
+it, and we went on. Then it stopped and we drifted: the moon went down
+and it was cold, and finally Geoffrey made me curl up among the cushions.
+I felt that it must be very late, but Geoffrey showed me his watch, and
+it was only a little after ten. I knew Peter wouldn't be going to the
+bridge until eleven, and I hoped by that time we would be home.
+
+But we weren't. We were far, far down the river. At last I gave up hope
+of arriving before the house closed, but I knew that I could explain to
+Mrs. Bower.
+
+After that I napped and nodded, for I was very tired, and all the time
+Geoffrey tinkered with the broken motor. Each time that I waked I asked
+questions but he always quieted me--and at last--as the dawn began to
+light the world, a pale gray spectral sort of light, Uncle Rod, I saw
+that the shore on one side of us was not far away, but on the other it
+was a mere dark line in the distance--double the width that the river is
+at Bower's. Geoffrey was standing up and steering toward a little pier
+that stuck its nose into shallow water. Back of the pier was what seemed
+to be an old warehouse, and in a clump of trees back of that there was a
+thin church spire.
+
+I said, "Where are we?" and he said, "I am not sure, but I am going in to
+see if I can get the motor mended."
+
+I couldn't think of anything but how worried the Bowers would be. "You
+must find a telephone," I told him, "and call Beulah, and let her know
+what has happened."
+
+He ran up to the landing and fastened the boat, and then he helped me
+out. "We will sit here and have a bit of breakfast first," he said;
+"there's some coffee left in Brinsley's hot and cold bottle, and some
+supplies under the stern seat."
+
+It was really quite cheerful sitting there, eating sardines and crackers
+and olives and orange marmalade. A fresh breeze was blowing, and the
+river was wrinkled all over its silver surface, and we could see nothing
+but water ahead of us, straight to the horizon, where there was just the
+faint streak of a steamer's smoke.
+
+"We must be almost in the Bay," I said. "Couldn't you have steered
+up-stream instead of down?"
+
+He sat very still for a moment looking at me, and then he said quickly
+and sharply, "I didn't want to go up-stream. I wanted to go down. And I
+came in here because I saw a church spire, and where there is a church
+there is always a preacher. Will you marry me, Mistress Anne?"
+
+At first I thought that he had lost his mind. Uncle Rod, I don't think
+that I shall ever see a sardine or a cracker without a vision of Geoffrey
+with his breakfast in his hand and his face as white as chalk above it.
+
+"That's a very silly joke," I said. "Why should I marry you?"
+
+He looked at me, and--I didn't need any answer, for it came to me then
+that I had been out all night on the river with him, and that he was
+thinking of a way to quiet people's tongues!
+
+I tried to speak, but my voice shook, and finally I managed to stammer
+that when we got back I was sure it would be all right.
+
+"It won't be all right," he said; "the world will have things to say
+about you, and I'd rather die than have them say it. And I could make you
+happy, Anne."
+
+Then I told him that I did not love him, that he was my dear friend, my
+brother--and suddenly his face grew red, and he came over and caught hold
+of my hands. "I am not your brother," he said. "I want you whether you
+want me or not. I could make you love me--I've got to have you in my
+life. I am not going on alone to meet darkness--and despair."
+
+Oh, Uncle Rod, then I knew and I looked straight at him and asked:
+"Geoffrey Fox, did you break the motor?"
+
+"It isn't broken," he said; "there has never been a thing the matter with
+it."
+
+I think for the first time that I was a little afraid. Not of him, but of
+what he had done.
+
+"Oh, how could you," I said, "how could you?"
+
+And it was then that he said, "I thought that I could play Cave Man and
+get away with it."
+
+After that he told me how much he cared. He said that I had helped him
+and inspired him. That I had shown him a side of himself that no one else
+had ever shown. That I had made him believe in himself--and in--God. That
+if he didn't have me in his life his future would be--dead. He begged and
+begged me to let him take me into the little town and find some one to
+marry us. He said that if we went back I would be lost to him--that--that
+Brooks would get me--that was the way he put it, Uncle Rod. He said that
+he was going blind; that I hadn't any heart; that he would love me as no
+one else could; that he would write his books for me; that he would spend
+his whole life making it up to me.
+
+I don't know how I held out against him. But I did. Something in me
+seemed to say that I must hold out. Some sense of dignity and of
+self-respect, and at last I conquered.
+
+"I will not marry you," I said; "don't speak of it again. I am going back
+to Bower's. I am not a heroine of a melodrama, and there's no use to act
+as if I had done an unpardonable thing. I haven't, and the Bowers won't
+think it, and nobody else will know. But you have hurt me more than I can
+tell by what you have done to-night. When you first came to Bower's there
+were things about you that I didn't like, but--as I came to know you, I
+thought I had found another man in you. The night at the Crossroads ball
+you seemed like a big kind brother--and I told you what I had suffered,
+and now you have made me suffer."
+
+And then--oh, I don't quite know how to tell you. He dropped on his knees
+at my feet and hid his face in my dress and cried--hard dry sobs--with
+his hands clutching.
+
+I just couldn't stand it, Uncle Rod, and presently I was saying, "Oh, you
+poor boy, you poor boy----" and I think I smoothed his hair, and he
+whispered, "Can't you?" and I said, "Oh, Geoffrey, I can't."
+
+At last he got control of himself. He sat at a little distance from me
+and told me what he was going to do.
+
+"I think I was mad," he said. "I can't even ask your forgiveness, for I
+don't deserve it. I am going up to town to telephone to Beulah, and when
+I come back I will take you up the river where you can get the train. I
+shall break the engine and leave it here, so that when Brinsley gets it
+back there will be nothing to spoil our story."
+
+He was gone half an hour. When he came he brought me a hat. He had bought
+it at the one little store where he had telephoned, and he had bought one
+for himself. I think we both laughed a little when we put them on,
+although it wasn't a laughing matter, but we did look funny.
+
+He unfastened the boat, and we turned up the river and in about an hour
+we came into quite a thriving port with the Sunday quiet over everything,
+and Geoffrey did things to the engine that put it out of commission, and
+then he left it with a man on the pier, and we took the train.
+
+It seems that all night at Bower's they were looking for us. They even
+took other boats, and followed. And they called. I know that if Geoffrey
+heard them call he didn't answer.
+
+Every one seemed to accept our explanation. Perhaps they thought it
+queer. But I can't help that.
+
+Geoffrey is going away to-morrow. When we were alone in the hall for a
+moment he told me that he was going. "If you can ever forgive me," he
+said, "will you write and tell me? What I have done may seem
+unforgivable. But when a man dreams a great deal he sometimes thinks
+that he can make his dreams come true."
+
+Uncle Rod, I think the worst thing in the whole wide world is to be
+disappointed in people. As soon as school closes I am coming back to you.
+Perhaps you can make me see the sunsets. And what do you say about life
+now? Is it what we make it? Did I have anything to do with this mad
+adventure? Yet the memory of it will always--smirch.
+
+And if life isn't what we make it, where is our hope and where are our
+sunsets? Tell me that, you old dear.
+
+ANNE.
+
+P.S. When I opened my door just now, I found that Geoffrey had left on
+the threshold his little Napoleon, and a letter. I am sending the letter
+to you. I cried over it, and I am afraid it is blurred--but I haven't
+time to make a copy before the mail goes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What Geoffrey said:
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MY LITTLE CHILD:
+
+I am calling you that because there is something so young and untouched
+about you. If I were an artist I should paint you as young Psyche--and
+there should be a hint of angels' wings in the air and it should be
+spring--with a silver dawn. But if I could paint should I ever be able to
+put on canvas the light in your eyes when you have talked to me by the
+fire, my kind little friend whom I have lost?
+
+I cannot even now understand the mood that possessed me. Yet I will be
+frank. I saw you go into the wood with Richard Brooks. I felt that if he
+should say to you what I was sure he wanted to say that there would be no
+chance for me--so I hurried after you. The thing which was going to
+happen must not happen; and I arrived in time. After that I told Brooks
+as we walked back that I was going to marry you, and I took you out in my
+boat intending to make my words come true.
+
+These last few days have been strange days. Perhaps when I have described
+them you may find it in your heart to feel sorry for me. The book is
+finished. That of itself has left me with a sense of loss, as if I had
+put away from me something that had been a part of me. Then--I am going
+blind. Do you know what that means, the desperate meaning? To lose the
+light out of your life--never to see the river as I saw it this morning?
+Never to see the moonlight or the starlight--never to see your face?
+
+The specialist has given me a few months--and then darkness.
+
+Was it selfishness to want to tie you to a blind man? If you knew that
+you were losing the light wouldn't you want to steal a star to illumine
+the night?--and you were my--Star.
+
+I am going now to my little sister, Mimi. She leaves the convent in a few
+days. There are just the two of us. I have been a wayward chap, loving
+my own way; it will be a sorry thing for her to find, I fancy, that
+henceforth I shall be in leading strings.
+
+It is because of this thing that is coming that I am begging you still to
+be my friend--to send me now and then a little letter; that I may feel in
+the night that you are holding out your hand to me. There can be no
+greater punishment than your complete silence, no greater purgatory than
+the thought that I have forfeited your respect. Looking into the future I
+can see no way to regain it, but if the day ever comes when a Blind
+Beggar can serve you, you will show that you have forgiven him by asking
+that service of him.
+
+I am leaving my little Napoleon for you. You once called him a little
+great man. Perhaps those of us who have some elements of greatness find
+our balance in something that is small and mean and mad.
+
+Will you tell Brooks that you are not bound to me in any way? It is best
+that you should do it. I shall hope for a line from you. If it does not
+come--if I have indeed lost my little friend through my own fault--then
+indeed the shadows will shut me in.
+
+GEOFFREY.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Uncle Rodman writes:
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MY BELOVED NIECE:
+
+Once upon a time you and I read together "The Arabian Nights," and when
+we had finished the first book you laid your little hand on my knee and
+looked up at me. "Is it true, Uncle Rod?" you asked. "Oh, Uncle Rod, is
+it true?" And I said, "What it tells about the Roc's egg and the Old Man
+of the Sea and the Serpent is not true, but what it says about the
+actions and motives of people is true, because people have acted in that
+way and have thought like that through all the ages, and the tales have
+lived because of it, and have been written in all languages." I was sure,
+when I said it, that you did not quite understand; but you were to grow
+to it, which was all that was required.
+
+Blessed child, what your Geoffrey Fox has done, though I hate him for it
+and blame him, is what other hotheads have done. The protective is not
+the primitive masculine instinct. Men have thought of themselves first
+and of women afterward since the beginning of time. Only with
+Christianity was chivalry born in them. And since many of our youths have
+elected to be pagan, what can you expect?
+
+So your Geoffrey Fox being pagan, primitive--primordial, whatever it is
+now the fashion to call it, reverted to type, and you were the victim.
+
+I have read his letter and might find it in my heart to forgive him were
+it not that he has made you suffer; but that I cannot forgive; although,
+indeed, his coming blindness is something that pleads for him, and his
+fear of it--and his fear of losing you.
+
+I am glad that you are coming home to me. Margaret and her family are
+going away, and we can have their big house to ourselves during the
+summer. We shall like that, I am sure, and we shall have many talks, and
+try to straighten out this matter of dreams--and of sunsets, which is
+really very important, and not in the least to be ignored.
+
+But let me leave this with you to ponder on. You remember how you have
+told me that when you were a tiny child you walked once between me and my
+good old friend, General Ross, and you heard it said by one of us that
+life was what we made it. Before that you had always cried when it
+rained; now you were anxious that the rain might come so that you could
+see if you could really keep from crying. And when the rain arrived you
+were so immensely entertained that you didn't shed a tear, and you went
+to bed that night feeling like a conqueror, and never again cried out
+against the elements.
+
+It would have been dreadful if all your life you had gone on crying about
+rain, wouldn't it? And isn't this adventure your rainy day? You rose
+above it, dearest child. I am proud of the way you handled your mad
+lover.
+
+Life _is_ what we make it. Never doubt that. "He knows the water best who
+has waded through it," and I have lived long and have learned my lesson.
+When I knew that I could paint no more real pictures I knew that I must
+have dream pictures to hang on the walls of memory. Shall I make you a
+little catalogue of them, dear heart--thus:
+
+No. 1.--Your precious mother sewing by the west window in our shadowed
+sitting-room, her head haloed by the sunset.
+
+No. 2.--Anne in a blue pinafore, with the wind blowing her hair back on a
+gray March morning.
+
+No. 3.--Anne in a white frock amid a blur of candle-light on
+Christmas----
+
+Oh, my list would be long! People have said that I have lacked pride
+because I have chosen to take my troubles philosophically. There have
+been times when my soul has wept. I have cried often on my rainy days.
+But--there have always been the sunsets--and after that--the stars.
+
+I fear that I have been but little help to you. But you know my
+love--blessed one. And the eagerness with which I await your coming. Ever
+your own
+
+UNCLE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+_In Which There is Much Said of Marriage and of Giving in Marriage._
+
+
+EVE'S green-eyed cat sat on a chair and watched the flame-colored fishes.
+It was her morning amusement. When her mistress came down she would have
+her cream and her nap. In the meantime, the flashing, golden things in
+the clear water aroused an ancient instinct. She reached out a quick paw
+and patted the water, flinging showers of sparkling drops on her sleek
+fur.
+
+Aunt Maude, eating waffles and reading her morning paper, approved her.
+"I hope you'll catch them," she said, "especially the turtles and the
+tadpoles--the idea of having such things where you eat."
+
+The green-eyed cat licked her wet paw, then she jumped down from the
+chair and trotted to the door to meet Eve, who picked her up and hugged
+her. "Pats," she demanded, "what have you been doing? Your little pads
+are wet."
+
+"She's been fishing," said Aunt Maude, "in your aquarium. She has more
+sense than I thought."
+
+Eve, pouring cream into a crystal dish, laughed. "Pats is as wise as the
+ages--you can see it in her eyes. She doesn't say anything, she just
+looks. Women ought to follow her example. It's the mysterious, the
+silent, that draws men. Now Polly prattles and prattles, and nobody
+listens, and we all get a little tired of her; don't we, Polly?"
+
+She set the cream carefully by the green cushion, and Pats, classically
+posed on her haunches, lapped it luxuriously. The Polly-parrot coaxed and
+wheedled and was rewarded with her morning biscuit. The flame-colored
+fishes rose to the snowy particles which Eve strewed on the surface of
+the water, and then with all of her family fed, Eve turned to the table,
+sat down, and pulled away Aunt Maude's paper.
+
+"My dear," the old lady protested.
+
+"I want to talk to you," Eve announced. "Aunt Maude, I'm going to marry
+Dicky."
+
+Aunt Maude pushed back her plate of waffles. The red began to rise in her
+cheeks. "Oh, of all the fools----"
+
+"'He who calleth his brother a fool----'" Eve murmured pensively. "Aunt
+Maude, I'm in love with him."
+
+"You're in love with yourself," tartly, "and with having your own way.
+The husband for you is Philip Meade. But he wants you, and so--you don't
+want him."
+
+"Dicky wants me, too," Eve said, a little wistfully; "you mustn't forget
+that, Aunt Maude."
+
+"I'm not forgetting it." Then sharply, "Shall you go to live at
+Crossroads?"
+
+"No. Austin has made him an offer. He's coming back to town."
+
+"What do you expect to live on?"
+
+Silence. Then, uncertainly, "I thought perhaps until he gets on his feet
+you'd make us an allowance."
+
+The old lady exploded in a short laugh. She gathered up her paper and her
+spectacles case and her bag of fancy work. Then she rose. "Not if you
+marry Richard Brooks. You may as well know that now as later, Eve. All
+your life you have shaken the plum tree and have gathered the fruit. You
+may come to your senses when you find there isn't any tree to shake."
+
+The deep red in the cheeks of the old woman was matched by the red that
+stained Eve's fairness. "Keep your money," she said, passionately; "I can
+get along without it. You've always made me feel like a pauper, Aunt
+Maude."
+
+The old woman's hand went up. There was about her a dignity not to be
+ignored. "I think you are saying more than you mean, Eve. I have tried to
+be generous."
+
+They were much alike as they faced each other, the same clear cold eyes,
+the same set of the head, the only difference Eve's youth and
+slenderness and radiant beauty. Perhaps in some far distant past Aunt
+Maude had been like Eve. Perhaps in some far distant future Eve's soft
+lines would stiffen into a second edition of Aunt Maude.
+
+"I have tried to be generous," Aunt Maude repeated.
+
+"You have been. I shouldn't have said that. But, Aunt Maude, it hasn't
+been easy to eat the bread of dependence."
+
+"You are feeling that now," said the old lady shrewdly, "because you are
+ready for the great adventure of being poor with your young Richard.
+Well, try it. You'll wish more than once that you were back with your
+old--plum tree."
+
+Flash of eye met flash of eye. "I shall never ask for another penny," Eve
+declared.
+
+"I shall buy your trousseau, of course, and set you up in housekeeping,
+but when a woman is married her husband must take care of her." And Aunt
+Maude sailed away with her bag and her spectacles and her morning paper,
+and Eve was left alone in the black and white breakfast room, where Pats
+slept on her green cushion, the Polly-parrot swung in her ring, and the
+flame-colored fishes hung motionless in the clear water.
+
+Eve ate no breakfast. She sat with her chin in her hand and tried to
+think it out. Aunt Maude had not proved tractable, and Richard's income
+would be small. Never having known poverty, she was not appalled by the
+prospect of it. Her imagination cast a glamour over the future. She saw
+herself making a home for Richard. She saw herself inviting Pip and
+Winifred Ames and Tony to small suppers and perfectly served little
+dinners. She did not see herself washing dishes or cooking the meals.
+Knowing nothing of the day's work, how could she conceive its sordidness?
+
+She roused herself presently to go and write notes to her friends.
+Triumphant notes which told of her happiness.
+
+Her note to Pip brought him that night. He came in white-faced. As she
+went toward him, he rose to meet her and caught her hands in a hard grip,
+looking down at her. "You're mine, Eve. Do you think I am going to let
+any one else have you?"
+
+"Don't be silly, Pip."
+
+"Is it silly to say that there will never be for me any other woman? I
+shall love you until I die. If that is foolishness, I never want to be
+wise."
+
+He was kissing her hands now.
+
+"Don't, Pip, _don't_."
+
+She wrenched herself away from him, and stood as it were at bay. "You'll
+get over it."
+
+"Shall I? How little you know me, Eve. I haven't even given you up. If I
+were a story-book sort of hero I'd bestow my blessing on you and Brooks
+and go and drive an ambulance in France, and break my heart at long
+distance. But I shan't. I shall stay right here on the job, and see that
+Brooks doesn't get you."
+
+"Pip, I didn't think you were so--small."
+
+The telephone rang. Eve answered it. "It was Winifred to wish me
+happiness," she said, as she came in from the hall.
+
+She was blushing faintly. He gave her a keen glance. "What else did she
+say?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"You're fibbing. Tell me the truth, Eve."
+
+She yielded to his masterfulness.
+
+"Well, she said--'I wanted it to be Pip.'"
+
+"Good old Win, I'll send her a bunch of roses." He wandered restlessly
+about the room, then came back to her. "Why, Eve, I planned the
+house--our house. It was to have the sea in front of it and a forest
+behind it, and your room was to have a wide window and a balcony, and
+under the balcony there was to be a rose garden."
+
+"How sure you were of me, Pip."
+
+"I have never been sure. But what I want, I--get. Remember that, dear
+girl. When I shut my eyes I can see you at the head of my table, in a
+high gold chair--like a throne."
+
+She stared at him in amazement. "Pip, it doesn't sound a bit like you."
+
+"No. What a man thinks is apt to be--different. On the surface I'm a
+rather practical sort of fellow. But when I plan my future with you I am
+playing king to your queen, and I'm not half bad at it."
+
+And now it was she who was restless. "If I married you, what would I get
+out of it but--money?"
+
+"Thank you."
+
+"You know I don't mean it that way. But I like to think that I can help
+Richard--in his career."
+
+"You're not made of that kind of stuff. You want your own good time.
+Women who help men to achieve must be content to lose their looks and
+their figures and to do without pretty clothes, and you wouldn't be
+content. You want to live your own life, and be admired and petted and
+envied, Eve."
+
+She faced him, blazing. "You and Aunt Maude and Win are all alike. You
+think I can't be happy unless I live in the lap of luxury. Well, I can
+tell you this, I'd rather have a crust of bread with Richard than live in
+a palace with you, Pip."
+
+He stood up. "You don't mean it. But you needn't have put it quite that
+way, and some day you'll be sorry, and you'll tell me that you're sorry.
+Tell me now, Eve."
+
+He put his hands on her shoulders, holding her with a masterful grip. Her
+eyes met his and fell. "Oh, I hate your--sureness."
+
+"Some day you are going to love it. Look at me, Eve."
+
+She forced herself to do so. But she was not at ease. Then almost
+wistfully she yielded. "I--am sorry, Pip."
+
+His hands dropped from her shoulders. "Good little girl."
+
+He kissed both of her hands before he went away. "I am glad we are
+friends"--that was his way of putting it--"and you mustn't forget that
+some day we are going to be more than that," and when he had gone she
+found herself still shaken by the sureness of his attitude.
+
+Pip on his way down-town stopped in to order Winifred's roses, and the
+next day he went to her apartment and unburdened his heart.
+
+"If it was in the day of duels I'd call him out. Just at this moment I am
+in the mood for pistols or poison, I'm not sure which."
+
+"Why not try--patience?"
+
+He glanced at her quickly. "You think she'll tire?"
+
+"I think--it can never happen. For Richard's sake I--hope not."
+
+"Why for his sake?"
+
+Winifred smiled. "I'd like to see him marry little Anne."
+
+"The school-teacher?"
+
+"Yes. Oh, I am broken-hearted to think he's spoiling Nancy's dreams for
+him. There was something so idyllic in them. And now he'll marry Eve."
+
+"You say that as if it were a tragedy."
+
+"It is, for him and for her. Eve was never made to be poor."
+
+"Don't tell her that. She took my head off. Said she'd rather have a
+crust of bread with Richard----"
+
+"Oh, oh!"
+
+"Than a palace with me."
+
+"Poor Pip. It wasn't nice of her."
+
+"I shall make her eat her words."
+
+Winifred shook her head. "Don't be hard on her, Pip. We women are so
+helpless in our loves. Richard might make her happy if he cared enough,
+but he doesn't. Perhaps Eve will be broadened and deepened by it all. I
+don't know. No one knows."
+
+"I know this. That you and Tony seem to get a lot out of things, Win."
+
+"Of marriage? We do. Yet we've had all of the little antagonisms and
+differences. But underneath it we know--that we're made for each other.
+And that helps. It has helped us to push the wrong things out of our
+lives and to hold on to the right ones."
+
+Philip's young face was set. "I wanted to have my chance with Eve. We are
+young and pretty light-weight on the surface, but life together might
+make us a bit more like you and Tony. And now Richard is spoiling
+things."
+
+Back at Crossroads, Nancy was trying to convince her son that he was not
+spoiling things for her. "I have always been such a dreamer, dear boy.
+It was silly for me to think that I could stand between you and your big
+future. I have written to Sulie Tyson, and she'll stay with me, and you
+can run down for week-ends--and I'll always have David."
+
+"Mother, let me go to Eve and tell her----"
+
+"Tell her what?"
+
+"That I shall stay--with you."
+
+She was white with the whiteness which had never left her since he had
+told her that he was going to marry Eve.
+
+"Hickory-Dickory, if I kept you here in the end you would hate me."
+
+"_Mother!_"
+
+"Not consciously. But I should be a barrier--and you'd find yourself
+wishing for--freedom. If I let you go--you'll come back now and then--and
+be--glad."
+
+He gathered her up in his arms and declared fiercely that he would not
+leave her, but she stayed firm. And so the thing was settled, and as soon
+as he could settle his affairs at Crossroads he was to go to Austin.
+
+Anne, writing to Uncle Rod about it, said:
+
+"St. Michael is to marry the Lily-of-the-Field. You see, after all, he
+likes that kind of thing, though I had fancied that he did not. She is
+not as fine and simple as he is, and somehow I can't help feeling sorry.
+
+"But that isn't the worst of it, Uncle Bobs. He is going back to New
+York. And now what becomes of _his_ sunsets? I don't believe he ever had
+any. And oh, his poor little mother. She is fooling him and making him
+think that it is just as it should be and that she was foolish to expect
+anything else. But to me it is unspeakable that he should leave her. But
+he'll have Eve Chesley. Think of changing Nancy Brooks for Eve!"
+
+It was at Beulah's wedding that Anne and Richard saw each other for the
+last time before his departure.
+
+Beulah was married in the big front room at Bower's. She was married at
+six o'clock because it was easy for the farmer folk to come at that time,
+and because the evening could be given up afterward to the reception and
+a big supper and Beulah and Eric could take the ten o'clock train for New
+York.
+
+She had no bridesmaids except Peggy, who was quite puffed up with the
+importance of her office. Anne had instructed her, and at the last moment
+held a rehearsal on the side porch.
+
+"Now, play I am the bride, Peggy."
+
+"You look like a bride," Peggy said. "Aren't you ever going to be a
+bride, Miss Anne?"
+
+"I am not sure, Peggy. Perhaps no one will ever ask me."
+
+"I'd ask you if I were a man," Peggy reassured her. "Now, go on and show
+me, Anne."
+
+"You must take Beulah's bouquet when she hands it to you, and after she
+is married you must give it back to her, and----"
+
+"And then I must kiss her."
+
+"You must let Eric kiss her first."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because he will be her husband."
+
+"But I've been her sister for ever and ever."
+
+"Oh, but a husband, Peggy. Husbands are _very_ important."
+
+"Why are they?"
+
+"Well, they give you a new name and a new house, and you have new clothes
+to marry them in, and you go away with them on a honeymoon."
+
+"What's a honeymoon?"
