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diff --git a/old/62707-0.txt b/old/62707-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index cc7512f..0000000 --- a/old/62707-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,4441 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Furnace of Earth, by Hallie Ermine Rives - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: A Furnace of Earth - -Author: Hallie Ermine Rives - -Release Date: July 19, 2020 [EBook #62707] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A FURNACE OF EARTH *** - - - - -Produced by D A Alexander, David E. Brown, and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This -file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - - - - - - - - -A FURNACE OF EARTH - - - - - A FURNACE OF EARTH - - BY - - HALLIE ERMINIE RIVES - - _Author of “Smoking Flax,” etc._ - - As silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. - - --DAVID. - - [Illustration] - - INDIANAPOLIS - THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY - PUBLISHERS - - - - - COPYRIGHT, 1900, - BY THE CAMELOT COMPANY, - NEW YORK. - - - - - TO - R. W. - - - - - _Their first estate of joy they leave, - So pure, impassioned and elate, - And learn from Piety to grieve - Because their hearts are passionate._ - - --The Revelation of St. Love the Divine. - - - - -THE ELEMENTS. - - -EARTH, AIR AND WATER. - -Along the wavering path which followed the twisting summit of the -cliffs toiled a little figure. His face was tanned, and from under a -brown tangle of hair looked eyes blue and fearless. - -He had walked a mile, and home lay a mile further, where white-painted -cottages glowed against the close green velvet of the hills. The way -ran staggeringly, and the boy was tired. - -A group of ragged children tossed up their caps and shouted from the -cluster of fishermen’s huts set further back from the sea; he did not -heed them, but seated himself on the tufted panic-grass and turned -his eyes seaward. The hot sun slanted silver-bright flashes from the -moody water, and whistling swallows, beyond the cliff-edge, soared and -dropped against the blue of the sky, like black balls from a juggler’s -hands. A light breeze, lifting, ruffled with a million ripples the gray -surge, played along the path in scurrying dust-whorls and cooled his -hot cheeks. - -On its heels came stealthily a yellowish dimness; a sullen bank of -cloud crept swiftly along the northern horizon. From a thin, black -line, it grew to a pall, rising ominous and threatening. Quick flashes -pricked its jagged edge. Beneath it the sea turned to a weight of -liquid lead. - -The boy Richard rose fascinated, his eyes upon the advancing squall, -his ears open to the rising breathing of the waves, troubled by -under-dreams. His lips were parted eagerly, and his browned hands -clutched at the brim of his hat. Often and often, from his window, he -had seen the power of the storm; now its near and intimate presence -throbbed through him. - -The foremost gust struck him with sudden fury, turning him about as -though with strong hands upon his shoulders, and tearing his hat from -his grasp. He caught his breath with a sense of outraged dignity; then, -bending his head resolutely to the onslaught, he stumbled forward. The -air was full of scudding mist-streaks, and twisted roots caught at his -feet in the half-darkness. The fierce wind tore with its claws at the -little jacket, buttoned bravely, and tossed the damp, rebellious hair. -The fishermen’s huts lay just behind him, a dry and beckoning shelter; -before him, for a few paces, stretched the path leading into ghostly -obscurity. The boy bent low, bracing his legs doggedly against the -stubble, and foot by foot went on along that lone mile into the storm. - -On a sudden the blurred sea-view was swallowed up. The wind swooped, -grasping at his ankles. It picked up pebbles and flung them, howling, -against his body. They stung like heavy hail. It snapped off unwilling -twigs from the cringing bushes and dashed them into the childish face. -But he did not retreat. What was the wind that it should force him -back! A mighty determination was in his little soul. His teeth were -tight clenched, and his legs ached with the strain. The blast caught -away his breath and he turned his back to it. At the moment it seemed -to lull, tempting him to go its way, but he would not yield. - -Then the tempest gathered all its forces and hurled them spitefully, -hatefully against him, barring, lashing him cruelly, thrusting him -backward. He dropped upon his knees in the path, giving not an inch. -The wind, sopped with heavy rain, fell upon him bodily. He stretched -himself flat, winding his fingers among the roots of the wiry grasses, -struck down, bruised, but still unconquered. - -A lone, pied gull, careening sidelong through the wind-rifts, roused -in him a helpless frenzy of anger and resentment. He clenched his tiny -fist and shook it at the sky, choking, gasping, sobbing, great tears of -impotent rage and mortification blown across his cheeks. - - -FIRE. - -The red-gold of the sun still warmed the late summer dusk. The fading -light sifted between the curtains of the window and touched lovingly -the checkered coverlid, moulding into soft outline the rounded little -limbs beneath. The long hair spread goldenly across the pillow, and the -wide brown eyes were open. - -Old Anne was going to die--old Anne with the ugly wrinkled face and -bony fingers from which all the children ran. She was going to die that -night. Margaret had heard it whispered among the servants. That very -same night while she herself was asleep in bed! Her soul was going to -leave her body and fly up to God. - -She wondered how it would look, but she knew it would be very -beautiful. Its back would not be bent, nor its face drawn with -shining burn-scars. It would be young and straight, and it would -have wings--long, white wings, such as the angels had in the big -stained-glass window over the choir-box in the chapel. It would -have a ring of light around its head, such as the moon had on misty -evenings. It would go just at the moment when old Anne died, and those -who watched close enough might see. Would it speak? Or would it go so -swiftly that it could only smile for a good-by? She wondered if its -eyes would be kindly and blue, not dim and watery as Anne’s had been. -Her own face was smoother and prettier than Anne’s, but her eyes were -dark. Angels always had blue eyes. Its face would be turned up toward -heaven, where it was going, and its wings would make a soft, whispering -sound, like a pigeon’s when it starts to fly. One would have to be very -quick, but if one were there at just the right minute, one could see it. - -Oh, if _she_ only could! She felt quite sure she would not be afraid -of Anne then, knowing that she was just going to be an angel! If they -would only let her! She was so little, and they would be watching, so -that maybe they would not notice her. Perhaps she could slip in quietly -on tiptoe, and then she would see a real shining soul, such as she -herself had inside of her, and which she loved to imagine sometimes -looked out of her eyes at her from the looking-glass. A breathless -eagerness seized her, and she sat up in the bed, hugging her knees and -resting her chin upon them. - -She listened a moment; the house was very still. Then she threw down -the covers, and jumped in her bare feet to the floor. She sat down -on the rug in her white nightgown, and pulled on her stockings with -nervous haste, and her shoes, leaving them unbuttoned and flapping. -Then she slipped into her muslin dress, fastening it behind at the neck -and waist, and opened the door, tugging at the big brass knob, and -quaking at its complaining creaks. No one was in sight, and the little -figure, with its bright floating hair and rosy skin showing between -its shoulders like a belated locust, stole fearfully down the dim -stairway, along the deserted hall, and sidling through the half-opened -door, stepped out among the long-fingered glooms of the standing -shrubbery. - -She hesitated a moment, frightened at the outdoor dark, and then, -catching her breath, ran quickly around the corner of the house, -and down the drive toward the low, clapboarded structure beside the -stables, where a lighted window-shade with moving shadows pointed out -the room of that solemn presence. - -The night air was warm and heavy, and its door stood wide. She crept up -close and listened. Between low-muttered words of subdued conversation, -she heard a slow and labored breathing--a breathing now stopping, -now beginning again, and with a curious rattle in it which somehow -awed her. From where she crouched, she could see only the foot of the -bed, with its tall, bare posts. There seemed to be expectancy in the -hushed voices within, and a quick fear seized her lest she should miss -the wonderful sight. Quivering with eagerness, she rose to her feet, -and with her fascinated gaze seeking out the old face on the pillow, -stepped straight forward into the room. - -She heard a rising murmur of astonishment, of protest, and before her -light-blinded eyes had found their way, felt herself seized roughly, -unceremoniously, lifted bodily off her feet and borne out into the -night. She heard, through the passionate resentment of her childish -mind, the soothing endearments of Jem the gardener, and she struggled -to loose herself, beating at his face with her hands and sobbing with -helpless suffocation of anger. - -A frightened maid met them at the door and took her from him, carrying -her to her room to undress her and sit by her till she should fall -asleep. No assurance that old Anne would soon be happy in heaven -comforted her. No one understood, and she was too hurt to explain what -she had wanted. - -So she lay through the long hours, the bitter tears of grief and -disappointment wetting her pillow. - - - - -I. - - -The air above the shelving stretches of sand-beach shimmered and -dilated with the heat of the August afternoon, as Margaret walked just -beyond the yeasty edge of the receding waves. There was little wind -stirring, and the cool damp was pleasant under her feet. She had left -the hotel behind, and the straggling line of bobbing, dark-blue specks, -which indicated the habitual bathers, was small in the distance. - -A blue-and-silver bound book was in her hand, and her gray tweed skirt -and soft jacket, with a bunch of drooping crimson roses at the waist, -made a grateful spot upon the white glare. Summer sun and sea-wind had -given a clear olive to her face and a scarlet radiance to her full -lips, softly curved. Her hair, in waving masses of flush-brown, flowed -out from beneath her straw hat, tempting a breeze. - -To her left were tumbled monotonous, low dunes, and beyond them the -torn clayey bank, gashed by storms; to her right, only barren stretch -of sea and sweep of sky. - -At a bight of the shore, under the long, curved hole of a pine, leaning -to its fall from the high bank through which half its naked roots -struck sprangling, ran a zigzag footpath to a little grove, where -hemlock and stunted oak grew thickly. Up she climbed, poising lightly, -and drawing herself to the last step by grasping a sprawling creeper. -The green coolness refreshed her, and there was more movement in the -higher air. - -She followed the twists of the path among the low bushes clustering in -front of a sparse clearing. Facing her, in the edge of the shade, where -the light fell in mottled shadows upon a soft, springy floor of dead -pine needles, with its wide arms laced in the rasping boughs of the -scrub-oaks around it, stood an unwieldy wooden cross, hewed roughly, -its base socketed in stone and its horizontal bar held in place by a -rust-red bolt. A cracked and crazy bench, also hewn, was set beneath, -and just above this was nailed a heavy board in which was deeply cut -this half-effaced inscription: - - Here Lies - The Body of an Unknown Woman - Drowned - In the Wreck of the Schooner Bartlett, - May 9, 1871. - -and below it, in larger characters, now almost obliterated by -gray-and-yellow stains: - - Ora Pro Anima Sua. - -This was Margaret’s favorite spot. She preferred its melancholy -solitude to the vivacious companionship of the cottage piazza, and -its quiet tones to the bizarre hues of the beach pavilion. It lay -removed from the usual paths, reached only by a wide detour, across -bush-tangled wastes or the long, uncomfortable walk up-shore on the -hot, yielding sand. Now she sank upon the seat with a deep sigh of -pleasure, letting her book fall open in her lap. Her eyes roved far -off across the gray-green heave where a buccaneering fish-hawk slanted -craftily. - -A deeper light was in them as they fell upon the open printed leaf: - - “For Love is fine and tense as silver wire, - Fierce as white lightning, glorious as drums - And beautiful as snow-mountains. Swift she is - As leaping flame and calm as winter stars.” - -Its chaste beauty had long ago stamped the passage upon her memory; -to-day the lines hymned themselves to a subtle, splendid music. - -Tossing the volume suddenly to one side, her hands loosed her belt. -She held the limp band movelessly a moment, and then bent her face -eagerly over it. Under her fingers the filigree of the clasp slid back, -disclosing a portrait. It was that of a man, young, resolute-faced, -with brown, wavy hair parted in the middle, and candid forehead. It was -rugged and masterful, but with a sweetness of lips and a tender, gray -softness of proud eyes that bespoke him not more a doer than a dreamer. - -As she looked, her lips parted and a faint color crept up her neck, -showing brightly against the auburn hollows of her hair. She fondled -and petted the ivory with her hands, and then raised it to her lips, -kissing it, murmuring to it, and folding it over and over in the warm -moistness of her breath. - -Holding it against her face, she walked up and down the open space -with quick, pushing steps, her free hand stripping the leaves from the -sweeping bush fronds, her hat fallen back, swaying from the knotted -streamers caught under the slipping coil between her shoulders. -Stopping at length in front of the bench, she hung the belt upon a -corner of the carven board, its violet weave tinging the weathered -grain and the painted circlet glowing like a jewelled period for the -massive lettering. - -With one knee on the warped seat, she read again the fading sentences. - -“An unknown woman.” Gone down into the cold green depths! Perhaps -with a dear, glowing secret in her heart, a one name bubbling from -her lips, a new quivering something in her soul, which the waters -could not still! That body buffeted and tossed by rearing breakers, -to lie nameless in a neglected grave; that soul, its earthly longing -forgotten, to go forever unregretful of what it had cried for with all -the might of its human passion! - -Ah! but _did it_? If death touched her own soul to-day! “For love is -strong as death. * * * Many waters cannot quench love, neither can -the floods drown it!” In imagination she felt the numbing clasp of -the dragging under-deeps; she saw her soul wandering, wraith-like, -through shadowless, silent spaces and across infinite distances. Would -it bear with it a placid joy? Would it know no quicker heart-beat, -no tears that reddened the eyelid, no tender thrill in all its lucent -veins? Would nothing, nothing of that strange, sweet wildness that ran -imprisoned in all her blood cling to it still? - -The thought bit her. She reached up and snatched down the belt, -pressing the clasp tightly with her cheek in the curve of her shoulder, -repeating dumbly to herself the pious “Ora pro anima sua” that stood -before her eyes. - - * * * * * - -A far crackling struck across her mood, and hastily drawing the belt -about her waist, she leaned sideways from the upright beam, raising her -hand quickly, as if to put back the lawless meshes of her hair. She -heard the sound of a confident step, crunching on the marly sand, and -the swish of bent-back bushes. It was coming in a direct line toward -her. There was a dry clatter of falling fence-rails, as though the -intruder, disdaining obstacles, preferred to walk through them. - -She caught a glimpse of a familiar, bright-colored scarf between the -glimmering, leafy tangles, and then the thrust of a quick spring, and -an instant later the figure that had vaulted the heavy fence came -dropping, feet foremost, through the snapping screen of brambles, and -walked straight toward the spot where she had risen to her feet with a -little glad cry. - - - - -II. - - -“Give me your hand,” he said peremptorily. They were on a pebbly -spur of the descending path, and Daunt had leaped down below her. As -she stretched it out to him, he drew it sharply toward him. She felt -herself grasped firmly in his arms, swung off and lifted to the smooth -level beneath. She could feel his uneven breaths stirring in the roots -of her hair, and his wrists straining. Her head fell against his -shoulder and her look met his, startled. His sunburned face was pale, -and his gray eyes were hazed with a daring softness. - -Then, as she lay passive in his arms, a fiery longing grew swiftly in -them, and he suddenly bent his head and kissed her--again and again. -She felt her unused mouth moulding to answering kisses beneath his -own, and her cheeks rushing into a flame. Through her closed lids the -sun hung like a rosy mist of woven sparkles. - -“I love you!--_you!_--_you!_” he said, stammering and hoarsely. “I -_love_ you!” - -The tumbling passion of the utterance pierced through her like a spear -of desperate gladness. Every nerve reached and quivered, tendril-like. -His deep breathing, toned with the dripping lap of the shingle seemed -to throb through her. She lay quiet, breathless, her lashes drooped, -her very skin tense under the lasting burn of his lips. - -“Margaret! Ardee, dear! Look at me!” - -Her eyes flowed into his. From a blur under cloud-pale eyelids, they -had turned to violet balls, shot through with a trembling light. The -look she gave him melted over him in a rage of love. Desire bordered -it, a smile dipped in it, promise made it golden, and he saw his own -longing painted in it as a pilgrim sees his reflection in a slumbering -pool. - -She clasped her hands on his head, pushing back his cloth cap, and -framing his face in the long, sweeping oval of her arms. He could -feel little vibrant thrills in her fingers. He held her tightly, -masterfully, first at arm’s length, laughing into her wide eyes, and -then close, folding her, pressing her hair with his hands. - -The leaves from the roses she wore fell in splotches of deep red, -sprinkling the brown-veined sand at their feet; the dense, bruised -odor, mixed with the salty breath of seaweed, seemed to fill and choke -all her swaying senses. - -“It is like a storm!” she said. “I have dreamed of it coming at the -last gently, like a bright morning, but it isn’t like that! It seemed -as if that were the way it would come to me--like a still, small -voice--but it isn’t! It’s the wind and the earthquake and the fire! -Oh!” she said, drawing her breath in a long, shuddering inhalation. -“Do you smell that rose-scent? Did ever any roses smell like that? -They--they make me dizzy! Feel me tremble.” - -Every pulsation of her frame ran through him with a swift, delicious -sensation, like the touching of rough velvet. Her curling hair, where -it sprang against his neck, ridged his skin with a creeping delight. - -“Do you know,” he said, “you are like a great, tall, yellow lily. -Some gnome has drawn amber streaks in your hair--it shines like a -gold-stone--and rubbed your cheeks with a pink tulip leaf! And your -lips are like--no, they are like nothing but ripe strawberries! Nobody -could ever describe your eyes; they are most like a bed of purple -violets set in a brown cloud with the sun shining through it. Tell me!” -he said suddenly. “Do you love me? Do you? Do you?” - -“Yes! yes! yes! Oh,” she breathed, “what is there in your hands? I want -them to touch me!” - -He passed his palms lightly along the bow-like curve of her cheek. - -“It is like fire and flowers and music,” she said, “all rolled into -one. And those roses! They are attar. The sand looks as if it were -bleeding!” - -“Shall you think of me when I am on the train to-night?” - -“All the time--every minute!” - -“And to-morrow, while I am in the city?” - -“Yes!” - -“And Monday?” - -“Then you will come back to me!” - -He strained her to him in the white sunlight, and kissed her again, on -the lips and forehead and hands, and she clung to him, lifting her face -to him eagerly and passionately. - - * * * * * - -Margaret stood watching the firm-knit figure as it crossed the sand -space. She saw the lift of his lithe shoulders as he pulled himself up -the bank, saw his form splashed against the sky, saw the flutter of his -handkerchief as he flung her a last signal. - -She waved her hand in return, and he disappeared. - -Then she ran to a slant spile rising lonely from the sand, and sank -down quivering. It seemed to her as if she could bear no more joy; her -body ached with it. She threw up her hands and laughed aloud in sheer -ecstasy. - -Then she remembered that she had left her book in the grove, and she -stumbled up and walked back slowly, smiling and humming an air as she -went along. - -The first shade of the dimming afternoon lay under the trees as -she climbed again to the little clearing, and the sunbeams glanced -obliquely from the crooked oak branches. The air was very still and -freighted only with the soft swish of the ebb-tide and the clean -fragrance of balsam. Her book lay open and face down on the plank seat. -She picked it up and sat down, leaning back. - -She was still humming, low-voiced, and as she sat she began to -sing--not strongly, but hushed, as though for a drowsy ear--with her -face lifted and her dreamy eyes upon the sea margin. - - “Purple flower and soaring lark, - Throbbing song and story bold, - All must pass into the dark, - Die and mingle with the mold. - Ah, but still your face I see! - Bend and clasp me; Sweet, kiss me!” - -It was Daunt’s song, the one he most loved to hear her sing. But to-day -it had a new, rich meaning. She stretched her hands on either side, -grasping the seat, and sang on to the bending boughs, rubbing slowly -against the weather-stained beam arms above her head: - - “Dear, to-day shall never rust! - What, are we to be o’erwise? - All that doth not smell of dust - Lieth in your lips and eyes. - So, while loving yet may be, - Bend and fold me; Sweet, kiss me!” - -The shade grew darker as she sat. It deepened the brown of her eyes -and the sea-bloom in her cheeks, and the loitering lilac of the -west touched the coils of her hair, as they lay against the gray -board, blotting with their living bronze the half-effaced, forgotten -inscription: - -_Pray for Her Soul._ - - - - -III. - - -In the pause before the service began, Margaret’s eyes drifted -aimlessly about the dim body of the small but pretentious seaside -chapel. It held the same incongruous gathering so often to be seen -at coast resorts, a mingling of ultra-fashionable summer visitors, -and homely and uncomfortably well-dressed village folk. There was -Mrs. Atherton, whose bounty had elevated the parish from a threadbare -existence, with simple service and plain altar furniture, to a devout -adherence to High Church methods, with candles and rich vestments, and -a never-failing welcome for stylish visiting clergymen from the city; -there was the wife of the proprietor of the Beach Hotel, whose costumes -were always faithful second editions of Mrs. Atherton’s; there were -the rector’s two daughters and the usual sprinkling of familiar faces -that she had passed on the drive or the beach walk. - -The lawn outside was shimmering with the heat that had followed an -over-night shower, and the pewed calm oppressed her. Her limbs were -nettled with teasing pricks of restlessness. - -The open windows let in a heavy, drenched rose-odor, tinged with a -distant salt smell of sea. The air was weighted with it--it was the -same mingled odor that had filled her nostrils when she stood with -Daunt on the shore, with the wet wind in their faces and fluttering -petals of the crushed roses she had worn staining the dun sand and -crisp, strown seaweed like great drops of blood. It overpowered her -senses. She breathed it deeply, feeling a delicious intoxication, and -its suggested memory ran through her veins like an ethereal ichor, -tingling to her finger ends. - -Her eyes, heavy and swimming, were full of the iridescent colors of the -stained-glass window opposite, with the dull yellow aureole about the -head of the central figure. The hues wove and blended in a background -of subdued harmony, lending life and seeming movement to the features. - -“A man somewhat tall and comely, his hair the color of a ripe chestnut, -curling and waving.” The description recurred to her, not as though -written to the Roman Senate by Lentulus, Governor of Judea, but as if -printed in bossed letters about the rim of the picture. “In the middle -of his head a seam parteth it, after the manner of the Nazarites. His -forehead is plain and very delicate, his face without spot or wrinkle, -beautified with a lovely red; his nose and mouth of charming symmetry. -His look is very innocent and mature; his eyes gray, clear and quick. -His body is straight and well proportioned, his hands and arms most -delectable to behold.” - -“His eyes gray, clear and quick.” From the window they followed -her--the eyes that had looked into hers on the beach, full of longing -light--the eyes that had charmed her and had seemed to draw up her soul -to look back at them. - -She dragged her gaze away with a quick shudder, to a realization of -her surroundings. A paining recoil seized her at the temerity of her -thought, and her imaginings shrank within themselves. A vivid shame -bathed her soul. She felt half stifled. - -The dulled and droning intonation of the reader came to her as -something banal and shop-worn. He was large and heavy-voiced. -His hair was sandy and thin, and his skin was of that peculiar -pallor and pursiness bred of lack of exercise and a full diet. It -reminded her irresistibly of pink plush. He had a double chin, and -he intoned with eyes cast down, and his large hands clasped before -him, after the fashion affected by the higher church. His monotonous -and nasal utterance glossed the periods with unctuous and educated -mispronunciation. The congregation was punctuated with nodding heads. - -To Margaret, listening dully, there seemed to be an inexpressible -incongruity between the man and the office, between the face and -the robes, which should have lent a spirituality. She looked about -her furtively. Surely, surely she must see that thought reflected -from other faces; but her range of vision took in only countenances -overflowing with conscious Sabbath rectitude, heads nodding with -rhythmic sleepiness and eyes shining with churchly complacency. -Suddenly through the rolling periods the meaning struck through to -Margaret, and her wandering mind was instantly arrested. - - “_For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; - but they that are of the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be - carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and - peace._” - -She heard the words with painful eagerness. Her mind seemed suddenly as -acute, as quick to record impressions as though she had just awakened -from a long sleep. - -A woman in a pew to Margaret’s right dropped her prayer-book with a -smart crash onto the wooden floor. The smooth brows drew together -sharply and his voice, pauseless, took on a note of asperity, of -irritated displeasure. Reading was a specialty of his, and to be -interrupted spoiled the general effect and displeased him. - - “_Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not - subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be._” - - “_So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God._” - -An old man, bent and deaf, sat close up under the reader’s desk. He -leaned forward with elbow on knee and one open palm behind a hairy -ear. His eyes were raised, and his look was rapt. Margaret could see -his side-face from where she sat. He saw only the sanctified figure of -the priest and heard no human monotone, but the voice of God, speaking -through the lips of His anointed. He was a real worshipper. For her -the spiritual was swallowed up. That one bodily image stood before her -inner self. It had blotted out her diviner view; it had even thrust -itself behind the flowing robes and sandaled feet and had dared to -usurp the place of the eternal symbol of human spirituality! - -She locked her hands about her prayer-book, pinching them between her -knees. The woman directly in front of her wore a hot, figured silk -and a drab mull boa that looked dreadfully like bunched caterpillars. -The riotous rose-odor made her faint and sick, and she had a horrible -feeling that the carved heads of the jutting stone work were laughing -evilly at her. - -A strangling terror of herself seized her--a terror of this new and -hideous darkness that had descended upon her spirit--a terror of -this overmastering impulse which threatened her soul. It was part of -the dominance of the flesh that its senses should be opened only to -itself, only to the earthy and the lower. This penalty was already upon -her; of all in that congregation, she, only she, must see the bestial -lurking everywhere, even in God’s house, and in the vestments of His -minister. - - “_So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God._” - -It was part of their punishment that they could no longer please -themselves. Out from every shape of nature and art, from the shadows -of grove and the sunshine of open plain, from the crowded street and -from the silent church must start forever this spectre, this unsightly -comrade of fleshly imagination. This was what it meant to be carnally -minded. Margaret’s soul was weak and dizzy with pain. - - * * * * * - -For in some such way will every woman cry. The very purity of her -soul will rise to bar out the love that is of earth, earthy--the -beautiful human love so young, so tender-eyed and warm-fingered, and -with the lovely earth-light that is about its brows. And then, when -the soul grows weary of the pallid thoughts, when the chill of the -shadows strikes through--when the walls grow cold and the soul lifts -iron bar and chain to let in the human sunshine, then the pale images -that throng the house gather and are frightened at the very joy of the -sun, and they try to shut the door again against the shining, and sit -sorrowful in a trembling dark. - -The cry of the woman is, “Give me soul! Give me spirituality!” Oh, -loved hand! Oh, eyes! Oh, kissed lips and fondled hair! The woman’s -love gives to each of you a soul. You will shine for her in her -nethermost heaven. - -“Tell me not of my love,” she cries, “that it is corporeal and must -fade! Tell me only that it is of the spirit, a fond and heavenly light, -such as never was in earthly sunrise or in evening star! A soul, but -not a body! An essence, but no substance! It is too lovely to be of -earth, too sweet to be only of this failing human frame. Its speech is -the speech of angels, and its eyes are like the cherubim. Tell me not -that it is not all of the soul!” So, until she dreams the last dream of -love in earth-gardens, until she closes her soul’s eyes to dream of the -humanity of love, the dignity of human passion, until then she perfumes -the lily and paints the rose. - -When the temperament that loves much and is oversensitive opens the -gates of its sense to human passion, if its spiritual side recoils, -it recoils with self-renunciation and with tears. The pain of such -renunciation makes woman’s soul weak. Its self-probings and the whips -of its conscience, made a very inquisitor, form for her a present -horror. She cries out for the old dream, the old ideal, the old faith! -It is the tears she sheds for this which drop upon the wall of the -world’s convention and temper it to steel. - - “_Therefore, brethren, we are debtors not to the flesh to live - after the flesh. For, if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but - if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall - live._” - -The droning voice of the reader hummed in Margaret’s ears. She came -to herself again, almost with a start, dimly conscious that the woman -in crêpe in the next pew was watching her narrowly. She must sit out -the service. She fell to studying the pattern of the embroidery on the -altar cloths. It was in curiously woven arabesques, grouped about the -monogram of Christ. Anything to withdraw her eyes from the face of the -reader, for which she was beginning to feel a growing and unreasoning -repulsion. - -Throughout the remainder of the sermon she kept her gaze upon her open -Bible, turning up mechanically all the cross references to the word -“flesh.” She followed the contradistinction of flesh and spirit through -the New Testament. It was the _flesh_ lusting against the _spirit_, and -the _spirit_ against the _flesh_, contrary the one to the other. The -lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life--these -all of the world. - -The voice of the priest ran along in pauseless flow. It seemed to -Margaret that he was repeating, with infinite variations, the same -words over and over: “So they that are in the flesh cannot please God.” - -As she rose for the final benediction, her knees felt weak and she -trembled violently. She remembered what happened afterward only -confusedly. The next thing she really knew was the sense of a moist -apostolic palm pressed against her forehead as she half sat on the -stone bench to the right of the entrance, and a smooth, rounded voice -saying: - -“Mrs. Atherton! Mrs. Starr! will you come back here a moment? This dear -young woman appears to be overcome with the heat!” - - - - -IV. - - -Daunt to Margaret. - - “NEW YORK, Sunday Morning. - -“My Very Own!--Is that the way to begin a love letter? Anyhow, it is -what I want to say. It is what I have called you a thousand times, -to myself, since a one day far back--which I shall tell you about -some time--when I made up my mind that you should love me. Does that -sound conceited? Did you ever guess it? Over a year I have carried the -thought with me; you have loved me only half that time. - -“How I have watched your love unfolding! How I have hugged and -treasured every new little leaf! I have been afraid so long to touch -it; I wanted every petal full-blown, before I picked it, to be -mine--mine, only mine, all mine, as long as I lived. - -“Since I left you yesterday, to come up to this dismal city, I have -been so happy that I have almost pinched myself to see if I were not -asleep. To think that all my richest dreams have come true all at once! - -“When I think of it, it makes me feel very humble. I shall be more -ambitious. I am going to write better and truer. I must make you proud -of me! I am going to work hard. No other man ever had such an incentive -to grow--to catch up with ideals--as I have, because no other man ever -had you to love. - -“Yesterday I went directly from the train to the club. I pulled one of -the big chairs into a shaded corner and closed my eyes to feel over and -over again the deliciousness of the afternoon. I could feel your body -in my arms and your head hard against my shoulder and--that first kiss. -It has been on my lips ever since! I haven’t dared even to smoke for -fear it might vanish! - -“All the while I had a curious, vivid, tumultuous sense as though I -were in especially close touch with you. It seemed almost as if you -wanted to tell me something, and that _I couldn’t quite hear_. - -“After I went to bed I could not sleep for happiness; I wondered what -you had been doing, saying, thinking, dreaming--whether you thought -of me much, and, most of all, when you knelt down that night! Shall I -always be in the ‘Inner Room,’ and shall you look in often? - -“A letter is such a pitiful makeshift! I could go on writing pages! I -want to put my arms around you and whisper it in your ear! - -“The church-bells are ringing now. I can picture you sitting in the -chapel, just as you do every Sunday, and, maybe sometimes, just a -minute of course, stealing a little backward thought of me! - -“Always in my mind, you will be linked with red roses, such as you wore -_then_. To-day I am sending you down a hamper of them. I should like -to think of you to-night as sleeping nestled up in them, and dreaming -their perfume. I am longing to see you. I feel as though I wanted to -roll the day up and push it away to get into to-morrow quicker. - -“You will hardly be able to read this--my pen runs away with me; but -I know you can read what is written over it all and between every two -lines--that I love you, I love you wholly, unalterably. - -“God keep you, safe and sound, dearest, always, always--for me! - - “RICHARD.” - - -Margaret to Daunt. - - “Monday. - -“I am leaving this morning for a long visit. I cannot see you again. I -have made up my mind suddenly--since I saw you Saturday afternoon, I -mean. You will think this incomprehensible, I know, but, believe me, I -_must_ go. - -“Think of me as generously as you can. This will hurt you, and to hurt -you is the hardest part of it. Do not think that I have treated our -association lightly. I could go upon my knees to beg you not to believe -that I have been deliberately heartless. Remember me, not as the one -who writes you this now, but as the girl who walked with you on the -beach and who, for that one hour, thought she saw heaven opened. - - “MARGARET LANGDON.” - - -Daunt to Margaret. - -“Dear:--You must let me write you. You _must_ listen! What does your -letter mean? What is the reason? If there had been anything that could -come between us, I know you well enough to believe you would have told -me before. How can you expect me to accept such a dismissal? I don’t -understand it. What is it that has changed you? What takes you from me? -Surely I have a right to know. Tell me! You can’t intend to stay away. -It’s monstrous! It’s unthinkable! Explain this mystery! - -“I could not believe, when I received your letter to-day in the city, -that you had written it. It seemed an evil dream that I must wake up -from. Yet I have come back here to our summer haunt to find it true -and you gone. You have even left me no address, and I must direct this -letter to your city number, hoping it will be forwarded you. - -“How can you ask me to submit to a final sentence like this? I feel -numbed and stung by the suddenness of it! I can’t find myself. I can do -nothing but wrestle with the unguessable why of your going. It’s beyond -me. - -“After that one afternoon on the sands, after that delicious day of -realization that my hopes were true--that you loved me--to be flung -aside in a moment like an old glove, like a burnt-out match, with no -word of explanation, of reason--nothing! It shan’t stay so! You can’t -mean it! You are a woman, a true, sweet woman; you _shan’t_ make me -believe you a soulless flirt! There is something else--something I must -know! - -“I feel so helpless, writing to you. Space is a monster. If I could -only see you for a single moment, I know it would be all right. Write -to me. Tell me what I want to know. Until I hear something from you, I -shall be utterly, endlessly miserable. - - “R. D.” - - -Margaret to Daunt. - -“I cannot come back, Richard. I cannot even explain to you why. Don’t -humiliate me by writing me for reasons. You would not understand me. -What good would it do to explain, when I can hardly explain it to -myself? I only _feel_, and I am wretched. - -“You must forget that afternoon! I am trying to do the right thing--the -thing that seems right to myself. I must believe in my instinct; that -is all a woman has. I know this letter doesn’t tell you anything--I -can’t--there is no use--I _can’t_! - -“You know one thing. You must know that that last day, when I kissed -you, I did not think of this. I did not intend to go away then. That -was all afterward. I had no idea of hurting or wronging you--not the -slightest! - -“I know this is incoherent. I read over what I have written and the -lines get all jumbled up. Somehow it seems to mean nothing. And yet it -means so much--oh, so horribly much!--to me. - - “M.” - - -Daunt to Margaret. - -“Dearest:--Please, please let me reason with you. Don’t think me -ungenerous; bear with me a little. I _must_ make you see it my way! -I cheat myself with such endless guessing. Can I have grieved you or -disappointed you? Have I shocked those beautiful white ideals of yours -in any way? If that walk on the shore had been a month ago, if we had -been together since, I might believe this; but we have not. That was -the last, _and you loved me then_! I brought my naked heart to you that -afternoon--it had been yours for long!--and laid it in your hand. You -took it and kissed me, and I went away without it. Have you weighed it -in the balance and found it wanting? Do you doubt what it could give -you? Dear, let it try! - -“To-day I walked up the old glen where the deserted cabin is. The very -breeze went whispering of you and the rustling of every bush sounded -like your name. The sky was duller and the grass less green. Even the -squirrels sat up to ask where you were with the chestnuts you always -brought them. Nothing is the same; I am infinitely lonely here, and -yet I stay on where everything means you! When I walk it seems as if -you must be waiting, smiling, just around every bend of the rock--just -behind every clump of ferns--to tell me it was all a foolish fancy, -that you love me and have not gone away! You are all things to me, -dear. I cannot live without you. I want you--I need you so! I never -knew how much before. - -“Only tell me what your letters have not, that you do not love me--that -you were mistaken--that it was all a folly, a madness--and I will never -ask again! Ah, but I know you will not; you cannot. You do! _You do!_ I -have that one moment to remember when I held you in my arms, when your -throat throbbed against my cheek, when your lips were on mine, when -your arms went up around my head, and when I could feel your heart -beating quick against me. Your breath was trembling and your eyes were -like stars! Can you ask me to forget that, the moment that I seemed to -have always lived and kept myself for? - -“It’s impossible! This must be a passing mood of yours which will -vanish. Love is a stronger thing than that! I don’t know the thing that -is troubling you--I can’t guess it--but I am sure of _you_. I know you -in a larger, deeper way, and in the end you will never disappoint me in -that! - -“I am hoping, longing, waiting. Let me come to you! Let me see you face -to face, and read there what the matter is! - -“Remember that I am still - - “Your own, - “R.” - - -Margaret to Daunt. - - “‘THE BEECHES,’ WARNE. - -“I have been touched by your last letter. I had not intended to write -again, yet somehow it seems as if I must. Can you read between these -lines that I am unhappy? I have been to blame, Richard, so much to -blame; but I didn’t know it till afterward. - -“I can’t answer your question; it isn’t whether I love you--it’s _how_. -Doesn’t that tell you anything? I mustn’t be mistaken in the _way_. You -must not try to see me; it would only make me more wretched than I am -now, and that is a great deal more than I could ever tell you. - - “M.” - - -Daunt to Margaret. - -“If you won’t have any pity for yourself, for heaven’s sake have some -for me! What am _I_ to do? _I_ haven’t any philosophy to bear on the -situation. I can’t understand your objections. Your way of reasoning -your emotions is simply ghastly. The Lord never intended them to be -reasoned with! We can’t think ourselves into love or out of it either. -At least _I_ can’t. I’ve gone too far to go backward. Since you went I -have been one long misery--one long, aching homesickness. - -“You ask me not to ‘humiliate’ you by asking for your reasons. Don’t -you think _I_ am humiliated? Don’t you think _I_ suffer, too? And yet -it isn’t that; my love isn’t so mean a thing that it is my vanity that -is hurt most. If I believed you didn’t love me, that might be; but if -you could leave me as you have--without a chance to speak, with nothing -but a line or two that only maddened me--you wouldn’t hesitate to tell -me the truth now. - -“You _do_ love me, Margaret! You’re torturing yourself and torturing -me with some absurd hallucination. Forgive me, dear--I don’t mean -that--only it’s all so puzzling and it hurts me so! I’m all raw and -bleeding. My nerves are all jangles. - -“I can only see one thing clearly--that you are wrong, and you’ll see -it. Only somehow I can’t make you see it yet! - - “DAUNT.” - - - - -V. - - -The warm October weather lay over the Drennen homestead at Warne. This -was a house gigantic and austere, its gray stone walls throwing into -relief its red brick porch, veined with ivy stems, like an Indian’s -face, whose warrior blood is raging, leant against a rock boulder. - -Under the shade of the falling vine-fringe Margaret sat, passive and -quiet, on the veranda. From under drooping lids, long-lashed, her -brown eyes looked out with a sort of sweet and sober studiousness. -Her reddish-brown hair appeared the color of old metal beaten by the -hammer here and there into a lighter flick of gold, rolling back from -her straight forehead and caught in a loose, low knot. The corners of -her mouth were lifted a little, giving an extra fulness to sensitive -lips, and the long rise of her cheek, from chin to temple, was without -a dimple. - -The haze hung an opal tint over the blue hillsides and lent to nearer -objects a dreamy unreality. The atmosphere reflected Margaret’s mood. -She was conscious of a certain tired numbness. Her acts of the past -few weeks had a sort of elusiveness in perspective, and the old house -at Warne, with its gloomy stables, taciturn servants, its familiar -occupants--even she herself--seemed to possess a curious unreality. - -Across the field ran the wavering fringe of willow which marked the -little sluggish brook with the foot-log, where often she had waded, -slim-legged, as a child. There was the old stable loft from which she -had once fallen, hunting for pigeons’ eggs. There were the same gloomy -holes under the eaves, from which awful bat shapes had issued for her -childish shuddering. Only the master of the house was changed, and he -was Melwin Drennen, Lydia’s husband. As a child, he had carried her on -his shoulders over the fields when she had visited the place. She had -liked him unaffectedly, and the great sorrow of his life had hurt her -also. - -She was a mere child then, and had heard it with a vague and wondering -pain. It had been a much-talked-of match--that between her cousin and -this man--and it was only a week after the wedding, at this same old -place, that the accident had happened. Lydia had been thrown from her -horse. She was carried back to a house of mourning. The decorations -were taken from the walls, and great surgeons came down from the city -to ponder, shake their heads, and depart. He, loving much, had hoped -against hope. Margaret remembered hearing how he had sat all one night -outside her door, silent, with his head against the wainscoting and his -hands tight together--the night they said she would die. - -And that was twelve years ago! She had bettered slightly, grown -stronger, walked a little, then declined again. Now for five years past -her life had been a colorless exchange of bed and reclining-chair, -and, in this period, she had never left the house. - -Margaret shivered in the sun as she thought. At intervals she had heard -of his life. “Such a _lovely_ life!” people said. She had thought -of his self-sacrifice and devotion as something very beautiful. It -had been an ever-present ideal to her of spiritual love. In her own -self-dissatisfaction she had flown to this haven instinctively, as to a -dear example. A strange desire to stab herself with the visual presence -of her own lack had possessed her. But in some way the steel had failed -her. She was conscious now of a vague self-reproach that her greater -sorrow was for Melwin and not for the invalid. Surely Lydia was the one -to be sorry for, and yet there was an awfulness about the life he led -that she was coming to feel acutely. - -The crying incompletion, the negative hollowness of it, had smote her. -His full life had stopped, like a sluggish stream. His vitality, his -energies, could not go ahead. He was bound through all these years -to the body of this death. Love had broadened his gaze, lifted his -horizon, and then Fate had suddenly reared this crystal, impassable -wall, through which he must ever gaze and ever be denied. He was -condemned still to love her and to watch agonizedly the slender -gradations, the imperceptible stages by which she became less and less -of her old self to him. - -Margaret gazed out across the velvet edge of the hills, and felt a -sense of dissatisfaction in the color harmony. A doubt had darkened the -windows of her soul and turned the golden sunlight to a duller chrome. -She was so absorbed that she caught a sharp breath as the French window -behind her clicked raspingly and swung inward on its hinges. It was -Melwin. - -He came slowly forward through the window, holding his head slightly -on one side as though he listened for something behind him. She -found herself wondering how he had acquired the habit. His face was -motionless and set, with a peculiar absence of placidity--like a -graven image with topaz eyes. To Margaret it suggested a figure on an -Egyptian bas-relief, and yet he looked much the same, she thought, -as he had ten years before. Perhaps his beard was grayer and he was -more stoop-shouldered, and--yes, his temples looked somehow hollower -and older. He had a way of pausing just before the closing word of a -question, giving it a quaint and unnatural emphasis, and of gazing -above and past one when he spoke or answered. When he had first greeted -her on her arrival, Margaret had turned instinctively in the belief -that he had spoken to some one unperceived behind her. - -“Will you go in to--Lydia?” he said, difficultly. “I think she wants -you.” - - * * * * * - -As Margaret came down the stairway a moment later, tying the ribbons of -her broad hat under her chin, his look of inquiry met her at the door, -and the tinge of eagerness in his lack-lustre eyes faded back into -stolidity again as she told him it was only an errand