+
+"The honey is for the sweetness, and the moon is for the madness, Peggy,
+dear."
+
+"Do people always go away on trains for their honeymoons?"
+
+"Not always. I shouldn't like a train. I should like to get into a boat
+with silver sails, and sail straight down a singing river into the heart
+of the sunset."
+
+"Well, of course, you couldn't," said the plump and practical Peggy, "but
+it sounds nice to say it. Does our river sing, Miss Anne?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What does it say?"
+
+Anne stretched out her arms with a little yearning gesture. "It
+says--'_Come and see the world, see the world, see the world!_'"
+
+"It never says that to me."
+
+"Perhaps you haven't ears to hear, Peggy."
+
+It was a very charming wedding. Richard was there and Nancy, and David
+and Brinsley. The country folk came from far and wide, and there was a
+brave showing of Old Gentlemen from Bower's who brought generous gifts
+for Peter's pretty daughter.
+
+Richard, standing back of his mother during the ceremony, could see over
+her head to where Anne waited not far from Peggy to prompt her in her
+bridesmaid's duties. She was in white. Her dark hair was swept up in the
+fashion which she had borrowed from Eve. She seemed very small and slight
+against the background of Bower's buxom kinsfolk.
+
+As he caught her eye he smiled at her, but she did not smile back. She
+felt that she could not. How could he smile with that little mother
+drooping before his very eyes? How _could_ he?
+
+She found herself later, when the refreshments were served, brooding over
+Nancy. The little lady tasted nothing, but was not permitted to refuse
+the cup of tea which Anne brought to her.
+
+"I had it made especially for you," she said; "you looked so tired."
+
+"I am tired. You see we are having rather strenuous days."
+
+"I know."
+
+"It isn't easy to let--him--go."
+
+"It isn't easy for anybody to let him go."
+
+The eyes of the two women went to where Richard in the midst of a
+protesting group was trying to explain his reasons for deserting
+Crossroads.
+
+He couldn't explain. They had a feeling that he was turning his back on
+them. "It's hard lines to have a good doctor and then lose him," was the
+general sentiment. He was made to feel that it would have been better not
+to have come than to end by deserting.
+
+He was aware that he had forfeited something precious, and he voiced his
+thought when he joined his mother and Anne.
+
+"I'll never have a practice quite like this. Neighborhood ties are
+something they know little about in cities."
+
+His mother smiled up at him bravely. "There'll be other things."
+
+"Perhaps;" he patted her hand. Then he fired a question at Anne. "Do you
+think I ought to go?"
+
+"How can I tell?" Her eyes met his candidly. "I felt when you came that I
+couldn't understand how a man could bury himself here. And now I am
+wondering how you can leave. It seems as if you belong."
+
+"I know what you mean."
+
+She went on: "And I can't quite think of this dear lady alone."
+
+Nancy stopped her. "Don't speak of that, my dear. I don't want you to
+speak of it. It is right that Richard should go."
+
+Anne was telling herself passionately that it was not right, when Beulah
+sent for her, and presently the little bride came down in her going-away
+gown, to be joined by Eric in the stiff clothes which seemed to rob him
+of the picturesqueness which belonged to him in less formal moments.
+
+But Richard had no eyes for the bride and groom; he saw only Anne at the
+head of the stairway where he had first talked to her. How long ago it
+seemed, and how sweet she had been, and how shy.
+
+The train was on the bridge, and a laughing crowd hurried out into the
+night to meet it. Peggy in the lead threw roses with a prodigal hand.
+"Kiss me, Beulah," she begged at the last.
+
+Beulah bent down to her, then was lifted in Eric's strong arms to the
+platform. Then the train drew out and she was gone!
+
+Alone on the stairway, Anne and Richard had a moment before the crowd
+swept back upon them.
+
+"Dr. Brooks, take your mother with you."
+
+"She won't go."
+
+"Then stay with her."
+
+He caught at the edge of her flowing sleeve, and held it as if he would
+anchor her to him. "Do you want me to stay?"
+
+Her eyes came up to him. She saw in them something which lifted her
+above and beyond her doubts of him. She had an ineffable sense of having
+found something which she could never lose.
+
+Then as he drew back he was stammering, "Forgive me. I have been wanting
+to wish you happiness. Geoffrey told me----"
+
+And now Peggy bore down upon them and all the heedless happy crowd, and
+Richard said, "Good-night," and was gone.
+
+Yet when she was left alone, Anne felt desperately that she should have
+shouted after him, "I am not going to marry Geoffrey Fox. I am not going
+to be married at all."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+_In Which Anne Asks and Jimmie Answers._
+
+
+"'A MONEYLESS man,'" said Uncle Rod, "'goes quickly through the market.'"
+
+He had a basket on his arm. Anne, who was at her easel, looked up. "What
+did you buy?"
+
+He laughed. His laugh had in it a quality of youth which seemed to
+contradict the signs of age which were upon him. Yet even these signs
+were modified by the carefulness of his attire and the distinction of his
+carriage. Great-uncle Rodman had been a dandy in his day, and even now
+his Norfolk coat and knickerbockers, his long divided beard and flowing
+tie gave him an air half foreign, wholly his own.
+
+In his basket was a melon, crusty rolls, peaches and a bottle of cream.
+
+"Such extravagance!" Anne said, as he showed her the bottle.
+
+"It was the price of two chops. And not a lamb the less for it. Two chops
+would have been an extravagance, and now we shall feast innocently and
+economically."
+
+"Where shall we eat?" Anne asked.
+
+"Under the oak?"
+
+She shook her head. "Too sunny."
+
+"In the garden?"
+
+"Not till to-night--people can see us from the road."
+
+"You choose then." It was a game that they had played ever since she had
+come to him. It gave to each meal the atmosphere of an adventure.
+
+"I choose," she clapped her hands, "I choose--by the fish-pond, Uncle
+Rod."
+
+The fish-pond was at the end of the garden walk. Just beyond it a wooden
+gate connected a high brick wall and opened upon an acre or two of
+pasture where certain cows browsed luxuriously. The brick wall and the
+cows and the quiet of the corner made the fish-pond seem miles away from
+the town street which was faced by the front of Cousin Margaret's house.
+
+The fish-pond was a favorite choice in the game played by Anne and Uncle
+Rod. But they did not always choose it because that would have made it
+commonplace and would have robbed it of its charm.
+
+Anne, rising to arrange the tray, was stopped by Uncle Rodman. "Sit
+still, my dear; I'll get things ready."
+
+To see him at his housekeeping was a pleasant sight. He liked it, and
+gave to it his whole mind. The peeling of the peaches with a silver
+knife, the selection of a bowl of old English ware to put them in, and
+making of the coffee in a copper machine, the fresh linen, the roses as a
+last perfect touch.
+
+Anne carried the tray, for his weak arm could not be depended upon; and
+by the fish-pond they ate their simple meal.
+
+The old fishes had crumbs and came to the top of the water to get them,
+and a cow looking over the gate was rewarded by the remaining half of the
+crusty roll. She walked away presently to give place to a slender youth
+who had crossed the fields and now stood with his hat off looking in.
+
+"If it isn't Anne," he said, "and Uncle Rod."
+
+Uncle Rod stood up. He did not smile and he did not ask the slender youth
+to enter. But Anne was more hospitable.
+
+"Come in, Jimmie," she said. "I can't offer you any lunch because we have
+eaten it all up. But there's some coffee."
+
+Jimmie entered with alacrity. He had come back from New York in a mood of
+great discontent, to meet the pleasant news that Anne Warfield was in
+town. He had flown at once to find her. If he had expected the Fatted
+Calf, he found none. Uncle Rodman left them at once. He had a certain
+amount of philosophy, but it had never taught him patience with Jimmie
+Ford.
+
+Jimmie drank a cup of coffee, and talked of his summer.
+
+"Saw your Dr. Richard in New York, out at Austin's."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"He's going to marry Eve."
+
+"Is he?"
+
+"Yes. I don't understand what she sees in him--he isn't good style."
+
+"He doesn't have to be."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Men like Richard Brooks mean more to the world than just--clothes,
+Jimmie."
+
+"I don't see it."
+
+"You wouldn't."
+
+"Why shouldn't I?"
+
+"Well, you look so nice in your clothes--and you need them to look nice
+in."
+
+He stared at her. He felt dimly that she was making fun of him.
+
+"From the way you put it," he said, with irritation, "from the way you
+put it any one might think that it was just my clothes----"
+
+"That make you attractive? Oh, _no_, Jimmie. You have nice eyes and--and
+a way with you."
+
+She was sewing on a scrap of fancy work, and her own eyes were on it. She
+was as demure as possible, but she seemed unusually and disconcertingly
+self-possessed.
+
+And now Jimmie became plaintive. Plaintiveness had always been his strong
+suit with Anne. He was eager for sympathy. His affair with Eve had hurt
+his vanity.
+
+"I have never seen a girl like her. She doesn't care what the world
+thinks. She doesn't care what any one thinks. She goes right along taking
+everything that comes her way--and giving nothing."
+
+"Did you want her to give you--anything, Jimmie?"
+
+"Me? Not me. She's a beauty and all that. But I wouldn't marry her if she
+were as rich as Rockefeller--and she isn't. Her money is her Aunt
+Maude's."
+
+"Oh, Jimmie--sour grapes."
+
+"Sour nothing. She isn't my kind. She said one day that if she wanted a
+man she'd ask him to marry her. That it was a woman's right to choose. I
+can't stand that sort of thing."
+
+"But if she should ask you, Jimmie?"
+
+Again he stared at her. "I jolly well shouldn't give her a chance. Not
+after the way she treated me."
+
+"What way?"
+
+"Oh, making me think I was the whole thing--and then--throwing me down."
+
+"Oh, so you don't like being thrown down?"
+
+"No. I don't like that kind of a woman. You know the kind of woman I
+like, Anne."
+
+The caressing note in his voice came to her like an echo of other days.
+But now it had no power to move her.
+
+"I am not sure that I do know the kind of woman you like--tell me."
+
+"Oh, I like a woman that is a woman, and makes a man feel that he's the
+whole thing."
+
+"But mustn't he be the whole thing to make her feel that he is?"
+
+He flung himself out of his chair and stood before her. "Anne," he
+demanded, "can't you do anything but ask questions? You aren't a bit like
+you used to be."
+
+She laid down her work and now he could see her eyes. Such steady eyes!
+"No, I'm not like myself. You see, Jimmie, I have been away for a year,
+and one learns such a lot in a year."
+
+He felt a sudden sense of loss. There had always been the old Anne to
+come back to. The Anne who had believed and had sympathized. Again his
+voice took on a plaintive note. "Be good to me, girl," he said. Then very
+low, "Anne, I was half afraid to come to-day."
+
+"Afraid--why?"
+
+"Oh, I suppose you think I acted like a--cad."
+
+"What do _you_ think?"
+
+"Oh, stop asking questions. It was the only thing to do. You were poor
+and I was poor, and there wasn't anything ahead of me--or of you--surely
+you can't blame me."
+
+"How can I blame you for what was, after all, my great good fortune?"
+
+"Your what?"
+
+She said it again, quietly, "My great good fortune, Jimmie. I couldn't
+see it then. Indeed, I was very unhappy and sentimental and cynical over
+it. But now I know what life can hold for me--and what it would not have
+held if I had married you."
+
+"Anne, who has been making love to you?"
+
+"Jimmie!"
+
+"Oh, no woman ever talks like that until she has found somebody else. And
+I thought you were constant."
+
+"Constant to what?"
+
+"To the thought--to--to the thought of what we might be to each other
+some day."
+
+"And in the meantime you were asking Eve to marry you. Was it her money
+that you wanted?"
+
+"Her money! Do you think I am a fortune-hunter?"
+
+"I am asking you, Jimmie?"
+
+"For Heaven's sake, stop asking questions. You know how a pretty woman
+goes to my head. And she's the kind that flits away to make you follow. I
+can't fancy your doing that sort of a thing, Anne."
+
+"No," quietly, "women like myself, Jimmie, go on expecting that things
+will come to them--and when they don't come, we keep on--expecting. But
+somehow we never seem to be able to reach out our hands to take--what we
+might have."
+
+He began to feel better. This was the wistful Anne of the old days.
+
+"There has never been any one like you, Anne. It seems good to be here.
+Women like Eve madden a man, but your kind are so--comfortable."
+
+Always the old Jimmie! Wanting his ease! After he had left her she sat
+looking out over the gate beyond the fields to the gold of the west.
+
+When at last she went up to the house Uncle Rod had had his nap and was
+in his big chair on the front porch.
+
+"Jimmie and I are friends again," she told him.
+
+He looked at her inquiringly. "Real friends?"
+
+"Surface friends. He is coming again to tell me his troubles and get my
+sympathy. Uncle Rod, what makes me so clear-eyed all of a sudden?"
+
+He smoothed his beard. "My dear, 'the eyes of the hare are one thing, the
+eyes of the owl another.' You are looking at life from a different point
+of view. I knew that if you ever met a real man you'd know the difference
+between him and Jimmie Ford."
+
+She came over, and standing behind him, put her hands on his shoulders.
+"I've found him, Uncle Rod."
+
+"St. Michael?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Poor little girl."
+
+"I am not poor, Uncle Rod. I am rich. It is enough to have known him."
+
+The sunset was showing above the wooden gate. The cows had gone home. The
+old fish swam lazily in the shadowed water.
+
+Anne drew her low chair to the old man's side. "Uncle Rod, isn't it
+queer, the difference between the things we ask for and the things we
+get? To have a dream come true doesn't mean always that you must get what
+you want, does it? For sometimes you get something that is more wonderful
+than any dream. And now if you'll listen, and not look at me, I'll tell
+you all about it, you darling dear."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was in late August that Anne received the first proof sheets of
+Geoffrey's book. "I want you to read it before any one else. It will be
+dedicated to you and it is better than I dared believe--I could never
+have written it without your help, your inspiration."
+
+It was a great book. Anne, remembering the moment the plot had been
+conceived on that quiet night by Peggy's bedside when she had seen the
+pussy cat and had heard the tinkling bell, laid it down with a feeling
+almost of awe.
+
+She wrote Geoffrey about it. It was her first real letter to him. She had
+written one little note of forgiveness and of friendliness, but she had
+felt that for a time at least she should do no more than that, and Uncle
+Rod had commended her resolution.
+
+"Hot fires had best burn out," he said.
+
+"If you never do anything else," Anne wrote to Geoffrey, "you can be
+content. There isn't a line of pot-boiling in it. It is as if you had
+dipped your pen in magic ink. Rereading it to Uncle Rodman has brought
+back the nights when we talked it over, and I can't help feeling a little
+peacock-y to know that I had a part in it.
+
+"And now I am going to tell you what Uncle Rod's comment was when I
+finished the very last word. He sat as still as a solemn old statue, and
+then he said, 'Geoffrey Fox is a great man. No one could have written
+like that who was sordid of mind or small of soul.'
+
+"If you knew my Uncle Rodman you would understand all that his opinion
+stands for. He is never flattering, but he has had much time to think--he
+is like one of the old prophets--so that, indeed, I sometimes feel that
+he ought to sing his sentences like David, instead of saying wise things
+in an ordinary way. And his proverbs! he has such a collection, he is
+making a book of them, and he digs into old volumes in all sorts of
+languages--oh, some day you must know him!
+
+"I am going back to Crossroads. It seems that my work lies there. And I
+have great news for you. I am to live with Mrs. Brooks. She has her
+cousin, Sulie Tyson, with her, but she wants me. And it will be so much
+better than Bower's.
+
+"All through Mrs. Nancy's letters I can read her loneliness. She tries to
+keep it out. But she can't. She is proud of her son's success--but she
+feels the separation intensely. He has his work, she only her thoughts of
+him--and that's the tragedy.
+
+"In the meantime, here we are at Cousin Margaret's doing funny little
+stunts in the way of cooking and catering. We can't afford the kind of
+housekeeping which requires servants, so it is a case of plain living and
+high thinking. Uncle Rod hates to eat anything that has been killed, and
+makes all sorts of excuses not to. He won't call himself a vegetarian,
+for he thinks that people who label themselves are apt to be cranks. So
+he does our bit of marketing and comes home triumphant with his basket
+innocent of birds or beasts, and we live on ambrosia and nectar or the
+modern equivalent. We are quite classic with our feasts by the old
+fish-pond at the end of the garden.
+
+"Cousin Margaret's garden is flaming in the August days with phlox, and
+is fragrant with day lilies. There's a grass walk and a sun-dial, and
+best of all, as I have said, the fish-pond.
+
+"And while I am on the subject of gardens, Uncle Rod rises up in wrath
+when people insist upon giving the botanical names to all of our lovely
+blooms. He says that the pedants are taking all of the poetry out of
+language, and it does seem so, doesn't it? Why should we call larkspur
+_Delphinium_? or a forget-me-not _Myostis Palustria_, and would a
+primrose by the river's brim ever be to you or to me _primula vulgaris_?
+Uncle Rod says that a rose by any other name would _not_ smell as sweet;
+and it is fortunate that the worst the botanists may do cannot spoil the
+generic--_rosa_.
+
+"And now with my talk of Uncle Rod and of Me, I am stringing this letter
+far beyond all limits, and yet I have not told you half the news.
+
+"I had a little note from Beulah, and she and Eric are at home in the
+Playhouse. She loves your silver candlesticks. So many of her presents
+were practical and she prefers the 'pretties.'
+
+"You have heard, of course, that Dr. Brooks is to marry Eve Chesley. The
+wedding will not take place for some time. I wonder if they will live
+with Aunt Maude. I can't quite imagine Dr. Richard's wings clipped to
+such a cage."
+
+She signed herself, "Always your friend, Anne Warfield."
+
+Far up in the Northern woods Geoffrey read her letter. He could use his
+eyes a little, but most of the time he lay with them shut and Mimi read
+to him, or wrote for him at his dictation. He had grown to be very
+dependent on Mimi; there were even times when he had waked in the night,
+groping and calling out, and she had gathered him in her arms and had
+held him against her breast until he stopped shaking and shivering and
+saying that he could not see.
+
+He spoke her name now, and she came to him. He put Anne's letter in her
+hand. "Read it!" and when she had read, he said, "You see she says that I
+am great--and she used to say it. Am I, Mimi?"
+
+"Oh, Geoffrey, yes."
+
+"I want you to make it true, Mimi. Shall I begin my new book to-morrow?"
+
+It was what she had wanted, what she had begged that he would do, but he
+had refused to listen. And now he was listening to another voice!
+
+She brought her note-book, and sat beside him. Being ignorant of
+shorthand she had invented a little system of her own, and she was glad
+when she could make him laugh over her funny pot-hooks and her straggling
+sketches.
+
+Thus in the darkness Geoffrey struggled and strove. "Speaking of
+candlesticks," he wrote to Anne, "it was as if a thousand candles lighted
+my world when I read your letter!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+_In Which Pan Pipes to the Stars._
+
+
+THAT Richard in New York should miss his mother was inevitable. But he
+was not homesick. He was too busy for that. Austin's vogue was
+tremendous.
+
+"Every successful man ought to be two men," he told Richard, as they
+talked together one Sunday night at Austin's place in Westchester,
+"'another and himself,' as Browning puts it. Then there would be one to
+labor and the other to enjoy. I want to retire, and I can't. There's a
+selfish instinct in all of us to grip and hold. That is why I am pinning
+my faith to you. You can slip in as I slip out. I have visions of riding
+to hounds and sailing the seas some day, to say nothing of putting up a
+good game of golf. But perhaps that's a dream. A man can't get away from
+his work, not when he loves it."
+
+"That's why you're such a success, sir," Richard told him, honestly; "you
+go to every operation as if it were a banquet."
+
+Austin laughed. "I'm not such a ghoul. But there's always the wonder of
+it with me. I sometimes wish I had been a churchgoing man, Brooks. There
+isn't much more for me to learn about bodies, but there's much about
+souls. I have a feeling that some day in some physical experiment I shall
+find tangible evidence of the spiritual. That's why I say my prayers to
+Something every night, and I rather think It's God."
+
+"I know it's God," said Richard, simply, "on such a night as this."
+
+They were silent in the face of the evening's beauty. The great trees on
+the old estate were black against a silver sky. White statues shone like
+pale ghosts among them. Back of Richard and his host, in a semicircle of
+dark cedars, a marble Pan piped to the stars.
+
+"And in the cities babies are sleeping on fire escapes," Austin
+meditated. "If I had had a son I should have sent him to the slums to
+find his work. But the Fates have given me only Marie-Louise."
+
+And now his laugh was forced. "Brooks, the Gods have checkmated me.
+Marie-Louise is the son of her father. I had planned that she should be
+the daughter of her mother. I sowed some rather wild oats in my youth,
+and waked in middle age to the knowledge that my materialism had led me
+astray. So I married an idealist. I wanted my children to have a
+spiritual background of character such as I have not possessed. And the
+result of that marriage is--Marie-Louise! If she has a soul it is yet to
+be discovered."
+
+"She is young. Give her time."
+
+"I have been giving her time for eighteen years. I have wanted to see her
+mother in her, to see some gleam of that exquisite fineness. There are
+things we men, the most material of us, want in our women, and I want it
+in Marie-Louise. But she gives back what I have given her--nothing more.
+And I don't know what to do with her."
+
+"Her mother?" Richard hinted.
+
+"Julie is worn out with trying to meet a nature so unlike her own. Our
+love for each other has made us understand. But neither of us understands
+Marie-Louise. I sent her away to school, but she wouldn't stay. She likes
+her home and she hates rules. She loves animals, and if she were a boy
+she would practice medicine. Being a woman and having no outlet for her
+energies, she is freakish. You saw the way she was dressed at dinner."
+
+"I liked it," Richard said; "all that dead silver with her red hair."
+
+"But it is too--sophisticated, for a young girl. Why, man, she ought to
+be in white frocks and pearls, and putting cushions behind her mother's
+back."
+
+"You say that because her mother wore white and pearls, and put
+cushions behind _her_ mother's back. There aren't many of the
+white-frocks-and-pearls kind left. It's a new generation. Perhaps dead
+silver with red hair is an expression of it. And it is we who don't
+understand."
+
+"Perhaps. But it's a problem." Austin rose. "If you'll excuse me, Brooks,
+I'll go to my wife. We always read together on Sunday nights."
+
+He sent Marie-Louise out to Richard. She came through the starlight, a
+shining figure in her silver dress, with a silver Persian kitten hugged
+up in her arms. She sat on the sun-dial and swung her jade bracelet for
+the kitten to play with.
+
+"Dad and mother are reading the Bible. He doesn't believe in it, and she
+gets him to listen once a week. And then she reads the prayers for the
+day. When I was a little girl I had to listen--but never again!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Why should I listen to things that I don't believe? To-night it is the
+ten virgins and their lamps. And Dad's pretending that he's interested. I
+am writing a play about it, but mother doesn't know. The Wise Virgins are
+Bernard Shaw women who know what they want in the way of husbands and go
+to it. The Foolish Virgins are the old maids, who think it unwomanly to
+get ready, and find themselves left in the end!"
+
+The silver kitten clawed at the silver dress, and climbed on her
+mistress's shoulder.
+
+"All of the parables make good modern plots. Mother would be shocked if
+she knew I was writing them that way. So I don't tell her. Mother is a
+dear, but she doesn't understand. I should like to tell things to Dad,
+but he won't listen. If I were a boy he would listen. But he thinks I
+ought to be like mother."
+
+She slipped from the sun-dial and came and sat in the chair which her
+father had vacated. "If I were a boy I should have studied medicine. I
+wanted to be a trained nurse, but Dad wouldn't let me. He said I'd hate
+having to do the hard work, and perhaps I should. I like to wear pretty
+clothes, and a nurse never has a chance."
+
+"Perhaps you'll marry."
+
+"Oh, no. I should _hate_ to be like mother."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"She just lives for Dad. Now I couldn't do that. I am not going to marry.
+I don't like men. They ask too much. I like books and cats and being by
+myself. I am never lonesome. Sometimes I talk to Pan over there, and
+pretend he is playing to me on his pipes, and then I write poetry. Real
+poetry. I'll read it to you some time. There's one called 'The Rose
+Garden.' I wrote it about a woman who was a patient of father's. When she
+knew she was going to die she wrote him a little note and asked him to
+see that her body was cremated, and that the ashes were strewn over the
+roses in his garden. He didn't seem to see anything in it but just a
+sick woman's fancy. But I knew that she was in love with him. And my poem
+tells that her blessed dust gathered itself into a gentle wraith which
+lives and breathes near him."
+
+"And you aren't afraid to feel that her gentle wraith is here in the
+garden?"
+
+"Why should I be? I don't believe in ghosts. I don't believe in fairies,
+either, or Santa Claus. But I like to read about them and write about
+them, and--and wish that it might be so."
+
+There was something almost wistful in her voice. Richard, aware suddenly
+of what a child she was, bent forward.
+
+"I think I half believe in fairies, and Christmas wouldn't be anything
+without Santa Claus, and as for the soul of your gentle lady, I have a
+feeling that it is finding Heaven in the rose garden."
+
+She was stroking the silver kitten which had curled up in her lap. "I
+wish I weren't such a--heathen," she said, suddenly. "I know what you
+mean. But it is only the poetic sense in me that makes me know. I can't
+_believe_ anything. Not about souls--or prayers. Do you ever pray?"
+
+"Every night. On my knees."
+
+"On your knees? Oh, is it as bad as that?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Richard, writing to his mother, said of Marie-Louise, "Her mind isn't in
+a healthy state. It hasn't anything to feed on. Her father is too busy
+and her mother too ill to realize that she needs companionship of a
+certain kind. I wish she might have been a pupil at the Crossroads
+school, with Anne Warfield for her teacher. But no hope of that."