for Lydia. - -She jumped from the piazza and raced around the drive toward the -stables. Creed, the coachman, whose wool was growing gray in a lifetime -of allegiance to the Whiting stock, was standing by the window, holding -a harvest apple for the black, reaching lip and white, impatient teeth -of his favorite charge inside the stall. He dropped his currycomb as he -saw her. - -“Mornin’, Miss Marg’et. Want me fur sump’n?” - -“No, I only came for Mrs. Drennen to see how Sempire’s foot is. She -says he stepped on a stone.” - -The black face puckered with a puzzled look, that broadened into a -smile the next instant. - -“Marse Drennen done tole dat to Miss Liddy ez a skuse fo’ he not ridin’ -mo’. She all de time tryin’ to mek he git out an’ gallavant. He ain’t -nuver gwine do dat no mo’. Miss Liddy, she al’ays worryin’ feared Marse -Drennen moutn’t joy heseff, an’ he al’ays worryin’ cause she worryin’. -She mek up all kinds ob things fur he to do dat way, an’ he jes humor -her to think he do ’em, an’ she nuver know no diffunce.” - -Margaret had seated herself on the step and was looking up. “You’ve -always been with her, haven’t you?” - -Creed smiled to the limit of his heavy lips. “’Deed I hev. When Miss -Liddy wuz married she purty nigh fou’t to fotch me wid her. Her ole -maid sister, she wantter keep me wid dee all back dar in New O’leens. -You see I knowed Miss Liddy when she warn’t a hour ole an’ no bigger’n -a teapot. - -“Meh mammy wuz nussin’ de li’l mite in her lap wid a hank’cher ober -her, an’ I tip in right sorf to cyar a hick’ry lorg an’ drap on de -fiah. Dat li’l han’ upped an’ pull de hank’cher offen her face an’ look -at me till I git cl’ar th’oo de do’. She wuz de peartest, forward’st -young ’un! An’ she growed up lak she started, too. Marse Drennen he -proud lak a peacock when he come down dyar frum de Norf an’ cyared her -off wid he.” - -“I remember how pretty she was.” Margaret spoke softly. - -“Does yo’ sho ’nuff? She wuz jes ’bout yo’ age den. Her ha’r wuz de -color ob a gole dollar, an’ her eyes wuz blue ez a catbird’s aig. She -wuz strong as a saplin’, an’ she walk high lak a hoss whut done tuck de -blue ribbon et de fa’r.” - -Sempire arched his shining neck and whinnied gently for another apple. -Creed stroked the intelligent face affectionately. “Whut mek yo’ go -juckin’ dat way?” he said. “Cyarn’t you see I’se talkin’ to de ledy?” - -He looked into the fresh young face beneath the straw hat with its -nodding poppies and drew a deep breath. - -“It do hurt me, honey, to see de change! Don’t keer how hard I wucks, -I feels lonesome to see how de laugh an’ song done died in her froat. -’Twuz jes one stumble dat done it. She an’ Marse Drennen wuz gallopin’ -on befo’ de yuthers. Pres’n’y she look back to see ef I wuz comin’. -De win’ wuz blowin’ her purty ha’r ’bout ev’y way, an’ her eyes wuz -sparklin’ jes lak de sun on de ice in de waggin ruts. Jes dat minit de -hoss slip, an’ I holler an’ he done drap in er heap on he knees, an’ -Miss Liddy she fall er li’l way off an’ lay still. - -“Seem lak meh heart jump up in meh mouf. I wuz de fust one dyar. She -wuz layin’ wid her ha’r ober her face an’ her po’ li’l back all bent up -agin de groun’! - -“Marse Drennen he go on turrible. He kneel down dyar in de road an’ -kiss her awful, an’ beg her to open her eyes, an’ say he gwine kill -dat hoss sho’. Den we cyared her back to de house, an’ she nuver know -nuttin’ fo’ days an’ days. De gre’t doctors do nuttin’ fer her. She jes -lay an’ lay, an’ et seem lak she couldn’t move, only her haid. Marse -Drennen he nuver leabe her. He jes set in de cheer an’ rock heseff -back an’ forf lak a baby an’ look at her an’ moan same’s he feelin’ et -too. - -“He don’ nuver git ober et no mo’. Peers lak she’d git erlong better -now ef he didn’t grieve so. He hole he haid up al’ays when he roun’ -her. He wuz bleeged to do dat, to keep her from seein’ he disapp’inted, -’cause she wuz al’ays sickly an’ in baid to nuver rekiver. He face -sorter light up wid her lookin’ on, an’ he try to cheer her up, meckin’ -out dat tain’ meek no diffunce. Hit did, do’! He git out o’ her sight, -he look so moanful; he ain’t jolly an’ laughin’ lak when he wuz down -Souf co’tin’, an’ I hole he hoss till way late. - -“She al’ays thinkin’ ob him now, an’ he don’ keer fer nuttin’--jes sit -wid he chin in bofe han’s on de po’ch lookin’ down. He heart done got -numbed. Seems lak de blood done dried up in he veins an’ some time he -gwine to shribble up lak er daid tree whut nuver gwine show no red an’ -yaller leabes no mo’. He jes live al’ays lak he done los’ sump’n he -couldn’ fin’ nowhar.” - -Margaret arose from the step as he paused and turned his dusky face -away to pick up the fallen currycomb. - -As she walked back to the house Melwin’s figure as she had seen him on -the porch rose before her memory--the face of a sleeper, with the look -of another man in another life. Before her misty eyes it hung like a -suspended mask against the background of the drab stone walls. - - - - -VI. - - -The frost scouts of the marshalling winter had fallen upon the woods -which skirted the Drennen estate, and the great beeches were crimsoning -in their death flush; the maples enchanting with their fickle foliage, -some still clinging to their green, and others brilliant with blushes -that they must soon stand naked before the cold stare of the sky. Here -and there on some aspiring knoll a slim poplar rose like a splendid -bouquet of starting yellow. - -At a turn of the road, which wound leisurely between seamed tree-boles, -Margaret had seated herself upon a lichened slab of stone. Her loosely -braided hair lay against the hood of her scarlet cloak, slipping from -her shoulders, and she seemed, in her vivid beauty, the incarnate -spirit of the blazonry of fall. Her head was bare and her clasped -hands, dropped between her knees, held a slender book, a random -selection from the litter of the library table. It was the story of -Marpessa, and unconsciously she had folded down the leaf at the lines -she had just read: - - “I love thee then - Not only for thy body packed with sweet - Of all this world, that cup of brimming June, - That jar of violet wine set in the air, - That palest rose, sweet in the night of life; - Nor for that stirring bosom all besieged - By drowsing lovers, or thy perilous hair; - - * * * * * - - Not for this only do I love thee, but - Because Infinity upon thee broods, - And thou art full of whispers and of shadows. - Thou meanest what the sea has striven to say - So long, and yearnèd up the cliffs to tell; - Thou art what all the winds have uttered not, - What the still night suggesteth to the heart. - Thy voice is like to music heard ere birth, - Some spirit lute touched on a spirit sea; - Thy face remembered is from other worlds; - It has been died for, though I know not when, - It has been sung of, though I know not where. - It has the strangeness of the luring West, - And of sad sea-horizons; beside thee - I am aware of other times and lands, - Of birth far back, of lives in many stars.” - -With the broadening half-smile upon her parted lips and that far -splendor in her eyes, she looked as might have looked the earthly -maiden for whom the fair god and the passionate human Idas pledged -their loves before great Zeus. - -The deadened trampling of horse’s hoofs upon the soft, shaly road beat -in upon her reverie. The horse, moving briskly, was abreast of her -as she started to her feet. There was a sharp, surprised exclamation -from the rider, a snort of fear from the animal as he shied and -plunged sideways from the flaring apparition. Almost before she could -cry out--so quickly that she could never afterward recall how it -happened--the thing was done. The frantic brute reared white-eyed, -rose and pawed, wheeling, and the rider, with one foot caught and -dragging from the stirrup-iron, was down upon the ground. Margaret, -without reflection, acted instantly. With a single bending spring of -her lithe body she was beside the creature’s head, her slender arms, -like stripped willow branches, straining and tugging at his bit, until -the steel clamps cut into her flesh. She threw all the power of her arm -upon the heavy jaw, and with one hand reached and clasped tight just -above the great steaming, flame-notched nostrils. The fierce head shook -from side to side an instant, then the lifting hoofs became calm, and -he stood still, trembling. Slipping her hand to the bridle, she turned -her head for the first time and was face to face with Daunt. - -She gazed at him speechless, with widening eyes. A leaping joy at the -sight of him mixed itself with a realization of his past peril. She -felt her face whiten under his steadfast gaze. A thousand times she had -imagined how they might meet, what she might say, how she would act, -and now, without a breath of warning, Fate had set him there beside -her. His hand lay next hers upon the rein of the animal, which a single -faltering of her finger, a drooping of her eyelash would have left to -drag him helpless to a terrible death. A breathless thanksgiving was in -her soul that she had not swerved in foot or hand. - -Suddenly she noticed that his left hand hung limp, and her whole being -flamed into sympathy. “Oh, your poor wrist! You have hurt it!” Her -fingers drew his arm up to her sight. Her look caressed his hand. - -“It’s nothing,” he said hastily, but with compressed lips. “I must have -wrenched it when I tumbled. How awkward of me!” - -“It was I who frightened your horse; and no wonder, when I jumped up -right under his feet.” - -“And in that cloak, too!” he said, his eye noting the buoyancy of her -beauty and its grace of curve. - -The rebellious waves of her brown hair had filched rosy lustres from -her garb, and the blood painted her cheeks with a stain like wild -moss-berries. Her eyes chained his own. She had not yet released his -hand, but was touching it with the purring regard of a woman for an -injured pet. The allurement of her physical charm seemed to him to pass -from her finger-tips like pricklings of electricity from a Leyden jar. - -Daunt shook off her hand with an uncontrollable gesture, and with his -one arm still thrust through the bridle, drew her close to him and -kissed her--kissed her hair, her forehead, her half-opened eyes, her -mouth, her throat, her neck. - -She felt his lips scorch through her cloak. He dropped upon his knees, -still holding her, and showered kisses upon the rough folds of her gown. - -“Margaret!” he cried, “you know why I have come! You know what I want! -I want you! Forgive me, but I couldn’t stay away. Do you suppose I -thought you meant what you said in those letters? Why should you run -away from me? Why did you leave me as you did? What is the matter?” - -As he looked up at her, he saw that the light had died out of her eyes. -Her lips were trembling. Her face was marked by lines of weariness. -She repulsed him gently and went back a few steps, gazing at him -sorrowfully. - -“You shouldn’t have come,” she said then. “You ought to have stayed -away! You make it so hard for me!” - -“Hard?” His voice rose a little. “Don’t you love me? Have you quit -caring for me? Is that it?” - -“No--not that.” - -“Do you suppose,” he went on, “that I will give you up, then? You can’t -love a man one day and not love him the next! You’re not that sort! -Do you think I would have written you--do you think for one minute I -would have come here, if I hadn’t known you loved me? What _is_ this -thing that has come between us? What _is_ it takes you from me? Doesn’t -love mean anything? Tell me!” he said, as she was silent. “Don’t stand -there that way!” - -“How can I?” she cried. “I tried to tell you in those letters.” - -“Letters!” There was a rasp in Daunt’s voice. “What did they tell me? -Only that there was some occult reason--Heaven only knows what--why it -was all over; why I was not to see you again. Do you suppose that’s -enough for me? You don’t know me!” - -“No, but I know myself.” - -“Well, then, I know you better than you know yourself. You said you -didn’t want to see me again! That was a lie! You _do_ want to see me -again! You’re nursing some foolish self-deception. You’re fighting your -own instincts.” - -“I’m fighting myself,” she said; “I’m fighting what is weak and -miserably wrong. I can’t explain it to you. It isn’t that I don’t know -what you think. I don’t know where I stand with myself.” - -“You loved me!” he burst forth, in a tone almost of rage. “You _loved_ -me! You know you did! Great God! you don’t want me to think you didn’t -love me that day, do you?” he said, a curiously hard expression coming -into his eyes. - -“I don’t know.” She spoke wearily. “I--don’t--know. How _can_ I know? -Don’t you see, it isn’t what I thought then--it isn’t what I did. -It’s what was biggest in my thought. Oh--” she broke off, “you can’t -understand! You _can’t_! It’s no use. You’re not a woman.” - -“No,” he said roughly, “I’m not a woman. I’m only a man, and a man -feels!” - -“I know you think that of me,” she said humbly. “But, indeed, indeed, I -don’t mean to be cruel--only to myself.” - -“No, I suppose not!” retorted Daunt bitterly. “Women never mean things! -Why should they? They leave that to men! Do you suppose,” he said with -quick fierceness, “that there is anything left in life for me? Is it -that I’ve fallen in your estimation? You thought I was strong, perhaps, -and now you have come to the conclusion that I’m weak! And the fact -that it was _you_ and that _you_ felt too makes no difference. I’ve -heard of women like that, but I never believed there were any! You wash -your feeling entirely out of your conscience, and I’m the one who must -hang for it. And in spite of it all, you’re human! Do you think I don’t -know that?” - -She put out her hands as if to ward off a tangible blow. “Don’t,” she -said weakly, “please don’t!” - -“Don’t?” he repeated. “Does it hurt to speak of it? Do you want to -forget it? Do you think I ever shall? I don’t want to. It’s all I shall -have to remind me that once you had a heart!” - -“No! no!” she cried vehemently. “You _must_ understand me better than -that! Don’t you see that I want to do what you say? Don’t you see that -my only way is to fight it? It is I who am weak! Oh, it seems in the -past month I have learned so much! I am too wise!” - -“Wait,” he said; “can you say truly in your heart that you do not love -me?” - -“That--isn’t it,” she stammered. - -“It is!” he flamed. “Tell me you don’t love me and I will go away.” - -She was silent, twisting up her fingers with a still intensity. - -“Tell me!” - -“But there’s so much in loving. It has so many parts. We love so many -ways. We have more of us than our bodies. We have souls.” - -“I’m not a disembodied spirit,” he broke in. “I don’t love you with -any sub-conscious essence. I don’t believe in any isms. I love you -with every fibre of my body--with every beat of my heart--with every -nerve and with every thought of my brain! I love you as every other -man in all the world loves every other woman in the world. I’m human; -and I’m wise enough to know that God made us human with a purpose. He -knows better than all the priests in the world. How do you _want_ to be -loved? I tell you I love you with all--_all_--body and mind and soul! -Now do you understand?” - -“It’s not that!” she cried. “It’s how I love you. Oh, no; I don’t mean -that!” - -“I don’t care how you love me!” he retorted. “I’ll take care of that! -You loved me enough that once.” - -“Ah, that’s just it! I forgot everything. I forgot myself and you! I -wanted the touch of your hands--of your face! There was nothing else in -the whole world! Oh!” she gasped, “do you think I thought of my soul -then?” - -“Listen!” he said, coming toward her so that she could feel his hot -breaths. “You’re morbid. You’re unstrung. You have an idea that one -ought to love in some subtle, supernatural, heavenly way. That’s -absurd. We are made with flesh-and-blood bodies. We have veins that run -and nerves that feel. You are trying to forget that you have a heart. -We are not intended to be spirits--not until after we die, at any rate.” - -“But we _have_ spirits.” - -“Yes,” he answered, “but it’s only through our hearts, through our -mind’s hopes, through our affections, that we know it. All our soul’s -nourishment comes through the senses. That’s what they were given us -for.” - -“But one must rule--one must be master.” - -Daunt leaned toward her and caught both her hands in his one. “Ardee, -dear,” he said more softly, “don’t push me off like this! Don’t resist -so! I love you--you know I do. This is only some unheard-of experiment -in emotion. Let it go! There’s nothing in the world worth breaking both -our hearts for this way. There can’t be any real reason! Come to me, -dear! Come back! Come back! Won’t you?” - -At the softness of his tone her eyes had filled slowly with tears. - -“I mustn’t! Oh, I mustn’t! The happiness would turn into a curse. You -mustn’t ask me!” - -Daunt struggled between a rising pity for her suffering and a helpless -frenzy of irritation. Between the two he felt himself choking. There -seemed in her a resistance and an implacable hostility that he was -as powerless to combat as to understand. He began to comprehend the -terrible strength that lies in consistent weakness. There was something -far worse in her silent mood than there could have been in a storm of -reproaches or of vehement denial. He felt that if he spoke again he -could but raise higher the barrier between them, which would not be -beaten down by sheer force. He mounted, stumblingly and blindly, his -left hand awkwardly swinging, and, turning his horse’s head, spurred -him into a vicious trot. - -A bit of golden-rod had dropped from his button-hole when he had -crushed her in his embrace, and as he disappeared down the curved road, -under the passionate foliage, Margaret slipped upon her knees and -caught the dusty blossom to her face in agonized abandon. Tears came -to her in a gusty whirl of longing, and strangling sobs tore at her -throat. - - - - -VII. - - -Nightshade and wistaria. The lusty poison-vine and the delicate -climbing tendrils. The evil and the pure. Their snake-like stems wound -about each other, twining in sinuous intimacy, the cardinal berries -flaunting alone where the fragrant purple blooms had long since fallen. -They clung to each other, the enmeshed and alien branches veiling a -sightless trunk, whose rotted limbs, barkless and neglected, projected -bare knobs complainingly from the vagrant tangle. It drew Margaret’s -steps, and she went closer. The dogs that had followed yelping at -her heels, after she had tired of throwing sticks for them to fetch, -now went nosing off across the orchard in canine unsympathy with her -reflective mood. She stood a monochrome, in roughish brown tweed, -under the dappling shadows. - -“Miss Langdon, I believe?” - -The deep, resonant voice recalled her. She saw a smooth-shaven face -with the rounded outline that belongs to youth, and is but rarely the -heritage of age, surmounted by the striking incongruity of perfectly -milk-white hair. His lips were thin and firm, suggesting at one -time strength and firmness, and the glance which met her from the -frank, hazel eyes was one of open friendliness. His clerical coat was -close-buttoned to his vigorous chin. - -“I am Dr. Craig,” he said, “rector of Trinity parish. I heard that Mrs. -Drennen had a cousin visiting her, and I came out to ask you to come -to our Sabbath services. We haven’t as ambitious a choir, perhaps, as -you have in your city church,” he said, smiling, “--though we have -one tenor voice which I think quite remarkable--but we offer the same -message and just as warm a welcome.” - -Her loneliness had wanted just such a greeting. “I shall be glad to -come!” she answered. “I passed the church only yesterday and sat awhile -in the porch to rest. It is so peaceful, set among the trees!” - -“You seemed entirely out of the world as I walked up the path,” he -said. “I could almost see you think.” - -“I was looking at this.” She pointed to the clustering vines. - -“What an audacious climber! Its berries have the color of rubies. And a -wistaria, too!” - -“I was thinking when you came,” she continued hesitatingly, “what a -pity it was that the two should have ever grown together. The wistaria -has an odor like far-away incense, and its leaves are tender and -delicate-veined, like a climbing soul. The nightshade is dark green and -its berries are sin-color. They don’t belong together, and now nobody -in the world could ever pull them apart without killing them both. -Isn’t it a pity?” - -“Ah, there is where I think you err! That bold, aspiring sap is just -what the pallid wistaria needs. Its perfume is less insipid for the -mingling earth-smell of the other. It climbs higher and reaches further -for the other’s strength. The flora of nature follows the same great -law as humanity. Opposite elements combine to make the strongest men -and women. One of the most valuable, I think, of the suggestions we get -from the vegetable creation is the thought of its comprehensive good. -Nothing that is useful is bad, and there is nothing that has not its -use. What we know is, the higher grows and develops by means of the -lower.” His fine face lifted as he spoke with conscious dignity. - -To Margaret, in the untiring challenge of her self-questionings, his -view brought an unworded solace. Her mind grasped eagerly at his -thought, puzzled by itself, yet reaching for the visible spirituality -of the man. His face, calm and with a tinge of almost priestly -asceticism, was a tacit reassurance. A wish to hear him speak, to talk -to him, came to her. He had lived longer than she, he knew so much -more! If she could only ask him! If she only knew how to begin! If some -instinct could only whisper to his mind’s ear the benumbing question -her whole being battled with, without her having to put it into words! -Even if she could--even if he could guess it--he might misunderstand. -No girl ever had such thoughts before! They were only hers--only hers, -to hide, to bury in silence! She blushed hotly to think that she had -ever thought of voicing it to the air. A guilty horror, lest her face -might betray what she was thinking, bathed her. She could never, never -tell it! There could be no help from outside. Her mind must struggle -with it alone. - -She started visibly, with a feeling that she had been overheard, at a -crunching step behind them. Her companion greeted the arrival with the -heartiness of an old acquaintance. - -“Ah, Condy,” he said, “much obliged for that salve of yours. It has -quite made a new dog of Birdo.” - -“Thet so?” inquired the newcomer, with interest. “Et’s a powerful good -salve.” His straggling yellow beard and much-battered straw hat shed a -mellow lustre on his leathery, sun-tanned face, where twinkled clear -blue eyes. - -“I’ve jest been up by th’ kennels,” he volunteered. - -“I hope you found the family all well?” the rector inquired, with -gravely humorous concern. - -“Toler’ble. Th’ ole mastiff won’t let me git clost ’nough t’ say more’n -howdy do. He’s wuss ’n a new town marshal!” He rasped a sulphur match -against his trouser-leg and lit his short clay pipe, hanging his head -awkwardly to do so, and disclosing the inquisitive muzzle and beady -eyes of a diminutive setter pup, which he carried under his butternut -coat, supported in his forearm. Margaret patted the cold nose, and its -owner displayed it pridefully. - -“He ain’t but three weeks old,” he said, “en’ I’m a-bringin’ him up on -th’ bottle. Ef I fetch him eround he’ll make a fine setter one o’ these -days, fer he’s got good points. Look at th’ shape o’ his toes! Et goes -agin my grain t’ lose a puppy. Somehow et seems ez ef they hev ez much -right t’ live ez some other people.” His mouth relaxed broadly about -his pipe-stem, with a damp smile. - -“What’s the matter with him?” asked the rector. - -“Jest ailin’, puny like. Dogs ez a lot like babies; some on ’em could -be littered en’ grow up in a snowdrift, en’ others could be born in a -straw kennel en’ die ef you look at ’em. This one was so weakly thet -Bess, my ole setter, wouldn’t look at him. Jest poked him eround with -her nose, poor little devil! en’ wouldn’t give him ez much ez a lick. -Et’s a funny thing,” he continued, stuffing down the embers in his pipe -with a hard forefinger, “th’ difference there ez thet way between dogs -en’ folks. I never seen a woman yit thet wouldn’t take all kinds o’ -keer fer a sick baby, but a dog puts all her nussin’ on her healthy -young uns en’ lets th’ ailin’ shift fer theirselves. Mebbe et’s because -she hez so many all at once, but I guess it’d be the same with women ef -they hed a dozen at once ez et ez now. The parson here”--he blinked at -Margaret with a suspicion of levity--“says ez how et’s because th’ dogs -ain’t got no souls. I don’t know how thet ez, but et looks ez ef et -might be so.” - -The rector laughed good-humoredly as the decreasing figure silhouetted -itself against the field. “Condy’s a unique character,” he said, “but -immensely likable. He has a quaint philosophy that isn’t down in the -books, but it’s none the less interesting for that. I must be going -now,” he continued; “sermons in stones and books in running brooks -won’t do for my congregation.” - -“You will go up to the house and see Lydia?” - -“I have already seen her. She told me I should find you somewhere in -the fields, she thought. Your cousin is a great sufferer,” he added -gently. “She is a beautiful character--uncomplaining under a most -grievous affliction. I am deeply sorry for her, and yet”--there was -a note of perplexity in his voice--“sometimes I believe I pity her -husband even more! I am not well acquainted with him personally. I -wish I might know him better. She often speaks to me of him. Her love -for him is most exquisite; it always reminds me of the perfume of the -night-blooming-cereus.” - -He took his leave of Margaret with grave courtesy and left her standing -on the leaf-littered grass, with the red berries of the nightshade -gleaming through the rank green foliage above her head. - - - - -VIII. - - -Lydia’s reclining chair had been rolled close to the window and -Margaret sat beside her, contemplating a melancholy drizzle, mingled -with sweeping gusts of rain. The chickens stood in huddled groups -under the garden shrubs, and the white and yellow chrysanthemums, from -their long, bordering beds, shook out their frowsy petals and drank -rejoicingly. Margaret loved to watch the splash of the shower upon the -fallen leaves. Her nature reflected no neutral tints; rain and gray -weather to her had never been coupled with sadness. - -The emaciated hands by her side moved restlessly in the afghan. “What -a bad day for Mell,” she said. “He is fond of the saddle, and now he -will come home wet and cold, before his ride is half finished.” - -Margaret looked at her curiously. She recalled Sempire’s stone-bruise -and Creed’s version of it. Melwin she had left only a few minutes -before, sitting statue-like in the library, with his chin upon his -hands. She felt with a smarting of her eyelids that the pathetic -deception was but a part of the consideration, the tender, watching -guard with which he surrounded the invalid’s every thoughtfulness of -him. - -“Margaret!” Lydia spoke almost appealingly, laying a hand upon her -arm, “do you think Mell seemed happy to-day? You remember him when we -were married? I’ve seen him toss you many a time, as a little girl, on -his shoulder. Don’t you remember how he used to laugh when he would -pretend to let you fall over backward? Does he seem to you to be any -different now? Not older--I don’t mean that (of course he is some -older)--but soberer. He used to have friends out from the city, and -be always bird-hunting or playing polo. I could go with him then; he -liked to have me. He used to say he wanted to show me off. He seems to -be so much more alone now, and to care less for such things. At first -it made me happy to think that he couldn’t enjoy them any longer when -I couldn’t share them with him. That was very selfish, I know, and now -his not taking pleasure in them is a pain to me. I want him to. He is -so good to me! It seems sometimes as if I were a reproach to him. I am -so helpless, useless--such a hindering burden. I can’t do anything but -go on loving him. If I could only help him! If I could dust his desk, -or fill his pipe, or tend the primroses he loves, or put the buttons in -his shirts for him, or do any one of the thousand little foolish things -that a woman loves to do for her husband!” - -Reaching over, Margaret patted her hand gently. The patient eyes looked -up at her hungrily. - -“Oh, Margaret, if I could only know that he was happy! If I could only -fill his life wholly, completely, to the brim! I feel so bodiless lying -here. Other women must mean so much more to their husbands. I used to -pray to die--to be taken away from him. I thought that he would love me -better dead. Love doesn’t die that way--it’s living that kills love. -And I couldn’t bear to think that I might live to see it die slowly, -horribly, little by little; and I watched, oh, so jealously! for the -first sign. It’s a dreadful thing to be jealous of life! I have thought -that if it could be right for him to marry another woman while I was -still his wife--one who could give him all I lack--that I would even be -content, if he were only happy! There is just my mind left now for him -to love, and the mind, so denied, rusts away.” - -“But your _soul_ is alive,” said Margaret softly, “and that is what -we love and love with. It seems to me that the most beautiful thing in -the world is a love like Melwin’s for you--one that is all spirit. It -is like the love of a child for a white star, that is not old and dusty -like the earth, but pure and shining and very, very far above its head. -When I was little I used to have one particular star that I called my -own. I wouldn’t have been happier to have touched it or to have had it -any nearer. I was contented just to look up to it and love it.” - -“You’re a genuine comforter!” said Lydia, a smile of something more -nearly approaching joy than Margaret had yet seen there playing upon -her lips. “I am ungrateful. It is wicked of me to repine as I do! God -has given me Mell’s love, and every day it winds closer around me. And -he loves my soul. I ought to think how much more blest I am than other -women whose husbands do not care for them! I ought to spend my time -thinking of him and not of myself! Perhaps I could plan more little -pleasures for him. We used to make so many pretty surprises for each -other, and we got so much happiness out of them. It is the small things -in life that please us most. When we were first married, I studied all -the little ways. I wore the colors he was fond of, and did my hair as -he thought was most becoming. Why, I wouldn’t have put on a ribbon or -a flower that I thought he did not like! He set so much store by those -things. Do you see that big closet on the other side of the room? Open -the door. There are all the dresses that Mell liked me in when we were -married. Do you see that pearl liberty silk with the valenciennes? I -had that on the last night we ever danced together--the night before I -was hurt. He liked me best of all in that.” - -She passed her hand caressingly over the shimmering lengths which -Margaret had spread out across her knees. “You would look well in such -a gown,” she said. “Your hair is like mine was, only a shade darker. -Put the skirt on. There! It fits you, too!” - -A stir of anticipation, of excitement, overspread her languor. “I want -you to do me a favor; I don’t believe you’ll mind! Take dinner to-night -with Melwin downstairs. I am tired to-day and I shall go to sleep -early. Wear the dress; maybe it will remind him of the way I looked -then, when I had the same roses in my cheeks. He called them holly -berries. Will you wear it?” - -Margaret turned away under pretense of examining the yellow lace. “Oh, -yes,” she said, “and I have a cameo pin that will just suit to clasp it -at the throat.” - -“No, no!” Lydia had half raised herself on her elbow. “In my box on the -dresser is a string of pearls. Mell gave me them to go with it.” - -She took the ornament and, with an exclamation of delight, unfastened -the neck of her nightgown and clasped it around her throat. Dropping -her chin to see how the lustreless spheres drooped across the pitiful -hollows of her neck, she gave them back with a sigh that was sadder -than any words and turned her head wearily on the pillow. - -Margaret gathered up the garments tenderly, and bent over and left a -light kiss on the faded cheek as she went from the room. - - - - -IX. - - -Margaret stood before the cheval-glass in Lydia’s gown, smiling at the -quaint reflection. It showed a figure with slim, pointed waist between -billowy paniers, flounced with Spanish frill after the fashion of a -decade before. The neck was square-cut and the tight sleeves reached -to the elbow, ending in a fall of lace. It was not unbecoming to her. -Her brown eyes had borrowed from the pearl tint a misty violet and the -springing growth of her hair had taken on the shade of wet broom-straw. -A faint glow rose in her cheeks as she surveyed her own stirring image. -She clasped the close necklace of pearls about her throat. Poor Lydia! -Something as fair she must have looked in that old time so rudely -ended! Poor Melwin! - -The wide dining-room doors stood open, and she did not pause, but -went directly in. The old butler stood in the hall, and she noticed -wonderingly that he gazed at her with a scared expression and moved -backward, his arms stretched behind him in an instinctive gesture of -fright which puzzled her. Were even the ancient servitors of the house -as incomprehensible as was their master? - -Melwin stood leaning against the polished rosewood sideboard, -his unseeing gaze fixed on a glass-prismed candelabra of antique -workmanship, whose pendants vibrated ceaselessly. His lifted stare, -which went beyond, suddenly caught and fastened itself upon her in a -look of startled fascination. His lean fingers gripped the edge of the -wood and he stiffened all over like a wild animal couched to spring. -His shrunken features were marked with a convulsion of fearful anguish. -Margaret shrank back dismayed at the lambent fire that had leaped into -his colorless eyes. - -“Lydia!” The cry burst from his lips as he made a quick step toward her. - -“Why, Melwin!” she gasped, “what is the matter?” - -The table was between them, but she could see that he was shaking. -His eyes turned from her to the opposite wall, then back again. Her -gaze followed his and rested upon a splendid full-length portrait. -She knew at once that it was Lydia. But she saw in that one instant -more than this; she saw her own face, radiant, sparkling, the same -lightened, straw-tinted hair, the same shadowy violet eyes, the same -gown, pearl gray, quaintly cut, that had faced her in the depths of the -cheval-glass. - -“Melwin, don’t you know me? Why, it’s I--Margaret!” - -His lips lifted from his teeth. Even through the strained agony of his -face, she could have imagined him about to laugh. It seemed a minute -before his voice came, and when it did it scourged her like a sting of -a lash. She cringed under its livid fury. - -“How dare you? How _dare_ you come to me like that? Do you think a man -is a stone? Do you think he has no feeling, that you can torture him -like this? Do you think he never remembers or suffers? Is there nothing -in his past that’s too sacred to lay hands upon?” - -“It was Lydia, Melwin,” cried Margaret, her fingers wandering -stumblingly along the low neck of the gown; “she asked me to do it. She -thought it would please you. She thought it would remind you of the way -she used to look.” - -“She told you?” A softer expression came to his face. The hard lines -fell away; the weary ghost of an unborn smile hovered on his lips, -trembling and pathetic. - -“Don’t care! Please, please don’t look so! I didn’t think! I will go -away at once and take the dress off.” - -He laid his arms upon the back of a chair and dropped his head upon -them. “Don’t mind me, child,” he said brokenly; “you couldn’t help -it. You didn’t understand. When a man’s flesh has been bruised with -pincers, when his sinews have been wrenched and dragged as mine have, -he does not take kindly to the rack. You could have wrung my heart out -of my body to-night with your hands, and it would not have hurt so -much.” - -“I am so sorry!” Margaret breathed, warm gushes of pity sweeping over -her. “You could never guess how sorry I am!” - -“I suppose,” he said more calmly, “that I have been a puzzle to you. -You were too young to know me when I _lived_. I am only half alive now. -Life has gone by and left me stranded. Look at that picture, child. -That was Lydia--the Lydia of the best years of my life--the Lydia that -I loved and won and married! Twelve years! How long ago it seems!” - -Margaret had seated herself opposite him and leaned forward, her -bare elbows on the table and her locked fingers against her cheek. -“I--understand now.” Her voice was a strenuous whisper. - -“You will know what that is some time--to feel one nearer than all the -world--to tremble when her arm presses yours, to listen for the swish -of her skirt, to turn hot and cold at the smell of her hair or the -touch of her lips! She was beautiful--more beautiful to me than any -woman I had ever seen, or ever shall see. She filled every corner of -me! Life was complete. It had nothing left to give me. Can you think -what that means? You know what happened then. It came crashing in upon -my youth like a falling tower. Since then the years have gone by, but -they stopped for me that day.” - -An intenser look was in Margaret’s eyes. “But you have Lydia--you love -her!” - -He breathed sharply. “Have her!” he repeated. “I have her mind, her -soul, the intellect that answered mine, the soul that leaned to my -soul, but _her_--_her_--the body I held, the woman I caressed, the -fragrant life I touched--where is it? Where? I love her!” he cried with -abrupt passion. “I loved her then; I love her now. I have never loved -another woman! I never think a thought that is not of her. My very -dreams, my imagination are hers! I would rather die than love another -woman! - -“I suppose people pity me and think how hard it was that Lydia’s -accident couldn’t have happened before we were married instead of -afterward. Fools! _Fools!_ As though that would make it different! If -it must have been, I wouldn’t have it otherwise. Not to possess wholly -the woman one loves is the cruelty of Love; the pain of knowing that no -other love can possess you is the mercy of Love. Such misery is dearer -than all other joys. She is _mine_, and with every breath that I curse -Fate with I thank God for her!” - -“Isn’t that happiness?” - -He laughed, a short, jarring, mirthless laugh that hurt her. “Do you -think,” he said, “that that is all a man craves? Can a man--a living, -breathing man--live on soul alone? Can you feed a starving human -being on philosophy? His stomach cries for bread! You can quench his -spiritual thirst while his heart dries up with physical drought. He -wants both sides. With one unsatisfied, he goes halting, crippled. I -live in my past and feed on the husks of it. Do you think they fill me? -I tell you, I go always hungry--always famishing for what other men -have!” - -Margaret felt as if she were being wafted through some intangible -inferno of suffering. She felt smothered, as by the dust of some dead -thing into whose open grave she had unwittingly stumbled. The real -Melwin that she had waked terrified her. The glimpse through the torn -mask, into the distorted face, with its marks of branding, shook the -depths of her nature. She had always thought of Melwin abstractly, as -of a beautiful personality, crowned with spiritual stars and haloed -with pain; now she saw him as he was--a half-man, decrepit, moribund, -his passion no living glow, but a flitting and unreal fox-fire, which -he must follow, follow, grasping at, but never gaining. The dreadful -unfulfilment of his life’s promise sat upon his brow and cried to her -from every word and gesture. She felt as if she was gazing at some -mysterious and but half-indicated problem to which there could be no -answer. - - * * * * * - -That was a meal which Margaret never afterward remembered without a -recoil. A chilling self-consciousness had fallen upon her and clogged -her tongue. Melwin ate hastily and almost fiercely, saying nothing, and -once half rising, it seemed in utter forgetfulness of her presence, -and then sitting down again. She excused herself before the coffee -and slipped away, running hastily up the stair to her room, her feet -catching in the unaccustomed tightness of the old-fashioned skirt. - -As she turned the key in the lock, she fancied she heard a moan -through the thick walls of Lydia’s room, and she tore off the garments -with feverish haste, shutting them from her sight in the carved Dutch -chest which filled one corner, releasing, as she did so, a pungent odor -of cedar; not the fresh, resinous smell of sappy forest-growth, but -the dead-faint aroma of the past--the perfume that belonged to Lydia’s -gown, to Melwin, and to that gloomy house and all it contained. - -She pushed open the heavy blinds and leaned across the window ledge, -questioning. Melwin was a man--but Lydia? Had she also this inner -buried side, which in him had been shocked into betrayal? Were men -and women alike? Were their longings and cravings the same? Was there -something in the one which felt and answered the every need of the -other? Was spiritual attraction forever dependent for its completion -upon physical love? The thought came to her that in the long years -Melwin had become less himself; that his brooding mind had perhaps -lost its balance; that what to a healthier mind would be but a shadow -had grown for him a threatening phantom. Her heart was full of a vague -protest against the suggestion which had thrust itself upon her. - -Her spiritual side reached out groping hands for comfort and sustenance. - -Drawing down the window, she turned into the room. A ponderous Bible -in huge blocked leathern covers lay on the low table, its antiquated -silver clasps winking in the light from the pronged candlestick. With -a sudden impulse, she threw it open, leaning forward, her fingers -nervously ruffling its edges. This was the soul-comforter of the ages. -It must help her. - - “Hadad died also. And the dukes of Edom were; duke Timnah, duke - Aliah, duke Jetheth, - - “Duke Aholibamah, duke Elah, duke Pimon.” - -The musty chronicle meant nothing. She turned again, parting the leaves -near to the end. - - “Salute Prisca and Aquila, and the household of Onesiphorus. - - “Erastus abode at Corinth: but Trophimus have I left at Miletum sick.” - -She almost laughed at the banality of her haphazard choice. She knew -the pages full of condemnation for the unworthy thought. Now they -mocked her. Impatiently she opened the huge volume wide in the middle. -A new and intense eagerness illumed her face as her eyes rested on the -page: - - “Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast - doves’ eyes. - - “My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, - and come away. - - “By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, - but I found him not. - - “My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand. - - “His head is as the most fine gold, his locks are bushy, and black as - a raven. - - “His eyes are as the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters, washed - with milk, and fitly set. - - “His cheeks are as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers: his lips like - lilies, dropping sweet-smelling myrrh.* * * - - “His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely.” - -She looked up startled, her breath struggling in her breast; a deep, -vivid blush spread over her face and neck, glowing crimson against the -whiteness of her apparel. - -The room seemed suddenly dense with a dank, spicy smell of roses -mixed with salty wind. It spread from the pages of the book and hung -wreathing about her till the air was filled with fiery flowers. She -felt herself burning hot, as if a flame were scorching her flesh. In -the emptiness of the room, she caught her hands to her cheeks shamedly, -lest the world could see that tell-tale color. Even the dim candles’ -light angered her, and she blew them out, creeping into the soft bed -hastily, as though into a hiding-place. - - - - -X. - - -For some days after her unforgettable meeting with Daunt in the woods, -Margaret had not left the house. She had spent much of her time reading -to Lydia. There was a never lessening sorrow in the invalid’s gaze that -affected her, full as was her mind of her own thoughts, and she had -been glad to sit with her to escape the slow-burning fires that haunted -her in Melwin’s opaque eyes. - -She had almost a fear to venture beyond the shelter of this cheerless -home--a fear of what she longed for unspeakably and as unspeakably -dreaded. She told herself that Daunt was gone, that he had returned -to the city, that she would not see him again at Warne. And yet her -inmost wish belied the thought. He had gone away believing her cruel. -The memory tortured her. An instinctive modesty, as innate as her -conscience, had made it impossible for her to express in words the -distinction which her own sensitiveness had drawn. To think of it was -an intangible agony; to voice it was to penetrate the veiled sanctuary -of her woman-soul. - -But the afternoon following Melwin’s outburst in the dining-room, her -flagging spirits and the smell of the cropped fields drew her out of -doors. She was sore with a sense of reproach at her own unthinking -blunder. Since then she had not seen Melwin. She felt how awkward would -be the next meeting. - -The sunlight splintered against low-sailing clumps of vapor which -extended to the horizon, and the chill of the air prompted her to walk -briskly. She did not take the wood road, but kept to the open country, -following the maple-lined footpath that boarded the rusting hedgerows. -There was little promise in the drooping, despondent sky. A shiver -of wind was in the tall grasses and a far whistling of a flock of -marsh-birds came to her over the moist fallow. - -A darting chipmunk made her turn her head, and she became conscious -that a figure was close behind her. An intuitive knowledge flashed upon -her that it was Daunt. A vibrant thrill shot through her limbs and she -felt her cheeks heating. - -“Margaret! Margaret!” - -She turned her head where he stood uncovered behind her. His left wrist -was bound tightly with a black band, and he carried his arm thrust -between the buttons of his jacket. - -“I am disabled for riding, you see,” he said, smiling. “My wrist has -gone lame on me. You see I am stopping at Tenbridge, and I walked over -the hill.” - -The ease and naturalness of his opening disarmed her. She caught -herself smiling back at him. - -“I’m so sorry about your wrist,” she said. “Does it pain you much?” - -“Only when I forget and use it. Did you think I would come back again?” -This with blunt directness. - -She made him no answer. - -“Do you know, I have been here every day since I saw you. I’ve spent -the hours haunting the road through the woods and tramping these paths -between the fields.” - -“I have not been out of the house since then,” she answered. - -“Why not?” - -“Can’t you guess why?” - -“Were you afraid you might see me?” - -“I--I didn’t know.” - -“Look here, dear,” he said, “you know I don’t want to persecute you. -If you will only tell me truly that you don’t love me, I will go away -at once and never see you again. But I believe that there is no other -thing in life worth setting against love. It means my happiness and -yours, and it would be cowardly for me to give you up for anything but -your happiness. Can’t we reason a little about it?” - -She shook her head hopelessly. “It wouldn’t help. I have reasoned and -reasoned, and it only makes me wretched.” - -His brows knit perplexedly. He stopped and faced her in the path. “Do -you think that I have come to you for any other reason than that I -want you, that you mean more to me now than you ever did? That I love -you more--_more_--since I know you love me wholly? You have loved me, -absolutely. Now you are refusing to marry me! Why? Why? Why?” - -Margaret’s flush had deepened. While he had been speaking, she had -several times flung out her hand in mute protest. “Oh!” she said, “how -can I make you understand? Love is strange and terrible. It isn’t -enough to love with the earth-side of us! Why”--her voice vibrated with -a little tremor--“I would love you just the same if I knew you _had_ -no soul--if there was only the human feel of you, and if I knew you -must die like a dumb beast and not go to my heaven. If I knew that I -should never see you again after this life, I would love you and long -for you, just the same, now and afterward! Oh, there must be something -wrong with my soul! That kind of a love is wrong. It’s the love of the -flesh! Don’t you see? Can’t you see it’s wrong?” - -Daunt struck savagely at the wiry beard-grasses with the stick he -carried. This doubt was so irrational, so unwholesome to his healthy -mind that to argue it filled him with a dumb anger. He groaned -inwardly. She was impossible! - -“You give no credit,” he slowly said at last, “to your humanity. In -a woman of your soul-sensitiveness, it is unthinkable that the one -should exist without the other. Soul and sense react upon each other. -Bodily love, in people who possess spirituality, who are not mere -clods, dependent upon their eyes and appetites for all life gives them, -presupposes spiritual affinity. The physical may be the lesser side of -us, but it is not necessarily the lower. Whatever there is in Nature -is there because it ought to be. If we cannot see its beauty or its -meaning, let us not blame Nature; let us blame ourselves.” - -“Don’t think,” said Margaret, “that I haven’t thought all that! It is -so easy to reason around to what we _want_ to believe. It doesn’t make -me happy to think as I do, but I can’t help it! We can’t make ourselves -_feel_. _I_ can’t! What good would it do me to make myself _think_ I -believed that? You would soon see what I lacked, and I would know it, -and we would be chained to each other while our souls shrivelled. Oh,” -she ended with almost a sob, “I am so utterly miserable!” - -Daunt felt a mad desire to take that near-by form in his arms, to -soothe her and comfort her. He felt as if she were