+
+He wrote, too, of his rushing days, and Nancy, answering, hid from him
+the utter hopelessness of her outlook. Her life began and ended with his
+letters and the week-ends which he was able to give her. But some of his
+week-ends had to be spent with Eve; a man cannot completely ignore the
+fact that he has a fiancee, and Richard would have been less than human
+if he had not responded to the appeal of youth and beauty. So he motored
+with Eve and danced with Eve, and did all of the delightful summer things
+which are possible in the big city near the sea. Aunt Maude went to the
+North Shore, but Eve stayed with Winifred, and wove about Richard her
+spells of flattery and of frivolity.
+
+"I want to be near you, Dicky boy. If I'm not you'll work too hard."
+
+"It is work that I like."
+
+"I believe that you like it better than you do me, Dicky."
+
+"Don't be silly, Eve."
+
+"You are always saying that. Do you like your work better than you do me,
+Dicky?"
+
+"Of course not." But he had no pretty things to say.
+
+The life that he lived with her, however, and with Pip and Winifred and
+Tony was a heady wine which swept away regrets. He had no time to think.
+He worked by day and played by night, and often after their play there
+was work again. Now and then, as the Sunday night when he had first met
+Marie-Louise, he motored with Austin out to Westchester. Mrs. Austin
+spent her summers there. Long journeys tired her, and she would not leave
+her husband. Marie-Louise stayed at "Rose Acres" because she hated big
+hotels, and found cottage colonies stupid. The great gardens swept down
+to the river--the wide, blue river with the high bluffs on the sunset
+side.
+
+The river at Bower's was not blue; it showed in the spring the red of the
+clay which was washed into it, and now and then a clear green when the
+rains held off, but it was rarely blue except on certain sapphire days in
+the fall, when a northwest wind swept all clouds from the sky.
+
+And this was not a singing river. It was too near the sea, and too full
+of boats, and there was no reason why it should say, "_Come and see--come
+and see--the world_," when the world was at its feet!
+
+And so the great Hudson had no song for Richard. Yet now and then, as he
+walked down to it in the warm darkness, his ears seemed to catch a faint
+echo of the harmonies which had filled his soul on the day that Anne
+Warfield had dried her hair on the bank of the old river at Bower's, and
+had walked with him in the wood.
+
+Except at such moments, however, it must be confessed that he thought
+little of Anne Warfield. It hurt to think of her. And he was too much of
+a surgeon to want to turn the knife in the wound.
+
+Marie-Louise, developing a keen interest in his affairs as they grew
+better acquainted, questioned him about Evelyn.
+
+"Dad says you are going to marry her."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Is she pretty?"
+
+"Rather more than that."
+
+"Why don't you bring her out?"
+
+"Nobody asked me, sir, she said."
+
+She flashed a smile at him.
+
+"I like your nursery-rhyme way of talking. You are the humanest thing
+that we have ever had in this house. Mother is a harp of a thousand
+strings, and Dad is a dynamo. But you are flesh and blood."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+"I wish you'd ask your Evelyn out here, and her friends. For tea and
+tennis some Saturday afternoon. I want to see you together."
+
+But after she had seen them together, she said, shrewdly, "You are not in
+love with her."
+
+"I am going to marry her, child. Isn't that proof enough?"
+
+"It isn't any proof at all. The big man is the one who really cares."
+
+"The big man? Pip?"
+
+"Is that what you call him? He looks at her like a dog waiting for a
+bone. And he brightens when she speaks to him. And her eyes are always on
+you and yours are never on her."
+
+"Marie-Louise, you are an uncanny creature. Like your little silver cat.
+She watches mice and you watch me. I have a feeling that you are going to
+pounce on me."
+
+"Some day I shall pounce," she poked her finger at him, "and shake you as
+my little cat shakes a mouse, and you'll wake up."
+
+"Am I asleep, Marie-Louise?"
+
+"Yes. You haven't heard Pan pipe." She was leaning on the sun-dial and
+looking up at the grinning god. "Men who live in cities have no ears to
+hear."
+
+"Are you a thousand years old, Marie-Louise?"
+
+"I am as old as the centuries," she told him gravely. "I played with Pan
+when the world was young."
+
+They smiled at each other, and then he said, "My mother wants me to live
+in the country. Do you think if I were there I should hear Pan pipe?"
+
+"Not if you were there because your mother wished it. It is only when you
+love it yourself that the river calls and you hear the fluting of the
+wind in the rushes."
+
+It was an August Saturday, hot and humid. Marie-Louise was in thin white,
+but it was a white with a difference from the demure summer frocks of a
+former generation. The modern note was in the white fur which came high
+up about Marie-Louise's throat. Yet she did not look warm. Her skin was
+as pale as the pearls in her ears. Her red hair flamed, but without
+warmth; it rippled back from her forehead to a cool and classic coil.
+
+"If you marry your Eve," she told Richard, "and stay with father, you'll
+grow rich and fat, and forget the state of your soul."
+
+"I thought you didn't believe in souls."
+
+She flushed faintly. "I believe in yours. But your Eve doesn't. She likes
+you because you don't care, and everybody else does. And that isn't
+love."
+
+"What is love?"
+
+She pondered. "I don't know. I've never felt it. And I don't want to feel
+it. If I loved too much I should die--and if I didn't love enough I
+should be ashamed."
+
+"You are a queer child, Marie-Louise."
+
+"I am not a child. Dad thinks I am, and mother. But they don't know."
+
+There were day lilies growing about the sun-dial. She gathered a handful
+of white blooms and laid them at the feet of the piping Pan. "I shall
+write a poem about it," she said, "of a girl who loved a marble god, and
+who found it--enough. Every day she laid a flower at his feet. And a
+human came to woo her, and she told him, 'If I loved you, you would ask
+more of me than my marble lover. He asks only that I lay flowers at his
+feet.'"
+
+He could never be sure whether she was in jest or earnest. And now she
+narrowed her eyes in a quizzical smile and was gone.
+
+He spoke of Marie-Louise to Eve. "She hasn't enough to do. She ought to
+be busy with her fancy work and her household matters."
+
+"No woman is busy with household matters in this age, Dicky. Nor with
+fancy work. Is that what you expect of a wife?"
+
+He didn't know what he expected, and he told her so. But he knew he was
+expecting more than she was prepared to give. Eve had an
+off-with-the-old-and-on-with-the-new theory of living which left him
+breathless. She expressed it one night when she said that she shouldn't
+have "obey" in her marriage service. "I never expect to mind you, Dicky,
+so what's the use?"
+
+There was no use, of course. Yet he had a feeling that he was being
+robbed of something sweet and sacred. The quaint old service asked things
+of men as well as of women. Good and loving and fine things. He was
+old-fashioned enough to want to promise all that it asked, and to have
+his wife promise.
+
+Eve laughed, too, at Richard's grace before meat. "You mustn't embarrass
+me at formal dinners, Dicky. Somehow it won't seem quite in keeping with
+the cocktails, will it?"
+
+Thus the spirit of Eve, contending with all that made him the son of his
+mother, meeting his spiritual revolts with material arguments, banking
+the fires of his flaming aspirations!
+
+Yet he rarely let himself dwell upon this aspect of it. He had set his
+feet in a certain path, and he was prepared to follow it.
+
+On this path, at every turning, he met Philip. The big man had not been
+driven from the field by the fact of Eve's engagement. He still asked her
+to go with him, he still planned pleasures for her. His money made things
+easy, and while he included Richard in most of his plans, he looked upon
+him as a necessary evil. Eve refused to go without her young doctor.
+
+Now and then, however, he had her alone. "Dicky's called to an
+appendicitis case," she informed him ruefully, one night over the
+telephone, "and I am dead lonesome. Come and cheer me up."
+
+He went to her, and during the evening proposed a week-end yachting trip
+which should take them to the North Shore and Aunt Maude.
+
+"Is Dicky invited?"
+
+"Of course. But I'm not sure that I want him."
+
+"He wouldn't come if he knew that you felt like that."
+
+"It isn't anything personal. And you know my manner is perfect when I'm
+with him."
+
+"Yes. Poor Dicky. Pip, we are a pair of deceivers. I sometimes think I
+ought to tell him."
+
+"There's nothing to tell."
+
+"Nothing tangible,--but he's so straightforward. And he'd hate the idea
+that I'm letting you--make love to me."
+
+"I don't make love. I have never touched the tip of your finger."
+
+"_Pip!_ Of course not. But your eyes make love, and your manner--and deep
+down in my heart I am afraid."
+
+"Afraid of what?"
+
+"That Fate isn't going to give me what I want. I don't want you, Pip. I
+want Dicky. And if you loved me--you'd let me alone."
+
+"Tell me to go,--and I won't come back."
+
+"Not ever?"
+
+"Never."
+
+She weakened. "But I don't want you to go away. You see, you are my good
+friend, Pip."
+
+She should not have let him stay. She knew that. She found it necessary
+to apologize to Richard. "You see, Pip cares an awful lot."
+
+Richard had little sympathy. "He might as well take his medicine and not
+hang around you, Eve."
+
+"If you would hang around a little more perhaps he wouldn't."
+
+"I am very busy. You know that."
+
+His voice was stern. "If I am a busy husband, will you make that an
+excuse for having Pip at your heels?"
+
+"_Richard._"
+
+"I beg your pardon. I shouldn't have said that. But marriage to me means
+more than good times. Life means more than good times. When I am here in
+New York it seems to me sometimes that I am drugged by work and pleasure.
+That there isn't a moment in which to live in a leisurely thoughtful
+sense."
+
+"You should have stayed at Crossroads."
+
+"I can't go back. I have burned my bridges. Austin expects things of me,
+and I must live up to his expectations. And, besides, I like it."
+
+"Really, Dicky?"
+
+"Really. There's a stimulus about the rush of it and the big things we
+are doing. Austin is a giant. My association with him is the biggest
+thing that has ever come into my life."
+
+"Bigger than your love for me?"
+
+Thus she brought him back to it. Making always demands upon him which he
+could not meet. He found himself harassed by her continued harping on the
+personal point of view, yet there were moments when she swung him into
+step with her. And one of the moments came when she spoke of the yachting
+trip. It was very hot, and Richard loved the sea.
+
+"Dicky, I'll keep Pip in the background if you I promise to come."
+
+"How can you keep him in the background when he is our host?"
+
+"He is going to invite Marie-Louise. And he'll have to be nice to her.
+And you and I----! Dicky, we'll feel the slap of the breeze in our faces,
+and forget that there's a big city back of us with sick people in it, and
+slums and hot nights. Dicky--I love you--and I am going to be your wife.
+Won't you come--because I want you--_Dicky_?"
+
+There were tears on her cheeks as she made her plea, and he was always
+moved by her tears. It was his protective sense that had first tied him
+to her; it was still through his chivalry that she made her most potent
+appeal.
+
+Marie-Louise was glad to go. "It will be like watching a play."
+
+She and Richard were waiting for Pip's "Mermaid" to make a landing at the
+pier at Rose Acres. A man-servant with their bags stood near, and
+Marie-Louise's maid was coated and hatted to accompany her mistress. "It
+will be like watching a play," Marie-Louise repeated. "The eternal trio.
+Two men and a girl."
+
+She waved to the quartette on the forward deck. "Your big man looks fine
+in his yachting things. And your Eve is nice in white."
+
+Marie-Louise was not in white. In spite of the heat she was wrapped to
+the ears in a great coat of pale buff. On her head was a Chinese hat of
+yellow straw, with a peacock's feather. Yet in spite of the blueness and
+yellowness, and the redness of her head, she preserved that air of
+amazing coolness, as if her blood were mixed with snow and ran slowly.
+
+Arriving on deck, she gave Pip her hand. "I am glad it is clear. I hate
+storms. I am going to ask Dr. Brooks to pray that it won't be rough. He
+is a good man, and the gods should listen."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+_In Which Fear Walks in a Storm._
+
+
+THE "Mermaid," having swept like a bird out of the harbor, stopped at
+Coney Island. Marie-Louise wanted her fortune told. Eve wanted peanuts
+and pop-corn. "It will make me seem a little girl again."
+
+Marie-Louise, cool in her buff coat, shrugged her shoulders. "I was never
+allowed to be that kind of a little girl," she said, "but I think I'd
+like to try it for a day."
+
+Eve and Marie-Louise got on very well together. They spoke the same
+language. And if Marie-Louise was more artificial in some ways, she was
+more open than Eve.
+
+"You'd better tell Dr. Brooks," she told the older girl, as the two of
+them walked ahead of Richard and Pip on the pier. Tony and Winifred had
+elected to stay on board.
+
+"Tell him what?"
+
+"That you are keeping the big man in reserve."
+
+Eve flushed. "Marie-Louise, you're horrid."
+
+"I am honest," was the calm response.
+
+Pip bought them unlimited peanuts and pop-corn, and Marie-Louise piloted
+them to the tent of a fat Armenian who told fortunes.
+
+In spite of his fatness, however, he was immaculate in European clothing;
+he charged exorbitantly and achieved extraordinary results.
+
+"He said the last time that I should marry a poet," Marie-Louise informed
+them, "which isn't true. I am not going to be married at all. But it
+amuses me to hear him."
+
+The black eyes of the fat Armenian twinkled. "There will be a time when
+you will not be amused. You will be married."
+
+He pulled out a chair for her. "Will your friends stay while I tell you
+the rest?"
+
+"No, they are children; they want to buy peanuts and pop-corn--they want
+to play."
+
+The others laughed. But the fat Armenian did not laugh. "Your soul is
+old!"
+
+"You see," she asked the others, "what I mean? He says things like that
+to me. He told me once that in a former incarnation I had walked beside
+the Nile and had loved a king."
+
+"A king-poet," the man corrected.
+
+"Will you tell mine?" Eve asked suddenly.
+
+"Certainly, madam."
+
+"I am mademoiselle. You go first, Marie-Louise."
+
+But Marie-Louise insisted on yielding to her. "We will come back for
+you."
+
+Coming back, they found Eve in an irritable temper. "He told
+me--nothing."
+
+"I told you what you did not want to hear. But I told you the truth."
+
+"I don't believe in such things." Eve was lofty. Her cold eyes challenged
+the Oriental. "I don't believe you know anything about it."
+
+"If Mademoiselle will write it down----" He was fat and puffy, but he had
+a sort of large dignity which ignored her rudeness. "If Mademoiselle will
+write it down, she will not say--next year--'I do not believe.'"
+
+She shivered. "I wish I hadn't come. Dicky boy, let's go and play. Pip
+and Marie-Louise can stay if they like it. I don't."
+
+When Marie-Louise had had her imagination once more fed on poets, kings,
+and previous incarnations, she and Pip went forth to seek the others.
+
+"I wonder what he told Eve?" Pip speculated.
+
+Marie-Louise spoke with shrewdness. "He probably told her that she would
+marry you--only he wouldn't put it that way. He would say that in
+reaching for a star she would stumble on a diamond."
+
+"And is Brooks the star?"
+
+She nodded, grinning. "And you are the diamond. It is what she
+wants--diamonds."
+
+"She wants more than that"--tenderness crept into his voice--"she wants
+love--and I can give it."
+
+"She wants Dr. Brooks. 'Most any woman would," said Marie-Louise cruelly.
+"We all know he is different. You know it, and I know it, and Eve knows
+it. He is bigger in some ways, and better!"
+
+They found Eve and Richard in a pavilion dancing in strange company, to
+raucous music. Later the four of them rode on a merry-go-round, with
+Marie-Louise on a dolphin and Eve on a swan, with the two men mounted on
+twin dragons. They ate chowder and broiled lobster in a restaurant high
+in a fantastic tower. They swept up painted Alpine slopes in reckless
+cars, they drifted through dark tunnels in gorgeous gondolas. Eve took
+her pleasures with a sort of feverish enthusiasm, Marie-Louise with the
+air of a skeptic trying out a new thing.
+
+"Mother would faint and fade away if she knew I was here," Marie-Louise
+told Richard as she sat next to him in a movie show, "and so would Dad.
+He would object to the germs and she would object to the crowd. Mother is
+like a flower in a sunlighted garden. She can't imagine that a lily could
+grow with its feet in the mud. But they do. And Dad knows it. But he
+likes to have mother stay in the sunlighted garden. He would never have
+fallen in love with her if her roots had been in the mud."
+
+She was murmuring this into Richard's ear. Eve was on the other side of
+him, with Pip beyond.
+
+"I've never had a day like this," Marie-Louise further confided, "and I
+am not sure that I like it. It seems so far away from--Pan--and the
+trees--and the river."
+
+Her voice dropped into silence, and Richard sat there beside her like a
+stone, seeing nothing of the pictures thrown on the screen. He saw a road
+which led between spired cedars, he saw an old house with a wide porch.
+He saw a golden-lighted table, and his mother's face across the candles.
+He saw a girl in a brown coat scattering food for the birds with a kind
+little hand--he heard the sound of a bell!
+
+When they reached the yacht, Winifred was dressed for dinner, and Eve and
+Marie-Louise scurried below to change. They dined on the upper deck by
+moonlight, and sat late enjoying the still warmth of the night. There was
+no wind and they seemed to sail through silver waters.
+
+Marie-Louise sang for them. Strange little songs for which she had
+composed both words and music. They had haunting cadences, and Pip told
+her "For Heaven's sake, kiddie, cheer up. You are making us cry."
+
+She laughed, and gave them a group of old nursery rhymes. Most of them
+had to do with things to eat. There was the Dame who baked her pies "on
+Christmas day in the morning," and the Queen who made the tarts, and
+Jenny Wren and her currant wine.
+
+"They are what I call appetizing," she said quaintly. "When I was a tiny
+tot Dad kept me on a diet. I was never allowed to eat pies or tarts or
+puddings. So I used to feast vicariously on my nursery rhymes."
+
+They laughed, as she had meant they should, and Pip said, "Give us
+another," so she chanted with increasing dramatic effect the story of
+King Arthur.
+
+    "A bag pudding the king did make,
+     And stuffed it well with plums,
+     And in it put great hunks of fat,
+     As big as my two thumbs----"
+
+"Think of the effect of those hunks of fat," she explained amid their
+roars of laughter, "on my dieted mind."
+
+"I hate to think of things to eat," Eve said. "And I can't imagine myself
+cooking--in a kitchen."
+
+"Where else would you cook?" Marie-Louise demanded practically. "I'd like
+it. I went once with my nurse to her mother's house, and she was cooking
+ham and frying eggs and we sat down to a table with a red cloth and had
+the ham and eggs with great slices of bread and strong tea. My nurse let
+me eat all I wanted, because her mother said it wouldn't hurt me, and it
+didn't. But my mother never knew. And always after that I liked to think
+of Lucy's mother and that warm nice kitchen, and the plump, pleasant
+woman and the ham and eggs and tea."
+
+She was very serious, but they roared again. She was so far away from
+anything that was homely and housewifely, with her red hair peaked up to
+a high knot, her thick white coat with its black animal skin enveloping
+her shoulders, the gleam of silver slippers.
+
+"Dicky," Eve said, "I hope you are not expecting me to cook in Arcadia."
+
+"I don't expect anything."
+
+"Every man expects something," Winifred interposed; "subconsciously he
+wants a hearth-woman. That's the primitive."
+
+"I don't want a hearth-woman," Pip announced.
+
+Dutton Ames chuckled. "You're a stone-age man, Meade. You'd like to woo
+with a club, and carry the day's kill to the woman in your tent."
+
+A quick fire lighted Pip's eyes. "Jove, it wouldn't be bad, would it?
+What do you think, Eve?"
+
+"I like your yacht better, and your chef and your alligator pears, and
+caviar."
+
+An hour later Eve and Richard were alone on deck. The others had gone
+down. The lovers had preferred the moonlight.
+
+"Eve, old lady," Richard said, "you know that even with Austin's help I'm
+not going to be a Croesus. There won't be yachts--and chefs--and
+alligator pears."
+
+"Jealous, Dicky?"
+
+"No. But you've always had these things, Eve."
+
+"I shall still have them. Aunt Maude won't let us suffer. She's a good
+old soul."
+
+"Do you think I shall care to partake of Aunt Maude's bounty?"
+
+"Perhaps not. But I am not so stiff-necked. Oh, Ducky Dick, do you think
+that I am going to let you keep on being poor and priggish and
+steady-minded?"
+
+"Am I that, Eve?"
+
+"You know you are."
+
+Her laughing eyes challenged him. He would have been less than a man if
+he had not responded to the appeal of her youth and beauty. "Dicky," she
+said, "when we are married I am going to give you the time of your young
+life. All work and no play will make you a dull boy, Dicky."
+
+In the night the clouds came up over the moon, and when the late and lazy
+party appeared on deck for luncheon, Marie-Louise complained. "I hate it
+this way. There's going to be a storm."
+
+There was a storm before night. It blew up tearingly from the south and
+there was menace in it and madness.
+
+Winifred and Eve were good sailors. But Marie-Louise went to pieces. She
+was frantic with fear, and as the night wore on, Richard found himself
+much concerned for her.
+
+She insisted on staying on deck. "I feel like a rat in a trap when I am
+inside. I want to face it."
+
+The wind was roaring about them. The sea was black and the sky was black,
+a thick velvety black that turned to copper when the lightning came.
+
+"Aren't you afraid?" Marie-Louise demanded; "aren't you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why shouldn't you be? Why shouldn't anybody be?"
+
+"My nerves are strong, Marie-Louise."
+
+"It isn't nerves. It's faith. You believe that the boat won't go down,
+and you believe that if it did go down your soul wouldn't die."
+
+Her white face was close to him. "I wish I could believe like that," she
+said in a high, sharp voice. Then she screamed as the little ship seemed
+caught up into the air and flung down again.
+
+"Hush," Richard told her; "hush, Marie-Louise."
+
+She was shaking and shivering. "I hate it," she sobbed.
+
+Pip, like a yellow specter in oilskins, came up to them. "Eve wants you,
+Brooks," he shouted above the clamor of wind and wave.
+
+"Shall we go in, Marie-Louise?"
+
+"No, no." She cowered against his arm.
+
+Over her head Richard said to Pip, "I shall come as soon as I can."
+
+So Pip went down, and the two were left alone in the tumult and blackness
+of the night.
+
+As Marie-Louise lay for a moment quiet against his arm, Richard bent
+down to her. "Are you still afraid?"
+
+"Yes, oh, yes. I keep thinking--if I should die. And I am afraid to die."
+
+"You are not going to die. And if you were there would be nothing to
+fear. Death is just--falling asleep. Rarely any terror. We doctors know,
+who see people die. I know it, and your father knows it."
+
+By the light of a blinding flash he saw her white face with its wet red
+hair.
+
+"Dad doesn't know it as you know," she said, chokingly. "He couldn't say
+it as you--say it."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"He's like I am. _Dad's afraid._"
+
+The storm swept on, leaving the waves rough behind it, and Richard at
+last put Marie-Louise to bed with a sleeping powder. Then he went to hunt
+up Eve. He was very tired and it was very late. The night had passed, and
+the dawn would soon be coming up over the horizon. He found Pip in the
+smoking room. Eve had gone to bed. Everybody had gone to bed. It had been
+a terrible storm.
+
+Richard agreed that it had been terrible. He was glad that Eve could
+sleep. He couldn't understand why Austin had allowed Marie-Louise to take
+such a trip. Her fear of storms was evidently quite uncontrollable. And
+she was at all times hysterical and high-strung.
+
+Pip was not interested in Marie-Louise. "Eve lost her nerve at the last."
+
+Richard was solicitous. "I'm sorry. I wanted to come down, but I couldn't
+leave Marie-Louise. Eve's normal, and she'll be all right as soon as the
+storm stops. But Marie-Louise may suffer for days. The sooner she gets on
+shore the better."
+
+He went on deck, and looked out upon a gray wind-swept world.
+
+Then the sun came up, and there was a great light upon the waters.
+
+All the next day Marie-Louise lay in a long chair. "Dad told me not to
+come," she confessed to Richard. "I've been this way before. But I
+wouldn't listen."
+
+"If I had been your father," Richard said, "you would have listened, and
+you would have stayed at home."
+
+She grinned. "You can't be sure. Nobody can be sure. I don't like to take
+orders."
+
+"Until you learn to take orders you aren't going to amount to much,
+Marie-Louise."
+
+"I amount to a great deal. And your ideas are--old-fashioned; that's what
+your Eve says, Dr. Dicky."
+
+She looked at him through her long eyelashes. "What's the matter with
+your Eve?"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"She is punishing you, but you don't know it. She is down-stairs playing
+bridge with Pip and Tony and Win, and leaving you alone to meditate on
+your sins. And you aren't meditating. You are talking to me. I am going
+to write a poem about a Laggard Lover. I'll make you a shepherd boy who
+sits on the hills and watches his sheep. And when the girl who loves him
+calls to him, he refuses to go--he still watches--his sheep."
+
+He looked puzzled. "I don't know in the least what you are talking
+about."
+
+"You are the shepherd. Your work is the sheep--Eve is the girl. Your work
+will always be more to you than the woman. Dad's work isn't. He never
+forgets mother for a minute."
+
+"And you think that I'll forget Eve?"
+
+"Yes. And she'll hate that."
+
+There was a spark in his eye.
+
+"I think that we won't discuss Eve, Marie-Louise."
+
+"Then I'll discuss her in a poem. Lend me a pencil, please."
+
+He gave her the pencil and a prescription pad, and she set to work. She
+read snatches to him as she progressed. It was remarkably clever, with a
+constantly recurring refrain.
+
+"_Let me watch my sheep," said the lover, "my sheep on the hills._"
+
+The verses went on to relate that the girl, finding her shepherd
+dilatory, turned her attention to another swain, and at last she flouts
+the shepherd.
+
+"_Go watch your sheep, laggard lover, your sheep on the hills._"
+
+She laid the verses aside as Tony and Win joined them.
+
+"Three rubbers, and Pip and Eve are ahead."
+
+"Isn't Eve coming?"
+
+"She said she was coming up soon."
+
+But she did not come, and Pip did not come. Marie-Louise, with a great
+rug spread over her, slept in her chair. Dutton Ames read aloud to his
+wife. Richard rose and went to look for Eve.
+
+There was a little room which Pip called "The Skipper's own." It was
+furnished in a man's way as a den, with green leather and carved oak and
+plenty of books. Its windows gave a forward view of sky and water.
+
+It was here that the four of them had been playing auction. Eve was now
+shuffling the cards for Solitaire.
+
+Pip, watching her, caught suddenly at her left hand. "Why didn't Brooks
+give you a better ring?"
+
+"I like my ring. Let go of my hand, Pip."
+
+"I won't. What's the matter with the man that he should dare dream of
+tying you down to what he can give you? It seems to me that he lacks
+pride."
+
+"He doesn't lack anything. Let go of my hand, Pip."
+
+But he still held it. "How he could have the courage to ask--until he
+had made a name for himself."
+
+She blazed. "He didn't ask. I asked him, Pip. I cared enough for that."
+
+He dropped her hand as if it had stung him. "You cared--as much as that?"
+
+She faced him bravely. "As much as that--it pleased me to say what it was
+my right to say."
+
+"Oh! It was the queen, then, and the--beggar man. _Eve_, come back."
+
+She was at the door, but she turned. "I'll come back if you will beg my
+pardon. Richard is not a beggar, and I am not the queen. How hateful you
+are, Pip."
+
+"I won't beg your pardon. And let's have this out right now, Eve."
+
+"Have what out?"
+
+"Sit down, and I'll tell you."
+
+Once more they were seated with the table between them. Pip's back was to
+the window, but Eve faced the broad expanse of sky and sea. A faint pink
+flush was on the waters: a silver star hung at the edge of a crescent
+moon. There was no sound but the purr of machinery and the mewing of
+gulls in the distance.
+
+Eve was in pink--a straight linen frock with a low white collar. It gave
+her an air of simplicity quite unlike her usual elegance. Pip feasted his
+eyes on her.
+
+"You've got to face it. Brooks doesn't care."
+
+"He does care."
+
+"He didn't care enough to come down last night when you were afraid--and
+wanted him. And you turned to me, just for one little minute, Eve. Do you
+think I shall ever forget the thrill of the thought that you turned to
+me?"
+
+She was staring straight out at the little moon. "Marie-Louise was his
+patient--he had to stay with her."
+
+"You are saying that to me, but in your heart you know you are resenting
+the fact that he didn't come when you called. Aren't you, Eve? Aren't you
+resenting it?"
+
+She told him the truth. "Yes. But I know that when I am his wife, I shall
+have to let him think about his patients. I ought to be big enough for
+that."
+
+"You are big enough for anything. But you are not always going to be
+content with crumbs from the king's table. And that's what you are
+getting from Brooks. And I have a feast ready. Eve, can't you see that I
+would give, give, give, and he will take, take, take? Eve, can't you
+see?"
+
+She did see, and for the moment she was swayed by the force of his
+passionate eloquence.
+
+She leaned toward him a little. "Pip, dear, I wish--sometimes--that it
+might have been--you."
+
+It needed only this. He swept the card table aside with his strong arms.
+He was on his knees begging for love, for life. Her hair swept his cheek.
+
+The little moon shone clear in the quiet sky. There was not much light,
+but there was enough for a man standing in the door to see two dark
+figures outlined against the silver space beyond.
+
+And Richard was standing in the door!
+
+Eve saw him first. "Go away, Pip," she said, and stood up. "I--I think I
+can make him understand."
+
+When they were alone she said to Richard in a strained voice, "It was my
+fault, Dicky."
+
+"Do you mean that you--let him, Eve?"
+
+"No. But I let him talk about his love for me--and--and--he cares very
+much."
+
+"He knows that you are engaged to me."
+
+"Yes. But last night when you stayed on deck when I needed you and asked
+for you, Pip knew that you wouldn't come--and he was sorry for me."
+
+"And he was sorry again this afternoon?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And he showed it by making love to you?"
+
+"He thinks I won't be happy with you. He thinks that you don't care. He
+thinks----"
+
+"I don't care what Meade thinks. I want to know what you think, Eve."
+
+Their voices had come out of the darkness. She pulled the little chain of
+a wall bracket, and the room was enveloped in a warm wave of light. "I
+don't know what I think. But I hated to have you with Marie-Louise."
+
+"She was very ill. You knew that. Eve, if we can't trust each other, what
+possible happiness can there be ahead?"
+
+She had no answer ready.
+
+"Of course I can't stay on Meade's boat after this," he went on; "I'll
+get them to run in here somewhere and drop me."
+
+She sank back in the chair from which she had risen when Philip left
+them. His troubled eyes resting upon her saw a blur of pink and gold out
+of which emerged her white face.
+
+"But I want you to stay."
+
+"You shouldn't want me to stay, Eve. I can't accept his hospitality,
+after this, and call myself--a man."
+
+"Oh, Dicky--I detest heroics."
+
+She was startled by the tone in which he said, "If that is the way you
+feel about it, we might as well end it here."
+
+"Dicky----"
+
+"I mean it, Eve. The whole thing is based on the fact that I stayed with
+a patient when you wanted me. Well, I shall always be staying with
+patients after we are married, and if you are unable to see why I must do
+the thing I did last night, then you will never be able to see it. And a
+doctor's wife must see it."
+
+She came up to him, and in the darkness laid her cheek against his arm.
+"Dicky, don't joke about a thing like that. I can't stand it. And I'm
+sorry about--Pip. Dicky, I shall die if you don't forgive me."
+
+He forgave her. He even made himself believe that Pip might be forgiven.
+He exerted himself to seem at his ease at dinner. He said nothing more
+about leaving at the next landing.
+
+But late that night he sat alone on deck in the darkness. He was a plain
+man, and he saw things straight. And this thing was crooked. The hot
+honor of his youth revolted against the situation in which he saw
+himself. He felt hurt and ashamed. It was as if the dreams of his boyhood
+had been dragged in the dust.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+_In Which We Hear Once More of a Sandalwood Fan._
+
+
+IN the winter which followed Richard often wondered if he were the same
+man who had ridden his old Ben up over the hills, and had said his solemn
+grace at his own candle-lighted table.
+
+It had been decided that he and Eve should wait until another year for
+their wedding. Richard wanted to get a good start. Eve was impatient, but
+acquiesced.
+
+It was not Richard's engagement, however, which gave to his life the
+effect of strangeness. It was, rather, his work, which swept him into a
+maelstrom of new activities. Austin needed rest and he knew it. Richard
+was young and strong. The older man, using his assistant as a buffer
+between himself and a demanding public, felt no compunction. His own
+apprenticeship had been hard.
+
+So Richard in Austin's imposing limousine was whirled through fashionable
+neighborhoods and up to exclusive doorways. He presided at operations
+where the fees were a year's income for a poor man. A certain percentage
+of these fees came to him. He found that he need have no fears for his
+financial future.
+
+His letters from his mother were his only link with the old life. She
+wrote that she was well. That Anne Warfield was with her, and Cousin
+Sulie, and that the three of them and Cousin David played whist. That
+Anne was such a dear--that she didn't know what she would do without her.
+
+Richard went as often as he could on Sundays to Crossroads. But at such
+times he saw little of Anne. She felt that no one should intrude on the
+reunions of mother and son. So she visited at Beulah's or Bower's and
+came back on Mondays.
+
+Nancy persisted in her refusal to go back to New York. "I know I am
+silly," she told her son, "but I have a feeling that I shouldn't be able
+to breathe, and should die of suffocation."
+
+Richard spoke to Dr. Austin of his mother's state of mind. "Queer thing,
+isn't it?"
+
+"A natural thing, I should say. Your father's death was an awful blow. I
+often wonder how she lived out the years while she waited for you to
+finish school."
+
+"But she did live them, so that I might be prepared to practice at
+Crossroads. As I think of it, it seems monstrous that I should disappoint
+her."
+
+"Fledglings always leave the nest. Mothers have that to expect. The
+selfishness of the young makes for progress. It would have been equally
+monstrous if you had stayed in that dull place wasting your talents."
+
+"Would it have been wasted, sir? There's no one taking my place in the
+old country. And there are many who could fill it here. There's a chance
+at Crossroads for big work for the right man. Community water
+supply--better housing, the health conditions of the ignorant foreign
+folk who work the small farms. A country doctor ought to have the
+missionary spirit."
+
+"There are plenty of little men for such places."
+
+"It takes big men. I could make our old countryside bloom like a rose if
+I could put into it half the effort that I am putting into my work with
+you. But it would be lean living--and I have chosen the flesh-pots."
+
+"Don't despise yourself because you couldn't go on being poor in a big
+way. You are going to be rich in a big way, and that is better."
+
+As the days went on, however, Richard wondered if it were really better
+to be rich in a big way. Sometimes the very bigness and richness
+oppressed him. He found himself burdened by the splendor of the mansions
+at which he made his morning calls. He hated the sleekness of the men in
+livery who preceded him up the stairs, the trimness of the maids waiting
+on the threshold of hushed boudoirs. Disease and death in these sumptuous
+palaces seemed divorced from reality as if the palaces were stage
+structures, and the people in them were actors who would presently walk
+out into the wings.
+
+It was therefore with some of the feelings which had often assailed him
+when he had stepped from a dim theater out into the open air that Richard
+made his way one morning to a small apartment on a down-town side street
+to call on a little girl who had recently left the charity ward at
+Austin's hospital. Richard had operated for appendicitis, and had found
+himself much interested in the child. He had dismissed the limousine
+farther up. It had seemed out of place in the shabby street.
+
+He stopped at the florist's for a pot of pink posies and at another shop
+for fruit. Laden with parcels he climbed the high stairs to the top floor
+of the tenement.
+
+The little girl and her grandmother lived together. The grandmother had a
+small pension, and sewed by the day for several old customers. They thus
+managed to pay expenses, but poverty pinched. Richard had from the first,
+however, been impressed by their hopefulness. Neither the grandmother nor
+the child seemed to look upon their lot as hard. The grandmother made
+savory stews on a snug little stove and baked her own sweet loaves. Now
+and then she baked a cake. Things were spotlessly clean, and there were
+sunshine and fresh air. To have pitied those two would have been
+superfluous.
+
+After he had walked briskly out into Fifth Avenue, he was thinking of
+another grandmother on whom he had called a few days before. She was a
+haughty old dame, but she was browbeaten by her maid. Her grandchildren
+were brought in now and then to kiss her hand. They were glad to get
+away. They had no real need of her. They had no hopes or fears to
+confide. So in spite of her magnificence and her millions, she was a
+lonely soul.
+
+Snow had fallen the night before, and was now melting in the streets, but
+the sky was very blue above the tall buildings. Christmas was not far
+away, and as Richard went up-town the crowd surged with him, meeting the
+crowd that was coming down.
+
+He had a fancy to lunch at a little place on Thirty-third Street, where
+they served a soup with noodles that was in itself a hearty meal. In the
+days when money had been scarce the little German cafe had furnished many
+a feast. Now and then he and his mother had come together, and had talked
+of how, when their ship came in, they would dine at the big hotel around
+the corner.
+
+And now that his ship was in, and he could afford the big hotel, it had
+no charms. He hated the women dawdling in its alleys, the men smoking in
+its corridors, the whole idle crowd, lunching in acres of table-crowded
+space.
+
+So he set as his goal the clean little restaurant, and swung along toward
+it with something of his old boyish sense of elation.
+
+And then a strange thing happened. For the first time in months he found
+his heart marking time to the tune of the song which old Ben's hoofs had
+beaten out of the roads as they made their way up into the hills--
+
+    "I think she was the most beautiful lady,
+     That ever was in the West Country----"
+
+He was even humming it under his breath, unheard amid the hum and stir of
+the crowded city street.
+
+The shops on either side of him displayed in their low windows a wealth
+of tempting things. Rugs with a sheen like the bloom of a
+peach--alabaster in curved and carved bowls and vases, old prints in dull
+gilt frames--furniture following the lines of Florentine
+elaborateness--his eyes took in all the color and glow, though he rarely
+stopped for a closer view.
+
+In front of one broad window, however, he hesitated. The opening of the
+door had spilled into the frosty air of this alien city the scent of the
+Orient--the fragrance of incense--of spicy perfumed woods.
+
+In the window a jade god sat high on a teakwood pedestal. A string of
+scarlet beads lighted a shadowy corner. On an ancient and priceless
+lacquered cabinet were enthroned two other gods of gold and ivory. A
+crystal ball reflected a length of blue brocade. A clump of Chinese bulbs
+bloomed in an old Ming bowl.
+
+Richard went into the shop. Subconsciously, he went with a purpose. But
+the purpose was not revealed to him until he came to a case in which was
+set forth a certain marvelous collection. He knew then that the old song
+and the scents had formed an association of ideas which had lured him
+away from the streets and into the shop, that he might buy for Anne
+Warfield a sandalwood fan.
+
+He found what he wanted. A sweet and wonderful bit of wood, carved like
+lace, with green and purple tassels.
+
+It was when he had it safe in his pocket, in a box that was gay with
+yellow and green and gold, that he was aware of voices in the back of the
+shop.
+
+There were tables where tea was served to special customers--at the
+expense of the management. Thus a vulgar bargain became as it were a
+hospitality--you bought teakwood and had tea; carved ivories, and were
+rewarded with little cakes.
+
+In that dim space under a low hung lamp, Marie-Louise talked with the fat
+Armenian.
+
+He was the same Armenian who had told her fortune at Coney. He stood by
+Marie-Louise's side while she drank her tea, and spoke to her of the
+poet-king with whom she had walked on the banks of the Nile.
+
+Richard approaching asked, "How did you happen to come here,
+Marie-Louise?"
+
+"I often come. I like it. It is next to traveling in far countries." She
+indicated the fat Armenian. "He tells me about things that happened to
+me--in the ages--when I lived before."
+
+A slender youth in white silk with a crimson sash brought tea for
+Richard. But he refused it. "I am on my way to lunch, Marie-Louise. Will
+you go with me?"
+
+She hesitated and glanced at the fat Armenian. "I've some things to buy."
+
+"I'll wait."
+
+She flitted about the shop with the fat Armenian in her train. He showed
+her treasures shut away from the public eye, and she bought long lengths
+of heavy silks, embroideries thick with gold, a moonstone bracelet linked
+with silver.
+
+The fat Armenian, bending over her, seemed to direct and suggest.
+Richard, watching, hated the man's manner.
+
+Outside in the sunshine, he spoke of it. "I wouldn't go there alone."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I don't like to see you among those people--on such terms. They don't
+understand, and they're--different."
+
+"I like them because they are different," obstinately.
+
+He shifted his ground. "Marie-Louise, will you lunch with me at a cheap
+little place around the corner?"
+
+"Why a cheap little place?"
+
+"Because I like the good soup, and the clean little German woman, and the
+quiet and--the memories."
+
+"What memories?"
+
+"I used to go there when I was poor."
+
+She entered eagerly into the adventure, and ordered her car to wait. Then
+away they fared around the corner!
+
+Within the homely little restaurant, Marie-Louise's elegance was more
+than ever apparent. Her long coat of gray velvet with its silver fox
+winked opulently from the back of her chair at the coarse table-cloth and
+the paper napkins.
+
+But the soup was good, and the German woman smiled at them, and brought
+them a special dish of hard almond cakes with their coffee.
+
+"I love it," Marie-Louise said. "It is like Hans Andersen and my fairy
+books. Will you bring me here again, Dr. Richard?"
+
+"I am glad you like it," he told her. "I wanted you to like it."
+
+"I like it because I like you," she said with frankness, "and you seem to
+belong in the fairy tale. You are so big and strong and young. I don't
+feel a thousand years old when I am with you. You are such a change from
+everybody else, Dr. Dicky."
+
+Richard spoke the next day to Austin of Marie-Louise and the fat
+Armenian. "She shouldn't be going to such shops alone. She has a romantic
+streak in her, and they take advantage of it."
+
+"She ought never to go alone," Austin agreed, "and I have told her. But
+what am I going to do? I can rule a world of patients, Brooks, but I
+can't rule my woman child," he laughed ruefully. "I've tried having a
+maid accompany her, but she sends her home."
+
+"I wish she might have gone to the Crossroads school, and have known the
+Crossroads teacher--Anne Warfield. You remember Cynthia Warfield, sir;
+this is her granddaughter."
+
+Austin remembered Cynthia, and he wanted to know more of Anne. Richard
+told him of Anne's saneness and common sense. "I am so glad that she can
+be with my mother, and that the children have her in the school. She is
+so wise and good."
+
+He thought more than once in the days that followed of Anne's wisdom and
+goodness. He decided to send the fan. He expected to go to Crossroads for
+Christmas, but he was not at all sure that he should see Anne. Something
+had been said about her going for the holidays to her Uncle Rod.
+
+Was it only a year since he had seen her on the rocks above the river
+with a wreath in her hand, and in the stable at Bower's, with the lantern
+shining above her head?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+_In Which Christmas Comes to Crossroads._
+
+
+NANCY'S plans for Christmas were ambitious. She talked it over with Sulie
+Tyson. "I'll have Anne and her Uncle Rod. If she goes to him they will
+eat their Christmas dinner alone. Her cousins are to be out of town."
+
+Cousin Sulie agreed. She was a frail little woman, with gray hair drawn
+up from her forehead above a high-bred face. She spoke with earnestness
+on even the most trivial subjects. Now and then she had flashes of humor,
+but they were rare. Her life had been sad, and she had always been
+dependent. The traditions of her family had made it impossible for her to
+indulge in any money-making occupation. Hence she had lived in other
+people's houses. Usually with one or the other of two brothers, in
+somewhat large households.
+
+Her days, therefore, with Nancy were rapturous ones.
+
+"There's something in the freedom which two women can have when they are
+alone," she said, "that is glorious. We are ourselves. When men are
+around we are always acting."
+
+Nancy was not so subtle. "I am myself with Richard."
+
+"No, you're not, Nancy. You are always trying to please him. You make him
+feel important. You make him feel that he is the head of the house. You
+know what I mean."
+
+Nancy did know. But she didn't choose to admit it.
+
+"Well, I like to please him." Then with a sudden burst of longing,
+"Sulie, I want him here all of the time--to please."
+
+"Oh, my dear," Sulie caught Nancy's hands up in her own, "oh, my dear.
+How mothers love their sons. I am glad I haven't any. I used to long for
+children. I don't any more. Nothing can hurt me as Richard hurts you,
+Nancy."
+
+Nancy refused to talk of it. "We will ask David and Brinsley; that will
+be four men and three women, Sulie."
+
+"Well, I can take care of David if you'll look after Brinsley and Rodman
+Warfield. And that will leave your Richard for Anne."
+
+Nancy's candid glance met her cousin's. "That is the way I had hoped it
+might be--Richard and Anne. At first I thought it might be--and then
+something happened. He went to New York and that was the--end."
+
+"If you had been more of a match-maker," Sulie said, "you might have
+managed. But you always think that such things are on the knees of the
+gods. Why didn't you bring them together?"
+
+"I tried," Nancy confessed. "But Eve--I hate to say it, Sulie. Eve was
+determined."
+
+The two old-fashioned women, making mental estimates of this modern
+feminine product, found themselves indignant. "To think that any girl
+could----"
+
+It was lunch time, and Anne came in. She had Diogenes under her arm. "He
+will come across the road to meet me. And I am afraid of the automobiles.
+When he brings the white duck and all of the little Diogenes with him he
+obstructs traffic. He stopped a touring car the other day, and the men
+swore at him, and Diogenes swore back."
+
+She laughed and set the old drake on his feet. "May I have a slice of
+bread for him, Mother Nancy?"
+
+"Of course, my dear. Two, if you wish."
+
+Diogenes, having been towed by his beloved mistress out-of-doors, was
+appeased with the slice of bread. He was a patriarch now, with a lovely
+mate and a line of waddling offspring to claim his devotion. But not an
+inch did he swerve from his loyalty to Anne. She had brought him with her
+from Bower's, and he lived in the barn with his family. Twice a day,
+however, he made a pilgrimage to the Crossroads school. It was these
+excursions which Anne deprecated.
+
+"He comes in when I ring for recess and distracts the children. He
+waddles straight up to my desk--and he is such an old dear."
+
+She laughed, and the two women laughed with her. She was their
+heart-warming comrade. She brought into their lonely lives something
+vivid and sparkling, at which they drank for their soul's refreshment.
+
+Nancy spoke of Rodman Warfield. "We want him here for Christmas and the
+holidays. Do you think he can come?"
+
+Anne flashed her radiance at them. "I don't think. I know. Mother Nancy,
+you're an angel."
+
+"Richard is coming, of course. It will be just a family party. Not many
+young people for you, my dear. Just--Richard."
+
+There was holly and crow's-foot up in the hills, and David and Anne
+hitched big Ben to a cart and went after it. It was a winter of snow, and
+in the depths of the woods there was a great stillness. David chopped a
+tall cedar and his blows echoed and reechoed in the white spaces. The
+holly berries that dropped from the cut branches were like drops of blood
+on the shining crust.
+
+Nancy and Sulie made up the wreaths and the ropes of green, and fashioned
+ornaments for the tree. There was to be a bigger tree at the school for
+the children, but this was to be a family affair and was to be free from
+tawdry tinsel and colored glass. Nancy liked straight little candles and
+silver stars. "It shall be an old-fashioned tree," she said, "such as I
+used to have when I was a child."
+
+Sulie's raptures were almost solemn in their intensity. Richard sent
+money, plenty of it, and Sulie and Nancy went to Baltimore and spent it.
+"I never expected," Sulie said, "to go into shops and pick out things
+that I liked. I've always had to choose things that I needed."
+
+Now and then on Saturdays when Anne went with them, they rushed through
+their shopping, had lunch at the Woman's Exchange and went to a matinee.
+
+Nancy was always glad to get back home, but Sulie revelled in the
+excitement of it all. Anne made her buy a hat with a flat pink rose which
+lay enchantingly against her gray hair.
+
+"I feel sometimes as if I had been born again," Sulie said quaintly;
+"like a flower that had shriveled up and grown brown, and suddenly found
+itself blooming in the spring."
+
+Thus the days went on, and Christmas was not far away. Anne coming in one
+afternoon found Nancy by the library fire with a letter in her hand.
+
+"Richard hopes to get here on Friday, Anne, in time for the tree and the
+children's festival. Something may keep him, however, until Christmas
+morning. He is very busy--and there are some important operations."
+
+"How proud you are of him," Anne sank down on the rug, and reached up her
+hand for Nancy, "and how happy you will be with your big son. Could you
+ever have loved a daughter as much, Mother Nancy?"
+
+"I'm not sure; perhaps," smiling, "if she had been like you. And a
+daughter would have stayed with me. Men have wandering natures--they must
+be up and out."
+
+"Women have wandering natures, too," Anne told her. "Do you know that
+last Christmas I cried and cried because I was tied to the Crossroads
+school and to Bower's? I wanted to live in the city and have lovely
+things. You can't imagine how I hated all Eve Chesley's elegance. I
+seemed so--clumsy and common."
+
+Nancy stared at her in amazement. "But you surely don't feel that way
+now."
+
+"Yes, I do. But I am not unhappy any more. It was silly to be unhappy
+when I had so much in my life. But if I were a man, I'd be a rover, a
+vagabond--I'd take to the open road rather than be tied to one spot."
+
+There was laughter in her eyes, but the words rang true. "I want to see
+new things in new people. I want to have new experiences--there must be a
+bigger, broader world than this."
+
+Nancy gazing into the fire pondered. "It's the spirit of the age. Perhaps
+it is the youth in you. I wanted to go, too. But oh, my dear, how I
+wanted to come back!"
+
+There was silence between them, then Anne said, "Perhaps if I could have
+my one little fling I'd be content. Perhaps it wouldn't be all that I
+expected. But I'd like to try."
+
+On Thursday Anne met the postman as he drove up. There were two parcels
+for her. One was square and one was long and narrow. There were parcels
+also for Nancy and Sulie. Anne delivered them, and took her own treasures
+to her room. She shut and locked her door. Then she stood very still in
+the middle of the room. Not since she had seen the writing on the long
+and narrow parcel had her heart ceased to beat madly.
+
+When at last she sat down and untied the string a faint fragrance
+assailed her nostrils. Then the gay box with its purple and green and
+gold was revealed!
+
+The little fan was folded about with many thicknesses of soft paper. But
+at last she had it out, the dear lovely thing that her love had sent!
+
+In that moment all the barriers which she had built about her thoughts of
+Richard were beaten down and battered by his remembrance of her. There
+was not a line from him, not a word. Nothing but the writing on the
+wrapper, and the memory of their talk together by the big fire at Bower's
+on the night of Beulah's party when he had said, "You ought to have a
+little fan--of--sandalwood--with purple and green tassels and smelling
+sweet."
+
+When she went down her cheeks were red with color. "How pretty you are!"
+Sulie said, and kissed her.
+
+Anne showed the book which had come in the square parcel. It was Geoffrey
+Fox's "Three Souls," and it was dedicated to Anne.
+
+She did not show the sandalwood fan. It was hidden in her desk. She had a
+feeling that Nancy and Sulie would not understand, and that Richard had
+not meant that she should show it.
+
+Nancy, too, had something which she did not show. One of her letters was
+from Dr. Austin. He had written without Richard's knowledge. He wished to
+inquire about Anne Warfield. He had been much impressed by what Richard
+had said of her. He needed a companion for his daughter Marie-Louise. He
+wanted a lady, and Cynthia Warfield's grandchild would, of course, be
+that. He wanted, too, some one who was fearless, and who thought
+straight. He fancied that from what Richard had said that Anne would be
+the antidote for his daughter's abnormality. If Nancy would confirm
+Richard's opinion, he would write at once to Miss Warfield. A woman's
+estimate in such a matter would, naturally, be more satisfying. He would
+pay well, and Anne would be treated in every way as one of the family.