squeezing his heart -small with her hands. He was silent. Then his resentful will rose in an -ungovernable flood. - -“Do you suppose I intend to break my life in two for a quibble--for a -baseless fancy? I tell you, you’re wrong! You’re wrong! You’ve tangled -yourself up in a lot of sophistry! Don’t think I am going to give up. I -won’t! You shall come to yourself! You shall! You _shall_!” - -Margaret felt the leap of his will as an unbroken pacer the unexpected -flick of a whip-thong. It was a new sensation. It had a tang of -mastery, of domination, that was strange to her. She was unprepared -for such a situation. She looked at him half stealthily. In the lines -of his mouth there was an unfamiliar sovereignty. She felt that -deliciousness of revolt which every strong woman feels at the first -contact with an overbearing masculinity. A swift suggestion of the -potentiality of his unyielding purpose stabbed her. - -“And the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew and beat -upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.” A flitting -memory brought the parable to her mind. Could it be that the house of -her defence was built upon the sands? “And the rain descended and -the floods came and the winds blew”--the first promise of the tempest -was in his eyes. A fear of yielding insinuated itself darkly. The set -intentness of his obstinacy lingered after his words, hung about her -in the air and pressed upon her with the weight of an unescapable -necessity. Her breath strained her. - -All at once she turned, speaking rapidly, incoherently. “Don’t--don’t -talk to me like that! Don’t argue with me! I can’t bear it--now! -I’m all at sea; I’m a ship without a captain. Don’t bend me; I was -never made to be bent. I have got to think for myself. You must go -away--indeed, you must! Somehow, to talk about it makes it so much -worse. I can’t discuss it! Don’t ask me any more! Oh, I know you think -I’m unreasonable. It sounds unreasonable sometimes, even to myself. I -wish you wouldn’t blame me, but I know you must. You can’t help it. I -blame myself, and I hurt myself, and the blame and the want and the -hurt are all mixed up together! If you care--if you care anything for -me, you will go away! You won’t come again. I hurt you when you do, and -I can’t bear to do it.” - -Daunt nodded, took her hand, held it a moment, and then released it. -“Very well,” he said quietly and sadly. He did not offer to kiss -her. The fire had died out of his voice and there was left only a -constrained sorrow. But it had no note of despair. Its resignation was -just as wilful as had been its assertive passion. He looked at her a -moment lingeringly, then turned and vaulting the hedge, with squared -shoulders and swinging stride, struck off across the stubble of the -fields. - -Margaret did not look back, but she knew he had not turned his head. -Then a long sigh escaped her. - - - - -XI. - - -Her blood coursed drummingly as she went back along the road, half -running, her hat fallen, held by the loose ribbon under her chin, her -hands opening and closing nervously. Her head was high and her mood -struck through her like the smell of turned earth to a wild thing of -the jungle. She wanted action, hard movement, and she ran with fingers -spread to feel the breeze. Her thoughts were a tumult--her feelings -one massing, striving storm of voices, through which ran constant, -vibrating, a single, insistent, dominant chord. - -“You _shall_! You SHALL!” she repeated under her breath. “Why do I -like that? It’s sweeter than bells! I can hear him say it yet. It was -like a hand, pulling me!” - -She stopped stock-still, suddenly, gazing at the fallen -purple-and-crimson autumn leaves, a poured-out glory of color at her -feet. “Splendid!” she said. She bent and swept up a great armful and -tossed the clean, wispy, crackling things in the air. They fell in a -whirling shower over her face, catching in her hair. In the midst of -them she laughed aloud, every chord of her body sounding. Then, with a -quick revulsion, she threw out her arms and sank panting on the selvage -of the field. - -“What can I do? What can I do?” she said. “I’m afraid! I can’t go on -fighting this way! It--drags me so.” Her fingers were pulling up the -tapery grass-spears in a sinister terror. “I felt so strong the last -few weeks, and it’s gone--utterly gone! Why--it went when I first -looked at his face. If he had kissed me again, this time; if--if he had -held me as he did that other day--in the woods--oh, my heart’s water! -There’s something in me that _won’t_ fight. The ground goes from under -my feet. It’s dreadful to feel this way! His hair smelled like--roses! -If I had dared kiss it! I ought to be sorry and I’m--not! I’m ashamed -to be glad, and I’m glad to be ashamed!” - -She felt herself shivering, resentful of the ecstasy of sweetness that -lapped and folded her. The dull glow of the sky irritated her with its -very serenity. - -“If I only hadn’t seen him! If I had been strong enough not to! It’s -ungenerous of him. He ought to leave. He ought to have gone away after -that last time! He _ought_!” - -But if he had! The thought obtruded itself. She had longed for him to -come; she knew, down in her soul, she had. Her heart had given her lips -the lie. The woman in her had betrayed her conscience. - -“It’s the truth!” she cried, lifting her hand. “It’s the truth! Oh, if -he hadn’t come--_if--he--hadn’t_!” She muttered it to the wind by the -loneliness of the slashed hedges. “That would have been the one last -terrible thing. It would have crushed me! I could never have been glad -again. I’m sick now with desolation at the thought of it! It’s easier -not to be able to forgive myself than it would be not to be able to -forgive him! But he _did_ come! He wants me!” Her voice had a quiver of -exultation. “Nothing on earth ever can rob me of that!--nothing!” - -She pressed her arm against her eyes till her sight blent in -golden-lettered flashes. The one presence was all about her; she could -even feel his breath against her hair. His eyes had been the color of -deep purple grapes under morning dew. The old hunger for him, for his -hand, his voice, swept down upon her, and she crouched closer to the -ground wet with fog-dew, striking the sod hard with her hands. He had -come. He was there. He never would go--she knew that. If he stayed, she -must yield. She had been perilously close to it that day. - - * * * * * - -After a time she became quieter and drew from her skirt pocket a -crumpled letter, received that morning after three re-forwardings. It -was in a decisive feminine hand, and spreading it before her, Margaret -turned several pages and began to read: - -“Your letter has somehow distressed me,” it read. “It seemed unlike -your old self. It seemed sad. I imagine that you are troubled about -something. Is it only that you are tired and dissatisfied? I have -wondered much about you since you left the city in the spring. What -have you been doing? How have you spent the time in the stale places -of idleness? I have been so busy here at the hospital that I have -seen none of our old friends. Time goes so quickly when you like your -work! And I enjoy mine. It has come to mean a great deal to me. Dr. -Goodno intends soon, he says, to put me in charge of the children’s -ward. Poor little things! They suffer so much more uncomplainingly -than grown folks. Dr. Goodno is our superintendent and Mrs. Goodno is -superintendent of nurses. She has been so dear and kind to me, one -could not help loving her. It hardly seems possible that I have been -here three whole years. - -“Margaret, have you ever thought seriously of the last letter I wrote -you? There is a great deal of compensation in this life, and I have -thought sometimes (I know you’ll forgive me for saying it) that you -needed some experience like this. Every woman ought to be the better -for it. You are my dearest friend, and if I could only show you -something--some new satisfaction in living--something to take you out -of yourself more, I would be so glad. - -“I have told Mrs. Goodno so much about you, and she would welcome you -here, I know. It might be just what you need. You know the nurses are -taken on three months’ probation, and there is no compulsion to stay. -If you did not like it, you could leave at any time, and you would be -the gainer by the experience. You need no preparation. Just telegraph -me at any time and come.” - -A resolution had formed itself rapidly in Margaret’s mind. Thrusting -the letter deep into her pocket, she walked swiftly up the path to -the house. She sent Creed with a telegram before she entered the -library. Melwin was standing with his back to her, staring out through -the leaded diamonds of the window. He turned slowly, gazing over her -shoulder. His face had lapsed into its habitual neutral passiveness. -His pupils had contracted into their peculiar unrefracting dulness, and -his hands hung without motion. - -“Melwin,” she said, “I’m going back to the city. I have received a -letter which makes it necessary. I think I will take the evening train.” - -He turned again to the window. “Must you--go?” His voice was toneless -and dull. - -“Yes,” she answered. “I will look in and say good-by to Lydia.” She -waited a moment uncertainly, but he did not speak, and she left him -standing there. - - * * * * * - -Turning the knob of Lydia’s door softly, she pushed it open and -entered. Lydia lay with her face turned toward the wall; her regular -breathing showed that she slept. Margaret could not bear to awaken her. -A wavering smile was on her parted lips and gave a fragile loveliness -to the delicate transparency of her skin. Perhaps a happy dream had -come for awhile to beckon her from ever-present pain. Perhaps she was -dreaming that she was well and knew and filled a strong man’s yearning. - -Margaret closed the door noiselessly. Going to her room, she pencilled -a little note, and tiptoeing cautiously back through the hall, slipped -the missive under Lydia’s door. - -And this was her farewell. - - - - -XII. - - -Across the country Daunt strode, paying little heed to his direction. -He skirted one field, crossed another, swung through a gully, scrambled -along a gravel-pit, climbed a hilly slope, and cut across in a wide -circuit. He thought that physical weariness might bring mental relief. -He paused for a moment by the edge of a clayey bank, in which a -multitude of tiny sand-swallows--winged cliff-dwellers--had pecked them -vaulted homes. He thrust his stick gently into one of the openings and -smiled to see the bridling anger of its feathered inhabitant. - -Seating himself upon a pile of split rails in a fence corner, he -dropped into reverie. He was conscious of an immense depression. The -past few weeks had brought him nearer to realizing how much Margaret -meant, not only to himself, but to his labor in the world, than he had -ever been before. His artistic temperament had pointed him a dreamer, -but his natural earnestness had made him a laborious one. His ideals -were fresh and strong, and the world of tangled interests and woven -ambitions had stood before him always, mute, importunate, a place -to make them real. In man’s ear there sound ever three voices: the -brazen-throated throng, the silver-throated few and the golden-throated -one. This last voice Daunt had learned to listen to. He had made -Margaret his unconscious motive. The best of his written work had been -done at the huge antique mahogany desk under her picture. What she had -been to his work, what she was then, showed him what her presence or -absence in his life must inevitably mean. He realized the truth of what -he had once scoffed at, that behind every man’s success lies the heart -of a woman. - -He felt a profound disheartenment. His mind skimmed the waste of his -younger years. It saw his toils as little things and the work he had -praised in himself as that of a trifler. He knew now his capacities -for ambition. He saw inspiration for the first time as, on a twilit -highway, one sees a fancied bush, with a sudden movement, resolve -itself into a human figure. He saw his past, harvestless. Fate had -taken his youth, like a handful of sand, and fed it to the sea! Since -Margaret had gone, his work had been purposeless, barren--it wanted her -presence. - -He had lighted his pipe mechanically, and through the blue-pale smoke -whorls, a near bush took on the outline of her clear profile, reclined -against a dusky cushion. His longing filled the silence with an inward -voice: - -“You are the woman,” it said, “that I have always wanted! I want -you all! I want your childish shallows and your womanly deeps! I -want your weakness and your strength! I want you just as you are, no -different--you, yourself.” - -She was sitting before him now in the firelight of her room, where -the tongues of the burning drift-wood and salt-dusted larch sprang -up, blue, magenta and purplish-green, prickling the brass-work of the -fireplace into a thousand many-colored points, and he was leaning -forward, speaking, with his bare heart behind set lips: “I love you. -All that I have for you that you will not own! All that you might be to -me that you will not give!” - -He felt her present trouble vaguely and with the same impotent -resentment that he had felt in that far-off yet ridiculously near -child-life, when in all the lofty manhood of his eight years he had -defied the cliff-winds--that childhood which lived in his memory as a -stretch of sun-drowned sea-beach swept by wind; a dim background in a -frame of sharp outline, which held little images of delicate fragrance, -clear and sweet, on the retina of his memory. This woman met him in a -pain, measured by his added years, that he was powerless to appease. - -Knocking the cold ashes from his pipe, Daunt rose and stretched his -arms wide along the topmost rail of the shambling fence and gazed out -across the evening hills, blurred by the blue of distance, into the -red sunset. Far to the left, glooming from encircling elms, lay the -house that sheltered Margaret. Down below him, in the railroad cut, -crawled a deliberate tank-train. From where he stood, he could see the -ungainly arm of the slung pipe, through which the thirsty engine drank -deep draughts. Sitting in the chill air had told him his fatigue, and -his wrist had grown stiff and painful. He felt unequal to the long walk -across to Tenbridge, and, consulting his watch, reflected that the -city-bound train, almost due, would carry him to the little Guthrie -junction, shortening his walk by half. - -He pushed rapidly down the hill road, grateful for the heat of renewed -motion. The station was deserted. One shabby hack drowsed driverless -under the shed, and even the ticket agent had apparently forsaken his -grating. - -Sauntering across the platform, Daunt leaned against the signal-post, -on whose swinging arm a round, fevered eye watched, unwinkingly and -angry, for the distant train, fast growing from a bright pin point to -a blazing blotch of yellow, between the spun-out rails. Its attenuated -rumbling had swelled to a trembling roar. His pre-occupation was so -deep that the clamorous iron thing was upon him almost before he heard -it. The surprise jarred him into sudden movement, and it was then that -his tired limbs lurched under him; the sucking vortex of the hurtling -mass threw him off his balance, he wavered, stumbled, fell--and the -pitiless armored monster, plunging, gigantic, regardless, caught him on -its mailed side and passed on, to shudder, to slow, to stop--too late! - - - - -XIII. - - -The gas lamps had been early lit and threw flaring streaks of white -across the dingy platform as Margaret reached the station. She had -stood on the top of the little slope, looking back across the fields, -grown dim and mysterious in the purpling dusk, with a tightening of -the throat. However unhappy she had been here, yet she had seen Daunt. -He had stood with her by those dwarfed hedges, he had pleaded with -her under the flaming boughs of those woods. She could still feel the -strong pressure of his lips upon her hand as he besought her for what -she could have given him so eagerly, so gladly, so joyously if she had -dared. She was leaving him there, and the parting now seemed so much -more than that other seaside flight, when she had been stung to action -by her own self-reproach. Making her mute farewell, she heard a shriek -of steam, as the train came shuddering into the station, drawing long, -labored breaths like some chained serpent monster, overtired, and she -hastened stumblingly, uncertainly over the stony road. When she reached -the platform, she was out of breath and panting, and did not notice the -knot of trainmen, with beckoning arms and dangling lanterns, by the -side of the track. - -She sank into her Pullman seat wearily. Several windows were open and -inquiring heads were thrust forth. She was conscious of a subdued -excitement in the air. A conductor passed hurriedly through the coach -and swung himself deftly off the end. People about her asked each other -impatiently why the train did not start, and a sallow-faced woman with -a false front hoped nervously and audibly that nothing was the matter. -A sudden whisper spread itself from chair to chair, and a man came back -from the smoking compartment to seat himself beside his wife, and -pulled down the window-shade with low whisperings. - -“An accident. A man hurt.” - -Margaret heard it with a tremor. She tried to raise her window, but the -latch caught, and she placed her face close to the pane to peer out. Up -the platform tramped four trainmen, bloused and grimy with coal-dust, -carrying between them a board, covered with tarpaulin, under which -showed clearly the outlines of a human figure. - -Margaret caught her breath and drew back with a sudden feeling of -faintness. There were a few tense moments of waiting. Then a quiver -ran through the heavy trucks, there was a sharp whistle, a snort of -escaping steam, and past her window moved slowly back the station -lamps. A porter went toward the baggage-car, his arms piled high with -white towels, which threw his ebony face into sharp contrast. The -forward conductor leaned over the occupant of the chair across from -Margaret to borrow his flask, and went out with it. She realized from -this that the injured one was on the train. - -He was probably at that moment lying on the floor of the baggage-car, -amid a litter of trunks and bags. Men were bending over him to see if -he lived or died. Five minutes ago he had been as full of life and -strength and breath as she. Now he lay stricken and maimed and ghastly, -a huddle of bleeding flesh and torn sinew, perhaps never again to see -the smile of the sunlight, or, perhaps, to live mutilated and broken -and disfigured, his every breath a pain, his every pulse a pang. -Perhaps he had loved ones--a _one_ loved one, who had hung about his -neck and kissed him when he went away. What of that love when they -should bring this object back to her? - -A hideous question of the lastingness of human love flung itself from -the darkness without in upon her brain. One could love when the face -was fair, when the form was supple and straight, when the eyes were -clear and the blood was young with the flush of life! One could still -love when age had grayed the hair and the kindly years had bowed the -back. Mutual love need not dim with time, but only mellow into the -peaceful content of fruition. - -But let that straight form be struck down in its prime: a misstep, a -slip in the crowded street, a broken rail, an explosion in a chemist’s -shop, and in an instant the beauty is scarred, the symmetrical limb -is twisted, the tender face is seamed and gnarled. The loved form -has gone, and in its place is left a shape of pain, of repulsion, of -undelight. Ah! what of that love then? - -Margaret shivered as if with cold. How could _she_ answer that? There -was a love that did not live and die in the beating of the heart, which -did not fade into darkness when its outer shell perished. That was the -spirit love. That was the love of the mother for the child, of the soul -for the kindred soul. That was the love that endured. It was the only -love which justified itself. It was this that God intended when He put -man and woman in the earth to cherish one another and gave them living -souls which spoke a common language. Better a million times crush -from the heart any lesser habitant! Better an empty soul, swept and -garnished, than a chamber of banqueting for a fleshly guest! - - * * * * * - -Woman’s heart is the Great Questioner. When Doubt waves it from -natural interrogation of the world about it, it turns with fearful -and inevitable questionings upon itself, until the sky which had been -thronged with quiring seraphim flocks thick with sneering devils. “Do -you think,” insinuates the Tempter mockingly, “that this beautiful -dove-eyed love of yours can stand the ultimate test? Have you tried -it? You have seen loves just as beautiful, just as young, go down into -the pit. Do you dream that yours can endure? Strip from your love -the subtle magnetism of the body, take from it the hand-touch, the -lip-caress, the pride of the eye, and what have you left? The hand -grows palsied, the lips shrivel, the eye leadens, and love’s body -dies. What then? Ah, what then! - - * * * * * - -The darkness had fallen more thickly without, and Margaret saw her face -reflected from the window-pane, as in a tarnished and trembling mirror. -Her own eyes gazed back at her. She put up her hands and rubbed them -against the glass, as though to erase the image she saw. - -“Don’t look so,” she said, half aloud. “What right have you to look so -good? Don’t you know that if you had staid, if you had seen him again, -you would have thought as he did? You couldn’t have helped it! You -couldn’t! You had to run away! You didn’t want to come! You wish you -were back again now! You--you do! You want him. You want him just as -you did--then! That’s the worst of it.” - -The face in the glass made her no answer. It angered her that those -eyes would offer no glance of self-defence, and, with a quick impulse, -she reached up and drew down the shade. - -The whir and click of the flying wheels jarred through her brain. She -had a sense of estrangement from herself. She felt almost as though she -were two persons. The one Margaret riding in her pillowed chair, with -her mind a turmoil of evil doubts, and the other Margaret rushing on by -her side through the outer night, calm-eyed and untroubled, and these -two almost touching and yet separated by an infinite distance. They -could never clasp each other again. She had a vague feeling that there -was a deeper purpose of punishment in this. She herself had raised the -ghost which must haunt her. - -She hardly noted the various stations as the train stopped and breathed -a moment, and then dashed on. Try as she would, her thoughts recurred -to the baggage-car and the burden it carried. She wondered whether they -would put it off quickly at the terminal, and what it would look like. -It was for such things that hospitals were built, and to a hospital -with all that it implied, she was bound. New and torturing doubts -of her own strength beset her. She was afraid. In her imagination -she already smelled the sickening sweet halitus of iodoform and saw -white-aproned nurses winding endless bandages upon bleeding gashes that -would not be stanched. - -An engulfing rumbling told her that they were entering the city -tunnel, and near-by passengers began a deliberate assortment of wraps -and parcels. The porter passed through the train, loudly announcing -the last stop. There was almost a relief to Margaret’s overwrought -sensibilities in his sophisticated utterance. It was a part of the -great cube-jumbled, fish-ribbed metropolis, with its clanging noises -and its swirl of cañoned living for which during the past weeks she had -thirsted feverishly. She felt, without putting it into actual mental -expression, that surcharged thought might find relief in simple things. - -Lois would be waiting there to meet her. She would be glad to see -her. It was pleasant to be loved and looked for. A moment or two more -and the white, smoky haze that blotted the car windows lifted, and -in place of the milky opaque squares appeared glimpses of wide-lit -spaces and springing ironwork. The car hesitated, shocked itself with a -succession of gentle jars, and came heavily to a halt. They were in the -station. - -Margaret alighted on the platform with limbs numb and tired. The strain -of the day had given her a yearning for quiet, for the abandon of a -deep chair with soft cushions, and a cup of tea. She met Lois with -outstretched arms and a wan and uncertain smile against which her lips -feebly protested. - -“Why, Margaret, dear, how tired you look!” said Lois, kissing her. -“Come, and we’ll get a cab just outside. Your train was very late. I -thought you never _would_ get here at all!” - -Margaret clung to Lois’s hands. “O--h,” she said, falteringly, “do we -have to go up the whole length of the train?” - -“Why, yes; are you so very tired?” - -“No--but----” she stopped, ashamed of her weakness. She was coming to -be a nurse--to learn to care for sick people and to dress wounds. What -would Lois think of her? “Do--do they unload the baggage-car now?” - -“Oh,” said