+Marie-Louise might at first be a little difficult. But in the end, no
+doubt, she would yield to tact and firmness.
+
+And he was always devotedly, her old friend!
+
+It had seemed to Nancy as she read that something gripped at her heart.
+It was Anne's presence which had kept her from the black despair of
+loneliness. Sulie was good and true, but she had no power to fill the
+void made by Richard's absence. If Anne went away, they would be two old
+women, gazing blankly into an empty future.
+
+Yet it was Anne's opportunity. The opportunity which her soul had craved.
+"To see new things and new people." And she was young and wanting much to
+live. It would not be right or fair to hold her back.
+
+She had, however, laid the letter aside. When Richard came she would talk
+it over with him, and then they could talk to Anne. She tried to forget
+it in the bustle of preparation, but it lay like a shadow in the back of
+her mind, dimming the brightness of the days.
+
+Everybody was busy. Milly and Sulie and Nancy seeded and chopped and
+baked, and polished silver, and got out piles of linen, and made up beds,
+and were all beautifully ready and swept and garnished when Uncle Rodman
+arrived from Carroll and Brinsley from Baltimore.
+
+The two old men came on the same train, and David brought them over from
+Bower's behind big Ben. By the time they reached Crossroads, they had
+dwelt upon old times and old friends and old loves until they were in the
+warm and genial state of content which is age's recompense for the loss
+of youthful ardors.
+
+They were, indeed, three ancient Musketeers, who, untouched now by any
+flame of great emotion, might adventure safely in a past of sentiment
+from which they were separated by long years. But there had been a time
+when passion had burned brightly for them all, even in gentle David, who
+had loved Cynthia Warfield.
+
+What wonder, then, if to these three Anne typified that past, and all it
+meant to them, as she ran to meet them with her arms outflung to welcome
+Uncle Rod.
+
+She had them all presently safe on the hearth with the fire roaring, and
+with Milly bringing them hot coffee, and Sulie and Nancy smiling in an
+ecstasy of welcome.
+
+"It is perfect," Anne said, "to have you all here--like this."
+
+Yet deep in her heart she knew that it was not perfect. For youth calls
+to youth. And Richard was yet to come!
+
+Brinsley had brought hampers of things to eat. He had made epicurean
+pilgrimages to the Baltimore markets. There were turkeys and ducks and
+oysters--Smithfield hams, a young pig with an apple in its mouth.
+
+He superintended the unloading of the hampers when Eric brought them
+over. Uncle Rod shook his head as he saw them opened.
+
+"I can make a jar of honey and a handful of almonds suffice," he said. "I
+am not keen about butchered birds and beasts."
+
+Brinsley laughed. "Don't rob me of the joy of living, Rod," he said.
+"Nancy is bad enough. I wanted to send up some wine. But she wouldn't
+have it. Even her mince pies are innocent. Nancy sees the whole world
+through eyes of anxiety for her boy. I don't believe she'd care a snap
+for temperance if she wasn't afraid that her Dicky might drink."
+
+"Perhaps it is the individual mother's solicitude for her own particular
+child which makes the feminine influence a great moral force," Rodman
+ventured.
+
+"Perhaps," carelessly. "Now Nancy has a set of wine-glasses that it is a
+shame not to use." He slapped his hands to warm them. "Let's take a long
+walk, Rod. I exercise to keep the fat down."
+
+"I exercise because it is a good old world to walk in," and Rodman swung
+his long lean legs into an easy stride.
+
+They picked David up as they passed his little house. They climbed the
+hill till they came to the edge of the wood where David had cut the tree.
+
+There was a sunset over the frozen river as they turned to look at it.
+The river sang no songs to-day. It was as still and silent as their own
+dead youth. Yet above it was the clear gold of the evening sky.
+
+"The last time we came we were boys," Brinsley said, "and I was in love
+with Cynthia Warfield. And we were both in love with her, David; do you
+remember?"
+
+David did remember. "Anne is like her."
+
+Rodman protested. "She is and she isn't. Anne has none of Cynthia's
+faults."
+
+Brinsley chuckled. "I'll bet you've spoiled her."
+
+"No, I haven't. But Anne has had to work and wait for things, and it
+hasn't hurt her."
+
+"She's a beauty," Brinsley stated, "and she ought to be a belle."
+
+"She's good," David supplemented; "the children at the little school
+worship her."
+
+"She's mine," Uncle Rod straightened his shoulders, "and in that
+knowledge I envy no man anything."
+
+As they sat late that night by Nancy's fire, Anne in a white frock played
+for them, and sang:
+
+    "I think she was the most beautiful lady
+     That ever was in the West Country,
+     But beauty vanishes, beauty passes,
+     However rare, rare it be,
+     And when I am gone, who shall remember
+     That lady of the West Country?"
+
+And when she sang it was of Cynthia Warfield that all of the Old
+Gentlemen dreamed.
+
+When the last note had died away, she went over and stood behind her
+uncle. She was little and slim and straight and her soft hair was swept
+up high from her forehead. Her eyes above Uncle Rod's head met Nancy's
+eyes. The two women smiled at each other.
+
+"To-morrow," Nancy said, and she seemed to say it straight to Anne,
+"to-morrow Richard will be here."
+
+Anne caught a quick breath. "To-morrow," she said. "How lovely it will
+be!"
+
+But Richard did not come on Christmas Eve. A telegram told of imperative
+demands on him. He would get there in the morning.
+
+"We won't light the tree until he comes," was Nancy's brave decision.
+"The early train will get him here in time for breakfast."
+
+David drove big Ben down to meet him. Milly cooked a mammoth breakfast.
+Anne slipped across the road to the Crossroads school to ring the bell
+for the young master's return. The rest of the household waited in the
+library. Brinsley was there with a story to tell, but no one listened.
+Their ears were strained to catch the first sharp sound of big Ben's
+trot. Sulie was there with a red rose in her hair to match the fires
+which were warming her old heart. Nancy was there at the window,
+watching.
+
+Then the telephone rang. Nancy was wanted. Long distance.
+
+It was many minutes before she came back. Yet the message had been short.
+She had hung up the receiver, and had stood in the hall in a whirling
+world of darkness.
+
+_Richard was not coming._
+
+He had been sorry. Tender. Her own sweet son. Yet he had seemed to think
+that business was a sufficient excuse for breaking her heart. Surely
+there were doctors enough in that octopus of a town to take his patients
+off of his hands. And she was his mother and wanted him.
+
+She had a sense of utter rebellion. She wanted to cry out to the world,
+"This is my son, for whom I have sacrificed."
+
+And now the bell across the street began to ring its foolish
+chime--Richard was not coming, _ding, dong_. She must get through the day
+without him, _ding, dong_, she must get through all the years!
+
+When she faced the solicitous group in the library, only her whiteness
+showed what she was feeling.
+
+"Richard is detained by--an important--operation. And breakfast
+is--waiting. Sulie, will you call Anne, and light the little tree?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+_In Which a Dresden-China Shepherdess and a Country Mouse Meet on Common
+Ground._
+
+
+MARIE-LOUISE'S room at Rose Acres was all in white with two tall
+candlesticks to light it, and a silver bowl for flowers. It was by means
+of the flowers in the bowl that Marie-Louise expressed her moods. There
+were days when scarlet flowers flamed, and other days when pale roses or
+violets or lilies suggested a less exotic state of mind.
+
+On the day when Anne Warfield arrived, the flowers in the bowl were
+yellow. Marie-Louise stayed in bed all of the morning. She had ordered
+the flowers sent up from the hothouse, and, dragging a length of silken
+dressing-gown behind her, she had arranged them. Then she had had her
+breakfast on a tray.
+
+Her hair was nicely combed under a lace cap; the dressing-gown was faint
+blue. In the center of the big bed she looked very small but very
+elegant, as if a Dresden-China Shepherdess had been put between the
+covers.
+
+She had told her maid that when Anne arrived she was to be shown up at
+once. Austin had suggested that Marie-Louise go down-town to meet her.
+But Marie-Louise had refused.
+
+"I don't want to see her. Why should I?"
+
+"She is very charming, Marie-Louise."
+
+"Who told you?"
+
+"Dr. Brooks. And I knew her grandmother."
+
+"Will Dr. Dicky meet her?"
+
+"Yes. And bring her out. I have given him the day."
+
+"You might have asked me if I wanted her, Dad. I don't want anybody to
+look after me. I belong to myself."
+
+"I don't know to whom you belong, Marie-Louise. You're a changeling."
+
+"I'm not. I'm your child. But you don't like my horns and hoofs."
+
+He gazed at her aghast. "My dear child!"
+
+She began to sob. "I am not your dear child. But I am your child, and I
+shall hate to have somebody tagging around."
+
+"Miss Warfield is not to tag. And you'll like her."
+
+"I shall hate her," said Marie-Louise, between her teeth.
+
+It was because of this hatred that she had filled her bowl with yellow
+flowers. Yellow meant jealousy. And she had shrewdly analyzed her state
+of mind. She was jealous of Anne because Dad and Dr. Richard and
+everybody else thought that Anne was going to set her a good example.
+
+It was early in January that Anne came. The whole thing had been hurried.
+Austin had been peremptory in his demand that she should not delay. So
+Nancy, very white but smiling, had packed her off. Sulie had cried over
+her, and Uncle Rod had wished her "Godspeed."
+
+Richard met her at the station in the midst of a raging blizzard, and in
+a sort of dream she had been whirled with him through the gray streets
+shut in by the veil of the falling snow. They had stopped for tea at a
+big hotel, which had seemed as they entered to swim in a sea of golden
+light. And now here she was at last in this palace of a house!
+
+Therese led her straight to Marie-Louise.
+
+The Dresden-China Shepherdess in bed looked down the length of the
+shadowed room to the door. The figure that stood on the threshold was
+somehow different from what she had expected. Smaller. More girlish.
+Lovelier.
+
+Anne, making her way across a sea of polished floor, became aware of the
+Shepherdess in bed.
+
+"Oh," she said, "I am sorry you are ill."
+
+"I am not ill," said Marie-Louise. "I didn't want you to come."
+
+Anne smiled. "Oh, but if you knew how much I _wanted_ to come."
+
+Marie-Louise sat up. "What made you want to come?"
+
+"Because I am a country mouse, and I wanted to see the world."
+
+"Rose Acres isn't the world."
+
+"New York is. To me. There is so much that I haven't seen. It is going to
+be a great adventure."
+
+The Dresden-China Shepherdess fell down flat. "So that's what you've come
+for," she said, dully, "adventures--here."
+
+There was a long silence, out of which Anne asked, "How many miles is it
+to my room?"
+
+"Miles?"
+
+"Yes. You see, I am not used to such great houses."
+
+"It is down the hall in the west wing."
+
+"If I get lost it will be my first adventure."
+
+Marie-Louise turned and took a good look at this girl who made so much
+out of nothing. Then she said, "Therese will show you. And you can dress
+at once for dinner. I am not going down."
+
+"Please do. I shall hate going alone."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well, there's your father, you know, and your--mother. And I'm a country
+mouse."
+
+Their eyes met. Marie-Louise had a sudden feeling that there was no gulf
+between them of years or of authority.
+
+"What shall I call you?" she asked. "I won't say Miss Warfield."
+
+"Geoffrey Fox calls me Mistress Anne."
+
+"Who is Geoffrey Fox?"
+
+"He writes books, and he is going blind. He wrote 'Three Souls.'"
+
+Marie-Louise stared. "Oh, do you know him? I loved his book."
+
+"Would you like to know how he came to write it?"
+
+"Yes. Tell me."
+
+"Not now. I must go and dress."
+
+Some instinct told Marie-Louise that argument would be useless.
+
+"I'll dress, too, and come down. Is Dr. Dicky going to be at dinner?"
+
+"No. He had to go back at once. He is very busy."
+
+Marie-Louise slipped out of bed. "Therese," she called, "come and dress
+me, after you have shown Miss Warfield the way."
+
+Anne never forgot the moment of entrance into the great dining-room.
+There were just four of them. Dr. Austin and his wife, herself and
+Marie-Louise. But for these four there was a formality transcending
+anything in Anne's experience. Carved marble, tapestry, liveried
+servants, a massive table with fruit piled high in a Sheffield basket.
+
+The people were dwarfed by the room. It was as if the house had been
+built for giants, and had been divorced from its original purpose. Anne,
+walking with Marie-Louise, wondered whimsically if there were any
+ceilings or whether the roof touched the stars.
+
+Mrs. Austin was supported by her husband. She was a little woman with
+gray hair. She wore pearls and silver. Anne was in white. Marie-Louise in
+a quaint frock of gold brocade. There seemed to be no color in the room
+except the gold of the fire on the great hearth, the gold of the oranges
+on the table, and the gold of Marie-Louise's gown.
+
+Mrs. Austin was pale and silent. But she had attentive eyes. Anne was
+uncomfortably possessed with the idea that the little lady listened and
+criticized, or at least that she held her opinion in reserve.
+
+Marie-Louise spoke of Geoffrey Fox. "Miss Warfield knows him. She knows
+how he came to write his book."
+
+Anne told them how he came to write it. Of Peggy ill at Bower's, of the
+gray plush pussy cat, and of how, coming up the hall with the bowl of
+soup in her hand, she had found Fox in a despairing mood and had
+suggested the plot.
+
+Austin, watching her, decided that she was most unusual. She was
+beautiful, but there was something more than beauty. It was as if she was
+lighted from within by a fire which gave warmth not only to herself but
+to those about her.
+
+He was glad that he had brought her here to be with Marie-Louise. For the
+moment even his wife's pale beauty seemed cold.
+
+"We'll have Fox up," he said, when she finished her story.
+
+Anne was sure that he would be glad to come. She blushed a little as she
+said it.
+
+Later, when they were having coffee in the little drawing-room,
+Marie-Louise taxed her with the blush. "Is he in love with you?"
+
+Anne felt it best to be frank. "He thought he was."
+
+"Don't you love him?"
+
+"No, Marie-Louise. And we mustn't talk about it. Love is a sacred thing."
+
+"I like to talk about it. In summer I talk to Pan. But he's out now in
+the snow and his pipes are frozen."
+
+The little drawing-room seemed to Anne anything but little until she
+learned that there was a larger one across the hall. Austin and his wife
+went up-stairs as soon as the coffee had been served, and Marie-Louise
+led Anne through the shadowy vastness of the great drawing-room to a
+window which overlooked the river. "You can't see the river, but the
+light over the doorway shines on my old Pan's head. You can see him
+grinning out of the snow."
+
+The effect of that white head peering from the blackness was uncanny. The
+shaft of light struck straight across the peaked chin and twisted mouth.
+The snow had made him a cap which covered his horns and which gave him
+the look of a rakish old tipster.
+
+"Oh, Marie-Louise, do you talk to him of love?"
+
+"Yes. Wait till you see him in the spring with the pink roses back of
+him. He seems to get younger in the spring."
+
+Anne, going to bed that night in a suite of rooms which might have
+belonged to a princess, wondered if she should wake in the morning and
+find herself dreaming. To have her own bath, a silk canopy over her head,
+to know that breakfast would be served when she rang for it, and that her
+mail and newspapers would be brought--these were unbelievable things. She
+had a feeling that if she told Uncle Rod he would shake his head over it.
+He had a theory that luxury tended to cramp the soul.
+
+Yet her last thought was not of Uncle Rod but of Richard. She had come
+intending to give him a sharp opinion of his neglect of Nancy. But he had
+been so glad to see her, and had given her such a good time. Yet she had
+spoken of Nancy's loneliness.
+
+"I hated to leave her," she said, "but it seemed as if I had to come."
+
+"Of course," he agreed, with his eyes on her glowing face, "and anyhow,
+she has Sulie."
+
+Marie-Louise, in the days that followed, found interest and occupation in
+showing the Country Mouse the sights of the city.
+
+"If you want to see such things," she said rather grandly, "I shall be
+glad to go with you."
+
+Anne insisted that they should not be driven in state and style. "People
+make pilgrimages on foot," she told Marie-Louise gravely, but with a
+twinkle in her eye. "I don't want to whirl up to Grant's tomb, or to the
+door of Trinity. And I like the subway and the elevated and the surface
+cars."
+
+If now and then they compromised on a taxi, it was because distances were
+too great at times, and other means of transportation too slow. But in
+the main they stuck to their original plan, and Marie-Louise entered a
+new world.
+
+"Oh, I love you for it," she said to Anne one night when they came home
+from the Battery after a day in which they had gazed down into the pit of
+the Stock Exchange, had lunched at Faunce's Tavern, had circled the great
+Aquarium, and ended with a ride on top of a Fifth Avenue 'bus in the
+twilight.
+
+It was from the top of the 'bus that Anne for the first time since she
+had come to New York saw Evelyn Chesley.
+
+She was coming out of a shop with Richard. It was a great shop with a
+world-famous name over the door. One bought furniture there of a rare
+kind and draperies of a rare kind and now and then a picture.
+
+"They are getting things for their apartment," Marie-Louise explained,
+and her words struck cold against Anne's heart. "Eve is paying for them
+with Aunt Maude's money."
+
+"When will they be married?"
+
+"Next October. But Eve is buying things as she sees them. I don't want
+her to marry Dr. Dicky."
+
+"Why not, Marie-Louise?"
+
+"He isn't her kind. He ought to have fallen in love with you."
+
+"Marie-Louise, I told you not to talk of love."
+
+"I shall talk of anything I please."
+
+"Then you'll talk to the empty air. I won't listen. I'll go up there and
+sit with that fat man in front."
+
+Marie-Louise laughed. "You're such an old dear. Do you know how nice you
+look in those furs?"
+
+"I feel so elegant that I am ashamed of myself. I've peeped into every
+mirror. They cost a whole month's salary, Marie-Louise. I feel horribly
+extravagant--and happy."
+
+They laughed together, and it was then that Marie-Louise said, "I love
+it."
+
+"Love what?"
+
+"Going with you and being young."
+
+In the days that followed Anne found herself revelling in the elegances
+of her life, in the excitements. It was something of an experience to
+meet Evelyn Chesley on equal grounds in the little drawing-room. Anne
+always took Mrs. Austin's place when there were gatherings of young
+folks. Marie-Louise refused to be tied, and came and went as the spirit
+moved her. So it was Anne who in something shimmering and silken moved
+among the tea guests, and danced later in slippers as shining as anything
+Eve had ever worn.
+
+It was on this day that Geoffrey Fox came and met Marie-Louise for the
+first time.
+
+"I can't dance," he told her; "my eyes are bad, and things seem to
+whirl."
+
+"If you'll talk," she said, "I'll sit at your feet and listen."
+
+She did it literally, perched on a small gold stool.
+
+"Tell me about your book," she said, looking up at him. "Anne Warfield
+says that you wrote it at Bower's."
+
+"I wrote it because she helped me to write it. But she did more for me
+than that." His eyes were following the shining figure.
+
+"What did she do?"
+
+"She gave me a soul. She taught me that there was something in me that
+was not--the flesh and the--devil."
+
+The girl on the footstool understood. "She believes in things, and makes
+you believe."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I hated to have her come," Marie-Louise confessed, "and now I should
+hate to have her go away. She calls herself a country mouse, and I am
+showing her the sights--we go to corking places--on pilgrimages. We went
+to Grant's tomb, and she made me carry a wreath. And we ride in the
+subway and drink hot chocolate in drug stores.
+
+"She says I haven't learned the big lessons of democracy," Marie-Louise
+pursued, "that I've looked out over the world, but that I have never been
+a part of it. That I've sat on a tower in a garden and have peered
+through a telescope."
+
+She told him of the play that she had written, and of the verses that she
+had read to the piping Pan.
+
+Later she pointed out Pan to him from the window of the big drawing-room.
+The snow had melted in the last mild days, and there was an icicle on his
+nose, and the sun from across the river reddened his cheeks.
+
+"And there, everlastingly, he makes music," Geoffrey said, "'on the reed
+which he tore from the river.'"
+
+    "'Yes, half a beast is the great god, Pan,
+      To laugh as he sits by the river,
+      Making a poet out of a man.
+      The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,
+      For the reed that grows nevermore again,
+      As a reed with the reeds in the river.'"
+
+His voice died away into silence. "That is the price which the writer
+pays. He is separated, as it were, from his kind."
+
+"Oh, no," Marie-Louise breathed, "oh, no. Not you. Your writings bring
+you--close. Your book made me--cry."
+
+She was such a child as she stood there, yet with something in her, too,
+of womanliness.
+
+"When your three soldiers died," she said, "it made me believe something
+that I hadn't believed before--about souls marching toward a
+great--light."
+
+Geoffrey found himself confiding in her. "I don't know whether you will
+understand. But ever since I wrote that book I have felt that I must live
+up to it. That I must be worthy of the thing I had written."
+
+Richard, dancing in the music room with Anne, found himself saying, "How
+different it all is."
+
+"From Bower's?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you like it?"
+
+"Sometimes. And then sometimes it all seems so big--and useless."
+
+The music stopped, and they made their way back to the little
+drawing-room.
+
+"Won't you sit here and talk to me?" Richard said. "Somehow we never seem
+to find time to talk."
+
+She smiled. "There is always so much to do."
+
+But she knew that it was not the things to be done which had kept her
+from him. It was rather a sense that safety lay in seeing as little of
+him as possible. And so, throughout the winter she had built about
+herself barriers of reserve. Yet there had never been a moment when he
+had dined with them, or when he had danced, or when he had shared their
+box at the opera, that she had not been keenly conscious of his presence.
+
+"And so you think it is all so big--and useless?" He picked up the
+conversation where they had dropped it when the dance stopped.
+
+She nodded. "A house like this isn't a home. I told Marie-Louise the
+other day that a home was a place where there was a little fire, with
+somebody on each side of it, and where there was a little table with two
+people smiling across it, and with a pot boiling and a woman to stir it,
+and with a light in the window and a man coming home."
+
+"And what did Marie-Louise say to that?"
+
+"She wrote a poem about it. A nice healthy sane little poem--not one of
+those dreadful things about the ashes of dead women which I found her
+doing when I came."
+
+"How did you cure her?"
+
+"I am giving her real things to think of. When she gets in a morbid mood
+I whisk her off to the gardener's cottage, and we wash and dress the baby
+and take him for an airing."
+
+Richard gave a big laugh. "With your head in the stars, you have your
+feet always firmly on the ground."
+
+"I try to, but I like to know that there are always--stars."
+
+"No one could be near you and not know that," he told her gravely.
+
+It was a danger signal. She rose. "I have a feeling that you are
+neglecting somebody. You haven't danced yet with Miss Chesley."
+
+"Oh, Eve's all right," easily; "sit down."
+
+But she would not. She sent him from her. His place was by Eve's side. He
+was going to marry Eve.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was late that night when Marie-Louise came into Anne's room. "Are you
+asleep?" she asked, with the door at a crack.
+
+"No."
+
+"Will you mind--if I talk?"
+
+"No."
+
+Anne was in front of her open fire, writing to Uncle Rod. The fire was
+another of the luxuries in which she revelled. It was such a wonder of a
+fireplace, with its twinkling brasses, and its purring logs. She
+remembered the little round stove in her room at Bower's.
+
+Marie-Louise had come to talk of Geoffrey Fox.
+
+"I adore his eye-glasses."
+
+"Oh, Marie-Louise--his poor eyes."
+
+"He isn't poor," the child said, passionately, "not even his eyes. Milton
+was blind--and--and there was his poetry."
+
+"Dr. Dicky hopes his eyes are getting better."
+
+"He says they are. That he sees things now through a sort of silver rain.
+He has to have some one write for him. His little sister Mimi has been
+doing it, but she is going to be married."
+
+"Mimi?"
+
+"Yes. He found out that she had a lover, and so he has insisted. And then
+he will be left alone."
+
+She sat gazing into the fire, a small humped-up figure in a gorgeous
+dressing-gown. At last she said, "Why didn't you love him?"
+
+"There was some one else, Marie-Louise."
+
+Marie-Louise drew close and laid her red head on Anne's knee. "Some one
+that you are going to marry?"
+
+Anne shook her head. "Some one whom I shall never marry. He
+loves--another girl, Marie-Louise."
+
+"Oh!" There was a long silence, as the two of them gazed into the fire.
+Then Marie-Louise reached up a thin little hand to Anne's warm clasp.
+"That's always the way, isn't it? It is a sort of game, with Love always
+flitting away to--another girl."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+_In Which St. Michael Hears a Call._
+
+
+IT was in April that Geoffrey Fox wrote to Anne.
+
+"When I told you that I was coming back to Bower's, I said that I wanted
+quiet to think out my new book, but I did not tell you that I fancied I
+might find your ghost flitting through the halls, or on the road to the
+schoolhouse. I felt that there might linger in the long front room the
+glowing spirit of the little girl who sat by the fire and talked to me of
+my soldiers and their souls.
+
+"And what I thought has come true. You are everywhere, Mistress Anne, not
+as I last saw you at Rose Acres in silken attire, but fluttering before
+me in your frock of many flounces, carrying your star of a lantern
+through the twilight on your way to Diogenes, scolding me on the
+stairs----! What days, what hours! And always you were the little
+school-teacher, showing your wayward scholars what to do with life!
+
+"Perhaps I have done with it less than you expected. But at least I have
+done more with it than I had hoped. I am lining my pockets with money,
+and Mimi has a chest of silver. That is the immediate material effect of
+the sale of 'Three Souls.' But there is more than the material effect.
+The letters which I get from the people who have read the book are like
+wine to my soul. To think that I, Geoffrey Fox, who have frittered and
+frivoled, should have put on paper things which have burned into men's
+consciousness and have made them better. I could never have done it
+except for you. Yet in all humility I can say that I have done it, and
+that never while life lasts shall I think again of my talent as a little
+thing.
+
+"For it is a great thing, Mistress Anne, to have written a book. In all
+of my pot-boiling days I would never have believed it. A plot was a plot,
+and presto, the thing was done! The world read and forgot. But the world
+doesn't forget. Not when we give our best, and when we aim to get below
+the surface things and the shallow things and call up out of men's hearts
+that which, in these practical days, they try to hide.
+
+"I suppose Brooks has told you about my eyes, and of how it may happen
+that I shall, for the rest of my life, be able to see through a glass
+darkly.
+
+"That is something to be thankful for, isn't it? It is a rather weird
+experience when, having adjusted one's self in anticipation of a
+catastrophe, the catastrophe hangs fire. Like old Pepys, I had resigned
+myself to the inevitable--indeed in those awful waiting days I read, more
+than once, the last paragraph of his diary.
+
+"'And so I betake myself to that course which it is almost as much as to
+see myself go into my grave; for which, and all the discomforts that will
+accompany my being blind, the good God prepare me!'
+
+"Yet Pepys kept his sight all the rest of his life, and regretted, I
+fancy, more than once, that he did not finish his diary. And, perhaps, I,
+too, shall be granted this dim vision until the end.
+
+"It seems to me that there are many things which I ought to tell you--I
+know there are a thousand things which are forbidden. But at least I can
+speak of Diogenes. I saw him at Crossroads the other day, much puffed up
+with pride of family. And I can speak of Mrs. Nancy, who is a white
+shadow of herself. Why doesn't Brooks see it? He was down here for a week
+recently, and he didn't seem to realize that anything was wrong. Perhaps
+she is always so radiant when he comes that she dazzles his eyes.
+
+"She and Miss Sulie are a pathetic pair. I meet them on the road on their
+errands of mercy. They are like two sisters of charity in their long
+capes and little bonnets. Evidently Mrs. Brooks feels that if her son
+cannot doctor the community she can at least nurse it. The country folks
+adore her, and go to her for advice, so that Crossroads still opens wide
+its doors to the people, as it did in the days of old Dr. Brooks.
+
+"And now, does the Princess still serve? I can see you with your blue
+bowl on your way to Peggy, and stopping on the stairs to light for me the
+torch of inspiration. And now all of this service and inspiration is
+being spilled at the feet of--Marie-Louise! Will you give her greetings,
+and ask her how soon I may come and worship at the shrine of her grinning
+old god?"
+
+Anne, carrying his letter to Marie-Louise, asked, "Shall I tell him to
+come?"
+
+"Yes. I didn't want him to go away, but he said he must--that he couldn't
+write here. But I knew why he went, and you knew."
+
+"You needn't look at me so reproachfully, Marie-Louise. It isn't my
+fault."
+
+"It is your fault," Marie-Louise accused her, "for being like a flame.
+Father says that people hold out their hands to you as they do to a
+fire."
+
+"And what," Anne demanded, "has all this to do with Geoffrey Fox?"
+
+"You know," Marie-Louise told her bluntly, "he loves you and looks up to
+you--and I--sit at his feet."
+
+There was something of tenseness in the small face framed by the red
+hair. Anne touched Marie-Louise's cheek with a tender finger. "Dear
+heart," she said, "he is just a man."
+
+For a moment the child stood very still, then she said, "Is he? Or is he
+a god, like my Pan in the garden?"
+
+Later she decided that Geoffrey should come in May. "When there are
+roses. And I'll have some people out."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was in May that Rose Acres justified its name. The marble Pan piping
+on his reeds faced a garden abloom with beauty. At the right, a grass
+walk led down to a sunken fountain approached by wide stone steps.
+
+It was on these steps that Marie-Louise sat one morning, weaving a
+garland.
+
+"I am going to tie it with gold ribbon," she said. "Tibbs got the laurel
+for me."
+
+"Who is it for?"
+
+"It may be for--Pan," Marie-Louise wore an air of mystery, "and it may
+not."
+
+She stuck it later on Pan's head, but the effect did not please her. "You
+are nothing but a grinning old marble doll," she told him, and Anne
+laughed at her.
+
+"I hoped some day you'd find that out."
+
+Richard, arriving late that afternoon, found Mrs. Austin on the terrace.
+"The young people are in the garden," she said; "will you hunt them up?"
+
+"I want to talk to Dr. Austin, if I may."
+
+"He's in the house. He was called to the telephone."
+
+Austin, coming out, found his young assistant on the portico.
+
+"Can you give me a second, sir? I've a letter from mother. There's a lot
+of sickness at Crossroads. And I feel responsible."
+
+"Why should you feel responsible?"
+
+"It's the water supply. Typhoid. If I had been there I should have had it
+looked into. I had started an investigation but there was no one to push
+it. And now there are a dozen cases. Eric Brand's little wife, Beulah,
+and old Peter Bower, and the mother of little Francois."
+
+"And you are thinking that you ought to go down?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I don't see how I can let you go. It doesn't make much difference where
+people are sick, Brooks, there's always so much for us doctors to do."
+
+"But if I could be spared----"
+
+"You can't, Brooks. I am sorry. But I've learned to depend on you."
+
+The older man laid his hand affectionately on the shoulder of the
+younger. If for the moment Richard felt beneath the softness of that
+touch the iron glove of one who expected obedience from a subordinate, he
+did not show it by word or glance.
+
+They talked of other things after that, and presently Richard wandered
+off to find Eve. He passed beyond the terraces to the garden. He felt
+tired and depressed. The fragrance of the roses was heavy and almost
+overpowering. There was a stone bench set in the midst of a tangle of
+bloom. He sank down on it, asking nothing better than to sit there alone
+and think it out.
+
+He felt at this moment, strongly, what had come to him many times during
+the winter--that he was not in any sense his own master. Austin directed,
+controlled, commanded. For the opportunity which he had given young
+Brooks he expected the return of acquiescence. Thus it happened that
+Richard found less of big things and more of little ones in his life than
+he had anticipated. There had been times when the moral side of a case
+had appealed to him more than the medical, when he had been moved by
+generosities such as had moved his grandfather, when he had wanted to be
+human rather than professional, and always he had found Austin blocking
+his idealistic impulses, scoffing at the things he had valued, imposing
+upon him a somewhat hard philosophy in the place of a living faith. It
+seemed to Richard that in his profession, as well as in his love affair,
+he was no longer meeting life with a direct glance.
+
+He rose and went on. He must find Eve. He had promised and yet in that
+moment he knew that he did not want to see her. He wanted his mother's
+touch, her understanding, her love. He wanted Crossroads and big Ben--and
+the people who, because of his grandfather, had called him--"friend."
+
+He found Anne and Geoffrey and Marie-Louise by the fountain at the end of
+the grass walk. Marie-Louise perched on the rim was, in her pale green
+gown, like some nymph freshly risen. Her hat was off, and her red hair
+caught the sunlight.
+
+Anne was reading the first chapter of Geoffrey's new book. He sat just
+above her on the steps of the fountain. His glasses were off, and as he
+looked down at her his eyes showed a brilliancy which seemed to
+contradict his failing sight.
+
+Marie-Louise held up a warning finger. "Sit down," she said, "and listen.
+It is such a wonder-book, Dr. Dicky."
+
+So Richard sat down and Anne went on reading. She read well; her voice
+had a thrilling quality, and once it broke.
+
+"Oh, why did you make it so sad?" she said.
+
+"Could I make it glad?" he asked, and to Richard, watching, there came
+the jealous certainty that between the two of them there was some subtle
+understanding.
+
+When at last Anne had read all that he had written Marie-Louise said,
+importantly, "Anne is the heroine, the Princess who serves. Will you ever
+make me the heroine of a book, Geoffrey Fox?"
+
+"Perhaps. Give me a plot?"
+
+"Have a girl who loves a marble god--then some day she meets a man--and
+the god is afraid he will lose her, so he wakes to life and says, 'If you
+love this man, you will have to accept the common lot of women, you will
+have to work for him and obey him--and some day he will die and your soul
+will be rent with sorrow. But if you love me, I shall be here when you
+are forgotten, and while you live my love will demand nothing but the
+verses that you read to me and the roses that lay at my feet.'"
+
+Geoffrey gave her an eager glance. "Jove, there's more in that than a
+joke. Some day I shall get you to amplify your idea."
+
+"I'll give it to you if you promise to write the book here. There's a
+balcony room that overlooks the river--and nobody would ever interrupt
+you but me, and I'd only come when you wanted me."
+
+Marie-Louise's breath was short as she finished. To cover her emotion she
+caught up the wreath which she had made in the morning, and which lay
+beside her.
+
+"I made it for you," she told Geoffrey, "and now that I've done it, I
+don't know what to do with it."
+
+She was blushing and glowing, less of an imp and more of a girl than
+Richard had ever seen her.
+
+Geoffrey rose to the occasion. "It shall be a mascot for my new book.
+I'll hang it on the wall over my desk, and every time I look up at it, it
+shall say to me, 'These are the laurels you are to win.'"
+
+"You have won them," Marie-Louise flashed.
+
+"No artist ever feels himself worthy of laurel. His achievement always
+falls short of his ambition."
+
+"But 'Three Souls,'" Marie-Louise said; "surely you were satisfied?"
+
+"I did not write it--the credit belongs to Mistress Anne. Your wreath
+should be hers."
+
+But Marie-Louise's mind was made up. Before Geoffrey could grasp what she
+was about to do, she fluttered up the steps, and dropped the garland
+lightly on his dark locks.
+
+It became him well.
+
+"Do you like it?" he asked Anne.
+
+"To the Victor--the spoils," she told him, smiling.
+
+Richard felt out of it. He wanted to get away, and he knew that he must
+find Eve. Eve, who when he met her would laugh her light laugh, and call
+him "Dicky Boy," and refuse to listen when he spoke of Crossroads.
+
+The path that he took led to a little tea house built on the bank, which
+gave a wide view of the river and the Jersey hills. He found Winifred and
+Tony side by side and silent.
+
+"Better late than never," was Tony's greeting.
+
+"I am hunting for Eve."
+
+"She and Meade were here a moment ago," Winifred informed him. "Sit down
+and give an account of yourself. We haven't seen you in a million years."
+
+"Just a week, dear lady. I have been horribly busy."
+
+"You say that as if you meant the 'horribly.'"
+
+"I do. It has been a 'bluggy' business, and I am tired." He laughed with
+a certain amount of constraint. "If I were a boy, I should say 'I want to
+go home.'"
+
+Winifred gave him a quick glance. "What has happened?"
+
+"Oh, everybody is ill at Crossroads. Beastly conditions. And they ought
+to have been corrected. Beulah's ill."
+
+"The little bride?"
+
+"Yes. And Eric is frantic. He has written me, asking me to come down. But
+Austin can't see it."
+
+"Could you go for the day?"
+
+"If I went for a day I should stay longer. There's everything to be
+done."
+
+He switched away from the subject. "Crowd seems to have separated. Fox
+and Anne Warfield by the fountain. You and Tony here, and Eve and Pip as
+yet undiscovered."
+
+"It is the day," Winifred decided, "all romance and roses. Even Tony and
+I were a-lovering when Eve found us."
+
+Richard rose. "Tony, she wants to hold your hand. I'll get out."
+
+Winifred laughed. "You'd better go and hold Eve's."
+
+As he went away, Richard wondered if there was anything significant in
+her way of saying it.
+
+Eve and Pip were in the enclosed space where Pan gleamed white against
+the dark cedars. Eve was seated on the sun-dial. Pip had lifted her
+there, and he stood leaning against it. Her lap was full of roses, and
+there were roses on her hat. The high note of color was repeated in the
+pink sunshade which lay open where the wind had wafted it to the feet of
+the piping Pan.
+
+Pip straightened up as he saw Richard approaching. "There comes your
+eager lover, Eve. Give me a rose before he gets here."
+
+"No."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I'm afraid."
+
+"Of me?"
+
+"No. But if I give you anything you'll take more. And I want to give
+everything to--Dicky."
+
+He laughed a triumphant laugh. "I take all _I_ can get. Give me a rose,
+Eve."
+
+She yielded to his masterfulness. Out of the mass of bloom she chose a
+pink bud. "I shall give a red one to Dicky, so don't feel puffed up."
+
+"I told you I should take what I could get, and Brooks isn't thinking of
+roses. Look at his face."
+
+"I am sorry to be so late, Eve," Richard said, as he came up. "I am
+always apologizing, it seems to me."
+
+"Little Boy Blue----! Dicky, what's the matter?"
+
+"I want to go home." He tried to speak lightly--to follow her mood.
+
+"Home--to Crossroads?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"There's typhoid, and they don't know how to cope with it."
+
+"Aren't there other doctors?"
+
+"Yes, but not enough."
+
+"Nonsense; what did they do before you came to the county? You must get
+rid of the feeling that you are so--important." She was angry. Little
+sparks were in her eyes.
+
+"Don't worry, Eve. Austin doesn't want me to go. I can't get away. But it
+is on my mind."
+
+"Put it off and come and help me with my roses. I gave Pip a bud. Are you
+jealous, Dicky?"
+
+Still trying to follow her mood, he said, "You and the rest of the roses
+belong to me. Why should I care for one poor bud?"
+
+She stuck a red rose in his coat, and when she had made her flowers into
+a nosegay, he lifted her down from the sun-dial. For a moment she clung
+to him. Meade had gone to rescue the sunshade which was blowing down the
+slope, and for the moment they were alone. "Dicky," she whispered, "I was
+horrid, but you mustn't go."
+
+"I told you I couldn't, Eve."
+
+Then Pip came back, and the three of them made their way to the
+fountain, picking up Winifred and Tony as they passed. Tea was served on
+the terrace, and a lot of other people motored out. There was much
+laughter and lightness--as if there were no trouble in the whole wide
+world.
+
+Richard felt separated from it all by his mood, and when he went to the
+house to send a message for Austin to the hospital, he did not at once
+return to the terrace. He sought the great library. It was dim and quiet
+and he lay back in one of the big chairs and shut his eyes. The vision
+was before him of Pip leaning on the sun-dial against a rose-splashed
+background, with Eve smiling down at him. It had come to him then that
+Pip should have married Eve. Pip would make her happy. The thing was all
+wrong in some way, but he could not see clearly how to make it right.
+
+There was a sound in the room and he opened his eyes to find Marie-Louise
+on the ladder which gave access to the shelves of the great bookcases
+which lined the walls. She had not seen him, and she was singing softly
+to herself. In the dimness the color of her hair and gown gave a
+stained-glass effect against a background of high square east window.
+
+Richard sat up. What was she singing?
+
+    "_I think she was the most beautiful lady_
+     _That ever was in the West Country,_
+     _But beauty vanishes, beauty passes,_
+     _However rare, rare it be._
+     _And when I am gone, who shall remember_
+     _That lady of the West Country?_"
+
+"Marie-Louise," he asked so suddenly that she nearly fell off of the
+shelves, "where did you learn that song?"
+
+"From Mistress Anne."
+
+"When you sing it do you think of--her?"
+
+"Yes. Do you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Marie-Louise sat down on the top step of the ladder. "Dr. Dicky, may I
+ask a question?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why didn't you fall in love with Anne?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"Oh! Then why didn't you marry her?"
+
+"She is going to marry Geoffrey Fox."
+
+Dead silence. Then, "Did she tell you?"
+
+"No. He told me. Last spring."
+
+"Before you came here?"
+
+"Yes. That was the reason I came. I wanted to get away from everything
+that--spoke of her."
+
+Marie-Louise slipped down from the ladder and came and stood beside him.
+"_He told you_," she said in a sharp whisper, "but there must be some
+mistake. She doesn't love him. She said that she didn't. I wonder why he
+lied."
+
+There was nothing cold about her now. She was a fiery spark. "Only
+a--_cad_ could do such a thing--and I thought--oh, Dr. Dicky, I thought
+he was a _man_----"
+
+She flung herself at his feet like a stricken child. He went down to her.
+"Marie-Louise, stop. Sit up and tell me what's the matter."
+
+She sat up. "I shall ask Anne. I shall go and get her and ask her."
+
+He found himself calling after her, "Marie-Louise," but she was gone.
+
+She came back presently, dragging the protesting Anne. "But Marie-Louise,
+what do you want of me?"
+
+Richard, rising, said, "Please don't think I permitted this. I tried to
+stop her."
+
+"I didn't want to be stopped," Marie-Louise told them. "I want to know
+whether you and Geoffrey Fox are going to be married."
+
+Anne's cheeks were stained red. "Of course not. But it isn't anything to
+get so excited about, is it, Marie-Louise?"
+
+"Yes, it is. He told Dr. Dicky that you were, and he _lied_. And I
+thought, oh, you know the wonderful things I thought about him, Mistress
+Anne."
+
+Anne's arm went around the sad little nymph in green. "You must still
+think wonderful things of him. He was very unhappy, and desperate about
+his eyes. And it seemed to him that to assert a thing might make it come
+true."
+
+"But you didn't love him?"
+
+"Never, Marie-Louise."
+
+And now Richard, ignoring the presence of Marie-Louise, ignoring
+everything but the question which beat against his heart, demanded:
+
+"If you knew that he had told me this, why didn't you make things clear?"
+
+"When I might have made things clear--you were engaged to Eve."
+
+She turned abruptly from him to Marie-Louise. "Run back to your poet,
+dear heart. He is waiting for the book that you were going to bring him.
+And remember that you are not to sit in judgment. You are to be eyes for
+him, and light."
+
+It was a sober little nymph in green who marched away with her book.
+Geoffrey sat on the stone bench a little withdrawn from the others. His
+lean face, straining toward the house, relaxed as she came within his
+line of vision.
+
+"You were a long time away," he said, and made a place for her beside
+him, and she sat down and opened her book.
+
+And now, back in the dim library, Anne and Richard!
+
+"I stayed," she said, "because they were speaking out there of
+Crossroads. I have had a letter, too, from Sulie. She says that the
+situation is desperate."
+
+"Yes. They need me. And I ought to go. They are my people. I feel that in
+a sense I belong to them--as my grandfather belonged."
+
+"Do you mean that if you go now you will stay?"
+
+"I am not sure. The future must take care of itself."
+
+"Your mother would be glad if your decision finally came to that."
+
+"Yes. And I should be glad. But this time I shall not go for my mother's
+sake alone. Something deeper is drawing me. I can't quite analyze it. It
+is a call"--he laughed a little--"such as men describe who enter the
+ministry,--an irresistible impulse, as if I were to find something there
+that I had lost in the city."
+
+She held out her hand to him. "Do you know the name I had for you when
+you were at Crossroads?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I called you St. Michael--because it always seemed to me that you
+carried a sword."
+
+He tightened his grip on the little hand. "Some day I shall hope to
+justify the name; I don't deserve it now."
+
+Her eyes came up to him. "You'll fight to win," she said, softly.
+
+He did not want to let her go. But there was no other way. But when she
+had joined the others on the terrace he made a wide detour of the garden,
+and wandered down to the river.
+
+It was not a singing river, but to-day it seemed to have a song, "_Go
+back, go back_," it said; "_you have seen the world, you have seen the
+world_."
+
+And when he had listened for a little while he climbed the hill to tell
+Austin and to tell--Eve.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+_In Which Anne Weighs the People of Two Worlds._
+
+
+"RICHARD!"
+
+"Yes, mother, I'm here. Austin thinks I am crazy, and Eve won't speak to
+me. But--I came. And to think you have turned the house into a hospital!"
+
+"It seemed the only thing to do. Francois' mother had no one to take care
+of her--and there were others, and the house is big."
+
+"You are the biggest thing in it. Mother, if I ever pray to a saint, it
+will be one with gray hair in a nurse's cap and apron, and with shining
+eyes."
+
+"They are shining because you are here, Richard."
+
+Cousin Sulie, in the door, broke down and cried, "Oh, we've prayed for
+it."
+
+They clung to him, the two little growing-old women, who had wanted him,
+and who had worked without him.
+
+He had no words for them, for he could not speak with steadiness. But in
+that moment he knew that he should never go back to Austin. That he
+should live and die in the home of his fathers. And that his work was
+here.
+
+He tried, a little later, to make a joke of their devotion. "Mother, you
+and Cousin Sulie mustn't. I shall need a body-guard to protect me. You'll
+spoil me with softness and ease."
+
+"I shall buckle on your armor soon enough," she told him. "Did Eric meet
+you at the station?"
+
+"Yes, I shall go straight to Beulah's. I stopped in to see old Peter
+before I came up. I can pull him through, but I shall have to have some
+nurses."
+
+And now big Ben, at an even trot, carried Richard to the Playhouse. Toby,
+mad with gladness at the return of his master, raced ahead.
+
+Up in the pretty pink and white room lay Beulah. No longer plump and
+blooming, but wasted and wan with dry lips and hollow eyes.
+
+Eric had said to Richard, "If she dies I shall die, too."
+
+"She is not going to die."
+
+And now he said it again, cheerfully, to the wasted figure in the bed. "I
+have come to make you well, Beulah."
+
+But Beulah was not at all sure that she wanted to be--well. She was too
+tired. She was tired of Eric, tired of her mother, tired of taking
+medicine, tired of having to breathe.
+
+So she shut her eyes and turned away.
+
+Eric sat by the bed. "Dear heart," he said, "it is Dr. Dicky."
+
+But she did not open her eyes.
+
+In the days that followed Richard fought to make his words come true. He
+felt that if Beulah died it would, in some way, be his fault. He was
+aware that this was a morbid state of mind, but he could not help the way
+he felt. Beulah's life would be the price of his self-respect.
+
+But it was not only for Beulah's life that he fought, but for the lives
+of others. He had nurses up from Baltimore and down from New York. He had
+experts to examine wells and springs and other sources of water supply.
+He had a motor car that he might cover the miles quickly, using old Ben
+only for short distances. Toby, adapting himself to the car, sat on the
+front seat with the wind in his face, drunk with the excitement of it.
+
+When Nancy spoke of the expense to which Richard was putting himself, he
+said, "I have saved something, mother, and Eric and the rest can pay."
+
+Surely in those days St. Michael needed his sword, for the fight was to
+the finish. Night and day the battle waged. Richard went from bedside to
+bedside, coming always last to Beulah in the shadowed pink and white room
+at the Playhouse.
+
+There were nurses now, but Eric Brand would not be turned out. "Every
+minute that I am away from her," he told Richard, "I'm afraid. It seems
+as if when I am in sight of her I can hold her--back."
+
+So, night after night, Richard found him in the chair by Beulah's bed,
+his face shaded by his hand, rousing only when Beulah stirred, to smile
+at her.
+
+But Beulah did not smile back. She moaned a little now and then, and
+sometimes talked of things that never were on sea or land. There was a
+flowered chintz screen in the corner of the room and she peopled it with
+strange creatures, and murmured of them now and then, until the nurse
+covered the screen with a white sheet, which seemed to blot it out of
+Beulah's mind forever.
+
+There was always a pot of coffee boiling in the kitchen for the young
+doctor, and Eric would go down with him and they would drink and talk,
+and all that Eric said led back to Beulah.
+
+"If there was only something that I could do for her," he said; "if I
+could go out and work until I dropped, I should feel as if I were
+helping. But just to sit there and see her--fade."
+
+Again he said, "I had always thought of our living--never of dying. There
+can be no future for me without her."
+
+So it was for Eric's future as well as for Beulah's life that Richard
+strove. He grew worn and weary, but he never gave up.
+
+Night after night, day after day, from house to house he went, along the
+two roads and up into the hills. Everywhere he met an anxious welcome.
+Where the conditions were unfavorable, he transferred the patient to
+Crossroads, where Nancy and Sulie and Milly and a trio of nurses formed
+an enthusiastic hospital staff.
+
+The mother of little Francois was the first patient that Richard lost.
+She was tired and overworked, and she felt that it was good to fall
+asleep. Afterward Richard, with the little boy in his arms, went out and
+sat where they could look over the river and talk together.
+
+"I told her that you were to stay with me, Francois."
+
+"And she was glad?"
+
+"Yes. I need a little lad in my office, and when I take the car you can
+ride with me."
+
+And thus it came about that little Francois, a sober little Francois,
+with a band of black about his arm, became one of the Crossroads
+household, and was made much of by the women, even by black Milly, who
+baked cookies for him and tarts whenever he cried for his mother.
+
+Cousin Sulie rose nobly to meet the new demands upon her. "It is a
+feeling I never had before," she said to Richard, as she helped him pack
+his bag before going on his rounds, "that what I am doing is worth while.
+I know I should have felt it when I was darning stockings, but I didn't."
+
+She gloried in the professional aspect which she gave to everything. She
+installed little Francois at a small table in the Garden Room. He
+answered the telephone and wrote the messages on slips of paper which he
+laid on the doctor's desk. Cousin Sulie at another table saw the people
+who came in Richard's absence.
+
+"Nancy can read to the patients up-stairs and cut flowers for them and
+cook nice things for them," she confided, "but I like to be down here
+when the children come in to ask for medicine, and when the mothers come
+to find out what they shall feed the convalescents. Richard, I never
+heard anything like their--hungriness--when they are getting well."
+
+Beulah, emerging slowly from among the shadows, began to think of things
+to eat. She didn't care about anything else. She didn't care for Eric's
+love, or her mother's gladness, or Richard's cheerfulness, or the nurses'
+sympathy. She cared only to think of every kind of food that she had ever
+liked in her whole life, and to ask if she might have it.
+
+"But, dear heart, the doctor doesn't think that you should," Eric would
+protest.
+
+She would cry, weakly, "You don't love me, or you would let me."
+
+She begged and begged, and at last he couldn't stand it.
+
+"You are starving her," he told the nurses fiercely.
+
+They referred him to the doctor.
+
+Eric telephoned Richard.
+
+"My dear fellow," was the response, "her appetite is a sign that she is
+getting well."
+
+"But she is so hungry."
+
+"So are they all. I have to steel my heart against them, especially the
+children. And half of the convalescents are reading cook books."
+
+"Cook books!"
+
+"Yes. In that way they get a meal by proxy. I tell them to pick out the
+things they are going to have when they are well enough to eat all they
+want. Their choice ranges from Welsh rarebits to plum puddings."