Lois, cheerfully, “we’ll leave your checks here; it won’t be -necessary to wait for the trunks. Come, dear!” She led the way up the -thronged platform. “Hurry!” she said suddenly, “there is a case in the -baggage-car. I wonder where it’s going! Oh, you poor darling!” - -Margaret had turned very pale and leaned against a waiting truck for -support. - -“I forgot. That _is_ a rather stiff beginning for you, isn’t it? I’m -_so_ sorry! I hope you didn’t see; it looks like a bad one. Don’t watch -it, dear. That’s right! You won’t mind it a bit after a while. You’re -quite worn out now. Come, we’ll go around this other way.” - -“It happened at Warne,” said Margaret, tremulously. “I saw them take -him on.” - -“Poor dear! and you must have been worrying about it all the way in. -Do you see the ambulance at the curb? That’s ours. You see, they -telegraphed, and now he will be cared for sooner than you get your tea. -There goes the ambulance gong! They’re off. And now here’s the cab.” - - - - -XIV. - - -An hour later, Margaret, somewhat composed from her ride, waited in -the homelike bedroom for Lois to come and take her to Mrs. Goodno, the -Superintendent of Nurses. From her post at the window she could look -down upon the street. - -It had begun to rain, and the electric lights hurled misshapen -Swedish-yellow splotches on the wet asphalt. The wind had risen, -rending the clouds into shaggy lines and made a dreary, disconsolate -singing in the web of telephone wires bracketed beneath the window. -Margaret felt herself to be in a state of unnatural tension. She gazed -out into the swathing darkness, trying desperately to make out the -landscape. Her eyes wandered from the clumps of wet and glistening -foliage to the starting lights in a far-off apartment house, -which thrust its massive top, fortress-like, and, with proportions -exaggerated by the lowering scud, up into the air. Do what she would, -her mind recurred, as though from some baleful necessity, to the -details of the long train-ride. The never-ending clack of the wheels -was in her ears. She clenched her hands as the landscape resolved -itself into the dim station at Warne, and she saw again the grimy -brakemen carrying something by covered with a dirty canvas. - -She shut her eyes to drag them away from the window. How could she ever -stand it! It had been a mistake--a horrible, ghastly mistake! She had -turned cold and sick when they had carried it past the car window. How -could she ever bear to see things like that? Lois did. Lois liked it! -So did all of them. But they were different. There must be something -hideously wrong about her--it was part of her unwomanliness--part -of her guilty lack. The others saw the quivering soul beneath the -sick flesh; she could never see within the bodily tenement. She was -handcuffed to her lower side. She remembered the story of the criminal, -chained by wrist and ankle to a comrade; how he woke one day to find -the other dead--_dead_--and himself condemned to drag about with him, -day and night, that horrible, inert thing. She, Margaret Langdon, -was like this man. She must drag through life this corpse of a dead -spirituality, this finer comrade soul of hers which had somehow died! -Her life must be one long hypocrisy--one unending deceit. She was even -there under false pretences. They would not want her if they knew. - -She turned toward the fireplace. Over it hung a sepia print of the -Madonna of the Garden. The glow touched the rounded chin and chubby -knees of the little St. John with a soft flesh-tint, and left in shadow -the quaint incongruity of the distant church-spire. Margaret’s whole -spirit yearned toward its placid purity. She had had the same print -hung in her bedroom at home, and it had looked down upon her when she -prayed. She gazed at it now with eyes of wretchedness, filmed with -tears. Her throat ached acutely with a repressed desire to sob. She -fancied that the downcast lids lifted and that the luminous, wide eyes -followed her wonderingly, reproachfully. - - * * * * * - -Lois came in smiling. “She is in now,” she said, “and we will go down.” - -Margaret exerted herself and tried to chat bravely as they went along -the corridor, and entered the cool silence of the room where Lois’s -friend waited to meet her. There was a restfulness in Mrs. Goodno’s -neat attire, and a dignity about her clear profile, full, womanly -throat and strong, capable wrists, that seemed to be an inseparable -part of her atmosphere. Her firm and unringed hands held Margaret’s -with a suggestion of tried strength and assured poise that bore -comfort. Her eyes were deep gray, smiling less with humor, one felt, -than with a constant inward reflection of welcome thoughts. Her hair -was a dull, toneless black, carried back under her lace cap in a -single straight sweep that left the hollows of her neck in deep shadow. - -“And you are Miss Langdon?” she said. “Lois has told me so much about -you. Do sit down. Tea will be here directly, and I want to give you -some, for I know you have had a long, dreary ride.” - -She busied herself renewing the grate fire, while Margaret watched her -with straying eyes. - -“You know,” she said, returning, “we people who spend our lives taking -care of broken human bodies have to be strong ourselves. You are -strong; I see that, though your face has tired lines in it now. But we -must be more than that--our minds must be healthy. We can’t afford to -be morbid. We have to have cheerful hearts. We must see the beauty of -the great pattern that depends on these soiled and tangled threads we -keep straightening out here.” - -“Oh,” said Margaret, “do you think we have to be happy to do any good -in the world? How can we be happy unless we work? And if we start -miserable----” she stopped, with an acute sense of wretchedness. - -“No, not happy necessarily. There are things in some of our lives which -make that impossible; but we can be cheerful. Cheerfulness depends not -on our past acts, but on our wholesome view of life, and we get this by -learning to understand it and to understand ourselves.” - -“But, do you think,” questioned Margaret, “do you think we always do in -the end?” - -“Yes; I believe we do. It’s unfailing. I proved it to myself, for I -began life by being a very unnatural girl, and a very unhappy one. -I misunderstood my own emotions, as all young girls do. I didn’t -know how to treat myself. I didn’t even know I was sick. I had been -brought up in New England, and I tortured myself with religion. It -wasn’t the wickedness of the world that troubled me; I expected too -much of myself--we all do at a certain age. And, because I found -weakness where I hadn’t suspected it, I thought I was all wrong. You -know we New Englanders have a peculiar aptitude for self-torture, -and I wore my hair-cloth shirt and pressed it down on the sores. It -was the University Settlement idea that first drew me out of myself. -I went into that and worked at first only for my own sake; but, after -a while, for the work’s sake. It was only work I wanted, my dear, and -contact with real things. Out of the turmoil and mixture and pain I got -my first real satisfaction. In its misery and want and degradation I -learned that an isolated grief is always selfish. I learned the part -that our human bodies play in life. I began to see a meaning in the -plan and to understand the part in it of what I had thought the lower -things in us. Then I got into the hospital work, and you will soon see -what that is. It has shown me humanity. It has taught me the nobility -of the human side of us. It makes me broader to understand and quicker -to feel; and it isn’t depressing. There is a great deal in it that is -sunny. I hope you will like it. But we are not all made in the same -mould, and we regard your coming, of course, merely as an experiment. -So, if you feel at any time that it is not for you, come to me and tell -me. Come to me any time and talk with me. - -“Now you have finished your tea, and I must go to the children’s ward. -I have put you with Lois till the strangeness of it wears off, and you -can have a separate room whenever you like.” - -Leaning forward, she brushed Margaret’s cheek lightly with her lips and -went quickly out of the room. - -In spite of her misery, a shy feeling of comfort had come into -Margaret’s heart. She rose and surveyed herself in the mirror over the -mantel, drawing a deep breath and raising her shoulders as she did so. -It was an unconscious trick of hers. - -“Oh, no!” she said half aloud, “that is the temptation. I want to think -it, and it can’t be true. I _want_ to! The want in me is bad! How _can_ -it be true?” “The nobility of the human side of us”--ah, that had come -from the calm poise of a wholesome understanding! It was noble--this -human side--but not king. What of this strange mastery that overflowed -her, the actual ache for the glow of his eyes, the pressure of his -fingers? The mere memory of it was like a live coal to her cheeks. It -burned her. The feel of his strong hair was in the fibrous touch of -her gown. His mouth, smiling at the corners, warmed her shoulder. His -bodily presence was all about her; it breathed upon her, and her soul -reeled and shut its eyes like a drunken man! - -Margaret tossed her hands above her head, the wrists dropping crosswise -upon the shearing pillow of her flame-washed hair. In the mirror she -saw the pale oval of her face in this living setting. As she gazed, the -features warmed and changed; the eyes became Daunt’s eyes--the mouth, -Daunt’s mouth. It was Daunt’s face, as she had looked up into it framed -in her arms on the sun-brilliant beach. The wind was all about her, -fresh and odorous, and his kisses were falling upon her seasalt lips! - -Still holding her arms raised, she leaned to the mirror and kissed the -glass hungrily. Her breath sighed the picture dim. The magic of it -was gone, and Margaret, glancing fearfully behind her, turned and ran -breathless to her room, where she locked the door and threw herself -upon the bed, pressing her face down into the soft pillow gaspingly, to -shut out the vivid passion-laden odor of bruised roses that seemed to -pursue her, filling all her senses like a far-faint smell of musk. - - - - -XV. - - -Margaret passed along through the light-freshened ward, following -Lois closely, and fighting desperately the active feeling of nausea -which almost overcame her. All her sensitive nature cringed in this -atmosphere. Through the brightness and cleanliness of wood and metal, -the absolute whiteness of the stamped bed-linen and the fresh smell -of antiseptics, she had a morbid sense of the ugliness of disease, of -the loathsomeness of contact with physical decrepitude that is one of -the selfishnesses of the artistic temperament. She felt the dread, -incubus-like, pressing upon her and sucking from her what force and -vitality she had. A feeling of despair of being able to cope with this -thrusting melancholy beset her and she fought it off with her strongest -strength. - -At intervals, as they passed, was a cot shut off by screens of white -linen, fluted and ironed, as high as the eyes. These spotless blanks -stood out more awful to Margaret in intimation of hidden horror than -any open physical convulsion. Behind these screens was more often -silence, but sometimes came forth an indistinct and restless muttering, -and once a sharp, panging groan. A sick apprehension gripped her, and -she felt her palms growing moist with sweat. She was sickly sensible -of the sweet, pungent smell of carbolic and ether, sharpened by a -spicy odor of balsam-of-Peru. From the pillows curious eyes peered at -her, set in faces sharp-featured and hectic, or a shambling figure in -loose garments moved, bent and halting, across their path. She caught a -sidewise view, through a swing door, of a tiled operating-room, with a -glittering _mêlée_ of polished instruments. Here and there she thought -the lapping folds of bandages moved, showing blue glimpses of gaping -cuts and festering tissue. It seemed as if the long rows of white -coverlids and iron bed-bars would go on eternally. - -As they came to the extreme end of the room, Margaret suddenly stopped, -gripping Lois’s arm with vise-close fingers. “What is that?” she -whispered. - -“What is what?” - -She stood listening, her neck bent sideways, and a flush of excitement -rising on her cheeks. “Didn’t you hear him call me?” she said. - -“Hear him? Hear who?” said Lois. - -But she did not answer. “Take me away; oh, take me away!” she said -weakly. “I want to go back to the room. I--I can’t tell you what I -thought I heard. It would sound such nonsense. I must have imagined it. -Oh, of course I imagined it! Oh, Lois, I don’t believe I will ever be -any good here, do you?” - -Lois drew her into the outside corridor and up the hall. “I do believe -you are sick yourself!” she said. “Why, you have quite a fever. There -is something troubling you, dear, I’m sure. Can’t you tell me about it?” - -“Oh, no! Indeed there is nothing!” cried Margaret. “Lois, I want to -see _all_ the patients--the worst ones. Promise me you’ll take me with -you when you go around to-night. Indeed, indeed, I must! You _must_ -let me! I will be just as quiet! You will see! You think it wouldn’t -be best--that I’m too fanciful and sensitive yet--but indeed, it isn’t -that. Maybe it’s because I only look on from a distance. I don’t touch -it, actually. I’m only a spectator. If I could go quite close, or -do something to help with my hands, maybe they would seem more like -people, and the sickness of it would leave me. Do, dear, say I may -to-night!” - -They had reached the room now, and Lois gently forced Margaret upon -the lounge. “Very well,” she said, “I will. I’m going through at nine -o’clock. I’m not afraid of your sensitiveness. It’s the sensitive -ones who make the best nurses, Dr. Goodno says. They can _feel_ their -diagnosis. But you must lie down till I can come for you.” - - * * * * * - -Left alone, Margaret pressed her head into the cushions and tried to -think. She could not shake off the real impression of that cry. “Ardee! -Ardee!” It had come to her with such suddenness that every nerve had -jumped and jerked. Could she have dreamed it? Was the sound of that old -intimate name of hers, breathed in that peculiar voice, only a trick of -the imagination? Surely it must have been! Her nerves were overwrought -and frayed. She was hysterical. It was only the muttering of some -fever patient! And yet, she had felt that she must see. An indefinable -impulse had urged her to beg Lois to take her with her. And now the -same horror would seize her again, the same sickening repulsion, and -she would have the same fight over. - - * * * * * - -When Lois came for her, Margaret prepared herself quickly and they -passed down. At the door of the surgical ward they met the house -surgeon, who nodded to Margaret at Lois’s introduction. “Just going in -to see Faulkner’s trephine case,” he said. “It’s a funny sort.” - -“Is he coming through all right?” asked Lois. “That’s the one that was -brought in on your train the other night, Margaret,” she added. - -“I’m afraid it’s going to be the very devil. He took a nasty -temperature this afternoon, and the nurse got worried and called me -up. I found we had a good old-fashioned case of sepsis--wound full of -pus and all that. What makes it bad is that he has hemiplegia. The -whole left side seems to be paralyzed. The operation didn’t relieve the -brain pressure, and with his temperature where it is now, we’ll have to -simply take care of that and let any further examination go. I’ve just -telephoned to Faulkner. It won’t be a satisfactory case, anyway. There -is possibly some deeper brain injury in the motor area, and if we beat -the poison out, he stands to turn out a helpless cripple. Some people -are never satisfied,” he continued, irritably. “When they start out to -break themselves up, they have to do it in some confounded combination -that’s the very devil to patch up. Coming in?” - -He held the door open, and they followed him quickly to a nest of -screens at the upper end of the ward, passing in with him. - -Margaret forced her unwilling eyes to regard the patient as the doctor -laid a finger upon his pulse, attentively examined the temperature -chart, and departed. He lay with his left side toward them. The head -was partly shaven, hideous with bandages, and in an ice-pack. The -side-face was drawn, distorted and expressionless. His left hand lay -quiet, but the fingers of the right picked and tumbled and drummed on -the coverlid unceasingly. He was muttering to himself in peculiar, -excitable monotone. On a sudden his voice rose to audible pitch: - -“Now, then! you’ll come. Don’t say you won’t! Why--you can’t help -it! You _will_! Do you hear? * * * * Take the straight pike to the -crossroads, and then two miles further on. The Drennen place--yes, I -know!” - -At the tone Margaret started in uncontrollable excitement. An -inarticulate cry broke from her. She ran to the foot of the bed, and, -her fingers straining on the bars, gazed with fearful questioning into -the features of the sick man. As she gazed, his head rolled feebly -on the pillow, displaying the right side of the face. Then a low, -terrible, choking, sobbing cry rose to her lips--a cry of pain, of -remonstrance, of desolation. “Why, it’s--it’s my--my--it’s Richard -Daunt!” - -Lois reached her in a single step and held her, trembling. But after -that one bitter sob she was absolutely silent. She hardly breathed; -all her soul seemed to be looking out of her deep eyes. The uncouth -mumbling went on, uncertain but incessant. - -“* * Drennen place. That’s where she is. I’ll find her! Let me go! -Quick, take this off my head! I tell you, I’ve _got_ to go! * * * Oh, -my dear, don’t you want to see me? You look like an autumn leaf in that -scarlet cloak. Come closer to me. Your hair is like flame and you’re -pale--pale--pale! Look at me! * * * How dare you treat me this way? How -dare you! You knew I’d come to you--you knew I couldn’t help it. Some -one told me you didn’t want me to come. * * * It was a letter, wasn’t -it? Some one wrote me a letter. But it was a lie!” - -Lois readjusted the ice-pack, and the voice died down into broken -mutterings. Then he began again: - -“Where’s Richard Daunt? You’ve got to make her understand! You’ve got -to, and you can’t. You’ve failed. She used to love you, and now she’s -gone away and left you. She won’t come back! You can go to the devil! * -* * Ardee! See how your hair shines against the old cross! Pray for her -soul! Pray--for--her--soul! * * Ardee!” - -Margaret bowed her face on her hands, still clasping the bed-rail. -Great, clear tears welled up in her eyes and splashed upon the -coverlid. She saw, as if through a fleering maze of windy rain-sheets, -the dull, round, staring eyes, the yellow skin, the restless fingers -and unlovely lips. Then she stood upright, swaying back and putting -both hands to her temples as though something tense had snapped in her -brain. - -A pained wonder was in the look she turned on Lois--something the look -of a furred wood-animal caught by the thudding twinge of a bullet. -The next moment she threw herself softly on her knees by the cot, -stretching her arms across the straightened figure, pressing her -lips to the rounded outline of the knees, and between these kisses, -lifting her face, swollen with sobless crying, to gaze at the rolling, -unrecognizing features beside her. Agony was in the puffed hollows -beneath her eyes, and her lips were drawn with the terrible yearning of -a mother for her ailing child. - -Lois raised her forcefully, yet feeling a strange powerlessness, and -drew her away, with a finger on her lip and a warning glance beyond -the screens, and Margaret followed her with the tranced gaze of a -sleep-walker. There was no repugnance or distrust in it now, or fleshly -horror of sickness. - - * * * * * - -In her room again, she stood before the window, her mind reaching out -for the new sweetness that had dropped around her. All that she had -thought strongest in her old love had shrunk to pitiful detail. Between -her young, lithe body and the broken and ravaged wreck she had seen, -there could then be no bond of bounding blood and throbbing flesh; -but love, masterful, undismayed, had cried for its own. Something was -dissolving within her heart--something breaking down and away of its -own weight. She felt the fight finished. It had not been fought out, -but the combatants who had gripped throat in the darkness had started -back in the new dawn, to behold themselves brothers. There was a primal -directness in the blow that had thrust her back--somewhere--back from -all self-questionings and the torture of mental misunderstanding, upon -herself. It was an appeal to Cæsar. Beneath the decree, the rigidity -of belief that had lain back of her determination turned suddenly -flexible. She did not try to reason--she felt. But this feeling was -ultimate, final. She knew that she could never doubt herself again. - -The green glints from the grass-plots on the tree-lined street and the -sun on the gray asphalt filled her with a warm tenderness. Every bird -in all the world was piping full-throated; every spray on every bush -was hung with lush blossoms and drenched with fragrance. The swell -of filling lungs and tumultuous blood--the ecstasy of breathing had -returned to her. The joy-bitter gladness of the heart and the world, -the enfolding arms of the unforgot, clasped her round. It was for her -the Soul’s renaissance. The Great Illumination had come! - -As Lois gazed at her, mystified, she turned, with both hands pressed -against her breast, and laughed. - - - - -XVI. - - -Closing the door, Margaret opened her trunk and from the very bottom -produced a slender bunch of letters. She lit the small metal lamp and -placed it on the wicker chair, kneeling beside it with an unreasoning -sense that there was a fitness in the posture. Her fingers trembled as -she touched the black ribbon which held the letters, and she stayed -herself, swaying against a chair, as she unknotted it. There were a -few folded sheets of paper--pencilled notes left for her--a telegram -or two, and four letters. Before she read the first letter, she laid -it against her face, lovingly, as though it were a sentient thing. -She read them one by one very slowly, sometimes smiling faintly with -a childish trembling of the lips--smiles that were followed quickly -by tears which gathered in her great eyes and rolled down her cheeks. -When she had finished reading the last one, she made a little pile -of them. Then, taking from her trunk writing paper, ink and pen, she -laid them upon the floor beside the pile of letters and stretched -herself full length upon the heavy rug. As she lay leaning upon her -elbows, with eyes gazing straight before her, she looked like some -desolate, wind-broken reed over which the storm had passed. She wrote -slowly, with careful fingers, forming her letters with almost laborious -precision, like a little child who writes for a special and fond eye: - - “My Beloved: Please forgive me. Please try to forget how cruel I was - and think kindly of me. I have been so wretched. All through the - slow days since I went away, I have longed so for you. All the many - dark nights I have dreamed of you and cried for you. If you could - only know now while you are suffering so. If you could only know - how I longed for you all that time, I would not suffer so now. I - want so much to tell you. I want to tell you that I love you every - way and all ways. I loved you this way all the time, only I didn’t - know it, and I wanted to love you the way I know I do now. I must - have been mad, I think. I was so selfish and so cruel, and I thought - I was trying to be so good. I could die when I think that it was I - who brought all this suffering upon you. To think that you might - have been killed and that I might never have been able to tell you! - Richard, I have learned what love is. Do other women ever have to - learn it as hardly, I wonder? - - “Do you know, it was not until to-day that I knew you were here--that - you were hurt? And yet we came here on the same train together. If - God had let me know it then, I think I should have died on that long, - terrible journey. You did not know what you were saying, and I heard - you call ‘Ardee! Ardee!’ just as you used to at the beach. That cry - reached out of the dark and took hold of my heart as though it were - an invisible hand drawing me to you. - - “And I had been running away from you when I came--running away from - you and myself. I knew you meant to stay at Warne and see me again. - And I knew if I saw you again, I could not struggle any longer--you - were so strong. And you were right, too; I know that now, dear. - - “The last time I met you in the field, my heart leaped to tell you - ‘yes.’ I was so hungry--hungry--hungry for you. And I was afraid of - my own self. I distrusted my own heart, but it was only because I - wanted to love you with my soul--with the other side of me--the side - that I did not know, that I could not feel sure you filled. Oh, you - must have thought me unnatural, abnormal, hateful. Dear, such doubts - come to women, and they are terrible things. There is more of the - elemental in men. The finer--the further passion of love they know, - when women fail to grasp it. We have to learn it--it is one of the - lessons which men teach us. When my heart was so full of doubt, I - made up my mind to crucify my bodily sensibilities. It seemed to me - that I must let my soul come uppermost. - - “Don’t you remember how I never could bear to look at your collie - that was sick, and how terribly ill I got when I tried to tie up your - hand the day you cut it? All through my life, I have never been able - to look on suffering or pain. I always used to avoid it or shirk it. - When I got to thinking, at Warne, of my own soul, it seemed to me - that I had been unwomanly and selfish, cruelly, heartlessly selfish, - and that I had dwarfed that soul that I must make grow again. - - “So I came down here. - - “All along I have had such a horror of this place. I could not - overcome it. Every hour was full of misery. - - “To-day I went through the wards and I found you. - - “Dearest, I am so happy and I am so miserable--miserable because - I have found you suffering. Every moment is a long agony to me. - And happy because I have found myself. My soul and I are friends - again. Some wonderful miracle was worked for me to-day, and it is - so brilliant, so wonderful, that it has left no room in my mind for - anything else. - - “It was not the old familiar face that I saw against the pillows - to-night. It was not the old dear voice that called to me. It was not - the old Daunt. The wavy hair is gone, and there is no color in your - cheeks. But, dear, when I saw your poor face all drawn and your lips - all cracked with fever, my heart came up in my throat so that I could - not breathe. I wanted to kiss your face, your hands. I wanted to kiss - even the bandages that were around your head. I wanted to put my arms - around you. I felt strong enough to keep anything from you--even - death. All in a moment it seemed to me that I was your mother, - and you were my little child who was sick. And yet so much more - so--infinitely much more than that. It came to me then like a flash, - how wrong--wickedly wrong I had been. Everything disappeared but you - and me. It was not your body that I loved. It was not the body that - that broken thing had been that I loved, but it was you--_you_, the - inner something for whose sake I had loved the Richard Daunt that I - knew. - - “You could not speak to me. You did not know that I was there. You - could not plead with me, but my own self pleaded. You’ll never have - to beg me to stay or go with you again. You need me now--only I know - how much. You cannot even know that I am near you, that I am talking - to you, that I am telling you all about it. I know that you will - never see this letter, and yet somehow it eases my heart a little to - write it. I have read over all the letters that you have sent me, - and they are such brave, such true letters. I understand them now. - They have been read and cried over a great many times since you wrote - them. - - “I am waiting now every day, every hour when I can tell you all this - with my own lips, and when your dear eyes will open again and smile - up into mine with the old boyish smile--and when you will put your - arms around my neck and tell me that you know all about it, and that - you forgive me.” - -Her tears had been dropping fast upon the page, and she stopped from -time to time to wipe them with the draping meshes of her loose, -rust-colored hair. She did not even turn as she heard a hand at the -door. - -“Why, Margaret!” said Lois, “it is two o’clock in the morning, and I -have just finished my last round. Come, child, you must go to bed at -once. I see that I have got to be a stern chaperon. What! writing?” - -“It is a letter,” said Margaret. “I have just finished it.” She lifted -the tongs and poked the fire-logs until there was a crackling blaze, -then she gathered up the loose ink-stained sheets carefully, and, -leaning forward, laid them in a square white heap upon the red embers. -The flame sprang up and around them, reaching for them voraciously. -And Lois, seeing the action, but making no comment, came and sat down -on the rug beside Margaret, and wistfully and tenderly drew the brown, -bowed head into her sisterly arms. - - - - -XVII. - - -“Lois”--Mrs. Goodno, standing in the doorway, drew her favorite close -beside her--“look at the picture coming down the hall! Isn’t she -beautiful?” There was a spontaneous and genuine admiration in her tone -as she spoke. - -A something indefinable, an atmosphere of loveliness, seemed to breathe -from Margaret’s every motion as she came toward them. Her cheeks had -a delicate flush, her glance was bright and roving, and her perfect -lips were tremulous. Her look had a new mystery in it--a brooding -tenderness, like the look of a young mother. - -“All through the nurses’ lecture this morning,” said Lois, “I noticed -her. When she smiled it made one want to smile, too!” - -As Margaret reached them and greeted Mrs. Goodno, Lois joined her, and -the two girls walked down the hall together to their room. - -“Now,” said Lois, as she took a text-book from the drab-backed row on -the low corner shelf, and assumed a judicial demeanor, “I’m morally -certain that you haven’t studied your Weeks-Shaw this morning, and I’m -going to quiz you.” - -Margaret broke into a laugh. “Try it,” she said gayly. “You’re going to -ask me to define health, and to show the difference between objective -and subjective symptoms, and tell you what is a mulberry-tongue. Health -is a perfect circulation of pure blood in a sound organism. How is -that?” - -“Good!” Lois, sitting down by the window, was laughing, too. “When the -doctor quizzes you, you may not know it so well! Suppose you explain to -me the theory of counter-irritants.” - -Margaret swooped down upon her, and kneeling by her chair, put both -hands over the page, looking up into her face. “Don’t!” she said. -“What do I care for it all to-day! Oh, Lois! Lois!” she whispered in -the hushed voice of a child about to tell a dear secret, “I am so -happy! I am so happy that I can’t tell it! To think that I can watch -him and nurse him, and take his temperature! I can help cure him and -see him get better and better every day. When he talks, he pronounces -queerly and his words get all jumbled up, and his sentences have no -ends to them, but I love to hear it--I know what they are trying to -say! He is so weak that I feel as if I were his mother. I know you’ve -told Mrs. Goodno; haven’t you, dear? Somehow I knew it just now when -she smiled at us! I don’t care if you did--not a bit--if she will only -let me stay by him.” - -Lois patted the bronzing gloss of the uplifted head. “I did tell her,” -she said. “I thought I ought to--but she understands. Never fear about -that.” - -“I wonder what makes me so happy! I love all the world, Lois! Did you -ever feel that way?” - -The light wing of a shadow brushed the face above her, and deep in its -eyes darkled a something hidden there that was almost envy. - -The voice went running on: “Suppose he should open his eyes suddenly -to-night--conscious! Do you know what I would do? I would slip off this -apron all in a minute, so he should see me and know me first of all. I -have my hair the way he likes it. I wish I could do more for him! Love -is service. I want to tire myself out doing things to help him. Why, -only think! It was my fault he was hurt. I sent him away when it was -breaking my heart to do it.” - -“If he should know you to-day, dear,” Lois said, her face flashing into -a smile, “it ought to help him get well. There is joy bubbling out all -over you!” - -“I’m so glad he’s not conscious now, for when he isn’t he doesn’t -suffer. Sometimes last night he seemed to, and then I ached all over -to suffer for him. I could laugh out loud through the pain, to think -that I was bearing it for him! Oh, Lois, I haven’t understood. I see -now what you love in this life here. It isn’t only bodies that you are -curing; it’s souls--that you’re making sound houses for.” - -Drawing Lois’s arm through hers, Margaret pointed to where the huge -entrance showed, from the deep window. “Do you know, the first day we -came in there together, I was the unhappiest girl in the world. It -seemed as though I was being dragged into some dreadful black cave, -where there was no sun, no flowers, nothing but ghastly sights and -people that were dying! The first day I went with you through the wards -I hated it. I wanted to shut my eyes and run away as far as I could -from it!” - -“I know that; I saw it.” - -“But now that is all changed. I never shall see a body suffer again -without wanting to put my hands on it and soothe it. Life is so much -sweeter and deeper than I knew! It’s hard to be quiet. I’m walking to -music. I must go around all the time singing. It seems wicked of me -to be so happy when I know that it will be days and days yet before -he can even sit up and let me read to him. But I can’t help it. I was -so wretched all the time before, that the joy now seems to be a part -of me. It seems to be his joy, too. He would be glad if he could know -that, in spite of all I thought and everything I said, I love him now -as he wanted me to, and that nothing ever can come between us again! -Isn’t it time to go in yet? I can hardly wait for the hour!” - -Lois looked at her watch. “It’s near enough,” she said. “Come. Dr. -Faulkner is somewhere in the ward now, and I must get instructions.” - - * * * * * - -Daunt lay perfectly quiet, his restless hand still. An orderly was -changing the phials upon the glass-topped table and nodded to them. - -Lois darted a quick glance at the face on the pillow, and her own -changed. A stealthy fear crept over her. Margaret’s head was turned -away toward the cot. How should she tell her? How let her know that -subtle change of the last few hours that her own trained eye noted? -How let out for her the strenuous agony that waited in that room? The -pitiful unconsciousness of evil in the graceful posture went through -her with a start of anguish. - -The soft footfall of the visiting surgeon drew near, and with swift -prescience she moved close to Margaret. He bent over the figure in -rapid professional inquiry and consulted the chart, nodding his head as -he tabulated his observations in a running, semi-audible comment. - -“H--m! well-developed septic fever. Delirium comes on at night, you -say, nurse. Eh? H--m! Pulse very rapid and stringy--hurried and -shallow breathing--eyes dull, with inequality of pupils. H--m! Face -flushed--lips blue--extremities cold. Lips and teeth covered with -sordes--typical case. H--m! Complete lethargy--clammy sweat--face -assuming a hippocratic type. Temperature sub-normal. H--m! Yes. Nurse, -please preserve all notes of this case. It’s interesting. Very. Like to -see it in the ‘Record.’” - -“What are the probabilities, doctor?” It was the sentence. Lois’s lips -were trembling, and she put a hand on Margaret’s arm. - -“Probabilities? H--m! Give him about twelve hours and that’s generous. -Never any hope in a case of this kind. Why, the man’s dying now. Look -at his face.” - -A piteous, chalky whiteness swept like a wave over Margaret’s cheeks, -but she had made no sound. When the doctor was quite gone, she swerved -a little on her feet, as though her limbs had weakened, and her lips -opened and shut voicelessly, as if whispering to herself. Lois dreaded -a cry, but there was none; she only shut her eyes, and covered her poor -face, gone suddenly pinched and pallid, with her two hands. - -“Wait, Margaret.” Lois held out a hand whose professional coolness was -touched with an unwonted tremor. “Wait a moment, dear.” She ran to the -hall to see that no one was in sight. Then running back and putting her -arm around Margaret’s shoulders, she led her, blind and unresisting, to -the stair. - - - - -XVIII. - - -The house surgeon stretched his long legs lazily in a corner of the -office and looked at the hospital superintendent through the purplish -haze from his cigar. “I wonder, Goodno,” he said, “that you have time -to get interested in any one case among so many. I’d like to see the -one you speak of pull through; it’s a rather unusual case, and a -trephine always absorbs me.” - -Dr. Goodno lighted a companion cigar. “My interest in him isn’t wholly -professional,” he answered slowly. “It’s personal. In the first place, -he isn’t an Italian stevedore or a Pole peddler from Baxter street. He -is a man of a great deal of promise. He has published a book or two, I -believe. And in the second place, my wife is very much concerned.” - -“Always seems to be the trouble, doesn’t it? Enter a romance!” Dr. -Irwin waved his hand widely. - -“Yes, it’s a romance. To tell the truth, Irwin, Mrs. Goodno knows of -the young woman, and I can’t tell you how anxious she is about him. -There’s nothing sadder to me than a case like that.” - -“Ah!” the other said, “that’s because you’re a married man. The rest of -us haven’t time to grow sympathetic. I should say that the particular -young woman would be a great deal better off, judging from present -indications, if he _did_ die.” - -“Why?” - -“Because, if he should recover from this septic condition, he’s more -than likely to be a stick for the rest of his life. It’s even chances -he never puts foot to the ground again. Such men are better dead, and -if you gave them their choice, most of them would prefer it.” - -“I didn’t know it was as bad as that. Dr. Faulkner’s earlier prognosis -was more favorable.” - -“Yes, but I don’t like his temperature of the last two days. He’s got -septic symptoms, and you know how quickly such a course ends. Well, -we’ll soon know, though that’s more consolation to us than it might -be to him, I suppose.” He drummed with his fingers on the arm of the -chair. “As for the girl,” he continued. “Love? Pshaw! She’ll get over -it. What sensible woman, when she’s got beyond the mooning age and the -foreign missionary age, wants a cripple for a husband? If this patient -should live in that way, this girl you speak of would probably get the -silly notion that she wanted to marry him--trust a woman, especially a -young woman, for that! If she’s beautiful or wealthy, or particularly -talented, it’s all the more likely she would insist on tying herself -up to him and nurse him and feed him gruel till her hair was gray. And -what would she get out of it?” - -“There might be worse lives than that.” Dr. Goodno spoke reflectively. - -“For her, I presume you mean?” - -“Yes. Woman’s love is less of a physical affinity and more a -consciousness of spiritual attraction than man’s.” - -“Teach your women that. It’s not without its merits as a working -doctrine. The time a woman isn’t thinking about servants or babies she -generally spends thinking about her soul. The word soul to her is as -fascinating as a canary to an Angora cat. She takes so much stock in -heaven only because she’s been told it isn’t material. Your material -philosophies were all invented and patented by men; it’s the women who -keep your spiritual religions running.” - -“How would _you_ have it?” - -“Oh, it’s all right as far as heaven goes! Let them believe anything -they want to. But when you bring the all-soul idea down into every-day -life, it’s mawkish. When you go about preaching that love is a -spiritual ‘affinity,’ for instance.” - -“Well?” - -“You may believe it, understand. But you gloss over the other side. -The general opinion is that ‘bodily’ isn’t a nice word to use when we -discuss love. You and I, as physicians, see every day the results of -this dislike to recognize the material side in what has been called the -‘young person.’ Women are taught from childhood to regard the immensely -human and emotional sensibilities as linked to sin. The sex-stirring -in them, they are led to imagine evil and a wrong to possess. They are -taught instinctively to condemn rather than to respect the growth and -indications of their own natures. The profound attraction of one sex -to the other which marks the purest and most ennobling passion--the -trembling delight in the merest touch or caress--the bodily thrill at -the passing presence or footfall of the one beloved--these they come to -believe a shame to feel and a death to confess. It is the teaching that -makes for the morbid. A great deal of mental suffering which leaves its -mark upon the growing woman might be avoided if men and women were more -honest with themselves. A soulless woman is just as much use in the -world as a bodiless one--or a man either, for that matter.” - -Dr. Goodno regarded him musingly. “Granted there is a good deal of -truth in what you say,” he said. “When I spoke of woman’s love as more -of a spiritual and less of a material affinity than man’s, I meant -that it does not require so much from the senses to feed upon. Sex has -a psychology, and it is a fact which has been universally noted that -all that concerns the mental aspect of sex is exhibited in greater -proportionate force by women. Does not this seem to imply that love to -a woman is more of a mental element and less of a physical?” - -“Nonsense! More of a mental, but only so because more of a physical, -too. All love’s mental delights come originally from the physical -side. How many women do you see falling in love with twisted faces and -crooked joints? A hand stands for a hand-clasp; a face for a kiss! Love -becomes a ‘spiritual’ passion only after it has blossomed on physical -expression. Not before.” - -The other shook his head doubtfully. - -“If your view were the correct one,” pursued Irwin, “women, in all -their habitual acts of fascination (which are Nature’s precursors of -love) would strive more to touch the mental, the spiritual side of -men. But they don’t. They apply their own self-learned reasoning to -the opposite sex. They decorate themselves for man with the feathers -of male birds (you’ll find that in your Darwin), which Nature gave the -male birds to charm the females. They strike at his senses, and they -hit his mental side, when he has any, through them.” - -“You’re a sad misogynist, Irwin!” Dr. Goodno was smiling, but there was -a sub-note of earnestness beneath the lightness of his tone. “And you -forget that women have an imaginative and ideal side which is superior -to man’s. They can create the mental, possibly, where men are most -dependent upon sense-impression. Love involves more of the soul in -woman, Irwin.” - -The house surgeon unwound his legs. “Or less,” he said tersely. -“Havelock Ellis says a good thing. He says that while a man may be -said to live on a plane, a woman is more apt to live on the upward -or downward slope of a curve. She is always going up or coming down. -That’s why a woman, when an artificial civilization hasn’t stepped in -to forbid it, is forever talking about her health. And, spiritually, as -well as physically, she is just as apt to be coming down as going up. -Her proportion is wrong. Your bad woman disrespects her soul; your good -woman disrespects her body. The wholesome woman disrespects neither and -respects both. But very few young women are wholesome nowadays. Their -training has been against it! The best way for a woman to treat her -soul is to realize that her soul and body belong together, and have to -live together the rest of her natural life. She needn’t forget this -just because she happens to fall in love! No woman can marry a man -whom accident has robbed of his physical side and not wrong herself. -She shuts off the avenues of her senses. There is no thrill of ear or -hand--no comeliness for her eye to dwell upon, and her spiritual love, -so beautiful to begin with, starves itself slowly to death!” - -“Very good on general principles,” said Dr. Goodno. “That’s the -trouble. It’s easy enough to sermonize in the pulpit, or the clinic -either, but when we come to concrete examples, it’s difficult. The -particular instance is troublesome. Now, in the case of this man in the -surgical ward, if he recovered at all, but remained a hopeless cripple, -you would pack him off into a rayless solitude for the rest of his -life, and tell the girl who loves him to go and love somebody else. You -wouldn’t leave it to her--even if he was willing.” - -“Wouldn’t _you_?” - -“No! I would be afraid to arrogate to myself the judgment upon two -human souls. There are times when what we call consistency vanishes and -something greater and more noble stands up to make it ashamed. I’ll -tell you now, Irwin, if the one woman in the world to me--the woman I -loved--if my wife--had been brought where the case we’ve been speaking -of promises to be--if there were nothing but her eyes left and the -something that is back of them--I tell you, I’d have married her! Yes, -and I’d have thanked God for it!” - -His companion tossed the dead butt of his cigar into the grate and rose -to go to the ward. “Goodno,” he said, and his voice was unsteady, “I -believe it! You would; and I wish to the Lord I knew what that meant!” - - * * * * * - -The superintendent sat long thinking. He was still pondering when his -wife entered the room. “I’ve just been talking with Irwin,” he said, -“about the last trephine case--the one you spoke to me of. He doesn’t -seem too hopeful, I’m sorry to say.” - -She did not answer. - -“By the way,” he continued, “I saw your new nurse protégée to-day. -Langdon, I believe her name is. She is a lovely girl; I think I never -saw a brighter, sweeter face in my life.” - -Mrs. Goodno had gone to the window and stood looking out. “Doctor,” she -said, “I’ve bad news. Dr. Faulkner has just seen Mr. Daunt, and--he is -dying.” - -Something in her voice caught him. He rose and came beside her, and saw -that her eyes were full of tears. He drew her head to his shoulder and -smoothed her hair gently. He could feel her hands quiver against his -arm. His thoughts fled far away--somewhere--where the one for whose -sorrow she cried must be uncomforted. “Poor girl! Poor girl!” he said. - - - - -XIX. - - -As they entered the room, Lois turned the key in its lock and bent a -long, penetrating gaze on Margaret. - -She lay huddled against the welter of bedclothes, silent, inert, -pearl-pale spots on her cheeks like gray-white smothers of foam over -fretting rocks. Her eyes were closed and her breath came chokingly, -like a child’s after a draught of strong medicine. Suddenly, as Lois -stood pondering, she kneeled upright on the bed, holding her arms out -before her. - -“Oh, God!” she cried, “don’t let him die! Please don’t! He can’t--he -can’t die! Why, he’s Richard--Richard Daunt. It’s only an accident. He -can’t die that way. God--God!” - -“Hush, dear! Oh, dear! What can I say?” cried Lois. - -Margaret slipped to the floor, dragging the covers with her, and -burying her face in the fleecy cuddle. There she writhed like some -trodden thing. - -“Oh, dear God!” she sobbed, “just when I knew. He can’t die now! It’s -just to punish me; I’ve been wicked, but I didn’t mean to be. I only -wanted his good! If he had only died before I knew it! Only let him -live till I can tell him, God. I’m not a wicked woman--you know how I -tried. A wicked woman wouldn’t have tried. Oh, God, he doesn’t even -know! I can’t tell him. I’ve suffered already. If he died, I couldn’t -feel worse than I have all this time. Let me think he’s going to die, -but don’t let him. _Don’t let him!_ I want him so! It isn’t for that -that I want him! I know now. I thought it was the other. But I wasn’t -so wicked as that. I’ve been selfish. I’ve been thinking I was good -to keep him away, but I wasn’t. I was cruel. He loved me the right -way. Oh, if I could only forget how he talked!--and he didn’t know -what he was saying. I’ve hated myself ever since. If he dies, I shall -hate myself forever! I don’t deserve that! I’m not so bad as that! I -_couldn’t_ be. I’m willing to be punished in other ways--in any other -way--but not this, God! I can’t stand it! - -“I don’t ask for him as he was! I don’t care how he looks! Give him -to me just as he is. Give him to me crippled and helpless, and let me -care for him all my life. Oh, God, it isn’t so much that I ask! It’s -such a little thing for you to grant! Why, every day you let some one -get well, some one who isn’t half as much to anybody as he is to me. If -I were asking something I oughtn’t to--something sinful, it would be -different! But it can’t be bad to want him to get well! I’ll be better -all my life to have him. It isn’t much--I’ll never ask you anything -else as long as I live! Only let him live--don’t take him away! I don’t -care if he can never walk again, if he can only know me, and love me -still! God, his life is so precious to me; it’s worth more than all the -world. If he died, I would want to die, too. God! Hasn’t he suffered -enough? How can you watch him--how can you see what he is suffering -now and not let him live? You can if you want to! There are so many -millions and millions of people, and this is just one of them. Oh, for -Christ’s sake--for Christ’s sake!” - -“Oh, Margaret! Margaret!” wailed Lois, falling beside her, as though -physical contact could soothe her. “Don’t go on like that! Don’t! Oh, -it’s too cruel! You break my heart! Darling, darling! He isn’t dead -yet. Maybe--maybe----” She stopped then, choking, but pressing her -hands hard on Margaret’s cheeks, on her hair, on her breast, her limbs, -as though to press back the nerves that she felt throbbed to bursting. - -Margaret struggled to her feet, swaying with the paroxysm just passed. -Her eyes were unwet and bright, and her teeth were clenched tightly on -her under lip. - -“No, he isn’t dead,” she said slowly, as though to force conviction -on herself. “He isn’t--dead. Doctors are mistaken sometimes, aren’t -they?” she asked dully. “Yes, I know! They are! Dr. Irwin told me so -himself. ‘The prognostications of surgery can in no case be considered -infallible.’ That’s what he said in the lecture yesterday. I wrote it -down in my note-book. That means that he may not die. Oh! I’ve got to -believe that. _I’ve got to!_ Can’t you see that I’ve got to? You don’t -believe he will live! I see it in your face. When the doctor said that -just now, you looked just as he did. He might have stabbed me just as -well. Why! I’d rather die myself a million times--but it wouldn’t do -any good! It wouldn’t do any good!” - -Margaret moved to the fire and spread out her hands before the -blaze, as though her mind unconsciously sought relief from strain -in an habitual action. But her chattering teeth showed that she was -unconscious of its warmth. - -She looked up at the countenance of La Belle Jardinière above the -fireplace. The mild gaze which had once held reproach now seemed to -bend down full of pitiful tenderness. Her bright, miserable eyes rested -on the placid figure. - -“You don’t know,” she said slowly, “what I am praying for. If it were -a little child--_my_ little child--that I were asking for, you would -understand. You can only pity me, but you can never, never know!” - -She turned and walked up and down the floor, her steps uneven with -anguish, her fingers laced and unlaced in tearless convulsion, and her -throat contracting with soundless sobs. - -Lois watched her, her mind saying over and over to itself: “If she -would only cry! If she would only cry!” There was something more -terrible than tears in this inarticulate anguish. At last she went and -stood in Margaret’s way, clinging entreatingly to her. “Do let me help -you, dear! Lie down and let me cover you up and make you some tea! Do -please, dear!” She stopped, struck by the ashy pallor of her face. - -“No, no, Lois. I can’t stay here! Think! He may be dying _now_! I -_must_ go to him! Oh, you have got to let me--they can’t forbid me -that. I was going to stay with him to-night, anyway. You know I was! -I can’t let him die! He _shan’t_! I’ll fight it off with him. I don’t -care what Dr. Faulkner says; I don’t care what you think! You mustn’t -say no, Lois! Oh, Lois, darling! I’ll die now, right here, if you -don’t.” She dropped on her knees at Lois’s feet, catching her hand and -kissing it in grovelling entreaty. - -“You know I’ll have to let you, if you ask like that!” cried Lois. “I’m -only thinking of you--and of him,” she added. “You know if you should -break down----” - -“But I won’t--I won’t!” A gulping hiccough strained her, and Lois -poured out a glass of water for her hastily, and stood over her while -she swallowed it in choking mouthfuls. - - - - -XX. - - -In the dimmed light Margaret bent above Daunt’s bed to wipe away the -creeping, beady sweat that lay on the forehead, and laid her fingers on -his wrist. Then she came close to Lois. She had bitten her lip raw and -her neck throbbed out and in above her close collar. - -“It’s fluttering,” she whispered piteously, “and he’s so cold! See how -pinched and blue his nose is. Oh, God--Lois!” - -The rustle and stir of the early waking city soaked in fine-filtered -sounds through the window. Of what use were its multitudinous -strivings, its tangled hopes, its varied suffering? The unending quiet -of softened noises beyond the spotless, ruffled screens hurt her. She -could have screamed, inarticulately, frantically, to scare away that -dreadful, stolid, lethargic thing that sprawled in the air. Her nails -left little, curved, purpled dents in her palms that smarted when she -unclenched her fingers. It would be easier to bear it if he cried -out--if he babbled unmeaningness, or hurled reproaches. Only--that -still prostration, that anxious expression about the lines of the -forehead, that silence, growing into---- No, no! Not that! Not--death! - -Lois sat aching fiercely at the smouldering longing in the shadowy -depths of the other’s spaniel-like eyes. The tawny-brown surge of her -hair, swept back from her forehead, stood out against the white of the -blank wall, cameo-like. She suddenly crouched by Lois’s chair, grasping -at her. “Lois, Lois!” she said, low and with fearful intensity; “it’s -come! Help me to fight it! Help me!” - -“What has come? What?” - -“Fear! It’s looking at me everywhere. It’s looking between the -screens! I must keep it away. If I give up to it, he’ll die! Press my -hands--that’s good. Look at him! Didn’t he move then? Wasn’t his face -turned more? I’m--cold, Lois.” - -An icy frost had silvered her soul. Gaunt arms seemed to stretch from -the dimness toward the bed. Then, with an effort which left her weak, -she thrust back her imaginings, rose, and sat down by the pillow. -Her eyes glanced fearfully from side to side, then above, as though -questioning from what direction would come this relentless foe. - -Through her dazed brain rushed, clamorous, reiterating, a prayer-blent, -defiant appeal. She saw God sitting on a draped throne, but His -face was merciless. He would not help her! Of what virtue was this -all-filling love of hers if it could not save one little human life? He -was dying--dying--dying! And he _must not_ die! She remembered a night, -far back in her misty childhood, when she had crept through evening -shadows to see a soul take flight. The Death Angel then was a kindly -friend sent to set free a shining twin; now it was a ghastly monster, -lying in wait and chuckling in the silences. - -She pressed Daunt’s nerveless hand between her warm palms and strove -to put the whole force of her being into a great passionate desire--a -desire to send along this human conductivity the extra current of -vitality which she felt throbbing and pressing in her every vein. It -seemed as though she must give--give of her own bounding life, to eke -out the fading powers of that dying frame. Again and again she breathed -out her longing, until the very intensity of her will made her feel -dizzy and weak. She would have opened her veins for him. Like the Roman -daughter, she would have given her breast to his lips and the warmth -from her limbs to aid him. - -Once she started. “You shall! You shall!” seemed to patter in flying -echoes all about her. It was Daunt’s cry by the fields at Warne, that -had gone leaping from his lips to her heart like a vibrant, inspiring -fire. Did that virile will still lie living, overlapped with the wing -of disease, sending its stubborn strength out now to bolster her own? -She glanced at the waxy face, half expecting to see the bloodless lips -falling back from the words. - -Daunt lay motionless. The ice-pack had been removed from his head, and -the shaven temple showed paste-like beneath the bandage-edge. From time -to time Lois poured between his lips a teaspoonful of diluted brandy, -and, at such times, Margaret would put her strong arms under his head -and raise it from the pillow, outwardly calm, but inwardly shuddering -with wrenching jerks of pain. - - * * * * * - -So the slow, weary night dragged away. The house surgeon looked in -once, bent over the patient a moment, and, without examination, went -away. - -The morning broke, and through the walls the dim, murmurous hum of -street traffic penetrated in a muffled whisper. Then the gray of the -late dawn crept about the room, noiseless-footed, like one walking -over graves. Suddenly Lois, who had been sitting with closed eyes, felt -a touch on her shoulder. It was Margaret, and she pointed silently to -Daunt. Lois started forward with a shrinking fear that the end had come -unperceived, but a glance reassured her. The rigid outlines of his -features seemed to have relaxed; an indefinable something, a warmth, a -tinge, a flexibility seemed to have fallen upon the drawn cheeks. It -was something scarce tangible enough to be noted; something evasive, -and yet, to Lois’s trained senses, unmistakable. It was a light -loosening of the grip of Death, a tentative withdrawing of the forces -of the destroyer. - -Lois turned with a quick and silent gesture, and the two girls looked -at each other steadfastly. Into Margaret’s eyes sprang a trembling, -eager light of joy. - -“We mustn’t hope too much, dear,” Lois whispered, “but I think--I -think that there is a little change. Wait until I call Dr. Irwin.” - -The house surgeon bent over the cot with his finger upon Daunt’s pulse. -“This is another one on Faulkner,” he said. “It beats all how things -will go. Said he’d give him twelve hours, did he? Well, this patient -has his own ideas about that. He evidently has marvellous recuperative -powers or else the age of miracles isn’t past. Better watch this case -very carefully and report to me every hour or so. You can count,” he -smiled at Lois, “on being mighty unpopular with Faulkner. He doesn’t -like to have his opinions reversed this way, and he is pretty sure to -lay it on the nurse.” - -As the doctor disappeared, all the strength which Margaret had summoned -to her aid seemed to vanish in one great wave of weakening which -overspread her spirit. Everything swam before her eyes. She sank upon -the chair and laid her arms outstretched upon the table. Then she -slowly dropped her head upon them. - - - - -XXI. - - -It was late afternoon. The fiery sun had just dipped below the jagged -Adirondack hill-peaks to the south, still casting a carmine glow -between the scattered and low-boughed pines. The square window of the -high-ceiled sanitarium room was specked with pale-appearing stars, and -the snow-draped slopes beneath showed dim in the elusive beauty that -lurks in soft color and low tones. Daunt lay silent, facing the window, -and Margaret, tired from romping with the doctor’s children, rested on -a low hassock beside his reclining chair. Slowly the carmine faded from -the snow, and the hastening winter-dark trailed its violescent gossamer -up and down the rock-clefts and across the purpling hollows. - -He turned his eyes, all at once feeling her lifted gaze. He reached out -his right hand and touched the lace edge of her white nurse’s cap, with -a faint smile. Something in the smile and the gesture caught at her -heart. She leaned suddenly toward him, and taking his hand in both her -own, laid her face upon it. - -He drew his hand away, breathing sharply. - -“Dear!” she said. “Do you remember that afternoon on the sands? You -kissed me then! I am the same Margaret now--not changed at all.” - -A shudder passed over him, but he did not reply. - -Then she knelt beside him, quite close, laying her cheek by his face -on the pillow and drawing his one live hand up to her lips. “You are -everything to me,” she whispered--“everything, everything! That day -on the beach I was happy; but not more happy, dear, than I am now. You -were everything else in the world to me then, but now you are _me_, -myself! Don’t turn away; look at me!” Reaching over, she drew his -nerveless left arm across her neck. - -He turned his face to her with an effort, his lips struggling to speak. - -“Kiss me!” she commanded. - -He tried to push her back. “No! No!” he cried vehemently, drawing away. -“That’s past.” - -“Not even that! Just think how long I’ve waited!” She was smiling. -“Richard,” she said, “do you know what it means for a woman to kneel -to a man like this? I haven’t a bit of pride about it. Only think how -ashamed I will be if you refuse to take me! What does a woman do when a -man refuses her?” - -A white pain had settled upon Daunt’s face. “Margaret,” he faltered, -“don’t; I can’t stand it! You don’t know what you say.” - -She kissed his hand again. “Yes, I do! I am saying just as plainly as I -can that I love you; that I belong to you, and that I ask for nothing -else but to belong to you as long as I live.” - -His hand made a motion of protest. - -“I want you just as much as I did the day you first kissed me. I want -the right to stay with you always and care for you.” - -He winced visibly. “‘Care for me!’” he repeated. “It would be _all_ -care. I have nothing to bring you now but sorrow and regret. I’m not -the Daunt who offered himself to you at Warne. I’m only a fragment. I -had health and hopes then. I had beautiful dreams, Margaret--dreams of -work and a home and you. I shan’t ever forget those dreams, but they -can never come true!” - -She smoothed his hand caressingly. “I have had dreams, too,” she -answered. “This is the one that comes oftenest of all. It is about you -and me.” She turned her head, with a spot of color in either cheek. -“Sometimes it is in the day. You are lying, writing away at a new book -of yours, and I am filling your pipe for you, while the tea is getting -hot. I see you smile up to me and say, ‘Clever girl! how did you know I -wanted a smoke?’ Then you read your last chapter to me, and I tell you -how I wouldn’t have said it the way the woman in the story does, and -you pretend you are going to change it, and don’t. - -“Sometimes it is in the evening, and we are looking out at the sunset -just as we have been doing to-night.” - -He would have spoken, but she covered his mouth with her hand. His -moist breath wrapped her palm. - -“And then it is dark and there is a big red lamp on the table--the one -I had in my old room--and I am reading the latest novel to you, and -when we have got to the end, you are telling me how you would have done -it.” - -While she had been speaking, glowing and dark-eyed, a mystical peace--a -divine forgetfulness had touched him. He lifted his hand to his -forehead, feeling her soft fingers. The pictures she painted were so -sweet! - -Presently he threw his arm down with a swallowed sob. The dream-scene -faded, and he lay once more helpless and despairing, weighted with the -heaviness of useless limbs, a numb burden for whom there could be no -love, no joy, nothing but the inevitable rebuke of enduring pain. He -smoothed the wide dun-gold waves of her hair gently. - -“You are not for such a sacrifice, Margaret,” he said sadly. “I am not -such a coward. You are a woman--a perfect, beautiful woman--the kind -that God made all happiness for.” - -“But I couldn’t be happy without you!” she cried. - -“Nor with me,” he answered. “No, I’ve got to face it! All the long -years I should watch that womanhood of yours growing dimmer and less -full, your outlook narrowing, your life’s sympathies shrinking. I -shall be shut up to myself and grow away from the world, but you shall -not grow away from it with me! It would be a crime! I should come to -hate myself. I want you to live your life out worthily. I would rather -remember you as you are now, and as loving me once for what I was!” - -Margaret’s eyes were closed. She was thinking of Melwin and Lydia. - -“Woman needs more to fill her life than the love of a man’s mind. She -wants more, dear. She wants the love of the heart-beat. She wants -home--the home I wanted to make for you--the kind I used to dream -of--the----” His voice broke here and failed. - -The door pushed open without a knock. A tiny night-gowned figure stood -swaying on the sill, outlined sharply against the glare of lamp-light. - -“Vere’s ’iss Mar’det?” he said in high baby key. “I yants her to tiss -me dood-night!” - -Margaret’s hand still lay against Daunt’s cheek, and as she drew it -away, she felt a great hot tear suddenly wet her fingers. - - - - -XXII. - - -Snow had fallen in the night--a wet snow, mingled with sleet and -fleering rain. It had spread a flashing, silver sheen over the vast -wastes, and the sun glinted and laughed from a web of woven jewels. -It gleamed from every needle of the stalwart evergreens, which stood -around in dazzling ice-armor, keeping guard above the virgin snow -asleep, with its white curves dimpling beside the rough, bearish -mountains. Overhead the sky bent in tranquil baby-blue. - -The beauty of the frozen morning hung cheerily about the row of -pillowed chairs wheeled before the glass sides of the long sun-parlor. -To some who gazed from these chairs it was a glimpse of the world into -which they would soon return; to others it was but the symbol of -another weary winter of lengthening waiting. But to each it brought a -comfort and a hope. - -The same fair whiteness of the outdoors shone mockingly through -Daunt’s window. Its very loveliness seemed cruel, with that insidious -raillery with which Nature, be she gloomy or bright, fits our darker -moods. Through the night, while Margaret’s phantom touch lay upon his -forehead, and the ghosts of her kisses crept across his hand, he had -fought with his longing, and he had won. But it was a triumphless -victory. The pulpy ashes of his own denial were in his mouth. He had -asked so little--only to see her, to hear her step, and the lisping -movement of her dress, and the cadence of her voice--only to feel the -touch of her fingers and the drench of her warm, young life! She loved -him; his love, he told himself, incomplete as it was, would take the -place of all for her. And in his heart he told himself that he lied! - -But the rayless darkness of that inner room cast no shadow in the cozy -sun-parlor. There, the doctor, with youthful step that belied his -graying hair, strode about among the patients, chatting lightly, and -full of good-natured badinage. Then, leaving them smiling, he went back -to his private office. As he entered, Margaret rose from the chair -where she waited, and came hurriedly toward him. She was pale, and her -slender hands were clasping nervously about her wrists. - -“Doctor,” she began, and stopped an instant. Then stumblingly, “I have -just got your note. I came to ask you--I want to beg you to--not to -make me go back! I--want to stay so much! I know so well how to wait on -him. You know I wasn’t a regular nurse at the hospital. It was only a -trial. Dr. Goodno doesn’t expect me back.” - -He drew out a chair for her and made her sit down, wiping his glasses -laboriously. “My dear child--Miss Langdon--” he said, “I know how you -feel. My good friend Mrs. Goodno wrote me of you when Mr. Daunt came -to us. She is a splendid, noble-hearted woman, and she wrote of you as -though you were her own daughter. You see,” he continued, “when you -first came, it was suspected that Mr. Daunt’s peculiar paralysis might -be of a hysteric type, and might yield naturally, under treatment, with -a bettering physical condition, or, possibly, under the impulse of some -extra nervous stimulus. Such cases are not unmet with.” - -“Yes, yes,” she said anxiously. - -He polished his glasses again. “I am sorry to say,” he went on, “that -we have long ago abandoned this hope, as you know. Such being the case, -it seems, under the peculiar circumstances, advisable--that is, it -would be better not to----” He stopped, feeling that he was floundering -in deeper water than he thought. - -“Oh, if you only knew!” Margaret’s voice was shaking. “I came here -because I love him, doctor, and because he loved me! Surely I can at -least stay by him. I am experienced enough to nurse him. It’s the only -thing left now for me to be happy in. He wants me! He’s more cheerful -when I am with him. I know he doesn’t really need a special nurse, -but--I don’t have to earn the money for it. I do it because I like it.” - -“My dear young lady,” the doctor said, wheeling, with suspicious -abruptness, in his chair, “be sure that it is only your own best good -that is considered. There are cruel facts in life that we have to face. -This seems very hard for you now, I know. It _is_ hard! He is a brave -man, and believe me, my child, he knows best.” - -Margaret half rose from her seat. “‘He’?--_he_ knows best--Richard? -Does _he_ say--did Mr. Daunt----” - -He took her hand as a father might. “It was not easy for him,” he said -simply. - -She bowed her head in piteous acquiescence, and held his fingers a -moment, her lips striving courageously for a smile, and then went -silently out. - -As she passed Daunt’s closed door on the way to her room, she stretched -out her arms and touched its dark panels softly, fearfully, and then -leaned forward, and once laid her lips against the hard grained wood. - - * * * * * - -An hour later, from where he lay, Daunt could see the bulbous, ulstered -figure of the colored driver as he waited by the porch to take his -single passenger to the distant Lake station. He could see the rake of -the horses’ ears as the man swung his arms, pounding his sides to keep -the blood circulating. His steamy breath made a curdling smoke-cloud -about his peaked cap. - -Daunt’s blood forged painfully as the square ormolu clock on the mantel -pointed near to the hour. There were lines of sleeplessness beneath his -eyes; his face was instinct with suffering. Through his open door came -the mingled tones of conversation in the rooms beyond. - -He was sitting up, his vigorous hair, grown over-long during his -illness, blending its hue with that of the dark chair-cushion. The -white collar that he wore seemed to have lent its pallor to his cheeks. - -He felt himself to have aged during the night. Through the long weeks -since his accident, he had hoped against hope. The doctors had talked -speciously of change of scene and bracing mountain air. He had been -glad enough to leave the foreboding atmosphere of the hospital for -this more cheery hill-top harbor. He had never known nor asked by what -arrangement Margaret was now with him; it had seemed only natural -that it should be so. His patches of delirium memories were every one -brightened by her face and touch, and this state had merged itself -gradually into the waking consciousness when she was always by. Without -questioning, he had come to realize that whatever might have risen -between them in the past was forever gone, and rested content in her -near presence and the promise of the future. - -But as the weeks dragged themselves by he had come to know, with a -kind slowness of realization, that this hope must die. In their late -talks, both of them had tacitly recognized this. In the night of his -growing despair, she had been his one star. Now he must shut out that -ray with his own hands and turn his face to the intolerable dark. - -When her head had been next his on the pillow, with his nostrils full -of the clean, grassy fragrance of her hair--when her hand had closed -his lips and her voice had plead with him, he had seen, as through -a lightning-rift, the enormity of the selfishness with which he had -let his soul be tempted. From that moment there was for him but one -way--_this_ way. And he had accepted it unflinchingly, heroically. - - * * * * * - -The spring of the wide stairway broke and turned half way up, and from -where he sat his eye sighted the landing and that slim figure coming -slowly down. It was the old Margaret in street dress. Above the fur -of her close, fawn cloth coat, her hopeless eyes looked over the -balustrade along which her slight, gloved hand slid weakly, as though -seeking support for her limbs. - -She crossed the threshold and came toward him, with her eyes half -closed, as though in a maze of grief. The hollows beneath them looked -bruised, and her features pinched like a child’s with the cold. -Gropingly and blindly, one hand reached out to him, the other she -pressed close to her throat. She was bathed in a wave of violent -trembling. - -Every stretching fibre in Daunt’s being responded. He could feel the -shuddering palpitation through her suède glove. His self-restraint -hung about him like heavy chains, which the quiver of an eyelash, the -impulse of a sigh, would start into clamorous vibration. - -He looked up and their eyes met once. Her gaze clung to him. His lips -formed, rather than spoke, the word “Good-by.” Then he put her hand -aside and turned his head from her, not to see her go. - -His strained ear heard her uncertain footfalls, and the agony of his -mind counted them! Now she was by the table. Now her hand was on the -knob. Now---- He sprang around, facing her at the sound of a stumble -and a dulled blow; she had pitched forward against the opened door, -swaying--about to fall. - -As her knees touched the floor, a scream burst shrill in the silence of -the room--a scream that pierced the drowsy quiet of the sun-parlor and -brought the doctor running through the hall. - -“Margaret!” - -Its intensity dragged her from the swoon. She turned her head. Daunt -was standing in the middle of the floor, his eyes shining with -fluctuant fire, his arms--_both_ arms--stretched out toward her. - -“Margaret!” he screamed. “Margaret! I can walk!” - -[Illustration] - - - - -TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES: - - -Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_. - -Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. - -Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized. - -Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original. - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's A Furnace of Earth, by Hallie Ermine Rives - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A FURNACE OF EARTH *** - -***** This file should be named 62707-0.txt or 62707-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/2/7/0/62707/ - -Produced by D A Alexander, David E. 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