+
+He laughed, but Eric saw nothing funny in the matter. "I can't bear to
+see her--suffer."
+
+Richard was sobered at once. "Don't think that I am not sympathetic.
+But--Brand, I don't dare-_feel_. If I did, I should go to pieces."
+
+Slowly the weeks passed. Besides Francois' mother, two of Richard's
+patients died. Slowly the pendulum of time swung the rest of the sick
+ones toward recovery. Nancy and Sulie and Milly changed the rooms at
+Crossroads back to their original uses. The nurses, no longer needed,
+packed their competent bags, and departed. Beulah at the Playhouse had
+her first square meal, and smiled back at Eric.
+
+The strain had told fearfully on Richard. Yet he persisted in his efforts
+long after it seemed that the countryside was safe. He tried to pack into
+twelve short weeks what he would normally have done in twelve long
+months. He spurred his fellow physicians to increased activities, he
+urged authorities to unprecedented exertions. He did the work of two men
+and sometimes of three. And he was so exhausted that he felt that if ever
+his work was finished he would sleep for a million years.
+
+It was in September that he began to wonder how he would square things up
+with Eve. At first she had written to him blaming him for his desertion.
+But not for a moment did she take it seriously. "You'll be coming back,
+Dicky," was the burden of her song. He wrote hurried pleasant letters
+which were to some extent bulletins of the day's work. If Eve was not
+satisfied she consoled herself with the thought that he was tearingly
+busy and terribly tired.
+
+In her last letter she had said, "Austin doesn't know what to do without
+you. He told Pip that you were his right hand."
+
+Austin had said more than that to Anne. He had found her one hot day by
+the fountain. Nancy had written to her of the death of Francois' mother.
+The letter was in her hand.
+
+Austin had also had a letter. "Brooks is a fool. He writes that he is
+going to stay."
+
+Anne shook her head. "He is not a fool," she said; "he is doing what he
+_had_ to do. You would know if you had ever lived at Crossroads. Why, the
+Brooks family belongs there, and the Brooks doctors."
+
+"So you have encouraged him?" Austin said.
+
+"I have had nothing to do with it. I haven't heard from him since he
+left, and I haven't written."
+
+"And you think he is--right to--bury--himself?"
+
+Anne sat very still, her hands folded quietly. Her calm eyes were on the
+golden fish which swam in the waters at the base of the fountain.
+
+"I am not sure," she said; "it all has so much to do with--old
+traditions--and inherited feelings--and ideals. He could be just as
+useful here, but he would never be happy. You can't imagine how they look
+up to him down there. And here he looked up to you."
+
+"Then you think I didn't give him a free hand?"
+
+"No. But there he is a Brooks of Crossroads. And it isn't because he
+wants the honor of it that he has gone back, but because the
+responsibility rests upon him to make the community all that it ought to
+be. And he can't shirk it."
+
+"Eve Chesley says that he is tied to his mother's apron strings."
+
+"She doesn't understand, I do. I sometimes feel that way about the
+Crossroads school--as if I had shirked something to have--a good time."
+
+"But you have had a good time."
+
+"Yes, you have all been wonderful to me," her smile warmed him, "but you
+won't think that I am ungrateful when I say that there was something in
+my life in the little school which carried me--higher--than this."
+
+"Higher? What do you mean?"
+
+"I was a leader down there. And a force. The children looked to me for
+something that I could give and which the teacher they have isn't giving.
+She just teaches books, and I tried to teach them something of life, and
+love of country, and love of God."
+
+"But here you have Marie-Louise, and you know how grateful we are for
+what you have done for her."
+
+"I have only developed what was in her. What a flaming little genius she
+is!"
+
+"With a poem accepted by an important magazine, and Fox believing that
+she can write more of them."
+
+Anne spoke quietly: "And now I am really not needed. Marie-Louise can go
+on alone."
+
+He stopped her. "We want you to stay--my wife wants you--Marie-Louise
+can't do without you. And I want you to get Brooks back."
+
+She looked her amazement. "Get him back?"
+
+"He will come if you ask it. I am not blind. Eve Chesley is. The things
+she says make him stubborn. But you could call him back. You could call
+to life anything in any man if you willed it. You are inspirational--a
+star to light the way."
+
+His voice was shaken. After a pause he went on: "Will you help me to get
+Brooks back?"
+
+She shook her head. "I shall not try. He is among his own people. He has
+found his place."
+
+Yet now that Richard was gone, Anne found herself missing him more than
+she dared admit. She was, for the first time, aware that the knowledge
+that she should see him now and then had kept her from loneliness which
+might otherwise have assailed her. The thought that she might meet him
+had added zest to her engagements. His week-ends at Rose Acres had been
+the goal toward which her thoughts had raced.
+
+And now the great house was empty because of his absence. The city was
+empty--because he had left it--forever. She had no hope that he would
+come back. Crossroads had claimed him. He had, indeed, come into his own.
+
+When the rest of his friends spoke of him, praised or blamed, she was
+silent. Geoffrey Fox, who came often, complained, "You are always sitting
+off in a corner somewhere with your work, putting in a million stitches,
+when I want you to talk."
+
+"You can talk to Marie-Louise. She is your ardent disciple. She burns
+candles at your altar."
+
+"She is a charming--child."
+
+"She is more than that. When her poem was accepted she cried over the
+letter. She thinks that she couldn't have done it except for your help
+and criticism."
+
+"She will do more than she has done."
+
+When Marie-Louise joined them, Anne was glad to see Geoffrey's protective
+manner, as if he wanted to be nice to the child who had cried.
+
+She had to listen to much criticism of Richard. When Eve and the
+Dutton-Ames dined one night in the early fall at Rose Acres, Richard's
+quixotic action formed the theme of their discourse.
+
+Eve was very frank. "Somebody ought to tie Dicky down. His head is in the
+clouds."
+
+Marie-Louise flashed: "I like people whose heads are in the clouds. He is
+doing a wonderful thing and a wise thing--and we are all acting as if it
+were silly."
+
+Anne wanted to hug Marie-Louise, and with heightened color she listened
+to Winifred's defense.
+
+"I think we should all like to feel that we are equal to it--to give up
+money and fame--for the thing that--called."
+
+"There is no better or bigger work for him there than here," Austin
+proclaimed.
+
+"No," Winifred agreed, and her eyes were bright, "but it is because he is
+giving up something which the rest of us value that I like him.
+Renunciation isn't fashionable, but it is stimulating."
+
+"The usual process is to 'grab and git,'" her husband sustained her. "We
+always like to see some one who isn't bitten by the modern bacillus."
+
+After dinner Anne left them and made her way down in the darkness to the
+river. The evening boat was coming up, starred with lights, its big
+search-light sweeping the shores. When it passed, the darkness seemed
+deeper. The night was cool, and Anne, wrapped in a white cloak, was like
+a ghost among the shadows. Far up on the terrace she could see the big
+house, and hear the laughter. She felt much alone. Those people were not
+her people. Her people were of Nancy's kind, well-born and well bred, but
+not smart in the modern sense. They were quiet folk, liking their homes,
+their friends, their neighbors. They were not so rich that they were
+separated by their money from those about them. They had time to read and
+to think. They were perhaps no better than the people in the big house on
+top of the terrace, but they lived at a more leisurely pace, and it
+seemed to her at this moment that they got more out of life.
+
+She wanted more than anything in the world to be to-night with that
+little group at Crossroads, to meet Cousin Sulie's sparkling glance, to
+sit at Nancy's knee, to hear Richard's big laugh, as he came in and found
+the women waiting for the news of the outside world that he would bring.
+
+She knew that she could have the little school if she asked for it. But a
+sense of dignity restrained her. She could not go back now. It would seem
+to the world that she had followed Richard. Well, her heart followed him,
+but the world did not know that.
+
+She heard voices. Geoffrey and Marie-Louise were at the river's edge.
+
+"It is as if there were just the two of us in the whole wide world,"
+Marie-Louise was saying. "That's what I like about the darkness. It seems
+to shut everybody out."
+
+"But suppose the darkness followed you into the day," Geoffrey said,
+"suppose that for you there were no light?"
+
+A rim of gold showed above the blackness of the Jersey hills.
+
+"Oh," Marie-Louise exulted, "look at the moon. In a moment there will be
+light, and you thought you were in the dark."
+
+"You mean that it is an omen?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What a small and comfortable person you are," Geoffrey said, and now
+Anne could see the two of them silhouetted against the brightening sky,
+one tall and slim, the other slim and short. They walked on, and she
+heard their voices faintly.
+
+"Do I really make you comfortable, Geoffrey Fox?"
+
+"You make me more than that, Marie-Louise."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+_In Which Richard Rides Alone._
+
+
+"EVE."
+
+"Yes, Pip."
+
+"Can't you see that if he cared Richard would do the thing that pleased
+you--that New York would be Paradise if you were in it?"
+
+"Why shouldn't Crossroads be Paradise to me--with him?"
+
+"It couldn't be."
+
+"I am going to make it. I talked it over last night with Aunt Maude.
+She's an old dear. And I shall be the Lady of the Manor. If Dicky won't
+come to New York, I'll bring New York down to him."
+
+"It can't be done. And it's going to fail."
+
+"What is going to fail?"
+
+"Your marriage. If you are mad enough to marry Brooks."
+
+She mused. "Pip, do you remember the fat Armenian?"
+
+"At Coney? Yes."
+
+"He said that--I had reached for something beyond my grasp. That my
+fingers would touch it, but that it would soar always above me."
+
+"Sounds as if Brooks were some fat sort of a bird. I can't think of him
+as soaring. I should call him the cock that crowed at Crossroads. Oh,
+it's all rot, Eve, this idea that love makes things equal. I went to the
+Hippodrome not long ago and saw 'Pinafore.' Our fathers and mothers raved
+over it. But that was a sentimental age, and Gilbert poked fun at them.
+He made the simple sailor a captain in the end, so that Josephine
+shouldn't wash dishes and cook smelly things in pots and hang out the
+family wash. But your hero balks and won't be turned into a millionaire.
+If you were writing a book you might make it work out to your
+satisfaction, but you can't twist life to the happy ending."
+
+"I shall try, Pip."
+
+"In Heaven's name, Eve! It is sheer obstinacy. If everybody wanted you to
+marry Brooks, you'd want to marry me. But because Aunt Maude and Winifred
+and I, and a lot of others know that you shouldn't, you have set your
+heart on it."
+
+She flashed her eyes at him. "Is it obstinacy, Pip, I wonder? Do you know
+I rather think I am going to like it."
+
+Her letters said something of the sort to Richard. "I shall love it down
+there. But you must let me have my own way with the house and garden.
+Don't you think I shall make a charming chatelaine, Dicky, dear?"
+
+He had a sense of relief in her unexpected acquiescence in his decision.
+If she had objected, he would have felt as if he had turned his back not
+only on the work that he hated but on the woman he had promised to marry.
+It would have looked that way to others. Yet no matter how it had looked,
+he could not have done differently. The call had been insistent, and the
+deeps of his nature been stirred.
+
+He was thinking of it all as one morning in October he rode to the
+Playhouse on big Ben to see Beulah.
+
+Dismounting at the gate, he followed the path which led to the kitchen.
+Beulah was not there, and, searching, he saw her under an old apple tree
+at the end of the garden. She wore a checked blue apron, stiffly
+starched, and she was holding it up by the corners. A black cat and three
+sable kittens frisked at her feet.
+
+Some one was dropping red apples carefully into the apron, some one who
+laughed as he swung himself down and tipped Beulah's chin up with his
+hand and kissed her. Richard felt a lump in his throat. It was such a
+homely little scene, but it held a meaning that love had never held for
+himself and Eve.
+
+Eric untied Beulah's apron string, and carrying the apples in this
+improvised bag, with his arm about her waist sustaining her, they came
+down the walk.
+
+"This is Beulah's pet tree. When she was sick she asked for apples and
+apples and apples."
+
+Beulah, sinking her little white teeth into a red one, nodded. "It is
+perfectly wonderful," she said when she was able to speak, "how good
+everything tastes, and I can't get enough."
+
+Eric pinched her cheek. "Pretty good color, doctor. We'll have them
+matching the apples yet."
+
+Richard wanted to ask Eric about the dogs. "Some of my friends are coming
+down to-morrow for the Middlefield hunt."
+
+"If they start old Pete there'll be some sport," Eric said.
+
+"I shall be half sorry if they do," Richard told him. "I am always afraid
+I shall lose him out of my garden. He is a part of the place, like the
+box hedge and the cedars."
+
+He said it lightly, but he meant it. He had hunting blood in his veins,
+and he loved the horses and the dogs. He loved the cold crisp air, and
+the excitement of the chase. But what he did not love was the hunted
+animal, doubling on its tracks, pursued, panting, torn to pieces by the
+hounds.
+
+"Old Pete deserved to live and die among the hills," Beulah said. "Is
+Miss Chesley coming down?"
+
+"Yes, and a lot of others. They will put up at the club. Mother and Sulie
+aren't up to entertaining a crowd."
+
+He wanted Eric's dogs for ducks. Dutton-Ames and one or two others did
+not ride to hounds, and would come to Bower's in the morning.
+
+As he rode away, he was conscious that as soon as his back was turned
+Eric's arm would again be about Beulah, and Beulah's head would be on
+Eric's shoulder. And that he would lift her over the threshold as they
+went in.
+
+That afternoon Richard motored over to the Country Club to welcome Eve.
+She laughed at his little car. "I'd rather see you on big Ben than in
+that."
+
+"Ben can't carry me fast enough."
+
+"Don't expect me to ride in it, Dicky."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Oh, Dicky, can you _ask_?"
+
+Meade's great limousine which had brought them seemed to stare the little
+car out of countenance. But Richard refused to be embarrassed by the
+contrast. "She's a snug little craft, and she has carried me miles. What
+would Meade's car do on these roads and in the hills?"
+
+Pip had come up and as the two men stood together Eve's quick eye
+contrasted them. There was no doubt of Richard's shabbiness. His old
+riding coat was much the worse for wear. He had on the wrong kind of hat
+and the wrong kind of shoes, and he seemed most aggravatingly not to
+care. He was to ride to-morrow one of the horses which had been sent down
+from Pip's stables. He hadn't even a proper mount!
+
+Pip, on the other hand, was perfectly groomed. He was shining and
+immaculate from the top of his smooth head to the heel of his boots. And
+he wore an air of gay inconsequence. It seemed to Eve that Richard's
+shoulders positively sagged with responsibility.
+
+There was a dance at the club that night. Richard, coming in, saw Eve in
+Pip's arms. They were a graceful pair, and their steps matched perfectly.
+Eve was all in white, wide-skirted, and her shoulders and arms were bare.
+She had on gold slippers, and her hair was gold. Richard had a sense of
+discomfort as he watched them. He was going to marry her, yet she was
+letting Pip look at her like that. His cheeks burned. What was Pip
+saying? Was he making love to Eve?
+
+He had tried to meet the situation with dignity. Yet there was no dignity
+in Eve's willingness to let Pip follow her. To speak of it would,
+however, seem to crystallize his feeling into a complaint.
+
+Hence when he danced with her later, he tried to respond to the lightness
+and brightness of her mood. He tried to measure up to all the
+requirements of his position as an engaged man and as a lover. But he did
+not find it easy.
+
+When he reached home that night, he found little Francois awake, and
+ready to ask questions about the hunt.
+
+"Do you think they will get him?" he challenged Richard, coming in small
+pink pajamas to the door of the young doctor's room.
+
+"Get who?"
+
+"Old Pete."
+
+"He is too cunning."
+
+"Will he come through here?"
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"I shall stick my fingers in my ears and shut my eyes. Are you going to
+ride with them?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You won't let them kill old Pete, will you?"
+
+"Not if I can help it."
+
+After that, the child was more content. But when Richard was at last in
+bed, Francois came again across the hall, and stood on the threshold in
+the moonlight. "It would be dreadful if it was his last night."
+
+"Whose last night, Francois?" sleepily.
+
+"Old Pete's."
+
+"Don't worry. And you must go to bed, Francois."
+
+Richard waked to a glorious morning and to the hunt. Pink coats dotted
+the countryside. It seemed as if half the world was on its way to the
+club. Richard, as he mounted one of Pip's hunters, a powerful bay, felt
+the thrill of it all, and when he joined Eve and her party he found them
+in an uproarious mood.
+
+Presently over hills streamed a picturesque procession--the hounds in the
+lead, the horses following with riders whose pink blazed against the
+green of the pines, against the blue of the river, against the fainter
+blue of the skies above.
+
+And oh, the music of it, the sound of the horn, the bell-like baying, the
+thud of flying feet!
+
+Then, ahead of them all, as the hounds broke into full cry, a silent,
+swift shadow--the old fox, Pete!
+
+At first he ran easily. He had done it so often. He had thrown them off
+after a chase which had stirred his blood. He would throw them off again.
+
+In leisurely fashion he led them. As the morning advanced, however, he
+found himself hard pushed. He was driven from one stronghold to another.
+Tireless, the hounds followed and followed, until at last he knew himself
+weary, seeking sanctuary.
+
+He came with confidence to Crossroads. Beyond the garden was his den.
+Once within and the thing would end.
+
+Across the lawn he loped, and little Francois, anxious at the window,
+spied him. "Will he get to it, will he get to it?" he said to Nancy, his
+small face white with the fear of what might happen, "and when he gets
+there will he be safe?"
+
+"Yes," she assured him; "and when they have run him aground, they will
+ride away."
+
+But they did not ride away. It happened that those who were in the lead
+were unaware of the tradition of the country, and so they began to dig
+him out, this old king of foxes, who had felt himself secure in his
+castle!
+
+They set the dogs at one end, and fetched mattocks and spades from the
+stable.
+
+Pip and Eve were among them. Pip directing, Eve mad with the excitement
+of it all.
+
+Little Francois, watching, clung to Nancy. "Oh, they can't, they
+mustn't!"
+
+She soothed him, and at last sent Milly out, but they would not listen.
+
+Nancy and Sulie were as white now as little Francois. "Oh, where is
+Richard?" Nancy said. "It is like murder to do a thing like that. It is
+bad enough in the open--but like a rat--in a trap."
+
+The big bay was charging down the hill with Richard yelling at the top of
+his voice. The bay had proved troublesome and had bolted in the wrong
+direction, but Richard had brought him back to Crossroads just in time!
+
+Francois screamed. "It is Dr. Dicky. He'll make them stop. He'll make
+them."
+
+He did make them. His voice rang sharply. "Get the dogs away, Meade, and
+stop digging."
+
+They were too eager at first to heed him. Eve hung on his arm, but he
+shook her off. "We don't like things like that down here. Our foxes are
+too rare."
+
+It was a motley group which gathered later at the club for the hunt
+breakfast. There were fox-hunting farmers born on the land, of sturdy
+yeoman stock, and careless of form. There were the lords of newly
+acquired acres, who rode carefully on little saddles with short stirrups
+in the English style.
+
+There were the descendants of the great old planters, daring, immensely
+picturesque. There was Eve's crowd, trained for the sport, and at their
+ease.
+
+A big fire burned on the hearth. A copper-covered table held steaming
+dishes. Another table groaned under its load of cold meats and cheese. On
+an ancient mahogany sideboard were various bottles and bowls of punch.
+
+Old songs were sung and old stories told. Brinsley beamed on everybody
+with his face like a round full moon. There were other round and
+red-faced gentlemen who, warmed by the fire and the punch, twinkled like
+unsteady old stars.
+
+Eve was the pivotal center of all the hilarity. She sat on the table and
+served the punch. Her coat was off, and in her silk blouse and riding
+breeches she was like a lovely boy. The men crowded around her. Pip,
+always at her elbow, delivered an admiring opinion. "No one can hold a
+candle to you, Eve."
+
+Richard was out of it. He sat quietly in a corner with David, old Jo at
+their feet, and watched the others. Eve had been angry with him for his
+interference at Crossroads. "I didn't know you were a molly-coddle,
+Dicky," she had said, "and I wanted the brush."
+
+She was punishing him now by paying absolutely no attention to him. She
+was punishing him, too, by making herself conspicuous, which she knew he
+hated. The scene was not to his liking. The women of his household,
+Nancy, Sulie and Anne, had had a fastidious sense of what belonged to
+them as ladies. Eve had not that sense. As he sat there, it occurred to
+him that things were moving to some stupendous climax. He and Eve
+couldn't go on like this.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Far up in the hills a man was in danger of bleeding to death. He had cut
+himself while butchering a pig. The doctor was called.
+
+Richard, making his way through the shouting and singing crowd which
+surrounded Eve, told her, "I shall have to go for a little while. There's
+a man hurt. I'll be back in an hour."
+
+She looked down at him with hard eyes. "We are going to ride
+cross-country--to the Ridge. You might meet us there, if you care to
+come."
+
+"You know I care."
+
+"I'm not sure. You don't show it. I--I am tired of never having a
+lover--Dicky."
+
+It was a wonderful afternoon. The heavy frost had chilled the air, the
+leaves were red, and the sky was blue--and there was green and brown and
+gold. But Richard as he rode up in the hills had no eyes for the color,
+no ears for the song beaten out by big Ben's hoofs. The vision which held
+him was of Eve in the midst of that shouting circle.
+
+The man who had cut himself was black. He was thin and tall and his hair
+was gray. He had worked hard all of his life, but he had never worked out
+of himself the spirit of joyous optimism.
+
+"I jes' tole 'um," he said, "to send for Dr. Brooks, and he'd beat the
+devil gettin' to me."
+
+When Richard reached the Ridge, a flash of scarlet at once caught his
+eye. On the slope below Eve, far ahead of Meade, in a mad race, was
+making for a grove at the edge of the Crossroads boundaries. She was a
+reckless rider, and Richard held his breath as she took fences, leaped
+hurdles, and cleared the flat wide stream.
+
+As she came to the grove she turned and waved triumphantly to Pip. For a
+moment she made a vivid and brilliant figure in her scarlet against the
+green. Then the little wood swallowed her up.
+
+Pip came pounding after, and Richard, spurring his big Ben to
+unaccustomed efforts, circled the grove to meet them on the other side.
+
+But they did not come. From the point where he finally drew up he could
+command a view of both sides of the slope. Unless they had turned back,
+they were still in the grove.
+
+Then out of the woods came Pip, running. He had something in his arms.
+
+"It is Eve," he said, panting; "there was a hole and her horse stumbled.
+I found her."
+
+Poor honest Pip! As if she were his own, he held her now in his arms.
+Her golden head, swung up to his shoulder, rested heavily above his
+heart. Her eyes were shut.
+
+Richard's practiced eye saw at once her state of collapse. He jumped from
+his horse. "Give her to me, Meade," he said, "and get somebody's car as
+quickly as you can."
+
+And now the tiger in Pip flashed out. "She's mine," he said, breathing
+hoarsely. "I love her. You go and get the car."
+
+"Man," the young doctor said steadily, "this isn't the time to quarrel.
+Lay her down, then, and let me have a look at her."
+
+He had his little case of medicines, and he hunted for something to bring
+her back to consciousness. Pip, pale and shaken, folded his coat under
+her head and chafed her hands.
+
+Presently life seemed to sweep through her body. She shivered and moved.
+
+Her eyes came open. "What happened?"
+
+"You fell from your horse. Meade found you."
+
+There were no bones broken, but the shock had been great. She lay very
+still and white against Pip's arm.
+
+Richard closed his medicine case and rose. He stood looking down at her.
+
+"Better, old lady?"
+
+"Yes, Dicky."
+
+He spoke a little awkwardly. "I'll ride down if you don't mind, and come
+back for you in Meade's car." His eyes did not meet hers.
+
+As he plunged over the hill on his heavy old horse, her puzzled gaze
+followed him. Then she gave a queer little laugh. "Is he running away
+from me, Pip?"
+
+"I told him you were--mine," the big man burst out.
+
+"You told him? Oh, Pip, what did he say?"
+
+"That this was not the time to talk about it."
+
+She lay very still thinking it out. Then she turned on his arm. "Good old
+Pip," she said. He drew her up to him, and she said it again, with that
+queer little laugh, "Good old Pip, you're the best ever. And all this
+time I have been looking straight over your blessed old head at--Dicky."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+_In Which St. Michael Finds Love in a Garden._
+
+
+THE flowers in Marie-Louise's bowl were lilacs. And Marie-Louise, sitting
+up in bed, writing verses, was in pale mauve. Her windows were wide open,
+and the air from the river, laden with fragrance, swept through the room.
+
+The big house had been closed all winter. Austin had elected to spend the
+season in Florida, and had taken all of his household with him, including
+Anne. He had definitely retired from practice when Richard left him. "I
+can't carry it on alone, and I don't want to break in anybody else," he
+had said, and had turned the whole thing over to one of his colleagues.
+
+But April had brought him back to "Rose Acres" in time for the lilacs,
+and Marie-Louise, uplifted by the fact that Geoffrey Fox was at that very
+moment finishing his book in the balcony room, had decided that lilacs in
+the silver bowl should express the ecstatic state of her mind.
+
+Anne, coming in at noon, asked, "What are you writing?"
+
+"_Vers libre._ This is called, 'To Dr. Dicky, Dinging.'"
+
+"What a subject, and you call it poetry?"
+
+"Why not? Isn't he coming to dinner for the first time since--he left New
+York, and since he broke off with Eve, and since--a lot of other
+things--and isn't it an important occasion, Mistress Anne?"
+
+Anne ignored the question. "What have you written?"
+
+"Only the outline. He comes--has caviar, and his eyes are on the queen.
+He drinks his soup--and dreams. He has fish--and a vision of the future;
+rhapsodies with the roast," she twinkled; "do you like it?"
+
+"As far as it goes."
+
+"It goes very far, and you know it. And you are blushing."
+
+"I am not."
+
+"You are. Look in the glass. Mistress Anne, aren't you glad that Eve is
+married?"
+
+"Yes," honestly, "and that she is happy."
+
+"Pip was made for her. I loved him at Palm Beach, adoring her, didn't
+you?"
+
+"Yes." Anne's mind went back to it. The marriage had followed immediately
+upon the announcement of the broken engagement. People had pitied poor
+young Dr. Brooks. But Anne had not. One does not pity a man who, having
+been bound, is free.
+
+He had written to her a half dozen times during the winter, friendly
+letters with news of Crossroads, and now that she was again at Rose
+Acres, he was coming up.
+
+The spring day was bright. Rich with possibilities. "Marie-Louise, don't
+stay in bed. Nobody has a right to be in the house on such a day as
+this."
+
+But Marie-Louise wouldn't be moved. "I want to finish my verses."
+
+So Anne went out alone into the garden. It was ablaze with spring bloom,
+the river was blue, and Pan piped on his reeds. Geoffrey waved to her
+from his balcony. She waved back, then went for a walk alone. She
+returned to have tea on the terrace. The day seemed interminable. The
+hour for dinner astonishingly remote.
+
+At last, however, it was time to dress. The gown that she chose was of
+pale rose, heavily weighted with silver. It hung straight and slim. Her
+slippers were of silver, and she still wore her dark hair in the smooth
+swept-up fashion which so well became her.
+
+Richard, seeing her approach down the length of the big drawing-room
+where he stood with Austin, was conscious of a sense of shock. It was as
+if he had expected that she would come to him in her old blue serge, or
+in the little white gown with the many ruffles. That she came in such
+elegance made her seem--alien. Like Eve. Oh, where was the Anne of
+yesterday?
+
+Even when she spoke to him, when her hand was in his, when she walked
+beside him on the way to the dining-room, he had this sense of
+strangeness, as if the girl in rose-color was not the girl of whom he had
+dreamed through all the days since he had known that he was not to marry
+Eve.
+
+The winter had been a busy one for him, but satisfying in the sense that
+he was at last in his rightful place. He had come into his own. He had no
+more doubts that his work was wisely chosen. But his life was as yet
+unfinished. To complete it, he had felt that he must round out his days
+with the woman he loved.
+
+But now that he was here, he saw her fitted to her new surroundings as a
+jewel fitted to a golden setting. And she liked lovely things, she liked
+excitement, and the nearness of the great metropolis. There were men who
+had wanted to marry her. Marie-Louise had told him that in a gay little
+letter which she had sent from the South.
+
+As he reviewed it now disconsolately, he reminded himself that he had
+never had any real reason to know that Anne cared for him. There had been
+a flash of the eye, a few grave words, a break in her voice, his answered
+letters; but a woman might dole out these small favors to a friend.
+
+Thus from caviar to soup, and from soup to roast, he contradicted
+Marie-Louise's conception of his state of mind. Fear and doubt,
+discouragement, a touch of despair, these carried him as far as the
+salad.
+
+And then he heard Austin's voice speaking. "So you are really contented
+at Crossroads, Brooks?"
+
+"Yes. I wish you would come down and let me show you some of the things I
+am doing. A bit primitive, perhaps, in the light of your larger
+experience. But none the less effective, and interesting."
+
+Austin shrugged. "I can't imagine anything but martyrdom in such a
+life--for me. What do you do with yourself when you are not working--with
+no theaters--opera--restaurants--excitements?"
+
+"We get along rather well without them--except for an occasional trip to
+town."
+
+"But you need such things," dogmatically; "a man can't live out of the
+world and not--degenerate."
+
+"He may live in it, and degenerate." Anne was speaking. Her cheeks were
+as pink as her gown. She leaned a little forward. "You don't know all
+that they have at Crossroads, and Dr. Brooks is too polite to tell you
+how poor New York seems to those of us who--know."
+
+"Poor?" Richard had turned to her, his face illumined.
+
+"Isn't it? Think of the things you have that New York doesn't know of. A
+singing river--this river doesn't sing, or if it does nobody would have
+time to listen. And Crossroads has a bell on its school that calls to the
+countryside. City children are not called by a bell--that's why they are
+all alike--they ride on trolleys and watch the clocks. My little pupils
+ran across the fields and down the road, and hurried when I rang for
+them, and came in--rosy."
+
+She was rosy herself as she recounted it.
+
+"Oh, we have a lot of things--the bridge with the lights--and the road up
+to the Ridge--and Diogenes. Dr. Austin, you should see Diogenes."
+
+She laughed, and they all laughed with her, but back of Richard's laugh
+there was an emotion which swept him on and up to heights beyond anything
+that he had ever hoped or dreamed.
+
+After that, he could hardly wait for the ending of the dinner, hardly
+wait to get away from them all, and out under the stars.
+
+It was when they were at last alone on the steps above the fountain, with
+the garden pouring all of its fragrance down upon them, that he said, "I
+should not have dared ask it if you had not said what you said."
+
+"Oh, St. Michael, St. Michael," she whispered, "where was your courage?"
+
+"But in this gown, this lovely gown, you didn't look like anything that I
+could--have. I am only a country doctor, Anne."
+
+"Only my beloved--Richard."
+
+They clung together, these two who had found Love in the garden. But they
+had found more than Love. They had found the meaning for all that Richard
+had done, and for all that Anne would do. And that which they had found
+they would never give up!
+
+
+
+
+"_The Books You Like to Read at the Price You Like to Pay_"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_There Are Two Sides to Everything_--
+
+--including the wrapper which covers every Grosset & Dunlap book. When
+you feel in the mood for a good romance, refer to the carefully selected
+list of modern fiction comprising most of the successes by prominent
+writers of the day which is printed on the back of every Grosset & Dunlap
+book wrapper.
+
+You will find more than five hundred titles to choose from--books for
+every mood and every taste and every pocketbook.
+
+_Don't forget the other side, but in case the wrapper is lost, write to
+the publishers for a complete catalog._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_There is a Grosset & Dunlap Book for every mood and for every taste_
+
+
+RUBY M. AYRES' NOVELS
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.
+
+
+THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART
+Why was Barbara held captive in a deserted hermit's hut for days by a
+"man without a heart" and in the end how was it that she held the winning
+cards.
+
+THE ROMANCE OF A ROGUE
+Twenty-four hours after his release from prison Bruce Lawn finds himself
+playing a most surprising role in a drama of human relationships that
+sweeps on to a wonderfully emotional climax.
+
+THE MATHERSON MARRIAGE
+She married for money. With her own hands she had locked the door on
+happiness and thrown away the key. But read the story which is very
+interesting and well told.
+
+RICHARD CHATTERTON
+A fascinating story in which love and jealousy play strange tricks with
+women's souls.
+
+A BACHELOR HUSBAND
+Can a woman love two men at the same time?
+
+In its solving of this particular variety of triangle "A Bachelor
+Husband" will particularly interest, and strangely enough, without one
+shock to the most conventional minded.
+
+THE SCAR
+With fine comprehension and insight the author shows a terrific contrast
+between the woman whose love was of the flesh and one whose love was of
+the spirit.
+
+THE MARRIAGE OF BARRY WICKLOW
+Here is a man and woman who, marrying for love, yet try to build their
+wedded life upon a gospel of hate for each other and yet win back to a
+greater love for each other in the end.
+
+THE UPHILL ROAD
+The heroine of this story was a consort of thieves. The man was fine,
+clean, fresh from the West. It is a story of strength and passion.
+
+WINDS OF THE WORLD
+Jill, a poor little typist, marries the great Henry Sturgess and inherits
+millions, but not happiness. Then at last--but we must leave that to Ruby
+M. Ayres to tell you as only she can.
+
+THE SECOND HONEYMOON
+In this story the author has produced a book which no one who has loved
+or hopes to love can afford to miss. The story fairly leaps from climax
+to climax.
+
+THE PHANTOM LOVER
+Have you not often heard of someone being in love with love rather than
+the person they believed the object of their affections? That was Esther!
+But she passes through the crisis into a deep and profound love.
+
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP,  PUBLISHERS,  NEW YORK
+
+
+STORIES OF RARE CHARM BY GENE STRATTON-PORTER
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+
+THE WHITE FLAG.
+How a young girl, singlehanded, fought against the power of the Morelands
+who held the town of Ashwater in their grip.
+
+HER FATHER'S DAUGHTER.
+This story is of California and tells of that charming girl, Linda
+Strong, otherwise known as "Her Father's Daughter."
+
+A DAUGHTER OF THE LAND.
+Kate Bates, the heroine of this story, is a true "Daughter of the Land,"
+and to read about her is truly inspiring.
+
+MICHAEL O'HALLORAN.
+Michael is a quick-witted little Irish newsboy, living in Northern
+Indiana. He adopts a deserted little girl, a cripple. He also aspires to
+lead the entire rural community upward and onward.
+
+LADDIE.
+This is a bright, cheery tale with the scenes laid in Indiana. The story
+is told by Little Sister, the youngest member of a large family, but it
+is concerned not so much with childish doings as with the love affairs of
+older members of the family.
+
+THE HARVESTER.
+"The Harvester," is a man of the woods and fields, and is well worth
+knowing, but when the Girl comes to his "Medicine Woods," there begins a
+romance of the rarest idyllic quality.
+
+FRECKLES.
+Freckles is a nameless waif when the tale opens, but the way in which he
+takes hold of life; the nature friendships he forms; and his love-story
+with "The Angel" are full of real sentiment.
+
+A GIRL OF THE LIMBERLOST.
+The story of a girl of the Michigan woods; a buoyant, loveable type of
+the self-reliant American. Her philosophy is one of love and kindness
+toward all things; her hope is never dimmed.
+
+AT THE FOOT OF THE RAINBOW.
+The scene of this charming love story is laid in Central Indiana. It is
+one of devoted friendship, and tender self-sacrificing love.
+
+THE SONG OF THE CARDINAL.
+The love idyl of the Cardinal and his mate, told with rare delicacy and
+humor.
+
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP,  PUBLISHERS,  NEW YORK
+
+
+THE NOVELS OF GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL (MRS. LUTZ)
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.
+
+
+BEST MAN, THE
+CLOUDY JEWEL
+DAWN OF THE MORNING
+ENCHANTED BARN, THE
+EXIT BETTY
+FINDING OF JASPER HOLT, THE
+GIRL FROM MONTANA, THE
+LO, MICHAEL!
+MAN OF THE DESERT, THE
+MARCIA SCHUYLER
+MIRANDA
+MYSTERY OF MARY, THE
+OBSESSION OF VICTORIA GRACEN, THE
+PHOEBE DEANE
+RED SIGNAL, THE
+SEARCH, THE
+TRYST, THE
+VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS, A
+WITNESS, THE
+
+_Ask for Complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction_
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP,   PUBLISHERS,  NEW YORK
+
+
+ETHEL M. DELL'S NOVELS
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+
+CHARLES REX
+The struggle against a hidden secret and the love of a strong man and a
+courageous woman.
+
+THE TOP OF THE WORLD
+Tells of the path which leads at last to the "top of the world," which it
+is given to few seekers to find.
+
+THE LAMP IN THE DESERT
+Tells of the lamp of love that continues to shine through all sorts of
+tribulations to final happiness.
+
+GREATHEART
+The story of a cripple whose deformed body conceals a noble soul.
+
+THE HUNDREDTH CHANCE
+A hero who worked to win even when there was only "a hundredth chance."
+
+THE SWINDLER
+The story of a "bad man's" soul revealed by a woman's faith.
+
+THE TIDAL WAVE
+Tales of love and of women who learned to know the true from the false.
+
+THE SAFETY CURTAIN
+A very vivid love story of India. The volume also contains four other
+long stories of equal interest.
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP,   PUBLISHERS,  NEW YORK
+
+
+ELEANOR H. PORTER'S NOVELS
+
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+
+JUST DAVID
+The tale of a loveable boy and the place he comes to fill in the hearts
+of the gruff farmer folk to whose care he is left.
+
+THE ROAD TO UNDERSTANDING
+A compelling romance of love and marriage.
+
+OH, MONEY! MONEY!
+Stanley Fulton, a wealthy bachelor, to test the dispositions of his
+relatives, sends them each a check for $100,000, and then as plain John
+Smith comes among them to watch the result of his experiment.
+
+SIX STAR RANCH
+A wholesome story of a club of six girls and their summer on Six Star
+Ranch.
+
+DAWN
+The story of a blind boy whose courage leads him through the gulf of
+despair into a final victory gained by dedicating his life to the service
+of blind soldiers.
+
+ACROSS THE YEARS
+Short stories of our own kind and of our own people. Contains some of the
+best writing Mrs. Porter has done.
+
+THE TANGLED THREADS
+In these stories we find the concentrated charm and tenderness of all her
+other books.
+
+THE TIE THAT BINDS
+Intensely human stories told with Mrs. Porter's wonderful talent for warm
+and vivid character drawing.
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP,  PUBLISHERS,  NEW YORK
+
+
+FLORENCE L. BARCLAY'S NOVELS
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+
+THE WHITE LADIES OF WORCESTER
+A novel of the 12th Century. The heroine, believing she had lost her
+lover, enters a convent. He returns, and interesting developments follow.
+
+THE UPAS TREE
+A love story of rare charm. It deals with a successful author and his
+wife.
+
+THROUGH THE POSTERN GATE
+The story of a seven day courtship, in which the discrepancy in ages
+vanished into insignificance before the convincing demonstration of
+abiding love.
+
+THE ROSARY
+The story of a young artist who is reputed to love beauty above all else
+in the world, but who, when blinded through an accident, gains life's
+greatest happiness. A rare story of the great passion of two real people
+superbly capable of love, its sacrifices and its exceeding reward.
+
+THE MISTRESS OF SHENSTONE
+The lovely young Lady Ingleby, recently widowed by the death of a husband
+who never understood her, meets a fine, clean young chap who is ignorant
+of her title and they fall deeply in love with each other. When he learns
+her real identity a situation of singular power is developed.
+
+THE BROKEN HALO
+The story of a young man whose religious belief was shattered in
+childhood and restored to him by the little white lady, many years older
+than himself, to whom he is passionately devoted.
+
+THE FOLLOWING OF THE STAR
+The story of a young missionary, who, about to start for Africa, marries
+wealthy Diana Rivers, in order to help her fulfill the conditions of her
+uncle's will, and how they finally come to love each other and are
+reunited after experiences that soften and purify.
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP,  PUBLISHERS,  NEW YORK
+
+
+BOOTH TARKINGTON'S NOVELS
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+
+SEVENTEEN.
+Illustrated by Arthur William Brown.
+No one but the creator of Penrod could have portrayed the immortal young
+people of this story. Its humor is irresistible and reminiscent of the
+time when the reader was Seventeen.
+
+PENROD.
+Illustrated by Gordon Grant.
+This is a picture of a boy's heart, full of the lovable, humorous, tragic
+things which are locked secrets to most older folks. It is a finished,
+exquisite work.
+
+PENROD AND SAM.
+Illustrated by Worth Brehm.
+Like "Penrod" and "Seventeen," this book contains some remarkable phases
+of real boyhood and some of the best stories of juvenile prankishness
+that have ever been written.
+
+THE TURMOIL.
+Illustrated by C. E. Chambers.
+Bibbs Sheridan is a dreamy, imaginative youth, who revolts against his
+father's plans for him to be a servitor of big business. The love of a
+fine girl turns Bibb's life from failure to success.
+
+THE GENTLEMAN FROM INDIANA.
+Frontispiece.
+A story of love and politics,--more especially a picture of a country
+editor's life in Indiana, but the charm of the book lies in the love
+interest.
+
+THE FLIRT.
+Illustrated by Clarence F. Underwood.
+The "Flirt," the younger of two sisters, breaks one girl's engagement,
+drives one man to suicide, causes the murder of another, leads another to
+lose his fortune, and in the end marries a stupid and unpromising suitor,
+leaving the really worthy one to marry her sister.
+
+
+_Ask for Complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction_
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP,  PUBLISHERS,  NEW YORK
+
+
+KATHLEEN NORRIS' STORIES
+
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+
+SISTERS.
+Frontispiece by Frank Street.
+The California Redwoods furnish the background for this beautiful story
+of sisterly devotion and sacrifice.
+
+POOR, DEAR, MARGARET KIRBY.
+Frontispiece by George Gibbs.
+A collection of delightful stories, including "Bridging the Years" and
+"The Tide-Marsh." This story is now shown in moving pictures.
+
+JOSSELYN'S WIFE.
+Frontispiece by C. Allan Gilbert.
+The story of a beautiful woman who fought a bitter fight for happiness
+and love.
+
+MARTIE, THE UNCONQUERED.
+Illustrated by Charles E. Chambers.
+The triumph of a dauntless spirit over adverse conditions.
+
+THE HEART OF RACHAEL.
+Frontispiece by Charles E. Chambers.
+An interesting story of divorce and the problems that come with a second
+marriage.
+
+THE STORY OF JULIA PAGE.
+Frontispiece by C. Allan Gilbert.
+A sympathetic portrayal of the quest of a normal girl, obscure and
+lonely, for the happiness of life.
+
+SATURDAY'S CHILD.
+Frontispiece by F. Graham Cootes.
+Can a girl, born in rather sordid conditions, lift herself through sheer
+determination to the better things for which her soul hungered?
+
+MOTHER.
+Illustrated by F. C. Yohn.
+A story of the big mother heart that beats in the background of every
+girl's life, and some dreams which came true.
+
+
+_Ask for Complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction_
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP,   PUBLISHERS,   NEW YORK
+
+
+EMERSON HOUGH'S NOVELS
+
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.
+
+
+THE COVERED WAGON
+NORTH OF 36
+THE WAY OF A MAN
+THE STORY OF THE OUTLAW
+THE SAGEBRUSHER
+THE GIRL AT THE HALFWAY HOUSE
+THE WAY OUT
+THE MAN NEXT DOOR
+THE MAGNIFICENT ADVENTURE
+THE BROKEN GATE
+THE STORY OF THE COWBOY
+THE WAY TO THE WEST
+54-40 OR FIGHT
+HEART'S DESIRE
+THE MISSISSIPPI BUBBLE
+THE PURCHASE PRICE
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK
+
+
+GEORGE W. OGDEN'S WESTERN NOVELS
+
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+
+THE BARON OF DIAMOND TAIL
+The Elk Mountain Cattle Co. had not paid a dividend in years; so Edgar
+Barrett, fresh from the navy, was sent West to see what was wrong at the
+ranch. The tale of this tenderfoot outwitting the buckaroos at their own
+play will sweep you into the action of this salient western novel.
+
+THE BONDBOY
+Joe Newbolt, bound out by force of family conditions to work for a number
+of years, is accused of murder and circumstances are against him. His
+mouth is sealed; he cannot, as a gentleman, utter the words that would
+clear him. A dramatic, romantic tale of intense interest.
+
+CLAIM NUMBER ONE
+Dr. Warren Slavens drew claim number one, which entitled him to first
+choice of rich lands on an Indian reservation in Wyoming. It meant a
+fortune; but before he established his ownership he had a hard battle
+with crooks and politicians.
+
+THE DUKE OF CHIMNEY BUTTE
+When Jerry Lambert, "the Duke," attempts to safeguard the cattle ranch of
+Vesta Philbrook from thieving neighbors, his work is appallingly
+handicapped because of Grace Kerr, one of the chief agitators, and a
+deadly enemy of Vesta's. A stirring tale of brave deeds, gun-play and a
+love that shines above all.
+
+THE FLOCKMASTER OF POISON CREEK
+John Mackenzie trod the trail from Jasper to the great sheep country
+where fortunes were being made by the flock-masters. Shepherding was not
+a peaceful pursuit in those bygone days. Adventure met him at every
+turn--there is a girl of course--men fight their best fights for a
+woman--it is an epic of the sheeplands.
+
+THE LAND OF LAST CHANCE
+Jim Timberlake and Capt. David Scott waited with restless thousands on
+the Oklahoma line for the signal to dash across the border. How the city
+of Victory arose overnight on the plains, how people savagely defended
+their claims against the "sooners;" how good men and bad played politics,
+makes a strong story of growth and American initiative.
+
+TRAIL'S END
+Ascalon was the end of the trail for thirsty cowboys who gave vent to
+their pent-up feelings without restraint. Calvin Morgan was not concerned
+with its wickedness until Seth Craddock's malevolence directed itself
+against him. He did not emerge from the maelstrom until he had
+obliterated every vestige of lawlessness, and assured himself of the
+safety of a certain dark-eyed girl.
+
+
+_Ask for Complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction_
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK
+
+
+PETER B. KYNE'S NOVELS
+
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+
+THE PRIDE OF PALOMAR
+When two strong men clash and the under-dog has Irish blood in his
+veins--there's a tale that Kyne can tell! And "the girl" is also very
+much in evidence.
+
+KINDRED OF THE DUST
+Donald McKay, son of Hector McKay, millionaire lumber king, falls in love
+with "Nan of the Sawdust Pile," a charming girl who has been ostracized
+by her townsfolk.
+
+THE VALLEY OF THE GIANTS
+The fight of the Cardigans, father and son, to hold the Valley of the
+Giants against treachery. The reader finishes with a sense of having
+lived with big men and women in a big country.
+
+CAPPY RICKS
+The story of old Cappy Ricks and of Matt Peasley, the boy he tried to
+break because he knew the acid test was good for his soul.
+
+WEBSTER: MAN'S MAN
+In a little Jim Crow Republic in Central America, a man and a woman,
+hailing from the "States," met up with a revolution and for a while
+adventures and excitement came so thick and fast that their love affair
+had to wait for a lull in the game.
+
+CAPTAIN SCRAGGS
+This sea yarn recounts the adventures of three rapscallion sea-faring
+men--a Captain Scraggs, owner of the green vegetable freighter Maggie,
+Gibney the mate and McGuffney the engineer.
+
+THE LONG CHANCE
+A story fresh from the heart of the West, of San Pasqual, a sun-baked
+desert town, of Harley P. Hennage, the best gambler, the best and worst
+man of San Pasqual and of lovely Donna.
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP,  PUBLISHERS,  NEW YORK
+
+
+JACKSON GREGORY'S NOVELS
+
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.
+
+
+DAUGHTER OF THE SUN
+A tale of Aztec treasure--of American adventurers, who seek it--of
+Zoraida, who hides it.
+
+TIMBER-WOLF
+This is a story of action and of the wide open, dominated always by the
+heroic figure of Timber-Wolf.
+
+THE EVERLASTING WHISPER
+The story of a strong man's struggle against savage nature and humanity,
+and of a beautiful girl's regeneration from a spoiled child of wealth
+into a courageous strong-willed woman.
+
+DESERT VALLEY
+A college professor sets out with his daughter to find gold. They meet a
+rancher who loses his heart, and becomes involved in a feud.
+
+MAN TO MAN
+How Steve won his game and the girl he loved, is a story filled with
+breathless situations.
+
+THE BELLS OF SAN JUAN
+Dr. Virginia Page is forced to go with the sheriff on a night journey
+into the strongholds of a lawless band.
+
+JUDITH OF BLUE LAKE RANCH
+Judith Sanford part owner of a cattle ranch realizes she is being robbed
+by her foreman. With the help of Bud Lee, she checkmates Trevor's scheme.
+
+THE SHORT CUT
+Wayne is suspected of killing his brother after a quarrel. Financial
+complications, a horse-race and beautiful Wanda, make up a thrilling
+romance.
+
+THE JOYOUS TROUBLE MAKER
+A reporter sets up housekeeping close to Beatrice's Ranch much to her
+chagrin. There is "another man" who complicates matters.
+
+SIX FEET FOUR
+Beatrice Waverly is robbed of $5,000 and suspicion fastens upon Buck
+Thornton, but she soon realizes he is not guilty.
+
+WOLF BREED
+No Luck Drennan, a woman hater and sharp of tongue, finds a match in
+Ygerne whose clever fencing wins the admiration and love of the "Lone
+Wolf."
+
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP,  PUBLISHERS,  NEW YORK
+
+
+ZANE GREY'S NOVELS
+
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+
+TO THE LAST MAN
+THE MYSTERIOUS RIDER
+THE MAN OF THE FOREST
+THE DESERT OF WHEAT
+THE U. P. TRAIL
+WILDFIRE
+THE BORDER LEGION
+THE RAINBOW TRAIL
+THE HERITAGE OF THE DESERT
+RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE
+THE LIGHT OF WESTERN STARS
+THE LAST OF THE PLAINSMEN
+THE LONE STAR RANGER
+DESERT GOLD
+BETTY ZANE
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LAST OF THE GREAT SCOUTS
+
+The life story of "Buffalo Bill" by his sister Helen Cody Wetmore, with
+Foreword and conclusion by Zane Grey.
+
+
+ZANE GREY'S BOOKS FOR BOYS
+KEN WARD IN THE JUNGLE
+THE YOUNG LION HUNTER
+THE YOUNG FORESTER
+THE YOUNG PITCHER
+THE SHORT STOP
+THE RED-HEADED OUTFIELD AND OTHER BASEBALL STORIES
+
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP,  PUBLISHERS,  NEW YORK
+
+
+JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD'S STORIES OF ADVENTURE
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+
+THE COUNTRY BEYOND
+THE FLAMING FOREST
+THE VALLEY OF SILENT MEN
+THE RIVER'S END
+THE GOLDEN SNARE
+NOMADS OF THE NORTH
+KAZAN
+BAREE, SON OF KAZAN
+THE COURAGE OF CAPTAIN PLUM
+THE DANGER TRAIL
+THE HUNTED WOMAN
+THE FLOWER OF THE NORTH
+THE GRIZZLY KING
+ISOBEL
+THE WOLF HUNTERS
+THE GOLD HUNTERS
+THE COURAGE OF MARGE O'DOONE
+BACK TO GOD'S COUNTRY
+
+
+_Ask for Complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction_
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mistress Anne, by Temple Bailey
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MISTRESS ANNE ***
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